The Praxis

by Walter Jon Williams

  The nights Ava was with her man, Gredel spent with Caro. There was a lot of room in the big bed. She found that Caro didn’t so much go to sleep as put herself into a coma: she loaded endorphins into the med injector and gave herself one dose after another until unconsciousness claimed her.

  Gredel was horrified. “Why do you do it?” she asked one night as Caro reached for the injector.

  Caro gave her a glare. “Because I like it,” she snarled. “I can’t sleep without it.”

  Gredel shrank away from Caro’s look. She didn’t want Caro to tear into her the way she ripped into other people.

  One night Lamey took them both to a party. “I’ve got to take Caro out too,” he told Gredel. “Otherwise I’d never see you.”

  The reason for the party was that Lamey had put up a loan for a restaurant and club, and the people hadn’t made a go of it, so he’d foreclosed and taken the place over. Inheriting a stockroom of liquor and a walk-in refrigerator full of food, he decided it shouldn’t go to waste, and so invited nearly everyone he knew. He paid the staff for one more night and let all his guests know the food and drinks were free.

  “We’ll have fun tonight,” he said, “and tomorrow I’ll start looking for somebody to manage the place.”

  It was the last great party Gredel had with Lamey and his crew. The big room was filled with food and music and people having a good time. Laughter rang from the club’s rusted, reinforced iron ceiling, which was not an attempt at decor but a reminder that the floor above had once been braced to support heavy machinery. Though Gredel didn’t have anything to drink, she still got high simply from being around so many people who were soaking up the good times along with the free liquor. Her mind whirled as she danced, whirled like her body spinning along the dance floor in response to Lamey’s smooth, perfect, elegant motion. He leaned close and spoke into her ear.

  “Come and live with me, Earthgirl.”

  She shook her head, smiled. “Not yet.”

  “I want to marry you. Have babies with you.”

  A shiver of pleasure sang up Gredel’s spine. She had no reply, only put her arms around Lamey’s neck and rested her head on his shoulder.

  She didn’t know why she deserved to be so loved. Lamey, Caro, her mother, each of them filling a dreadful hollowness inside her, a hollowness she hadn’t realized was there until it was filled with warmth and tenderness.

  Lamey danced with Caro as well, or rather, guided her around the dance floor while she did the jumping up and down thing she did instead of dancing. Caro was having a good time. She drank only a couple bottles of wine over the course of the night, which for her was modest, and the rest of the time danced with Lamey or members of his crew. As they left the club she kissed Lamey extravagantly to thank him for inviting her.

  Lamey put an arm around both Caro and Gredel. “I just like to show my beautiful sisters a good time,” he said.

  He and Gredel took Caro to the Volta Apartments, after which they intended to drive back to the Fabs to spend the dawn in one of Lamey’s apartments. But Caro lingered in the car, leaning forward out of the backseat to prop her head and shoulders between Lamey and Gredel. They all talked and laughed as the doorman hovered in the Volta vestibule, waiting for the moment to let Lady Sula past the doors. Finally Lamey said it was time to go.

  “Save yourself that drive back to the Fabs,” Caro said. “You two can use my bed. I can sleep on the sofa.”

  Lamey gave her a look. “I hate to put a beautiful woman out of her bed.”

  Caro gave a sharp, sudden laugh, then turned to kiss Gredel on the cheek. “That depends on Gredel.”

  Ah. Ha, Gredel thought, surprised and not surprised. Lamey, it seemed, was looking for a return on his investment. Gredel considered it a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t mind,” she said.

  So Lamey took Gredel and Caro up to the apartment and made love to them both. Gredel watched her boyfriend’s pale butt jigging up and down over Caro and wondered why it didn’t bother her.

  Because I don’t love him, she decided. If I loved him, this would matter.

  And then she thought, Maybe Caro loves him. Maybe Caro would want to stay with Lamey in the Fabs, and she could take Caro’s place in the academy and go to Earth.

  Maybe that would be the solution that would leave everyone happy.

  Caro apologized the next day, after Lamey left. “I was awful last night,” she said. “I don’t know what you must think of me.”

  “It was all right,” Gredel said. She was folding Caro’s clothes and putting them away. Cleaning up after the orgy, she thought.

  “I’m such a slut sometimes,” Caro said. “You must think I’m trying to steal Lamey away from you.”

  “I’m not thinking that.”

  Caro trotted up behind Gredel and put her arms around her. She leaned her head against Gredel’s shoulder and put on the lisping voice of a penitent little girl. “Do you forgive me?”

  “Yes,” Gredel said. “Of course.”

  Suddenly Caro was all energy. She skipped around the room, bounding across the carpet as Gredel folded her clothes. “I’ll make it up to you!” Caro proclaimed. “I’ll take you anywhere you want today! What would you like? Shopping?”

  Gredel considered the offer. It wasn’t as if she needed new things—she was beginning to feel a little oppressed by all her possessions—but on the other hand, she enjoyed Caro’s pleasure in purchasing them. Then another idea struck her.

  “Godfrey’s,” she said.

  Caro’s eyes glittered. “Oh yes.”

  It was a glorious day—summer was coming on, and warm breezes flowed through the louvered windows on the private rooms at Godfrey’s, breezes that wafted floral perfume over Gredel’s skin. She and Caro started with a steam bath, then a facial, a lotion wrap, and a massage that stretched all the way from the scalp to the toes. Afterward they lay on couches, talking and giggling, caressed by the breezes and drinking fruit juice as smiling young women gave them manicures and pedicures.

