and there, go legit, and I wanted to go on. I had a job in train that I wanted to do, you see.” She could almost see the remembered IC(E), almost taste the sharp codes, a new system then, one she’d never broken before, a gaudy, glittering challenge, utterly irresistible to any netwalker of spirit. “We were still arguing about it, about the job, when Evans-Tindale passed. She left. I haven’t seen her since, bar her name on the nets.” The worst of it was, Trouble had been right.
Mabry nodded slowly, as though he’d guessed her thought. “Treasury will be wanting to talk to you nonetheless.”
“I might’ve known.” The words came out more bitter than she’d intended, and Mabry smiled slightly.
“They want Trouble—either one—very badly. If you know of a way to get in touch with her—” He broke off, shaking his head.
I certainly wouldn’t tell you, Cerise thought, and said, “I’ll bear that in mind.” Or was he hinting I should warn her? she wondered a split second later. It was possible; he was Helling’s lover. Max had obviously spoken well of them, from the old days, or at least the little he’d said had been good. And there was an old rivalry between Treasury and the Eurocops.
“They’ll probably be getting in touch with you soon,” Mabry went on. The waiter appeared with their food, a plate balanced in each hand, served them with economically graceful gestures. Mabry waited until he had gone to continue. “John Starling is handling the on-line investigation.”
Cerise froze for a fleeting instant, the delicate flavor of the chicken gone to ashes in her mouth. She knew Starling, all right, at least by reputation, and didn’t much like him— another netwalker who’d never known the shadows and had a chip on his shoulder because of it. He used a soaring bird as an icon, a deceptively simple sweeping line, bright as light on metal. “I’m sure I’ll be hearing from him, then.”
Mabry nodded, she thought in sympathy. “I’m inclined to agree with you and Max, this isn’t the Trouble you knew. But now that Trouble’s back on-line—well, I suppose they have to take action.”
“If I were looking for Trouble,” Cerise said, “I’d look in Seahaven.”
Mabry smiled then, with genuine amusement, the lines tightening around his eyes. “So easy for some of us to get there.”
“Ah, well,” Cerise answered, and matched his smile. Mabry would not be welcome in Seahaven, any more than she would be welcomed in the near-mythical bat caves reserved for the real cops. “Are you based in the States these days?”
“London, actually.” Mabry accepted the change of subject with equanimity. “This is a temporary assignment.” They talked through the rest of the meal about minor things— Mabry’s time in London, her own life at Multiplane, never how he and Helling had met—and came back to the new Trouble’s techniques over dessert.
“Frankly,” Mabry said, “I think this Trouble, the new one, is very young. The technical aspects—the routines I’ve dissected have managed to be brilliant and sloppy all at the same time. Not mature work.”
“And very much not Trouble’s style,” Cerise said.
“Not if she liked—likes—precision work,” Mabry agreed.
“And it’s asking for trouble, being that sloppy,” Cerise said, and grimaced at the inadvertent pun. A drop of raspberry sauce escaped from the wedge of chocolate terrine, landed on the pristine edge of her plate. She dabbed it up abstractedly, the fuchsia of her nails clashing with the deeper red, licked her finger without really thinking about it.
Mabry smiled wryly—he was having coffee, black, decaf— and said, “Yeah. I think this newTrouble is going to trip itself up one of these days.”
“What about tracers? Any luck?”
“Now there this Trouble seems to have learned quite a lot from someone.” Mabry leaned forward, planted both elbows on the cloth. The table tilted slightly under his weight. “I’m good at tracking, and we’ve had some other experts in—Max among them.”
“I remember Toby,” Cerise said. It had been the best tracer she’d ever used, was still a part of her frontline toolkit.
“Yes. But we still haven’t been able to get any kind of a fix.”
