Praxis, p.38
Praxis, page 38
Gredel took the injector from Caros limp fingers. She reached out and brushed the hair from Caros face.
Want some more? she asked. Want some more, Sister Caro?
Caro gave a little indistinct murmur. Her lips curled up in a smile. When Gredel fired another dose into her carotid, the smile broadened, and she shrugged herself into the sofa pillows like a happy puppy.
Gredel turned from her and reached for Caros portable computer console. She called up Caros banking files and prepared a form closing the account and transferring its contents to the account Gredel had set up. Then she prepared another message to Caros trust account on Spannans ring, instructing any further payments to be sent to the new account as well.
Caro, Gredel said. Caro, I need your thumbprint here, all right?
She stroked Caro awake, and managed to get her to lean over the console long enough to press her thumb, twice, to the reader. Then Gredel handed the injector to Caro and watched her give herself another dose.
Now Im really a criminal, she thought. She had left a trail of data that pointed straight to herself.
But even so, she could not bring herself to completely commit to this course of action. She left herself a way out. Caro has to want it, she thought. I wont give her any more if she says no.
Caro sighed, settled herself more deeply into the pillows. Would you like some more? Gredel asked.
Mmm, Caro said, and smiled.
Gredel took the injector from her hand and gave her another dose.
After a while she exhausted the first vial and started on the second. Before each dose, she shook Caro and asked if she wanted more. Caro would sigh, or laugh, or murmur, but never said no. Gredel triggered dose after dose.
After the second vial was exhausted the snoring started, Caros breath heaving itself past the palate, the lungs pumping hard, sometimes with a kind of wrench. Gredel remembered the sound from the time Caro had given herself too much endorphin, and the memory caused her to leap from the sofa and walk very fast around the apartment, rubbing her arms to fight her sudden chill.
The snoring went on. Gredel very much needed something to do, so she went into the kitchen and made coffee. And then the snoring stopped.
Ice shuddered along Gredels nerves She went to the kitchen door and stared out into the front room at the tumbled golden hair that hung off the end of the couch. Its over, she thought.
Then Caros head rolled, and Gredels heart froze as she saw Caros hand come up and comb the hair with her fingers. There was a gurgling snort, and the snoring resumed.
Gredel stood in the door as cold terror pulsed through her veins. But she told herself, No, it cant be long now.
And then, suddenly, she couldnt stand still any longer, and walked swiftly over the apartment, straightening and tidying. The new clothes went into the closet, the shoes on their racks, the empty bottle in the trash. Wherever she went the snores pursued her. Sometimes they stopped for a few paralyzing seconds, then resumed.
Abruptly, Gredel couldnt bear being in the apartment. She put on a pair of shoes, went to the freight elevator and took it to the basement, where she looked for one of the motorized carts they used to move luggage and furniture. There were a great many objects in the basement, things that had been discarded or forgotten about, and Gredel found some strong dedger-fiber rope and an old compressor, a piece of solid bronzework heavy enough to anchor a fair-sized boat.
She put these in the cart and pushed it to the elevator. As she approached Sulas doors, she could hear Caros snores through the enameled steel. Gredels fingers trembled as she pressed codes into the lock.
Caro was still on the couch, her breath still fighting its way past her throat. Gredel cast an urgent glance at the clock. There werent many hours of darkness left, and darkness was required for what happened next.
Gredel sat at Caros feet and hugged a pillow to her chest and watched her breathe. Caros skin was pale and looked clammy. Please, Gredel begged under her breath. Please die now. Please. But Caro wouldnt die. Her breaths grated on and on, until Gredel began to hate them with a bitter resentment. This was sotypical , she thought. Caro couldnt evendie without getting it all wrong.
Gredel looked at the wall clock, and it stared back at her like the barrel of a gun. Come dawn, she thought, the gun goes off. Or she could sit in the apartment all day with a corpse, and that was a thought she couldnt face.
