Trouble and her Friends

by Melissa Scott

  “Frankly,” Mabry said, “I think this Trouble, the new one, is very young. The technical aspects—the routines I’ve dissected have managed to be brilliant and sloppy all at the same time. Not mature work.”

  “And very much not Trouble’s style,” Cerise said.

  “Not if she liked—likes—precision work,” Mabry agreed.

  “And it’s asking for trouble, being that sloppy,” Cerise said, and grimaced at the inadvertent pun. A drop of raspberry sauce escaped from the wedge of chocolate terrine, landed on the pristine edge of her plate. She dabbed it up abstractedly, the fuchsia of her nails clashing with the deeper red, licked her finger without really thinking about it.

  Mabry smiled wryly—he was having coffee, black, decaf—and said, “Yeah. I think this new Trouble is going to trip itself up one of these days.”

  “What about tracers? Any luck?”

  “Now there this Trouble seems to have learned quite a lot from someone.” Mabry leaned forward, planted both elbows on the cloth. The table tilted slightly under his weight. “I’m good at tracking, and we’ve had some other experts in—Max among them.”

  “I remember Toby,” Cerise said. It had been the best tracer she’d ever used, was still a part of her frontline toolkit.

  “Yes. But we still haven’t been able to get any kind of a fix.”

  Cerise finished the last bite of the terrine, and leaned forward herself. “It may be because this guy’s using some of Trouble’s old routines, modified. Trouble knew Max’s work, used to enjoy playing hide-and-seek with him, and most of the current tracers use some of the Toby routines. That’s part of the problem with all of this. This guy’s using Trouble’s tools, so it is her work, her hand, that shows up on autopsy. But it isn’t her.”

  “I wondered why so many of the shadow-folk were staying so quiet,” Mabry said. “Usually, when someone boasts like this, stirs up this much heat, you get a lot of talk. The shadows either close ranks, wall us out, or there are half a hundred people wanting to shop him.”

  “Trouble was well respected,” Cerise said. It wasn’t precisely true, but it was as close as she felt like coming to the full explanation. Trouble’s skills had been universally respected, but the wire had made the old netwalkers keep their distance, and there had always been the whisper that Trouble was only as good as her chips. It was more that Trouble had been the most visible of the group on the wire, and one of the best crackers around; like it or not, she’d been a symbol to both sides. “Now that she’s back, you may hear more.”

  “So you believe in this message I’ve been seeing everywhere.”

  It wasn’t really a question, but Cerise answered anyway. “That’s Trouble’s style.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that, and Mabry signaled for the check. They argued politely over it, and, after some insistence Mabry let her pay. Cerise was still smiling when she emerged into the cloudy afternoon to find her car waiting as she’d asked. She told the driver to take the long way back to Multiplane’s compound, along the ring road that surrounded the city, and leaned back against the seat, trying to sort out her thoughts. She would almost certainly have to talk to Starling—or maybe I could send Sirico, or maybe Jensey? she wondered. The real question is, am I going to try to warn Trouble first? Can I afford to take that chance? She sighed, turned her head sideways, not really seeing the other vehicles—dozens of dark, heavy-bodied cars that matched the one in which she rode—crowding the travel lanes. Trouble more than half deserves this, the way she ran out on me—but she gave me fair warning, the one warning she always gives, she told me she wasn’t going to crack that system…. And I don’t like John Starling’s reputation.

