|
3: Shan The Heretic Appears
This is how Shan the Heretic showed up in my life, and neither I nor Holy Mars would ever be the same again.
Some time ago, during the Storm Season, I was coming down from the Eyeglass Tower of the Graniston Domes. I had ensured that all the seals were in place and the hatches battened as prescribed in the sacred Directions. I felt happy, and none of the things I am about to describe had yet come to my attention, shattering the innocence of what we believe.
While up there, I stood meditating for some time as I gazed through the thick glass windows at our farms and villages in the thin blue air. Soon the Popess or Holy Mother of our Fire Faith would visit the Granistons for the Storm ceremonies. We all looked forward with joy and comfort to her visitation. The children expected gifts under a tree, and the adults reaffirmed their vows to their Dome.
As I looked out from the tower that late morning, dust was starting to encircle us with its brown clouds. Men and women in gliders sailed here and there on the high winds, assisted in the thin air by flat hydro-bladders under their colorful sails. In a week or two, the sailing would be done as the air thickened with dust.
Already I could see, scattered across the quadrille paths and pipes in all directions, the hard bluish light of stored energy gathered from Sol's generous rays during the Clear Season. We store energy in batteries so that we won't live in utter darkness during the Storm time. Looking down at the battery lights, I believed they were harder and stronger in my childhood, but then we do not always remember things as they really were. I could see the cold dust snaking through the mountain canyons to the north and east, while peach-colored sunlight played on the flat plains to the south and west. In the really far distance was the looming hulk of Olympus Mons, which has its own clouds and atmosphere, and hundreds of dots of light where domed cities surround its enormous walls. Every year, life becomes a little bit leaner, and among the literal readers of Direction, there is much talk of end times.
One by one, using levers, I lowered the steel plates outside and screwed them tight by turning the crossjack on their bolts on the metal surfaces inside. It's said these naked steel sheets are among the oldest building artifacts on Mars, and represent the unknown foundation period when the Godpods put humans on the surface of Mars--if you believe such tales.
On my way down, I encountered the heretic who was to change my life. I was to learn the truth about Erdith and the Godpods and many other things to which your histories and libraries have no reference because it is beyond the scope of your knowledge.
I wore my comfortable white woolen robe, tied with the belt that unites us in spirit, as I came down the steel spiral steps from the high turret. I smelled the wonderful aromas of cooking, from corn to cabbage, from beef to beets, from chicken to chowder. With over 5,000 people in the Graniston 1 Dome, we have a rich populace. There are another 10,000 scattered in the farms and villages, and we have six outlying towns (Graniston 1, Graniston Power, Graniston 2, Graniston Defense, Graniston Cargo, and Graniston Science). Each of the towns is said to have been a Godpod in primordial history, and elementary schools often have paintings on the walls of the Gods' giant hands placing these pods on the surface of Mars like little shells from which life sprang.
I was humming contentedly and thinking of the many children coming in from the schools for their midday meal, when a wild figure presented himself to me in the stairs. Since we are forbidden to carry weapons in the domes, I was defenseless before this disheveled and dirty, hairy man. He wore a long beard matted with filth, and his eyes were so wide that they shone white even above the pupils. "Brother!" he shot at me in a hoarse whisper. "Brother!" In the semi-darkness, I could see he wore Triber clothing, brown with many patches, and the obnoxious trousers their men and women both wear.
"Who are you, Triber? What are you doing up here?" I demanded. Though scared, I put my fists on my hips and assumed a pose of authority. Inwardly, I prayed to the Holy Sun and the flying twins Fear and Terror to preserve me. A broad knife glittered in the folds of his waistband, and his hands were black with dirt.
"I am Triber Shan," he said, "and I have come to warn you about a terrible event."
"How did you get into the tower? I must ask you to--"
"No time," he snapped, coming closer. I could smell his sweat and the rankness of his hair. They do not bathe, nor do they cut their hair. "The Holy Mother will be assassinated."
"What?" I made the sign of Horizon, clutching my left hand to my heart and moving my two pointing fingers from left to right over my head in an arc. "Why have you singled me out for your offensive talk?"
"I was one of you," he said. His breath stank and his remaining teeth were brown as he spoke close to my face. I was being contaminated spiritually by his unwashed and unpurified presence, and I shuddered at the days of fasting and propitiation now thrust upon me.
