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  “Of course,” Wa Lixin agreed. “Still, we don’t know what you might have picked up from the crew or other passengers, do we? Martian society cannot regulate interplanetary travel, you see, but we can prescribe for the citizens and casuals who actually touch down on our planet. So it’s the law that everyone coming under our pressure be surveyed for communicable diseases, as well as for preexisting conditions that could create a liability situation.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now, don’t move!”

  He rushed to complete the examination, taking the telemetered data and making his reference comparisons.

  “You’re clear,” he said finally. “No abnormalities whatsoever. And quite healthy.” Perhaps a little too healthy, considering the way she was stretching that jumpsuit.

  “How’s that?” the woman asked, turning her head quickly, so that the upper part of the screen blurred again. “You got no traces of my accident?”

  “Umm.” It was Dr. Lee’s turn to hesitate. “What exactly should I be looking for?”

  “Well, ‘head trauma’ is the term they used back in Austin. You see, about a year ago I was having my hair done in an autocoif—that’s an automated shampoo-curl-and-cut contraption?” she explained when he gave her a blank look. “Anyway, the machine kind of seized up. Seems the solenoids all burned out along one side of the helmet, or so the techs said later. It drove the point of the scissors right through the side of my head. Did it with such force that—”

  Wa Lixin put up a restraining hand and stared hard at the scan on his screen. He zoomed and rotated the image to the approximate site of the injury she described. As he did so, curls and ridges of scar tissue—bone that had healed from an indented star fracture—built up around the outside of her skull. A smooth plastic insert gleamed whitely in the triangular hole that pierced her parietal plate just above the lower suture. The distorted tissue completed forming as he watched.

  “Must be a lag in the processing,” Dr. Lee murmured to himself. “All right, Miss Coghlan, I can see it now. Um…do you have any recurring symptoms?”

  “No, nothing serious. Just sometimes, off and on, I have trouble concentrating.”

  “Enough to bother you?”

  “I cope,” his patient said bravely—perhaps even defiantly. “Look, this has all been fun, but can I go now?”

  “By all means. And welcome to Mars.”

  The woman nodded curtly, slid off the table, and moved quickly out into the waiting room. She gathered up her bags and approached the outer door, which opened for her automatically. Only then did she half-turn and give him a wave of farewell before stepping into the corridor. Then she was gone.

  Dr. Lee tapped keys that stored her somatic image and biomedical history in the grid’s archives. That done, he settled in for another quick go game, before his next patient arrived.

  Chapter 2

  We’ll All Go Out to Meet Her When She Comes

  Golden Lotus, Residential Unit 4/21/9, June 7

  Demeter Coghlan’s accommodations at the Golden Lotus were best described as a closet within a closet. Once she had dropped her bags on the floor she found herself walking in half-circles to keep from stepping on them. The bed swung down sideways on straps, just like in a Houston Judiciary Department detention cell—except the straps were clean and not too frayed. The screen and keyboard of the room’s terminal wedged into a recess in the native rock, which had been dusted with gold flecks to make it look like the Mother Lode back on Earth. The communal bathroom was down the hall and metered.

  But the room was a place to cache her change of clothing unwrinkled. It also gave her a sense, at least, of privacy.

  Coghlan eyed the terminal. If she pulled down the bed, after hanging up her clothes, she could sit almost facing the screen. She tapped a key and waited for the screen to come up. It printed: HOW MAY I HELP YOU, MS. COGHLAN?

  DO YOU TAKE VIO? she entered, two-fingered.

  “Yes, this terminal is so equipped,” a neutral male voice, still three octaves too high, answered from a speaker somewhere in the rig.

  “I could have told you that,” Sugar piped up. “Just ask, Dem.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll handle this,” Demeter told her. “Um, Grid…How do I get out to Valles Marineris?”

  “The Canyonlands Development Limited Pty. of North Zealand has this area currently under development for a residential and food-processing complex expected to accommodate fifteen hundred people in the first phase,” the terminal replied, sounding like a canned spiel. “Named for the nineteen-hundred-kilometer-long gorge system and its many tributaries, which were apparently shaped by streamflows at an unknown previous time when Mars is presumed to have possessed quantities of free-flowing surface water, this district includes some of the lowest elevations yet charted in the planet’s surface.”

  As the grid talked, still photos of the project came and went on the screen in almost random order.

  “Construction activity on the tunnel complex is continuously monitored by my Library Function, Channel Thirty-nine, for the interest and entertainment of guests of the Golden Lotus. A virtual-reality tour of the finished complex model is available on Channel Forty-three, for those terminals equipped with interactive V/R capability. Applications to be considered for future residential or commercial status will be accepted through this unit by requesting—”

  “Maybe later, guy,” Demeter interrupted. “Look, I just want to get out there and see the place. How do I get hold of a U-Drive-It, or something? And which direction do I head out in?”

  The terminal paused for what seemed like a whole bunch of nanoseconds. “Personal transport on the Martian surface must be requisitioned from the Dockmaster, Tharsis Montes. Accommodation is usually assigned on a priority basis. As the Canyonlands Complex in the Valles Marineris District is some two thousand six hundred fifty-two kilometers from this location, you should plan on at least fourteen days of travel time.” The screen showed her something like a silver-and-red Travelways bus galumphing along on eight articulated stilts. “The approximate cost of mounting such an expedition is—”

  “Skip it. You’re telling me at least three reasons—but in the nicest way possible—why I can’t get thar from here, aren’t you?”

  Another excruciating pause. “Personal travel on the Martian surface is extremely difficult for nonadapted humans,” the grid admitted.

