“Too soon to tell. Just getting the hang of it. Got any stimulants?”
“Just caffeine.” Cirrus looked far too stimulated already. Her pupils were dilated. Keylinn said, “There’s coffee and tea in the other room, and a pot.”
“I finished it already. I’ll need plain water, too,” said Cirrus. “My throat’s getting sore.”
Spider had already gotten up, and Cirrus followed him out. When he came in again, he brought a cup for Keylinn. “Think she’s all right?” he asked.
Keylinn shrugged.
Two hours later Cirrus entered again. “Just stretching my legs,” she said. She was sweating as though she’d been exercising and her expression was distant but radiant. She resembled nothing more than a woman who’d just tumbled from the bed of a gifted lover. “Excellent job. Very stiff. I keep punching, and it doesn’t give. Truly rigid, truly.”
“Really,” said Keylinn.
“Oh, yeah. The program has a forced neurosis, one of the sickest things I’ve ever seen.” She paused. “Did I say sick? I meant slick. Although that, too.”
She disappeared again. Spider looked at Keylinn.
“Don’t ask me,” said Keylinn.
At ten hundred hours Cities time Cirrus came in and said hoarsely, “Cracked, jobbers. Finished, complit, blown into bonz dust.”
Keylinn called Adrian. Then she said to Cirrus, “You’re sure?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I weren’t sure.” She stretched, her breasts rising and falling as she lifted her arms. Spider stared, fascinated. “Lovely subprogram, not squishy at all. There’s always fat, always softness somewhere, always dead-ends and things not well-considered. Not this. Every piece interlocks. Privilege to destroy. Know the creator?”
“Somewhat,” said Keylinn.
“Still living? The Center personality was only copyrighted two years ago.”
“So far as I know.”
“When you see him or her, tell them I’d sleep with them if I were younger and stupider.”
“Ah,” said Keylinn, who wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not.
Spider said, “He’ll be coming back to the Diamond pretty soon. You could hang around for a day or two and meet him, if you don’t have another assignment.”
“Thanks,” she yawned and did another stretch, “but I’ve already met him. A customization job is better than a psych-profile.” She reached for her jacket.
Keylinn said, “You’d better wait for Adrian. He has to authorize your pay, in any case.”
They followed her back into the main office. Spider said, “What do you mean, you’ve already met him?”
“Intelligent, cautious, doesn’t talk about himself much? Not exactly an optimist? Wouldn’t trust his mother?”
“That’s amazing,” said Spider.
“Elementary,” she beamed, “if you’ve been poking around in his head for the last few hours. Look: Most security programs have booby traps. You expect it, they don’t want people to tamper with them, right?”
“All right,” said Spider.
The door slid open and Adrian came in. He paused for a moment, taken aback by the girl without any clothes. Keylinn noted that his eyes went straight where Spider’s had.
Cirrus paid no attention, she was in the heart of her obsession. “Well, your friend—maybe I should say your acquaintance—did a tight job. I mean, occasionally the extra-careful will put in two booby traps. How many do you think your friend had?” She paused. “Six. And in order of ascending difficulty. It’d take a sharp person even to spot the fifth one. And, of course, by the time you find it, you’re so demoralized you could spend the rest of your life looking for the sixth. Which of course is the trap.”
“How do you mean?” asked Adrian.
She turned her attention to him. “There no sixth. The door is open now. Just push the damned button.”
Adrian glanced over at the vault. “How do you know?”
“It’s my judgment, cyr. I just think that the irony of someone’s having the key and being too afraid to use it would appeal to the mind that created this program.”
“Then all we have to go on is your feeling,” said Adrian slowly.
“That’s all you ever had to go on, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t suppose,” said Adrian, “that you’d like to open it yourself?”
“Not in my job description, your highness.” She put on Keylinn’s jacket and picked up the cape. “In fact, maybe you could wait till I reach the Transport area before you do anything rash.”
Adrian smiled back at her, but it was not the type of smile, thought Keylinn, that she herself would like to receive. “You’ve got a lot of faith in your own abilities, for someone who’s running out in the middle of a job.”
“The job’s over, cobby, I just said—”
“It’s not over if it’s not disarmed,” said Adrian.
“Then open it,” said Cirrus coldly. And she waited.
Adrian went over to the door and pushed the button. The door swung open, and you could hear four breaths being let out.
“There you are,” said Cirrus, a trifle shakily. “No problem. As I said.”
Adrian laughed. “As you said,” he agreed. “You’ll find eight thousand Empire units in the Commons Bank waiting for you.”
“We only agreed on five thousand,” she said.
“A bonus,” said Adrian, “for having the guts to stay. Corporal Hastings, escort our visitor to the Transport area.”
He removed the malachite box.
“Well,” said Spider, “it was nice meeting you.”
“You, too,” said Cirrus. “You’re nice people, for religious freaks.”
“Thank you,” said Spider.
They waited for the shortie’s grid to go on-line.
Cirrus said, “And I’m glad to see your friend has one flaw, anyway.”
“What’s that?” asked Spider.
“Ego. He’s not used to having people who can follow his tracks. He didn’t expect anybody to get past the fifth trap.”
“I see,” said Spider. “So you could pick it out so quickly, because it’s your weak point, too.”
She turned and looked at him, wide-eyed. He said, “You didn’t leave the room when you had the chance. And you might have been wrong, you know.”
She stared, and then laughed. It was involuntary laughter, straight from her soul, and it passed quickly. She said, “Thank you, Corporal. It’s never the things we know about ourselves that bring us down, is it?”
Chapter 46
Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back
When gold and silver
