accounting to prepare for the sheriff’s office—not a particularly pleasant task at the best of times, and doubly not after van Liesvelt’s news. Part of her obligation as the co-op’s syscop was to keep a log of local net usage, and to watch out for any attempts either to crack her system or, more likely, to use it as a springboard to other, richer nodes. It was a painstaking job at the best of times, and usually involved hunting down two or three individual members to see if they remembered doing certain jobs. This time, though… this time, she would have to check her own records very carefully, and maybe do some judicious editing before she turned them over to the sheriff. She made a face, put the rest of her coffee in the microwave for later, and started down the stairs to her workspace.
The big display board flickered to life at her touch, showing only normal activity, familiar iconage. A CADset was up and running, Natalie Dreyer was on one of her interminable excursions to the university libraries, and someone—Rikki, probably—was running the story-sculpture program that took almost as much space as the graphics programs. Her routine checks were all in place, watchdogs lurking dormant: nothing new there. If anything changed, if anyone tried anything out of the ordinary, her watchdogs would notice and alert her.
She made a face, impatient with herself, and spun her chair to face the board, slipping the cord into place. Instantly the world hazed around her, sparks and shadow overwriting her vision, the ghost of new and unrelated sensations tingling along her nerves. She ignored the feelings, reached for her keyboard, and typed the sequence that changed its mode from standard to the specialized format that allowed her to control the brainworm’s settings. She hit a second sequence, and then her private code, the password that gave her access to the internal account. An instant later a light flared, and a new window popped into existence, displaying the brainworm’s virtual controls. She sighed—it was much more fun working fully wired, but the brainworm inevitably leaked some feedback into the system; a good syscop could tell whether or not another netwalker was on the wire—and moved the virtual levers to damp down the input. The tingling faded, and the lights that floated between her and the screen dimmed slightly, until she was looking at a display that was almost what any other netwalker would see. She made another face, and touched a final icon to set the changes. Then, dismissing the brainworm’s controls, she turned her attention to the monthly accounts.
She pored over the accounts for three hours without finding anything out of the ordinary. Her own monitors had been doing their job, erasing any signs of her occasional fully wired forays onto the main nets, and there was no sign that this new Trouble, whoever it was, had been using her nodes as a staging area. She shrugged to herself, and touched the keys that would drop her notes into a working file for later revision into the sort of report the local sheriff appreciated, then leaned back in her chair, stretching to work out the kinks. The iconage of the co-op at work danced in front of her eyes, and was echoed a moment later on the main display: Dreyer still in the libraries, two CADsets working now, Mineka Konstenten running a blocking program. Her eyes lingered on Konstenten’s icon, flickering from pale blue to a blue dark as midnight as her demand on the system changed. Konstenten was still an enigma, had come over one night to see the computers, stayed until morning, and had neither returned nor allowed the subject to be raised again. Trouble’s smile shifted with the memory, became rueful. She still didn’t know how she herself felt about the whole thing. Konstenten was a good friend, a clever designer, and an attractive woman; a vest she had made, Japanese patchwork of black-and-white fabrics, hung on Trouble’s wall as a work of art when it wasn’t being worn. But she was not precisely what Trouble wanted in a lover—or at least not now, not here—and, all in all, it was probably smarter to live celibate just a little while longer… Which was where that train of thought always ended these days. Trouble stretched again, making herself concentrate on the pull of muscles across her shoulders, then laced her fingers together and pulled until the tendons tightened all the way into her wrists. If the brainworm had been fully operational, the movement would have sent feedback into the net, a flicker of sensation translated as light and sound, tangible even to the unwired masses… She turned her attention back to the screen.
“Indy?”
Trouble looked up, startled, touched keys to open the intercom. “Yeah?”
“There’s a couple of suits who want to see you,” Gustafson went on. “Oba’s got them in the main hall.”
Trouble swallowed hard, the copper taste of panic filling her throat, and kept her voice steady only with an effort. “What sort of suits?” She made her hands move on the keyboard, saving her work and putting her system to sleep, leaving only the watchdogs loose on the household net.
“Something to do with computers, I think,” Gustafson said. “They said they wanted to talk to the syscop.”
Trouble let her breath out slowly, reached for the remote that would signal her if there were any anomalies in the system, and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. If they just wanted to talk to the syscop, it might be all right, be just another routine check. And if it was what van Liesvelt had warned her about, people looking for Trouble, her present documentation should get through the first checks. She pushed herself away from the board, and went up the basement stairs.
Gustafson was waiting outside the main door, one hand still on the intercom controls, the sunlight pointing up the corn-silk texture of her hair and the bright barbaric splendor of her working smock.
“So what do you think?” Trouble asked, and was rewarded by a quick grin.
“Not corporate, I don’t think,” Gustafson said. “The suits aren’t good enough.”
“Thanks,” Trouble said, and started for the community hall. Like anyone who lived this far outside the mainstream, Gustafson had learned to read the nuances of the corporate dress codes as well as or better than the corporate souls themselves: if she said cheap suit, she meant it, and cheap suits meant cops.
The hall was still very bright, though someone had adjusted the skylights so that the glass was bright amber, filling the hall with heavy color. It helped to hide the worn upholstery on the lobby furniture—the space had been furnished from the discards of the co-op’s households—and the merely serviceable rugs. The two men waiting there had their backs to the light, throwing their faces into shadow, but Trouble could tell they were cops just from the way they held themselves.
“India.” Alvarez emerged from a side room, the management committee’s current offices, a sheaf of green-stripe paper in one hand. “These people wanted to talk to you.”
Trouble nodded and stepped forward into the sunlight. “I’m India Carless,” she said, and waited.
“Thanks for seeing us, Ms. Carless,” one of the strangers said. He was the taller of the two, Trouble realized, as they both came to their feet in polite acknowledgment. They were definitely cops, by the movement as well as the suits, cheap copy-Armanis, and she held herself very still.
“Unless you need me, India,” Alvarez said, “I’ve got to get back to work.” He let his voice trail off, making it almost a question, and Trouble shook her head.
“I can take care of it, thanks,” she said, and Alvarez turned away. Trouble looked back at the strangers. “Is there a problem?”
“I don’t think so,” the smaller man said.
His partner cut in smoothly. “We just have a few routine questions. We’ve been talking to most of the syscops who monitor systems that use the BVI-four gateway into the national net.”
Trouble let herself relax a little. Anyone who called it the national net didn’t know the system—or else, she thought, they’re trying to lull me into being careless. If they’re looking for Trouble, they’ll be playing it very canny. “If I can help, sure. Can I get you some coffee?”
There was a quick exchange of looks, and then the taller man said, “No, thanks. We’ve got a lot of driving to do.” He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket, came up with a thin folder. “I’m Bennet Levy, that’s John Starling. We’re from the Treasury.”
Trouble accepted the folder with what she hoped was convincing uncertainty, studied the ID card and hologram badge as though she’d never seen one before, and handed it back to Levy. She didn’t recognize either of their names, but then, she hadn’t expected to: even if she had heard of them, and she had been off the shadow nets long enough to make that unlikely, she would only have heard their work names, not the names that were actually on their badges. “Why don’t we go in the other room?” she said, and gestured toward the door that led to the smaller of the two conference rooms. “It’s not as sunny.”
“Thanks,” Starling said, and the two of them followed her into the little room. Trouble motioned for them to take a chair, and let the door fall closed behind them.
“Have a seat, please,” she said. “You sure you don’t want coffee or something?”
“No, thanks,” Levy said again. He and Starling pulled chairs away from the table and sat down, apparently
