After one cautious step, Johann raced up the helical ramp. “I’m coming,” he said excitedly, his face reflecting the light from above.
DOUBLE
FULL MOON NIGHT
* * *
GENTRY LEE
TO MY SEVEN SONS,
Hunter, Travis, Michael, Patrick, Robert, Austin, and Cooper,
WHO HAVE ENRICHED MY LIFE BEYOND MEASURE
PROLOGUE
IN THE THIRD decade of the twenty-second century a global stock market crash precipitated a devastating worldwide depression known as the Great Chaos. Throughout the world, the destitute flocked in thousands to metropolitan areas, desperately searching for work and creating a homeless problem that overwhelmed the infrastructures of the great cities.
In London, fear of uncontrolled anarchy prompted the city fathers to accept an extraordinary proposal to care for the homeless. The Michaelites, a new religious order dedicated to serving humanity following the precepts of the charismatic Franciscan novitiate Michael Balatresi, martyred in June 2138, converted Hyde Park into a tent city. There, under the leadership of a twenty-four-year-old woman ordained as Sister Beatrice, the unpaid, energetic sect members provided hope, training, and sustenance to as many as ten thousand of the temporarily downtrodden.
During the bitterly cold winter of 2141, both Sister Beatrice and her Michaelite apprentice Sister Vivien, a former high-class call girl who had experienced a life-changing epiphany during a chance late-night meeting with Beatrice on the streets of London, had eerie encounters with glowing clouds of sparkling,’ dancing particles of unknown origin. Later, after Sister Beatrice was appointed Bishop of Mars and the two women had moved to the red planet, they would convince themselves that the astonishing particle apparitions they had seen were angels sent by God to strengthen their faith and dedication.
During that same winter of 2141, Johann Eberhardt, a thirty-year-old system engineer responsible for water distribution and allocation throughout greater Berlin, also had a startling encounter with a similar apparition of the sparkling, dancing particles that always drifted about, seemingly at random, inside a glowing cloud of constantly changing shape. Even though his busy life was burdened both by the dire financial straits of his parents and an ugly resurgence of racist nationalism in Germany, Johann was nevertheless fascinated by the apparition and expended considerable effort to understand it. He was certain that there was an explanation for the phenomenon he had witnessed that was consistent with the laws of science.
When Johann moved to Mars, he became the director of the Valhalla Outpost, a facility located near the northern Martian polar caps whose function was to provide water to the other human habitations on the planet. On Mars Johann and Sister Beatrice both had additional encounters with the clouds of enigmatic, sparkling, dancing particles. For each of them, the new apparitions only reinforced their earlier conclusions about the true nature of these experiences.
The Great Chaos resulted in substantial reductions in funding for the Martian colonies. Although the lack of money undermined the essential infrastructure on the planet and triggered a mass emigration back to Earth, Johann and Sisters Beatrice and Vivien steadfastly remained in their jobs on Mars, eventually becoming acquainted with one another and sharing stories of their unusual apparitions. When a giant global dust storm swept across Mars, threatening to deliver a deathblow to all human habitation, Beatrice and Vivien were at Valhalla with Johann. The three of them, along with eight other human beings, had the courage and faith to enter a strange, hatbox-shaped structure that had been built by bizarre alien robots just before the dust storm reached the outpost. To their astonishment, the structure turned out to be a vehicle. This vehicle blasted off and orbited Mars for several hours before being swallowed by a gigantic spherical white spacecraft with a red polar hood and red linear markings around its equator.
Once inside this amazing extraterrestrial spaceship, Johann and Sister Beatrice were separated from the other nine humans. They were guided toward a small boat, which took them on an incredible voyage, a magical mystery tour that suggested whoever or whatever had created the giant sphere not only had thorough knowledge of recent human history, but also had somehow accumulated intimate personal information about Johann and Beatrice.
