Trouble and her Friends

by Melissa Scott

  “Here,” an armored man said, and held up an injector. Starling took it, inspected the label and the discolored tip, then made a face and handed it to Mabry.

  “Gerumine,” he said, and Mabry grunted.

  “It’s a euthanasiant,” he said to Trouble. “I wonder if he took it himself, or if Novross gave it to him.”

  “You don’t know that’s what happened,” Cerise protested automatically, pushed herself to her feet. Her hands were shaking, and she jammed them into her pockets.

  “Well, he sure didn’t take it,” Starling answered, nodding to the Mayor. “And you two didn’t, and the injector’s been used. That doesn’t leave many choices, does it?”

  Trouble shivered again, stood slowly, glass crunching under her feet. “Jesus,” she said, and then, “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Mabry said.

  Cerise said, “He said he was cleaning up the mess, the mess he’d caused. I suppose Silk was part of it.”

  Like me, Trouble thought. It could’ve been me—fifteen years ago, it might have been me. The fog was thicker now, drifting in through the shattered windows, cold and wet on her skin.

  Mabry touched her shoulder, turned her away from the two bodies, newTrouble’s and the Mayor’s, urged her toward the door. Trouble went unresisting, and Cerise followed more slowly, looking back toward the boy’s body and the grey-jacketed medics kneeling beside it.

  Mabry paused on the landing, touched Trouble’s shoulder again. “This—incident—presents an opportunity for us, one that I don’t want to see go to waste. It’s important, Trouble, will you listen?”

  Trouble made a noise that might have become laughter, bit her lip again to keep it from swelling to full hysterics. “I’m listening.”

  “Seahaven, virtual Seahaven, is without a Mayor now,” Mabry said. “If we had somebody legal in charge, somebody we could trust—”

  “Me?” Trouble said, and lifted a skeptical eyebrow.

  “It would make sense,” Mabry said. “You’re an old-style netwalker, you’ve been a syscop, you beat the Mayor at his own game. The nets would have to respect your claim, and we’d be able to crack down on Seahaven.”

  Cerise grinned. “You shot the sheriff, Trouble, that means you get to be marshal.”

  “I’m still on the wire,” Trouble said automatically. “People may not believe I beat him.” But the idea was tempting: to have Seahaven for herself, to take over that space, that status, for her own…. And there would be other opportunities too—maybe Mabry wouldn’t approve, and Starling, Treasury, certainly wouldn’t, but the possibilities cut both ways, not just not to return to the shadows, she’d come too far for that anyway, but to redefine the bright lights, begin again the action Evans-Tindale had cut short. From Seahaven, with Seahaven’s sanctuary as a base and a passport, she could do anything.

  Mabry said, “You could do it. Times are changing; the wire doesn’t matter so much anymore—too many people have them now. And you’ve earned it. That’s the thing nobody else can ever claim. You beat him.”

  Trouble nodded slowly. “It can’t be this easy.”

  Mabry grinned, showing very white teeth. “Probably not,” he admitted. “But in the long run, there isn’t anybody else. And even Treasury isn’t so stupid as to leave Seahaven untenanted, when they can have you in charge.”

  “All right,” Trouble said, and nodded again. “All right, I’ll do it. Conditionally.”

  “Of course,” Mabry said.

  Cerise turned away, left them talking, walked down the stairs as silently as she’d come. Her hands were aching now, worse than ever, from the recoil; she rested a hand on each shoulder to try to reduce the swelling, hugging herself against the cold and the irrational feeling of loss. Not that she’d lost anything, not necessarily, but Silk was dead, and the Mayor—though he was no loss—and Trouble would become Mayor in her turn— She bit off that thought, knowing she was being maudlin, hysterical, and not knowing how to stop. Should I go back to the hotel? she wondered, get my runabout and get out of here, or should I just start walking, keep walking until I feel safe again? The street was still full of cops, a knot of them standing beside the fire engine, its bucket once again fully retracted, armored men clustering around the two snipers in congratulation; there were more cops at each end of the street, their mottled grey uniforms blurred even further by the thickening fog. She should probably thank the snipers, too, Cerise knew; they had saved her life. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it, couldn’t quite get past the cold that filled her, and stood with her hands on her shoulders in the fog, wondering what to do.

