"Next time we'll take a blimp," Mitsuno grumbled.
"Department funding does not permit excursions by lighter-than-air transportation over distances less than four thousand klicks," the computer node said primly.
"I'm kidding, Wyatt."
Silence. Demeter fancied the machine was sulking.
"What do you do when you're at home?" Lole asked after they had gone a few more kilometers.
"I was a student, studying for foreign service."
"Is that some kind of military outfit?"
"Oh, not at all! We help to maintain peaceful relations all across the planet. You see," she explained, "Earth has so many nations and regional trading alliances and ecological defense blocs and economic shield treaties that maintaining the world's diplomatic balance is a full-time business. Foreign service is a good career, too. If I complete my coursework, and with the pull my grandfather can generate, I'll have my pick of an embassy or consulate job in just about any country Texahoma exchanges relations with."
"If you complete your courses." Mitsuno accurately picked up her inflection. "Why did you stop?"
"I... Well, I had an accident."
"Oh. And where would you like to be assigned?" He politely declined to follow up on her personal difficulties.
"Haven't decided yet. I might like to get away from all these machines for a while. That would mean taking a post in some society that's gone Professed Primitive—like Seychelles, Montana, or the Republic of Hawaii—but sometimes the Pee-Pees can be a little too orthodox about their stature. As an alternative, I might just go to some developmentally challenged state like Dakota or del Fuego. Life there can be pretty desperate, of course, but I'd draw diplomatic privileges such as immunity and escort service. I'd id so get to buy in special stores, go to the head of any queues, and park in reserved spaces."
"Park?" the Martian asked.
"Uh ... temporarily store my car?"
"Ah! I've heard about cars. Do you actually own one?"
"G'dad does—he's my grandfather. And when I make ambassador rank, I'll be entitled to one, too."
'You could come to Mars," Lole offered. "We're about as foreign as you can get. And not nearly so primitive. Or desperate."
"You're a little too foreign. None of the Mars colonies has established diplomatic relations with Earth yet. In fact, your governments—or what I can see of them, at least—actively resent intrusions from the mother planet."
"Yeah, you got that right," he agreed. "Besides, we don't have much room for embassies here on Mars. How many nations do you people have now?"
"Thirteen hundred and some. The count changes every couple of days."
"That's a lot of tunnel space. And most Martians would get ornery about giving special privileges to social parasites. . . . No offense intended," he added quickly. "I'm sure your Earth governments really value what you diplomats can do."
"Most of the Martians I've met have been downright friendly."
"That's because you're a paying guest."
"Oh, right." Demeter had almost forgotten her nominal role on this visit.
"Although . . ." Mitsuno went on slowly, "when somebody says 'diplomat,' I usually hear 'spy.'"
Demeter saw him grin to take the sting out of his words.
"Why, whatever would there be worth spying on up here?" she asked innocently. The real answer, of course, was other Earth spies. Everyone came to Mars to scope out the territory and defend the old claims. "A million square miles of blasted rock, is all," she concluded aloud.
"And water," he pointed out. "Mineral rights, too."
Minerals . . . geology . . . something. The thought went out of her head immediately.
Demeter noticed that the walker had stopped moving. The vista out the front window had stabilized on a valley floor of lemon-colored sand littered with black rocks. She started to gesture when the robot voice cut in.
"You have arrived, Lole."
"Let's stretch our legs," Mitsuno said to Demeter, heading for the airlock at the back of the vehicle.
He showed her how to put on the pressure suits. They were sensible garments, cut on the one-size-fits-most pattern. On Demeter, that left plenty of room for her street clothes as well as freedom of movement. The suit offered no plumbing. It would keep her alive on the Martian surface, or even in low orbit, but not for longer than her bladder could hold out. The helmet was big and rested on a well-padded neck ring, which she appreciated. She did not have to carry its weight on her skull and push the bobby pins into her scalp.
Before Demeter pulled on the gauntlets, she took off her charm bracelet and tucked Sugar into an inside zippered pocket. No sense in letting delicate electronics get caught in the snapseals.
Then she and Lole crowded into the airlock, and he flushed its atmosphere back into the vehicles holding tanks. When the outside door opened, Coghlan expected they'd have to climb down a ladder. After all, the view from the windows had shown the walker carrying itself a good three meters off the ground. But the lock rim was a gentle step off the valley's sandy floor. Demeter glanced back and saw that the machine had assumed a low crouch, with its knee joints flexed above the cabin roof.
"What's on the program for today?" she asked, once she'd figured out the suit's radio channels.
"I'm prospecting for water or ice, and you're helping me."
Mitsuno went over to the side of the walker's belly and opened a compartment hatch in the smooth space between two leg swivels. He took out various aluminum cases, laid them on the sand, and unsealed their lids. Inside, inset into foam cutouts, were gray melon-shapes with little black bracing feet on either side and a data panel on top.
"What're those?"
"Transponders."
"What are you going to do with them?"
"You're going to take one and walk about three hundred meters out that way." Mitsuno pointed to the east. "Then you take another and go the same distance in the opposite direction. And when that's done, you'll put out two more, going north and south this time."
"And what will you be doing?"
"Watching you." Lole grinned up through his helmet bubble and handed her the first of the recording devices. It was solid-feeling, but not all that heavy.
She moved around the walker's outstretched footpads and started off toward the horizon. None of the stones that lay on top of the desert floor was big enough to make her alter course. She just stepped over them, keeping to as straight a line as possible. Soon Demeter had crossed a small rise and walked into a shallow pit. She looked over her shoulder and noticed that the walker had all but disappeared.
"Lole?"
"Yeah?"
"I can't see you," she said. "Does line of sight matter to these widgets?"
"Naw, they read ground motion and compare with their own inertials."
"Okay"
When she had counted off something like three hundred paces—each one close enough to a meter for this kind of work—Demeter set the transponder down, cocked its legs as Lole had shown her, and turned it on. When she straightened up, she noticed a group of silhouettes on the far horizon. They were dancing figures in inky leotards, with what looked like fluttering capes or demon wings on their shoulders. All except one. It was bright green. It looked, more than anything else, like a jade carving of the Laughing Buddha. It was holding up an aerialists parasol.
Coghlan wished the helmet visor was fitted with zoom optics. As it was, she could get no more definition than naked-eye. The entities looked like mirages or possibly dust devils, and she might have dismissed them as such—except for that lone, green figure.
When she got back to the walker, she mentioned the apparition to Mitsuno.
"How many were there, would you say?"