At the end of the voyage Johann and Sister Beatrice were deposited near an uninhabited island paradise somewhere inside the sphere. They lived together on the island in harmony, arguing only about whether their hosts were God’s angels or an extraterrestrial species with unbelievable technological capability. During this period they also fell in love. However, the strength of Beatrice’s vow of chastity, taken when she was ordained as a Michaelite priestess, prevented the physical consummation of their affair.
Johann and Beatrice were visited by a glowing ribbon of the sparkling, dancing particles, which performed a complex display that each of them interpreted differently Immediately thereafter, their almost perfect island existence was irrevocably altered by the arrival of a third person who had left Mars with them, Yasin al Kharif Johann and Beatrice found Yasin unconscious and near death, clinging to a floating piece of debris in the lake that surrounded their island. The good and gentle Beatrice exerted her considerable energies to nurse Yasin back to health.
Yasin had worked for Johann at Valhalla. Johann knew that his former employee, although extraordinarily intelligent, had a history of sexual assault and other sociopathic behavior. Johann brooded about what life would be like when Yasin was again healthy. He also shared his knowledge of Yasin’s past with Sister Beatrice, but she essentially ignored his warnings.
In the days that followed, Johann’s worst fears were realized. Yasin, after first being rebuked by the outraged Johann for suggesting that the two of them should subdue Beatrice and together enjoy her sexually, seized the first available opportunity to attack Sister Beatrice. Johann stopped the rape before it was successful, and was going to kill Yasin, but Beatrice interceded. Later, after a period of uneasy peace, Yasin trapped and imprisoned Johann. Leaving Johann to die in his cave prison, Yasin repeatedly raped and humiliated Beatrice in many additional ways.
The particle beings, however, kept Johann alive in his prison by providing food and water. When Yasin entered the cave to confirm that Johann was indeed dead, Johann’s righteous anger erupted and he murdered his adversary. Unfortunately, Yasin had already impregnated Beatrice, and she refused to even consider aborting the child. Johann and Beatrice lived together as husband and wife while Yasin’s child grew inside her womb. She died shortly after giving birth to a daughter, but not before she extracted a promise from Johann that he would care for Maria as if she were his own.
Johann dug a grave for Beatrice and buried her. Soon thereafter, a glowing white hovercraft, accompanied by many dazzling ribbons of the sparkling, dancing particles, appeared at the island site where he was struggling to care for the infant Maria. To Johann’s astonishment, a ramp descended from the hovercraft to the surface and a white being, looking and sounding exactly like the woman he had just buried, beckoned for Johann to ascend. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up Maria and climbed up the ramp.
JOHANN
AND
MARIA
ONE
JOHANN CAREFULLY PLACED eight thin twigs in the cake. He inspected his creation a final time, gently chastising himself for the messiness of the inscription, and then lit the makeshift candles with a small hand torch.
“You may open your eyes now,” Johann said to Maria as he carried the cake into their cave.
The girl’s face broke into a dazzling smile. She rose from the chair where she had been sitting and bounded toward Johann. He bent down and held the cake, which he had made from the fruits and berries on the island, directly in front of her eyes.
“Happy Birthday to you… Happy Birthday to you, Johann sang. In the flickering light from the candles he could see Maria beaming with joy.
When the song was over, the little girl blew vigorously acro
ss the top of the cake. All but two of the twigs stopped burning immediately The sudden burst of smoke, however, made Johann cough. Laughing, and moving away from the smoke, he put the cake down on the small table next to their mats. Maria ran over and threw her arms around his waist.
“Thank you, Johann,” she said.
He picked her up and hugged her. “You’re eight years old now,” he said. “You’re a big girl.”
“You don’t really know how old I am,” she said in a teasing voice, kissing him lightly on the forehead. “You’re just guessing.”
Johann dropped her to the floor of the cave and stared at his little companion. The light from the torches standing just outside the cave entrance caught the deep blue of her eyes, suddenly reminding Johann of Maria’s mother. There was a powerful rush of memory and emotion that left him momentarily speechless.
“What is it, Johann?” Maria said, noticing his change of expression.