  “Cerise?” Trouble said from behind her. “Ah, your hands.”

  “Yours aren’t in great shape, either,” Cerise said, and Trouble looked down as though surprised to see the thin cuts that crisscrossed her palms and ran up the sides of her hands.

  “It’s the glass,” she began, and Cerise said, “I was there, I know.”

  “I know.” Trouble looked past her, toward the end of the street where the fog was thickest. “I wanted—I need to talk to you. Before I agree to this, there are some things I need to settle.”

  “Such as?” In spite of herself, Cerise heard the old bitterness, the old anger, in her voice, and Trouble grimaced.

  “Look, how many times do I have to say I fucked up? I don’t want to do it again, Cerise, I don’t want to leave, or for you to leave me, OK? If I take Seahaven, will you run it with me?

  “And if I won’t?”

  Trouble spread her hands. “Then—whatever. Is Multiplane hiring?”

  Cerise stared at her for a long moment, not sure she had heard correctly, then, slowly, she began to laugh. “I don’t believe you said that.”

  “What’s so goddamn funny?” Trouble glared at her, and Cerise got herself under control with an effort.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just—you giving up Seahaven? To work for Multiplane? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Will you run it with me?” Trouble asked.

  Cerise nodded, slowly. “It’s kind of a dumb question, sweetheart. Is there anybody who doesn’t want Seahaven?”

  Trouble nodded back, reached out, careful of Cerise’s hands, touched first her shoulder and then her cheek. “It’s not going to be the same.”

  “It never is,” Cerise answered. She forced a smile, and a lighter tone, knowing perfectly well what Trouble meant: the old days were long gone, and there was no going back, no matter what the regrets. “You’ll just have to bring the law in, Marshal, that’s all.”

  “Thanks,” Trouble said, sour-voiced, but she was smiling. They stood close together against the chilling fog, the sky grey as glass above them, waiting for Mabry to return.

  14

  Trouble stands in the heart of Seahaven, her Seahaven now, on the patch of nothing, black and slick as glass, where the Mayor’s palace once stood. She has kept the rest of the space the way he had it that last day, the dusty street and the falsefronted buildings, the heat and the sun and the dust, and she’s kept the icon Cerise made for them, the dark gunfighter’s shadow against the virtual sun. The control points, the space itself, eddy around her body like the kiss of the wind: a new sensation, still, the full power of the interface filtered through the brainworm, as though she has no skin, as though she walks naked through the system. It is a strange feeling, vulnerable and powerful all at once: she is getting used to it, and without it Seahaven would be less than it was. And that she cannot, will not, allow: she’s come too far, risked too much, to let this space be anything but more than it was under the Mayor’s rule.

  Ahead of her, the street is busy, icons clustering by the wall, wood now, not stone, where the artists work and messages are posted, others clustering by the door to the saloon where the real business is done. She built that herself, borrowing from the memory of Miss Kitty’s years before, and is pleased. Cerise is in there now—she can feel Cerise’s presence even through the swirl of signals, the constant rumble along he
r nerves. There are plenty of others, too, and she stops, mostly because she can, the novelty not yet worn off, lets the brainworm and the fabric of Seahaven itself tell her who is talking there. Dargon is there; triumph enough in itself, that he’ll still come to Seahaven even though he doesn’t think, isn’t sure, she’s earned the right to it. Arabesque, too, like a taste of salt, and Helling, and a dozen others she sees as flickers of an icon, an eyeblink image in her mind. The shadows still come to Seahaven, and she doesn’t, won’t stop them, but she welcomes the bright lights as well.

  That in itself has been enough to drive off some of the shadows, the ones who are deep enough in the shadows that they have their own outside system, their own network of protectors and enemies in the realworld. Of all of them, only Fate has ventured into Seahaven more than twice, and he hasn’t brought his business with him. That brings a flicker of regret, but she quells that sternly. She can’t afford it—more than that, she isn’t the Mayor, this isn’t his Seahaven anymore, and she will live by the rules she’s made, not by his.

