“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 were almost normal-looking. “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.
Gredel was sleeping over three nights later, when Caro produced a med injector before bed 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, 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 any more.” She tugged the injector against Gredel's fingers. “Let go,” she said. “I'll be all right.”
“Don't,” Gredel begged.
Caro laughingly detached Gredel's fingers from the injector, then held it 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 tell Panda to 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 into a pharmacy and pay full price.”
Anxiety sang along Gredel's nerves. 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 after, on the first hot afternoon of summer. Gredel and Caro 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. On her way to the bathroom, Caro took a bottle of chilled wine from the kitchen, opened it, offered some to Gredel, who declined, then carried the bottle and a glass into the bathroom with her.
The sound of running water came distantly to the front room. Gredel 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 that 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, though, and Gredel shifted to the data channel and looked up the requirements for the Cheng Ho academy, which the Sulas traditionally attended.
By the time Caro came padding out in her dressing gown, Gredel was full of information. “You'd better find a tailor, Caro,” 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 and looked at the screen as if she were having trouble focusing on it all. “What are you talking about?” she said.
“When you go to the 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.”
It was a hot day and Gredel was tired and had not had a rest or a bath or a drink, and she blundered right through the warning signals Caro was flying, the signs that she'd not only had her bottle of wine in the bath, but taken something else as well, something that kinked and spiked her nerves and brought her temper sizzling.
“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 Gredel, 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?”
Caro stood over Gredel. Her arms windmilled as if they were throwing rocks at Gredel's 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 stared at her, too overwhelmed by surprise to raise a hand to her stinging cheek. Caro screamed on.
“I see you everywhere-everywhere in my life! 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 just picked them up and threw them again, so finally Gredel just 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 were 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 go into the apartment and try to calm Caro and explain herself.
I didn't take the money, she protested. I didn't ask for anything.
Something hit the door hard enough so that 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.
She 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 let him send someone to pick her up, then let him divert her for the rest of the evening.
In the morning, she went to the Volta at the time she had planned with Caro. There was a traffic jam in the lobby-a family was moving into the building, and their belongings were piled onto several motorized carts, each with the Volta's gilt blazon, that jammed the lobby waiting for elevators. Gredel greeted the doorman in her Peer voice, and he called her “Lady Sula” and put her alone into the next elevator.
She hesitated at the door to Caro's apartment. She knew she was groveling, and knew as well that she didn't deserve to grovel.
But this was her only hope. What choice did she have?
She knocked, and when there wasn't an answer she knocked again. She heard a shuffling step inside and then Caro opened the door and blinked at her groggily through disordered strands of hair. She was dressed as Gredel had last seen her, bare feet, naked under her dressing gown.
“Why didn't you just come in?” Caro said. She left the door open and withdrew into the apartment. Gredel followed, her heart pulsing sickly in her chest.