And this was not the attitude she needed to take to this meeting. Her frown deepened to a scowl, and she took her thoughts firmly in hand. Helling’s friend from Interpol was going to want value for any information he let slip; she would have to be at her best, if she was going to win this game. The car slowed again, eased to a stop directly in front of the black glass-fronted building that housed the restaurant they had chosen. The driver locked the engine, and came around to open the door; Cerise climbed out easily, just touching the automatically extended hand.
“I’ll be back for you at three, Ms. Cerise?” the driver asked, and she nodded.
“That’ll be fine,” she said, and went up the shallow marble stairs into the lobby.
The light was darker here, dimmed by the smoky glass, but she knew her way without having to consult the direction boards placed discreetly inside the entrance. She climbed the double staircase and nodded to the man in evening clothes who waited just outside the door.
“Cerise,” she said. “I’m meeting a man named Mabry.”
The security man nodded back, fingering the silver square of the annunciator clipped to his lapel, and Cerise stepped past him into the suddenly warm light of the restaurant. It wasn’t crowded, and a pair of waiters came hurrying to meet her.
“May I help you?” the first—a dark, curvy little woman in a black skirt a little too short to flatter her short legs—asked, in a voice that held the hint of a musical accent. Cerise smiled in spite of herself, in spite of business.
“My name’s Cerise,” she said again. “I’m here to meet Mr. Mabry.”
“Of course. If you’ll come this way,” the woman answered, and hurried off, glancing back only once to be sure Cerise was still behind her. Cerise followed more slowly, enjoying both the woman’s bustling handsomeness and the quiet elegance of the dining room, found herself, as she had expected, at the door of one of the semiprivate rooms. A table for two had been set up there, hidden from any other diners by a standing screen and some towering, broad-leafed plants, and the dark woman gestured toward the table.
“Your party, ma’am.”
“Thanks,” Cerise said, hoping vaguely that she would be the one to wait on them, and turned her attention to the man at the table. He rose to his feet at her approach, holding out his hand in greeting.
“Ms. Cerise?” It was only half a question, but Cerise nodded anyway, and the man went on, his vowels touched with a flat, European accent. “I’m Vesselin Mabry.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Cerise said, and allowed herself to be handed to her seat. It was a tactic Eurocops often employed against Yanks, that overdone, unfamiliar politesse, but she had faced it before, rather enjoyed the brittle game of it. He was not quite what she had expected, looked more like an overage rocker than a netwalker: a big man, broad through the shoulders and thick-bodied, with a mane of untidy, greying curls and a fleshy, broad-boned face. Only the jacket betrayed him for a cop, even though he wore it over jeans and a charcoal-grey T-shirt: it was not top-of-the-line, a less expensive copy of a good designer. She smiled to herself, reassured, and leaned forward in her chair.
“Max said you might have some information for me about a cracker I’ve been hunting.”
Mabry didn’t even blink, just smiled slowly, the lines at the corners of his eyes tightening with what looked like good humor. “Funny, that’s what Max said to me.”
Their waiter—not the dark woman, Cerise saw with some disappointment—arrived then, stopping the conversation.
He offered menu boards, pointed out the order mechanism, and vanished again, but the interruption had been enough to defuse any advantage she might have achieved.
“I heard on the net that Multiplane had had an encounter with Trouble,” Mabry said. “Frankly, I was disappointed that you didn’t notify us at once.”
“Question of jurisdiction,” Cerise said, promptly and plausibly, using the easy lie. “Interpol’s network authority comes from the Amsterdam Conventions, and you know we never signed.”
Mabry sighed heavily, put his menu aside. “You and I both know that’s bullshit. Any law enforcement agency can be notified now, and the word passed to a more appropriate entity if necessary.”
“Also bullshit,” Cerise said. “We have a responsibility to be certain that our response to an intrusion is overseen by the agency most directly concerned. Which may or may not be your agency—all of which is made moot, of course, by the fact that the company is U.S.-based.”
