Read Online Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick - Free Book Online

flash-froze the brain. Later, the personality and surface memories could be teased out with supercooling induction techniques, if the traffic investigators needed an interview.
    I died, Rebel thought flatly. She remembered it happening very clearly now, the faces bent over her, their concerned expressions and the way it had all drawn away into whiteness as …
    The pearls orbited Maxwell’s waist like a ring of satellites. His navel danced at their center.
    Now, as the Perimeter Defense employees slowed and the clamor of voices fell to a murmur, Rebel’s name rose in black Gothic letters. It dominated the scene for a beat, then burst into sudden, bright flame. When the flames died down, a new Rebel Mudlark rose from them like a phoenix.
    The new Rebel was an idealized version of the original, taller and thinner, with spectacular muscle structure. She stood wide-legged, fists on hips, and laughed self-confidently. The holo drew back. Green dyson worlds floated behind her, and she was surrounded by a ring of cringing admirers. One reached a trembling hand out for her, and she kicked him right in the mouth.
    The words AVAILABLE SOON scrolled up.
    â€œTurn it off,” Rebel whispered desperately. “Oh God, turn that damn thing off.” The memory of her death burned in her brain. She wouldn’t be able to forget it again.
    Maxwell picked up the briefcase, looked at it blankly, touched a glowing red dot. The room went dark. “Hold me,” Rebel said. “I don’t want to do anything, just … hold me, please hold me.”
    She floated in the dark, flooded with misery. She’d felt like this when her mother had died in the accident at the Kluster refineries. Her pain had caught her by surprise then, because she’d hated the cold bitch. You’ll never hurt me again, she had thought angrily, and yet she’d still felt abandoned and desolate. She hugged Maxwell to her, like a big, sexless cuddly toy.
    Vague shapes swam in her vision, threatening to coalesce into a stretched and bloated skull. She’d seen death’s face before, as a child. Her first time solo in a vacuum suit, she had blundered across a laser cable and shorted out half her suit. Her visor went black and her rebreather stopped. Floating alone and sightless, gasping and choking, she had suddenly realized that she was going to die. And in that horrified instant, she saw a face before her, bone-white and distorted, with empty eye sockets, small dark nostrils, and black gaping mouth. She threw her head back and the face lurched at her, and she was abruptly hauled in by a Traffic Control employee who injected an air line through the skin of her suit. It had only been her reflection, lit by a lone failsafed helmet monitor light.
    Maxwell gently slid a hand between her legs and moved them apart. He started to enter her. Upset and distracted as she was, she almost let him do it. It would be the easy thing, the path of least resistance. But then the Rebel persona asserted itself, and she shoved him away. She would not let herself be taken advantage of.
    â€œBack off there, bud! Who gave you permission to do that?”
    Maxwell looked bewildered. “But—”
    â€œYou don’t listen too good, do you? I said I didn’t want to do anything, and I by God meant it.” As she raged at him, Maxwell backed away, fell into a fighting crouch, straightened, crouched again. His hands fisted and unfisted. His face twisted with conflicting programmed urges. “What are you, some kind of machine? Willing sex isn’t good enough for you?” Clumsily, Maxwell threw a slap at Rebel’s face. She batted his hand away contemptuously and tried to punch him in the stomach. He flinched back, and his string broke, pearls exploding in all directions. They bounced off the tin walls like hail.
    â€œJust get the fuck out of here!”
    Maxwell was backed into a corner, quivering. In a tiny voice he said,