“There’s a major sweep on,” van Liesvelt continued, “ID checks, body scans, toolkit search, pattern matching—the works and then some. The warning went up on all the boards for anyone ever connected with Trouble to lie low, but I figured, since I’d heard you went legal, you might not get the message. And, of course, I didn’t dare risk the mail.”
“You figured right,” Trouble said. It had been months—maybe as much as a year—since she had last logged on to any of the temporary BBS, the pirate bulletin boards where most of the virtual economy functioned and the illegal and quasi-legal jobs were traded. She had kept a low profile, not even lurking, her presence dimmed until she could barely feel the virtual winds, barely taste the data, relying purely on the visual images rather than the brainworm’s translation. She frowned, adding up the points where her new identity intersected with the old. There were more of them than she liked, and she could feel her frown deepen. “How’s the check being run?”
“On-line, mostly,” van Liesvelt answered. “But there are some off-line checks as well, following up on this new Trouble’s contacts.”
I wonder if any of them are being made up this way? Trouble thought. She put that aside, something to deal with in the morning when she could ask a few discreet questions of the sheriff’s computer flunky, and said, “Thanks, Butch. I appreciate the warning.”
Van Liesvelt shrugged, reached for his glass again. “You’re family. All us queers have to stick together.”
Trouble smiled. “How’d you get up here? You need parking, or transport home tomorrow?”
“I left my bike in the woods,” he answered, and waved vaguely toward the stand of trees that stood invisible beyond the metal shutters. “I figured nobody would want it bad enough to chop down a whole tree for it.”
Trouble felt the laugh catch in her throat. Van Liesvelt had come up from the city on his ancient motorbike, almost an antique already, three hundred miles in the rain, to warn her that someone was using her name, and that she might catch some fallout from it. She touched his shoulder gently, and he looked up in surprise. “Thanks,” she said again, softly, and van Liesvelt shrugged, looked embarrassed and pleased all at once.
“Like I said, we got to stick together.”
There was a chair that folded out into a narrow mattress in the oversized closet that passed for a second bedroom. Trouble found sheets and a blanket, and pulled the second quilt and the extra pillow from her own bed to make up a serviceable extra bed. Van Liesvelt protested, but only for form’s sake, and she left him to strip and went on into her own room. She undressed slowly, her mind still busy with Liesvelt’s warning. It had been three years since she’d… retired. It had seemed the thing to do at the time: corporate security had been getting better, as were the various law enforcement groups—Treasury, Interpol, ECCI, ko-cops and all the rest—assigned to watch the nets, and then Congress had rejected the Amsterdam Conventions in favor of Evans-Tindale, making convictions possible and even commonplace. Even before Evans-Tindale, things had been going badly. She could still remember the shock, the taste of it, bitter fear, when she’d heard that Terrel was actually going to jail on an armed robbery charge, just as if the icebreaker in his kit had been a gun…. Cerise had said that it was stupid to panic, that blind drunk they were better than Terrel was at his best, but Trouble had been certain then that things had changed. Eight months later, Evans-Tindale had passed, and she had been out of the business for good, and on her way to reestablishing her original identity, alone.
She sighed, and crawled into bed, waving her hand through the signal beam to cut the lights. She could hear the rain, louder now, here under the roof, and, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, her furniture became familiar shadows. The courtyard lights cast a faint pattern on the far wall, even through the curtains. I don’t want to leave, she thought, I like it here. The co-op had been a safe harbor, a quiet, easy refuge—dull, but there had been something comforting about the very predictability of the routine. Maintaining the local net, shepherding the co-op’s business through the nets: it was easy, and she would regret losing it. She made a face in the dark, annoyed with herself, turned noisily onto her side so that she was looking at the blank wall. If I was really that contented here, I wouldn’t’ve turned the brainworm back on—wouldn’t’ve been out on the net tonight. So where does that leave me?