  That wasn’t entirely fair, and she knew it—he was a dedicated cop and a skilled netwalker—but she refused to look further. I don’t like him, and I don’t think Mabry likes him either. And besides, I owe Trouble at least this much. The trick now is to find her—or, of course, someone who knows how to find her. I wonder if Butch kept in touch? It was quite possible, and she felt a faint pang at the thought. But then, she told herself, I didn’t exactly make an effort to keep in touch with him, or with any of them, after I went legit. She had not been proud of herself for taking the job with Multiplane—it had not been entirely her choice, and it was not something she had been going to boast about to her old friends, not something that she had wanted to discuss at all, if she could help it. And the easiest way to avoid questions had been to avoid the people altogether, at least until she was well-known as Multiplane’s chief syscop, and by then so many of the shadow-folk and the worm-carriers had fled into security that she was relatively invisible. She could put the word out discreetly—one of the others, Helling, maybe, or Dewildah, or even van Liesvelt, if she could find him, might be willing to help—or she could take her own advice to Mabry and look in Seahaven. That was probably her best bet, and she shifted against the cushions, wishing now that she’d told the driver to take the flyway. She curbed her impatience sharply, made herself sit quiet as the car churned its way through the heavy traffic. Seahaven was always a temptation and a challenge: she could only welcome the excuse.

  The car let her off at Multiplane’s main entrance, where the same deferential security was waiting. The first pair murmured greetings as one held first the car door and then the door into the lower lobby, but the second pair, one seated behind the high desk that half blocked the entranceway, the other standing hidden behind a pillar and a potted palm, looked up at her approach, and the taller man stepped out from behind his pillar.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Cerise, but I’ve got a message for you.”

  Cerise stopped, frowning in spite of herself—she hadn’t expected Treasury to catch up with her so quickly—and security went on, “Mr. Coigne would like to talk to you as soon as you get in. He said, if you’d drop by his office on your way up.”

  That was not a request. Cerise frowned more deeply, wondering exactly what Coigne wanted, and shook speculation away as pointless. “All right, thank you. You can let him know I’m on my way.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Cerise,” the woman behind the desk said.

  Cerise nodded and went on past, to ride the moving stairs up to the main lobby. She had to wait for an elevator—not unusual, so late in the day—and stood for a long moment staring at the elevated track that carried the compound-to-compound shuttle. The frame embedded in the massive grey-glass wall was designed around the track and its enclosure, the brass struts radiating like a sunburst from around the triangular entrance. Even on a cloudy day, the metal seemed to gleam with a light of its own; in better weather it was spectacular, and Cerise allowed herself a quick moment of regret, wishing it were sunny. It was easier, at the moment, to think about architecture. The elevator came then, and she stepped inside past the hurrying squad of brightly dressed secretaries, keeping her mind blank as she rode up to the twentieth floor.

  Coigne was expecting her, of course—security had, inevitably, notified him of her arrival—and the secretary, a quick-moving, painfully serious woman, waved her on into the inner suite. The door to Coigne’s office stood open, and she paused there, tapped once on the black-enameled metal of the frame. Coigne looked up with well-simulated surprise, beckoned for her to come in.

  “I heard from the Treasury today,” he said, without preamble.

  Cerise seated herself in the guest’s chair, arranging her skirt to show a comfortable amount of thigh. She had dressed carefully for the meeting with Mabry, in the black and hard fuchsia that was her trademark, and knew she looked good. She had realized long ago that it annoyed Coigne to find her attractive, and she enjoyed the delicate game of provocation. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “I assume they’re interested in Trouble?”

  Coigne frowned. “If you were expecting them, Cerise, you might have warned your staff.”

  “I thought,” Cerise said, “that they were capable of handling routine matters.”

  “The Treasury doesn’t seem to think it’s r
outine,” Coigne said. “Neither does your staff, for that matter.”

  Cerise hid her irritation, an annoyance mixed almost equally with apprehension, and said, “I don’t see the problem.”

  “No problem,” Coigne answered, and laid gentle stress on the word “problem.” “However, they do want to talk to you.”

  “So I’d heard.” Cerise leaned back in the padded chair, crossed her legs and let one foot swing, the shoe hanging momentarily from her toe before she pulled it back. “I gave a precis of our information on the intrusion to the Interpol agent handling the case—given that we’re multinational, I thought it’d be good to have someone from there looking into the matter—but I’d be happy to provide the same information to Treasury.”

  “They know that you used to work with Trouble.”

  “It’s no secret.”

