without it Seahaven would be less than it was. And that she cannot, will not, allow: she’s come too far, risked too much, to let this space be anything but more than it was under the Mayor’s rule.
Ahead of her, the street is busy, icons clustering by the wall, wood now, not stone, where the artists work and messages are posted, others clustering by the door to the saloon where the real business is done. She built that herself, borrowing from the memory of Miss Kitty’s years before, and is pleased. Cerise is in there now— she can feel Cerise’s presence even through the swirl of signals, the constant rumble along her nerves. There are plenty of others, too, and she stops, mostly because she can, the novelty not yet worn off, lets the brainworm and the fabric of Seahaven itself tell her who is talking there. Dargon is there; triumph enough in itself, that he’ll still come to Seahaven even though he doesn’t think, isn’t sure, she’s earned the right to it. Arabesque, too, like a taste of salt, and Helling, and a dozen others she sees as flickers of an icon, an eyeblink image in her mind. The shadows still come to Seahaven, and she doesn’t, won’t stop them, but she welcomes the bright lights as well.
That in itself has been enough to drive off some of the shadows, the ones who are deep enough in the shadows that they have their own outside system, their own network of protectors and enemies in the realworld. Of all of them, only Fate has ventured into Seahaven more than twice, and he hasn’t brought his business with him. That brings a flicker of regret, but she quells that sternly. She can’t afford it—more than that, she isn’t the Mayor, this isn’t his Seahaven anymore, and she will live by the rules she’s made, not by his.
She sees the sky thin on the fringes of the townscape, where she sketched the echo of desert to blend into the artificial distance, feels in the same moment the slap of a door opening, like the sting of sand against her skin. She doesn’t move, looks up instead, not recognizing the hand behind the flurry of code, and sees a shape like the silver sketch of a bird, brighter even than the heat of the sky. She has been more than half expecting him, but she waits, lets the icon fall to her own plane, before she moves to meet him. Her shadow goes before her, falling across him like a chill wind, and she feels him turn, feels the dispersal routine ready in his hand.
Hello, Starling, she says, and for the first time she thinks he might be afraid.
Trouble, Starling’s voice is as it always was, the same easy tone, but Trouble feels the tension surrounding him, the tension of readied programs, carried on the live air of her Seahaven, and she has to hide her own elation.
Welcome to Seahaven, she says, and lets her shadow fade a little.
We need to talk, Starling says. *My bosses aren’t exactly pleased with what you’re doing.*
Really? Trouble doesn’t bother to sound convincing. She feels a flicker in the air, doesn’t have to look back to know that Cerise has come to the doorway of the saloon, stands looking out into the dusty street. *I don’t know why not, they got what they wanted. Seahaven’s not a refuge space anymore.*
They expected a bit more cooperation,* Starling says. Under the circumstances.
Trouble shrugs, enjoying the easy play of her icon. *I’ve done what I can, under law. But I have a direct-drop open node on the Euronets that puts this space under the Conventions, not Evans-Tindale. I have to abide by those rules. *
And, she doesn’t say, doesn’t have to say, the Conventions protect the nets as much as they protect the realworld. It’s not the clearest situation, and she knows it—there have been rulings for and against her open-node argument—but Starling knows it, too, and knows that the nets will be solidly behind her. Trouble can feel the quiver in the air that means that icons are gathering, the other netwalkers coming out to see what’s going on, what Starling wants. She doesn’t look back, but she can tell they fill the false windows of the saloon and gather on the boardwalks to either side of the street.
Starling says, *That argument’s been overruled before. It won’t hold up in court.*
Maybe not, Trouble says, *but maybe it will. Charge me and we’ll see what the judges say.*
There is a little pause, and she feels Starling withdraw a little, preparing his retreat. *Give me half a chance. We’ll be watching, believe me. Every transaction, every payday, every single packet of data that comes out of here—oh, yeah, we’ll be watching.*
Go ahead, Trouble says. *I’ve nothing to hide. But I hope you plan to get warrants for all that.*
Oh, yeah, Starling says, grim-voiced. I play by the rules, Trouble, remember that.
*I don’t forget,* Trouble says, but already he’s moving away, turned his back to her, the blank side of the icon, heading for the nearest node. She lets him go, and the lurkers move warily away, giving him a wide berth. She feels the node open, and the icon flicks away. She sighs, acknowledging at least his competence —he will play by his rules, she’ll give him that, and he’ll do it well—and turns away.
Cerise says, *He wasn’t pleased.*
No, Trouble says, and turns to face her, seeing the icons that still wait in the windows and the boardwalk. She ignores them, their presence a weight in the air around her, says, Still, somebody has to do it.
I hope Max is right about this one, Cerise says—the open-node defense was Helling’s idea— and Trouble grins, lets the brainworm carry her pleasure onto the net.
*The law’s ambiguous, statute law and common law both. Besides, the main thing is still to get the Conventions established—to get people to push for it again.*
Cerise shrugs—she’s less certain of it than Trouble, of the ability of the net to cooperate and of the realworld to pass the laws they all need—but she’s said that all before, says only, Well, if anyone can do it, you can.
Someone has to, Trouble says. She looks around at the space that is Seahaven, the careful details of the street and the buildings and the vivid artwork flattened slightly in the harsh light, tastes the dust and heat. It was bought with a death—whatever she thought of the Mayor, he’s dead, and if it wasn’t at her hands directly, it was close enough, and she wouldn’t have the hardware or the software or the authority if he weren’t dead—and she can feel that burden sometimes like a wall pressing in over the dome of the false sky that bounds the city. Someone has to, she says again, as if his ghost is somewhere in the machines that create this Seahaven, as if he might have cared, and turns away, walks back down the vivid street, the dust soft and almost real against her feet.
The sun was sinking toward the horizon beyond the long window, its pale disk almost obscured by the dull clouds. Trouble watched it idly, saw the lower limb drop below the last layer of cloud, and looked away, blinking, as the fen ran suddenly with watery light and shadow.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” The voice was sharply accented, not of the educated class, and Trouble blinked again, trying to drive away the green reflections that floated in her eyes. She recognized the man; Mabry had pointed him out as one of the conference’s local sponsors, a senior Eurocop who was smart enough to realize how useful the nets could be, but she couldn’t remember his name. The man—he wasn’t very tall, about her own height, with wavy hair that had gone grey at the temples and eyebrows that arced like a bird’s wing— smiled as though he recognized her dilemma and held out his hand. “Jack Callier. Regional chief constable.”
“Mr. Callier.” Trouble took his hand, warily, trying to remember what else Mabry had said about him. When she had agreed to speak at the annual European Conference on Computers and the Law, she hadn’t realized that cops’ politics were as complicated as the nets’, and she still wasn’t sure enough of all the factions.
“I enjoyed your talk,” Callier went on.
“Thanks,” Trouble said, and waited. It wasn’t that the Eurocops had been hostile, exactly, but they didn’t know her, and the ones who did know her reputation knew her as a cracker better than as the new marshal of Seahaven.
“I don’t mind telling you it’d make my job easier, if your lot signed the Conventions,” Callier went on, with an easy grin that invited confidences. “What do you think the chances are of getting it past your legislature?”
Trouble shrugged, on familiar ground here, and felt herself relaxing in spite of herself. “Not this session,
