Trouble and Her Friends

Chapter Two

TROUBLE’S ON THE nets tonight, riding the high data like a cowboy, the plains of light stark around her. The data flows and writhes like grass in the virtual wind, and she glides along the shifts and shadows, a shadow herself against their virtual sun. At the starpoint node, she slides from that high plane into a datastream like a canyon, falls suddenly into shadow, its warning cool along her skin.

IC(E) rises to either side, prohibiting the nodes, great heaps and coils of it like glittering wire, and the old urge returns. She studies it, and knows that she has keys in her toolbox that will unlock them all, fingertips tingling with the memory of their touch smooth as silk. She can almost taste what lies behind that barrier, files and codes turned to candy-color shapes good enough to eat, and remembers the sweet-sour tang, the glorious greed of gorging on the good bits, sorting them in an eyeblink by taste and smell, faster and more sure than anyone else in the business. She lifts her hand, the icon shimmering into existence, familiar routine half-invoked, but makes herself turn away. The IC(E) glitters behind her, lights trembling as though something behind it laughed, and she thinks she hears the whisper of a giggle.

The same sensation touches her like a finger of flame, a taunt literally stinging like electricity, but she has learned long since to ignore that cleverest of lures. She leaves the way she came, sliding oblique along a trail of untouched data, slick beneath her feet like a film of ice, and glances back to see the net healing itself behind her, closing to leave no trace she’s ever been there. This night’s city flows beneath her, data streams like rivers of cars, and she walks the nets down again, merging with the data until it pools and slows and feeds out into the great delta of the BBS. Here are all the temptations of the world, spread out in the broad meanders and the bottomless swamps, where slow transfer is common and the sheer volume hides a multitude of sins. The air around her thickens as the brainworm reads the data as sensation, and she flings back her head, smelling spice and oil and a bitter tang like vinegar, carried on a virtual breeze that wraps itself around her illusory body. She pauses—not lost; she is never lost, not here, where the brainworm does its best and a lesser netwalker could drown in the sheer overload of sensation—but savoring the taste and scent of rich and unprotected data, the salt ebb and flow of freedom. And then the reminder sounds, Cinderella chimes at the back of her mind. She finds a quiet current, a soft and transient node, and lets it carry her home.

The flat dull light of the basement workspace was blinding after the glittering contrast of the nets, and it was cold. She blinked twice, the lines of this night’s city still ghosting across her vision, reflections of the net covering the real world, and reached for the cord plugged into the dollie-slot behind her ear. She popped it free, feeling the dull snap as the connection was fully broken, and her screen lit, displaying a record of the evening’s ramble as a series of node connections and transfers. Her private accounting program was running alongside, erasing and diffusing those connections, and the notations vanished one by one as the program progressed. Everything was as it should be, and she stretched and went to the high window, peering up at the dark glass. It ran with rain, and the lines of the net across her sight crossed and recrossed the running water. She stared at them for a long moment, held by an illusion of meaning, the deceptive gnosis of the nets, where every shape held a dozen contrary secrets. But off the nets, the images were random, and to demand more was a step toward lunacy. She shook herself, and turned away.

There was no point in turning up the heat, not when she would be going upstairs almost at once. She shivered, touched keys to trigger the program that would erase all traces of this night’s wanderings. She should know better— she was legit now, a syscop, even, and syscops didn’t need to walk the nets under false pretenses—but the wires woven directly into her cortex made every excursion onto the nets an adventure, and she had never been able to resist that challenge. The only trouble was that the brainworm was absolutely illegal here—had been since Evans-Tindale passed three years ago—and particularly for a syscop, but the net was nothing but colored lights without it. She grinned to herself, watching the screen flash from grey to white, icons flickering past—THREE PASSES COMPLETE, DATA DESTROYED, ATTEMPT RECOVERY: YES/NO?—and touched YES. Despite Treasury propaganda, the wire wasn’t addictive—she was living proof of it, had lived two years with her implants disabled, until she couldn’t stand the boredom any longer—but it was hard to go back to the sight-only, black-and-neon-glitter world when you’d had it all. The screen changed again, displayed an empty box: the trash program had finished its work. She set her toggles, putting the gateway to sleep, loosed her best watchdog into the household net, then, stretching again, started up the stairs toward her apartment.

It was later than she had realized, well into the new morning. Even Ned Paiso’s workshop was dark, and the security lights blazed over the co-op’s empty central courtyard, a haze of raindrops filling the cones of light. A smaller security field set blue haze around the well-filled bike rack: it wasn’t a killing field, wasn’t even attached to a call box, but everyone hoped it would deter the casual thieves. She paused in her tiny kitchen, staring absently out the window, but decided she didn’t really want anything. She had eaten her fill already, at dinner, and then on the nets. She turned away, feeling the lack of sleep finally dragging at her bones, and started toward the stairs that led to her bedroom.

The noise came from her tiny porch, a rough, breathless noise like a snarl. She froze, her eyes racing to the alarm system’s display beside the kitchen window. Nothing but green lights, but all that meant was that an intruder was good enough to bypass the system. The sound came again, more loudly. More like an animal, she thought—a raccoon, maybe? They came into the compound sometimes, looking for food or shelter in the one still-empty condo. The thought was reassuring, and she moved quietly toward the short flight of stairs that led down into the little living room. She did not turn on the lights—now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she would be able to see whatever was out there quite clearly—but she reached for the poker that hung from the woodstove she never used. She lifted it cautiously, not wanting to make a noise and alarm whatever it was, and edged toward the sliding door. Rikki the metalworker had made them all shutters two years ago, when he couldn’t figure out any other way to pay his co-op fees, and for the first time she was grateful for them. Very carefully, she reached for the first vertical slat, and jumped as the sound came yet again. It sounded like a drunk’s snoring—if it was a raccoon, she thought, it wasn’t long for this world. She twisted the slat, and it gave a little, as it was designed to do, giving her a tiny window onto her back porch.

A man was sleeping there, curled into a ball on a battered chaise that he had dragged into the uncertain shelter of the trellis, a quilted jacket drawn tight around his burly body. Even in the half-light he looked dirty, and more than a little ill. She blinked, unable to believe what she was seeing—I thought he was long gone, gone back to Europe, or dead— then reached for the box that controlled the window. She touched the sequence that sprung the locks and lit a single light above the door, then shoved curtain and door aside and stepped out into the rain. The man’s eyes opened slowly, and then he seemed to recognize the lights and rolled painfully into a sitting position.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Butch?” the woman asked, and the man gave her the old familiar goofy grin. He hadn’t shaved in long enough that the mustache was beginning to lose definition in a general waste of stubble.

“Hello, Trouble,” he said.

“Jesus Christ,” Trouble said, and bit off the rest of it. You look terrible, she would have said, and she really didn’t want to know. “Come on inside before you freeze to death. How long have you been here?”

Van Liesvelt shambled to his feet, still hugging the jacket tight to him, and she could see where the rain had left darker patches across his shoulders. He looked sideways, still grinning a little, and she gave a sigh of relief: at least he hadn’t had to sell his implants.

“Oh, an hour or three,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake everyone.”

He had lost most of the accent, Trouble thought, sounded more like a Kiwi or something, which was probably just as well. White Africans hadn’t been popular folks for some decades, and queer white Africans were even worse. She shook the thought away as an irrelevance born of her own fatigue, and stood aside to let him in through the sliding door. “But what are you doing here?” she said again, and a thought struck her. “How the hell did you find me?”

“You told me your name, your realname, one time back in Crystal City. I remembered it, and then I got lucky. You’re on the rolls as the local syscop, you know.”

“It’s not that uncommon a name,” Trouble said—the year she was born, every third child had been named India, after the U.N. Festival—and van Liesvelt nodded.

“That’s why I waited on the porch. I didn’t want to wake you, if it wasn’t you.”

Trouble nodded, appeased. “I’m not in the business anymore, Butch.”

Van Liesvelt nodded back. His jacket was beginning to give off a once-familiar smell, cigarettes and musky aftershave and uncleaned wool in heady combination. “I remember. Whatever happened to Cerise, anyway?” He looked around as though he expected the other woman to materialize out of the shadows, and Trouble grimaced at the memory.

“We haven’t been back in touch,” she said, and made her tone a warning not to pry.

“Oh.” Van Liesvelt would clearly have liked to ask further questions, and Trouble cut in firmly.

“Give me your coat, you’re dripping on the carpet. You want a drink?”

“Thanks,” van Liesvelt said, shrugging himself out of the wet fabric. He was a big man, the kind of blond who went red in the summer, and he carried a little more weight than he had the last time Trouble had seen him—a modest roll of flab hanging over the waistband of his jeans. That, at least, was reassuring; maybe the rest was just fatigue and bad habits and falling asleep in the rain, she thought, and went back up the stairs into the kitchen. Whatever else he was or had been, he had been a good friend on and, less commonly, off the nets; she owed him at least this much attention. She hung the coat over a chair so that it could drip on the tiling, then flicked the heating switch to maximum and poured two thick tumblers of neat vodka. Unless he’d changed his style, van Liesvelt would rather drink that than the wine that was the only other choice. She came back down into the little living room, carrying the bottle as well as the glasses, and was not surprised when van Liesvelt finished his drink in a single gulp. He held out the glass again and she filled it, saying, “What’s it all about, Butch?”

“You’re in trouble,” van Liesvelt said, and seemed to find it funny. Trouble eyed him without amusement, and was meanly pleased when he did a double take, looking hard at his glass. “What the hell’s the flavor?”

“Coriander.”

“Jesus.”

There was a little silence, and van Liesvelt looked away from her, staring at the faded carpet as though there was a message encoded in its dull patterns. Trouble said, “So why am I in trouble?”

Van Liesvelt sighed, put the glass down with the second drink barely tasted. “If I have much more, I will be drunk.” He turned back to face her, grey eyes gone suddenly more serious than she had ever seen them. “You sure you went legit, Trouble? ‘Cause I’ve seen some work on the nets that’s real slick, in your style, and goes under your name. Treasury is getting pissy about it.”

Trouble shook her head. “I’m clean. I’ve been clean for, what, just about three years now.”

“Somebody who calls themself Trouble has been hacking the industrials,” van Liesvelt said. “And they’re on the wire.”

“Ah.” Trouble took a sip of her own vodka, the alcohol stinging her lips. That moved the stranger out of the hordes of crackers who infested the nets and into an elite group, the far smaller number of netwalkers, legitimate and not, who had had a brainworm installed. She and Cerise had been part of that, once… She put that memory aside, looked back at van Liesvelt.

“And, on top of all that,” van Liesvelt said, “they’re bragging about it.”

“I never did that—”

“And that’s got everyone’s attention,” van Liesvelt went on, as though she hadn’t spoken. “It’s not so much what they go away with—as best I can hear, it wasn’t much—as that they made some big-time security look like shit, and the powers-that-be are pushing for Treasury to make an example of someone. Trouble, for preference.”

“Fucking idiots,” Trouble said, and wasn’t sure herself whether she meant the Treasury’s network cops or the boasting cracker who’d stolen her name. It had always been stupid to boast about a completed job, was suicidal now; the smart operators did what they were paid for and kept their mouths shut, and that silence brought them more customers in the long run. The trouble was, half the illegal operators still thought Treasury was a bunch of network-nellie fools who got lost every time they left the corporate systems. She had never made that mistake, and she was startled to realize how angry it made her to have her name linked to that particular behavior.

“There’s a major sweep on,” van Liesvelt continued, “ID checks, body scans, toolkit search, pattern matching—the works and then some. The warning went up on all the boards for anyone ever connected with Trouble to lie low, but I figured, since I’d heard you went legal, you might not get the message. And, of course, I didn’t dare risk the mail.”

“You figured right,” Trouble said. It had been months— maybe as much as a year—since she had last logged on to any of the temporary BBS, the pirate bulletin boards where most of the virtual economy functioned and the illegal and quasi-legal jobs were traded. She had kept a low profile, not even lurking, her presence dimmed until she could barely feel the virtual winds, barely taste the data, relying purely on the visual images rather than the brainworm’s translation. She frowned, adding up the points where her new identity intersected with the old. There were more of them than she liked, and she could feel her frown deepen. “How’s the check being run?”

“On-line, mostly,” van Liesvelt answered. “But there are some offline checks as well, following up on this new Trouble’s contacts.”

I wonder if any of them are being made up this way? Trouble thought. She put that aside, something to deal with in the morning when she could ask a few discreet questions of the sheriff’s computer flunky, and said, “Thanks, Butch. I appreciate the warning.”

Van Liesvelt shrugged, reached for his glass again. “You’re family. All us queers have to stick together.”

Trouble smiled. “How’d you get up here? You need parking, or transport home tomorrow?”

“I left my bike in the woods,” he answered, and waved vaguely toward the stand of trees that stood invisible beyond the metal shutters. “I figured nobody would want it bad enough to chop down a whole tree for it.”

Trouble felt the laugh catch in her throat. Van Liesvelt had come up from the city on his ancient motorbike, almost an antique already, three hundred miles in the rain, to warn her that someone was using her name, and that she might catch some fallout from it. She touched his shoulder gently, and he looked up in surprise. “Thanks,” she said again, softly, and van Liesvelt shrugged, looked embarrassed and pleased all at once.

“Like I said, we got to stick together.”

There was a chair that folded out into a narrow mattress in the oversized closet that passed for a second bedroom. Trouble found sheets and a blanket, and pulled the second quilt and the extra pillow from her own bed to make up a serviceable extra bed. Van Liesvelt protested, but only for form’s sake, and she left him to strip and went on into her own room. She undressed slowly, her mind still busy with van Liesvelt’s warning. It had been three years since she’d… retired. It had seemed the thing to do at the time: corporate security had been getting better, as were the various law enforcement groups—Treasury, Interpol, ECCI, ko-cops and all the rest—assigned to watch the nets, and then Congress had rejected the Amsterdam Conventions in favor of Evans-Tindale, making convictions possible and even commonplace. Even before Evans-Tindale, things had been going badly. She could still remember the shock, the taste of it, bitter fear, when she’d heard that Terrel was actually going to jail on an armed robbery charge, just as if the icebreaker in his kit had been a gun… Cerise had said that it was stupid to panic, that blind drunk they were better than Terrel was at his best, but Trouble had been certain then that things had changed. Eight months later, Evans-Tindale had passed, and she had been out of the business for good, and on her way to reestablishing her original identity, alone.

She sighed, and crawled into bed, waving her hand through the signal beam to cut the lights. She could hear the rain, louder now, here under the roof, and, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, her furniture became familiar shadows. The courtyard lights cast a faint pattern on the far wall, even through the curtains. I don’t want to leave, she thought, I like it here. The co-op had been a safe harbor, a quiet, easy refuge—dull, but there had been something comforting about the very predictability of the routine. Maintaining the local net, shepherding the co-op’s business through the nets: it was easy, and she would regret losing it. She made a face in the dark, annoyed with herself, turned noisily onto her side so that she was looking at the blank wall. If I was really that contented here, I wouldn’t’ve turned the brainworm back on—wouldn’t’ve been out on the net tonight. So where does that leave me?

She had been careful when she retired, had taken seven months to reestablish herself, her new/old identity, before she’d gone back onto the nets, and by that time she’d created jobs to explain the time she’d been invisible. The documentation for those jobs was the weakest link, of course—some of it was outright forgery, like the six months she’d supposedly spent waiting tables in Seahaven, and all of it depended on “employers” being unable to remember their minimum-wage help clearly enough to notice that she’d bought someone else’s workcard. Still, an early adulthood spent hopping from one low-pay, no-status job to another wasn’t particularly uncommon, especially for artists, and the story that she’d told the co-op when she applied to run their networks for them was not inherently implausible. Kids dropped out of school all the time to try to make it in the arts, and found out too late that their talents didn’t lie in that direction at all. When the Treasury cops showed up—if, she amended, without conviction—she would just have to hope that the story held up. It had held up when the local sheriff’s office had run the security check that cleared her to receive a syscop’s license. But the sheriff’s office doesn’t exactly check things out as carefully as Treasury will, a voice whispered in her mind. She ignored it, and disciplined herself to sleep.

She woke in the chill light of dawn to hear someone tapping on the doorframe. She sat up, blinking, to see van Liesvelt peering in at her.

“I got to be going,” he whispered, and Trouble shook herself fully awake.

“Why? You’re welcome to stay for breakfast, have some coffee, at least…”

She had spoken in her normal voice—there was no one around to hear—and to her relief van Liesvelt did the same. “No, thanks anyway. I have to be back in the city by noon.”

“So you could leave at seven,” Trouble began, and van Liesvelt shook his head.

“There’s some people I’ve got to see first. And I want to be out of sight of here before full light, anyway.”

That was a kindness, and Trouble was briefly ashamed of her own relief. “If you’re sure,” she said, and threw back the covers. “I’ll let you out.”

She padded down the stairs behind him, shivering a little in the thin T-shirt, unlocked the back door, and then fiddled the security system to let him past the main perimeter sensors. Van Liesvelt walked away across the damp grass toward the stand of trees where he’d left his motorcycle, his disreputable jacket flapping loose around him. He turned back once, lifting his hand in casual farewell, and then disappeared back into the shadows of the trees. Trouble waited until she was certain he’d had time enough to pass the perimeter, counted off five more minutes by the kitchen dock, then reset the security system and went back to bed.

She woke again at nine, feeling somewhat more in control of things, and showered herself completely awake. She dressed, and headed across the compound to the community hall where the news-service machine was kept. It was a cool morning even in the sun, and the maples outside the compound were already showing a few yellow and flame-red leaves among the general green, bright contrast against the vivid blue of the sky. The rain had left the air unexpectedly clear, and she could hear the hum of traffic on the feeder fly-way that ran less than two kilometers from the compound.

Inside the residents’ entrance, the community hall was as disorderly as ever, the walls papered with notices and children’s art, but quiet: most of the other inhabitants were already at work or school. Trouble went down the long corridor and out into the main room, bright with the sunlight that streamed in through the skylights. The glass was set on clear today, and the plain wooden chairs and benches in the public lobby seemed to glow in the warm light. The dining room was closed, of course, but the coffee machine was still active. She punched her codes into the news-service dispenser, and poured herself a cup of coffee while the machine whirred to itself and finally spat half a dozen closely printed sheets. She collected the thin papers, squinting at the print— the machine’s ribbon needed changing, and she made a mental note to take care of that later—and nearly ran into Oba Alvarez, one of the co-op’s half-dozen potters and a member of the management committee. He smiled at her, rather vaguely, and headed on into the management office.

Trouble shook her head, nearly spilling her coffee, and started back toward her condo. Dory Gustafson, busy draping a photoprint stand with a length of treated cloth, looked up long enough to call a greeting, but did not pause in her work. Trouble waved the papers at her. The co-op still seemed vaguely unreal to her, especially after her days in the city. She knew better than to be nostalgic for the dangers, the hovering fear, the adrenaline edge that the chance of random violence gave to the simplest things, but she still had trouble quite believing in the co-op’s basic—niceness. It was easier when they were having trouble with the zoning boards, or the bills, or fighting about a new member’s work: she could deal with all of that almost better than she could cope with the good times.

She shook her head again, unlocking the condo’s door, and went into the kitchen. She still had the monthly accounting to prepare for the sheriff’s office—not a particularly pleasant task at the best of times, and doubly not after van Liesvelt’s news. Part of her obligation as the co-op’s syscop was to keep a log of local net usage, and to watch out for any attempts either to crack her system or, more likely, to use it as a springboard to other, richer nodes. It was a painstaking job at the best of times, and usually involved hunting down two or three individual members to see if they remembered doing certain jobs. This time, though… this time, she would have to check her own records very carefully, and maybe do some judicious editing before she turned them over to the sheriff. She made a face, put the rest of her coffee in the microwave for later, and started down the stairs to her workspace.

The big display board flickered to life at her touch, showing only normal activity, familiar iconage. A CADset was up and running, Natalie Dreyer was on one of her interminable excursions to the university libraries, and someone—Rikki, probably—was running the story-sculpture program that took almost as much space as the graphics programs. Her routine checks were all in place, watchdogs lurking dormant: nothing new there. If anything changed, if anyone tried anything out of the ordinary, her watchdogs would notice and alert her.

She made a face, impatient with herself, and spun her chair to face the board, slipping the cord into place. Instantly the world hazed around her, sparks and shadow overwriting her vision, the ghost of new and unrelated sensations tingling along her nerves. She ignored the feelings, reached for her keyboard, and typed the sequence that changed its mode from standard to the specialized format that allowed her to control the brainworm’s settings. She hit a second sequence, and then her private code, the password that gave her access to the internal account. An instant later a light flared, and a new window popped into existence, displaying the brainworm’s virtual controls. She sighed—it was much more fun working fully wired, but the brainworm inevitably leaked some feedback into the system; a good syscop could tell whether or not another netwalker was on the wire—and moved the virtual levers to damp down the input. The tingling faded, and the lights that floated between her and the screen dimmed slightly, until she was looking at a display that was almost what any other netwalker would see. She made another face, and touched a final icon to set the changes. Then, dismissing the brainworm’s controls, she turned her attention to the monthly accounts.

