Read Online Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick - Free Book Online Page A

“But this is my place.”
    For a long moment Rebel glared at him scornfully. Then she laughed, and with a kind of rough good will, reached out to tousle his hair. “You’re kind of useless, you know that?”
    â€œIt all depends on what you want,” Maxwell said, eyes averted sullenly. But his tension was gone. He began gathering up the pearls that still bounced about the room, nabbing them out of the air and holding them in one hand. “I mean, I can fight just as good as I sex, but I got to have clear signals. You can’t expect me to—hey, what’s that?”
    â€œWhat’s what?”
    â€œListen!” They fell silent. In the distance was a dull clank-clank-clank of people hammering on the pipes. It went on and on, growing in volume as more and more people to one end of the tank town hammered in unison. Rebel touched a frame pipe and felt it vibrating in sympathy. Outside, the constant murmur of voices died.
    â€œIt’s the heat! God damn. We got to get away.” Maxwell let go of the pearls and grabbed for his cloak.
    â€œGet away? Where? What are you talking about?”
    Maxwell was frantically struggling into his clothes. “You’ve never been in a raid before? They start by grabbing the airlock. That takes maybe a dozen jackboots. And they bring in a few crates of programming units and these enormous stacks of arrest programs.”
    â€œArrest programs?”
    â€œYeah. Then they move out from the locks in a long line. They arrest maybe one out of five people they nab for failure to cooperate and sentence them to like six hours enforcement duty. Program ’em up on the spot, give them their orders, and send them out to bring in more to be programmed. They spread out like a storm. Before long, you got jackboots everywhere.”
    In her mind’s eye, Rebel saw the police expanding through the tank in an ever-widening cordon, swelling their numbers as they went, doubling every few minutes, like an explosion of yeast culture through a warm medium. “But what are they looking for?”
    â€œWhat the fuck does it matter? You want them to get hold of you?” Maxwell untwisted a corner wire holding on the back wall and shoved the tin to show a thin, dark line of weeds. “Look, worse comes to worse, we can slip out back. Nothing there but vines. Only don’t move around much, ’cause I got a beehive back there. I don’t want you disturbing them.” He took Rebel’s hand and pulled her out into the court. “What we’ve got to do is slip past the storm front. See, they’ll be spread out thin. Questioning everyone, right? Once we get by them, we’re clear.”
    The court was empty. They swam to the gateway. “Does this sort of thing happen here often?” Rebel asked.
    â€œNaw. Once a month, tops.”
    They paused at the gateway and looked down the corridor. Doors opening onto it had been shut and windows tied down. It was crowded with people fleeing the jackboots. Suddenly there came a babble of voices from, upgrain, and people hesitated, colliding in midair as those ahead of them turned back abruptly.
    â€œWhat the hell—?”
    â€œKeep moving, you idiots!”
    â€œNo, no! Turn back!”
    A raver came down the rope, eyes full-mad and staring, globules of drool spewing from his mouth. He was a scrawny old man with long grey beard, his cloak in tatters. He raged as he came, tearing with insane strength at whoever got close. One of his legs was broken, and it waved fluidly behind him. It was clear he did not notice the pain.
    â€œSweet Krishna!” somebody wailed, and floated back from the raver, trailing large red spheres of blood. The corridor was filling with thrashing, panicky people. Somebody pushed past Rebel into the courtyard, and then two more. “Come on,” Rebel said worriedly, “we’ve got to get away from here.”
    But then there was a rush on the