Mining the Oort

by Frederik Pohl

  His father shrugged. "Just cooperation. Anyway, it's true. You've gone about as far as you can go here. We're going to Denver."

  "Denver?"

  "It's in Colorado," his father snapped. "In America. Where the Oort headquarters are."

  "I know where the Oort headquarters are," Dekker said stiffly.

  "I hope to God so," his father said. "That's where you have to go to take your psych test and your entrance examination, and you'd better pass them both, Dek, because getting us set up there is going to cost a pisspot."

  "Can you afford it?"

  "It's about the only thing I can afford," his father said sourly; he looked thirstily at his bottle, but didn't drink.

  18

  Suppose you were put in charge of a vast corporation that proposed to tweak comets out of the Oort cloud and carry them a few billion kilometers away to bring air and water to the planet Mars. It's a huge project Take all its widespread parts together and it barely fits within the extreme boundaries of the entire solar system, but it needs a particular place it can call a home. It needs a headquarters.

  If you had to choose where that headquarters should go, where, in all that vast space, would you put it?

  Several competing choices might occur to you at once, all of them good. First, you might put the headquarters out in the Oort cloud itself, where the miners tagged the likeliest comets and the snake handlers threaded them with instruments and Augenstein drives and sent them down toward their destiny on Mars. A somewhat inconvenient location to get to, true, but that would be where the raw materials were located.

  Or you might put the headquarters somewhere near one of the two Co-Mars satellites, the pair of control stations that sit in Mars's own orbit at its Trojan points, a hundred and twenty degrees away from each other, and each sixty degrees from Mars. That's where the incomings are nursed all the way from the Oort and around the Sun and back up toward Mars itself.

  Or, finally, you might even put your headquarters in orbit around the planet Mars itself, where the final fine-tuning and demolition took place before each impact.

  All good spots . . . but none of them was the spot the Oort Corporation finally chose. They chose a mountaintop outside of Denver, Colorado, U.S.A., Earth. Right at the bottom of Earth's gravity well. Right on the surface of the revolving Earth itself, so that for half of each day the planet they were sitting on obscured their line-of-sight communications to half the solar system, and so they could communicate with their satellites only by relay.

  Oh, that site had defects, to be sure. But it had one great advantage not shared by any possible orbital alternative:

  The headquarters of Oortcorp sat firmly on their own planet, where they alone could control it, and where no one could ever question who owned it.

  19

  Denver was a whole other thing from Nairobi—colder, damper, the people conspicuously whiter—but Dekker DeWoe didn't have much time for sightseeing. He and his father didn't have that much money left, either, so they took the blimp instead of a supersonic fixed-wing airliner and got there just about in time to locate a furnished room and get ready for the first hurdle Dekker had to pass.

  That was the psychological test, and "ready" was an exaggeration of his condition. To take the test Dekker had to drag himself out of bed on four hours' sleep and ride a bus halfway up the mountain, and then the Earthie woman administering the test—who said her name was Doctor Rosa McCune—started by ordering him to take his clothes off. "That's right," she said, "all of them. Get naked, DeWoe. What's the matter, are you ashamed of your body?"

  Of course, that had never occurred to Dekker, who had only been thinking that this examining room was cold even by Martian standards. He could think of no good reason to say that, and good probable reasons for not, so he simply followed her orders. While he was stripping down the woman studied him and made a little speech. "Dekker DeWoe," she said, "assuming you get into the program, and assuming you stay in it—and the chances are you won't do either of these things, so don't get your hopes up—you'll have these psychological tests often. Not regularly. I didn't say that; there won't be anything regular about them. But often. The reason for that, of course, is that the career you're applying for is very demanding. Weak people can't cut it, and when we find weakies we kick them out. Do you understand that?"

  "Sure," Dekker said, grinning.

  She made a note on her keypad—about, he supposed, the fact that he was smiling, so he stopped. Then she went on. "However, I should point out that this particular test is different from any other. Would you like to know why?"

