Grey Eagle, Sanitized

Copperfox

Copperfox

Well-known member
There are adult issues which affect us whether we talk about them or not, and which _somebody_ must openly confront with _Christian_ insight, or else the problems in that area will _never_ be remedied. This being said, I still understand The Dancing Lawn's reasons for not wanting too much to be said on _this_ forum about adult subjects. I am grateful to the Mods for giving me AS MUCH leeway as they've given me to hint at the adult subjects in my stories.

My superhero Grey Eagle was first invented here, as a half-joking roleplay character with a mission to destroy sexy vampires. When I extended the Alipang Havens saga into the near future, this led me to think about where the human race might go _beyond_ Alipang's lifetime. Ideas fell into place, and Grey Eagle turned into a not-at-all-joking character: a successor to Alipang Havens as a Christian warrior against evil. The tales of the Grey Eagle can never truly be told on T.D.L., because they are simply _too_ adult. The trends which exist in the real world right now _are_ leading in directions that run far outside of what can be discussed here, and I do not dispute the family-friendly rule for T.D.L. Yet when, God willing, published Grey Eagle novels do become available, I _would_ want my forum friends to know of them and be able to read them.

Therefore, just as when children's publishers "clean up" the storylines of grownup literature to enable young readers to dip their toes in the pool of serious literature, I am now going to attempt a G-rated super-condensation of the Grey Eagle epic. Nothing will be said here that could not reasonably be read by an eight-year-old; but I hope I can show enough of my intent that the _actual_ novels will be of interest to T.D.L. members. Note that I have a Facebook page for the project; the name of the page is the title of the first book: "JOURNEY OF THE GREY EAGLE."

I have to begin by summarizing how I imagine future history (Jesus tarrying) transitioning from the lifetime of Alipang Havens to that of Eliot Granholm, the man who becomes The Grey Eagle. Then I'll go straight onward into the plot arc of the sci-fi epic.


PICKING UP AFTER THE END OF WHAT CAN BE SEEN ON THE "ALIPANG HAVENS" THREAD:

The conditions of dictatorship on the North American continent have been mostly reversed. "Greater China," the leading superpower on Earth, is mercifully becoming more humane; and the African Union has grown stronger as a force for good. Alipang and Kim, with other characters from their stories, get to be involved in further adventures connected with preserving freedom and justice for a while longer.

In the neighborhood of the year 2050, two especially momentous events happen. One is that, because of relentless pressure by Muslim fanatics, the surviving people of Israel, helped by sympathizers from various nations, resort to a fantastic project made possible by futuristic technology: they actually LIFT MOUNT ZION RIGHT OFF OF THE EARTH, move it across outer space, and place it in orbit around Earth's Moon, with the permission of the Chinese government which already controls all access to the Moon. A new Temple is built there, surrounded by an atmosphere-containing dome, and Jewish priests conduct worship there in a way as close as they can manage to Old Testament ritual. The other big event is that the government of India, foreseeing an eventual _global_ dictatorship which they won't be able to prevent, bypasses China's Moon colonies and takes possession of MARS. They transplant as many Hindu people there as they can, and invite others to join them there in a society guaranteeing freedom of speech and religion. Mars eventually becomes a home and a refuge for the majority of surviving Christians, including the _entire_ remnant of the Roman Catholic church.

In old age, Alipang gets to have one more great adventure: becoming like Daniel with Nebuchadnezzar. That is, he has the providential opportunity to exert literally the _final_ Christian influence on the founders of that new tyranny which the Indians foresaw. God works through Alipang to ensure that faith in Him is not _immediately_ forbidden upon the creation of "the Citizoic League," which is the new multi-world order. Like Egypt being humane to the Hebrews in the lifetime of the Pharaoh who knew Joseph, the Citizoic regime continues to permit some religious freedom in its early decades.

Eliot Aristede Granholm is born in Chile, several years after Alipang Havens goes home to Heaven. That partial freedom endures _just_ long enough so that Eliot gets the chance to see a Bible and various Christian books. Fortunately, even _after_ freedom of faith gets shut down on Earth and on any space territory Earth controls, freedom remains on Mars, in colonies dug inside the planet Mercury, and on the moons of Saturn (Jupiter with ITS moons being a Citizoic possession). Eliot studies medicine and surgery, and the high value of his skills to space colonists is what leads to all of his adventures.....
 
The Grey Eagle saga takes place in the 22nd century. The most important scientific advances existing by then are the sophisticated artificial control of gravity (which is particularly helpful to spaceships in more ways than one), and the vast expansion of genetic modification beyond what we already witness in our time. "Alipang Havens" readers may recall that "The Possible Future of Alipang Havens" depicted persons with muscular strength artificially doubled above anything that would normally be possible, this being naturally one of the first things that science would want to try doing. The human lifespan is also lengthened for everybody, by improvement of the "telomeres" which regulate our cell reproduction; that is, _deterioration_ of telomeres is slowed down.

Less obvious modifications are also tried. I depicted Alipang Havens as submitting to an experiment which "armored" portions of his skin, including the skin of his hands, giving the treated areas great resistance to burning and to electric shock. By Eliot Granholm's time, that alteration has been refined to produce "Thermaloids," human beings who are virtually immune to fire. This, of course, makes them natural fire-FIGHTERS.

Eliot has the good fortune to live in a nuclear family at a time when the overwhelming majority of human beings are raised in government nurseries and never even _meet_ their parents. Eliot's father is a popular athlete; his mother is an engineer; and his younger siblings, a brother and a sister, both become "vacuum specialists," meaning that they are trained to work in spacesuits for exterior maintenance jobs on spaceships and space stations.

As a medical/surgical student, Eliot falls in love with a female scientist named Hasseba. She _pretends_ to love Eliot, but the real reason why she agrees to marry him is because she knows he is a superior genius, and figures that being attached to him could help her own career. Note that this does _not_ reflect women in the 22nd century being unable to get anywhere _unless_ a man boosts their careers; if anything, the reverse is true. Eliot being a potential boost for Hasseba is an exception, because Eliot is brilliant and Hasseba is mediocre. As a general rule, women in the Citizoic League have things rigged in their favor, as a switch from men having the advantages in past eras. But dominant women prove to be no more just and fair than dominant men had been; and Eliot finds himself nearly enslaved by his selfish wife, who is physically bigger and stronger than he is.

In the year 2121, Eliot and Hasseba, who have no children because Hasseba doesn't want any, move to Mars. There, despite Hasseba's bossiness, Eliot's natural talents cannot be stopped from shining through. Hasseba achieves very little of importance, while Eliot earns the respect and gratitude of people all over Mars. The planet Mars, by the way, gets referred to as Mangal, which is the Hindi name for that planet.

Though not owning Mars, the Citizoic League tries to exert influence there. The Citizoic government is divided, not primarily by physical locations, but primarily according to TYPES OF ACTIVITY. The "Life Directorate," which has authority over child-raising, health care, food production, and environmental issues, is the sector of government to which Eliot is subordinated. Even living on the free planet Mars/Mangal, Eliot still considers himself a Life Directorate employee, acting as a goodwill ambassador for Earth. But continued exposure to Christianity on Mars fortifies Eliot's ability to reject and oppose evil.

The man heading Life Directorate at that time tries to sabotage the Martian healthcare system covertly, hoping to make the Martians believe they _can't_ guarantee their people's health _without_ relying on aid from Earth. But Eliot exposes the sabotage, causes great embarrassment to his corrupt leader, becomes a "national hero" on Mars..... and makes it hazardous for himself to return to Earth.

