Margaux (dread empire's fall)

by Walter Jon Williams

  Margaux

  ( Dread Empire's fall )

  Walter Jon Williams

  Walter Jon Williams

  Margaux

  “Hey Earthgirl! I got someone for you to meet!”

  Stoney was excited. He was almost always excited. He was one of Lamey's lieutenants, a boy who hijacked cargo that came over the sea to Maranic Port and sold it through Lamey's outlets in the Fabs. Stoney wore soft felt boots and a puffy padded jacket with rows of tiny little metal chimes that rang when he moved, and a hard round plastic hat without a brim, the clothes that all Lamey's linkboys wore when they wanted to be noticed.

  Gredel came into the room on Lamey's arm. He had dressed her in a gown of short-haired kantaran leather set off with collar and cuffs of white satin, big clunky white ceramic jewelry inlaid with gold, shiny little plastic boots with nubbly surfaces and tall heels. The height of fashion, at least as far as the Fabs were concerned.

  Lamey liked shopping for Gredel. He took her to the stores and bought her a new outfit two or three times each week.

  Lamey had earned his name because he once had a defect that made him walk with a limp. It was something he'd had fixed as soon as he had the money, and when Gredel first met him, he glided along like a prince, putting each foot down with deliberate, exaggerated care, as if he were walking on rice paper and didn't want to tear it. Lamey was only twenty-five years old in Shaa measure, but already he ran a set of linkboys, and had linkages of his own that eventually ran up to some of the Peers responsible for running places like the Fabs. He had millions, all in cash stashed in various places, and three apartments, and half a dozen small stores through which he moved the material acquired by his crews.

  He also had a seventeen-year-old girlfriend called Earthgirl.

  Lamey had offered to set her up in an apartment, but Gredel still lived with Nelda, the woman who had mostly raised her since Gredel's mother had been sentenced to serve on the agrarian communes. Gredel wasn't sure why she stayed. Maybe it was because Gredel hoped she could protect Nelda against Antony, her husband-Gredel's earliest memories were of cowering in the dark while Antony raged outside the door, bellowing and smashing furniture. Or maybe Gredel stayed because once she moved into a place that Lamey bought her, she'd have to spend all her time there waiting for him to come see her. She wouldn't be able to leave for fear that he'd come by and find her gone and get angry; and she couldn't have her friends visit because they might be there when Lamey turned up and that would probably make him mad, too.

  That was the kind of life Gredel's mother Ava had always led, waiting in some apartment somewhere for some man to turn up. That's why Ava had never been able to see her daughter when she wanted to. Gredel's father had apparently been caught at something, but it had been Ava who had paid for it, and Gredel's father who had skipped town. Gredel had seen him maybe twice since then.

  Gredel wanted a different life for herself. She had no idea how to get it, but she was paying attention, and maybe some day she'd learn.

  Gredel still attended school. Every afternoon, when Gredel left her school, she'd find Lamey in his car waiting for her, Lamey or one of his boys who would take Gredel to wherever Lamey was waiting.

  Gredel's attending school was something Lamey found amusing. “I'm going around with a schoolgirl,” he'd laugh, and sometimes he'd remind her to do her schoolwork when he had to leave with his boys on some errand or other. Not that he left her much time for schoolwork. Her grades had plunged to the point where she would probably get kicked out of school before she graduated.

  Tonight, the eve of the Festival of Spring, Lamey had taken Gredel to a party at Panda's place. Panda was another of Lamey's linkboys, and he worked on the distribution end. He'd pointed Stoney and his crew at a warehouse full of wine imported from Cavado and pharmaceuticals awaiting shipment to a Fleet hospital on Spannan's ring. The imported wine was proving difficult to sell, there not being much of a market in the Fabs for something so select; but the pharmaceuticals were moving fast through Panda's outlets and everyone was in the mood to celebrate.

  “Come on, Earthgirl!” Stoney urged. “You've got to meet her!”

  A warning hummed through Gredel's nerves as she saw everyone at the party looking at her with eyes that glittered from more than whatever they'd been consuming earlier in the evening. There was an anticipation there in those eyes Gredel didn't like. So she dropped Lamey's arm and straightened-because she didn't want these people to see her afraid-and she walked to where Stoney waited.

  “Earthgirl!” Stoney said. “This is Caro!” He was practically jumping up and down with excitement, and instead of looking where Stoney was pointing, Gredel just gave Stoney a long, cool glance, because he was just so outrageous this way.

  When she turned her head, her first thought was, She's beautiful. And then the full impact of the other girl's face struck her.

