(Machines in the dark. Things spinning.)
(“The world’s wide, minnow, wider than you know.”)
“Can I see it? Can I meet your brother?”
“He’s dead. He died, oh, forty years ago. He had an equipment failure, out on the Yuon desert, on Dothog. Air ran out. I’ve got the picture, though. I’ll bring it.”
“I’m sorry, Sagot.”
“Child, you grieve and you get over things. I just remember my brother now, not the end of him, just the living. You know the shuttleport, just outside Dsonan? You can feel the ships take off. You can hear them when they come in, like thunder, even through the walls-”
“Is that that sound?” (“Duun, what’s that?” “I don’t know, buildings have a lot of sounds. Mind on your business, minnow.”)
“-about every five-day. They carry cargo up to the station, pick up what the station makes, medicines and such, and bring it back down. There’s still the Dothog base, it’s quite a little town now, all domes and connecting tunnels. All scientists. About once a year you can get a tour out from the station, but it’s horrendously expensive, the kind of thing only the rich can afford and too rough to please most of that sort, but they still have a few visitors. I’ve dreamed about it, I’d like to go, but it takes a year each way; and something always comes up. I don’t know-” Sagot looked at her hands and looked up. “I think, I think deep down I’m superstitious about it, I think my brother’s still there, still climbing about over the dunes and enjoying himself, but if I went there it’d be just a place, I’d see the town all grown up and the damn tourists and I’d go out in the desert and he wouldn’t be there. Then he’d be dead for me, really dead-oh, gods. I’m sorry, boy, the old woman talks on and on. You wanted to ask me about space.”
“Have you been there?”
“I’ve been up to the station. It’s a barren kind of place, all tubes and tunnels-”
(Tunnels. Metal tunnels. Going on and on, bending up when you walk them-)
“-and one part of it looks a lot like all the other parts. And strangely enough you don’t really get to see the stars much. You can see them from the shuttle if you get up front-they let you do that. It’s beautiful. The world’s beautiful. Haven’t you seen it in pictures?”
(The dark globe with the fire coming over it, the spinning place-)
“No, of course you haven’t. I’ve got this marvelous window-tape. I bought it on the station. It’s the earth from space. I think I can find a copy for you. You get to watch the sun come up over and over again round the curve of the world; you get to see all the seas and the clouds all swirled-”
“He’s coming round-he’s coming round. Hold the injection. He’s coming out of it.”
“That jolted him. Something happened.”
“Quiet. He can hear. Let’s get him out of here.”
“Do you hear us, Thorn? Move your hand if you hear us.”
“Aaaaaaaaiiiiii!”
It was his voice. Thorn was the one screaming. He came fighting up out of the dark, and dark was about him, stars aglow in giddy distance.
Light blazed, white and awful; he flung himself out of bed blind and hit the wall with his back before he saw Duun in the doorway, against the dark of the hall, Duun naked from his sleep and staring at him. “Are you all right, Thorn?”
Thorn leaned against the cold surface at his back. His limbs began to shake in aborted reaction. “I’m sorry, Duun.”
Duun kept on staring at him. Duun’s ears were back. Thorn peeled himself off the wall. The windows were sunrise now, sun coming up over grasslands. Duun had disrupted the timer. The air-conditioner wafted grass-scent, dewy and cold. Thorn shivered again, feeling the draft on his skin. Bedclothes made a trail over the side of the bed and onto the sand, the route his flight had taken.
“It was a nightmare,” Thorn said. “I dreamed…” (Faces. Sounds.) He began to shake again. “Faces like mine, Duun-they didn’t make me up!”