She slides along a familiar gridline, watching for a starred intersection that will take her up another plane, deeper into the net. She reaches the intersection, makes the transfer, and codes flash before her eyes, icons and a stream of numbers warning her that another person, another icon, is overtaking her, signaling for her attention. She recognizes the main icon, and the contact code, sends codes of her own, and feels her secondary translator lock and mesh with the newcomer’s.
*Hello, Trouble,* Arabesque’s voice says, in her ear.
She frowns, wishing she had more to go on than just the sound—without the wire, all she has is the flat code that hangs in the air in front of her, black on silver. *Hello, Rachelle,* she answers, and knows she sounds less than enthusiastic.
*I thought you might like to know,* Arabesque says, and Trouble imagines she hears a hint of malice in her voice. *The Mayor’s not best pleased with you.*
*The Mayor of Seahaven?* she asks, for want of a better question, wanting time to think, and Arabesque laughs.
*Is there another? He’s saying—he floats it as a question, someone else’s name, but the word is he’s behind it. He says you should be the one to be shopped, not newTrouble—you’re not really one of us, he says, just another dyke on the wire, using it ’cause you’re not good enough to run the net bare.* There is contempt in her voice, and anger: this touches her, too.
*What’s the response?* Trouble asks, and is pleased to hear herself dispassionate, as though she didn’t really care.
*Not a lot of support,* Arabesque answers, and Trouble thinks she shrugged. *Maybe ten percent of what I saw, certainly no more than that.* There is a pause; Trouble waits, hating to be blind. *A lot of people were really shocked, Trouble, that’s the good thing. They expected the Mayor to back you up, since he’s always been so protective of his name.*
*What’s he so pissed off about?* Trouble says.
*You’ve been making pretty free with his boards,* Arabesque says,*you and Cerise. And you’ve never been appropriately thankful.*
Trouble grimaces, feels her lips twist, knows the gesture is invisible. *He’s never done anything to be thanked for.*
*Whatever,* Arabesque says. *But I thought you ought to know what he was saying.*
*What’s the name he’s using? Can I prove it’s him?*
*I doubt it. It’s posted under Sasquatch—I couldn’t prove it was the Mayor, but I’m morally certain it’s him.*
Trouble considers this for a heartbeat, marshaling her options. *Thanks, Rachelle,* she says at last, regretting again her lack of available expression. *I’ll keep on eye on this.*
*No problem,* Arabesque answers, and a codestring flashes as she breaks the connection. Trouble sees the code slide away, following a solid line, and turns away herself. There’s not much more she needs to do; better, she thinks, to return home—take a circuitous route, lurk in any chat fora that are open, see what’s being said—but still, return home, and wait for Blake to contact her.
Cerise finds the mailcode’s reference point, pauses in the dataflow to scan the area: a flat and featureless plane, like an empty dance floor. It’s not an ordinary node, that much is certain, and she steps out of the datastream expecting—something. As her foot touches the plane, color flares from that point of contact, shoots out across the virtual floor, turning it from a mere place-holder to squares of brick and stone and lush beds of flowers. They are blooming out of season, out of synch, chrysanthemums and crocuses sprouting together, beds of tulips set below roses in full riot, but that hardly seems to matter. The color, the image, spreads further, like dye in damp cloth, and a bench springs up, and then, beyond that, a fantastic steel and glass gazebo, bright as a birdcage against the illusory sky that wells up behind it. Cerise looks back over her shoulder, sees the air behind her shimmer like heat, reflecting the illusion like a trembling mirror: special-purpose IC(E), very sophisticated IC(E), triggered by the same routine that had set the image maker in motion. Was it my codes that triggered this, she thinks, or would anyone’s touch have done it? It doesn’t feel hostile—anyone who set a trap would hardly use this garden for a backdrop, she thinks, but she readies her defenses anyway, primary shield, dispersion routine copied from Trouble years before, the cutout that will drop her off the net if all else fails, and a voice sings from the gazebo.
