Mars Plus

Chapter 7 Cries and Whispers

"Revolution is not in their programming, Roger."

Fetya hadn't spoken in more than three hours. She had simply kept pace with him as Roger Torraway put long distance between himself and that embarrassing confrontation. Together their clublike feet stamped over the wind-packed sand.

"I wasn't talking about 'revolution,'" he objected. "Just some kind of concerted action. A protest march. A demonstration of strength. After all, they benefit from the Deimos generator, too."

"Protest implies power shifting."

"That's deep!" He could hear the bitterness in his own voice, slopping over onto the closed signal that carried between them. He detested the feelings that were now bubbling up in him: of dependence and obligation.

"Is true!" the other Cyborg said. "We were made for exploration. For observation. For description. We serve human needs on Mars, in support of colonizing efforts. Our purpose is not dictating terms to human settlements. Now you want we should damage colonials."

"Not damage! Just. . . withhold our counsel and advice. We have to show the burgomasters how much they need us. How they need us as free and independent beings. Show them how scary and hostile a place this planet can potentially be without us."

"Implies somebody has to die first, yes?"

"Well..."

'Tell me story of omelets and eggs again, Roger." She let out a grating chuckle.

"Damn it, this is serious!" He stamped the ground in midstride.

"Serious to you means obvious to everybody else?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You figure out...."

The pair plodded along in silence for another hour, good for an additional eight kilometers. With Rogers compressed time-sense, it passed inside a few gliding seconds. Only the scenery was different: steeper hills, more exposed bedrock, the beginnings of erosion gullies.

"Make their problems your problem," Fetya said at last. "Not other way around."

"How do I do that?"

"Find out what humans need."

"I've already tried that. They just weren't buying any."

"No, Roger. You made offer to sell what you had, not what they need. Is difference."

"But I offered to sell myself, my innermost—"

"Still not what they need."

"Yeah."

Fetya was right, of course. But what the hell did the humans on Mars need? Something that only he, or one of the other Cyborgs, could supply. And, of course, something they weren't already supplying, according to their "programming."

That was the stumper.

Sometime during the previous afternoon as the conversation wandered from this to that, Ellen Sorbel had mentioned another Earth-based casual who was interested in hydrology and the workings of the Resources Department—a Mr. Sun from United Korea.

Demeter was resigned to finally having to meet the man in the flesh. So she had asked Sorbel to arrange an introduction. Demeter supposed she could always share her experiences at Harmonia Mundi as an icebreaker.

The hydrologist met Demeter at the Golden Lotus and walked her up two levels and across the complex to brunch at Tharsis Montes's most fashionable tearoom.

"They actually do serve tea there," Sorbel explained. "Thick brown stuff they've been bubbling for a week or more in a genuine Russian samovar, imported from Petrograd, solid silver and heavy. Then they dilute it with vodka, whiskey, lemon juice, or whatever you want. It's really disgusting."

"Why does anyone go there?' Demeter asked, curious.

"Because it's ..." Ellen shrugged. "Where you can be seen, I guess. The tourists all love it."

"I've never heard of the place."

"Their little cakes are famous. Very crumbly, mostly sugar and butter—well, sorghum extract and some kind of saturated lipid, but you get the idea." Ellen gave a wicked grin.

"You sure know how to whet my appetite."

"That reminds me____If you're getting tired of tooting around the Martian surface, you really ought to take a tour of the orbital power satellites. Especially the new one they've got under construction over Schiaparelli. Taking a V/R of microgravity can be a real kick. I can arrange a hookup for you, if you want."

Demeter paused before replying. What would remind Ellen of such a thing? Had Demeter said something about it yesterday? Why should Sorbel be so interested in feeding her this new experience? Maybe .. . Demeter's head whirled. It was culture-lag or time-shock or something. It was making her suspicious of the simplest friendly overtures. Or possibly she was just keyed up about meeting up her first foreign-national spy.

The Russian Tearoom's decor was all white cloth and porcelain, bright silver and chiming crystal. The walls had been whitewashed and then painted in stark black lines that were supposed to be barren trees in a Russian winter—from the perspective of an artist who had never seen a living tree. Somewhere in the background a recording of violins played Zigeunenveisen—Gypsy music for a Czarist setting. Oh, well, it could easily have been a chorus of Cossack voices. Next, Demeter expected to find waiters dressed in black jodhpurs, waist sashes, and red-silk blouses. Fortunately, however, the service was both automated and unobtrusive.

Ellen walked past the seating chart and into the main room, towing Demeter in her wake. She went right up to a center table where sat a fat young man in a conservative gray suit. Demeter recognized the face from her snooping in the directory of casuals three days ago. The eyes were more deeply buried in their folds of fat than the pixel dump of Sun 11 Suk's travel holo had suggested. His skin was much yellower, less healthy-looking. She glanced around surreptitiously for the servant, Chang Qwok-Do, but found no one fitting his image. Probably back in the kitchen, arranging to barbecue a dog or something.

"Sukie, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine," Ellen was saying. "This is Demeter Coghlan, who's also up from Earth. Demeter, Sun II Suk is a distinguished visitor from United Korea."

The young man shifted his bulk from its tight wedge against the table and flexed his knees. The movement passed for a polite effort to rise. He then raised his hand to her and tilted his head, the eyes narrowed in line with his outstretched fingers and cocked thumb, as if aiming a pistol.

Demeter grasped the hand—it was soft and damp—and pumped it.

"Won't you ladies join me?" he wheezed.

