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).
On the roof of a warehouse on the Rim of Burroughs
Dome, DaneelAH said, “The stele, the dolphin suit, there are probably other
artifacts scattered all over the surface of Mars.”
“Why?” QuinnAH, the pastor’s young artificial human
and assistant, said suddenly. “Really? So what? There’s all kinds of artifacts
out there! Why should any of them matter to us?”
“Good question, Son,” said Stepan. “They wouldn’t
matter if we know what they were doing here. If there is life elsewhere in the
universe, what was it doing on Mars?”
QuinnAH shrugged, “Dying?”
HanAH lifted his hand to strike the boy until
Stepan said, “It could be.” He shook his head, “But we won’t know.” He handed
waved to them, “You can have the tail piece as well as the VR unit. We,” he
looked down at QuinnAH, “have work to do here.” He nodded. “Good luck.”
DaneelAH said, “Thank you, Stepan. Whatever we
find, we’ll send word.” He gestured to the floor opening, “May we take the
steps down to the floor?”
“Be my guest. Be careful of the spacesuit with
bones.”
HanAH saluted, “We will, Reverend.”
They started down the stairs, stepping carefully
around the suit. “What do you suppose they’re going to do with it?” said MishAH.
“Obviously he’s going to sell it to the highest
bidder,” said HanAH, shaking his head. “He’s a charlatan just like the rest of
his ilk – the Molesters, Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers, Muslims, Thieves,
Hindu, Embezzlers…”
MishAH interjected, “Don’t forget yourself, dear
vatmate.”
“What?”
DaneelAH laughed as he bounced down the steps and
turned on the landing, “We’re always included in that list of radicals and
undesirables of Mars.”
HanAH silently outpaced them down the steps,
slamming the door at the bottom a few moments later. DaneelAH shook his head
and said, “Now he’ll be in a mood for days.”
“I don’t care. Sometimes he’s such a know-it-all I
want to slap him upside the head and tell him to get over himself.”
“Oh, that would be effective,” said AzAH. “Then the
martyr complex would set in and he’d be in a funk for a month!” They reached
the bottom at the same time and stepped into the dim interior of the warehouse.
The door across the filthy expanse of floor was open, letting in orange light. “Looks
like it’s sunset.”
“Or a dust storm,” DaneelAH said. Though weather
and climate were outside of his specialty, knowledge of weather was invaluable
when excavating outside of the Domes --
even coordinating a team of robotic surveyors. He’d done that many times
when he was young and fresh from the vat. While HanAH had a keener sense of weather
change…
He shouted from across the warehouse, “Hurry up!
There’s something going on and I think now would be a good time to get out of
Dodge,” the group, spurred by his tone, arrived at the door at a gallop.
MishAH, master of patterns stepped up to the door,
saying, “What do you perceive?”
“I can hear shouting in the distance. I thought I
heard an explosion just before I stepped out. I wouldn’t have exposed us if I
was just curious.”
She nodded, stepping out cautiously and listening
intently. She stepped back in, “You’re right. Not only is it shouting, it’s
chanting.” She reach out, touched each one, and said, “We have to move fast and
now.”
DaneelAH said, “What’s going on?”
MishAH made a face, then said, “I’m not certain
because the sounds are distorted by distance and the shape of the Dome but there’s
a crowd out there and they’re angry about an individual. I think the name is ‘Natan’…or
something similar.”
“Who’s Natan?” HanAH said. “I’ve been surfing the
police net for news and never heard that name.”
“That’s because he doesn’t exit anymore,” said
Stepan’s voice from the darkness.
The vat mates turned as one. HanAH said, “He’s
dead?”
“Didn’t say that,” said Stepan as he walked up to
them. “He’s just different these days.”
AzAH said suddenly, “Your voice is stressed. You’re
not saying something vital. What is it?”
Stepan sniffed. “A skill like that, if it became
well-known, could get you arrested or showed out the airlock.”
“Don’t deflect,” she said. “You know something
about this character.”
“Of course I do. I’m Natan. Natan Wallach.”
MishAH and HanAH cried out in startlement. DaneelAH
took several step back. Only AzAH stepped closer. “You’re Natan Wallach, one of the Heroes of Mars during the ascent of the
Unified Faith In Humanity. You single-handedly defended seventy-two children in
an elementary school from Christian and Buddhist gang members caught up in
inter-gang warfare?”
“So goes the
legend,” said Stepan.
“Why would a
mob want to kill you?” MishAH said.
Stepan
snorted this time then said, “Because my father has likely told them that not
only am I a fake, I became a Christian in the process.”
“You didn’t
defend those kids?” AzAH whispered.
“That much
of the legend is true. I kept them safe from a crazy mob intent on fighting a
turf war around them. The part that isn’t true is that they were just a couple
of gangs; hopeless kids, sons and daughters of immigrants who’d come to Mars to
start a new life and found that it was just more of the same thing. Even with
the United Faith in Humanity as a foundation, they felt just as helpless as
they had when they lived in Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Communist countries
back on Earth. The ‘united faith in humanity was just one more broken promise –
and I had planned to tell everyone on Mars the story.”
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