  "I suppose I would," Dekker agreed. He tried again to suppress his grin, although it was certainly amusing that the woman not only had made him take all his clothes off—even the leg braces—but had not even allowed him to sit down.

  "The difference is," she said precisely, "that this time you knew in advance you would be tested, so you had a chance to prepare yourself for it. You won't have forewarning again. Now do you see that wall screen? Take the controller in your hand. When I tell you to start, press the switch and then keep the cursor within the target circle until I tell you to stop."

  Dekker looked at the blank screen. "What cursor—?" he began, but she was already saying:

  "Start."

  The screen flashed into light at once and Dekker blinked at it. Most of the screen was filled with a multihued dazzle pattern of shifting shapes and intensities, but he made out the moving pale green circle—the only circle on the screen—and the bright golden point that had to be the cursor. The hand controller was an unfamiliar design, but Dekker solved it quickly enough and brought it within the circle . . . and kept it there, pretty well, though not easily. What made it hard wasn't only that the circle moved unpredictably, but that the psychologist was paying no attention to him. Indeed, she yawned and moved toward the window and then began to change her clothes before him. A loud bang behind him distracted him for a second; when he had decided that was a deliberate attempt to break his concentration the screen itself flickered, went out for a second, then reappeared in a whole new configuration. Then the door opened and a man appeared, pushed his way between Dekker and the screen and began a loud conversation with the psychologist, now down to her underwear. . . .

  It went on like that Interminably. And when it was over Doctor Rosa McCune, without pause, began administering the written test, which was even longer and more boring—and he had to stay naked and standing on his weary legs through all of that, too.

  "Of course," Dekker told his father when he was back in the little furnished room they had taken, "they were trying to shake me up, I know that. Being naked and all. And making me stand up without the braces.'

  "They're tough on Martians," his father said, "You have to get used to that."

  "I will. Well, I am, pretty much. Anyway, I think I can get along without the braces a lot of the time now. It was all pretty funny, too. Like the questions on the test: 'When did you last talk to God?' And, 'Are your stools black and tarry?' They must have a sense of humor, anyway."

  "All psychological tests are funny. Psychology's a funny subject," his father said, and paused to cough for a moment. He cleared his throat, refilled his glass, and said, "The important thing is that you passed."

  "I don't know that for sure. She didn't say anything."

  "She didn't say you failed, so you passed. Anyway, you're a Martian. Naturally you can handle stress." Boldon DeWoe got up and limped over to the tiny refrigerator for more ice cubes. He was looking frailer and sicker than ever, Dekker saw. This climate wasn't good for him.

  "How long are you going to stay here?" Dekker asked.

  "Until you get into the academy. Now, listen. I've hired a tutor for you, his name is Marcus Hagland; he got through the course himself, but before he got assigned they threw him out on some charge or other. You're going to have to keep on studying, Dek."

  "I know."

  "I know you know," his father said, sitting down ag
ain with a sigh. "Did you ever hear what the Martians here call this place?"

  "I didn't know there were any Martians here."

  "The smart ones aren't, they left Denver long ago. But the ones that are left call it 'Danktown.' That's what it is, cold and dank and miserable. I hated it while I was training, and I hate it worse now. At least thank God it isn't snowing."

  "I wouldn't mind seeing snow," Dekker said.

  His father nodded. "I felt the same way once," he said. "When I first came here." He paused, looking at his son, then he smiled. "Dek, do you remember I gave you a present when I left? A little stuffed animal?"

  "I called it Brave Bear," Dekker said, suddenly uncomfortable; he was not used to sentimental reminiscences from this long-lost father.

  "I don't suppose you still have it," his father said, almost wistfully.

  "Well, I do, though. I mean, not here. But I never gave it away."

  His father nodded. Dekker couldn't tell whether or not he was pleased. His father sipped his drink, then said, "About those Martians in Denver. They can't do us any good, Dek, and we don't have time to be social. Marcus will be around in the morning, and then all you're going to be able to do between now and the examination is study."

