This time the disorientation is worse, so that she can barely move at all, muscles throbbing with useless effort. Then, as she starts to pull back, to try again, her hand moves by chance as she wants it to go, straight ahead along the path traced by the walkway. She freezes in sudden understanding, her hand still outstretched toward the invisible IC(E). The silver ripples are puddled under her feet, solid silver that shimmers like cloth in a breeze. This time the mirror has inverted her perception as well as reversed it, or at least partly so; she must reach down to move ahead, as well as right to go left. But knowing isn’t the same as doing: she tries to take a step, and nearly falls, saves herself only by a graceless twist. There’s only one thing she can do, what she’s been doing all along, and she drops again to her knees, eyes closed, and gropes forward, running her hand across the surface of the walkway. It seems to rise slightly under her fingers, and she slides cautiously forward, not daring to open her eyes. She finds first one edge, and then the other, sweeping her hand back and forth like a blind woman’s cane, slides forward again on her knees. She reaches out, and her fingers shock painfully against hard IC(E), the pain of it driving up into her shoulder and down into her ribs.
She cries out, eyes flying open, and sees the world flung sideways around her, the walkway twisted like a Möbius strip, so that Cerise and the wall of their IC(E) hangs at an impossible angle. In the same instant an illusion of gravity tugs at her, so that she can feel herself on the verge of falling, a heartbeat, a second, a fraction of a second away from losing her grip on the walkway and spilling out into empty space. She squeezes her eyes shut, and the worst of the sensations vanishes. The pain in her arm returns, but the pins-and-needles feeling is already fading: just a warning, really, this time, just to let her know this IC(E) is diamond-hard.
She clings there, the red-black darkness behind her eyelids a perverse comfort, bracing herself to try again. She needs to see the Mayor’s IC(E) to breach it, needs to find a control point and destroy the illusion of invisibility, but to do that, she has to open her eyes. Tune the worm lower? she thinks, and discards the thought as quickly as it forms. She needs the full input, the full intensity and range of sensation, if she’s to beat the Mayor. She opens her eyes, swallowing nausea, makes herself ignore the tugging gravity, her palms flat on the walkway’s cool surface. She can still feel herself starting to fall, resists the temptation to go with that illusion, and flattens her whole body against the path, pressing herself, hips and thighs and breasts and shoulders, into the silver surface as though she would embrace it. She lays her cheek against the rippling light, imagines she feels the faint ebb and flow of it against her skin. The falling sensation recedes a little, and she shifts her head to study the invisible IC(E) and the illusion that protects it.
The shield is very well made, a seamless, recursive image, the walkway twisting back on itself; its surface stretches without flaw, without a glitch in the code to give her a handle. And even if she found one, she thinks, she couldn’t reach it, not lying flat like this, trapped by the illusion that surrounds her…. She suppresses the thought, shifts her head again. Gravity clutches harder with each fractional movement, threatening to pry her from her place. She tells herself it is unreal, an image, a sensation, transmitted by the brainworm; tells herself then that she is coated in glue, that she will stick to the walkway, that she cannot fall. Slowly, she reaches out again, sliding her hand along the cool and silver-rippling surface, gropes for the control points she has found before. She finds nothing, just the inchoate, general presence—not even warmth, just the tremor of movement—of the silver ripples that have gathered there under her body. She starts to reach for the IC(E), to try a blind assault, but stops herself, makes herself pause again and think. There is something about the way the light moves beneath her body, something familiar in the faint sensation….
And then she has it, the source of the memory and of the answer all in one: the light is an echo, incomplete and nearly insubstantial, of the bright control points she has seen outside the pyramid. Either it hides the control points in its diffuse light or it is in itself a control mechanism, fragile and ephemeral, hard to manipulate but as effective as any more permanent node. She lies very still, letting the sensations seep through her, the gentle pulse gather against her skin. No control points are hidden in the seashell flicker; the light itself, the cool delicate ripples of it, is the mechanism. She presses her hand flat, as though she would force it through the rigid surface, spreads her fingers and watches the ripples spread and then return, rebounding from the edge of the invisible IC(E). She shifts her hand again, wriggling her fingers, feels the ripples build, bouncing back from the IC(E), from the walkway’s edge, from the surface of her body. The feedback swells, a flush of heat now present in the walk beneath her hand, where the program has to manifest in order to maintain control of the illusion. She waits, letting the substance build, and feels an override cut in, emerging to banish the program before it can be manipulated. She closes her hand, feeling the pulse of the override strum through her body, and her fingers sink deep into the solid warmth of a temporary control point. She twists her hand, shuts off the override, and the program vanishes, leaving her abruptly chilled. But the control point stays warm in the palm of her hand, as though she holds a handful of embers.
And that’s all she needs. The Mayor set his reality to respond to these controls; she adjusts it, carefully, feels gravity vanish and then return, oriented now so that she can stand straight against it, feel its pull through the soles of her feet. She strips away the illusion covering the IC(E), and a wall like a tangle of thornbrush spun from glass blinks into existence in front of her. The light that streams from it is all but blinding, hiding detail. She blinks, eyes watering, looks away, and in that instant the control point evaporates in her hand. She braces herself for the return of the illusions she has banished, but the walkway stays beneath her, and the wall of IC(E) remains. She studies it, head cocked to one side, does her best to ignore time passing, the knowledge that there’s only Cerise watching her back, keeping back the active defenses. The pattern of the thorn wall shifts and shimmers, writhing as though alive, as though with heat, and then, quite suddenly, she sees it, sees the key. It is like Cerise’s work, just as Cerise said, the complexity of the system elaborated and reelaborated from a matrix Trouble remembers all too well. She smiles, tasting triumph, reaches into the glittering hedge; the spines stab her hand, and then skid painfully along her arm as she reaches deep into the tangled code, leaving dark trails like blood against her skin. She ignores them, ignores the pain shivering through her, finds the single branch that is the key to the pattern. She takes it in two fingers, delicately, presses down and away. The glass resists, impossibly, bends and stretches, and then, suddenly overloaded, snaps like a brittle twig. The wall of IC(E) vanishes as though it had never been.
