Walter Williams: The Praxis

After that, both sides lost the ability to defend themselves against the oncoming attacks. The missiles flooded in. Fury, triumph, sadness, and despair wrenched Sula as antimatter bursts obliterated friend and foe alike.

In the end nothing was left. Battleship Squadron 1 had ceased to exist, and so had Fanaghee’s heavy ships. It seemed that only she was left, she and her eighteen missiles drifting toward Magaria’s sun.

It was clearly time to quit the battle. There were at least forty Naxid ships remaining, and no more than thirteen survivors in the Home Fleet—maybe less, as there was a continual blaze of action behind her. She needed to swing around Magaria’s sun, then around Rinconell en route for Wormhole 1 and Zanshaa. Her only contribution to the battle, it seemed, would be to expend six of her missiles defending herself against a useless attack fired at her by her own side.

Hatred of her own uselessness stung Sula’s throat. She blinked back tears of frustration and rage. All around her was death and ruin, to which she had not been a participant but an angry witness. In a way, that was worse than dying. Even annihilation had been denied her.

The long hours went past. Sula ate ration bars to keep up her strength and drank an electrolyte supplement to replace what she’d sweated away. She skated the rim of unconsciousness in her burn around the sun, but managed to hang on to herself, to her bitter knowledge of her own uselessness.

The battle behind her died away. Perhaps everyone concerned was running low on missiles. Her detectors showed six vessels of the Home Fleet surviving, pursued by a swarm of enemy.

Six ships, she thought, out of fifty-four. Whole worlds were ending this day.

Including her own. She had hated the Fleet at least as much as she loved it, but it had provided assurance, stability, continuity, and tradition, in addition to mundane things like meals and a modest salary. All that was gone now. Sula was afloat in the void, surrounded only by a thin shell and preceded by a swarm of eighteen worthless, deadly missiles.

Black despair closed in. She could feel its chill fingers touch her face. All that she had done, all that she had been, and it was only for this.

Deathowed her, she thought. Death owed her more than this solitary cruise, this lonely circuit around a wilderness of annihilation.

She and Death had known one another for a long time. It seemed to her that Death should be a better friend than this.

When Gredel returned from opening her account in Lady Sula’s name, 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 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 sure 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 café for breakfast, and Gredel told her about Lamey being on the run and asked if she could move in with Caro so that he’d 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 Laiown quarter, the smell of ammonia in her nostrils while Lamey’s sweat rained down on her. Let her keep her illusions, Gredel thought.

“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 she 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 meantEarth day.” 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 knowhow to do it.

There was so much Caro didn’t know. That knowledge brought a savage pleasure to Gredel’s mind. Caro didn’t knowanything, didn’t even know that her best friend hated her. Caro didn’t know that she 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 went out of her way to please Caro, and Caro responded. Her mood was sunny, and she laughed and joked, and dressed Gredel like a doll, as she always had. Behind her own pleasing mask, Gredel despised Caro for being so easily manipulated.You’re so stupid, she thought.

But pleasing Caro brought trouble of its own, because when Lamey’s boy called for Gredel, she 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’d 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 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 found a box of plasters that would soak up the bruises and 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?”

“Yes,” Gredel said. “Two vials of Phenyldorphin-Zed.”

She was required to sign the Narcotics Book for the endorphin analog, and the name she scrawled wasSula.

Caro was outraged by Gredel’s bruises. “Lamey comes round here again, I’ll kick him in the balls!” she said. “I’ll hit him with a chair!”

“Forget about it,” Gredel said wearily. She didn’t want demonstrations of loyalty from Caro right now. Her feelings were confused enough: she didn’t want to start having to like Caro all over again.