Wyatt might be blind to the nibblings of mice, but he could sure as hell spot a big old rat.
So, instead, Ellen would have to initiate the execution—if and when it became necessary—through a dummy persona. It had to be an access code that Wyatt would accept as a registered token-holder. In short, Joiy's access code.
When the time came, her programs would cut off the grid's higher functions, its collective intelligence and executive decision making, its administration of the planet's legal and social doctrines, its tap into corridor surveillance and human monitoring, but leave in place and operative the low-order functions that mechanically maintained the tunnel complexes. Or that was probably how it would work ... she hoped... according to her best professional guesstimate. With an untested virus, Ellen knew, you could never be one hundred percent sure of the outcome.
"Did you get it?' Lole asked again at her shoulder.
"Of course, chapter and verse. .. . Are you back so soon? Where's Demeter?"
"Be here in a minute. I sent one of the boys for her."
"I thought you'd go yourself."
"We've got things to talk about, before she comes." Lole turned deadly serious. "Jory gave us more than he knew."
"Sure, the grid's whole battle plan. It's going to seal off humanity by destroying the Earth fountains. That separates us into easily disposable chunks, doesn't it?"
"Obviously," he agreed. "It probably has something similar planned for our own fountain. Maybe that's what the drives are for on the new power satellite—to send it out on a parabolic orbit, ending up here, at Tharsis Montes."
Sorbel gave that notion some thought. "I'm not sure. Why cut a rope in two places, when one cut will do?"
"That would isolate us from Luna, Europa, the Belt Stations...."
"But those colonies aren't viable without massive support from Earth. Neither are we."
"Oh, hell, Ellen! We're totally self-supporting now! I thought that was a given. We all resent Earth's meddling in our affairs—their old territorial claims and their impulsive new terraforming projects. They're just a nuisance, from the Martian point of view Cut them off at the fountainhead and we'll do just fine. Better than fine. With the way open for us to supply Europa and the outer colonies, we'll—"
"We'll die on the vine, Lole. Sure, we're self-supporting, on a month-to-month basis. Maybe even year-to-year. But cut us off from the rare and refined materials and new technologies that regularly flow from Earth and we won't last long. Two, three years from now we'll be starving and suffocating up here. We'll petition to go back on any terms. The grid knows this, of course. It wrote the program on our economy."
"Then what are those engines for, on the power platform?" he asked.
"I have no idea why you'd rig that satellite to scoot. A sudden thrust would destroy its solar panels, fold them up like flypaper. Unless, of course, they're dummies, built for show—and they're not. I think I know the grid about as well as any human person, and I've found it's inherently conservative. The grid wouldn't waste Mars's precious resources—resources for which it ultimately claims stewardship—putting hectares of polymorphic silicon in orbit only to rip them off in the first second of operation."
"So it's still a mystery."
"Part of it, anyway. We do know about the plan to blow the fountains."
"Can you stop it?"
"I have the bullet, the gun, and now—with the access codes from Jorys systems—the trigger. I can initiate our virus well inside the sixty-eight minutes of orbital lag time needed to position those bombs. We can phage the grid's higher functions before it gets even close with them.. . . Everything else, though, is going to be a crap shoot."
"Good enough for my—"
"What's going on?" a voice asked from behind them.
Ellen turned to see a sleep-rumpled Demeter Coghlan being duck-walked into the secret room by one of Lole's security heavies.
"Miz Coghlan?"
"Yes, Terminal?" Demeter mumbled. "What is it now?"
"Miz Coghlan!"
Someone was shaking her shoulders, practically sliding her body around on the bedsheets. Damn it! Who left the door open? She gave orders not to be disturbed.
"Miz—"
"All right already I'm awake. I'm up!"
Demeter opened her eyes and stared into the face of someone she'd never . . . No, it was the heavy-set young man from the secret room, the one who had hit Jory and then walked away. He was bent over her now, with his big hands on her bare shoulders.
She glanced down to see how much of the sheet had slipped off her body, looked pointedly at his hands on her skin. "Do you mind?"
He withdrew them.
"Lole and Miss Ellen want you back in the—" He glanced at the terminal. "—back at the party." With that, the man stepped away from the bed and waited for her to get up.
"All right." She sighed. "I'll be along in a minute."
He would not take the hint and move.
"You run on ahead," she said, "and I'll meet you there."
"They told me I was to bring you. Special."
"Well, I'm not getting dressed with you standing there. Why don't you wait outside?"
The man's brows drew together in a doubtful frown.
"There's only the one door," she observed. "You think I'm going to leave through an air duct or something?"
He actually turned his head toward the grating, forty centimeters square and set high in the rock wall. Demeter would have to be a contortionist with a collapsible head to sneak out of the room that way.
"Go on," she said. "Shoo!"
As soon as the door closed behind him, Demeter leapt out of bed, found fresh underwear and a clean jumper, and rummaged through the bottom of the tiny closet for a pair of soft walking boots. The gallery over the water leading to the secret room was too slick and slimy to attempt in her slippers. Demeter knew she had no time to go down to the communal bathroom and splash water on her face, let alone take a shower. Her pet gorilla wasn't going to take his eyes off her for that long.
When she left the room, Demeter brushed past him and strode off down the corridor. He ran three steps behind and caught her arm with a bruising grip just above the elbow. She whirled on him, within the limits of movement he allowed.
"Look—what's your name?"
"Jeff."
"Jeff what?"
"Te Jing."
"Look, Jeff Te Jing. Am I a prisoner or something?"
'They said to bring you. I bring."
"Well, could you stop trying to give me tendinitis?"
Te Jing's face chewed over this request for three more paces. "You won't try to run?"
"Of course not. I want to see Lole and Ellen, too."
"Okay." He released the squeezing pressure on her arm, but his hand never broke contact.
"Jesus!" she breathed.
He took her over the water, down the dead-end corridor in the abandoned section of tunnels, and up to the blank steel door. The first room was empty now; the party really was over. As she passed the hanging curtain with the chemical toilet, Demeter veered off, thinking the basin would still be diere and she could at least wash up.
The sudden movement took Te Jing by surprise. He caught her in a half nelson and twisted until she dropped one knee to the ground.
"You promised," he said accusingly.
"Just to wash my hands."
"Aggh," he grunted, like a swearword.
Going through the short connecting tunnel, he put his hands on the back of her neck, pressing down hard on her spine, his thumbs splayed against her shoulder blades for lateral control. Demeter could barely creep along in that position. They used to do this to the prisoners at Matamoros, she remembered; it was called "frog marching" and felt as humiliating and painful as it looked.