*Well,* she says again, and looks at Silk. He looks back at her, the icon showing the hip-shot stance, the defiant stare that she remembers, and she thinks again of the touch of her—his—hands. He’s playing a dangerous game, reminding her of that, and a part of her admires his arrogance before she slaps the thought away. *Open the door.*
There is a last, minuscule pause, and then he steps forward. She calls back the icepick, in the same moment shortening the leash that holds him to her, and sees him reach deep into the violated code. Something sparks, and then the system recognizes him, his icon. The codewall vanishes, all but a few patches, segments of the wall already so eroded by her work that they can no longer respond even to legitimate stimulus. Seahaven opens before them, a dusty street lined with the tall false fronts of the frontier town, and they pass through together into the sudden heat. Silk tugs once at the leash, little more than an experiment, and she controls it instantly.
*Walk,* she says, and they start together up the long street.
Theclawhammer slides away with a noise like a needle scoring plastic, and Trouble feels the sickening scrape of it against the codewall, bringing a skidding pain like the deliberate scratch of a pin. That means the wall is damaged, though only slightly. She feels the self-seal routine kick in, knows already that it won’t be finished in time, that she will have to rely on the inner wall. Her icepick returns to the attack, slower now, probing the convoluted codes. The Mayor brushes at it, but it finds a weak point and fastens on, burrowing, fretting loose the imperfect fragments, digging into the wall. The Mayor dispatches a watchdog—not one of his specials, with all its fancy iconage; this one’s a killer, plain sphere covering code that will shred almost any other program. The icepick keeps burrowing, blindly, oblivious to the watchdog chewing at its heels, and for a moment Trouble thinks it might succeed. And then the watchdog reaches vital code: the icepicks slows and fades, dissolves into directionless fragments.
Trouble swears, and feels a new touch, a cold mouth like a leech’s full of glassy teeth, against her skin. She swears again, under her breath, knowing what’s happened—she was concentrating on her own attack, forgot to keep an eye out for sleepers, and now she has one on her, already burrowed through the first codewall and onto her main defense. She stays calm with an effort, hating the touch of it, cold with the pain of a dozen razors’ cuts, calls the watchdog she bought from Jesse. For a long moment she waits, the cold pain gnawing at her, and then the watchdog vanishes. The Mayor’s watchdog lurches forward, and her own program turns to meet it. She winces, unable to tell which one will win, but makes herself look away, reaches into her toolkit for another attack. This one’s a hammer, slow and crude, but she sets it bashing, hoping to distract the Mayor. She parries his icepick, looses a copy of the disrupter on it, and feels a lucky blow: the icepick shatters, scattering fragments. She ducks, but feels a few of them slap against her skin, distinct points of pain like bee stings.
She brushes them away, reaches for another program, triggers its response, another kind of icepick, to join the hammer already at work. The Mayor swats at the hammer, but it’s sturdy, resilient, bounces back each time he slaps it away. Trouble allows herself a quick smile, seeing that, looses a second copy of her icepick, hoping to overwhelm his defenses, then turns her attention to her own systems and the icepick worrying at her shields. Her watchdog is still tangled in fight, and she calls another copy, sets it to work.
*Trouble!*
Cerise’s voice, she thinks, but does not dare glance back toward it, just in case it’s some trick of the Mayor’s and then a second voice echoes, a voice she’s never heard, clear and young.
*Eytan!*
For an instant she can’t think who it means, and then remembers—the Mayor’s name is Eytan—but the Mayor’s already turning, leaping down like a superhero from the first level of his temple. He carries the cloud of his attackers with him for an instant, but then gestures stiffly, and the space of Seahaven itself twists and swirls around him like a twist of wind, and Trouble’s programs are gone. She freezes for half a heartbeat, appalled at the casual power, the sheer scale of the Mayor’s creations, and then her mind is working again, and she sees, knows, what he’s betrayed. Seahaven is fluid space—that much they’d all always known, that it was entirely the Mayor’s whim and so controllable from somewhere, but this, this sweeping destruction, proves that the control points are everywhere, and everywhere potent, potentially universal. And, therefore, potentially accessible to any cracker.
*Jamie—* the Mayor begins, and Cerise’s voice rides over his words, sharp as the crack of a whip.
