Then the chrono heard a distinctive rattle: the keys depressing on the room's terminal board.
"Communications!" Demeter's voice spoke softly.
"Yes, Dem?" Sugar replied instantly.
"Not you, Shoogs. I want the room's terminal."
"Never no mind, Dem.''
"Yes, Ms. Coghlan?" the terminal said—in what Sugar judged to be a slowed and octave-adjusted synthetic female voice trying to pass for nonaggressive male.
"Take a letter," Coghlan directed. "Digitize and compress for Earth transmission with the next signal alignment...."
Sugar countermanded her own suspend order. Any correspondence the boss initiated, she would probably want to call up and discuss later. Sugar decided to listen in and at least find out the file number for grid reference.
"Recording," said that fakey voice.
"To Gregor Weiss, Survey Director, Texahoma Martian Development Corporation, Dallas—and look the rest up in your Earth directory—Dear Greg..."
Demeter's voice paused for many nanoseconds.
"Umm, I've arrived on Mars, place called Tharsis Montes, where the elevator is, without incident—ah, Terminal?"
"Yes, miss?"
"You might put a few prepositions in there for me— whatever sounds good—and a few less commas. You don't need to register every breath I take, hey?"
"Very good."
"Text resumes. I'm passing the cover story you and Gee-dad worked up, about my needing a long vacation, and so far nobody's interested. Nobody even knows I'm here, except maybe the computer system, and it doesn't seem to care, either. They made me get a physical, looking out for contagious diseases, they say, and that's about all.
"Paragraph. I've already established that the Zea-landers are pushing ahead with the Valles Marineris area. Them or their agents here on Mars, that is. I didn't get any maps, yet, but from the pix the grid was showing me, the site of their development seems to be right in the area we're claiming. At least, the erosion layers look enough like the aerial survey analysis you made me memorize.
"Paragraph. The development, which they call quote Canyonlands unquote—Terminal, use punctuation marks there, will you, not the words themselves—claims to be for residential and food processing. And it looks as if they're digging in, just like every other colony complex on this dustball. So, Greg, I would guess they haven't figured out yet that the Marineris District is at a deep enough elevation for air pressure to build up faster than anywhere else on the surface. And open water, if and when, will collect there soonest, too. I don't know if the Zealanders can be brought around to our terraforming scheme. And you might get me a care package of better intelligence a sap—no, Terminal, that's one word, all caps . . . Jesus! you're a dumb machine!—but, anyway, I guess they'd be almighty unhappy if they were to finish digging out a honeycomb of tunnels below bedrock just about the time we flood, out the area with a lake or inland sea or something.
"Paragraph. Anyway, I've got a date tomorrow with one of the locals to go vee-are with a piece of the construction equipment or something. That'll get me a sight of the area, and we can begin figuring how big an ouch the Zealanders will start registering when we file our project. I'll have more when I get back.
"Paragraph. On other topics—yee-ee-hew!—no, that was a yawn, so don't print it—I said, back up and erase that—no, not the whole—shit!
"Paragraph. On other topics, tell Gee-dad I'm in great shape and think I'm fully recovered from the accident. And no, there are no the third-generation Coghlans on the horizon. This is a working trip, not some kind of shipboard romance. Though, I tell you, Greg, if I were tempted to rattle the old fuddys chain, there's this sexy little bunch I met today with the slickest skin, about medium chocolate, if you know what I—" Think!
Sugar knew that sound, too. It was some kind of cap or cover coming down over the charm bracelet, blocking out all distinct sounds.
Demeter had this thing about even talking sex in front of computers, let alone doing it. But, of course, what did she think was taking her dictation right then? Anyway, Sugar's eavesdropping was over for the evening. Time to get some juice. suspend. ...
Chapter 3
Teaching Your Grandfather to Suck Eggs
After a morning shower that was both metered and timed—allowing her only twenty-five seconds to shampoo and rinse her long tangle of hair—Demeter Coghlan went for breakfast in the hotel's cafeteria-style dining room. The scrambled eggs (if that's what they were), sausage, and vegetables were served chopstick-style, with enough sauce to bind them for first-timers in the low gravity. Demeter broke down and asked for a spoon, got something that resembled a high-sided rowboat with a long prow, and ended up popping down the biggest pieces with her fingers. Different cultures, different manners.
She still had about an hour before her date to go touring with that gorgeous guide, Jory Whatsisname. Demeter decided to use it improving her intelligence.
Normally Coghlan would prefer to go snooping with Sugar's help, because the little comm unit could be amazingly discreet if she was told to be. But for this job Demeter wanted visuals, full-motion if available, and binaural audio as well as pure voice-only data. So, back in her room, she called up the terminal.
"Umm. . . ." Demeter hesitated, trying to frame her questions casually. "I'd like some information on some other people who might be visiting Mars about now."
"Casuals are listed in Directory Four," the machine told her.
"Oh!" So Coghlan wouldn't have to get personal with the grid after all. Her two fingers glided across the trackball, pulling down the correct directories and constructing her search pattern. What she wanted was a feeling for the opposition. The index showed a total of five North Zealanders and two United Koreans on-planet. Demeter called for dossiers—or whatever the local courtesy term was—with pix if possible.
The five Zealanders looked to be duds: two married pairs and a single, all with ages above fifty.
One of the pairs—the Bradens, William and Jane— had formally applied for colonial status. The other two—Peter Wendall and his wife Genevieve—were shown as visiting the Bradens in their new farming community on the edge of Elysium.
Further analysis showed that these four people were actually related: Jane Braden being Peter's sister. Demeter didn't have a detailed picture of the North Zealand Economic Development Agency, known as "N-ZED" in the business, but she didn't think their operating budget extended to paying passage on four people and colonial-placement fees on two more just to place one spy. Besides, Elysium was half a world away from Valles Marineris—not very convenient for keeping subtle tabs on the locals' progress with their Canyon-lands development, even with telepresent capability.
The terminal screen showed her in succession four alert faces, all with strong chins and heavy brows, all with white skins kept tanned and taut by clean living, hard work, and lots of exercise under expensive lamps.
Pioneer types with first-rate educations, they would probably bring a whole arsenal of physics formulas to the job of fixing a water pump, but Demeter had no doubt they'd get it fixed.
The unmarried Zealander, Alfred Mann, was no relation to this family grouping, and his reason for visiting Mars was shown as "astronomical interests," which was vague enough to be suspicious. But Demeter determined that he had touched down at Tharsis Montes just long enough to get a shuttle ride up to Phobos, where he'd spent the last six months at the observatory. So he could be eliminated as a factor.