And damn it! Demeter Coghlan, who didn't like to even talk about sex in front of the machines, had been maneuvered into bed—not once, but twice—by them. Or had the distrust she felt for cybers also been preprogrammed into her brain? That would make sense, of course: it was the ultimate cover for a supposedly clean operative.
Suddenly, nothing she did or said or thought was her own.
Everything was potentially a whisper from the wires in her head.
Demeter understood, finally, that she needed help. She had to find someone who was independent of all this, who stood outside the grid and its skewed information sources, who could make his own decisions.... Roger Torraway.
Or was his name, coming into her mind right then, just another electronic compulsion?
No way to tell.
When instinct won't work, try intellect.
The Cyborg and all his land might be the product of decades-old computer projections, but they had been roaming the deserts of Mars at will ever since. It was well known, among Cyborg watchers, that older models like Torraway could withhold radio communication with the grid—from their end. And he was, in the exchange's very words, "not a token holder on this network." All of this implied he was clean of interference. And he would have an economic interest in joining her side in any war against the machines: she had put him on retainer.
But how could Demeter get in touch with Torraway?
At the moment, she was passing one of the ubiquitous public terminals set into the corridor wall. Was it that simple? Just call him?
But then the grid would know where she was.
It did anyway, tracking the electromagnetic noise coming from the circuits inside her skull. She had no secrets anymore, did she?
Demeter studied and rejected the menu of options. 'Terminal, patch me through to Roger Torraway, wherever he is, whatever he's doing. We have to talk."
"Right away, Miz Coghlan."
That readiness was odd now, wasn't it? Before, when she'd asked...
"Demeter?" The voice was flat and mechanical, with no accent on any syllable. A Cyborg voice, for sure. The screen, however, never did resolve into an image of her interlocutor, not even from stock pixels. Nothing in the archive to display, and no lens on site this time to take any kind of image. Instead, the menu flicked off after a few seconds and displayed a revolving moire pattern. It was almost hypnotic.
"Colonel Torraway? I'm in trouble. I need your help."
"What has happened?"
"I've been mixed up with a group of people who are . . . Well, they're convinced the grid has dropped a digit and is plotting against humanity. Now they think I'm some kind of spy for the machines—"
"Why would they believe that?"
"Because of some chips inside my head, medical prosthetics, that they think have got me under computer control."
"And are you?" He sounded curious. "Under computer control?"
"Christ, I don't know\" Demeter wailed. "I mean, how could I?"
"Too true."
"You're the only person I know who can mediate between diem and the machines. The humans respect you, and the cybers can't touch you ... not really."
Silence on his end.
That was disquieting.
"And you're strong, Colonel. You can protect me, physically, from whatever it is they have planned for me."
"The humans, you mean."
"Yes. They've already killed one supposed spy—the Creole, Jory den Ostreicher."
"Killed him? How?"
"They cut his head open and took out parts of his brain—the electronic parts. I'm afraid they want to do the same thing to me, with my prosthetics. I'm scared, Colonel Torraway."
"I don't know. ..." Cold winds seemed to whistle through the transmitted voice. "None of this appears to be Cyborg business."
"You're human, too, at least in part," she pleaded. "Don't ever forget that."
"Over the years," he continued, "the colonists have grown to resent any intrusion in their affairs from the company of Cyborgs. Why, the last time we—"
Suddenly, Demeter was growing tired and angry with all his dithering. "We have a deal, Colonel!" she snapped. "Your help, in return for funds drawn on the Double Eagle Bank of Austin, Texas. Name your price, convertible into any currency. I'll pay it."
More silence.
"Very well, Demeter," he said at last. "It has been years since I visited the tunnels, and I can't guarantee my presence will have any effect on this generation of humans."
"Just help me, Colonel. Where are you now?"
"Actually, within a few hundred yards of Tharsis Montes. Near the main airlock facility."
"Great! Now—uh—can you let yourself in?"
A hard, ratcheting sound came through the terminal. It might have been a cynical chuckle. "Do you have socket wrenches in your fingertips?"
"Okay, but don't start a leak or something. I'm right outside there."
"Understood. Torraway out."
The terminal's moire pattern folded in on itself, showing the menu display again. Demeter turned away from the wall unit.
"Demeter!"
Lole Mitsuno was charging up the ramp toward her.
She looked around for someplace to run, but his legs were a lot longer than hers.
Lole caught sight of Demeter as he was coming up the ramp near the main airlock. Mitsuno was moderately proud of himself, having figured it out as the only logical destination she could make for, even in her present disturbed state of mind. There she could steal a walker and travel overland to one of the other Martian tunnel communities. Any other course would be foolish, leading her to almost immediate capture.
"Demeter!" he called and picked up his pace.
She turned, as if to run, then paused.
In a moment he was standing in front of her, pinning her against the rock wall, bracketing her upper arms in either hand to block another escape, and keeping mindful of where his groin was in relation to her knees.
"Why did you run like that?" he asked.
"You, Ellen, that doctor! All of you would have killed me, just like Jory, after you found out—"
"Jory isn't dead."
"He sure looked that way."
"No, just deeply unconscious. We needed to get something from his brain, and to do that we had to remove certain appliances—"
"Just like you want to remove them from me."
"No, Demeter. We don't want to hurt—"
"Ellen does! I could see it in her eyes. She hates me now." Demeter was looking wildly around, blink into his eyes, flick down at his chin, wink past his ear, slide up the ramp, like an animal in a trap.
"I swear it isn't so," he said and tried to mean it.
"I'm not going back to that room with you."
"Then where—?"
"Let me go to my hotel. I'll stay right there, locked in if you like, until the next transport leaves for Earth. I won't talk to anyone about anything. I just want to go home." But the crazy shifting around with her eyes went on, flick up the ramp, blink down into the tunnel, like a broken machine on an endless do-loop.
"Demeter . . ."He tried to get her attention. "It's a little late for—"
A pair of hands grabbed Lole's shoulders from behind.
"—tha-ay-ay-at ..." His voice bounced from his chest up to his soft palate as he was pulled bodily away from her, lifted off the tunnel floor, and shaken like a rag. His jaw rattled so that his teeth clicked together and were in danger of cutting his tongue.