*Trouble,* it says, and Trouble smiles, lets her amusement leak out onto the net.
*Dargon.* She knows what lies behind the massive image, a pudgy, bearded man who lives in his parents’ basement; she tracked him once, after he’d crossed her, and found his secret. She lets that knowledge strengthen her, then pushes it aside. Whatever he is in the realworld, they are on the nets now, and she cannot afford contempt—whatever he is in the realworld, on the nets he is a king. She turns her head, surveys the line, names them one by one.
*Nova—* Blake’s partner, a shape perversely made of shadow rather than light, sexless against the dark city walls. *—Starfire—* Another shadow-shape, this one filled with stars, as though the icon were a window into the heart of a galaxy. *—Arabesque, or should I say, hello, Rachelle—* And here her voice sharpens in spite of herself, because Rachelle Sirvain is an old friend, a good friend, from the years before. The robed icon shifts, and Trouble tastes uncertainty, a hint of guilt spiking the air, before Arabesque has herself under control again. *Postmaster, Katana, Jimmy-D, Rogue, Alexi—* The last all plaintext, two-dimensional shapes against the black-and-neon city, without depth and expression, but not, she reminds herself, without tools or the skill to use them.
*Someone,* she says,*someone’s been messing with my mail.*
There is a little pause, and in the silence someone, Arabesque, she thinks, laughs soft and low. The Postmaster icon shifts slightly, and she knows he was brought in to do the work, and failed.
Dargon says, *We have reason to be concerned.*
Trouble laughs, lets the sharp sound carry the scent of her anger onto the net. The ones on the wire will feel it clearly; the others will receive a footnote and, perhaps, the faint uncomfortable echo of her feelings. *So do I have a reason to be concerned—and the right. Where were you when this punk cracker took my name?*
That is her best point, the most legitimate argument, and she feels it strike home. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees other icons gathering by ones and twos, staying well back, out of range, but watching. This is a major event, even for Seahaven, and she wonders, briefly, where the Mayor is.
Dargon says,*Rumor had it you were dead.*
*Rumor,* Trouble says, and lets them sweat, lets them wonder which rumor she will mention, which of the nasty stories that circulate about them all. *Rumor had it wrong,* she says at last, and smiles inside, tasting their relief. *I’m still here, and it’s my name.*
*You’re stirring up a lot of trouble,* Dargon says. *Causing problems for everyone who works the shadows. It can’t go on, Trouble.*
*I didn’t start it,* Trouble says. *It was forced on me—but I intend to finish it.* She lifts her voice a little, talking now not only to the line of icons but to the lurkers to either side and any others watching invisible—to the Mayor himself, if need be. *This newTrouble, this person who stole my name, it’s compromised me. Not to mention it’s gotten everyone else into difficulties, but that’s your business, yours to deal with unless you want to make it mine. I want my name back, and I want this punk off the net. Is that clear enough for you, Dargon?*
*It’s clear,* Dargon says, and the color of his armor shifts slightly, takes on the red tinge of anger mixed with the blue of amusement. A grim smile? Trouble translates, and waits.
*Treasury doesn’t care which one of you it gets,* he says at last.
Trouble smiles. *But you care, or you should. You don’t stop this one now, you don’t know what it’ll do next—could steal your names, your work and style, could just keep cracking the way it’s been doing, and upsetting the cops. But sooner or later you’ll have to do something. I intend to do it now.*
There is another silence, this one longer, and she takes the chance to look sideways at the lurkers. Fate is there, plaintext cartoon-icon of his scarred face, and next to him a shape that can only be Max Helling, bright among the rest. The old gang returning, she thinks, and can’t decide if she feels better for it. She thinks she sees van Liesvelt too, among the cluttering crowd.
Dargon says at last, *If this newTrouble agreed to stop using your name, would you call a truce?*
Yes, Trouble thinks, if it also agreed to stop using my programs, copying my style, made it clear it was someone else. But this is the net, and the rules are different; she can’t concede a position yet, not without losing status. She says, *Has this person agreed to it?*
Dargon hesitates, and the colors fade a little from his icon. *No.*
And that, Trouble thinks, will never do. She can’t afford to concede first, not when she’s always been on the outside, not quite of the community that polices the net, set apart by the brainworm, gender, and her choice of lovers. She shakes her head, enjoying the sense of the movement—a false sense, really, existing only in her brain, along the brainworm’s wires—says, *If it agrees, talk to me then.*
Dargon gives a little sigh—he had obviously expected no other response, would probably never even have asked if she hadn’t been a woman, a dyke, and on the wire.