She had been careful when she retired, had taken seven months to reestablish herself, her new/old identity, before she’d gone back onto the nets, and by that time she’d created jobs to explain the time she’d been invisible. The documentation for those jobs was the weakest link, of course—some of it was outright forgery, like the six months she’d supposedly spent waiting tables in Seahaven, and all of it depended on “employers” being unable to remember their minimum-wage help clearly enough to notice that she’d bought someone else’s workcard. Still, an early adulthood spent hopping from one low-pay, no-status job to another wasn’t particularly uncommon, especially for artists, and the story that she’d told the co-op when she applied to run their networks for them was not inherently implausible. Kids dropped out of school all the time to try to make it in the arts, and found out too late that their talents didn’t lie in that direction at all. When the Treasury cops showed up—if, she amended, without conviction—she would just have to hope that the story held up. It had held up when the local sheriff’s office had run the security check that cleared her to receive a syscop’s license. But the sheriff’s office doesn’t exactly check things out as carefully as Treasury will, a voice whispered in her mind. She ignored it, and disciplined herself to sleep.
She woke in the chill light of dawn to hear someone tapping on the doorframe. She sat up, blinking, to see van Liesvelt peering in at her.
“I got to be going,” he whispered, and Trouble shook herself fully awake.
“Why? You’re welcome to stay for breakfast, have some coffee, at least….”
She had spoken in her normal voice—there was no one around to hear—and to her relief van Liesvelt did the same. “No, thanks anyway. I have to be back in the city by noon.”
“So you could leave at seven,” Trouble began, and van Liesvelt shook his head.
“There’s some people I’ve got to see first. And I want to be out of sight of here before full light, anyway.”
That was a kindness, and Trouble was briefly ashamed of her own relief. “If you’re sure,” she said, and threw back the covers. “I’ll let you out.”
She padded down the stairs behind him, shivering a little in the thin T-shirt, unlocked the back door, and then fiddled the security system to let him past the main perimeter sensors. Van Liesvelt walked away across the damp grass toward the stand of trees where he’d left his motorcycle, his disreputable jacket flapping loose around him. He turned back once, lifting his hand in casual farewell, and then disappeared back into the shadows of the trees. Trouble waited until she was certain he’d had time enough to pass the perimeter, counted off five more minutes by the kitchen clock, then reset the security system and went back to bed.
She woke again at nine, feeling somewhat more in control of things, and showered herself completely awake. She dressed, and headed across the compound to the community hall where the news-service machine was kept. It was a cool morning even in the sun, and the maples outside the compound were already showing a few yellow and flame-red leaves among the general green, bright contrast against the vivid blue of the sky. The rain had left the air unexpectedly clear, and she could hear the hum of traffic on the feeder flyway that ran less than two kilometers from the compound.
Inside the residents’ entrance, the community hall was as disorderly as ever, the walls papered with notices and children’s art, but quiet: most of the other inhabitants were already at work or school. Trouble went down the long corridor and out into the main room, bright with the sunlight that streamed in through the skylights. The glass was set on clear today, and the plain wooden chairs and benches in the pu
blic lobby seemed to glow in the warm light. The dining room was closed, of course, but the coffee machine was still active. She punched her codes into the news-service dispenser, and poured herself a cup of coffee while the machine whirred to itself and finally spat half a dozen closely printed sheets. She collected the thin papers, squinting at the print—the machine’s ribbon needed changing, and she made a mental note to take care of that later—and nearly ran into Oba Alvarez, one of the co-op’s half-dozen potters and a member of the management committee. He smiled at her, rather vaguely, and headed on into the management office.
Trouble shook her head, nearly spilling her coffee, and started back toward her condo. Dory Gustafson, busy draping a photoprint stand with a length of treated cloth, looked up long enough to call a greeting, but did not pause in her work. Trouble waved the papers at her. The co-op still seemed vaguely unreal to her, especially after her days in the city. She knew better than to be nostalgic for the dangers, the hovering fear, the adrenaline edge that the chance of random violence gave to the simplest things, but she still had trouble quite believing in the co-op’s basic—niceness. It was easier when they were having trouble with the zoning boards, or the bills, or fighting about a new member’s work: she could deal with all of that almost better than she could cope with the good times.
