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 (70,000+ words as of now), drop me a line and I’ll
send you the unedited version.
The blue man, OrcAH, curator
of the small museum, nodded slowly, making a subtle gesture with his left index
finger. “I will give it some more thought. Where might I find you?”
Paolo said, “Around,”
pausing, he added, “But don’t wait too long, I’ll be leaving soon.”
“How soon?”
“As soon as I figure out
who betrayed me and confront them.” He turned and walked out of the museum. He
expected to be grabbed by the Dome police or a band of rogue Artificial Human.
When neither appeared immediately, he started back down the corridor leading to
Burroughs Grand Plaza.
It didn’t take long to get there and he’d been to
it a number of times – but the sheer scale and audacity of the place still
boggled his mind. Twice the size of the Aeropagus on which is was modeled in
Robinson, it was ostentatious in a way that might have been ugly, but was
instead, overwhelming. He smiled when he realized that Burroughs bred audacity.
OrcAH was no different in that than the Mayor of Burroughs, who styled herself Citizen Council
Director Haman. While she headed The District Council of fifteen men, women and
genneuts, she pretended to a representative government, but her real powers
were the same as every other Mayor: absolute.
Burroughs also renamed their floating rock the
Court of Eleusinian Mysteries. Pretentious, but appropriate, Paolo thought. Wildly different smells roared around him: baking
bread, aromatic woods burning, flowers, rotten melons of every variety, machine
oil, and fried bread grease. The noise pummeled his ears after the silence of
his hike from the rover: at least six languages, transuranic rock music, and a
brass band thundering louder than ever in counterpoint to a literal thunder of
air moving in an immense space.
The city founders had carved
an immense disk of sandstone from the surface of Mars, polished, sealed it and
kept it floating a meter off the ground with an antigrav field. A school
cluster of children boiled like chattering steam after an Artificial Human
child-minder which said as it passed him, “…stop young learners, will be the
sewage reclamation plant…”. Multiple groans followed after them.
Still on the wide avenue that
circled the Court, Paulo slipped through the crowds, making for the disk where
it floated over a hectare of space. He stopped to stare at it and around the
edge of the giant park. A massive Earth Redwood spread its branches over the
stone of the Court. The landscape was dry, mimicking the habitat of the massive
tree. Scattered over it were gold sand concrete benches, chairs, patches of
Earth cacti and countless fat blue pillows. Men, women, children, robots,
androids and holograms reclined, talked, argued, sang and gestured widely. He
took a deep breath.
As in Robinson, the church,
synagogue, Buddhist temple, the Rationalist Forum and other religious shrines
and places were closed. As always, the softly glowing mural with the subdued
humaniform logo of the Unified Faith in Humanity stood in benign ascendance
over the scene. Paulo blew out a breath. There were still enough underground
believers – both on Earth and Mars – to equip a small army. But there would be
no war. That would only make things worse. Unlike before, he was working alone
and desperately needed a connection to the Christian underground here. This
time, he risked his life. Burroughs was NOT Robinson. Burroughs had thrown
dissidents out the airlocks and called it “cleansing”. They still did it on
occasion.
He needed to get to Cydonia
and his marsbug was not doing well. He needed people who would both support him
and pray for him.
He walked up the steps, kept
going until he found an open bench and sat, his heart pounding. He held his
breath as people noticed and those who might want to hear what he had to say stepped
toward him. When he had a polite crowd, he waved to the mural and said, “People
of Burroughs Dome, I can see you’re a spiritual people.”
There were nods. An elderly
woman approached, flanked by a young woman. She sat in a grav chair, nodded to
him and smiled as her chair settled. Encouraged, Paulo said, “I know, from
traveling over Mars that no one else produces as much carbon and organic
plastic as you do. I’ve heard that innovation is encouraged here in a way that
it’s not encouraged anywhere else. Last of all, I know the you stick tight
together in just about every way.” He held his breath then plunged ahead,
“That’s why I was surprised when I heard that you so strongly support the
Unified Faith in Humanity.” Grumbling mutters in those gathered. The old woman
frowned faintly. He pursed his lips, then added, “Even to the point of removing
those who have diverse and contrary views.”
“Why it surprises me is that
in order to get everything to work so well here, you have to have met the challenges
face-to-face. You had to understand the nature of Humanity better than anyone
else in order to get people to work together so well. You had to know more
about people than they knew about themselves.” Surprised silence. Every eye on
him, focused and listening right now as he said, “That’s why I have no doubt
that you understand that Humanity is made up of more than just the body, mind
and heart. It has a soul that belongs to something outside of itself.” He had
their attention – even that of a group of young adults who had been playing
cricket not far away. They’d left their game to listen. “I’m here to say that
the soul belongs to the Water God – who, like a pot of snow on a hot stove is
solid, liquid and gas yet water all the same, the God of Heaven is Father
forever, Son crucified and alive again and Spirit of unimaginable power yet all
the same. That’s who we belong to.” There was laughter, angry mutters and words
that sounded like “slavery” and “haters” and “terrorists”. Rather than shouting
over them though, Paulo’s voice lowered as he said, “God wants us to turn away
from evil and come to Him.” He stood abruptly, ending his session.
People drifted away, but some
stayed. A man with two children approached him and lowering his voice said,
“Get moving, young man. Some have gone to fetch the mind police.” He snorted
softly. “You know, even your Christian forebears had friends in high places who
believed that people should be able to choose for themselves what they believe.
Some of them never became Christians themselves.” He turned and hurried away.
Farther on, another man watched,
lifting his arm, first two fingers together, pointing up; the other three
clenched to the palm. Paolo dipped his chin and set off across the floating
platform.
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