Jesse nodded, touched controls hidden somewhere behind the bulk of the miniframe. “I think I can fit you up, except maybe for the implant. Karakhan’s good, but she’s not up to the worms yet. I’d have to get somebody in.”
“Who’s the best, now that Carlie’s dead?” Trouble asked.
“Woman in the city,” Jesse answered. “Her name’s Huu, H-U-U—Dr. Huu, get it?”
“Got it,” Trouble said, and wished she hadn’t.
“She’s part of Butch van Liesvelt’s crowd, if you still talk to any of them,” Jesse went on. “I could get you an introduction, but you’d be better off going through the family.”
“Yeah, you’re still a straight boy,” Trouble said. “I’ll talk to Butch. What about the rest of the stuff?”
“I can get it for you,” Jesse answered. “At a price, of course.”
“Jesse,” Trouble said, and let her voice go deep and teasing.
“I mean it, Trouble. This stuff doesn’t come cheap anymore, and you want some pretty specialized routines.”
“I don’t have time to waste,” Trouble said. “I’ll give you three thousand for the lot.”
“Three thousand?” Jesse’s voice scaled up with mock-disbelief. “Three thousand for icepicks, tracers—my best tracers, which is what I know you’ll want—and a muzzle?”
“That’s right.” Trouble waited, hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans, knowing that all she really needed to do was wait.
“I’m sorry,” Jesse said, and shook his head for emphasis. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it. I’ve got a business to maintain, expenses, employees to pay—we’ve got a pension plan and health care now, in case you didn’t know.”
“Both of which are mandated by the government,” Trouble said. “Three thousand, Jesse. I told you, I don’t have time to waste.”
There was a little silence, Jesse shaking his head, and then, still shaking his head, he spread his hands in surrender. “All right, three thousand. But you’ll have to take straight-off-the-net routines. I can’t afford to do any custom work at that price.”
“I can make my own modifications,” Trouble said demurely.
“All right,” Jesse said. “Let me start pulling things.”
“Thanks,” Trouble said, and Jesse waved vaguely toward a chair that stood in the corner of the room. It was as much of an invitation as she was going to get, and Trouble dragged it over to the miniframe. Jesse leaned close over his multiscreen, hands busy on keyboard and shadowscreen, her presence already all but forgotten. He would be checking his inventory, Trouble knew, the legal and illegal storage spaces he had scattered in the house and across the nets, along the virtual chain that made up his network presence. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see the flare of lights as Jesse leapfrogged from node to node, muddying his trail.
It took nearly an hour for him to locate the programs he wanted. He surfaced long enough to announce that fact, but it took another twenty minutes to extricate himself from the nets without leaving traces. Trouble waited patiently enough—someone less skilled could easily have taken three times as long, without producing what she needed—but when the data drives began to whir she pushed herself to her feet and went to watch them spin down.
“I hope you like what I found you, after all that,” Jesse said, rather sourly, and Trouble looked over her shoulder to see him unplugging himself from the last system block.
“I’ll let you know when I see them.”
Jesse rolled his eyes heavenward. “There’s gratitude for you.”
“Can I run off your system?” Trouble asked. The green light came on, signaling copy-complete, and she triggered the release.
“Oh, go ahead. Why not?” Jesse waved toward a trio of nodes, and Trouble slipped her board from her bag and set it on the ledge, opening it just enough to give her access to her machines. She carried several versions of analysand in working memory, and ran the new programs through the most comprehensive of the group, barely watching the lines of code as they flickered past on the screen. An image formed behind her eyes, drifting hazily in unreal space, coupled with a cascade of sensation as the brainworm kicked in, translating the numbers into her personal codes. She flipped from the icepicks, elegant, lean programs, cold and hard as steel, to the baroque complexity of the tracers, and smiled in spite of herself, feeling a familiar touch, a routine of her own buried in the secondary structure. The program lolled in front of her, willing and eager and clearly skilled; fleetingly, she felt the sensation of glossy fur, and nodded to herself, accepting that the program was in good shape.
“Good bones,” she said aloud, and Jesse grunted.
“Good genes,” he answered. “You remember Max Helling? That’s about a third-generation variant of his old Toby.”
Trouble nodded. She remembered Helling, all right, from the old days, a bony, hawk-faced man who specialized in tracers and virus killing, though Aledort—a cracker, as well as an ecoteur—had kept him away from the circle as much as possible. “Whatever happened to him, anyway?”
“Went legit,” Jesse answered. “Or so I heard. I haven’t seen his work much, outside the marketplace.”
And that was a pretty good indication that he was indeed legitimate: only the crackers could afford to give away their programs for nothing. “Who wrote the variant?” Trouble asked, and Jesse shrugged again.
“Signs itself TG—which stands for Toujours Gai, or so I hear. The work’s reliable. TG doesn’t do much, and what there is tends to build on other people’s templates, rework flawed stuff, but what’s out there is choice. Word is, if you need something redesigned, TG’s the one to do it.”
“Nice to know,” Trouble said, and touched keys to begin shutting down the system. “This is good stuff, Jess, thanks.”
“Always a pleasure doing business,” Jesse answered, without conviction. “Three thousand, you said? Plus five hundred for my commission.”
“Three thousand,” Trouble answered. “Nice try.”
“Three thousand.”
Trouble nodded, reached into her bag, came up with the folder of mixed cash. She found what she wanted and handed it to Jesse. He counted it, stacking it gravely into three piles, multicolor citiscrip foils, the dull silver of the bearer cards, the final, smaller grey-green wad of oldmoney. “All there,” he said at last, and swept the piles together, stuffed it all somewhere out of sight. “Anything else I can do for you?” His tone suggested that he hoped there wasn’t.
“Two things,” Trouble answered, and grinned at the suddenly wary expression on the man’s face. “Nothing complicated—not even anything illegal.”
“Right,” Jesse said, without conviction, and sank back into his chair.
“First, I saw out there somebody had a trike for sale. Is it still available?”
Jesse nodded warily. “Yeah.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“No more than anybody,” Jesse said, and Trouble sighed theatrically. She was, she realized, enjoying herself.
“It’s your fucking store, Jesse, you know every piece of string that goes through here, never mind the chips and the hardware. Don’t give me that.”
“It’s pretty much as advertised,” Jesse said, stung. “Good condition, probably needs a tune-up, kid’s selling because he’s out of college and can’t afford the freight to get it home to wherever it is he comes from, Sao Paulo or someplace like that, and he doesn’t want to drive it.”
Trouble nodded slowly. The machine—an OstEuro Star-rider, the notice had said—wasn’t particularly fancy, wouldn’t win races or carry extra armament, would probably get you killed if you tried outrunning police vans and flyers, but it was a good steady platform for the long haul, would carry a decent cargo. “I’m interested in it, Jesse. Will you broker for me?”
“At fifteen percent, sure,” Jesse answered.
“Used to be ten.”
“Inflation,” Jesse said.
Trouble considered, running the numbers in her head, but she already knew she could afford it, even with Jesse’s commission. “All right. But I won’t go above the asking price, no matter what he throws in.”
