some of each as well, as though the food and the alcohol would help ground her. Huu ate with them, devouring noodles and broth with confident pleasure, and she and van Liesvelt spent most of the time debating the relative merits of Stinger and Monaco bioware. Trouble let the familiar talk wash over her, letting herself adjust to the aftershocks, the occasional frisson of unrelated sensation as the swollen scalp around the new implant triggered a reaction. It would take a day or two to settle down fully, and she would use that time to rest, recuperate, stay off the nets and see what could be done in the real world to locate this new Trouble. Once the incision was mostly healed, she would go back on the nets, and start looking in earnest.
She slept better than she’d expected—Huu had left her with pills and strict instructions—but woke with the kind of dull headache that left a person fit for nothing but the lowest grade of television. She had at least half expected it, treated it with more of the pills and a day spent sprawled on van Liesvelt’s couch, staring at shopping channels without really seeing either the products or the perky, high-breasted women pitching them. Van Liesvelt ignored her, busy with his machines, gone first into local space composing some small utility, and then out in the net itself, but she was too sore, too tired and aching, even to feel envious. They had dinner delivered, from the Indian restaurant on the edge of the District, and Trouble relaxed into the familiar taste of curries and thick, greasy breads.
By the second day she felt better, so much so that she borrowed van Liesvelt’s setup and took her first steps back onto the net. She tuned the brainworm as low as she could, barely a ghost of the usual sensations, but even so, her skin crawled and tingled, itchy with extraneous sensations bleeding in from the healing incision, and she logged off almost at once, swearing to herself.
“Want a cup of tea?” That was van Liesvelt, standing in the doorway of the little room. It was barely more than a closet, windowless and stuffy, warmed by the banked hardware, and Trouble felt suddenly trapped, claustrophobic.
“Yeah, thanks,” she said, and, mercifully, van Liesvelt moved his bulk out of the doorway.
“I was thinking,” he said. “If this new Trouble is in the business—not just farting around, I mean—then there aren’t that many people left who’d have anything to do with it.”
“That’s true,” Trouble said, and followed him down the long hall to the kitchen.
The kitchen itself was unexpectedly bright, overhead lights and electric kettle plugged into the main work island, bright-orange cords stranded through the room’s central volume. Outside the double window, the sky was brassy-white, a few more substantial clouds floating above the general haze. They overlooked the alley and the attached garages, low sheds jutting out into the rutted street. The doors were strongly reinforced against thieves, and most were brightly painted, garish against the dull stone. The kettle whistled, and van Liesvelt poured the tea, set the mugs solemnly on the long table.
“So,” Trouble said. “Who’d you have in mind?”
Van Liesvelt shrugged. “The usual suspects. Dieter, the Snowman—”
“I heard he was out of the game,” Trouble interjected. “In fact, I heard he turned state’s evidence about a year back.”
“You should know better than to believe everything the syscops tell you,” van Liesvelt said, grinning. “He got caught, all right, but beat the rap. They put the story out on him out of spite.”
Trouble nodded. “What about Devil-boy?”
“Gone legit.”
“That does narrow it down.”
Van Liesvelt nodded, fished the teabag out of his mug. “Yeah. It’s pretty much Dieter, and the Snowman, and Jimmy Star and Fate.”
Trouble pulled out her own teabag and took a wary sip of the spicy, bright red liquid. “I don’t know about Dieter, I heard he mostly deals viruses.”
“Oh, no,” van Liesvelt said, his voice suddenly accentless, mimicking Dieter’s thin tones, “not viruses. Never viruses. Just code fragments.”
“My ass,” Trouble said.
“Not to my taste,” van Liesvelt said automatically, and Trouble lifted her middle finger at him. “So, Fate or the Snowman, or maybe Jimmy Star. I think you’re right about Dieter. Do you want me to see what I can find out?”
Trouble made a face, but had to admit the logic of the suggestion. She wasn’t ready yet for that kind of netwalking, and she didn’t have time to wait until she was better, not with Treasury on her heels. “Yeah. Anything at all would be useful.”
“Do you want to listen in?”
Trouble hesitated, tempted, but shook her head. Even just lurking, using the brainworm on its lowest setting to follow van Liesvelt’s activity, would be as bad as walking the net on her own. “Let me know if you find anything,” she said, and van Liesvelt nodded.
“I’ll do that.” He picked up his mug, and wandered away again, only apparently aimless. Trouble watched him go, bit back her irrational jealousy. She hated the attunement period, hated not being able to walk the nets as freely as she normally could. You survived three years off the wire, she told herself firmly. You can put up with this. She picked up her mug, and went back into the living room to investigate van Liesvelt’s collection of tapes.
He had a lot of anime, typical of a netwalker, and one in particular that was familiar, an old favorite of Cerise’s: americanime, surreal, queer, and violent. She put it in the player, settled herself on the couch to watch, wondering if she would like it as well without Cerise’s commentary. It was old-style, the drawing mannered, elongated, improbable figures against sweeping, computer-managed backgrounds, but the conventions were easy enough to relearn, and she watched, caught up in spite of herself by the stylized plot and people. The latter were real enough, netwalkers she had known and admired years before drawn larger than life, made heroes, and she remembered, suddenly, Cerise talking about the filmmaker. She—it had been a woman, Trouble remembered— had been a netwalker back in the glory days, when the nets had just opened out, before she’d retreated to anime. The brainworm had been very new then, the risks outrageous; safer to draw and dream, Cerise had said.
“Got it,” van Liesvelt said from the doorway, and Trouble looked up sharply, automatically muting the player. “It’s Fate.”
Trouble touched a second button, shutting down the entire system, and stood up. “Is it, now?”
Van Liesvelt nodded. “And he’s taking some heat for it— gone to ground, they say, but I know where his bolthole is.”
“What kind of heat?” Trouble asked.
“Treasury’s been interested in him, subpoenaed all the files on that board he runs. Plus local cops set watchdogs on the system—I heard from Kid Fear that Fate’s spent most of the last few days taking potshots at them.”
“Kid Fear?” Trouble lifted an eyebrow at the name, and van Liesvelt shrugged one shoulder.
“I know. It’s either fifteen or pretending to be.”
“Is it reliable?”
“So far.” Van Liesvelt shrugged again. “You think we should have a few words with Fate?”
Trouble smiled slowly. “I think so. In person.” Fate—his real name was Kenney, Lafayette Kenney, or something like that—was notorious for hating to work offline, so much so that it was rumored that he had once turned down a million in citiscrip because it would have involved too many face-to-face meetings with the client. The story was probably an exaggeration, but it summed up Fate’s attitude pretty well. “You sure you know where he is?”
“Trust me,” van Liesvelt said, not even bothering to sound offended, and Trouble waved away her words.
“Sorry.” If van Liesvelt, who made it his business to know the offline world as well as the nets, said he knew, he knew. “When’s a good time?”
Van Liesvelt looked at the carpet, checking the time. “Now’s as good as any. He’ll be there.”
“Good enough,” Trouble said. “Shall we take the trike?”
Van Liesvelt shook his head. “My runabout. I don’t want you driving off the grid.”
Trouble grinned—she had a reputation from the old days, not always deserved, as a reckless driver—but went back into the spare room for her jacket. When she emerged, van Liesvelt was checking the battery of a
