Trouble drove too fast, as usual, the speed warning flickering yellow at the base of the helmet display. Ahead, the flyway gleamed like a dirty mirror in the cloudy light, reflecting the grey of the sky. At this hour, dozens of tow-carriers rumbled in the central lanes, mostly heading south toward the markets; the private traffic was sparse, a couple of corporate limos and a handful of light trucks and runabouts, spread out for kilometers along the ribbon of the road. More letters flashed in the helmet display, warning that this was the last exit before the border tolls, and she eased the trike sideways into the slower lane. The exit ramp curved down into the scrubland behind the salt marshes, and the grid lights flashed at her, warning her that local roads were not under computer control. She matched the speed limit here—local cops were less forgiving than the grid—and turned onto the narrow road that led east, toward True’s Island and the sea.
The land was relatively crowded here, cluttered with low-built, sagging houses and cinder-block garages. This was car-farm country, a place to buy and sell spare parts and junkers. The road was busier, too, battered runabouts with unmatched panels and the ubiquitous pickups, each with its bed full of miscellaneous machinery. Trouble drove decorously, not wanting to attract undue attention: the border people were an insular group, didn’t welcome outsiders and particularly not the ones who took the back roads to Seahaven.
She crossed the border just south of Southbrook, skirting the town itself and its asphalt plains of discount shopping. On the horizon, she could see the neon sign, bright even in daylight, blinking the message that had been the town’s salvation, no sales taxes!!! East of town, all the little roads wove together into a rotary, complete with a cop-shop in the center, mixed public and private station, the state insignia side-by-side with the logo of the hotel, The Willows at Seahaven. Only a single road led east, out into the marshes, and Trouble took it, careful to keep the trike just under the speed limit posted on the board at the entrance to the road. A forest-green fast-tank was waiting in the lay-by beside the station, warning lights muted, and she watched it warily in her mirrors until it had faded from sight.
No one else had taken the Seahaven road. The asphalt ran straight and true toward the sea, the marsh spreading golden to either side. It was low tide, and the air smelled of salt and mud even under the helmet. She glanced sideways, and saw a few seabirds wading in the shallow channels, heedless of chemical sands, long legs bleached white by the tainted waters; another bird circled idly overhead, whiter than the clouds. As she drew closer to the coast, the ground seemed to drop away to either side, the road carried on heavy concrete pilings over bare mud and the filled channels that were the creeks. At high tide, it was all water, and only the brookers knew the safe passages, where the creeks and brooks were deep enough to take a boat and cargo without touching the poisoned land. They would fish here, too, in defiance of the law and common sense, scratching a living from the polluted waters that might well be worse than the town jobs they feared so badly.
Ahead, the land lifted slightly, sand and seawall rising to block her view of the ocean. She slowed in spite of herself, in spite of the brookers who could be lurking, as the road went from pilings to the solid sand and stone of Shepherd Hill. It wasn’t much of a hill, or even much of an island, just scrub grass and a few straggling pines, bent nearly double by the winter winds, but it was enough to carry the Coast Road. Ahead, the seawall loomed, a massive heap of stone and gravel, with the faded warning sign below it: road ends here, and then a double-headed arrow. To the right, the road was drifted with sand and rock, barely traveled: only the Plantation lay to the south, deserted since the Hundred-Year Winter, except for public sex and suicides. It had once been a tourist mecca, a stretch of semiwild beachfront, protected from overdevelopment by state and federal governments. There had been a web of narrow roads on the landward side, leading to a pavilion and ranger station just below the main beach, but south of that the beach and scrubland had been left for hikers. In the old days, Trouble had been told, it had been a picnic spot, a twenty-minute walk from the last parking circle to a sweep of beach that looked across the inlet to the Joppa Flats. Now, though…. Now it was dead land, or dying—the ecologists weren’t completely sure of that, but they had diagnosed the chemical-sands syndrome, and that was an eventual death sentence, both for the beaches and, very nearly, for towns like Seahaven that clung to the water. The sands had absorbed the chemicals that had spilled offshore during the unbelievable series of winter storms that had struck the coast twenty years ago; there had been other spills since, in storms and in fair weather, none quite as bad as in the Hundred-Year Winter, and the sands had bonded to the chemicals, changing the nature of the beaches and of the sea floor. The vegetation, or some of it, had adapted, the algae first, great mats of it washing up on the beaches to carry still more chemicals ashore. Some of the hardier species had developed ways of eating the more noxious chemicals, and a few seaweeds had developed a symbiotic relationship with them, carrying the algae in their nodelike floats or under the broad leaves, until the entire coast was poisoned. Only a few species seemed to hold their own; the rest, fish and birds and the occasional shoreline mammal, were dwindling toward extinction. Trouble turned north, toward Seahaven.