Hasseba tells Eliot that, while she understands the dangers in going back to Earth just now, it would be a smart move now for him to prove his continued loyalty to the Citizoic League by going _someplace_ where the League is in charge. This means moving to the moons of Jupiter, among which Callisto is the "colonial capital." So they settle on Callisto in 2130.... and Hasseba soon takes advantage of the new location to _abandon_ Eliot, whose growing Christian beliefs were an annoyance to her. On Mars, she knew that Hindus and Christians alike would have detested her for deserting such a good husband as Eliot; but in the female-dominated society of the Jovian colonies, a woman practically gets a medal for deserting a husband.

In spite of heartbreak, and in spite of being required to be silent about his faith in Christ, Eliot goes on serving the communities of Jupiter for a number of Earth-years. Then he makes a happier move: to the _free_ colonies of Saturn. The Saturnian moon Titan becomes his home base. He can't get married again -- not because he owes anything to Hasseba, for in Biblical terms Eliot, as the betrayed spouse, is free of any more obligation to the deserter, but because there _aren't_ any available suitable women for him. There are good Christian women on Titan, Iapetus, Dione, etc.; but all of them either are already taken, or are much too young for the now-late-middle-aged Eliot. So, on top of being cut off from his birth family, Eliot sadly has to resign himself to never getting to raise children of his own.

But there are compensations for him. In a meaningful sense, as a doctor, he makes ALL children his own by caring for them, winning the affection of whole families for his compassion and skill. In addition, when a Titanian boy named Orville is orphaned by his parents dying in a spaceship disaster, Eliot becomes the boy's guardian -- and passes all of his medical knowledge to the boy. Loving his mentor as a "third parent," Orville grows to manhood and follows Eliot's footsteps as a doctor.

This brings us up to the start of the first actual _book_ in the Grey Eagle series. Eliot is now about seventy years old, but "telomere preservation" means that his health is like that of, say, a man only forty-eight years old. Eliot, like other people of his age in the 22nd century, is easily capable of living actively for another forty or fifty years. Nonetheless, he _psychologically_ feels himself to be over the hill, destined to live the rest of his days as the fatherly old healer for younger people -- not at all a bad life to live, but a life in which he never expects to have any dashing adventures.

Little does he suspect.....
 
Last edited:
The Situation As The Main Action In Volume One Begins: ​

Contrary to extreme total-depravity doctrine, some _partial_ goodness survives even in a fallen world. Thus, _even_ in the tyrannical Citizoic League, there are _some_ rulers who at least vaguely care about making the lives of the citizens bearable. Bernardo Fuentes, the Life Directorate chief who was exposed in his wrongdoing, gets kicked out of the government, and his place is taken by a comparatively young woman who is also a comparatively good-hearted person, Doctor Azitah Sohrab. (Note that her first name is pronounced "AH-zitah," not "ah-ZEEE-ta.") Assuming command of the Life Directorate, Azitah finds herself on a footing of equality with four other leaders:

> Justinian Dembe is the chief of the Space Directorate, whose purpose is self-explanatory.

> Consuelo Mugabe, Azitah's only real friend among these four, is the chief of the Labor Directorate, also self-explanatory.

> Brock Tersteegen, the most evil of these four, is the chief of the Peace Directorate, which does most of the law-enforcement work.

> Mabel Sukarno Smith, next youngest after Azitah, is the chief of the Knowledge Directorate, which controls most scientific research, education, and the news media.

Logan Siraj, a scientist under Mabel's authority, has conceived a radical new "mutation" to give to human beings: a transformation of their nervous systems, to give their brains the ability to GENERATE ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY. Because this plan falls in the field of biology, Life Directorate's territory, Mabel persuades Azitah to cooperate with what is called "the Magnabolt Project."

Logan says that his project needs, above all, a human subject who is _extremely_ intelligent. At the same time, it's so risky that no geniuses living on Earth will want to be the first guinea pig. But Logan thinks of Eliot Granholm, with whom he is not personally acquainted, but whose honored reputation he knows. Eliot looks like an ideal candidate: he has the brains to control mind-over-matter powers, and he's expendable. Azitah supports the choice, because she too knows Eliot by reputation; and _unlike_ Logan, she enormously admires Eliot for his well-known integrity.

So a message is transmitted to Titan, inviting Eliot to return to his native world at last. the year now is 2166. The Citizoic government offers him a high position, similar to being a Surgeon-General. Suddenly filled with hope that he might get to serve God and change people's lives on Earth, Eliot takes the bait, and rides to Earth on board a Titan-based spaceship which has an errand of its own.

Arriving on Earth, Eliot is taken to a Life Directorate facility in Russia -- actually, one of the collective nurseries I mentioned. One baby girl attracts Eliot's attention, and he asks about adopting her; but before that idea can get anywhere, the trap closes on Eliot. He is forcibly taken to a secret laboratory, while the public is told that he suddenly became sick.

It is in the laboratory that he first hears about the idea of a human brain becoming able to manipulate gravity. Logan and his assistants go to work to transform Eliot, using advanced technology to keep him under control and prevent him from KILLING THEM once he has his super-powers. Eliot doesn't want to kill anyone, but he does have a motive to fight against his captors: he overhears them talking about a plan to use gravity-manipulators to wreck the Temple of Lunar Jerusalem. Azitah, who has begun to feel romantically attracted to Eliot for his goodness and wisdom, is unaware of this conspiracy.

Eliot is pressed into service to coach younger people who are chosen to be made into "Magnabolts" once the initial transformation has proven successful. But Eliot, smarter than any of them, advances far ahead of them in ability. He becomes so skillful at manipulating gravity that he can bend light around himself, making himself invisible. This abiiity helps him to escape. Faking his own death, he becomes a fugitive. He not only must survive, he has to try to figure out a way to save the Israelis from being robbed of their Temple.

Of the young candidates for transformation, one grieves more than any other for the presumed death of Doctor Granholm: a young woman named Zvika Bartlett, who was also beginning to fall in love with this wise older man. But she IS destined eventually to find out that he didn't really die.....
 
The leaders of the tiny Israeli colony orbiting Earth's Moon have no power to defend themselves by battle; but there is plenty that they can do by _cleverness_ to protect themselves. They have many secret agents on Earth, and their very best agent is-- a character from the Alipang Havens series! "The Possible Future of Alipang Havens" featured an Israeli Mossad agent named Yirimyahu (=Jeremiah) Kohen, who was infected by a terrible biological weapon. The only way his life could be saved was to freeze him in suspended animation. This was the last that "Alipang Havens" readers saw of Agent Kohen; but around the time that the Citizoic League was established, he was revived, cured of the mutant disease germs, and turned into a cyborg. Using the codename of Golem (a creature in European Jewish folklore), Yirimyahu performs various undercover missions to help prevent harm to Jerusalem.

The Temple priests have some inkling of what happened to Eliot Granholm, whom they remember as a friend to the Jewish people. So they assign Yirimyahu to search for Eliot and try to help him survive and stay free.

Eliot, meanwhile, takes advantage of people believing he is dead. He starts creating hideouts where he can safely rest; and he forms a plan to make Logan and the other scientists think that the bio-gravity process is unpredictable. Finding some of his former trainees, Eliot uses his own gravity powers to interfere with _their_ gravity powers, in ways which don't cause any serious injury, but which make it look as if the other gravity-manipulators were losing control of their actions. This forces the researchers to put aggressive operations on hold, while they search for the (non-existent) defects in their Magnabolts.