Again Caros breath hung suspended, and Gredel felt her own breath cease for the long moment of suspense. Then Caro dragged in another long rattling gasp, and Gredel felt her heart sink. She knew that her tools had betrayed her. She would have to finish this herself.
All her anger was gone by now, all hatred, all emotion except a sick weariness, a desire to get it over. The pillow was already held to her chest, a warm comfort in the room filled only with Caros racking, tormented snores.
She cast one last look at Caro, thought, Please die at her one more time, but Caro didnt respond any more than she had responded to any of Gredels other unexpressed wishes.
Gredel suddenly lunged across the sofa, her body moving without conscious command, the movement seeming to come from pure instinct. She pressed the pillow over Caros face and put her weight on it.
Please die, she thought.
Caro hardly fought. Her body twisted on the couch and both her hands came up, but the hands didnt fight, they just fell across Gredels back as if in a halfhearted embrace.
Gredel would have felt better if Caro had fought. It would have given her hatred something to fasten on to.
Instead, through the closeness of their bodies, she felt the urgent kick-kick-kick of Caros diaphragm as it tried to draw in air, the kick repeated over and over again. Fast, then slow, then fast. Caros feet shivered. Gredel could feel Caros hands trembling as they lay on her back. Tears spilled from Gredels eyes.
The kicking stopped. The trembling stopped.
Gredel leaned on the pillow awhile longer just to make sure. The pillow was wet with tears. When she finally took the pillow away, it revealed a pale, cold thing that bore no resemblance to Caro at all.
Caro was weight now, not a person. That made what followed a lot easier.
Handling a limp body was more difficult than Gredel had ever imagined. By the time she got it onto the cart, she was panting for breath and her eyes stung with sweat. She covered Caro with a bed sheet and she added some empty suitcases to the cart as well. She took the cart to the freight elevator, then left by the loading dock at the back of the building.
I am Caroline, Lady Sula, she said aloud, rehearsing her story. Im moving to a new place because my lover beat me. She would have the identification to prove her claim, and what remained of the bruises, and the suitcases plain to see alongside the covered objects that werent so plain.
Gredel didnt need to use her story. The streets were deserted as she walked downslope alongside the humming cart, down to the Iola River.
The roads ran high above the river on either side, with ramps that descended to the darkened riverside quay below. Gredel rode the cart down the ramp to the rivers edge. This was the good part of Maranic Town, and there were no houseboats here, no beggars, no homeless, andat this hourno fishermen. The only encounters she feared were lovers sheltering under the bridges, but by now it was so late that even the lovers had gone to bed.
It was as hard getting Caro off the cart as getting her on it. But when she finally went into the river, tied to the compressor, the dark waters closed over her with barely a ripple. In a video drama Caro would have floated a while, poignantly, saying good-bye to the world, but there was none of that here, just the silent dark submersion and ripples that died swiftly in the current.
Caro had never been one for protracted good-byes.
Gredel walked alongside the cart back to the Volta. A few cars slowed to look at her, but moved on.
In the apartment, she tried to sleep, but Caros scent filled the bed, and sleep was impossible there. Caro had died on the sofa, and Gredel didnt want to go near it. She caught a few hours fitful rest on a chair, and then the woman called Caroline Sula rose and began her day.
The first thing she did was send in the confirmation of her appointment to the Cheng Ho Academy.
She packed two suitcases, took them to Maranic Port and the hovercraft ferry that would take her across the Krassow Sea to Vidalia. From there she took the express train up the Hayakh Escarpment to the Quaylah Plateau, where high altitude moderated the subtropical heat of the Equatorial Continent. The planets antimatter ring arced almost directly overhead.
Paysec was a winter resort, but the snowfall wouldnt begin until the monsoon shifted to the northeast, so she found good rates for a small apartment in Lustrel, and took it for two months. She bought some clothesnot the extravagant garments that were sold in Maranic Towns arcades, but practical country clothes, and boots for walking. She found a tailor, and he began to assemble the extensive wardrobe she would need for the academy.
