“I’ll tell you what we’re after,” she went on, as though Nova hadn’t spoken, and fixed her eyes on Blake, who stood with one hip leaning against the edge of the test table. “Then you can think about it and give me an answer. I’d rather you said you didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me than lie to me—and I’ll find out any lies.”
“Oh, I know exactly what this is about,” Nova said, and Blake said, “Wait.” She looked at Trouble. “Go on.”
Trouble said, “Word is that this newTrouble, the person who’s stolen my name on the net and who’s causing a lot of trouble for all the shadows, lives in Seahaven. If he buys hardware, and he must, no one goes without hardware, he’ll have come to you. I want his name, and an address.”
“He might not have come to me,” Blake said, tonelessly. “Not everyone has your high opinion of my sources.”
“Bullshit,” Cerise said sweetly.
Trouble elaborated, “He’s not stupid, newTrouble. He will have come here—the work he’s doing, he’d have to have done.”
“Assuming he’s in this Seahaven,” Blake said. “What’s this to you, Cerise? Where does Multiplane fit in?”
“My bosses want Trouble almost as much as Treasury does, and they aren’t much more particular about which one they get,” Cerise answered, with a thin smile. “I, however, want to see the right Trouble blamed for this shit.”
“Personal interest?” Nova murmured, with a lifted eyebrow.
“Get the wrong Trouble, and it’s not going to stop,” Cerise said. “And surely both sides of the law agree it has to stop.”
“Touché,” Nova said.
“Well?” Trouble asked, still looking at Blake.
Blake looked down at the test table, running her fingers over the concealed controls. “Give me a few days,” she said.
Nova said, “I hate to say it, Moll, but she’s right. Trouble, I mean. This punk’s got to go.”
Blake glared at her partner, got herself under control instantly. “I need to check things out,” she said to Trouble. “You understand.”
“Fair enough,” Trouble answered, and pushed herself back up out of the heavy chair. “Let me know.”
“What are you going to do when you find him?” Nova asked.
Trouble looked back over her shoulder, met Cerise’s eyes for an instant, saw her eyebrows lift slightly, and then her gaze slid past to Nova, still sitting with her leg cocked up, ankle on her knee. A carved bead hung from a braided leather anklet, catching the light from the window. “Shop him,” Trouble said, simply, and Nova nodded.
She went on down the stairs, Cerise following silently, and the door opened again into the shop. The young woman was still sitting behind the counter, but this time a pair of young men in patched denim jackets stood together over a recording deck, muttering to each other about its merits. They looked up as the door opened, startled and unwillingly impressed, and Trouble walked out past them, Cerise falling into step at her side.
“Where to now?” she asked, when they had stepped out onto the boardwalk.
Trouble shrugged, looked down the arcade toward the palace. “We’ll stop in a couple more places,” she said, “and then we’ll hit the palace.”
Cerise nodded, a faint, not entirely happy smile playing on her lips, and turned toward the next storefront.
Most of the storeowners remembered them, though not all fondly. Trouble repeated her message four times more, twice to men she had once known well, once to a thin woman who’d done them a favor, back in the old days, and was visibly unsure if she regretted it, once more to a man who had known Cerise, and sweated for it. She looked at Cerise as they left the store, and Cerise smiled.
“So what was that all about?” Trouble asked.
Cerise’s smile widened, became almost impish. “He owed me money, and he doesn’t know if I remember.”
Trouble grinned. “You going to call it in?”
“I haven’t decided.” Cerise stiffened abruptly, not a movement but a sudden focusing of attention. Trouble shifted, looking with her toward the palace, and saw a man in black leather walking toward them, a red skull vivid on his shoulder.
“I see Tinati’s deigned to notice us,” she said aloud.
Cerise jammed her hands into the pockets of her jacket, one fist distending the pocket as though she held something there. “That’s Aimoto. He’s sort of chief thug.”
“Great.” Trouble kept walking, controlling her steps with an effort, turning her approach into a saunter that was as provocative as open aggression. As the stranger approached, she could see that he was Asian, or at least part Asian: a big man, broad-shouldered, big-bellied under the heavy jacket, with golden skin and a flat nose and eyes that looked very small.