One member of the ruling class knows that Eliot _isn't_ dead: Azitah Sohrab, the one who loves him. Eliot secretly contacts her, and she assists him any way she can. Joining in this help to Eliot is Azitah's faithful security guard, a strength-enhanced man called Goliath Ironfist. They exchange information with Eliot, smuggle supplies to him, etc.

Yirimyahu, whose spy identity is unknown to any of Earth's top rulers, makes his own contact with Eliot separately from Azitah's efforts to help him. Yirimyahu provides Eliot with improved concealment - -including several months of cryosleep! -- to make sure that Mabel Smith and Brock Tersteegen don't find out Eliot is alive.

While Eliot is being kept safely hidden, the Jerusalem spy network learns about persons on a space station plotting mutiny against the Citizoic League. Since these would-be rebels are _not_ freedom fighters, but only fanatics who would set up their_own_ dictatorship if they could, the Israeli spies have no qualms about alerting the Earth government against the mutiny. This service causes the Citizoic regime to decide that Jerusalem deserves better than being wrecked. So, with Eliot having bought _time_ for the Israelis, the Israelis have _used_ that time to ward off the danger they faced.
 
Other plotlines are going on concurrently with what has been described so far.

The space station with the mutiny threat is one of two that are orbiting the mostly-useless planet Venus. This one is called Afzal Zuhara, and is the one place in the Citizoic League where Islam is allowed to be practiced openly. The League leadership had taken a page from Jerusalem's movement, and had moved the Great Stone of Mecca to an orbit around Venus, then built a space station directly above it.

The other station orbiting Venus was actually built by the settlers of Mercury, but the Citizoic Space Directorate took it over by force. The League names it Aphrodite Station. Eliot's mother, brother and sister live on Aphrodite, where they can have a home and employment while _avoiding_ attention from the totalitarian government whose cruelty hastened the death of Eliot's father. Eliot's close relatives believe him to be dead.

Meanwhile, a less-close relative of Eliot's is making a career in show business. Emily Armfeldt, a character inspired by MY REAL-LIFE SISTER RICKI who learned to be a theater fight choreographer, is a performer at the future equivalent of a Renaissance festival. Movies and other entertainments at the time of this story have continued the trend which is already highly visible in _real_ life at the _present_ time: depicting women as unbeatable goddesses who easily wipe out stupid, clumsy men five or ten at a time. But Emily, though a tough woman, _doesn't_ go along with the fashion of gratuitously humiliating males. She befriends a much younger _male_ actor, named Adam Thomas (inspired by TDL's own Sir Tom the Dragon Knight!), and teaches him serious swordfighting skills. At this point, Emily does not yet _know_ that she is related to Eliot. Other characters also turn up who are related to him and don't know it. But Eliot will cross paths with them eventually.

Politics in the Citizoic League are vicious. Justinian Dembe, head of the Space Directorate, gets assassinated. The real planner of this murder, an official named Janice Nsonga, takes his office. Consuelo Mugabe retires from her leadership of Labor Directorate, to be replaced by a man named Mongkut Potichak, whose previous job was on the moons of Jupiter. Mongkut finds himself needing to investigate the mystery of someone setting fire to a factory in order to claim that non-existent "Christian terrorists" did it. This is actually the work of Brock Tersteegen, who feels a need to invent imaginary threats of rebellion, to convince everyone that his interplanetary police force is needed. Mabel, meanwhile, schemes and plots to hold for herself the power to control the future creation of any more gravity manipulators.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Mars, having heard the phony report that Eliot Granholm died of a strange disease, don't believe it for a minute. They believe that Eliot was murdered for being a dissenter. So they step up secret projects to be ready to defend their planet against any possible invasion from Earth. Among the Martian military officers leading the preparations is Ligrig Naya, a Gurkha, who personally remembers Eliot from when Eliot lived on Mars with Hasseba.

And the little girl whom Eliot had wished to adopt, now able to walk and talk, has been hustled into the collective-childhood system. She finds that _everything_ has to be done in groups, including eating and sleeping. But she dreams at night about a mysterious man who held her in his arms and spoke gently to her.

 
Last edited:
Additional "simultaneous action" occurs on other planets.

On Titan, the largest and most-populated of all the moons of Saturn, Eliot's protege' Orville has married a woman named Darpana, who is seventeen years _older_ than Orville. This should serve to calm any female readers who feel annoyed about Eliot having _younger_ women falling for him. By the connivance of Israeli agents, a secret message reaches Orville and Darpana, ending their grief by letting them know that Eliot _didn't_ die.

On Ganymede, a major moon of Jupiter, Hasseba plays every political trick she can come up with, in order to get the chance to be part of a prestigious project searching for life inside the water-bearing Jovian moon Europa.

Mars receives a visitor from Mercury, a business executive and diplomat named Tareku Oguyani. Tareku's widowed mother Sylvia, who lives with him in the smaller of Mercury's two colonies, is the engineer who designed the space station which was stolen from the Mercurians. Tareku talks with Martians about having a united front in trade negotiations with Earth: negotiations occasioned by the leadership turnover in Earth's Space Directorate.

Even the asteroid belt sees action, as a Martian ship renders emergency assistance to an Earth-owned asteroid base. A crewman from the ship, Leonid Aleksandrov, a Russian Messianic Jewish technician who is a part-time helper to the Jerusalem spy network (and thus has indirectly helped Yirimyahu), talks with Siglal Bimpe, the woman in charge of the asteroid station. Grateful for being helped with an air-supply crisis, Siglal confides important information to Leonid: the fact that she is seeing signs that the Citizoic League may have plans to seize Martian-owned asteroid bases.

Brock Tersteegen, the K.G.B.-Gestapo type, considers Janice Nsonga, the new chief of Space Directorate, to be his main obstacle on the way to increasing his personal authority and control. Brock wants to be able to have dealings with the independent worlds, _independently_ from Space Directorate. He wants to gain the friendship of those free people, until they feel that they _prefer_ to do any negotiating with Brock rather than with Janice. Guided by suggestions from subordinates, Brock forms the idea of holding an "Interplanetary Symposium on Law Enforcement," where members of whatever police forces the free colonies have can meet with Earth's Peace Directorate officers, on the campus of a police academy. He figures that the very fact of his appearing to be _interested_ in what "outworlders" think will score huge points for him with the populations of Mercury, Mars and Saturn.

Sylvia Oguyani is chosen to lead the combined delegation of Mercury's two underground colonies to the symposium. The Martian delegation includes retired Gurkha Pasang Naya, brother of the previously-mentioned Ligrig Naya. Saturn, being the most remote in distance from Earth, sends only one delegate, who can easily be accommodated on a ship that has business going to Mars anyway. This man is Sayef Haj, a space captain and a personal friend of Eliot; he is to hitch a ride to Earth on the Martian delegation's ship.

Sayef, incidentally, was honored early in this novel by Eliot giving him something special, a copy of a rare book. The book, an autobiography by ERIC HAVENS, is titled "They'll Call This Hate Speech," and relates Eric's long fight against the same thought-censoring political correctness which ultimately led to the creation of the Citizoic League.

(Those who have read "The First Love of Alipang Havens" may remember the chapters which depicted Eric's efforts to warn people against allowing total federal control of all health care. Those scenes can be assumed to be part of what Eric was remembering when he wrote his book.)
 
