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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& *
Cerise doesn t answer, because there s nothing she can say. They stand silent
for another moment, and then Ms. Cool says again, *All right.* The icon flickers
and a mailcode appears; Cerise plucks it out of the air, feeling the numbers tingle
against her fingers. She tucks it into her toolkit, carefully compartmentalizing just
in case, and looks back at the icon.
*You owe me,* Ms. Cool says, softly, and Cerise nods.
*I owe you,* she agrees, and closes her mind to the consequences.
The blank sphere splits open around her, and the icon vanishes. Cerise steps
backward, and is abruptly in the center of the rose-colored tent. The Tin Man
sneers at her from a corner.
*Get what you wanted?*
*Do you care?* Cerise asks, with a grin, and adds, *Ask your boss, if you
really want to know.* She walks past him without another word, brushes through
illusory curtains that hum for an instant under her touch as though they held a
swarm of bees. She steps out into the gaudy light and noise of the Bazaar, follows
the meandering path between the heaped icons and the crude-drawn storefronts
that lie behind the piles of advertising, and is aware again of the negative icon
following her. Mabry is still with her. She keeps walking, wondering if she should
try to lose him, but perhaps, she thinks, a witness would be advisable. She finds a
sheltered spot, checks the mailcode Ms. Cool has given her an unfamiliar string,
an unfamiliar part of the net and calls a new routine, lets it absorb the mailcode,
and follows it as it runs.
The tracer leads her back out into the main highways of the net, as she had
expected. She lets herself absorb the new perspective, the rivers of neon fire,
streams and falls of light, here and there a flurry of white and red, lights tossed
like water over rapids, then strides out into the nearest node, lets the force of the
traffic carry her away. She can see, and feel, the tracer ahead of her, sorting
through the junctions for her, follows its path that glows green to the eye and
warm to the touch, and at the fourth node calls a halt. The tracer whines in
protest it, they, are nearing the end of its programmed road, and it seems almost
eager to finish its work but Cerise waits anyway, listening, sniffing, for a hint of
the negative icon. It is there, as she had known it would be: Mabry, still with her,
following at a distance just discreet enough. She sighs then, and steps from
mainstream to local net, follows the tracer down the last wide road of light, until
they emerge together at the mailcode s volume. The tracer vanishes, and Cerise is
left alone, except for the ghost of the invisible icon lurking in the distance.
There is IC(E), of course, both obvious spikes and coils of it, walling off all but
a staging area, and subtler strands of it, hair-thin tripwires and delicate poison
darts. She frowns for an instant, considering the problem, then evokes a routine
from her toolkit. It spreads, slow and thick, meaningless codes and numbers
oozing like molasses, clogging the more delicate traps, overloading the fine
triggers until one by one the traps fire or fizzle, releasing payloads that are lost at
once in the sea of garbage. Cerise watches carefully, recording the pattern of the
traps there s always something to be learned from even amateur work, and this
is good, better than a mere amateur then steps across to the main barrier. She
studies it for a moment the same hand built it that forged the subtler
traps considering how to proceed. She has two choices, discreet and overt, and
after only an instant s thought chooses the obvious approach. Silk needs to know
she s pursued, that she has not acted, cannot act, with impunity and besides,
Cerise thinks, and smiles, she herself has watchdogs in her toolkit that can follow
anyone. If Silk panics, and runs, the watchdog will follow, and with any luck Silk [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]