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11: King City
To enter the Royal Lands, you either take an airship from one of the Domer cities, or else you ride in a land caravan up the mountain's sides. This takes on new meaning when you realize that Olympus Mons, the Olympic Mountain, is the largest mountain in the solar system. It is a giant that rises just over 15 miles high, at its base is over 300 miles across, and is surrounded by a cliff wall that rises over three and a half miles high. The top of this monster is slightly domed, and at its center is a huge caldera 48 miles across representing an extinct volcano.
I had to assume that the Roy Ollies knew about me from the information in the global database, which I was sure both Temple and Dome would have entered to warn others about me. Thus, I had to resort to a ruse.
In a Triber market far below the Tharsis Plain that borders Olympus, I bought robes and prayer beads somewhat similar to those worn by a highlands order of monks called the Blue Horizon Brothers. In the global Temple hierarchy, priests are father, priestesses mother, nonpriestly monks brother, and nonpriestly nuns are sister. I was used to the ways of a brother, so this was the guise I took upon myself. I took a step upward from there, in the Domer city of Buenos Ares, where I changed habits and became a White Brother. I knew that order has relative houses up among the Royals, and it is a very large order whose members don't all know each other. In this guise, I sat in a large Royal airship with my cowl over my head and my hands joined around my prayer beads. Nobody disturbed me, not even the ticket agent and cop who wandered the aisles in tandem looking for fare skippers. I had bought my ticket fair and square (at a monkish discount yet) in a travel brokerage in Buenos Ares Center.
It was my first journey at night in an airship, and I had the good luck to have a window seat in the gondola. Seating for the 100 passengers was thus: in the back 12 rows, or second class, it was 3 and 3, meaning three seats on either side of the aisle. That took care of 60 passengers. In the front section, or first class, sat 40 passengers two and two in larger and more cushy seats on either side of the aisle. I sat on the hard wooden benches in second class with a rented pillow under me. You could rent a blanket and a pillow in the central area, which was a sort of 20x20 minimarket with a kiosk staffed by the conductor when he wasn't conducting. He had things to read, videos to plug into your beltpad if you had one, plus coffee, sandwiches, yogurts, agars, sprouts, kelps, and sweet cakes. He had a good variety of waxed fruits and hard candies. Since the trip took twelve hours, it was inevitable that every passenger on board would eventually stop for coffee or something to eat in the little plaza with its six benches and three narrow little tables, and bring something back to his or her seat to read. In the back, you got a faint potty odor along with leaked high-altitude fresh air. Toward the middle, it was warmer and more coffee-smelling. Seats weren't assigned, and as the hours passed I moved about to allay my boredom.
When we left Buenos Ares, it was still daylight. The sun set about an hour later in the cold blue distance over a peachy haze. The airship, which is shaped like a bullet and pointed at both ends, has its long passenger or cargo gondola slung underneath. From the central kiosk area, a spiral staircase rises to the bridge above. There, the captain and his crew manage the hundreds of helium envelopes and the clattering engines that burn a mix of hydrogen and methane in an enclosed chamber of oxygen and nitrogen; this turns a worm gear on which six large propellers turn, and that pushes the ship along. Seen from a distance, it is a droning, clattering sausage of tiny green air traffic indicator lights plus a bar of yellow light made up of the passenger windows.
We climbed for about three hours. The night sky around and above us was uniformly black and filled with many stars. The stars all look about the same, given that most are unimaginably distant and their relative sizes are insignificant. Their colors and luminosities are another matter, with some looking brown and dull while others blue-white dots of searing intensity. Our Holy Sun was on the other side of the sky, but our two moons Terror and Fear could be seen as visibly moving dots of light. I have looked at them through our telescopes, and noted that they are cratered. I looked for the other planets of the night, the giants with their rings and moons, away from the sun, and the four dots closer to the sun. The farthest of these (Alfar) from us is tiny, and hard to find, but so bright that you do see it when it is in the proper opposition. Bigger yet is the blindingly right Betar. Then there is the twin system of Sharli Major and Sharli Minor. Some philosophers feel that Sharli Major, because of its bluish white color, might be the mythical Erdith. Legend has it, however, that there is a broken planet of many pieces or asteroids, named Delta, which might have been the mythical paradise from which the Godpods came. We are Echo, Mars, in this scheme. Next comes mighty Fox Star with his faint ring and many moons. Next is Gulf Star, which has enormous rings and many planets. Last there are Hotel and India, both of which are large and have moons. Old legends tell of more planets but they are said to be of a different and tiny order, and may be nothing but pure mythology. These sorts of things are not doctrinal nor canonical, so nobody is ever executed for thinking they exist, although it is forbidden to teach about them, and that can bring prison time.
