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I ll take you up, then, she said.
Key? Trouble asked, in some surprise, and Blake shook her head.
We got palm-locks last year, Trouble. Even Seahaven changes.
Right, Trouble said, and followed Valentine through the battered door and up
the narrow stairs.
It was warm in the upstairs hall, and the air smelled indefinably of Seahaven, salt
and constant damp blending with the scent of oil or burned rubber from the beaches.
Valentine led her down the long, dimly lit hallway, and stopped at the last door,
fingering the heavy box of the palm-lock mounted above the latch. The door swung
open, and Valentine held it, nodding for the other woman to go in.
Trouble stepped into sudden cool and the hum of an environmental unit set on
high, reached automatically for the room controls to switch on the lights. The room
was bigger than she d expected, with a desk and table and a couple of comfortable
chairs next to a floor-mounted junction box in one room, and a big bed and a video
cabinet in the other. She d gotten turned around somehow, coming up the stairs, so
she was surprised when she opened the heavy curtains to see that she overlooked
the front of the building and the street outside. She could just see the edge of the
neon sign running below the window, and understood why the curtains were made of
such heavy fabric. The bathroom was small, but most of the fixtures looked
relatively new. She set her bag down, and Valentine said from the doorway, All
right?
It ll do, thanks, Trouble said.
Then we ll set the lock.
It was an exercise in futility the first thing she would do, after she checked the
net, would be to buy an override lock of her own, probably from Blake s shop but
Trouble nodded, and came forward to lay her palm against the sensor plate.
Valentine fiddled with the lock controls, and then with her master control, and
pronounced the lock ready. Trouble tested it obediently, and the door snapped open
to her touch.
All set, then, Valentine said, and turned away without waiting for an answer.
Trouble shut the door behind her, turned to survey the suite more closely.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, scarred wood floor, a single throw rug, cheap
white-wood furniture, a few posters tacked onto the walls in lieu of prints, but she
went methodically through it anyway, searching for bugs and taps and peepholes.
She found nothing, either in the walls or under the casing of the junction box, and
dragged the less battered of the two chairs close to it, within reach of her machine
cords. She pulled the other chair in front of the door, wedged it with the desk, and
went back to the junction box to begin setting up her system. The node was
standard; she plugged in cables and power cords, and leaned back in her chair to
begin a last quick check for lurkers.
She let the diagnostics run, paying less attention to the play of lights and numbers
on the little screen than to the flicker of feeling across her skin, hot as a summer
wind, and the fleeting taste of the system on her tongue. Everything felt clean, no
alien programs hidden in the architecture, no odd loops of code that led nowhere,
and she adjusted the brain-worm to its highest setting. It was the first time she had
run it at full capacity since she d had the new chip installed, and she sat for a
moment, letting herself get used to the sensations. The net felt brighter, as though
she were looking at it through freshly washed windows, all her senses sharpened as
though she d shed a skin. She grinned to herself, enjoying the heady feeling, and
touched the button that released her onto the net.
She rides the nets like a roller-coaster, swept along the data-stream, hitching a
ride on the lightning transfer just because she can. She laughs aloud, not caring
for an instant that the brainworm transmits the ghost of that emotion back onto the
net, but then she sobers, remembering what she s come for, and drops back down
to the plane of the datastream. Roads of light, highways of data, stretch in every
direction, dazzling red and gold and the pure white light of diamonds. She pauses
a moment, enjoying the display, the sheer pleasure she had missed for three
interminable days better, actually, than what she had had, a sharper image,
faster response and then she shapes her course, chooses a road that glows like
lava, red as molten steel, sinks into it, and lets it carry her away.
She rides it toward the BBS, buffeted by the taste and smell of the data that
enfolds her, her skin prickling with its touch, tingling with security and encryption
The noise of it is jarring, like high-pitched thunder, but she rides with it until it
carries her through the final node, the last one before the bazaar. She drops from
it then, finds herself abruptly in a space that has been reformed since the last time
she took this route. A wall of light flows like water ahead of her, curving in a
graceful semicircle, she hears a sound like a thousand voices mimicking water, the
flow of conversation in a million languages, and the air is suddenly cool, faintly
damp against her skin. She takes a step forward, curious but not alarmed there
is no IC(E) visible, and no warning, the space s creator doesn t seem to mind
trespassers, indeed, seems actively to invite them and an icon/face blooms in the
lightfall, the colors running down now over the planes and angles of the face,
bright along the scar that bisects one cheek
*Fate?* she says aloud it has to be him, even though the icon is new, a
startling, unexpected effort for a man not on the wire, an illusion built to lure in
the worm-carriers, or one particular worm and she tastes agreement before she
hears the answer.
*Hello, Trouble. I want to talk to you.*
Trouble nods, wary, goes no closer while she feels no IC(E), Fate has no
reason, just now, to be fond of her, and there are other programs besides IC(E) in
every cracker s toolkit. *I m listening,* she says, when the other says nothing.
*Where are you going?*
Trouble hesitates, a heartbeat of time that will seem longer. Fate is certainly no
friend, never was but then, how hard will it be to guess where she is ultimately
headed? *Seahaven.*
*I thought so,* Fate says, and the colors shift briefly, flush with satisfaction,
and fade again to the rainbow of the lightfall. *There are people there who want
to talk to you.*
*Oh?* In spite of herself, Trouble feels a touch of fear Treasury/ Starling,
maybe, though how he would get into Seahaven without the Mayor s connivance,
or any of her old enemies, or even new-Trouble itself. She curbs the feeling
sharply, makes herself wait.
*Oh, yes,* Fate says, and this time she hears the malice in his voice. *You ve
stirred up a lot of trouble. People want to know your intentions.*
That s different that she can handle, and she sighs softly. *Thanks for the
warning, Fate.* she says, and the icon retreats, fading into the lightfall.
*I ll be watching. *
Fate s voice drifts back to her as if from a great distance, and then the lightfall
and the cool air and the rest of the space dissolve around her, fading to grey like a
scene from an old movie. Trouble lifts an eyebrow an enormous effort, just to
pass that message but turns her attention to the business at hand. Overhead, the
web of data conduits glitters black-on-silver, she reaches up, touches one, and lets
it carry her down into the BBS.
She finds the door to Seahaven without difficulty she is expected, she thinks,
and takes a moment to reorder her toolkit, so that her best defenses, a shield and a
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