It wasn’t a long drive, not half an hour even at the low speed the badly mended potholes and the drifting sand forced upon her, and she could see the arc of the Ferris wheel on the horizon, bright even in the daylight. The road lifted as she reached the higher ground of the Sands, the ground falling away steeply into the mud and grass of the Blood Creek Slough. A boat, high-bowed, with a squarely upright pilothouse in its center, moved slowly along the creek itself, a single figure just visible in the stern. In the far distance, at the inland edge of the Slough, the autumn trees were red and gold against the dull sky.
The land widened, a few houses, low-built, sturdy looking, cinder block and grey shingle, appearing now, and the piled-rock seawall gave way to concrete and sloped sand. This was brooker country, not quite Seahaven, and Trouble touched the throttle, increasing her speed as she passed a fenced-in schoolyard. And then she was past the Sands, the land narrowing briefly to a causeway, the first houses of Seahaven appearing ahead. In contrast to the Sands, they were brightly painted, and crammed in higgledy-piggledy on the rising ground. To her left the Ferris wheel loomed, centerpiece of the Parcade, and a paved road, much mended but clear of sand, turned off toward it. She allowed herself a long look at the low-slung arcades lining the road, and the mock-castle, pink and green and bright as an Easter egg, at the end of it, but kept to the main road. If newTrouble was in Seahaven, he would almost certainly be found in the Parcade, but there would be time to search for him later, when she had reestablished herself in town.
There were more people here, more than she’d seen in any one place since she’d crossed the border, kids in ragged denim and army surplus or cheap-dyed tunics, a few older adults in uniforms from The Willows, heading home to sleep or out to the Parcade to play or deal, other adults in an attempt at cracker’s leather and chains clustered in the shop doorways or along the streetside. Most of them would be faking it—real crackers would probably be asleep by now, after a hard night’s work, or just waking up—and Trouble’s lip curled behind the concealing helmet.
She turned onto the beachfront road, skirting the crowds at the town center, drove between the seawall and the tattered boardwalk, where the shops clustered together, selling souvenirs of a beach no one wanted anymore to see, and cheap, oily food. Beyond the seawall, the ruin of the Pavilion Bandstand loomed, jutting on a broken pier a hundred meters out into the water. Only the junkies and a few whores went there now, sheltered in its leaning shell, and even the craziest netwalkers gave it a wide berth: the net held no weapons that could frighten a people without credit or history.
There was a public lot at the end of the boardwalk, half-filled with runabouts and the occasional home-built truck. Trouble found a space without difficulty, and climbed off the trike, stretching in the suddenly humid air. She needed a place to stay, someplace cheap and, more important, discreet, and she would find that only on this side of the Harbormouth Bridge. Once she crossed the drawbridge into Seahaven proper, people would begin asking awkward questions; better to stay this side of the bridge, safely anonymous and clear of the hotel’s direct influence. She knew half a dozen places that met that description, or she had known them; whether they still existed, in the continual flux that was this unnamed section of town, was another matter. Still, there was only one way to find out, and she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and started walking, the humid warmth closing in around her.
The first hostel was long gone, displaced by an Asian restaurant with purple walls and plastic plates of food in the windows, but the second was still in business. It was tall for Seahaven, almost four stories, sides shingled and painted a faded blue. Trouble stepped cautiously onto the sagging porch, trimmed with pink-and-yellow-painted carving, and pushed open the screen door that led to the little lobby. As usual, no one was in sight, but a camera watched from the corner above the manager’s counter. She stared up at it, deliberately acknowledging its presence, and settled herself to wait.
It was only a few minutes before the door that closed the stairwell off from the rest of the lobby swung open, but it felt much longer. Trouble made herself turn slowly, found herself facing a woman she didn’t recognize, a woman nearly as tall as herself, with grey eyes and grey-streaked dark hair. Her skin was faintly mottled, sun-scarred, and she’d made no attempt to hide it with makeup or creams.
“Help you?” she asked, in a tone that suggested she didn’t care if she could.
“Yeah,” Trouble answered. “I’m looking for a room.”
The woman just stared at her, lined face without expression, and Trouble went on, keeping her impatience under control with an effort, “Does Mollie Blake still live here? She’ll vouch for me.”
Something in the woman’s expression changed, a shadow of recognition flickering across her face. “I know Mollie. What’s your name?”
“India Carless. But everyone calls me Trouble.”
“I remember you.” The woman stood still for an instant longer, then turned away from the counter. “Wait. I’ll see if we have anything.”
It was a risk, giving her proper name, Trouble knew, but it was the only name Mollie Blake knew her by. She waited again, leaning now against the counter where the camera was focused, and listened for the sound of footsteps on the steps up to the porch. If the stranger called the cops—though which cops would be interested, here in Seahaven, was always an open question—there was another way out, through the flimsy door and down the long hall to the barren backyard…. And then she did hear footsteps, not on the porch behind her but on the inside stairs, and the stranger reappeared in the doorway. A second woman stood behind her, and, seeing her, Trouble gave a sigh of relief.
