"Come again?" he asked.
"Do your radio-frequency transmissions—say, between your backpack and its supporting cybers, or with the grid nexus here in the tunnels at Tharsis Montes—do they go through the ground?"
"No need to. After all, I live out in the open where it's all line of sight. When there is an obstruction, such as a mountain between me and the transmitter, or if I've wandered off into a pocket valley, then we can usually bounce the signals around with relays."
"Suppose you were underground. Like under forty meters of solid rock?"
"Oh. When I'm inside the complex, the grid has its own RF repeaters built into the walls. They're pretty widely spaced, though, so Cyborgs and Creoles all have hardwired jumpers for—"
"Not in the tunnels," she insisted. "Suppose you, um, walked into a cave?"
"Then I would be out of touch. But that's not a problem, really. My system has its own internal resources for making linear projections and conducting error checks until I can re-establish a link."
"Thank you, Colonel."
"That's it? You woke me up for—?"
But the woman's image had vanished.
Demeter disconnected from Colonel Torraway with a glow of personal satisfaction. She might make something as a spy after all.
Sure, a secret was a secret, and Demeter had sworn to keep Mitsuno s information confidential. But even that much commitment didn't mean she was automatically buying into everything Lole had told her, file and line. Some items she wanted to check for herself, such as his estimate of the security arrangements for the secret society's meeting rooms and its "clean" cyber. Demeter was delighted she'd discovered a way to verify all this by referral to a man who lived through radio transmissions and could, for all she knew, read by the light of microwaves. She had found out what she wanted to know without violating Mitsuno's confidence. And nothing she'd said to Roger Torraway would create suspicion within the grids circuits that communicated between Tharsis Montes and wherever the Cyborg happened to be now.
Still warmed by the glow of her own cleverness, Demeter decided to submit her nightly report to Gregor Weiss—even if it was rounding toward morning.
"Terminal, shift to interrogation mode."
"Yes, miss. . . . Where have you gone in the past twenty-four hours?" the terminal dutifully asked.
"Lole Mitsuno met me outside the room here," she began sleepily, "and we went to the—"
Oops! Nothing like handing Lole's secret to the grid on a silver disk. And Demeter had just been congratulating herself on being a such a clever little spy.
"Um," she temporized. "Instead, lets take some new vectors for your questions."
"Very well," the machine said impassively.
What could she tell it—how could she steer it—to avoid references to Mitsuno's cave?
Well, she had learned some interesting facts about the Canyonlands development in the past twenty-four hours. For one, its power satellite was too large for projected needs. Had Mitsuno told her that? No, it was from Sun II Suk. But Lole had told her about the station's unusual configuration, with nacelles or pods or something on the outside. That was probably a safe subject for her report.
"Ask me about the Number Six power station."
"Yes, have you heard anything about the new orbiting solar collector?"
"Sure. The Korean agent, Sun, informed me today that its rated capacity..."
As usual, she seemed to drift off before completing the thought.
It had been ten days since Jory den Ostreicher last cleared this area of von Neumanns, and now the shallow valley was fairly squirming with the blind machines. He quickly set about picking the top ones off the pile and cracking their shells open, dividing up the lumps of raw material inside and saving the least damaged carapaces for possible Stage 2 s.
This work brought back pleasant memories. The last time he was out this way that Earth woman, Demeter Coghlan, had come along by proxy and helped him collect ingots. Joiy hadn't seen her since their last encounter in his private nest, which had turned a little . . . well, rough. Since then, he knew, she had been avoiding him. Jory was sensitive enough to understand that. He had hurt her and she didn't want to see him again. That made sense.
But almost a week had gone by already, and Jory wanted some more of what she gave so freely. By this time, Demeter must be feeling better about him. After all, nobody could carry a grudge longer than a week, could they? She had probably gotten all over her sore spots and would be feeling frisky again.
Den Ostreicher checked with the grid to see if she was still assigned to the Golden Lotus. And, yes, she hadn't left her room yet this morning. Now, if he could just pick up the pace....
Jory's fingers flew with superhuman speed and precision: taking, breaking, picking, and placing. While the idle ten percent of his mind studied out what he wanted to say to his girlfriend, the other ninety percent focused on the job at hand.
The pile of mechanical organisms melted—and the stacks of shells and bags of recovered commodities grew—like steamers at a clambake.
Brunch at the supremely fakey, pseudo-St. Peters-bourgeois bistro was becoming a habit with Demeter. But this was the place for keeping an eye on her competition, or confreres, or whatever you called spies who spent more time bumping into each other than digging out government secrets. No sooner had the mechanical maitre d' seated her than Nancy Cuneo bustled up to her table.
"Have you tried the caviar yet, dear?"
Demeter worked up her best smile. "Made with real fish eggs?"
"Of course not." Cuneo sat down and studied the flat display of choices. "But the protein content is the same. Good for your skin, or so they say." She glanced at the waiting machine. "Chai, pozhalusta."
The server beeped at her and trundled off.
"At my age," she said to Demeter, "all I can drink is black tea. Put anything in it—lemon, cream, Drambuie—and my stomach goes off like a Roman candle."
"I'm sorry," Demeter offered, mentally noting the information for a possible assassination attempt. "A Roman—what did you say?"
"A brand of fireworks, dear. Before your time. . . . You wouldn't think to look at me, but I'm very old."
"Oh, no," Demeter lied.
"Oh, yes! Why, the pieces and parts I've shed over the years. I'm simply propped up by technology, a dab of plastic skin here, a bit of electronics there. Why, do you know my pacemaker's been kicking up recently?"
"Really?" Demeter studied the menu and rang for service. A tank-shaped waitron cycled by and she ordered buttered toast—or at least toast thoroughly oiled—with jam of any flavor so long as it was red, and coffee with lots of cream and sugar.
"Really," Cuneo replied. "I get a stutter and a buzz until I think I'm fibrillating. It must be all the electronic interference in these tunnels, I guess."
"Interference?"
"Of course. Electronic sensors every couple of meters along the walls, public cyber terminals on every corner, smart machines like our friend here—" She nodded to the rolling waitron. "—they just clutter the air with emissions. .. . What I wouldn't give for a place with a little shielding. Some place I could relax and take a deep breath."
"Take a walk outside."
"Then it's even worse. What with signal relays, microwave fields, sunspots. No, if there was only some place, here underground, that was truly isolated." For emphasis, Cuneo put a hand weakly to her chest, the dying Camille.