Mining the Oort Read online

  "They'd give it to you on Mars, wouldn't they?"

  "They'd give it to me in Martian funds. Here I get it in cues. Do you know the difference?"

  "Sure I do."

  "Then don't ask dumb questions." He hesitated, then added, "And there's another reason. Here I have repair shops handy, too."

  "Repair shops?"

  "They call them hospitals, but—" He slapped at his thigh. "—it's all electronics here, Dek, and when the system goes out they have to open it up and take the components out and fix them. Yes, they have repair shops on Mars, too, but they have to import the components from Earth. That means they have to be paid for in cues. I may not be much use anymore, Dek, but I don't want to be a liability, either. And anyway, here's where I've got my friends." He put the plug decisively back in his ear to show that the conversation was over.

  Dekker couldn't let it go at that. "When you say 'friends,'" he said obstinately, "what you mean is drinking buddies, right?"

  His father took the plug out of his ear again and studied Dekker's judgmental face. "You think I stay here just so I can drink up my pension without anybody interfering, is that it?" He waited politely for a response before going on, but Dekker was mute. "What I mean by 'friends,'" his father said then, "is people who can help us. Both of us, Dekker. I do drink, that's true. But drinking buddies are better than no friends at all when you don't have any future."

  "You could have a future!"

  His father shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Dek. You'll have to have it for both of us.

  16

  The tall, skinny Martian physique works fine on Mars, but a lot less well on Earth. What makes the difference is gravity. The Martian who comes to Earth suddenly discovers that he has an extra forty or so kilograms to carry around with him—all the time—and his body's musculature isn't up to it.

  So the muscles are built up with polysteroids. That's easy enough. But then the muscles can exert more force than the bones they are attached to can withstand, so to keep the skeleton intact the bones have to be built up with more calcium. That works, too, but more slowly; so while the skeleton is becoming denser and more rigid the long bones of the legs, particularly, need to be scaffolded from outside: thus the leg braces. But then there are other problems. Those new muscles demand more oxygen, so while the bone marrow is making more red corpuscles an extra couple of liters of whole blood are pumped in to tide them over. Then there's the heart itself. It has to work harder in order to move all this extra blood around. A whole array of beta blockers and stimulants are needed to help the heart do its new job.

  And then, when all this has been done, the result is a body that has been beefed up, but still remembers its birthplace conditions. It tires. It slows down. What they say is true: It's easy enough to take the boy out of Mars, but you can never, ever, take Mars out of the boy.

  17

  What Dekker was good at wasn't worrying. It was working, and he worked. He worked at the courses that made no sense to him, even English history and "political science," whatever that was. He put the shocking thought of the possible cancellation of the Oort project out of his mind, and when his first grades came in on the text screen in his father's apartment he was pleased, and slightly astonished, to discover that he had placed third in the class.

  His father, on the other hand, only nodded. "You've been working hard and studying hard," he pronounced. "What did you expect? Only bear down a little harder on the math, because it has to look good."

  "What has to look good?" Dekker asked, but his father already had the earplugs in and was turning on the Nairobi-Jo'burg soccer game. Dekker went back to his studies.

  The only thing he really worried about was how his classmates would react to this new Martian kid, this new white Martian kid, placing above twenty-nine of the thirty-two of them. As it turned out, they didn't seem hostile at all. Afira Kantado, the young woman who was fourth in the class—that is, the one who would have been third if Dekker hadn't preempted her place—did give him one short, surly look when the grades were posted. But the others congratulated him, joked with him, or didn't talk about it at all, which he liked best.

  The jokes they made were about his accent, but Dekker had that long since squared away. He wasn't the one who talked funny. They talked funny, because—Mr. Cummings had told him, when they chatted for a moment before class one day—that was the perfectly natural way one spoke when one came of parents who had attended good schools. "Good schools," Dekker discovered, were limited to two: a pair of universities named "Oxford" and "Cambridge." The reason these young people were in this prep school was that as soon as they graduated most of them, too, would be off to complete their educations in this "England" where the "good schools" were.

