Mining the Oort (26 page)

She persisted. "Are you sure you know what you're talking about? Have you ever seen a war?"

"Of course I haven't. How could I? Nobody has."

"Oh, I don't mean a real one," she said impatiently. "I mean a war virt."

He was honestly surprised at that. "I didn't think people had virtuals of
wars
."

"People who can afford them have all kinds of things, Dekker. Even people who can't afford them do, if they used to have rich grandfathers." She looked at him speculatively for a moment. "Of course," she said, "they're better if you get in the mood first—"

He puzzled over that, then his brow cleared. "Oh. You mean if we drank some more wine?"

"Not exactly. Well, wine will do, I guess. Question is, are you brave enough to experience a war?"

If she hadn't used the word "brave" Dekker might well have refused. That was undoubtedly why she had used it; and a few minutes later they were in her bedroom. She pulled virtual-reality helmets out of her cupboard and was helping him slide the headset over his shoulders.

The virtual-reality headset wasn't at all like a Martian hotsuit, he discovered. It was a lot worse. As with the spotter-ship suits it had no visor. Although here, too, fresh air flowed to his nostrils, he had the same sensation of choking in the dark. When Ven spoke to him her voice was muffled. "Are you ready?" she asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be."

"Then let's do it. What we're going to see is from the American Civil War, what they called the Battle of the Seven Days. Here we go—"

And there it was.

There was no click, no warning flicker. Simply Dekker was suddenly looking out on the banks of a stream, ten meters wide, with swampy, wooded lands lining its margins. He had full surround—not only sight and hearing were involved but other senses, too. The air that came to his nostrils was damp and wet, and tinged with the smell of burning wood—from camp fires, perhaps?—as well as some other burning smell, a chemical, unpleasant one that he couldn't identify. He heard the sounds of distant explosions over occasional birdsong and the constant buzzing of insects.

He heard something behind him and turned his body. Though the whole scene, he knew, was only computer-drawn images electronically painted inside his helmet, his view moved as his body did. Around a bend of the river he saw that some men in blue uniforms were urging a team of horses to pull a cannon up out of the river on the far side.

A
cannon
. It was a real
war
.

"That's the Chickahominy River," Ven Kupferfeld's voice said in his ear. "What we're watching is the beginning of the Battle of Seven Pines."

Dekker frowned to himself. "I thought you said the name of it was Seven Days."

"Don't be dense, Dekker. Seven Pines is one of battles that made up the Seven Days, for God's sake. Let's take a look at some of the generals."

The scene swooped and shifted. Now he was looking at two gray-uniformed men who stood by themselves, poring over a map they held between them. One was tall and unkempt, the other dapper though his jacket was stained with sweat. Beyond the generals white-skinned men on horseback were riding by in a loose formation, rifles held loosely at their sides. Forty or fifty black-skinned men in assorted clothing—mostly shirts, cotton pants, bare feet—were panting and grunting to themselves as they dug up a lawn to make earthwork walls while three black-skinned women in long skirts and kerchiefs carried buckets of water to them.

"Those two men are the Confederate commanders," Ven was saying. "The big one's General Thomas Jackson. He got famous later on, when they called him 'Stonewall,' but right now he's just a corps commander under General Robert E. Lee. That's Lee next to him. He's going to turn out to be the greatest general of the war, and he's just been given command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Hold on."

Another quick scene shift. Dekker found himself looking at another group, this one by the side of a dirt track. Loaded wagons were rumbling along the track toward a river—the same Chickahominy? Dekker supposed so; and these men, too, were studying maps. "This is the other side, Dekker. The good-looking young fellow in blue is George McClellan. He commands the Union armies, and they're invading the South. See, Dekker, right now he's brought his armies within about a hundred kilometers from Richmond—that's the capital of the Confederacy—and if McClellan can push on through and take Richmond, the war will be over."

"Will he?"

"No," she said, scorn in her voice. "He could have, but he won't. The asshole had everything he needed to do the job, but he's going to back off because Lee fooled him. If you want to know the way it went, it was a disgrace. The North didn't take Richmond for three more years, and then it wasn't McClellan who did it. That's why this is an interesting battle, Dekker, because McClellan had all the advantages and Lee kicked his silly ass anyway."