*Be careful, sunshine, I’ve got a leash on him. Trouble, are you all right?*
*Fine,* Trouble answers, shortly, not surprised even now by the rescue—figuring the odds are still even, with Cerise here, since she’s brought newTrouble with her.
The Mayor says again, *Jamie,* and fear and anger both are sharp in his voice, crackle on the net like the scent of lightning.
Silk/newTrouble says, *I’m sorry—* and the Mayor’s voice cuts into whatever else he might have said.
*You’re wired,* he says, and Trouble risks a look backward, over her shoulder to where Cerise’s familiar icon stands beside a generic man-shape rough-clad in black, not quite matching the Mayor’s severity.
*You little bastard,* the Mayor says, voice flat again, the anger damped to a hint of sulphur. *When— How—?* And he stops, with what would have been the shake of a head if he’d himself been on the wire.
*I’m sorry,* Silk/newTrouble says again, and sounds terribly young.
*You cunt,* the Mayor says, and the icon’s working hand convulses. *Go home.* The fabric of Seahaven warps again, twists and distorts and in an eyeblink wraps itself around Silk/newTrouble’s icon. Cerise swears, incoherent, lifts a hand to jerk short the leash, and the program kicks back, broken at the source. The section of image knots tighter, space stretching around it, painful to the eye, and then relaxes, smoothing out to restore the stark frontier town as though it had never changed. Silk/newTrouble is gone.
Cerise curses again, shakes a stinging hand, and Trouble swings back to face the Mayor. The ground roils under her feet, tipping her sideways, the air goes gluey, multileaved and flaking yellow-tinged as isinglass; she struggles for breath and balance, goes to her knees in the dust that rises to engulf her. Cerise calls something, but her voice is muffled, and Trouble closes her mind to it, concentrating on the space that has enfolded her. She closes her eyes as well, cutting off the visuals that threaten to override her system, feels the pressure on her lungs ease because she lacks the visual cue of dust to reinforce thick air. She could hit the panic button, drop off the net completely, she’d be safe then, but that would mean losing, admitting herself beaten. She reaches blindly into the spaces around her, groping spread-fingered for the hot spots, the control points that will allow her to break free of this program. She trips an emergency control, dangerous but necessary, kicks the brainworm to full power, full receptivity, and feels the heat and the thick air clog her lungs, illusion but dangerous, warning her of slower dangers. She ignores that, reaches out again, fingers trailing across illusory lumps and tingling wires, every touch magnified, and finally touches a hot spot, palms its burning circle in her left hand. She finds a second even as she analyzes the first, and cups them both, working through the system. The feeling is familiar beneath the generic heat, a system like systems she has used before. She shifts her left hand slightly, then her right, and feels the system controls wrap themselves around her fingers. She gestures—the old-style code, the old netwalker symbols—and feels some of the pressure ease from around her. She gestures again, with more confidence this time, and the wall of images unravels around her.
Cerise says, *Christ, you gave me a scare.* She lets her hands fall, lets another icepick flick back into obscurity.
Trouble takes a deep breath, ignoring the heat that lingers along with the fear, looks up at the Mayor’s palace
. It turns a blank face to the rest of Seahaven, the usual windows and doors sealed with stone, even the battling statues vanished from the corners of the platforms. *NewTrouble?* she asks, and Cerise shrugs.
*Bounced him out of Seahaven—right off the nets, I think. Are you all right?*
*Fine,* Trouble says, sourly, not thinking, then looks at Cerise in apology. *I’m all right. But we have to do something about the Mayor.*
*Yeah, but what?* Cerise scowls, scanning the illusory space, empty now except for the icons. They have waited a long time, by the reckoning of the nets; the walls will be sealed tight, all the IC(E) in place and fully armed.
*Go after him,* Trouble says.
Cerise hesitates, her hands still stinging from the first wall of IC(E), knowing it would be smarter to take the draw and run, leave the Mayor to Mabry, to Treasury and the Eurocops. But that’s not either of their styles—and there is Silk to think about. He’s on the wire, one of them, doubly family, maybe, and she feels responsible. She nods slowly, works her hands again. The fingers that held the leash feel thick and clumsy, and worry stabs through her.