  “Well then, how do we ‘nonadapted’ types get around?”

  “By proxy.”

  “How so?”

  “Proxy…a person or device equipped with recording and telemetry functions to act on the request of, or in place of, another person.”

  The screen displayed, first, a human person under a helmet that was ringed with lenses and antennae. The person was also wearing what looked like a manplifier suit with detachable waldos. Next the terminal showed a metal ball of indeterminate size knobbed with similar pickups. The ball walked on feathery spider legs and sported two nearly human arms—which gave Demeter a queasy feeling.

  “Right.” Coghlan bit her lip. Something was not getting said here; she sensed she needed badly to know what that something was.

  “Um, how do I get in touch with a proxy?” she asked.

  “Through an interactive V/R terminal.”

  “Are you that kind of terminal?”

  “This unit is not so equipped.”

  “Then how do I access?”

  “Many public terminals, and those for short-term lease in some private establishments, are equipped with full sight-sound-touch reality interaction. Some of these units also provide patches for the inner ear, thereby stimulating the sense of balance, and to the rhinal cortex, stimulating the senses of smell and taste. Such features are usually provided at additional charge—”

  “Thanks, I already know what Mars smells like.” Burned rock and used gym socks, she guessed, with the sting of a vodka martini heavy on the vermouth. “How do I find a terminal that can handle virtual reality?”

/>   “The Golden Lotus provides a full-feature simulation parlor for your relaxation and entertainment. In the public corridors, look for any device marked with the red V-slash-R symbol.” And the screen showed her a picture of one.

  “Thanks, I’ll go out now and—”

  “It is strongly recommended,” the grid interrupted her, which was something new, “that first-time visitors be accompanied by an experienced guide. This is for your protection, so that you do not become spatially disoriented, and to protect the colony’s equipment, which in the case of your incapacitation might become damaged or lost.”

  “I see. And where do I get a guide?”

  “Many citizens will agree to escort casuals for a small fee, which may be paid directly—”

  “Right. Now find me one, will you?”

  “We will arrange for an appropriate person to contact you,” the grid presence said stiffly. Then it went silent. As if to make its point, the screen pattern blinked off. End of conversation.

  “How about that?” Demeter said to herself. “I finally managed to insult a machine.”

  “You do it all the time, Dem,” Sugar observed from her wrist. “Why, the things you say to me—”

  “Shut up, Shoogs.”

  “Never no mind, Dem.”

  Suddenly the gold-flecked walls seemed to be pressing in on her. The air in her room felt all used up. Demeter stood, letting the bed swing back into its recess. After making sure that the doorlock was properly keyed to her thumbprint, she went out into the hallway, turned left for the main tunnel, and went on an unsupervised meander.

  Tharsis Montes, Agricultural Lot 39, June 7

  Jory den Ostreicher pulled the plastic sheet tight over the seedbed and tacked it with a nailgun. To avoid ripping the material, he put his spike through a grommet molded into the rolled seam.

  Tending the new crops—this one was low-hydro carrots, by the tag stitched into the seam—was just part of his outside duties. Every citizen of Mars had three or four jobs, all assigned according to his or her skills and adaptations. Putting in carrots, or any other plantform, was a communal effort.

  To begin with, an injection crew shot a perimeter wall all around the plot, going down to bedrock or permafrost, whichever came first; this formed an impermeable barrier against the Martian atmosphere. Next, someone with a rototiller had to prepare the soil, which meant breaking it up and raking it smooth. Then someone else spread the necessary mix of chemicals, including a healthy dose of nitrogen-fixers. Finally, Jory came around with his rolls of film and tacked them across the top of the barrier dike.

  The double-layer film was made by someone else, probably a home-factory cooperative working with methane feedstocks from the gas wells. They sealed the edges, adding the anchoring grommets and inlet tubes for pumped air and water. Another cooperative sprouted the seedlings under blotting paper and studded the film with them. They left the finished rolls in a compartment lock for Jory to pick up and spread. It was a real community effort in the best Martian tradition, and everybody got a share of the harvest.

  Jory’s special skill wasn’t any green thumb—he personally couldn’t make hair grow. Instead it was his adaptation for working outside in the natural Martian atmosphere. Jory was a Creole, halfway between the old-line Cyborgs and the nonadapted humans. In the cold and partial pressure, the average colonist would last about fifteen seconds before his feet would freeze and his lungs collapse; with the ultraviolet bombardment his skin would go melanomic and flay off within days of his return to a protected environment—if he ever got that far. The Cyborgs, on the other hand, were an import. They had to be gutted out and retrofitted on Earth because of the complex surgeries that adapted them to indefinite, self-contained, and unprotected living on the surface. But after that, they were more machine than human.

  Creoles were the perfect compromise. The surgery that it took to make a Jory, brutal and vast in scale as it was, was well within the capabilities of the Martian medical system. A Creole had the best of both worlds. Unlike the Cyborgs, the Creole looked quite human. He could move easily, almost inconspicuously, among his nonadapted friends and relatives. Yet he could also work and play out on the surface, unprotected, for up to three hours at a time without distress. If there was one thing you wanted to be on Mars, it was Creole. Not the least of the advantages was the bonus pay he got for light-duty, bonehead jobs like tacking down a sheet of carrots.

  “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 Jory den Ostreicher’s work in tacking down the remainder of the seedling sheet was even more boneheaded than usual.

  Red Queen Bar, Commercial Unit 2/4/7, June 7

  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 Corporation’s 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.