  Learning these things made Dekker feel better. When he also discovered that these students were about the brightest Nairobi had, he didn't feel quite so worried about comparisons with Martian students.

  The other thing Dekker began to learn was that not all black was the same black. In his original, parochial view, all Earthies had been just Earthies; from his father he had learned that these particular Earthies were identified as Kenyans; now he found that even Kenyans thought of themselves more fractionatedly still. About half the boys, and almost all the girls, considered themselves what they called "Kikuyu," while the handful of tall, weedy, almost Martian-looking ones were called "Masai." Even that wasn't all, because there were a handful who came from other "tribes."

  Dekker had to have that word explained to him. A tribe was not at all, Dekker discovered, the same thing as a deme. Tribes were a matter of genes, not location. Surprisingly, you continued to be part of your tribe even if you moved to some other tribe's deme.

  All that astonished Dekker greatly. What did it matter what your relatives were?

  But it seemed that it did matter, although except for the fact that the Masai were of pleasingly stretched-out proportions compared to the Kikuyu, Dekker could not distinguish between one tribe and another. The Kenyans all could, though. Infallibly, A fair proportion of the "citizenship" classes, as the shove-and-grunt sessions were properly called, were devoted to the subject, Mr. Cummings invariably beginning by reminding all the students that it didn't matter what tribe their ancestors had come from, they were all not only equal but, really, the same.

  He got challenged on it, too. Afira Kantado raised her hand and pointed to Dekker. "He's not the same," she said.

  "Of course he is, Kantado," Mr. Cummings said patiently, "or at least you should act as though he were." She looked unconvinced, so the teacher explained. "You know what the basis of good citizenship is. You don't have to like any other person. If you have bad feelings, that's all right. It's perfectly natural for you to dislike another person. The important thing is that you must always keep your resentments to yourself—except in these sessions, of course. If you let the hostilities and angers out in the outside world, that's when conflicts start—and violence—and, in the long run, it could even lead to wars. We don't want that, do we? So we must—DeWoe? Did you want to say something?"

  Dekker had his hand up. "That isn't the way we do it on Mars," he pointed out.

  There was a faint sound from the class, almost a titter. Mr. Cummings gave them a warning look. "No, of course it isn't, DeWoe," he agreed. Different places have different customs. I understand on Mars the thrust is to make you like each other, isn't it?"

  Dekker frowned. "Not 'like,' exactly. There are plenty of people I don't particularly like. But we have to trust each other, and care for each other—we have to make sure everybody's being treated fairly. Like—" He had been going to say, "like the Law of the Raft," but changed his mind in the middle of the sentence."—like we're all family."

  Mr. Cummings nodded tolerantly. "I suppose that's quite important on Mars, where the conditions are so much more—severe. And of course it would be even more so under even harsher conditions, would it not? For example, DeWoe, you're planning to go out into the Oort cloud
to work. Why don't you tell the class what it's like out there?"

  "I've never been there," he objected.

  "But your father has. He must have told you stories about it."

  The fact was, he hadn't. But Dekker was not prepared to admit that in public, so he did his best. "Out in the Oort," he said, "it's like Mars, only tougher. You can't throw your weight around. You can't afford to be jealous of somebody else, or try to get an advantage over him. You have to try to understand how the other person feels."

  "It sounds good to me," Walter Ngemba put in, not bothering to raise his hand.

  "It sounds stupid," Afira Kantado commented. "What about sex?"

  "Sex?" Dekker repeated, trying to imagine what sex had to do with docility—or "citizenship."

  "You keep saying 'him.' What about men and women? Don't they ever have two men loving the same woman?"

  "Oh," said Dekker, relieved, "that. That's no problem. A man takes a duty wife—or a woman takes a duty husband—and they live together as long as they both want to. Then they stop."

  One of the Masai had a hand up, snickering. "When your old man was in the Oort, did he have a duty wife?"

  Dekker answered hotly, "My father has a wife. She's my mother. What would he want another wife for?"

  Half a dozen hands went up then, over grinning faces. Mr. Cummings shook his head. "This is a very interesting discussion," he pronounced, "but the period's over. We'll resume it at our next session if you like—but now, good afternoon to you all."

