“I don’t drink much.”
“Why not?”
Gredel hesitated. “I don’t like being drunk.”
Caro shrugged. “That’s fair.” She emptied Gredel’s glass, then put it with the others on the side table. “It’s not being drunk that I like,” 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 likequiet.”
“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 her 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 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 her 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 backseat and tried to rouse Caro. She woke long enough to murmur 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 her 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? she thought.
Her twin was a Peer.
Ah,she thought.Ha.
The cold touch of the med injector.
Pressed to the throat.
Followed by the hiss…
Cadet Sula thrashed awake from the nightmare memory, only gradually prying its frozen talons from her mind. A light flashed on her instrument panel, accompanied by a soft tone.
Incoming transmission. Right.
“Display,” she said.
It was the lantern-jawed staff lieutenant, Martinez. “Cadet Sula,” he said, “I was wondering if you’re lonely.”
Surprise brought a savage laugh to Sula’s throat.Lonely? How could you think that?
“I’m sending you some entertainment,” Martinez said. “It’s all from my personal collection. I don’t know what sort of thing you like, so I’m sending a wide spectrum of stuff. If you’ll tell me what sort of thing you’d prefer, I’ll try to get it to you.”
He smiled “Enjoy.” Then he hesitated, and added. “I’m receiving requests from reporters who want to interview you in regard to the Blitsharts rescue. The lord commander’s given his permission, so it’s up to you. You’ve become sort of famous here.” And then he brightened again. “Let me know if you need anything. Aside from a hot bath, that is.”
The transmission ended. Sula looked at the comm display and saw the steadily winking light that indicated her communications buffer was being filled with compressed audiovisual files.
Entertainment?
Anything was better than lying here alone, with nothing but memories for company.
She watched Spate in the knockabout comedyExtrovert, enjoying his excellent timing, the sheer physicality of his movements. She absorbed Loralee Pang and the Lai-own Far-fraq in the melodramasDr. An-ku Investigates andDr. An-ku and the Mystery Skull. She watched Aimee Marchant in the sophisticated comedyFleet Exercises, with its totally unreal life aboard a battleship, and Cannonball Li in the frantic, classicCrazy Vacation, which she decided was overrated. She avoided the dramasRighteousness andLife of Evil — grim explorations of despair and violence were nothing she wanted to watch right now, despite the happy endings mandated by the censors.
“Send more Spate,” she sent in a private message to Martinez. “And tell the reporters to go eat rocks.”
Martinez proved to be quite a connoisseur of low comedy. In addition to more Spate vehicles, he sent the Deuces inHigh-Low Boys and Mary Cheung inWho’s on the Slab?
It was while watching Spate do his famous mushroom dance inSpitballs! that Sula felt the tide of sorrow begin to flow out of her, propelled by a wind of laughter. She laughed till cramp lay like a fist in her belly, till tears spilled from her eyes. She felt the sadness retreat and flow away until she could dam it up again, until it was safe behind its iron wall.
Thank you, Martinez,she thought.Thank you for saving me…from me.
FOUR
There had been a party at the Ngeni Palace the night before, and the decorations were still coming down. Golden shay blossoms taller than a man were being lowered from the upper regions of the barrel-vaulted hall, ribbons of gold and white unwound from the columns that supported the long balconies, and a gang of servants under the direction of a Daimong in livery was scrubbing the dark red marble floor. Mingled scents of perfume and decay wafted from the hundreds of faded flowers dumped into a hopper near the front door.
Judging by its remnants, the party had been quite large, thronging the halls and corridors. Were Martinez the sort to pay attention to the society reports, he could probably have read rapturous descriptions that morning of the decorations, costumes, and guests that had filled the palace the previous night.
