They moved to one side and waited in silence while he assembled his belongings. In ten minutes everything was in order. Kneeling, adjusting the straps of his pack, he nodded and looked up. The early sun was full on the city now, and its rooftops were bright with a golden radiance. Light seemed to stream upward from them; the entire desert appeared to blaze in that luminous flow.
“All right,” Oxenshuer said, rising and shouldering his pack. “Let’s go.” But he remained where he stood, staring ahead. He felt the city’s golden luminosity as a fiery tangible force on his cheeks, like the outpouring of heat from a crucible of molten metal. With Matt leading the way, the three men walked ahead, single file, moving fast. Will, the squint-eyed one, bringing up the rear, paused to look back questioningly at Oxenshuer, who was still standing entranced by the sight of that supernal brilliance. “Coming,” Oxenshuer murmured. Matching the pace of the others, he followed them briskly over the parched, sandy wastes toward the City of the Word of God.
There are places in the coastal desert of Peru where no rainfall has ever been recorded. On the Paracas Peninsula, about eleven miles south of the port of Pisco, the red sand is absolutely bare of all vegetation, not a leaf, not a living thing; no stream enters the ocean nearby. The nearest human habitation is several miles away, where wells tap underground water and a few sedges line the beach. There is no more arid area in the western hemisphere; it is the epitome of loneliness and desolation. The psychological landscape of Paracas is much the same as that of Mars. John Oxenshuer, Dave Vogel, and Bud Richardson spent three weeks camping there in the winter of 1987, testing their emergency gear and familiarizing themselves with the emotional texture of the Martian environment. Beneath the sands of the peninsula are found the desiccated bodies of an ancient people unknown to history, together with some of the most magnificent textiles that the world has ever seen. Natives seeking salable artifacts have rifled the necropolis of Paracas, and now the bones of its occupants lie scattered on the surface, and the winds alternately cover and uncover fragments of the coarser fabrics, discarded by the diggers, still soft and strong after nearly two millennia.
Vultures circle high over the Mojave. They would pick the bones of anyone who died here. There are no vultures on Mars. Dead men become mummies, not skeletons, for nothing decays on Mars. What has died on Mars remains buried in the sand, invulnerable to time, imperishable, eternal. Perhaps archaeologists, bound on a futile but inevitable search for the remains of the lost races of old Mars, will find the withered bodies of Dave Vogel and Bud Richardson in a mound of red soil, ten thousand years from now.
At close range the city seemed less magical. It was laid out in the form of a bull’s-eye, its curving streets set in concentric rings behind the blunt-topped little palisade, evidently purely symbolic in purpose, that rimmed its circumference between the mesas. The buildings were squat stucco affairs of five or six rooms, unpretentious and undistinguished, all of them similar if not identical in style: pastel-hued structures of the sort found everywhere in southern California. They seemed to be twenty or thirty years old and in generally shabby condition; they were set close together and close to the street, with no gardens and no garages. Wide avenues leading inward pierced the rings of buildings every few hundred meters. This seemed to be entirely a residential district, but no people were in sight, either at windows or on the streets, nor were there any parked cars; it was like a movie set, clean and empty and artificial. Oxenshuer’s footfalls echoed loudly. The silence and surreal emptiness troubled him. Only an occasional child’s tricycle, casually abandoned outside a house, gave evidence of recent human presence.
As they approached the core of the city, Oxenshuer saw that the avenues were narrowing and then giving way to a labyrinthine tangle of smaller streets, as intricate a maze as could be found in any of the old towns of Europe; the bewildering pattern seemed deliberate and carefully designed, perhaps for the sake of shielding the central section and making it a place apart from the antiseptic, prosaic zone of houses in the outer rings. The buildings lining the streets of the maze had an institutional character: they were three and four stories high, built of red brick, with few windows and pinched, unwelcoming entrances. They had the look of nineteenth-century hotels; possibly they were warehouses and meeting halls and places of some municipal nature. All were deserted. No commercial establishments were visible, no shops, no restaurants, no banks, no loan companies, no theaters, no newsstands. Such things were forbidden, maybe, in a theocracy such as Oxenshuer suspected this place to be. The city plainly had not evolved in any helter-skelter free-enterprise fashion, but had been planned down to its last alleyway for the exclusive use of a communal order whose members were beyond the bourgeois needs of an ordinary town.