“Hello, Mollie.”
“Hello, Trouble.” Blake stepped out from behind the other woman, but did not come closer or offer an embrace. “I thought you were out in the bright lights these days.”
“I was.” Trouble eyed Blake warily, uncertain how to read the reception. Blake was no cracker, had never been on the nets—didn’t even have a dollie-slot, the essential tool for anyone who worked with any network. She was, however, one of the best sources of hardware throughout the Parcade, possibly along the coast. “You might say my past caught up with me. I’m looking for a place to stay, until I find someone.”
Blake nodded, slowly. She was a stocky, straight-bodied woman, a little taller than average, her skin tanned almost to the color of her rust-brown hair. At the moment she was absolutely ordinary in jeans and a crumpled, man-style shirt, but Trouble, who had seen her dressed to kill, ready to mingle with the crowds at The Willows, was not deceived. “I’ve heard something about that,” Blake said.
“You’re still with Nova, then?” Trouble asked, and Blake shrugged.
“Off and on.” She looked at the other woman, still standing silent at her shoulder. “Trouble’s OK. She doesn’t cause problems—or if she does, she cleans it up herself.”
That was letting her know where she stood with a vengeance. Trouble suppressed a moment’s annoyance—Blake should talk—and said, “Thanks.”
The grey-haired woman stepped around Blake, ducked under the barrier so that she stood behind the counter, and reached for the keyboard of the registration system, pulling it out from under a pile of news sheets. “Carless, you said the name was?”
Blake said, “That’s Joan Valentine, by the way.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Trouble murmured.
Valentine nodded, her expression noncommittal, and poised her hands over the keyboard. “Name?”
“India Carless,” Trouble said, and wondered an instant later if she should have chosen another. Treasury knew that name—worse still, it was her real one—but then, she told herself, she didn’t have good ID for anything else. That was the one thing she hadn’t gotten for herself in the city, new ID to replace the jane-doe registration or her own legitimate papers. She shook the worry away, leaned forward to watch Valentine key the information into the machine.
“They send a disk up to the cop-shop twice a week,” Blake said suddenly, and Trouble glanced over her shoulder to see the other woman smiling slightly.
Valentine said, “Local regulations.” She looked at her screen, head cocked to one side as she studied the menu. “The only thing they pay attention to is the ID numbers, though.”
“Right,” Trouble said, and reached into her pocket for the jane-doe disk. She handed it to Valentine, who ran it through the scanner and handed it back across the counter.
“Somebody’s going to come asking questions about that,” Valentine said.
“When?”
Valentine shrugged.
Blake said, “Come on, Val. You sent the last update, when, yesterday?”
Valentine darted her an uncertain look, but said, “Yeah.”
“So you’ve got, what, it’s Thursday—so, you’ve got until Monday at the earliest,” Blake said. “Or Tuesday, if Val forgets to send the disk on time.”
“And how likely is that?” Trouble asked, and Blake laughed.
Valentine made a face. “It—can be arranged. Talk to me.”
“Let me know the going rate,” Trouble said. “In the meantime, though, I’d like to get a room.”
“I’ve got a two-room suite, your own bath and input nodes, on the third floor,” Valentine said. “If that’s all right with you.”
“That’s fine,” Trouble said, and meant it. She pulled the last cash-card from her belt, set it on the counter. It would certainly be enough to cover a few days in Seahaven—at least until Tuesday, and after that, she could use credit. Valentine accepted it, fed it into the machine, and nodded as the verification codes appeared.
“I’ll take you up, then,” she said.
“Key?” Trouble asked, in some surprise, and Blake shook her head.
“We got palm-locks last year, Trouble. Even Seahaven changes.”
“Right,” Trouble said, and followed Valentine through the battered door and up the narrow stairs.
It was warm in the upstairs hall, and the air smelled indefinably of Seahaven, salt and constant damp blending with the scent of oil or burned rubber from the beaches. Valentine led her down the long, dimly lit hallway, and stopped at the last door, fingering the heavy box of the palm-lock mounted above the latch. The door swung open, and Valentine held it, nodding for the other woman to go in.
Trouble stepped into sudden cool and the hum of an environmental unit set on high, reached automatically for the room controls to switch on the lights. The room was bigger than she’d expected, with a desk and table and a couple of comfortable chairs next to a floor-mounted junction box in one room, and a big bed and a video cabinet in the other. She’d gotten turned around somehow, coming up the stairs, so she was surprised when she opened the heavy curtains to see that she overlooked the front of the building and the street outside. She could just see the edge of the neon sign running below the window, and understood why the curtains were made of such heavy fabric. The bathroom was small, but most of the fixtures looked relatively new. She set her bag down, and Valentine said from the doorway, “All right?”