“He is not,” Cerise said mildly, “even half as stupid as he looks.”
The big man was within earshot now, and Trouble wondered if he’d heard. If he had, he gave no immediate sign of it, nodding placidly to Cerise. “It’s good to see you again, Ms. Cerise. Mr. Tinati was wondering, are you here on Multiplane’s business, or is it—personal?”
“A little of both,” Cerise answered, still with her hands in her jacket pockets.
Aimoto nodded again, looked at Trouble. “Trouble, I believe?”
Trouble nodded.
“Mr. Tinati would like to talk to you—to both of you.”
“Fine,” Cerise said, and Trouble nodded again.
“We were wanting to talk to him.”
She wasn’t sure, but thought a smile flickered across Aimoto’s broad face. He said nothing, however, but turned back toward the palace, gesturing for them to go with him. Trouble kept step at his shoulder, not wanting to fall ahead or behind, and wished again that she had some weapon, any weapon. Tinati, and his bosses, were people that even the net did not cross; she preferred to deal with them only at a distance.
They passed through the shadow of the Ferris wheel and climbed the four steps that led up to the palace’s main door, plywood painted to mimic pink marble ringing hollow under their boots. Inside, the palace was relatively dark, despite the strip-lights along the halls, the walls painted pink or green or covered with bright, surreal murals. Most of the little doors that led off the hall were closed, each one badged with cryptic symbols or a name printed in letters so small that one would have to be practically touching the door to read them. Cerise glanced curiously from side to side, obviously recognizing at least some of the symbols. Trouble, who had been out of the shadows long enough to lose track of who was who, ignored them, and tried to pretend she didn’t care.
Aimoto took them up the back stairs, the ones that led directly to Tinati’s main office. Trouble spotted at least two gun alcoves on the way up, and knew there was more security she couldn’t see, hidden in the walls and ceiling and wired into the building’s electrical system. At the top of the stair, Aimoto paused and said, apparently to thin air, “I’ve brought them, boss.”
A voice answered almost instantly, “Come on in.”
Aimoto pushed open the heavy door, gesturing for them to enter. Trouble stepped past him, Cerise still at her side, and caught a quick glimpse of the armor sandwiched in the door itself as she came into the room. Aimoto followed them in, set his back against the door, and waited. Trouble did not look back, knew better than to look back, but the skin between her shoulder blades tingled painfully, and she knew from the deliberately bored expression on Cerise’s face that the other woman was just as aware of the big man’s presence between them and the only visible exit.
Tinati was sitting at a standard executive desk, beautifully polished red-toned wood supporting a black-glass display top. A few papers were scattered across the surface, but the viewspace and the work areas were conspicuously clear. Tinati was a slim man, not very tall, not quite dwarfed by his high-backed chair, and well dressed, looked like an Ivy League lawyer on the make.
“It’s good to see you again, Tinati,” Cerise said, breaking the silence.
Tina
ti looked at her without expression, steepling long and rather beautiful hands above the desk’s viewspace. “And you, Cerise. Tell me, is this official, Multiplane’s business, or is it personal?”
“A little of both,” Cerise said again.
“I’d like to be a little clearer on that one,” Tinati said.
Trouble said, “Why? It’s not the clearest situation.”
Tinati’s eyes flickered toward her, but he looked back at Cerise. “Multiplane’s involvement—complicates—my position.”
Cerise took a deep breath. “Multiplane wants Trouble—there have been intrusions, as I’m sure you’ve heard. I want to make sure we get the right one.”
“Ah.” Tinati leaned back again, unfolding his hands. “Then I take it that resuming your old association is purely unofficial.”
“So far,” Cerise answered, with more certainty than she felt. Multiplane—or, more precisely, Coigne—would be extremely unhappy when they found out she’d been working with Trouble; only delivering the newTrouble’s head on a virtual platter would have any chance of appeasing them.
