Mining the Oort by Frederik Pohl Read Free Book Online Page B

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."
    "I think he should have something solid," Annetta said. He hadn't noticed that she had returned. "What have you been eating, Dekker?"
    He tried to remember. "I had some of the killed-meat things, I think."
    There was a quick, hushed titter around the group, and Evan laughed. "Oh, Dekker! You're just too precious. Why do you say 'killed-meat'? Do you think we'd be likely to eat it while it was still alive?"
    Dekker concentrated for a moment until he remembered the answer to that—it had come from so many docility classes, so long ago, that it was buried in his subconscious now. "Because we always say that. It's to, you know, remind us that in order for us to eat ki—to eat meat , something has to be slaughtered."
    Evan opened his eyes wide in an imitation of surprise. "But that's what they're for ; boy. No, don't worry about things like that. Here, give me your glass."
     
    The thing about wine was that it made you feel nice and warm and rather cheerful, although it also seemed to make you feel as though your skin were tightening up on your face, and the floor didn't seem as solid as it ought.
    Dekker decided, though, that he was conducting himself rather well. Evan had finally left him alone—Dekker saw him off in a corner with Annetta Cauchy, looking tolerant as the girl scolded him about something—and Dekker just wandered about, talking to whoever seemed to want to talk to him. Not everyone did. Some of the people, especially one of the sallow-skinned women with the straight, jet-black hair, didn't seem to understand him very well, and when she spoke to him he was startled to find that he was being addressed in some other language.
    But others were quite nice. Annetta's mother, for instance. He didn't quite understand the worried look in her eyes as she spoke to him, but when she asked him about his home he was glad to tell her all about Sagdayev deme. He described the landscape, and the rooms, and the copper mine; he told her how they concentrated solar heat so that the molten copper flowed out of the ore, and how the oxygen that had bound it was usefully added to the deme's supply. He was going on to explain some of the differences between Sagdayev and Sunpoint City when he discovered that she was no longer listening. That surprised him, because he didn't remember her turning away. Nor did he remember how he came to have a filled glass in his hand again, but he cheerfully lifted it to his lips. It was astonishing how the taste had improved.
    He was, he felt confident, holding