She shook her head again, unlocking the condo’s door, and went into the kitchen. She still had the monthly accounting to prepare for the sheriff’s office—not a particularly pleasant task at the best of times, and doubly not after van Liesvelt’s news. Part of her obligation as the co-op’s syscop was to keep a log of local net usage, and to watch out for any attempts either to crack her system or, more likely, to use it as a springboard to other, richer nodes. It was a painstaking job at the best of times, and usually involved hunting down two or three individual members to see if they remembered doing certain jobs. This time, though…this time, she would have to check her own records very carefully, and maybe do some judicious editing before she turned them over to the sheriff. She made a face, put the rest of her coffee in the microwave for later, and started down the stairs to her workspace.
The big display board flickered to life at her touch, showing only normal activity, familiar iconage. A CADset was up and running, Natalie Dreyer was on one of her interminable excursions to the university libraries, and someone—Rikki, probably—was running the story-sculpture program that took almost as much space as the graphics programs. Her routine checks were all in place, watchdogs lurking dormant: nothing new there. If anything changed, if anyone tried anything out of the ordinary, her watchdogs would notice and alert her.
She made a face, impatient with herself, and spun her chair to face the board, slipping the cord into place. Instantly the world hazed around her, sparks and shadow overwriting her vision, the ghost of new and unrelated sensations tingling along her nerves. She ignored the feelings, reached for her keyboard, and typed the sequence that changed its mode from standard to the specialized format that allowed her to control the brainworm’s settings. She hit a second sequence, and then her private code, the password that gave her access to the internal account. An instant later a light flared, and a new window popped into existence, displaying the brainworm’s virtual controls. She sighed—it was much more fun working fully wired, but the brainworm inevitably leaked some feedback into the system; a good syscop could tell whether or not another netwalker was on the wire—and moved the virtual levers to damp down the input. The tingling faded, and the lights that floated between her and the screen dimmed slightly, until she was looking at a display that was almost what any other netwalker would see. She made another face, and touched a final icon to set the changes. Then, dismissing the brainworm’s controls, she turned her attention to the monthly accounts.
She pored over the accounts for three hours without finding anything out of the ordinary. Her own monitors had been doing their job, erasing any signs of her occasional fully wired forays onto the main nets, and there was no sign that this new Trouble, whoever it was, had been using her nodes as a staging area. She shrugged to herself, and touched the keys that would drop her notes into a working file for later revision into the sort of report the local sheriff appreciated, then leaned back in her chair, stretching to work out the kinks. The iconage of the co-op at work danced in front of her eyes, and was echoed a moment later on the main display: Dreyer still in the libraries, two CADsets working now, Mineka Konstenten running a blocking program. Her eyes lingered on Konstenten’s icon, flickering from pale blue to a blue dark as midnight as her demand on the system changed. Konstenten was still an enigma, had come over one night to see the computers, stayed until morning, and had neither returned nor allowed the subject to be raised again. Trouble’s smile shifted with the memory, became rueful. She still didn’t know how she herself felt about the whole thing. Konstenten was a good friend, a clever designer, and an attractive woman; a vest she had made, Japanese patchwork of black-and-white fabrics, hung on Trouble’s wall as a work of art when it wasn’t being worn. But she was not precisely what Trouble wanted in a lover—or at least not now, not here—and, all in all, it was probably smarter to live celibate just a little while longer…. Which was where that train of thought always ended these days. Trouble stretched again, making herself concentrate on the pull of muscles across her shoulders, then laced her fingers together and pulled until the tendons tightened all the way into her wrists. If the brainworm had been fully operational, the movement would have sent feedback into the net, a flicker of sensation translated as light and sound, tangible even to the unwired masses…. She turned her attention back to the screen.
