Mining the Oort Read Online Free PDF Page A

later; because even though they were in a strange deme, and in spite of the fact that the comet was due to strike in a matter of hours, and regardless of all the effort involved in protecting Sunpoint's destructibles against possible harm—in spite of all these things, the essential functions of life on Mars went on. For Dekker, one of them was the compulsory daily class in Getting Along.
    But he had an hour or so to go before he had to be there, and he spent it roaming around—blessedly alone, for Tsumi was, no doubt, grumpily tending the capybara meat animals by himself.
    Nothing was the same here as in Sagdayev. The place was not only bigger, it was laid out funny. Mostly it was huge —six levels deep, against Sagdayev's three—and Dekker had a satisfying hour or so just roaming it, always remembering to look as though he had some important errand so that no one would ask him why he wasn't doing anything useful.
    He cut the time a little fine. When it was time to get to docility he suddenly realized he didn't know where to go. He asked directions; but all the preimpact excitement nobody seemed to know where anything was happening, and so he arrived in the classroom just when the Pledge of Assistance was about to begin.
    The room was crowded. There were at least sixty or seventy young and women there, and Dekker was startled to see that Tsumi Gorshak was among them. What was the kid doing in a session meant for eights-and-ups? For that matter, why was Tsumi nodding satisfiedly to the proctor and pointing at Dekker at the same time?
    Dekker slid into a seat on the floor next to Tsumi and joined the recital:
     
    "I pledge my life
    to those who share it,
    to the safety and well-being of my planet,
    and all who live in it.
    One world,
    with liberty and justice for all,
    through sharing."
     
    But everybody was looking at him, and as soon as they were finished Tsumi whispered, "You're late."
    He wasn't alone. The proctor was pointing at him. "Punctuality," the young man, a ten-year-old with a sparse beard, said, "is the courtesy of kings. What's your name?"
    "Dekker DeWoe," he admitted.
    "Dekker DeWoe. Well, Dekker DeWoe, lateness steals time from other people. It is as bad to take someone's time as to take his property."
    "I meant no offense," said Dekker, looking around to see if, by any chance, that Annetta Cauchy person was in the room. She wasn't. There weren't any Earth children at all in the class. Perhaps Earthies didn't need to be taught to be nonaggressive. Or perhaps they didn't care.
    "And meanwhile," the proctor was going on, "your young nephew was worried about you."
    "I meant no—" Dekker began again automatically, and then realized what the man was saying. He turned a glare on Tsumi, who shrugged blandly.
    "I said you told me to meet you here," Tsumi whispered.
    "You had no right ." Dekker whispered back, but stopped there because the proctor was addressing his audience. Dekker subsided as the proctor spoke:
    "Let's begin. I haven't met all of you before, so let's get back to basics. This is docility training. What do we mean by 'docility'?"
    He looked around. A Sunpoint eight-year-old in the first row had her hand up already. "Docility is learning to consider the needs of society and other people," she said.
    "That's right. That doesn't mean being passive. We're not passive, are we? But we're docile; which is to say, we're civilized. And, being civilized people, we just made our Pledge of Assistance. Does everybody do that?"
    "Everybody on Mars," the same girl said at once.
    Another put in, "Everybody in space, even, the Loonies and everybody. But not the Earthies."
    The proctor nodded in satisfaction. "That's true. When you see our Earth guests here you have to remember they're a little different Of course they have their own kind of training—well, they have to, don't they? Or they'd still be having wars there. But they make a different kind of pledge in their schools; they pledge 'allegiance.' What does