She pored over the accounts for three hours without finding anything out of the ordinary. Her own monitors had been doing their job, erasing any signs of her occasional fully wired forays onto the main nets, and there was no sign that this new Trouble, whoever it was, had been using her nodes as a staging area. She shrugged to herself, and touched the keys that would drop her notes into a working file for later revision into the sort of report the local sheriff appreciated, then leaned back in her chair, stretching to work out the kinks. The iconage of the co-op at work danced in front of her eyes, and was echoed a moment later on the main display: Dreyer still in the libraries, two CADsets working now, Mineka Konstenten running a blocking program. Her eyes lingered on Konstenten’s icon, flickering from pale blue to a blue dark as midnight as her demand on the system changed. Konstenten was still an enigma, had come over one night to see the computers, stayed until morning, and had neither returned nor allowed the subject to be raised again. Trouble’s smile shifted with the memory, became rueful. She still didn’t know how she herself felt about the whole thing. Konstenten was a good friend, a clever designer, and an attractive woman; a vest she had made, Japanese patchwork of black-and-white fabrics, hung on Trouble’s wall as a work of art when it wasn’t being worn. But she was not precisely what Trouble wanted in a lover—or at least not now, not here—and, all in all, it was probably smarter to live celibate just a little while longer… Which was where that train of thought always ended these days. Trouble stretched again, making herself concentrate on the pull of muscles across her shoulders, then laced her fingers together and pulled until the tendons tightened all the way into her wrists. If the brainworm had been fully operational, the movement would have sent feedback into the net, a flicker of sensation translated as light and sound, tangible even to the unwired masses… She turned her attention back to the screen.

“Indy?”

Trouble looked up, startled, touched keys to open the intercom. “Yeah?”

“There’s a couple of suits who want to see you,” Gustafson went on. “Oba’s got them in the main hall.”

Trouble swallowed hard, the copper taste of panic filling her throat, and kept her voice steady only with an effort. “What sort of suits?” She made her hands move on the keyboard, saving her work and putting her system to sleep, leaving only the watchdogs loose on the household net.

“Something to do with computers, I think,” Gustafson said. “They said they wanted to talk to the syscop.”

Trouble let her breath out slowly, reached for the remote that would signal her if there were any anomalies in the system, and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. If they just wanted to talk to the syscop, it might be all right, be just another routine check. And if it was what van Liesvelt had warned her about, people looking for Trouble, her present documentation should get through the first checks. She pushed herself away from the board, and went up the basement stairs.

Gustafson was waiting outside the main door, one hand still on the intercom controls, the sunlight pointing up the corn-silk texture of her hair and the bright barbaric splendor of her working smock.

“So what do you think?” Trouble asked, and was rewarded by a quick grin.

“Not corporate, I don’t think,” Gustafson said. “The suits aren’t good enough.”

“Thanks,” Trouble said, and started for the community hall. Like anyone who lived this far outside the mainstream, Gustafson had learned to read the nuances of the corporate dress codes as well as or better than the corporate souls themselves: if she said cheap suit, she meant it, and cheap suits meant cops.

The hall was still very bright, though someone had adjusted the skylights so that the glass was bright amber, filling the hall with heavy color. It helped to hide the worn upholstery on the lobby furniture—the space had been furnished from the discards of the co-op’s households—and the merely serviceable rugs. The two men waiting there had their backs to the light, throwing their faces into shadow, but Trouble could tell they were cops just from the way they held themselves.

“India.” Alvarez emerged from a side room, the management committee’s current offices, a sheaf of green-stripe paper in one hand. “These people wanted to talk to you.”

Trouble nodded and stepped forward into the sunlight. “I’m India Carless,” she said, and waited.

“Thanks for seeing us, Ms. Carless,” one of the strangers said. He was the taller of the two, Trouble realized, as they both came to their feet in polite acknowledgment. They were definitely cops, by the movement as well as the suits, cheap copy-Armanis, and she held herself very still.

“Unless you need me, India,” Alvarez said, “I’ve got to get back to work.” He let his voice trail off, making it almost a question, and Trouble shook her head.

“I can take care of it, thanks,” she said, and Alvarez turned away. Trouble looked back at the strangers. “Is there a problem?”

“I don’t think so,” the smaller man said.

His partner cut in smoothly. “We just have a few routine questions. We’ve been talking to most of the syscops who monitor systems that use the BVI-four gateway into the national net.”

Trouble let herself relax a little. Anyone who called it the national net didn’t know the system—or else, she thought, they’re trying to lull me into being careless. If they’re looking for Trouble, they’ll be playing it very canny. “If I can help, sure. Can I get you some coffee?”

There was a quick exchange of looks, and then the taller man said, “No, thanks. We’ve got a lot of driving to do.” He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket, came up with a thin folder. “I’m Bennet Levy, that’s John Starling. We’re from the Treasury.”

Trouble accepted the folder with what she hoped was convincing uncertainty, studied the ID card and hologram badge as though she’d never seen one before, and handed it back to Levy. She didn’t recognize either of their names, but then, she hadn’t expected to: even if she had heard of them, and she had been off the shadow nets long enough to make that unlikely, she would only have heard their work names, not the names that were actually on their badges. “Why don’t we go in the other room?” she said, and gestured toward the door that led to the smaller of the two conference rooms. “It’s not as sunny.”

“Thanks,” Starling said, and the two of them followed her into the little room. Trouble motioned for them to take a chair, and let the door fall closed behind them.

“Have a seat, please,” she said. “You sure you don’t want coffee or something?”

“No, thanks,” Levy said again. He and Starling pulled chairs away from the table and sat down, apparently very much at their ease. Trouble did the same, hoping she seemed equally calm. The chairs and table were less battered than the furniture in the lobby: this room was used for negotiations with outsiders, and the fittings were correspondingly better.

“So how can I help you?” Trouble said again, and the two agents exchanged quick glances.

“We’ve had some reports of cracking and intrusions that have been traced back to BVI-four,” Starling said. That would make him the technical expert, Trouble thought, and kept her face expressionless. “But we lose the perpetrator there, at BVI-four—we haven’t been able to trace him on any of the major outgoing lines—so we’re checking all the local nets that use that gateway, in case he’s staging through one of them.” He paused. “You’re the only syscop for this system, Ms. Carless?”

In spite of his best efforts, Trouble heard a whisper of incredulity in his voice, and bit her tongue to keep from responding to it. A lot of people still assumed that a woman couldn’t run a bulletin board on her own, much less act as solo syscop; if they wanted to make that mistake, this was not the time to enlighten them. “That’s right,” she said aloud, and waited.

“Do you mind telling me about the setup here?”

“Not at all.” Trouble paused and took a deep breath, willing herself to switch to enthusiast’s mode. “This is an artist’s co-op here, we’re registered with the NEA and the state foundations. Because of that, we need versatile machines, a lot of raw power that can be turned to different uses at different times. We have a local net within the compound, mostly home machines and famicon, to facilitate load-sharing, and a couple of linked minis for graphics—one of our people is a fractalist, and we also rent time to some other graphics people who can’t afford their own machine suite. We have four printers here, too, all top of the line, and a babybox to run them. All of that is on the local net, so that we can pool jobs when we have to, or buy time from other co-ops. Seara— she’s the fractalist—she takes some odd commissions sometimes, things that need a lot of power.”

“Such as?” Starling asked.

Trouble shrugged. “Last year, somebody wanted fractal wallpaper, and we had a printer that could run it. The design took everything on our net, plus a hundred hours of bought-time just for the formulae, and then it tied up the printer and the babybox for a month.”

“Fractal wallpaper,” Levy said.

“I didn’t care much for it myself,” Trouble said, and there was a little silence, almost companionable, as the three of them contemplated the possibilities.

“What about your net connections?” Starling asked, shaking himself back to business.

“We have two basic nodes, one general, one highspeed data,” Trouble answered, “both transfering through BVI-four. I monitor both on a random schedule, and keep a watchdog running at all times.”

That was the standard procedure, and Starling nodded. “So graphics is the primary business of your net?”

“Yes and no,” Trouble said. “It’s the reason we have this much power, and the highspeed connection, but most of the time people don’t need much more than their home machines. We tend to use the BVI-four gate primarily for information and trading, and once every couple of months we run a big job through it. And, as I mentioned, we do sell time when we have it.” She paused, gauging the agents’ response, and ventured a question of her own. “I’m assuming you’re looking for someone sneaking packet data through the highspeed node?”

“Among other things,” Starling said.

“What about access to the big nets?” Levy asked.

Trouble looked at him. “Do you mean who has it, or how we work it?”

“Who has it?”

“We have a household account on Tele-net, through BVI-four, which I manage through some homebrew accounting routines. All the adults have access. It’s a standard password setup. I try to get them to change the codes regularly, and never use anything from a dictionary, the usual routine, but you know how that goes.” Trouble shrugged. “We get odd charges—stuff I can’t identify, and nobody admits to— maybe once or twice a year.”

“What about kids?” Starling again. “Are there any, and do they have access?”

Trust Treasury to ask first about the kids, Trouble thought. She said, “Yes, and yes. We gave everyone full access to the local net, but I gave the kids special passwords that access a different set of programs—games, mostly, some arts and science tools. If they try to use the gateways when they’ve logged on with those passwords, I’ve set the system to flag me. If they’ve got a reason, schoolwork or something, or their folks’ permission—and if they’re not going into one of the really expensive datastores—I’ll generally let it go through.”

“What about kids using their parents’ passwords?” Starling asked. “Do you get much of that?”

“I don’t think so,” Trouble said. “Certainly I haven’t spotted any anomalous activity patterns on any of the accounts. We’ve only got half a dozen kids in the compound, and they don’t seem to be into computers much.”

“Lucky,” Levy said.

Starling said, “Have there been any changes in usage patterns? Or any signs of intrusion, charges you can’t account for, say, over the last five months?”

Trouble frowned, hiding the annoyance at being addressed as a total novice, and did her best to simulate genuine confusion. “No, nothing recently. And I keep good records—they’re filed with the sheriff every other month.” That much was required by law; she doubted she needed to tell Starling, at least, that the files were thoroughly edited before they went to county records. Starling grinned as though he’d read the thought, the first human expression she’d seen from him.

“Do you spend a lot of time on the net?” Levy asked abruptly.

Trouble looked at him warily. “Depends on how you define ‘a lot of time.’ I handle all the co-op’s on-line business, time sharing or selling, anything like that. I’m the one who deals with the net when people need it. Why?”

Levy ignored the question. “Has anyone locally been talking about any kind of unusual charges, intrusions, unexpected problems in their local systems?”

“No,” Trouble said, with more confidence, recognizing where the question was headed. “We share time with a lot of local nets—we’re all small-scale around here, a couple of mom-and-pop datastores, town libraries, things like that. If anybody was having troubles, they wouldn’t tell the rest of us, for fear it would cut into their income.”

“Would you tell us?” Levy asked.

Trouble smiled. “I’d tell you,” she said, and emphasized “you.” Go ahead, pursue that line, she thought. It would only lead them into the tangle of the BBS, and they could spend the next ten years there, chasing their tails, without finding anything useful.

“I wonder if you’ve heard of someone coming back into the shadows,” Starling said softly. “Netwalking, cracking— you know the sort of gossip on the BBS. Especially in the syscops’ forums. The talk-name is Trouble.”

Trouble froze for a heartbeat, made herself move again with an effort that was almost painful. “I’ve heard the name before,” she said, dry-mouthed. It would be suspicious to say anything else; she had been a name to conjure with, once upon a time. “But not recently—not for a couple of years, at least. I thought somebody told me Trouble died.”

“The reports were greatly exaggerated,” Starling said.

Levy said, “So you haven’t heard anything about Trouble?”

Trouble shook her head. “Like I said, I haven’t heard that name in a couple of years.”

The two agents exchanged a quick, unreadable glance, and Starling said, “Can you show us the setup? The physical plant, I mean.”

“Sure,” Trouble said, and pushed herself up out of her chair, hiding her unease. “It’s across the way—everything’s in my basement so that I can keep an eye on things full-time.” She palmed open the door, and led the way out into the lobby, Starling and Levy following at a polite distance.

She took them through her condo and down into the basement work area, where the minis sat behind a heavy dust-wall, and the smaller machines—the network controller and its backup, and the souped-up home machine that she used for her own access—sat side-by-side on their low table. Levy glanced around as she pointed out the various features, but she could see Starling’s eyes tracing every cable and connection as she explained the system.

“And you’re on-line yourself, of course,” he said, when she had finished.

“Yes.”

He stepped up to her control board, ran a long-fingered hand along the edge of the casing—a netwalker’s hand, Trouble thought, superstitiously, and felt a surge of fear. He nigged the datacord out of its housing, and his attention sharpened abruptly. “You must spend a lot of time on the nets,” he said, and pulled the cord out to its full length, displaying the double head.

Trouble froze again, damning herself for her carelessness. A double jack, highspeed data line and regular dollie-jack combined, was the tool of the serious netwalkers; it was also the only way you could process enough information to satisfy the brainworm. Most users—even most syscops—made do with the ordinary jack, and lived with the time lags. If she had stood up and shouted, the message couldn’t have been plainer. “I do spend a lot of time out there,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding. “Like I said, we do a lot of graphics, both in-house with the fractals and as a time vendor. I spend a lot of time monitoring those jobs, and you have to be able to shut down fast if something goes wrong.”

“Oh?” That was Levy, sounding almost interested.

“Yeah. When you’re running the big color printer and there’s a glitch in the program, well, the faster you can close it off, the less ink and paper you waste. And Seara uses a lot of unconventional materials, all of them expensive.” She gave Starling a guileless glance, and did not think he was impressed.

“You must do test runs to prevent that kind of thing,” Starling said.

“Oh, sure,” Trouble answered, and let a genuine grievance color her voice. “But you don’t know artists. They keep fiddling with a program even after it’s supposed to be set, and when you run what’s supposed to be the final job, you find out they’ve added a line or two of code—” She let her voice go high and thin, imitating Seara. “—just a half-tone difference in one color mask, that’s hardly a change at all—and that will be the thing that screws up the entire run.”

“Uh-huh.” Starling was still looking at the double-headed cord, his eyes moving from its housing to the host machine to the main display. Trouble kept her expression open and innocently helpful, hoping that he believed her—but that was almost too much to expect, with the shadow-walker’s cord staring him in the face.

“When did you send your last report to the sheriff?” Levy asked.

“The beginning of August,” Trouble answered. She could feel the fear swelling in her belly, took a slow, deep breath to keep it down, and tucked her hands into her pockets again.

“So the next one’s due any day now,” Starling said.

Trouble nodded. “I was working on it when you called me.”

Starling looked at Levy. “I think we might as well wait until that one’s in, Ben.”

“Whatever.” Levy looked back at Trouble. “Will you send us a copy as well?” He held out a card, and Trouble took it mechanically.

“Sure. Is there anything I should be looking for?”

Starling shook his head. “Just the usual. You will let us know if you hear anything—anything at all—about Trouble?”

“Absolutely,” Trouble said.

“Or anything else,” Levy said. “Any talk of intrusions, funny accounts, anything at all. Our numbers are on the card.”

Trouble looked at it, the codes barely registering, looked back at Levy. “I’ll let you know,” she said again, and doubted they believed her.

She walked them back upstairs and let them out her front door, watched them walk away across the lawn. They hesitated for a moment at the entrance to the community hall, but then Starling said something, and they turned away, heading toward the compound gate and the carpark beyond. They walked in step as if by habit, and Trouble shivered despite the sunlight. They were bound to be suspicious—they had to be suspicious, after she had been careless enough to leave the double jack out in plain sight. It was just a question now of what she would have to do. She closed the door gently, throwing the locks out of old habit, and started slowly back down the steps to the basement.

She seated herself in front of the keyboard again, but did not reach for the datacord. They would expect her to do that, to go on-line to find out anything she could about them—the netwalkers would know, as they knew all the important enforcement agents; it was just a matter of asking the right people—and if they were any good at all, they would be monitoring her system from their car. If they were as good as she suspected Starling might be, her system would already be crawling with their watchdogs, lurking programs to track her progress across the nets… She shook herself then, clamping down hard on the panic that had seized her. She had checked the system this morning when she went online—though maybe not as well as she should have, after what Butch said—and there had been nothing out of place, nothing she didn’t recognize. She just hadn’t expected Treasury to show up so quickly.

She made a face and reached for the datacord, slipped it into the slot behind her ear. The main thing now was to control the damage, find out what, if anything, they had running in her system; failing that, she would need to find out why they had connected her with the stranger calling itself Trouble. And that would take some fancy shadow-walking. In the old days, it would have been simple to deal with the problem: she would simply have packed up her machines and gone to a new city, found an apartment and started over again. It had always taken months for the law to track her, and the one time she’d been unlucky and they’d found her right off, it had still taken them so long to figure out who had jurisdiction that she had been able to get out of town before the warrants could be issued. But that was a very long time ago, before she’d met van Liesvelt—before you met Cerise, a voice whispered—and things hadn’t been that easy in years. Not since Evans-Tindale—and all of that, she admitted silently, was less the problem than the fact that she herself was out of practice. It had been three years since she’d walked the shadows, at least in any serious way.

She leaned back in her chair, staring at the screen that mirrored the image that hovered in front of her eyes, not really seeing the lines of minuscule type and flickering icons. The first thing she needed to do was find out why Treasury had come here looking for this new cracker. Once she knew that, knew whether she was actively suspected or if she’d just been unlucky, then she would know what more she had to do. She hesitated, wondering if it was worth the risk, then entered the sequence that recalled the brainworm’s control panel. She adjusted virtual levels until she was running at half strength, the setting that would give her the extra control she needed but minimize the inevitable feedback from the brainworm itself.

Virtuality steadies around her, becomes faintly tangible, a hint of roses and lavender filling the air. Everything seems to be in order in the local net, but she whistles anyway, summoning the nearest watchdog, and it comes lolloping over. She stoops to pet it, feels the spikes of its code sharp under her hand, touches ears and nose and finds them cold as ice. It, at least, is in perfect health, and she says, seek, boy, and lets it run, following its track in the pools of phosphorus it leaves behind. It comes cantering back in half an interminable second, lolling tongue trailing drops of fire, flops at her feet: nothing amiss, nothing to hunt and catch. Stay, she says, and strides out toward the gateway, heading for the main nets and the information she needs.

Chapter Three

CERISE WATCHES FROM the edge of the board, surveys her domain. The programs stretch before her, dark squares laced with the hot red-gold of the internal datastream, live unreal wires pulsing with the ebb and flow of information. The light squares swarm with golden haze, warm light like butter melting, folding over the pastel flicker of the workers in their core. Overhead arches the blue of IC(E), hard-edged, geometric, walling in the chessboard that has become her world.

And it’s a good world: her thoughts flash like darts along the angled tracks, flicker along the lava cracks of the datastreams. She pauses at the edge of the golden shell, and a program like a snake’s tongue tastes the bytes that whistle through her. A hundred lights bloom and fade before her: all is as it should be, her pawns—the company’s pawns, if she’d admit it—controlled, contained, and protected by her lattice of hard IC(E). The data itself slips unconstrained through the internal nets, the brainworm turning it sharp and sweet as candy, like a taste of honey in the wind.

A light flares, hot pink, winks instantly to the blue of IC(E), but she’s seen it and is moving, launching herself along the familiar paths. She draws armor about her as she goes, blue-grey IC(E) as sharp as steel, slips within the datashell in the blink of a code. The bright shards of data slid past unchanged, stinging rain against her skin. Nothing missing, nothing spoiled—but she queries the system and finds nothing there, too. No one has been there, the system says, and that is wrong. She sets the intruder alert wailing, sends the message racing along the datastream, confining all but the highest-level users to their own spheres. The lights dim around her as the internal codewalls thicken. Beyond it, the alarm flares like lightning, crackling along the lattice of the external IC(E); behind her, the junior syscops and their watchdogs come on-line, bright shapes coursing the system, leaving her to deal with the hole in the heart of their most secure system

Inside the cracked shell she finds the flaw, and behind it teases out the tangled bits that were her favorite monitor, and something else She lays the pieces out module by module and line by line, bright against a slab of black she conjures out of nothing, and separates her own program from the stranger She recognizes the hand at once, and swears softly, checks the routines again It’s a familiar program, anyway, though there’s no guarantee that the one who wrote it was the one who launched it against the company—but she feels the knowledge cold against her, the fragments of data pricking her fingers like shards of glass

Overhead, a syscop calls from where the system IC(E) was dented. It’s a bruise along the edge of one bright bar of the codewall, but it’s all the trail she’ll ever find. She leaves the scraps of program to the nearest watchdog, and lets herself out the way the stranger came in—the stranger who may not be a stranger, not at all. She puts that thought aside, and launches herself out into the greater net.

Power lies before her, planes and fields and streams of light, the familiar night-city that lies always in her core. She smiles her pleasure even as she shapes a tool to filter the information, searching for a method that was once as familiar to her as her own best tools, a hand on the keyboards as clever as her own. The program darts away, a shape vaguely like a bird, spiraling out across the glittering fields, finds a trace and stoops to it, transmitting codes. Numbers flash in front of her eyes—MATCH INEXACT, PROBABILITY OF MATCH 70.09%, FOLLOW YES/NO—but she barely sees them. The brainworm translates the same input into a touch, a scent and a feeling, like and yet not the same as the hand she thought she’d followed. Frowning now, she signals FOLLOW and lets the program run, drifting armored along the lines of light, through datastreams like rivers of white fire. She passes a familiar node, and then another, bathed in sudden flares as systems challenge and then accept her presence. She knows even before the stream slows and swells and tangles in and around itself that she will lose this trail in the spreading swamp of the BBS, the market delta where all the data in the world eventually collects, puddles, and, muddied, goes free.

