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5: Awaiting The Holy Mother's Visit
I was allowed to return to my room in the monastery on the bluffside overlooking a valley that was now choked with brown air. During Clear Season I could see a delightful vista for miles, complete with rare lowlands lakes and chapparal open to the Martian sky. Those were the Clear Days, or summer as it was sometimes called, when the sky was light blue and the Holy Sun shone like a diamond. It is a medical fact that you can burn the retinas of your eyes if you stared long enough directly into the Holy Disk on such days. There is a meditation on that in the Directions or Scriptures, which are fragments of burned papers that came down to Mars in the Godpods. According to the meditation, the eye burning signifies the forbidden fruit of knowledge that humans can only access once they pass into the next life and meet the Gods. Walking in paradise with the Gods, one can look down into the life of mortals and see all their folly and sometimes intercede for them with prayer and piety.
The Abbot kept a close watch over me, I knew that, since he had adopted me in my childhood. I could feel his eyes burning into my back as I went about my daily duties. I was a Reader Second Class, meaning I was on the lower rung of the literate class of clergy. There were five ranks beneath mine. Toward the end of my life, I might qualify for Reader First Class. I was what in civilian life would be called a technician or engineer, depending on the degree of my expertise in my field. My major specialty was Mechanics, with minors in electronics and engines. I had always been a thinking person, and learned early in life to keep my thinking to myself for fear of being ridiculed or beaten.
That brings up the matter of my background. I was the only child of a man and woman who lived in Graniston Cargo. We were poor, yes, but we always had enough to eat. By strictly observing Dome Law (Temple and Civil) a citizen in good standing was guaranteed the right to work and the right to eat. That extended to his or her family. My parents were hard workers, so we never lacked for food or clothing. I could remember times in my childhood when Storm Seasons were exceptionally bad, and the Tribers lost what little they had. Sometimes they came up into the highlands and raided the perimeters of domes and towns. There was a time when I was not allowed to play outside, and certainly not allowed anywhere near the high stone wall topped by glass and steel that separated our enclave from the wild. I can remember hearing shooting at night, when guards in the towers around town picked off Tribers who'd made it past the electric fence and other traps. The Council said we were defending the Dome complex from being overrun, in which case the end result would be death for all. The Tribers were just trying to forage food to survive. Mars can be a hard place, and we all work toward preventing any more such times. In the long term, the anger of the Tribers could prove lethal, so the Confederation of Habitations and Domes was founded, whose main purpose was to maintain a system of roads and aid stations down in the canyons and plains. Though the conservatives groaned at the unselfishness of it, the progressives held sway at the time of my undoing, and felt it would promote peace. In plainspeak, it would keep the Tribers down there in bad times rather than have them raiding the hydroparks and factories upside. My father died of a heart attack when I was 11, and my mother died of cancer when I was 14. Since I had no relatives, and here wasn't an adoptive family, the Temple took me in as a novice monk at 15. The older monks treated me like a little brother, and I certainly had my share of playmates and workmates. I had outgrown my childhood friends, and Sudie's family were long gone by the time I was ten, so I had only an unresolved and painful hole in my heart and memory. My parents had loved me in a devoted but distant way, and I had turned inward to become a reader early on. What was there to read? The royal cities of high Olympus produce a rich literature of poems, sagas, philosophy, and prose fiction. Given that the population of Mars has held steady at about twenty million souls (including a generous estimate of the Triber migrants), there is enough brain volume in the world to keep mathematics, the sciences, and engineering skills alive. It's been estimated that the human population was double its current size a thousand years ago, and they created much of the knowledge that we, today, merely manage to keep up. There is very little new science or philosophy being done, because the Confederation feels we know enough. There is considerable fear of reason, given how unpredictable and cruel the world can be, and the Temple with their vast power feel that it's dangerous for humans to probe around in the affairs of the Gods. Hence, that meditation on the burning power of the sun against eyes that invade the realm of knowledge. To finish my story about myself, I became a first-class student and was taken under the cold and distant nurture of the Abbott himself. My position in the community was assured, and I lived well in a house of 30 monks who taught school, maintained the physical plant, and served as ecologists. There was nuclear power here centuries ago, but as the numbers of people diminished, and the knowledge pool grew too thin, the then-United Domes decided to burn all the books pertaining to that knowledge, and the last generation of nuclear physicists permanently drove in the dampers on the fuel rods so that the plants would be permanently disabled. The dome-like plants were then encased in thousands of tons of concrete to keep them in a shell for eons. In my generation, we understand the principles involved, but we have no practical way to ever develop nuclear or atomic energy again. We live sufficiently well on the byproducts of biochemistry, in particular the O2/CO2 cycle maintained between us and our trees, of which we have millions under cultivation in domed farms. The wind and other natural forces provide plenty of energy to heat or cool our dwellings and pump water, so we are entirely self-sufficient.
