Had that really mattered to her? Had she but known.
She was an old woman, a simple woman, a woman who would pass unremembered in the texts of history and did not care. A woman who had her family, her long life, her virtue, her community. A woman who, if she had known of such a creature as the Queen of the Death Jockeys, would have been horrified, would have shielded her kids, would have been the first to run her current self out of town. Or, perhaps, had she known enough, to call for her head on a pike.
Caroline had once been this person, in a time so ancient it had passed into legend. But her memories of that time still existed. The old Caroline would have turned the other cheek, but the new Caroline knew things about God the old one had never suspected. If there was no salvation in life, she could at least seek vengeance.
The doctors hadn't known why she was in such pain. They didn't dare prescribe any more drugs than she was already getting. Her family didn't understand it. They just thought it was tragic and wished she would go ahead and die so they wouldn't have to be bothered with her, so they could carve up what little was left of her estate, if there would be anything left after all the medical bills were paid.
But AnneMarie knew. She was the one who traded Caroline's precious opiates, released from their controlled storage in the good cause of making an old lady's last days bearable, for her own supply of free-base cocaine. The new Caroline had tried the drug, to see what it was she had paid for with so much pain. It was called «crack» for the sound it made in the makeshift pipes where its users vaporized it, because unlike the hydrochloride form of cocaine it wasn't water soluble. Caroline had sucked gently on the fumes and listened to a hammer roar through her brain, for one brief moment.
For one brief moment — and then, nothing. Caroline made the pipe disappear and shook her head. The high was fast, hard, very intense — and ephemeral. It was hardly there and it was gone. Caroline could understand if her pain, pain which she measured not by the day or the hour or the minute but by each miserable crawling second, if such suffering had been incurred to provide AnneMarie with a real drug like heroin. An opiate for an opiate, at least. But it had been crack cocaine. Naturally, AnneMarie had needed a lot of trading material to stay high any decent fraction of the time.
Of course, it would never occur to the bitch that she was torturing a harmless, helpless old lady to feel that way. She would be incapable of giving a shit. The fast, furious high was like a lifetime of orgasms in one moment. Fleeting, but sweet.
And no one would ever know. Even the harmless old lady herself didn't know she was getting pure saline, until the staff at a strange hospital gave her the real thing, and she knew her first moment of peace in years.
And then Prime Intellect came.
And the Change.
AnneMarie hadn't been unattractive; she had been in her early forties, and years of working on her feet had kept her from getting fat. But she had a hard look, a look that admitted she might not care about an old woman's pain. A look that said she might have seen too much, that she might deserve a few moments of feeling like God in return for a lifetime of changing diapers and colostomy bags and carefully spoon-feeding legions of ungrateful, incontinent old farts.
And if the price of her little reward was to torture one of the old biddies, then she was prepared to pay it. She had a look that said the Devil might find her soul on the deep-discount must-go rack.
Caroline shook her head to clear it of these stray and unwanted thoughts. Fred squeezed her hand reassuringly. Too much thinking along those lines could be bad for her plan.
AnneMarie was wearing her nurse's uniform in the old picture. Palmer could worship Nazis until a swastika grew on his nose, Caroline thought; that uniform will always represent evil to me.
She looked at the new picture.
It was so ordinary as to be pathetic; AnneMarie had shaved her apparent age in half, firmed up her breasts, toned her body, and was wearing a slinky cocktail dress. Before the Change she'd have been considered stunningly beautiful, but now stunning beauty was a cheap thing. She probably didn't need cocaine any more; Prime Intellect could turn on the dopamine pump in her brain far more efficiently than any chemical catalyst. People only did drugs for nostalgia in Cyberspace.
There was one other thing about the «after» picture. It was familiar. As Caroline had guessed, AnneMarie had come to her birthday party. AnneMarie's stint as Caroline's nurse added up to a bona fide Brush with Fame. Did she dare go for the brass ring, and introduce herself? Nope. She had chickened out and sent Prime Intellect afterward to deliver her invitation. She was probably afraid that Caroline would fuck up that nice pert perky feeling of permanently coke-headed happiness.
"Go give her hell," Fred said encouragingly. "Think of what I would do to her."
Caroline smiled. "Please inform AnneMarie that I have decided to accept her invitation."
Moments later, she blinked over.
It was a pathetic imitation of her style, similar to countless others. AnneMarie had ripped off the white-space idea but couldn't bear to leave it featureless. So there was a sofa and some tables, a couple of potted plants, and a few paces off to the side a bed. Like many of Caroline's imitators, AnneMarie had missed the point entirely, which is that since it is all fake there was no reason to maintain a «home» with a bunch of familiar stuff in it. Home had been less than a dream for centuries.
Nevertheless Caroline smiled and planted herself on the sofa. AnneMarie had a tea service and poured for her, a gesture Caroline would have found touching if she hadn't hated the bitch so much.
They made cloying small talk about the passing years and Caroline had to bite her lip to keep the sarcastic comments, which usually flowed freely, from surfacing. It had been a long time since she used ordinary pretense, and her skills were rusty. But she knew she mustn't give up the act. Not yet. She kept that firmly in mind as AnneMarie wandered around to the point.
"I just wanted you to know that I suffered for a long time because of what I did to you," she finally said.
It was all Caroline could do to keep from replying: You hypocritical cunt.
"I'm really sorry I took your drugs." Isn't it about three hundred years too late? "You really didn't deserve it." No shit. "I hope you can find it in you to forgive me." Fat chance.
"It was a long time ago," she said instead.
AnneMarie brightened visibly. "I'm so glad you feel that way." Sure you are. "You know, there's another reason I wanted to talk." Of course there is. "I was hoping you could help me a little." What a surprise. "I was hoping you could introduce me to Death sports."
Caroline worked hard to suppress the predatory grin that spread across her face, and when she couldn't she at least managed to force it into something resembling an expression of delight. Which, in a twisted sense, it was.
"Well, I'd be delighted. All you have to do is swear out a Contract. Then you can have someone else kill you, or think of an imaginative way for Prime Intellect to do it. When you're just starting out, it's a lot better to get someone else to do the job. Keeps you from repeating a lot of boring old shit."