*Hello, Cerise.*
It is the voice she knows as Silk’s, and she starts slowly toward it, waiting for an icon to appear behind the glass and steel. She tastes the program around her, sampling the constructed images: no one she recognizes, not even fully Silk, though it holds a flavor of the work she’d sampled at their one meeting. And then she sees the icon clearly, the same girl-shape, all curves and black leather, standing hipshot in the doorway, one arm against the wall above her head.
*Hello, yourself,* Cerise answers, but her tone is warmer than the words, more appreciative than she’d meant. She keeps walking, past beds of tulips and something else she doesn’t recognize, until she stands less than ten yards from the smiling icon.
*You like my place?* Silk asks, and Cerise hesitates, nods slowly at last.
*It’s very nice,* she says, and judges her moment. *Technically.*
The icon twitches, but the expression stays the same for a long moment. Then, slowly, Silk lifts one eyebrow. *Only technically?*
*You’re not a gardener,* Cerise answers, and allows herself a smile. There is a little pause, and then Silk returns the grin.
*You want to come in?*
*What did you have in mind?* Cerise asks, and keeps her distance. She lets the defensive programs fade from readiness, however, and Silk’s grin changes, becomes sexy, open invitation.
*Come in and find out.*
Cerise hesitates, admitting the appeal but wary of it, of the stranger behind the icon, and Silk says, *Safe as houses.*
And safer than real sex, Cerise thinks, automatically, and adds, but not as safe as staying here. Trouble would have laughed, and walked away—or agreed, if the fancy took her. Cerise allows herself a smile. The old days are back again, she’s stepping back into old habits as though there had never been a break—and that’s a little too much, too fast, now, she needs a break from it, from Trouble.
She takes a few steps forward, and Silk pulls herself gracefully upright, leaving just enough room for Cerise to step past her. She knows perfectly well what the mock-gazebo must contain, what she would consent to—the programs aren’t difficult to find, are simplicity to write when both parties are on the wire, no need for complex suits and gloves, just the brainworm turning suggested fantasy to direct, directed input. She brushes past Silk, deliberately trailing a hand across the girl-shape’s hip. She feel leather, cool and smooth as Silk’s name against her palm, and Silk laughs and follows her in, offers her hand and in it a key.
Cerise hesitates only for an instant, less than a heartbeat, though Silk will see it, calls the routine from the depths of her toolkit, extends her own hand offering her own key. They touch, and Cerise feels the play of raw sensation like water shivering through her as the programs speak and calibrate one to the other. And then she feels Silk’s hands on her breasts, delicate and possessive, reaches out to cup black leather hips and feels the shock of skin beneath her fingers. She closes her eyes—the programs have not matched, cannot match sight and touch—lets Silk’s hand slip back along her shoulder blades, so that they are pulled body to body, breasts, bellies, and thighs touching, only Silk’s hand against her breast dividing them. It’s been a long time since she’s played this game, a long time since there’s been a presence on the net that excited her, and she is startled once again when she feels the distant ache between her legs, her body waking to stimulus, lagging behind the unreal sensations.
And then the brainworm has overridden that distraction, and she feels only the touch of Silk’s hands, the whisper of Silk’s skin under her own fingers. She pulls Silk closer still, feels the other woman lean back, straddling her, knees tight along
her ribs, pubic hair and the wet warmth of her crotch just brushing Cerise’s belly—there is no gravity, after all, no reference points, no reason to worry that she’s gone somehow without noticing from standing to flat on her back—and Cerise smiles blind, runs both hands along Silk’s thighs until her thumbs caress the inner join of thigh and groin, teasing along the edge of the tight-curled hair. And then Silk backs away, evading the touch, easing down along and then between Cerise’s legs. Cerise tries to rise, to follow, but there is a hand on her breast and a hand on her belly, urging her down, and then a cheek against her own thigh and a tongue warm and eager between her legs. Cerise leans back, arching under hands and mouth, tangles her hands in Silk’s hair, guiding her to the right spots.
