Praxis

SIX

Sula raged inwardly against her certainty that everything she said was wrong. She was making a botch of the whole evening, and all because she didn’t know how to talk to someone who liked her.

She had been another person once, and then decided not to be that person again, and to avoid anything, like alcohol, that might bring that person back. But she didn’t know how to be this new person very well, and she kept getting it wrong.

It’s the job of the dead to stay dead. Nice light cocktail-bar conversation, that.

She reminded herself that Martinez was only trying to help.

Of course, he was also trying very hard to get her into bed. This prospect wasn’t entirely without its attractions, though she’d been chaste for so long that she wondered if she’d have any idea how to behave with a man. It would be on a par with everything else this evening to somehow make a total botch of it.

Martinez could probably handle any problem that would arise, she decided. She could trust to his efficiency that way.

She might as well surrender. It wasn’t as if chastity had benefited her in any way that she could see, and Martinez could hardly make her life worse than it was.

Fortunately, entertainment began before she could completely poison the conversation. A pair of singers and a band mounted the stage and began a series of dance tunes, and Martinez seemed pleased that it was she who asked him to dance and not the other way around.

Sula had once enjoyed dancing, but her only practice in recent years had been at the academy, where everyone stood nervous and perspiring in dress uniforms and hampered by a rigid etiquette. She was out of practice at dancing for pleasure, but fortunately, Martinez was an able partner-those stumpy legs knew their business, she decided-and his expertise neutralized her initial awkwardness. She discovered in herself a tendency to bounce on the balls of her feet with each step, but reminded herself that the whole point was to keep a low center of gravity, and told herself sternly to glide, not bound like an eager puppy.

As the evening progressed her awkwardness faded and she relaxed into the movements, the steps, and Martinez’s arms. Their bodies moved into a close synchrony, and she found herself responding easily to the merest suggestion of his touch, the lightest impulse on her palm or hip or back. Her body molded to his during the slow dances, and warm blood flushed her skin at his nearness. There seemed progressively less point to the whole chastity business.

They danced for an hour and then stepped outside to cool off. Clouds scudded low overhead, obscuring Zanshaa’s ring, and gusts of wind blustered around the corners of the buildings. A pleasure boat floated past on the canal, darkened, but with its contours outlined in cool blue neon-it looked like a skeleton boat, a visitation from another plane. Martinez dabbed sweat from his brow with a handkerchief and opened his high uniform collar. “Next time,” he said, “I’ll wear civvies.”

“Thank you for reminding me how much fun this is,” Sula said. “I’ve only been to formal balls for-oh, years.”

“Service dances?” He looked at her. “Theycan be deadly, can’t they?” He turned to the canal, saw the neon-lit pleasure boat floating past, and his eyes lit with an idea. “I have a notion. Would you like to go for a ride on the canal?”

“I-”

“Come on!” He took her by the hand and set off at a trot. She followed, the wind tearing a laugh from her lips.

There was a stand for excursion boats a short distance ahead. Martinez showed the elderly Torminel attendant his credentials and was shown to a small, two-person canal boat, with strands of colored lights hanging from its stumpy mast and its canopy folded halfway back over a sofa seat. Martinez wiped water from the seat with his handkerchief, then helped Sula down from the stone quay-the light, resinous hull swayed as she stepped in, and water made a viscous sucking sound against the moss-draped stone-and then he seated himself next to her and instructed the autopilot.

Iodine, weed and moss, bird droppings, things that were dead and floating in the chill dark water-the scent of the canal struck like a bludgeon at Sula’s memory. She hadn’t tasted air like this in a long time. Suddenly she wanted to protest the whole excursion, but Martinez was near and smiling, happy in his adventure; and she didn’t want to ruin the evening, not after it had finally begun to go well.

The silent electric motor accelerated smoothly. Sula tried to relax against Martinez’s arm. “There’s a lovely view of the High City coming up,” he said in her ear.

Put him in the river,Gredel had said, years of pent-up hatred burning in her words.

The High City was obscured by low cloud. Martinez murmured his disappointment. “I’ll have to show it to you another time,” he said.

A chill wind shivered along Sula’s bones. She thought of the body slipping in silence beneath the surface of the Iola, streetlight shimmering gold on the spreading, dying ripples, the water rising over the mouth and nose, the vision rising in Sula’s mind like the obdurate flood of memory, the scent of river and time and death.

Lady Sula?

She wasn’t even Lady Caro, she was LadySula. She wasn’t just any Peer, she was head of the whole Sula clan.

Lamey’s fury faded away quickly-it did that, came and went with lightning speed-and he picked Caro up in his arms and carried her to the elevator while the doorman fussed around him. When they arrived on the top floor, the doorman opened Caro’s apartment, and Lamey walked in as if he paid the rent himself and carried Caro to her bedroom. There, he put Caro down on her bed and had Gredel draw off the tall boots while he covered her with a comforter.