Last edited:
Becoming the Grey Eagle:

In Eliot's early adventures, when he had no way of planning farther ahead than thwarting the threat to Lunar Jerusalem, he made no declarations about himself. He made his interference with other Magnabolts look like a series of accidental malfunctions. He didn't _want_ the authorities (besides the few like Azitah who already knew he was alive and at large) even to _suspect_ that someone was deliberately impeding a government operation. After all, even a fugitive who has the power to fly and the power of invisibility is much safer from pursuit if no enemy knows TO pursue him.

But after being taken in hand by the more experienced Agent Golem, and after being given the chance to cover his tracks by hibernating in concealment for several months, Eliot upon his emergence decides it's time to be bolder. This is when he first adopts the pseudonym of "Grey Eagle." Later on, when he speaks with one female character about his mission, she gets in a bit of a feminist snit, harrumphing that female eagles are larger and stronger than male ones. Eliot replies, "If you say so; but it doesn't matter. I chose the name simply because it sounded heroic, not as a calculated insult to female carnivorous birds."

Eliot begins announcing himself as Grey Eagle when he begins rescuing people from disasters in Superman style. This leads to his being hunted by a _metaphorical_ female bird of prey: a top investigator for the Peace Directorate named Joan Herkuf. Joan is like Inspector Javert to Eliot's Jean Valjean, except that Joan is not evil, only dedicated to her duty. I've actually considered letting Joan become Eliot's eventual true love; but this is not a spoiler post.

Mongkut Potichak is a witness to Eliot's first big rescue; and since the lives Eliot saves are those of blue-collar workers, Mongkut forms an immediate favorable opinion of the mysterious Grey Eagle. Mongkut's own sharp intelligence also leads him, independently of anything Joan Herkuf is doing, to figure out that the lowly technician "Trevor Chaney" is really the super-spy Yirimyahu Kohen. But far from trying to arrest either Yirimyahu or Eliot, Mongkut is eager to make _allies_ of them, the better to protect the common people from being preyed upon by cruel, selfish rulers like Brock and Janice. In return, the Israeli planners who command Yirimyahu are prepared to support Mongkut any way they can.
 
Dictatorships always use their news media to present lies as truth. In the world and time of Grey Eagle, Christianity has been completely prohibited in all parts of the Solar System that are controlled by the government on Earth. But even _with_ Christianity being driven out, the rulers _pretend_ to be worried about a "terrible danger" of armed, violent conquest by so-called "Jesustrons."

Although at first the aristocrats don't know that Grey Eagle IS a Christian, they try to discredit him in the minds of the people. Brock Tersteegen, the same man planning a diplomatic outreach to the free planets, plots a series of _intentional_ "accidents" in a dozen Earth cities, all of which will cause deaths. His idea is that, with the media on his side, he can talk as if these mass deaths "prove" that the Grey Eagle "doesn't really care about people." As if even he could have magically prevented _every_ disaster "if he really cared."

But of course, Eliot _does_ care about human life. Though unable to prevent the mass murder described above, he finds a good opportunity to show his real character. He learns that there is a sort of detention camp, where common citizens are housed if they are sick or disabled, but have used up their "health ration" in the government-monopoly medical system. Eliot goes to this camp, overpowers the armed guards, and literally _forces_ them to allow him to _treat_ the sick people. By showing his medical knowledge, he risks exposing exactly who he really is; but he's the _good_ guy, he has to help people in distress!

Azitah, learning of Eliot's latest escapade, realizes that it could come back to bite her. So she meets with her most trusted henchmen, to plan how she can best defend herself and Eliot in the worst case. She decides to prepare to make it a worst case FOR THE BAD GUYS -- by preparing mutant disease organisms which can be carefully controlled to affect only selected victims. With these precision biological weapons, she has a fighting chance against even the most powerful opponent.

Eliot becomes bolder as his control of his powers improves. Daring to invade a stronghold belonging to Mabel Smith, he shows that her guards _can't_ stop him from getting in; yet he kills no one, and treats Mabel quite gently while arguing in favor of reforms that Mabel could enact. His combination of power and mercy -- in a society which sneers at men (except very high-ranking ones) as inferior -- makes such an impression on Mabel that she starts to fall in love with him!

A henchman of Mabel's who was acquainted with Eliot before Eliot's apparent death is present when Grey Eagle encounters Mabel. This henchman, Jack Melitos by name, is convinced (correctly) that Grey Eagle is Eliot Granholm; but people don't believe him.


 
Who has read "Oliver Twist," or seen a movie or stage version of it? The way Oliver was abused in the orphanage is no worse than the way many children in institutions are treated on my imagined 22nd-century Earth. And the little girl whom Eliot saw just before he was kidnapped is among the abused children of the future.

Don't ask.

Azitah Sohrab informs Eliot of where he can find the girl; she can't just hand the girl over to him, because the boarding schools are not under her direct jurisdiction. So Eliot flies to the city where the girl is. Because of the magnetic origin of his powers, he has found that he can fly the fastest if he follows the force lines of Earth's magnetic field. So all of his urgent long-distance trips on Earth are done by flying to one of the magnetic poles, choosing the correct longitude line from there, and flying south or north to the vicinity of his destination, correcting to east or west as needed.

Eliot finds the girl he wanted to adopt.

He has cause to wish he had arrived just fifteen minutes sooner.

The man who IS the cause for Eliot to wish that, becomes the first human being Eliot ever kills. Take my word for it, the snake deserves to die. Eliot then renders medical aid to the child, finding that she remembers him! The reason she can remember him is because future science makes babies' brains acquire powers of memory much faster than in our time.

Eliot names the girl Iris, and she is entirely willing to leave with him, like Cosette with Jean Valjean. Taking her to one of his hideouts (and later to a series of other hideouts, to shake off any pursuit), he begins to teach her what "family" means -- something which the Soviet-style boarding school had not bothered about.

Yirimyahu the cyborg, meanwhile, has been keeping an eye out for Eliot, and facilitates Eliot's cultivation of good relations with the decent Commissioner Potichak. Potichak, in turn, makes additional resources available to Eliot.
 
The free planets have agreed to participate in the conference Brock Tersteegen proposed. Although he is evil, Brock has every intention of treating the symposium delegates well, because it's in his own interests to do so. But _other_ evildoers have an interest in _ruining_ the symposium and stopping this particular effort at reconciliation. Since I'm approaching the end of the first volume here, I'll be very short, not revealing all that happens. No one will be surprised if I say that Eliot _doesn't_ die, since he has to be around for the sequels.

The Israeli spy network gathers information about what the villains are up to. Eliot -- as Grey Eagle -- tries to warn Brock of the danger to his big event, but Brock is too skeptical to believe him. Those who are liars themselves are quick to believe that someone else is lying.

Did I mention Doctor Ching No-Yi, an older woman who is one of Azitah's chief advisors? Doctor Ching successfully befriends Iris; thus, Iris does not panic when asked to stay with Doctor Ching while her new Daddy has to fly off and defeat the forces of evil. Yirimyahu Kohen, Zvika Bartlett, and Azitah herself all help Eliot in the big showdown. Azitah and Zvika both know that the other is in love with Eliot, but there is no hostility between them over him. Eliot, though utterly unaccustomed to the idea of _fighting_ someone, manages to do his part. He has to fight a frightful cyborg assassin before he can even _reach_ the scene of the climactic action. He also has to save the life of someone whom the conspirators intended to eliminate as expendable.

Aided especially by Zvika, and by other Magnabolts whom he had mentored, Eliot rescues the incoming delegates, enabling the interplanetary conference to proceed -- though its proceedings are not seen until Volume Two. Eliot very nearly gets killed, but other good guys are able to wrap things up for him as he is taken to a hospital.