The trail ends, her program vanishes with a spark like an exclamation point. She slows herself, surveying the vast and marshy space, where lines and lights merge and cross and twine like parasites around each other’s roots. There are few shadows here, at least to the sight, but the steady glow, the slow pulse and steady buzz of unprotected data, hides more than it reveals. She gives herself a moment longer, savoring the salt tang of the free data, then finds a familiar line and follows it, moving through the crowding symbols and the overloaded petty-nodes with the ease of long familiarity. A major node flashes green and welcoming at last, terminus and gateway for a thousand low-budget users. She touches it, whispers code, and lets it snatch her home.

Coigne called the meeting for breakfast the next morning, leaving her six hours to prepare. She didn’t really need the time, had done all that could be done in the first few minutes after the codewall had been breached, but she complained about it anyway, knowing Coigne would respect her more for objecting to his plans. She spent another hour or so reviewing the data her hardworking staff had culled from the records—there were no surprises there, nothing she hadn’t already figured out in the seconds it had taken her to analyze the wreckage of the program and to trace the stranger’s trail—and went to bed.

She was up before the alarm, showered and dressed to the familiar murmur of the in-house news service spilling from the muted screen. There was no word of the intrusion, even on the high-level channels that she was cleared for, and she didn’t quite know if she was glad of it, or worried. She listened with half an ear to the latest profit projections broken down by division—an exercise in controlled intimidation that she usually followed religiously, because the number-two and last-place divisions would be ripe for on-line mischief—and wondered what she was going to say to Coigne. As little as possible, she thought, as always, and reached into her closet for the rest of her suit. Most of her look was already in place, her nails painted the hard dull-surfaced fuchsia that looked like the icing on a cookie, a flat, cheap color that worried the suits who saw her because they didn’t know how she’d dare. She had painted her lips and cheeks and eyes the same hard color, shocking against the careful pallor of her skin, and the black of the chosen suit only intensified the effect. It was subtly wrong for her job, like the rest of her look—like all of her, wrong sex, wrong class, wrong attitude most of all: the skirt a little too short, the jacket too mannish, with none of the affectations or compromises of corporate femininity. The heels of her shoes were painted the same stark fuchsia as her nails.

She looked hard at herself in the mirror, straightening the narrow skirt a final time. It would do—she would do; the look would remind them none too subtly that she could dress the way she did, could walk into their boardroom on her terms because they needed her. She could afford to dress this way—she was the only one who could afford to dress this way—because she was who and what she was. She was the only one, of all of them, who had to.

She put that thought aside—not something she could afford to acknowledge, not with Coigne waiting—and turned to the banked consoles to collect the pocketbook system with its downloaded data. Everything she needed was there, from the sanitized version of her report—Coigne would get the real one—to the software that would let her display and manipulate those figures for the board, to the homebrew stripped-down interfaces that let her achieve limited access to the nets even from the low-powered pocketbook. It wasn’t enough to feed the brainworm, gave her only a standard view, but it was enough to work with. She touched an icon to check the directory one final time, then hit the sleeper key and folded the screen away. She took extra care to double-lock the flat’s door behind her when she left.

A car was waiting in the driveway, just outside the courtyard gates. Coigne’s car, she realized in the split second before the nearest window slid down to reveal the hard-boned face.

“Good morning, Cerise. I thought you might need a ride.”

“You still don’t trust me, Coigne.” She smiled to hide the cold knot in the pit of her stomach. It had not been in her mind to run, but the fact that Coigne had thought she might made her wonder if she should have done so. “I’m disappointed.”

“So am I.” Coigne’s face disappeared, and the door snapped open.

Cerise slid into the car’s dim interior, into the faint smell of leather and the sunlight cut by the smoky bulletproof windows. Coigne was outlined against the far window, a thin, fair man with white-blond hair cut close to the stark planes of his skull. His wide mouth twisted into a brief, humorless smile, and he leaned forward to touch a button on the control panel mounted just below the divider that separated the passengers from the driver’s pod. The door closed itself, and the car slid smoothly into gear, picking up speed as it passed through the courtyard gate and out onto the expressway feeder. It was all corporate land here, manicured to expensive perfection in front of the identical blocks of flats and houses bought from the same prefab supplier, allowed to go to an approximation of wilderness in the ditch that separated the access road from the feeder and the overarching flyway.

“So what happened?” Coigne asked.

Cerise reached into her carryall, handed him the disk she had prepared. “That’s my report.”

Coigne took it, slid it into the datadrive set into the armrest beside him. He slipped a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and plugged the fine cable into the drive before fitting the temple pieces over his ears. The dark backing on the display lenses made him look blind. “But what happened?” he said again.

“Pretty much what you see,” Cerise said, and then, because she knew he expected more, “Someone—a pretty skilled someone—pried a gap in main IC(E) and penetrated the Corvo division subgroup. Response time was excellent, and as far as I can tell nothing was damaged or stolen.”

“Copies?”

“Impossible to tell.” She gave the bad news without flinching, refusing to apologize or justify.

“Find out.”

“The only way I can do that,” Cerise said, “is to wait and see if anything shows up on the market. I’ve already got feelers out, but it’s too soon to tell.”

“I see.” Coigne unplugged the dataline, then lifted the glasses off and slipped them back into their pocket. “I’ve heard a name in all of this.”

“Have you?” Cerise made herself relax against the heavy padding, felt the draft from the comfort systems cool on her legs. The car topped the rise onto the flyway, slipped sideways through a gap in the traffic, and settled into the passing lane. Cars flashed past to her right, overtaken in the slow lane, their shapes blurred by the smoky glass. The regular compound-to-compound commuter shuttle rumbled past, trundling along its track in the center of the flyway. For an instant, the low sun caught and flamed in its mirrored windows, and then it was gone.

“The word is,” Coigne said, “that Trouble’s back on-line.”

Cerise sat very still, knowing better than to speak the lie that had sprung instantly to her tongue. Trouble’s dead—but Trouble wasn’t dead, and it would be too easy to find out that truth, and then it would be too late to convince Coigne that she could still be trusted.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about it,” Coigne said.

Cerise shook her head, managed a faint, one-shouldered shrug. “It would be the first sign I’d seen of Trouble since I came to work for you.” She paused, and tried the lie. “At one point, I heard she was dead.”

Coigne ignored it. “You and Trouble used to work together. I would’ve thought you’d recognize the style.”

“Anyone can copy style,” Cerise said, and laced her tone with faint contempt. “Hell, I see my own programs on the nets, copies of my own work trying to break my IC(E). Style isn’t an ID, Coigne.”

“Not legally, but I would have thought it would be enough for you. Especially since it was enough to set other people talking.” Coigne looked sideways at her, met her eyes for the first time. “I’m sure I can rely on you, Cerise.”

He didn’t need to articulate the rest of the threat: he—Multiplane officially, but mostly, directly, him—knew perfectly well what she had done before he hired her, and had the evidence to boot, evidence that was a guilty verdict suspended for only so long as she worked for him. She lifted an eyebrow at him, achieved a quick smile. “That was a long time ago, Coigne.”

“Three years.”

“On the nets, that’s eternity. Besides, our cracker wasn’t Trouble.”

Coigne looked at her for a moment longer, then turned back to the window. “Don’t fuck this up, Cerise.”

Cerise ignored him, and he seemed content to let it go. She turned her head slightly, looked out the smoky window without really seeing the thickening stream of cars that converged on Multiplane’s central compound. It hadn’t been Trouble yesterday, she was sure of it, just someone who’d learned a lot, stolen a lot, from Trouble. But Trouble had been her partner back in the glory days before Evans-Tindale, and that tainted her judgment, in Coigne’s eyes. He wouldn’t believe her until she found the intruder, this cracker who was using Trouble’s programs, and proved that it was someone else. And God help me if my Trouble’s still on-line somewhere, still in the business; I’ll never convince Coigne it wasn’t her. She rejected that thought even as it formed, her lips curving with the start of a smile. Trouble had walked away from the business three years ago. She wasn’t about to reappear now.

The car slowed and tilted, following the flyway as it curved down in a graceful double-spiral that joined the semicircular road that curved in and out of the central compound. There were other cars ahead of them, more of the heavy-bodied black limos that signified junior executive status and were abandoned for more practical vehicles once the rider made it into the boardroom. Coigne frowned quickly, and glanced at his chrono. A shuttle pulled past them into the main building’s terminal—the elevated tracks ran directly into the fourth-floor lobby—and Cerise found herself wishing she had been on it. She was entitled to a car and driver, but rarely took the privilege; she enjoyed the crowds on the shuttle, and the illusion of anonymity, coupled with the certainty of an audience, let her hone her attitude for each day’s work.

The car slowed still further, braked to a crawl as it took its place in line behind an identical vehicle. Coigne leaned sideways—trying to read the license number, Cerise knew, see who it was ahead of him—then settled back in his place, his mouth twisting in a faint, dissatisfied frown. They slid at last into the docking point, and a security guard, soberly suited, but with the mirrored glasses that hid a heads-up display, and at least one minigun concealed in his perfect tailoring, keyed open the door. Two more guards, so closely matched in age, size, and coloring that they could almost have been siblings, waited in the shadows of the door, ready for trouble. Not that there had been that many invasions of transportation engineering firms; that had been reserved for more controversial businesses, biotech and the direct-on-line computer firms, but Cerise was never entirely sorry for their presence. The first guard nodded a greeting, murmured, “Ms. Cerise,” in a voice so soft and deferential that she could ignore it if she chose, and turned his attention instantly to Coigne.

“Excuse me, Mr. Coigne, but there’s a direct-flash for you.”

“Damn.” Coigne scowled at the guard, whose expression didn’t change.

“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s noted urgent.”

Coigne grimaced. “Put it through to one of the cabinets, will you? Cerise—” He stopped abruptly. “I’ll see you upstairs, then.”

“Of course,” Cerise said, and slung her bag more securely onto her shoulder. One of the other guards held the door open for her, and she went into the building, her heels loud on the polished stone floor. She heard the door of one of the communications cabinets that lined the first lobby close behind her, sealing Coigne into its gleaming interior, but did not look back. She rode the moving stair up to the main lobby, where a quartet of well-dressed secretaries staffed a long counter that was as much barrier as service center. Overhead, another shuttle train hummed almost silently along its guidepath, bright against the brown-toned glass that formed the building’s outer shell, and disappeared through the arch that led to the fourth-floor lobby. The massive pillars that supported the rails cast long shadows across the warm-toned floor. Cerise stepped up to the counter and passed her ID disk through the nearest scanner. One of the secretaries, a dark girl who looked barely old enough to have a network license, looked up as the numbers flashed across her screen.

“Good morning, Ms. Cerise. Your meeting’s in conference dining three.”

“Thanks—” For the life of her, Cerise could not remember the younger woman’s name, and compromised with a smile. “When is it scheduled for?”

“You have fifteen minutes,” the younger woman answered, and her own smile in return was faintly conspiratorial.

Cerise nodded, stepping around the barrier, and made her way into the elevator lobby. There were two banks of elevators, one on each side of the shuttle’s guidepath, polished bronze columns that ran the height of the five-story outer lobby and then continued up the outside of the building itself. The express was running to the executive dining levels at the top of the building, where her meeting would be held, but she ignored it, waiting impatiently for a local car instead. It came at last, and she wedged herself in with a dozen or so others, tucking her carrycase carefully under her arm. With luck, she would be able to check in with her own people without being too late for her meeting.

Network Security took up most of the twenty-first floor, a suite of offices around the perimeter and then a maze of cubicles surrounding the protected core where the mainframes and their backups lived. Cerise stepped out of the car into the tiny metal-walled lobby, and waited while yet another security guard passed her ID through his scanner. Only after the machine had cleared her did he smile and mumble something that might have been a greeting. Cerise nodded—try as she might to accept them as a necessity, the precautions never failed to annoy her—and passed through the heavy door into her domain.

Most of the day staff was already at work, crammed with their machines into their shoebox cubicles. A few were still offline, drinking a last cup of coffee or going over a hard-print report from the previous night, but most of them were already limp in their chairs, cords plugged into dollie-slots, out on the nets. Everything was as it should be, and Cerise made her way around the perimeter of the maze to her own suite of rooms. The outer door was open, and a dark woman looked up from her keyboard in surprise.

“Cerise. I thought you had a meeting.”

“I do.” Cerise came to stand behind her chief assistant, and stared unabashedly over her shoulder at the screen. “What’s this?”

“Autopsy of that program you found yesterday,” Jensey Baeyen answered. “It’s homebrew, or at best heavily modified commercial. I got a sixty percent probability on the maker, though.”

“What’s the name?” Cerise asked, already knowing the answer.

“Someone called Trouble. Been inactive for a few years, just came back onto the nets in a big way, is what it looks like,” Baeyen answered.

“Who made the match—which data bank, I mean?”

“Treasury.”

That figured. Cerise nodded. “Make me a copy of the autopsy and put it on disk for me, would you? What about copies? Any sign of them on the grey markets?”

“Not yet,” Baeyen said. She touched keys, and slipped a datablock into one of her subsidiary drives. “I put Sirico on it; he should have a report for you within the hour. Someone’s been bragging, though.”

“Shit.”

Baeyen grimaced. “I know. It’s just the usual stuff, ‘look how smart I am,’ with nothing real to back it up—”

“—but the board isn’t going to like it,” Cerise said. She sighed, made a face at the screen. “Make me a quick copy of what you’ve picked up so I can look it over before my meeting. So Treasury thinks it’s Trouble?”

“That’s what the match says,” Baeyen said. “But Trouble was never one to boast, or so I hear, so the boaster and the cracker may not be the same hand, which would explain why nothing’s showed up on the markets yet. But it looks like she’s back—Trouble, I mean. It was a she, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Cerise said, in her most colorless voice. Oh, yes, she added silently, Trouble’s a woman, all right, a tough and sexy, smart-ass broad who walked out on me—but she didn’t boast, and she didn’t take stupid chances. She accepted the datablock, glanced up to check the time. “I’ve got to get moving, but tell Sirico I want to talk to him as soon as I get back.”

“All right,” Baeyen said, and turned her attention back to her displays.

Cerise went back out of the office, past the rows of cubicles staffed by limp bodies, and the security checkpoint, rode the elevator to the executive dining area. The conference rooms were on the lower of the two floors, a maze of linked rooms with movable walls to accommodate groups of various sizes. Dining room three was smaller than she had remembered from the last meeting, just a single oval table with half a dozen chairs and place settings, but the view from the enormous window was just as she remembered it. The room faced northeast, and the towers of the city gleamed in the distance, bright as steel against the vivid blue of the sky. It looked best in the morning, before the daily haze settled in; the channels of the salt marsh that lay between Multiplane’s compound and the main connector flyway were full, reflecting the sky like a tarnished mirror.

The others were there ahead of her, Lenassi of Marketing, Mr. Koichiro from the Executive Committee, Guineven from R-and-D and Brendan Rabin from the Corvo subgroup, looking distinctly uneasy at being in such high company, Coigne himself for Main Security—most of the important people on the Internal Affairs Committee, plus a representative of the group involved in the intrusion. Cerise nodded a general greeting, and took her place at the table. A young woman in a neat black uniform drifted over to take her order.

“You’re late,” Coigne said.

Cerise looked at him dispassionately, said to the waitress, “Just coffee, please, and a display stand for my system.” The woman nodded and backed away, and only then did Cerise turn her attention to the people at the table. “I know. I stopped in downstairs to see how the autopsy was going.”

“Autopsy?” Lenassi asked sharply.

“My people spent last night dissecting what was left of the intruding program,” Cerise said. “They’ve achieved a reconstruction, but I’ll want to look it over myself before I can say if we’ve got anything useful.”

The display stand arrived then, trundling into place under its own power, and Cerise turned to fit her pocketbook into the cradle. Her coffee arrived a moment later, a full pot and a delicate cup-and-saucer displayed for a moment on a silver tray, before the waitress whisked everything into place in front of her. At the same moment, a rather handsome abstract painting slid aside to reveal the larger of the room’s two projection screens.

“Are we all set, gentlemen?” Koichiro asked, and nodded to the waitress before anyone could respond. “That will be all, thank you, Consuela.”

“Yes, sir,” the waitress said in a colorless voice, and slipped away, closing the door behind her.

Koichiro looked at Coigne. “So. Derrick, you wanted this meeting.” As always, he sounded a little conscious of the first name, as though he were still getting used to the alien custom. He was older than most of the Board, older than most of the executive committee, and Cerise had never been able to determine if his posting to Internal Affairs was a sign of his rank or a graceful step toward retirement.

“That’s right, sir,” Coigne said, and gathered the table’s attention with a look that was as eloquent as shuffling papers. “As you know, we had an intrusion yesterday, into the Corvo subgroup’s research net. As far as we can tell, no actual damage was done, but it remains possible that copies were made of crucial data. I felt that Internal Affairs should meet as soon as possible to discuss both the immediate consequences and any long-term effects. And, of course, any possible solutions to a continuing problem. Cerise, would you give us a rundown of yesterday’s event, and your department’s response to it?”

“Of course.” Cerise reached across the display stand to touch the start-up key, cupped her hand around the remote, almost hiding the controls. Letters and symbols flashed onto the wall screen, shaping a schematic outline of Multiplane’s internal network. Bright blue lines formed a boundary around the image, showing the IC(E) that walled in the systems. “I’ve made disk copies for each of you as well, but this is the summary. The intrusion lasted about five seconds, realtime, before the syscops spotted it, and was directed into Corvo’s secondary storage volume—that’s the space linked to Bren’s principal workspace.” On the screen, the affected nodes glowed briefly red. “Five seconds is not a lot of time to make copies, but I have people checking for any signs that the intruder is trying to market stolen goods. The program used was a cracker’s tool, probably homebrew, or maybe a commercial product that has been extensively rewritten. We are autopsying what’s left of it, but we haven’t gotten a solid match to any known crackers.”

She was taking a risk there, and knew it, but sixty percent wasn’t a solid match by any stretch of the imagination. She glanced from face to face, gauging their reactions. Both Rabin and Rand Guineven looked relieved—as well they might; most of their projects were too complex to be significantly affected by such a short intrusion. Lanessi still looked worried, which was no surprise. Public relations was part of Marketing’s concern, and he would have heard that someone was bragging already. Coigne wore his usual faint, faintly patronizing smile, but she couldn’t read Koichiri’s expression at all.

“I was on the net when the intrusion occurred,” Cerise went on, “and tracked the incoming path to a dead-end node in the BBS. I’ve begun other lines of inquiry, but I don’t expect to hear much from those sources until later today.”

She touched the remote again, dimming the big screen. It had not been the most useful presentation she had ever made, but the Board seemed to expect to see visuals no matter what the topic. There was a little silence, and then Lanessi cleared his throat.

“I understand that there has already been publicity about this on the nets.”

The shadow of a frown flickered across Coigne’s face, but he said nothing. Cerise said, “That’s right.”

“Most unfortunate,” Koichiri murmured.

Cerise glanced warily at him, saw no expression at all on his broad face. “But unavoidable,” she said. “A short intrusion like this is likely to have been made for advertising—to prove that someone can do the job, not actually to copy anything. Of course whoever did it is going to boast.”

“And by boasting, tell every other cracker out there that we’re vulnerable,” Lanessi said. He shook his head. “It’ll get back to clients and shareholders at this rate.”

“Not necessarily,” Cerise said. “Right now, the intruder doesn’t have anything real to boast about—and everyone on the net, at least, will know that. They’ll ignore it until the intruder comes up with something useful. And that we can prevent, now that we’re warned.”

“We’ve taken the usual precautions,” Coigne cut in smoothly, “doubling the sweep frequency, running more watchdogs, putting more syscops into the system. And we’re devoting a particular effort to tracking down the intruder, making sure she’s stopped for good.”

“She,” Lanessi said. “Then you have an ID?”

“A possible ID,” Cerise said, overriding whatever Coigne would have said. “A rumored ID. We have a name, nothing more.”

“And a sixty percent match in the autopsy,” Coigne said, soft and deadly. ‘To a name that matches a known cracker. I consider it a little better than possible, Cerise.“

Cerise smiled at him blandly, wondering which of her people had leaked the autopsy report. “I’d prefer to say possible until I’ve confirmed it. There are some important discrepancies involved, as well as the sixty percent match. It’s better to be conservative in this, I think.”

“Who is this person?” Koichiri leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the table. Age spots showed on the backs of his steepled hands.

Coigne looked at Cerise, visibly passing the question to her. Cerise chose her words with care. “Rumor says it’s someone calling themselves Trouble—Trouble was a big name on the nets three or four years ago, but dropped out of sight, hasn’t been heard of since. There was some talk that she was dead. This person, this new Trouble, may be the old one returned, or just someone using her name and programs: as I said, this doesn’t match the old Trouble’s style in some significant ways.”

Coigne lifted an eyebrow at that, a fleeting gesture, but said nothing. Koichiri said, “You’ll pursue this.” It was not a question.

“Of course, sir,” Cerise said, and allowed herself a faint note of injury.

Guineven said slowly, “I’m more concerned that this episode might lead to further attempts on the system. What can we do to prevent it?”

“We’ve already set up extra security,” Coigne said, “and we’ll maintain it for as long as necessary. And catching the intruder should discourage any further attempts.”

“How will that extra security affect the net?” Guineven asked, and Rabin nodded.

“Yeah, we’re already high-loading—” He stopped abruptly, as though he hadn’t meant to speak.

“It’s going to run a little slower,” Coigne said. “It can’t be helped.”

“Mr. Rabin,” Koichiri said. “What would the intruder have been looking for?”

Rabin gave a suppressed shrug, as though he wanted to be more expressive and didn’t quite dare. “We have the MADCo station shuttles on the boards, and the estimates would be worth something to anyone else making a bid on the project. Or there’s the Genii design.”

Guineven shook his head. “I don’t think so. That’s so close to production that it wouldn’t benefit anyone anymore.”