  Coigne eyed her thoughtfully, thin face expressionless, the grey eyes paler than the clouds seen through the windows behind him. He was framed against the ocean and the sky, the water gone cold and grey-green in the dulled light; his fair hair looked washed out, ugly against the strong greys. On the horizon, a rust-red shape was briefly visible: a ship, a tanker maybe, standing out to sea.

  “Listen to me, Cerise,” Coigne said at last. Cerise did not move, did not change her politely attentive smile, but every muscle in her body tightened. She recognized that tone all too well: Coigne meant every word, and would back them up, precisely and exactly, with all his considerable skill and resources. “I want this Trouble—I’ve told you that before, and I mean it. I don’t intend for us to put up with this kind of shit from two-bit crackers. I don’t really care if this is the woman you used to live with, but if it is, I expect you to put her away. You work for me now—for Multiplane—and don’t forget it.”

  “All right,” Cerise said. She sat up abruptly, enjoying her anger. “You’ve said your piece, now listen to me. I will put a stop to this new Trouble—who is not my ex-lover; my ex-lover is back and thoroughly pissed off on her own account—and I don’t need your threats to make me do my job. I have a system to protect: that matters to me. But I am not going to be able to do it while you or Treasury are breathing down my neck, and I’m not going to find him or her or it on the nets. You want me to catch this new Trouble, fine. But I’m going to need more freedom of action than you’re used to putting up with. And if you won’t give it to me, I don’t want to hear any complaints about me not doing my job.”

  Coigne blinked twice, looked down at his desktop, looked back at her, his face still without readable emotion. “What do you need?”

  Cerise paused, startled by his capitulation—which means that he wants this new Trouble, much more than I realized—said, slowly, trying to hide the fact that her own plans were still unformed, “First, I’ll need to make Jensey—Baeyen—acting chief for the duration.”

  Coigne nodded.

  “Then—” Cerise took a breath, pulling her thoughts together. “I’ll need to devote myself to this job exclusively. I have net access, I’ll want extra time without questions, and I’ll want a company car—no driver, just the car. Also leave, with pay, no questions where or why, and a company draft, at least ten thousand.”

  “You should have that in your budget,” Coigne said.

  “I’ll need your signature on the forms.”

  Coigne nodded. “You’ll be going after her—or him—yourself, then?”

  “Yes,” Cerise said, and realized that she was shaking. She folded her hands, laced her fingers together—she had not expected Coigne to agree, still had not realized how important this was to him—and smiled deliberately. “It’s my job, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Coigne said, “it is.”

  Cerise pushed herself up out of the chair before the silence could grow into a threat. “Then I’ll pass this information to Treasury, and put things in train.”

  Coigne nodded again. “Send me the papers. I’ll approve your requests.”

  “Thanks,” Cerise said, and turned toward the door. Coigne’s voice stopped her in the doorway.

  “Don’t fuck this up.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Cerise said, and let the door close gently behind her.

  She made her way back to network security like a woman in a dream, barely aware of the delicate pastel murals that decorated the public spaces or the carpets chosen to be soothing. She showed her ID to security, a stocky woman sitting hunched behind the bulletproof glass of her cubicle, and went on into the main room. It was very quiet, the only sound the gentle hum of half a dozen individual stations mingled with the softer hiss of the environmental system. Her staff, Sirico, Macea, Czaja, and the rest, sat or sprawled bonelessly in their cubicles, supported by the heavy chairs, out on the nets. She ignored them, stepped into her own office to find Baeyen sprawled vacant-eyed at her station in the outer office. Her mouth hung slightly open, and a thin line of spittle trailed down her chin. Cerise walked past her, knowing better than to try to reach her from the realworld, went into her own office, and keyed commands into the waiting machine. A few seconds later, Baeyen’s icon flashed onto the screen.

  “Boss?”

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” Cerise said, “but we’ve got a project to set up.”

  “Let me close this down,” Baeyen answered promptly, “and I’ll be on my way.”