I was impressed by the many Royal Dome cities clinging to the mountain walls all around. Except for those on the lower sprawl, Free Domers, the upper points of light represented Royal Domes. The most astounding sight was yet to come as we rose up above the mountain top. All in all, it took six hours to climb to an altitude of about seven miles, and six more hours to reach the Royal capital in the caldera.
On the trip, I began to notice an older man who appeared to look at me once or twice too often. He was slight, with yellowish-brown skin and gray hair that was a few weeks past needing to be cut. He wore exterior lenses, which made him look bookish—most people prefer simple eye surgery to correct their vision, unless there is a therapeutic reason why they cannot have procedures done. I wondered if he were one of those who seek younger men for pleasures that Mars society frowns upon. He made me uncomfortable, and I moved out of his direct range of vision from acros the aisle and at the other end of second class. I thought of him as Flash, because of the way his lenses twinkled in the poor light, and because of the strange, pinched look of his face and eyes.
Climbing to an altitude a mile above the top, we soared above the Royal Olympus Dome. No matter how seasoned the traveler, I am told this sight always causes a gasp to move through the entire ship. Under a thin cloud deck, I saw hundreds of points of light large and small, the Royal cities. The Royal Olympus Dome is a natural formation covering over 150 square miles in which live about ten million subjects of the king's court at King City.
For the last hour, we droned over the rim of the caldera and gasped again. A mile below us lay a city of a million inhabitants in the largest dome of all, two miles in diameter and stretched over several internal mountain tops and manmade pillars. As we spiraled slowly in our descent, I could make out the boxy and pillared buildings, the streets with their moving cars, the parks and ponds, even a river that gathers the melt waters of the high cliffs and pours them through the caldera where they fall out into the atmosphere in plumes of fine frost. Perhaps most surprising is that it is always both day and night in King City. Deep seismic forces remain in the extinct volcano, and these drive the engines that power the city. It is always daylight in the surface floor under the dome, and always night time in the hundred decks below that. To parse it more finely: in some places below decks, daylight is piped down into chosen parks and other public spaces.
The airship docked among a dozen others at Queen's Field, the global airport. That is a busy place with shopping malls, factories, shipping centers, warehouses, and, surprisingly, gambling casinos. The Royals are more forgiving than the puritanical Free Domers, and much goes on here that would be frowned upon in the austere places I had known. If it weren't for some of the filth and crime here, I might have preferred King City to anywhere else on Mars.
As I stood with my cowl, beads, and rucksack on a busy street corner, I was thoroughly confused. I had come here, thinking to find the secret of the seventh point, and instead I felt like an insect in this vast city. Traffic rushed past in all directions as I stood on the curb. Pedestrians crowded around me. Since the air was cured, nobody worried about oxygen. Cured means it is treated and recycled through huge turbines. There are more trees than people in the dome cities, and this place is no different. Trees and greens generate oxygen that we breathe, while the hydrogen cars burn clean and give off only water and trace elements.
Another strange thing for me is that they use a medium called money, which is hard to explain. I had seen coins, like Sam Gorepoint's mysterious find from the Royal mines, but never thought of them as anything other than decorative items. The unit of currency is the Royal Credit (RC), which is a paper that can be divided into four Royal Quarters (RQ). There are denominations of five RC (5RC), 10RC, 20RC, and so forth. Most of what you do every day can be done with these small denominations. The bigger stuff is done electronically.
I had exchanged some bent and rusty Triber coins for a few RC, but my main source was Timony's billfold. Of that, I had spent most of it on air fare, and I spent my last few RC on food and drink aboard the airship. Fortunately, it is an acceptable sight to see a monk mendicant, so I stood near a bank building with a cup and collected about twenty RC in a few hours. As I waited for kind strangers to say their prayer mantras as they dropped coins or bills into my cup, I studied a map I had bought at a news stand nearby. King City is divided into several major sections, with the Palace Section in the middle on one side of the Olympus River, and the Temple section across the way. That's where Her Holiness Gina-Paulina Benedictina XXIV stays when she is not on the road. I could see the two complexes from where I sat—golden spires on the right for Temple, golden domes on the left for Palace. The other Sections included Banking, Commerce, Shipping, Warehousing, and so forth—functional, unromantic names. Spread through all but the Palace and Temple districts were all manner of dwellings ranging from the palatial to the efficiency.
I spent my first night in broad daylight in a place called River Park. While I dozed on the grass, a policeman came by to ask if I were all right. Satisfied, he muttered a mantra and moved on. Evidently, monks are sacred and must not be disturbed because they are conduits of blessings from the Gods. This was lost on a pair of street thugs who tried to roll me after noticing that I paid for a meal earlier. My finely honed Triber skills came to the fore, and I swung my stick around even as I was lying on the grass. One of them, who had his hand in my pocket, caught it on the temple and may have lain there dead for all I knew. The other ran off with my wallet, and I after him with my rucksack on my back and my walking stick clutched close to me.