“Nothing,” he replied. “You’re right, of course, about your age… It’s impossible to determine without any true frame of reference.” Johann suddenly brightened. “But it doesn’t matter if today is really your birthday, or not,” he said. “Because we are going to celebrate anyway… Wait here for a moment, I’ll be right back.”
Johann dashed out of the main cave and turned left, into the plaza where the perpetual fire burned. Around behind the fire, in a barricaded alcove beside one of the smaller caves, he had hidden all of Maria’s birthday presents in a decorated wheelbarrow He removed the barricade, grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow, and drove it back to the entrance to the cave.
“All right, young lady;” he said. “It’s time for your presents.”
Maria stepped out into the artificial daylight. She removed the decorative fabric from the top of the wheelbarrow and began rummaging through her new toys. Each of them had been painstakingly created by Johann during the weeks before her birthday from materials that he had collected from the island and the lake. There was a new; larger abacus, several pieces of furniture for the tiny houses in their make-believe city on the sand beside the lake, a pair of small carved dogs, new costumes for both the Siegfried and Brunhild marionettes that Johann used to illustrate his Wagnerian stories, and three human figurines, about twenty centimeters high, two men and a woman, wearing robes that covered their bodies from just below the neck down to their ankles.
The delighted little girl held the three figurines close to her face, so that she could see them more clearly “This must be Brother Ravi,” she said after a moment’s examination. Johann nodded. “And these two are Sister Nuba and Brother Jose.”
Maria carried the figurines into the cave and placed them on a shelf that had been built against the wall behind her bed. On that same shelf were eight other human figurines, the tallest of which bore a striking resemblance to Johann. Maria surveyed her collection with satisfaction.
“I have them all now;” she said. “You, Mother, Father, Sister Vivien, Kwame, Anna, Fernando, and Satoko, and now these three.”
In a few seconds she wriggled out of his arms and returned to the wheel-barrow to pull out the carved dogs and the doll furniture. “Come on,” she said, running off toward the lake. “Let’s go play—we can eat the cake later, after lunch.”
Johann followed her down the path toward the water.
ON THE SAND beside the lake what had originally been built as a small town, named Potsdam after Johann’s boyhood home, had now grown into an extended city. Construction on their city in the sand had been ongoing for over a year by the time Johann and Maria celebrated her eighth birthday Their play together in Potsdam offered Jo-hams a perfect means of introducing the girl to a wide range of human endeavors and activities that would have been utterly foreign to her otherwise. The concepts of family, marriage, divorce, school, work, money, and other items that would have been familiar to any normal eight-year-old on Earth meant nothing to Maria, who had never seen any human beings other than Johann. She was fascinated by his descriptions of the daily lives of the people in their tiny houses, descriptions which Johann, who lacked a fertile imagination, drew completely from his own childhood memories of the people who lived on his block in Kiezstrasse in Potsdam.
Potsdam was Maria’s favorite play activity, and time with Johann on the sand in and around their city was often her reward for outstanding performance during the morning school lessons that the girl tolerated only because they were so important to Johann. Maria had little or no interest in spelling, or multiplication tables, or Earth geography, but she did her lessons brilliantly so that she could spend more time sitting beside Johann on the beach and creating a new school complex, or a shopping center, or a residential housing development.
What thrilled Maria the most during their play were the details of daily life in Potsdam for the people who inhabited their buildings and worked in their offices. Constantly prodded by his young companion for more minutiae about the lives of the citizens in their city, Johann began to recall events from his childhood that he had long since forgotten. Maria took these vignettes from his memory and expanded and embellished them. Thus the day that Johann’s friend Otto temporarily disappeared (in reality there had been a new film that Otto had risked the wrath of his parents to see) became, in Maria’s mind, a family soap opera that ended with Otto’s unconscious body being dragged from the Havel River and miraculously resuscitated.
Maria’s precocious imagination, which Johann only fettered when her lack of life experience caused her to concoct a scene or situation that could not possibly have happened, eventually became the driving factor behind their play. It was as much a source of delight for him as it was for her.
