Vacuum Flowers Read Online Free PDF Page B

continents that burned a metallic blue-white, and seas of ink. The seas were areas scraped clean of the flowers. A traffic redirector snatched her, and the asteroid veered wildly away, and the Labor Exchange geodesic exploded in her face. She plowed into the magnetic cushion, slowed, stopped, and was nudged gently to an airlock.
    The bourse was aswarm with workers. Rebel swam in, past new shifts that were suiting up and leaving. Completed shifts kicked by, laughing and chattering, folding back helmets and shucking their suits. She followed a rainbow-print suit that had been in her work gang and rode a mag line to the Storage and Maintenance gate. A large-breasted paymaster sat in knee rings there, holding a salary machine in her lap. “Step it up,” she snapped.
    Hastily, Rebel pulled off a glove and inserted her hand in the machine. It read her prints, calculated mass of flowers scraped, and extruded a thin silver bracelet. It felt odd on her wrist. She kicked off and the rainbow suit was nowhere to be seen. She had no idea where she should go now.
    Then someone bounced lightly against her, nudging her into a mag line. “See you on the other side, Sunshine,” he said, and she shot through a doorway. That same man. At line’s end, she almost missed the grab bar because she was craning about, trying in vain for a glimpse of his face.
    She followed a burly woman into the locker room. Aping the woman’s actions, she collapsed her suit, stuffing it and her cache-sexe into the helmet along with the cheap set of arm and leg bands she’d been issued, and dumped the lot into a cleaning chute. Then she kicked into the showers. She washed with a soaped towel, rinsed with a wet one, and kicked back into the lockers.
    The locker room was a pentagonal tube, with lockers on all the walls. Rebel floated among the laughing, chattering women, and couldn’t remember which locker was hers. But the memory was there, even if she couldn’t acess it. Her body knew what to do. She let it go where it wished, and came to a locker that opened at her touch. Inside were her clothes and work gear, freshly cleaned.
    Anchoring herself in a foot ring, she donned cache-sexe and travel bands. Then she slipped into the knee rings and popped up a mirror. That same disconcerting, button-nosed face stared at her from her reflection.
    All about her, women were dressing and reprogramming themselves, painting their faces to match their new personas. The room was full of marilyns and pollyannas, the occasional zelda, even a suzy vacuum. A xaviera, seeing her frozen in indecision, paused from painting her lips vulval pink and proffered her wafer. “Here you go, honey. Open wide and give it a try.”
    Rebel blushed and looked away, and the women hooted with laughter. She snatched up her things and fled, her face as naked as the day she was born.
    Outside, a man grabbed her elbow, and without even thinking, she punched him in the stomach. He doubled over into his cloak and floated away backwards, a perfectly amazed look on his face.
    Then Rebel saw the stars painted across the man’s face and realized that this was the stranger she had called. Flustered, she reached out to steady him, but he had already snagged a grab bar and was watching her with a closed and wary expression.
    â€œListen, I’m sorry,” Rebel said. “I didn’t mean to hit you. I’m sorry I even called you in the first place. Why don’t we just shake hands and go our separate ways?”
    The stranger regarded her steadily. “You’re not Eucrasia anymore, are you?”
    She met his gaze. His eyes were green. “No.”
    Briefly, the man’s face went blank, as if he were arguing with himself. Then it cleared and he said, “Look. I live in King Jonamon’s court, Tank Fourteen. That’s probably the best place you could go, if you’re on the run from something. There’s a couple of shacks empty. Come