"You're lying to me," she countered sharply. "You've got a computer in there."
Lole heard Ellen draw breath beside him.
"We do?' he asked, once more semaphoring with his eyes. This was extremely dangerous talk, and Demeter ought to understand that. "How do you know?"
"I saw it."
"Oh? And when?"
"This afternoon. I went back there."
"Why would you do that?"
Coghlan paused. "I was looking for... my earrings. I lost them last night."
Mitsuno honestly couldn't remember whether she had been wearing jewelry or not. He remembered Demeter seeming awfully naked when, statutorily, she had been fully dressed.
"You should have asked me," he chided. "I would have looked for them."
"You were busy today." She shrugged. "And besides, you never said not to go back."
"But the door was locked."
"A cheap mechanical tumbler. They teach us how to get around those."
"Who teaches you?" he wondered aloud.
"My university courses, for future diplomats."
"Ah! Spies."
"You got it."
"I'm sorry about the lock," he said, hoping to distract her. "But, of course, with no power, we can't use an electronic thumb pad."
"So I figured. But then, you've got enough power for that computer."
Lole sat up straight and looked her levelly in the eye. "If there's a computer in that room, Demeter, it's news to me. You must've seen something else and thought it was a computer."
"I'm not that dumb, Lole."
"Demeter, dear ..." Ellen cut in.
The Coghlan woman barely glanced at her.
"That whole corridor is like a public dump, you know," Ellen went on smoothly. "I'm sure you'll find pieces and parts of terminals, virtual-reality gear, old cybers, bit registers, lots of stuff, just strewn around." Now Sorbel was wig-wagging with her eyebrows. "Some of it's probably even wired together, as it was when the owner tossed it. But none of that junk's working. You understand?"
"So? You're in on it, too?" The way Demeter sounded, the news didn't surprise her much.
"In on what, dear?'
"On whatever it is you two're trying to hide." With that, Demeter puckered her lips in a frown, nodded once, stood up, and walked away.
Ellen turned to Mitsuno. "Lole, what have you done?"
"I don't know, but I guess I'd better undo it."
"Do it tonight," Sorbel told him.
Ordered him.
Demeter was keying into her hotel room when a hand touched her elbow.
"Demeter?'
She knew without looking that it was Lole Mitsuno, probably come to give her more explanations. Demeter jerked her arm out of his grasp.
"Don't try to mess with my mind, Lole. I know what I know."
Her thumb stabbed at the lockplate. The door clicked open.
"I have something to show you," he said. He took her elbow again, but lightly.
"I don't want to—" But she didn't pull away again.
Through the crack in the door, her cubicle beckoned. It was a safe place for her. It had a bed, all her clothing, access to metered water, a terminal she could eventually teach to take accurate dictation, and a degree of privacy. After the shit that had come down today, all she wanted was to go in there, lie down, and not even dream.
"What?" Demeter asked finally.
"I can't tell you." Lole was doing that thing with the eyebrows again. Was it some kind of twitch? "I have to show you."
He was drawing her down the corridor, but gently. It was like the tug of microgravity, or a cat's-paw breeze.
She sighed. "Is it far?"
"You know the way."
"All right." She pulled the door closed, turned, and came with him.
After three changes of level and four cross tunnels, she dragged her steps. "If you think I'm going back to that room and ... service you, think again. Lole, I am not in the mood."
"It's not that."
"But you said the room was for ... partying."
"Among other things. We have a lot to talk over."
"We did talk, at the Hoplite, remember?"
"Talk over in private, I mean." He headed off down the corridor. She could either stare at his back, or follow.
Demeter hurried to keep up.
Over the bridge and into the abandoned workings, Mitsuno led her up to the sheetmetal door. He moved his shoulder to hide the lock as he twirled the tumbler, then grunted and let her see.
"You know how to spring this?"
"Nope."
"Then how—?"
"I know the combination."
He shook his head. "I've got to be more careful, next time." Mitsuno went in and turned on the lights. The room was just as they had left it. Demeter was nothing if not a neat spy
"Now, where was it you thought you saw a computer?" he prompted.
"Not 'thought.' Did see. Back behind that pile of stuff—" She pointed to the replaced supplies. "—there's a secret room. More secret, anyway. The computer is on a table in there."
Mitsuno relaxed. His shoulders came down a fraction. "You really did a job in here, didn't you?" He went over to the pile, tipped the base box up on a corner, and pivoted it out of the way. Then he went down in a duck-walk and passed through the connecting tunnel. Demeter followed him.
"Yup, that's a computer all right," he said, standing in front of the table.
"Like I said, you lied to me."
"No, I didn't. It wasn't turned on when we were making love. That's your condition, isn't it?"
"But you said these things were always on."
"Not this one." He reached over to the switch on the power supply, flipped it to the one's position. A heat crackle from the wires and boards was the only response. "Now it's on."
"What's the input-output scheme here?" she asked. "I couldn't figure that part out."
"Voice operated, like your chrono."
"Oh. Can it hear us?'
"I hear you."
The sound was deep and hollow, like a rusty old lawnmower. Whoever programmed this machine hadn't paid much attention to the personality modules—if there were any—or to the vocal inflection. It was the same as with the lock on the door: default values had been good enough.
"What are ... what are you called?" Demeter asked.
"Lethe."
"What's that?'
"That's Ellen's idea of a joke," Mitsuno explained. "Lethe is a river in Greece, on the Eurasian Continent, Earth. Its water is supposed to have a hypnotic quality that makes people forget."
"Forget what?"
"Everything they hear, for one. Lethe is our community memory. We come here, tell him something, and then we can forget about it. He does the remembering and correlating."
"Who is 'we'? You and Ellen and who else?"
"A group of us. You've met Dr. Wa Lixin? He's part of our organization."
"Are you a rebel group?" Demeter asked.
"You might say that. Well, yes, that's probably what we are. Revolutionaries."
"Then who are you rebelling against? You Martians don't have much of a government. None that I can see. There's barely a city administration around here. So who?'
"Against the machines, as I told you before. We don't trust them."
"Yet you use them. This one, for example." She pointed to the components piled on the table.
"Lethe is special. Ellen built him in here, from the circuit boards up. Each piece was obtained separately and at random, wiped down electronically, brought in here, and assembled. Lethe only knows what Ellen put in his head. It was all done with voice programming, starting from a kernel system that she wrote out in longhand on a scribe pad, all zeros and ones. He brings in nothing from the outside except raw silicon and empty registers. And, of course, he has no connection to outside resources. Lethe is our child, born and bred."