She didnt want Lady Sulas disappearance from Maranic Town to cause any official disturbance, so she sent a message to Caros official guardian, Jacob Biswas, telling him that she found Maranic too distracting and had come to Lustrel in order to concentrate on her preparation for the academy. She told him she was giving up the Maranic apartment, and that he could collect anything shed left there.
Because she didnt trust herself to impersonate Caro with someone who knew her well, she didnt use video; she typed the message and sent it print only.
Biswas called back almost immediately, but she didnt take his call or any of the other calls that followed. She replied with print messages, saying she was sorry shed been out when he called, but she was spending a lot of time in the library cramming.
That wasnt far from the truth. Requirements for the service academies were posted on the computer net, and most of the courses were available in video files, and she knew she was deeply deficient in almost every subject. She worked hard.
She only answered one call, when she happened to be home, listened to the answerware, and realized the caller was Sergei. She answered and called him every filthy name she could think of, and once her initial anger was spent, she began to choose words more carefully, flaying him alive with one choice phrase after another. By the end he was weeping, loud gulping honks that grated over the speakers.
Serve him right, she thought.
Lamey had her worried more than Sergei or Jacob Biswas. Every day she half expected him to burst down the door and demand that she produce Earthgirl. He never turned up.
On her final day on Spannan, Biswas insisted on meeting her, with other members of his family, at the skyhook. She cut her hair severely short, wore Cheng Ho undress uniform, and virtually plated her face with cosmetic. If she looked to Biswas like a different girl, no wonder.
He was kind and warm and asked no questions. He told her she looked very grown-up and was proud of her. She thanked him for his kindness and for looking after her. She hugged him and the daughters hed brought with him.
His wife, Sergeis sister, had the sense to stay away.
Later, as the skyhook carried her to Spannans ring, and its steady acceleration pressed her into her seat, she realized it was Caros Earthday, the real one.
The Earthday that Caro would never see.
Sula jerked awake from a shivering dream, and for a moment Caros scent seemed to fill the pinnace. There were tears in Sulas eyes, and when she wiped them away, she saw something new on her displays.
Five somethings, swinging around from the far side of Barbas. Five ships were burning hard gees, coming around the big planet at an unusual angle. Sula wondered if they were heading for Magaria. Nothey burned well past that point.
Ah. Ha, she said.
They were looping around Barbas to fly toward Rinconell. And now Sula saw what they intended.
They were going to come between Wormhole 1 and the six survivors of the Home Fleet. There would be a blazing collision as their paths crossed, and the last of the Home Fleet would be annihilated. The five Naxid ships might die as well, if the loyalists had enough missiles remaining, but in any case the last of the Home Fleet would be destroyed.
Frantically, Sula began calculating trajectories. Her own missiles were a third of a light-minute ahead of her, and it would take time for her instructions to reach them. She didnt want them to maneuver where the enemy could see them, and the only way to do that was to fire their engines when they were behind the huge gas giant Rinconell.
It took Sula almost three hours to calculate the trajectories, triple-check the work, and transmit the missiles instructions via communications laser. Then she calculated her own trajectory and her own burn. Because she couldnt pull the massive gees of her missiles, she couldnt lay herself on the same trackshed be a spectator again, whatever happened.
And then she waited. It was nine hours before the tawny gas giant Rinconell became a great crescent on her displays, before her eighteen missiles executed precise pivots and made the furious burn that set them on their new trajectories. And more seconds passed before her own engine punched her and dropped her into nightmare sleep.
But the wait was worth it. On their mad swing around Barbas, the Naxid ships emerged with a velocity of nearly half the speed of light. The missiles coming at them were traveling in excess of .7c. The closing velocity was so enormous that the Naxids were probably never aware of what was coming at them and had a few seconds warning at most, not enough to activate their defenses.