“Multiplane is multinational,” Mabry murmured. “You have subsidiaries in Switzerland, Eire, and Germany, just to name Europe. That certainly falls within my brief. And multinationals have traditionally obeyed the Conventions.”
Cerise nodded, willing to surrender her position—she had better and stronger ones in reserve—and said, “Which is part of why I’m here, Mr. Mabry.”
“Vess. Please.”
Like calling a cobra “Cuddles,” Cerise thought. It’s cute, but it doesn’t make me any less careful. “And I’m Cerise.”
“No other name?”
“I never needed one.” Cerise smiled at him, looked down at her menu, then touched the order strip to select her lunch.
“Except Alice,” Mabry said, and matched her smile.
“That was a long time ago,” Cerise answered. She had expected him to know that—anyone who was halfway competent on the nets would have found out her old workname, never mind that Helling could have told him—and she refused to be disconcerted by it.
“Yes, it quite dates me,” Mabry answered, and Cerise caught herself warming to him. That was dangerous; still, Helling liked him, and Max had never been a fool.
“But we are interested in the same person,” Mabry went on. “I would be very glad indeed to see any data you can give me regarding your intrusion.”
“You didn’t say, we’re both interested in Trouble,” Cerise said.
“That’s the second thing I’d be interested in hearing from you,” Mabry said. “The word on the nets is that Trouble is back—the old Trouble, your former partner, I believe—and that this intruder, this cracker who writes viruses, is someone else entirely. Of course, a week ago, everyone was saying the opposite.”
“I think it’s two different people,” Cerise said.
“Why?”
Cerise leaned back in her chair as the waiter appeared with their salads, grateful for the interruption. When the man had left, she went on, “Because none of this is Trouble’s style. Not the cracking—our work was surgical, we did exactly what was needed, nothing more, nothing less—and not the boasting afterward. I hadn’t heard about viruses until I talked to Max—you must be keeping that very much under wraps, Mr. Mabry—but that’s even more not our style, not Trouble’s style. Germ warfare is too double-edged. We never messed with it.”
“What, never?” Mabry murmured, with a lift of his bushy eyebrows. “I thought it was a rite of passage.”
“Don’t play devil’s advocate with me,” Cerise said. “You’re old enough to remember the old days. There were standards, even before the law moved in. Responsible people didn’t do viruses.” She shook her head, the anger cooling rapidly, continued more quietly. “I know, we were breaking the law, off-line law, but we did keep to our own rules.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you a romantic,” Mabry said.
“You were there, too,” Cerise answered. “You tell me.” There was a little silence, and then Mabry looked away. “Yes, I know,” he said, softly. “I get tired of hearing about it sometimes, that’s all.”
He was never one of us, Cerise realized suddenly, had never worked the shadows. She eyed him with new wariness and a new respect, not quite sure which she felt—more like what she would feel for some new and exotic species—and Mabry smiled with what looked like self-mockery.
“Still,” he said. “Cops should stick together—shouldn’t we?”
Cerise smiled, acknowledging the point: whatever he hadn’t been, whatever she h
ad been before, right now they were on the same side.
“Max said this wasn’t like Trouble,” Mabry went on, “or not like the Trouble he knew, and now you’re saying the same thing. I find that very interesting.”
Cerise hesitated, then, deliberately, touched one finger to her dollie-slot. “This new Trouble doesn’t feel the same.”
“A brainworm?” Mabry’s thick eyebrows rose, and then he grinned. “A European job, I presume.”
“Of course,” Cerise said, blandly.
“Yet the Treasury savants make a match of it.”
“Sixty percent accuracy,” Cerise said. “All that means is that they’ve never seen the newbie before, and that it’s using some of Trouble’s old programs—which would make sense, if it’s stealing Trouble’s name. All of which you know.”
Mabry grinned again. “Tell me about Trouble.”
Cerise looked at him in genuine surprise. “What’s Max told you?”