“Derrick,” Koichiri said. “I think you should also look into who would benefit from such a theft. You might be able to find your intruder that way.”

Coigne hesitated, as though he wanted to refuse, and Cerise bit back the desire to grin. Looking into potential rivals’ activities would keep him busy, away from her investigation, and give her a chance to handle things her way. Lanessi said, “I can give you what we know about competitors’ bids, Derrick. If that would help.”

“Thanks,” Coigne said, and sounded sour. There was no refusing either the offer or the order. “I’d appreciate it.”

Koichiri nodded once, decisively. “Thank you, gentlemen. I think you are well on your way to controlling a potentially troublesome situation.”

It was unmistakably a dismissal. Cerise sighed, worked her remote to close down the pocketbook, then reached to work the machine clear of the display stand. The others were gathering their belongings, too, collecting papers and mini-boards. Koichiri pushed his chair back and started for the door. Lanessi and Guineven followed more slowly, but Rabin hung back, paused to lean over Cerise’s shoulder.

“I wonder if I could talk to you at some point about what the intruder got into?” he asked, softly.

Cerise nodded, but before she could say anything, Coigne said, “Cerise. I’d like to talk to you now, if you can spare a minute or two.”

Cerise sighed again—she had been expecting that command ever since Koichiri had brought up rival firms—and looked at Rabin. “I’ll try to get in touch with you this afternoon, Bren, if you’ll be free.”

“I’ll be available until three,” Rabin answered, with a wary glance in Coigne’s direction, and eased away.

“I’ll talk to you before then,” Cerise said, and looked at Coigne. “All right, what is it?”

“My office,” Coigne said, softly, though the room had emptied around them. Cerise nodded, and slipped the pocketbook back into its case.

“Fine.”

She followed Coigne down the three-level staircase—supposed to be reserved for fire access, but everyone used it— and then around the curve of the building to his office. The two rooms faced directly east, over the ocean, and the windows were darkened against the morning light. Coigne seated himself behind his massive desk, ran his hand across an edge-mounted control bar to light the displays beneath the polished surface. Cerise settled into the chair opposite him, crossing her legs to display stockings and the bright-heeled shoes to their best advantage.

“What do you mean, this doesn’t match Trouble’s pattern?” Coigne asked.

Cerise blinked. “This person—even if it’s calling itself Trouble, it’s not behaving the way Trouble used to. Boasting, for one thing: that’s something Trouble never did.” The memory caught her unaware: Trouble pacing the length of their two-room apartment, swearing in rhythm with her drumbeat walk, all because a friend had boasted once too often, and now he was dead, another body rotted in the harbor water. “She said it was stupid, it used to infuriate her when other people did it.” Especially friends.

“Maybe,” Coigne said. “Or maybe, since she’s been off the nets so long, she feels she needs the advertising.”

That was plausible—if you didn’t know Trouble. Cerise said, “All right, but even granting that, the program autopsy isn’t conclusive, either. It’s like Trouble’s hand, but there are some tricks she never used.”

“Again, she’s been off the nets a while,” Coigrte said. “Why shouldn’t she have learned some new tricks?”

“Where?” Cerise asked. “And besides, these aren’t new tricks. It’s old stuff, stuff she did differently—routines she always sneered at.” And it feels different, she wanted to say, it doesn’t taste or smell or feel like Trouble’s work. But that was arguing from the brainworm’s evidence, and she still didn’t know for sure that Coigne knew she had one installed. She was almost certain that he did—he would almost have to know—but until she was sure, she didn’t want to betray herself unnecessarily.

“Could she be covering her trail?” Coigne asked.

“Possible, but unlikely,” Cerise retorted. “Why is it so important for it to be Trouble?”

There was a little silence, and then Coigne looked away, conceding. “It’s not so much that I want it to be Trouble,” he said, “as I want to be sure you’d tell me if it was Trouble.”

“I do my job.”

“If it is Trouble,” Coigne began, and let the words hang. Cerise watched him, unblinking. She had never wasted time justifying herself to him, refused to begin now.

“At any rate,” Coigne went on, “I expect you to deal with the intruder. Which brings me to my next point.” He smiled, not pleasantly. “I want this person stepped on, and stepped on hard. In other words, Cerise, this isn’t something that I want to take to court. Find me the intruder, and give me the location. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Cerise sat very still, not daring to move for fear of betraying her anger or the sudden fear. It had been years since the corporations had felt safe acting as their own law, since well before Evans-Tindale—since the Amsterdam Conventions, in fact—years since it had been necessary. For Coigne to be trying those tactics now—it could only mean that there was something not quite right about Corvo’s project, something that wouldn’t stand the scrutiny of a proper trial. And if she was wrong, if Trouble was involved… If any shadow folk were involved, they still had more claim on her loyalty than Coigne did. And at the very least, they deserved a trial, not Coigne’s goons jumping them from some back alley. She said, her voice carefully expressionless, “You’re taking a lot on yourself, Coigne.”

Coigne looked back at her, pale eyes, grey as ice with a darker ring at the edge of the iris, utterly unreadable. “I have my—priorities.”

Or your instructions, Cerise thought. “All right,” she said, “I’ll keep you informed.” She rose to leave, and Coigne’s voice stopped her in her tracks.

“I want more than that. I want this intruder, Cerise. I’ve never been more serious.”

Cerise looked back over her shoulder, wondering just what Coigne had been up to to produce what was, for him, a kind of panic. “I won’t forget,” she said, and slipped through the door before Coigne could call her back. It had been a petty effort—and useless, too; if Coigne wanted to continue the conversation, all he would have to do was ask for her— but it helped to take away the fear.

She made her way back down through the familiar tangle of corridors and elevators to Network Security, waited again while the guards processed her ID and waved her through into the inner rooms. A trio of operators was offline, clustered around a bluebox junction that looked homemade, and Cerise suppressed the temptation to stop and join the analysis. Instead, she went on into her own office, where Baeyen was still working at the lesser terminal.

“Sirico’s got his report,” Baeyen said, without looking up from her screen, and Cerise nodded, glancing quickly over the other woman’s shoulder. Nothing new there, just the usual security schema, and she pushed open the door to her private office.

The mail light was flashing, but she ignored it, touched buttons instead to signal the best of the three secretaries attached to the department. An instant later, her screen windows, and Landy Massek’s sharp face looked out at her.

“Yes, Ms. Cerise?”

“I need you to set up a meeting for me with Brendan Rabin at Corvo, sometime this afternoon for preference. Will you do that, and get back to me as soon as possible?”

“No problem,” Massek said cheerfully, and his window vanished.

Cerise sighed, and turned her attention to her mail. As she’d expected, the largest file was Sirico’s report, and she flipped through it quickly. He had been as thorough as ever, and had come up with nothing—which means, she thought, whoever it is, this new Trouble’s had trouble selling whatever s/he got. And since that’s not likely, unless Rabin has something really unexpected to tell me, like they’re not working on anything at the moment, it should mean that s/he didn’t get anything at all. She touched keys, flipping quickly through the remaining files, then switched to a different program and tied herself into Sirico’s last reported position. There was a brief hesitation, and then another window opened on her screen, displaying Sirico’s icon, a samurai-armored head and shoulders that looked vaguely robotic.

“Cerise?”

“Who were you expecting?” Cerise began, and cut herself off. “You did a nice job on the report, Pol.”

“Thanks.” The icon’s expression could not change—Sirico didn’t have a brainworm, was too obedient a networker for that—but the voice sounded faintly smug. “I don’t think they got anything, boss. Somebody’d be buying, if they had.”

“I think you’re right,” Cerise said. “Tell me, what else have you heard about this Trouble?”

There was the faintest of hesitations before he answered, just enough to convince her that there was something more. “Just talk. Nothing real.”

“Such as?”

There was a longer silence, and then Sirico blurted, “Word is, you used to work with somebody called Trouble.”

“That’s right.” Cerise had been expecting the question for almost twenty hours now; she found herself remotely surprised that none of the others had brought it up before. Except, of course, Coigne. “We were partners. You knew I came out of the shadows, Pol. Everyone does.”

“So, what do you want us to do about this one? Go slow?”

Cerise blinked at the screen, startled and a little touched by the offer. “No. I want to stop any more problems before they get started—and besides, I don’t think it’s the Trouble I used to know.”

“There are people saying that,” Sirico said. “And there are a lot of people who are pretty pissed at this one. He/she’s been teasing the big names, and stirred up a lot of security in the process.”

Definitely not my Trouble, Cerise thought. “Any word on how to contact this Trouble?”

“What else?” Sirico asked, and the icon would have grinned if it could. “Seahaven.”

“Ah.” Cerise leaned back in her chair. She had expected nothing less, of course, would have been disappointed if she had gotten any other answer. Seahaven was the last and greatest of the virtual villages, the last survivor of a dozen similar spaces that had existed before Evans-Tindale. It was a virtual space run by and for its unknown architect, the Mayor, an unreal place policed, positioned, and created entirely at his whim. If you entered its influence, you agreed to abide by its rules, to subordinate whatever filters you used to interpret the net to its own system. It was a spectacular effect, and a dangerous one; there were always people who tried to beat the local system, force it to bend to their whim, and while they always failed, the fallout could be disastrous. It had always been a cracker’s haven; now it was one of the last remaining spaces where the shadow walkers could conduct their business. It was also one of the net’s greatest temptations, and home of its greatest dangers: Trouble had said once that if it were on any map, it would have to be labeled, quite literally, HERE BE DRAGONS.

“Do you have any idea where I’d look for Seahaven these days?”

Sirico’s icon shifted color, went yellow for a brief instant, the equivalent of a shrug. “New Hampshire?”

“Very funny.” Cerise frowned at the screen. Seahaven was also a town on the New Hampshire coast, maybe ninety-five kilometers to the north. It had once been a summer resort and a fishing town, but as the beaches became dangerous, racked with high UV sunlight, eaten away by pollution and the shifting tideline, other businesses had dwindled, until the entire population was dependent on the secure hotel built just outside the town on pilings driven into the salt marsh. The hotel was highly rated among the multinationals who needed absolute security for their negotiations—there had never been a successful raid, virtual or real, on the facility, and only a handful of attempts—and the lack of other work in the area kept its prices lower than most. Seahaven, the offline Seahaven, existed now only to service the hotel, and the hotel and the town government worked hand in glove to keep it that way. Cerise had lived there for an interminable eight months after Evans-Tindale—the old beachfront Parcade was one of the best sources along the East Coast for black-and grey-market ware, and she had been desperate for new hardware—and had hated it. The ghost of a town, worse still, the ghost of a virtual town, hopeless and dying, with nothing to do but serve the hotel and throw rocks and bottles at straying strangers: live free or die, Cerise thought, only they can’t seem to do either. She shook away the flash of memory, salt air and the smell of oil smoke drifting along the beachfront, said aloud, “The Seahaven that matters, Pol. Any ideas?”

“I don’t know. The last I heard, if you wanted to go to Seahaven, take a walk through the Bazaar. But that was a week ago.”

Cerise sighed. “Right, thanks. Keep an eye out for any sale from this intrusion, will you?”

“How long do you want me to watch?” Sirico asked.

“Give it another thirty-two hours,” Cerise answered. “If we haven’t seen anything by then, we’re not going to.”

“OK.”

“Thanks, Pol,” Cerise said, and cut the connection. She stared at the screen for a moment, then touched keys to sound the net. The system flashed an instant list of everyone’s position on-line. The simplest thing would be to post a general message, but traveling to net-Seahaven was still something a little questionable, a long step toward the shadows; for her people’s sake, it would be better to ask them individually. She studied the list, then blanked the screen. None of the duty operators were likely to admit knowing the road, even if they did know it, which wasn’t terribly likely; better to hit the net herself, head for the BBS and the Bazaar that lay at its heart, and find her own way from there. And, she admitted, with a wry smile at her own frailties, it would be more fun to do it herself.

Before she could tie in, a chime sounded, and Massek’s face appeared in the corner of her screen. “I’ve set up an appointment with Mr. Rabin, Ms. Cerise. Is two-thirty all right with you?”

Cerise made a face. “Can you make it any later, Landy?”

“Sorry. Mr. Rabin’s got a meeting at three as it is, and he expects to be there the rest of the day.”

“All right,” Cerise said, and knew she sounded irritable. “Two-thirty it is.”

“Thanks. I’ll tell Mr. Rabin.” Massek vanished.

That changed the parameters somewhat. Cerise pushed herself up from her desk and went to the door of the office. “Jensey. I’m going out on the net for the next few hours. I’ll be back by two—it’s to do with the incident yesterday, if anyone asks.” She meant Coigne, and Baeyen knew it.

“I’ll tell him,” the dark woman answered. “Do you want me to sound a recall for you?”

“I’ll set one,” Cerise answered, and turned away. She returned to her seat, adjusting the chair controls to a more comfortable setting, one that wouldn’t leave her crippled after a few hours. She checked the toolkits and the standbys already displayed on the screen, and touched keys to have the system warn her when it was time to go home. Then she took a deep breath, and launched herself out onto the net.

She is flying now, bursting like a rocket through the company IC(E), exploding onto the net like a firework. Overhead, a light gleams like a moon, full and brilliant an open conference, and she hesitates, tempted, but makes herself turn away. The lines of the nets expand before her, roads and rivers of data like glowing highways, she chooses one, not quite at random, and lets it carry her down toward the BBS.

The rivers move more slowly here, where talk is free and the lines are overburdened. She disciplines herself to that meandering pace, drifts silently from node to node. The Bazaar is the great center of the BBS, the link of traders’ nodes where anything and everything is bought and sold. Lights flare around her as she drifts closer, bursts of compressed iconage like the cries of a street hawker, and the air smells of burnt cinnamon. She bats the most persistent symbols idly away, feeling them break like bubbles against her hand, familiar advertising, most of them, some of them not, new names and faces, new services, strangers on the net. She drifts past, not bothering to make any reply, her own icon dimmed and ghostly in the midst of all that brilliance, seeking the sellers that lay behind the walls of light, behind the barriers of the obvious. She tests the virtual winds, tasting the data, but finds none of the familiar markers that hint at the road to Seahaven. At the Polar Flare, where there is always news of the shadows, she catches the ball of light that is flung at her, unwraps the spinning advertisement without bothering to read the icons, there is nothing at its center, and she frowns, and tosses the glittering shards like confetti back onto the net. There are other nodes, she crosses them, finds at last a familiar symbol, and touches it. The shape within becomes a presence, a scent and then a swirl of light, a hand-icon inviting her inside. She reaches into her own toolkit, finds the right shape to answer it. Their icons merge, weaving together into a sphere that will provide at least the illusion of privacy, and the familiar presence speaks.

*Haven’t seen you in a while, Cerise. Are you buying or selling?*

He knows perfectly well she’s gone legit, gotten a real job, a legal job, and Cerise smiles, letting the brainworm display the expression for all to see.

*Neither, Max. As you should know. I’m trying to get to Seahaven.*

As she expects, that stops him, and there is a little pause, the light flickering around her like a silent fire. She hangs in its warmth like a salamander, happy in her element, and hears a faint intake of breath.

*The road’s closed today, or so I hear. Come back tomorrow.*

Trouble?

She makes the question ambiguous, and hears Max Helling laugh.

I thought you left her.

He knows better than that, he was there, and Cerise keeps her tone cold and level. *If it’s her—and she left me. *

*If—?* There is another little silence, and then Helling laughs again. *So that’s the way you’re playing it. I heard this Trouble got into Multiplane.”

*That’s the way it is. Or so I hear.* Her echo of his words is malicious, and she hears it strike home.

*I’ve retired, too, Cerise. Don’t push me.*

That is news, and Cerise lifts an eyebrow, knowing the brainworm will relay the gesture, asking without speech whatever happened to Aledort. She says nothing direct, however, waits, lapped in the golden light. She waits, and it is Helling who speaks again.

*Like I said, the road’s down today. Try tomorrow—through Eleven’s Moon.*

He flips away, shattering the sphere that encloses them into a thousand shards like flying knives. Cerise ducks in spite of herself, in spite of knowing she should have expected it, and Helling is gone But he’s told her what she wanted, what she needs to know, there’s nothing more she wants from him, not for now. She smiles, delighting in the glittering air, the crush and bother of the advertising, the slow and complex rhythm of the data tides that lie beneath the BBS, and turns along a curve of blue-green light, taking the long way home.

Chapter Four

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TROUBLE PLAYS JIGSAW well, even by the standards of the nets. The crystals dance through the playing sphere, flickering from blue to green to yellow, racing up and down the spectrum in an unpredictable pattern, and she reaches for the red ones, catches them just as they blush from orange into red, and slings them into their place in the growing structure. The twisted sculpture, a fantastic, spiraling tower like a mad single-branched candelabra, shivers under a sudden shower of pieces, her own and her last opponent’s, flickering like a flame between blue and red. Around the inner surface of the sphere, the eliminated players cluster in ones and threes, bright icons at the corners of her vision, redetermining the playing area. She smiles, fierce behind the mask of her playing piece, the brainworm turned up full, so that she feels every unreal motion, and launches a crystal—already red, too late in its cycle to use—toward an icon who’s drifted too close, a silver shape like a Scottie dog. She turns away before she sees it hit or parried, to catch another drift of crystals. A few are shading toward red; she catches three in quick succession, tosses them, slowly, not with all her strength, so that as they approach the twisted tower they are just turning red. Her opponent, a wedge of iridescent silver like a fighter plane, knocks the first away with a well-placed crystal of her own, but the second and the third sink home, and the tower shades imperceptibly closer to the true red that would mean Trouble’s victory. Trouble smiles behind the masking icon, and launches herself up and over the wavering structure—it sways even wider, but she has timed it perfectly—and finds a rich field of crystals on the far side, all ripening toward the red she needs. The iridescent fighter swoops sideways, swinging wide around the structure, gathering crystals of her own, but Trouble is ahead of her. She slings the last five crystals into place, banking them off the nearest part of the sphere to snap into the lattice at the bottom of the tower, the hardest of all shots to execute but the most certain, done right. The tower flares scarlet, flashes victory; victory flares around her own icon, bathing her in sheer delight, direct pleasure, and she gasps inside the encircling field of color. The other icons, the glittering fighter, the Scottie dog, a stylized Ferrari, and all the rest, drop slowly to the common plane of the net, and the playing sphere fades around them.

Nice game, the fighter says, gruffly, and Trouble smiles again.

Thanks.

*I didn’t catch your name,* the Ferrari says.

Trouble pauses, savoring the moment she had known would come—she had planned for it, came out to play in order to provoke it, and now she intends to enjoy it. Trouble, she says at last. The original, and before they can react, before they can do more than absorb the words, she’s launched herself for the nearest node, leaving only the shell of the icon behind her. The cutouts flare as she drops through the node, and she vanishes from the net in a shower of smoke and flame that obscures her trail beyond recovery.

Trouble lay back in her chair, jolted by the drop from virtuality, let herself sit for a moment, until her heartbeat slowed to normal. She had spent the last three days tracking the person who called themself Trouble through the net, and had gotten nowhere, found nothing except a file full of crackers’ gossip. And Treasury was still too interested in her system to make it possible for her to chase down the rumors. She checked the main screen automatically, saw Starling’s watchdog still patiently chasing its tail, and touched the keys that released the crude muzzle. The program unfolded itself, sent a burst of codes across her screen, found nothing, and went dormant again, momentarily satisfied. Trouble eyed it uncertainly—she couldn’t be sure that it hadn’t spotted her interference, working with a three-year-old muzzle—but there was nothing she could do about it if it had. The worst it could do was testify that she had a brainworm—bad, but not an unbeatable charge. At least it could not, by itself, prove that she was Trouble.

And she had made a good start. Trouble smiled slowly, savoring the memory of the Jigsaw game. It had been fun to play again, to play at her own top capacity; it had been even more fun to name herself, and watch the panic set in. Once she was known to be back, she herself, the original, the only Trouble, someone would tell her who this pretender really was. And then she could deal with it, either by shopping the pretender to the cops—she had no obligations there, after the stranger had stolen her name, her style—or by revealing the pretense on the wider nets. The latter was probably the more satisfying option, though selling out the pretender was safer, and she allowed herself a grin, contemplating the possibilities.

Her fingers were cramping inside the tight shell of the metal-bound glove. She winced, working her hand against servos gone suddenly stiff and unresponsive, and sat up enough to unplug the glove. The pain eased, and she stretched cautiously, opening and closing her hand, until she was certain the cramps would not return. Then she snapped open the catches, and eased the glove away from her fingers. Trouble’s return—the return of the real Trouble, she amended silently—would be the talk of the nets within half an hour. All she had to do was back it up.

Fortunately, that wouldn’t be hard. But before she could go much further, she needed a new toolkit, and probably a new implant to manage data transfer to the brainworm. After three years, the old chip was outclassed, and while she could make or steal much of the software and bioware that she needed, it would be quicker and more efficient—and safer, too, in the long run—to buy what she needed from one of the shadow dealers who infested the coast. She had the money for it, a little more than five thousand in a mix of citiscrip, bearer cards, and an ugly grey-green wad of oldmoney; and besides, she told herself, buying a new kit would be one more way of announcing her return.

A chime sounded from the intercom, and she jumped before she realized what it was.

“India?” A female voice too distorted to recognize paused briefly, static singing through the speaker. “India, are you down there?”

Trouble touched the answer button, her heart still racing painfully. “I’m here. What is it?”

“Are you on line? I—we’d like to talk to you.”

“If I was on line,” Trouble said, “I wouldn’t be answering you.” She stopped, took a deep breath, backing away from the bravado of the nets. “Sorry. Who’s we?”

