Whatever he was, he wasn't what Orme had expected him to be. Orme believed, or thought he'd believed, that Jesus was the only begotten son of God, and that his purpose had been determined always, from before the beginning of time. He had sacrificed himself so that all the world might be saved, might live forever in blessedness, in the ecstasy of seeing God face to face. One day, a day that had been promised for more than two thousand years, the Last Judgement would come with uttermost terror and absolute joy. And those who had rejected God would go to hell. Hell would be the realisation that God was forever denied to the damned.
But here was Jesus, not on Earth but on Mars. And he was only a man who had thought of himself, when on Earth, as the Messiah, a Jew come to restore the holy kingdom of the Jews. Very little that had been written about him in the New Testament was true.
Orme should have been shattered by this revelation. The shock had been great but not as great as it should have been. Why? Because his belief had not really been as deep and firmly fixed as he had thought. He'd paid more than lip service to his religion, but it hadn't been rooted in his heart. He hadn't really been convinced. Not down there where the genuine, the living, convictions lived and looked up through the deep at the pseudo-convictions, the half-dead, swimming in what they thought was the light. The real light was in the darkness.
He went outside. It was quiet now. Everybody had gone home; the houses were dark. Possibly there were policemen patrolling the streets, but he saw no one. Anyway, though he knew they existed, he had never seen a policeman. According to what he'd been told, they didn't wear uniforms, and there were very few of them. That told him a lot about this society, the only one of its kind in the solar system. Where was there a better place to live? Nowhere.
He walked out into the silent street and looked up at the globe hanging below the apex of the cavern. It shone now with a candlepower equal to that of Earth's full moon. It even had the same markings, the man in the moon if you were a Westerner, the hare if you were a Japanese.
Up there, inside the glowing sphere, a man did live - if you could believe the Martians. There was no reason not to but he just could not accept the reality.
He stood for a moment, his neck bent back. And then he lifted up both hands and shouted, 'You up there! Do you have the answers to my questions?'
There was, of course no reply.
13
The sky was a great light show.
Orme, looking out of the window, saw that the blue had become spectra. Horizontal bands of bright and flashing purples, blues, oranges, red, greens, yellows, whites, and blacks were spread around the dome. Here and there, gold, indigo, scarlet, and silver stars were born, expanded, and exploded. Variously- shaped clouds of different colours and hues sprang from scattered points, swelled, raced writhing across the sky, and the starbursts momentarily met, coalesced, glowed, pulsed then faded away.
'Hey, Avram, come look at this!'
Bronski joined him, and his eyes grew large.
'It makes me shiver.'
'I wonder how they do that?' Orme said. 'The whole dome must be set with electronic devices.'
'No, I don't think so. You forget how far ahead of us they are. I'll wager that they use some principle unknown to us. Anyway, that's a small item to consider today. Forget you are an engineer, Richard. At least for today.'
The people were coming out of their houses. They were dressed in their best, both sexes clad in long silky robes of many colours, wearing flowers in their hair. They were laughing and skipping, many hand in hand. Orme opened the door and stepped outside. Now he could hear music from a distance, many bands playing: drums beating, trumpets blaring, flutes and fifes shrilling, harps twanging, cymbals crashing.
Abruptly a voice spoke from behind them. Orme turned to see Bronski gesturing for him to come back in. He did so and found the holograph image of a smiling Hfathon before the set.
'We expect you at the square in an hour,' he said. 'You'd better start out at once. It won't be easy to get through the crowds.'
Orme looked at his wristwatch.
'Yes, we know. Couldn't you send someone to drive us there?'
'The only one who rides today is the Messiah,' the Krsh said. 'Last night everybody drove or walked in and set up camp or stayed with relatives or friends. Perhaps I should have told you you'd be expected to walk. Please hurry. May he smile upon you. Shalom.'
His image blinked out.
Orme looked at Bronski, shrugged his shoulders, and said, 'You'd think they'd give us special treatment. After all, we are their guests. And part of this is for our benefit.'
The Frenchman looked at the gloriously pulsating sky.
'You still suspect that this is a hoax?'
'Now, I didn't say that!' Orme said. 'It's just that I have to keep a tight rein on my emotions.'
'You're not the only one,' Bronski said. 'Well, we'd better get going.'
They went out of the house again. Orme thought of how nice it was that he didn't have to lock the door. Then he thought, that was an irrelevant thought. Or was it? I've been trying all this morning to think of irrelevant things. To get my mind away from... Him. But it's like trying not to think about a hippopotamus.
They went out into the street, which was by then empty of Martians. Shirazi, looking pale and grim, stepped out of the house directly opposite theirs. Orme met him in the middle of the street.
'Where's Madeleine?'
'She says she's not going. She doesn't feel well.'
'Did she tell Hfathon that?'
Nadir shook his head. 'No. She didn't say a word to him.'
Orme grimaced. 'That's a hell of a note. Is she really sick?'
Shirazi nodded. 'Yes, but I don't believe it's from any physical cause. She's emotionally upset. She keeps saying that this is all a trick, a big con. So why should she go? I told her she had to because it would insult the Martians if she didn't.'
Orme got angry, but he told himself that perhaps he felt so furious because he was experiencing the same emotions as she. It was fear that was making her sick, the fear that this might be true.
But why should he, a Christian, be so terrified? Shouldn't he be as joyous as the Martians?
'This is nonsense,' he said loudly. 'Let's get her... if we have to drag her there!'
He led the others into the house. He had expected that at least she'd have the TV set on so she could see the events. But it was off, and she was lying in her bed. When she saw him storm in, she sat up.
'You might at least have the decency to knock!'
'You knew we were coming. Come on, Madeleine, get up and get going. Quit acting like a child!'
That brought her to her feet. Eyes wide, face distorted, she spewed French at him. Then she stopped, passed her hand over her face, shook, and said, in English, 'You got me mad to make me get out of bed, didn't you?'
He nodded. 'You have to go, Madeleine, unless you're really sick. In which case, I'll get a doctor.'
He didn't add that the doctor would be able to determine if she really were ill; she couldn't fake it.
'I don't know what's the matter with me,' she said. 'But I can make it. It's just that...'
'That you're like me,' he said. 'You're afraid it might be true.'
'What? But you...?'
'Let's talk about it some other time.'
They went out into the street and walked down along it until they came to the edge of the crowd. Neither said a word and the two men spoke in low voices to each other infrequently. When they reached the square, they drowned in a seastorm of noise. Everybody was talking, and what seemed like a hundred bands were blasting away. As for the numbers here, Orme thought there had to be a million people at least. They were squeezed shoulder to shoulder, breast to back, forming a colossal ring around a broad high stone platform in the centre of the square. Orme had never seen it before. The reason for that was that its top had been flush with the pavement. It was rising slowly now out of the ground. On its top stood about fifty men and women.