Gredel had never admired Lamey so much as at that moment. He behaved with a strange delicacy, as if he were a Peer himself, some Lord Commander of the Fleet cleaning up after a confidential mission.

The doorman wouldn’t let them stay. On the way out Gredel saw that Caro’s apartment was a terrible mess, with clothes in piles and the tables covered with glasses, bottles, and dirty dishes.

“I want you to come back here tomorrow,” Lamey said as he started the car. “I want you to become Caro Sula’s best friend.”

Gredel fully intended this, but she wondered why Lamey’s mind and her own were running in the same track. “Why?”

“Peers are rich,” Lamey said simply. “Maybe we can get some of that and maybe we can’t. But even more than the money, Peers are also the keys to things, and maybe Caro can open some doors for us. Even if it’s just the door to her bank account, it’s worth a try.”

It was very, very late, almost dawn, but Lamey wanted to take Gredel to one of his apartments. There they had a brisk five minutes’ sex, hardly worth taking off her clothes as far as Gredel was concerned, and then Lamey took her home.

As soon as she walked in the door she knew Antony was back. The apartment smelled different, a blend of beer and tobacco and human male and fear. Gredel took off her boots at the door so she wouldn’t wake him, and crept in silence to her bed. Despite the hour, she lay awake for some time, thinking of keys and doors opening.

Lamey didn’t know what he wanted from Caro, not quite. He was operating on an instinct that told him Caro could be useful, give him connections, links that would move him upward. Gredel had much the same intuition where Caro was concerned, but she wanted Caro for other things. Gredel didn’t want to stay in the Fabs. Caro might show her how to do that, how to behave, perhaps, or how to dress, how to move up, and maybe not just out of the Fabs, but off Spannan altogether, loft out of the ring station on a tail of fire to Esley or Zanshaa or Earth, to a glittering life that she felt hovering around her, a kind of potential waiting to be born but that she couldn’t quite imagine.

She woke just before noon and put on her robe to shower and use the toilet. The sounds of the Spring Festival zephyr-ball game blared from the front room, where Antony was watching the video. Gredel finished her business in the bathroom and went back into her room to dress. When she finished putting on her clothes and her makeup, she brushed her hair for a long time, delaying the moment when she would leave her sanctum to face Antony, but when she realized what she was doing, she got angry at herself and put the brush down, then put her money in the pocket of her jacket and left the room.

Antony sat on the sagging old sofa watching the game on the video wall. The remains of a sandwich sat on a plate next to him. He was a man of average height but built powerfully, with broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and long arms with big hands. He looked like a slab on legs. Iron-gray hair fringed his bald head, and his eyes were tiny and set in a permanent suspicious glare.

He wasn’t drinking, Gredel saw, and felt some of her tension ease. “Hi, Antony,” she said as she walked toward the apartment door.

He looked at her, his black eyes glaring. “Where you going dressed like that?”

“To see a friend.”

“The friend who bought you those clothes?”

“No. Someone else.” She made herself stop walking and face him.

His lips twitched in a sneer. “Nelda says you’re whoring now for some linkboy. Just like your mother.”

Anger flamed along Gredel’s veins, but she clamped it down and said, “I’ve never whored. Never. Not once.”

“Not for money, maybe,” Antony said. “But look at those clothes on you. And that jewelry.” Gredel felt herself flush. Antony returned his attention to the game. “Better you sell that tail of yours for money,” he muttered. “Then you could contribute to your upkeep around here.”

So you could steal it,Gredel thought, but didn’t say it. She headed for the door, and just before it swung shut behind her she heard Antony’s parting shot. “You better not take out that implant! You get pregnant, you’re out of this place! I’m not looking after another kid that isn’t my own!”

Like he’d ever looked after any kid.

Gredel left the building with her fists clenched and a blaze of fury kindled in her eyes. Children playing in the front hall took one look at her and got out of her way.

It wasn’t until the train was halfway to Maranic Town that the anger finally ebbed to a normal background buzz and Gredel began to wonder if Caro would be at home, if she would even remember meeting her the previous night.

Gredel found the Volta Apartments quickly now that she knew where it was. The doorman-it was a different one this time-opened the door for her and showed her right to the elevator. Clearly he thought she was Caro. “Thank you,” Gredel smiled, trying to drawl out the words the way a Peer would.

She had to knock loudly, several times, before Caro came to the door. Caro was still in her short dress from the previous night, and tights, and bare feet. Her hair was disordered, and there was a smear of mascara on one cheek. Her slitted eyes opened wide as she saw Gredel at the door.

