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).
“That
much of the legend is true,” said Stepan Izmaylova. “I kept the children 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.”
AzAH
shook her head, “Stupid expectation! They should have known better…”
Stepan
smiled. HanAH snorted, saying, “You-fee wasn’t any better than any other
religion. Worse if you ask me. At least if your deity didn’t answer your
prayers, you could claim it was busy or had other, more important things to do.
But the entire foundation of the United Faith was the assertion that Humans are
essentially good and that without ridiculous constraints about ‘worship’ or ‘service’,
they’d usually do the right thing and help each other.” He breathed a profanity
under his breath. AzAH slugged him, though it was only half-hearted and she was
more disgusted than angry. “Artificial life has seen precisely how exclusive
the ‘Human’ banner is and who, precisely is allowed to fly it and claim its
benefits.”
DaneelAH
stared at his vat mate for several seconds before saying, “All the more reason
to both get rid of You-fee and go back to all being Human together…”
AzAH
snorted this time, “That’s a myth. Humanity has never been ‘together’ – except short
after creation or the victory of Sapiens over Neandertal. Shortly after that,
Saps began to fight over skin color; and most recently not only have they
continued to fight over religions, they now fight over the percentage of unmodified
DNA that makes a person Human.”
HanAH
said, “All of this will be academic if we don’t get out of Burroughs. You have
a mission to accomplish,” he gestured to DaneelAH. “You have to gather the
evidence, then present it to the Mayors.”
“I
can’t do the presentation. I’m not Human.”
“What
about Stepan?”
HanAH
glanced over his shoulder toward the muffled noise of a crowd. “If he survives
the day, then you need to have him be the spokesperson. Until then, we have to
go.”
MishAH
hadn’t spoken since leaving the roof. Now she said, “We have no idea where to
go.”
“I
can get you there,” said a voice. The four of them spun around. QuinnAH held up
both hands. “Hey, I’m just the messenger! If you don’t want the help, I’ll go!”
He turned.
“Wait!”
said DaneelAH, MishAH, and AzAH said in unison. QuinnAH stopped. MishAH continued,
“We need to get out of here, but aren’t you worried about Stepan?”
QuinnAH
turned, glanced at the crowd, then said, “He’s a big boy. So am I. We can take
care of ourselves. You can’t. You want my help getting down to Port Exit or
not?”
HanAH
said, “Not,” and turned to walk away.
The
other three ignored him and walked up to QuinnAH. DaneelAH said, “We’ll follow
you.”
QuinnAH
peeked around them at HanAH and said, “Have a nice trip. We’ll meet you at Port
Exit.” He started walking back into the warehouse. Three of them followed him.
HanAH
glared, looked into the distance, cursed and follow them inside. He started
when the boy stepped next to him from the shadows. “Following the herd, eh?”
“Shut
up and move.” HanAH was certain he heard the boy snicker and raised his hand
threateningly.
DaneelAH
stopped as AzAH and MishAH kept on. He said in a low voice, “Hating him is like
heating ourselves. He’s more like you than any of the rest of us.”
“What?”
HanAH exclaimed. His blurt echoed from the distant walls of the warehouse. “I’m
nothing…” DaneelAH shook his head and walked away, leaving HanAH to stare after
the group. For an instant, he considered making his own way out of Burroughs,
wondered how his vat mates could possibly survive without him and lengthened
his stride. “I’m nothing like that brat,” he muttered, at the same time wondering
at the weakness of his rebuttal.
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