The Long Run | Page 7

in the green leather dress still held her purse by its clasped top. An adholo flared and he swerved slightly to pass through it; under the cover of scarlet laser light he pulled the emblade from its waterproofed hiding place behind his belt buckle and turned it on. The emblade was only three molecules wide at its edge; it would cut through ferrocrete as though it were paper, and with some muscle behind it would cut even sheet monocrystal. It was completely safe; the blade itself dissolved instantly into a fine dust at the first touch of liquid--say, blood.
The cops were only thirty meters or so away; Trent increased his pace slightly, came alongside the three girls and did the thing in one movement, with the ease of long years of practice: jostled the girl roughly enough to make sure the gendarmes saw it, muttered a brief apology and smiled at the girl in what might be taken for slight embarrassment, flicked the emblade up to touch the side of the purse, cut, reached through the open flap and with two fingers pulled the wallet free, switched the emblade off, dropped the haft to the ground and gave it a good kick and was turning away with the stolen wallet, the exercise done flawlessly, back toward the gendarmes, when a delicate feminine hand closed around his forearm with amazing strength.
The girl said softly, in a voice pitched to go no further than Trent's ears, "I'd like my wallet returned."
Trent turned back to her and for the first time actually looked at the girl's face. The crowd was clearing away around them, a small open space with Trent and the girl at the center. She was fifteen or so, with clean simple features framed by long, straight black hair, with green eyes that were even brighter than the dyed leather dress she wore. Trent said, "Sure," and gave the wallet back. The girl looked at him curiously, head tilted slightly to one side, a puzzled look taking hold upon her features.
Trent said softly, "How did you know I took it?"
A deep baritone voice ten meters behind Trent, off to his left, said "Ma'am, stand away, please."
"Really," said Trent. "I did that perfectly."
The baritone voice boomed, "Stand away!"
The girl had not answered Trent. Trent said, as the seconds ticked by, "If you're not going to answer me, you'd better do what he says. He'll stun you too if you don't, and it's not pleasant. Believe me."
The girl nodded slowly, and took a single step backward, wallet in her hand. Her eyes never left Trent, and the puzzled look did not waver.
Her eyes.
"Oh," said Trent. The girl took another step backward, and another.
Bright green eyes, like Carl Castanaveras', or Jany McConnell's--
Emerald eyes.
Trent said, "Denice?"
Her eyes widened in shock.
The cops shot him.

3.
"I don't understand," she said to Trent, that February day in 2062, "why you work so hard at it."
The three of them lay in the grass in the center of the park across the street from the Chandler Complex: the dark-haired green-eyed twins, and one blonde boy with pale blue eyes. David lay beneath one of the trees, hiding from the hazy noontime sun with a book; Denice and Trent sat beneath the tree next to David's, dancing in the InfoNet.
"Because I'm a Player," Trent replied.
Denice Castanaveras sighed in frustration. It frustrated her to know that most of the telepaths in the Complex could have touched Trent's thoughts easily, to know that two years from now, when the Change came for her, she would be able to do the same; and that today she was limited by the clumsiness of words in her attempt to understand something that was very important to the closest friend she had in the world.
"Not a webdancer, Denice, a Player."
She peered down at the portaterm Trent worked on. Seven years later, after the perfection of tracesets that required neither hypnosis nor biofeedback nor drugs for normal users to operate, the device would be a quarter the size, lack a keyboard, incorporate the functions of infocards, and be called a handheld--but the primary function was the same, a device to interface humans with the global Information Network.
Jacked into the MPU slot at the side of the portaterm was an optical computer about the size of a makeup key; the coprocessor that held Trent's Image, Ralf the Wise and Powerful. "Life can be described," said Ralf in a completely human voice, "and described surprisingly well, in terms of the growth of information content. Correct me if I'm wrong, Boss, but that's what the Player's Litany means: from the Crystal Wind came data, and from data came life."
Trent nodded. "That's why I want an inskin."
"What's why?"
... to expand your sensory bandwidth by an order of magnitude, to do the things an