very much at their ease. Trouble did the same, hoping she seemed equally calm. The chairs and table were less battered than the furniture in the lobby: this room was used for negotiations with outsiders, and the fittings were correspondingly better.
“So how can I help you?” Trouble said again, and the two agents exchanged quick glances.
“We’ve had some reports of cracking and intrusions that have been traced back to BVI-four,” Starling said. That would make him the technical expert, Trouble thought, and kept her face expressionless. “But we lose the perpetrator there, at BVI-four—we haven’t been able to trace him on any of the major outgoing lines—so we’re checking all the local nets that use that gateway, in case he’s staging through one of them.” He paused. “You’re the only syscop for this system, Ms. Carless?”
In spite of his best efforts, Trouble heard a whisper of incredulity in his voice, and bit her tongue to keep from responding to it. A lot of people still assumed that a woman couldn’t run a bulletin board on her own, much less act as solo syscop; if they wanted to make that mistake, this was not the time to enlighten them. “That’s right,” she said aloud, and waited.
“Do you mind telling me about the setup here?”
“Not at all.” Trouble paused and took a deep breath, willing herself to switch to enthusiast’s mode. “This is an artist’s co-op here, we’re registered with the NEA and the state foundations. Because of that, we need versatile machines, a lot of raw power that can be turned to different uses at different times. We have a local net within the compound, mostly home machines and famicon, to facilitate load-sharing, and a couple of linked minis for graphics—one of our people is a fractalist, and we also rent time to some other graphics people who can’t afford their own machine suite. We have four printers here, too, all top of the line, and a babybox to run them. All of that is on the local net, so that we can pool jobs when we have to, or buy time from other co-ops. Seara— she’s the fractalist—she takes some odd commissions sometimes, things that need a lot of power.”
“Such as?” Starling asked.
Trouble shrugged. “Last year, somebody wanted fractal wallpaper, and we had a printer that could run it. The design took everything on our net, plus a hundred hours of bought-time just for the formulae, and then it tied up the printer and the babybox for a month.”
“Fractal wallpaper,” Levy said.
“I didn’t care much for it myself,” Trouble said, and there was a little silence, almost companionable, as the three of them contemplated the possibilities.
“What about your net connections?” Starling asked, shaking himself back to business.
“We have two basic nodes, one general, one highspeed data,” Trouble answered, “both transfering through BVI-four. I monitor both on a random schedule, and keep a watchdog running at all times.”
That was the standard procedure, and Starling nodded. “So graphics is the primary business of your net?”
“Yes and no,” Trouble said. “It’s the reason we have this much power, and the highspeed connection, but most of the time people don’t need much more than their home machines. We tend to use the BVI-four gate primarily for information and trading, and once every couple of months we run a big job through it. And, as I mentioned, we do sell time when we have it.” She paused, gauging the agents’ response, and ventured a question of her own. “I’m assuming you’re looking for someone sneaking packet data through the highspeed node?”
“Among other things,” Starling said.
“What about access to the big nets?” Levy asked.
Trouble looked at him. “Do you mean who has it, or how we work it?”
“Who has it?”
“We have a household account on Tele-net, through BVI-four, which I manage through some homebrew accounting routines. All the adults have access. It’s a standard password setup. I try to get them to change the codes regularly, and never use anything from a dictionary, the usual routine, but you know how that goes.” Trouble shrugged. “We get odd charges—stuff I can’t identify, and nobody admits to— maybe once or twice a year.”
“What about kids?” Starling again. “Are there any, and do they have access?”
Trust Treasury to ask first about the kids, Trouble thought. She said, “Yes, and yes. We gave everyone full access to the local net, but I gave the kids special passwords that access a different set of programs—games, mostly, some arts and science tools. If they try to use the gateways when they’ve logged on with those passwords, I’ve set the system to flag me. If they’ve got a reason, schoolwork or something, or their folks’ permission—and if they’re not going into one of the really expensive datastores—I’ll generally let it go through.”
“What about kids using their parents’ passwords?” Starling asked. “Do you get much of that?”
“I don’t think so,” Trouble said. “Certainly I haven’t spotted any anomalous activity patterns on any of the accounts. We’ve only got half a dozen kids in the compound, and they don’t seem to be into computers much.”
“Lucky,” Levy said.
Starling said, “Have there been any changes in usage patterns? Or any signs of intrusion, charges you can’t account for, say, over the last five months?”
Trouble frowned, hiding the annoyance at being addressed as a total novice, and did her best to simulate genuine confusion. “No, nothing recently. And I keep good records—they’re filed with the sheriff every other month.” That much was required by law; she doubted she needed to tell Starling, at least, that the files were thoroughly edited before they went to county records. Starling grinned as though he’d read the thought, the first human expression she’d seen from him.
“Do you spend a lot of time on the net?” Levy asked abruptly.
Trouble looked at him warily. “Depends on how you define ‘a lot of time.’ I handle all the co-op’s on-line business, time sharing or selling, anything like that. I’m the one who deals with the net when people need it. Why?”
Levy ignored the question. “Has anyone locally been talking about any kind of unusual charges, intrusions, unexpected problems in their local systems?”
“No,” Trouble said, with more confidence, recognizing where the question was headed. “We share time with a lot of local nets—we’re all small-scale around here, a couple of mom-and-pop datastores, town libraries, things like that. If anybody was having troubles, they wouldn’t tell the rest of us, for fear it would cut into their income.”
“Would you tell us?” Levy asked.
Trouble smiled. “I’d tell you,” she said, and emphasized “you.” Go ahead, pursue that line, she thought. It would only lead them into the tangle of the BBS, and they could spend the next ten years there, chasing their tails, without finding anything useful.
“I wonder if you’ve heard of someone coming back into the shadows,” Starling said softly. “Netwalking, cracking— you know the sort of gossip on the BBS. Especially in the syscops’ forums. The talk-name is Trouble.”
Trouble froze for a heartbeat, made herself move again with an effort that was almost painful. “I’ve heard the name before,” she said, dry-mouthed. It would be suspicious to say anything else; she had been a name to conjure with, once upon a time. “But not recently—not for a couple of years, at least. I thought somebody told me Trouble died.”
“The reports were greatly exaggerated,” Starling said.
Levy said, “So you haven’t heard anything about Trouble?”
Trouble shook her head. “Like I said, I haven’t heard that name in a couple of years.”
The two agents exchanged a quick, unreadable glance, and Starling said, “Can you show us the setup? The physical plant, I mean.”
“Sure,” Trouble said, and pushed herself up out of her chair, hiding her unease. “It’s across the way— everything’s in my basement so that I can keep an eye on things full-time.” She palmed open the door, and led the way out into the lobby, Starling and Levy following at a polite distance.
She took them through her condo and down into the basement work area, where the minis sat behind a heavy dust-wall, and the smaller machines—the network controller and its backup, and the souped-up home machine that she used for her own access—sat side-by-side on their low table. Levy glanced around as she pointed out the various features, but she could see Starling’s eyes tracing every cable and connection as she
