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 (100,000+ words as of now), drop me a line and I’ll
send you the unedited version.
QuinnAH threw
both arms around Stepan, adding, “You hide. There’s a little door under the
third window over. Push in, slide right. Go in. It’s tight, but it’ll keep you
safe ‘til I get back. These crazy Vatlings you made friends with’ll get in
trouble if I don’t get ‘em outta here.” He squeezed Stepan once more, adding, “Once
I get them to Breachport, I’ll be back. I whistle comin’ in, then knock twice,
stop and knock once.” Stepan didn’t move, Quinn pushed him into the office,
saying, “Go, man!”
Stepan
cleared his throat, “I’ll run as fast as I can as soon as you let go of me.”
Quinn did, and Stepan ran. Quinn ran into the office but stopped. Quinn met the
other Artificial Humans – Daneel, Az, Mish, and the angry Han. He smiled. Han
was so much like his own father. He shook his head then leaned into the vast warehouse,
barely able to see the group as Quinn chased them down the dropshaft there.
When they were gone, he stepped out.
He hadn’t
intended to lie to Quinn, but God had laid a call on his heart, not only to
feed the poor here on the Rim, but to bring hope to the hopeless. He was fairly
certain that the rioters outside the warehouse had been set up for this by his
father – if not personally, then set up by agents acting for the Home Owners
District. He just didn’t know if the mob was made up of Rimmers or hired thugs
from the HOD. He shook his head. There was only one way to find out.
For an
instant, he felt like he should spend some time praying, then smiled. An old
Christian he’d known had been leading an underground – literally underground, in
the maintenance tunnels under the stuffcap tubes – service when Security
blundered into one of their alarms. He signaled the group to disperse silently.
Stepan had whispered, “Shouldn’t we stop and pray for our safety?”
The man
had clapped him on the shoulder and whispered back, “Don’t worry, son, I keep prayed
up for times like this!”
In the
here-and-now, Stepan left the office. He could return to the hiding place if the
riot was Rimmers and he’d calmed them down. If they weren’t, no amount of
hiding would have kept him safe. He jogged across the warehouse floor, then slipped
out through heavy door, pulling it tightly shut as he went out into the wan
light of Martian noon.
There
was no way to see the crowd of rioters, but they were easy enough to hear. This
far from Breachport and the HOD, the streets were laid out in a circular
pattern, following the curvature of the Dome exactly. Each road – technically a
thoroughfare, though the Councils had never gotten the colonists and then citizens
to call them anything but roads! – paralleled either the curved Wall or the
major Spokes that ran laser-straight from Rim to Park Place under the center of
the Dome. The seven hundred hectares held Government Pylon as well as most of
the branches of planetary government like the courts, stock exchange, planetary
administration buildings – all branches of Martian Government offices in the
titular capitol of the planet, Bradbury.
He ran
toward the angry roar and came to a stop when he saw the first cluster of other
Martians running toward him. He flagged them down, shouting, “What’s happening?”
All but
one ignored him. A young woman skidded to a stop and stared at him then said, “Mayor
Nasseri has closed everything down!”
“Why?”
“Someone’s got a bio bomb. He lives on
the Rim and is threatening to set if off if everyone in the Dome doesn’t
convert to Christianity and appoint him Mayor of Burroughs!” She shook her
head, “It’ll be the breaching of FirstDome
all over again! Eighteen thousand men, women and children! The backup “bubble”
technology was sabotaged by the Buddhists and an entire neighborhood of toddlers
newly dedicated to the United Faith and they all died of explosive
decompression!”
He considered telling her the
truth: an evangelical Christian gang and a radical Buddhist gang were having a
turf war and a Jewish gang and a Muslim gang had gotten drawn into it. There
was an accident. The media spun the gang war into an intentional terrorist
attack. Mars panicked and attacked, the resulting pogrom making Earth’s legal
maneuvers against all religions but the UFH look reserved by comparison.
But she
looked wildly around then said, “There’s a warrant out for the arrest of the
ringleader!” She held her hand flat, palm up and a 3D image formed from her data
implant. It was blurry, though he didn’t say so; and the supposed instigator
was wearing a hat so part of his face was shaded. She looked at him intently
then said, “You look like a nice person, maybe you work with the poor here on
the Rim. I do, too. But things are about to get ugly. You should find somewhere
to shelter until the riot’s over. Excuse me, I’ve got to go.”
He
nodded as she dashed away. He pulled up the image of the ringleader on his own data
implant. The small image was poor at best, but in a mob, anyone who looked even
remotely like the perpetrator could easily become the victim. That was what
decided him. He strode toward the roar of the crowd being funneled down the
narrow alleys of the Rim – if someone was going to be lynched today, it would
be him. The thought of an innocent man or woman dying because they happened to
look like a very old image of himself was unacceptable.
At the
end of the street, people were running. Copdrones hovered in the air, laser
scanners flickering over the faces while at the same time dodging flying debris,
clubs, sticks, and stunner shots. Projectile weapons had been banned on Mars a
century ago and had never made a return. But the technology to kill without
projectiles had been honed to create seriously deadly weapons. Before he could
reflect on the ability of Humanity to create more and deadlier weapons, and the
failure of the Unified Faith in curbing that desire not at all, the mob took a
sudden turn and he found himself facing a wall of running, cursing, and panicked
Humanity.
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