Mars Plus

Chapter 13 Shots in the Dark

Harry Orthis came bolt upright out of a sound sleep. He looked around in the utter darkness of his hotel room, trying to determine what had awakened him.

Nothing.

If the intrusion had been some kind of noise, it wasn't repeated. He listened for a minute or more—counting out his suddenly accelerated heartbeats and dividing by two for good measure—but still he heard nothing.

Orthis stared into black space with perfectly sleep-adapted eyes, seeking shadows. After a moment's concentration, he could sense the room's terminal screen by the faintest of residual glows from its phosphors. A lighted diode, buried in its keyboard circuitry and still active, pebbled the ceiling with oblong shadows: the edges of key blocks and plunger switches matrixed above the underlit board. The room's outer door, for all the brush-stripping at its edges, oudined itself in golden slivers leaking in from the hallway. The charge light on his battery-powered shaver flooded the bathroom with a green blaze.

But none of it moved. None of it would have brought him awake.

'Time?" Orthis asked his personal chrono, lying on the nightstand.

"One twenty-seven, ayem," replied its neutral voice. On a whim, Orthis had once programmed the chrono to be perfectly indeterminate as either male or female, alive or mechanical. It offered him no comfort now.

Harry Orthis knew his own sleep cycles. Based on the time he had turned out his reading light and rolled over, he could expect to wake up twice, briefly, at around two-fifteen and four-thirty. And then he would barely open his eyes, not even raise his head—let alone come upright on the bed like this.

He wiped his palms on the bare skin of his chest. There they picked up an even heavier slick of sweat. He scrubbed his fingers against the outside of the blanket, matting its curried fuzz.

The room wasn't all that hot.

So this had to be a cold sweat.

He pushed back the covers and, without turning on the light, walked over to the terminal, seated himself before it.

"System."

"Yes, Counselor Orthis?" the local machine replied, voice only.

"Connect me with Demeter Coghlan. She's at the Golden Lotus."

"Miss Coghlan is not in her assigned room," a new voice, higher level, informed him.

"Find her for me, will you?"

"That function is not offered as part of regular programming." To aid him, the screen lit up with a menu of the system's interpersonal contact routines. It was a short list.

"Mephisto ... locate the girl."

A pause. Harry Orthis could imagine the grid checking the trace images collected from hundreds or possibly thousands of video monitors, the scent indices from just as many gas sniffers, the compressed echoes from a like number of public earjacks. The machines would be frantically coordinating their raw data, searching for a clue, a trail, a present position.

"Miss Coghlan is not currently in the Tharsis Montes complex," the grid announced finally. The screen went a neutral gray.

"How did she leave? And when?"

"There is no record of her leaving."

"Catalog the sales of intercolony transit vouchers during the past twenty-four hours," he instructed. "Also, rentals of pressure suits at all the public locks."

"We repeat, there is no record of her leaving, by any exit."

"Interesting.... Give her last-known position."

"The restaurant Chez Guerrero, Commercial Unit 1/16/2." The screen offered standard tourist photos of the inside of a two-star eatery. It had tables too close together, a hard tile floor, and lots of white plaster on the walls, with reproductions of old paintings reflecting a Mexican flavor, maybe American Southwest.

"When was she there?"

"Yesterday, between eighteen-thirty hours and twenty hundred hours."

"And after that?" Orthis prompted.

"After that, Miss Coghlan was not in the complex."

"With no record at all of her leaving. Yes, I get it." He sat with his chin on his chest, thinking. The montage of restaurant views clicked off, showing a blank screen again. "Did she eat dinner alone? Was anyone with her?"

"Lole Mitsuno." The screen displayed a golden head with level, gray eyes. The man had a good chin and reeked of hormones.

"Don't know him."

"Mitsuno is a Mars citizen, born on planet, and is currently employed as a Grade Two Hydrologist with the Tharsis Montes Resources Department. He and Miss Coghlan have been tallied together on several occasions during the past eight days. Our module Y-4 Administrative Terminal in his department is now reviewing the relationship."