  As they clumped together at the door, Walter Ngemba touched Dekker's arm and said consolingly, "I'm sorry about that chap Merad. It's just that he's Masai, you know."

  Dekker looked at him in surprise. "I thought everybody was supposed to be the same."

  "Oh, everybody is. Even Masai. It's just that they are so, well, uncivilized, sometimes. But, look, I've had a thought. Have you got anything planned for the weekend? Because my father said he'd be delighted to have you come have a look at our farm."

  "Farm?"

  "Our family place. It's out in the Rift Valley. Can you come?"

  It was a surprise, but a very pleasing one. "Why, sure. Thanks," Dekker began. Then second thoughts occurred to him. "I do have a lot of studying to do—"

  "We can study together; we've got a lot of the same subjects, you know. Do you need to ask your father?"

  Need to? "Not exactly," Dekker said.

  "Well, talk to him about it. I expect he'll be out there waiting for you, won't he?"

  But, as it turned out, that particular afternoon Boldon DeWoe wasn't. There was no sign of the little trike. As Dekker stood uncertainly on the sidewalk, looking up and down at the traffic, the Peacekeeper woman hurried over to him, putting her phone into its pouch and looking concerned.

  "You're Dekker DeWoe, aren't you? Well, I've got a message for you. You have to go pick up your father at the Sunshine Shabeen."

  "The what?"

  "It's a bar," she explained. "Do you know where it is? It doesn't matter; you'll have to take a taxi anyway and the driver will know. All the drivers know the Sunshine Shabeen."

  She turned to blow a peremptory blast on her whistle and, before Dekker could ask any questions, a cab swooped over out of the traffic screen. Yes, the driver certainly did know where the Sunshine Shabeen was. Then all Dekker had to worry about was whether the few cues on his amulet were going to be enough to pay the bill.

  They weren't. Dekker had to rummage in his father's pockets to find the money to pay the driver, and then enough to pay him again to take the two of them back home. His father was no help. His father was snoringly drunk and impossible to rouse. He was almost impossible to move, too, and Dekker certainly couldn't have managed the task by himself.

  Fortunately there were two bulky Peacekeepers waiting outside the shabeen, and when they'd had a look at tall, skinny Dekker they did the job for him.

  What surprised Dekker was that that was all they did. Once they had shifted Boldon DeWoe into the waiting cab the larger of the Peacekeepers wished Dekker a good night. They turned away, although they certainly would have been within their rights to do things far more severe. When Dekker saw the caked blood and snot around his father's nose he had no doubt that the old man's behavior had been very antisocial.

  Yet the Peacekeepers hadn't arrested him.

  That was a puzzle, but Dekker had other things on his mind. Unfortunately there were no handy Peacekeepers at the apartment building, nor did the sulking cab driver show any interest in helping. Even more unfortunately, a light sprinkling of rain had driven the stoop loungers indoors, and Boldon DeWoe, shriveled though he was, was more than Dekker could manage up the front steps.

  Then he heard a voice from above: "Hi there, down below!" When he looked up it was their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Garun, leaning out the window. "Just hang on there a sec, please. I'll get Jeffrey and Maheen to give you a hand with your dad."

  Jeffrey and Maheen showed up in a matter of seconds, huge, good-natured, quick to lug Boldon DeWoe up to the apartment and even lay him down on his bed. "He'll be right enough if you just cover him over and let him sleep it off, chum," one of them advised as they left.

  Dekker did as instructed. Jeffrey and Maheen clearly had more experience in these matters than himself, and anyway there didn't seem any need to do anything else. After he had thought that out, Dekker looked considerably at the refrigerator, then abandoned the thought of making a meal. Instead, he pulled out his lesson cartridges arid began to study.

  He was doing calculus exercises—though he didn't know what he would ever need to know calculus for, when pocket math machines were always available—when he heard a knock on the door.

  It was Mrs. Garun again, this time bearing a covered pot of soup.

  "I thought you might like a bit of something to eat," she said apologetically. "Your dad, too, when he wakes up. The lads said he was probably gone for the night, but whenever it is you can just heat a dish up for him."