She stands at the edge of a space so mundane that it must mirror reality, a room crowded with hardware, a room with a desk and a lamp and a single window that shows rooftops and the arc of the Parcade Ferris wheel. The Mayor stands in the center of that space, frozen in the heart of his machines, at one with his machines, clothed in sheets of chips and wrapped with flickers of wire, each hand splayed wide across control mechanisms impossibly magnified, so that with the flick of a finger he shifts electrons, changes, recreates his world. They stand facing each other for an instant, perhaps six heartbeats, Trouble smiling, knowing now she has him, the Mayor’s face unchanging, still the blank icon, but she can feel the same knowledge chilling him. And then he closes his hands, the magnified controls shattering, spinning away, and the illusion winks out, disappears, and the Mayor with it, dropping away from the net leaving nothingness behind, an empty hole, so that Trouble has to fight to stay where she was, not fall off the nets after him.
*You bastard,* she shouts after him, knowing it’s useless, *you cowardly son of a bitch—*
And she stops as abruptly as she’s begun, standing on the edge of nothing, an absence of virtuality, because he’s beaten her after all. By running like this he’s denied her her only chance to prove herself, because the Mayor’s friends will always say—the net itself may always say—that she never faced him directly, and that if she had, she would have lost. It won’t matter that he ran, that he was the one who chose not to meet her; it will always be her failure—and maybe it is my fault, she thinks, I should’ve known, should’ve stopped him—
She shoves that thought aside, furious with herself for allowing it—it is not her fault, not her choice or her cowardice, but the Mayor’s, and there will be plenty of people who’ll see it—and turns back, toward the space where Cerise still stands behind her guardian IC(E), the icon braced, stance utterly intent, absorbed in the delicate and deadly ballet of battling programs that Trouble can only just make out, distorted, through the glasslike wall.
Cerise turns her head, the icon’s head, as though she senses some change in the air behind her. *Trouble—?*
*He’s run out on me,* Trouble says, furious, and Cerise looks back at the programs struggling on the other side, struggling against, her wall of IC(E). The icebreakers are moving more slowly now, by rote programming rather than the Mayor’s hand; the watchdogs, too, are suddenly clumsy, awkward against the counterroutines’ attacks.
*Any data?* she asks, and Trouble shakes her head, staring into the hole. When the Mayor dropped off-line, he took his immediate volume with him; with it, she thinks, she is certain, went all the vital data. The air is empty, tasteless, around her.
*No,* she says, voice flat. *There’s no point in staying. Let’s go.*
Cerise grins and nods, closes her fists tight over the emergency control. Trouble copies her, and the world, the Mayor’s world, blinks out around them.
Trouble sat up abruptly, wincing from a stiff shoulder, reached angrily for the datacord and jerked it out of her dollie-slot. Cerise copied her, more slowly, her fingers clumsy and stiff. She freed herself from the machine, and then laid her hands flat against the edge of the table, studying them warily. As she had feared, the knuckles were swollen, the fingers puffy as though with heat. She grimaced, recognizing a familiar injury, and Trouble reached across to touch her shoulder.
“You OK?”
“Froze my fingers a little,” Cerise said, and Trouble winced again, this time in sympathy.
“You should see a doctor—”
“In this town?” Cerise managed a laugh. “I might as well post a sign on the net that I’ve been cracking.” She bent her fingers cautiously, made a face at the jarring pain. “Maybe Mabry can recommend someone.”
“We should find him,” Trouble said, grimly. “He must’ve missed newTrouble at the flat—”
The door slammed open as though the locks had never been set, bounced against the far wall. Mabry caught it one-handed, flung it closed again behind him, practically in the face of the frightened desk clerk. Trouble caught a brief glimpse of her pale, red-lipped face and the master key hanging in a nerveless hand before the door had shut, and Mabry was in the room.
“You’ve blown it,” he said. “I warned you, and the deal’s off. Cerise, I expected better of you—”
“Hold it,” Trouble began, her own temper rising, and Cerise said, “Wait a minute, Mabry. We didn’t warn the kid.”
“Then how the hell did you know he was warned?” Mabry glared at them impartially, one hand still knotted in a fist at his side.
“Because we ended up chasing him on the nets,” Cerise said, impatiently. “What happened?”
Mabry stared at her for a moment, then took a deep breath, visibly controlling his temper. “We lost the kid—he was coming up to the flat, and something spooked him. He got off the elevator a couple floors early, and then we think he went back down the fire stairs while we were still figuring out what happened. He must’ve jimmied the alarms. And if either of you had anything to do with it—”
“We didn’t,” Cerise said. “My word, Vess.”
Mabry was silent for another long moment, then, slowly, nodded. “For now.”
“We went to Seahaven,” Trouble said, and hoped he wouldn’t ask why. “The Mayor challenged me, and then the kid showed up—”
“He was running from you, Vess,” Cerise interjected. “I don’t know where he was, realworld, but it was after he’d got away from you.”
Mabry nodded again, as though that explained something. “Go on.”
“The Mayor bounced him right off the net,” Trouble said. “And then he jumped me. We went after the Mayor.”
“Why the hell didn’t you go for the kid?” Mabry muttered.
“I told you,” Trouble said, “the Mayor dumped him offline. Like he’d tripped the emergency cutout. We couldn’t follow him.”
“And we’ve lost Novross.” Mabry’s other hand tightened briefly to a fist, and then, with an effort, he made himself relax. “All right. I want everything you can tell me about the Mayor, about the boy, about this encounter.” He gave a singularly mirthless grin. “After all, you still haven’t given me newTrouble.”
“Don’t threaten me,” Trouble began, bit off anything else she would have said.
Cerise said, softly, “We kept our part of the bargain, Vess. You wouldn’t want to break yours.”