"Get back," I whispered harshly, afraid someone might overhear and charge me with consorting with the unclean.
"I've chosen this place because you are alone, Brother. Do you recognize me yet?"
I shook my head. Should I know him? I stared at him closely. He tried to be helpful by turning his head this way and that, and by holding his beard aside.
"Does the name Brother Gaunt mean anything to you?"
I was still trying to find a way to dart past him, but now I froze. "Brother Gaunt? Why... he has been dead two or three years." That is Mars time, but by the sacred temple clocks, which measure something called Man Years, it's more like four to six years. Religious literalists claim that refers to time measured on the mythical Erdith. In short, or in long, it was a long time.
"It was my monkish name. My given name, Brother Farr, was Timony Eastgarden..."
"...no," I interjected, remembering my playmate Sudie Eastgarden down the lane past the grape bowers and among the hydroponic bean fields.
"...and you used to come to play with Sudie in the old days before they vocationed you to the Temple."
I shook my head, suddenly feeling tearful. "I haven't seen Sudie in years."
He nodded. "As well you wouldn't, because she was expelled along with the rest of my family after I left this prison of limited ideas."
I understood then how dangerous my situation was becoming by the second. If the authorities connected me somehow with this traitor, I would be seen as a danger to the dome and could be sent packing by a side gate with whatever I could carry in a sack, and the gate would be locked at my back forever. I would lose everything. To a Domer, that was like dying. "You have to get away from me," I told him. Now I really did push himside and start down the stairs. He was wiry and strong, and grabbed my shoulder as he followed me down the winding stairs. Our feet made scuffling sounds on the metal, and in the raw concrete pillar our flying clothing and grabbing hands made muffled slapping sounds. "Wait!" he cried.
"Get away!" I said. "You can take your information to Brother Gate." I referred to the member of our order who is on duty at any given time at the outer gate of Graniston 2, which is the entry point to our gated preserve in the Blue Hills.
"I'm not stupid," he said, "and for a moment, don't you be. Do you understand what would happen if I were to tell them the Holy Mother is about to be murdered?"
I froze. I must have turned white as an ammonium lick on the far sands as I turned slowly. "You speak the most frightful treason..."
"Not treason, but an offer of help." He gripped my shoulders with his hands. He was bigger than I by half a head. Now that he knew who he was, he seemed no longer a demented Triber, but an old neighbor gone bad, gone mad, whatever.
"This must be serious for you to risk your life coming here." It was the first crack in my resistance, and the beginning of the unraveling of my life. And indeed now nothing can ever be the same again in our world.
He spoke earnestly: "Brother Farr, do you know why I was expelled?"
"Expelled? We were told you became a heretic and left us."
"If these lunatics are sane, then I am a heretic. I had a vision, Brother Farr, an insight, because I found something from the long ago past that convinced me the story of ancient Erdith is true. We were not put here by any Godpods. We came here, sent by the warring powers of old Erdith, who then destroyed themselves with wondrous weapons." Seeing the fear and disbelief in my eyes, he shook my shoulders and nodded vehemently while saying "It's true, and I know you are the smartest among this pack of hydroponic pea-pods. If anyone can understand that, and save the Holy Mother, you can."
My fate was already sealed, but I didn't know it yet.
"Beware of Shuatro, Duke Balesso. He was exiled by the king of Olympus Mons, and has spent time among the Domers and the Tribers, and places you cannot even imagine. He intends to overthrow both Temple and State, and make himself absolute tyrant."
"That would be unthinkable," I said.
"Think again, Brother Farr. Time stands still for nobody. Together with his advisor, Evkar Voreill, Balesso has plans moving forward. "
I would later learn that three kitchen women, two of them cleaners and one of them a supervisor, had seen us through the plate glass windows inside Level 23 where Timony Eastgarden and I stood on the lowest rung of the ladder where it spills onto the uppermost utility access plaza. Normally, we would have been undetected, but the three women were rising in a work lift to repair clogged intakes to the kitchen stoves. The police file reports that they stood gaping at the sight of a wild Triber with his hands on the shoulders of a pure and dedicated monk, as if converting him to heathenish liberties and false thinking. The women reported seeing the monk reaching up to touch the Triber's beard as if in a gesture of friendship or affection.
