Trouble and her Friends

by Melissa Scott

  Baeyen looked up warily at that, and Cerise leaned forward, steepling her hands on the desktop. “I’m going after Trouble—the new Trouble—myself,” she said. “Which means I’ll be leaving you in charge of the systems, Jensey.”

  Baeyen’s eyes widened, a look of shock replaced almost at once by one of calculation. Then that, too, was gone, and she looked back down at the notepad’s tiny screen. “What do you need me to do?”

  “As I said, you’ll be handling the systems once I leave,” Cerise said. “I don’t know exactly when it’ll happen—it all depends on how long it takes me to track down newTrouble—but I want to get everything in place now.” She watched Baeyen as she spoke, saw the other woman’s struggle to keep the excitement from her face as she chorded information into the notepad: Baeyen was no less ambitious than anyone at Multiplane, and she could see the possibilities. Not that it mattered, Cerise thought. She was still better than Baeyen. “Aside from getting you briefed, I need to arrange for a car, not with a driver, to be available for me on an hour’s notice—less if transport can manage it—and to get the paperwork written up so I can draw on the emergency funds.”

  Baeyen nodded, head still down, watching words scroll past on her screen. “All right. I’ll put the paperwork in train—I can do it myself, or I can give it over to one of the secretaries, if you don’t mind word getting out.”

  “That’s why I asked you to do it,” Cerise said.

  “I’ll take care of it, then,” Baeyen said, without annoyance. “Ditto for the car. I’ll also get on that disk for Treasury.”

  “Sirico can do that,” Cerise said, and Baeyen nodded.

  “After that—whenever you want to start showing me things, I’m ready.”

  “Get the paperwork going,” Cerise answered, “then come talk to me.” She was startled by her own reluctance, took herself firmly in hand. “I’ll start putting together notes for you tonight.”

  Baeyen nodded, chorded a final bit of data to her notepad, and rose gracefully to her feet. “I’ll talk to you before you go home, anyway,” she said, and let herself out, closing the office door behind her.

  Cerise sighed, and looked down at the desktop with its scattered icons. She should really start on the package for Baeyen, and she knew it, but she reached instead for the input cord. It wouldn’t hurt anything to go out on the nets or an hour or two, might even help her give Baeyen an up-to-the-second picture…. She grinned at the thought, well aware of what she was doing, but plugged herself in, pushing a stray piece of hair back out of the way. She did need to see how people were responding to Trouble’s challenge—and besides, she thought, I just might be able to pass Mabry’s warning to Trouble. That was an odd thought, that she might encounter the other woman on the nets after all these years, an uncomfortable thought—she had always somehow assumed that Trouble had quit for good, left the nets entirely—but she put the idea aside. She owed Trouble this much: that was all that mattered.

  She wanders through the fields of light, past familiar signs, moving toward Seahaven, but not in pursuit of it. Her work is, mostly, done: two hours on the nets already, longer in virtual time, long enough for anyone, and ample for her. There is only Trouble to consider, but she floats, drifting from node to node, not quite willing to take the next step, to turn down toward the BBS and the hidden roads that lead to Seahaven. IC(E) arches to either side, coils and spills of it concealing a link of nodes that leads to unidentified corporate space, glittering like razor wire in sunlight. She studies it idly, mapping its weak points and its strengths, and wonders if she should find the maker of one particularly clever piece of code, beg, borrow, or steal it for her own nets. She files the thought, and the location, for later, and turns away, letting a rush of traffic carry her down into the BBS.

  She touches down on the virtual plane that carries the Bazaar traffic, lets her icon interface completely with the system around her. Balls of advertising burst overhead and at her feet, spraying bright images, gilded promises, so that she walks at the center of her own hailstorm of light. Very little is of interest, but she smiles anyway, enjoying the brilliance, the sensation like soap bubbles against her skin, and does not dismiss them out of hand. Other icons glide past her, some like her haloed with the confetti of the advertising, many not—real crackers, they say, don’t tolerate this misuse of the net’s potentials, and many others copy the affectation, true or not. She ignores them all, follows the currents that spiral in toward the center of the bazaar. At Eleven’s Moon, further in today than the last time she found it, closer to the hubbub of the central board where real business is transacted and transformed, she lifts a hand to the demon, who scowls but says nothing. The door opens for her, and she steps out into Seahaven.

  It is quiet today, a muted space, trees with jewels for leaves lining black-glass avenues, while the illusion of water rushes through an arrow-straight canal, reflecting equally illusory stars as strands of golden light. She looks down, and finds her icon remade, the cartoon woman rounded out to become something close to human. She frowns—Seahaven is in a realistic mode today—and gestures, dismissing the icon. A warning sounds, a shape like a gryphon forming in the dark air to inform her that she can’t go naked/invisible here, but she ignores it, chooses another shape from her bag of tricks. This one is closer to her true image, in a style that will match the Mayor’s whim, an alabaster woman, austerely thin, draped in black and touched with the color that is her name. The gryphon vanishes, accepting the change.

