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
and I’m sorry, but a number of them got deleted from the blog – 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 (40,000
words as of now), drop me a line and I’ll send you the unedited version.
The Disciple, Stepan’s estranged father, looked at Quinn. The very blue,
young Artificial Human stood behind Stepan. The boy had shown up in the
warehouse Stepan was converting into a community center and rooftop garden.
Scandalized Old Man Gillard exclaimed, “You aren’t a real person!”
Stepan shook his head, embarrassed, grabbed Quinn’s shoulder and said,
“Come on. We have work to do.” They headed away from the Home Owner’s District
without looking back.
What he didn’t see was his father, shadowed in the adobe’s window well,
shake his head sadly and turn away. But just as the father had felt the son’s
embarrassment, the son felt the father’s grief. It wasn’t enough to turn him
back, but for just a moment, Stepan thought about returning; reconciling;
talking. Quinn took that moment to tug on Stepan’s shirt and say, “They
starin’.”
Stepan looked up, noticing the HOD again. The old woman who’d identified
him as the Hero of the Faith Wars turned her back on him. She’d spent years on
the surface, in a space suit and survived the measured insanity of a frontier. Add
to the kind of craziness on any edge of civilization, men, women, and children
of multiple faiths began to react to wild rumors about attacks, atrocities, and
brutal slayings. Groups of young people banded together to protect worship
times; even to escort individuals safely to masjid, church, synagogue, temple,
centers, reliquary, gurdwara, and any other holy place of worship.
Hands that had been prepared to greet him when he arrive, sometimes curled
into fists. There were muttered curses. Lots of, “Get out inti!” Stepan winced. The derogatory phrase came from the word, intron – referring to non-coding sections
of the Human genome – that had been removed from the DNA of artificial humans.
“Get out of our town with that thing,” an older man said. Would they beat
him bloody or toss him out an airlock? He wasn’t worried about that for himself.
He was ready to die for his beliefs and certainly for talking to Quinn. But
what about Quinn? They’d kill him for certain because he might not be as young
a man as he looked. Artificial Humans were manufactured of blue flesh and blood.
Their neither grew nor aged – they wore out. For all he knew, Quinn might have
been an AH who lynched a dozen Human farmers in Heinlein Station, hanging them
from a microwave relay tower to blow in the thin winds of Mars.
It took them to make it back to the trash pick-up shelter he and Quinn had
come up in. Some people cursed Stepan openly. He shook his head. Quinn
whispered, “We gotta go or they gone kill you.”
“They won’t…”
“People’s crazy when you ain’t what they think you is.”
“What?”
“I look like a kid.”
“Are you?”
Quinn lifted the lid to the garbage chute, gestured down, and finally
grabbed Stepan’s arm when something flew over their heads and clanged against
the metal of the garbage area. Stepan jumped, and Quinn followed hard on his
head as a roar echoed down the chute.
They slowed to a stop back where they’d started. The cover above was
closed, so now no light shone down. Quinn sighed. “We’re back where we belong,
then.” He looked up at Stepan and said, “I’m thirteen. Actual. I was made to
look like this, but right now I AM this.” He took Stepan’s hand and led him
back to the tracks. “We can catch the five and take it back near the Rim. We’ll
have to walk after that.”
Stepan looked down at him and said, “You’re just a kid, then.”
Quinn snorted, wiped his nose on his sleeve, then said, “Yeah, I might be
thirteen, but the stuff I seen’s gotta make me older…”
Stepan sighed, nodded, then squeezing his shoulder, said, “Yeah, son. It
made me older, too.” He paused. “It made me older, too.” Another sigh, and he
said, “Let’s get home, Quinn.”
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