  She sees the sky thin on the fringes of the townscape, where she sketched the echo of desert to blend into the artificial distance, feels in the same moment the slap of a door opening, like the sting of sand against her skin. She doesn’t move, looks up instead, not recognizing the hand behind the flurry of code, and sees a shape like the silver sketch of a bird, brighter even than the heat of the sky. She has been more than half expecting him, but she waits, lets the icon fall to her own plane, before she moves to meet him. Her shadow goes before her, falling across him like a chill wind, and she feels him turn, feels the dispersal routine ready in his hand.

  *Hello, Starling,* she says, and for the first time she thinks he might be afraid.

  *Trouble.* Starling’s voice is as it always was, the same easy tone, but Trouble feels the tension surrounding him, the tension of readied programs, carried on the live air of her Seahaven, and she has to hide her own elation.

  *Welcome to Seahaven,* she says, and lets her shadow fade a little.

  *We need to talk,* Starling says. *My bosses aren’t exactly pleased with what you’re doing.*

  *Really?* Trouble doesn’t bother to sound convincing. She feels a flicker in the air, doesn’t have to look back to know that Cerise has come to the doorway of the saloon, stands looking out into the dusty street. *I don’t know why not, they got what they wanted. Seahaven’s not a refuge space anymore.*

  *They expected a bit more cooperation,* Starling says. *Under the circumstances.*

  Trouble shrugs, enjoying the easy play of her icon. *I’ve done what I can, under law. But I have a direct-drop open node on the Euronets that puts this space under the Conventions, not Evans-Tindale. I have to abide by those rules.*

  And, she doesn’t say, doesn’t have to say, the Conventions protect the nets as much as they protect the realworld. It’s not the clearest situation, and she knows it—there have been rulings for and against her open-node argument—but Starling knows it, too, and knows that the nets will be solidly behind her. Trouble can feel the quiver in the air that means that icons are gathering, the other netwalkers coming out to see what’s going on, what Starling wants. She doesn’t look back, but she can tell they fill the false windows of the saloon and gather on the boardwalks to either side of the street.

  Starling says, *That argument’s been overruled before. It won’t hold up in court.*

  *Maybe not,* Trouble says, *but maybe it will. Charge me and we’ll see what the judges say.*

  There is a little pause, and she feels Starling withdraw a little, preparing his retreat. *Give me half a chance. We’ll be watching, believe me. Every transaction, every payday, every single packet of data that comes out of here—oh, yeah, we’ll be watching.*

  *Go ahead,* Trouble says. *I’ve nothing to hide. But I hope you plan to get warrants for all that.*

  *Oh, yeah,* Starling says, grim-voiced. *I play by the rules, Trouble, remember that.*

  *I don’t forget,* Trouble says, but already he’s moving away, turned his back to her, the blank side of the icon, heading for the nearest node. She lets him go, and the lurkers move warily away, giving him a wide berth. She feels the node open, and the icon flicks away. She sighs, acknowledging at least his competence—he will play by his rules, she’ll give him that, and he’ll do it well—and turns away.

  Cerise says, *He wasn’t pleased.*

  *No,* Trouble says, and turns to face her, seeing the icons that still wait in the windows and the boardwalk. She ignores them, their presence a weight in the air around her, says, *Still, somebody has to do it.*

  *I hope Max is right about this one,* Cerise says—the open-node defense was Helling’s idea—and Trouble grins, lets the brainworm carry her pleasure onto the net.

  *The law’s ambiguous, statute law and common law both. Besides, the main thing is still to get the Conventions established—to get people to push for it again.*

  Cerise shrugs—she’s less certain of it than Trouble, of the ability of the net to cooperate and of the realworld to pass the laws they all need—but she’s said that all before, says only, *Well, if anyone can do it, you can.*

  *Someone has to,* Trouble says. She looks around at the space that is Seahaven, the careful details of the street and the buildings and the vivid artwork flattened slightly in the harsh light, tastes the dust and heat. It was bought with a death—whatever she thought of the Mayor, he’s dead, and if it wasn’t at her hands directly, it was close enough, and she wouldn’t have the hardware or the software or the authority if he weren’t dead—and she can feel that burden sometimes like a wall pressing in over the dome of the false sky that bounds the city. *Someone has to,* she says again, as if his ghost is somewhere in the machines that create this Seahaven, as if he might have cared, and turns away, walks back down the vivid street, the dust soft and almost real against her feet.