*Greedy,* Silk says, sounds approving, and Cerise moans at the touch of breath and the moving lips. Then the tongue is back, busy and demanding, and Cerise arches harder against it, pressing herself against the other woman’s mouth. She shudders, and then at last she’s coming, riding the crest of her delight until the brainworm’s trigger resets, and she shivers, unwillingly letting it end. She recovers slowly, body lagging behind her brain, and reaches for Silk, groping still with eyes closed, not wanting to end the illusion. There is nothing within her reach.
She opens her eyes, and gravity reasserts itself; she is standing again on the featureless plane, the IC(E) that walled it vanished, the illusion of a garden gone as well. She’s been had, in more ways than one, and she sets a watchdog searching, just in case Silk has left a trail. The program returns a moment later, empty-jawed. She swears and recovers it, stands still for a long moment, staring at the grid of the net around her. Distantly, at a distance, she can feel her body trembling still, muscles relaxing only slowly in the aftermath of orgasm, but the brainworm has already recovered for her. Whatever it was about—and she can’t be sure, it could be revenge on a syscop, revenge on a friend of Trouble’s, or just some new game invented by one more crazy—she will have to deal with consequences: there are never no consequences from something so meticulously prepared and executed. Stupid, she tells herself, it was stupid to agree—and then she strangles the thought stillborn. Stupid it may be, stupid it was, but it’s done, and you’ll have to deal with it. Trouble will be amused.
She turns away from the plane, launches herself to the nearest datastream and lets it carry her, at the same time letting her senses stretch until the din of the nets is almost painful. She will see/hear/feel Silk if she comes back, and recognize her; until then, she’ll put out a few discreet inquiries. Once she knows what this was all about, why it happened, beyond her own foolhardy choice, then she’ll know what has to be done about it. But the net is empty of significant data, and she lets the river of light carry her toward home.
The hotel room was very quiet, and her legs had cramped. Cerise grimaced, knowing perfectly well why, and uncoiled herself cautiously from the chair. She was wet, as well as stiff, and remembered all too well why she’d never much liked virtual sex. She called up a text-analysis routine, and set it to work on the contents of the file she’d pulled from the message wall in virtual-Seahaven, and went into the bathroom to take a shower. She took her time about it, letting the hot water relax her tensed muscles, and emerged to wrap herself in a yukata just as the screen went blank, signaling that the program had completed its run. She frowned, and crossed to the media center, touched keys to open and read the recreated file. Most of it was old news, people passing messages, rumors, and gossip, about one or both Troubles, and she unwound the towel from around her still-wet hair, ran her fingers through the short strands to ease it into shape, not wanting to bother getting a comb, while the program displayed message after message. Then a strange name caught her eye, and the message attached to it seemed to leap out at her:
THE OLD TROUBLE IS THE ONE WHO IS CAUSING ALL THE PROBLEMS RIGHT NOW, AND I THINK SHE’S THE ONE WHO SHOULD PAY FOR IT. SHE WAS OFF THE NETS FOR YEARS; NOW SHE’S COME BACK AND CLAIMS IT’S STILL HER RIGHT TO USE THE NAME? COME ON! IF IT WEREN’T FOR HER, TREASURY WOULDN’T BE SO INTERESTED IN THE NEW TROUBLE. I SAY, IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE SHE IS, REALWORLD, THEY SHOULD TELL TREASURY AND GET IT OVER WITH. THAT WAY WE CAN GET SOME PEACE AROUND HERE AGAIN.
It was signed sasquatch and an icon she didn’t recognize.
Cerise frowned, sat back down in front of the screen, drawing the yukata closed around her, typed in a series of commands that would retrieve all messages derived from Sasquatch’s. The sticky fingers routine had only picked up some of them—not all of them, apparently, had contained the trigger words she had selected—but she had gotten enough to get a feel for what Seahaven’s regulars were saying. Most, she was glad to see, disagreed, and she had gotten most of one long posting that pointed out just what the newTrouble had done, but there was a small but vocal minority who agreed with Sasquatch. And there was one final message from Sasquatch that made her frown even more deeply:
THE OLD TROUBLE IS STILL THE ONE CAUSING THE PROBLEMS, AND SHE’S STILL NOT REALLY ALL THAT GOOD, IF SHE HAS TO USE THE WIRE. SHE’S NOT ONE OF US, SHE’S A POLITICAL. SO WHY ARE WE PROTECTING HER?
