“Thanks,” Trouble said, turned her head to include Nova in the glance. “I appreciate your help.”
“You and yours didn’t leave us much choice,” Blake said, but she was smiling. “Good luck.”
“I hope you get the little bastard,” Nova said, sweetly, and held open the door.
“So do I,” Trouble said, and went back down the stairs to the shop, and out into the sunlight of the Parcade.
Cerise strides the patterns of the Bazaar, knee-deep in a fog of images. She has always been noticeable, now more than ever, and she wades through a stream of messages, bioware selectively deaf, ignoring all but the very few names she has chosen to recognize. It does not impede her progress, this glittering chaff that ebbs and flows, her illusory movement cutting illusory eddies in its broken-mirror surface—she’s too good for that—but it is a nuisance, makes it hard to spot the thing she knows is there. Person, she corrects herself, but it’s hard still to see that spot of nothing, that negative icon, as the person she knows it to be. Mabry—as she supposes she should have, could have guessed, had she thought about it—is following her as discreetly as he’s able. She considers the question as she winds through the alleys of the Bazaar, idly brushing away the occasional bit of advertising that flies too close. She could be rid of him, if she wanted; it wouldn’t be easy, but she’s good enough, and she very nearly takes the first step toward the funhouse hidden behind the deceptively plain Willander icon, before she thinks again. It might be better, in the long run, to let him follow, let him shadow her—let him find Silk and contrive his own revenge.
She changes her step, turns instead for a confection like a tent, low swooping walls and draped ceiling all of a light that shimmers like iridescent satin. She sees the walls sway toward her, feels the touch of an identity check like a warm hand at her pulse points, and the door rises for her: an expensive effect, but effective enough. She steps inside, wondering what Mabry will do, and feels her shadow hesitate and then retreat into the crowd of users, where even her best passive surveyors can’t find him against the background noise. He will be waiting when she returns, however; that is more certain than taxes, and she hides a smile at the thought, moving into rose-scented shadow.
Inside, the light has the same tint of roses, overlaid on the silver haze of a security sphere. She looks around once, noting the visible icons and the one that is invisible, blanked out, lurking behind a screen of light, and then nods to the shape that bows stiffly in her general direction.
*Cerise,* it says, a shape like a man made out of steel pipes, and Cerise answers, *Tin Man.* She is more interested in the invisible icon, but the amenities have to be observed.
*You have been a busy girl,* the Tin Man observes. *Tell me, does the course of true love still run smooth?*
*I’ve been busy,* Cerise agrees, *and the rest is none of your business.*
The Tin Man achieves something like a leer, an accomplishment for someone not on the wire.*Oh, come now, I’ve always been very fond of Trouble.*
*I doubt it’s mutual.* There is no point in subtlety with him. Cerise looks at him without expression, allows the contempt to spill like acid into the air between them, then looks past him, fixing her eyes on the spot where the invisible icon is lurking. *It’s not you I came to talk with.”
*Sorry?* The Tin Man sounds genuinely surprised, and a part of her admires the act.
*I didn’t come to talk to you,* Cerise said, with infinite patience. *Where’s Dorothy?*
The Tin Man’s icon doesn’t change—he’s not wired, any more than the invisible one is wired—but Cerise can hear the sudden anger in his voice. The Tin Man’s proud of being straight, resents the insinuation, and Cerise hides a smile.
*Don’t know any Dorothy,* he says, and Cerise allows the smile to show. *If it’s herself you want to talk to, I’ll see if she’s willing.*
She’ll be willing, Cerise thinks, but judges she’s pushed hard enough already. The Tin Man’s icon vanishes, though she can feel his presence, this faint tingle of electricity against her skin, and she looks around the rose-lit room again. The shimmering silver walls have closed in, sealing her off from the rest of the nets: a necessary precaution, but one that always makes her uneasy, at least when she doesn’t control the program. She controls herself instead—she can break this program if she has to, has ice-cutters in her toolkit that will destroy better security than this—and resigns herself to wait in patience.
At last the Tin Man reappears, bowing so that his silver-tubing fingers brush the rose-scented floor. *This way,* he says, and a blackness opens beside him, an oval doorway into nothing.
Cerise lifts an eyebrow—it was a cheap effect, and they both know it—and steps through into emptiness.
