Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

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.

And, say, there was Cygnus, and—whaddaya know!—Phobos, and, yes, if I squinted, Deimos too, just beneath it.

But no. Surely the Holy Virgin had not revealed herself to Jurgen Emat. Peasant children, yes; the poor and sick, yes. But a televangelist? A rich broadcast preacher? No, that was ridiculous.

It wasn’t explicitly in Cardinal Pirandello’s message, but I knew enough of Vatican politics to understand what was going on. As he’d said, Jurgen Emat had been at seminary with Viktorio Lazzari—the man who was now known as Leo XIV. Although both were Catholics, they’d ended up going down widely different paths—and they were anything but friends.

I’d only met the Pontiff once, and then late in his life. It was almost impossible to imagine the poised, wise Bishop of Rome as a young man. But Jurgen had known him as such, and—my thoughts were my own; as long as I never gave them voice, I was entitled to think whatever I wished—and to know a person in his youth is to know him before he has developed the mask of guile. Jurgen Emat perhaps felt that Viktorio Lazzari had not deserved to ascend to the Holy See. And now, with this silly announcement of a Martian Marian vision, he was stealing Leo’s thunder as the Pope prepared to visit Fatima.

Martian. Marian. Funny I’d never noticed how similar those words were before. The only difference …

My God.

The only difference is the lowercase t—the cross—in the middle of the word pertaining to Mars.

No. No. I shook my head inside the suit’s helmet. Ridiculous. A crazy notion. What had I been thinking about? Oh, yes: Emat trying to undermine the Pope. By the time I got back to Utopia Planitia, it would be late Saturday evening. I hadn’t thought of a sermon yet, but perhaps that could be the topic. In matters of faith, by definition, the Holy Father was infallible, and those who called themselves Catholics—even celebrities like Jurgen Emat—had to accept that, or leave the faith.

It wouldn’t mean much to the … yes, I thought of them as my congregation, even sometimes my flock … but of course the group that only half-filled the pews at Saint Teresa’s each Sunday morn were hardly that. Just the bored, the lonely, those with nothing better to do. Ah, well. At least I wouldn’t be preaching to the converted …

I looked around at the barren landscape, and took a drink of pure water through the tube in my helmet. The wind howled, plaintive, attenuated, barely audible inside the suit.

Of course, I knew I was being unfairly cynical. I did believe with all my heart in Our Lady of the Rosary. I knew—knew, as I know my own soul!— that she has in the past shown herself to the faithful, and …

And / was one of the faithful. Yes, pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall—but I was more faithful than Jurgen Emat. It was true that Buzz Aldrin had taken Holy Communion upon landing on the moon, but I was bringing Jesus’ teachings farther than anyone else had, here, in humanity’s first baby step out toward the stars …

So, Mary, where are you? If you’re here—if you’re with us here on Mars, then show yourself! My heart is pure, and I’d love to see you.

Show yourself, Mother of Jesus! Show yourself, Blessed Virgin! Show yourself!

* * *

Elizabeth Chen’s tone had the same mocking undercurrent as before. “Have a nice walk, Father?”

I nodded.

“See anything?”

I handed her my helmet. “Mars is an interesting place,” I said. “There are always things to see.”

She smiled, a self-satisfied smirk. “Don’t worry, Father,” she said, as she put the helmet away in the suit locker. “We’ll have you back to Bradbury in plenty of time for Sunday morning.”

* * *

I sat in my office, behind my desk, dressed in cassock and clerical collar, facing the camera eye. I took a deep breath, crossed myself, and told the camera to start recording.

“Cardinal Pirandello,” I said, trying to keep my voice from quavering, “as requested, I visited Cydonia. The sands of Mars drifted about me, the invisible hand of the thin wind moving them. I looked and looked and looked. And then, blessed Cardinal, it happened.”