she was enjoying the return to Seahaven, to the crowds and the shops and the heavy salt air. And that, she told herself, was beside the point. She had bought her dinner—that had been her excuse for going out; it was time she went back to her room and waited for Blake, or any of the others, to call. She looked north anyway, toward the bridge at Harbormouth, wondering what Cerise was doing, if she were busy, if she wanted to come out on the town, but curbed that thought. It was too dangerous—and besides, she told herself, she was pissed at you when she left. Better let her calm down—better let us both calm down, let things cool down a little between us—before we try again. It was easy, too easy, to fall back into the old routines; the trouble is, she thought, I’m not sure I don’t want to do just that.
“ ’Cuse me?”
Trouble turned to face the speaker, automatically checking to make sure she hadn’t somehow walked too close to the beach, and found herself facing a skinny black kid, hair carved into a tight cap. He was wearing a Net-God T-shirt, gold stylized chip design bright against black cotton, and the cuff of a VR glove protruded slightly from the pocket of his denim vest.
A cracker or a wannabe? she wondered, and said, “Yeah?” She kept her voice neutral, and was pleased when the kid didn’t blink.
“You’re Trouble?”
“That’s right.” There was no point hiding her name, she thought, not after she’d spent the morning making sure everyone knew she was back.
“I’ve got a message for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Trouble kept her voice and face expressionless, but inwardly felt herself snap to attention. “Who from?”
“Butch. Van Liesvelt.”
Trouble nodded. “All right.”
“Butch says Treasury’s on to you. They know you’re in Seahaven, so if you’ve put your name on anything, stay away from it.” The kid took a deep breath, visibly recalling a memorized message. “He says he’ll do what he can, but that isn’t much. You’re on your own.”
“Shit.” Trouble bit back the rest of the comment, thinking of the hardware left in her rooms—and it would have to be abandoned, she didn’t dare go back—and managed a nod for the kid. “Thanks—tell Butch I appreciate the warning.”
The kid grinned suddenly. “He also sent a call-card.” He held out the silver rectangle, and Trouble took it, nodding slowly.
“Thanks,” she said again, and meant it: the cards were as good as cash to gain access to the dataphone system; if she’d been given a card like that, at that age, she would have been sorely tempted to keep it. The kid’s grin widened, as though he’d read the thought, and he slipped his hand out of the pocket of his jacket.
“I get a gold card as payment.”
Trouble laughed. “Tell Butch thanks,” she said again, and the kid nodded.
“I’ll do that,” he said, and turned away into the crowd.
Trouble watched him go, losing himself expertly among the strolling pedestrians and the knots of shoppers that eddied in front of the tiny storefronts, tried to think what she should do next. Try to retrieve her hardware, if she could: that was the obvious first step, probably too obvious. But she couldn’t afford to lose the equipment without a struggle. She jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, started slowly back along the avenue toward the streets that led to the hostel. She stayed with the crowds most of the way, calling up old skills to hover always at the edge of a large group, so that at first glance she seemed to be part of it. A block from the hostel she turned down an alley that led between two fry-shops, stepping carefully over the broken boxes and the rotted vegetables that slimed the pavement. It was a narrow space, narrowed further by the heaped trash, so that there was barely a clear path between the buildings. She walked carefully, letting her eyes adjust to the sudden darkness, and paused at the end of the alley to survey the street. The alley did not quite meet the end of Marcy Street, where the hostel stood, but came in at an angle to the cross street; the continuation of Marcy formed a dogleg in the opposite direction. From the mouth of the alley, she could just see the hostel’s entrance and the runabout parked illegally across from it. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought there were people sitting in the runabout, slumped low in their seats—even if there weren’t, its very location betrayed it as a cop car. A good deal of the town’s income came from parking fines; no local would be stupid enough to wait there, in a blatant no- stopping zone, without a guarantee of immunity.