  "Thank you," Dekker said, lifting the lid and sniffing. It was some sort of killed-animal and vegetables, and actually it smelled very good.

  Mrs. Garun tarried for a minute. "He's a good man, your father," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. "It's a shame he got hurt that way in the Oort."

  "Thank you," Dekker said again, for lack of a more appropriate response, but the woman hadn't finished.

  She hesitated, then said in the tone of a confidence, "You know, Dekker, I thought once I might go out there myself."

  That startled Dekker, and the expression on his face made her laugh. "Oh," she said good-naturedly, "I didn't always work in the billing department for the electric company. When I was young I had bigger ideas, you know. I studied engineering at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and I thought terraforming Mars from the Oort was the biggest, most wonderful idea anybody ever had—only, of course, then I married Mr. Garun, and he didn't want me to go off without him. So I did the next best thing."

  She looked expectantly at Dekker, who said, guessing, "You went to work for the electric company?"

  "Oh, no, not that. I mean about the Oort. I decided to help the project my own way. So when Mr. Garun died I put the insurance money into Oort bonds." She untied and retied her apron meditatively before she added, "Only the things have been going down a bit lately, haven't they?"

  "I really don't know much about financial things," Dekker apologized. "We don't have that sort of thing on Mars."

  "Well, I know you don't. Only—it's a bit of a worry, isn't it? I hate to sell and take a loss. On the other hand, what's the future going to be? I wouldn't care to wake up one morning and find I was penniless." Then she smiled at him. "What keeps my spirits up is young people like you, Dekker, giving up everything to go out there and make it work. God bless you. And, please, if there's anything you need, just knock on my door!"

  When Mrs. Garun was back in her own apartment, Dekker ate the soup thoughtfully. It was in fact very good, though he couldn't recognize exact
ly what species of killed-animal had gone into it, but he was conscious of a faint bad taste in the back of his mouth. The taste wasn't the soup. It was something quite different, and worse.

  He looked in to make sure his father was still sound asleep. Then he rinsed the dish and took out the latest communication from his mother to track down something she had said.

  Gerti DeWoe hadn't missed a week, expensive as keeping in touch from Mars was; she was there on his screen every Thursday, always looking tired but alert, always with little bits of news: Tinker Gorshak was sick, Tinker was better; they've started the new windmills on the slope over Sagdayev, and that was good because the dust storms had been fierce lately and the photovoltaic farms were always getting covered over; she'd been asked to represent Sagdayev again at the all-deme parliament in Sunpoint City—Dekker shook his head in continuing surprise at that; his mother a politician? Tsumi Gorshak had been cautioned for cutting his docility classes. And the import budgets were cut again.

  That was the part he was looking for. He played it over twice. The reason cues were short, his mother said, was that they'd had to postpone the new issue of the Bonds, because the Earthie financiers had informed them that the market was temporarily too "soft."

  Dekker scowled at that. Why were these Earthies always making trouble about the Bonds? A deal was a deal, wasn't it? Everybody had known from the very beginning that the Bonds would not pay off until the Oort project was complete—or complete enough, anyway, for Mars to start growing the crops that would produce the cues to meet the payments. So why did the price keep going up and down—or, actually, mostly just down?

  It made no sense to him. And it wasn't just Mars that was hurt by these financial tricks; decent Earthies like Mrs. Garun were feeling the pinch, too.

  Dekker yawned and tried to put these impossible questions out of his mind. He turned off the screen and crawled into bed, dropping his clothes to the floor. His father's snoring was less raucous now, though Dekker was perplexed to hear an occasional low rumbling sound that mixed with it sometimes, and definitely did not come from Boldon DeWoe. Dekker lay on his back with his eyes open, thinking about Mrs. Garun, thinking about his mother—then, almost drifting off to sleep, thinking about his parents, trying to recapture the memory of when all three of them lived together, before his father went off to the Oort. Dekker was nearly sure his parents had been happy. The question had never seemed to come up, but they acted happy enough, and his mother had definitely cried when Boldon DeWoe left. So what had gone wrong?