Mabry made a face, waved the words away. “All right, yes, sorry. But this is important. If we lose the Mayor now, if he gets a chance to run, start over somewhere else—”
“All right,” Trouble said. “All right.” She closed her eyes, calling up the memory of the Mayor’s virtuality, spaces within spaces, the western town and the Aztec temple that contained the walkway and its mirrors, that in turn contained the last small space, the volume that had vanished with the Mayor. She could almost see it now, the machines and the Mayor merged, and the dull room that contained them, table and lamp and the window that overlooked the Parcade—
“I can find him,” she said aloud, and felt a surge of glee. He hadn’t beaten her after all; he had betrayed himself instead, and she could prove it. Both Mabry and Cerise were looking at her, Mabry frankly skeptical, Cerise wary, and she grinned at both of them. “The last volume, the one at the very end of the path, Cerise—it was based on his realworld location, I’m sure of it. You wouldn’t construct something like that unless you were copying something real, it was too plain, too mundane for it not to be real.” She broke off, took a deep breath, controlling her excitement. “The point is, there was a window, with a view of the Parcade. If we can find the view, I can find the Mayor.”
There was another silence, and then Cerise moved, swinging back to the media center, swollen fingers clumsy on the controls. “There’s a tourist mock-up of the town, supposed to let you see what your rooms will be like, what the views will be, that sort of thing.” Her hand slipped, jarring her fingers, and she swore under her breath, scowling at the screen.
“Let me,” Mabry said, and Cerise stepped reluctantly aside. Mabry finished entering the codes, triggered a three-dimensional model of the town.
“What did you see?” Cerise asked, and gestured for Mabry to call up the inquiry screen.
“He was overlooking the Parcade,” Trouble said. “The western end, with the Ferris wheel. There were houses in the way, so you couldn’t see the street itself, just the Ferris wheel.”
“How many streets?” Cerise asked. Mabry seated himself at the controls, heavy face intent on the screen and the menu of questions.
Trouble frowned, trying to remember. “Three, maybe? I think there were three rows of roofs, anyway.”
“How high up were you?” Cerise asked.
“High,” Trouble answered. “At least two stories, maybe three or four—the nearest building was a little away, you’d be looking down on it.”
Cerise nodded, looked at Mabry. “Run it, see what it comes up with.”
Mabry did as he was told. The model vanished, to be replaced by a swirling paisley pattern.
“Come on,” Cerise murmured, staring at the screen. “Come on.”
Trouble leaned over Mabry’s other shoulder and willed the holding pattern to clear. After what seemed an interminable time, the paisley swirls vanished, and a message appeared: no exact match available. “Oh, shit,” Trouble said, and turned away.
“See if there’s a possible location,” Cerise said calmly to Mabry, and the big man touched keys, frowning slightly. The holding pattern reappeared, but only for a moment, then was replaced by a section of the city model—four, maybe five blocks of nondescript houses, on the far side of the Harbormouth bridge, where the solid land fell away into the Slough. A message appeared with it: similar views exist in this approximate area.
“Now, that’s more like it,” Cerise said, and Trouble turned back to the screen.
“That’s where I’d expect to find him,” she agreed.
Cerise nodded, studying the image. “A view of the Ferris wheel, you said, and a bunch of housetops.”
“Yeah.”
“What about there?” Mabry asked, and slid the cursor across the screen to circle a tall rectangle colored the pale green of a rooming house.
“Why not?” Cerise said.
Mabry touched keys, and images flickered across the screen as he moved the cursor from floor to floor of the rooming house. All were views from the windows that faced the Parcade; all showed housetops and the Ferris wheel above them in the distance. “Well?”
Trouble shook her head. “Definitely not there.” She studied the screen, trying to imagine what it would take to transform the images she had just seen to the one she remembered. “What about that one?”
Mabry touched keys again, calling up the views attached to the house she had selected. Trouble watched them through, but shook her head again. “It’s close, though. Try next door.”
Mabry worked his way down the street, selecting two more houses, shook his head as the images from the third popped onto the screen. “This of course assumes that he’ll stay put long enough for us to catch him. Even if we find the place, he’ll be long gone.”
Cerise looked at Trouble, who said nothing, her eyes fixed on the screen. Cerise said, carefully, “I’m not so sure about that, Mabry. There’s no real reason for him to run—he doesn’t know what, if anything, Trouble saw, and he doesn’t know we know Seahaven. He’s been invisible for a long time, and he’s got hardware there—it must be substantial, to run Seahaven. I think he’ll stay.”
“It would be stupid,” Mabry said, but he sounded slightly more optimistic than he had. “Where next?”
Trouble pointed, touching a house across the street from the one they had viewed before. “That one.”
Mabry selected it, ran the images, moving up from the ground floor. Trouble held her breath as the pointer reached the top two floors, relaxed with a sigh.
“That’s it.”
“You’re sure?” Mabry asked, but he was already calling up the address.
“Of course I’m sure,” Trouble answered. “That’s the view I saw, anyway.”
“That’s near where Blake used to live,” Cerise said, and shook the thought away as irrelevant.
Mabry shoved himself away from the media center, not bothering to shut down the program. “Your phone? I need to call—”
“We’re coming with you,” Trouble said, and pointed to the handset resting on the coffee table.
Mabry picked it up, began punching numbers. “Do you think that’s wise? I thought you had a reputation to uphold.”
Cerise grinned at that, reached across the keyboard to close down the system. “Oh, we have reputations, all right—”
“—and I fully intend to keep mine,” Trouble finished. “Nobody crosses me, Mabry. Nobody.”
“Suit yourself,” Mabry answered, and turned away to speak softly into the handset.
Cerise looked at Trouble, lowered her voice cautiously. “You sure you’re sure?”
Trouble nodded again, knowing the question she was being asked. After all this, Cerise was saying, after being dragged back into the shadows and finding out again that she had a taste for it, did she really want to throw herself irrevocably into the bright lights, turn herself into nothing more than a syscop? “I’m sure,” she said, and Mabry tossed the handset onto the couch.
“Let’s go,” he said, and swept out of the room without looking back.
Trouble followed, said over her shoulder, so softly Cerise wasn’t for a second sure she had heard correctly, “I want to be in at the kill. If I’ve gone over to the enemy, I want to do it right.”
Cerise hesitated, shook her head, uncertain of her feelings, or at best sure only of one thing, that she would see this through to the end. She followed both of them down the emergency stairs and out into the lobby.