Trouble goes on, not waiting for his answer, *Like I said, sooner or later this person’s going to have to be stopped.*
*Stopped or shopped?* a voice—Nova’s, she thinks—queries sharp and amused, and Trouble nods her appreciation of the quibble.
*Treasury will certainly buy,* she says. *And I’m prepared to sell, if I have to. But I want my name back, and an end to this stupidity.*
She has declared herself, fully and completely, and she stops, waiting for their answers. The Postmaster is first to move, drifting back out of the line of icons, away from the wall, away from her, his message clear. He will not help, but he won’t stand against her, either. Arabesque steps forward, colors rippling along the sweep of her silken robe, the cloth flying as though she stood perpetually in a strong wind, steps past Dargon and comes to join her. Trouble smiles, and feels an unfamiliar sensation shiver through her—gratitude, certainly, and something more. Starfire backs away, joining Postmaster, and Rogue joins them; a heartbeat later, Alexi goes with them. From the lurkers, van Liesvelt steps forward, a big shambling bear-shape that carries his familiar grin. Blue Max, Max Helling, unmistakable even in the blue thunderstorm that has replaced his biplane, follows more slowly, and van Liesvelt turns to him in surprise. Katana and Jimmy-D turn away, brush past Postmaster, and are gone, lost among the lurkers. Fate steps forward without comment or change of affect, takes his place with Trouble’s friends. That she had not expected, a public affirmation of his private choice, and she is careful not to shame him with surprise. Dargon and Nova stand alone between her and the wall, and Nova laughs.
*Later, maybe, Trouble. But I won’t stand in your way.* The icon flips away, vanishes in a shower of smoke, and Dargon turns slowly, faintly green, the color of a nodded head.
*All right. For now,* he says, and steps aside.
Trouble hides her smile, mutes the triumph that sings through her, looks at the icons gathered around her. It is so like the old days that she could cry or dance, and she doesn’t know what to say, says instead of greeting, *I have to get my mail.*
Arabesque laughs, a muted sound, and van Liesvelt says, *So do it. We’ll wait.*
Trouble nods, strides away across the charcoal paving, takes the message down from the wall. Cerise’s once-familiar codes seethe against her hands; she matches them from memory, the responses buried in her toolkit, and the message falls open in her hands, a fleeting burst of words that burns itself into memory. Treasury/ Starling are looking for you, take precautions. That is unexpected, a warning from Cerise, after everything that’s been between them, and she walks back to the others as slowly as she dares, wondering what to do.
*So,* van Liesvelt says. *You got your mail.*
*Was it worth it?* Fate says, and despite the inflexible icon, Trouble hears the irony in his tone.
It triggers her decision, and she nods, speaks before she can change her mind. *Yeah,* she says,*it was worth it—and does anyone know where Cerise is the
se days, or what she’s doing?*
Arabesque draws in a breath, says, in the sharp London voice that goes so strangely in Trouble’s mind with the black skin, *What a welcome. Thank you, sunshine.*
*Sorry,* Trouble says, and after a moment the other woman laughs, this time at herself.
*I’ve missed you, Trouble.*
*And I’ve missed you.* Trouble waits a moment, gauging her chance to ask again, and Helling clears his throat.
*Cerise is with a company called Multiplane. Chief of on-line security, I think. And she’s looking for Trouble—the new one, I mean.*
*I see.* Trouble didn’t mean to speak aloud, is vaguely startled when the words drop onto the net, shakes herself with a frown. *I need to get a message to her, privately. Any ideas?*
Arabesque’s mouth twists, but she says nothing. Helling says, slowly, *I have a—friend who’s in touch with her, but it wouldn’t necessarily be private.*
*I know a route,* Fate says. *Do you want the numbers or do you want me to do it for you?*
There is a challenge, intended or not, in his words, and Trouble stiffens. *Give me the numbers.*
The icon does not change, but a moment later a silver wafer appears in the air between them. Trouble takes it, tucks it into memory without looking at it, feels the numbers vibrate in her mind. Arabesque says, *I thought you left her. That’s what she said.*
*I did.* Trouble doesn’t look at her, doesn’t want to explain, and Arabesque laughs again, this time with genuine amusement.
