Walter Williams - Margaux

Gredel straddled Caro and slapped her hard across the face. Her own nerves leaped at the sound, but Caro gave a start, her eyelids coming partway open, and she gasped in air.

Gredel slapped her again. Caro gasped again and coughed, and her lids opened all the way. Her eyes were eerie, blank convexities of green jasper, the pupils so shrunk they could barely be seen.

“What-” Caro said. “What are you-?”

“You've got to get up.” Gredel slid off the bed and pulled Caro by the arm. “You've got to get up and walk around with me, right?”

Caro gave a lazy laugh. “What is-what-”

“Stand up now!”

Gredel managed to haul Caro upright. Caro found her feet with difficulty, and Gredel got Caro's arm around her shoulders and began to drag Caro over the floor. Caro laughed again. “Music!” she snorted. “We need music if we're going to dance!”

This struck her as so amusing that she almost doubled over with laughter, but Gredel pulled her upright and began moving her again. She got Caro into the front room and began marching in circles around the sofa.

“You're funny, Earthgirl,” Caro said. “Funny, funny.” Laughter kept bubbling out of her throat. Gredel's shoulders ached with Caro's weight.

“Help me, Caro,” she ordered.

“Funny funny. Funny Earthgirl.”

When she couldn't hold Caro up any more, Gredel dumped her on the sofa and went to the kitchen to get the coffee maker started. Then she returned to the front room and found Caro asleep again. She slapped Caro twice, and Caro opened her eyes.

“Yes, Sergei,” she said. “You do that. You do that all you want.”

“You've got to get up, Caro.”

“Why wouldn't you talk to me?” Caro asked. There were tears in her eyes. Gredel pulled her to her feet and began walking with her again.

“I called you,” Caro said as they walked. “I couldn't stand it anymore and I called you and you wouldn't talk to me. Your secretary said you were out but I knew he was lying from the way he said it.”

It was three or four hours before Gredel's fear began to ebb. Caro was able to walk on her own, and her conversation was almost normal, if a little subdued. Gredel left her sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee and went into the bedroom. She took the med injector, and two others she found in the bedroom and another in the bathroom, plus the cartridges of Phenyldorphin-Zed and every other drug cartridge she could find, and she hid them under some towels in the bathroom so that she could carry them out later, when Caro wasn't looking. She wanted to get rid of the liquor, too, but that would be too obvious. Maybe she could pour most of it down the sink when she had the chance.

“You stopped breathing,” Gredel told Caro later. “You've got to stop using, Caro.”

Caro nodded over her cup of coffee. Her pupils had expanded a bit, and her eyes were almost normal-looking. “I've been letting it get out of hand.”

“I was never so frightened in my life. You've just got to stop.”

“I'll be good,” Caro said.

Gredel was sleeping over three nights later, when Caro produced a med injector before bed and held it to her neck. Gredel reached out in sudden terror and yanked the injector away.

“Caro! You said you'd stop!”

Caro smiled, gave an apologetic laugh. “It's all right,” she said. “I was depressed the other day, over something that happened. I let it get out of hand. But I'm not depressed any more.” She tugged the injector against Gredel's fingers. “Let go,” she said. “I'll be all right.”

“Don't,” Gredel begged.

Caro laughingly detached Gredel's fingers from the injector, then held it to her neck and pressed the trigger. She laughed while Gredel felt a fist tightening on her insides.

“See?” Caro said. “Nothing wrong here.”

Gredel talked to Lamey about it the next day. “Just tell Panda to stop selling to her,” she said.

“What good would that do?” Lamey said. “She had sources before she ever met any of us. And if she wanted, she could just go into a pharmacy and pay full price.”

Anxiety sang along Gredel's nerves. She would just have to be very careful, and watch Caro to make sure there weren't any more accidents.

Gredel's happiness ended shortly after, on the first hot afternoon of summer. Gredel and Caro returned from the arcades tired and sweating, and Caro flung her purchases down on the sofa and announced she was going to take a long, cool bath. On her way to the bathroom, Caro took a bottle of chilled wine from the kitchen, opened it, offered some to Gredel, who declined, then carried the bottle and a glass into the bathroom with her.

The sound of running water came distantly to the front room. Gredel helped herself to a papaya fizz, and, for lack of anything else to do turned on the video wall.

There was a drama about the Fleet, except that all the actors striving to put down the mutiny were Naxids. All their acting was in the way their beaded scales shifted color, and Gredel didn't understand any of it. The Fleet setting reminded her of Caro's academy appointment, though, and Gredel shifted to the data channel and looked up the requirements for the Cheng Ho academy, which the Sulas traditionally attended.

By the time Caro came padding out in her dressing gown, Gredel was full of information. “You'd better find a tailor, Caro,” she said. “Look at the uniforms you've got to get made.” The video wall paged through one picture after another. “Dress, undress,” Gredel itemized. “Ship coveralls, planetary fatigues, formal dinner dress, parade dress-just look at that hat! And Cheng Ho's in a temperate zone, so you've got greatcoats and jackboots for winter, plus uniforms for any sport you decide to do, and a ton of other gear. Dinner settings!-in case you give a formal dinner, your clan crest optional.”

Caro blinked and looked at the screen as if she were having trouble focusing on it all. “What are you talking about?” she said.

“When you go to the Cheng Ho academy. Do you know who Cheng Ho was, by the way? I looked it up. He-”

“Stop babbling.” Gredel looked at Caro in surprise. Caro's lips were set in a disdainful twist. “I'm not going to any stupid academy,” she said. “So just forget about all that, all right?”

Gredel stared at her. “But you have to,” she said. “It's your career, the only one you're allowed to have.”

Caro gave a little hiss of contempt. “What do I need a career for? I'm doing fine as I am.”

It was a hot day and Gredel was tired and had not had a rest or a bath or a drink, and she blundered right through the warning signals Caro was flying, the signs that she'd not only had her bottle of wine in the bath, but taken something else as well, something that kinked and spiked her nerves and brought her temper sizzling.

“We planned it,” Gredel insisted. “You're going into the Fleet, and I'll be your orderly. And we can both get off the planet and-”

“I don't want to hear this useless crap!" Caro screamed. Her shriek was so loud that it stunned Gredel into silence and set her heart beating louder than Caro's angry words. Caro advanced on Gredel, green fury flashing from her eyes. “You think I'd go into the Fleet? The Fleet, just for you? Who do you think you are?”

Caro stood over Gredel. Her arms windmilled as if they were throwing rocks at Gredel's face. “You drag your ass all over this apartment!” she raged. “You-you wear my clothes! You're in my bank accounts all the time-where's my money, hey! My money!"

“I never took your money!” Gredel gasped. “Not a cent! I never-”

“Liar!” Caro's hand lashed out, and the slap sounded louder than a gunshot. Gredel stared at her, too overwhelmed by surprise to raise a hand to her stinging cheek. Caro screamed on.