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Page 19.
Chapter 11. King City
 To enter the Royal Lands, you either take an airship from one of the Domer cities, or else you ride in a land caravan up the mountain's sides. This takes on new meaning when you realize that Olympus Mons, the Olympic Mountain, is the largest mountain in the solar system. It is a giant that rises just over 15 miles high, at its base is over 300 miles across, and is surrounded by a cliff wall that rises over three and a half miles high. The top of this monster is slightly domed, and at its center is a huge caldera 48 miles across representing an extinct volcano.
I had to assume that the Roy Ollies knew about me from the information in the global database, which I was sure both Temple and Dome would have entered to warn others about me. Thus, I had to resort to a ruse.
In a Triber market far below the Tharsis Plain that borders Olympus, I bought robes and prayer beads somewhat similar to those worn by a highlands order of monks called the Blue Horizon Brothers. In the global Temple hierarchy, priests are father, priestesses mother, nonpriestly monks brother, and nonpriestly nuns are sister. I was used to the ways of a brother, so this was the guise I took upon myself. I took a step upward from there, in the Domer city of Buenos Ares, where I changed habits and became a White Brother. I knew that order has relative houses up among the Royals, and it is a very large order whose members don't all know each other. In this guise, I sat in a large Royal airship with my cowl over my head and my hands joined around my prayer beads. Nobody disturbed me, not even the ticket agent and cop who wandered the aisles in tandem looking for fare skippers. I had bought my ticket fair and square (at a monkish discount yet) in a travel brokerage in Buenos Ares Center.
It was my first journey at night in an airship, and I had the good luck to have a window seat in the gondola. Seating for the 100 passengers was thus: in the back 12 rows, or second class, it was 3 and 3, meaning three seats on either side of the aisle. That took care of 60 passengers. In the front section, or first class, sat 40 passengers two and two in larger and more cushy seats on either side of the aisle. I sat on the hard wooden benches in second class with a rented pillow under me. You could rent a blanket and a pillow in the central area, which was a sort of 20x20 minimarket with a kiosk staffed by the conductor when he wasn't conducting. He had things to read, videos to plug into your beltpad if you had one, plus coffee, sandwiches, yogurts, agars, sprouts, kelps, and sweet cakes. He had a good variety of waxed fruits and hard candies. Since the trip took twelve hours, it was inevitable that every passenger on board would eventually stop for coffee or something to eat in the little plaza with its six benches and three narrow little tables, and bring something back to his or her seat to read. In the back, you got a faint potty odor along with leaked high-altitude fresh air. Toward the middle, it was warmer and more coffee-smelling. Seats weren't assigned, and as the hours passed I moved about to allay my boredom.
When we left Buenos Ares, it was still daylight. The sun set about an hour later in the cold blue distance over a peachy haze. The airship, which is shaped like a bullet and pointed at both ends, has its long passenger or cargo gondola slung underneath. From the central kiosk area, a spiral staircase rises to the bridge above. There, the captain and his crew manage the hundreds of helium envelopes and the clattering engines that burn a mix of hydrogen and methane in an enclosed chamber of oxygen and nitrogen; this turns a worm gear on which six large propellers turn, and that pushes the ship along. Seen from a distance, it is a droning, clattering sausage of tiny green air traffic indicator lights plus a bar of yellow light made up of the passenger windows.
We climbed for about three hours. The night sky around and above us was uniformly black and filled with many stars. The stars all look about the same, given that most are unimaginably distant and their relative sizes are insignificant. Their colors and luminosities are another matter, with some looking brown and dull while others blue-white dots of searing intensity. Our Holy Sun was on the other side of the sky, but our two moons Terror and Fear could be seen as visibly moving dots of light. I have looked at them through our telescopes, and noted that they are cratered. I looked for the other planets of the night, the giants with their rings and moons, away from the sun, and the four dots closer to the sun. The farthest of these (Alfar) from us is tiny, and hard to find, but so bright that you do see it when it is in the proper opposition. Bigger yet is the blindingly right Betar. Then there is the twin system of Sharli Major and Sharli Minor. Some philosophers feel that Sharli Major, because of its bluish white color, might be the mythical Erdith. Legend has it, however, that there is a broken planet of many pieces or asteroids, named Delta, which might have been the mythical paradise from which the Godpods came. We are Echo, Mars, in this scheme. Next comes mighty Fox Star with his faint ring and many moons. Next is Gulf Star, which has enormous rings and many planets. Last there are Hotel and India, both of which are large and have moons. Old legends tell of more planets but they are said to be of a different and tiny order, and may be nothing but pure mythology. These sorts of things are not doctrinal nor canonical, so nobody is ever executed for thinking they exist, although it is forbidden to teach about them, and that can bring prison time.
I was impressed by the many Royal Dome cities clinging to the mountain walls all around. Except for those on the lower sprawl, Free Domers, the upper points of light represented Royal Domes. The most astounding sight was yet to come as we rose up above the mountain top. All in all, it took six hours to climb to an altitude of about seven miles, and six more hours to reach the Royal capital in the caldera.
On the trip, I began to notice an older man who appeared to look at me once or twice too often. He was slight, with yellowish-brown skin and gray hair that was a few weeks past needing to be cut. He wore exterior lenses, which made him look bookish—most people prefer simple eye surgery to correct their vision, unless there is a therapeutic reason why they cannot have procedures done. I wondered if he were one of those who seek younger men for pleasures that Mars society frowns upon. He made me uncomfortable, and I moved out of his direct range of vision from across the aisle and at the other end of second class. I thought of him as Flash, because of the way his lenses twinkled in the poor light, and because of the strange, pinched look of his face and eyes.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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