"What has become of Sudie?" I asked, reaching up to touch his dirty beard as if it might make me believe I was not having a disturbed dream.
"She is as well as one might expect," he said. "My parents have died of grief and despair. My two other siblings have gone to a town on Olympus Mons to become servants, but I am not welcome in any of the domes and towns, and my sister has remained with me until I can find her a husband."
The unthinkable had not yet entered my mind. "Wish her well," I said, imagining her traipsing off with some unwashed brute who resembled Timony, the former Brother Gaunt, or Shan the Tribesman as he now called himself. "What about the Holy Mother?"
"There isn't much time," he said, starting to withdraw up the stairs to the plate he had secretly unbolted from the concrete after flying here in a glider that was now attached, like a butterfly, to the outside wall of the tower. I deduced all that later, of course. "The Holy Mother will be assassinated here in the Granistons when the she comes for the annual Storm ceremonies."
"Why?" I shook my head, trying to imagine anyone murdering the Popess of our culture. It would be like snuffing the sacred Sun Fire itself. The sisterhood of priestesses had kept the flame alive since primordial times, and Graniston was one of the few privileged places to possess such a sacred site. There were six in all, and each year the Popess or Holy Mother performed her all-important Storm rites in a different one of these locations. In a few days, Graniston would once again be favored by this rotation, and we would install colored lights on strings and exchange gifts.
"A duke named Shuatro Balesso was expelled for plotting against his king in the high kingdom of Olympus Mons. He was sent out with his family and servants in the dark of Storm Season some years ago, and they all perished. His wives, his children. Only he survived. Balesso came down among the Tribes and made a new life for himself, but vowed to avenge his family. He entered a monkery far on the edge of the highlands, and quickly worked his way up to be an assistant abbot in the main fire temple out on the shallow seas. He managed to corrupt one of the young, impressionable sisters, who secretly admitted him to the database of knowledge so that he is like a shadow on the Holy Mother's back. He has taken control of the global media, and has attracted a large and fanatical following of dupes who believe anything he says, and will do any dirty work for him."
"But why Graniston? What have we got to do with what goes on in the high kingdoms?"
"Balesso leads a secret group of plotters who want to turn Mars into a single state run by him, a king above both king and Free Domers. They know of a powerful secret buried deep in the ground, which dates to ancient times. With that secret, if they can find it and harness it, Balesso hopes to gain total power on Mars."
Before I could ask another question, and before he could say another word, we were startled by a loud shout. Then a babble of voices broke loose as security men and women came pouring up the stairs. There must have been a dozen of them, half the Dome's force of law and order in dark blue. With them were one or two brown-robed Temple cops. "There he is!" "Grab him!" "Hold the monk!"
So the Temple cops pressed me against the cold stone wall, while the blue-jumps pounded up the stairs after the escaping Timony. He turned and kicked them so that a mass of them fell down in a jumble. Forbidden to fire their phasars in the Dome, they started back up the stairs waving steel-and-rubber saps.
"Wait!" I yelled, pulling the two Temple cops toward me, punching one, kicking the other, and jumping over their stunned bodies to pound up the stairs after the cops. "He has information!"
Timony was too fast for them. He swung outside the open bolt-hole, rapelled a few dozen feet to his glider, and dropped away as the first cops reached the windy, icy opening.
"Wait!" I shouted, but it was too late.
I got there just in time to see him flying by in his plastic-thin glider. He'd put on the kind of round black wind goggles the Tribers wear down in the plains. He glanced toward us with a look I could not decipher--quizzical, frustrated, pondering some further hope of warning us. But the cops started unloading their phasars, and the glider crumpled at 12,000 feet. It took another second for him to start plummeting more than two miles to his death on the broken rusty rocks too far down to clearly see.
The Temple cops seized me from behind. I being a monk, the blues had no right to touch me. My fate would be far more severe in the Temple courts. I made up my mind not to spill what I knew, because it was clear that the first to know would be the traitor of whom Timony had spoken, and then I'd be a dead man. Besides, I hoped to save the Holy Mother, who was due to visit us in ten sols.
|
