With slightly trembling fingers, Demeter turned over the price chip. Glassflower jewelry was a rarity on Earth, outrageously expensive, even by Tiffany's standards. The numbers engraved on the chip came into focus. Demeter squinted away the phantom zeros that her fears and a momentary tearing of her eyes had added to the price.
Two thousand Neu.
It was a steal.
"Its a copy," said a voice at her elbow.
Coghlan glanced down. The woman was incredibly short, not much over 140 centimeters. She wore a plain suit of good, gray worsted wool and real leather hightop shoes. The woman's hair was a naturally curly blond, cut short and combed with a rake. Still, she had the same square, flat face of a farmer's wife, with wind-etched lines and a natural sunburn. It was the face Demeter had studied at odd moments in various settings over the past week. The hair must be a wig: nobody could bleach, dye, and rinse that often and get away with it.
"Why do you say?" Demeter asked, holding the necklace fractionally closer to her body.
Nancy Cuneo reached for it. Their fingers brushed as she took the artifact, and Demeter felt the hard edge of calluses. Probably from weapons practice. The Zealander turned the jewelry over, exposing the backs of the shells, where the tiny gold wires went through.
"See these radial creases?" A blunt, yellowed fingernail traced folds in the red-stained silicate. "That's where the glass was crimped when the blower was rolling it out. Instead of lines, a real shell has rings here, just like on a tree. They, too, are a sign of seasonal growth."
"I see."
"Its a pretty thing, but not worth the price." The woman smiled up at her. Those obsidian-black eyes were harder than the glass beads looped over her fingers.
"Thank you," Demeter said coldly, taking the necklace back and dropping it carelessly on the counter.
"You are Demeter Coghlan, aren't you? From Texahoma State?"
Demeter was too intelligent to consider denying it or evading notice for even a moment. Cuneo would have access to the same grid resources and had probably been studying her as assiduously as she had been studying Cuneo.
"Yes, I am. And you are ... ?" Demeter allowed herself a last, tiny bit of subterfuge.
"Nancy Cuneo ... but then, you knew that already" The woman gave her a knife-edged smile. "I thought it would be nice for us to meet on neutral ground, as it were." She waved a hand around at the hangings of the bazaar.
"Yes?" She couldn't think of much more to say.
"I know why you're here, of course," the older woman went on, still smiling. "Your people in Texahoma are nervous about what we may be planning to do with the Valles Marineris. They sent you to check us out."
"Why would you think that?'
"Then you are not concerned?"
"Well, sure, I'm concerned. What citizen wouldn't be? After all, we have territorial claims going back to the first time Captain William Schorer of Houston, Texas, set foot in the valley. He set up a flag and everything."
"You saw that in your schoolbooks, did you?"
"Yes, of course," Demeter said stoutly.
"The flag of the United States of America—which is hardly congruous with the current state of Texahoma."
"We cleave to the Texas part of the legend, ma'am."
"But, of course, your concern is in no way official, is it?"
"No, ma'am. I mean, how could it be?"
"You're very young, dear." Cuneo put out a hand, touching her wrist. Only later did Demeter guess this one touch might be as good as a polygraph.
"I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"What can Alvin Bertrand Coghlan have been thinking?" the older woman asked, mostly to herself. 'To send his granddaughter on a mission like this. . . . You are what we call an ingenue, dear, a dilettante in the great game. Let me give you a word of advice for the next time you choose to dabble. You do not have to answer every question, nor meet every sally with a riposte. It makes you seem far too eager to prove your story, which in itself is damning."
"I—!" Demeter wisely closed her mouth.
"Let's lay our cards on the table, shall we?"
Coghlan thought about this offer for an instant. "My G'dad used to say that's when all the aces get swept up somebody's sleeve."
Cuneo laughed at the joke. "A wise man, old Alvin Bertrand. But seriously, Demeter, we should join forces. All those historic claims are hopelessly tangled, and you know it. North Zealand traces its ownership through the Potanter Trek, when the party camped out in the Valles for six months."
"Before they perished in the mountains to the east of there," Demeter reminded her. "And they never filed a formal interest."
"Parry and riposte, again?"
Demeter Coghlan clamped her jaw shut on a response.
"Anyway, a piece of paper laid before the U.N. Commission on Mars is not the clincher you seem to believe. Our friend from United Korea would argue strenuously that they are entitled to the district for reasons of population pressure alone, regardless of the astronomical expense of relocating their people. Heavens, he does argue that point. Endlessly. And Korean claims are tied by the slender thread of a ten-percent interest in one unmanned Chinese rocket that made landfall on Mars, half a planet away from the Valles."
"Is there a point to this history lesson?" Demeter asked sweetly enough.
"Merely that it would be a mistake to treat any of this minuet too earnestly. Even with N-ZED providing full financial backing for development work in the Canyonlands—isn't that a charming name for the district, too?—we North Zealanders are hardly cementing our claim. And I'll tell you something even your Alvin Bertrand doesn't know: that our agency is behind the new power station a-building in orbit. That's part of the overall package. But what does it matter, in the end?'
Cuneo looked at Demeter, as if expecting a response. Demeter did not give her the satisfaction.
"Nothing. Nothing at all!" the woman went on. "We'll all be dead and dust before the Valles complex is worth more than a handful of paper credits. So why should we fight? There will be plenty of time to work out some kind of joint tenancy—if that's what your grandfather is angling for?'
The pause drew out in uncomfortable silence.
"I'm sure I don't know his mind," Demeter said at last.
"No, of course. But then, Texahoma has much better claims down south, near the polar cap. That area is much more hospitable—better supplied with water, for instance."
"But aren't the caps predominantly dry ice?"
"Well, of course, but I'm talking about the permanent frost layer, the undercoating to the CO2 crust." The woman waved the issue aside with one hand. "At any rate, a trade delegation is about to arrive from North Zealand. They're reasonable people. I'm sure you'll get along with them. There is no reason why our two nations should not cooperate—or at least agree to defer further dispute until we have something concrete to fight about."
"I'm sure your traders are lovely people," Demeter agreed. "But I still don't see what that has to do with me. I'm just a college girl on vacation, recovering from a terrible accident, taking in the sights—and about to buy some native artifacts." She touched the necklace once more, wistfully, then left it alone for good. "Until you offered to help me, that is."
"An accident, did you say?'
"Certainly You can check my records, if you want." Demeter shrugged, convinced the woman already had. "Deep cover" is what G'dad chucklingly called it. "I had a run-in with an autocoif during my senior year. Deep lacerations all along one side of my head. My hair covers the scar now. But it was like to kill me."
"You poor thing!"
Demeter preened in the satisfaction of having successfully defended her story.