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hum of traffic on the feeder fly-way that ran less than two kilometers from the
compound.
Inside the residents entrance, the community hall was as disorderly as ever, the
walls papered with notices and children s art, but quiet: most of the other inhabitants
were already at work or school. Trouble went down the long corridor and out into
the main room, bright with the sunlight that streamed in through the skylights. The
glass was set on clear today, and the plain wooden chairs and benches in the public
lobby seemed to glow in the warm light. The dining room was closed, of course, but
the coffee machine was still active. She punched her codes into the news-service
dispenser, and poured herself a cup of coffee while the machine whirred to itself and
finally spat half a dozen closely printed sheets. She collected the thin papers,
squinting at the print the machine s ribbon needed changing, and she made a
mental note to take care of that later and nearly ran into Oba Alvarez, one of the
co-op s half-dozen potters and a member of the management committee. He smiled
at her, rather vaguely, and headed on into the management office.
Trouble shook her head, nearly spilling her coffee, and started back toward her
condo. Dory Gustafson, busy draping a photoprint stand with a length of treated
cloth, looked up long enough to call a greeting, but did not pause in her work.
Trouble waved the papers at her. The co-op still seemed vaguely unreal to her,
especially after her days in the city. She knew better than to be nostalgic for the
dangers, the hovering fear, the adrenaline edge that the chance of random violence
gave to the simplest things, but she still had trouble quite believing in the co-op s
basic niceness. It was easier when they were having trouble with the zoning
boards, or the bills, or fighting about a new member s work: she could deal with all
of that almost better than she could cope with the good times.
She shook her head again, unlocking the condo s door, and went into the kitchen.
She still had the monthly accounting to prepare for the sheriff s office not a
particularly pleasant task at the best of times, and doubly not after van Liesvelt s
news. Part of her obligation as the co-op s syscop was to keep a log of local net
usage, and to watch out for any attempts either to crack her system or, more likely,
to use it as a springboard to other, richer nodes. It was a painstaking job at the best
of times, and usually involved hunting down two or three individual members to see
if they remembered doing certain jobs. This time, though& this time, she would
have to check her own records very carefully, and maybe do some judicious editing
before she turned them over to the sheriff. She made a face, put the rest of her
coffee in the microwave for later, and started down the stairs to her workspace.
The big display board flickered to life at her touch, showing only normal activity,
familiar iconage. A CADset was up and running, Natalie Dreyer was on one of her
interminable excursions to the university libraries, and someone Rikki,
probably was running the story-sculpture program that took almost as much space
as the graphics programs. Her routine checks were all in place, watchdogs lurking
dormant: nothing new there. If anything changed, if anyone tried anything out of the
ordinary, her watchdogs would notice and alert her.
She made a face, impatient with herself, and spun her chair to face the board,
slipping the cord into place. Instantly the world hazed around her, sparks and
shadow overwriting her vision, the ghost of new and unrelated sensations tingling
along her nerves. She ignored the feelings, reached for her keyboard, and typed the
sequence that changed its mode from standard to the specialized format that allowed
her to control the brainworm s settings. She hit a second sequence, and then her
private code, the password that gave her access to the internal account. An instant
later a light flared, and a new window popped into existence, displaying the
brain-worm s virtual controls. She sighed it was much more fun working fully
wired, but the brainworm inevitably leaked some feedback into the system; a good
syscop could tell whether or not another netwalker was on the wire and moved the
virtual levers to damp down the input. The tingling faded, and the lights that floated
between her and the screen dimmed slightly, until she was looking at a display that
was almost what any other netwalker would see. She made another face, and
touched a final icon to set the changes. Then, dismissing the brainworm s controls,
she turned her attention to the monthly accounts.
She pored over the accounts for three hours without finding anything out of the
ordinary. Her own monitors had been doing their job, erasing any signs of her
occasional fully wired forays onto the main nets, and there was no sign that this new
Trouble, whoever it was, had been using her nodes as a staging area. She shrugged
to herself, and touched the keys that would drop her notes into a working file for
later revision into the sort of report the local sheriff appreciated, then leaned back in
her chair, stretching to work out the kinks. The iconage of the co-op at work danced
in front of her eyes, and was echoed a moment later on the main display: Dreyer still
in the libraries, two CADsets working now, Mineka Konstenten running a blocking
program. Her eyes lingered on Konstenten s icon, flickering from pale blue to a blue
dark as midnight as her demand on the system changed. Konstenten was still an
enigma, had come over one night to see the computers, stayed until morning, and
had neither returned nor allowed the subject to be raised again. Trouble s smile
shifted with the memory, became rueful. She still didn t know how she herself felt
about the whole thing. Konstenten was a good friend, a clever designer, and an
attractive woman; a vest she had made, Japanese patchwork of black-and-white
fabrics, hung on Trouble s wall as a work of art when it wasn t being worn. But she
was not precisely what Trouble wanted in a lover or at least not now, not
here and, all in all, it was probably smarter to live celibate just a little while longer&
Which was where that train of thought always ended these days. Trouble stretched
again, making herself concentrate on the pull of muscles across her shoulders, then
laced her fingers together and pulled until the tendons tightened all the way into her
wrists. If the brain-worm had been fully operational, the movement would have sent
feedback into the net, a flicker of sensation translated as light and sound, tangible
even to the unwired masses& She turned her attention back to the screen.
Indy?
Trouble looked up, startled, touched keys to open the intercom. Yeah?
There s a couple of suits who want to see you, Gustafson went on. Oba s got
them in the main hall.
Trouble swallowed hard, the copper taste of panic filling her throat, and kept her
voice steady only with an effort. What sort of suits? She made her hands move on
the keyboard, saving her work and putting her system to sleep, leaving only the
watchdogs loose on the household net.
Something to do with computers, I think, Gustafson said. They said they
wanted to talk to the syscop.
Trouble let her breath out slowly, reached for the remote that would signal her if
there were any anomalies in the system, and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. If
they just wanted to talk to the syscop, it might be all right, be just another routine
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