She looks around once, noting the visible icons and the one that is invisible, blanked out, lurking behind a screen of light, and then nods to the shape that bows stiffly in her general direction.
Cerise, it says, a shape like a man made out of steel pipes, and Cerise answers, Tin Man. She is more interested in the invisible icon, but the amenities have to be observed.
You have been a busy girl, the Tin Man observes. Tell me, does the course of true love still run smooth?
*I’ve been busy,* Cerise agrees, and the rest is none of your business.
The Tin Man achieves something like a leer, an accomplishment for someone not on the wire. *Oh, come now, I’ve always been very fond of Trouble.*
*I doubt it’s mutual.* There is no point in subtlety with him. Cerise looks at him without expression, allows the contempt to spill like acid into the air between them, then looks past him, fixing her eyes on the spot where the invisible icon is lurking. *It’s not you I came to talk with.”
*Sorry?* The Tin Man sounds genuinely surprised, and a part of her admires the act.
*I didn’t come to talk to you,* Cerise said, with infinite patience. *Where’s Dorothy? *
The Tin Man’s icon doesn’t change—he’s not wired, any more than the invisible one is wired —but Cerise can hear the sudden anger in his voice. The Tin Man’s proud of being straight, resents the insinuation, and Cerise hides a smile.
*Don’t know any Dorothy,* he says, and Cerise allows the smile to show. *If it’s herself you want to talk to, I’ll see if she’s willing.*
She’ll be willing, Cerise thinks, but judges she’s pushed hard enough already. The Tin Man’s icon vanishes, though she can feel his presence, this faint tingle of electricity against her skin, and she looks around the rose-lit room again. The shimmering silver walls have closed in, sealing her off from the rest of the nets: a necessary precaution, but one that always makes her uneasy, at least when she doesn’t control the program. She controls herself instead—she can break this program if she has to, has ice-cutters in her toolkit that will destroy better security than this—and resigns herself to wait in patience.
At last the Tin Man reappears, bowing so that his silver-tubing fingers brush the rose-scented floor. This way, he says, and a blackness opens beside him, an oval doorway into nothing.
Cerise lifts an eyebrow—it was a cheap effect, and they both know it—and steps through into emptiness.
For a long moment the light doesn’t appear, no light, no sound, no sense, and Cerise frowns, readying a program to strip the disguise from within the sphere of the security. She counts to ten, slowly, then reaches into the toolkit for the routine. As she had expected, light returns, dull, white light like the light in an office, and with it the rest of the illusion. She is standing in a featureless white sphere, and at the center of it hangs a plaintext symbol, blue reversed crescent and a blue disk like a planet trapped between its horns. The edges of the symbol flicker faintly, fizzing red. Cerise regards it without affection, picturing the woman behind the symbol: thin and bony, iron-grey hair cut close to the skull, face scraped clean of makeup while her body is constrained by the drab jeans-and-T-shirt of a mainline cracker. Ms. Cool has been around for years, from before the brainworm, and she’s made a place for herself on the nets, but she’s not fond of anyone, and especially not of women, at least not women on the wire.
Cerise, she says, in a voice electronically distorted to a timbre like scraping wire. What do you want?
Cerise grits her teeth behind the mask of her cartoon-icon, hopes that the brainworm has not translated the fleeting emotion, dislike, and intimidation, or something very like it. *Word is, you know everyone’s location on the nets. I’m looking for Silk.*
Word is, Ms. Cool says, the electric voice nasty, you already have a mailcode.
Had, Cerise corrects, and keeps her own voice level only with an effort. The space defined by Silk’s code had been empty, as she’d expected, the trail long cold; she has wasted minutes searching, she and her watchdogs, before she’d admitted defeat and the necessity of bargaining with Ms. Cool.
The icon hanging opposite her does not change, not even a shift of color, but Cerise imagines that the other woman would have smiled had she been able. *If Silk’s dumped you, it’s not my business to put the two of you back together. Besides, what would Trouble say?*
I manage my own sex life, thanks, Cerise says. This is business. She hesitates, gauging the insult. *I didn’t think Silk was one to pass up business—any more than you.*
Ms. Cool ignores her, doesn’t answer for a long moment, just the icon hanging blind in the blank white space. Cerise keeps a grip on herself, masters her impatience, and waits unmoving. At last, without the flicker of anything to anticipate the response, Ms. Cool says, *I have a code. But there’s a price.*
There always is. Cerise speaks without thinking, sees no reason to regret the words.
*Multiplane’s security is good,* Ms. Cool says. And I need information.
Cerise laughs aloud. *My security’s good, you mean. And it’s no deal.*
You might want to hear the full offer, Ms. Cool says, and Cerise gestures for her to continue. *And don’t think I can’t break your IC(E), girl, but I have other fish to fry.*
That is almost certainly a lie and they both know it, but Cerise gives no sign, and Ms. Cool goes on without a breath.
*And I’m not after trade secrets, you’d be surprised how little market there is for them. What I want is personnel information, nothing more. Just a simple file, not even the classified version. On a man named Derrick Coigne. *
Coigne. Cerise barely stops herself from speaking the name aloud, feels the surprise congeal around her, the sensation doubly vivid in the blank room. That was different, Coigne was different, it might even help her to pass that information on to Ms. Cool—and this was probably just what Ms. Cool wanted her to think. Ms. Cool’s favors are rarely simple, simply given or simply achieved; besides, even a general-access internal file contained information that outsiders were not supposed to see. Multiplane has more secrets than she knows, more enmities and rivalries and obscure alliances than even she can monitor, even watching the internal nets as she does—but there’s no choice this time, she tells herself. She needs Silk’s codes, some location, and she needs them now or she would never have come to Ms. Cool, because if she doesn’t get them, if she and Trouble don’t find newTrouble, and soon, the whole messy business with Treasury will begin all over again. And that she, they, cannot afford; she will not risk it, risk losing Trouble, not again.
She has made the decision almost before she’s realized it, as though there was no decision to be made, no choice at all. The only question left is whether she will keep her bargain, get Ms. Cool the files she wants, or, more precisely, how she will go about keeping both the bargain and her job. And if she loses the job, she thinks, it will be worth it—and that is a thought she doesn’t want and can’t right now afford, and she puts it aside without even the acknowledgment of a frown. Coigne, she says, aloud this time, still playing for time. *Why would anyone want Coigne’s files?*
*Don’t be stupid, girl,* Ms. Cool says. *Anyway, the whys don’t matter. It’s a straight deal, my code for his file. Are you willing?*
*I’m interested,* Cerise corrects. *But I’m not—in the office right now. You’d have to take it on trust.*
*I don’t do business that way.*
*In this case, you don’t have a choice.* Cerise stops, takes a deep breath, makes her tone ever so faintly conciliatory—anything more would be suspicious. *Even I don’t have access from outside.*
There is another silence, another of Ms. Cool’s periods of inattention, and Cerise finds herself holding her breath. She hides a frown, and makes herself breathe, counting heartbeats; she reaches a hundred, an eternity, before Ms. Cool speaks. *All right. We’ll do it your way. But if you cross me, Cerise… *