  “Ah. Ha,” she said.

  Caro looked at her with a ragged grin. She had long golden hair and green eyes and skin smooth as butter-cream, flawless…

  “It's your twin!” Stoney almost shouted. “Your secret twin sister!”

  Gredel gaped while everyone laughed, but Caro just looked at her and said, “Are you really from Earth?”

  “No,” Gredel said. “I'm from here.”

  “Help me build this pyramid.”

  Gredel shrugged. “Why not?” she said.

  Caro wore a short dress and a battered jacket with black metal buckles and boots that came up past her knees-expensive stuff. She stood by the dining table carefully building a pyramid of crystal wine glasses. “I saw this done once,” she said. “You pour the wine into the one glass on the top, and when it overflows it fills all the others. If you do it right, you fill all the glasses and you don't spill a drop.”

  Caro spoke with a kind of drawl, like Peers or rich people did when they made speeches or announcements on video.

  “We're going to make a mess,” Gredel predicted.

  “That's all right, too,” Caro shrugged.

  When the pyramid was completed, Caro got Stoney to start opening bottles. It was the wine his crew had stolen from the warehouse in Maranic Port, and it was a kind of bright silver in color, and filled the glasses like liquid mercury.

  Caro tried to pour carefully, but, as Gredel predicted, she made a terrible mess, the precious wine bubbling across the tabletop and over onto the carpet. Caro seemed to find this funny. At length, all the glasses were brimming full, and she put down the bottle and called everyone over to drink. They took glasses and cheered and drank. Laughter and clinking glasses rang in the air. The glasses were so full that the carpet got another bath.

  Caro took one glass for herself and pushed another into Gredel's hand, then took a second glass for herself and led Gredel to the sofa. Gredel sipped cautiously at the wine-there was something subtle and indefinable about the taste, something that made her think of the park in spring, the way the trees and flowers had a delicate freshness to them. She'd never tasted any wine like it before.

  The taste was more seductive than she wanted anything with alcohol to be. She didn't take a second sip.

  “So,” Caro said, “are we related?”

  “I don't think so,” Gredel said.

  Caro swallowed half the contents of a glass in one go. “Your dad was never on Zanshaa? I can almost guarantee my dad was never here.”

  “I get my looks from my Ma, and she's never been anywhere,” Gredel said. Then, surprised, “You're from Zanshaa?”

  Caro gave a little twitch of her lips, followed by a shrug. Interpreting this as a yes, Gredel asked,

  “What do your parents do?”

  “They got executed,”
Caro said.

  Gredel hesitated. “I'm sorry,” she said. Caro's parents were linked, obviously. No wonder she was hanging with this crowd.

  “Me, too.” Caro said it with a brave little laugh, but she gulped down the remains of the wine in her first glass, then took a sip from the second. She looked up at Gredel.

  “You heard of them maybe? The Sula family?”

  Gredel tried to think of any of the linkages with that name, but couldn't. “Sorry, no,” she said.

  “That's all right,” Caro said. “The Sulas were big on Zanshaa, but out here in the provinces they wouldn't mean much.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why do they call you Earthgirl?”

  Gredel put on her Earth accent. “Because I can talk like I'm from Earth, darling. I do the voice.”

  Caro laughed. She finished her second glass of wine, then got two more from the pyramid and drank them, then reached for Gredel's. “You going to drink that?”

  “I don't drink much.”

  “Why not?”

  Gredel hesitated. “I don't like being drunk.”

  Caro shrugged. “That's fair.” She drank Gredel's glass, then put it with the others on the side table. “I don't like being drunk,” she said, as if she were making up her mind right then. “But I don't dislike it either. What I don't like,” she said carefully, “is standing still. Not moving. Not changing. I get bored fast, and I don't like quiet.”

  “In that case, you've come to the right place,” Gredel said.

  Her nose is more pointed, Gredel thought. And her chin is different. She doesn't look like me, not really.

  I bet I'd look good in that jacket, though.

  “So do you live around here someplace?” Gredel asked.

  Caro shook her head. “Maranic Town.”

  “I wish I lived in Maranic.”

  Caro looked at her in surprise. “Why?”

  “Because it's… not here.”

  “Maranic is a hole. It's not something to wish for. If you're going to wish, wish for Zanshaa. Or Sandamar. Or Esley.”

  “Have you been to those places?” Gredel asked. She almost hoped the answer was no, because she knew she'd never get anywhere like that, that maybe she'd get to Maranic Town, if she was lucky.

