“It’s what I’ve got.”
“It’s fine.” Trouble looked sideways, saw the stranger still watching her, looked back at van Liesvelt. “It’d be nice if you’d make introductions, Butch.”
“Oh, yes.” Van Liesvelt filled another of the small glasses and handed it across. Trouble took it, feeling the cold of the vodka even through the heavy glass. “This is a good friend of mine from the nets, the lady you were looking for—she’s since your time, Trouble, but she’s very, very good. Michellina Huu.”
The fat woman nodded, gravely.
Van Liesvelt went on, “And this is Trouble—not the one you’re thinking of.”
Huu smiled at that, almond eyes narrowing. “I’m glad. No one needs that hassle.”
“That’s what she’s here about,” van Liesvelt said. “Am I right, Trouble?”
Trouble seated herself on the edge of the chair nearest the door, said, “That’s right. I don’t take kindly to someone usurping my name.”
Huu said, “Who does?” She was very well dressed, Trouble saw, a heavy silk suit that almost had to be bespoke, and a few pieces of what looked like carved jade. Her sleek black hair was cut in an angled cap that flattered her broad face, and Trouble felt distinctly plain by comparison.
“I told her you’d be wanting to do some business,” van Liesvelt said, and Trouble nodded.
“Yeah, thanks. I’ve been working in the bright lights for a few years,” she said, talking through him now to Huu. “It’s about time I had an upgrade.”
“Well,” Huu said. She looked from Trouble to van Liesvelt and back again, and her impassivity broke into a sudden good-natured grin. “You’re a closemouthed bastard, Butch. You might give me a little more warning. Exactly what are you looking for, Trouble?”
“I told you to bring your kit,” van Liesvelt said. “And a full set of spares.”
“That might have been for you,” Huu said. “God knows, you’re always blowing something.”
Trouble said, “I need a new processor, for a worm. I’ve been hearing about the Prior highspeed set, but I’m open to suggestions.”
“It’s a good set,” van Liesvelt said.
“Expensive,” Huu said.
“How expensive?” Trouble looked from one to the other, and van Liesvelt shrugged.
“It runs about thirty-five hundred, installed,” Huu said.
“I heard you were family,” Trouble said.
“That is the family price,” Huu answered.
Trouble lifted an eyebrow.
“That includes the board, and the plate, plus the linkage,” Huu said. “And everything’s new, straight-out-of- the-factory steriles, so you don’t have to worry about who had them last. And the BOSRAM update, of course. Plus installation. And I don’t take plastic.”
Trouble sighed, calculating. She could afford it, but it wouldn’t leave her much for other expenses. “I’ve got thirteen-fifty in citiscrip and twelve hundred in bearer cards. Another four-fifty in U.S. dollars.”
Huu looked at van Liesvelt, who nodded slowly. “I’ll cover the rest.”
“That’s not necessary, Butch,” Trouble began, and van Liesvelt waved away her protest.
“Yes, it is.”
Huu said, “Pay me three thousand up front, you can owe me the rest.”
Trouble nodded. “When can we do this?”
Huu spread her hands. “Butch told me to bring my kit. Now, if you’d like.”
“Worm and all?” Trouble asked sharply. The linkages were complex; even though the original installation had done the hardest work, running the molecular wires directly into the brain, fitting the new processor to the input channels needed painstaking care.
“I was trained in Europe,” Huu said, and grinned. “Amsterdam.”
Van Liesvelt nodded.
Trouble nodded back, reassured. Amsterdam was the great center for legal training. “You’ve got a Prior with you?”
“Everyone wants them,” Huu answered. “Of course I carry them.”
“All right.” Trouble looked at van Liesvelt, recognizing her own reluctance and impatient with it, but unable quite to control it. “Can I get something to eat?”
“Not until I’m finished,” Huu interrupted.
“I’ll put something in the nuke,” van Liesvelt said. “You want to use the bathroom, Doc?”
Huu nodded, but stayed in her place. Cash in advance, Trouble thought, and pushed herself up out of her chair. “I’ll get the money.”
The hall was dark now, lights gleaming in the buildings beyond the window. She made her way back into the little bedroom, switched on the blinding overhead light, and rummaged in her bags until she’d collected the money. It was probably the best thing for her, doing the installation more or less spur of the moment, and she knew she should be grateful to van Liesvelt for setting it up like this. She hated the installation process, which he knew, hated it more each time she had to go through it, and it was better not to have to spend a night or two sweating over it. It wasn’t so much the risk of a screw-up. That was there, all right, less likely than an accident on the flyway but worse to contemplate, brain miswired, or damaged, leaving her a drooling idiot. It was a risk she’d learned to live with, faced every time she confronted serious IC(E) or even, on some level, every time she stepped out onto the net itself. Power surges happened, rare but real, overriding the inbuilt safeties of the implanted systems, and there was nothing you could do about it, except stay off the net altogether. No, it was the installation itself she hated, and tuning her reflexes to the new system, body given over to pure sensation, inflicted without passion, without feeling, by a stranger’s hands. Maybe that was why the serious netwalkers, the original inhabitants of the nets, hated the brainworm: not so much because it gave a different value, a new meaning, to the skills of the body, but because it meant taking that risk, over and above the risk of the worm itself. Maybe that was why it was almost always the underclasses, the women, the people of color, the gay people, the ones who were already stigmatized as being vulnerable, available, trapped by the body, who took the risk of the wire. And you are trying to put this off, she told herself firmly. Get on with it
She went back into the main room, laid the money on the low table in front of Huu. The citiscrip foils glittered in the light, bright against the bearer cards and the crumpled wad of oldmoney. Huu counted it quickly, and slipped the pile into her jacket pocket.
“All right,” she said, and stood, reaching for the bulky case that stood at the end of the couch. “Shall we get started?”
“Fine,” Trouble said, and didn’t know if she was glad that Huu was a woman. It had been easier with Carlie, they’d been old friends, and there was no possibility—well, no likelihood—of sex between them.
“It’s down the hall,” van Liesvelt said. “Last door on the right. I should have anything you need, Doc.”
“Thanks,” Huu said, and motioned to Trouble. “After you.”
The bathroom was bigger than Trouble had expected, with room enough between the shower and the sink and toilet for a solid-looking table. Huu set her bag on its white-painted surface, popped the latches, and began lifting out equipment. “Have a seat,” she said, and plugged in a portable sterilizer, then turned to shrug out of her jacket, hanging it neatly on the back of the door. The clean-field lit with a whine as the sterilizer warmed up, and a bright cone of purple-tinged light formed in the center of the table. Huu set a handful of instruments under it, and drew on rubber gloves, white and dead-looking against her dark skin. “And then let me have a look at what you’ve got in there now. What’s your status?”
“Negative.” Trouble lowered the toilet lid, sat down warily.
“Tilt your head.”
Trouble did as she was told, looking down and to her left to expose the dollie-slot. Rubber fingers ruffled the short hair, probed gently, and then Huu took her hand away, smoothing the other woman’s hair as absently as she’d disarranged it.
“That’s a nice chip you’ve got in there now. Do you want to keep it, or trade it in? I’ll credit you for the balance of what you owe, for a trade.”
There was no point in keeping the extra chip: it wouldn’t run in tandem with the Prior system. “Make it seven-fifty, and you’ve got a deal.”
