Mining the Oort Read online

  He stopped, laughing at himself. "Well," he said, "sometimes I don't remember the Law of the Raft myself, I guess. I suppose I should be more charitable to the Earthies. It's hard, though. Anyway, that's what I wanted Tsumi to understand. Do you follow me?"

  "I think so," Dekker said doubtfully.

  "I wish Tsumi did. That boy hangs out with a lot of the wrong people, I'm afraid, and his father—well, I shouldn't say anything against his father." He looked at his watch. "Anyway, Dekker, I'm going to finish up the cooking. If you want to read the book, go ahead. It's a fine story, isn't it?"

  Dekker nodded agreement, and did as he was told. But, although the novel was as interesting as ever, he was glad when his mother arrived, looking both amused and surprised. "I've got a message for you, Dekker," she told her son at once. "You're invited to a party."

  That startled Dekker. He blinked at his mother. Who in Sunpoint did he know well enough to invite him to anything? And the surprise was bigger still when his mother told him, "It's an Earth girl. Annetta Cauchy. She says her parents are having a preimpact dinner, and she wants you to come."

  Dekker opened his eyes wide in astonishment, but he was nowhere nearly as astonished as Tinker Gorshak. "You've been getting around in a hurry," the old man grumbled.

  "I'm glad you're making friends so fast," Gertrud said. She waited to see if her son was going to say something. When he didn't she asked, "What about it? Do you want to go?"

  "Now, wait a damn minute," Gorshak said, scowling. "I thought we were going to have a little private party right here. Just family." He reached over to pat Dekker's knee and didn't notice when Dekker, who didn't consider Tinker Gorshak any part of his family, pulled stiffly back. Gorshak went on, "What's the use of him getting mixed up with those people? All they want to do is suck our blood. I think he should tell this girl to take her invitation and stuff it."

  "Tinker. It isn't going to hurt him to see how the other half lives," Gertrud said, "if he wants to go. What about it, Dekker?"

  Dekker said, "I probably ought to go, I think. I mean, it's kind of like the Law of the Raft, isn't it?"

  Tinker scowled, then grinned. To Gerti he said, "It's something we were talking about. Maybe he's right."

  "All right, then," Gerti DeWoe said, not bothering to try to understand the allusion. "Then what about a present?"

  Another surprise. Dekker gave his mother a puzzled look. "A present?"

  "That's right, a present. Earthies are always giving presents to each other. You can't go to a party without bringing something along to give your hostess."

  "But I don't have anything to give away," Dekker protested.

  Tinker Gorshak said sourly, "Who does? But that doesn't stop the mudsuckers from always wanting something anyway." He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, if you're sure you want to do this—Tell you what, Dek. Let me make a couple of calls and see what I can do for you.

  9

  A good-sized comet can mass more than a hundred billion tons, and in the richest comets as much as four-fifths of that mass may be water—not liquid water, of course, but ice is just as good.

  Water's the first thing you want to grow crops. Old Earthie farmers used to calculate that it took about seven million tons of irrigation water to lay one inch—in modern measures, two and a half centimeters—of water on a hundred square miles ("miles"!) of farmland. The other figure to remember is that you need about ten "inches" a year to make most crops grow, even with trickle irrigation.

  What that adds up to is that you could wet down nearly a million and a half square miles with one decent-sized comet, sort of.

  In practice it's harder than that. You can make those sums work only if you could keep the water contained in one place—which you can't. And also if most of it didn't get blasted right back into space by the impact—which it does. And if that was all you wanted . . .

  But of course the Martians wanted much more than that. They wanted water to keep, and air besides. So they needed a lot of comets, because what they wanted was to make the whole old planet bloom.

  What a lucky thing it was for all of them that the Oort had literally trillions of the things.

  1O

  When Dekker DeWoe, gift in one sweaty hand, turned up at the home of the Cauchy family, the first thing that surprised him was the walls.

