Rattles, cries, and sudden pain! The accumulated moments of someone's very real fear drove through her skull all at once. There came a flavor of blood, so new that it had to be from the future. Indeed, all the sensations had the pervasive freshness of an event that had not yet happened. Just as a recent occurrence left a greater impact than one long-past, one soon to be had an impact many times more powerful than any specimen of the present. Keen blades of torment scythed through her and when she saw Choron's contorted face—
Nara woke.
Another night, another vision—but this one was terrifying. It reminded her of the things she had seen in her dreams half a lifetime before. She sat up in bed, trying to pull herself away from the awful instant she had just fled. She could come back to it later: today was her day at Market, and there was much she had to buy.
The routine gestures of washing, dressing, and walking quietly through her darkened home to avoid awakening mother helped her return fully to the present. She ate a hasty breakfast of enriched cereal before slipping through the door and into the travel capsule she had called outside.
Years of self-discipline had given her the ability to tuck the visions away in some forsaken corner of her mind; the past night's monstrosity all but faded away in her journey to the Market, but it came boiling out of its confines when she caught sight of a woman she knew well.
Nara had not seen Choron's mother for two weeks. She had not really looked for Pira during that time, not actively, anyway. But in a colony whose population was just over one thousand, it usually was not necessary to search hard for another. She finally spotted Pira at the Market. Nara liked the smooth, even features of the older woman's face. Her dark hair and green eyes were just like Choron's. Those same features were relaxed, concentrating on a display of fresh hydroponic produce, when Nara noticed her.
Nara always found it difficult to approach the woman. Yes, she was friendly, but she also seemed to sense something in Nara—mothers always knew when women fancied their loved ones. Whether Pira had ever told Choron about her suspicions, Nara did not know; she had stopped worrying about it years before. However, the vestigial shyness remained.
“Good morning, Pira.”
The older woman finished looking at the vegetables and turned to her. “Well! Nara, it's been some time since I saw you. You look very good.”
“I'm fine. How are you?”
“At my age, things are rarely anything but normal.” She smiled. “But I suppose today is one of those rare days. I've heard good news from Choron.”
Nara didn't try to hide her pleasure. “Really? What is he doing now?”
“He sent a letter a few days ago. The transmission had to be relayed a few times, coming from deep space. He's near the Great Rock.”
This time, Nara slid her face into its usual mask. Her recent dreams had been of Choron and the Great Rock. God protect him, she thought. Those are some of the worst nightmares I've ever had.
Pira had seen the face enough times to know what it meant. “What's wrong? Visions? Of my son?”
Think up a lie, quickly. “Please don't call them that. They are just dreams. And no, I did not dream about him. It's just that I'm worried every time I hear of the Great Rock. I don't want God to end us just yet.”
“Ah. Well, that's why he's there,” Pira said, relaxing visibly. “To talk to Him. You know that our family isn't as pious as some, but that old master of Choron's has decided to orbit Him and relay our prayers.”
I have dreamed as much, she recalled, and haven't seen beyond. That old man is trouble. “Miro. I wonder when he will give up the ship to Choron. He should have retired years ago.”
“You know, I thought the same thing. My son says that Miro wants to 'blast away the last traces' of our family name. The prospector believes that our wealthy status as merchants hurts Choron's reputation. He had to fight to retain his privilege to write us!”
Nara had always ignored Choron's status; handsome was handsome, smart was smart, no matter what his family did. Her father had given up explaining why she should find a boy who wouldn't marry her only to woo mistresses with his money later. Choron thinks he can buy whoever he wants. Not my daughter! A good husband should be too poor to cheat on you, he had said.
From that point, the conversation became safe and comfortable. Nara loved hearing of Choron; his mother loved talking about him. They strolled through the Market at a pace set by Pira, who examined and occasionally bought goods. At last, she insisted that she had to return home and help prepare dinner.
As Nara watched the woman walk away, she tried desparately to decode her dream of Choron. Her dreams were funny that way: either sharp and clean, piercing as a drill, or a large, incomprehensible lump. In the clamor of the Market, she would never be able to concentrate; best to complete her errands and let the meaning seep in.