“Earthgirl,” she said. “Hi.”

“The doorman thought I was you. I came over to see if you were all right.”

Caro opened the door and flapped her arms, as if to say,I am as you see me. “Come in,” she said, and walked toward the kitchen.

The apartment was still a mess, and the air smelled stale. Caro went to the sink in the little kitchen and poured herself a glass of water.

“My mouth tastes like cheese,” she said. “The kind with the veins in it. I hate that kind of cheese.”

She drank her water while Gredel walked around the disorderly apartment. She felt strangely reluctant to touch anything, as if it was a fantasy that might dissolve if she put a finger on it.

“So,” she said finally. “You want to go and do something?”

Caro finished her water and put down her glass on a counter already covered with dirty glasses. “I need some coffee first,” she said. “Would you mind going to the cafe on the corner and getting some for me while I change?”

“What about the coffee maker?” Gredel asked.

Caro blinked at the machine as if she were seeing it for the first time. “I don’t know how to work it,” she said.

“I’ll show you.”

“I never learned how to do kitchen stuff,” Caro said as she made way for Gredel in the kitchen. “Till I came here, we always had servants. I had servantshere, but I called the last one a cow and threw her out.”

“What’s a cow?” Gredel asked.

“They’re ugly and fat and stupid. Like Berthe when I fired her.”

Gredel found coffee in a cupboard and began preparing the coffee maker. “Do youeat cows, or what?” she asked.

“Yeah, they give meat. And milk too.”

“We have vashes for that. And zieges. And swine and bison, but they only give meat.”

Gredel made coffee for them both. Caro’s coffee cups were paper thin and delicate, with a platinum ring around the inside and a design of three red crescents. Caro took her cup into the bathroom with her, and after a while Gredel heard the shower. She sipped her coffee as she wandered around the apartment-the rooms were nice, but notthat nice. Lamey had places just as good, though not in such an exclusive building as this. There was a view of the Iola River two streets away, but it wasn’t that nice a view; there were buildings in the way, and the window glass was dirty.

Then, because she couldn’t stand the mess any longer, Gredel began to pick up the scattered clothes and fold them. She finished that and was putting the dirty dishes in the washer when Caro appeared, dressed casually in soft wool pantaloons, a high-necked blouse, and a little vest with gold buttons and lots of pockets slashed one on top of the other. Caro looked around in surprise.

“You cleaned up!”

“A little.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I didn’t have anything else to do.” Gredel came into the front room. She looked down at one of the piles of clothing, put her hand down on the soft pile of a sweater she had just folded and placed neatly on the back of a sofa. “You have some nice things,” she said.

“That’s from Yormak cattle. They have wonderful wool.” She eyed Gredel’s clothing. “What you’re wearing, that’s-that’s all right.”

“Lamey bought it for me.”

Caro laughed. “Might have known a man picked that.”

What’s wrong with it?Gredel wanted to ask. It was what everyone was wearing, only top quality. These weren’t clothes hijacked at Maranic Port, they were bought in astore.

Caro took Gredel’s arm. “Let’s get some breakfast,” she said, “and then I’ll take you shopping.”

The doorman stared comically as Caro and Gredel stepped out of the elevator. Caro introduced Gredel as her twin sister Margaux from Earth, and Gredel greeted the doorman in her Earth accent. The doorman bowed deeply as they swept out.

An hour later in the restaurant, Gredel was surprised when Caro asked her to pay for their meal. “My allowance comes first of the month,” she said. “And this month’s money supply isgone. This cafe won’t run a tab for me.”

“Weren’t we going shopping?”

Caro grinned. “Clothes I can buy on credit.”

They went to one of the arcades where exclusive shops sheltered under a long series of graceful arches of polymerous resin, the arches translucent but grown in different colors, so that the vaulted ceiling of each glowed with subtle tones that merged and flowed and blended. Caro introduced Gredel as her sister, and laughed when Gredel used her Earth accent. Gredel was called Lady Margaux and surrounded by swarms of clerks and floorwalkers, and she was both surprised and flattered by the attention. This is what it was like to be a Peer.

If she’d been merely Gredel, the staff would have been there all right, but following her around to make sure she didn’t steal.

The arcades didn’t serve just Terrans, so there were Torminel there, and Naxids, and some pleasure-loving Cree who wandered through the shops burbling in their musical voices. It was unusual for Gredel to see so many nonhumans in one place, since she rarely had any reason to leave the Terran parts of the Fabs. But the Peers, Gredel concluded, were almost a species of their own. They had more in common with each other than they had with other folk.

Caro bought an outfit for herself and two for Gredel, first a luxurious gown with a cape so long it dragged on the floor, and next a pajamalike lounging outfit. Gredel had no idea where she would ever wear such things. Caro nodded at the lounging suit. “Made of worm spit,” she said.

