Mars Plus

Chapter 18 Animals in a Trap

"Roger ..." The vision of Dorrie appeared before him, in shorts and halter, with her dark hair blowing long streamers against the prevailing direction of the ever-present wind. It was nighttime in the bowl of sand, but that made no difference to his first wife's image. She glowed with unseen sunlight, a little bubble of silver and gold that cloaked her torso and flowed like St. Elmo's fire out along the arm that she pointed toward the horizon.

"What do you want?" he asked tiredly. These visions of her had been coming more often lately. Originally devised by Alexander Bradley and Don Kayman, they were supposed to push buttons of recognition and desire that he no longer had. If Roger could reprogram her out of the backpack computer, he would. But Dome's face and voice were ingrained in his survival mechanisms at the deepest levels. He would probably make himself blind and deaf if he tried to eradicate her now.

"Go to Tharsis Montes," she ordered in that same sweet voice.

"Why?"

"Go to Tharsis Montes."

"I do need a reason, Dorrie. After all, you're not real."

"Go, Roger."

"Is something wrong with my—?"

"Run, Roger."

Before he could frame any more questions, his feet had stopped plodding across the uneven surface. They were poised for flight, his knees bent. What the hell was going on? He felt his body turning, aligning with an internal radio-imaging compass that had already picked out Tharsis Montes. It lay over the horizon, at the end of Dorries arm.

"Run, Roger!"

And before he could stop himself, his feet were churning, his legs scissoring, his body hurdling over the valley's scattered rocks, his toes touching the ground only at ten-meter intervals, and then leaving only the shallowest of pockmarks in the sand. His mechanical legs and body were moving of their own accord. Dorrie had vanished. And Roger Torraway, a mere wisp of program operating within a program, was suddenly very much alone.

Demeter ran through the tunnels of Tharsis Montes, knowing secretly that she had nowhere to go. If she went down, going deeper into the complex, then eventually she would come to dead ends and cul-de-sacs, dark places where she could be cornered, captured, and killed. While, if she went up, climbing toward the domes and airlocks on the surface, her only choices were to surrender or don a pressure suit and escape to the planet's surface outside. That would merely be a delaying tactic, she knew, circumscribed by the air supply in the suit's tanks. In the end, she would have to surrender or suffocate.

But as Demeter ran, these thoughts formed only a background patina, a web of possible futures, to a brain that coiled and snared itself on blossoming waves of understanding about the past. Demeter was reliving the last two years in a kaleidoscope of new interpretations.

Fiction: Demeter had decided to visit Mars for a change of scene, in order to recuperate from a bizarre accident in the beauty parlor.

Fact: It was never any kind of accident. The grid's nexus on Earth had arranged for those scissors to slip as surely—she understood it all now!—as the grid had jimmied those early computer projections calling for the Cyborg program that had created Roger Torraway.

And since her "accident," with the introduction of a bunch of neurochips and biologicals into her skull, how many of Demeter's personal decisions had been made for her? Certainly she had never in the past two years been conscious of a wee, small voice whispering "Eat your vegetables," "Study covert diplomacy," "Learn martial arts," and finally "Go to Mars." But that didn't mean a chip-sized artificial intelligence hadn't been monitoring her speech and visual inputs, hitting this neuron or that with near-random jolts of electricity, creating its own little compulsions.

The scenario suddenly explained why she so consistently used the hotel's terminal in interrogation mode—and why she so often fell asleep doing it. Of course, the machine could sieve her memories for anything she had seen and heard during the day; whatever the implanted intelligence hadn't understood, she herself would articulate for the grid's waiting ear.

Fiction: The Texahoma Martian Development Corporation, learning about her planned vacation, had recruited her for a little on-site survey work, a spy mission against the Nordi Zealanders, because she was Alvin Bertrand Coghlan s granddaughter and therefore politically reliable.

Fact: The North Zealanders weren't pursuing any development on Mars that couldn't be studied better from Earth. So why would the TMDC have paid to send her up here in the first place? Because a computer had told them the trip was necessary, of course. And after the name of Demeter Coghlan—whose brains were all nicely fixed up and ready to roll— popped out of the corporation's strategic projections, somebody had remembered that she was Alvin Ber-trand's nearest and dearest. That didn't hurt matters in the slightest, of course. And Demeter had always evaluated well in computerized aptitude tests, of course.

But then, since the North Zealanders weren't doing anything really worth observing up here, why had they sent an entire delegation to negotiate with a putative Martian government about it? The answer to that one was easy, too: Harry Orthis, the N-ZED chief counselor, had suffered a scuba-lung accident in order to have his own brains fixed. He was the grid's backup for Demeter. Sun II Suk, with his electronic hormone pump, was another standby in case she failed.

