by Arthur C.
11
Johann did not fall asleep immediately. For a while he listened to the murmur of the two women in the next room. He could not understand their words, but he loved the sound of their voices. It was an unusual experience for him to be sharing his apartment with others, especially women.
As he lay in bed with his eyes closed, his mind jumped from event to event in the hectic last two days of his life. Johann smiled as he recalled Sister Beatrice’s response to his admitted astonishment that the ribbon had changed into all the different manifestations of the particles that he had personally seen before.
“It’s not surprising, Brother Johann,” she had said, “that the angels know about all your previous encounters with their kind, even if they occurred on another planet. God’s angels all communicate with each other, wherever they are, and an interaction with a human is a major event in their realm… What astonishes me is that you have been blessed by all these extraordinary events, and you still can’t or won’t acknowledge the guiding hand of God in your life.”
Johann finally fell asleep thinking about Beatrice. She dominated his dreams, most of which were short, disconnected vignettes dealing with the mundane details of daily life. In one of them Beatrice accompanied Johann through a routine inspection of the outpost. He remembered thinking in his dream how natural it seemed for the two of them to be together.
Someone was shaking him lightly. “Brother Johann,” the woman’s voice said, “wake up please… Something has happened.”
He was slow to realize where he was. Johann sat up in his bed and automatically looked at the clock on the end table. It was not yet four o’clock.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Brother Johann,” Beatrice said, “but something unusual is happening very near to Valhalla… I had just begun my meditation up on the observation deck when I saw a pair of bright lights flashing across the dark sky. I was thinking they landed fairly close to the outpost when I saw three more, following approximately the same path.”
The sleepy Johann stared at the beautiful, eager eyes no more than a meter away from his. His first impulse was to tell Sister Beatrice to return to her meditation, or whatever in the hell she had been doing, and come back in three hours to tell him again about the bright lights in the sky. But no, Johann thought to himself, I’ll go with her up to the observation deck and give her my standard lecture on meteor showers… That might actually be fun.
He slipped out of bed in the dark and found a shirt and a pair of slacks. They tiptoed through the living room, being careful not to wake the sleeping Vivien, and began climbing the winding stairs that led to Valhalla’s only observation deck.
“I couldn’t sleep at all,” Beatrice whispered from above Johann on the narrow staircase. “I kept thinking about your story last night.”
Johann had to slow himself down as they climbed to keep from becoming tangled in the bottom of Beatrice’s robe. Once, he was seized by a boyish impulse to lift her robe and see what was underneath, but he managed to restrain himself.
“All of the lights originated there, in that sector of the sky,” Beatrice said once they reached the deck. She pointed to a group of stars not far from the tiny moon Deimos. The view was sensational. Valhalla was one of the sites on Mars which, for astronomical purposes, had special viewing windows built into the bubbles. A pair of those windows was directly over the observation deck.
“They seemed at first to be flying directly toward us,” Beatrice said. “But at the last moment they veered away and landed nearby, out on that plateau in the west, I believe.”
Johann had turned to face Beatrice and was about to start his meteor-shower lecture when her face began to glow from reflected light. “Look, Brother Johann,” she said. “There’s another one!”
Holy shit, thought Johann as he turned to face the viewing windows. His first impulse was to duck. It looked as if the spectacular light heading in their direction was indeed going to hit Valhalla. It was all over in a few seconds. Whatever had been the source of the bright light had apparently impacted Mars a few kilometers to the west, near where Beatrice had indicated that the earlier objects might have landed.
“We must be passing through a swarm of meteors,” Johann said after he recovered from the shock. “That was quite a sight.”
“Can we go out there and see where they landed?” Sister Beatrice asked.
Johann looked at her with incredulity. “Now?” he said. “At four o’clock in the morning?”
Beatrice smiled. “I’m ready if you are,” she said.
While they were in the air lock and Johann was checking out the rover and its ancillary systems, he was seized by a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Beatrice heard him laughing on the earphones inside her spacesuit. She walked over directly in front of him. “What is it?” she said.
Johann gazed at her through both their faceplates. “This is so certifiably insane,” he said, struggling not to laugh again, “that it’s comical. I wish I could be there to see Narong’s face when his alarm wakes him and he listens to my recorded message. ‘Dear Narong, Sister Beatrice and I saw some unusual bright lights about four o’clock this morning. We have taken Rover 14A out on the western plateau to investigate.’
A minute later Johann was still chuckling intermittently. They were now sitting side by side in the rover, waiting for the ambient environment in the air lock to become that of Mars.
“Are you making fun of me, Brother Johann?” Beatrice asked. “It’s all right if you are,” she added. “I’m not offended. I appreciate your doing this to satisfy my curiosity.”
Johann turned to face his companion. “No… Well, yes, maybe a little,” he said. “I’ve just never met anyone quite like you.”
