Nice, Trouble says, and Cerise smiles, rubbing her hands to warm them. For a moment she thinks it’s nothing more than cold, nothing more than an illusion of the brainworm, but then she feels something beneath the cool, a faint, distant ache, all the more worrisome because she’s sure it’s real.
*Let’s get on with it* she says, and Trouble looks more closely at her.
You all right?
Yeah, Cerise answers, and, when Trouble says nothing, just keeps looking. *I’m OK. Let’s go*
OK, Trouble agrees, not entirely certain, but closes off her concern, and steps through the opening.
She catches her breath as the new illusion takes hold of her, spins her perspective, and then she has compensated, steadies herself against the brainworm’s insistence that she is upside down and sideways. She closes her eyes, lets herself go limp, and the brainworm and the temple-space together turn her right, so that when she opens her eyes she is standing perpendicular to the opening Cerise made, looking out at a world that hangs at a bizarre angle. Cerise’s icon performs the same maneuver, spinning against the bright opening until it’s oriented with the strict and sober geometry, drab black and a grey that isn’t even close to silver, that makes up the Mayor’s private space. Satisfied that Cerise is with her, Trouble turns, scanning the net around her for traps and watchdogs. She sees nothing, the brainworm finds nothing it can translate to sound or smell or taste, not even the wet-steel tang of IC(E).
Weird, Cerise says, and Trouble nods, knowing exactly what is meant.
A pattern, a line like a road, brighter grey than the planes that wall in this entrance space, stretches away from them, edged with thinner lines of black. It zigzags through the irregular slabs that rise like trees, like the stones of Stonehenge, disappears into an illusory far distance: the temple, like most virtual spaces, is bigger on the inside than the outside, and even with the brainworm’s assistance, sight fails before the road ends. A shiver of light, like a dusting of stars, runs beneath the bright surface, shooting away into the interior, flickering in and out of sight between the irregularly spaced planes. Trouble catches her breath, looking instantly for watchdogs, for attacking programs, but there’s still nothing, just the pure still sense of the code itself in the air around her.
*I suppose that’s an invitation,* Cerise says.
Trouble nods again, still searching for IC(E), grateful that her brainworm is still tuned high. I feel like Dorothy, she says, and steps out onto the path. Another flicker of light runs away beneath her feet, like ripples on the surface of a pool; to either side of the grey band, the illusory floor drops away—not a surprise, but she walks carefully nonetheless.
*That wasn’t Kansas back there,* Cerise mutters, and follows. The same scattering of light ripples away from her, and Trouble feels the faint warmth of it rush fugitive under her own feet.
*Might’ve been,* Trouble says, as much to chase away her fears as because she thinks so, and takes another few cautious steps. Old Kansas, in the old days. Where the hell is the IC(E)?
Cerise shakes her head, the brainworm carrying the gesture like a scent of oil, a taste of peppermint. *Worry about that when we find it—or when it finds us.*
Her voice is grimmer than her words, but Trouble laughs anyway, and keeps walking, lines of silver rippling away from her along the grey slab that is the path. There’s still no sign of IC(E), though the plane that was the floor drops further away below them until it vanishes in a haze like black fog—she would say that the path is rising, but the brainworm denies that, tells her she is walking straight and level. Slabs of featureless grey, some narrow as sheets of steel, others thick as stone, rise on either side, set at angles to the walkway; ahead, the path jogs sharply left, around a stone pillar that looks almost blue, the blue of a shadow, among the shaded greys. And still there’s nothing else, no watchdogs—she glances back in spite of herself, the fuchsia spark of Cerise’s neckerchief the only color in the bleak grey-and-black, almost painful to the eye, sees only Cerise, the icon’s face set in a faint, unhappy frown. And no IC(E) either, not even the hint of it drifting up from the black fog virtual meters below the walkway. The lights beneath her feet, the silver ripples like moonlight on water, aren’t IC(E) either, aren’t anything that she recognizes; she is getting used to them, though, and has to make an effort now to feel their fugitive warmth as they flicker away from her along the narrow path.