“Me, Oba, Mike, and Terri Lofting.”

At least half of the Management Committee, plus whoever was doing the talking. Trouble took a deep breath, feeling the sudden chill run along her spine. “I’ll be right up.”

She took the time anyway to shut things down properly, so that no one could complain of her work as syscop, and went upstairs. The delegation was waiting at the main door, the evening sky behind them glowing red and orange between the layers of clouds, like embers in a banked fire. She studied them for an instant as she opened the door—it was the entire Management Committee, plus Judy Merric, who had once been a paralegal and did most of the legal talking for the coop—and beckoned them into the brightly lit kitchen.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“You tell us,” Teresa Lofting said. She was the oldest member of the committee, grey-haired and soft-bodied, but there was a will of iron beneath the grandmotherly exterior. She had built the co-op almost out of nothing, and was fiercely protective of its rights.

“Let’s sit down,” Alvarez said hastily. “If you don’t mind, India.”

“No,” Trouble said, without sincerity, and waved them on into the living room. She thought for a moment of offering coffee and tea, but, looking at the grim faces, suspected that it would only put off the inevitable. “What’s this all about?” she said again, and sat down on the chair beside the unused stove.

The others took their places reluctantly, exchanging glances, and at last Alvarez said, “The Treasury agents, the ones who were here the other day. What do they want with you?”

“They were asking about a cracker who may have been going through my—our—nodes,” Trouble said, and wondered why she bothered. “I told them I hadn’t seen anything, and gave them a copy of the sheriff’s report—my report to the sheriff. That’s all.”

“And had you?” Lofting asked. Trouble frowned, and the older woman amplified, her voice still sweetly reasonable. “Had you seen anything?”

“No,” Trouble said, and didn’t bother hiding her annoyance.

“Hey, people,” Merric said softly, and Mike Ishida said, “Yeah, let’s begin at the beginning. India doesn’t know what’s been going on today.”

Trouble looked warily at them, already not sure she wanted to know, and Alvarez said, “All right, Mike, you tell her.”

Ishida gave a wry smile, careful to include all of them—but Lofting, at least, wasn’t buying, Trouble thought, and Alvarez didn’t look too happy, either. And if Merric’s here— she might only have been a paralegal, but she had a good sense of the legal process. If she was worried, then Treasury might well be close to an arrest.

“We’ve been getting a lot of attention from the authorities all of a sudden,” Ishida said. “I got a phone call from a Mr. Levy, who says he’s with the Treasury, asking about you, India—asking how you came to work for us, what we know about you—asking me in my capacity as a committee speaker. Oba and Terri got the same kind of inquiries, and when I asked around, a lot of people had been getting informal questions. So what’s going on?”

Trouble spread her hands. “I don’t entirely know. What they told me was, they tracked a cracker using my nodes, my net. I checked into it, of course, and didn’t find any signs of anyone, but what I hear on the net is, there’s a cracker come back from the dead, somebody nobody’s heard of in years, who’s causing a lot of trouble. What the connection is with me, I don’t know.” And everything except the last sentence was absolutely true.

The other four exchanged glances, Lofting still with that gentle, implacable moue of distaste that was more alarming than any overt threat. Merric leaned forward slightly. “India—”

“Very well,” Lofting said, riding over whatever the ex-paralegal would have said. “I can accept that you don’t quite know what’s happening, I can even believe that you didn’t know that this—cracker—was back in business, but I find it hard to believe that you didn’t know this person. If that’s what you tell us, however—” She paused, clearly waiting for a denial. Trouble made her expression as guileless as possible, and, after a moment, Lofting continued. “—then we have to accept it. But I—we of the Management Committee— cannot support you if you’ve been involved in illegal activities. I want that clearly understood.”

“We knew perfectly well when India came to us that hiring any syscop out of the shadows might present problems,” Ishida began. “And we agreed then—”

“Do you understand?” Lofting said, as if the younger man hadn’t spoken.

Oh, yes, Trouble thought, I understand, and bit her tongue to keep from speaking it aloud. You’re washing your hands of me, regardless of what I’ve done—or, more precisely, because you believe I’ve done whatever it is they’re accusing me of… Which of course I did do, once upon a time and sort of, because I was—I am—Trouble. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so serious—hell, it is funny. She sat still for a moment longer, considered and discarded three different answers. It was quiet in the condo; she could hear, in the far distance, the dulled, steady rush of traffic on the flyway. She said at last, “You don’t leave me many options. As it happens, I haven’t been running shadow jobs here—” She used the cracker’s phrase deliberately, and saw Merric wince. “—but that doesn’t seem to matter, to you or to Treasury. Like Mike said, you knew—I told you—what I’d done before I came here, back when it wasn’t illegal, and you said then it didn’t matter. However, I don’t intend to involve you, the co-op, in my troubles.”

Ishida flinched at that, and Alvarez looked up, as though he would protest. Even Lofting had the grace to look faintly uncomfortable, but she rallied quickly. “The co-op can’t afford your troubles—can’t afford cracker troubles,” she said. “The law—Evans-Tindale is very clear about what makes an accessory. You know that.”

She had been looking at Trouble, but it was Alvarez who nodded. “I’m sorry, India,” he said.

“So,” Trouble began, and Lofting cut in.

“I want you to understand that we, the co-op as a whole, will do whatever we can to cooperate with the Treasury’s investigation.”

“Make sure you fill out the reward form correctly,” Trouble said. “But remember to clear out your personal systems first.” She had meant that as a threat—she had dealt with plenty of grey-market programmers for the co-op, trying to get good programs at prices the artists could afford—and she was pleased when Alvarez looked away.

Lofting ignored her, looked around the room, visibly gathering her delegation. “That’s all we came to say. I appreciate your time, India.”

“Not at all,” Trouble said, and bit down hard on a profane response. It wouldn’t work—wouldn’t impress Lofting, wouldn’t anger her, would merely be what she’d expected, and Trouble wouldn’t give her that satisfaction. She walked them to the door, moving with care, and was surprised when Merric hung back at the doorway, glancing over her shoulder as the others moved away into the growing dark.

“If you need it,” she began, scowling, and then her tone changed abruptly. “If they come down on you, India, remember, you don’t have to talk to them. Even if they arrest you, you don’t have to talk to them without a lawyer, and we have a contract with my old firm.” She reached into her pocket, the movement screened from the others by her body, and came out with a thin piece of pasteboard. “The callcode’s there, and our account number. You’ll still have access.”

Trouble took the card wordlessly, and knew from Merric’s shiver that her fingers as they brushed against her hand were as cold as ice. “Thanks,” she said, and was remotely pleased that her voice remained steady.

“I hope to hell you don’t have to use it,” Merric said, and turned away.

Trouble shut the door quite gently behind her, and went upstairs to her bedroom. There was no point in putting it off, and no point in staying here any longer; with Lofting firmly ranged against her, the rest of the co-op would soon fall into line. Which meant she needed the toolkit right away, and the new implant as soon as possible, and the machines downstairs would no longer be safe… She put those thoughts aside, recognizing incipient panic, and began methodically to pack.

It didn’t take her long. She had accumulated more things than she’d realized, clothes and books and disks and the plain-but-decent furniture, but most of it would have to stay behind. She collected what she could carry, what would help her in the weeks ahead—Trouble’s clothes, the best of her pieces, costume from the old days and the few new things that matched that image—and then went downstairs to break up the system. Some of the hardware would have to stay—she couldn’t risk having the node simply vanish, tempting as it was to deprive the co-op of its connection to the outside world—but she stripped the more portable machines away, reaching awkwardly around the shelves to unhook dusty cables. She had done this before, and shied away from the memory, suppressing the thought that Cerise would say it served her right. She sneezed, startled, and went back upstairs for a rag, cursing herself for her carelessness. She’d never stayed in any one place long enough for that to be a problem. Finally, however, she had everything broken down; she folded the last cable neatly into its housing, took a last look at the net monitor obligingly blinking on the main screen—everything was green, most of the house machines shut down for the night, a single blue-toned icon that was Mineka Konstenten, working late on one of her designs— and turned away. It had never been particularly hard to leave, before. Even leaving Cerise had been easier.

She paused in the living room, set the system carrybag on the floor beside the lighter backpack that held her clothes. It was a strange thought, not something she’d really considered before. It wasn’t so much that it was hard to leave the co-op—though, given the choice, she would have stayed, and that was startling—as that it had been, well, easy to leave Cerise. Not that I wasn’t right to do it, she thought, but still… She could remember packing that day, loading the machines and the clothes haphazard into the only bag she had, wrapping the delicate brainbox at the center of a cocoon of jackets and shirts, packing the storage blocks in underwear, hurrying because she couldn’t stand the thought of arguing anymore, because Evans-Tindale had become law and she’d known Cerise wouldn’t see reason, because if she hurried she didn’t have to think too much about what Cerise would say, coming home to the empty flat. No, easy wasn’t the right word, but she hadn’t felt this same regret, a nostalgia, almost, for the time she’d spent. It had been fear then, certainly, and anger. She was angry now, too, but she hadn’t expected the co-op to support her. She had expected Cerise to come with her, in the end.

She checked the kitchen controls a final time, making sure the household systems had spooled down to standby, set the environmental system at fifteen degrees, then left the remote conspicuously in the center of the table. She pocketed the old-fashioned keys, and let herself out the sliding door, locking it carefully again behind her. She hesitated then, weighing the keys in her hand, then turned not toward the gate but into the compound, walking back along the row of houses, skirting the pools of light that spread from the porches. At Konstenten’s house she hesitated, but made herself step up onto the porch, and tapped gently on the reflecting glass. For a moment she thought the other hadn’t heard her, that she’d been too immersed in her work to hear, but then the mirror-image rippled, the line of trees, her own brighter shape wavering, and the door slid open a few inches.

“What is it, India?” Konstenten asked, and slid the door open the rest of the way. She was a tall woman, chestnut hair held back by an embroidered scarf; threads clung to her T-shirt and the legs of her jeans. Behind her, light gleamed on her quilting frame, spotlighted in the center of the room. “Or should I ask?”

“I’m leaving,” Trouble said. She held out her keys, and Konstenten took them mechanically, stood holding them still with her hand up, as though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with them. “I may be back—I hope I’ll be back, but I wanted to ask if you’d keep an eye on my stuff.”

There was a little silence, and then Konstenten said, “You’re leaving me responsible for your place. And whatever’s in it. All with Treasury breathing down your neck, and the talk everywhere that you’re going to be busted any day now. Fuck you, Indy.”

“There’s nothing in there that could get you into trouble,” Trouble said. “They think I’m a cracker, you’re not involved in that.”

“Fuck you,” Konstenten said again, and threw the keys at Trouble’s feet. They landed with a splash of metal against concrete. “Why do you even bother telling me you’re going?”

Because I didn’t tell Cerise, Trouble thought. But that was not an answer that Konstenten would understand. She said, “Because I thought I owed you.”

“Because you needed my help,” Konstenten answered. The keys lay gleaming at Trouble’s feet.

“Fine,” Trouble said. She shifted the bags on her shoulder, took a step backward, letting the keys lie where they’d fallen. “Yeah, I could’ve used some help, but it’s OK. Leave it, let the committee, whoever, deal with it. But I wanted to let you know.”

She turned away, started walking fast into the shadows, heading toward the edge of the standing trees and the path that led to the main gate. Behind her, she heard a scrape of metal against concrete, but did not look back to see if Konstenten had picked up the keys.

She caught the night shuttle into Irish Point, the train chugging down the center of the flyway that gleamed like an oil slick in the headlights and the silver glare of the rising moon. To the south, the city lights filled the horizon, the distant buildings little more than shadows behind the broken geometry of their lights, further distorted by the scratched windows. She watched them, trying not to think too much, until the flyway split away to either side, ramps spiraling down to the ground roads, and the shuttle itself dipped toward the terminus. She had made sure that Jesse’s still existed, was still in the same ratty storefront where he had always kept shop; that was all she could do, and she put her worries and the anger aside for later.

She took a trolley from the terminus into the town center, got off at the familiar end-of-Main stop. Main Street was less crowded here, toward the edge of Irish Point’s shopping district, fewer cars in sight. Less than two miles away, the street ended at the concrete of the sea wall, and Trouble could see the lights of the Coast Guard tower rising above the distant buildings. She made her way past the closed storefronts, their windows protected by metal grills or heavier solid shutters. Here and there, someone had tried to pry one of the barriers away, leaving a corner curled up, and everywhere red and green pinlights glowed in corners, signalling wideawake security systems.

There weren’t many people on the street, either—a young woman hurrying past, who vanished through the locked door that led to an upstairs apartment; a couple of middle-aged men who walked slow and unsteady, arguing about something in an unfamiliar creole; a twenty-something man in jeans and a too-tight T-shirt, hands in his pockets, scowling—and Trouble felt vaguely that she ought to be afraid. She was too angry for fear, however, beyond the always present need to keep an eye on the shadows, too angry still even to admit her anger, except as a white-cold intensity that she honed like a weapon, focusing her thoughts on the meeting. She would not think of Konstenten, of the co-op, not yet. She turned off Main Street at last, striding through the orange glow of a streetlight, and saw the familiar sign ahead of her.

Jesse’s was a small place, a clapboard storefront with a dirty display window filled with faded posters and a few old-fashioned pocketbooks and travel decks. The door was open, however, just a screen separating the main room from the street, and she could hear the music two doors away. It was old music, familiar rhythms, and she found herself falling into step as she came up to the door.

The main room was just the same as it had always been, bare wood floors badly in need of polishing, shelves filling the side walls and the wall behind the bare metal counter with its row of open outlets. Just inside the door, an overfilled notice board advertised everything from used chips and bioware to a secondhand tricycle. A quartet, all young, all nondescript in jeans and military surplus, none of them familiar to her, sat at the center table, a notebook’s internal works spread out among them like a card game or the entrails of some sacrificial animal. They all looked up at the sound of the door, and she felt their eyes on her as she walked past them to the counter. None of them would be of significance—if they were at all important, they would be in one of the back rooms—and she ignored them, fixing her eyes on the woman behind the counter. She would be one of Jesse’s innumerable girls, one of the harem who cooked and cleaned and did the tech work and kept the store running while Jesse played on the nets, and Trouble approached her with the same wary respect she used to all of Jesse’s women. The woman, tall, stringy, very black, her hair fastened in a club of braids at the base of her neck, looked back at her with a weary, deliberately unnerving stare.

“What you need, honey?”

“I’ve got some shopping to do,” Trouble answered. “And I want to talk to Jesse.”

“We got stock out here,” the woman answered, with a vague wave of her hand at the crowded shelves, “but Jesse’s on-line. You’ll have to make do with me.”

Behind her, Trouble could hear a soft sound from the group at the table, a rustle that might have been a stifled laugh. She ignored it, still looking at the stringy woman. “I need custom work. And I still want to talk to Jesse.”

There was a little silence, and the woman said, “Will Jesse want to talk to you?”

“Tell him Trouble’s here.”

The woman’s head came up, her mobile face drawing down into an angry scowl. “I don’t take kindly to pretenders, sweetheart, and we don’t deal with hot merchandise—”

“The real Trouble,” Trouble interjected. “The original. You can tell Jesse that I’m back, and I’m pissed. Nobody takes my name in vain.”

The woman stared at her, her anger replaced by speculation, and Trouble heard one of the quartet whistle softly. She could see their reflection in one of the shiny metal boxes that held sterile components, a distorted image, but clear enough to see them all four staring, the notebook forgotten on the tabletop. She waited, willing to let the woman take her own time in deciding how to handle this apparition from Jesse’s past, and the curtain that covered the door into the back rooms was swept back abruptly.

“Problems?” a familiar voice asked, and the woman turned toward her with ill-concealed relief.

“This woman wants to talk to Jesse—”

“Trouble?” Annie Elhibri sounded less than enthusiastic in her recognition, and Trouble allowed herself a slight, unpleasant smile.

“Good to see you again, Annie.”

“Jesus.”

“Not yet,” Trouble murmured, and Elhibri rolled her eyes.

“What the hell are you doing here? We heard you’d left the shadows.”

“Someone’s taking my name in vain,” Trouble said again. “I’m—not best pleased.”

“Right,” Elhibri said. “I guess you better talk to Jesse.”

She held the curtain aside, and Trouble ducked under the faded fabric. The inner rooms had changed even less than the outer, the walls still painted with bold sweeps of color and stylized suns-and-moons from the last psychedelic revival. In one side room, a couple of crackers sprawled on mattresses laid out beside a strip of datanodes, cords snaking across the floorboards from their dollie-slots to disappear into the nodes. In the next room, a man and a woman leaned close over a viewlens, the woman pointing out features in its circle. Trouble looked, but couldn’t see what lay in the lens’s magnifying field. The surgery was empty, not usual in the old days, not on a Thursday night when most people had just gotten paid on their real jobs, and she glanced sharply at Elhibri.

“Where’s Carlie?”

Elhibri looked back at her, thin eyebrows rising. “Dead. Didn’t you hear? He died last winter.”

“AIDS?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.” Trouble closed her mouth over anything else she would have said, any apology for not having known. Carlie Held had installed her first dollie-slots and BOSRAM, had implanted her brainworm and rigged most of the later upgrades and improvements to the mixed system. It was hard to believe he could be dead—and someone might have told me, out of all the old gang. But she had walked away, not they.

“We got a new girl doing installations,” Elhibri went on, “name of Karakhan. Carlie trained her—it was his idea to have her take over.”

Trouble nodded, swallowing her grief and the regret that she hadn’t known sooner, and Elhibri stopped in front of the final door.

“Wait here,” she said, and pushed through the beaded curtain before Trouble could say anything. There was a murmur of voices, and Elhibri reappeared, holding the curtain aside. “Jesse says come on in.”

“Thanks,” Trouble said, and stepped under the draped beads.

Nothing much had changed here, either, except for Jesse himself. He still sat behind the massive desklike shape of a salvaged miniframe, extra processing towers sprouting from its corners like buttresses, but his hair was grey, and the lines of his face had deepened. The eyes, however, were the same, brown and deceptively warm, and so was his expression, smiling and closed all at once.

“So the prodigal returns,” he said, with the same heavy joviality that he had always used when he wanted to buy time. It was a familiar pose, and Trouble took a savage pleasure in the old routines.

“Not exactly,” she said. “I just need to pick up a few items for my toolkit. You’re still the best, Jesse, or so they say.”

Jesse lifted an eyebrow. “Still, Trouble?”

“It’s been a while.”

“So it has,” Jesse agreed. “What is it precisely that you’re looking for?”

“Just a couple of routines,” Trouble answered. “I need a set of icepicks and some tracers. And I want to buy a muzzle for a watchdog.”

“You do realize,” Jesse said, “that all of this is illegal now?”

Trouble smiled. “And I want an upgrade for my worm.”

Jesse sighed. “All right, I can get you the icepicks, no problem, deliver as soon as you pay and I download. Tracers, hell, take your pick, I’ve got a pretty good selection. Now, for the muzzle—what kind of a watchdog is it, anyway?”

“Treasury,” Trouble answered, and was pleased when Jesse winced.

“You don’t ask for much, do you? Come back into my life, without even so much as a hello, darling, and tell me you want sixteen varieties of naughtyware, including a new chip for the worm. What the hell are you up to—or, no, don’t tell me. Icepicks, tracers, muzzles, implants—Christ, you don’t want much from me.”

Trouble waited until the spate of talk had run out, smiled again. “Hello, darling. It’s good to see you again.”

There was a little silence, and then, reluctantly, Jesse smiled back at her. It was a real smile, acknowledging her attitude and skill, and it transformed the blank roundness of his face. “I didn’t think it could be you making all that trouble. Just not your style.”

“It’s not,” Trouble said. “Which, of course, is why I’ve come shopping.”

Jesse nodded, touched controls hidden somewhere behind the bulk of the miniframe. “I think I can fit you up, except maybe for the implant. Karakhan’s good, but she’s not up to the worms yet. I’d have to get somebody in.”

“Who’s the best, now that Carlie’s dead?” Trouble asked.

“Woman in the city,” Jesse answered. “Her name’s Huu, H-U-U—Dr. Huu, get it?”

“Got it,” Trouble said, and wished she hadn’t.

“She’s part of Butch van Liesvelt’s crowd, if you still talk to any of them,” Jesse went on. “I could get you an introduction, but you’d be better off going through the family.”

“Yeah, you’re still a straight boy,” Trouble said. “I’ll talk to Butch. What about the rest of the stuff?”

“I can get it for you,” Jesse answered. “At a price, of course.”

“Jesse,” Trouble said, and let her voice go deep and teasing.

“I mean it, Trouble. This stuff doesn’t come cheap anymore, and you want some pretty specialized routines.”

“I don’t have time to waste,” Trouble said. “I’ll give you three thousand for the lot.”

“Three thousand?” Jesse’s voice scaled up with mock-disbelief. “Three thousand for icepicks, tracers—my best tracers, which is what I know you’ll want—and a muzzle?”

“That’s right.” Trouble waited, hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans, knowing that all she really needed to do was wait.

“I’m sorry,” Jesse said, and shook his head for emphasis. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it. I’ve got a business to maintain, expenses, employees to pay—we’ve got a pension plan and health care now, in case you didn’t know.”

“Both of which are mandated by the government,” Trouble said. “Three thousand, Jesse. I told you, I don’t have time to waste.”

There was a little silence, Jesse shaking his head, and then, still shaking his head, he spread his hands in surrender. “All right, three thousand. But you’ll have to take straight-off-the-net routines. I can’t afford to do any custom work at that price.”