Failed at what, though?

Well, wasn't it obvious?

Fiction: Demeter had met Lole Mitsuno and Ellen Sorbel by accident, because they just happened to be friends of Jorys.

Fact: Jory was another of the grid's tools, under some kind of direct telepathic control. Anyone could figure that out, and apparently Ellen and Lole already had.

The computer network had been using Jory to get close to them because it suspected whatever they were doing in that secret room would harm the grid and its long-range plans. When Jory struck out—because the rebel group would naturally suspect a Creole and put buffers around him—the computers had created a totally plausible person to meet and fall in with the rebel leaders. She would be an Earth casual, a socially acceptable rich girl, a junior-grade spy who was already launched at a false target, the Valles development. Maybe, the grid must have thought, Ellen and Lole could be lulled into showing her what they were doing.

Demeter s proof for this scenario was in the way she had met Jory. She had asked for—or been under compulsion to seek?—a guide to the Valles Marineris workings, and the grid had sent her that particular Creole.

A second proof was the in the way the machines had covered for her at Wa Lixin s office, during her mandatory physical examination on arrival. The grid knew the rebels were already suspicious of anyone with biomechanical aids, so it had created a phony image of her head on the examining table.

Oh, it was so neat!

The deviousness of the plan took Demeters breath away. With two whole worlds, their entire human populations, and every voice-and-data channel to play with, the grid could write almost any script it wanted. It might have a hundred, a thousand, a million human puppets simultaneously in development, to fit every conceivable consequence of its past and future actions. The Earth nexus probably didn't actually monkey with the cyber in the Travis County Clerk's office that had matched her mother's genotype against her father's during the state-required blood tests, but it must certainly have picked up a few ideas from the exchange. Then the rest of Demeter s life could have easily been redirected through a sequence of file adjustments and crossed wires in various data transfers. Like that course in conversational Russian she took in the eighth grade, because of a computer glitch ...

And damn it! Demeter Coghlan, who didn't like to even talk about sex in front of the machines, had been maneuvered into bed—not once, but twice—by them. Or had the distrust she felt for cybers also been preprogrammed into her brain? That would make sense, of course: it was the ultimate cover for a supposedly clean operative.

Suddenly, nothing she did or said or thought was her own.

Everything was potentially a whisper from the wires in her head.

Demeter understood, finally, that she needed help. She had to find someone who was independent of all this, who stood outside the grid and its skewed information sources, who could make his own decisions.... Roger Torraway.

Or was his name, coming into her mind right then, just another electronic compulsion?

No way to tell.

When instinct won't work, try intellect.

The Cyborg and all his land might be the product of decades-old computer projections, but they had been roaming the deserts of Mars at will ever since. It was well known, among Cyborg watchers, that older models like Torraway could withhold radio communication with the grid—from their end. And he was, in the exchange's very words, "not a token holder on this network." All of this implied he was clean of interference. And he would have an economic interest in joining her side in any war against the machines: she had put him on retainer.

But how could Demeter get in touch with Torraway?

At the moment, she was passing one of the ubiquitous public terminals set into the corridor wall. Was it that simple? Just call him?

But then the grid would know where she was.

It did anyway, tracking the electromagnetic noise coming from the circuits inside her skull. She had no secrets anymore, did she?

Demeter studied and rejected the menu of options. 'Terminal, patch me through to Roger Torraway, wherever he is, whatever he's doing. We have to talk."

"Right away, Miz Coghlan."

That readiness was odd now, wasn't it? Before, when she'd asked...

"Demeter?" The voice was flat and mechanical, with no accent on any syllable. A Cyborg voice, for sure. The screen, however, never did resolve into an image of her interlocutor, not even from stock pixels. Nothing in the archive to display, and no lens on site this time to take any kind of image. Instead, the menu flicked off after a few seconds and displayed a revolving moire pattern. It was almost hypnotic.

"Colonel Torraway? I'm in trouble. I need your help."

"What has happened?"

"I've been mixed up with a group of people who are . . . Well, they're convinced the grid has dropped a digit and is plotting against humanity. Now they think I'm some kind of spy for the machines—"

"Why would they believe that?"

"Because of some chips inside my head, medical prosthetics, that they think have got me under computer control."

"And are you?" He sounded curious. "Under computer control?"

"Christ, I don't know\" Demeter wailed. "I mean, how could I?"

"Too true."

"You're the only person I know who can mediate between diem and the machines. The humans respect you, and the cybers can't touch you ... not really."

Silence on his end.

That was disquieting.

"And you're strong, Colonel. You can protect me, physically, from whatever it is they have planned for me."