As Volume One ends, the public now _knows_ that Eliot is alive, and that he is the Grey Eagle. But now it is not a disaster for Eliot to be unmasked, because not only are some of the top rulers on his side now, but even the evil ones are either aware of owing him gratitude, or _afraid_ to try anything against him. So readers of the sequel can look forward to finding out whether it is _really_ any safer for a heroic rebel to join the establishment. :rolleyes:
 
Volume Two of Grey Eagle goes into more depth about the independent communities founded on Mercury, Mars, and the moons of Saturn. The first of those worlds hosts two underground habitats, named Ouroboros and Hermes. The Mercurians, more than anyone else in the future Solar System as I imagine it, preserve the hearty spirit that the United States used to have in abundance. One man from Hermes Colony -- and this is one of the descendants of Alipang Havens himself -- makes up a song, to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Note that the opening lines refer to the fact that Earth's dictatorship refers to spacemen as "cosmonauts," in the style of the fondly remembered Soviet Union. "Wormies" refers to a past generation of "Earthers" who had tried unsuccessfully to prevent Hermes Colony from being established. And "topsy-turvies" refers to Mercurian-built spaceships, because Mercurian colonists find space flight a relief from the claustrophobia of living in underground cities.


We’re the astronauts of Hermes; we don’t say "cosmonaut."
We don’t admire the wormies our great-grandfathers fought.
You can laugh at all your worries if Hermes is your friend,
For the astronauts of Hermes keep laughing till the end!

If you’re Mexican or Burmese, and want to know what’s true,
The colonists of Hermes will make a place for you.
If you catch a case of squirmies from living in a cave,
You can ride our topsy-turvies along a solar wave!

The complete song contains language that might be just a hair too rough for Dancing Lawn. The Grey Eagle saga is not intended for eight-year-olds....yet it IS intended to applaud and encourage those who TAKE GOOD CARE OF eight-year-olds.
 
In one scene where he is bearing witness for Jesus, Grey Eagle resorts to a 22nd-century parable to illustrate God's grace:

“Please envision the following for me, not as a piece of concrete history, but simply as a kind of picture. Imagine that God is in command of an orbital defense platform. Looking down at the Earth, He sees people doing all sorts of evil. Their evil makes Him so angry that He orders all the missiles on the platform to be launched at the ground directly below Him. But His love is even mightier than His anger; so He jumps out the airlock, and flies down to the ground faster than His missiles can fly. Getting in between the people and the incoming missiles, God calls out to all humans everywhere, ‘Hurry, take shelter behind Me! Let Me take the impact, so you’ll survive!’ And everyone who ducks behind Him is saved, both from the initial detonation and from the ensuing fallout."
 
For Your Enjoyment.....

The following is a stand-alone story set in "the Grey Eagle universe." Its action takes place during Eliot Granholm's childhood. Eliot and his family have no part in it, but it helps to set up the conditions in which Eliot will eventually rise to fame. Unlike the rest of the Alipang Havens-Grey Eagle continuum, this story is narrated in first person, by its title character....

"THE FIRST POPE OF MARS"​


"For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world." This Divine Mercy Prayer had become a favorite with me at some point after my first year in the mental institution. If it hadn't been so important to me to keep intact all my recollection of anything liturgical, I would by this time have changed the last phrase to "--and on the whole Solar System."

The first light of day was brightening the great glass dome of the Meditative Atrium, the only place in this institution where we were allowed to see the sky and feel untreated air blowing through. With no eye-level windows, no scenery or other buildings were visible; but along with the sky, we could at least behold birds and the tops of trees. Only two other inmates, both male, shared the atrium with me at this hour; there was no segregation of the sexes here, but the current female-dominated central government of Earth had the oddest way of judging men insane far more often than it judged women insane. Kwai Chu-Dong, the younger of my two current companions, was a genuine inmate, while Yermak Antonov was not.

"Have you prayed for us to have guns?" Yermak asked me when I stopped praying for a while.

"No, I prayed for everyone to receive God's mercy," I replied, refusing to allow him to get on my nerves. I had accumulated at least six years of experience enduring Yermak's company; and since I was the Pope, I could credit myself with penance carried out by enduring him. Right here, I must specify for anyone who reads my recollections without otherwise knowing me: that was not a standard insane-asylum joke. I actually am the Vicar of Christ on Earth, even if Christ is worshiped now only on Mercury and Mars. I am Pope Javier, a Pope with no Vatican. The remnants of the Holy City had enjoyed a reprieve by being transferred to Nigeria, after the Boko Haram terrorists had been defeated in Nigeria right around the time when Europe fell under an Islamic Caliphate. But in my lifetime, even this reduced Vatican had at last been destroyed, a collateral casualty of the Integral War that left the so-called Lawgiver and her Five Commissioners in charge.

I had for a time been allowed still to minister to the dwindling population of Catholics on Earth, with a few on Earth's Moon. (It still feels odd to have to call our Moon a moon instead of the Moon; but with expeditions working to settle pioneers on Jupiter's moons, the picture of the inhabited creation is changing.) Eventually, however, the new Soviet-style regime had concocted an excuse to declare me mentally incompetent, and stash me here. Thus, the rulers themselves don't call me insane for saying that I am Pope Javier; they call me insane for believing that it matters being a Pope.

"The cause of mercy will be served if we can fire the guns," the fake inmate informed me. "In a blaze of gunfire, we'll escape from here and win wonderful freedom!"

Yermak was a plant, really working for the Knowledge Directorate, serving two purposes. One purpose was to monitor us actual inmates at close range, noting any behavior changes that might escape the attention of the regular staff. His other purpose was as a stage prop. It had taken me less than three months to ascertain that the management always hustled Yermak up front when there were visitors to the institution. He was intended to be seen and heard by schoolchildren and whomever else. His tiresome babbling about guns was clearly intended to drum into all visitors' heads the official dogma that the very idea of anyone without police authority possessing the means of self-defense was irrational. The long-gone United States of America had had a rule called the Second Amendment, guaranteeing that citizens could carry weapons for self-defense; but Pang Biao-Tu, in her "Bill of Prerogatives," had turned this upside-down with a fiat that no one but agents of the government was allowed to be armed.

That was a sweet deal for agents of the government. For the rest of us, it meant that anyone from the Pope to a lowly accountant like my friend Kwai Chu-Dong could be tossed into a place of confinement anytime the only people with recourse to armed violence felt like tossing him.

Chu-Dong had not been around Yermak as much as I had been. He actually tried speaking to the planted man: "But even if we did have guns, the hidden bankers would simply pay to have us killed."

"We'll shoot the bankers," Yermak said to Chu-Dong. "So cheer up! All we need to do is man the guns and fire the guns, and you'll see changes made."

At least Chu-Dong was authentic in his estrangement from reality. The ascent of Lawgiver Pang, and the multi-sided urban warfare which had secured her takeover of Earth and its territories, had proven conclusively that the wealthiest banker could still be killed easily by a railgun projectile or a particle beam. Now Chu-Dong, the actual psychotic, swung toward me without rising from his seat. "Citizen Pope, can't you pray that we'll have the money to buy our freedom?"

"The freedom to fire the guns!" cried Yermak.

I sighed, and said quietly to Chu-Dong, "I do pray for us to be released."

"And your prayer is about to be answered, though not by your imaginary God," interjected a female voice I didn't recognize. "Nor even by your Blessed Mother. You should call me your Even More Blessed Mother, because I'm actually going to do you some good!"