"Prepare a summary for me," Orthis instructed. Then, as an afterthought: "Does he have a record?"

"Please specify." The screen showed a kaleidoscopic moire pattern in pinks and greens—emblematic of confusion.

"Like, a criminal record? Perhaps for psychopathic sexual deviancy, child molestation, abduction, rape, that sort of thing?"

"No such charges have been filed against him," the grid replied primly.

"No, I guess not.... Interesting."

"Further instructions?" the machine asked.

"Not at this time. If I think of anything, I will let you know."

"As will we...."

With a sudden blip the screen went dark. Not just blank, but completely turned off, with only the flush of its dying phosphors to light him to bed.

"Ah! There you are!"

Demeter Coghlan was crossing the foyer outside the door of her hotel room. It was her first step out into the open, it seemed, after more than a kilometer of creeping warily from apex to apex around three long walls of every public hexcube on Level Four. The reason for her caution was simple: here it was the near side of morning, going on six o'clock and breakfast time, and she was still dressed in her raspberry microdress, a pair of black heels eighty-five millimeters high, and nothing much else. Except for a contented smile and a rat's nest of brown hair that clawed at her neck and draggled down her bare back. Not a very wholesome picture.

So the jolly call stabbed at her, like a thief on the end of a policeman's shockrod.

Demeter turned to find Sun II Suk seated on the little banquette that jutted from one side of the foyer hexcube. He sat like a chubby schoolboy, hands folded in his broad lap, legs crossed at the ankle and tucked back under his bulk. A Schoolboy Buddha, she thought to herself.

"Oh! Hello, Sukie." She could feel his eyes inch-worming over every centimeter of her exposed skin. Looking for what? Sucker marks?

"You were out late." He made a statement, not a question.

"Yes."

"I tried to call you. I got no answer, anywhere. I looked all over for you. No one could find you."

"I was visiting a friend."

"Doesn't he have a terminal?"

"We... didn't have it hooked up."

'That was most inconsiderate. I really wanted to talk with you."

"Oh? What about?"

Sun's face instantly went blank: the Schoolboy Buddha caught out in a lie. His lower lip briefly sagged, his eyelids drooped, his shoulders slumped. Although Suns confusion lasted less than half a second, Demeter definitely saw it. Within the space of a wink, however, he brightened and pulled himself together.

"To talk with you about the new team from N-ZED."

"I've met them," she replied. "What about it?"

Pause. "Do you think they represent a danger to either of our positions?"

"You called me at—what? the middle of the night?—to ask me that?"

"It was two o'clock. I had trouble sleeping."

"Bad conscience?"

"No. Concern for you, my dear."

"I can take care of myself."

"These North Zealanders are not what they seem. Their development project, Canyonlands, is not what it pretends to be."

"This is supposed to be news?"

"I only want to help you. For example, study their new orbiting power station. You will see that it is far larger—three times the capacity—than their proposed energy consumption. That is not a fact you can check with any public source, but I offer it to you in order to cement our alliance."

Sun's face was turned partly away from her, chin up, brow relaxed, like a moon at three quarters, concerned elsewhere. For a long moment he displayed the truthful schoolboy, the benevolent Buddha, with no spells to cast, nothing to urge. The bubbling spy of their previous encounter was nowhere to be seen in him.

"Well, I appreciate your help." It sounded lame in her own ears.

Then she noticed that, with every other breath, Sun's eyes flickered to betray him. They winked sideways, crawling over her white flesh, measuring, tasting, gauging clefts and indentations that they could not reach from whatever they could see exposed. So even now he remained the adventitious lecher.

"I have to go," she said suddenly, walking to her door. Demeter brushed her fingertips together, to remove any grunge from her print pattern, and pushed her thumb against the lockplate.

The Korean stood up, moved toward her.

"I can open it myself." Demeter turned her shoulders protectively.

Halfway across the foyer, Sun 11 Suk stopped. His palms came forward in a half-shrug. Something of the old smile showed on his face.

"Really, I do not fancy European women," he lied.