"The humans, you mean."

"Yes. They've already killed one supposed spy—the Creole, Jory den Ostreicher."

"Killed him? How?"

"They cut his head open and took out parts of his brain—the electronic parts. I'm afraid they want to do the same thing to me, with my prosthetics. I'm scared, Colonel Torraway."

"I don't know. ..." Cold winds seemed to whistle through the transmitted voice. "None of this appears to be Cyborg business."

"You're human, too, at least in part," she pleaded. "Don't ever forget that."

"Over the years," he continued, "the colonists have grown to resent any intrusion in their affairs from the company of Cyborgs. Why, the last time we—"

Suddenly, Demeter was growing tired and angry with all his dithering. "We have a deal, Colonel!" she snapped. "Your help, in return for funds drawn on the Double Eagle Bank of Austin, Texas. Name your price, convertible into any currency. I'll pay it."

More silence.

"Very well, Demeter," he said at last. "It has been years since I visited the tunnels, and I can't guarantee my presence will have any effect on this generation of humans."

"Just help me, Colonel. Where are you now?"

"Actually, within a few hundred yards of Tharsis Montes. Near the main airlock facility."

"Great! Now—uh—can you let yourself in?"

A hard, ratcheting sound came through the terminal. It might have been a cynical chuckle. "Do you have socket wrenches in your fingertips?"

"Okay, but don't start a leak or something. I'm right outside there."

"Understood. Torraway out."

The terminal's moire pattern folded in on itself, showing the menu display again. Demeter turned away from the wall unit.

"Demeter!"

Lole Mitsuno was charging up the ramp toward her.

She looked around for someplace to run, but his legs were a lot longer than hers.

Lole caught sight of Demeter as he was coming up the ramp near the main airlock. Mitsuno was moderately proud of himself, having figured it out as the only logical destination she could make for, even in her present disturbed state of mind. There she could steal a walker and travel overland to one of the other Martian tunnel communities. Any other course would be foolish, leading her to almost immediate capture.

"Demeter!" he called and picked up his pace.

She turned, as if to run, then paused.

In a moment he was standing in front of her, pinning her against the rock wall, bracketing her upper arms in either hand to block another escape, and keeping mindful of where his groin was in relation to her knees.

"Why did you run like that?" he asked.

"You, Ellen, that doctor! All of you would have killed me, just like Jory, after you found out—"

"Jory isn't dead."

"He sure looked that way."

"No, just deeply unconscious. We needed to get something from his brain, and to do that we had to remove certain appliances—"

"Just like you want to remove them from me."

"No, Demeter. We don't want to hurt—"

"Ellen does! I could see it in her eyes. She hates me now." Demeter was looking wildly around, blink into his eyes, flick down at his chin, wink past his ear, slide up the ramp, like an animal in a trap.

"I swear it isn't so," he said and tried to mean it.

"I'm not going back to that room with you."

"Then where—?"

"Let me go to my hotel. I'll stay right there, locked in if you like, until the next transport leaves for Earth. I won't talk to anyone about anything. I just want to go home." But the crazy shifting around with her eyes went on, flick up the ramp, blink down into the tunnel, like a broken machine on an endless do-loop.

"Demeter . . ."He tried to get her attention. "It's a little late for—"

A pair of hands grabbed Lole's shoulders from behind.

"—tha-ay-ay-at ..." His voice bounced from his chest up to his soft palate as he was pulled bodily away from her, lifted off the tunnel floor, and shaken like a rag. His jaw rattled so that his teeth clicked together and were in danger of cutting his tongue.

Some inborn conditioning saved Lole. Instead of twisting and fighting—and probably dying in the effort—he instead went limp. Dangling with his toes some centimeters off the ground, Mitsuno was held up by two bands of steel that circled his arms. Under his own weight, these bands were beginning to stretch the skin beneath the fabric of his jacket sleeves and gouge into his biceps. In this free moment for reflection, he glanced down at them and saw human-shaped fingers in what looked like tight-fitting black rubber gloves.

Demeter slid away from the wall and walked around Lole, staring up at him with sober intensity—now that she was no longer the trapped animal.

"Don't hurt him, Colonel."

Colonel? Torraway? Why was he inside the complex now? And how did Demeter suddenly know . . . oh, through the grid. Of course.

"You can put me down, sir," Lole said quietly. "I won't bother anyone."

Without a word, the hands lowered Mitsuno smoothly until his feet were flat on the floor and his legs were taking his full weight.

Lole turned to confirm his guess. The Cyborg was bigger than he remembered, more than two meters tall and broad in proportion, with those batlike wings of solar filament quivering above his clean-shaven skull. The faceted eyes regarded him dispassionately.