“It’ll do, thanks,” Trouble said.
“Then we’ll set the lock.”
It was an exercise in futility—the first thing she would do, after she checked the net, would be to buy an override lock of her own, probably from Blake’s shop—but Trouble nodded, and came forward to lay her palm against the sensor plate. Valentine fiddled with the lock controls, and then with her master control, and pronounced the lock ready. Trouble tested it obediently, and the door snapped open to her touch.
“All set, then,” Valentine said, and turned away without waiting for an answer.
Trouble shut the door behind her, turned to survey the suite more closely. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, scarred wood floor, a single throw rug, cheap white-wood furniture, a few posters tacked onto the walls in lieu of prints, but she went methodically through it anyway, searching for bugs and taps and peepholes. She found nothing, either in the walls or under the casing of the junction box, and dragged the less battered of the two chairs close to it, within reach of her machine cords. She pulled the other chair in front of the door, wedged it with the desk, and went back to the junction box to begin setting up her system. The node was standard; she plugged in cables and power cords, and leaned back in her chair to begin a last quick check for lurkers.
She let the diagnostics run, paying less attention to the play of lights and numbers on the little screen than to the flicker of feeling across her skin, hot as a summer wind, and the fleeting taste of the system on her tongue. Everything felt clean, no alien programs hidden in the architecture, no odd loops of code that led nowhere, and she adjusted the brainworm to its highest setting. It was the first time she had run it at full capacity since she’d had the new chip installed, and she sat for a moment, letting herself get used to the sensations. The net felt brighter, as though she were looking at it through freshly washed windows, all her senses sharpened as though she’d shed a skin. She grinned to herself, enjoying the heady feeling, and touched the button that released her onto the net.
She rides the nets like a roller-coaster, swept along the datastream, hitching a ride on the lightning transfer just because she can. She laughs aloud, not caring for an instant that the brainworm transmits the ghost of that emotion back onto the net, but then she sobers, remembering what she’s come for, and drops back down to the plane of the datastream. Roads of light, highways of data, stretch in every direction, dazzling red and gold and the pure white light of diamonds. She pauses a moment, enjoying the display, the sheer pleasure she had missed for three interminable days—better, actually, than what she had had, a sharper image, faster response—and then she shapes her course, chooses a road that glows like lava, red as molten steel, sinks into it, and lets it carry her away.
She rides it toward the BBS, buffeted by the taste and smell of the data that enfolds her, her skin prickling with its touch, tingling with security and encryption. The noise of it is jarring, like high-pitched thunder, but she rides with it until it carries her through the final node, the last one before the bazaar. She drops from it then, finds herself abruptly in a space that has been reformed since the last time she took this route. A wall of light flows like water ahead of her, curving in a graceful semicircle; she hears a sound like a thousand voices mimicking water, the flow of conversation in a million languages, and the air is suddenly cool, faintly damp against her skin. She takes a step forward, curious but not alarmed—there is no IC(E) visible, and no warning; the space’s creator doesn’t seem to mind trespassers, indeed, seems actively to invite them—and an icon/face blooms in the lightfall, the colors running down now over the planes and angles of the face, bright along the scar that bisects one cheek.
*Fate?* she says aloud—it has to be him, even though the icon is new; a startling, unexpected effort for a man not on the wire, an illusion built to lure in the worm-carriers, or one particular worm—and she tastes agreement before she hears the answer.
*Hello, Trouble. I want to talk to you.*
Trouble nods, wary, goes no closer: while she feels no IC(E), Fate has no reason, just now, to be fond of her, and there are other programs besides IC(E) in every cracker’s toolkit. *I’m listening,* she says, when the other says nothing.
*Where are you going?*
Trouble hesitates, a heartbeat of time that will seem longer. Fate is certainly no friend, never was—but then, how hard will it be to guess where she is ultimately headed? *Seahaven.*
*I thought so,* Fate says, and the colors shift briefly, flush with satisfaction, and fade again to the rainbow of the lightfall. *There are people there who want to talk to you.*
*Oh?* In spite of herself, Trouble feels a touch of fear—Treasury/Starling, maybe, though how he would get into Seahaven without the Mayor’s connivance, or any of her old enemies, or even newTrouble itself. She curbs the feeling sharply, makes herself wait.
*Oh, yes,* Fate says, and this time she hears the malice in his voice. *You’ve stirred up a lot of trouble. People want to know your intentions.*
That’s different—that she can handle, and she sighs softly. *Thanks for the warning, Fate,* she says, and the icon retreats, fading into the lightfall.