“Mr. Kleinschmidt has made another ten million marks,” she would say “and wants to build a new Wagnerian theatre out by the lake… But he insists that the audiences must have good restaurants available in the immediate vicinity.” She would sketch the general design of the buildings on the sand and then, with Johann’s counsel and engineering advice, choose the building materials and the sites for the new complex. Maria did not do any of the actual construction. That was Johann’s task. But she would regale him with tales about Mr. Kleinschmidt, or his daughter Katya who wanted to be an actress but had a speech impediment, while Johann was adding the new buildings, roads, and trolley tracks to their make-believe city.
Several months before her eighth birthday, Johann and Maria’s imaginary abode had changed, at her insistence, to a brand-new house in their Potsdam on the sand. They had moved from Kiezstrasse to a housing development close to the Schloss Cecilienhof and its magnificent lakeside park. In this new neighborhood Johann no longer had his childhood memories to help him recall who lived in what houses. Maria, of course, knew not only the names of the imaginary people who inhabited every one of the little houses spread out on the beach, but also all the details of their lives. She chided Johann when he forgot that Ulrike was the daughter of the Muellers, not the Heinrichs. The play in their city had by this time become completely hers. Johann was only a willing acolyte.
According to Maria, one of the most recent families to move into their housing development was from Egypt, like Maria’s father. Both of the parents in the family worked all day Their only daughter, Tetrethe, was lonely She had not yet become friends with the other children in the neighborhood. Tetrethe wanted a pet. On the day of her birthday, by the tune that Johann reached their re-created city on the sand, Maria had already placed the two carved dogs outside a specific new house at the edge of the city.
“Tetrethe is happy now,” she shouted as Johann approached. “When she comes home from school she’ll have someone to play with.”
She looked up at him innocently and a quizzical look spread across her face. “But she wants to know what kind of dogs these are, and I can’t tell her:”
“The lighter, long skinny one is a dachshund.” Johann answered. “The other is a schnauzer.”
Maria explained what she had just learned to the make-belie
ve Tetrethe and then began placing the other pieces of birthday furniture in houses in the same neighborhood. One of the homes had to have its walls torn down to accommodate a fancy entertainment/communications system. Maria explained to the Offenbachs that now they would be able to have “full-screen, interactive entertainment on demand” as a result of their purchase. Johann smiled to himself while he was reconstructing the Offenbachs’ house and listening to Maria’s banter. She has learned my words well, he thought, even though she has absolutely no idea what they really mean.
When Johann was finished, Maria looked troubled. “While I was talking to Mrs. Offenbach,” she said, “she told me that her husband, Fritz, has not been feeling well. He is over at the doctor’s office now. Let’s go see what’s the matter with him.”
Johann and Maria took several steps to the right and Maria dropped down on her knees next to the building marked with a red cross on the top. “Oh no, Johann,” she said after several seconds. “Mr. Offenbach has a brain tumor that must be treated immediately or he will die. What a terrible tragedy that would be for Mrs. Offenbach and their two daughters…”
JOHANN WAS STANDING in the placid lake, the water just below his knees, holding the large net beside him. From time to time he would bend down and retrieve one of the fishlike creatures trapped in the net and drop it in the bucket dangling from his left shoulder. Behind him, fifty meters away, Maria had moved across Potsdam to the small pond that represented the Havel in their imaginary city. She was kneeling next to the only mosque in the miniature town, talking to Tetrethe and her family. Tetrethe’s mother was explaining to her daughter (Maria was, as usual, speaking for everybody) that most of the people in Germany were Christians, not Muslims as they were. From the distance Johann could hear many of the same words he had often used in explaining to Maria the differences between her mother’s and her father’s religion. I have kept my promise, Beatrice, he thought idly as he dropped a long, slithering, eel-like being into the bucket. She has learned about God and Christ and Saint Michael. She knows what an essential role religion played in your… I have even taught her the basic tenets of Yasin’s religion.
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