*Are you OK?* Trouble asks, her tone sharpening, and Cerise nods again.
*Caught some IC(E) getting in here,* she says, careful to keep her voice casual. Trouble looks at her, uncertain, searching, and she forces a smile. *Stung my fingers a little, nothing more.*
*All right,* Trouble says, and her tone is doubtful, but she starts toward the temple.
*Wait,* Cerise says, and reaches into her toolkit, triggers the iconage editor she had carried since she first went into the business. Trouble cocks her head to one side, but asks no questions; Cerise grins, and triggers a sequence, spinning an image into the air around them. Her touch is clumsy, but the shape that forms is recognizable enough: a gunfighter’s silhouette, battered ten-gallon hat and loose cap-shouldered duster, dark against the Mayor’s walls.
Trouble laughs softly. *Shouldn’t the hat be white?* she says, and makes the change. *What brought this on?*
*Blame the Mayor,* Cerise says, and gestures at the fading frontier town around him. *I thought I’d beat him at his own game.*
After a moment Trouble nods, and reaches for the icon, drawing it over herself like a suit of clothes. Cerise spins a second copy for herself—she keeps the black hat, but her kerchief is her own hot fuchsia, a single point of vivid contrast—and dons it, too.
*He picked the game,* Cerise says, and looks at Trouble remade, at an icon that seems suddenly more herself than the dancing harlequin had ever been. Trouble looks back at her as though she’d read the thought, and the icon’s wry mouth twists into a sudden smile.
*When were we ever the good guys?* she asks, and reaches for her toolkit.
Cerise doesn’t answer, moves to join her, to examine the featureless surface. Weren’t we always? she thinks, and runs one hand across the temple face, feeling sun-warmed stone beneath her palm. She finds a protruding bit of code, a defect, where the image has been corrupted—perhaps by collateral damage from the fight, perhaps just by wear and tear, by constant usage; whatever the cause, she catches hold of it, levers away the skin of the image. It comes away with a ripping sound, just a small patch of the illusion, perhaps as big as a man’s outspread hand. In that one spot, the codewall lies exposed, and she frowns, studying its pattern. Trouble moves up beside her, but she’s barely aware of the other’s presence, concentrating on the codes. It was made by the same hand that made the outer wall; there are similarities of style and shape, but otherwise it’s not much like that first barrier, a tighter, leaner code concealing a colder IC(E). She hesitates for an instant, thinking of the first wall, of her sore hands, then shakes herself, makes herself contemplate the exposed patterns.
Trouble reaches past the other icon’s shoulder, carrying the icon of a sleeper. She releases it beside the open patch of code, bends close to watch it apply itself to the codewall. For a moment it seems to make headway, and then the IC(E) reasserts itself The sleeper slows, frozen, drops away to shatter against the illusory dirt.
*It shouldn’t’ve done that,* Trouble says, irrelevantly—she hates illusions that don’t quite work—and Cerise leans closer to the opening.
*Try this,* she says, and touches a probe to a single strand of code. She is still clumsy, a little less accurate than she needs to be, but the codewall sings under her touch, a deep bass note that reverberates through their bones. She’s found a hot spot within the wall of IC(E), a space that give access to a deeper layer of control, a structure more fundamental than the IC(E).
*Careless,* Trouble says, meaning the Mayor, and reaches for the same point, delicately brushes the same bit of code. The music answers again, true and deep as some great bell. She takes a breath, bracing herself for the necessary attack, the necessary risk, and Cerise touches her arm.
*Let me,* Cerise says.
Trouble hesitates, recognizing the logic—Cerise’s hands are already burned; she herself is unhurt, and should remain so, to deal with the Mayor—and in that instant Cerise reaches past her, deep into the maze of coded IC(E). Light flares, momentarily blinding, and Cerise winces at the numbing chill that wraps around her. The cold dims her tactile sense, masking those receptors, but she gropes anyway toward the faint heat of the control points. And then she has it, and the light fades, dims, and then vanishes completely, revealing a new world within the temple walls.
*Nice,* Trouble says, and Cerise smiles, rubbing her hands to warm them. For a moment she thinks it’s nothing more than cold, nothing more than an illusion of the brainworm, but then she feels something beneath the cool, a faint, distant ache, all the more worrisome because she’s sure it’s real.