Matt led them sure-footedly into the maze, infallibly choosing connecting points that carried them steadily deeper toward the center. He twisted and turned abruptly through juncture after juncture, never once doubling back on his track. At last they stepped through one passageway barely wide enough for Oxenshuer’s pack, and he found himself in a plaza of unexpected size and grandeur. It was a vast open space, roomy enough for several thousand people, paved with cobbles that glittered in the harsh desert sunlight. On the right was a colossal building two stories high that ran the entire length of the plaza, at least three hundred meters; it looked as bleak as a barracks, a dreary utilitarian thing of clapboard and aluminum siding painted a dingy drab green, but all down its plaza side were tall, radiant stained-glass windows, as incongruous as pink gardenias blooming on a scrub oak. A towering metal cross rising high over the middle of the pointed roof settled all doubts; this was the city’s church. Facing it across the plaza was an equally immense building, no less unsightly, built to the same plan but evidently secular, for its windows were plain and it bore no cross. At the far side of the plaza, opposite the place where they had entered it, stood a much smaller structure of dark stone in an implausible Gothic style, all vaults and turrets and arches. Pointing to each building in turn, Matt said, “Over there’s the house of the god. On this side’s the dining hall. Straight ahead, the little one, that’s the house of the Speaker. You’ll meet him at breakfast. Let’s go eat.”
…Captain Oxenshuer and Major Vogel, who will spend the next year and a half together in the sardine-can environment of their spaceship as they make their round trip journey to Mars and back, are no strangers to one another. Born on the same day—November 4, 1949—in Reading, Pennsylvania, they grew up together, attending the same elementary and high schools as classmates and sharing a dormitory room as undergraduates at Princeton. They dated many of the same girls; it was Captain Oxenshuer who introduced Major Vogel to his future wife, the former Claire Barnes, in 1973. “You might say he stole her from me,” the tall, slender astronaut likes to tell interviewers, grinning to show he holds no malice over the incident. In a sense Major Vogel returned the compliment, for Captain Oxenshuer has been married since March 30, 1978, to the major’s first cousin, the former Lenore Reiser, whom he met at his friend’s wedding reception. After receiving advanced scientific degrees—Captain Oxenshuer in meteorology and celestial mechanics, Major Vogel in geology and space navigation—they enrolled together in the space program in the spring of 1979 and shortly afterward were chosen as members of the original thirty-six-man group of trainees for the first manned flight to the red planet. According to their fellow astronauts, they quickly distinguished themselves for their quick and imaginative responses to stress situations, for their extraordinarily deft teamwork, and also for their shared love of high-spirited pranks and gags, which got them in trouble more than once with sober-sided NASA officials. Despite occasional reprimands, they were regarded as obvious choices for the initial Mars voyage, to which their selection was announced on March 19, 1985. Colonel Walter (“Bud”) Richardson, named that day as command pilot for the Mars mission, cannot claim to share the lifelong bonds of companionship that link Captain Oxenshuer and Major Vogel, but he has been closely a
ssociated with them in the astronaut program for the past ten years and long ago established himself as their most intimate friend. Colonel Richardson, the third of this country’s three musketeers of interplanetary exploration, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on the 5th of June, 1948. He hoped to become an astronaut from earliest childhood onward, and…
They crossed the plaza to the dining hall. Just within the entrance was a dark-walled low-ceilinged vestibule; a pair of swinging doors gave access to the dining rooms beyond. Through windows set in the doors Oxenshuer could glimpse dimly-lit vastnesses to the left and the right, in which great numbers of solemn people, all clad in the same sort of flowing robes as his three companions, sat at long bare wooden tables and passed serving bowls around. Nick told Oxenshuer to drop his pack and leave it in the vestibule; no one would bother it, he said. As they started to go in, a boy of ten erupted explosively out of the left-hand doorway, nearly colliding with Oxenshuer. The boy halted just barely in time, backed up a couple of paces, stared with shameless curiosity into Oxenshuer’s face, and, grinning broadly, pointed to Oxenshuer’s bare chin and stroked his own as if to indicate that it was odd to see a man without a beard. Matt caught the boy by the shoulders and pulled him against his chest; Oxenshuer thought he was going to shake him, to chastise him for such irreverence, but no, Matt gave the boy an affectionate hug, swung him far overhead, and tenderly set him down. The boy clasped Matt’s powerful forearms briefly and went sprinting through the righthand door.