  Every square inch of Gredel’s skin seemed flushed with summer, with life. Back at the Volta, Caro dressed Gredel in one of her own outfits, the expensive fabrics gliding over nerve-tingling, butter-smooth flesh. When Lamey came to pick them up, Caro put Gredel’s hand in Lamey’s and guided them both toward the door.

  “Have a lovely night,” she said.

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” Lamey asked.

  Caro only shook her head and laughed. Her green eyes looked into Gredel’s—Gredel saw amusement there, and secrets that Lamey would never share. Then Caro steered them into the hall and closed the door behind them.

  Lamey paused a moment, looking back. “Is Caro all right?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Gredel said. “Now let’s go find a place to dance.”

  She felt as if she were floating, moving across the floor so lightly that she almost danced on her way to the elevator. It occurred to her that she was happy, that happiness had never been hers before, but now she had it.

  All it took was getting Antony out of the picture.

  The first crack in Gredel’s happiness occurred two afternoons later, when she arrived at the Volta late due to a blockage on the train tracks from the Fabs. She let herself in, and found Caro snoring on her bed. Caro was dressed to go out, but she must have got bored waiting for her to turn up, because there was an empty wine bottle on the floor and the med injector near her right hand.

  Gredel spoke to Caro, then shook her. There was no response. Caro was pale, her flesh cool and faintly bluish.

  Another long, grating snore shredded the air. Gredel felt her heart turn over at the pure insistence of the sound. She seized the med injector and checked the contents: endorphin analogue, something called Phenyldorphin-Zed.

  Caro began another snore, and then the sound simply rattled to a halt. Her breathing had stopped. Terror roared through Gredel’s veins.

  She never dealt with an overdose, but there was a certain amount of ora
l legend on the subject that circulated through the Fabs. One of the fixes involved filling the victim’s pants with ice, she remembered. Ice on the genitals was supposed to wake you right up. Or was that just for men?

  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 screens of green jasper, the pupils so shrunken 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 her 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 continued moving. She got Caro into the front room and walked her 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 anymore, Gredel dumped her on the sofa and went to the kitchen to get the coffee maker started. When she returned to the front room, Caro was 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 him,” Caro said as they walked. “I couldn’t stand it anymore and I called him and he wouldn’t talk to me. His secretary said he was 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 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 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 almost looked normal. “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.

  But three nights later, Gredel was sleeping over when Caro produced a med injector 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 and 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 anymore.” She reached out and gripped the injector. “Let go,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

  “Don’t,” Gredel begged.

  Caro laughingly detached Gredel’s fingers, then held the injector 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 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 to a pharmacy and pay full price.” He took her hands and looked at her, concern in his blue eyes. “You can’t help her. Nobody can help a user when they’ve gone this far. You know that.”

  Anxiety sang along Gredel’s nerves. She didn’t want Lamey’s words to be true. 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 on the first hot afternoon of summer. She and Caro had 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. Caro took a bottle of chilled wine from the kitchen, opened it, and offered some to Gredel, who declined. Caro brought the bottle with her into the bathroom.

  In the front room, Gredel heard the sound of running water as she 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 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, and she moved to the data channel and looked up the requirements for the Cheng Ho Academy, which the Sulas bound for the military traditionally attended.

  By the time Caro came padding out in her dressing gown, Gredel was full of information. “You’d better find a tailor,” 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 at the screen as if she were having trouble focusing on it. “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “When you go to 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.”

  Since it was a hot day and Gredel hadn’t had a rest or a bath or a drink, she missed the warning signs that would have told her that Caro had more than a bottle of wine in the bath, that she’d taken something else as well—something that kinked and spiked her nerves and made her temper sizzle.

  “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 her, 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?”

  Gredel sat on the sofa, and Caro stood over her, arms windmilling as if they were throwing rocks at her 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 looked up and stared at her, too overwhelmed to raise a
hand to her stinging cheek.

  “I see you everywhere—everywhere in my life!” Caro went on. “You tell me what to do, how much to spend—I don’t even have any friends anymore! They’re all your friends!” She reached for the shopping bags that held their purchases and hurled them at Gredel. Gredel warded them off, but when they bounced to the floor, Caro picked them up and threw them again, so Gredel snatched them out of the air and let them pile in her lap, a crumpled heap of expensive tailored fabrics and hand-worked leather.

  “Take your crap and get out of here!” Caro cried. She grabbed one of Gredel’s arms and hauled her off the sofa. Gredel clutched the packages to her with her other arm, but several spilled as Caro shoved her to the door. “I never want to see you again! Get out! Get out! Get out!”

  The door slammed behind her. Gredel stood in the corridor with a package clutched to her breast as if it was a child. Inside the apartment she could hear Caro throwing things.

  She didn’t know what to do. Her impulse was to open the door—she knew the codes—to reenter the apartment and try to calm Caro.

  I didn’t take the money, she protested. I didn’t ask for anything.

  Something hit the door hard enough so it jumped in its frame.

  Not the Fleet. The thought seemed to steal the strength from her limbs. Her head spun. I have to stay here now. On Spannan, in the Fabs. I have to…

  What about tomorrow? a part of her cringed. She and Caro had made plans to go to a new boutique in the morning. Were they going or not?

  The absurdity of the question struck home, and sudden rage possessed her, rage at her own imbecility. She should have known better than to press Caro on the question, not when she was in this mood.

  Gredel went to her mother’s apartment and put the packages away. Ava wasn’t home. Anger and despair battled in her mind. She called Lamey, and he sent someone to pick her up. Then she let him divert her for the rest of the evening.