*I’ll be watching.*
Fate’s voice drifts back to her as if from a great distance, and then the lightfall and the cool air and the rest of the space dissolve around her, fading to grey like a scene from an old movie. Trouble lifts an eyebrow—an enormous effort, just to pass that message—but turns her attention to the business at hand. Overhead, the web of data conduits glitters black-on-silver; she reaches up, touches one, and lets it carry her down into the BBS.
She finds the door to Seahaven without difficulty—she is expected, she thinks, and takes a moment to reorder her toolkit, so that her best defenses, a shield and a dispersion program, are ready to hand . Then she steps through the gateway, and out into Seahaven.
Today it’s all black glass, a predatory nightmare of a city, looming buildings that turn the streets into canyons lit only by the graffiti that glows neon-orange against the slick black walls. This is not her favorite incarnation; it means the Mayor is in a bad mood, unwilling to police the virtual violence, or, perhaps and worse, ready to indulge in it himself. She tunes the toolkit higher, evokes the standby call and feels the ghost of a shield bind itself like a weight to her left arm. The linked dispersion program trembles against her right palm, ready for use—it will handle most active attacks, destroy the program that the shield deflects—and she walks carefully out into the glass-walled city.
The streets are empty, or nearly so; she catches the glimpse of an icon whisking out of sight around a corner once, but that is all. Her footsteps echo, ringing on the apparent stone beneath her feet, but no one challenges her, and she reaches the market square without seeing anyone more at all. The market is all but empty, too, most of the shopfront/icons shuttered, splashed at the Mayor’s whim with heavy grills and bright graffiti. Only the wall remains unchanged, and there are icons clustered at its far end, waiting. Two turn at her approach, and she hears her footsteps suddenly ring louder, sparks flying where her heels touch the black ground: the Mayor, making sure no one misses her entrance. Bastard, she thinks, and grins, and keeps on walking, watching the icons shift themselves, spreading out to meet her.
She imagines music, West Side Story, Sharks against Jets, and shifts her stride to match the nervous beat, the finger snap of sparks against her skin. Behind the icons, on the wall, she sees her icon dancing against a gaudy familiar packaging, its gloss a little dulled from handling. Someone has been trying to read her mail, but she knows from the pattern of the wrapping and the way the scuff marks lie that the seals—Cerise’s seals—have held.
The icons are clearer now, some with the tang of the wire about them, their feedback tinting the net around them, others—the majority, but not by much—plaintext. She knows them all, and that is briefly disappointing: it would have been good to meet newTrouble at last, the stranger who’s taken her name. She stops when she is about five virtual meters from the nearest of them, waits, hands loose at her sides, the programs trembling against her fingers. One icon takes a single step forward, declaring itself the spokesman: an angular, armored shape like a Japanese toybot.
*Trouble,* it says, and Trouble smiles, lets her amusement leak out onto the net.
*Dargon.* She knows what lies behind the massive image, a pudgy, bearded man who lives in his parents’ basement; she tracked him once, after he’d crossed her, and found his secret. She lets that knowledge strengthen her, then pushes it aside. Whatever he is in the realworld, they are on the nets now, and she cannot afford contempt—whatever he is in the realworld, on the nets he is a king. She turns her head, surveys the line, names them one by one.
*Nova—* Blake’s partner, a shape perversely made of shadow rather than light, sexless against the dark city walls. *—Starfire—* Another shadow-shape, this one filled with stars, as though the icon were a window into the heart of a galaxy. *—Arabesque, or should I say, hello, Rachelle—* And here her voice sharpens in spite of herself, because Rachelle Sirvain is an old friend, a good friend, from the years before. The robed icon shifts, and Trouble tastes uncertainty, a hint of guilt spiking the air, before Arabesque has herself under control again. *Postmaster, Katana, Jimmy-D, Rogue, Alexi—* The last all plaintext, two-dimensional shapes against the black-and-neon city, without depth and expression, but not, she reminds herself, without tools or the skill to use them.
*Someone,* she says,*someone’s been messing with my mail.*
There is a little pause, and in the silence someone, Arabesque, she thinks, laughs soft and low. The Postmaster icon shifts slightly, and she knows he was brought in to do the work, and failed.
Dargon says, *We have reason to be concerned.*
Trouble laughs, lets the sharp sound carry the scent of her anger onto the net. The ones on the wire will feel it clearly; the others will receive a footnote and, perhaps, the faint uncomfortable echo of her feelings. *So do I have a reason to be concerned—and the right. Where were you when this punk cracker took my name?*
That is her best point, the most legitimate argument, and she feels it strike home. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees other icons gathering by ones and twos, staying well back, out of range, but watching. This is a major event, even for Seahaven, and she wonders, briefly, where the Mayor is.