She was silent for a moment. There were, Dekker noticed, singing birds and buzzing insects here, too, and the air was as warm and sodden as on the other side. It wasn't as bad as he had expected. The woods were pretty. These ancient men did not seem particularly monstrous. No one appeared to be getting hurt, and if this was a fair sample of what wars were like, Dekker could not see that they were so awful.

But then Ven Kupferfeld said, "Now watch. This whole series of battles took seven days, remember, so naturally we can't watch all of it. All we can do is hit some of the high spots—"

Then Dekker DeWoe got his first taste of war.

The high spots he saw on Ven Kupferfeld's virt were not at all high for him; they plumbed depths he had never experienced before.

War was not a matter of courtly men tranquilly poring over maps. War was bloody violence and brutal death. War was filled with the stink of blood and excrement and burning flesh. War was men screaming, and horses trying to stand up with guts cascading out of their bellies; it was wounded soldiers trampled behind their breastworks as the enemy leapt over with bayonets, and cavalrymen sabering gunners trapped against their cannon. War was
murder
, repetitive, multiple, and without end.

Ven was switching the virt almost at random from one scene of carnage to another, careless of time or sequence. At one moment Dekker saw a sun fiercely high in the sky, at another they were in a tangle of swamp and scrub with a violent thunderstorm raging in dawn light as drenched men crept through thickets, firing as they moved; at still another they were in midnight darkness lit with thunder of a different sort, orange tongues of flame that licked out from batteries of cannon massed on a hillside, pouring shot into screaming masses of men on the dark slopes below.

Dekker had seen all he ever wanted to see of war in the first few seconds, but he made himself watch for ten long minutes more. He needed to be sure that he understood everything there was to understand about this ancient and forgotten—but apparently not entirely forgotten—record of frightfulness from the human race's barbarous past.

Then he had had enough. There might be more to learn, but Dekker DeWoe was unwilling to learn it. He pulled the helmet off his head and set it on the bed beside him, careful not to tangle the leads to the control panel.

Next to him Ven Kupferfeld was sitting tautly erect, her hands clasped in her lap and her head hidden by the massive virt helmet. The Virginia killing ground was gone from Dekker's sight. What he saw around him was again only Ven's warm, comfortable bedroom. Incongruously, he could still hear the sounds of combat continuing inside the helmet, faint and remote, but he didn't know how to shut the thing off. He didn't bother. He just sat there.

Dekker was not physically sick, he was simply sickened. He waited patiently, without speaking or moving, until at last Ven Kupferfeld removed her own helmet and the tiny sounds of carnage stopped.

She stared at him angrily. "Well?" she said. "What do you think?"

He considered his answer. "I think I'm ashamed of the human race," he said.

She got up and carefully stowed the helmets away before she responded. Then she gave him a pitying look. "Oh, you're a real Martian, all right, aren't you?" she said. "You don't want to face up to what human beings are really like."

"I don't like people getting
killed
."

"Why does that bother you so much, Dekker?" she asked, becoming reasonable. "Dying isn't an aberration. People die all the time. Everybody dies, sooner or later, and sometimes the way they die is a lot nastier than getting a bullet through your head in a battle. What's wrong with people dying for a purpose—because they believe in something enough to put their lives on the line for it?"

"What were these men dying for? You told me this war kept on going for
years
. As far as I could see," he said, "they died for nothing."

"It wasn't for nothing," she said, "because the South won those battles. It doesn't matter what happened later, that time they
won
. Naturally there were casualties. In those seven days the South lost twenty thousand men, and McClellan maybe a little more."

He stared at her. "Forty thousand dead men," he said wonderingly.

"Oh, hell, no, not all of them dead. Maybe half of the casualties actually were killed, or died of their wounds, but, Jesus, Dek, what of it? That was a long time ago. What difference does it make if they got killed? They'd all be dead by now anyway, wouldn't they? Anyway, that's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"Winning, Dekker! Winning's the point. Winning is what matters, because when you win you can take everything that you're entitled to have, no matter who tells you you can't." She looked at him, and then her expression softened. "Well, we won't talk about it anymore now. Trust me, you'll change your mind, Dekker, when you grow up a little. Now do you want to come to bed?"