*Let’s get on with it,* she says, and Trouble looks more closely at her.
*You all right?*
*Yeah,* Cerise answers, and, when Trouble says nothing, just keeps looking. *I’m OK. Let’s go.*
*OK,* Trouble agrees, not entirely certain, but closes off her concern, and steps through the opening.
She catches her breath as the new illusion takes hold of her, spins her perspective, and then she has compensated, steadies herself against the brainworm’s insistence that she is upside down and sideways. She closes her eyes, lets herself go limp, and the brainworm and the temple-space together turn her right, so that when she opens her eyes she is standing perpendicular to the opening Cerise made, looking out at a world that hangs at a bizarre angle. Cerise’s icon performs the same maneuver, spinning against the bright opening until it’s oriented with the strict and sober geometry, drab black and a grey that isn’t even close to silver, that makes up the Mayor’s private space. Satisfied that Cerise is with her, Trouble turns, scanning the net around her for traps and watchdogs. She sees nothing, the brainworm finds nothing it can translate to sound or smell or taste, not even the wet-steel tang of IC(E).
*Weird,* Cerise says, and Trouble nods, knowing exactly what is meant.
A pattern, a line like a road, brighter grey than the planes that wall in this entrance space, stretches away from them, edged with thinner lines of black. It zigzags through the irregular slabs that rise like trees, like the stones of Stonehenge, disappears into an illusory far distance: the temple, like most virtual spaces, is bigger on the inside than the outside, and even with the brainworm’s assistance, sight fails before the road ends. A shiver of light, like a dusting of stars, runs beneath the bright surface, shooting away into the interior, flickering in and out of sight between the irregularly spaced planes. Trouble catches her breath, looking instantly for watchdogs, for attacking programs, but there’s still nothing, just the pure still sense of the code itself in the air around her.
*I suppose that’s an invitation,* Cerise says.
Trouble nods again, still searching for IC(E), grateful that her brainworm is still tuned high. *I feel like Dorothy,* she says, and steps out onto the path. Another flicker of light runs away beneath her feet, like ripples on the surface of a pool; to either side of the grey
band, the illusory floor drops away—not a surprise, but she walks carefully nonetheless.
*That wasn’t Kansas back there,* Cerise mutters, and follows. The same scattering of light ripples away from her, and Trouble feels the faint warmth of it rush fugitive under her own feet.
*Might’ve been,* Trouble says, as much to chase away her fears as because she thinks so, and takes another few cautious steps. *Old Kansas, in the old days. Where the hell is the IC(E)?*
Cerise shakes her head, the brainworm carrying the gesture like a scent of oil, a taste of peppermint. *Worry about that when we find it—or when it finds us.*
Her voice is grimmer than her words, but Trouble laughs anyway, and keeps walking, lines of silver rippling away from her along the grey slab that is the path. There’s still no sign of IC(E), though the plane that was the floor drops further away below them until it vanishes in a haze like black fog—she would say that the path is rising, but the brainworm denies that, tells her she is walking straight and level. Slabs of featureless grey, some narrow as sheets of steel, others thick as stone, rise on either side, set at angles to the walkway; ahead, the path jogs sharply left, around a stone pillar that looks almost blue, the blue of a shadow, among the shaded greys. And still there’s nothing else, no watchdogs—she glances back in spite of herself, the fuchsia spark of Cerise’s neckerchief the only color in the bleak grey-and-black, almost painful to the eye, sees only Cerise, the icon’s face set in a faint, unhappy frown. And no IC(E) either, not even the hint of it drifting up from the black fog virtual meters below the walkway. The lights beneath her feet, the silver ripples like moonlight on water, aren’t IC(E) either, aren’t anything that she recognizes; she is getting used to them, though, and has to make an effort now to feel their fugitive warmth as they flicker away from her along the narrow path.
The blue-grey monolith looms ahead, its edges smoothed, rounded not by weather, nature, but as though ground by some massive machine. Trouble eyes it warily, suspecting a trap, dispatches a copy of a watchdog toward it. The program—stripped down to carry more features, its icon little more than a red disk—floats cautiously toward it, circles it, and returns again.
Trouble and her Friends Page 35