The coldly beautiful woman who had spoken -- utterly alien to the tender compassion of Our Lady -- emerged into the daylight from one of the corridors which converged on the Meditative Atrium. She wore a sort of professorial robe, on which could be seen the emblem of a square-root symbol surrounding a human head seen in profile. This was the emblem of the Knowledge Directorate, one of the five divisions of Pang Biao-Tu's governmental system.

Yermak Antonov stood up and faced her, asking, "Have you come to fire the guns?"

"I have others to fire guns for me if I need them to," she replied. I am Knowledge Commissioner Yung Tam-Lu."

This startled me. Standing up also, I said, "The last I heard, the Knowledge Commissioner was Tomas Rodriguez."

"He is still living," Commissioner Yung assured me, "but in retirement."

Yermak tapped Chu-Dong on the shoulder and stage-whispered, "That gives Pasha Rodriguez more spare time to fire his guns." Each Commissioner of the Citizoic League was less formally referred to as a Pasha. This was a corruption of the Arabic ruler-title which I believe is properly pronounced "Bashaw," since there is no letter P in Arabic. But since the Citizoic League no longer needs Muslims as a weapon to help destroy Christianity, the ruling caste (known by the Chinese term Ren Min ) sees no special need to be accurate about the Arabic language. In another borrowing from Arabic, the regional Superintendents who were the next highest leaders in each Directorate were alternately called Emirs.

The Knowledge Pasha ignored Yermak. "As for you, Pope Javier, I've come to offer you the opposite of retirement. You are going to be discharged from this institution. If I'm not mistaken, February ninth is your Day of Saint Apollonia, so you can pretend that she had something to do with it."

 
Last edited:
"Where am I to be sent?" I asked, trying not to show any emotion.

"To Mangal," the Knowledge Pasha replied.

How much have I forgotten? I asked myself. I'm sure I've heard of Mangal, but-- "Begging your pardon, Commissioner, but where and what is Mangal?"

Smirking, she turned toward Chu-Dong. "You, number-cruncher, I'll bet even you know where Mangal is."

"But, Master," Chu-Dong whimpered. (Under the Citizoic regime, the word "master" is proper to use when addressing male or female Pashas.) "I can't make a bet; the international bankers took all my money."

Yung Tam-Lu acted much kinder toward him than toward me. "Easy, Chu-Dong, try to remember the Great Unification. Your money wasn't taken by bankers; the government converted it into Citizoic dinars. And physical money of any kind is used now only for special purposes; normally, all transfers of economic value are conducted by government networks. Anyway, don't worry about betting; I'll pay off the bet for you if you lose. Just tell the Pope, if you can, where Mangal is."

"You have to know where a thing is if you want to shoot at it," Yermak interjected. "That is, unless you're conducting indirect fire, as with a howitzer."

Holding on to his concentration, Chu-Dong told me, "Mangal is just another name for the planet Mars."

Of course! Now it came back to me. Back when I had been a young priest, the nation of India, foreseeing the imminent forcible abolition of national sovereignty, had transported as many thousands of its most intelligent and skilled people to Mars as it could manage with adequate resources for life support. The expatriate Hindus had then declared that the world they had claimed would thenceforth be known by its Hindi name.

Pasha Yung drew close to me. "I see that you remembered it, once he reminded you. But I know why your brain blocked that memory. As a Christosaurus, you hate everyone who's different from you, so you couldn't bear to think of the Red Planet being given a 'pagan' name. Sucker! Hypocrite! I suppose you never heard that the name 'Mars' is equally of pagan origin!"

My mind was regaining clarity, if only because, Our Lady forgive me, I resented Yung's contemptuous treatment. She was goading me to see if she could make me say something angry that would give her an excuse to snatch the just-offered freedom out of my grasp. Most likely, the proposal to release me had not originated with her, but rather had been urged upon her by the other Pashas. The so-called "Knowledge" Directorate, after all, had been created for the very purpose of erasing all knowledge of God; so Yung Tam-Lu must be the very last Pasha who would want me set free.

Perhaps the Space Directorate had been the first to advocate my release and deportation. Our cosmonauts were the ones who most often encountered independent colonists, and so might gain something from a gesture of good will toward the "disobedient worlds."

Still keeping control and using a bland voice, I left the insult unacknowledged, and asked, "How soon am I to depart?"

"As soon as we fire the guns!" exclaimed Yermak.

Yung patted Yermak as if he were a dog -- which, I reflected, was not far from being literal fact. "Your Oldness, you leave this refuge for weary minds as soon as you've eaten breakfast. Suitable toiletries and clothing will be provided for you. We'll even give you back that robe of yours that was put in storage when you first checked in here. Your departure from Earth will be just over four hours from now. A cislunar shuttle will carry you to Lunar Orchard." (I remembered that "Lunar Orchard" was the name of the first self-sustaining Moon colony; it had been established by the pre-Citizoic authorities of Greater China, not long after they had destroyed the United States without firing a shot by pouncing on the unsustainable American debt.) "How soon you get off of Luna depends on how soon the Mangali ship Vikramaditya arrives in Lunar orbit to pick you up."

I forced myself to be obsequious: "Master, I thank you for granting this new adventure to me, wherever it may lead. Please, if he is willing, would it be possible for Chu-Dong to come with me?"

A small spontaneous laugh escaped Yung's throat. "A Chinese man among the Indo-Martians... that might be amusing. Yes, he will be permitted to go with you." I noticed that she didn't ask Chu-Dong how he felt about this; her own amusement was taking precedence.

Yermak tapped Chu-Dong on the shoulder. "Once you land on Mars, you'll need to come off the ship shooting."
 
Last edited:
Ignoring Yermak, Chu-Dong asked me, "Are there any other Chinese people on Mangal?"

I told him that I honestly didn't know, but added, "There are, however, persons like me there." I glanced at the Knowledge Pasha before continuing, "And I'm sure that some of them, after living many Earth-years in close proximity to Hindus, have learned to stop hating everyone who's different from them." Yung Tam-Lu smirked at the realization of my effort to tread cautiously.

"Then I'll go with you," said my friend, "As long as you promise not to tell the evil international bankers where I went."

"They'll never hear it from me."

"They won't hear," Yermak interjected, "because they'll be firing the guns."

"When you get to your fellow prehistorics," Pasha Yung told me, "let them know that we purposely chose the year 2101 to release you, due to its millennial significance."

I blinked, puzzled. "Master, I thought this was already 2102."

She patted my head as she had patted Yermak's. "It would be, under your barbaric old Christosaurus calendar. But after achieving the Great Unification, Lawgiver Pang decreed that the change of years should thenceforth be based on the Chinese New Year, since all civilization of any value comes from China."

I knew she wouldn't say that last part in the hearing of Afrocentrists or Latino supremacists, but I made no remark. Yermak made one instead: "After all, the Chinese invented gunpowder, and that's the real heart of civilization."

Pasha Yung continued, "So there was one year with fourteen months, and since then each new Earth-year begins with March. So it isn't too late for us to make our symbolic statement."

I had either never known about that calendar change, or else had lost the knowledge over these many years of abuse. Odd that they still used the old number count for the years; but that was no doubt simply a convenience, with a change of starting month being enough to make their point. In any event, I did understand what she meant about "millennial significance." 2101 was exactly one hundred years after the beginning of the twenty-first century. During that century, the destroyers of freedom had pretended that all Christians everywhere had been adamantly saying that Jesus was certain to return precisely when the millennium changed. Thus, by saying that we said something we had not said, they had been able to convince themselves that the whole gospel of Christ was discredited.