  Dekker knew what walls were supposed to look like. All Martians lived within walls all their lives, and all the walls in Sunpoint City, as in every Martian settlement, were made out of the same material. The stuff looked like poured concrete but, since there certainly wasn't enough spare water on Mars to waste on such water-intensive processes as pouring concrete, certainly wasn't. What the walls were made of was the cheapest and most convenient material available on Mars: rock. Rock was cheap to obtain and easy to deal with—as long as you had plenty of solar heat. You just dug up some of the bare rock that lay all around the surface, and then you crushed it, pressed it, and heated it until it sintered into flat construction panels.

  Of course, most Martians then did as much as they could to decorate those monotonous walls. They painted them at least—"crayoned" them might have been a better word, because the pigment was in waxy sticks that you just rubbed on. Or they hung pictures on them when they had any pictures to hang. Or they lined the walls with shelves and cupboards, which was usually a necessity anyway, living space being as scarce as it was.

  But that was about as far as any Martian could afford to go with wall decorations, and Dekker had never before seen walls hung with draperies. They weren't just any old kind of spun-rock draperies, either. These were fabric draperies—woven out of organic fabrics, probably even out of real cotton and silk and wool, natural-fiber textiles that had to have been shipped all the way from Earth. At, as Tinker Gorshak would have been sure to point out, the expense of their Martian hosts.

  Dekker's consolation was that at least he had a worthy gift for his hosts, for Tinker Gorshak had come through for him. The old man had not stopped disapproving of Dekker's socializing with the Earthies, but all the same, he had postponed his own dinner long enough to escort Dekker down to the Sunpoint hothouse, and there he had wheedled an actual rosebud from his colleague, the amiable Mr. Chantly. When Dekker entered the Earthies' apartment—more than one room, obviously, since there were no beds in this one, although it was easily three times the size of the single room he shared with his mother—his eyes were popping as he held his flower before him like an ambassador's credentials, staring at everything around.

  It wasn't just the drapes on the walls, it was everything. Even the lights. There wasn't any one-dim-bulb rule here; the room was flooded with brilliant light. He had never seen people dressed like these, either—filmy, silky drapes on the women, puffed shirts and ruffled shorts on the men, nothing that would keep you warm or fit under a hotsuit. Nor had he ever seen a table longer than he was, and every square centimeter of it covered with food. Dozens of varieties of food. Dishes of spicy little balls of hot killed-animal. Fresh raw celery. Carrots slivered into pencil-thin strips (they had to be on even better terms with the hothouse geneticist than Tinker Gorshak was). Bowls of yellow or pink or green pastes to dip the vegetables in. "So glad you could come, Dekker," said the tall, yellow-haired Earthie woman who let him in. "Oh, a rose! How kind of you," she finished, sniffing it and offering it to her daughter. "Look, Annetta, Dekker has brought us a rose."

  "I'll put it with the others," the girl told her mother, and took Dekker's arm. "Come on, Dekker, let's hit the chow line. You must be starving."

  It was annoying to Dekker that this girl should always assume he was hungry. It was even more annoying, in fact embarrassing, when he observed that on the buffet table there were half a dozen vases of flowers, all kinds of flowers, and when Annetta thrust his lone contribution into one of the vases he could hardly find it again.

  But the fact was that as soon as she handed him a plate he found that she had been right. He really was hungry, his salivar
y glands flowing at the smells and sights of all that remarkable food. And Annetta was devoting herself to him. "Some lobster, Dekker? You've never had lobster? Well, these are only irradiated, you can't get live ones here, of course, but still—And try the guacamole! My mother made it herself, grew her own avocados in the aeroponics."

  The stuff called "guacamole" looked too much like the algae paste the cooks added to soups and stews, and Dekker certainly wasn't going to touch the funny-looking red-shelled stuff Annetta said was lobster. But there was plenty of other food to choose from. He let her guide him to the salads, and the killed-poultry legs in barbecue sauce, but when he took a good look at the display behind the table he stopped short.

  Across the top of the wall was a banner that read Cauchy, Stern-Glass & Co. celebrates the triumph of ecopoiesis. And under it was a row of pictures, the fake-3D kind that almost looked as though they had depth: a grove of fruit trees in blossom; some people with long boards strapped to their feet, sliding down an immense snow-white slope; laughing nude men and women, all young, all beautiful—all distinctly Earthie in their proportions—diving and swimming at the edge of an immense blue lake. The startling thing was that they all looked somehow oddly almost familiar, though of course he had never seen anything like that in the flesh. "Is that Earth?" he asked.