Ellen Sorbel begged off with the claim of pressing duties and quickly departed the tearoom. That left Demeter and the grimly smiling Oriental. She accepted the chair opposite him.

"I understand, Miz Coghlan, that we are both interested in this planet's natural resources. We two have visited many of the same places. . . . Valles Marineris, for one."

"Mine is a purely academic interest, I assure you."

"All, yes. Academics. The databases tell me you have studied for your country's foreign service. Perhaps you are planning to add exogeology to your curriculum vitae, then?"

"That's a thought."

"But you already have the credits required to take your degree," Sun pointed out.

"Not quite enough," she corrected.

"Sufficient, apparently, to know your business. That is, if you have accepted this assignment."

'"What 'assignment' would that be?"

"Why, to come here and investigate the Zealanders' development in areas currently claimed by your own Texahoma. . . . And by United Korea, of course."

"You have an active imagination, sir."

"Oh? Then Texahoma does not claim—?"

"No—about my being on assignment. I wish someone would pay me to take vacations and play the tourist. As it is ..."

"As it is, Miz Coghlan, your grandfather pays you to do exactly that. And to 'keep your eyes peeled.' Or 'get the wax out of your ears.' Or whatever colorful Americanism the old man uses with his favorite granddaughter."

"And why would he tell me that?" Demeter asked demurely.

"Come, my dear!" Sun II Suk laid a confiding hand on her forearm. "Do not play the naive with me! Your august 'Gee-dad,' as you call him, is a political power in your country. Officially, at least, Alvin Bertrand Coghlan is next in line for the Big Chair in Austin. Unofficially, he already steers the party apparatus of the Inde-Goddam-Pendents, where the real authority exists."

"Well..."

"Do I lie?" His smile was full of white teeth.

"No, but we Texahomans don't like to talk so openly about a man's prospects. It puts the kibosh on him, we say."

'"Puts the kai—?"'

"Another colorful Americanism." Demeter showed her own teeth. Damn, but she was beginning to enjoy this! "For your collection."

"Let's be straight with each other, my dear. That's the correct phrase, is it not? You and I are here for the same purpose—to find out what the Zealanders are up to and, if possible, throw a few logs in front of their wheels. Not—" He held up a hand before she could respond. "—that it will matter in any practical way until long after both of us are mere dust blowing on the wind. No effort to terraform this planet will come to anything in less than a hundred years. Two hundred. But since we are all on Earth—or in Mars—for so dismally short a time, we two might as well make common cause and hay while the sun shines. Yes?"

"Are you telling me you are a paid spy, Mr. Sun?" Demeter made her eyes go wide.

"But of course! And United Korea pays well for my humble efforts. Does not yours?"

Coghlan was reminded of a quip by one of her professors, Simonson, who taught Industrial Espionage and Economic Theory: "Beware of geeks when baring grifts." He must have had Sun II Suk in mind.

"Now," Sun continued, "which of the current crop of North Zealand visitors do you favor? The farmers out at Elysium? The stargazer up on Phobos? Or the new one, the Cuneo woman?"

"Well, for my money—"

"Cuneo, of course. She does care for the future, especially in the Valles Marineris District. And yes, she knows all about the Texahomans' secret plans for mutating the Martian atmosphere. If she were to discover our true purposes, yours and mine, she would do anything to inconvenience us. Probably even agitate to have us removed from this planet. Either back up the fountain or . . . out into the desert somewhere. That woman is capable of anything."

"Aren't you being a little dramatic? Even if she—"

"See for yourself! Tell me those aren't the eyes of a fanatic!" Sun II Suk gestured to a table just beyond the one next to diem.

A lone woman sat there. The face might be the same one Demeter had scanned in her hotel room three days ago. In person the features were . . . blockier, somehow. The body was stockier than Demeter had imagined from the passport description. But the hair was entirely different: red and curly and cut full to the collar of her jacket, not the severe black helmet the grid had shown earlier. Of course, it could be a wig, one way or the other.

And Sun's information was so good in other respects, why would he make a stupid mistake now?

"If that's really her," Demeter began, "and she really is the dangerous person you believe her to be, then is it safe to be talking about her so openly?"

The Korean pointed to a small white box sitting on the table linen, lost among the sugar and cream and the obligatory bud vase with a paper flower. It sat against the edge of the table between them and Cuneo. Demeter had noticed the box and thought it was a pillbox with some kind of medicine for Sun.

"Phase inverter," he announced. "The device has the gift of turning any sound made within a circle of—oh, a meter and a half across—on its head. Feeds it right back into the air as pure gibberish. I'm surprised, Demeter, that your government hasn't provided you with something similar." He lifted one finger and raised his voice. "Personally, I think all North Zealanders smell like the breath of thousand-year-old eggs."

Cuneos head shifted with a cup halfway to her lips. She looked over at Sun and Coghlan—but it was the distracted glance of a lone diner in a crowded place.

There was no recognition, let alone sense of insult.

"See?" he said in a more normal voice. "Just white noise."

Demeter noted in passing that any device so tiny yet powerful had to be cybernetically controlled— probably using sophisticated processing algorithms supplied through the local grid. And she would bet Texahoma dollars to the Russian Tearoom's greasy little donuts that any conversation going into the white box got stuck somewhere in the grids capacious data-streams.

"You do like to live dangerously, Mr. Sun," she said.

"No, my dear, I like to live. Period. Full stop. And you can put that on my gravestone. .. . But please, do call me 'Sukie.' You'll do that now, won't you?"

Despite her every instinct, Demeter liked him.