“I can make my own modifications,” Trouble said demurely.

“All right,” Jesse said. “Let me start pulling things.”

“Thanks,” Trouble said, and Jesse waved vaguely toward a chair that stood in the corner of the room. It was as much of an invitation as she was going to get, and Trouble dragged it over to the miniframe. Jesse leaned close over his multiscreen, hands busy on keyboard and shadowscreen, her presence already all but forgotten. He would be checking his inventory, Trouble knew, the legal and illegal storage spaces he had scattered in the house and across the nets, along the virtual chain that made up his network presence. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see the flare of lights as Jesse leapfrogged from node to node, muddying his trail.

It took nearly an hour for him to locate the programs he wanted. He surfaced long enough to announce that fact, but it took another twenty minutes to extricate himself from the nets without leaving traces. Trouble waited patiently enough—someone less skilled could easily have taken three times as long, without producing what she needed—but when the data drives began to whir she pushed herself to her feet and went to watch them spin down.

“I hope you like what I found you, after all that,” Jesse said, rather sourly, and Trouble looked over her shoulder to see him unplugging himself from the last system block.

“I’ll let you know when I see them.”

Jesse rolled his eyes heavenward. “There’s gratitude for you.”

“Can I run off your system?” Trouble asked. The green light came on, signaling copy-complete, and she triggered the release.

“Oh, go ahead. Why not?” Jesse waved toward a trio of nodes, and Trouble slipped her board from her bag and set it on the ledge, opening it just enough to give her access to her machines. She carried several versions of analysand in working memory, and ran the new programs through the most comprehensive of the group, barely watching the lines of code as they flickered past on the screen. An image formed behind her eyes, drifting hazily in unreal space, coupled with a cascade of sensation as the brainworm kicked in, translating the numbers into her personal codes. She flipped from the icepicks, elegant, lean programs, cold and hard as steel, to the baroque complexity of the tracers, and smiled in spite of herself, feeling a familiar touch, a routine of her own buried in the secondary structure. The program lolled in front of her, willing and eager and clearly skilled; fleetingly, she felt the sensation of glossy fur, and nodded to herself, accepting that the program was in good shape.

“Good bones,” she said aloud, and Jesse grunted.

“Good genes,” he answered. “You remember Max Helling? That’s about a third-generation variant of his old Toby.”

Trouble nodded. She remembered Helling, all right, from the old days, a bony, hawk-faced man who specialized in tracers and virus killing, though Aledort—a cracker, as well as an ecoteur—had kept him away from the circle as much as possible. “Whatever happened to him, anyway?”

“Went legit,” Jesse answered. “Or so I heard. I haven’t seen his work much, outside the marketplace.”

And that was a pretty good indication that he was indeed legitimate: only the crackers could afford to give away their programs for nothing. “Who wrote the variant?” Trouble asked, and Jesse shrugged again.

“Signs itself TG—which stands for Toujours Gai, or so I hear. The work’s reliable. TG doesn’t do much, and what there is tends to build on other people’s templates, rework flawed stuff, but what’s out there is choice. Word is, if you need something redesigned, TG’s the one to do it.”

“Nice to know,” Trouble said, and touched keys to begin shutting down the system. “This is good stuff, Jess, thanks.”

“Always a pleasure doing business,” Jesse answered, without conviction. “Three thousand, you said? Plus five hundred for my commission.”

“Three thousand,” Trouble answered. “Nice try.”

“Three thousand.”

Trouble nodded, reached into her bag, came up with the folder of mixed cash. She found what she wanted and handed it to Jesse. He counted it, stacking it gravely into three piles, multicolor citiscrip foils, the dull silver of the bearer cards, the final, smaller grey-green wad of oldmoney. “All there,” he said at last, and swept the piles together, stuffed it all somewhere out of sight. “Anything else I can do for you?” His tone suggested that he hoped there wasn’t.

“Two things,” Trouble answered, and grinned at the suddenly wary expression on the man’s face. “Nothing complicated—not even anything illegal.”

“Right,” Jesse said, without conviction, and sank back into his chair.

“First, I saw out there somebody had a trike for sale. Is it still available?”

Jesse nodded warily. “Yeah.”

“Do you know anything about it?”

“No more than anybody,” Jesse said, and Trouble sighed theatrically. She was, she realized, enjoying herself.

“It’s your fucking store, Jesse, you know every piece of string that goes through here, never mind the chips and the hardware. Don’t give me that.”

“It’s pretty much as advertised,” Jesse said, stung. “Good condition, probably needs a tune-up, kid’s selling because he’s out of college and can’t afford the freight to get it home to wherever it is he comes from, Sao Paulo or someplace like that, and he doesn’t want to drive it.”

Trouble nodded slowly. The machine—an OstEuro Star-rider, the notice had said—wasn’t particularly fancy, wouldn’t win races or carry extra armament, would probably get you killed if you tried outrunning police vans and flyers, but it was a good steady platform for the long haul, would carry a decent cargo. “I’m interested in it, Jesse. Will you broker for me?”

“At fifteen percent, sure,” Jesse answered.

“Used to be ten.”

“Inflation,” Jesse said.

Trouble considered, running the numbers in her head, but she already knew she could afford it, even with Jesse’s commission. “All right. But I won’t go above the asking price, no matter what he throws in.”

Jesse started to leer, then thought better of it. Trouble said it for him, “No, not even his own hot body. Not my type.”

“Agreed. I’ll need a deposit—earnest money.”

“I’ll give you three hundred now,” Trouble said, “and another two hundred over the commission if you can make the deal before I leave.”

Jesse nodded, and typed something into his desktop. A chime sounded faintly. Trouble reached into her pocket, pulled out a second folder of bearer cards. She found one that rated two hundred and fifty, then paged through a half-empty book of foils until she came up with the remaining fifty, and passed them together across the desktop.

“I’m trying to contact him now,” Jesse said, and made the money vanish into a pocket without looking up from his screens. “You said there was more?”

“Second thing,” Trouble said. “I need to go to Seahaven, Jesse. Can I walk out through your nodes?”

There was a little silence, Jesse busying himself with the desktop. “Seahaven’s changed some,” he said at last.

When he didn’t say anything more, Trouble lifted an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“It’s changed.” Jesse grimaced, looked annoyed with himself for having betrayed anything like uncertainty. “The Mayor—he’s gotten a little more autocratic these days, and the interface is a lot slicker, a lot more IC(E) in it, nasty IC(E). There was an incident last year that caused a lot of talk. The Mayor turned in somebody who was working out of Seahaven—he said the guy was cracking without good sense, screwing around where he couldn’t possibly make a profit, but a lot of people thought it was personal.”

“I heard some of that,” Trouble said. There had been a rumor last year that someone, not a cracker, had been shopped to the cops for screwing around with someone else’s pillow-friend. If that was from Seahaven—well, it had to have been a nasty quarrel, and wide-ranging, for its echoes to have reached her in the bright lights.

“So a lot of people are off Seahaven these days,” Jesse went on, “or at least they’re watching their step.”

Trouble shrugged, only partly out of bravado. Whatever truth was behind the rumors, Seahaven was still the only place left that you could do certain kinds of business, the only place that had successfully defended itself against the various agencies whose job it had become to police the nets. “I need to get a message out,” she said, and Jesse sighed.

“Then you want to go to Seahaven,” he agreed. “Try through Eleven’s Moon. You’re welcome to use a node, any room you want. But—be careful, Trouble.”

“Thanks,” Trouble said. “Is there someplace I can be private? Not just for me,” she added, seeing Jesse’s mouth curl into a grin, “but to keep you people out of it.”

Jesse sobered instantly. “Yeah.” He touched more controls, and Trouble heard a chime sound in some distant part of the building. “You can have the little room upstairs.”

That brought back memories, all right—she had worked there before, done some of her best work in that little, blue-walled space, both when she was starting out and then later, when she and Cerise had needed to do a job on the fly—but she said nothing.

“Ah,” Jesse said, and looked down at his screens. “I found the kid.”

“Offer him two-thirds,” Trouble said.

“Don’t you trust me?” Jesse asked, rhetorically, and his fingers danced over the keyboard. There was a little pause, and then he smiled. “Done deal. That’s another fifteen hundred, Trouble.”

“Rounded up?” Trouble asked, but reached for her money.

“Rounded down. I’m wounded.”

Trouble slid a short stack of bearer cards across the table, added a booklet of citiscrip. “Where is the trike?”

“Out back,” Jesse answered. “You can have it whenever you want it—” He broke off as the curtain slid back and Elhibri appeared in the doorway.

“Annie. Trouble’s going to be working upstairs.”

Elhibri nodded, and Trouble followed the other woman out of the room and up the narrow back stairway to the blue-painted room. It was empty except for the node, its box mounted in the center of the floor like an inside-out drain, and a patched foam-core armchair.

“You want coffee?” Elhibri said, grudgingly, and Trouble nodded.

“Yeah, I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll bring you a pot,” Elhibri answered, and disappeared, closing the door behind her. Left to herself, Trouble began setting up her system, main box, data drives, the specialized add-ons that interpreted the net, then plugged the cord into her dollie-slot, careful to keep the power low for now. She loaded the new programs, ran the installation routines, and sat back to run a quick diagnostic scan. Elhibri reappeared halfway through, a small, two-cup thermos and a mug on a tray, and Trouble thanked her abstractedly, barely aware of her presence or her departure. The scan showed green, a multibranched tree of indicators; more than that, she could feel the system in tune, a gentle harmony, and she shut down the scan.

The gateway icon returned to the center of the screen, a multibranched, ever-changing shape that seemed always on the verge of falling into a regular polygon but could never quite be defined. Trouble evoked the control program, touched the virtual levers, bringing the brainworm fully online, and heard the seashell rush, the traffic rumble of the net. The realworld hazed and faded, overwritten by the images transmitted directly to her brain.

She rides the fast datastream toward the BBS and the delta, slides away from it as the data slows around her, using her own separate momentum to carry her a little further into the swirling light, the bright icons of the advertisers and the punters and the users blending into a single shifting layer like the flow of a visible wind. She passes familiar stations, nodes and virtual spaces that are shops and meeting grounds and informal brokers of one thing or another, but no one seems to notice. No one sends her more than the usual glittering chaff, and she smiles at her conceit that made her expect more. It is probably just as well, this virtual anonymity, or discretion, but she doesn’t have to like it. She finds a mail drop, a red-and-blue glittering box, and, after only the slightest hesitation, steps within. Inside is the illusion of a post office, and the illusion of privacy; she invokes a routine that makes the latter real, and quickly shapes her message. BUTCH—I NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTACT DR HUU, AND A PLACE TO STAY. MEET ME AT MICKEY’S WILD GOOSE AT—she glances sideways, checking realtime, and makes the calculation—5 A.M. TOMORROW. THANKS. She adds the mailcode and dispatches it, through a tried-and-true cutout node. Smoke flares briefly, a stink and a flash of heat across her face, and she knows the system has erased the local copy. She smiles, and dismisses the program that gave her the moment’s protection from prying eyes.

She moves on through the shifting pattern of the virtual streets, spirals eddying within a greater spiral, following their shape rather than the outward image, and finds herself at last in front of a symbol she recognizes, an icon man-tall, X and I barring a shape like a full moon. She lifts her hand, knocks, and, a fraction late, feels wood beneath her knuckle. A heartbeat later, the icon fades a little, becomes pliable to the touch. She drifts through it, and feels the local interface seize her, drawing shadowy shapes around her. The walls of a store tower to either side, dark shelves crammed with dark and unimaginable objects that slink away from view when you try to see them clearly; a shapeless figure, a demon carved of light so white that she can’t see any detail, sits behind a high counter, waiting.

You rang? it says, deep voice stolen from an actor famous for horror films, and Trouble smiles to herself. She gestures, overriding the local system, and calls into being her old icon, harlequin dancing, the one everyone remembers.

*I’m on the road for Seahaven* she says, and ignores the faint intake of breath that betrays the human hand behind the demon.

There is a little pause. She feels the faint pulse of a probe, pressure, a tickle, against her skin, and then the stronger surge of her own kit repelling its interest, so that she appears to the other as an icon without a source, without the faint silver cord that ties most icons to their point of origin and makes the skies above the BBS a cat’s-cradle of glittering lines. The demon shape nods and gestures, creating a doorway out of nothing.

Enter, it says, in its most sepulchral voice, and Trouble touches hand to forehead in mock salute. The door opens at her approach, and she steps through into Seahaven.

It is Venice, today, or perhaps Amsterdam—Trouble has been to neither—all tall, narrow houses lining a canal that reflects trees made of light. She smiles, acknowledging its genuine beauty, and walks on into the image, ignoring the door that closes and vanishes behind her. Light glitters from the black water at her left hand; more lights glow in the windows of the houses to her right. Overhead, grey on black, clouds flow too fast across a starless night. She doesn’t recognize these buildings, but some things never change in Seahaven, and she starts walking, following the slow curve of the canal, until, just where she’d expected it, she finds a bridge. She crosses that, still walking alone, her footsteps ringing on the stone, striking sparks, no sign of other visitors, turns left, and emerges abruptly into a crowded plaza. At its far end looms a terraced pyramid like an Aztec temple, winged lions and eagles poised in combat on each corner: always the same symbol, always the same place, here at the heart of Seahaven: the Mayor’s palace. She strides through the crowd as though they don’t exist—and most of them are pale, compared to her, unwired—ignoring the occasional surprised murmur, just her name, Trouble, like distant thunder, and walks up the steps until she stands under the arch of the Mayor’s palace.

Mr. Mayor She is playing to the crowd as well as to the presence that made the city, and enjoys it, enjoys their leashed interest, the pretense of indifference that deceives no one. There is a pause, and she wonders if the Mayor is going to make her wait, punish her for her presumption, and she resolves to rip a hole in the wall before she lets him do that to her. But then the arch lights, slowly, and a ghostly shape takes shape within it, wraith-thin, wraith-pale even without the black drapery, crowned in black and the pale blue-silver of stars.

So the voice says, too soft to be heard beyond the portico, and an instant later she feels the air congeal as the Mayor seals the space behind them, surrounding them with a cool sphere of opal light. It is you. I heard you were dead.

Hoped, maybe, Trouble thinks—they were not enemies, but were never friends, she was wary of Seahaven, respectful but not adulatory, and the Mayor has always preferred something close to worship She says, *It’s me. *

And what does Trouble want here? the Mayor asks *I’m not at all sure we want trouble. * He isn’t wired, or his icon would have smiled, still, his tone points up the double meaning, childish though it may be.

I have business. Trouble says, *and as a courtesy, I thought I’d give you notice .*

Fair warning? the Mayor murmurs

*If you like. Someone’s been using my name, causing me problems—Treasury’s down on me, from the old days, and I’m not happy. Maybe this new Trouble thinks I’m dead, thinks the name’s free for use, maybe it’s just stupid, I don’t know. But I want my name back. No one uses my name for the kind of shit this new Trouble’s been pulling. * She stops, pulling back from the anger, continues more calmly. *This is fair warning, and I want to make sure this punk sees it. I’m back, I’m the only Trouble there is, and I don’t take kindly to imposters. *

There is another silence, the Mayor’s icon looking down at her with the same faint, unchanging, superior smile she remembers with annoyance, and then he says, Why come here?

He wants his tribute, and she gives it, grudging *Because Seahaven’s still the center of the business—always has been, probably always will be. Because I know everyone who’s anyone will come through here, in time. This—new Trouble—will get my message if I leave it here.*

The icon bends its head in regal thanks, complex display for someone not on the wire. Showoff, Trouble thinks, says nothing. The Mayor says, *I’ll post it myself, red-line warning, if you’d like*.

Trouble lifts her head, surprised—it’s not like the Mayor to offer anything, much less something actively useful, and least of all to her—and the icon gestures stiffly with its working hand.

*The new Trouble, as you call it, has been attracting too much attention. I’ve had to shut down for a couple of days myself—I’m only just up again. It’s time it was warned to behave. *

*I’d appreciate it.* Trouble says

“Then give me a name-sign. *

Trouble reaches into her toolkit for the seal she hasn’t used in three years, wakes the program and waits while it churns a tiny image out onto the net It is her icon, the dancing harlequin, imbedded in the image are more fragments of code that by their presence identify it as hers alone and by their absence betray any attempt to tamper. She hangs it in the air in front of her. The Mayor waves his hand, and it shrinks, he makes a gesture like putting it into his pocket, and the shimmering image vanishes.

*I’ll post that message* he says, and Trouble answers, Thank you.

The opal sphere dissolves. She steps back through the last wisps of it—they cling to her for an instant, cold and damp as fog, then curl away—and sees the others watching, openly now, as she walks back across the square. She doesn’t recognize many of the icons— it’s been three years since she’s walked the shadows, and three years is long enough for most of her peers to have vanished, the hands behind the icons retired, imprisoned, or dead—but they know hers, and they make way for her, no one quite daring to question. She walks back out of the crowd, out of the plaza, feeling the old joy singing in her, the old delight at her mastery, and turns left across another illusory canal. A few of the icons follow, slipping discreetly after her, she grins to herself, readying a program of her own—just let them try to follow me home—and gestures, looking for the nearest outbound node. It has always been easier to leave Seahaven than to enter it, a door appears almost at once, and she opens it, steps back out into the hubbub of the BBS. Two icons follow, with an attempt at stealth. She laughs and makes no attempt to conceal it, sets her program free, and in the same instant cuts her connection, letting the prepared retrieval snatch her home.

Chapter Five

TROUBLE STRAIGHTENED SLOWLY, shrugging her shoulders against the inevitable stiffness. One foot had gone to sleep, despite her precautions, she made a face, working her ankle until the pins-and-needles faded to a distant buzz. Then she unplugged herself from the system and began breaking down the machines. The euphoria was fading rapidly, curdling to melancholy, an inevitable reaction. The coffee in the thermos was still warm, and she drank it in gulps, more for the liquid and the caffeine than for the taste. It was late, but she still had time and to spare to make her rendezvous with van Liesvelt. If he gets the message, a voice whispered in her brain, but she pushed the thought aside. You could rely on Butch—she could rely on Butch; that had been demonstrated a dozen times in the past, and the fact that he’d come up to the co-op to warn her only proved that nothing important had changed. But of course it had: all the important things had changed. She wasn’t with Cerise anymore, wasn’t even legal anymore, despite her best efforts, and Carlie was dead and David was in jail and the survivors, the old gang, all van Liesvelt’s and her friends, Cerise and Helling and Aledort and Arabesque and Dewildah, scattered God knows where— She shook the memories away, angry with herself now for indulging her mood, the down side of her net triumph. Better to stay angry, she thought, and slung the bag of components up onto her shoulder, leaving the thermos and the cup for someone else to deal with.

As promised, Jesse had the trike ready for her in the back lot, complete with temporary registration and jane-doe ID chip, and a secondhand helmet that carried a heads-up display and a datacord. She loaded her bag into the cargo box slung between the rear wheels and pulled on the helmet, plugging herself in to the machine’s limited control system. Lights flashed green, and she felt the faint buzz of pleasure that confirmed the diagnostic’s report. For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should try to make the drive tonight, but she was still tense and angry from her conversation with the committee—and besides, she told herself, you made a deal with Butch. Might as well use the adrenaline. She kicked the trike to life, and swung it out of the crowded lot before she could change her mind. It was a heavy machine, stiff in the steering, but reasonably powerful, and she knew she had the hang of it by the time she’d worked her way through the tangled streets to the entrance to the main flyway. Lights flashed in the helmet display, warning her that the flyways were under grid control and urging her to tie herself in as well. She hesitated for an instant—jane-does, temporary registration, were just that, temporary, and could set off alarms; on the other hand, the surest way to get stopped by a traffic patrol was to stay off the grid—and touched the yes/no pad under her thumb. The machine steadied under her as she picked up speed, and the lines of the grid gleamed in her helmet screen. She leaned forward, letting the noise and the wind carry away the worst of her anger.

She reached the outskirts of the city a little after three, as the class-two bars were closing and the after-hours clubs were opening for business, rode the flyway in over the darkened suburbs, spiraling down the ramp at the Park exit as the gridlines vanished from her helmet. McElwee Park was as apparently deserted as always, but she gave it a careful berth anyway, knowing that the shadows hid a small army of dealers. The Park District was less busy than usual, only a few smaller trucks stopped outside an occasional shop, tired-looking crews slinging boxes down through the sidewalk hatches in the orange glare of the loading lights, but she drove cautiously anyway, paralleling the arch of the flyway. Most of the old landmarks were still there, though there was just the raw scar of a foundation where the Teleos Theater had been, and at last she turned onto the side street that ran into the shadow of the flyway. The club was there, just where it had always been, tucked into the shadow of one of the massive supporting pillars; she wondered, not for the first time, how Mickey had managed to bribe or beat the gangs away from his door. The business lamp was lit, casting a sickly yellow light onto the pavement. The street to either side was crowded with vehicles, inexpensive runabouts and cycles sharing space with bigger, meaner machines that glittered with security: Mickey’s Wild Goose was, unmistakably, still in business.

Trouble found a parking place between the streetlamps and set the unfamiliar security fields, then slung her bags over her shoulder and started toward the door. She was more tired than she had realized; the anger had worn off somewhere on the long drive, and the exhilaration of the drive itself was fading. She could feel a dull stiffness in her shoulders and down her back from the trike’s steering, and knew she would be sore in the morning. She sighed, laying her hand over the tiny call-plate, and waited, feeling the night chill creep over her, until the panel that covered the bulletproof peephole slid open.

“Private club.” The voice came from a speaker below the peephole. The panel started to slide closed again, but Trouble caught it, exerting all her strength to keep it open.