“I could say the same thing. Brother Johann,” she replied.
They drove in silence toward the west, away from the late-summer sun that was rising in a low arc behind them. It was a spectacular early morning. The millions of stars above them receded as the polar sun inched higher in the Martian sky.
“I will miss this planet,” Beatrice said as Johann steered the rover up a long slope that led to the plateau. “It is a harsh place, not really meant for human habitation, but it has a raw and unique beauty.”
“Someday,” Johann said, bouncing in his seat from the rough terrain, “if we ever straighten out our problems on Earth, we will transform Mars into a paradise.”
“Only if God is willing, Brother Johann,” Beatrice replied.
The plateau was several hundred meters higher in altitude than the position where Valhalla was located. Behind them, in the direction of the rising sun, the geodesic bubbles looked out of place on the barren plains. There were many more boulders here on the plateau than there had been in the immediate vicinity of the outpost. Some of the boulders were quite large and blocked their view. Often it was not easy for Johann to find a path through the profusion of rocks.
“These rocks are all ejecta,” Johann said, “deposited here by a major impact millions of years ago. There’s a huge crater nearby.”
Johann made a sharp left turn to avoid a chaotic boulder field. They had continued south only a few hundred meters when the sky above them, now a light rusty color, flashed with another bright light. They stared together as the light hurtled toward them. Sister Beatrice reached out and grabbed Johann’s arm just before the bright flash narrowly missed them, landing only half a kilometer or so away.
Johann drove the rover as fast as he dared. They came over a small hill on the plateau and saw a sight, down the slope in front of them, that they would both remember for the rest of their lives. The object that had just landed, a large white sphere, had extended a pair of strange, scissorlike contraptions from its midsection, and was cutting itself out of a multilayered bag that had obviously cushioned its impact on the surface.
The large white sphere was on the right side of a small, flat plain. Around the rest of the plain were other empty bags with gaping holes, as well as a wide variety of wh
ite objects with smooth surfaces, rounded corners, and occasional red bands or other red markings. Most of these strange objects were standing still, but a few were in motion, using their retractable appendages to sweep rocks and other debris away from the two big construction projects in the middle of the plain.
The newly arrived sphere, once free of its bag, retracted its scissors and began rolling toward the larger of the two construction projects. Hovering over each of the projects were long ribbons of sparkling particles. Although these ribbons were much larger than any of the formations Johann had seen before, from a distance they appeared to be identical in kind to the one that had followed Johann and Kwame for so long on the polar ice.
Johann parked the rover and aimed both of the rover cameras at the incredible scene below them. Beatrice began to pray. Johann was silent until she finished.
The new sphere had by this time convulsed several times, each time radically changing its shape. It currently resembled a freight car, with tracks instead of wheels, and was hauling six or eight of the other white objects from where they had been standing to the vicinity of the larger construction project.
“If I had not seen this with my own eyes,” he said, “I could not possibly have believed it… I must thank you for suggesting we come out here this morning.”
“God called us both, Brother Johann,” Beatrice said simply.
They climbed out of the rover and stood side by side, watching the activity below them. White, hulking things with hands like scoops were digging in the Martian soil and carrying their collected material over to what looked like bloated furnaces. From time to time a tall, skinny, white object would stick its long hand into the furnace and retrieve something that would subsequently be stacked in one of the many piles forming around the two construction projects.
Only the smaller of the two projects had begun to take any shape. It already looked like a hatbox erected on short stilts. Johann checked his watch and then opened up the back of the rover. He found enough tools and parts that he could construct two makeshift tripods, upon which he mounted the two rover cameras after carefully removing them from the vehicle. Johann also deployed a portable transmitter and hooked it to the cameras so that they would be able, once back in Valhalla, to view in real time what was occurring on the plateau. He verified with the newly awakened Narong that the pictures were being received in the outpost communications center.
Beatrice could not take her eyes off the scene on the plateau. When Johann told her that it was time for them to return to Valhalla, she was disappointed. “Don’t you think we should go down there, Brother Johann,” she asked, “and actually be among the angels?”
“No, I don’t,” Johann replied. “I believe if we were meant to intercede in any way, we would have been given a sign.”
Beatrice responded with an appreciative smile. “Well spoken, Brother Johann,” she said.
Nobody did any work in Valhalla that day. Everyone stayed glued to one of the television monitors scattered throughout the outpost, all of which displayed the amazing scene unfolding on the plateau a few kilometers to the west. In the middle of the morning drone rovers were sent to the site to set up more cameras, guaranteeing that both wide-angle frames of the entire scene and narrow-angle close-ups of the two construction projects would be available even if camera-system failures occurred.
At first Johann himself supervised the small operations center, reviewing the incoming signals and choosing, as a function of what was occurring out on the plateau, which of the signals would be routed to the outpost monitors. Sister Beatrice was not content simply to watch the monitors along with everyone else at Valhalla. Whenever Johann glanced up, or talked to the technician seated beside him, he saw Beatrice standing on the other side of the glass window.