He ran through the park, down a concrete flight of steps two or three at a time, down into the night, and I after him.
Now we were on a night street illumined by ornate, paired metal poles that leaned—one over the sidewalk, one over the street— with glowing globes on top.
The thief thought he had lost me, because I fell back and moved in the shadows. He had no idea of my determination when I am after something. I followed him down two or three more decks, each with its own flavor. One deck seemed alive with noisy street cars, trucks, trains, all sorts of moving traffic. Another deck seemed composed of looming warehouses and freight yards in which night crews labored wearing yellow helmets and driving tow motors. He brought me to a deck that smelled of cheap restaurants, beer, and night-blooming flowers. I heard girls laughing in conversation, men laughing back, other people arguing. This was a residential deck. The thief led me to his building, up a flight of rickety wooden steps whose steep plaster walls were gouged and smelled moldy.
I came to a landing with six doorways that smelled sour, like stale cabbage, mildewed clothing, ick. I heard babies squalling and someone arguing. I recognized his voice behind one of the doors, and waited a few minutes to see how many people were in that apartment. It was he and a young woman, presumably his wife or girl friend. Their argument came to a crescendo, and I ducked aside as I saw the doorknob turning by my elbow. I ducked aside, just in time to see an angry, pretty young blonde girl of about 18 striding out with makeup and clothing that suggested to my Free Domer sensibilities that she was either a bar girl or a prostitute working for this scoundrel. Her long legs under a short white skirt pumped away as she descended the stairs without having noticed me. I believed he was alone, and started to formulate a plan. I did not have long to wait. He came out of the door, whistling to himself, as if he were about to go out drinking. He had my money in his hand, and was happily tossing it up and down when my cane descended hard on his wrist. Before he would yell, I whacked him over the back of the head just hard enough to stun him. Then, before any neighbors could peer outside their doors, I scooped up the money. I grabbed his coat between the shoulder blades and used my knee to guide him inside, where I shut the door behind me. He was stunned, and sank to his knees. I slapped him hard, first on one temple, then the other, which made him fall down stunned or unconscious. I was hoping he had not recognized me as the monk from the park, but then again this sort of creature wouldn't really turn to the police. I spent about ten minutes ransacking the place as he lay moaning. I found another fifty or sixty RC, which I pocketed. Then I gave him one more kick in the kidneys before leaving—not hard enough to break anyting, but enough to make him very sore and stiff and prevent him from following me any time soon.
I now had enough money to make it for a few days. Time to turn my attention to the Temple Section. From my studies of the map I was surprised to learn that the Temple owned all the land on all the decks below. At least, I was surprised, and as the truth sank in, I wasn't surprised. On every deck, the map showed a gray area ('unknown') for the secret Temple areas. On the lowest deck, the dead giveaway was that all the sections around the gray square were marked Mining Industry. What else could there be under there but more mining? In fact, Sam Gorepoint had told me he worked in a special mining zone under the Temple complex.
It all came together now, what I had so far. The seventh point wasn't next to, as it seemed from Timony's map—it was underneath the sixth point which was the Holy Mother's main Temple.
All I had to do now was get into the mines down deep without getting caught, which would mean the death penalty, and then I'd have to figure out what miners like Sam couldn't see. And I didn't even know what I was looking for. All I knew was that when I found this mysterious place or thing Timony had sought and given his life for, it would change life on Mars forever.
I was tired, and needed a good sleep. So I rented a room in a cheap hotel, which cost me 8RC, and another 2RC for a small bottle of wine, some bread, and a little cheese. I woke up rested and refreshed the next morning.
On my way topside, I stopped for coffee and a ham and cheese pastry in a cozy little corner tea bar, as the call them here. It was just a little place that wrapped itself around the corner for about forty feet, with the main entrance at the corner and two picture windows facing the street. A man and a woman in white shirts and black pants kept busy behind the counter. It was busy with a dozen or more customers eating and reading their morning news or watching the newspane on the wall. In the mirrors behind the bottles and cakes standing on counters by the wall, I watched the steady river of pedestrians rushing by outside in either direction. That was when I noticed a Temple monk across the street. He had his cowl over his head, hiding his face, and his arms folded under his wide sleeves. I made a note of him and then saw him again in at least three other places before I emerged from a concrete stairwell into a busy topside street. I sauntered over to a park bench partially hidden behind a tree, and watched him emerge from the underground a minute later. He turned left and right, realized he had lost me, and headed away in the direction of the Temple Section with its spires—Holy City, as my map called the semi-autonomous region where the Popess reigned.
I had nothing better to do, and followed at a discreet distance under the high geodesic dome with its hundreds of daylight-blue light globes that turned night into day inside the vast Olympus Crater.
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