For Gardner Dozois

Thanks are due to Marianne for naming the Pequod, undifferentiating cells, and seeding a stagnant drop of water, to Jack Dann for the scripture from Pushkin, to Bob Walters for supplying plesiosaurs and designing Wyeth’s vacuum suit, to Greg Frost and Tim Sullivan for last-minute advice, to Tom Purdom for breakfast beer, to Gardner Dozois for the usual reasons, and to Virginia Kidd for patience. Financial support was provided by the M.C. Porter Endowment for the Arts. And a special debt of gratitude is owed Mario Rups, Ed Bryant, and Don Keller for irritating remarks.

REBEL

She didn’t know she had died.

She had, in fact, died twice—by accident the first time, but suicide later. Now the corporation that owned her had decided she should die yet again, in order to fuel a million throwaway lives over the next few months.

But Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark knew none of this. She knew only that something was wrong and that nobody would talk to her about it.

“Why am I here?” she asked.

The doctor’s face loomed over her. It was thin and covered by a demon mask of red and green wetware paint that she could almost read. It had that horrible programmed smile that was supposed to be reassuring, the corners of the mouth pushing his cheeks into little round balls. He directed that death’s head rictus at her.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said.

A line of nuns floated by overhead, their breasts bobbing innocently, wimples starched and white. They were riding the magnetic line at the axis of the city cannister, as graceful as small ships. It was a common enough sight, even a homey one. But then Rebel’s perception did a flipflop and the nuns were unspeakably alien, floating upside-down against the vast window walls that were cold with endless stretches of bright glittery stars embedded innight. She must have seen the like a thousand times before, but now, without warning, her mind shrieked strange strange strange and she couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was seeing. “I can’t remember things,”