"Well then, good morning. And, um, thanks for the advice."

He nodded, turned, and lumbered off down the corridor.

Demeter slipped into her room and slammed the door behind her. She wondered how long she'd have to wait, to make sure he was truly gone, before she dared head down to the hotel's common bathroom for a long, hot shower. And be damned to the meter rate!

Demeter picked up a toasted bagel—it was one of the few breads that the Martians prepared really well—and spread it with unsaturated oil that had been emulsified and was even vaguely yellow. What she really wanted, of course, was a big gob of cream cheese and a slab of smoked fish, salmon if they could get it, with maybe some onions and capers. Yum!

Trouble was, Mars didn't have any fish, except for a pair of experimental carp in the hydroponics lab, and they were completely off limits until the gene pool expanded. No capers, either. And the onions the colonists did grow were of the long, green shallot variety—not the big, purple slabs of Bermuda she craved.

No poppyseeds on her bagel, for that matter.

"There you are, Demeter!"

She looked up and spilled her tea. Thick liquid, stiff with sugar, ran out from the cup and over the tablecloth in a puddle held together by surface tension until absorption by the cloth's fibers overcame its front edge. Then the tea soaked into the white material, flattening into a muddy, brown delta.

"Damn it!" she cried, bringing up her napkin and fluttering it over the mess.

"I'm terribly sorry," Harry Orthis, the North Zealand analyst, said. He tried to help, pulling out his handkerchief, but she waved him away. "I guess I startled you," he added, as an apology.

"I guess you did."

"Didn't mean to, of course. But, you see, I've been looking all over for you, Demeter. So it was a shock to find—"

"Jesus, you too?" Demeter growled.

"Excuse me?"

"I spend one night on the town without a chaperon, and everyone calls out the dogs." Demeter wondered what was going on, and whether this meeting with Orthis was as accidental as it seemed. "Why didn't you leave a message in my room?"

"You weren't in your room. Nowhere near your hotel, in fact. I checked." He took the liberty of seating himself in the empty chair across from her, avoiding the sopping edge of the tablecloth. Orthis lifted the white porcelain teapot, righted her cup and saucer, gestured with the spout. "More tea?"

"Yes, please. . . . You know, I do return calls, Harry. What was so urgent it couldn't wait?"

Orthis s face went blank. Tea dribbled out of the upended pot until it threatened to overflow the cup.

"Harry?" she prompted.

"Yes, sonny, just thinking..."

"You wanted to see me? Last night? Hey?"

"Of course, it was about your plan—or the Texahoma Martian Development Corporation's plan, actually—for terraforming this planet. It will destroy the atmosphere, you know"

"Not to mention flooding out some of the lowland valleys," she said distinctly. "Like your Canyonlands project?"

"That's the least of it, Demeter. Crashing asteroids around is sheer lunacy. Abrupt, changes like that would be deadly to more than just the fragile, indigenous life on Mars. The instabilities would destroy the human colonies here now"

Demeter decided to let herself be drawn into speculation. "Why? They're all dug in below ground level and locked up tight. They should withstand a gradual change in atmospheric pressure and composition, happening over some months. More dust in the air—if that's possible—and some added water vapor. Their seals should hold."

"Then consider the winds," Orthis said. "Increasing the moisture and particulate content of the present global pattern will increase its kinetic energy many-fold. And consider the proportion of the Martian economy that takes place out on the surface, or under bubbles of light plastic. Gas drilling, crop planting, minerals exploration, to name just a few. All of that will vanish with your asteroid scheme."

"Well, its just in the talking stages, anyway," Demeter grumped. "It was just an idea."

"A bad one. Terraforming Mars would be a massive boondoggle, lots of effort for very little positive result, plus much danger and alarm. You and I both know that."

"It might get the people back home interested in Mars again."

"At the risk of one hundred percent of the goodwill we've built with the people here."

"Is that why your team was sent up in such a hurry? To defend your project in the Valles against us crazy, asteroid-flinging Texahomans ?"

"Not at all. We simply had a few points to clear up in negotiations."