Mabry had commandeered a car from the local cops, unmarked but with police equipment, sophisticated net monitors and local tie-ins, prominent on its control boards. There was a driver as well, a skinny, nondescript young man with pale brown hair and a recruit’s flashes below The Willows’ insignia on his shoulder. He looked momentarily as though he might protest, seeing the two women, but Mabry said, “You have the address?”
The young man swallowed whatever he had been going to say. “Yes, sir.”
“Then let’s go.” Mabry climbed into the front seat beside the driver, and Trouble and Cerise scrambled into the narrow passenger compartment. “You notified Treasury as well?”
The driver put the car into gear, edged forward out of the driveway in front of Eastman House. “Yes, sir. They’re on their way.”
“Good,” Mabry said, and leaned back against his seat. Trouble looked at Cerise, saw the other woman’s pale face intent on the road. Then Cerise looked at her, dark eyes wary, and they both heard the sound of sirens, distant now, but coming quickly closer.
“What the hell?” Trouble said, softly, and Mabry leaned forward to query one of the systems plugged into the main board.
“—hostage situation—” The voice blared from a speaker, and Mabry reached hastily for a datacord and plugged it in, cutting oft the voice.
“Who the hell can he be holding hostage?” Cerise asked. “Not Silk, surely.”
“Who’d care?” Trouble agreed, her eyes on Mabry.
The big man glanced back at her, his expression unreadable. “He’s tied into the city computers. Threatens to erase system software if he’s attacked. Can he do it?”
Trouble nodded slowly, remembering the sheer scale of virtual Seahaven, of the power, hardware and software, that the Mayor needed to maintain the illusion. Turn that power on a city system, and no IC(E) would be sufficient; at that scale, brute force alone would be enough to shatter the city’s coding, leave all the files, all the city systems, open and vulnerable.
“Does The Willows care?” Cerise asked, with a smile that did not touch her eyes.
Mabry’s eyes flicked toward her, and then away again. “The Willows is tied in to city services—drainage, the pump system, sewers, traffic control, all that. If Novross crashes those, The Willows doesn’t have sufficient backup power to keep things running.” He turned back to the control board, running one hand along a sensor strip. “Besides, the city systems contain the tax records.”
“Ah.” Cerise’s smile widened into open contempt.
The sirens were louder now as they crossed the Harbormouth bridge, and the local cops had set up a hasty road-block halfway down Ashworth Avenue. Other cops were fanning out from the roadblock, moving along the storefronts to shut down the businesses and force the citizens indoors. Out of harm’s way, or, more likely, just out of their way, Cerise thought. Mabry extended his credentials to the waiting cop, a man in full armor under his coveralls, with a stunstick at his belt and a pellet gun slung across his shoulder.
“Where’s Starling?”
The cop didn’t answer at once, but studied the folder with its double ID carefully, checking both identification and warrant before he returned it to its owner. “Down by the house,” he said. “He’s directing the operation.”
“Wonderful,” Trouble muttered.
Mabry said nothing, gestured to the driver. The young man pulled the car sharply around the end of the barricade, and started down the narrow street.
The cops had removed some of the parked cars from this end of the road, though they’d left others in place as makeshift barricades. Two fast-tanks were pulled into place across the street, one with its rear treads resting precariously on the soft ground that edged the Slough, the other blocking the roadway entirely. A trio of armored cops—wearing state badges rather than The Willows’ insignia—crouched in its shelter; a fourth man, equally armored, stepped out of its shadow and waved the car to the side of the road. The driver slowed obediently, and Mabry lowered his window to confer with the approaching officer.
Cerise laughed sharply. “You’d think the man was a fucking terrorist. Look at all this.”
Mabry glanced back at her, then turned to hand his credentials to the armored man. “Where’s Starling?”
“Mr. Mabry,” the cop acknowledged, straightened slightly as though he would have saluted. “Mr. Starling wants to see you right away. Down there, sir.” He pointed toward a third, smaller car, recognizable as police only by the way it was parked, slewed deliberately across the road to provide protection behind its bulk.
“I want to see Mr. Starling,” Mabry said, and levered himself out of the car. “You two, wait here.”
“Fine,” Trouble said to his back. She watched him make his way down the street, broad-shouldered in his battered jacket, conspicuously casual among the armored and uniformed police huddling behind the cars.
“What the fuck do they think they’re doing?” Cerise demanded. “He’s a cracker, not a gunrunner.”
Trouble saw the driver’s shoulders twitch, and a detached part of her admired the man’s self-control. “Yeah,” she said, deliberately provocative, “crackers don’t generally go around shooting cops.”
Cerise snook her head, still furious. “They got to be crazy, reacting like this.” But that was Evans-Tindale for you: the laws had been written by people who feared the nets, and it was that same fear that made things escalate, spiraling out of control.
Another siren sounded, a deeper note this time, and Trouble twisted in her seat to stare back the way they’d come. A fire engine, one of the heavy tower trucks with a lift basket on the front and a massive ladder-and-hose station at the back, was making its way ponderously down the street. One of the armored cops shouted and waved, and the driver edged their car in closer to the curb to let the fire engine pass. There were more armored men clinging to its sides.
“All this for software?” Trouble said. “They’ve got to have backups.”
The driver turned in his place, pale face very serious. “We can’t let him get away with the threat—we don’t dare let him crash the city systems.”
“This isn’t going to stop him,” Cerise said. She shook her head again. “This is not how you deal with the net.”
“They must have somebody trying to stop him on-line,” Trouble said, but her tone was less confident than her words. All this hardware could only be an admission of failure, a desperate attempt to stop something that couldn’t be dealt with in virtuality—and this would have to fail, too, she thought. If the Mayor really did hold Seahaven’s systems hostage, really had gained control of them through the net, then the fastest, most surgically efficient realworld attack would be seconds, minutes too slow. Starling, at least, would know it; she wondered bleakly if any of the others realized just how ineffective they really were.
“Trouble!” That was Mabry, striding back toward the car, his jacket flying open around him. “Cerise!” He lifted a hand, beckoning, and the driver popped the rear doors.
“Bet you he wants us to go cracking for him,” Cerise said, and swung herself neatly out of the compartment.
Trouble followed more slowly. “I don’t make bets on a sure thing.”