  “I was there when I was little,” Caro said.

  “I wish I lived in Byzantium,” Gredel said.

  Caro gave her a look again. “Where's that?”

  “Earth. Terra.”

  “Terra's a hole,” Caro said.

  “I'd still like to go there.”

  “It's probably better than Maranic Town,” Caro decided.

  Someone programmed some dance music, and Lamey came to dance with Gredel. A few years ago, he hadn't been able to walk right, but now he was a good dancer, and Gredel enjoyed dancing with him, responding to his changing moods in the fast dances, molding her body to his when the beat slowed down.

  Caro also danced with one boy or another, but Gredel saw that she couldn't dance at all, just bounced up and down while her partner maneuvered her around.

  After a while, Lamey went to talk business with Ibrahim, one of his boys who thought he knew someone in Maranic who could distribute the stolen wine, and Gredel found herself on the couch with Caro again.

  “Your nose is different,” Caro said.

  “I know.”

  “But you're prettier than I am.”

  This was the opposite of what Gredel had been thinking. People were always telling her she was beautiful, and she had to believe they saw her that way, but when she looked in the mirror she saw nothing but a vast collection of flaws.

  A girl shrieked in another room, and there was a crash of glass. Suddenly Caro's mood changed completely: she glared toward the other room as if she hated everyone there.

  “Time to change the music,” she said. She dug in her pocket and pulled out a med injector. She looked at the display, dialed a number, and put the injector to her throat, over the carotid. Little flashes of alarm pulsed through Gredel.

  “What's in there?” she asked.

  “What do you care?” Caro snarled. Her eyes snapped green sparks.

  She pressed the trigger, and, an instant later, the fury faded, and a drowsy smile came to Caro's lips. “Now that's better,” she said. “Panda's got the real goods, all right.”

  “Tell me about Zanshaa,” Gredel said.

  Caro lazily shook her head. “No. Nothing but bad memories there.”

  “Then tell me about Esley.”

  “Sure. What I can remember.”

  Caro talked about Esley's black granite peaks, with a white spindrift of snow continually blowing off them in the high perpetual wind, and the shaggy Yormak who lived there, tending their equally shaggy cattle. She described glaciers pouring in ageless slow motion down mountain valleys, high meadows covered with fragrant star flowers, chill lakes so clear that you could see all the way to the bottom.

  “Of course, I was only at that mountain resort for a few weeks,” Caro added. “The rest of the planet might be burning desert for all I know.”

  Lamey came back for more dancing, and when Gredel returned to the sofa Caro was unconscious, the med injector in her hand. She seemed to be breathing all right, though, lying asleep with a smile on her face. After a while, Panda came over and tried to grope her, but Gredel slapped his hands away.

  “What's your problem?” he asked.

  “Don't mess with my sister when she's passed out,” Gredel told him. He laughed, not exactly in a nice way, but he withdrew.

  Caro was still asleep when the party ended. Gredel made Lamey help her carry Caro to his car, and then got him to drive to Maranic Town to her apartment. “What if she doesn't wake up long enough to tell us where it is?” Lamey complained.

  “Whatever she took will wear off sooner or later.”

  “What if it's next week?” But he drove off anyway, heading for Maranic, while Gredel sat with Caro in the back seat and tried to wake her up. Caro woke long enough to murmur the fact that she lived in the Volta Apartments. Lamey got lost on the way there, and wandered into a Torminel neighborhood. The nocturnal Torminel were in the middle of their active cycle, and Lamey got angry at the way they stared at him with their huge eyes as he wandered their streets.

  Lamey was furious by the time he found the apartment building. He opened the passenger door and practically dragged Caro out of the car onto the sidewalk. Gredel scrambled out of the car and tried to get one of Caro's arms over her shoulders so she could help Caro get to her feet.

  A doorman came scrambling out of the building. “Has something happened to Lady Sula?” he demanded.

  Lamey looked at him in surprise. The doorman stared at Gredel, then at Caro, astonished by the resemblance. But Gredel looked at Caro.

  Lady Sula? Gredel thought.

  Her twin was a Peer.

  Ah, she thought. Ha.

  Lady Sula?

  She wasn't even Lady Caro, she was Lady Sula. 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 Lamey 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 thoughts echoed her own. “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 for as far as Gredel was concerned, and then Lamey took Gredel home.

  As soon as she walked in the door, she knew Antony was back-he'd been gone for four months, working in another town, and Gredel had got used to walking in the door without fear. Now 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 in the Fabs. 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 zephyrball 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 walked through the door.