Mining the Oort (37 page)

"Display?" Dekker repeated. He was caught off balance, halfway between the rapture of being out in space and the returning recollection of the baby. Then he realized what she was talking about. Of course. All the controllers' displays would have been cut off with the shutting down of the station's externals while they were outside. "Sorry," he said.

"That's okay. We had to postpone one burn, but we got a new solution and did it five minutes later. No problem." She didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. She was holding a wall strap, her body hanging out from the wall at about a forty-five-degree angle, looking quite content to stay there and chat with him. "Anyway," she went on conversationally, "it isn't the first time. We've been having glitches for the last day or two. Have they been bothering you?"

He shook his head, aware that he was staring at her. He couldn't help it. The fact that she had been pregnant at one time certainly didn't change anything, not to mention the fact that it was just as certainly no business of his. He felt impelled to say something, and tried, "If these glitches kept happening, how much trouble are we going to have with the communications?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Nothing serious, if they don't get worse," she said. "A pain in the ass, yes, but we're okay. It looks to me as though there's some bad code in the repeaters, so if we isolate the reception from the station circuits we should be able to track down whatever went wrong pretty quick. Then restoring the remote displays will take more time, but we can get along without them forever if we have to." Then she twisted herself around to confront him more directly. "Dekker? Is something on your mind? You keep looking at me as though I had two heads."

He flushed. "I apologize."

"Damn you, Dekker, don't apologize. Just say what you want to say."

He hesitated, then took the plunge. "Annetta, when you had your accident—"

"Yes?"

"Well, you were pregnant, right?"

She stopped, hanging to a wall hold, and stared at him. She didn't seem offended at first. If anything, peculiarly, she seemed almost relieved. Then her expression changed. "Hell. Somebody's been gossiping about me."

He apologized. "I know it's none of my business—"

"Damn straight it isn't!"

He swallowed and took the plunge. "I just wondered if Pelly Marine was the father."

She gave him a hostile look. "Is there any reason I should discuss my private life with you?" He shook his head, and she relented—minutely. "Remembering that it's none of your business, just like you said, and there's no reason I have to tell you anything—well, yes. I did have a duty mate then, and it was Pelly Marine."

"I see."

"I doubt that."

"All right," he said, beginning to be irritated, "then I don't see. Forget I asked." He considered turning away and leaving her; there was just so much of this Earthie game-playing he could take. If she'd been a Martian she would have answered at once—or, more likely, he would never have had to ask, because she would have mentioned it long ago.

"Don't get hostile, Dekker," she said. "I guess it's just that I don't like being reminded. You see, Pelly and I were
ex-
duty mates at the time. It was over between us before my accident. We just hadn't made it official. I got pregnant, and—we had a big argument about it." She shrugged. "I wanted to have the baby."

"And I guess he didn't?"

"He
positively
didn't. Listen, Dekker, I don't hate the man. I didn't hate him then, but we agreed to break it up—and then I had the accident, and a miscarriage, and there were problems from that that they couldn't handle here. So I got sent down, and that was the end of it. If McCune hadn't decided—" She stopped herself. "Well, never mind that part. She sent him down, so he's gone. It doesn't matter, though. If he was still here we wouldn't be getting together again anyway."

She stopped there. Lacking anything better to say, he offered, "I'm sorry."

"What's to be sorry about?" she asked. "I'm all recovered, and Pelly's history."

That seemed to be the end of it, or should have been, except that she was still looking at him in a—what would you call it?—an appraising way. Not
sexually
appraising. If Dekker had learned anything from Ven Kupferfeld, it was what the look of Earthie-female sexual speculation was like. Annetta's was different, almost as though there were something else she wanted to say.

There was. "Dekker," she said finally, "as long as we're butting into each other's affairs, I have a question for you. Why haven't you seen Rima Consalvo?"

He looked at her wide-eyed. "What are you talking about? I
tried
. I couldn't ever find her in," he said, knowing he sounded aggrieved.

