Cascade Point

A fireball becomes a river of flame racing through a dark, narrow corridor, erupting finally from a wood-shored entrance to blacken the grassy knoll above. The screams from within fill the air, but even as swearing rescuers plunge into the mine they are fading into the silence of death. Those still alive are brought out first, their agony muted by drugs. The rescuers who carry out the dead are no longer swearing. All are grim-faced; some are crying. The blackened bodies pass closely enough to touch....

And Javier was back on Aurora, standing in the rain with knotted muscles and a throat full of nausea. Behind him someone—a younger teen, probably—was sobbing with reaction. Ahead of him, the people had bunched together a bit more closely, leaving a small bubble of space around him, as if he were the carrier of some loathsome disease. He didn't bother to turn around; he knew that his own i

With a shuddering sigh he slid a wet hand under his collar and massaged the taut neck muscles there. One final going-away present, he thought dully; with love, from Aurora.

—

The cubicle euphemistically referred to as the kitchen manager's office was about the size of a king-sized coffin, Javier decided as he stood silently in the half- meter of space between the front wall and the cluttered desk. Wedged into a chair across the mound of paper was a man so fat that it was hard to understand how he had ever gotten into such a limited area. Unbidden, an irreverent thought flickered through Javier's sense of futility: that Hugo Schultz had been placed behind the desk as a child and allowed to grow into his current position.

Schultz looked up from the application he'd been reading and fixed Javier with a pig-eyed stare. "You didn't put down what job you wanted," he said, his voice just loud enough to cut through the sounds of the hotel kitchen that the cubicles walls made only token effort to keep out.

"I'll take anything that's open," Javier said simply, matching the other's volume.

Schultz nodded. "Uh-huh. I see you've got Earth citizenship. You born here?"

A lie would be so easy—and so useless. Javier's entire public information file was available via a single phone call, should Schultz choose to check on it. Besides, to anyone who had followed the events at the frontier over the past few years, his hair and eyes were a dead giveaway. "No, I was born on Aurora."

"Thought so," Schultz grunted. "You're a Cassandra, then?"

Javier winced at the term, but its use was far too widespread these days to be avoided. "Yes."

Schultz grunted again and studied the application some more. "A master's degree, no less. You get that on Earth?"

"No, on Aurora."

"I thought all the schools went when the rest of the planet fell apart."

"They did. But I was one of the first of my generation—the first generation of Cassandras. The society didn't begin its collapse until we entered the labor force, and by then I had my degree." He shuddered slightly at the memories. "I stayed on Aurora to try and help. Six months later Earth ordered the planet evacuated."

"At Aurora's request." The words were heavy with accusation.

"Yes," Javier acknowledged, making no effort to defend Aurora's leaders or their decision. On some worlds of the Colonia, he'd discovered, the stigma of being from a failed colony was almost as bad as that associated with his Cassandra visions, and he had long since tired of both fights.

Schultz's expression didn't change, but his voice softened a shade. "Why? What were you ru

"Ourselves. Each other. The visions." Javier shook his head. "You can't understand what it's like, Mr. Schultz. Never anything but people dying—usually on a massive scale, and always so close you can practically smell them." "But they don't come true, do they? That's what I heard, anyway."

"Enough do," Javier said. "A few percent, I suppose. But that doesn't really help. All it does is add uncertainty to the whole thing, like watching a laser being aimed at someone and not knowing whether it's charged or not."

"Did leaving Aurora help?"

There it was at last: the question that, in one form or another, everyone eventually got around to. Have the trances stopped coming? Again, the temptation was to lie; again, he knew it would be useless. "Not really. Scattering us around the Colonia eliminated the group trances, but that's about all."

"Those are the ones where someone had a seizure and half the Cassandras in the city joined in?"

"Sort of," Javier said carefully. They were treading on dangerous ground here. He would have to watch what he said.

"The story goes that every time the dust cleared from one of those you had a bunch of dead people and a mess of wrecked equipment." Schultz's steady gaze had challenge in it.

Javier understood; it was a roundabout way of asking another familiar question. "The deaths came about mainly when people driving or working heavy machinery weren't able to stop before the trance began. But we always get a couple seconds' warning, so for most jobs there really isn't any danger, either to ourselves or anyone else."

"You were pretty stupid to let Cassandras do that sort of work."

Javier shrugged. "We didn't have much choice. The entire third generation had the curse, and the work force desperately needed us. Anyway, the deaths and damage weren't all that devastating in themselves. It was the panic and fear that went with all of it."

Schultz held his gaze for a moment and then dropped his eyes to the application again. Javier waited silently, listening to the muted clatter of dishes around him and trying to ignite at least a spark of hope. The effort was futile. Schultz was far too smart not to have realized that someone with Javier's education wouldn't be looking for work in a hotel kitchen unless he was desperate. Bracing himself, Javier waited for the inevitable turndown.

"All right," Schultz grunted abruptly. "You can start on dishwasher and cleanup duties. Our stuff's not very fancy—sonic washers and brooms—but it's not likely to get away from you, either. If you're carrying a stack of dishes or something and it happens, put them down, pronto. And don't tell any of the other kitchen staff where you're from. They're not too bright, most of them," he added, anticipating Javier's obvious question, "and probably won't co

"I... yes, sir. Thank you, sir," Javier said, thrown off balance by the unexpected response.

"Sure. One other thing." Again the pig-eyes bored into Javier's face. "How often do you get these trances of yours?"

"Two or three times a week, usually, in a big city; maybe once a month in a less populated area."

"What's your accuracy rate?"

"About five percent. All the ones that do come true seem to happen within twenty-four hours of the vision."

"One in twenty. Not too good, is it? So okay, here's the deal. You get a vision, you keep it to yourself. I don't want to hear about it, and I don't want the staff to hear about it. Life in New York is hectic enough without doomsayings that probably won't happen. Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." Abruptly, Schultz raised his voice in a shout that made Javier jump.

"Wonky!"

A moment later the door at Javier's right popped open and a thin, weasellike face peered in. "Yeah, boss?"

"This is Javier; he's on cleanup duty. Show him around and get him started."

"Sure." Wonky tossed a broken-toothed grin at Javier. "Let's go, kid."

"You like the boss, Javier? Huh?" Wonky asked as they left the cubicle.

"He seems very fair," Javier answered cautiously.