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heavily controlled she sees watchdogs everywhere, some sleeping and benign,
others ranging purposefully, one or two guarding specific gateways, and she
marks those last for later investigation. Not that there s anything she wants from
behind those IC(E)-walled doors, but the challenge intrigues her.
The local trade-net lies ahead, a chain of BBS, a spiral within the spiral, an
eddy curling in opposition to the main system that becomes a series of spherical
spaces like beads on a string or the chambers of a nautilus. She considers it for an
instant, then lets herself drift down to that plane: it is here, if anywhere, that she
will find either Trouble. Her feet touch solid ground, or its illusion, and she walks
along a road whimsically marked with yellow bricks.
The BBS surround her, the first sphere filled with gaudy advertising, the icons
fizzing against her skin, dancing around her like a cloud of insects. She ignores
it this is a trade space; she recognizes most of the product, and knows this is not
worth her while and the images fade as she leaves that chamber. The next space
is brighter still, badged with neon shapes stolen from the Parcade, and she
doesn t bother to hide her sneer. This is for the tourists, the ones who want the
illusion of the shadows without the danger, a place that plays at being the grey
market. She looks close, and sees the watchdogs and the trackers, the silent IC(E)
woven into the very fabric of the images, all to protect the people the market is
designed to cheat. They have the feel of The Willows, of the security she has
already tasted from a distance, and she quickens her pace, knowing this is not a
place to linger.
Beyond it lie cocktail spaces, crowded with icons not all of whom represent
netwalkers the local system believes in the illusion above all and she slows,
scanning the space for likely trapdoors. There are fewer watchdogs here, and most
of those are focused on the obvious flashpoints, where the BBS intersects most
directly with the abstract plane. She walks past, searching for familiar symbols,
and finds an icon that she recognizes, painted by a well-known hand, a touch like
a whisper of perfume against the air. She smiles, approaches, and the icon rotates
toward her as though there were a live hand behind it. She can feel that fake,
however, the chill unreality radiating from it, and doesn t bother to answer the
preprogrammed greeting.
*Libera,* she says, the old password, and the icon fades slightly, disclosing the
trapdoor. She glances behind her once, unfolding her scan, and sees/feels nothing
untoward, no particular attention from the watchdogs. She gestures then, furling
her programs, and steps through the nebulous doorway.
She emerges into a new space, green-walled, floor of jagged emerald grass
imprisoned beneath an invisible surface, so that she walks above the apparent
surface of the ground. It is a lot of effort for a shadow board, and she looks
sharply sideways, letting the scans unfurl around her, but there is nothing
untoward, no tang of unexpected security. The watchdogs are bred from the
shadows, and she recognizes at least the pedigree if not the hand that made
them and in any case, they are turned toward the walls, watching for intruders,
not for the people who use the space. It is less crowded here no need for the
illusion of a crowd, to bolster the ego and she can feel the faint current, gentle
feedback, a hint of emotion, that signifies another brainworm, or maybe more than
one. Definitely the right place, she thinks, and lets herself stroll toward the source
of that sensation, walking, almost floating, over the top of the gleaming grass.
At the center of the space, by the message pole that runs from floor to arched
ceiling, she sees a familiar icon Mario, his name is, and he once tried to crack
her IC(E), though he was good enough to get away once she d jumped him. This
is neutral ground, however, and she gives him a careful distance, feeling his
surprise and quickly controlled anger feed back into the net. He s on the wire, too,
unusually, and she doesn t want trouble from him.
And then she feels it, the familiar warmth, a whisper of sensation that s like a
well-known voice. She quickens her step in spite of herself, in spite of knowing
better, and sees, around the pole, the shape of a harlequin, dancing, pipes in
hand.
*Trouble,* she says aloud, and the word comes out exultant, and she doesn t
quite know why.
The harlequin turns, lifts hand to half-mask, and she sees the mouth below it
smile. *Cerise.*
Cerise stops three virtual meters from her former partner, suddenly not sure
what to say or do, and Trouble lifts her hand. Evoking a program, Cerise thinks,
tensing she can feel the routine as yet undefined, its potential trembling in the
virtual air around the other woman s fingers and Trouble says, *Shall we talk?*
It is the tone, the same tease, half-amused, half-seductive, in which she would
have said, Shall we dance?, and Cerise smiles in return, deliberately slow and
mocking. *Why not?* she says, and calls her own program, throwing a silver
sphere around them, to keep out the lurkers. Trouble has seen the gesture and in
the same moment launches her own program, so that the two spheres, silver, silver
gilt, meet and mesh so that they stand under a mottled sky that streams with color.
Trouble lifts her hand to her face, and her own face appears through the mask a
gesture of respect, Cerise acknowledges, but a cheap one. She can feel the other s
presence, the feedback from the brainworm, knows Trouble feels the same, and
that if either one of them relaxes that same feedback can spiral, each feeding on
the other, until it carries them both away.
*I thought you d come,* Trouble says, *but I didn t expect you so soon.*
*I m not particularly happy with the current situation,* Cerise says, and hears
herself less sharp than she d intended.
*No more am I,* Trouble said, and laughs aloud. *For what it s worth, it
wasn t me.*
*I didn t think it was,* Cerise answers. *Not your style.*
*Thanks for that.*
There is a little silence between them, and in that silence Cerise hears the
thread of a sound, the ghost of a siren: her passive watchers, warning her that
security is interested in the private sphere. Trouble hears it, too, or some warning
of her own, looks over her shoulder.
*We can t talk here,* she says, and Cerise nods.
*I m at Eastman House,* she says. *Join me for breakfast.* She lifts her hand
to break the sphere, feels Trouble s agreement even as she dissolves the program s
construct in a cloud of buzzing smoke and fragments, and takes a quick five steps
sideways so that by the time the smoke clears and the watchdogs arrive, sniffing
avidly, she is well away and Trouble is nowhere to be seen. There is nothing else
she can do she has already done more, much more, than she d expected and
she walks back along the spiral, lost in thought, retracing her steps out of the
spiral path until she can ride the data home again.
Trouble sat unmoving in the darkened room, the sea-damp air chill on her bare
arms. Beyond the half-opened window, the fog rolled past in slow billows, bringing
a smell like peppermint and gasoline with it from the beach. She sniffed it
automatically the peppermint smell was like the one her bioware used to label a
particular class of data but did not move to close the window. The lights, linked
for economic reasons to a motion-sensor, had turned themselves out while she was
out on the net; they would not go on again until she touched the switch. There was
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