“So I think I’m safe in saying this is the net’s business,” Tinati said. He looked at Trouble. “I don’t mess with the net. It’s not my bosses’ policy, and it doesn’t pay. I want that clearly understood. But if the net is cracking down on this new Trouble—well, I won’t stand in your way. And I won’t help, either. This is strictly the net’s affair.”
“What about your people?” Trouble asked. “I’m going to be asking questions. Your sanction, your forbearance, at the least, that would make a big difference.” She was taking a chance, and she knew it, was not surprised when Tinati shook his head.
“What my people do is their business, up to the individual. I’m not for you, I’m not against you, I’m not involved. Don’t make me get involved.”
“As you say,” Trouble answered, “it’s the net’s business.”
“It’s getting very close to real,” Tinati said.
Cerise laughed, the sound loud in the quiet room. Even Tinati looked startled for an instant, and hid it quickly behind his lawyer’s mask. “All we want is to resolve a problem, Tinati—one that’s already a thorn in your side as well as ours.”
“It’s a straightforward deal,” Trouble said. “We find him, I shop him to Treasury, and that’s the end of it.”
“I hope so,” Tinati said. “I hope it’s that simple, Trouble. I don’t appreciate complications.”
“If there are any complications,” Trouble said, “they’ll come from you.”
Tinati studied her for a long moment, nodded at last. “As I said, this is the net’s business. I don’t interfere with the net.”
“Until it interferes with you,” Cerise said, and sounded almost happy.
“I’m glad we understand each other,” Tinati said, and there was more than a hint of irony in his tone. “Kenny, will you show the ladies out?”
Aimoto led them back down the stairs and out into the bright sunlight of the Parcade. “Good to see you again, Ms. Cerise,” he said, and disappeared back into the palace before the black-dad woman could answer.
“I bet,” Trouble said, and started walking back down the Parcade. Cerise fell into step beside her.
“So now what?” she asked. “Bother some more dealers?”
Trouble considered the question, shook her head slowly. “No. No, I don’t think it’d do much good. If anybody’s going to tell us, it’s going to be Mollie, and that’s going to take time.”
Cerise nodded. “I agree. So what, see what the nets are saying—see what’s going on in the other Seahaven, maybe?”
Trouble smiled wryly, remembering her last visit to virtual Seahaven. “Maybe you better do that,” she said. “I’m not exactly persona grata there just at the moment.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“Let me know what you find out,” Trouble said, and saw Cerise’s expression go suddenly wooden. There had been too much of an echo of the old days, too much a reminder of the old give-and-take and where it had led them both, and she added, much too late, “If you wouldn’t mind. Please.”
“I’ll be in touch,” Cerise said, still stiff-faced, and lengthened her step with sudden angry energy, striding off down the Parcade toward the main road that led back to Seahaven. Trouble watched her go, knowing better than to call her back, and could have kicked herself for her own clumsiness. She had always given the orders on jobs like this—she was good at the jobs where the realworld intersected the virtual, better than Cerise, and better than Cerise, too, when it came to vengeance. Cerise enjoyed the chase, but lost interest once the catch was made. It had always been Trouble, in the end, who’d made the kills. It was old knowledge, not even regret anymore, and Trouble put it briskly aside, and with it the possibility that Cerise, too, might have changed. She started down the Parcade in Cerise’s wake, not hurrying. She would let Cerise visit virtual Seahaven, all right, but she’d also run her own discreet checks, just in case. She could not forget, couldn’t afford to forget, that they weren’t a partnership anymore.
Silk
9
Cerise floats through the streets of Seahaven, frozen in a premature winter, the buildings white on black, heaped with snow. Even with a counterroutine in place, she feels the Mayor’s cold, radiating up from the ice-rimed streets and the frozen canal that runs straight as a surveyor’s line beside her. The same cold, damp and unpleasant, realer than IC(E), radiates from the building to her left, from the snow-heavy roof and the icicle-hung windows. She imagines her counterroutine as a cloak of fur, fur whiter than snow, greyer than ice, all soft warmth she’s never really felt, and hugs it to her, cobbles a display and drapes her icon in barbaric luxury. She drifts on, wrapped in false fur, her feet not quite touching the slick-glazed surface, heading for the market plaza.
