The air was fragrant here. The village had been built within a local cluster of blossoms, and the light was soft and pervasive. Rebel liked it. It could have used a little more life. Butterflies at least. A few lizards, a squirrel, perhaps a tree squid. But other than that, it was pleasant here, sheltered within the orchid. “Maybe I will build a hut,” she said. “I could spend my free time here. Who should I talk to about rent? Who’s your king here?”
“There are no kings here,” Fu-ya said. Billy tugged at his cloak, and the scholar handed him brush and paint. From the hut behind him, he drew a piece of paper. “Here, have fun.”
“No kings?” Treece said, puzzled. “Then who owns all this?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps no one. Perhaps the man in the wheel.” He spread his hands. “You see, when peoplerealized they could build here, they didn’t stop to worry about legalities. They just packed up and moved in.”
One of Fu-ya’s neighbors came up with a sphere of fresh-brewed tea and a handful of drinking syringes.
Scowling, Treece took one and said, “Why? Why burrow so deep in the orchid? Why post a guard by the trail?”
“Defense is simple here,” the neighbor said. “One guard can hold off a dozen attackers. If more came, we could just untie the rags from the path—they’d never find their way in. Or if that didn’t work… we’d all scatter, I guess. That’d be the end of the village, but there’s others out there. Lots of room to build another, for that matter.”
“No, no,” Fu-ya said to Billy. “You want to hold the brush upright, between thumb and forefinger. There, you see?
That way you won’t smudge.”
“Who are you expecting to attack you?” Treece said testily.
Another neighbor had come up, a large bony woman who seemed all knees and elbows whenever she moved.
She said, “You’re not from the tanks, then? No, I can see you’re not. Well, the gang wars are heating up. It’s funny.
You live in the tanks, you think: what did the police ever do for me? Beat you up, smash your teeth, catch you up in their raids. But now, with no police, there’s nothing to stop the gangs but each other. So they try to spread out. People were getting snatched up and reprogrammed all over the place. You don’t watch out, you find yourself being rude girl for some hoodlum you never even heard of before.
Only now, you’re willing to die for him. Very bad.
Especially now that everybody has these rifles; have you seen them? Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Everybody?” Treece said. “I noticed your guard had one. She shouldn’t. Those are supposed to be restricted to programmed samurai.”
The villagers laughed. There were some eight people sitting about by now. “There must be a hundred rifles inthe tanks,” Fu-ya explained. “Maybe even two hundred.
It’s a very bad problem.” He had seated Billy in his lap.
Now he looked down and said, “Hey, look at that. That is very good.”
Billy Defector did not look up. He was drawing circuits on the paper, long glowing lines and intersections like cool rivers of light, straight and pure and enigmatic.
Somewhere, Wyeth was fighting a wizard’s duel with the Comprise. Possibly it was already over. But here, sitting and chatting and laughing, all was peace. A girl who ducked her head, coloring, whenever spoken to, brought out a flute and began to play. Somebody produced two short metal pipes and provided percussion. Soon a band had coalesced and people were dancing.
Rebel didn’t join in. To her way of thinking, zero-gravity dancing was like zero-gravity sex, a lightweight version of the real thing. While Billy drew his circuits, she attached him to a programmer. “Don’t wriggle,” she said, and put him in a trance. Her hands slid down the wafers, and she lost herself in the delicate art of editing. This was the kind of work both her personas enjoyed, and for at least an hour she had no clear idea who she was. Then her hands hovered over the wafers in indecision and drew away.
With a sigh, she removed the adhesion disks. Billy stirred.
Fu-ya’s woman, Gretzin, said, “Is your little boy all right now?”
“I’m just the doctor,” Eucrasia said irritably. “The little boy doesn’t belong to me or anybody else for that matter.
He’s an orphan, I guess.” Then, with a gentle internal shift, she was Rebel again. “He’ll need lots more work before he’s all right. I only dared make minor changes, because he’s so fragile. There’s only a trace of personality to work on—just the memory of a hallucinogenic persona, really. It’s not the easiest thing to set right.”
Fu-ya swam up and lifted the child away. “Come on, Billy. I’ll show you how to fold a paper bird.”
Gretzin stared after the two. “I didn’t really think he was your little boy. I just kind of hoped.” She snorted. “Paper birds!”
The sheraton was a mess. Uprooted trees floated over drowned parasols in the ponds. Rebel skirted a pile of broken glass. She trailed a finger along a wall, and it came up stained with soot. “Where’s Billy?” Wyeth asked, coming up on her suddenly.
“I found a couple in the orchid and hired them to look after him. He’s staying in their village.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I thought they’d be good for him. A little quiet living should strengthen his sense of identity enough for me to try a bit more editing.” They matched strides. “Oh hell, Billy took a shine to Fu-ya, and when I tried to take him away, he started screaming hysterically. I was afraid if I separated them his emotions might run out of control and collapse what little mental structure he has.”
“Hmmm.” They stepped around a team of wallknobbers, gilders, and scrimshaw artisans. Workers were everywhere, making repairs. “Look here. I want to show you something.”
A morgue had been set up in the conference room, the corpses laid out on gurneys by the goldfish stream. There were seven cadavers, all Comprise. “I panicked them into moving early,” Wyeth said. “That’s one reason the casualties were so low. They knew they couldn’t take over the sheraton permanently and that they’d have to pay reparations for any humans killed.” He stopped at a Comprise corpse whose torso was cut open and the skin peeled back. Rebel looked down at the glistening organs, horrified and fascinated. Metal glinted here and there.
Wyeth picked up a hand and turned it over. “See here?
Retractable patch leads inside each fingertip. All she had to do was bite off a bit of callus on the tip and she could interface with anything. There are three separate rectenna systems buried under the skin, and a second spine with God knows how many gigabytes of storage capacity.”
“My God,” Rebel said. “Are they all like this?”
“No, just five. We call them lockpicks because their sole purpose is to break into computer systems. The Comprise hide a few inside every group they send into human space.
They were easy to spot because they’re carrying all that metal within them. As soon as we took them out, the fight was over.”
“Killed.” Constance limped in, trailed closely by Freeboy. He had a dirty bandage on his head. “You did not
‘take them out,’ Mr. Wyeth. You killed them.” Several embroidered panels in her clothing were stained; she reeked of smoke and wrath.
“Aren’t you supposed to be tending to the shrubberies, Moorfields?”
“My people are taking care of that. I want to know why you provoked this senseless, brutal battle.”
A tech reached into an access hatch by the foot of the bridge. The sky flickered and went on. Blue, with big, fleecy clouds.
“Oh, hardly a battle.” Wyeth smiled. “And far from senseless. It certainly took the starch out of the Comprise.
Half of them are down with shyapple sickness. Also, I learned a great deal from this incident. Means of fighting the Comprise, which I’ve taken the liberty of taping and sending to every major public data bank in the System.
They’ll be there when they’re needed.” His voice switched from warrior to mystic. “Someday, humanity is going to have to fight the Comprise. Someday the conflict will be out in the open. And when that happens, we’ll be the tiniest bit better prepared because of today.”