  “Thanks,” Cerise said. The icon vanished, and she turned her attention to the schematic of the corporate net that bloomed automatically in her screen. Everything seemed to be in order, and live security was tight; she touched another key sequence, and confirmed that her extra watchdogs were in place. So far, so good: all that remained was to warn her people to check again for viruses. She flipped away the schematic, typed a code command, and added identifying icons from machine memory; an instant later, the screen split, showed Czaja’s flying-crane icon in one half, Alec Zemtzov’s dumptruck, bright as a child’s toy, in the other.

  “Boss?” Czaja said.

  “Sorry to drag you away,” Cerise said again, “but I picked up some—worrisome—news at lunch today, from Interpol. Seems that the Eurocops have been finding viruses in a few of the intrusions, and they gave me a sample disk. We need to scan for it right away.”

  “We ran a solid scan as soon as it happened,” Czaja said. He was in charge of the section of the net that included Corvo’s research volume. “We didn’t turn up anything—”

  Zemtzov’s icon flickered, signaling an interrupt. “Nothing that matched existing patterns, anyway.” His on-line voice was far crisper than his real voice, and Cerise was, as always, briefly amused by the contrast. She smothered her smile as he continued, oblivious to the differences. “What does Interpol say about payloads?”

  That was always the real question, the virus’s intent, and Cerise nodded her approval. She had picked Zemtzov to be the system’s virus researcher, and was pleased to see her decision borne out. “Nothing too bad, or so Mabry said, but there’s still been some damage.”

  “Collateral or primary?”

  “I don’t know for sure—don’t know if they know.” Cerise slid Mabry’s disk into one of the transfer drives. “I have the dissections Interpol did.”

  “Ah.” Zemtzov’s icon shifted color again—he was an expressive communicator—and she could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “Then if there was anything—and I think Shaja’s right, the intruder didn’t leave us any presents—we should be able to track it.”

  “Good,” Cerise said. “I’m copying you Interpol’s files. I want you to take another run through the system, especially Corvo’s volume, Shaja, and sweep specifically for anything that’s in the file.”

  “You got it, boss,” Zemtzov said.

  Czaja said, more slowly, “I’m going to get complaints. The system’s already running slow.”

  “They’ll have to live with it,” Cerise said. She looked up to see Baeyen standing in the doorway, still rubbing at the damp line on her chin. “Blame it on me if you have to. I’ll hand
le any complaints.”

  “I’ll try to keep them calm,” Czaja said. “But they won’t be happy.”

  “They’ll survive,” Cerise said. “We need to do that sweep.”

  “All right,” Czaja said.

  Cerise sighed—he was good at his job, but painfully negative, always ready to find the bad things about any suggestion—and said, “Let me know when you’re finished.” She cut the connection as soon as they’d begun their acknowledgments, looked up at Baeyen. “Sorry, Jensey. Have a seat.”

  “No problem,” the dark woman said equably, and settled herself in the chair opposite Cerise. “What’s up?”

  Cerise smiled. “Enough. I’ve got Shaja and Alec running another sweep of the Corvo volume. Interpol says that the intrusions they’ve been dealing with have involved viruses.”

  Baeyen made a face, spread her hands wide. “That’s going to slow down everything.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Cerise said. “I also hear Treasury was wanting to talk to me.”

  Baeyen’s eyes slid sideways. Embarrassment? Cerise wondered. Or guilt? “That’s right,” the dark woman said. “I didn’t know what you wanted to tell them, so I told them they should come back.” She hesitated. “I didn’t mean to make trouble with Coigne.”

  “You didn’t,” Cerise said. It wasn’t true, but the other woman’s concern had made her feel vaguely protective. “When they come back, give them—no, we’ll make a couple of disks for them, analysis and a transcript of the event. Get Sirico to pull that together for me, will you, and copy it to me when he’s done.”

  Baeyen nodded, and slipped a notepad machine out of her pocket, began chording notes into its memory.

  “If I’m here,” Cerise went on, “I’ll talk to them, and if I’m not, see if you can get them to set up an appointment, all the usual stuff.”

  “Right,” Baeyen said. “Like I can tell Treasury what to do.”

  “I know,” Cerise said. “Do your best. This isn’t the main thing, though.”