  That was true enough, it turned out. The tutor arrived and stayed all day, the whole day was spent on studying. Dekker wasn't sure he liked the tutor. Marcus Hagland was Martian, but uncharacteristically glum, almost even hostile. He had a cough almost as bad as Boldon DeWoe's, and when Dekker took advantage of a break to ask him why he stayed in Denver he would only say, "Things are going to change."

  "Change how?" Dekker asked, but Marcus only shook his head, "The only way they can change," he said. "Now let's get back to your trajectory curves. For a first approximation you can ignore everything but the major planets within a hundred million kilometers or so of your trajectory and the Sun itself, but then, when you need to pin down the deltas for your correction burns—"

  And so on, and on. After the first few days Dekker began to wonder if there really was a city outside the furnished room. The room itself wasn't much smaller than the flat in Nairobi had been, but it smelled worse and it was colder.

  The colder part was a plus; Dekker had never adjusted to Kenyan heat. The other big plus was that if Dekker crawled out onto the fire escape and leaned as far as he could over the rusted rail he could see the distant mountain that was capped by the Oort headquarters. He couldn't really see the headquarters, of course, just an occasional glint of reflected light from a window when the sun was just right. But it was there. It was where he had taken the psych test, and it was where he was going—if he passed the entrance examination.

  At which point, each time he came to it, he dragged himself back to his screen for more study. Busy as he was, Dekker was not too busy to observe that his father was not only coughing more than ever but drinking heavily. That observation was not made in person, because Boldon DeWoe did very little drinking in the furnished room they shared. What he did was to go out by himself—"So I won't interrupt you while you're working, Dek"—and come home coughing and staggering.

  The only good part of that was that his father had become a touch more mellow, mellow enough that sometimes, when he came home smelling of whatever cheap liquor he had been drinking, he was even willing to be sociable with his son.

  Dekker liked that part. He liked hearing his father talk about his time in the Oort—not about the accident and the drugs, but about the companionship, the sense of purpose, the excitement.

  "I guess you wish you were back there, sometimes," Dekker offered, and his father glared at him.

  "Hell, boy! What's the use of wishing?" But then he softened. "If I were going to wish for something, I'd wish you were in the academy already so I could get out of here and go back to Kenya. Maybe get to know your fancy Mau Mau friends and get invited out to their farm."

  It was the first time Dekker had heard his father use the term "Mau Mau." "I didn't know you knew about the Mau Mau," he said.

  "How can you live in Nairobi and not know? Most of them don't talk about the Mau Mau much anymore. They don't like to remind anybody that their ancestors went around raping little girls and butchering babies. But you can't blame them too much for that. It was a long time ago. The whole planet was different. Everybody was still fighting wars here then, and some of them were a lot worse than anything the Mau Mau did."

  Dekker shook his head. "The way they feel about each other, I don't see how they ever stopped having wars."

  "Well, they didn't have any choice, Dek," his father said, pausing to blow his nose. "Fighting wars got to be bad for business. It didn't used to be. Wars used to be good for business, or they thought so, but then they got too big and there was just too much disruption. So they started the Peacekeepers. People get too unruly, they just throw them into rehabilitation until they calm down."

  "But—" Dekker began, and then had to wait while his father got through a fit of coughing.

  "But what?" Boldon DeWoe wheezed finally, his face red and eyes streaming.

  If Dekker had had a question, he had forgotten it in concern for this father. "Are you all right?"

  "Christ, no. How can I be all right in this goddam climate?" his father demanded. "Dek, listen. I think I'm going to have to lie down for a while, but first I've got something for you." Painfully he limped over to the closet, pulled out his pack, fumbled at the lock. He was sweating and clumsy. It took him three tries to get the combination right, but then he pulled out a cartridge in its sealed envelope.