For a long moment the light doesn’t appear, no light, no sound, no sense, and Cerise frowns, readying a program to strip the disguise from within the sphere of the security. She counts to ten, slowly, then reaches into the toolkit for the routine. As she had expected, light returns, dull, white light like the light in an office, and with it the rest of the illusion. She is standing in a featureless white sphere, and at the center of it hangs a plaintext symbol, blue reversed crescent and a blue disk like a planet trapped between its horns. The edges of the symbol flicker faintly, fizzing red. Cerise regards it without affection, picturing the woman behind the symbol: thin and bony, iron-grey hair cut close to the skull, face scraped clean of makeup. while her body is constrained by the drab jeans-and-T-shirt of a mainline cracker. Ms. Cool has been around for years, from before the brainworm, and she’s made a place for herself on the nets, but she’s not fond of anyone, and especially not of women, at least not women on the wire.
*Cerise,* she says, in a voice electronically distorted to a timbre like scraping wire. *What do you want?*
Cerise grits her teeth behind the mask of her cartoon-icon, hopes that the brainworm has not translated the fleeting emotion, dislike, and intimidation, or something very like it. *Word is, you know everyone’s location on the nets. I’m looking for Silk.*
*Word is,* Ms. Cool says, the electric voice nasty, *you already have a mailcode.*
*Had,* Cerise corrects, and keeps her own voice level only with an effort. The space defined by Silk’s code had been empty, as she’d expected, the trail long cold; she has wasted minutes searching, she and her watchdogs, before she’d admitted defeat and the necessity of bargaining with Ms. Cool.
The icon hanging opposite her does not change, not even a shift of color, but Cerise imagines that the other woman would have smiled had she been able. *If Silk’s dumped you, it’s not my business to put the two of you back together. Besides, what would Trouble say?*
*I manage my own sex life, thanks,* Cerise says. *This is business.* She hesitates, gauging the insult. *I didn’t think Silk was one to pass up business—any more than you.*
Ms. Cool ignores her, doesn’t answer for a long moment, just the icon hanging blind in the blank white space. Cerise keeps a grip on herself, masters her impatience, and waits unmoving. At last, without the flicker of anything to anticipate the response, Ms. Cool says, *I have a code. But there’s a price.*
*There always is.* Cerise speaks without thinking, sees no reason to regret the words.
*Multiplane’s security is good,* Ms. Cool says. *And I need information.*
Cerise laughs aloud. *My security’s good, you mean. And it’s no deal.*
*You might want to hear the full offer,* Ms. Cool says, and Cerise gestures for her to continue. *And don’t think I can’t break your IC(E), girl, but I have other fish to fry.*
That is almost certainly a lie and they both know it, but Cerise gives no sign, and Ms. Cool goes on without a breath.
*And I’m not after trade secrets, you’d be surprised how little market there is for them. What I want is personnel information, nothing more. Just a simple file, not even the classified version. On a man named Derrick Coigne.*
Coigne. Cerise barely stops herself from speaking the name alo
ud, feels the surprise congeal around her, the sensation doubly vivid in the blank room. That was different, Coigne was different, it might even help her to pass that information on to Ms. Cool—and this was probably just what Ms. Cool wanted her to think. Ms. Cool’s favors are rarely simple, simply given or simply achieved; besides, even a general-access internal file contained information that outsiders were not supposed to see. Multiplane has more secrets than she knows, more enmities and rivalries and obscure alliances than even she can monitor, even watching the internal nets as she does—but there’s no choice this time, she tells herself. She needs Silk’s codes, some location, and she needs them now or she would never have come to Ms. Cool, because if she doesn’t get them, if she and Trouble don’t find newTrouble, and soon, the whole messy business with Treasury will begin all over again. And that she, they, cannot afford; she will not risk it, risk losing Trouble, not again.
