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. ?zZ
Paolo
Marcillon scowled for a long time, then accessed the satellite owned by an
underground church and railroad – a shadow organization of the Cydonia Fellowship of Free Martians that the congregation just called “the fellowship” – and
reprogrammed their ‘bug’s destination for Cydonia and what the 20th
Century had dubbed The Face On Mars.
Nodding,
he reprogrammed his own ‘bug for intercept, then settled back. He’d meet
the four vatmates in Cydonia. Until then, they had
a long journey, probably fraught, probably dangerous, certainly not direct.
He might
die.
One or
all of them might die as well. He could program their ‘bug; he could program
his own; but he could not program events. They would have to play out – or
unravel – as they would. Most likely there would be no miraculous God
interventions here on the surface of Mars.
With a
sigh, he settled back and closed his eyes; not to sleep, but to pray for wisdom
and guidance. As an afterthought, he programmed the ‘bug to follow the least
third-least-probable path to a distance greater than four kilometers from
Burroughs and stop at a place he could scope out the lay of the land and
monitor internal. Sighing, he lay back and started with a confession…
When he
woke finally, the marsbug had come to a stop. Partially concealed by the base
of an upthrust fault and aligned with a crack in a boulder resting at the base
of the cliff, he had a clear view of the second largest city on Mars. He tapped
his database through the ‘bug’s console rather than through his link. He’d
jiggered the console to route any external activity through three or four different
nets and satellites. He was traceable, no doubt to people in Mars Authority –
but only if they knew enough about him to deduce his trail.
There
weren’t many people like that.
One of them lived in Burroughs, though Paolo
wasn’t certain it would be safe to see him. Still, the vine had it that he’d
not only converted, he was serving the community. He studied the Dome. Going in
to speak to Natan Wallach, the ostensible Hero of the Faith Wars wasn’t his
idea of a safe trip. The man had single-handedly led dozens of purges. He’d
personally overseen the Martyrdom of the Six hundred and Sixty-Six. He’d
deliberately chosen each and every one of the group. Certainly there’d been a
convicted child molester, no rapists or murderers that he knew of, a gene
thief, and a garden variety air thief, a pair of embezzlers caught, sentenced,
escaped, and caught at least twice more. The Domes figured that was about
enough repeating and sentenced them to death by exposure. The other six hundred
and sixty-one had been a mixed bag of ninety-four Jews captured in a kibbutz in
the shadow of Olympus, fifty-three Buddhists from a deep-desert underground seitch,
another even hundred Muslims and Hindu men, women, and children detained and
accused of religious terrorism, forty-nine Artificial Humans. The other three
hundred and sixty-five were an Earth-significant number of Christians.
All of them were herded into an
industrial airlock. After some debate, the Five Councils had decided that
explosive decompression would be more humane than slow suffocation.
Wallach had not only led the assault on
the kibbutz and the ashram where Hindu monks had been sheltering Muslim
refugees at Lewis Outpost, but had held pitched battle with a secret colony of
Artificial Humans at the South Pole. Paolo paused and pulled up the file. Natan’s
image leaped into high definition three dimensions over the console. Paolo held
his breath – if he was going to look for the man, he needed to know what he
looked like. At least what he’d looked like a decade ago. He tapped the play
key and listened: “Humanity has stood divided for millennia, probably since our
first prehistoric ancestors. At first, those divisions were necessary, driving
Homo sapiens to evolve, to dominate, and to eventually win a spot on this world
using their brain as the most flexible and powerful weapon. Once that had
happened, Humanity discovered ways to not only grow food, but to grow a
society. There were thousands of experiments with structures – both physical
and sociological.
“I will be the first to admit that among
the constructs created by Humanity, religion had a place – it took the place of
science, before our primitive, stupid forebears were able to comprehend the
world around them, it was necessary to assign unstoppable powers to unseen
forces – to create gods. Certainly organized religions allowed the movement of
material and capital and people. Certainly, there was a time when religions
served a purpose. But Humans outgrew the need for religions as science began to
understand and quantify the unseen. Once it was quantified, Humans learned to
manipulate the unknown. They became, in a sense gods – though no more divine
than you or I.” The gathered crowd, standing silent until this time laughed and
then cheered.
“However, the time came when not only
did we not need gods or goddesses or religions, but the useful construct began
to fight back. Rather than fade peacefully into the same closet as other antiquated
social constructs like race, gender, and law, religions chose to stay,
maintaining their sway over Humanity, turning their gentle leadings into
iron-fisted dominance. They waged war against intelligence, against racial
harmony, against sexual freedom, and the exercise of free will! They pretended
to hold superior views to those who did not agree with them. When the rest of
Humanity cowered under their brutal control, they began to war against each
other. That war still rages on Earth.
“Mars is Humanity’s last, best hope to
shake off the chains of religion’s inherent superiority ideology. These
religious ideologies have not only led to the slaughter of millions of
innocents, but to the unchecked reversion of scientific knowledge, the
cessation of the free growth of the individual, and the stagnation of Human
society on all of the planets and moons of this Solar System. The people of
Mars have chosen to stand in the gap and deny these people the freedom to chain
Humanity to its dismal and dark past.” The crowd roared its approval. Wallach
thundered, in the best tradition of evangelical street preachers he raised his
hands, “We will not go down again under the yoke of bondage!” He slammed them
down on the emergency evacuation plunger, blowing the doors off the airlock and
ending the lives of the six hundred and sixty-six martyrs.
Paolo sat watching the empty air over
the console. His pulse pounded in his ears. He had spent months in prayer. He
had spent days in prayer. He had spent every moment he was awake on his way to
this place in prayer. But the answer – the compulsion – had not lessened. He
had to talk to Natan Wallach.
He had to talk to the Hero of the Faith
Wars; a man who was a close to him as a brother. Because they WERE brothers...
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