Vacuum Flowers Read Online Free PDF Page A

in blackness, with no visual backdrop. Under a painted constellation of five-pointed gold stars, the eyebrows rose in surprise. “It’s been a long time.”
    Rebel listened with detached fascination as a shrill, rapid voice from her own mouth said, “I have to hide. I have to crawl under my face and pull it in after me. I have to get away.” Her face began to cry. “I don’t have any money and I can’t trust anyone and I need your help.”
    The stranger’s face shifted, startled and alarmed. “My God, what have you done to yourself, Eucra—?”
    â€œDon’t use my name!”
    Blank astonishment. Then, another instant shift of expression and the man grinned. “Gotcha, Sunshine. Listen, my shift has just started, but maybe you should join me anyway. I’m a vacuum bum these days, scraping flowers, nobody’s going to look for you rockside. You think you can find your way to the Labor Exchange using public transit?”
    Rebel wasn’t following the conversation at all. Her head nodded.
    â€œOkay, once you get there, go to the Storage and Maintenance gate. Tell them you want work as a scraper—we’re always shorthanded; they’ll give it to you. Mention my name so they put you on the right crew. It’s all piecework; they don’t care diddly-squat whether you put in a full shift. I’ll have them issue you vacuum gear against my account. That clear? Think you can do that?”
    Her body took a deep breath. Her voice said, “Yeah.”
    Rebel was scraping vacuum flowers off the surface of Eros when she came up from under.
    It was dull, nasty work. The shiny blue blossoms were surprisingly elusive. Her visor polarized out glare, turning the bright flowers into a field of black stars. She had to reach into darkness to find them. Their stems were as thin as wires and tougher. Worst of all, the gravity was so slight that a careless move would send her bounding meters away. She hovered over the rock, keeping afloat with touches of toe and finger as she angled her clippers under each bloom. Her muscles ached with tension and fatigue.
    The inside of her vacuum suit stank, and her collecting bag was only half full. It dragged behind her like the abdomen of a queen bee. Her helmet buzzed with voices as the work gang traded chitchat on the intercom channel. “… and I swear no lie,” a male voice drawled, “I was the suavest thing on two legs. They throw in a hardpacket of etiquette with the persona, you with me? So I know what fork you use to pick your nose with, and all. Not only was I suave out in public, I was even suave sexing it up afterwards.”
    â€œOh yeah? Maybe I oughta try you out,” said an amused female voice.
    â€œTamara, honey, the onliest thing less likely than me sexing you up is me admitting to sexing you up.” Hoots of laughter. “You get one of your menfriends to try this program, though. I mean that.”
    â€œHell,” went a second female voice, “one of Tamara’s menfriends gets suave, and he’ll—”
    She snapped off the intercom. Something was shifting within her, and she didn’t know who she was, Eucrasia or Rebel. Rebel or Eucrasia. “Let go,” she whispered savagely, and she was herself again: Rebel. But a sense of her other self lingered, hovering over her. She hunched her shoulders and ignored it as best she could and kept on scraping flowers.
    The work was soothing. Her fingers moved with a will of their own, clipping flowers and stuffing them into the mesh bag at a regular, efficient rate. Ahead of her, endless mats of vacuum flowers unfolded to the horizon, each bloom the size of a human head, but so fragile it crumpled to nothing at the touch of a gloved finger.
    The sense of Other remained, though, until her entire back itched with the touch of imagined eyes and she glanced back over her shoulder.
    There was no one there. Just a stretch of