  She was laughing at him. "Silly. That's Mars. The way it's going to be. Don't you recognize Olympus Mons, for heaven's sake? Those pictures are what they call renderings. They aren't meant to be real. Daddy's company uses them to encourage the investors when they underwrite a new issue."

  "Issue?" Dekker said, and then realized. "Oh. The Bonds."

  "Of course, the Bonds. Have you got everything you want? For starters, I mean? Then come on, I'd like you to meet some people."

  It was not exactly what Dekker would have liked, but he was determined to be a good guest. Annetta herself was not now the girl in the plain brown hotsuit he'd met out on the slope. Somehow she had grown up in a few hours. She was dressed in white, and what she was wearing was not shorts or even pants but a skirt, ankle length, filmy as her mother's. She wore a necklace of sparkling stones, with a large red one that lay close above her very nearly significant young breasts, and her pale hair was upswept with something like gold dust sprinkled on it.

  Dekker was dazzled—by the food, by the surroundings, by the girl, maybe most of all by the company. All these people were dressed like characters in a video play. All of them were Earthies, too—or almost all. He did recognize one elderly Martian couple as high-ups in the Sunpoint City administration. They seemed to be painfully on their best behavior, and Dekker saw that they were treated with elaborate courtesy, but no real concern, by the Earthies whose party it really was. Dekker also saw, with some scorn, that a large American "flag" was standing on a pole in one corner of the room, and then discovered that, even so, these people weren't all Americans. As he was introduced, catching none of the names, he learned that there was a German couple, and some Japanese and a handful of Brazilians. Some he couldn't identify at all. Altogether there were twenty or thirty people in the room, probably the whole Earthie population of Sunpoint City, Dekker thought.

  There were not very many children; Dekker was pretty sure he was the youngest person present.

  Annetta, he supposed, was not much older, and there was another Earthie girl and a boy a little older still; no one else under full adult age. Annetta introduced him all around. That was an ordeal in itself, because he had a plate of food and his mouth usually full, and hardly any of the names stayed with him long enough even to say hello. Still, he did get the names of the other kids: Evan, shorter than he but with a glass of wine in his hand, and Ina, with more makeup on her face than even Annetta. He remembered that Evan was the one he had met in the entry lock, and noticed that Evan and Ina were holding hands, and that when Annetta saw them doing it she bit her lip.

  "How old are you, Dekker?" the boy asked, looking him up and down with amusement.

  "Eight," Dekker said shortly, looking down at the Earthie boy. Evan was barrel-shaped; Dekker thought the boy looked as though he could break Dekker in half—what a strange notion, Dekker told himself reprovingly; just a few minutes with these mudsuckers and he was forgetting all about his nonviolence classes.

  "But that's almost fifteen, Earth years," Annetta put in quickly.

  "Oh, really?" Evan said, pursing his lips. "Then I suppose you're old enough to have a glass of wine with us?"

  Dekker knew what wine was, had even had a sip of his mother's now and then. "Of course I am," he declared. "We drink alcohol often." And then was stuck with this incredibly fragile-feeling crystal glass with this sour-tasting liquid in it. He swallowed it down anyway and managed to say, "Good wine," appreciatively.

  "It's really a pity," Annetta was saying warmly to him, "that we won't be seeing each other much, Dekker. My father's going to take us home, you know, as soon as we see the comet impact is going all right."

  "Home to Earth, that is," Evan supplied, grinning as he refilled Dekker's glass. "You've never been there, I suppose? No, of course not. You really should, if you ever can, I mean. Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Rio—Earth is just wonderful, Dekker. The scenery! The culture! The women! Here, let me fresh your drink up a little."

  "I think Dekker would rather have a soft drink," Annetta said worriedly.

