Trouble and her Friends

by Melissa Scott

  She looked back at the others, and saw Aledort leaning back a little, eyes narrowed. He had heard the same thing she had, and Aledort usually went armed.

  Helling said, “Nobody’s going to wipe out cracking anyway. The multinationals pay too damn well.”

  He had said the right thing, Cerise realized. There was a little ripple of scornful laughter, and, underneath it, the release of tension like a sigh. She took a deep breath, reached for her wine, and took a long drink without really tasting it. In the background, Singlar droned on, his voice alternately reproving and paternal by turns, but she determinedly ignored it, concentrating on the wine. She set the glass carefully back in its wet circle, wondering what she was going to do. Whatever else Evans-Tindale had done, it had broken the old community of the net, divided the old-style crackers, the ones who relied on the dollie-boxes, from the ones who used the brainworm—and was that the intention? she wondered suddenly. It would be more subtle than she would have expected from people who didn’t know the net—and conspiracy theories are usually wrong, she told herself sternly. The only certainty is that the nets have changed irrevocably. And Trouble is gone, my life changed with that as much as with the new law. The only question is, what to do now.

  She took another deep breath, still looking at the glass of wine in its wet circle. Singlar’s voice rumbled on behind her, but she didn’t turn to look again at the monitors.

  “—establish a new enforcement agency—something like the Texas Rangers, if you will, bringing law to the virtual frontier—”

  Arabesque was right about one thing, though: it was going to be a lot harder to make a living cracking without ending up in a real jail. She would need new equipment, top-of-the-line machines to replace the old systems she and Trouble had owned, maybe new bioware to bring her brainworm up to speed, and that meant a trip to Seahaven—the real one, she amended, with an inward smile, not the virtual town that went by the same name. The seacoast town was the East Coast’s greatest source for black- and grey-market netware, hard and soft alike. But it was correspondingly expensive: she would have to crack that IC(E), the IC(E) Trouble had refused to face with her. Anything with that big a fence around it had to be valuable, and there would be a grace period before Treasury got itself together. She could take what she needed, sell it, and be on the road to Seahaven, the real Seahaven, before anyone knew what had happened. And it would serve Trouble right, prove she’d been wrong to leave—

  “Cerise?” Van Liesvelt was leaning forward slightly, both elbows on the tilting tabletop.

  “Hey, careful,” Held said, and Arabesque pressed down on her side of the table, steadying it.

  “You all right, Cerise?” van Liesvelt asked.

  Cerise nodded. “Yeah, I’m all right,” she said, and thought she meant it. She smiled, calculating the effect. “I’ll be going to Seahaven. After I’ve done some—work.”

  Helling said, “That was serious IC(E), Trouble said. And you don’t know what’s behind it.”

  “If there’s that much IC(E),” Cerise said, “it has to be worth something. And I want to do some shopping.”

  “Your credit’s good with me,” Held said. He had done her other implants, from the original dollie-slot and box to the brainworm. Cerise nodded her thanks.

  “I appreciate it, Carlie, but I don’t take charity.” She looked around the table. “Anyone interested in coming in on this with me?”

  Mason shook her head. “I’m—I think I’m going to lie low for a while,” she said, and Cerise was suddenly certain that was not what the other woman had meant to say.

  “You’re quitting,” Arabesque said, the words an accusation, and Mason glared at her.

  “I don’t know yet, but I’m damn sure it’s the smart thing to do.”

  “Butch?” Cerise said.

  Van Liesvelt looked down at his beer. “I think Dewildah’s right. I’m going to lie low, see how things shape up before I take on anything else.”

  Cerise nodded. “Arabesque?”

  The other woman hesitated, made a face. “I know the job you mean, and I’m not taking on that IC(E) with what I got right now. You wait a month, let me get my new bioware tuned in, and I’ll go in with you.”

  “I’m not waiting,” Cerise said flatly. If I wait, she thought, if I wait, Trouble may come back and try to talk me out of it again—or worse still, maybe she won’t come back, and I’ll be left truly on my own. She shook the thought away. “Max, you interested?”

  “I’ve plenty of work of my own, thanks,” Helling answered.

  “Fine.”

  Held said again, “Cerise, I do give credit—”

  “And I don’t take charity.” Cerise shook her head, shaking away temptation. “Thanks, Carlie, but I can’t.” I don’t care what Trouble says, what any of them say, she thought. I’m not going to let things change.

  2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Hello, Trouble,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Coriander.”

  “Jesus.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I never did that—”

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

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