“I’m a member.”

“Yeah?” The voice was frankly incredulous. “Let’s see some ID.”

Trouble bit back a curse and reached into her pocket, came up with a silver disk engraved with her dancing harlequin. She had thought, before, that it had been stupid to keep it. She smiled, bitterly amused by her own assumptions, and held it in front of the peephole. There was a little silence, and then the voice spoke.

“Well, fuck me like a dog. I guess you better come in.”

The door opened, and a wave of smoke and sound came with it, so that she blinked and nearly stumbled on the high threshold. The main room was unexpectedly crowded, two dozen men, maybe more, gathered around the little tables, and all of the data towers along the walls were occupied: a very busy night, she thought, or else Mickey was running a promotion. Van Liesvelt was not among them. She made her way toward the massive bar at the center of the room, very aware that she was the only woman present, and the only person not wearing the cracker’s elaborate regalia, chains and leather or silk and suit. She could see herself in the dull gold mirror behind the bar: a tall woman, broad shoulders made even wider by the army surplus trenchcoat she wore over jeans and jacket, her silhouette made even more bulky by the bags slung over her shoulder. Her face looked pale in the uncertain light, pale and grim. She had forgotten, until just now, how much she had always disliked Mickey’s Wild Goose.

The senior bartender ignored her as she leaned against the bar, but the junior, a stocky woman with a worn, rawboned face, came sliding down to meet her. Trouble controlled her annoyance at the slight, but heard her voice rough and irritable anyway. “Get me a cup of coffee, please. And I’ll want to use a phone.”

The woman nodded, but made no move to reach for the coffee urn. “There’s a five-dollar minimum now,” she said, and glanced up, meeting Trouble’s eyes in brief, woman-to-woman apology. “Excluding services.”

Trouble looked at her for a long moment, but knew it would do no good to confront her. She could hear the silence behind her, the conversations not quite picked up where they had been left, the whispered speculation. “Is the kitchen still open?” She didn’t dare drink, not as tired as she was, but food could only help, might keep her awake until van Liesvelt arrived.

“Yeah,” the bartender said, and touched a hidden pressure point. A menu lit beneath the bar’s surface, displaying a dozen different items.

“Fine.” Trouble scanned it quickly: junk food, the kind of thing the shadows seemed to thrive on. “Give me a double burger with everything, fries, and the coffee. And I’ll still want to use the phone.”

The bartender nodded, her fingers moving on a hidden touchpad, and Trouble heard a snort of laughter at her shoulder. She turned, not fast, and saw a forty-something man in a decent business suit standing beside her. He had braced himself against the bar, and she could smell the gin on him.

“You’re not watching your weight, I guess.”

Trouble lifted an eyebrow at him, and his face changed, as though he’d realized that she might be someone, after all. “Not that you need to, of course.”

“And not that it’s any of your business,” Trouble said, quite gently, and laid her ID disk on the counter for the bartender, icon-drawing upwards. The man’s eyes flicked from it to her and back again, widening slightly in recognition.

“No. Sorry.” He looked down the bar. “Hey, Millie, what do I have to do to get served?”

“Sorry,” the bartender said, wearily. “That’s another gin-and-tonic, and a scotch, up?”

“Right.”

Trouble lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing. The bartender worked her machines, produced two more short glasses, and set them down in front of the stranger. He took them with the care of a man who’s already had too many, and turned away without leaving a tip. The bartender’s mouth tightened, but she looked away. “You wanted coffee?”

Trouble nodded. “Please.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Black.”

The bartender nodded, and headed back down the bar toward the coffee machine. Trouble leaned against the heavy display top, watched the menu flashing under her elbows. This was what she hated most about the on-line world, the shadows as much as the bright lights of the legal nets: too many men assumed that the nets were exclusively their province, and were startled and angry to find out that it wasn’t. They were the same people who feared the brainworm, feared the intensity of its sensations, data translated not as image and words alone, but as the full range of feeling, the entire response of the body, and, rather than ever admit fear, they walked with raised hackles, looking for a fight. It had gotten worse since Evans-Tindale: the new laws had broken the fragile alliances that had held the nets together, rewarding one set of netwalkers over the rest. Behind her, she could hear the conversations slowly starting up again; she could also hear the edge to them, ready to tumble into mockery or hostility. She loosened the belt of her coat, let it hang loose over her jacket and the open-necked shirt, and reached for the mug that the bartender slid toward her.

“You said you wanted a phone?” the bartender asked.

“Yeah,” Trouble said, and took a cautious sip of the coffee. “Can you run it here?”

“Sure.” The bartender reached under the counter, came up with a familiar black-and-silver comset, set it in front of the other woman. Trouble took it, smiling her thanks, and reached around the side for the datacord. This was precaution more than necessity, and she was not surprised to feel a faint pressure, the trace of another presence haunting her line. She blinked once, saw familiar icons overlaid on her vision, let herself fall into the fast time of the net—

—and sees lines running silver across her eyes, weaving through the bar, sees a stranger on the line, an unknown icon, generic in shape—there to listen? to spy? simply to harass? She carries nothing more than utilities in her bioware, runs the rest from hardware—and cuts that thought as useless. The phone system is there, and the local machine that drives it, and that’s weapon enough, in her hands. She reaches for the phone buttons, fingers impossibly slow, touches four keys to override the local system—syscop’s privilege—and then she’s in the heart of the system. She finds a dormant tracer, long unused, and launches it. It strikes gold at once, and as the numbers come up in front of her eyes, she repeats them, ties herself to the stranger’s phone and sets her fingers on two buttons at once, letting the shrill noise echo painfully through her ears, into the nerves where the brainworm can amplify it to the point where even the unwired can hear, and feel—

—and blinked away the silver lines, the blinding icons, to see one of the men at the corner table, a young man, spike-haired in a leather jacket draped with chains, jerk the cord out of his head, wincing at the feedback.

“Wired, by God,” someone said, not quite softly enough.

Trouble smiled, very slightly, and nodded toward the spike-haired man. She could feel herself falling into the old stance, all lazy confidence, one thumb hooked into the pocket of her jeans, the open coat swinging from her shoulders like a cape, and disciplined herself to show no further sign of the delight that bubbled up in her. It had been a long time since she’d had to play that game.

She turned back to the bar, certain now that no one else would try to bother her, and keyed in van Liesvelt’s codes. There was a little pause, the signal pulsing in her head, and then the machine clicked on.

“Hi, this is Butch. I’m not home right now—”

She cut it off, knowing—hoping, anyway—that van Liesvelt was on his way, and pulled the cord free of the dollie-slot, letting the hidden spring tug it back into its housing. She was suddenly very tired, but didn’t dare relax, not yet, not in front of this crowd. She took another swallow of the hot coffee, and the bartender slid a plate onto the counter in front of her. Trouble nodded, and looked around for the chit to thumbprint.

The bartender waved a hand, the gesture screened from the rest of the bar. “No charge,” she said softly.

“Thanks,” Trouble said, startled, but the other woman was already looking away.

“You done with the phone?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Trouble said, and the bartender carried it away. Trouble shrugged to herself, and turned her attention to the food.

She realized that she was hungry as soon as she took the first bite of the hamburger. The meat was rare, the way she’d always liked it, and seasoned with coarse black pepper; the tomato tasted of summer. She finished it quickly, along with the first cup of coffee. The bartender, silent, still not meeting her eyes, refilled the mug, and Trouble started on the fries. The club seemed to be getting used to her presence: the conversations resumed, and once or twice she heard ordinary laughter, though the men who came to the bar for drinks gave her a wide berth. She ignored them, and they ignored her; still, she knew a few of them were staring when they thought she wasn’t looking, not entirely hostile, now, but curious and, maybe, just a little bit afraid. The unregenerate shadow-walker in her rejoiced at the thought.

She was finishing the last french fry when the door opened again, and she looked up to see van Liesvelt standing silhouetted against the dawn light. She lifted a hand in greeting, and pulled herself up from against the bar. Van Liesvelt came to meet her, holding out his arms in greeting. It was done for effect, she knew, to annoy the watching netwalkers, who held back from physical display off the nets, fastidious to the point of prudishness. She returned the embrace with interest, was enveloped in his familiar smell.

“So you’re back in the game. You look,” van Liesvelt said, “like a gunslinger.”

Trouble laughed softly, not entirely displeased by the image. “I’m back,” she agreed, loudly enough for the entire bar to hear, and reached for the bag she had left at her feet. “I appreciate the favor.”

“No problem at all,” van Liesvelt said, and held the door.

Trouble walked past him into the morning light, the rising sun throwing shadows the length of a city block. The air smelled of oil and dew. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the rumble of an early train; closer at hand, a truck engine whirred and finally caught, settled into a steady rhythm.

“Sorry about the short notice,” she said, “but I’m in a bit of a bind.”

“It’s all right,” van Liesvelt said. “I’m sorry I’m late.” He looked around, blinking a little in the strong light. “What are you driving?”

“I bought a trike.”

“Bring it,” van Liesvelt said. “I bought a place with parking last year.”

“That’s new.” Trouble started toward the tricycle, reaching into her pocket for the security remote, and van Liesvelt grinned.

“The fines were getting expensive.” He stopped beside a rust-mottled runabout, tugged the door open. “You can follow me. There’s not enough traffic this time of day to complicate things.”

Trouble nodded, and deactivated the trike’s security field. She slung her bag back into the carrier, thumbed on the engine, and then sat, motor idling, while van Liesvelt coaxed the runabout into reluctant motion. She followed him along the uncrowded main street, back past the park, and then along the edge of the district until they came to the black-glass walls of the Interbank complex, and finally turned down a side street she didn’t recognize. At its far end, they turned again, into a cul-de-sac that was still entirely in shadow. Van Liesvelt pulled his runabout to a stop outside a tired-looking wooden door, popped the driver’s door, and climbed out. Trouble pulled the hike in behind him, lifted off her helmet.

“What’s this?”

“My place.” Van Liesvelt snapped open an ancient padlock, and hauled at the door. “Give me a hand, will you?”

Trouble came to join him, put her own weight against the door. It resisted for a moment longer, then slid open, the unoiled hinges shrieking. She winced, and said, “You could fix that, you know. You could even get a motor, and a remote hookup.”

“You can jimmy electronics a lot easier than you can fiddle this,” van Liesvelt said, and stepped back into the runabout.

That was true enough, Trouble thought, and went back to the trike, waiting for him to roll the runabout into the darkness. The machine vanished, and its engine cut out; a moment later, a light came on inside. Trouble sighed, and pushed the trike into the garage, edging as close to the walls as she could. There was just enough room. “So, what have you been up to, that you need that kind of security?”

“Stuff,” van Liesvelt answered, and grinned. He was standing at another door, this one opening onto a stairway.

“Sorry,” Trouble said, and lifted her bags out of the trike’s carrier.

“I’ll tell you when you’ve had some sleep,” van Liesvelt said, and led the way up the stairs.

She was never fully sure, afterwards, just how she got into the apartment, woke at sunset to the soft sound of voices in the outer room. As she had expected, her shoulders were tight from the trike’s steering, and she stretched cautiously, working the muscles until they loosened. She sat up carefully, tilted her head to listen, until she was sure she didn’t recognize the voice of whoever it was with van Liesvelt—a woman’s voice, certainly, but that was all. She swung herself out of the narrow bed, scanning the room—landlord-white walls, the bed, her bags set on top of the only table, bare sof-tile underfoot, typical cheap city flat—and padded naked across the floor to collect her clothes. She wondered briefly if van Liesvelt had undressed her, or if she’d managed it herself, then shook the thought away and began pulling on clothing.

Dressed in jeans and loose pullover, she pulled the door open, found herself looking out into a hallway drenched in red light. The setting sun was framed in the window at the end of the hall, sinking into the jagged skyline; the voices were louder, van Liesvelt and the woman, and she started down the hall toward them, her bare feet silent on the tiles. She paused just outside the only open door, and heard van Liesvelt laugh, low and genuinely amused. That sounded safe enough, and she stepped into the doorway. Van Liesvelt was standing in the center of the crowded, brightly lit room, a small glass in one hand, a frosted bottle in the other, and a fat woman sat on the couch in front of him, looking up. The television flared soundlessly behind her, displaying a weather report. She saw the movement behind van Liesvelt, and leaned sideways, frowning. Trouble lifted both hands, displayed them empty, and van Liesvelt turned to face her.

“Good morning to you, Trouble.”

“Good morning. Or whatever.” Trouble came on into the room, aware of the fat woman’s eyes on her, and was careful to keep her hands very much in sight. There was something about the stranger’s stance, the controlled stillness of her heavy body, that made Trouble feel the need for caution.

“You want a drink?” van Liesvelt went on, and Trouble nodded. “Vodka all right?”

“I expect it’ll have to be,” Trouble answered, and van Liesvelt’s grin widened.

“It’s what I’ve got.”

“It’s fine.” Trouble looked sideways, saw the stranger still watching her, looked back at van Liesvelt. “It’d be nice if you’d make introductions, Butch.”

“Oh, yes.” Van Liesvelt filled another of the small glasses and handed it across. Trouble took it, feeling the cold of the vodka even through the heavy glass. “This is a good friend of mine from the nets, the lady you were looking for—she’s since your time, Trouble, but she’s very, very good. Michellina Huu.”

The fat woman nodded, gravely.

Van Liesvelt went on, “And this is Trouble—not the one you’re thinking of.”

Huu smiled at that, almond eyes narrowing. “I’m glad. No one needs that hassle.”

“That’s what she’s here about,” van Liesvelt said. “Am I right, Trouble?”

Trouble seated herself on the edge of the chair nearest the door, said, “That’s right. I don’t take kindly to someone usurping my name.”

Huu said, “Who does?” She was very well dressed, Trouble saw, a heavy silk suit that almost had to be bespoke, and a few pieces of what looked like carved jade. Her sleek black hair was cut in an angled cap that flattered her broad face, and Trouble felt distinctly plain by comparison.

“I told her you’d be wanting to do some business,” van Liesvelt said, and Trouble nodded.

“Yeah, thanks. I’ve been working in the bright lights for a few years,” she said, talking through him now to Huu. “It’s about time I had an upgrade.”

“Well,” Huu said. She looked from Trouble to van Liesvelt and back again, and her impassivity broke into a sudden good-natured grin. “You’re a closemouthed bastard, Butch. You might give me a little more warning. Exactly what are you looking for, Trouble?”

“I told you to bring your kit,” van Liesvelt said. “And a full set of spares.”

“That might have been for you,” Huu said. “God knows, you’re always blowing something.”

Trouble said, “I need a new processor, for a worm. I’ve been hearing about the Prior highspeed set, but I’m open to suggestions.”

“It’s a good set,” van Liesvelt said.

“Expensive,” Huu said.

“How expensive?” Trouble looked from one to the other, and van Liesvelt shrugged.

“It runs about thirty-five hundred, installed,” Huu said.

“I heard you were family,” Trouble said.

“That is the family price,” Huu answered.

Trouble lifted an eyebrow.

“That includes the board, and the plate, plus the linkage,” Huu said. “And everything’s new, straight-out-of-the-factory steriles, so you don’t have to worry about who had them last. And the BOSRAM update, of course. Plus installation. And I don’t take plastic.”

Trouble sighed, calculating. She could afford it, but it wouldn’t leave her much for other expenses. “I’ve got thirteen-fifty in citiscrip and twelve hundred in bearer cards. Another four-fifty in U.S. dollars.”

Huu looked at van Liesvelt, who nodded slowly. “I’ll cover the rest.”

“That’s not necessary, Butch,” Trouble began, and van Liesvelt waved away her protest.

“Yes, it is.”

Huu said, “Pay me three thousand up front, you can owe me the rest.”

Trouble nodded. “When can we do this?”

Huu spread her hands. “Butch told me to bring my kit. Now, if you’d like.”

“Worm and all?” Trouble asked sharply. The linkages were complex; even though the original installation had done the hardest work, running the molecular wires directly into the brain, fitting the new processor to the input channels needed painstaking care.

“I was trained in Europe,” Huu said, and grinned. “Amsterdam.”

Van Liesvelt nodded.

Trouble nodded back, reassured. Amsterdam was the great center for legal training. “You’ve got a Prior with you?”

“Everyone wants them,” Huu answered. “Of course I carry them.”

“All right.” Trouble looked at van Liesvelt, recognizing her own reluctance and impatient with it, but unable quite to control it. “Can I get something to eat?”

“Not until I’m finished,” Huu interrupted.

“I’ll put something in the nuke,” van Liesvelt said. “You want to use the bathroom, Doc?”

Huu nodded, but stayed in her place. Cash in advance, Trouble thought, and pushed herself up out of her chair. “I’ll get the money.”

The hall was dark now, lights gleaming in the buildings beyond the window. She made her way back into the little bedroom, switched on the blinding overhead light, and rummaged in her bags until she’d collected the money. It was probably the best thing for her, doing the installation more or less spur of the moment, and she knew she should be grateful to van Liesvelt for setting it up like this. She hated the installation process, which he knew, hated it more each time she had to go through it, and it was better not to have to spend a night or two sweating over it. It wasn’t so much the risk of a screw-up. That was there, all right, less likely than an accident on the flyway but worse to contemplate, brain miswired, or damaged, leaving her a drooling idiot. It was a risk she’d learned to live with, faced every time she confronted serious IC(E) or even, on some level, every time she stepped out onto the net itself. Power surges happened, rare but real, overriding the inbuilt safeties of the implanted systems, and there was nothing you could do about it, except stay off the net altogether. No, it was the installation itself she hated, and tuning her reflexes to the new system, body given over to pure sensation, inflicted without passion, without feeling, by a stranger’s hands. Maybe that was why the serious netwalkers, the original inhabitants of the nets, hated the brainworm: not so much because it gave a different value, a new meaning, to the skills of the body, but because it meant taking that risk, over and above the risk of the worm itself. Maybe that was why it was almost always the underclasses, the women, the people of color, the gay people, the ones who were already stigmatized as being vulnerable, available, trapped by the body, who took the risk of the wire. And you are trying to put this off, she told herself firmly. Get on with it

She went back into the main room, laid the money on the low table in front of Huu. The citiscrip foils glittered in the light, bright against the bearer cards and the crumpled wad of oldmoney. Huu counted it quickly, and slipped the pile into her jacket pocket.

“All right,” she said, and stood, reaching for the bulky case that stood at the end of the couch. “Shall we get started?”

“Fine,” Trouble said, and didn’t know if she was glad that Huu was a woman. It had been easier with Carlie, they’d been old friends, and there was no possibility—well, no likelihood—of sex between them.

“It’s down the hall,” van Liesvelt said. “Last door on the right. I should have anything you need, Doc.”

“Thanks,” Huu said, and motioned to Trouble. “After you.”

The bathroom was bigger than Trouble had expected, with room enough between the shower and the sink and toilet for a solid-looking table. Huu set her bag on its white-painted surface, popped the latches, and began lifting out equipment. “Have a seat,” she said, and plugged in a portable sterilizer, then turned to shrug out of her jacket, hanging it neatly on the back of the door. The clean-field lit with a whine as the sterilizer warmed up, and a bright cone of purple-tinged light formed in the center of the table. Huu set a handful of instruments under it, and drew on rubber gloves, white and dead-looking against her dark skin. “And then let me have a look at what you’ve got in there now. What’s your status?”

“Negative.” Trouble lowered the toilet lid, sat down warily.

“Tilt your head.”

Trouble did as she was told, looking down and to her left to expose the dollie-slot. Rubber fingers ruffled the short hair, probed gently, and then Huu took her hand away, smoothing the other woman’s hair as absently as she’d disarranged it.

“That’s a nice chip you’ve got in there now. Do you want to keep it, or trade it in? I’ll credit you for the balance of what you owe, for a trade.”

There was no point in keeping the extra chip: it wouldn’t run in tandem with the Prior system. “Make it seven-fifty, and you’ve got a deal.”

“Six.”

“Seven?”

Huu hesitated, then nodded. “Seven.” She turned back to the table, and Trouble heard the whine of an electric razor. “Tilt your head again.”

Trouble looked down again, and a moment later the razor’s tip tingled against her neck, hair dropping away from around the dollie-slot and down the back of her neck. Huu brushed away the last stray pieces and picked up an injector the size of her thumb.

“This is going to sting,” she said, and put the tip against Trouble’s skin.

Trouble hissed at the touch—it was more than a sting, it was a definite jab, a deep stab of pain right through to the bone—but didn’t pull away. The pain was followed by an immense cold, and then a numbness, spreading out from the dollie-slot. It crept up her scalp, tingling at the top of her head, wrapped around her neck, and took in her whole right ear.

“Jesus,” she said, and couldn’t feel her jaw moving in the right-hand socket. “That was quick.”

“That’s how it’s supposed to be,” Huu said. She set an instrument tray—also hazed with purplish light—on the back of the toilet, and turned Trouble’s head into position. “Keep still.”

Trouble froze, and felt the distant pressure of Huu’s arm, her left forearm, against the back of her scalp. Something tickled near the dollie-slot, and, it seemed a long time later, she felt something damp on her back just below the knob of her spine. Metal clashed once behind her head, then again in the instrument tray. She slanted her eyes sideways without moving her head—she couldn’t have moved her head if she’d wanted to; Huu’s weight held her steady as a rock— and saw something like a piece of raw meat, tossed beside the bloodied scalpel. A moment later, Huu’s hand came into sight, laid the thick wafer of the old chip into the tray, and Trouble realized that she had been looking at a piece of her own scalp. There was another brief moment of pressure, and Huu grunted softly.