“Very little,” Mabry said, and there was a touch of bitterness in his voice. Cerise lifted an eyebrow, and Mabry took a deep breath. “Max and I have been—together—for about a year now, but we don’t, he doesn’t talk much about his old friends.”
“I didn’t know you were family,” Cerise said.
Mabry touched his own dollie-slot. “Depends on the family,” he said, and this time the bitterness was clear.
Cerise nodded once, careful not to show too much comprehension. Helling was on the wire, of course—they had all been, van Liesvelt, herself and Trouble, Max and his then-partner Jannick Aledort, Carlie Held, Arabesque, Dewildah Mason, and David Terrel. They had lived within a subway ride of each other for three years, and had seen each other off the nets perhaps even more than on—and that was part of what the wire had brought them, the desire to know each other in reality as well. And it would be hard for Mabry, a man who stayed within the law, who adapted to the rules of the net—one of the most ironclad of which was, never try to contact the human being behind the net persona-—to know that his lover had not only managed an illegal career with an illegal implant, but had broken that rule as well. “Whatever happened to Aledort?” she asked, with apparent inconsequence, and Mabry grimaced.
“He was shot to death,” he said, after a heartbeat’s pause. “Two years ago. No one was ever charged, but it was probably Planetaries.”
Cerise nodded, feeling suddenly cold despite the restaurant’s expensive environmental system. That was two down, out of the old gang, Terrel in jail—still—and Aledort dead, and maybe more gone, if she’d been able to keep in touch. It was no surprise that Aledort had gotten himself killed—ecotage was a dangerous profession, and the Planetary League was a particularly bad group to cross; and besides, Aledort had a nasty streak that almost invited murder—but it was still a little unnerving to contemplate.
“And yes,” Mabry went on, with another little smile, “I’m a bad winner.”
So we know where we stand, Cerise thought. She said, “We all thought Max could do better than Aledort.” She carefully did not say that she thought he had done so, and Mabry’s smile broadened for an instant.
“To return to business,” he said. “Tell me about Trouble.”
Cerise paused, took a deep breath, and was pleased that when she spoke, her voice stayed steady, remote. “We lived together, worked together, for just about four years. She’s a brilliant cracker—also on the wire, we all were—with a good sense of place and timing, a nice hand with tools. She used to write most of her own, or modify them. I’m probably a little quicker—she’s bigger than I am, and that shows even on the net—but she’s probably a little more accurate in the long run. She liked to run really clean programs, the architecture mattered to her, she’d polish things just for the satisfaction of it. That’s what’s missing with this new Trouble, that sense of precision. Trouble liked to keep things clean.” Including leaving me—at least it was clean for her. Cerise put the thought aside along with the flash of memory, Trouble’s body pressed against her own, the feel of Trouble’s muscled back beneath her fingers as she pulled the other woman closer into a twining embrace, and said, “What’s Interpol’s interest in all of this?”
There was a little pause, but then Mabry said, “As you know, this new Trouble has been causing a lot of commotion. Treasury is looking for her—or him—here, ECCI and Interpol are mounting their own investigations as well. Since Trouble, either one, has always worked out of the U.S. nets, I’ve been sent over to keep an eye on the Treasury investigation, just in case they turn up something we can use. There have been a series of intrusions, scattershot attacks, into the industrial nets in Europe, but we—Interpol is most worried about the viruses.”
“Reasonable enough,” Cerise said. In spite of herself, she felt another touch of fear worm its way along her spine. You couldn’t steal much in a five-second intrusion, but there was plenty of time to leave an infectious program. In fact, she thought, if I were trying to virus a system, that’s probably how I’d do it. Break in, leave my virus, and then deliberately trigger the alarms in the hope that the syscops would be too busy trying to trace the intruder to spot any stray bits of code. She bit back the desire to call her people immediately with the warning—they had run scans as soon as the intruder had been spotted; she had returned from her futile chase to find the printouts waiting—and said instead, “The same style?”