"Well," Annetta said, "I guess she was pretty busy at first. We all were, but she does sort of miss seeing you. I've heard her say so. And if you do want to see her—well, you know at least one place where she's going to be tomorrow, anyway, don't you? Like right here? Right around this time? When she'll be coming off her shift?"

40

When the little whisper of music from his alarm woke Dekker the next "morning"—no more than his own personal "morning," of course, since Co-Mars Two operated around the clock—he was in the middle of a pleasing dream. It had a woman in it, of course. They weren't actively having sex. But the ambience of the dream contained the fact that they recently had, or undoubtedly would, and meanwhile were holding each other, naked and warm together, in that wonderfully acheless, strainless way that you could only find in zero gravity.

As Dekker untangled himself from his sleeping harness he could almost feel the woman's arms still around him. Or was that feeling nothing more than the gentle restraints of the harness, dream-translated into something more loving? And, for that matter, who, exactly, had the dream woman been?

He puzzled over that second question as he pushed himself down the yellow hall to the sanitary facilities. Then he had to abandon the thought, because he needed all his concentration for what he was doing. His skills at the zero-gravity toilets and the enclosed spray booths that substituted for showers on Co-Mars Two were still too rudimentary to maintain any other chain of thought while he was using them.

When he was back in his own room, hovering before his screen, the question came back. Had it been Rima Consalvo? Ven Kupferfeld? Either of them could certainly have been a likely candidate for an erotic dream of Dekker DeWoe's. But was either the one? Annoyingly, Dekker was quite sure that he knew the woman. He just didn't know who she was.

The important thing, though, was to see what the prospects were for adding the company of an actual, rather than a dreamed, woman to his life. Annetta Bancroft had told him where his best immediate prospects were, so Dekker settled down to the screen to check on Rima's shift assignment. He called up "current work assignments," then "comet control," and had the entire rotation displayed for him.

There were a lot of names on it. He had known there would be: Co-Mars Two kept two boards live at all times, two controllers on each board. The two teams took turns at active control and checking the other team's solutions, and each individual operator worked two hours on, two hours off, and another two hours on for a complete shift.

That used up a lot of people, so there were twenty full-time controllers in the rotation, plus a dozen or so fill-ins. Dekker found R. Consalvo's name just where Annetta had said it would be among the fill-ins. The timing was good, Dekker saw. He calculated that he would easily be able to put in his own day and be finished with time to spare before Rima would get off the second half of her shift. Then they would both be off duty for a good many hours. That would be plenty of time for a talk or a meal . . . or whatever.

While Dekker was at the screen he switched over to the news channels, conscious of a faint, warm glow of pleasure in his lower abdomen as he thought of that "whatever."

The glow didn't last. The news dispelled it for him soon enough. He quickly ran through the major headlines, all depressing and none, really, of any personal interest—what did he or any other real Martian care about Earthie strikes or financial crises?—and finally, three or four increasingly specific menus later, tracked down a brief report on the negotiations for the Bonds. What made it brief was that there was nothing to say; the negotiations were "proceeding" but no "resolution" had been reached.

At that point the image on his screen flickered out.

Surprised, Dekker reached for the keypad, but before his fingers got there the screen had flashed back on again, displaying the original main menu. He frowned at it before he turned it off. That shouldn't have happened.

It occurred to him that a glitch in the station's internal communications, even a tiny one, might still constitute some sort of emergency. If so, he might be needed. Accordingly he tried to call Jared Clyne at his office.

Clyne wasn't there, and the legend on the screen gave no hint of urgency. It was only the standard invitation to leave a message.

When Dekker had turned it off again he made up his mind what he would have to do. He would allow himself to take time for a quick breakfast, because there might not be any real urgency. But then he would go early to the office just on the chance that he might be needed. Probably he wouldn't. Certainly he hoped that was the case. He especially hoped that he would not be needed for anything that would prolong his working day—at least, not past the time when Rima Consalvo would be getting off shift.

Breakfast wasn't quick, though. The line was long, and by the time Dekker got to the end of it he found Toro Tanabe sweating and scowling as he handed out meal packets. "Oh, hello, DeWoe. Don't you start with me, please. All the timers went down and we had to reset everything by hand, so I know the service is slow, and if your omelet's too burned or too raw I'm sorry, but it wasn't our fault."

