"And sparked a racial incident."
"No, that was the man with the mustache. And the knife. He was a Turk, they said."
"You saw such a man?"
"He went right past me, close enough to touch. He was trying to kill the woman."
"Kill her with the knife?"
"No, it was sticking out of him. Here." Demeter jabbed fingertips at an angle above her own left breast.
"Sounds like a family dispute that got out of hand. Then there probably won't be a court of inquiry. Not if enough people tell the same story."
"Does this sort of thing happen every day?" Demeter asked.
"Well. . . more often than we'd like. Living so close together, and underground most of the time, people get tense. Tempers flare up."
"What will happen to the couple that started it?"
"They will be counseled, then each made to wear homing bracelets for a while."
"Homing—?"
"Don't you have them on Earth? They allow the grid to track your whereabouts at all times. You can go to your place of employment during your normal work hours, then you go straight home. Show up anywhere else and you provoke an armed response from the Citizen's Militia."
"Charming. How long does this leper treatment usually last?"
"Some weeks. Long enough to make an impression and achieve a measure of behavior modification. If drugs or alcohol are found to be contributing factors, they will be forbidden for the duration of the homing period."
"How do you achieve that?" Demeter smiled. "A stiff warning?"
"Slivers of Antabuse, surgically inserted along with the bracelet. Take a drink or pop a lid with that under your skin, and you'll think you died. You'll certainly puke enough to die, though the homer helps by monitoring your vital signs. Nobody's actually gone out while under therapy—not in the last ten years or so, anyway."
"You people know a thing or two about crowd control, don't you?"
"We have to." Ellen shrugged. "Think what would happen if a full-scale riot boiled over to the surface levels and somebody punched out a door. That is not a docile climate out there, like you have in Texas."
"I suppose not." Demeter didn't sound happy. "This place isn't a thing like Texas."
Demeter Coghlan missed Sugar—even if the titanium bangle was just a machine. She missed the routine of putting her to bed under a water glass, pretending that the chrono might hear Demeter talk in her sleep and report the details to someone, something, somewhere.
That way, at least, Demeter could imagine that somebody cared about her. As it was, she had to make her report to Gregor Weiss alone that night, just her and the room's dumb terminal. It was not a happy report.
"I'm blown, Greg. That's the long and short of it."
Demeter leaned back against the pillows, keeping her head turned toward the microphone. Although, in this small room, how much could directionals matter?
"The Korean agent knows all about me. Even a lightweight like him spotted me within five minutes. And the Zealander woman blew my cover even before that. Today she was actually giving me pointers on how to be a better spy, for future reference. This place is just a sieve. Every time you turn around, someone's poking you in the shoulder, telling you how to mind your own business. Half the time, they aren't even human. Just some mechanical presence, always pushing you around."
Demeter thought about that for a moment. She decided to let the sentiment go out as spoken.
"Paragraph. I've tried to get out to the Valles Marin-eris for evaluation. That's a bust, too. I've seen about as much as you can by walking over the ground inside an animated tripod with a three-dee sensor head. I've also taken feed from the dirtmovers on site. But getting there in the flesh ... well, it's just not going to happen. Not unless I mount a full-blown overland safari, with native bearers and elephants—or their mechanical equivalent. You got a budget of a million Neu for this gig? I thought not.
"Paragraph. The bottom line, Greg, is I want to come home. Mars is not a happy place. Too many people living in too small a cubbyhole. Even the air is stale. I can't breathe most of the time. So, book passage for me, will you? Next available transport. I'll take anything you can arrange. Ore boat on a long traverse to the Kirkwood Gap, if you can get it. Just remove me from this sufferin' anthill!"
Demeter tried to think of anything else to say. There was nothing.
"Endit. Code and send.... And, Terminal?"
"Yes, Miz Coghlan?'
"Turn off the lights, please."
She was too tired to move, and her eyes were too wet and blurry to find the wall switch.
"Of course, Miz Coghlan." After a moments pause, long enough for her to punch up the pillows behind her head, the room went dark.
Chapter 11
A Visit with the Elders
The new day brought Demeter Coghlan out of bed with a much better mental attitude. With luck, this was going to be her last day on Mars. Or, anyway, the last before she got a positive commitment to bring her home, which was almost as good.
That being the case, she wanted one final stab at reconnoitering the Valles Marineris District, pulling out all the stops and giving it her very best effort. To do this, Demeter decided, she had to overcome a load of cultural taboos and talk direcdy to Roger Torraway, Mars s unofficial first citizen and Guinness Guide title-holder as eldest Cyborg. He ought to know something about the Valles, if anyone did.
Demeter walked into the hotel's simulation parlor, plugged herself into the nearest booth, and called up the resident menu. There was no entry for people, even famous ones, just the usual packaged tours.
"Terminal..."
"Yes, Miz Coghlan?"
"Patch me through to Roger Torraway."
"Colonel Torraway is not a token holder on this network."
"Huh? I thought all Cyborgs were hard-wired into the grid."
"That is true: packet radio communications are not optional for recent human-Cyborg conversions. However, Colonel Torraways processors precede the fabrication of this nexus."
"All right, then," Demeter said reasonably. "Find out his present location, and slot me into the nearest proxy."
"There are no tourist proxies within one hundred kilometers of Colonel Torraways present location."
"Then I'll take a working machine and pay the surcharge."
"There are no proxies of any kind within that radius."
"Well, hell, then I'll walk. Put me inside the nearest device at any distance. Supply it with a detailed map and a good-guess ETA."
"Colonel Torraway will not allow an uninvited mechanism to approach him. This is his expressed desire, and his speed over the ground permits him to enforce the prohibition by running away."
"Damn, damn, damn it," Demeter said without particular emphasis. "Put an emergency override on his comm system," she directed.
"That is not the routine procedure. Does your situation constitute an emergency?"
"Mephisto ... I order you to connect me with Colonel Roger Torraways communications module."
"Coming right up, Miz Coghlan."
Roger Torraway and Fetya Mikhailovna Shtev were kneeling side by side, staring down a gopher hole. It was an unusual formation in the desert's reddish laterite soiclass="underline" an oval depression with no visible bottom.
Its origin might almost be volcanic, except that the Heliopolis Basin was more than a thousand kilometers from any recently active lava fields.