Poverty gives birth to the strangest religions. Choron was a believer, but he still allowed himself to speculate on the origins of his faith. Poverty and chance had created a powerful belief system a hundred years before; the same poverty had kept it alive.
The miners of his planet had seen God in their telescopes back then. He had come to the edge of their meager white dwarf solar system as an immense shadow. Those poor workers, toiling underground for ore, had already grown to view the rock around them as a wrathful, cruel entity, and when their scopes had seen the Great Rock in the sky, even so far away, they knew that their God approached.
At that distance, even though its exact size was then unknown, its roundness had betrayed that it was no mere asteroid. The scrawny little planet under their feet had been no match for the Rock so far away. Naturally, He had become the source of hope and inspiration for following generations as He drew closer and closer to them.
So how did He approach them so quickly without their notice? Choron supposed that God could do whatever He wanted. Some believed that He was drawn close by the light of their sun, and His joy at seeing it had caused Him to quicken the journey across His Universe.
It was because of another belief that Choron idled in a ship close to the face of the Great Rock. There were those old ones on his planet who told dark stories of the end of the world. God Himself had come to smash them all into the void of space, they claimed, and that's why His path was going to cross with theirs on the next orbit. Choron may not have believed those old sourdoughs, but he was apprentice to one, which meant his beliefs did not matter.
“How 'bout that, my boy!” his master had asked when they had been tugged into orbit around the Great Rock. “Sure as hell gonna kill us all. That's why we're here. Gotta pray for us, for everyone.”
The old man, Miro, took a cheerful glance at the pockmarked face of God. “Old Rock been hit with all those asteroids, meteors, and just keeps smiling.”
“Think of all the natural resources!” Choron said.
“Don't you dare think 'bout taking God's land. Don't you dare.”
Choron always tried to defer to his master, yet there were times when he thought Miro was unfair. He remembered that once, at the very beginning of his apprenticeship, he had given Miro the wrong kind of drill bit. The man had lectured, cursed, and battered him for several minutes before finding the proper bit and continuing his prospecting.
Miro no longer hit his apprentice—Choron was bigger, stronger, and younger, and corporal punishment against him would be ridiculous and risky—but his old age had fermented his tongue into a fine vintage of verbal abuse. Choron kept his eyes on the Great Rock hanging huge in the viewport of the old prospector's ship. He expected a torrent of profane words against Choron's blasphemous thoughts, but they never came. He had caught Miro thinking the same thing.
For several years, the miners had ventured close to God, but it was out of the greatest luck that Miro had found a string of asteroids that led close enough to the Great Rock that a side-trip there wouldn't break quota. As far as either master or apprentice knew, no one had yet dared orbit the Rock.
“Well, kid,” said Miro after a long period of silent observation, “I never thought I'd be this close to Him, 'cept when I was dead. They say our ghosts live out there,” He waved his hand vaguely at God.
The apprentice had nothing to add.
Patting the ship's pilot console, Miro said, “I'm glad the old Plenty made the trip in one piece.” Out of the corner of his eye, Choron saw Miro look to him. “I wonder how she'll handle the landing.
Choron bolted upright in the co-pilot's chair. “Landing! On Him?”
“Boy, you gotta go to church. For the last year, they been giving us sermons that we gotta talk to God more.”
“Master, you know what they mean by that.”
“Sure do. And I been praying into my radio every damn day and night asking God why we all gotta die. Maybe He can't hear me over all the other prayers going on the radio at the same time. Maybe He wants someone to talk to Him in person.”
Choron did not know what to think. No one ever spoke against touching the Great Rock, landing on Him. Still, there was an unspoken agreement that none would provoke God's ire by touching-down there. Sometimes God was understanding, benevolent. Sometimes He was not. “I don't know, Miro. What if we offend Him?”
“Miners and prospectors die every day. Our day will come sooner.”
Choron asked a question of his master at the risk of a tirade; anything would be better than landing on God Himself. “Did someone put you up to this?”
The prospector beamed. “No. Came up with it myself.”
“What will everyone else think? Some of the old ones are even more strict than you about these things.”
“Choron, they'll never know.” He paused. “Why are we here?”
“We're supposed to broadcast prayers to Him.”
“Yeah. We can do just that when we land.”
Choron hated rationalizing his actions. Having lived with a man like Miro for most of his life, he knew the consequences. “Old man, you dance around the truth too much. Besides, you cussed me out not ten minutes ago because I talked about the metal on the Great Rock.”
“We won't take a thing from Him; be damn sure of that, boy. We're just gonna leave a little offering.”
“This is ridiculous. If I were God—”
“Don't be talking like that, boy. He'll really get mad if you keep that up.”
The Great Rock maintained its steady gaze at the little ship. Choron's father would blame materialism. As a boy, Choron had heard about little else. When I was your age, son... echoed his father's tired words in Choron's memory. It was always something about how God had been more respected when He was too far away to approach by ship. Miners all think of rocks the same way. When His shadow turned into one big Rock, He became a commodity. Then Choron's mother would interrupt: There's nothing more powerful than a God you can touch. Choron tended to agree with his mother on any subject, mainly out of principle—his father had been a constant source of tension for the family, and letters from his mother reported that little had changed. But he had trouble deciding who was right in that particular argument. It seemed that a tangible God was more immediate, as his mother asserted; however, even in the oldest of stories, the ones from before the miners had ever come to this system, alluded to the corrupting influence of man's sensuality. To touch God...
“Strap in, kid.”
He had never changed Miro's mind before; he couldn't set a new precedent now. “Planetfall?”
“You bet.”
“Miro, I just don't like the thought of this.”
“Aw hell. You young types are always afraid of something. Didn't I teach you anything? 'Sides, maybe God needs a prophet or something. I could be a prophet.”
Choron could only shake his head. Every now and then, a “prophet” popped up on the mining planet. They all ended up in the asylum. With his long, dirty gray hair splayed in the ship's microgravity, Miro certainly looked insane.