  She continues along Seahaven’s streets, following the pattern that remains constant no matter how the trappings change, finds herself at last in the market square. She moves through a gathering made unfamiliar by the Mayor’s choice of convention, human shapes rather than icons, male mostly, out of anime, a few caricatured women and robots, once a Masai prince striding with a spear, and makes her way to the heart of the space. There the wall glows neon-bright, prodigal images splashed along its surface, overlapping, overwriting each other. Here and there a message glows among the designs, and she walks along its length, following the threads. Trouble’s message is gone at last, but Cerise keeps walking, looking for some other trace of her old partner. There is nothing, not even among the tangles of artists’ imagery, and she stands for a long moment, considering the wall. There is someone watching her among the moving people, a shape she almost certainly will not find familiar even if she looks. The brainworm translates the code to a prickling between her shoulder blades, itchy, uncomfortable, but she takes her time anyway, framing her own message, before she turns around. It is a woman, a girl-shape, really, thin and angular, big eyes in a sharp and pointy face above black leather. The girl-shape smiles, pure mischief, impure invitation; Cerise blinks, intrigued in spite of herself, but returns to business.

  She knows what she needs to say, and phrases it without apology—Treasury/Starling (the joined icon, not the words) are looking for you, take precautions—but hesitates for an instant over the identifier, and settles at last for the smiling cat that will, for better or worse, evoke the old days. She wraps the words in a gaudy package that is much stronger than it looks, and seals it again, this time with Trouble’s harlequin, using the codes that they once shared, and hangs it on the wall before she can change her mind. She hears a murmur of surprise and curiosity behind her, but she does not look back.

  And then the girl-shape is there in front of her, still smiling: on the wire. Cerise blinks again, assessing the image, bad-girl chic, black leather and silver chains and the unmistakable curves, and dispatches a quick query-program of her own. It is rebuffed, as she’d expected, but the flavor of the other woman’s work comes with it, smoke and mirrors and the hint of steel beneath it.

  *Hey.*

  The voice is as much a pose as the rest of the icon, deep and smoky, but it’s well chosen. Cerise admits a silent interest, but suppresses all hint of it, because, after all, this may be a different kind of challenge.

  *Hey yourself.*

&nbs
p; The girl-shape shifts, takes up a stronger stance, hands on hips, and Cerise grimaces inwardly, bracing herself for the inevitable.

  She is known, and a syscop; there are plenty of crackers who have dared her before now.

  *You’re playing with fire,* the girl-shape says, gestures to the harlequin dancing against the wall. *Sure you’re up to it?*

  Cerise laughs, lets the amusement ripple out onto the net. *Are you?”

  *Try me,* the girl-shape answers, but she, too, is smiling, the mask of the icon-face creasing in a simulation of delight. Definitely on the wire, and Cerise nods, recognizing the skill.

  *Sorry, sunshine,* she says aloud. *I don’t have the time.*

  *You could make time,* the girl-shape answers, and flings up a hand, throwing out a shape like a mirrored sphere to surround them, blocking the sights and sounds of the plaza. Cerise reacts instantly, freezing the sphere literally half formed—just to prove she can do it, she’s curious now herself about this stranger—then relaxes and lets the image flow like mercury around them.

  *And why should I?* she asks, but makes no move to open the sphere, letting the lazy voice and the hint of contempt hold the other at a distance.

  *I’m cute,* the girl-shape answers, and the words are meant to sting. *That’s supposed to be enough for you.*

  I’ve seen better, Cerise thinks, and says nothing, lets the silence carry the message for her.

  *You a friend of that Trouble?* the girl-shape asks, voice gone sharp with anger, and shapes the piping harlequin in the palm of one hand to make herself absolutely clear.

  Cerise nods.

  *NewTrouble’s not going to be happy,* the girl-shape says, and Cerise’s attention sharpens.

  *And whose friend are you, little girl?*

  *Ah.* The girl-shape’s tone changes again, goes faintly smug, the icon preening itself against the silver mirror. *Myself and mine. Maybe yours—if you’re interested.*

  It’s not the challenge Cerise expected, and her eyebrows rise. It’s been a while since anyone approached her—being a syscop plays hell with one’s wetware. *So just who are you?*

  Something scratches at the outside of the sphere, a tarnished shadow against the silver. One of the Mayor’s watchdogs, Cerise guesses, groaning silently, come to stop just this kind of conversation. The girl-shape glances up at it, gestures rudely, looks back at Cerise.

  *Silk,* she says, *they call me Silk.* She reaches into her toolkit, icon-hand vanishing for an instant, to reappear clutching something that looks like an anarchist’s bomb wrapped in green-red-and-gold Christmas plaid. She tosses it gently toward Cerise, and it tumbles heavy to the illusory ground, rolls almost under her feet before it explodes in a cascade of blinding light. The silver sphere vanishes with it, exploding into a shower of gleaming shards. Cerise flinches back as they sting against her, blind for an instant before her filters override the image, and then the girl-shape is gone. A watchdog—this one a shape like a hound, black and tan—whines around her feet, seeking a scent. Fragments of red and green litter the ground, bits of codes no longer holding meaning, and out of the corner of her eye she sees a scavenger trundling toward them. She frowns slightly, scans the broken bits again—whatever Silk is, whatever else Silk is, she seems to act with reason, and there must have been some purpose behind the Christmas-colored bomb—and this time sees the mailcode, lying harmless among the clutter. She collects it hastily, stashes it in a holding box, is standing innocent and aloof, the box well sealed, when the scavengers arrive. She steps over them, walks away, out of the plaza, thinking of Silk.

  7

  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 sand
s 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.