The moment Johann left the operations center, Sister Beatrice accosted him and launched into a long explanation of how important it was that she personally witness everything the angels were doing. She would not be denied. At length Johann acquiesced and let her occupy one of the chairs behind the control panels, but only after she promised not to touch any of the switches or interfere in any way with the monitoring process.
By the late afternoon the smaller construction project on the plateau had been completed. All the mobile white objects were now concentrating their attention on the larger project. The small white hatbox stood alone, glistening in the afternoon sun, raised a meter above the Martian surface by its peculiar stilts. Next to it, a skinny white rectangular plate, accented by a striking red line around its perimeter, had been erected facing Valhalla. The plate had been built quickly, after the hatbox was essentially finished, by two mobile white giraffes.
The purpose of the plate was not clear until after the sun had set. Then the lights scattered around the plate began to flash. Narong was the first to figure out the pattern in the lights and to predict accurately the future behavior of the flashes. He explained to Johann in the operations center that the pattern would reach its “logical conclusion” in a little more than an hour.
“But what does it mean?” a puzzled Johann asked.
“Beats the shit out of me,” said Narong. “Maybe it’s some kind of communications or scheduling device for all the objects.”
“It’s a clock all right,” Sister Beatrice said quietly. “But it’s meant for us, not them… The angels all communicate with each other using other means.” She smiled. “Something important is going to happen when the pattern is completed.”
Both men looked at her in astonishment. “What is going to happen?” Narong said.
“I don’t know,” Beatrice said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Activity on the other construction project on the plateau ceased altogether as the flashing lights continued through their predicted sequence. Johann and Narong decided to take advantage of the temporary lull by visiting the cafeteria for a quick meal. Sister Beatrice declined to join them, choosing instead to remain at her post in the operations center. She told Johann and Narong that she would phone them if there were any new developments.
“That is one amazing woman,” Narong said as the two men began walking toward the cafeteria. “Her intensity must be seen to be believed.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Johann said. “And wait until you hear her sing. Her voice is even more unbelievable… if that’s possible.”
Before they even reached the cafeteria, Johann’s phone began to ring. He smiled knowingly at Narong and took the small receiver from his waist pouch. “Yes, Sister Beatrice,” he said. “What is it?”
“It’s Anna, Johann,” an excited voice on the other end said. “I’m over in the arrival hall. The train has returned.”
“The train that left last night?” Johann said.
“Yes,” Anna answered. “Yasin, Jaime, and Torok are all here, with me, along with the engineering personnel from the train… They reached the outskirts of BioTech City and then turned around. Yasin says he needs to speak to you immediately.”
“All right,” Johann said. “Bring him over to the cafeteria.”
Johann and Narong were halfway through their sandwiches when they were joined by Yasin and Anna. “It’s the worst dust storm of the century, Ace,” Yasin said before even sitting down. “It’s probably hitting BioTech as we speak. Everything to the south is shut down and in total chaos… They would not even let us enter BioTech because they’re worried about running out of food.”
“Any idea how fast the storm is moving?” Narong said.
“The stationmaster at BioTech told us that it will definitely go global by early next week,” Yasin replied. “Top winds were measured at eight hundred kilometers per hour before the gauges at Mutchville broke. The dust is already higher than the Tharsis peaks in the midlatitudes.”
“How long can we survive without sunlight?” Johann said to Narong.
“Six weeks to two months,” Narong said. “Maybe ten weeks if we’re lucky and have no major failures.”
“During the storm of 2109, just after Valhalla became operational,” Narong said with a worried look, “there was no incident sunlight here for ninety-two days. That kind of storm would wipe us out.”
A tiny alarm went off on Narong’s watch. “I had almost forgotten,” he said, turning around and pointing at the monitor above them. “Our sequence of flashes will reach its end point in one more minute.”
In a quick thirty seconds Johann and Narong tried to explain to Yasin what had happened at Valhalla in the twenty-five hours since the train had departed. At length they gave up, fell silent, and stared at the monitor.
The images on the television screen showed the rectangular plate, with its flashing lights, and the hatbox sitting nearby. Since it was night outside on the plains of Mars, and the robot cameras with their lighting were far away, the hatbox was hard to see. When the countdown finished, there was a brilliant burst of light underneath the hatbox and it lifted off the surface. Everyone gasped. The technician in the operations center had the presence of mind to switch to the wide-angle camera an instant later. All of the residents of Valhalla watched in awe during the four or five seconds it took the hatbox to accelerate upward and out of the field of view.
12
Once Johann announced that a major dust storm was coming and proclaimed a state of emergency at Valhalla, the entire outpost switched into high gear. The astonishing events out on the plateau were temporarily forgotten in the rush of activity to prepare for the storm.