Margaux (dread empire's fall)

by Walter Jon Williams

  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 and a barrel chest and long arms with big hands. He looked like a slab on legs. Iron-grey 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 for the apartment door.

  He looked at her with his glaring black eyes. “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. Kids 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 doorman 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 turned to walk 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 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 cafй 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 servants here, 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 you eat 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 took her cup into the bathroom with her, and after a while, Gredel heard the shower start to run. She sipped her coffee as she wandered around the apartment-the rooms were nice, but not that 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 a store.

  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 is gone. This cafй 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 non-humans 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 pajama-like 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?” Gre
del said, startled.

  “Worm spit. They call it ‘silk.'”

  Gredel had heard of silk, 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 only Sula, leaving out her first name and the honorific Lady. She seemed to carry a tab on 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-two. 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 this is 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.”

  “You don't live with Biswas anymore, though. Did he leave Spannan?”

  “No, he's still here. But he got divorced and remarried, and the new wife and I didn't get along-we were fighting every day, and poor old Jacob couldn't take it any more, so he got me the place in the Volta until it was time for me to join the Fleet.”

  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,” Caro said, 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,” Gredel 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 they pay you for it.”

  Caro gave a disdainful snort. “You do it, then.”

  “I would if I could.”

  Caro made a disgusted noise. “So why don't you? You could enlist.”

  “They wouldn't let me. 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 apartment, but when the driver started to pull up to the curb, Caro ducked into the back seat, pulled a bewildered Gredel down atop her, and shouted at the driver 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 in the alley behind the apartment building. There was a loading dock there, and Caro's codes opened the door. There were little motorized carts in the entryway, for use when people moved in 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. Her reluctance was profound. “Food,” she said, “but we've got Antony, too.”

  “And who's that?”

  Gredel told her. Caro's disgusted look returned. “He comes near me,” she said, “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, defiant.

  “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 I already 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, and he was amused by their dilemma and said he'd be there soon.

  “So tell me about Lamey,” Caro said while they waited.

  So Gredel told Caro 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 does good things, right? He's never hurt anybody, he just helps people.”

  Gredel hesitated. They were entering the area of things 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's smart. He uses his intelligence.”

  “Uh-huh,” Caro said. “So has he used his… intelligence… on 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 boyfriends did, 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. For all that it had never been as pleasurable as she'd been led to expect, it was nevertheless
pleasurable enough so that she never really wanted 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 me everything about sex.”

  Gredel blinked. “Who was Sergei?”

  “Remember I told you that Jake Biswas remarried? Well, his wife's sister was married to Sergei. He and I met at the wedding and fell for each other-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 does he 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.

  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 remembered something, and reached into his pocket. Gredel's nerves tingled as she recognized a 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.”