“All in. Now I have to attach it. You know the drill, it’s going to hurt, but it’ll be over in a second.”

Trouble winced—she did indeed know the drill, had done this twice before without it getting any easier—and braced her hands against her knees, digging her nails into the denim as though the extra pain would help.

“Now,” Huu said, and Trouble felt a fat snap like a giant static charge at the back of her head. She jerked in spite of herself, and the pain ebbed to a dull, distant ache. It throbbed slightly, in tune to her heartbeat.

“In and on,” Huu said. She took her hand away, and Trouble lifted her head cautiously. The anesthetic was starting to fade; her neck hurt, but not too badly, yet. Huu held out a towel that smelled strongly of antiseptic. Trouble took it, dabbed gently at her head and neck, and brought it away spotted with blood.

“Calibration next,” Huu said, her voice perfectly neutral, and slipped the head of a datacord into the sterilizer’s field. Trouble looked back over her shoulder, and saw the instrument bag gaping open to reveal the square black shape of an output box, all its telltales lit and the display screen glowing pale grey. “Ready?”

Not really, Trouble thought, but nodded. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Right. Look away, please,” Huu said.

Trouble took a deep breath, and swung around so that she was sitting with her back to Huu. She leaned forward, bracing her forearms against her thighs, and felt Huu’s fingers cold on her neck

“I’m beginning now,” Huu said, and Trouble took another deep breath—

and sprawls out into darkness, like but not the net, blind and deaf and dumb and insensate The worm in her brain lies dead, and she is nowhere, nothing—and then light sparks, brilliant red and gold explosions across her eyes, surrounding her. The feeling comes next, hot wind and then more, sheer heat, slamming against her body with the hot smell of gunpowder, fireworks, and sound follows, a great inchoate roar that fills her ears to bursting and then reverberates, soundless, in her bones. She would cry out, turn away, but the explosions are already fading to a drab landscape, light grey plane under dark grey sky.

Stand up, a voice says, and she does as she’s told, the flat grey ground spongy under her feet. She hears a snatch of song as she moves, harsh and incongruous—*got nipples on my titties big as the end of my thumb, got something ’tween my legs make a dead man come*—but the memory-music fades as Huu tunes the system tighter Walk.

And Trouble walks, steps out across the endless and unchanging plane. A wind touches her, gentle at first, caressing her naked body, then harder, stinging slaps against back and thigh and breast. She tastes sand, smells heat and rubber. She keeps walking, and walks out of the wind, the plane tilting underfoot so that she is now going uphill. She lengthens her stride, enjoying the challenge, and the ground gets steeper, so that she’s breathing hard and finally leans forward into the slope, pulling herself up with hands as well. Her fingers sink for an instant into the grey mass, a sensation like dust or fog between them, and she feels the shock of panic, as though she will fall through a barrier that is solid to her feet and legs. Then the slope steadies, first to soft mud and then to the same smooth rubber that she feels under her feet, and she keeps climbing, until at last she tops the hill and stands upright again.

The plane steadies around her, takes on color and three dimensions. Grass grows underfoot, cool and tickling, and she laughs in spite of herself, feels warmth on one side of her body, and turns to blink up into blue sky and the blinding disk of the sun. She looks down again, and sees a table in the distance, an ordinary picnic table, the kind you see in children’s books. There is a box on it, black, one side open into empty darkness. The pleasure fades, seeing it, and she is tempted, as always, to turn and walk away, ignore that last step, but she knows better. She takes another deep breath, walks toward the table, the sun warm along her right side, the grass cool and dew-damp underfoot, smelling of spring and acrid growth

This is the last step, the thing that all the rest leads to, the final tuning of body and brain wire. She looks down at the box—there is always the option to stop now, the cybermeds always give you that choice, but it’s a choice to live half-aware, half-blind, clumsy and grotesque on the net. She’s been on the wire too long to live like that, and she reaches for the box before she can think too long. She slips her hand into the opening, and the world vanishes in a sheer rush of sensation, pure feeling filling every nerve in her body. She throws back her head, and the feeling turns to pain, pins-and-needles swelling to racking cramp to pure fire, an agony swirling through her until she’s nothing but pain. And then it peaks and vanishes, leaving her gasping for an instant before the pleasure starts, rising from the tickle of desire to soaked arousal to racking, orgasmic delight.

She leaned forward further, pressing her elbows into her thighs, not yet ready to look up and meet Huu’s eyes. The blood-spotted towel lay between her feet, where she’d dropped it, and she fixed her eyes on it as though it was something important. Her crotch was hot and wet, body lagging behind her brain, and she smelled of sex. She could hear the sucking sound of Huu peeling off the rubber gloves, and wanted for a painful instant to feel the other woman’s hands between her legs, gloved fingers pressing into her clit— She took a deep breath, shook that thought away.

“You’re likely to be sore tomorrow,” Huu went on, heedless, or, more likely, Trouble thought, diplomatically blind and deaf, “and you should run at quarter power for a couple of days, let yourself get used to the new interface before you try to go at it full on—but you know the drill, you shouldn’t have to worry about it The calibration’s good—”

Trouble snorted and stretched to pick up the towel. It ought to have been good, the way she was feeling.

“—perfect to four decimal places, so you shouldn’t feel too much difference from your old system, except the speed. Pickup should be a little more precise, too, so you might want to spend some time playing with your precision tools before you actually use them. Swab the incision with alcohol a couple times a day for the next month—I’ll give you a dummy plug, if you don’t have one.”

“Thanks,” Trouble said, and accepted the flesh-colored plug, larger and broader-headed than the usual jacks, that Huu held out to her.

“It’s a good system,” Huu went on, and dumped the contents of the instrument tray into van Liesvelt’s sink. “I think you’ll like the way it’ll run now.”

“Thanks,” Trouble said again, and pushed herself to her feet. Her jeans were damp between her legs, flesh swollen and unsatisfied. Over Huu’s shoulder, she could see the water in the basin tinted faintly pink, the piece of scalp sticking to the side just below the waterline. “I think I want a drink.”

She had several. Van Liesvelt had defrosted several entrees, his usual prodigal generosity, and she had some of each as well, as though the food and the alcohol would help ground her. Huu ate with them, devouring noodles and broth with confident pleasure, and she and van Liesvelt spent most of the time debating the relative merits of Stinger and Monaco bioware. Trouble let the familiar talk wash over her, letting herself adjust to the aftershocks, the occasional frisson of unrelated sensation as the swollen scalp around the new implant triggered a reaction. It would take a day or two to settle down fully, and she would use that time to rest, recuperate, stay off the nets and see what could be done in the real world to locate this new Trouble. Once the incision was mostly healed, she would go back on the nets, and start looking in earnest.

She slept better than she’d expected—Huu had left her with pills and strict instructions—but woke with the kind of dull headache that left a person fit for nothing but the lowest grade of television. She had at least half expected it, treated it with more of the pills and a day spent sprawled on van Liesvelt’s couch, staring at shopping channels without really seeing either the products or the perky, high-breasted women pitching them. Van Liesvelt ignored her, busy with his machines, gone first into local space composing some small utility, and then out in the net itself, but she was too sore, too tired and aching, even to feel envious. They had dinner delivered, from the Indian restaurant on the edge of the District, and Trouble relaxed into the familiar taste of curries and thick, greasy breads.

By the second day she felt better, so much so that she borrowed van Liesvelt’s setup and took her first steps back onto the net. She tuned the brainworm as low as she could, barely a ghost of the usual sensations, but even so, her skin crawled and tingled, itchy with extraneous sensations bleeding in from the healing incision, and she logged off almost at once, swearing to herself.

“Want a cup of tea?” That was van Liesvelt, standing in the doorway of the little room. It was barely more than a closet, windowless and stuffy, warmed by the banked hardware, and Trouble felt suddenly trapped, claustrophobic.

“Yeah, thanks,” she said, and, mercifully, van Liesvelt moved his bulk out of the doorway.

“I was thinking,” he said. “If this new Trouble is in the business—not just farting around, I mean—then there aren’t that many people left who’d have anything to do with it.”

“That’s true,” Trouble said, and followed him down the long hall to the kitchen.

The kitchen itself was unexpectedly bright, overhead lights and electric kettle plugged into the main work island, bright-orange cords stranded through the room’s central volume. Outside the double window, the sky was brassy-white, a few more substantial clouds floating above the general haze. They overlooked the alley and the attached garages, low sheds jutting out into the rutted street. The doors were strongly reinforced against thieves, and most were brightly painted, garish against the dull stone. The kettle whistled, and van Liesvelt poured the tea, set the mugs solemnly on the long table.

“So,” Trouble said. “Who’d you have in mind?”

Van Liesvelt shrugged. “The usual suspects. Dieter, the Snowman—”

“I heard he was out of the game,” Trouble interjected. “In fact, I heard he turned state’s evidence about a year back.”

“You should know better than to believe everything the syscops tell you,” van Liesvelt said, grinning. “He got caught, all right, but beat the rap. They put the story out on him out of spite.”

Trouble nodded. “What about Devil-boy?”

“Gone legit.”

“That does narrow it down.”

Van Liesvelt nodded, fished the teabag out of his mug. “Yeah. It’s pretty much Dieter, and the Snowman, and Jimmy Star and Fate.”

Trouble pulled out her own teabag and took a wary sip of the spicy, bright red liquid. “I don’t know about Dieter, I heard he mostly deals viruses.”

“Oh, no,” van Liesvelt said, his voice suddenly accentless, mimicking Dieter’s thin tones, “not viruses. Never viruses. Just code fragments.”

“My ass,” Trouble said.

“Not to my taste,” van Liesvelt said automatically, and Trouble lifted her middle finger at him. “So, Fate or the Snowman, or maybe Jimmy Star. I think you’re right about Dieter. Do you want me to see what I can find out?”

Trouble made a face, but had to admit the logic of the suggestion. She wasn’t ready yet for that kind of netwalking, and she didn’t have time to wait until she was better, not with Treasury on her heels. “Yeah. Anything at all would be useful.”

“Do you want to listen in?”

Trouble hesitated, tempted, but shook her head. Even just lurking, using the brainworm on its lowest setting to follow van Liesvelt’s activity, would be as bad as walking the net on her own. “Let me know if you find anything,” she said, and van Liesvelt nodded.

“I’ll do that.” He picked up his mug, and wandered away again, only apparently aimless. Trouble watched him go, bit back her irrational jealousy. She hated the attunement period, hated not being able to walk the nets as freely as she normally could. You survived three years off the wire, she told herself firmly. You can put up with this. She picked up her mug, and went back into the living room to investigate van Liesvelt’s collection of tapes.

He had a lot of anime, typical of a netwalker, and one in particular that was familiar, an old favorite of Cerise’s: americanime, surreal, queer, and violent. She put it in the player, settled herself on the couch to watch, wondering if she would like it as well without Cerise’s commentary. It was old-style, the drawing mannered, elongated, improbable figures against sweeping, computer-managed backgrounds, but the conventions were easy enough to relearn, and she watched, caught up in spite of herself by the stylized plot and people. The latter were real enough, netwalkers she had known and admired years before drawn larger than life, made heroes, and she remembered, suddenly, Cerise talking about the filmmaker. She—it had been a woman, Trouble remembered—had been a netwalker back in the glory days, when the nets had just opened out, before she’d retreated to anime. The brainworm had been very new then, the risks outrageous; safer to draw and dream, Cerise had said.

“Got it,” van Liesvelt said from the doorway, and Trouble looked up sharply, automatically muting the player. “It’s Fate.”

Trouble touched a second button, shutting down the entire system, and stood up. “Is it, now?”

Van Liesvelt nodded. “And he’s taking some heat for it— gone to ground, they say, but I know where his bolthole is.”

“What kind of heat?” Trouble asked.

“Treasury’s been interested in him, subpoenaed all the files on that board he runs. Plus local cops set watchdogs on the system—I heard from Kid Fear that Fate’s spent most of the last few days taking potshots at them.”

“Kid Fear?” Trouble lifted an eyebrow at the name, and van Liesvelt shrugged one shoulder.

“I know. It’s either fifteen or pretending to be.”

“Is it reliable?”

“So far.” Van Liesvelt shrugged again. “You think we should have a few words with Fate?”

Trouble smiled slowly. “I think so. In person.” Fate—his real name was Kenney, Lafayette Kenney, or something like that—was notorious for hating to work offline, so much so that it was rumored that he had once turned down a million in citiscrip because it would have involved too many face-to-face meetings with the client. The story was probably an exaggeration, but it summed up Fate’s attitude pretty well. “You sure you know where he is?”

“Trust me,” van Liesvelt said, not even bothering to sound offended, and Trouble waved away her words.

“Sorry.” If van Liesvelt, who made it his business to know the offline world as well as the nets, said he knew, he knew. “When’s a good time?”

Van Liesvelt looked at the carpet, checking the time. “Now’s as good as any. He’ll be there.”

“Good enough,” Trouble said. “Shall we take the trike?”

Van Liesvelt shook his head. “My runabout. I don’t want you driving off the grid.”

Trouble grinned—she had a reputation from the old days, not always deserved, as a reckless driver—but went back into the spare room for her jacket. When she emerged, van Liesvelt was checking the battery of a stunstick. She gave him a questioning look—most netwalkers, even from the shadows, didn’t risk running afoul of the strict weapons laws—and he shrugged.

“I don’t think we’re heading into trouble, but Fate’s got some heavy friends. I’d rather be careful.”

Trouble nodded, accepting the necessity, and followed van Liesvelt down the stairs into the darkness of the garage.

Traffic was heavy, as always, but van Liesvelt was patient, easing the runabout through the tangle of cargo haulers and passenger vehicles at a steady pace, until at last they emerged from the District and he could turn onto one of the major cross-town arteries. Here the traffic was just as heavy, but the lines of runabouts and bikes moved more quickly, and they made better time toward the neighborhood where van Liesvelt said Fate had his bolthole. It wasn’t a bad area, mostly row houses and the occasional corner storefront complex—groceries, liquor, drugs-and-sundries, a couple of cheap-electronics shacks—and Trouble relaxed against the battered seat cushions. Van Liesvelt found a parking place along the street, beneath a streetlamp, and Trouble climbed out while he fiddled with his security system. The air was cool, the few stunted trees in their iron cages in front of the houses already turning yellow. Trouble fed a couple of foils into the meter, and turned to van Liesvelt.

“So, where is it?”

“About two houses down,” he answered, and tilted his head toward a house at the middle of the block, where an adolescent—at this distance, it was hard to tell the gender through the hunched body and the spiked hair—sat on the low steps, staring at nothing.

“That’s his security?” Trouble murmured.

“Probably,” van Liesvelt said. “Kids are cheap.”

Trouble nodded, and followed him toward the house. The boy—at least, she was almost certain it was a boy—looked up as they started up the stairs, but said nothing. The main door was unlocked, but gave only onto a grim-looking lobby, all grey tile and a cluttered letterboard beside the barred door. It looked impressive enough at first glance, but Trouble couldn’t repress a grin. The first thing she’d learned when she’d moved to the city was how to jimmy those boards…

“You want to do the honors, or shall I?” van Liesvelt asked.

“Oh, go ahead,” Trouble answered, and van Liesvelt produced a credit-card-sized databoard from one pocket. Its reverse was scarred with the lines where new chips had been inserted into the minimal systems. He flourished it once, and inserted it into the keyreader. There was a brief pause, and Trouble, leaning past his shoulder, could just see lights flickering in the tiny display square as the machine searched for a matching code. To her surprise, the lights stayed orange for a long moment, and then a voice crackled from the speaker above the lock.

“Christ, van Liesvelt, is that you?”

Fate, van Liesvelt mouthed, and Trouble nodded. Fate had always been good.

“That’s right,” van Liesvelt said aloud, quite cheerfully, and there was a sigh from the speaker.

“Then I suppose you’d better come up before you break something.” The mechanism clicked loudly, and Trouble pushed the door open.

“Only your codes, Fate,” van Liesvelt said, and they went up the stairs.

Fate lived on the third floor, at the back, where the fire escape led directly into a side street. Trouble saw the ladder plunging past the landing window, and was reminded of the last apartment she had shared with Cerise. They had wanted the near-impossible, a decent kitchen, quiet bedroom, at least two entrances or a good way out, and as few cockroaches as possible… She shook the memory away as van Liesvelt knocked on a rust-painted door, bracing herself for the meeting with Fate.

The door opened at once, but it was a stranger, blond and stocky in a cheap suit, who looked out at them. He grunted when he saw van Liesvelt, but scowled at Trouble. “What do you want?”

Van Liesvelt said, “Hey—”

Trouble smiled, said, in a voice soft enough to brook no argument, “We’re here to talk to Fate.”

The blond’s scowl deepened, and a second voice said, “Leave it, Phil. Let them in.”

Grudgingly, the blond stepped back, opening the door into a surprisingly pleasant apartment. The walls were painted dull cream to match the carpet, and there were a few pieces of good art scattered here and there. Fate was standing in the middle of the room, hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, long hair caught back in an untidy ponytail. The scar on his face, running from cheek to chin, looked more prominent than before.

“Do you want me to stay?” Phil asked, and Fate shook his head, grimacing impatiently.

“No, I know them.”

“Do I search them?” Phil went on, and leered in Trouble’s direction. “I’d enjoy searching the double-dollie.”

“Go ahead,” Trouble said, with the smile she’d cultivated for just that insult, “and I’ll be in your records by morning. How’s your credit, straight boy?”

Phil flushed, and Fate said, “Don’t mess with the net, Phil.” His voice was flat, without emotion. “I told you, this was my business. I’ll deal with it. You can go.”

“Mr. Sinovsky’s going to hear about it,” Phil said, but turned toward the door.

“Fine,” Fate said, and waited. There was a little pause, and then Phil shouldered past, deliberately jostling van Liesvelt. The door slammed behind him.

“Didn’t know you were working for the mob these days, Fate,” van Liesvelt said.

Fate looked at Trouble. “I didn’t know you were back on line.”

Trouble nodded. “I hear you’ve been dealing—fencing for someone using my name. I’m not happy, Fate.”

“Your happiness,” Fate began, the southern accent suddenly strong again, “—ain’t my responsibility.”

“I’m making it your business,” Trouble said, and took a step closer to Fate. “Treasury made it mine.”

Fate stepped backward, maintaining the distance between them. “Treasury’s been down on me, too. That’s what goddamn Phil was here about.”

“Oh,” van Liesvelt murmured, “Sinovsky’s not going to be pleased about that.”

Fate darted an angry glance at him, but said nothing.

Trouble said, “I’m looking for this new Trouble, Fate. I want him, her, or it very badly, because I lost a damn good job because of it, and it’s going to pay. Now, you’re its fence, you can tell me where it works out of.”

Fate shook his head again. “I can’t do that, Trouble. I’m running a business now—”

“I don’t give a shit about your business,” Trouble said. “I’m prepared to bring it down, and you know I can.”

There was a little silence, Fate still unmoving, keeping three meters between them, and van Liesvelt said thoughtfully, “Sinovsky can’t be pleased by all this attention, not when he’s trying to keep a low profile after those shootings.”

Fate glanced at him again, grey eyes wary. Trouble said, “He really won’t be happy if I have to take action.”

Fate looked back at her, took a deep breath. “Trouble— newTrouble—works out of Seahaven.”

“Where else?” van Liesvelt murmured

“That doesn’t tell me very much,” Trouble said. “Hardly worth my time.”

“The other Seahaven,” Fate said. “His realworld address is somewhere in Seahaven.”

Trouble nodded slowly. That made sense: the offline Seahaven, or at least the beachfront Parcade, was the best source on this coast for grey-market electronics. Where better to live, if you dealt in stolen codes—and besides, from everything she had heard, the new Trouble would probably appreciate the obvious irony of having the same address on-and offline. “Right, then,” she said. “I think I’ll pay him a visit. Thanks, Fate.”

“Don’t mention it,” Fate muttered, and van Liesvelt grinned.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Trouble smiled too, and turned toward the door, opening it for van Liesvelt. She was about to follow him into the hall when Fate called her name.

“NewTrouble’s on the wire. I thought you should know.”

Trouble turned back to face him, nodding slightly. “Thanks,” she said, and then, because that wasn’t enough, “I appreciate the warning.”

It was more than just a warning, and they both knew it; it was a declaration that Fate had chosen sides. If newTrouble was half as good as he seemed—and Trouble had no real doubt about it, from the rumors she’d heard and the work she’d seen—then any direct competition between the two of them would be decided by millisecond advantages. Knowing that he, newTrouble, was on the wire might give her just that faction of an edge, the difference that would mean beating him face to face.

Fate made an odd, unfinished gesture, barely more than half a shrug, hands still deep in his pockets, and Trouble remembered that he had never been on the wire. Gossip said he’d gone as far as Carlie’s once, actually left his flat and walked cross-town to the storefront clinic where Carlie had been working in those days, and turned around and left before Carlie could even ask what he wanted.

“He’s crazy,” Fate said, and managed a malicious smile. “Better get Cerise to watch your back—if she’s still around.”

“Fuck you,” Trouble said, and slammed the door behind her. Van Liesvelt gave her a wary look, and she shook her head, suddenly tired of the whole thing. “No, let it be. I got what I wanted.”

“All right,” van Liesvelt said, visibly doubtful, but Trouble ignored him, starting down the stairs toward the lobby. She had what she came for, newTrouble’s address, realworld and on-line, and that was enough. She’d check Seahaven again— virtual Seahaven, the one that mattered—and then… She smiled, slowly, without humor. Then she would head back north along the coast highway, to the other Seahaven, and see what this usurper had to say for himself.