“We have a problem,” Mabry said.
“No shit,” Cerise murmured.
Mabry pretended he hadn’t heard. “Novross does seem to have control of the city systems. Starling and his lot have been trying to dig him out for the past half hour.”
He tilted his head toward a black van that sat behind the line of cars. A cable snaked from a shielded port and disappeared into the door of the nearest building: Treasury’s special netwalkers, Trouble realized.
“They haven’t made much progress, but they’re still working on it,” Mabry said. “But the main thing is, Novross wants to talk to you.”
He was looking directly at Trouble, but even so she frowned in confusion. “To me?”
“To you,” Mabry agreed.
Trouble looked at Cerise, who shrugged, looked back at Mabry. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mabry answered. “He’s not precisely forthcoming on the matter. But he wants to talk to you—he says he’ll negotiate with you. And only you.”
“I doubt that,” Cerise said.
“She’s right,” Trouble said, and dredged a smile from somewhere. “We’re not exactly on friendly terms. But I can crack his IC(E)—let me in that van, and I’ll get him off the nets.” It wouldn’t be that easy, she knew, would take time and effort and probably more tools than she had with her, though Treasury might have some of what she would need—
Mabry shook his head. “It’s not on, Trouble. I’m sorry. Starling thinks his men can handle it, but he needs time. They need time. And Novross wants to talk to you.”
“He could kill her,” Cerise said sharply. “Did you think of that? Or is that what Starling has in mind?”
“He’s promised full cover,” Mabry said. Behind him, machinery whined, and the fire engine’s bucket rose jerkily into the air, swinging slightly from side to side. An armored figure was just visible over the edge of the bucket, gauntleted hand cupped to a headset in his helmet. The bucket rose higher, swung slightly sideways, so that the men in the bucket—there were two of them, Trouble realized—had the Mayor’s windows in their field of fire. “And I intend to hold him to it.”
“Not good enough,” Cerise said.
“What exactly am I supposed to do?” Trouble asked.
“Keep him talking,” Mabry answered. “Buy us time.”
“How?”
“He said he wants to negotiate,” Mabry said, “so negotiate. Offer him—whatever it is he wants, I suppose. No, offer passage out of the country, then we can haggle over how and where. Try to keep his mind off the nets. He’ll probably have demands of his own, anyway, so see what they are and we’ll go from there.”
“Great,” Trouble said. “I’m not a fucking negotiator, I don’t know what I’m doing—” And I don’t want to get myself killed, not by the Mayor, not after I’ve won—not for The Willows, anyway.
“He says,” Mabry said, “and I emphasize I don’t know if it’s true, but he says he has a line to the local nuke. He says he can override local controls, cause a catastrophic failure.”
“You don’t think he does,” Trouble said.
“No.” Mabry’s face twisted in a grimace half of frustration, half of rage. “And I don’t think Starling does, either. But it’s fucking useful for him, gives him access to all of this.” He gestured broadly, the sweep of his hand including the tanks and the fire engine and the huddling cops. In the distance, Trouble could hear the beat of a military helicopter, sweeping down from the base to the north. “And I—we can’t afford to take that chance.”
He was right about that, Trouble thought reluctantly. She tilted her head, looked up at the Mayor’s building: just another cheap Seahaven rooming house, paint peeling on the sides where it was less likely to be seen. The Mayor’s windows, uncurtained, unshaded, unlike all the others in the building, turned blank glass to the street. I should say no, she thought. Starling’s just trying to use me, use this threat to get me to do what he wants, maybe even get me killed, just like he’s used it to call out all this, local cops and state and God knows what all else. It was all but impossible to get into a nuke’s internal systems, even for the Mayor—they were built to stand up against all intrusion attempts, there were cutouts and realtime requirements, and the crucial systems were supposed to be completely disconnected from the nets. But if they weren’t, if the Mayor had gained access…. He was just crazy enough, just desperate enough, to try something, and no one could stand by and let that happen. She shied away from the image that presented itself, out of ancient video, smoke billowing from a broken dome, radiation fires smothered in concrete; that wouldn’t be what happened, not quite, but the area would be poisoned worse than it already was. And no one had ever honestly calculated the probable deaths. She looked back over her shoulder at Starling, still standing in the lee of the unmarked police car, conferring with Levy and a man in armor, not knowing whom she resented more, the Mayor or Starling himself.
“You’d still be better off with me running the nets,” she said.
“I don’t doubt it,” Mabry snapped. “But that’s not the deal.”
Trouble took a deep breath. “I want complete immunity, all charges past and present dropped.”
“Done.” Mabry nodded, with decision. “I will see to it personally.”
“And for Cerise as well.”
“Agreed.”
“He’ll fucking kill you,” Cerise said. “Trouble, don’t do it.”
Trouble looked at her, swallowing her own cold fear. “Look. He’s one of us, a cracker, a netwalker. Since when did we start carrying guns?”
“I did.”
“You weren’t exactly representative.”
“Neither’s he.”
“That was a long time ago, and in the city. And it’s not the same. It’s not the Mayor’s style.” Trouble took another long breath, tasting salt and the ubiquitous oil. The air was thickening, fog swirling in from the sea: not a good time for that, she thought, and automatically squinted upward, looking for the helicopter. It was still there, a dark shape against the white sky, but when she looked east, the outlines of the beachfront buildings were already blurred. “He doesn’t gain anything by killing me—”
“Except personal satisfaction,” Cerise snapped.
“Yeah.” Trouble shivered, told herself it was only the first wisps of fog. “But he loses his chance to walk out of here.”
“Do you really think Starling would let him walk?” Cerise asked. “Do you really think he thinks Starling will let him walk? Trouble—” She broke off abruptly, the rest of the sentence unspoken. I’m not losing you now, she would have said, not again, and this was not the time for declarations.
“But if he really can get into the nuke?” Trouble said.
“There’s no way he can,” Cerise said. “No fucking way.”
Trouble looked at her, and Cerise made a face, answered her own question. “Except he’s the Mayor, and if anyone can, it’s him, and we can’t take that risk anyway. Not on this coastline.” She sighed. “All right, do it. But I’m coming with you.”