Wild, angry joy sang in Sula as she watched the eighteen missiles explode in and among the Naxid ships. Nothing was left of the enemy but stripped ions that glowed fiercely and briefly in the deep, empty night, and then went out.
She reached for the comm unit and punched on the radio, broadcasting on the intership channel to the Naxids, the fleeing Home Fleet survivors, the scattered, cooling atoms that had been Dauntless and Glory of the Praxis, and all the others strewn and lost in the death and fury of Magaria.
Sula! she shouted into the transmitter. It was Sula who did this! Remember my name!
She programmed her own burn for the wormhole, and escape.
* * *
SIXTEEN
« ^ »
Five hours after transiting Magaria Wormhole 1, Sulas pinnace was recovered by the Bombardment of Delhi. She pulled herself wearily out of the little boat, and as the riggers helped her climb into the ready room, she saw in the dim emergency lighting that someone waited for her. Her heart surged as she recognized Martinez, and then she realized that a memory had imposed itself on her exhausted mind, a memory of the time Martinez had met her after the Midnight Runner rescue.
The person before her stepped forward, and before her she saw a different memory, that of Jeremy Foote.
You, she said, and began to laugh.
Foote looked at her with impatience. He was considerably less immaculate than when Sula had last seen him, at the party hed thrown to celebrate his promotion: he was without his uniform jacket, and his shirt was grimy and torn. His cowlick was greasy. His sleeves were rolled up, and there was a smear of something on one forearm, a smear that had an echo on his forehead where hed wiped away sweat.
The riggers took her helmet and unsealed her gloves.
Ill need your data foils, Foote said, his drawl a little more clipped than usual. The premier sent me.
I forgot them in the boat, Sula said. Sorry. She turned to return to the docking tube.
Ill get them, Foote said. Never mind.
He dropped into the docking tube and was gone for a few moments. The riggers shoved Sulas arms over her head and pulled off the upper half of her suit. Her nose wrinkled at the acrid odor of her own body, all the stale sweat and terror and burned adrenaline. The riggers began work on the lower half of her vac suit.
Foote popped up from the access tube. Turn your back, Sula told him.
Foote looked resentful. Ive seen women before, he said.
Youve never seen me, Sula said, and youre not going to.
Thats Turn your back, my lord, Foote drawled, but he turned anyway. The silent riggers stripped away Sulas suit and handed her a pair of sterile drawers.
I forgot about your promotion, my lord, sorry. Sula stepped into the drawers and tied the string waistband. It must have been the excitement of seeing you again.
She was rewarded by a crack in the facade of the riggers deadpan faces. She winked at the nearest of them, and was further rewarded by a startled grin.
Foote cast an annoyed look over his shoulder, saw she was clothed, and turned to face her. The premier says hes putting you in for a decoration, he said. He says you saved us.
Give him my thanks, Sula said. But isnt it the captain who does the recommending?
The captains dead, Foote said shortly.
The dead captain would have been Captain Foote, the yachtsman, who would have ensured young Jeremys continual promotion.
Sorry about your uncle, Foote.
He gave a grim nod. Were pretty well shot up, he said. Youll be needed on damage control, if youre not hurt.
I need some shoes, Sula said, and then Im with you.
Bombardment of Delhihad lost its captain, its second and third lieutenants, and everyone else in Command. The forward third of the ship had been decompressed, there were only a dozen missiles left in the magazine, and only one pinnace remainedSulas.
But Sula reminded herself that Delhi was in better shape than all but five other ships of the Home Fleet.
For two days she worked constantly at patching, refitting, replacing, and testing. Toward the end of the second day her party succeeded in recompressing the area around Command and in breaking into Command to retrieve the bodies of Captain Foote and the others. They had died due to firenot from asphyxiation, because they had their helmets on, but due to fierce heat. Nothing in Command was flammable, but even steel will burn if it gets hot enough, and Command had grown very hot indeed. A rain of molten metal had streaked the walls like tears.