“Your son?” Oxenshuer asked.
“Nephew. I’ve got two hundred nephews. Every man in this town’s my brother, right? So every boy’s my nephew.”
—If I could have just a few moments for one or two questions, Captain Oxenshuer.
—Provided it’s really just a few moments. I’m due at Mission Control at 0830, and—
—I’ll confine myself, then, to the one topic of greatest relevance to our readers. What are your feelings about the Deity, Captain? Do you, as an astronaut soon to depart for Mars, believe in the existence of God?
—My biographical poop-sheet will tell you that I’ve been known to go to Mass now and then.
—Yes, of course, we realize you’re a practicing member of the Catholic faith, but, well, Captain, it’s widely understood that for some astronauts religious observance is more of a public-relations matter than a matter of genuine spiritual urgings. Meaning no offense, Captain, we’re trying to ascertain the actual nature of your relationship, if any, to the Divine Presence, rather than—
—All right. You’re asking a complicated question and I don’t see how I can give an easy answer. If you’re asking whether I literally believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, whether I think Jesus came down from heaven for our salvation and was crucified for us and was buried and on the third day rose again and ascended into heaven, I’d have to say no. Not except in the loosest metaphorical sense. But I do believe—ah—suppose we say I believe in the existence of an organizing force in the universe, a power of sublime reason that makes everything hang together, an underlying principle of rightness. Which we can call God for lack of a better name. And which I reach toward, when I feel I need to, by way of the Roman Church, because that’s how I was raised.
—That’s an extremely abstract philosophy, Captain.
—Abstract. Yes.
—That’s an extremely rationalistic approach. Would you say that your brand of cool rationalism is characteristic of the entire astronaut group?
—I can’t speak for the whole group. We didn’t come out of a single mold. We’ve got some all-American boys who go to church every Sunday and think that God Himself is listening in person to every word they say, and we’ve got a couple of atheists, though I won’t tell you who, and we’ve got guys who just don’t care one way or the other. And I can tell you we’ve got a few real mystics, too, some out-and-out guru types. Don’t let the uniforms and hair-cuts fool you. Why, there are times when I feel the pull of mysticism myself.
—In what way?
—I’m not sure. I get a sense of being on the edge of some sort of cosmic breakthrough. An awareness that there may be real forces just beyond my reach, not abstractions but actual functioning dynamic entities, which I could attune myself to if I only knew how to find the key. You feel stuff like that when you go into space, no matter how much of a rationalist you think you are. I’ve felt it four to five times, on training flights, on orbital missions. I want to feel it again. I want to break through. I want to reach God, am I making myself clear? I want to reach God.
—But you say you don’t literally believe in Him, Captain. That sounds contradictory to me.
—Does it really?
—It does, sir.
—Well, if it does, I don’t apologize. I don’t have to think straight all the time. I’m entitled to a few contradictions. I’m capable of holding a couple of diametrically opposed beliefs. Look, if I want to flirt with madness a little, what’s it to you?
—Madness, Captain?
—Madness. Yes. That’s exactly what it is, friend. There are times when Johnny Oxenshuer is tired of being so goddamned sane. You can quote me on that. Did you get it straight? There are times when Johnny Oxenshuer is tired of being so goddamned sane. But don’t print it until I’ve blasted off for Mars, you hear me? I don’t want to get bumped from this mission for incipient schizophrenia. I want to go. Maybe I’ll find God out there this time, you know? And maybe I won’t. But I want to go.
—I think I understand what you’re saying, sir. God bless you, Captain Oxenshuer. A safe voyage to you.
