“Hello, Mollie.”
“Hello, Trouble.” Blake stepped out from behind the other woman, but did not come closer or offer an embrace. “I thought you were out in the bright lights these days.”
“I was.” Trouble eyed Blake warily, uncertain how to read the reception. Blake was no cracker, had never been on the nets—didn’t even have a dollie-slot, the essential tool for anyone who worked with any network. She was, however, one of the best sources of hardware throughout the Parcade, possibly along the coast. “You might say my past caught up with me. I’m looking for a place to stay, until I find someone.”
Blake nodded, slowly. She was a stocky, straight-bodied woman, a little taller than average, her skin tanned almost to the color of her rust-brown hair. At the moment she was absolutely ordinary in jeans and a crumpled, man-style shirt, but Trouble, who had seen her dressed to kill, ready to mingle with the crowds at The Willows, was not deceived. “I’ve heard something about that,” Blake said.
“You’re still with Nova, then?” Trouble asked, and Blake shrugged.
“Off and on.” She looked at the other woman, still standing silent at her shoulder. “Trouble’s OK. She doesn’t cause problems—or if she does, she cleans it up herself.”
That was letting her know where she stood with a vengeance. Trouble suppressed a moment’s annoyance—Blake should talk—and said, “Thanks.”
The grey-haired woman stepped around Blake, ducked under the barrier so that she stood behind the counter, and reached for the keyboard of the registration system, pulling it out from under a pile of news sheets. “Carless, you said the name was?”
Blake said, “That’s Joan Valentine, by the way.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Trouble murmured.
Valentine nodded, her expression noncommittal, and poised her hands over the keyboard. “Name?”
“India Carless,” Trouble said, and wondered an instant later if she should have chosen another. Treasury knew that name—worse still, it was her real one—but then, she told herself, she didn’t have good ID for anything else. That was the one thing she hadn’t gotten for herself in the city, new ID to replace the jane-doe registration or her own legitimate papers. She shook the worry away, leaned forward to watch Valentine key the information into the machine.
“They send a disk up to the cop-shop twice a week,” Blake said suddenly, and Trouble glanced over her shoulder to see the other woman smiling slightly.
Valentine said, “Local regulations.” She looked at her screen, head cocked to one side as she studied the menu. “The only thing they pay attention to is the ID numbers, though.”
“Right,” Trouble said, and reached into her pocket for the jane-doe disk. She handed it to Valentine, who ran it through the scanner and handed it back across the counter.
“Somebody’s going to come asking questions about that,” Valentine said.
“When?”
Valentine shrugged.
Blake said, “Come on, Val. You sent the last update, when, yesterday?”
Valentine darted her an uncertain look, but said, “Yeah.”
“So you’ve got, what, it’s Thursday—so, you’ve got until Monday at the earliest,” Blake said. “Or Tuesday, if Val forgets to send the disk on time.”
“And how likely is that?” Trouble asked, and Blake laughed.
Valentine made a face. “It—can be arranged. Talk to me.”
“Let me know the going rate,” Trouble said. “In the meantime, though, I’d like to get a room.”
“I’ve got a two-room suite, your own bath and input nodes, on the third floor,” Valentine said. “If that’s all right with you.”
“That’s fine,” Trouble said, and meant it. She pulled the last cash-card from her belt, set it on the counter. It would certainly be enough to cover a few days in Seahaven—at least until Tuesday, and after that, she could use credit. Valentine accepted it, fed it into the machine, and nodded as the verification codes appeared.
“I’ll take you up, then,” she said.
“Key?” Trouble asked, in some surprise, and Blake shook her head.
“We got palm-locks last year, Trouble. Even Seahaven changes.”
“Right,” Trouble said, and followed Valentine through the battered door and up the narrow stairs.
It was warm in the upstairs hall, and the air smelled indefinably of Seahaven, salt and constant damp blending with the scent of oil or burned rubber from the beaches. Valentine led her down the long, dimly lit hallway, and stopped at the last door, fingering the heavy box of the palm-lock mounted above the latch. The door swung open, and Valentine held it, nodding for the other woman to go in.
Trouble stepped into sudden cool and the hum of an environmental unit set on high, reached automatically for the room controls to switch on the lights. The room was bigger than she’d expected, with a desk and table and a couple of comfortable chairs next to a floor-mounted junction box in one room, and a big bed and a video cabinet in the other. She’d gotten turned around somehow, coming up the stairs, so she was surprised when she opened the heavy curtains to see that she overlooked the front of the building and the street outside. She could just see the edge of the neon sign running below the window, and understood why the curtains were made of such heavy fabric. The bathroom was small, but most of the fixtures looked relatively new. She set her bag down, and Valentine said from the doorway, “All right?”
“It’ll do, thanks,” Trouble said.
“Then we’ll set the lock.”
It was an exercise in futility—the first thing she would do, after she checked the net, would be to buy an override lock of her own, probably from Blake’s shop—but Trouble nodded, and came forward to lay her palm against the sensor plate. Valentine fiddled with the lock controls, and then with her master control, and pronounced the lock ready. Trouble tested it obediently, and the door snapped open to her touch.
“All set, then,” Valentine said, and turned away without waiting for an answer.
Trouble shut the door behind her, turned to survey the suite more closely. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, scarred wood floor, a single throw rug, cheap white-wood furniture, a few posters tacked onto the walls in lieu of prints, but she went methodically through it anyway, searching for bugs and taps and peepholes. She found nothing, either in the walls or under the casing of the junction box, and dragged the less battered of the two chairs close to it, within reach of her machine cords. She pulled the other chair in front of the door, wedged it with the desk, and went back to the junction box to begin setting up her system. The node was standard; she plugged in cables and power cords, and leaned back in her chair to begin a last quick check for lurkers.
She let the diagnostics run, paying less attention to the play of lights and numbers on the little screen than to the flicker of feeling across her skin, hot as a summer wind, and the fleeting taste of the system on her tongue. Everything felt clean, no alien programs hidden in the architecture, no odd loops of code that led nowhere, and she adjusted the brainworm to its highest setting. It was the first time she had run it at full capacity since she’d had the new chip installed, and she sat for a moment, letting herself get used to the sensations. The net felt brighter, as though she were looking at it through freshly washed windows, all her senses sharpened as though she’d shed a skin. She grinned to herself, enjoying the heady feeling, and touched the button that released her onto the net.