“Sorry?” Gredel said, startled.

“Worm spit. They call it ‘silk.’ ”

Gredel had heard of silk-she’d read about it in her researches on Earth history-and she touched the fabric with a new respect. “Do you think it came from Earth?” she asked.

“I doubt it.” Dismissively. “Earth’s a hole. My mother was there on government service, and she told me.”

Caro bought everything on credit. Gredel noticed that she signed onlySula, leaving out her first name and the honorificLady. She seemed to carry a tab at every store in the arcade. When Gredel thanked her for the presents, Caro said, “You can pay me back by buying dinner.”

“I don’t think I can afford that,” Gredel said doubtfully.

Caro laughed. “Guess we better learn to eat worm spit,” she said.

Gredel was intrigued by the way everyone lined up to give Caro credit. “They know I’m good for it,” Caro explained. “They know I’ll have the money eventually.”

“When?”

“When I’m twenty-three. That’s when the funds mature.” She laughed again. “But those people still won’t get paid. I’ll be off the planet by then, in the Fleet, and they can chase me through space if they like.”

Gredel was intrigued by this too. There tended to be serious consequences in the Fabs for people who didn’t pay their debts. Maybe this too was different for Peers.

“So is this money your parents left you?” Gredel asked.

Caro looked dubious. “I’m not sure. My parents were caught in some kind of scheme to swindle government suppliers out of a lot of money, and they lost everything-estates, money”-she tapped her neck significantly-“everything. I got sent to live with Jacob Biswas in Blue Lakes.” This was an exclusive area outside of Maranic Town. “The Biswas clan were clients of the Sulas, and Dad got Biswas the job of assistant port administrator here. I’m not sure if the money is something Dad got to him, or whether it came from my dad’s clients or friends, but it’s in a bank on Spannan’s ring, and the interest comes to me here every month.”

Caro went on to explain that her family was forbidden to be in the Civil Service for three generations, both as punishment for what her parents had done and to minimize the chance to steal. But as a Peer, she had an automatic ticket to one of the Fleet academies, and so it had been planned for her to go there.

“I don’t know,” she went on, shaking her head. “I can’t see myself in the Fleet. Taking orders, wearing uniforms…under all that discipline. I think I’d go crazy in ten days.”

The Fleet, Gredel thought. The Fleet could carry you away from Spannan, through the wormhole gates to the brilliant worlds beyond. Zanshaa, Esley, Earth…The vision was dazzling. For that, she could put up with uniforms. “I’d do it in a second,” she said.

Caro gave her a look. “Why?”

Gredel thought she may as well emphasize the practical advantages. “You get food and a place to sleep. Medical and dental care. And theypay you for it.”

Caro gave a disdainful snort. “Youdo it, then.”

“They wouldn’t let me in. My mother has a criminal record.”

The Fleet had their pick of recruits: there were plenty of people who wanted those three free meals per day. They checked the background of everyone who applied.

Unless, Gredel thought, someone she knew could pull strings. A Peer, say.

They took a taxi back to Caro’s building, but when the driver approached it, Caro ducked into the backseat, pulled a bewildered Gredel down atop her and shouted at him to keep going.

“What’s the matter?” Gredel asked.

“A collector. Someone come to get money from me. The doorman usually chases them off, but this one’s really persistent.”

Apparently, living on credit wasn’t as convenient as Caro let on.

The driver let them off at a loading dock in the alley behind the building. Caro’s codes opened the door.

There were little motorized carts in the entryway, for use when people moved furniture or other heavy belongings.

They took the freight elevator to Caro’s floor and looked for something to eat. There wasn’t much, just biscuits and an old piece of cheese. “Have you got food at your place?” Caro asked.

Gredel hesitated. “Yes,” she said, “but we’ve got Antony too.”

“And who’s that?”

Gredel told her.

“He comes near me,” Caro said with a disgusted look, “I’ll kick him in the balls.”

“That wouldn’t stop him for long,” Gredel said, and shivered. “He’d still slap your face off.”

“We’ll see.” Caro’s lip curled again.

“I’m serious. You don’t want to get Antony mad. I bet even Lamey’s boys would have a hard time with him.”

Caro shook her head. “This is crazy,” she laughed. “You know anyone who could buy us some food?”

“Well. There’s Lamey.”

“He’s your boyfriend, right? The tall one?”

“He carried you up here last night.”

“So Ialready owe him.” Caro laughed. “Will he mind if I mooch dinner off him? I’ll pay him back, first of the month.”

Gredel called Lamey on her phone. He was amused by their dilemma and said he’d be there soon.

Gredel made coffee while they waited, and served it in the paper-thin cups.