*Trouble, you’re too much.* She steps back, her draperies gathering around her as though her private windstorm had changed direction, lifts her hand to find a gateway out of Seahaven. *I’ll keep in touch,* she says, and is gone.
Trouble stares after her, regretting the unasked questions—what are you doing these days, are you well, are you happy—then shakes herself, and turns back to business. She has to find Cerise—she owes Cerise the word she herself had gotten, that newTrouble’ s in real-Seahaven.
Helling says, *It’s slick IC(E) at Multiplane, slick and very hard. And not all of it’s Cerise’s.*
*The route I gave you takes you in obliquely,* Fate says.
Trouble nods her thanks, feeling the numbers, address and directionals, trembling in memory.
*Good luck,* Helling says, and starts to drift away.
*Thanks,* Trouble says, softly, for more than just good luck, and she sees Helling’s face appear momentarily in the shadow of the thunderstorm, to show his smile.
*It’s good to have you back.*
Trouble grins in spite of herself—it’s good to be back—and looks at the others. *And thank you, too.*
*I don’t much like viruses,* Fate says. The icon does not change: it never changes, he’s not one to indicate feelings, says it all in the choice of his words. Trouble looks warily at him, wondering what lies behind it, morals, the cracker prejudice she shares, some deeper hatred, and the icon fades before her eyes. That leaves van Liesvelt, and she looks back at him, the heavy bear-shape bulky against the neon scrawl behind him.
*I had some news,* he says. *From the doc. She says Treasury’s been asking questions.*
*What kind of questions?* Trouble asks, and feels the fear stab through her. How could Treasury have known to go to Huu—how could they have known she needed a new chip? Jesse? It wasn’t like him to sell that kind of information.
Van Liesvelt shrugs. *She said it was a general have-you-seen-her notice, just asking if anyone’s done any work on a woman matching your description. It was going under your real name, though.*
*Fuck,* Trouble says, and only with difficulty refrains from kicking the watchdog that appears instantly to snap at her ankles. The co-op, then, and possibly Jesse—he would sell her, if it meant staying clear himself.
*The doc didn’t say anything, of course,*van Liesvelt went on, *and she thinks it should dead-end there.*
Trouble nods, her mind racing. When she gets off the net, she’ll have to bribe Valentine, see if she’ll substitute another name for the one she gave at registration, or maybe hack the hotel system and make the fix herself. That, in Seahaven, won’t be easy, and she puts the thought sternly aside for later. She will have enough to do, to leave Cerise the message she needs. *Thanks for the warning,* she says aloud, and van Liesvelt grins.
*Just be careful,* he says, and turns away.
Trouble takes the long way out of Seahaven, through the most complex of the gateways, checks the address Fate has given her, and lets the first node she comes to carry her away from the BBS. She follows the coded numbers through the tangle of the midlevel roads, letting herself fade to obscurity against the brilliant packets of data, until she is all but invisible, little more than a shadow of a ghost. She pauses at the center of a great hub, waits, a dozen breaths, a hundred heartbeats, while the datastreams flow over and past her, until she is sure she is not followed. Only then does she take the final step, the last turn that will lead her to her ultimate destination.
IC(E) arcs to either side, walling off the corporate precincts, sparks dripping like water from the overarching spines. Trouble recognizes the space, a shared system where suppliers and parent corporations meet and exchange data, knows how the protocol works and how to get inside. Fate has done well by her, bringing her here; the only difficulty now is to trace Multiplane’s lines. She checks herself, confirming that her presence has been muted, outbound data squelched, turns slowly, watching the datastream slide past her, merging with the IC(E), until she understands the pattern of it, and feels it in her bones. She chooses a packet then, invokes a mirror program from her toolkit, watches it spin an identical image around herself, so that she sinks into the datastream, indistinguishable from the data around her. She lets herself drift toward the IC(E), lets the steady flow draw her into the coils of unreal wire, sharp and cold as steel and hard as bone. She can feel the chill from them as she slides through the spiraling wire, sees it through a pale gold haze of the stolen pattern; her own hands are all but invisible, the gleam of IC(E) bright beneath her skin.