  "Why do you think that?" Dekker demanded. "No, I like to drink this wine very much." And in fact he discovered that he did—not for the taste, of course, because who could enjoy swallowing weak vinegar?—but it did warm him up in pleasant ways.

  It wasn't just the wine, either. People more mature than Dekker DeWoe found intoxication in moving in the society of their betters. It was fascinating to Dekker to watch the Earthies dealing with each other—always smiling, but always, he thought, serious and even—what would you call it?—yes, punishing behind the smiles. And what things they said! He caught bits and pieces of phrases and discussions, no more comprehensible to him than ancient Etruscan: What were "double-dip securities"? Or "self-licky debentures"? Or "off-planet taxfrees"? And always there was Annetta, worriedly keeping an eye on him as Evan, grinning sardonically, kept refilling Dekker's glass, making conversation, always patronizing. "Pity you've never been in a spaceship; it's so broadening. Three weeks en route, with the whole universe spread out before your eyes—"

  "I bet," Dekker said belligerently, swallowing a sip of the wine, "you've never been in an airship."

  "A what?" the Earthie asked tolerantly, one eyebrow raised.

  "A dirigible airship. We use them all the time—for mass lifting, you know. They're hot-air. You cruise over the Valles Marineris for the mines, say, and you're looking right down into the crevasses—"

  Annetta appeared from nowhere. "Here, let me take that for you," she said, tugging the glass from his hand with a glare at Evan. "Dirigible, you say? That sounds really fun, Dekker."

  "It is," Dekker affirmed, and went on describing the raptures of lighter-than-air flight on Mars—well, not really out of his own personal experience, of course, but they didn't have to know that; he'd seen it often enough in the virtuals, and it had been just as his mother had described it to him.

  "So you have virts," the girl, Ina, said. "Virtuals," she added helpfully, when he looked surprised.

  He blinked at her. She seemed a nice enough girl, short and squat, but too nice for that snot, Evan. "Did I say anything about virtuals?" he asked, trying to remember.

  "Of course they have virtuals, Ina," Evan said, his hand on her shoulder. "Only sight and sound, of course. On Earth," he informed Dekker, "we have full-sensory virts. Of course—" He gave Dekker an unexpected wink and poke in the ribs. "—they're not very convincing unless you dope up a little first."

  "Dope up? You mean like this wine stuff?"

  Evan laughed. "Oh, a lot better than that. I mean serious dope."

  "Oh," Dekker said. "I know. I saw it in the plays, but it's against the law."


  "Of course it's against the law. Who ever lets that stop him?"

  Dekker looked around to see what Annetta Cauchy thought of that, but the girl had disappeared. He did see his nearly empty wine glass on the table where she had left it. He picked it up and drank the remains while he thought over what it meant to deliberately break laws. That struck him as preposterous. What were laws for, if they were broken?

  But the Earth boy was still pressing him. As he refilled Dekker's glass he said, "What about games?"

  "Well, of course we have games. All kinds of games. Prospecting's good, and there's Blowout, and Building—"

  "I mean competitive games. War games. Crime games."

  "I don't think I've ever seen anything like that," Dekker confessed.

  "I didn't think you would have," Evan said comfortably, stroking Ina's back in a leisurely, self-confident way. "What do you do? I mean your father."

  "Oort miner," Dekker said, omitting the verbs in order to avoid bringing up the subject of whether his father was still with him.

  "Oort miner," the Earthie boy echoed, transparently pretending to be impressed. "How very interesting, Dekker. Mine's nothing so glamorous. Just an ordinary investment-fund portfolio manager, if you know what that is."

  Dekker was getting pretty well fed up with people supposing he didn't know what things meant. Especially when he didn't. "It's connected with the Bonds," he guessed, supposing that it must have something to do with them since everything these Earthies were involved in apparently did.

  "Yes, more or less. Someone has to buy them, you know, I mean with real money. We're the ones who make it easy for them to do it, and that's how your bonds get sold. That means," he went on modestly, "that we're the people who did all this for you. Oort miners are all very well, but it takes money—cue money—to get all those comets down here. Without us this whole planet would stay a permanently useless desert. But," he added, twinkling, "you don't have to thank me. Have some more wine."