one to indicate feelings, says it all in the choice of his words. Trouble looks wanly at him, wondering what lies behind it, morals, the cracker prejudice she shares, some deeper hatred, and the icon fades before her eyes. That leaves van Liesvelt, and she looks back at him, the heavy bear-shape bulky against the neon scrawl behind him.
I had some news, he says. *From the doc. She says Treasury’s been asking questions. *
What kind of questions? Trouble asks, and feels the fear stab through her. How could Treasury have known to go to Huu—how could they have known she needed a new chip? Jesse? It wasn’t like him to sell that kind of information.
Van Liesvelt shrugs. *She said it was a general have-you-seen-her notice, just asking if anyone’s done any work on a woman matching your description. It was going under your real name, though.*
Fuck, Trouble says, and only with difficulty refrains from kicking the watchdog that appears instantly to snap at her ankles. The co-op, then, and possibly Jesse—he would sell her, if it meant staying clear himself.
*The doc didn’t say anything, of course,* van Liesvelt went on, and she thinks it should dead- end there.
Trouble nods, her mind racing. When she gets off the net, she’ll have to bribe Valentine, see if she’ll substitute another name for the one she gave at registration, or maybe hack the hotel system and make the fix herself. That, in Seahaven, won’t be easy, and she puts the thought sternly aside for later. She will have enough to do, to leave Cerise the message she needs. Thanks for the warning, she says aloud, and van Liesvelt grins.
Just be careful, he says, and turns away.
Trouble takes the long way out of Seahaven, through the most complex of the gateways, checks the address Fate has given her, and lets the first node she comes to carry her away from the BBS. She follows the coded numbers through the tangle of the midlevel roads, letting herself fade to obscurity against the brilliant packets of data, until she is all but invisible, little more than a shadow of a ghost. She pauses at the center of a great hub, waits, a dozen breaths, a hundred heartbeats, while the datastreams flow over and past her, until she is sure she is not followed. Only then does she take the final step, the last turn that will lead her to her ultimate destination.
IC(E) arcs to either side, walling off the corporate precincts, sparks dripping like water from the overarching spines. Trouble recognizes the space, a shared system where suppliers and parent corporations meet and exchange data, knows how the protocol works and how to get inside. Fate has done well by her, bringing her here, the only difficulty now is to trace Multiplane’s lines. She checks herself, confirming that her presence has been muted, outbound data squelched, turns slowly, watching the datastream slide past her, merging with the IC(E), until she understands the pattern of it, and feels it in her bones. She chooses a packet then, invokes a mirror program from her toolkit, watches it spin an identical image around herself, so that she sinks into the datastream, indistinguishable from the data around her. She lets herself drift toward the IC(E), lets the steady flow draw her into the coils of unreal wire, sharp and cold as steel and hard as bone. She can feel the chill from them as she slides through the spiraling wire, sees it through a pale gold haze of the stolen pattern, her own hands are all but invisible, the gleam of IC(E) bright beneath her skin.
And then she’s through the first barrier, emerges into a space like a pool, where a structure like a stack of gears stirs the datastream, curving it first into a gentle whirlpool and then sorts it on its way. She slows herself subtly, not daring to fall too far out of the parameters, just a backward eddy in the general current, and searches the packets for an address label. They are coded, an unfamiliar system, and she calls Fate’s codes from memory. She had hoped not to have to rely on them—she trusts him, but only so far, only so far as she would trust any fellow cracker, except perhaps van Liesvelt and Arabesque and Cerise. But the numbers are there, and she evokes them, creates a label for herself that matches the patterns that she sees, and lets herself slide back into the line of data.
The current sweeps her closer, stirred by the first level of gears into the general pool, and then, quite suddenly, she’s swept up and away, snapped from the stream and flung off into a new and alien conduit. Her stomach lurches as the brainworm relays the motion faithfully—one of the few disadvantages of the wire—and then she steadies, orienting herself against the new perspective. The space is marked off in grids, black on silver, a dozen or more imposed one on top of the other, a mailroom configuration, a limited interface with Multiplane’s primary systems. She studies the pattern for a moment, letting the data fall past her to be captured by the various grids, then lets herself fall with them, shrinking as the data shrinks until she matches its shape precisely. The address Fate supplied floats before her, she feels the system probe it, a pulse like a pressure, a finger poked hard into her ribs, and then she’s shunted into the maze of the grids. She rides the current, tossed abruptly from side to side as the system shunts her from one plane to another, and then, quite suddenly, she’s where she wants to be.
She hangs suspended, abruptly still, in a space that seems infinite, but feels constrained, hemmed in by the walls of the pigeonhole into which she has been dropped. This is the virtual address, the place where the mail waits, and she studies it, reaching with infinite care to feel the other message packages waiting with her. They are all for Cerise, she feels further, finds the password lock that seals the system and recognizes Cerise’s hand in the intricate check mechanism. Definitely the right place, she thinks, and sinks back into the still center of the address to compose her message. It is simple, a single word—from her, to Cerise, there’s no need for more. Even after everything, it’s still that simple, and she shapes the word in its delicate casing: SEAHAVEN.
She sets it free, easing it out of the shell that conceals her presence, budding it like an amoeba. At last it pops free, shining like a soap bubble for an instant as the system registers a new arrival and Trouble smiles to herself. She has done what she can, it should be enough to bring Cerise to Seahaven, the real one—Cerise has already been to the virtual town, she knows what is and isn’t, there. All that remains is to leave as undetected as she’s entered. She pauses for an instant longer, considering her options then grins and shapes another address. The mail routine sweeps by again, and she watches it pass, gauging speed and direction, another dozen heartbeats, and it sweeps past again like a lighthouse beam. This time she reaches for it, places the false address in its path and lets it scoop up the packet, dragging her in its wake. When she’s sure it has her bait securely, she reels herself in, recomposes herself behind the mask of the false package. The program flings her back into the grids, and the grid flips her out into the sorting area. She would laugh if she dared, breathless, enjoying the rollercoaster ride. And then she’s back out in the IC(E) and she abandons the mail packet, lets the system carry its empty shell on through the walls of IC(E) Someone will be annoyed, receiving a transmission so badly garbled, but she spares less than a thought for them, turns her attention to the IC(E) instead. It is less formidable from this direction, was designed to keep people out, not to hold them in, but she knows better than to be too confident. She eases her way through the coils like diamond and wire, moving crabwise, oblique, across the grain of the net, until at last she emerges from the thicket, hangs once again in the open net.
She smiles, allowing herself at least that much of triumph, but does not let her cloaking programs fade. Instead, she takes the nearest datastream, and, still smiling, lets it carry her toward home.