“All the ones that have been reported,” Mabry said, “follow a similar pattern. A quick intrusion, sometimes a virus inserted, more often not, once a definite theft and subsequent sale, but always boasting afterwards.”
“That sounds like what we had,” Cerise agreed. “I have a transcript of the event with me, if you’d like to take a look at it.”
“I’d like to keep it.” Mabry held out his hand, and Cerise slid the disk across the table.
“Please do,” she said. “We haven’t had any signs of infection, but I’ll double-check when I get back to the office.”
“I can give you a sample of the payload,” Mabry said. “Which hasn’t been particularly destructive. And also what we’ve salvaged of the main code.” He produced another disk from his pocket, and held it out. Cerise took it, nodding her thanks.
“If you find anything,” Mabry went on, “would you save it for us? Most of it’s been set to self-destruct, but still, any fragments are potential evidence.”
“Of course,” Cerise said, and slipped the disk into her carrier.
“There’s one more thing,” Mabry said, “and I’d rather you didn’t answer than lie to me. Do you keep in touch with Trouble?”
It was not the question Cerise had been expecting. She hesitated, choosing her words carefully, thought vaguely that he’d paid her back for asking about Aledort. “No. We didn’t exactly—part friends. Right before Evans-Tindale passed, we had, well, a disagreement about it, about what we should do. Trouble wanted to bail out then and there, go legit, and I wanted to go on. I had a job in train that I wanted to do, you see.” She could almost see the remembered IC(E), almost taste the sharp codes, a new system then, one she’d never broken before, a gaudy, glittering challenge, utterly irresistible to any netwalker of spirit. “We were still arguing about it, about the job, when Evans-Tindale passed. She left. I haven’t seen her since, bar her name on the nets.” The worst of it was, Trouble had been right.
Mabry nodded slowly, as though he’d guessed her thought. “Treasury will be wanting to talk to you nonetheless.”
“I might’ve known.” The words came out more bitter than she’d intended, and Mabry smiled slightly.
“They want Trouble—either one—very badly. If you know of a way to get in touch with her—” He broke off, shaking his head.
I certainly wouldn’t tell you, Cerise thought, and said, “I’ll bear that in mind.” Or was he hinting I should warn her? she wondered a split second later. It was possible; he was Helling’s lover. Max had obviously spoken well of them, from the old days, or at least the little he’d said
had been good. And there was an old rivalry between Treasury and the Eurocops.
“They’ll probably be getting in touch with you soon,” Mabry went on. The waiter appeared with their food, a plate balanced in each hand, served them with economically graceful gestures. Mabry waited until he had gone to continue. “John Starling is handling the on-line investigation.”
Cerise froze for a fleeting instant, the delicate flavor of the chicken gone to ashes in her mouth. She knew Starling, all right, at least by reputation, and didn’t much like him—another netwalker who’d never known the shadows and had a chip on his shoulder because of it. He used a soaring bird as an icon, a deceptively simple sweeping line, bright as light on metal. “I’m sure I’ll be hearing from him, then.”
Mabry nodded, she thought in sympathy. “I’m inclined to agree with you and Max, this isn’t the Trouble you knew. But now that Trouble’s back on-line—well, I suppose they have to take action.”
“If I were looking for Trouble,” Cerise said, “I’d look in Seahaven.”
Mabry smiled then, with genuine amusement, the lines tightening around his eyes. “So easy for some of us to get there.”
“Ah, well,” Cerise answered, and matched his smile. Mabry would not be welcome in Seahaven, any more than she would be welcomed in the near-mythical bat caves reserved for the real cops. “Are you based in the States these days?”
“London, actually.” Mabry accepted the change of subject with equanimity. “This is a temporary assignment.” They talked through the rest of the meal about minor things—Mabry’s time in London, her own life at Multiplane, never how he and Helling had met—and came back to the new Trouble’s techniques over dessert.
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