  The sun was sinking toward the horizon beyond the long window, its pale disk almost obscured by the dull clouds. Trouble watched it idly, saw the lower limb drop below the last layer of cloud, and looked away, blinking, as the fen ran suddenly with watery light and shadow.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” The voice was sharply accented, not of the educated class, and Trouble blinked again, trying to drive away the green reflections that floated in her eyes. She recognized the man; Mabry had pointed him out as one of the conference’s local sponsors, a senior Eurocop who was smart enough to realize how useful the nets could be, but she couldn’t remember his name. The man—he wasn’t very tall, about her own height, with wavy hair that had gone grey at the temples and eyebrows that arced like a bird’s wing—smiled as though he recognized her dilemma and held out his hand. “Jack Callier. Regional chief constable.”

  “Mr. Callier.” Trouble took his hand, warily, trying to remember what else Mabry had said about him. When she had agreed to speak at the annual European Conference on Computers and the Law, she hadn’t realized that cops’ politics were as complicated as the nets’, and she still wasn’t sure enough of all the factions.

  “I enjoyed your talk,” Callier went on.

  “Thanks,” Trouble said, and waited. It wasn’t that the Eurocops had been hostile, exactly, but they didn’t know her, and the ones who did know her reputation knew her as a cracker better than as the new marshal of Seahaven.

  “I don’t mind telling you it’d make my job easier, if your lot signed the Conventions,” Callier went on, with an easy grin that invited confidences. “What do you think the chances are of getting it past your legislature?”

  Trouble shrugged, on familiar ground here, and felt herself relaxing in spite of herself. “Not this session, I’m afraid. We haven’t got the support right now, and no one wants to risk a vote yet. As more and more of Congress is dollied-up, have the implants, I mean, we get more and more backers, but until enough of them have actually dealt with the nets, it’s hard to explain why we need the Conventions when we’ve already got Evans-Tindale.”

>   “I heard your people elected someone—a senator, was it?—who was on the wire.” That was one of the few women there, a rawboned accentless woman called Dumesnil, who was a senior agent in Europol’s computer intelligence division. “Hello, Jack.”

  Callier nodded. “I don’t know if you know Anne Dumesnil, Ms. Carless?”

  “Trouble. Please.”

  “And I’m Stingray,” Dumesnil said. “Jack’s not on the wire—or on anything, for that matter.”

  Trouble nodded, impressed—Stingray had made a name for herself on the Euronets, was accounted a force in tracking the software black markets, someone even the shadows spoke of with grudging respect. She looked across the room, looking for the other faces that had come out of the shadows: Cerise and Max Helling, standing by the buffet table, the pair of net cops that everyone called the Terrible Twins, a black woman whose hair was braided with functional-looking beads and wires, a man in a deliberately conservative suit and a mane of untidy dark hair. There still weren’t enough of them to make policy, but at least they were there at all.

  “I started out a street cop,” Callier said. It had the sound of a set speech, something he’d practiced, and Trouble dragged her attention back to the conversation. “And a street cop I’ll always be. At least at heart.”

  “Not in that suit,” Dumesnil said, and Callier laughed. “So what about this congressman? Is it true?”

  “Yes, but,” Trouble said, “he’s only a member of the House of Representatives, he was elected from a district that’s not only historically liberal but also technophilic, and he got his worm when he was a subsidy student for a European corporation, and then only because he couldn’t do his research without it. All very legal and aboveboard.”

  “Surely it’s a start,” Dumesnil said.

  “I hope so,” Trouble said.

  “This must be quite a change for you,” Callier said, and there was something in his voice that made Trouble look sharply at him. “Working the bright lights after all those years in the shadows. How do your old mates feel about it?”