“Indy?”
Trouble looked up, startled, touched keys to open the intercom. “Yeah?”
“There’s a couple of suits who want to see you,” Gustafson went on. “Oba’s got them in the main hall.”
Trouble swallowed hard, the copper taste of panic filling her throat, and kept her voice steady only with an effort. “What sort of suits?” She made her hands move on the keyboard, saving her work and putting her system to sleep, leaving only the watchdogs loose on the household net.
“Something to do with computers, I think,” Gustafson said. “They said they wanted to talk to the syscop.”
Trouble let her breath out slowly, reached for the remote that would signal her if there were any anomalies in the system, and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. If they just wanted to talk to the syscop, it might be all right, be just another routine check. And if it was what van Liesvelt had warned her about, people looking for Trouble, her present documentation should get through the first checks. She pushed herself away from the board, and went up the basement stairs.
Gustafson was waiting outside the main door, one hand still on the intercom controls, the sunlight pointing up the com-silk texture of her hair and the bright barbaric splendor of her working smock.
“So what do you think?” Trouble asked, and was rewarded by a quick grin.
“Not corporate, I don’t think,” Gustafson said. “The suits aren’t good enough.”
“Thanks,” Trouble said, and started for the community hall. Like anyone who lived this far outside the mainstream, Gustafson had learned to read the nuances of the corporate dress codes as well as or better than the corporate souls themselves: if she said cheap suit, she meant it, and cheap suits meant cops.
The hall was still very bright, though someone had adjusted the skylights so that the glass was bright amber, filling the hall with heavy color. It helped to hide the worn upholstery on the lobby furniture—the space had been furnished from the discards of the co-op’s households—and the merely serviceable rugs. The two men waiting there had their backs to the light, throwing their faces into shadow, but Trouble could tell they were cops just from the way they held themselves.
“India.” Alvarez emerged from a side room, the management committee’s current offices, a sheaf of green-stripe paper in one hand. “These people wanted to ta
lk to you.”
Trouble nodded and stepped forward into the sunlight. “I’m India Carless,” she said, and waited.
“Thanks for seeing us, Ms. Carless,” one of the strangers said. He was the taller of the two, Trouble realized, as they both came to their feet in polite acknowledgment. They were definitely cops, by the movement as well as the suits, cheap copy-Armanis, and she held herself very still.
“Unless you need me, India,” Alvarez said, “I’ve got to get back to work.” He let his voice trail off, making it almost a question, and Trouble shook her head.
“I can take care of it, thanks,” she said, and Alvarez turned away. Trouble looked back at the strangers. “Is there a problem?”
“I don’t think so,” the smaller man said.
His partner cut in smoothly. “We just have a few routine questions. We’ve been talking to most of the syscops who monitor systems that use the BVI-four gateway into the national net.”
Trouble let herself relax a little. Anyone who called it the national net didn’t know the system—or else, she thought, they’re trying to lull me into being careless. If they’re looking for Trouble, they’ll be playing it very canny. “If I can help, sure. Can I get you some coffee?”
There was a quick exchange of looks, and then the taller man said, “No, thanks. We’ve got a lot of driving to do.” He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket, came up with a thin folder. “I’m Bennet Levy, that’s John Starling. We’re from the Treasury.”
Trouble accepted the folder with what she hoped was convincing uncertainty, studied the ID card and hologram badge as though she’d never seen one before, and handed it back to Levy. She didn’t recognize either of their names, but then, she hadn’t expected to: even if she had heard of them, and she had been off the shadow nets long enough to make that unlikely, she would only have heard their work names, not the names that were actually on their badges. “Why don’t we go in the other room?” she said, and gestured toward the door that led to the smaller of the two conference rooms. “It’s not as sunny.”
Trouble and her Friends Page 5