Dargon says,*Rumor had it you were dead.*
*Rumor,* Trouble says, and lets them sweat, lets them wonder which rumor she will mention, which of the nasty stories that circulate about them all. *Rumor had it wrong,* she says at last, and smiles inside, tasting their relief. *I’m still here, and it’s my name.*
*You’re stirring up a lot of trouble,* Dargon says. *Causing problems for everyone who works the shadows. It can’t go on, Trouble.*
*I didn’t start it,* Trouble says. *It was forced on me—but I intend to finish it.* She lifts her voice a little, talking now not only to the line of icons but to the lurkers to either side and any others watching invisible—to the Mayor himself, if need be. *This newTrouble, this person who stole my name, it’s compromised me. Not to mention it’s gotten everyone else into difficulties, but that’s your business, yours to deal with unless you want to make it mine. I want my name back, and I want this punk off the net. Is that clear enough for you, Dargon?*
*It’s clear,* Dargon says, and the color of his armor shifts slightly, takes on the red tinge of anger mixed with the blue of amusement. A grim smile? Trouble translates, and waits.
*Treasury doesn’t care which one of you it gets,* he says at last.
Trouble smiles. *But you care, or you should. You don’t stop this one now, you don’t know what it’ll do next—could steal your names, your work and style, could just keep cracking the way it’s been doing, and upsetting the cops. But sooner or later you’ll have to do something. I intend to do it now.*
There is another silence, this one longer, and she takes the chance to look sideways at the lurkers. Fate is there, plaintext cartoon-icon of his scarred face, and next to him a shape that can only be Max Helling, bright among the rest. The old gang returning, she thinks, and can’t decide if she feels better for it. She thinks she sees van Liesvelt too, among the cluttering crowd.
Dargon says at last, *If this newTrouble agreed to stop using your name, would you call a truce?*
Yes, Trouble thinks, if it also agreed to stop using my programs, copying my style, made it clear it was someone else. But this is the net, and the rules are different; she can’t concede a position yet, not without losing status. She says, *Has this person agreed to it?*
Dargon hesitates, and the colors fade a little from his icon. *No.*
And that, Trouble thinks, will never do. She can’t afford to concede first, not when she’s always been on the outside, not quite of the community that polices the net, set apart by the brainworm, gender, and her choice of lovers. She shakes her head, enjoying the sense of the movement—a false sense, really, existing only in her brain, along the brainworm’s wires—says, *If it agrees, talk to me then.*
Dargon gives a little sigh—he had obviously expected no other response, would probably never even have asked if she hadn’t been a woman, a dyke, and on the wire.
Trouble goes on, not waiting for his answer, *Like I said, sooner or later this person’s going to have to be stopped.*
*Stopped or shopped?* a voice—Nova’s, she thinks—queries sharp and amused, and Trouble nods her appreciation of the quibble.
*Treasury will certainly buy,* she says. *And I’m prepared to sell, if I have to. But I want my name back, and an end to this stupidity.*
She has declared herself, fully and completely, and she stops, waiting for their answers. The Postmaster is first to move, drifting back out of the line of icons, away from the wall, away from her, his message clear. He will not help, but he won’t stand against her, either. Arabesque steps forward, colors rippling along the sweep of her silken robe, the cloth flying as though she stood perpetually in a strong wind, steps past Dargon and comes to join her. Trouble smiles, and feels an unfamiliar sensation shiver through her—gratitude, certainly, and something more. Starfire backs away, joining Postmaster, and Rogue joins them; a heartbeat later, Alexi goes with them. From the lurkers, van Liesvelt steps forward, a big shambling bear-shape that carries his familiar grin. Blue Max, Max Helling, unmistakable even in the blue thunderstorm that has replaced his biplane, follows more slowly, and van Liesvelt turns to him in surprise. Katana and Jimmy-D turn away, brush past Postmaster, and are gone, lost among the lurkers. Fate steps forward without comment or change of affect, takes his place with Trouble’s friends. That she had not expected, a public affirmation of his private choice, and she is careful not to shame him with surprise. Dargon and Nova stand alone between her and the wall, and Nova laughs.
*Later, maybe, Trouble. But I won’t stand in your way.* The icon flips away, vanishes in a shower of smoke, and Dargon turns slowly, faintly green, the color of a nodded head.
*All right. For now,* he says, and steps aside.
Trouble hides her smile, mutes the triumph that sings through her, looks at the icons gathered around her. It is so like the old days that she could cry or dance, and she doesn’t know what to say, says instead of greeting, *I have to get my mail.*
Arabesque laughs, a muted sound, and van Liesvelt says, *So do it. We’ll wait.*
Trouble nods, strides away across the charcoal paving, takes the message down from the wall. Cerise’s once-familiar codes seethe against her hands; she matches them from memory, the responses buried in her toolkit, and the message falls open in her hands, a fleeting burst of words that burns itself into memory. Treasury/ Starling are looking for you, take precautions. That is unexpected, a warning from Cerise, after everything that’s been between them, and she walks back to the others as slowly as she dares, wondering what to do.
