"Yes, Miz Coghlan-Demeter-Cerise?" replied a cool voice. It was somehow a different inflection from the terminals usual tone: superior, more self-satisfied, less eager to please. In one move, she had reached Wyatt in the flesh—or the electron.
"I need to locate Ellen Sorbel. She's probably not at work yet, but—"
"Miz Sorbel is fully occupied."
"Where is she?"
"Hydrology Lab, Dome Two, but this is not a good time to—"
"Thanks, I'll be right there." Demeter was never one to take hints from a machine, especially one attached to a large bureaucracy. "Um, how do I find Dome Two?"
"Take Lift Four to the surface levels, follow Tube Y-Nine to the west, the rest is signed. But you really should—"
Demeter blanked the terminal, pulled on her coveralls, grabbed up a handful of pins for her hair, and went streaming out into the corridor.
Ellen Sorbel slid through the interstices of the matrix, following the line of least resistance. The granules she passed were rugged, globular shapes floating above or below her awareness. Each one represented a particle of fine sand, barely a millimeter in diameter, so tiny that in life it might disappear beneath one of her fingernails. Yet, at this scale, her mind swam and dove past the bits like a seal cresting the spires of a rocky headland.
She was a water droplet.
Ellen drifted lower, finding her own level. She was seeking a clay substrate reported to underlie the Desert of Agnus Dei, some two hundred kilometers southwest of Tharsis Montes. She slid forward across one crowning mass of glittering quartz and feldspar. Sorbel somersaulted down its leading edge and clung to the underside—clung not with her hands but with the adhesion of surface tension. There her back brushed against another jagged particle below it. She oozed away from the upper surface; her awareness flipped over, righting itself against the pull of gravity. She flowed onto the lower footing and began heading for its outer perimeter.
Another tumble, and Ellen found herself at some kind of boundary layer. No longer loose chunks with space between diem, but a hardpan of aluminum and magnesium silicates that formed lozenges only two or three microns in diameter. There was even less space between them. Her awareness flattened out, spreading and diffusing like pancake batter. There would be no more joyous tumbling. This certainly felt like the clay—
"What are you doing?"
The voice came from somewhere off to her left in the void.
Ellen turned with eyes that were not eyes and saw nothing.
"Who's there?"
"It's me! Demeter!"
"Oh, hello ..."
"Am I disturbing you?"
Yes! Ellen wanted to shout.
"Not really.... Um, how did you get here?"
"One of your technicians lent me a headset and gloves," Demeter replied. "He said you were here in the ... where is this place? It's like an asteroid field!"
"We're in a bit of desert, about fifty meters below the surface. Or, anyway, this is what the computer says should be below the surface."
"Wyatt says?"
"No, a much bigger boy."
"What are you looking for?'
"I'm trying to discover where the water would have gone ... if it ever existed here," Sorbel explained. "I think I've found a lens of clay which—"
"Where?" Demeter demanded.
"Somewhere below you, I guess. You're probably still up in the sandy layer."
"Is that so? How do I get down?'
"You don't—unless you know how to use your gloves to, well ,floiv."
"I can't," Demeter said after a minute. "Couldn't you come up to me? I can't see you."
"Eyesight isn't important down here. Why don't we just talk?" Ellen made herself limp and flattened out even more against the clay substrate. 'What do you want?"
"Well, unh, this is difficult.... Can anyone overhear us?"
"You mean, aside from the cyber that created this geological simulation and is now monitoring it?"
"Yeah."
"Not really Your headset is hushed."
"Then what I want is your help as a programmer. I need to hack a few terminals that're attached to the grid. I want a download of anything they send or receive over the next few days."
"Which terminals?" Ellen was merely curious.
"One is in the quarters of a North Zealand woman named Cuneo, first name Nancy. She's a casual on Mars like me. The others are wherever our Korean friend Sukie is staying—one terminal in his private room, the other with his manservant Chang Qwok-Do."
Sorbel considered the request for a passing moment. Then: "Lole was right about you, wasn't he? You're a spy"
"Ellen . . . we're all spies. Sun 11 Suk admitted as much as to me when you introduced us. He knows about the Cuneo woman, too, but I'd picked her out long before that. Either or both of them probably has a tap going on my room already. ... I just want some insurance to hold against payback time."
"And you thought I could—"
"You're the most computer-friendly person I know here. Hell, everyone on Mars practically lives in the machines' hip pocket. But you're the first person I've met who actually puts her head inside one for a living."
"We're not inside a computer, Dem. This is a geological simulation that's wired into a V/R sensory setup.
Its not all that different from the ones you use for role-playing or proxy touring."
"Whatever. I still figure if anyone has the smarts to help me, you do."
"I might have the smarts. Don't count on my willingness. Sukie is my friend. And I don't know what this Nancy Cuneo has done against me and mine... although I don't like the idea of anyone spying on Mars."
"We're not spying on you, Ellen. We're watching each other. It all goes back to the political situation on Earth. We three just happen to be on Mars right now. That's all."
One of the talents Sorbel's job had developed and strengthened in her was pattern analysis. She was adept at piecing together tiny clues to form an outline of what was really going on. From the nuances in Demeter's voice, Ellen understood one thing: she was lying. Demeter's story was too complicated and involved; the truth would be much simpler. This was unfortunate, because Ellen really liked the Earth woman. She was saddened to think they couldn't be honest with each other.
"You and your friends can play hide-and-seek all you want," Sorbel said finally, "but please don't ask me to do anything that will surely get us both in trouble with the Militia."
"You can't stay neutral forever, Ellen."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"The situation is going to change fast now. In a few days it's probably going to boil over. I can't give you details yet, because I don't have them. But this conflict is going to have a massive effect on the geol—no, the meteorol—the hydrology—shit! That's not right! I mean the envi-vi-ron-mental b-b-balance of this p-p-planet. It could change everything about the way you and everyone else on Mars lives."
"Change for the better?" Sorbel asked hopelessly.
"Clearly not."
"I see. And you're the only one who can keep this mysterious something from happening?"
"I think so."
Ellen Sorbel reflected for another long minute. "You're my friend, Demeter. But you are also telling me that other of my friends are not what they seem. In that case, I really don't know who to trust. You see my position?"
"Perfectly."
"Then I will... consider what you're asking me to do."
"Thank you."
Ellen didn't feel the loss of connection, but suddenly she knew Demeter Coghlan had withdrawn from the simulation.