And then she’s through the first barrier, emerges into a space like a pool, where a structure like a stack of gears stirs the datastream, curves it first into a gentle whirlpool and then sorts it on its way. She slows herself subtly, not daring to fall too far out of the parameters, just a backward eddy in the general current, and searches the packets for an address label. They are coded, an unfamiliar system, and she calls Fate’s codes from memory. She had hoped not to have to rely on them—she trusts him, but only so far, only so far as she would trust any fellow cracker, except perhaps van Liesvelt and Arabesque…and Cerise. But the numbers are there, and she evokes them, creates a label for herself that matches the patterns that she sees, and lets herself slide back into the line of data.
The current sweeps her closer, stirred by the first level of gears into the general pool, and then, quite suddenly, she’s swept up and away, snapped from the stream and flung off into a new and alien conduit. Her stomach lurches as the brainworm relays the motion faithfully—one of the few disadvantages of the wire—and then she steadies, orienting herself against the new perspective. The space is marked off in grids, black on silver, a dozen or more imposed one on top of the other: a mailroom configuration, a limited interface with Multiplane’s primary systems. She studies the pattern for a moment, letting the data fall past her to be captured by the various grids, then lets herself fall with them, shrinking as the data shrinks until she matches its shape precisely. The address Fate supplied floats before her; she feels the system probe it, a pulse like a pressure, a finger poked hard into her ribs, and then she’s shunted into the maze of the grids. She rides the current, tossed abruptly from side to side as the system shunts her from one plane to another, and then, quite suddenly, she’s where she wants to be.
She hangs suspended, abruptly still, in a space that seems infinite, but feels constrained, hemmed in by the walls of the pigeonhole into which she has been dropped. Th
is is the virtual address, the place where the mail waits, and she studies it, reaching with infinite care to feel the other message packages waiting with her. They are all for Cerise; she feels further, finds the password lock that seals the system and recognizes Cerise’s hand in the intricate check mechanism. Definitely the right place, she thinks, and sinks back into the still center of the address to compose her message. It is simple, a single word—from her, to Cerise, there’s no need for more. Even after everything, it’s still that simple, and she shapes the word in its delicate casing: Seahaven.
She sets it free, easing it out of the shell that conceals her presence, budding it like an amoeba. At last it pops free, shining like a soap bubble for an instant as the system registers a new arrival, and Trouble smiles to herself She has done what she can; it should be enough to bring Cerise to Seahaven, the real one—Cerise has already been to the virtual town, she knows what is, and isn’t, there. All that remains is to leave as undetected as she’s entered. She pauses for an instant longer, considering her options, then grins and shapes another address. The mail routine sweeps by again, and she watches it pass, gauging speed and direction; another dozen heartbeats, and it sweeps past again like a lighthouse beam. This time she reaches for it, places the false address in its path and lets it scoop up the packet, dragging her in its wake. When she’s sure it has her bait securely, she reels herself in, recomposes herself behind the mask of the false package. The program flings her back into the grids, and the grid flips her out into the sorting area. She would laugh if she dared, breathless, enjoying the rollercoaster ride. And then she’s back out in the IC(E) and she abandons the mail packet, lets the system carry its empty shell on through the walls of IC(E). Someone will be annoyed, receiving a transmission so badly garbled, but she spares less than a thought for them, turns her attention to the IC(E) instead. It is less formidable from this direction, was designed to keep people out, not to hold them in, but she knows better than to be too confident. She eases her way through the coils like diamond and wire, moving crabwise, oblique, across the grain of the net, until at last she emerges from the thicket, hangs once again in the open net. She smiles, allowing herself at least that much of triumph, but does not let her cloaking programs fade. Instead, she takes the nearest datastream, and, still smiling, lets it carry her toward home.
Trouble and her Friends Page 20