The blue-grey monolith looms ahead, its edges smoothed, rounded not by weather, nature, but as though ground by some massive machine. Trouble eyes it warily, suspecting a trap, dispatches a copy of a watchdog toward it. The program—stripped down to carry more features, its icon little more than a red disk— floats cautiously toward it, circles it, and returns again.
Passive system? Cerise says from behind her, and Trouble shrugs.
*This program’s supposed to catch those as well,* she answers, but they both know that it’s hard to simulate the output of a brainworm, the usual trigger for passive IC(E). A watchdog, even a complex one, is still only a limited program, and therefore, inevitably, imperfect.
Cerise makes a noise that is almost a laugh, short and angry, but says nothing. Trouble starts walking again, her best defensive routines invoked ready, trembling in her hands. She feels a tremor beneath her feet, a shudder different from the passage of the wavelets of light, and fixes her eyes on the hulking stone. It stays precisely as it is, releases nothing, no program or IC(E), just the blue-grey bulk of it beside the brighter grey of the path. Trouble hesitates, still watching, then starts to step past it, along the path that turns sharply left around it.
Her foot reaches out, but in the wrong direction, sliding somehow off the edge of the path. She staggers, trying to correct, but, though she can see the path plainly, can feel it still solid under one foot, she still reaches in the wrong direction, throwing herself even more off-balance. She can feel herself falling, flails backward, back toward the security of the walkway, and then she feels Cerise’s hands tight on her shoulders, dragging her back and down, so that they both stumble heavily, Cerise collapsing backward into a sitting position, Trouble in her lap. Cerise grabs for the edge of the path— it’s wide here, but nothing’s wide enough, not at that moment— and swears again as she cuts her fingers, grabbing a raw program edge.
Jesus Christ, Trouble says, splays her own hands firmly on the path, grateful for the solidity beneath her touch. What the hell was that? So this is what the other crackers had tried to describe, the ones who’d tried to crack Seahaven, what they meant when they said the architecture of the Mayor’s space defended itself, without IC(E)—without anything except a cracker’s overconfidence and fear to help it along.
Cerise untangles herself from the other woman’s icon, shaking her right hand—it feels bruised only, this time, but the accumulated aches are beginning to amount to a constant pain, warning her to be more careful. What happened?
*I—don’t know,* Trouble answers, and sounds almost surprised. She studies the path, still turning sharply to the left, and levers herself up onto hands and knees. For a moment she feels distinctly silly— crackers, real crackers, do not crawl through the architecture they are exploring—but dismisses the thought, focusing on the walkway in front of her. She reaches out again, feels Cerise’s hands close with reassuring strength on her ankles, and reaches again to the left. Her hand goes right, against her will, against all common sense; she frowns, concentrating, tries to bring her hand to the walk, and finds her hand jigging back and forth, unable to obey.
IC(E)? Cerise asks, but her tone says she already knows it isn’t.
Trouble answers anyway, *Not like any I’ve ever seen.* She reaches out again, and again she misses, but this time she’s closer. She grits her teeth, lays her hand flat against the surface of the walk, and slides it forward, following the path. Silver ripples fan out ahead of her, teasing, showing her the way she should go, but her hand obstinately refuses to obey, slips from side to side, advancing in fits and starts that bring her closer and closer to the right-hand edge of the walk. She is almost at the end of her reach, braces herself on that hand and shuffles forward, Cerise still clinging to her ankles, then reaches out again. There is something familiar about this, the halting progress, the way her eyes and her senses do not match—
*It’s a mirror* Cerise says. God damn.
*That’s it,* Trouble says, and the illusive memory appears: a child’s toy, a puzzle, a box with a hidden mirror and a series of figures to trace. You reached in from the side, and looked through the plate in the top, not realizing that you were looking not at your hand but at its mirror image. She had fought with the thing for hours, her finger jittering from side to side as she tried to figure out how to do what she could so plainly see, her
