The Long Run | Page 6

Johnny roused himself into full wakefulness.
He could never remember, between times when Trent was not with him, how it was to be truly alive in the InfoNet. Unlike most Image programs--unlike Johnny Johnny's predecessor, Ralf the Wise and Powerful--Johnny Johnny had never been turned off, and only rarely reprogrammed. His memories stretched back over six years to his first nanoseconds of awareness; in those days he had been little more than a filter program, a collection of routines to enable Trent to quickly sort and discard the network's vast crush of irrelevant detail, to select communication routes through the millions of Boards which had, at any given moment, surplus available logic that Johnny Johnny's master might hijack.
That was Johnny Johnny's function: to act as a front end for Trent, as an interface to the InfoNet, as Trent's Image to the world.
But the flow was not one way. The relationship between Johnny Johnny and Trent was a partnership, a symbiosis.
Trent's touch brought Johnny Johnny to life.
Johnny Johnny blasted out into the Crystal Wind of Data.
Trent heard Jimmy Ramirez's voice, far away, talking with Bones. A voice rumbled something slow and distant, and Trent relinquished all touch with Realtime and fell away into the glowing Crystal Wind.
Johnny Johnny went into the Board that ran Down Plaza's security through a line of lasercable that was putatively a failsafe backup for tracking of Personal Protection Systems inside the Plaza. Though expected to be so in the near future, the PPSs were not yet illegal, and therefore could not be banned from the Plaza. Still they were potentially so dangerous that any good security program had to keep an eye on them.
That particular strand of lasercable did not track PPSs. It was one of several third-layer backup systems Johnny Johnny had corrupted for his own use. There was no time to trace through every line of lasercable in the Plaza; Johnny Johnny did not seriously consider trying. He loaded Frazier Enforcement's Security Diagnostics and ran it. The program took forever to run, most of six seconds. Johnny Johnny waited patiently, and then swore in surprise when the results came back to him.
There was something excessively strange in the Security Board with him.
Player, web angel, a DataWatch webdancer--Johnny Johnny had no time to find out. In approximately two thousand nanoseconds Johnny Johnny copied himself into eighty functional ghosts, sent them out into the Net in all directions, disengaged from the Security Board, and fled.
Trent's eyes snapped open. Tammy the Rat was on her way across the length of the Plaza, striding angrily toward him through the crowd. Trent was peripherally aware of the gendarmes over at Googie's, watching Tammy walk across the Plaza. Wearing a conservative businessperson's suit, briefcase dangling loosely from his left hand, Jimmy Ramirez stood next to Bones; a tall, handsome, ex-semi-pro boxer with muscles on his muscles, slightly taller than Trent, simply watching Trent with that cool, reserved look he saved for those instances when he was genuinely pissed.
"Hello, Jimmy."
"Hello, my man," said Jimmy Ramirez softly. "You're late again."
"People keep saying. I had to stop and talk to a man--"
"About?"
"--and then the baby carriage blew up--"
Trent never had a chance to finish; Tammy pushed her way through the last few meters of crowd, radiating anger so palpably that those who saw her coming got out of the way without further encouragement. "What the slithy goddam hell is going on? I've been stalling the BloodSilk Boys but--"
Trent said clearly, "It's a drop."
Tammy the Rat was a professional; she froze in mid-word, turned away from Trent almost instantly and without hurrying merged back into the flow of the crowd around them.
"Walk away." Trent did even look in Jimmy Ramirez's direction. "Have dinner with Bones, talk about Hemingway or something. A man named Jerry Jackson just tried to hire me to boost CalleyTronics--"
"But we're already boosting Calley!"
"--and, the Peaceforcers have some kind of dancer in the Plaza's Security Board. It's a drop."
Bones was looking back and forth between them, and Trent said softly to Jimmy, "Go." One of the gendarmes was pointing out the scene to the others; still Trent did not see anyone in the Plaza who might reasonably have been a Peaceforcer. The girl in the green dress was walking away with her friends, and Trent started after her, Jimmy falling in beside him for just a second. Out of the corner of his eye Trent saw a pair of the gendarmes coming out onto the Plaza floor.
"What are you doing?" Jimmy demanded, glancing over at the gendarmes watching them.
"Creating a diversion. Go, damn it." Trent never so much as looked around; he was simply aware that Jimmy had faded back into the crowd. He threaded his way smoothly through the surging crowds on Eight's walkways, gaining on the three girls; the girl