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 him aside 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?"
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