*So,* van Liesvelt says. *You got your mail.*
*Was it worth it?* Fate says, and despite the inflexible icon, Trouble hears the irony in his tone.
It triggers her decision, and she nods, speaks before she can change her mind. *Yeah,* she says,*it was worth it—and does anyone know where Cerise is these days, or what she’s doing?*
Arabesque draws in a breath, says, in the sharp London voice that goes so strangely in Trouble’s mind with the black skin, *What a welcome. Thank you, sunshine.*
*Sorry,* Trouble says, and after a moment the other woman laughs, this time at herself.
*I’ve missed you, Trouble.*
*And I’ve missed you.* Trouble waits a moment, gauging her chance to ask again, and Helling clears his throat.
*Cerise is with a company called Multiplane. Chief of on-line security, I think. And she’s looking for Trouble—the new one, I mean.*
*I see.* Trouble didn’t mean to speak aloud, is vaguely startled when the words drop onto the net, shakes herself with a frown. *I need to get a message to her, privately. Any ideas?*
Arabesque’s mouth twists, but she says nothing. Helling says, slowly, *I have a—friend who’s in touch with her, but it wouldn’t necessarily be private.*
*I know a route,* Fate says. *Do you want the numbers or do you want me to do it for you?*
There is a challenge, intended or not, in his words, and Trouble stiffens. *Give me the numbers.*
The icon does not change, but a moment later a silver wafer appears in the air between them. Trouble takes it, tucks it into memory without looking at it, feels the numbers vibrate in her mind. Arabesque says, *I thought you left her. That’s what she said.*
*I did.* Trouble doesn’t look at her, doesn’t want to explain, and Arabesque laughs again, this time with genuine amusement.
*Trouble, you’re too much.* She steps back, her draperies gathering around her as though her private windstorm had changed direction, lifts her hand to find a gateway out of Seahaven. *I’ll keep in touch,* she says, and is gone.
Trouble stares after her, regretting the unasked questions—what are you doing these days, are you well, are you happy—then shakes herself, and turns back to business. She has to find Cerise—she owes Cerise the word she herself had gotten, that newTrouble’ s in real-Seahaven.
Helling says, *It’s slick IC(E) at Multiplane, slick and very hard. And not all of it’s Cerise’s.*
*The route I gave you takes you in obliquely,* Fate says.
Trouble nods her thanks, feeling the numbers, address and directionals, trembling in memory.
*Good luck,* Helling says, and starts to drift away.
*Thanks,* Trouble says, softly, for more than just good luck, and she sees Helling’s face appear momentarily in the shadow of the thunderstorm, to show his smile.
*It’s good to have you back.*
Trouble grins in spite of herself—it’s good to be back—and looks at the others. *And thank you, too.*
*I don’t much like viruses,* Fate says. The icon does not change: it never changes, he’s not one to indicate feelings, says it all in the choice of his words. Trouble looks warily at him, wondering what lies behind it, morals, the cracker prejudice she shares, some deeper hatred, and the icon fades before her eyes. That leaves van Liesvelt, and she looks back at him, the heavy bear-shape bulky against the neon scrawl behind him.
*I had some news,* he says. *From the doc. She says Treasury’s been asking questions.*
*What kind of questions?* Trouble asks, and feels the fear stab through her. How could Treasury have known to go to Huu—how could they have known she needed a new chip? Jesse? It wasn’t like him to sell that kind of information.
Van Liesvelt shrugs. *She said it was a general have-you-seen-her notice, just asking if anyone’s done any work on a woman matching your description. It was going under your real name, though.*
*Fuck,* Trouble says, and only with difficulty refrains from kicking the watchdog that appears instantly to snap at her ankles. The co-op, then, and possibly Jesse—he would sell her, if it meant staying clear himself.
*The doc didn’t say anything, of course,*van Liesvelt went on, *and she thinks it should dead-end there.*
Trouble nods, her mind racing. When she gets off the net, she’ll have to bribe Valentine, see if she’ll substitute another name for the one she gave at registration, or maybe hack the hotel system and make the fix herself. That, in Seahaven, won’t be easy, and she puts the thought sternly aside for later. She will have enough to do, to leave Cerise the message she needs. *Thanks for the warning,* she says aloud, and van Liesvelt grins.
*Just be careful,* he says, and turns away.
Trouble takes the long way out of Seahaven, through the most complex of the gateways, checks the address Fate has given her, and lets the first node she comes to carry her away from the BBS. She follows the coded numbers through the tangle of the midlevel roads, letting herself fade to obscurity against the brilliant packets of data, until she is all but invisible, little more than a shadow of a ghost. She pauses at the center of a great hub, waits, a dozen breaths, a hundred heartbeats, while the datastreams flow over and past her, until she is sure she is not followed. Only then does she take the final step, the last turn that will lead her to her ultimate destination.