She slows as she gets closer, remembering the real Seahaven, remembering Trouble, Trouble giving her orders as though nothing had changed, as though she’d never walked out with all her worldly goods and left Cerise bewildered and angry, remembering, too, how good it had felt to be back together even just on the street, and wonders what she will do now. Find out what they are saying in the market about newTrouble, certainly; that she would do for herself, even if it weren’t what Trouble wanted. But afterwards…. She fingers a code in memory, the mailcode Silk had left her, wrapped in a glittering, Christmas-wrapped bomb. After that, perhaps, perhaps she will follow that code, and see what Silk has to say for herself.
The market plaza is busy, and she is glad of it, lets herself drift through the crowd, not hiding her presence, but not advertising it, either. She hears fragments of gossip, sees a silver sphere spring up briefly around a pair of icons—sees too the watchdog lunge for them—but hears nothing that she doesn’t already know. Trouble—the original, her Trouble—is looking for the newTrouble, the one who usurped her name; the net is divided as to the rights of it, the snatches she hears uneasy, uncertain, but the lines are drawn. The only question left now is who will stand where. It is as she expected, pretty much, and she turns along the message wall, readying a program she calls sticky fingers, lets it trawl past the gaudy surface. She feels it working, process translated as sensation, a vibration that becomes now and then a thump, as though she dragged a stick across an uneven surface. She is proud of this routine, of the quick-search, the codebreaker, that lets her scan the posted mail and steal quick-copies of those messages that match the search criteria. They will be imperfect, made on the fly, but she can reconstruct them later, and they will give her an idea of how the net is taking this.
She reaches the end of the wall, and feels the program shut itself down, slapping back into her hand, the stolen messages heavy in memory. She finds a departure node, lets herself out onto the net, hovers for an instant in the datastream, letting the bits pour past her like a river of gold. She should go home, or back to real-Seahaven, where she can study the data that hangs in memory, but she reaches instead for the
mailcode she has carried with her since she met Silk, and follows it instead, turning down the lines of light toward the unreal space where Silk has said she can be found.
Trouble walks the net like the ghost of herself, brainworm turned off, presenting a generic icon to the general view. The net lies flat before her, black lines and dots on silver, black-and-grey symbols scribed across her sight as the net relays its messages. It is slow, painfully so, like wading through mud; she is deaf and numb, swathed in the lack of sensation, and she feels her hands straining against the data gloves, muscles tightening as though, if she just works a little harder, she could feel again. She’s been through this before and makes herself relax, but she can feel herself tense again as soon as her attention turns elsewhere. There is an ache behind her eyes, dull as black on silver, and she knows she will be sorry in the morning.
But she is effectively invisible in this guise, and most other netwalkers know nothing else; she can live with it for an hour or so, the time she needs to gather news. She turns toward the BBS—she slides along a thick black line, impervious to the data that she knows is flowing with her, past her, passes through a node like a great black gear, icons flickering above it to tell her who the parent users are, follows another, thicker line, and then a thinner, turning at right angles, always, from grid to grid, and then she’s on the floor of the BBS at last, a poor shadow of itself. Icons badge the air, offer other, smaller grids, or inner menu boards, and the view streams with brighter silver dots. She stops at one familiar display, where anyone can post a notice to the world. The board roils almost painfully in her sight, black print over silver-and-grey moire; a button hangs to her left, offering to clear the screen if she will log on, but she doesn’t, prefers to keep her anonymity even as she squints at the distorted letters. The system is old, from the first days of the net; whoever is manager here still keeps the doors open to the world. She skims through three pages, then flips through a dozen more pretty much at random: her challenge has traveled even here, well into the bright lights, and it’s made a lot of people nervous. Comment is divided, perhaps a third against and a third approving and a third deploring the situation altogether; perhaps half agree that newTrouble had no right to take her name. Pretty much what she’d expected, she thinks, and she slips away again, riding the first major line out of the BBS. It’s too crowded there, too painful to work without the brainworm to give depth and substance; she prefers the main net, the data highways, if she has to live without sensation.
Trouble and her Friends Page 24