Walter Williams - Margaux

“We don't know what he's going to offer them,” Lamey went on. “But he's just a link up from me, and he could be selling me or any of the boys.” He paused in his pacing, rubbed his chin. Sweat shone on his forehead. “I'm going to make sure it's not me,” he said.

“I understand,” Gredel said.

Lamey looked at her. His blue eyes were feverish. “From now on, you can't call me. I can't call you. We can't be seen in public together. If I want you, I'll send someone for you at Caro's.”

Gredel looked up at him. “But-” she began, then, “When?”

"When I want you," he said insistently. “I don't know when. You'll just have to be there when I need you.”

“Yes,” Gredel said. Her mind whirled. “I'll be there.”

He sat next to her on the bed and took her by the shoulders. “I missed you, Earthgirl,” he said. “I really need you now.”

She kissed him. His skin felt feverish. She could taste the fear on him. Lamey's unsteady fingers began to fumble with the buttons of her blouse. You're going to die soon, she thought.

Unless, of course, it was Gredel who paid the penalty instead, the way Ava had paid for the sins of her man.

Gredel had to start looking out for herself, before it was too late.

When Gredel left Lamey, he gave her two hundred zeniths in cash. “I can't buy you things right now, Earthgirl,” he explained. “But buy yourself something nice for me, all right?

Gredel remembered Antony's claim that she whored for money. It was no longer an accusation she could deny.

One of Lamey's boys drove Gredel from the rendezvous to her mother's building. Gredel took the stairs instead of the elevator because it gave her time to think. By the time she got to her mother's door, she had the beginnings of an idea.

But first she had to tell her mother about Lamey, and why she had to move in with Caro. “Of course, honey,” Ava said. She took Gredel's hands and pressed them. “Of course you've got to go.”

Loyalty to her man was what Ava knew, Gredel thought. She had been arrested and sentenced to years in the country for a man she'd hardly ever seen again. She'd spent her life sitting alone amid expensive decor, waiting for one man or another to show up. She was beautiful, but in the bright summer light Gredel could see the first cracks in her mother's faзade, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that the years would only broaden. When the beauty faded, the men would fade, too.

Ava had cast her lot with beauty and with men, neither of which would last. If Gredel remained with Lamey, or with some other linkboy, she would be following Ava's path.

The next morning, Gredel took a pair of bags to Caro's place and let herself in. Caro was asleep, so far gone in torpor that she didn't wake when Gredel padded into the bedroom and took her wallet with its identification. Gredel slipped out again and went to a bank, where she opened an account in the name of Caroline, Lady Sula, and deposited three-quarters of what Lamey had given her.

When asked for a thumbprint, she gave her own.

When Gredel returned from the bank, she found Caro groping with a shivering hand for her first cup of coffee. After Caro took the coffee to the bathroom for the long bath that would soak away the stale alcohol from her pores, Gredel replaced Caro's wallet, then opened the computer link and transferred some of Caro's money, ten zeniths only, to her new account, just to make certain that it worked.

It worked fine.

I have just done a criminal act, she thought. A criminal act that can be traced to me.

Whatever she may have done before, it hadn't been this.

After Caro's bath, she and Gredel went to a cafй for breakfast, and Gredel told her about Lamey being on the run and she asked if she could move in with Caro so that he would be able to send for her. Caro was thrilled. She had never heard of anything so romantic in her life.

Romantic? Gredel thought. It was sordid beyond belief.

But Caro hadn't been in the sultry little room in the Lyone quarter, the smell of ammonia in her nostrils while Lamey's sweat rained down on her. Let her keep her illusions.

“Thank you,” she said. But she knew that once she was with Caro, it wouldn't be long before Caro would grow bored with her, or impatient, or angry. Whatever Gredel was going to do, it would have to be soon.

“I don't know how often Lamey's going to send for me,” she said. “But I hope it's not on your birthday. I'd like you and I to celebrate that together.”

The scowl on Caro's face was immediate, and predictable. “Birthday? My birthday was last winter.” The scowl deepened. “That was the last time Sergei and I were together.”

“Birthday?” Gredel said, in her Earth accent. “I meant Earthday, darling.” And when Caro's scowl began to look dangerous, she added quickly, “Your birthday in Earth years. I do the math, see, it's a kind of game. And your Earthday is next week-you'll be fifteen.” Gredel smiled. “The same age as me, I turned fifteen Earth years just before I met you.”

It wasn't true, not exactly-Caro's Earthday was in three months-but Gredel knew that Caro would never do the math. Might not even know how to do it.

There was so much Caro didn't know. The knowledge brought a kind of savage pleasure to Gredel's mind. Caro didn't know anything, didn't even know that her best friend hated her. She didn't know that Gredel had stolen her money and her identity only an hour ago, and could do it again whenever she wanted.

The days went by and were even pleasurable in a strange, disconnected way. Gredel thought she finally understood what it was like to be Caro, to have nothing that attached her to anything, to have long hours to fill and nothing to fill them with but whatever impulse drifted into her mind. Gredel felt that way herself-mentally, at least, she was cutting her own ties free, all of them, floating free of everything she'd known.

To save herself trouble, Gredel exerted herself to please Caro, and Caro responded. Caro's mood was sunny, and she laughed and joked and dressed Gredel like a doll, as she always had. Behind her pleasing mask, Gredel despised Caro for being so easily manipulated. You're so stupid, she thought.

But pleasing Gredel brought trouble of its own, because when Lamey's boy called for her, Gredel was standing in the rain, in a Torminel neighborhood, trying to buy Caro a cartridge of endorphin analog-with Lamey's businesses in eclipse, she could no longer get the stuff from Panda.

When Gredel finally connected with her ride and got to the place where Lamey was hiding-he was back in the Terran Fabs, at least-he had been waiting for hours, and his patience was gone. He got her alone in the bedroom and slapped her around for a while, telling her it was her fault, that she had to know that she had to be where he could find her when he needed her.

Gredel lay on her back on the bed, letting him do what he wanted, and she thought, This is going to be my whole life if I don't get out of here. She looked at the pistol Lamey had waiting on the bedside table for whoever he thought might kick down the door, and she thought about grabbing the pistol and blowing Lamey's brains out. Or her own brains. Or just walking into the street with the pistol and blowing out brains at random.

No, she thought. Stick to the plan.

Lamey gave her five hundred zeniths afterward. Maybe that was an apology.

Sitting in the car later, with her bruised cheek swelling and the money crumpled in her hand and Lamey's slime still drooling down her thigh, she thought about calling the Legion of Diligence and letting them know where Lamey was hiding. But, instead, she told the boy to take her to a pharmacy near Caro's place.

She walked inside and found a box of plasters that would soak up the bruises, and she took it to the drug counter in the back. The older woman behind the counter looked at her face with knowing sympathy. “Anything else, honey?”