"Jory den Ostreicher ..." the grid said in his ear. Among his other adaptations was a neural implant that put Jory in continuous contact with the colony's main cyber network, both sight and sound.
"Yes, what is it?" he replied, more thinking the words than saying them with his throat.
"We have an escort assignment for you. It is a newly landed casual from the Earthly state of Texahoma."
"Well, yeah, but you can see I'm busy right now."
"The contract is flexible. You may finish your outside duties first."
"Does this casual have a name?"
"Demeter Coghlan." His visual cortex flashed a sixteen-bit sketch of a chubby little face and dark hair drawn back into a ponytail.
"A girl! Aww-right!"
"Ms. Coghlan is twenty-eight years old and is well connected to the Texahoma political establishment," the grid droned, tipping a data dump from a file somewhere. It often did that of its own volition. "Ms. Coghlan studied three-and-a-half years at the University of Texas, Austin, in the School of Diplomatic Relations, but failed to take a degree. Other than her family resources, she has no visible means of support, yet her expense account is reckoned at . . . data-not-available. Ms. Coghlan's stated purpose for visiting Mars is personal tourism, but we suspect other reasons and are presently researching this with our contacts on Earth."
"A rich girl." Jory whistled under his breath. "I'm liking this better all the time."
"We advise caution in your dealings with this person, Jory den Ostreicher."
"Oh, sure! I'll be careful. ... Did she say how much she would pay for my services?"
"You may ask any reasonable figure. The Government of Mars will supplement to meet your price."
"Great! Where can I find her?"
"Ms. Coghlan has been assigned space at the Golden Lotus, but she is now moving about the complex in a pattern that has not yet been analyzed. When you have completed your tasks at. . . Agricultural Lot 39, you will be given directions to her current location."
"Great!"
"We thought you would be pleased." In a blink, the voice was gone from his head and Jory was alone.
The quality of Joiy den Ostreicher s work in tacking down the remainder of the seedling sheet was even more boneheaded than usual.
Looking for some human company, Demeter Coghlan wandered into a bar called the Red Queen on the second level. It was hardly more than a largish cube off the corridor hex, crammed with half a dozen stand-up tables, no stools or chairs, and no human bartender, either.
Instead, there was a Mr. Mixology™ wall unit, ubiquitous throughout the human-occupied Solar System. Demeter wondered if she ordered a Texahoma-style margarita, would the machine do a better job of salting the glass than the last one she'd tangled with? Better, she decided, to simply order a beer and discover what new definition the Mixology Corporations R&D Department had come up with for "draft."
Most of the tables were full, but a discreet peek showed her that only about half the room's occupants had legs and feet. The rest were holograms from a swing-out projector mounted under the table's scalloped edge. So, the humans who were actually here were enjoying a quiet drink and a chat with a friend or loved one who was somewhere else—on another level or in another colony half the planet away. And vice versa, of course.
None of the humans was unengaged and thus likely to want to meet a "casual"—for that's what the grid kept calling her—fresh up from Earth. And it didn't look like anyone would stay around long enough to begin a friendship, either. From the size of the room to the chest-high configuration of the tables, the Red Queen was saying, "Take your drink, enjoy it, and then get on with whatever you were doing." Even with the low gravity, you didn't want to stand around hanging by your elbows for long. This was a real worker's culture.
Demeter stood off, watching the quiet action, sipping her beer with progressively larger sips, and decided she really didn't want to interface with a hologram as soon as a table came free, aside from the fact that she didn't know anyone on Mars, except that Dr. Lee.... When the suds were gone, she tossed her mug into the cycler and went out cruising.
One level up, she came to a sign directing her still higher, to "Dome City." She decided that might be interesting. Demeter wasn't at all sleepy, despite the fact she had been awake for going on twenty-three hours now. The problem was the time difference: moving from the interplanetary transport's Zulu or Universal Time, in synch with every other ship and orbiting station, to Mars's own rotational time—which included a day thirty-seven minutes longer than Earth's. Add in the fact that the tunnels here were evenly lighted at all hours, and Coghlan quickly felt like she was floating in a bubble of unalloyed frenetic energy. Maybe going up to the surface and seeing what the sun was doing would help her adjust.
The first indication that she was leaving the underground corridor system was a landing in the upward-slanting ramp where it went through an airlock. Both sets of lock doors were open at the time, but she noticed that each was poised to swing closed at the first sign of pressure loss. Swing, that is, with the encouragement of explosive bolts whose arming sequence carried three warning signs pasted on the tunnel wall on either side of the door. From what she could see of them, the doors looked to be made of plate armor.
Evidently, the Tharsis Monteans—Tharsisians? Tharsissies? Monties? Montaignards?—suspected that explosive decompression might well be accompanied by a nuclear attack.
Above the airlock, the quality of the ambient pressure changed. Coghlan's ears popped, and she was suddenly aware of a . . . well, surging quality to the atmosphere. It was like being in a suit, where each beat of the induction pumps thudded against your ears and rebounded from the fabric of your neckseal.
Layers of fiberglass and steel sheathing concealed the actual juncture between Martian rock and the human-constructed domes. After a dozen steps, Demeter was conscious of translucent plastic over her head. The material billowed gently: not enough to flap, but just enough to say that internal air pressure was the only thing holding its shape—and that there was a steady wind on the other side. She was positive the designers would have included more than one layer of ripstop between her breathable air and the attenuated carbon dioxide whistling across the Martian surface, but Demeter was suddenly aware that those fast-acting lock doors had a real purpose.
Judging from the quality of light coming through the UV-yellowed plastic, the sun had gone considerably nearer the horizon than it had been when she came down the space fountain. She started looking around for a window to check this.
The first dome was about fifty meters across and twenty meters high at the center. The space was walled off with head-high partitions. A second and even third level extended into the upper reaches of the enclosed space with pipework scaffolding that looked none too steady. Demeter noted that the cubicles directly under the platforms were tented over for modesty. Otherwise, the living or working units—or whatever else they were—enjoyed the bland sky of the dome's fabric.
Coghlan wandered around this collection of split-level huts, looking for the perimeter wall and a view of the planets actual surface at ground level. During her search, she glanced through the doorway of one cubicle, which was incompletely covered with a hanging cloth. Inside, she saw a modularized office: a half-desk, V/R terminal, string chair, disk rack, and what looked like an old-style drafters board—but with a couple of mice and an interactive surface. The sign outside the door said, civil engineering, d2, water resources.