"Oh?" Coghlan's ears swiveled forward. "Negotiations with whom?"

"Why, the government."

"Isn't any."

"I beg your pardon—?" Orthis had taken one of her bagels and started spreading yellow glop on it when the flat of his knife went sliding across one knuckle. He looked at the shine of grease on his finger, then thoughtfully licked it off. "What do you mean?"

"You've seen the setup here. This place practically runs itself. Everybody's too busy making a living to engage in the higher forms of government. And I have it on good authority that they've no time for diplomats and diplomacy. So, just who is it you were going to meet with?"

"There's a mayor in one of the other colonies," Orthis said defensively.

"At Solis Planum? She's a figurehead. Cuts the ribbon on new tunnel openings. Makes speeches in favor of filtering the air. Gets a budget of about five thousand Neu per annum to operate the chamber of commerce. But that's it. You try to run a deal with her, you'll find she has to refer most of it back to the people who put her in office."

"You've tried?"

"No, I just do my homework. Ludmilla Petrovna doesn't make a move without prior approval."

"So, it's simple. We go for the electorate. We mount a public relations campaign, mold opinion toward our—"

"You don't get it, do you, Harry? There is no 'electorate.' There hasn't been an election in Solis Planum in twenty years."

"What are you trying to tell me?" Orthis asked, seemingly patient.

"You've brought a lot of people up here, right? Planning to negotiate with the Martians, right? Except there's no one to sit down at the table with, is there? Speaking of boondoggles, this is a helluva long way to come on a jaunt." Demeter thought of Nancy Cuneo, who had arrived only a day or two after Coghlan herself and not much ahead of Harry's more public entourage. Why were they suddenly scrambling on site? Instead she asked, "Is your intelligence on the local situation so bad you didn't know all this'?"

"We—" he replied slowly. Too slowly. "—were led to believe that proper accommodations would be made."

"Led? By whom?"

"I really think that's out of your purview, Demeter."

"By your subcontractors in the Valles? By some local acting as your agent? Who?"

"And why are you here, Demeter?' Orthis countered.

"I'm on vacation."

"This is a hellacious long way to come for a change of scene," he tossed back to her. "Especially for someone with diplomatic training—•"

"I never completed my credits."

"—and secret credentials granted by the Sovereign State of Texahoma—"

"That's not true!"

"—including provisional U.N. immunity, guaranteed by the signature of Alvin Bertrand Coghlan, member of the General Assembly."

"My grandfather can be overly protective."

"So it would seem." Orthis gave a world-weary shake of his head. "And perhaps you're planning to do things, deniably in his name, that require such protection?"

"Jesus," she breathed. "Well, Cuneo and the Korean have it figured anyway. I'm here to watch you, of course."

"Watch us do what?" He was smiling. But it was friendly now, not at all in triumph.

"Take the Valles Marineris away from us. Our computer projections—" Something about computers and their predictions pricked at her memory, but the thought faded out in her rush to explain. "—showed that your development work there would tend to tip the legal balance in favor of your claims stemming from the Potanter Expedition."

"Canyonlands is a purely commercial development," he said. "Our interest is solely for profit. The inhabitants will be native-born Martians, or immigrants from all Earth nations, owing allegiance under the appropriate U.N. charters. There was never any thought of making them citizens of North Zealand, either de jure or de facto. Our citizenship requirements are far too rigid to allow for that."

"Uh-huh." Coghlan was prepared to disbelieve anything he said. "And if Canyonlands is so commercial, why are you building an orbiting power station three times the size of your projected end-phase requirements?"

"Who told you that orbiter was ours ?"

Demeter shook her head, beaming at him.

"More computer projections?"

"A little bird," she offered teasingly.

"All right," Orthis went on, "if you know so much about the administrative setup here on Mars, and if we were going to take the Valles away from you—whom did you think we were negotiating with?"

Demeter could feel her own face go blank.

After too long a pause, she heard herself admit in a small voice: "I don't know. . . . Really, it just. . . never occurred to me."