—Sure. Thanks. Was I of any help?
Hardly anyone glanced up at him, only a few of the children, as Matt led him down the long aisle toward the table on the platform at the back of the hall. The people here appeared to be extraordinarily self-contained, as if they were in possession of some wondrous secret from which he would be forever excluded, and the passing of the serving bowls seemed far more interesting to them than the stranger in their midst. The smell of scrambled eggs dominated the great room. That heavy, greasy odor seemed to expand and rise until it squeezed out all the air. Oxenshuer found himself choking and gagging. Panic seized him. He had never imagined he could be thrown into terror by the smell of scrambled eggs. “This way,” Matt called. “Steady on, man. You all right?” Finally they reached the raised table. Here sat only men, dignified and serene of mien, probably the elders of the community. At the head of the table was one who had the unmistakable look of a high priest. He was well past seventy—or eighty or ninety—and his strong-featured leathery face was seamed and gullied; his eyes were keen and intense, managing to convey both a fierce tenacity and an all-encompassing warm humanity. Small-bodied, lithe, weighing at most a hundred pounds, he sat ferociously erect, a formidably commanding little man. A metallic embellishment of the collar of his robe was, perhaps, the badge of his status. Leaning over him, Matt said in exaggeratedly clear, loud tones, “This here’s John. I’d like to stand brother to him when the Feast comes, if I can. John, this here’s our Speaker.”
Oxenshuer had met popes and presidents and secretaries-general, and, armored by his own standing as a celebrity, had never fallen into foolish awe-kindled embarrassment. But here he was no celebrity; he was no one at all, a stranger, an outsider, and he found himself lost before the Speaker. Mute, he waited for help. The old man said, his voice as melodious and as resonant as a cello, “Will you join our meal, John? Be welcome in our city.”
Two of the elders made room on the bench. Oxenshuer sat at the Speaker’s left hand; Matt sat beside him. Two girls of about fourteen brought settings: a plastic dish, a knife, a fork, a spoon, a cup. Matt served him: scrambled eggs, toast, sausages. All about him the clamor of eating went on. The Speaker’s plate was empty. Oxenshuer fought back nausea and forced himself to attack the eggs. “We take all our meals together,” said the Speaker. “This is a closely knit community, unlike any community I know on Earth.” One of the serving girls sa
id pleasantly, “Excuse me, brother,” and, reaching over Oxenshuer’s shoulder, filled his cup with red wine. Wine for breakfast? They worship Dionysus here, Oxenshuer remembered.
—The Speaker said, “We’ll house you. We’ll feed you. We’ll love you. We’ll lead you to God. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To get closer to Him, eh? To enter into the ocean of Christ.”
—What do you want to be when you grow up, Johnny?
—An astronaut, ma’am. I want to be the first man to fly to Mars.
No. He never said any such thing.
Later in the morning he moved into Matt’s house, on the perimeter of the city, overlooking one of the mesas. The house was merely a small green box, clapboard outside, flimsy beaverboard partitions inside: a sitting room, three bedrooms, a bathroom. No kitchen or dining room. (“We take all our meals together.”) The walls were bare: no icons, no crucifixes, no religious paraphernalia of any kind. No television, no radio, hardly any personal possessions at all in evidence: a shotgun, a dozen worn books and magazines, some spare robes and extra boots in a closet, little more than that. Matt’s wife was a small quiet woman in her late thirties, soft-eyed, submissive, dwarfed by her burly husband. Her name was Jean. There were three children, a boy of about twelve and two girls, maybe nine and seven. The boy had had a room of his own; he moved uncomplainingly in with his sisters, who doubled up in one bed to provide one for him, and Oxenshuer took the boy’s room. Matt told the children their guest’s name, but it drew no response from them. Obviously they had never heard of him. Were they even aware that a spaceship from Earth had lately journeyed to Mars? Probably not. He found that refreshing: for years Oxenshuer had had to cope with children paralyzed with astonishment at finding themselves in the presence of a genuine astronaut. Here he could shed the burdens of fame.
Something Wild is Loose: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Three Page 36