“So tell me about Lamey,” Caro said.

Gredel told her about Lamey’s business. “He’s linked, you know? He knows people, and he moves stuff around. From the port, from other places. Makes it available to people at good prices. When people can’t get loans, he loans them money.”

“Aren’t the clans’ patrons supposed to do that?”

“Sometimes they will. But, you know, those mid-level clans, they’re in a lot of businesses themselves, or their friends and allies are. So they’re not going to loan money for someone to go into competition with them. And once the new businesses start, they have to be protected you know, against the people who are already in that business, so Lamey and his people do that too.”

“It’s the Peers who are supposed to protect people,” Caro said.

“Caro,” Gredel said, “you’re the first Peer I’ve ever seen outside of a video. Peers don’t come to places like the Fabs.”

Caro gave a cynical grin. “So Lamey just doesgood things, right? He’s never hurt anybody, he just helps people.”

Gredel hesitated. They were entering an area she tried not to think about. She thought about the boy Moseley, the dreadful dull squelching thud as Lamey’s boot went into him. The way her own head rang after Lamey slapped her that time.

“Sure,” she said finally, “he’s hurt people. People who stole from him, mostly. But he’s really not bad,” she added quickly. “He’s not one of the violent ones, he’ssmart. He uses his intelligence.”

“Uh-huh,” Caro said. “So has he used his…intelligenceon you?”

Gredel felt herself flush. “A few times,” she said quickly. “He’s got a temper. But he’s always sweet when he cools down, and buys me things.”

“Uh-huh,” Caro said.

Gredel tried not to bristle at Caro’s attitude. Hitting was what boyfriendsdid. It was normal. The point was whether they felt sorry afterward.

“Do you love him?” Caro asked.

Gredel hesitated again. “Maybe,” she said.

“I hope at least he’s good in bed.”

Gredel shrugged. “He’s all right.” Sex seemed to be expected of her, because she was thought to be beautiful and because she went with older boys who had money. It had never been as pleasurable as she’d been led to expect, but was nevertheless pleasurable enough so she didn’t want to quit.

“Lamey’s too young to be good in bed,” Caro declared. “You need an older man to show you what sex is really about.” Her eyes sparkled and she gave a diabolical giggle. “Like my Sergei. He was really the best! He showed meeverything about sex.”

Gredel blinked. “Who was Sergei?”

“Jake Biswas’s wife’s sister was married to Sergei. We were always sneaking away to be together. That’s what all the fighting in the family was about. That’s why I had to move to Maranic Town.”

“How much older was he?”

“In his forties somewhere.”

Black, instant hatred descended on Gredel. She could have torn Sergei to ribbons with her nails, with her teeth. “That’s sick,” she said. “That man is disgusting.”

Caro gave a cynical laugh. “I wouldn’t talk if I were you,” she said. “How old is Lamey? What kind of scenes doeshe get you into?”

Gredel felt as if Caro’s words had slapped her across the face. Caro gave her a smirk.

“Right,” she said. “We’re models of stability and mental health, we are.”

Gredel decided to change the subject. “This is lovely,” she said, and held up the cup.

Caro looked at it without expression. “I inherited that set. That’s the Sula family badge, those three crescents.”

“What do they mean?”

“They mean three crescents. If they mean any more than that, nobody told me.”

Caro’s mood had sweetened by the time Lamey turned up. She thanked him for taking her home the previous night, and took them both to a restaurant so exclusive that Caro had to give a thumbprint in order to enter. There were no real dinners on the menu, just a variety of small plates that everyone at the table shared. Gredel had never heard of some of the ingredients. Some of the dishes were wonderful, some weren’t. Some were simply incomprehensible.

Caro and Lamey got along well, to Gredel’s relief. Caro filled the air with vivacious talk, and Lamey joked and deferred to her. Toward the end of the meal he reached into his pocket, and Gredel’s nerves tingled when she saw the med injector.

“Panda asked me if you wanted any more of the endorphin,” Lamey said.

“I don’t have any money, remember?” Caro said.

Lamey gave an elaborate shrug. “I’ll put it on your tab.”

Don’t,Gredel wanted to shout.

But Caro gave a pleased, catlike smile and reached for the injector in Lamey’s hand.

Gredel and Caro spent a lot of time together after that. Partly because Lamey wanted it, but also because Gredel found that she liked Caro, and liked learning from her. She studied how Caro dressed, how she talked, how she moved. And Caro enjoyed dressing Gredel up like one of her dolls, and teaching her to walk and talk as if she were Lady Margaux, the sister of a Peer. Gredel worked on her accent till her speech was a letter-perfect imitation of Caro’s. Caro couldn’t do voices the way Gredel could, and the Earthgirl voice always made Caro laugh.