She retraced her steps, wondering if she could get into the hostel through the back lots. It wasn’t likely, but she had to try. She threaded her way along a residential street crowded with parked runabouts—all with bright- orange resident’s stickers prominently displayed—and found a doorway at the end of the street, the alcove lamp not yet lit. She stepped into the shadows, pretending to examine the address board, and let her eyes travel beyond it to the street. From the alcove she could just see the wall that surrounded the hostel’s small backyard—just sand, really, and brick paving—and, above the wall, the windows of the back rooms. Only a couple were occupied, the curtains drawn closed, light showing just at the edges of the rectangle, but she waited anyway, frowning into the dark. The stairway that ran from the yard to the main floor was dimly lit, as always, a single weak bulb burning behind amber glass, and she fixed her eyes on that, waiting. For a long time nothing moved, and then, quite suddenly, a head appeared, vanished again, as though someone had stepped up onto the bottom stair, and then stepped down again. Trouble swore under her breath, turned out of the alcove, and headed back down the narrow street, keeping close under the shadow of the houses. It could just be a resident of the hostel, out for a last smoke or a drink or waiting for a connection before the dealers stopped making deliveries, but this was not the time to take that chance. She would have to abandon the hardware, at least for now.
And that didn’t leave her many options at all. She smoothed her frown with an effort, walked back down Ashworth toward the Parcade and the bank of phones that stood beside the palace, opposite the Ferris wheel. That was taking a risk, too, but Tinati didn’t like the cops, used his influence to keep them off the Parcade as a matter of principle. She didn’t think he would abandon that for her—she wasn’t worth it, it wasn’t worth it to him to meddle in what was, still, the net’s affair. With the call-card and the telepad she carried in her pocket, she could contact Cerise, get her to help—unless it was Cerise who’d sold her.
She stumbled over a board that had worked itself loose from the walk, swore as much at the thought of betrayal as at the pain in her toe. But Cerise wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t shop her to Treasury; no matter how angry she was, no matter how long she’d worked for Multiplane, she was still loyal to the shadows, and this was shadow business. She would settle it on the net, and personally, not through the law. Trouble made herself keep walking, through the patches of light and shadow that swept across the sandy street in front of the palace, joined the crowd that hovered beside the bank of phones, forming a ragged queue. She took her place at the end, jammed her hands back into her pockets, running her fingers over the smooth, case of the telepad. It was a busy night, maybe a dozen people waiting, another dozen hanging out, looking for work or just waiting for something to happen. She looked toward the palace, and saw Aimoto waiting in the shadow of the doorway: Tinati wasn’t having any trouble tonight, that much was clear.
The line moved slowly, as it always did. A street vendor came by, selling cones of fried vegetables; she bought one and ate its contents piece by piece, feeling the greasy paper disintegrate under her fingers. Then at last she was at the head of the line and a phone came free, and she moved toward it without haste, crumpling the paper cone in one hand. She set the wadded paper on the ledge beneath the phone, tugged the cord to draw the baffles down into place, and reached for the telepad. She plugged it in, checking automatically for visible bugs, and touched a key to run a quick scan from the pad itself. It came up clean—she had expected nothing else; Tinati would make sure that the obvious bugs were dealt with, and anything else would be in the main system anyway —and she fed the call-card into the access slot. The miniscreen at the top of the phone lit, displaying a series of branching menus; at the same time, the image in the telepad’s display shifted, showing a new series of codes and options. Trouble took a deep breath, and touched keys to route herself into the main phone system.
She found the subexchange she wanted quickly enough, for working blind, off the wire, and set her call chasing itself through the system, hoping to tangle any lurkers, before she typed in the codes that would give her access to The Willows and to Cerise’s phone. Her screen flashed white instead of the expected green, and she felt a heartbeat’s panic before she recognized what had happened. The white screen shifted, displayed voicemail codes, and she lifted the handset to hear the words.
“—named Sasquatch wants to sell you to Treasury, contact me ASAP.”