Political was a familiar euphemism, one that had never failed to draw at least a sour smile. Translated, Cerise thought, Sasquatch is saying she’s a dyke and on the wire, and we don’t have to take care of her. Wonderful. She flipped quickly through the rest of the file—Sasquatch was not gathering much more support for his views, but at least one of them was a name she recognized as local, metropolitan area if not actually based in Seahaven. And that one was really all Treasury would need to give them Trouble’s approximate location. She shut down the program, saving the file in protected memory, and switched back into the communications net, tied herself in to Multiplane’s files. Sasquatch was new to her, but one of her people might have encountered him before; she left the question in Baeyen’s working volume, with a red flag attached to it marking it as urgent, and flipped out again into the main phone system. She should warn Trouble, too, though it was better not to contact her directly. She hesitated again, considering her options, then plugged herself back into the net, launched herself into the local system.
She races through the spirals of light, finds the phone system and the hole that someone left in the stranded IC(E). This is a well-known trapdoor, at least in the shadows; she eases through it, still cautious, finds herself at last at the boards she wanted. She composes her message—Someone named Sasquatch wants to sell you to Treasury; contact me ASAP—and lets a pocket routine translate it into voicemail. The next time Trouble picks up her phone, she will receive that message; Cerise smiles, a little wryly, thinking of Trouble’s laughter when she hears about Silk, and turns again for home.
Touble walked back along the road that led to the Parcade, a twist of soft, greasy pretzel hot in her hand. She ate cautiously, trying not to spill either the butter or the mustard on herself, and watched the crowds out of the corner of her eye. It was getting dark, the sun just down behind the trees that edged the slough, the sky to the west flaming yellow and orange and red almost to the zenith. To the east, the stars were visible, and a sliver of moon, rising out of the ocean, cast a thin streak of light across the waves. The avenue was busy even on this side of the bridge, music spilling from the open doors of the two clubs—one playing intertech, the other playing speed, so that the bass lines met in a heavy, syncopated beat—and the food vendors were busy, their carts clustered around the public power points. She hadn’t found much since she left the nets, hadn’t had time to find much, but she was enjoying the return to Seahaven, to the crowds and the shops and the heavy salt air. And that, she told herself, was beside the point. She had bought her dinner—that had been her excuse for going out; it was time she went back to her room and waited for Blake, or any of the others, to call. She looked north anyway, toward the bridge at Harbormouth, wondering what Cerise was doing, if she were busy, if she wanted to come out on the town, but curbed that thought. It was too dangerous—and besides, she told herself, sh
e was pissed at you when she left. Better let her calm down—better let us both calm down, let things cool down a little between us—before we try again. It was easy, too easy, to fall back into the old routines; the trouble is, she thought, I’m not sure I don’t want to do just that.
“’Cuse me?”
Trouble turned to face the speaker, automatically checking to make sure she hadn’t somehow walked too close to the beach, and found herself facing a skinny black kid, hair carved into a tight cap. He was wearing a Net-God T-shirt, gold stylized chip design bright against black cotton, and the cuff of a VR glove protruded slightly from the pocket of his denim vest.
A cracker or a wannabe? she wondered, and said, “Yeah?” She kept her voice neutral, and was pleased when the kid didn’t blink.
“You’re Trouble?”
“That’s right.” There was no point hiding her name, she thought, not after she’d spent the morning making sure everyone knew she was back.
“I’ve got a message for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Trouble kept her voice and face expressionless, but inwardly felt herself snap to attention. “Who from?”
“Butch. Van Liesvelt.”
Trouble and her Friends Page 25