Gredel was learning the things that might get her out of the Fabs.

Caro enjoyed teaching her. Maybe, Gredel thought, this was because Caro didn’t have much to do. She’d left school, because she was a Peer and would get into the academy whether she had good marks or not, and she didn’t seem to have any friends in Maranic Town. Sometimes friends from Blue Lakes came to visit her-usually a pack of girls all at once-but all their talk was about people and events in their school, and Gredel could tell that Caro got bored with that fast.

“I wish Sergei would call,” Caro said. But he never did. And Caro refused to call him. “It’s his move, not mine,” she said, her eyes turning hard.

Caro got bored easily. And that was dangerous, because when Caro got bored she wanted to change the music. Sometimes that not only meant shopping or going to a club, but drinking a couple bottles of wine or a bottle of brandy, or firing things into her carotid from the med injector. It was the endorphins she liked best, though.

The drugs weren’t illegal, but the supply was controlled in various ways, and they were expensive. The black market provided pharmaceuticals at more reasonable prices, and without a paper or money trail. The drugs the linkboys sold weren’t just for fun, either: Nelda got Gredel black market antivirals when she was sick, and fast-healers once when she broke her leg, and saved herself the expense of supporting a doctor and a pharmacy.

When Caro changed the music, she became a spiky, half-feral creature, a tangled ligature of taut-strung nerves and overpowering impulse. She would careen from one scene to the next, from party to club to bar, having a frenzied good time one minute, spitting out vicious insults at perfect strangers the next.

At the first of the month, Gredel urged Caro to pay Lamey what she owed him. Caro just shrugged, but Gredel insisted. “This isn’t like the debts you run up at the boutique,” she told her.

Caro gave Gredel a narrow-eyed look that made her nervous, because she recognized it as the prelude to fury. “What do you mean?”

“When you don’t pay Lamey, things happen.”

“Like what.” Contemptuously.

“Like…” Gredel hesitated. “Like what happened to Moseley.”

Her stomach turned over at the memory. “Moseley ran a couple of Lamey’s stores, you know, where he sells the stuff he gets. And Lamey found out that Moseley was skimming the profits…” She remembered the way Lamey screamed at Moseley, the way his boys held Moseley while Lamey smashed him in the face and body. The way Lamey kept kicking him even after Moseley fell unconscious to the floor. And the sound of his thudding boots.

“So what happened to Moseley?” Caro asked.

“I think he died.” Gredel spoke the words past the knot in her throat. “The boys won’t talk to me about it. No one ever saw him again. Panda runs those stores now.”

“And Lamey would do that tome?” Caro asked. It clearly took an effort to wrap her mind around the idea of being vulnerable to someone like Lamey.

Gredel hesitated again. “Maybe you just shouldn’t give him the chance. He’s unpredictable.”

“Fine,” Caro said. “Give him the money then.” And she went to her computer and gave Gredel a credit foil for the money.

Lamey gave the foil a bemused look-he was in a cash-only business-and asked Gredel to take it back to Caro and have it cashed. But when she returned to Caro’s apartment the next day, Caro was hung over and didn’t want to be bothered, so she gave Gredel the codes to her cash account.

It was as easy as that.

Gredel looked at the deposit made the previous day and took a breath. Eight hundred forty zeniths, enough to keep Nelda and her assortment of children for a year, with enough left over for Antony to get drunk every night. And Caro got this everymonth.

Gredel started looking after Caro’s money, seeing that at least some of the creditors were appeased, that there was food in the kitchen. She cleaned the place too, tidied the clothes Caro scattered everywhere, saw that the laundry was sent out and, when it returned, was put away. Caro was amused by it all. “When I’m in the Fleet, you can join too,” she said. “I’ll make you a servant or something.”

Hope burned in Gredel’s heart. “I hope so,” she said. “But you’ll have to pull some strings to get me in-I mean, with my mother’s record and everything.”

“I’ll get you in,” Caro assured.

Lamey was disappointed when Gredel told him about Caro’s finances. “Eight hundred forty,” he muttered, “it’s hardly worth stealing.” He rolled onto his back in the bed-they were in one of his apartments-and frowned at the ceiling.

“People have been killed for a lot less than that,” Gredel said. “For the price of a bottle of cheap wine.”

Lamey’s blue eyes gave her a sharp look. “I’m not talking about killing anybody,” he said. “I’m just saying it’s not worthgetting killed over, because that’s what’s likely to happen if you steal from a Peer. It won’t be worth trying until she’s twenty-two, when she gets the whole inheritance, and by then she’ll be in the Fleet.” He sighed. “I wish she were in the Fleet now, assigned to the port. We might be able to make use of her, get some Fleet supplies.”

“I don’t want to steal from her,” Gredel said.

