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. They are HanAH, the security expert (m); DaneelAH, xenoarchaeologist (m); AzAH, language
expert (f); MishAH, pattern recognition (f).
AzAH smiled faintly, crossed her arms over her
chest. “What could the Mayor of Burroughs possibly want from the Southern
Wastes?”
HanAH said, “The whole planet is a waste – what
would the Mayor of one the Five Domes of Mars, possibly want with…”
“He would want evidence that there was alien life
on Mars at one time,” DaneelAH said.
HanAH snorted, “What kind of evidence of alien life
did Mayor Turin have?”
“Sorry to interrupt the dash into science fiction,
people,” MishAH said, “but we’ve got patterning evidence of unusual branching,
subsurface markings.”
“What?” said HanAH.
“Tunnels,” said DaneelAH.
“Tunnels where?” said AzAH.
DaneelAH took out his t-comp, his tablet computer
then said, “Under Burroughs.”
HanAH snorted, “Of course there are tunnels! There
are service areas under…”
“Not just service tunnels. Compared to the other
Domes, the tunneling under this crater is more than ten times as dense.”
MishAH scowled, snatched DaneelAH’s comp from him
and hunched over it, tapping, swiping, then holding it up to project a
holographic image nearly as wide as he was tall. He suspended it then stepped
back, his hand going to his hairless blue chin, forefinger and thumb stroking
them.
AzAH leaned to DaneelAH and said, “I love it when
he slips into his Sherlock Holmes persona.”
HanAH said, “I hate it – he thinks he’s so smart. I’m
the security expert – and I’ve even read the entire collection of Sherlock
Holmes stories and books. Even the pastiches. They’re garbage, really. Seems
like if the Domes are going to ban books, they should have started with those
stories rather than religious texts. It’s not like I don’t know…”
MishAH cut him off, saying, “Yes, brother. You’re
the expert. But sometimes someone looking at the same data with eyes untainted
by the paradigms of your profession can see things you can’t.”
“Like what?”
He reached into the hologram with his fingers
pinched, then spread them. “See here?” They all looked closely.
“What are we looking for?”
“There are tunnels below the tunnels, other
connecting them. There are also shadows beneath the ones that are mapped that
indicate there may be a layer of chambers below these.”
“How old are they?” asked AzAH.
“Hard to say.” He fiddled with the images some
more, then pulled up a side screen. “These say that the initial tunnels were
laid down about four hundred years ago.”
HanAH, DaneelAH, and AzAH turned to stare at the image.
HanAH said, “You’re telling me that they’re older than the Bradbury? Older than
Human civilization on Mars?”
MishAH held up a finger, though didn’t take his
eyes from the document now floating in front of him. “The tunnels are definitely
older than most of the settlements of Mars. But they aren’t older than the
original missions. At the end of the 21st Century, there were Humans
here…”
“True, but those were just science stations and
experimental weather and concept testing sites! There were no real colonies
back then!”
“That’s what we’ve been told, but I’m reading an
old government document.” He cleared the map and enlarged the document. The way
this is phrased makes it clear that someone – likely a whole bunch of someones!
– on Mars knew about these tunnels. It’s not clear if we made them or not, but
we know about them.”
DaneelAH pursed his lips then said, “Then that
makes it even more important that we connect with this Paolo and the Hero of
the Faith Wars. I think they must be working together.”
“Why do that want us?” AzAH said. MishAH, HanAH,
and DaneelAH turned to her.
DaneelAH said, “When we find that out, they we’ll
know where we’re going and why.”
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