She has made the decision almost before she’s realized it, as though there was no decision to be made, no choice at all. The only question left is whether she will keep her bargain, get Ms. Cool the files she wants, or, more precisely, how she will go about keeping both the bargain and her job. And if she loses the job, she thinks, it will be worth it—and that is a thought she doesn’t want and can’t right now afford, and she puts it aside without even the acknowledgment of a frown. *Coigne,* she says, aloud this time, still playing for time. *Why would anyone want Coigne’s files?*
*Don’t be stupid, girl,* Ms. Cool says. *Anyway, the whys don’t matter. It’s a straight deal, my code for his file. Are you willing?*
*I’m interested,* Cerise corrects. *But I’m not—in the office right now. You’d have to take it on trust.*
*I don’t do business that way.*
*In this case, you don’t have a choice.* Cerise stops, takes a deep breath, makes her tone ever so faintly conciliatory—anything more would be suspicious. *Even I don’t have access from outside.*
There is another silence, another of Ms. Cool’s periods of inattention, and Cerise finds herself holding her breath. She hides a frown, and makes herself breathe, counting heartbeats; she reaches a hundred, an eternity, before Ms. Cool speaks. *All right. We’ll do it your way. But if you cross me, Cerise….*
Cerise doesn’t answer, because there’s nothing she can say. They stand silent for another moment, and then Ms. Cool says again, *All right.* The icon flickers and a mailcode appears; Cerise plucks it out of the air, feeling the numbers tingle against her fingers. She tucks it into her toolkit; carefully compartmentalizing just in case, and looks back at the icon.
*You owe me,* Ms. Cool says, softly, and Cerise nods.
*I owe you,* she agrees, and closes her mind to the consequences. The blank sphere splits open around her, and the icon vanishes. Cerise steps backward, and is abruptly in the center of the rose-colored tent. The Tin Man sneers at her from a corner.
*Get what you wanted?*
*Do you care?* Cerise asks, with a grin, and adds, *Ask your boss, if you really want to know.* She walks past him without another word, brushes through illusory curtains that hum for an instant under her touch as though they held a swarm of bees. She steps out into the gaudy light and noise of the Bazaar, follows the meandering path between the heaped icons and the crude-drawn storefronts that lie behind the piles of advertising, and is aware again of the negative icon following her. Mabry is still with her. She keeps walking, wondering if she should try to lose him, but perhaps, she thinks, a witness would be advisable. She finds a sheltered spot, checks the mailcode Ms. Cool has given her—an unfamiliar string, an unfamiliar part of the net—and calls a new routine, lets it absorb the mailcode, and follows it as it runs.
The tracer leads her back out into the main highways of the net, as she had expected. She lets herself absorb the new perspective, the rivers of neon fire, streams and falls of light, here and there a flurry of white and red, lights tossed like water over rapids, then strides out into the nearest node, lets the force of the traffic carry her away. She can see, and feel, the tracer ahead of her, sorting through the junctions for her, follows its path that glows green to the eye and warm to the touch, and at the fourth node calls a halt. The tracer whines in protest—it, they, are nearing the end of its programmed road, and it seems almost eager to finish its work—but Cerise waits anyway, listening, sniffing, for a hint of the negative icon. It is there, as she had known it would be: Mabry, still with her, following at a distance just discreet enough. She sighs then, and steps from mainstream to local net, follows the tracer down the last wide road of light, until they emerge together at the mailcode’s volume. The tracer vanishes, and Cerise is left alone, except for the ghost of the invisible icon lurking in the distance.
There is IC(E), of course, both obvious spikes and coils of it, walling off all but a staging area, and subtler strands of it, hair-thin tripwires and delicate poison darts. She frowns for an instant, considering the problem, then evokes a routine from her toolkit. It spreads, slow and thick, meaningless codes and numbers oozing like molasses, clogging the more delicate traps, overloading the fine triggers until one by one the traps fire or fizzle, releasing payloads that are lost at once in the sea of garbage. Cerise watches carefully, recording the pattern of the traps—there’s always something to be learned from even amateur work, and this is good, better than a mere amateur—then steps across to the main barrier. She studies it for a moment—the same hand built it that forged the subtler traps—considering how to proceed. She has two choices, discreet and overt, and after only an instant’s thought chooses the obvious approach. Silk needs to know she’s pursued, that she has not acted, cannot act, with impunity—and besides, Cerise thinks, and smiles, she herself has watchdogs in her toolkit that can follow anyone. If Silk panics, and runs, the watchdog will follow, and with any luck Silk will run to newTrouble. She evokes the watchdog then, sets its chameleon routine and leaves it sleeping, less of a presence on the net than Mabry’s invisible non-icon, and turns her attention to the IC(E).