“He said alone,” Mabry interjected. It was no more than a token protest, but Cerise turned on him anyway.
“So get me in there without him knowing it, sunshine. I thought you people were supposed to be good. And I want a gun.”
“All right,” Mabry said. “Let’s go.”
They followed him down the narrow street, Mabry careful to keep the line of parked cars and runabouts between them and the rooming house. The cops, local and state, clustered in twos and threes behind the inadequate barricades, looked up as they passed, but their expressions were invisible behind the dark-tinted faceplates. Starling came to meet them, Levy and the armored stranger—probably some kind of senior police officer, Trouble thought, just from the amount of braid and badges, but she recognized only The Willows’ insignia among the clutter—following a few steps behind.
“Well?” Starling asked, and Mabry nodded.
Trouble said, “I understand he wants to talk to me. Is that right?” In spite of her efforts at control, her voice came out too loud, uncertain.
Starling said, “That’s right. I gather you’ve agreed.”
“I want all charges past and present dropped,” Trouble said, “for both me and Cerise.”
“That can be arranged,” Starling said.
“I’ve agreed to it,” Mabry said, mildly, and Starling’s lips tightened momentarily.
“All right.”
“Now,” Trouble said. “Just what is it you want me to do?”
“I just want you to keep him talking,” Starling said. “Distract him while we isolate him on the net, so that the rest of our people can move in.” He nodded to the fire engine. “We’ve got a sniper team there. They can take him out as soon as we’re sure the nets are safe.”
“That wasn’t in the plan, John,” Mabry said.
“You’d be better off letting us run the nets,” Trouble said, without much hope. “We’ve beaten him before.”
“No, thanks,” Levy said.
Starling said, “It’s you he wants to talk to. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“But there are some things you can do about protection,” Trouble said.
Starling waved his hand again, a broader gesture taking in not only the snipers but the men crouching behind the lines of cars. “You’ll have backup.”
Except when I’m inside, Trouble thought. But the men in the fire engine’s bucket would provide some cover, as much as she could reasonably expect.
Cerise said, “Yes. Well. I’m going with her.”
Starling frowned, and Trouble said, “It’s not negotiable.”
“He said alone,” Starling began, and Mabry shook his head.
“It can be done, John. It’s better this way.”
“And I want a gun,” Cerise said.
Starling sighed, looked at Levy. “Ben?”
Levy reached into his jacket, freed his pistol from the shoulder holster, and reluctantly held it out butt first. “Do you know how to use this?”
Cerise took it, automatically checking the magazine—full—then cocked it, putting the safety on. “Oh, yes.”
“Then let’s get on with it,” Starling said. “Mabry, you take Ms.—Cerise—around to the front door. Keep behind the cars, he can’t see down into the street too well.” Mabry nodded, motioned for Cerise to follow him. “Ms. Carless—Trouble. We’ll wait here.”
Trouble nodded, not daring to speak for fear her voice would break, watched as Mabry and Cerise made their way cautiously across the street and disappeared finally behind the line of parked cars. At last there was a flicker of movement beside the doorway, and Levy sighed.
“They’re in position.”
“Right,” Starling said, and reached for a handset. “Novross.”
There was a long silence, not even the crackle of static, and Trouble wondered for an instant if she was off the hook at last. Then the machine clicked, and the Mayor’s voice came clearly through the tiny speaker.
“I’m here.”
“We’ve done as you asked,” Starling said. “Trouble’s here, and she’s prepared to act as our representative.”
There was another silence, shorter this time, and then the Mayor said, “About time. Send her up.”
“She’s on her way,” Starling said, and looked at Trouble. “You’re on.”
“Thanks,” Trouble said. She took a deep breath, and stepped out from behind the car. She did not believe, in spite of everything Cerise had said, that the Mayor had a gun; it wasn’t his style, was unlike anything else he’d ever done, but even so; she felt an odd, tingling sensation on her forehead, and then between her breasts. It felt very real, so real that she looked down at herself, half expecting to see the bright dot of a targeting laser, but there was nothing there. She shivered again, convulsively, and wished she thought anyone would believe it was from the fog.
Cerise was waiting in the doorway, pressed against the wall under the shelter of the arch, out of the line of vision of the single securicam. It looked broken, blinded by too many nights in the salt air, but there was no point in taking chances. Trouble looked up at it, wondering if the lens were really as scratched as it appeared, looked back down at the locks and the intercom board with its list of names. Before she could decide if she should press the bell, the one marked “Novross” in a neat, orderly hand, the buzzer sounded, and she reached out almost automatically to push the door open. It gave under her hand, and Cerise slipped ahead of her into the darkened hallway. Trouble followed, letting the door close behind her.
The lights were out in the hallway, the only brightness filtering down through a distant skylight over the stairway. Cerise said, her voice little above a whisper, “They must’ve cut the power to the building.”
“Which should’ve cut the net link,” Trouble murmured.
Cerise nodded, managed a grim smile. “Except that he had a hidden line. Just like we had.”
“Just like everyone,” Trouble said, and started up the stairs. Cerise followed, silently, copying the other woman’s movements, staying half a flight behind. She had the pistol out and ready, safety off, just in case; it was heavier than the one she had used, a heavier caliber, the weight awkward in her hands.
Trouble paused at the first landing, listening, but heard nothing, not even the usual noises of a building’s miscellaneous machinery. She looked back, saw Cerise braced against the wall of the stair below, pistol held in both hands, the barrel tilted toward the ceiling. The sight was somewhat reassuring; Trouble forced a smile, and climbed the rest of the way to the third floor. There was only one door off the landing, and it was closed, but light showed through at the edges of the frame. So this is it, Trouble thought, but didn’t move closer at once, looked around instead for cameras. She didn’t see any, even in the shadows where the walls joined the high ceilings, but she was careful not to look back as she stepped up onto the landing. Cerise was behind her, there on the last landing; she could see what was happening well enough.
Trouble took a deep breath, and knocked on the white-painted door. For a crazy moment she thought she was going to giggle—it was too incongruous an image, her tapping on the metal door as though she were any visitor, this a normal visit—and she bit her lip hard, knowing that if she started laughing now it would be impossible to stop. The Mayor wouldn’t understand, she thought, wouldn’t be amused, and that realization was almost enough to send her over the edge.
