On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes
struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official
Unified Faith In Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom
directed against Christians, Molesters, Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers,
Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans – anyone who
threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It makes
good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a societal
level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a Roman
holiday...To see the rest of the chapters, go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on
the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story. If you’d like to read
it from beginning to end (60,000+ words as of now), drop me a line and I’ll
send you the unedited version.
QuinnAH, the blue Artificial Human boy
who refused to leave Stepan Izmaylova’s side said, “I bet this is where your prayer gets
answered and I go flyin’ up ona disk first, huh?” The boy apparently didn’t
notice he was gripping Stepan’s shirtsleeve.
“Probably,” Stepan replied looking down
at his charge, scowling, then nodding decisively.
“What?” the boy exclaimed. He yanked
his hand free and stopped walking alongside Stepan. “You gotta be craze!”
Stepan slapped him on the back, took
the disk, and said, “Just kidding, kid. Besides, it’s tuned to me. I’ll go up
then drop you a rope.” He looked up, said a brief, silent prayer, then
activated the gMod disk.
“That thing’s gonna stop halfway up!”
With a coil of rope over his shoulder,
he stepped on the metal disk. It immediately activated, a virtual control
screen projected from it into the air before his face. He lifted his chin a
fraction, and the gMod disk lifted slowly, dropped a few centimeters, then
continued to rise up. Clenching his jaw, holding his jaw a the precise angle
that allowed him to rise slowly, Stepan pretended indifference until he exited
the huge hole in the warehouse ceiling. He stepped off and fighting incipient
vertigo, he lowered the rope through to the waiting boy below. He called down,
“Now don’t be afraid, just keep your eye…”
Quinn’s head popped up and he pulled
himself up on his elbows. Standing, he slugged Stepan in the shoulder and said,
“No offense intended, Preach, but if you can do it, I can do it.”
“No offense taken,” Stepan replied,
then looked around for a place to secure the rope.
Quinn said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll
tie it up after I pull it up a couple hundred. Then I’ll break the lock on that
door and find out how far down the stairs go.”
“What stairs?”
Quinn laughed, “You…” he used
incredibly vulgar street slang for Naturals.
Stepan couldn’t help it, he smacked the
boy up back the head. “You will not use that phrase again around me.”
Quinn laughed again, but raised his
hands in surrender. “OK! OK! No need to shake the brain up! Around your
freakiness I’ll keep the words squeak!”
Stepan wasn’t exactly sure what the boy
meant, but he figured that a few more reminders might be necessary, but he was
trainable. He sighed and set off across the roof. Quinn grabbed his sleeve
again. Stepan turned, opening his mouth to rebuke him until he shoved a long
metal pole into his hand and said, “I’d tap the roof before walking on it, Mr.
Hero of the Faith Wars.” Stepan made a face. He’d hoped that part of the
adventure in the HOD had gone over the boy’s head. “The hole we came up through
ain’t likely to be the only one around here. Best be careful.”
Stepan took the pole, nodded and said,
“Then I put my life in your hands, young Mr. Friend of the Faith Wars.”
Quinn snorted. “I ain’t got no beliefs
in nothing by myself.” He looked up at Stepan, “Mind, I don’t hold nothin’
against you. You seem like a good type. At least you’re here to do something
other than arrest us, enslave us, or hunt us.”
“Hunt you?”
“Yeah. Not many know on account of the
people who could prove it is the ones whose dead. But the…” he managed the
first consonant of the vulgarity, stopped himself, “But some of the really,
really rich of your kind like to go deep down into the tunnels and hunt my
kind.”
“Animals!” Stepan exclaimed.
“Sure we act like animals, but…”
Stepan looked down at Quinn, put his
head on the ebony haired head and said, “You aren’t the animals, son. We’re the
animals.”
Neither one was paying attention to the
roof until a booming roar echoed from the filthy wall of a formerly transparent
Dome rim…
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