Yermak erupted with a babble of Russian, including what I recognized as the noun ogon, which, like its English counterpart, can mean "fire" in either the shooting sense or the plain-burning sense. His last repetition of ogon, perhaps because of the phonetic similarity to English "gun," brought him back to shouting "The guns! The guns!"

The Pasha shoved him away from her, then said to Chu-Dong, "Look after Javier on the trip. He's old and feeble, because his anti-technology superstitions caused him to refuse the offer of telomere preservation." This was another blatant lie on her part. Catholics and other Christians had not expressed or felt any opposition to the telomere-preservation process, because (unlike a certain form of stem-cell treatment), it did not entail the destruction of some human lives as a dark side of the promise to lengthen other people's lives. The reason why I had not received this longevity procedure was because almost no Christian over the age of forty had ever been given it, and few even of the younger ones.

I had once heard something about an Asian-American Protestant named Alipang Havens, a man ten or twenty years older than I, doing something or other that had won the grudging respect of the Citizoic Lawgiver, so that she decided to let some Christians, instead of no Christians, have their lives lengthened. This Alipang must have been an interesting fellow; he was also reported to have undergone experiments in making his skin more damage-resistant, which may have been a prelude to the trans-human modification which created the people they now call Thermaloids.

But as an Anglican writer once put it, that's part of someone else's story.

 
Kwai Chu-Dong and I didn't need much time to collect our very few personal effects. Pasha Yung told us, "A police detail will transport you both to the spaceport. They should be pulling up in front any minute. I'll have my administrative robot call ahead to the shuttle crew to expect two passengers instead of one."

My friend and I didn't even take a last look at Yermak Antonov. His yells of "The guns! Fire the guns!" receded behind us as we followed the Knowledge Pasha down a corridor. She did return my Papal vestments to me, albeit in a wrinkled condition. I almost said something about the nanofiber fabric which was supposed to prevent wrinkling, but I held my peace. The asylum staff might have simply deactivated the nannites while my vestments had been in storage. I wasn't going to complain; I was already nearly a free man.

The air outdoors was much warmer than I had imagined. For the whole duration of my captivity, no one had told me where the asylum was. Any time I asked, the staff workers would only give mocking replies like, "You are in the Basilica of the Brainless!"

Realizing why the warmth surprised me, the Knowledge Pasha indulged in one more petty dig: "Of course a bigoted racist like you wouldn't expect to find himself in equatorial Africa. This is the city of Yaounde, Cameroon, close to the bend in the continental coastline. Yaounde has its own spaceport, no thanks to you white-supremacist oppressors, and that's where you and Chu-Dong are going."

A few meters from the entrance waited a sturdy woman in uniform, a station deputy by her insignia. With her were two male deputies, both shorter than she. The Life Directorate had been causing many new-incubation girls to be taller than boys. "Master, Jessamyn Striska reporting to accept custody of the discharged inmates," she announced.

Yung offered no real goodbye to us, only a smirk. But words could hardly have communicated her arrogance better than her smirk did.

Loading us into their ground-effect hovercar, one of the male officers cheerfully administered a skin-permeating jet-spray to protect us in space against motion sickness. I hadn't thought about that.
 
Last edited:
The ride through Yaounde was tantalizingly brief, showing me only swift glimpses of what common people's life had become while I had been institutionalized. A holoprojection sign identified something called an "Interactive Diversity Theater;" I hated to think what that probably was. Many other establishments were labeled only by visual imagery, sometimes accompanied by single Chinese ideographs. I remembered that members of the underclass were purposely kept illiterate, able only to read numerals, mathematical and technical symbols, and the handful of Chinese characters which had been adopted for mundane uses like indicating entrances and exits.

"Here's one thing that should please you," Deputy Striska said to me in almost a friendly tone. "Absolutely no babies are ever killed before birth anymore, because they never get conceived in the first place except by the will of the regime."

Chu-Dong, whether intentionally or not, came to my rescue at this point, by asking the muscular young woman, "Are you a Protein Goddess?"

Jessamyn Striska's laugh actually sounded pleasant, albeit deeper in tone than would be the case with most women. "So I am, but that particular term for strength-enhanced human units is on its way out."

"Why so, officer?"

"Firstly, because many years have passed since women of science cured the kidney problem which had accompanied the early strength-enhancement methods. My kidneys have no difficulty processing the improved proteins in dead muscle cells as they are filtered routinely out of my blood. Thus, it's no longer necessary to use an enhancement name commemorating that success in biology. Secondly, the supreme oligarchy is now confident that the inferior sex has been sufficiently civilized that we needn't fear permitting some of them to receive super-strength. Accordingly, options are being discussed for a gender-neutral term. I myself prefer an adaptation of 'mlima'--" (this was the Swahili word for "mountain") "--but my superiors mostly favor 'hesaan', since it denotes a living creature." (That was Arabic for "horse.")

Security guards belonging to Space Directorate passed our vehicle through a secondary gate at Yaounde Spaceport. Deputy Striska carried our belongings for us, just to show how easy it was for her. When we came to the shuttle-boarding platform, a robot took charge of our baggage, and Jessamyn Striska handed us off to another, less massive uniformed woman.

"Welcome to the transatmospheric shuttle service," this woman told us, after first thanking Striska and waiting for her to depart. "My name is Volcanica Hayat. My co-pilot, Muna Bashir, is running preflight checks. Have you been given your anti-nausea treatment?"

I assured her that we had. Miss Hayat then lowered her voice, and looked at me with a conspiratorial expression.

"I had to ask. Those Peace Directorate neuroblots often forget." This, I realized, was a hint of the rivalries between Directorates. I mentally shrugged; with no more separate nations on Earth, apparently people still needed something to have competition and mutual dislike about.

"Are there any evil bankers on board your ship?" asked Chu-Dong.

Miss Hayat smiled -- perhaps because she had been told what were the delusions of my traveling companion. "Only one," she told Chu-Dong, "and we make him clean the zero-grav toilet. But come along now, I have to get you seated."

 
The same robot which had stowed our belongings presently entered the passenger compartment to help Chu-Dong and me into our takeoff couches. Miss Hayat was reviewing Miss Bashir's preflight checks.

"Human units are advised that the green button close to right hand activates external visual imagery," the robot announced. "Each additional touch to button causes twenty-degree rotation of camera-matrix direction. Continuous pressure more than four seconds will terminate external viewing."

I actually thanked the indifferent robot as it exited the cabin. If not for this machine's prompting, I would have missed the very last chance in my mortal life to get a live look at the world of humanity's birth. Chu-Dong and I were granted almost three minutes to look at the beauty of God's inhabitable creation, complete with glimpses of human beings who, if subjects of a tyranny, at least were not confined to a madhouse.

"You're looking, that's good," said Miss Bashir, coming aft to check on us herself. "You should be pleased to know that no burst of smoke and flame will block your view of the sky as we ascend. This shuttle runs entirely on electromagnetic drive."

"I'm sorry, what is that?" asked Chu-Dong. "Something devised by the international bankers?"

Muna Bashir was so unfazed by this question that I felt more certain she and Volcanica Hayat had been told in advance what manner of man my friend was. "It's a way that electricity can be made to propel a spacecraft. With electrical power, we generate microwaves. The microwaves are shot into a sort of reflecting vessel, whose ends are of unequal sizes. The waves bounce all around inside the vessel, but the shaping causes the greater part of the reflective reaction to move in one direction, thus imitating a rocket exhaust-- but with neither oxidation burning nor nuclear fusion required. There are safety advantages in using this kind of engine on ships which are in atmosphere part of the time."