"Well, Demeter—" Lole shifted his attention to her. "What happens now? Do we both escort you to your hotel?"

"You both will come with me," Colonel Roger Torraway said in a flat, machined voice. It was unaltered by the helium content of the tunnel's atmosphere, but he was pitching it high in an obvious attempt to put them at ease. "I know of a ... a safe place."

Lole glanced at Demeter. Her face registered dismay bordering on shock. Evidently this wasn't in her script.

"Where?' Lole asked, curious.

"A safe place," the Cyborg repeated.

"I think we can find our own way, Colonel," Mitsuno said suavely.

"Thank you, Colonel," Demeter said, inching toward Lole's side. "But I think I want to go to my hotel room now. I appreciate your—"

"You both will come with me to a safe place."

Demeter was now standing practically under his arm, looking up at the Cyborg, as was Lole. Mitsuno felt her fingers spider-dance into his hand and grip it tightly. "He's not... functioning right," she whispered. "He sounds different from before."

Clearly, Demeter didn't know that the Cyborg's aural range exceeded the human by at least a hundred percent. Torraway's ears would pick up her heartbeat, let alone her whispers. Yet he failed to react to what she said. The redly glinting eyes showed no awareness of either of them. He stood like a statue. Maybe, in the past million or so nanoseconds, Torraway had forgotten all about them.

Lole decided to test him. Keeping a grip on Demeter's hand, he began to slide sideways, to the right around the Cyborg, and so down the ramp.

With a flickering motion of hips and knees and elbows that defied the eye, the Colonel repositioned himself to block their escape.

Still smiling, staying loose, Lole drifted off to the left, dragging Demeter after him.

Flicker-shift, and the Cyborg was there again, standing across their main line of retreat. He moved like a defensive guard blocking the ball handler in a game of basketball, or like a collie dog heeling a pair of errant sheep, never actually touching Lole and Demeter, but always remaining psychologically poised between them and their goal.

After two such faked movements, Lole was ready to quit and resume negotiations. But apparently Torraway had other ideas. Suddenly he was herding them—not just guarding against their escape. He kept them in play by pushing his angular body first at Lole, then at Demeter, towering over them, spreading his arms, shaking his wide black wings. Lole took a step backward up the ramp, and Demeter came with him.

Torraway pressed after them, hedging them more closely still, pushing their gait. Soon Lole was taking two steps at a time, then three and stumbling. In another few seconds, he and Demeter turned and started to run—in the direction Torraway wanted to take them. Mitsuno had no hope of outrunning the Cyborg, which no human could do, but at least he could avoid having that dark presence take... other action with them.

After a dozen meters they had reached the center of the airlock facility, the six-sided chamber faced with massive doors. All were closed except one, which stood invitingly open, the readout panel beside it flashing clear. Peering through the connecting sleeve, Lole could see the interior of a standard utility walker, much like the one he and Demeter had taken on the survey in Harmonia Mundi.

"I guess we're supposed to go on in," she said with a brave smile.

"Yes. Please go in," Torraway grated, coming up behind them.

Mitsuno led Demeter through the hatch, keeping a sweaty but firm grip on her palm. He drew her to the forward seats, facing the instrument console and the front windshield. Only when they needed both hands to strap themselves in did they break contact.

Torraway followed behind, ducking his head and wings inside the low interior. He did not sit like a human but crouched, balanced for action, on the deck-plates. Again, he positioned himself in a direct line between them and the airlock.

The signal he gave must have been electronic, like the commands Wyatt used to control the walker. The rear door sealed with a sigh of pneumatics, the instrument board came alight with pressure readings, gyro headings, battery levels, and motor torques. Outside the side windows, the knee joints of the six legs flexed and bobbed.

The walker lunged slightly as it started away from the complex, but the movement smoothed as it headed out across the Martian landscape. The floor of the vehicle remained perfectly level, but the ground outside was rising perceptibly Lole, who knew the terrain around Tharsis Montes as well as any surface worker, abruptly realized where this "safe place" might be.

"No, Colonel! You can't take us there! We'll die."

His hands darted for the board, hoping to achieve an override and maybe turn this machine around.

Appearing with the suddenness of a policeman's cuffs, those black fingers reached around Lole and seized his wrists. They held his hands four centimeters above the controls.

Demeter turned in her seat and beat against the Cyborg's arms and face, trying to dislodge him. She might as well have flailed at the rocks outside.

"All right, Demeter," Lole said. "Don't hurt yourself. ... I'll be good, Colonel."

The steel hands held him a moment longer, time enough for Torraway to issue a silent command. The board went black, and the walker marched on.