Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

“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.