For a day in the Market, business was brisk; there had to be twice as many vendors and customers as usual. It was part of the cycle that occurred over several weeks, she guessed. While the planet, Orefall, was the home of almost everyone in the system, only at certain times was most of the population present; many families traveled in their modular homes with their fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands on excursions to the asteroids. At times, tides of people flowed through Orefall, their ship-homes repopulating the vacant spaces on the housing grid. It was the closest thing to seasons Orefall had.
There were those who came back more rarely, the grizzled prospectors and their apprentices who scoured space for heavy, rich asteroids. It had been almost an entire orbit since Nara had seen Choron.
The dim sun was rising, but she hardly noticed. All light that passed through the colony's atmosphere dome barely supplemented the artificial lights that burned all day. She had heard from the insterstellar traders who visited occasionally that hers was a small planet, a small system. She did not want to leave her home, yet the traders' words enforced the sense of incompleteness that she had always felt from Orefall.
Stopping here and there to buy things on her list, Nara picked up snatches of prayer on the streets. Idle shoppers went into plain gray booths to send their prayers to Him. Most were the usual supplications for a rich ore harvest or protection on an approaching journey, but several made her smile with the secret knowledge her dreams had presented to her.
“God, are you really going to destroy Orefall?” asked one old voice from its booth.
“Will we be able to see you come close? Please let it be so,” said another.
Orefall the planet did not have long to exist. It was already scattered dust in her dreams, little more than a memory. But Orefall the community—she saw it in God's embrace, chosen somehow to endure the ages.
In some ways, this was not just a conjecture presented in her visions—she admitted only to herself that they were more than dreams—but fact. Every home was capable of leaving the planet at any time, and even the least fortunate citizens had the means to escape. It was a less trivial challenge that caused debate among the miners of Orefall: how long can we survive without the planet? She was content to let others solve the problem; worry was for the old ones.
At the end of the day, as soon as she finished her rounds to the merchants in the Market, she walked to the transport station, entered a capsule, and typed in her home's grid address. It was as soon as she experienced the capsule's acceleration that her vision fell into order. At least, it felt the same way her dreams did when they finally sharpened, but this particular vision made little sense, even though she could pick out individual images and feelings.
Choron was there, Miro too, and God, the Great Rock, rushed to meet them. That part was painfully clear: they were landing on the Rock. From there, everything became fragmented. Half-images burned in her memory: a death, suffering, fear, and a puzzling flash of emptiness that she had never before experienced. As though the dream had been edited. There was nothing in this flood that she could identify as a certainty; even the events and emotions she had witnessed were disembodied.
Her ride home was over. The capsule's sudden stop jarred her from reflection. Now is the wrong time to think about it. There is nothing I can do. She collected the mesh bags she used for groceries. I'm a vessel, only a carrier of information, she realized. The thought did not bother her, for she had been an observer of her visions throughout her entire life, except once, and that had proven disastrous. Having gathered her things, she left the capsule and entered her home.
Even though each of the housing modules was similar to the others in design, generations of families had crafted them into unique works. Some of the better-educated citizens tried to apply psychology to the manner after which a given family modified its module, but such idleness was an undesirable trait in the community, and if anyone had come to a conclusion, she had kept it to herself.
Her own home was big for the two women who lived there. She and her mother had decided not to move to the Church dormitories after her father had died; while they needed to work hard to supplement the community's support pension, they managed to pay their bills on time. It was a comfortable place and an heirloom of sorts. They figured it would be an excellent dowry when the time came.
“Mother? I'm back,” she said toward the noise of running water in the kitchen.
The water turned off. “Did you find everything I sent you for?” asked her mother.
Walking into the kitchen, Nara held up the bags from her trip to the Market. “I think so. Let's make dinner; I'm hungry.”
They broke into their old routine without any more exchanges. The mother and daughter had long since lost the need for words to convey feelings; when they spoke, it was only to pass on other information, and in their close home life, there was little either didn't know of the other. As they worked, her mother turned on the small silver radio that lay on their dining table. Before Nara could ask what was on, she heard the Council music that played just before a public announcement.