“It’s open,” the Mayor’s voice said from inside, and the desire to laugh vanished as quickly as it had appeared. This time, Trouble did look back, to see Cerise hurrying silently up the stairs, to flatten herself against the wall, just out of the line of sight from the doorway.
“I’m coming in,” Trouble said, and heard herself shrill and nervous. She pressed lightly against the door, wary of booby traps, stories of bombs and electrical charges coming back to her from the old days, the Mayor’s days, when crackers had fought their battles off the nets as well as on, but nothing happened. She turned the knob, wincing in advance of an explosion, and the door swung open with the gentle groan of imperfectly oiled hinges.
The Mayor was standing exactly as she’d seen him last, frozen in the heart of his machines, hands splayed wide over the control surfaces, wires and chip boards wreathing him. And then she saw the differences as well, recognized that there was only one wire, the long cable of a datacord running down from a socket at the back of his skull, saw too that the chip boards were portable flatscreens, propped awkwardly across the main machines. Whatever else he’d planned, this was a jury-rigged defense, Trouble realized. And a defense of his home, in some strange way: there was a table with a microwave on it in one corner, and a futon on the floor beneath the windows. A slight figure lay curled on that, asleep or unconscious, face turned toward the wall: newTrouble, she thought, Tilsen. So he was here all along.
“Trouble,” the Mayor said, and she answered, “Mayor.”
The lights were working here, a single, badly shaded bulb dangling over the central work space, throwing the Mayor’s face into grotesque shadow. He was a thin man, cadaverously thin and pale, a shadow of light stubble further hollowing his cheeks, but his hands on the controls were sure and competent, his whole stance that of an El Greco prelate. Trouble stared at him, surprised at how much like his icon he was, and knew that he was staring just as curiously back at her.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised.” The Mayor’s voice was slow, too, and faintly slurred, and Trouble realized that he was still at least half on-line, some part of his brain holding off Starling’s men from the city systems. “You never really were one of us.”
So that’s the tack you’re going to take, Trouble thought, and dredged a laugh from somewhere. “No,” she said, “I’m not, and never was one of your kind. I’m better.”
The Mayor frowned, magisterial, would, she thought, have shaken a finger at her had he been able to free himself from his boards. “Very cocky. How unwise. Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Here,” Cerise said, from the doorway. Trouble didn’t dare look back, but saw the Mayor’s frown deepen.
“I would advise against using that,” he said, and one hand shifted on the board. A beam of ruby light shot from the ceiling, struck the worn floor just at Trouble’s feet, blinked out as quickly as it had appeared. Smoke curled from the cheap tiles, and it was all Trouble could do not to take a step backward.
“You’ll still be dead,” Cerise said.
“And so will your friend,” the Mayor answered. He fixed his eyes on Trouble, dismissing Cerise from his calculations. “I really didn’t think you’d throw in with them. Not in the end.”
“You didn’t leave me any alternatives,” Trouble said, stung more by the disappointment in his tone than by his words. “Christ, do you think I’m going to stand by and let you play silly buggers with the local nuke?”
“You believed that?” The Mayor gave a snort of contempt. “I thought you were at least technically literate. You should know it’s not possible. They—” He jerked his head toward the window. “I’d expect them to fall for it, but not you. Not even you should be that ignorant.”
Trouble felt herself flush, said, “Not so ignorant I couldn’t break your IC(E), Mayor.”
“That was the worm, not you,” the Mayor answered. “But real technical knowledge? I should have known better than to expect it.”
“Starling said you wanted to talk to me,” Trouble said, through clenched teeth. “So what do you want?”
“I had thought,” the Mayor began, and broke off, hands moving busily across the control surfaces. “But it doesn’t matter. What I want now is to be rid of you. You’re a disgrace to the nets, and the least I can do, the last thing I can do, is clean up the mess I inadvertently caused.”
His eyes slid sideways, toward the boy on the bed, and in that instant Trouble flung herself backward. The laser spat fire, the beam striking the tiles where she had stood. Cerise fired in the same instant, the noise enormous in the high-ceilinged room, kept firing, and with her second shot the snipers fired, too, shattering the windows. Trouble flung herself down, hands instinctively covering her head against the rain of glass, saw the Mayor’s body falling, torn, jerking with the impact of the bullets. Cerise screamed something, crouching against the wall by the door, a shriek that resolved itself at last into words.
“Stop it, you stupid bastards, stop firing! He’s dead!”
Whether they heard her or not, the shooting stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Trouble lifted her head cautiously, saw the floor paved with glass like broken ice, and the Mayor’s body sprawled bonelessly across his machines. A coil of smoke was rising from one of the consoles, and she crawled forward hastily, trying not to look at the body, groped for the kill switch and cut the power. The Mayor’s hand hung down, almost close enough to touch; there was no blood on the thin fingers, but she could smell it, acrid and unmistakable, and kept her eyes down, not wanting to see the ruin of his body.
“Silk?” Cerise said, and Trouble looked at the slight figure on the futon. The glass has fallen all around him, shards glittering on his body, and she winced and moved toward him, sweeping the bits of glass awkwardly out of her way. She could hear footsteps on the stairs now, the heavy tread of running men, but she ignored them, began picking the slivers of glass carefully away from the mattress and the boy’s clothes. Cerise came to join her; dropping the automatic on the floor beside her, picked flinchingly at the larger pieces.
“He doesn’t seem to have been cut,” Trouble said, doubtfully, grimaced as a sharp edge sliced her finger. She sucked at the cut, and Cerise brushed the last obvious pieces away from the mattress.
“Turn him over,” she said, and her voice was sharp with fear.
There was something wrong with him, Trouble thought, as she helped Cerise ease the boneless weight onto its back, something very wrong about the way he moved, about the open, staring eyes. “I think he’s dead,” she said aloud, and groped for a pulse in the slim neck. He looked barely fifteen, not the seventeen Mabry had claimed for him, slim, sweet-faced, with huge brown eyes that stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
“Dead?” Cerise echoed.