Lamey fingered his chin thoughtfully and went on as if he hadn’t heard. “What you do, see, is get a bank account inher name, but withyour thumbprint. Then you transfer Caro’s money over to your account, and from there you turn it into cash and walk off into the night.” He smiled. “Should be easy.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t worth it,” Gredel said.

“Not for eight hundred it isn’t,” Lamey said. He gave a laugh. “I’m just trying to work out a way of getting my investment back.”

Gredel felt relief that Lamey wasn’t intending to steal Caro’s money. She didn’t want to be a thief, and she especially didn’t want to steal from a friend like Caro.

“She doesn’t seem to have any useful contacts here.” Lamey continued thinking aloud. “Find out about these Biswas people she lived with. They might be good forsomething. ”

Gredel agreed. The request seemed harmless enough.

She spent most of her nights away from Nelda’s now, either with Lamey or sleeping at Caro’s place. That was good, because things at Nelda’s were grim. Antony looked as if he was settling in for a long stay. He was sick, something about his liver, and he couldn’t get work. Sometimes Nelda had fresh bruises or cuts on her face. Sometimes the other kids did. And sometimes when Gredel came home at night, Antony was there, passed out on the sofa, a bottle of gin in his hand. She’d take off her shoes and walk past him quietly, glaring her hatred, and it occurred to her how easy it would be to hurt Antony then, to pick up the bottle and smash him in the face with it, smash him until he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again.

Once, she came home and found Nelda in tears. Antony had slapped her around and taken the rent money, for the second time in a row. “We’re going to be evicted,” Nelda whispered hoarsely. “They’re going to throw us all out.”

“No they’re not,” Gredel said firmly. She went to Lamey and explained the situation and begged him for the money. “I’ll never ask you for anything ever again,” she promised.

Lamey listened thoughtfully, then reached into his wallet and handed her a hundred zenith note. “This take care of it?” he asked.

Gredel reached for the note, hesitated. “More than enough,” she said. “I don’t want to take that much.”

Lamey took her hand and put the note into it. His blue eyes looked into hers. “Take it and welcome,” he said. “Buy yourself something nice with the rest.”

Gratitude flooded Gredel’s eyes. Tears fell down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said. “I know I don’t deserve it.”

“Of course you do,” Lamey said. “You deserve the best, Earthgirl.” He kissed her, his lips coming away salty. “Now you take this to the building agent, right? You don’t give it to Nelda, because she might give it away again.”

“I’ll do that right away,” Gredel said.

“And-” His eyes turned solemn. “Does Antony need taking care of? Or need encouragement to leave? You know what I mean.”

Gredel shrank from the idea. “No,” she said. “No-he won’t stay long.”

“You remember it’s an option, right?”

She made herself nod in answer.

Gredel took the money to the agent, a scowling little woman who had an office in the building and who smelled of cabbage and onions. She insisted on a receipt for the two months’ rent, which the woman gave grudgingly, and as Gredel walked away, she thought about Lamey and how this meant that he loved her.

Too bad he’s going to die.The thought formed in her mind unbidden.

The worst part was, she knew it was true.

People like Lamey didn’t survive for long. There weren’t manyold linkboys-that’s why they weren’t called linkmen. Sooner or later they were caught and killed. And the people they loved-their wives, their lovers, their children-paid as well, like Ava, with a term on the labor farms, or with their own execution.

The point was reinforced a few days later when Stoney was caught hijacking a cargo of fuel cells in Maranic Port. His trial was over two weeks later, and he was executed the following week. Because stealing private property was a crime against common law, not against the Praxis, he wasn’t subjected to the tortures reserved for those who transgressed against the ultimate law, but simply strapped into a chair and garotted.

The execution was broadcast on the video channel reserved for punishments, and Lamey made his boys watch it. “To make them more careful,” he said simply.

Gredel didn’t watch. She went to Caro’s instead and surprised herself by helping Caro drink a bottle of wine. Caro was delighted at this lapse on Gredel’s part, and was at her most charming all night, thanking Gredel effusively for everything she’d done for her. Gredel left with the wine singing in her veins. She had rarely felt so good.

The euphoria lasted until she entered Nelda’s apartment. Antony was in full cry. A chair lay in pieces on the floor, and Nelda had a cut above her eye that wept red tears across her face. Gredel froze in the door as she came in, then tried to slip toward her room without attracting Antony’s attention.

No such luck. He lunged toward her, grabbed her blouse by its shoulder. She felt the fabric tear. “Where’s the money?” he shouted. “Where’s the money you get by selling your tail?”

Gredel held out her pocketbook in trembling hands. “Here!” she said. “Take it!”

It was clear enough what was going on, it was Antony Scenario Number One. He needed cash for a drink, and he’d already taken everything Nelda had.