IC(E) arcs to either side, walling off the corporate precincts, sparks dripping like water from the overarching spines. Trouble recognizes the space, a shared system where suppliers and parent corporations meet and exchange data, knows how the protocol works and how to get inside. Fate has done well by her, bringing her here; the only difficulty now is to trace Multiplane’s lines. She checks herself, confirming that her presence has been muted, outbound data squelched, turns slowly, watching the datastream slide past her, merging with the IC(E), until she understands the pattern of it, and feels it in her bones. She chooses a packet then, invokes a mirror program from her toolkit, watches it spin an identical image around herself, so that she sinks into the datastream, indistinguishable from the data around her. She lets herself drift toward the IC(E), lets the steady flow draw her into the coils of unreal wire, sharp and cold as steel and hard as bone. She can feel the chill from them as she slides through the spiraling wire, sees it through a pale gold haze of the stolen pattern; her own hands are all but invisible, the gleam of IC(E) bright beneath her skin.
And then she’s through the first barrier, emerges into a space like a pool, where a structure like a stack of gears stirs the datastream, curves it first into a gentle whirlpool and then sorts it on its way. She slows herself subtly, not daring to fall too far out of the parameters, just a backward eddy in the general current, and searches the packets for an address label. They are coded, an unfamiliar system, and she calls Fate’s codes from memory. She had hoped not to have to rely on them—she trusts him, but only so far, only so far as she would trust any fellow cracker, except perhaps van Liesvelt and Arabesque…and Cerise. But the numbers are there, and she evokes them, creates a label for herself that matches the patterns that she sees, and lets herself slide back into the line of data.
The current sweeps her closer, stirred by the first level of gears into the general pool, and then, quite suddenly, she’s swept up and away, snapped from the stream and flung off into a new and alien conduit. Her stomach lurches as the brainworm relays the motion faithfully—one of the few disadvantages of the wire—and then she steadies, orienting herself against the new perspective. The space is marked off in grids, black on silver, a dozen or more imposed one on top of the other: a mailroom configuration, a limited interface with Multiplane’s primary systems. She studies the pattern for a moment, letting the data fall past her to be captured by the various grids, then lets herself fall with them, shrinking as the data shrinks until she matches its shape precisely. The address Fate supplied floats before her; she feels the system probe it, a pulse like a pressure, a finger poked hard into her ribs, and then she’s shunted into the maze of the grids. She rides the current, tossed abruptly from side to side as the system shunts her from one plane to another, and then, quite suddenly, she’s where she wants to be.
She hangs suspended, abruptly still, in a space that seems infinite, but feels constrained, hemmed in by the walls of the pigeonhole into which she has been dropped. This is the virtual address, the place where the mail waits, and she studies it, reaching with infinite care to feel the other message packages waiting with her. They are all for Cerise; she feels further, finds the password lock that seals the system and recognizes Cerise’s hand in the intricate check mechanism. Definitely the right place, she thinks, and sinks back into the still center of the address to compose her message. It is simple, a single word—from her, to Cerise, there’s no need for more. Even after everything, it’s still that simple, and she shapes the word in its delicate casing: Seahaven.
She sets it free, easing it out of the shell that conceals her presence, budding it like an amoeba. At last it pops free, shining like a soap bubble for an instant as the system registers a new arrival, and Trouble smiles to herself She has done what she can; it should be enough to bring Cerise to Seahaven, the real one—Cerise has already been to the virtual town, she knows what is, and isn’t, there. All that remains is to leave as undetected as she’s entered. She pauses for an instant longer, considering her options, then grins and shapes another address. The mail routine sweeps by again, and she watches it pass, gauging speed and direction; another dozen heartbeats, and it sweeps past again like a lighthouse beam. This time she reaches for it, places the false address in its path and lets it scoop up the packet, dragging her in its wake. When she’s sure it has her bait securely, she reels herself in, recomposes herself behind the mask of the false package. The program flings her back into the grids, and the grid flips her out into the sorting area. She would laugh if she dared, breathless, enjoying the rollercoaster ride. And then she’s back out in the IC(E) and she abandons the mail packet, lets the system carry its empty shell on through the walls of IC(E). Someone will be annoyed, receiving a transmission so badly garbled, but she spares less than a thought for them, turns her attention to the IC(E) instead. It is less formidable from this direction, was designed to keep people out, not to hold them in, but she knows better than to be too confident. She eases her way through the coils like diamond and wire, moving crabwise, oblique, across the grain of the net, until at last she emerges from the thicket, hangs once again in the open net. She smiles, allowing herself at least that much of triumph, but does not let her cloaking programs fade. Instead, she takes the nearest datastream, and, still smiling, lets it carry her toward home.