Being near enough to hear this, Miss Hayat added, "Our Directorate plans eventually to use giant counter-gravity emitters to boost ships lifting off the surface; but we have a way to go in development before that plan will be cost-efficient."

Upon hearing that last expression Chu-Dong timidly said, "Was it international bankers who compiled your figures on that?"

"Not at all," Miss Bashir assured him. "The cost analysis was all done by expert engineers of Space Directorate."

Chu-Dong relaxed, and I still did not feel like talking at length. Soon enough, we rose from Yaounde Spaceport, and I kept watching God's blue sky until it changed into God's outer space.

Rationally, I knew that outer space being dark did not in any way disprove the glorious light of God's actual Heaven-type Heaven; but something in me couldn't help feeling a vague desolation, as a sky with air in it gave way to lifeless vacuum. So I began whispering rosaries to myself.

Happily, if Miss Hayat and Miss Bashir heard me, they did not react adversely.
 
Assured that no international bankers could get at him, Chu-Dong fell asleep within an hour after we left atmosphere. I went to sleep about fifteen rosaries after he did. We both eventually woke up naturally, ready to relieve ourselves; the shipboard robot explained to us how to use the zero-gravity toilet, and advised us that we had an hour and a half to enjoy exterior views before it would be time to strap in for deceleration. Our hostesses also fed us cosmonaut rations during this period.

Muna Bashir joined us in sightseeing for part of the time, and made what passed for small talk among cosmonauts. The most interesting part of this was when she told us about a peculiarity of our destination planet.

"I'm sure you already know that the reddish coloration of Mars comes from having iron oxide all over the place. The planet used to have a lot more atmosphere than it has now, and the oxygen did what oxygen does to minerals. Now, anyplace there are craters and ravines, a fine powder of rust accumulates in them. Sometimes there's enough of this rust that a person could sink into it, although the lower gravity does improve the chances of getting clear. English-speaking Martians refer to the stuff as 'quickrust,' and the rest use a corresponding term in Hindi."

"I suppose," Chu-Dong remarked, "that Martian bankers are too greedy and stingy to do anything about the hazard."

Miss Bashir smiled. "Fortunately, in most cases, the Martians find it good enough to mark off the quickrust pits. They have well-defined safe routes for surface traffic, much like the trunk lines for Earthside mag-lev railways. And I'm told that all quickrust has been cleared away from a half-kilometer radius around every permanent habitat."

I asked, "Only half a kilometer? Am I to understand from this that Martians don't get outdoors much?"

The co-pilot shrugged. "Apart from areas already made safe, like their spaceports and mining sites, there isn't much for them to go outside for; food production goes on inside the habitats. And barren rock in one place looks pretty much like barren rock in another place."

I was not cheered by this. Here I had barely been released from one confined setting, and she was reminding me that I would be spending the rest of my mortal existence inside another confined setting.

But then I was ashamed of myself for this mental grumbling. On Mars, I would have the freedom to lead worship and administer the sacraments. If this did not make a difference for me, what was the point in being the Pope?

Shortly after we passengers made ready for deceleration, Volcanica Hayat announced, "If you turn on your imagers, you can get a look at Lunar Jerusalem before we descend."

I thanked her for telling us, and activated my viewing set. Chu-Dong addressed a question directly to me: "Lunar Jerusalem? How many Jerusalems are there?"

I sighed and told him: "Since Rome's claim to be the new Jerusalem was made purely academic with the removal of the Vatican, there's only one Jerusalem. It was moved more dramatically and completely than the Vatican's move to Nigeria. At a time when I don't think you were born yet --anyway, in the middle of the twenty-first century -- Jews and their Christian sympathizers used some really expensive technology, including seismic-force generators and powerful counter-gravity emitters, to cut off the upper part of Mount Zion and levitate it into space. Then it was towed to an orbit around the Moon, where a pressurized habitat was built onto it. The dominant Chinese gave their permission for this."

"You never spoke of that while we were in the institution together," my friend remarked.

This called for something of a confession on my part, a confession on behalf of my whole communion. "There was nothing to my credit, or my church's credit, that I could have said if I had told you about it. For too many years, too many of us had indulged ourselves in moral cowardice where Palestine was concerned. We chose to side with the more numerous Muslims, merely because they were more numerous; we convinced ourselves that the Israelis, outnumbered by something like five hundred to one, were 'the real troublemakers,' and too many of us made excuses for Islamist fanatics no matter how many murders they committed. For what it's worth, numerous Protestants fell into the same cowardice."

Miss Hayat was hearing us, and she now told us where to direct our camera views to see Jerusalem. What we beheld with magnification resembled an asteroid, with a transparent dome which enclosed almost as much volume of space as the volume occupied by the mass of rock itself.

I fell silent, gazing at it. Chu-Dong suddenly spoke again: "Is Jesus Christ still there?"

"Not in His once-mortal human body," I replied. "But in His aspect of Real Presence in the Eucharist, you and I will be able to meet Him on Mars."

"You'll also meet many descendants of Earthside Israelis," Miss Hayat put in. "There are more than twenty thousand Jewish persons living on Mangal now, and they have a lot to do with providing the necessities that keep Lunar Jerusalem viable."

 
Last edited:
Half an hour before we were to begin our landing approach to Lunar Orchard, we were favored with an audiovisual call from a man on the Lunar surface. My first awareness of the call was when Muna Bashir told Volcanica Hayat, "It's a comms hail from the Tai-Pan."

Evidently a rank title, "Tai-Pan" rang no bells with me. I asked Chu-Dong if he knew what it meant. My friend replied, "It refers to a person who possesses great power and influence, usually someone outside of any constituted government. Rather like the international bankers."

I said to him, "But how can the Citizoic League allow anyone outside of its power structure to be so important as this title implies?"

My second question was uttered loudly enough that Miss Hayat looked back at us and offered an explanation: "The Tai-Pans of Luna are an exception, and permissible because they don't operate entirely without official oversight. The first Tai-Pans came into being before the League began; as agents of the Chinese government when Greater China still was a nation to itself and ruled all of Luna, Tai-Pans facilitated cooperative contacts between Lunar Orchard and the daughter colonies as new habitats increased."

Whatever was initially said between our two cosmonauts and the Tai-Pan, Chu-Dong and I soon found the conversation being relayed into our own screens. We saw the face of a Chinese-looking man, who introduced himself as Wen Kuei-Hao.

"I've been in communications with the Vikramaditya since we received the news that you would be asking them to take on an unexpected second passenger...."

Something in the Tai-Pan's voice triggered a frightened reaction from poor Chu-Dong. "Please, don't send me back to the institution, please!"

"I would not be the one to order that, if it were to be done. Captain Parisudha has already told me that he can manage this....but Pope Javier's cooperation will be needed to make it work out."

"What is required in order for my friend to have a seat on the flight for Mangal?" I asked.

"Just that you forego the enjoyment of watching space during the trip outward. Captain Parisudha had meant for you to be able to see all the sights as you traveled; but with two of you instead of one, considerations of oxygen and food will make it necessary for both of you to be kept in cryosleep for the whole voyage."

I made myself sound solemn. "For the sake of my friend Chu-Dong, I can accept being asleep for the whole way to our new home." I did not volunteer the fact that I would gladly hibernate through the months of space transit, so that I wouldn't have to think about how dead the vacuum of space really was.

And Chu-Dong certainly felt better now.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top