Under other circumstances she would take her time, thread the glittering razors’ maze of it, but she’s already betrayed her presence by neutralizing the first array of traps. She selects the best icebreaker she owns. She didn’t write the main structure, but she has modified it until it fits her hand, her style, like a velvet glove. She draws it on, feeling the power surge through it as the program wakes and tests the IC(E), then sweeps her hand across the first bright coil of program. The shock of it jolts her to her elbow, numb tingling as though she’d hit a nerve; she grimaces, calls more power. She touches it again, and this time the IC(E) cracks and shatters under her touch, falling away in chunks like broken glass. At the edges of the breach, the broken ends of the matrix flare, and then fade, like embers in the wind. She reaches out again, seizes another handful of the brittle glittering IC(E), enjoying the feeling as it cracks and falls like dust at her feet. Once more, and she is through, emerging into the echoing silence of an empty node.
She has expected that, predicted the emptiness when there was no counter to her first assault on the volume’s defenses, but she checks anyway, letting her own countersecurity programs survey the area. There is nothing more than the routine maintenance programs, anonymous and mainstream, nothing to betray their owner’s hand, and she steps out into the empty space. It is flat, featureless, grey floor, white dome/ceiling, all standard, not even a hot-spot to trigger a new environment or a private stash of files. Which is all pretty much as she has expected: she scans anyway, and this time finds the button, dulled almost to invisibility. She checks for links to IC(E), finds none, but readies a defensive program anyway before she triggers whatever lies behind the routine.
Grass sprouts underfoot, and a pavilion shimmers into place: the scene of her earlier seduction. She makes a face, but lets the program run, until the stage is complete, if empty, no sign of Silk behind the clever trappings. She scans again, ignoring the demanding memory—better to have Trouble, in spite of everything�
�finds a storage cache and a single file. She studies the guard program carefully, selects a tool, and freezes the lock into immobility. It can neither close nor destroy its contents; she pries it gently open, and scans the file. It is a working draft of a program, a model for iconage, and she seals a copy carefully into her working memory. It could be bait, a poison trap that carries some unpleasant virus, and she doesn’t have the time to risk that now.
There is nothing else she needs, not here, and the mere fact that she’s been here is message enough for Silk. She hesitates, contemplating a message, and at last tosses a copy of her icon out into the empty space. It hangs in the air, the cartoon shape glowing against the blank walls: if Silk knows what’s good for her, she’ll contact me, Cerise thinks, and turns away. And if she doesn’t—there’s always the watchdog. She walks out through the shattered IC(E), feels the ghostly touch of the watchdog, warm against her ankle, reassuring her of its presence. Mabry, too, is still with her, but she ignores him, and turns again for home.
Trouble sat cross-legged on her chair, left hand still nursing the elbow that stung and tingled from the feedback of the IC(E) surrounding The Willows’ databases. Voices spilled in through the open window, kids’ shouts high and clear as they played basketball in the lot behind the Chinese restaurant, mixing with the periodic drone of runabouts’ engines, but she ignored them all, staring at the numbers that filled her display screen. It was bad enough that she hadn’t been able to break through the IC(E) on-line—not only did her elbow hurt, but the same pins-and-needles sensation trembled through her hands, slowing her fingers on the keyboard and controls. The numbers did not change, and she glared at them a moment longer before moving on to the next screen. The news was no better there: most of the Headlands apartments were controlled by The Willows, and the information on tenants’ names and rents and who actually paid the bills was buried in The Willows’ most secure databases. She had already proved that she couldn’t break that IC(E)—almost unconsciously, she ran her hand over her sore elbow, imagining a bruise beneath the skin even though she knew perfectly well that the tingling was in her nerves, in the brainworm itself—which left her only the slow, unreliable road through the city records. And that wasn’t even cracking, she thought, bitterly; it was more like panning for gold, sifting huge amounts of raw information through a datasieve in the hopes first that the information you wanted was actually there, and then that you’d built the sieve correctly to catch it. Most crackers didn’t have the patience for the technique—hell, she wasn’t sure she had the patience for it anymore—but she’d already exhausted all the other options.
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