New words replacing old: …passed through a big city … half in ruins …
“And that,” said Jurgen, “is our first clue that the vision was specifically of Mars, of the Cydonia region, where, since the days of Viking, mystics have thought they could detect the ruins of a city, just west of the so-called Face on Mars.”
Gracious Christ, I thought. Surely the Vatican can’t have sent me off to investigate that? The so-called “Face” had, when photographed later, turned out to be nothing but a series of buttes with chasms running through them.
Again, the words floating behind Jurgen changed: Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels …
“Ah!” said Jurgen, as if he himself were surprised by the revealed text, although doubtless he’d studied it minutely, working up this ridiculous story.
“The famed Northern Cross,” continued Jurgen, “part of the constellation of Cygnus, is as clearly visible from Mars’ surface as it is from Earth’s. And Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, depending on their phases, might appear as two angels beneath the cross …”
Might, I thought. And monkeys might fly out of my butt.
But Jurgen’s audience was taking it all in. He was an old-fashioned preacher—flamboyant, mesmerizing, long on rhetoric and short on logic, the kind that, regrettably, had become all too common in Catholicism since Vatican III.
The floating words morphed yet again: … two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand …
“An aspersorium,” said Jurgen, his tone begging indulgence from all those who must already know, “is a vessel for holding holy water. And where, brethren, is water more holy than on desiccated Mars?” He beamed at his flock. I shook my head.
“And what,” said Jurgen, “did the angels Phobos and Deimos do with their aspersoria?” More words from the Third Secret appeared behind him in answer: They gathered up the blood of the Martyrs.
“Blood?” said Jurgen, raising his bushy white eyebrows in mock surprise. “Ah, but again, we have only blessed Sister Lucias interpretation. Surely what she saw was simply red liquid—or liquid that appeared to be red. And, on Mars, with its oxide soil and butterscotch sky, everything appears to be red, even water!”
Well, he had a point there. The people of Mars dressed in fashions those of Earth would find gaudy in the extreme, just to inject some color other than red into their lives.
“And, when I gazed upon Cydonia, my brethren, on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first appearance of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima, I saw her in all her glory: the Blessed Virgin.
“How did I know to look at Cydonia, you might ask? Because the words of Our Lady had come to me, telling me to turn my telescope onto Mars. I heard the words in my head late one night, and I knew at once they were from blessed Mary. I went to my telescope and looked where she had told me to. And nine minutes later, I saw her, pure and white, a dot of perfection moving about Cydonia. Hear me, my children! Nine minutes later! Our Lady’s thoughts had come to me instantaneously, but even her most holy radiance had to travel at the speed of light, and Mars that evening was 160 million kilometers from Earth—nine light minutes!”
I must have dozed off. Elizabeth Chen was standing over me, speaking softly. “Father Bailey? Father Bailey? Time to get up …”
I opened my eyes. Liz Chen was plenty fine to look at—hey, I’m celibate; not dead!—but I was unnerved to see her standing here, in the passenger cabin, instead of sitting up front at the controls. It was obvious from the panorama flashing by outside my window that we were still speeding along a few meters above the Martian surface. I’ll gladly put my faith in God, but autopilots give me the willies.
“Hmm?” I said.
“We’re approaching Cydonia. Rise and shine.”
And give God the glory, glory … “All right,” I said. I always slept well on Mars—better than I ever did on Earth. Something to do with the 37% gravity, I suppose.
She went back into the cabin. I looked out the window. There, off in the distance, was a side view of the famous Face. From this angle, I never would have given it a second glance if I hadn’t known its history among crackpots.
Well, if we were passing the Face, that meant the so-called cityscape was just 20 kilometers southwest of here. We’d already discussed our travel plans: she’d take us in between the “pyramid” and the “fortress,” setting down just outside the “city square.”
I started suiting up.
The original names had stuck: The pyramid, the fortress, the city square. Of course, up close, they seemed not in the least artificial. I was bent over now, looking out a window.
“Kind of sad, isn’t it?” said Liz, standing behind me, still in her coveralls. “People are willing to believe the most outlandish things on the scantest of evidence.”
There was just a hint of condescension in her tone. Like almost everyone else on Mars, she thought me a fool—and not just for coming out here to Cydonia, but for the things I’d built my whole life around.
I straightened up, faced her. “You’re not coming out?”
She shook her head. “You had your nap on the way here. Now it’s my turn. Holler if you need anything.” She touched a control, and the inner door of the cylindrical airlock chamber rolled aside, like the stone covering Jesus’ sepulcher.
What, I wondered, would the Mother of our Lord be doing here, on this ancient, desolate world? Of course, apparitions of her were famous for occurring in out-of-the-way places: Lourdes, France; La’Vang, Vietnam; Fatima, Portugal; Guadalupe, Mexico. All of them were off the beaten track.
And yet, people did come to these obscure places in their millions after the fact. It had been a century and a half since the apparitions at Fatima, and that village still attracted five million pilgrims annually.
Annually. I mean Earth annually, of course. Only the anal retentive worry about the piddling difference between a terrestrial day and a Martian sol, but the Martian year was twice as long as Earths. So, Fatima, I guess, gets ten million visitors per Martian year …
I felt cold as I looked at the landscape of rusty sand and towering rock faces. It was psychosomatic, I knew: my surface suit—indeed white, as Jurgen Emat had noted—provided perfect temperature control.
The city square was really just an open area, defined by wind-sculpted sandstone mounds. Although in the earliest photos, it had perhaps resembled a piazza, it didn’t look special from within it. I walked a few dozen meters then turned around, the lamp from my helmet piercing the darkness.
My footprints stretched out behind me. There were no others. I was hardly the first to visit Cydonia, but, unlike on the Moon, dust storms on Mars made such marks transitory.
I then looked up at the night sky. Earth was easy enough to spot—it was always on the ecliptic, of course, and right now was in … my goodness, isn’t that a coincidence!
It was in Virgo, the constellation of the Virgin, a dazzling blue point, a sapphire outshining even mighty Spica.
Of course, Virgo doesn’t depict the Mother of Our Lord; the constellation dates back to ancient times. Most likely, it represents the Assyrian fertility goddess, Ishtar, or the Greek harvest maiden, Persephone.
I found myself smiling. Actually, it doesn’t depict anything at all. It’s just a random smattering of stars. To see a virgin in it was as much a folly as seeing the ruins of an ancient Martian city in the rocks rising up around me. But I knew the … well, not the heavens, but the night sky … like the back of my hand. Once you’d learned to see the patterns, it was almost impossible not to see them.