“Tonight's transmission is a discussion with several prominent citizens of Orefall,” came the voice of the announcer, Imen Sorn, who lent his trademark emphasis to the word Orefall. “Among them: Vos Huran, the presiding Councilman; Bins Armot, the world-famous miner, and Flanik Or, the great businessman and merchant.” Nara stopped peeling carrots for a moment; Flanik Or was Choron's father. Even if he had nothing good to say, he usually found an interesting way to say it. “Our topic,” continued Sorn, “is the future of our dear world.”
The discussion progressed as most such discussions did. Armot, who had just returned from a long run to the asteroids, had the most to say—he, like most miners, had accumulated quite a few opinions that brewed during his time in space. Nara barely listened to the miner and the Councilman; she had heard opinions like theirs for the better part of the last year. Nara's mother rolled her eyes and sighed when Huran had his turn to speak: she came from an era before “politician” had become a full-time occupation.
It was only when Nara and her mother sat down at the smooth metal table that the broadcast lost its quality as a long-winded diatribe against the foolishness of hanging onto Orefall in the face of its inevitable destruction: Choron's father took his turn to speak.
The man had a deep, expressive voice that he had somehow never passed completely to his son. Years of practice on the radio, taking part in programs such as this one, had refined his manner of speaking. A man's voice was his most important asset in the world of the miners; they seldom dropped their tools to communicate in any way except by radio. Some said that Flanik Or's voice was more valuable than his entire business.
“Thank you, Imen,” he said after Sorn's brief overview of Flanik's holdings. “I can't say I disagree with the gentlemen who spoke before me—dying in a cataclysm is not the way I wish to leave this life—but let me raise two points. The first, of course, is a matter of practicality: without a common land to share, we will have to inhabit the asteroid belt. As any miner will tell you, and I think most of our listeners will agree, life there is difficult. Competition over habitable asteroids will cause conflict that our small population can't afford, and we'll be thrown back into the chaos of the Old Times before the Rock appeared.
“There is another thing to consider. Never in our planet's history have we abandoned it. Orefall is not much—why, they say the original expedition that discovered it spent most of its time arguing whether it was planet or planetoid—but it is all we really have. We are a proud people; yes, we will be able to survive later, as individuals, but what of our community? Free oxygen to everyone who lives here. Church schools for our children. If I may boast a little,” and here he sounded charmingly sheepish, ”a beautiful Market of which my enterprise is a part. All this will be gone. Our ancestors, who toiled away to make this world home—they will have done so in vain if we leave.
“Do we even know that God is here to crush us?” He let the question soak into the minds of his audience. “Our specialty is not mathematics or astronomy; we can't rightly say if we will collide with the Great Rock or not. I say we keep hoping, keep praying. Certainly the great God who destined us to be here will not destroy His creation.”
Amid the spirited replies of the other two guests on the radio, Nara's mother switched it off. She looked weary. “Flanik is not a bad man,” she said. “He means most of what he says. Then again, he has the most to lose if we leave Orefall.”
Nara shook her head slowly. “Everyone is going about it the wrong way. We're dug so deep into this rock that we can't think of anything else. Our thinking must change, or we'll die.”
“You may be right, my dear. I'm afraid changing these tough old miners will be nearly impossible. That reminds me, will you attend Church with me tomorrow?”
Nara understood both the joke and the serious plea underneath it. “I'm just as bad as them. They'll never change, I'll never go to Church. You know that.”
Her mother already understood Nara's reasons for staying away from the Church. “It never hurts to ask. It's been years since they humiliated you for speaking about—”
“Mother, it's hard enough to forget that day without you reminding me of it.”
If there was one reason she loved her mother, it was that her mother really knew what was best for Nara. “I know, dear. I just think you're missing something important.”
They ate in silence for a little while. Slowly, Nara spoke up and recounted her meeting with Pira. After they had finished, cleaned up, and talked for an hour about nothing in particular, they said good night and went to their rooms.
As Nara lay in bed, she thought of Choron, of her dark dreams, and wondered what they meant. Choron might be in grave danger, but could she risk humiliation again? Would Flanik and Pira take her to a priest, too, and try to exorcize the “demon” the Church believed gave her these visions, just like the last time she had tried to help someone? The priests had reversed cause and effect, claiming she knew about trouble before it happened because the demon made it so. Few had sided with young Nara.
In spite of these worries, Nara's awareness soon faded, and she fell fitfully to sleep. The slumber would bring her the most important dream of her life.