  "This is what you're going to study," he ordered. "Tell Marcus to work out all the exercises with you tomorrow. He can explain anything you don't understand."

  Dekker fitted the cartridge into his machine and looked doubtfully at the screen. "What is it?"

  "What does it look like?" What it looked very much like, Dekker thought, was a copy of an entry test for the Oort program. There was a list of fifty questions scrolling up the screen, and they weren't simple multiple-guess choices. Most of them called for complicated calculations or essay answers and all of them were hard.

  Dekker gave his father a suspicious look. "Where did you get this?"

  The old man was breathing hard now, but he managed a cocky grin. "I'd say that's nothing you have to bother about, Dek. It came from a friend. A lady friend." He started to turn away, then looked back at his son. "But you know something? The lady isn't a bad looker. You might've missed a pretty good chance there, boy."

  "Who? What chance?" Dekker demanded, but his father was coughing again.

  "Never mind," Boldon gasped. "Dek, I can't talk now. Just get on with it, will you? I'm going to bed."

  And Dekker did get on with it, wonderingly, while his father was wheezing and coughing on the far side of the room, with his face turned away. He made up his mind that he was going to have a showdown on this as soon as his father was in shape to answer. Meanwhile he worked at the questions until he was too tired to think anymore.

  His father seemed sound asleep. Dekker pulled the blanket over him, then lay down in his own bed, closed his eyes, was asleep in a moment . . . and woke up in the middle of the night, thinking he had heard something.

  The room was very quiet. Alarmed, Dekker got up and peered at his father's cot.

  It was empty.

  While he was sleeping his father had got up and gone out again, and, in the morning, was still gone . . . and did not show up all that day.

  When Marcus Hagland turned up for the day's cramming he knew nothing about Boldon DeWoe's whereabouts. "What are you asking me for, DeWoe? Your old man and I aren't close friends. It's just a business relationship. Did you report him missing?"

  "Who would I report it to?"

  "The Peacekeepers, for Christ's sake. Who else? Still," Hagland added comfortably, "I wouldn't be in any hurry to bother about that if I were you anyway. He probably passed out on some barroom floor and he'll show up when he feels like it." That was all he had to
say on the subject of Boldon DeWoe, and he turned to the cartridge Boldon had given his son. He began to grin. "Looks like he does have some friends, anyway," he said. "What'd he pay for this?"

  "I don't know." That was the simple truth, Dekker thought, though he also thought that the truth would be unpleasantly far from simple if he ever learned it.

  Hagland nodded, with the faint half smile of a tolerant accomplice. "Maybe you just don't ask questions like that? Or," he said, looking thoughtful as his tone changed, "maybe I've misjudged you and your old man both. It looks to me like the two of you are willing to bend a few rules for a good purpose. Do you take after him, DeWoe?"

  "My father wouldn't break any laws!"

  "No? Whatever you say, but how about yourself, then?"

  "I don't know what you're trying to say."

  Marcus took his time about responding to that, studying Dekker. Then he said, "It's simple. You might be able to do some good if you wanted to. You know the Earthies are screwing around with the project. Suppose you could do something to straighten that situation out—say, maybe something that might be pretty much against the law. Would you be willing to take a chance?"

  "On breaking the law? No. And," Dekker added, disliking this man, "if anyone seriously asked me to break a law I think that's when I would start thinking about talking to the Peacekeepers."

  The tutor looked at him with sour contempt, then shrugged. "Okay," he said. "Forget I asked. Let's get to work." He scrolled the screen to the first question. "Here we are. 'Spectral analysis shows the following concentrations in a target comet. Evaluate for suitability. Show me how you'd start your evaluation."

  And so they began the session, and as the day wore on Dekker's dislike of his tutor receded, replaced by growing worry about his father. It wasn't until Marcus had gone, and Dekker was fixing himself something to eat late that night, that it occurred to him that perhaps he should take the man's halfhearted advice after all and report his father's absence to the Peacekeepers.