“What happened?” Mabry said, and Trouble turned gratefully, to see armored cops crowding into the room behind Mabry and Starling.
“I don’t know,” she said. “The glass didn’t cut him, not seriously—”
“Here,” an armored man said, and held up an injector. Starling took it, inspected the label and the discolored tip, then made a face and handed it to Mabry.
“Gerumine,” he said, and Mabry grunted.
“It’s a euthanasiant,” he said to Trouble. “I wonder if he took it himself, or if Novross gave it to him.”
“You don’t know that’s what happened,” Cerise protested automatically, pushed herself to her feet. Her hands were shaking, and she jammed them into her pockets.
“Well, he sure didn’t take it,” Starling answered, nodding to the Mayor. “And you two didn’t, and the injector’s been used. That doesn’t leave many choices, does it?”
Trouble shivered again, stood slowly, glass crunching under her feet. “Jesus,” she said, and then, “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mabry said.
Cerise said, “He said he was cleaning up the mess, the mess he’d caused. I suppose Silk was part of it.”
Like me, Trouble thought. It could’ve been me—fifteen years ago, it might have been me. The fog was thicker now, drifting in through the shattered windows, cold and wet on her skin.
Mabry touched her shoulder, turned her away from the two bodies, newTrouble’s and the Mayor’s, urged her toward the door. Trouble went unresisting, and Cerise followed more slowly, looking back toward the boy’s body and the grey-jacketed medics kneeling beside it.
Mabry paused on the landing, touched Trouble’s shoulder again. “This—incident—presents an opportunity for us, one that I don’t want to see go to waste. It’s important, Trouble, will you listen?”
Trouble made a noise that might have become laughter, bit her lip again to keep it from swelling to full hysterics. “I’m listening.”
“Seahaven, virtual Seahaven, is without a Mayor now,” Mabry said. “If we had somebody legal in charge, somebody we could trust—”
“Me?” Trouble said, and lifted a skeptical eyebrow.
“It would make sense,” Mabry said. “You’re an old-style netwalker, you’ve been a syscop, you beat the Mayor at his own game. The nets would have to respect your claim, and we’d be able to crack down on Seahaven.”
Cerise grinned. “You shot the sheriff, Trouble, that means you get to be marshal.”
“I’m still on the wire,” Trouble said automatically. “People may not believe I beat him.” But the idea was tempting: to have Seahaven for herself, to take over that space, that status, for her own…. And there would be other opportunities too—maybe Mabry wouldn’t approve, and Starling, Treasury, certainly wouldn’t, but the possibilities cut both ways, not just not to return to the shadows, she’d come too far for that anyway, but to redefine the bright lights, begin again the action Evans-Tindale had cut short. From Seahaven, with Seahaven’s sanctuary as a base and a passport, she could do anything.
Mabry said, “You could do it. Times are changing; the wire doesn’t matter so much anymore—too many people have them now. And you’ve earned it. That’s the thing nobody else can ever claim. You beat him.”
Trouble nodded slowly. “It can’t be this easy.”
Mabry grinned, showing very white teeth. “Probably not,” he admitted. “But in the long run, there isn’t anybody else. And even Treasury isn’t so stupid as to leave Seahaven untenanted, when they can have you in charge.”
“All right,” Trouble said, and nodded again. “All right, I’ll do it. Conditionally.”
“Of course,” Mabry said.
Cerise turned away, left them talking, walked down the stairs as silently as she’d come. Her hands were aching now, worse than ever, from the recoil; she rested a hand on each shoulder to try to reduce the swelling, hugging herself against the cold and the irrational feeling of loss. Not that she’d lost anything, not necessarily, but Silk was dead, and the Mayor—though he was no loss—and Trouble would become Mayor in her turn— She bit off that thought, knowing she was being maudlin, hysterical, and not knowing how to stop. Should I go back to the hotel? she wondered, get my runabout and get out of here, or should I just start walking, keep walking until I feel safe again? The street was still full of cops, a knot of them standing beside the fire engine, its bucket once again fully retracted, armored men clustering around the two snipers in congratulation; there were more cops at each end of the street, their mottled grey uniforms blurred even further by the thickening fog. She should probably thank the snipers, too, Cerise knew; they had saved her life. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it, couldn’t quite get past the cold that filled her, and stood with her hands on her shoulders in the fog, wondering what to do.
“Cerise?” Trouble said from behind her. “Ah, your hands.”
“Yours aren’t in great shape, either,” Cerise said, and Trouble looked down as though surprised to see the thin cuts that crisscrossed her palms and ran up the sides of her hands.
“It’s the glass,” she began, and Cerise said, “I was there, I know.”
“I know.” Trouble looked past her, toward the end of the street where the fog was thickest. “I wanted—I need to talk to you. Before I agree to this, there are some things I need to settle.”
“Such as?” In spite of herself, Cerise heard the old bitterness, the old anger, in her voice, and Trouble grimaced.
“Look, how many times do I have to say I fucked up? I don’t want to do it again, Cerise, I don’t want to leave, or for you to leave me, OK? If I take Seahaven, will you run it with me?
“And if I won’t?”
Trouble spread her hands. “Then—whatever. Is Multiplane hiring?”
Cerise stared at her for a long moment, not sure she had heard correctly, then, slowly, she began to laugh. “I don’t believe you said that.”
“What’s so goddamn funny?” Trouble glared at her, and Cerise got herself under control with an effort.
“I’m sorry. It’s just—you giving up Seahaven? To work for Multiplane? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Will you run it with me?” Trouble asked.
Cerise nodded, slowly. “It’s kind of a dumb question, sweetheart. Is there anybody who doesn’t want Seahaven?”
Trouble nodded back, reached out, careful of Cerise’s hands, touched first her shoulder and then her cheek. “It’s not going to be the same.”
“It never is,” Cerise answered. She forced a smile, and a lighter tone, knowing perfectly well what Trouble meant: the old days were long gone, and there was no going back, no matter what the regrets. “You’ll just have to bring the law in, Marshal, that’s all.”
“Thanks,” Trouble said, sour-voiced, but she was smiling. They stood close together against the chilling fog, the sky grey as glass above them, waiting for Mabry to return.