He studied the woman he had, perhaps, been almost in love with. She was very pretty, lying back on her elbows on the bed they had shared. She wasn't smiling, but her face was flushed and her breathing was rapid.

He shook his head and stood up. "Not this time, I think," he said, sober and polite. "Thank you for dinner—and for the virt—but I think I'll just go on back to the dorm.

30

Dekker didn't see Ven Kupferfeld again for a while—that is, he
saw
her, and he even spoke to her in class when he had to, and she responded, amiably enough, in the same way. That was all. Ven seemed content to wait Dekker's mood out. Neither of them referred to the Civil War virt they had watched together, and neither made any moves toward spending an evening together again. It was as though it had never happened.

It had happened, though. It had left Dekker DeWoe in a turmoil, and it was not without effect. It even interfered with his work, so that Annetta Bancroft reprimanded him for daydreaming in front of the whole class. When it was over she stopped him on his way out. "What's your trouble, DeWoe?" she asked, not unkindly.

He shrugged. "I've had a lot on my mind," he said.

She watched him for a moment. "I know about your father," she said, and paused invitingly. He didn't respond. She waited a moment, then became businesslike. "Whatever it is, we'd better deal with it. According to your chart you're about due for a psych interview anyway, so I made an appointment for you tonight. Report to Dr. Kalem. If something's bothering you, let her try to help you straighten it out. You've done well so far. Don't blow it now."

He considered for a moment, then said, "Thanks." He almost meant it; he could see that the woman was trying to help him, and it was not her fault that she couldn't.

Dekker didn't expect much from the interview with Dr. Merced Kalem, either, and didn't get any more than he had expected. It was routine. He wasn't asked to strip, this time, and he was prepared for the usual tests and harassment while he was being tested. When Kalem sat him down afterward and began questioning him about any problems he might be having, Dekker was prepared. Taking his cue from what Annetta Bancroft had said, he was ready with the story of his father's death and his worries about the possible effects of competition with the farm habitats, and the name of Ven Kupferfeld never once came up.

Neither did the subject of war; and when the doctor released Dekker he was fairly sure that the woman was not going to make any irremediable entries on his record. He was even, he saw, through in time to get the scraps of a late dinner at the dining hall.

He ate quickly and alone, and when he was finished he felt better. There was nothing
real
to worry about, he told himself. All right, Ven Kupferfeld had some repulsive aspects to her character; what of it? Most people did—if they were not Martians, anyway—and none of those hidden, aberrant, animal lusts and yearnings really mattered, because they were what all the socializing training and hostility-reduction sessions were supposed to deal with. The sessions obviously worked, too. They weren't as good as docility training on Mars, granted, but what on Earth was? And the results were clear: Even Earthies didn't fight wars anymore.

He was so convinced that he had worked all his problems out that he was surprised when, back in his quarters, he found Toro Tanabe looking at him with barely hidden concern. "How did it go?" Tanabe asked.

Dekker shrugged. "The usual stuff. Kalem's not as much of a bitch as McCune, anyway."

"Few are," Tanabe agreed, but even the self-centered Toro Tanabe was not willing to let it go at that. He studied Dekker for a moment, then confronted his roommate. "It is obvious to me that something is really troubling you. What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing," Dekker said. Then he changed his mind. "Well, there was something I saw the other night," he admitted. "Tanabe, have you ever heard of virtuals of
wars
? I mean the kind that have scenes of really bloody stuff, with people getting their guts blown out and all, right before your eyes?"

Tanabe looked surprised, then amused. "But of course, DeWoe. I sometimes almost forget that you are a Martian and do not know what everyone knows. These are what they call 'snuff virts.' They come in many varieties. Not just wars, but stories that are filled with all kinds of torture and death, and mob violence and murders and rapes and—listen, DeWoe, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I do not myself care for them, but unfortunately it seems that there are many who do. There is no city on Earth where they cannot be bought."