"You want to take much better care of yourself, while you're on Mars," Cuneo went on pleasantly.
"There are so many more opportunities for getting yourself killed up here.... And maybe taking one of us along with you." The woman's saccharine smile did not extend to her eyes, which bored into Demeter like twin nine-millimeter gun barrels.
Demeter had to take an involuntary step backward.
"I won't," she promised.
Ellen Sorbel was running late on the morning's workload. She decided to take an early lunch break before the afternoon came around and crushed her. So she dashed into the Hoplite for a seafood handwich and mug of nonalcoholic ale—wet enough to wash down the krill cakes but with nothing to cloud her head. She found Demeter Coghlan at one of the tables near the back, picking at what looked like a salad but could have included some kind of farina noodles.
"Hey, Demeter!"
"Ellen! . . . Good to see you." The Earth woman looked pleased, set aside her fork, and pushed the plate away. Sorbel settled into the free chair.
"Look, uhh, about your request yesterday—"
"Oh, that! Forget it, please. It just never happened."
"I'm grateful because, you know, I could lose my job if anything happened. Especially if someone complained. And honest work is hard to come by if you're a cyber ghost."
"I said, forget it ever happened."
Ellen glanced over to see if Demeter was angry. The grin playing around the corners of her mouth said she wasn't. Sorbel was relieved.
"Are you still seeing Jory?" Ellen asked, to change the subject.
"Not if I can help it."
"Oh? I didn't know you had a problem there."
"Not really, he's just— I'm sorry, he's your friend and all."
"An acquaintance, actually. Lole and I kind of took him under our wing, once, when he had some trouble with the Department."
"All right then. You know what I'm talking about. He can be so immature and ... well, demanding. Like he's still fourteen years old."
"In many ways he is," Ellen said judiciously. "The process that makes a Creole does strange things to the hormones, not to mention the nervous system."
"Yeah, but he can be fairly sensitive, too. Do you know, when he found out I don't like doing it in front of the computers, he took me to this cave he had prepared. It's not even connected to power and water yet, let alone cyber services."
"Oh . . . !" Sorbel sagged against the chair's arms. She was thinking furiously. How had Jory found out about the . . . ? Or wait! Had he found out? "Where was all this?" she asked cautiously.
"I didn't really make a map."
"But in general terms—inside the complex? Outside? Up slope or down? Did you have to suit up?"
"Inside, and down a couple of levels. We crossed a big promenade that looked like a shopping mall."
"A...'mall'?"
"Sure, an indoor arcade, usually full of boutiques and eateries, with an anchor store or a hotel. Except this one was empty, still getting built."
"Okay, and his hideaway was nearby?"
"Fifty meters away, more or less. It was where some kind of expansion work had been closed off—temporarily, at least."
Then it wasn't the site Ellen was thinking of. Thank Heaven, or that other place, for small favors.
"But, Demeter, he actually told you the computers couldn't see or hear in there?" Suddenly the humor of it overtook her. Ellen tried to keep from laughing.
"Sure, no cables, no fiberoptic. The place was bare rock. Perfectly clean."
"Yeah, but Jory was in there with you."
"What do you mean?"
"He's hardwired for communications. The grid can monitor him on a private radio channel, twenty-four hours a day, waking and dreaming."
"So he could—!"
Ellen nodded. "He not only could, he does. Automatically. All the time, and with stereo sound and full-motion video—better than your charm bracelet there."
"That little creep! Does he know he does that?"
"He has to. It's part of the price of cyberhood."
"Damn him!"
"He only looks like a child, Demeter. Under that slick skin and elfin face, he's actually quite intelligent. Just not... socially adept, if you take my meaning."
"Perfectly." Demeter picked up her fork, made a halfhearted pass at the noodle salad, then flung both fork and food at the far wall. The utensil went ting! against cold rock.
Boy, was she mad! Ellen made a private note against ever getting on this woman's bad side.
Kemil Ergun always returned home at the middle of the day. He had done this every working day of his life, as his father had before him, his father and his fathers father, too, going back to the Old Country. Ergun's routine was always the same: a light meal, maybe a spinach salad and shashlik—or, within the culinary limits of this strange new world, hydroponic cress and braised lizard strips; one glass of homemade retsina; one hand-rolled, black-sobranie cigarette—and be damned to the air-filtration edicts; followed by a brief and feverish encounter with his wife Gloria; and finally a short nap. Only then could he go back to his work as a ballistics engineer with the space fountain, refreshed and relaxed. In civilized places, they called this ritual the "siesta."
This day, however, Kemil Ergun found nothing relaxing at home.
The hummus salad his wife served was lumpy, with bits of bean husk still floating on unabsorbed oil. The retsina was a new batch and sour. And, crowning indignity, she had let the household supply of sobranie run out and made no effort to tell him so he could acquire more through his special sources.
When Ergun questioned her on this, all she would say was: "Its contraband." Meaning: "I don't want it in the house."
Gloria Chan was not a proper wife. Respectful enough, yes, when his face was toward her. Compliant in bed, to be sure. But like all Chinese she had a willful streak. Deep down, she thought she was better than her husband. Better than any non-Chinese.
Actually, she was quite ignorant. She knew very little about the proper seasoning of his food. Nearly nothing about winemaking. And nothing at all about the secondary businesses in which Kemil Ergun engaged, with contacts on the space fountains cargo dock, that allowed them a houseful of little luxuries. Her family was huge and raucous. They seemed to spread over half this level of the complex and had a finger in every other pie, none of which they would trust with a Turk. They thought he could afford everything the two of them had on an engineers salary. More fool they!
"The smoking is my pleasure," he said today. Quite reasonably, he thought.
"Its dirty. You stink up the house."
"What good is it to have a house," he said with a shrug, "if a man cannot stink it up occasionally?"
"I have to live here too!"
"One cigarette? It never bothered you before."
"It bothered me. I just never said anything."
"Well. . . there then!" Kemil struggled for advantage on this slippery rhetorical slope. "This is no time to start complaining."
"I can complain if I want to. My hair and clothing always smelling like burning tar. Every day the Citizen's Militia come sniffing around, making rude eyes at me. My food tastes bad—"
"Your food always tastes bad!"
"You pig! You filthy Turkish pig!"
The encounter, no longer likely to be brief, quickly passed through the feverish stage as Gloria hefted the unfinished plate of hummus and slung it at his head.
Ergun ducked and heard the crockery smash against the wall behind him.
"You'll just have to clean that up." He shrugged again.