That describes me too—self-sufficient. When Timony mentioned his sister, I felt a greater sense of loss about her than I did about the deaths of my parents when I was so young. It seemed my parents had given what they had to give, and had moved on, while my friendship with Sudie was a lost puzzle piece from a lost childhood. I hadn't thought of her in years, but after my encounter with her brother, she crossed my mind often. That's not good for a monk, who is bound to celibacy under pain of harming the well-being and standing of the entire community in the eyes of the Gods. A monk who violates his vows of chastity, poverty, and service can bring down the wrath of the Gods on the whole community. The punishment for such transgressions is swift and harsh. The offending cleric is stripped of his sacral powers, paraded around in his own funeral procession, and then either thrown off a cliff or sent permanently away to live with the Tribers. It was what had happened to Timony Eastgate—not for sexual crimes, but for theological heresy. There is a solution the Domes quietly offer a young man who craves contact with the opposite sex—castration by severing the ducts that create male sex drive hormones. It is considered irreversible, given our knowledge, but theoretically it could be turned around. I had no intention of finding out. Better to engage in a little illicit self-gratification now and then when the pressure became too much. Some monks turn to drugs or drink, while others bury themselves in work. There were similar situations among the women in the sisterhoods, like the powerful Fire Temple, to which the Holy Mother belonged, the Popess of both the Fire Temple and the whole world. The monks and nuns rarely had contact at any level, so I never knew much about them. The nearest nunnery was, at any rate, a hundred miles away in a large dome city called Buenos Ares. No number. Just Buenos Ares. It is so big that it sprawls over more area than our entire complex with our six domes. Buenos Ares is, one might say, the nearest city. They receive their farm produce from us and other domes around. I have been there several times and found the pace of city life with 25,000 souls exhilarating—until I was mugged, had my money stolen, and was left for dead. That made me glad to return to the small, safe world of the Granistons.
There were increasing images of Balesso and his supporters. He was a surprisingly little man with an effeminate walk, but his eyes were dark and mean and scheming, and his mouth had a hard set to it even when he smiled. His hair was combed over his forehead in a black shock, and the square set of his face radiated the literalness of his take on both scripture (Temple) and law (State).
As I returned from my ordeal after Timony's death, I found nothing was the same. My thoughts kept turning back to my childhood. I kept wondering how she was—the little girl with whom I played house. She always gave directions, but insisted on serving me, so I endured the sitting about and listening to her rambling on and on about her dolls ("our kiddies"), her kitchen, and so on. I'd mentally block her dissertations about her clothing, about which she rambled on and on even at age eight. I began to have fantasies of really playing house with Sudie, which made me have night sweats and erotic dreams. As a city engineer when I wasn't performing Temple rituals, I did not have too hard a life, and managed to get my work done on time and within quality, even when my thoughts were far away.
All this, mind you, in the space of a week, because the Holy Mother was due to arrive soon and begin her preparations for the fire ceremonies. I was tempted to speak with the Abbot about my inner turmoil, at least the warning Timony had given. Timony had said there was an important traitor in the Granistons. I had no idea who that was, and Timony had died before I could get that information. So now I ran the risk of having the traitor find out I knew, and changing the plan a bit, but still killing the Holy Mother. At the same time, I couldn't just ignore the problem, because her visit was upcoming, and how could I morally fail to warn the authorities. Telling the wrong person would put my life in jeopardy, and I didn't want to die. At 26 man-years, I was too young to give up on the nectar of life.
Explaining man-years, there is a way of keeping records according to the legendary ancient calendar sometimes accorded to the legendary Erdith or Erdiz. In the nunneries, women very carefully track their menses, for it is said that their fruitfulness waxes and wanes with the comings and goings of a great yellow moon that hung over the valley of paradise or Erdiz. Legend even has it that this moon had engraved on it the face of a God who is blowing wind across the trees to make nectar and fruit. It all sounded very fanciful to me, and to most rational persons. Nevertheless, according to the ancient calendar preserved by the nuns, it is reckoned that I speak to you in or around the Year 4050. Moreover, legend has it that the Godpods brought first settlers to Mars in the year 2030 of that calendar, so we appear to have been here just over 2,000 years.
I had thoughts of telling Chief Blue, but what if he turned out to be the one helping Balesso to seize power from the kings as well as the domes and temples? Or Chief Brown, who was a Temple insider and fanatical believer, or was that just an act? Could it even be the Abbot, or some prominent Council member?
I resolved, finally, that if I could not determine who the traitor was, then I would find a way to tell the Holy Mother myself before harm could come to her. The latter is, in fact, what happened.
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