Dekker wedged himself with one foot and cracked the box open. "It looks fine," he reported. "So cheer up."

Tanabe looked up at him from under his glowering eyebrows. "You want me to cheer up," he said. "With all these people complaining, and the stock reports showing that all my father's holdings are under short-selling pressure, and my mother telling me I'm a fool and a disgrace to my family for working as a
cook
when I could be doing something useful and living like a king in Tokyo—and with fifty, count them,
fifty
lottery tickets in the last drawing and not one of them even coming close—with all that good stuff, you really want me to cheer up? Sure, DeWoe. I'll be glad to cheer up right away—if only you'll get the hell out of my way so I can get these people fed!"

Amused, but also slightly abashed, Dekker pushed himself away, clinging to his meal box and coffee bulb, and looked around for a perch. He saw Shiaopin Ye eating by herself in one corner of the room and floated over to join her.

When she looked up she nodded, but didn't look particularly pleased. He snapped a strap to his belt and grinned at her. "Are they giving you a hard time, too?" he asked cheerfully.

She closed her meal box to prevent any of the little dumplings inside from flying away and finished chewing before she answered. "You mean about the communications loss," she said. "Yes. We are all blamed. But just over there, you see, is the head of the communications section, having a pleasant meal with Dr. Rosa McCune, so it must be so that he is right when he says there is really nothing to be concerned about."

"Ah," Dekker said, taking a pull on his coffee. "You don't sound as though you agree with him."

"You are correct," she said. She lifted the lid of the box and expertly pulled out another dumpling with her chopsticks. Dekker began eating, too, glancing over to where Toby Mory and the psycher were talking amiably together.

"He really doesn't seem worried," Dekker offered. "He must know what he's doing, Ye. He's the head of the section."

"Exactly," Ye said, nodding. "That is precisely what he told me, not ten minutes ago."

"But you don't believe it."

Shiaopin Ye looked at him for several seconds before answering.

Then she closed her box and unsnapped her security belt. "DeWoe," she said, holding herself in place with one hand, "does this seem like a happy installation to you?"

"Happy?"

"I mean, do the people here seem comfortable in their work?"

He thought. "A little edgier than I would have expected, maybe. Some of them."

She nodded. "I would say quite 'edgy.' There is a tension on this station that I don't understand. I think things are being kept from us."

"By Toby Mory, you mean?"

"Not just by Toby Mory, but by him, too, yes. I am quite qualified in communications systems, DeWoe. You know that; we took the same courses. Yet when I begin to check the systems for myself Mory orders me to stop. He says he has done it himself."

Dekker scowled, trying to follow her logic, "If you're saying Mory really doesn't want the system fixed, that doesn't make any sense."

"It does not, but many things which do not make sense turn out to be true anyway, don't they? That is why I am going to go back there when Mory is not around and run a check myself."

"What do you expect to find, for God's sake?"

"I won't know that unless I find it, will I? But I will check anyway."

Dekker caught at her arm as she started to leave. "If you do find anything, will you tell me? It might be a matter for the emergency service."

She thought that over, then sighed. "I like you, DeWoe. You have always seemed honest to me. Yes. I will come to your room or leave a note. I will not, though," she added, "use the communications screen."

The thing that made it hard to laugh at Shiaopin Ye's preposterous ideas, Dekker told himself as he headed toward Jared Clyne's little office, was that she wasn't a preposterous kind of person. She had always impressed him as about the calmest and most levelheaded person in his class.

That didn't prove that she might not be wrong in her suspicions. It didn't even prove that she couldn't be crazy, because Dekker had formed the opinion that any Earthie at all might have concentrated loopiness hidden under the most attractive exterior—witness Ven Kupferfeld. And he certainly had to agree that her observations were acute. The atmosphere around Co-Mars Two was tenser and stranger than he had expected: people disappeared from sight for days on end, things went wrong, puzzles weren't solved.