He grabbed it and poured coins into his hand. Gredel could smell the juniper scent of the gin reeking off his pores. He looked at the coins dumbly, then threw the pocketbook to the floor and put the money in his pocket.

“I’m going to put you on the street myself, right now,” he said, and seized her wrist in one huge hand. “I can get more money for you than this.”

“No!” Gredel filled with terror, tried to pull away.

Anger blazed in Antony’s eyes. He drew back his other hand.

Gredel felt the impact not on her flesh but in her bones. Her teeth snapped together, her heels went out from under her, and she sat on the floor.

Then Nelda was screaming, her hands clutching Antony’s forearm as she tried to keep him from hitting Gredel again. “Don’t hit the child!” she wailed.

“Stupid bitch!” Antony growled, and turned to punch Nelda in the face. “Don’t ever step between me and her again!”

Turning his back was Antony’s big mistake. Anger blazed in Gredel, an all-consuming blowtorch annihilating fury that sent her lunging for the nearest weapon, a chair leg that had been broken off when Antony smashed the chair in order to underscore one of his rhetorical points. Gredel kicked off her heels and rose to her feet and swung the chair leg two-handed for Antony’s head.

Nelda gaped at her, her mouth an O, and wailed again. Antony took this as a warning and started to turn, but it was too late. The wooden chair leg caught him in the temple, and he fell to one knee. Made of compressed dedger fiber, the chair leg had broken raggedly, and the splintery end gouged his flesh.

Gredel gave a shriek powered by fifteen years of pure, suppressed hatred and swung again. There was a solid crack as the chair leg connected with Antony’s bald skull, and the big man dropped to the floor like a bag of rocks. Gredel dropped her knees onto his barrel chest and swung again and again. She remembered the sound that Lamey’s boots made going into Moseley and wanted badly to make those sounds come from Antony. The ragged end of the chair leg tore long ribbons out of Antony’s flesh. Blood splashed the floor and walls.

She only stopped when Nelda wrapped her arms around her and hauled her off the unconscious man. Gredel turned to swing at Nelda, and stopped only when she saw the older woman’s tears.

Antony was making a bubbling sound as he breathed. A slow river of blood poured out of his mouth onto the floor. “What do we do?” Nelda wailed as she turned little helpless circles on the floor. “What do we do?”

Gredel knew the answer to the question perfectly well. She got her phone out of her pocketbook, went to her room and called Lamey. He was there in twenty minutes with Panda and three other boys. He looked at the wrecked room, at Antony lying on the floor, at Gredel standing over the man with the bloody chair leg in her hand.

“What do you want done?” he asked Gredel. “We could put him on a train, I suppose. Or in the river.”

“No!” Nelda jumped between Antony and Lamey. Tears brimmed from her eyes as she turned to Gredel. “Put him on the train. Please, honey, please.”

“On the train,” Gredel repeated to Lamey.

“We’ll wake him up long enough to tell him not to come back,” Lamey said. He and his boys picked up Antony’s heavy body and dragged it toward the door.

“Where’s the freight elevator?” Lamey asked.

“I’ll show you,” Gredel said.

The tenants were working people who went to bed at a reasonable hour, and the building was silent at night and the halls empty. Lamey’s boys panted for breath as they hauled the heavy, inert carcass with its heavy bones and solid muscle. They reached the freight elevator doors, and the boys dumped Antony on the floor while they caught their breath.

“Lamey,” Gredel said.

He looked at her. “Yes?”

She looked up at him, into his accepting blue eyes.

“Put him in the river,” she said.

Something floated by on the surface of the water, and Sula tried not to look at it. Martinez gathered her in his arms and began to kiss her. She kissed him back, briefly, distractedly. She jerked and gave a shiver as a fat raindrop spattered on the back of her hand.

“Are you cold? Let me close the canopy.”

Martinez pushed a lever, and the boat’s plastic canopy flapped forward, cutting off the breeze. Suddenly there was no air. Sula lunged forward and heaved the canopy back with a cry.

“What’s wrong?” Martinez asked, startled.

“Boat!” Sula commanded. “Go to the quay! Now!” Panic flapped in her chest like torn canvas flogging in the wind. Raindrops spattered on her face.

Martinez took her by the hand. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“No!” she managed to shout, and wrenched her hand free. The boat slid against the quay and Sula launched herself for dry land. Pain jolted her shins as they barked against the stone quay, but after a brief scramble she was on her feet and walking briskly away. Martinez remained behind, his arms thrown out for balance, ridiculous in the swaying little boat.

“What did I do wrong?” he called, bewildered.

Rain hit her face in cold little slaps.

“Nothing!” she answered over her shoulder, and increased her pace.