Cerise finished the last bite of the terrine, and leaned forward herself. “It may be because this guy’s using some of Trouble’s old routines, modified. Trouble knew Max’s work, used to enjoy playing hide-and-seek with him, and most of the current tracers use some of the Toby routines. That’s part of the problem with all of this. This guy’s using Trouble’s tools, so it is her work, her hand, that shows up on autopsy. But it isn’t her.”
“I wondered why so many of the shadow-folk were staying so quiet,” Mabry said. “Usually, when someone boasts like this, stirs up this much heat, you get a lot of talk. The shadows either close ranks, wall us out, or there are half a hundred people wanting to shop him.”
“Trouble was well respected,” Cerise said. It wasn’t precisely true, but it was as close as she felt like coming to the full explanation. Trouble’s skills had been universally respected, but the wire had made the old netwalkers keep their distance, and there had always been the whisper that Trouble was only as good as her chips. It was more that Trouble had been the most visible of the group on the wire, and one of the best crackers around; like it or not, she’d been a symbol to both sides. “Now that she’s back, you may hear more.”
“So you believe in this message I’ve been seeing everywhere.”
It wasn’t really a question, but Cerise answered anyway. “
There wasn’t much to say after that, and Mabry signaled for the check. They argued politely over it, and, after some insistence Mabry let her pay. Cerise was still smiling when she emerged into the cloudy afternoon to find her car waiting as she’d asked. She told the driver to take the long way back to Multiplane’s compound, along the ring road that surrounded the city, and leaned back against the seat, trying to sort out her thoughts. She would almost certainly have to talk to Starling—or maybe I could send Sirico, or maybe Jensey? she wondered. The real question is, am I going to try to warn Trouble first? Can I afford to take that chance? She sighed, turned her head sideways, not really seeing the other vehicles—dozens of dark, heavy-bodied cars that matched the one in which she rode—crowding the travel lanes. Trouble more than half deserves this, the way she ran out on me— but she gave me fair warning, the one warning she always gives, she told me she wasn’t going to crack that system… And I don’t like John Starling’s reputation.
That wasn’t entirely fair, and she knew it—he was a dedicated cop and a skilled netwalker—but she refused to look further. I don’t like him, and I don’t think Mabry likes him either. And besides, I owe Trouble at least this much. The trick now is to find her—or, of course, someone who knows how to find her. I wonder if Butch kept in touch? It was quite possible, and she felt a faint pang at the thought. But then, she told herself, I didn’t exactly make an effort to keep in touch with him, or with any of them, after I went legit. She had not been proud of herself for taking the job with Multiplane—it had not been entirely her choice, and it was not something she had been going to boast about to her old friends, not something that she had wanted to discuss at all, if she could help it. And the easiest way to avoid questions had been to avoid the people altogether, at least until she was well- known as Multiplane’s chief syscop, and by then so many of the shadow-folk and the worm-carriers had fled into security that she was relatively invisible. She could put the word out discreetly—one of the others, Helling, maybe, or Dewildah, or even van Liesvelt, if she could find him, might be willing to help—or she could take her own advice to Mabry and look in Seahaven. That was probably her best bet, and she shifted against the cushions, wishing now that she’d told the driver to take the flyway. She curbed her impatience sharply, made herself sit quiet as the car churned its way through the heavy traffic. Seahaven was always a temptation and a challenge: she could only welcome the excuse.
The car let her off at Multiplane’s main entrance, where the same deferential security was waiting. The first pair murmured greetings as one held first the car door and then the door into the lower lobby, but the second pair, one seated behind the high desk that half blocked the entranceway, the other standing hidden behind a pillar and a potted palm, looked up at her approach, and the taller man stepped out from behind his pillar.
“Excuse me, Ms. Cerise, but I’ve got a message for you.”
Cerise stopped, frowning in spite of herself—she hadn’t expected Treasury to catch up with her so quickly —and security went on, “Mr. Coigne would like to talk to you as soon as you get in. He said, if you’d drop by his office on your way up.”
That was not a request. Cerise frowned more deeply, wondering exactly what Coigne wanted, and shook
