Chapter 5 - The Last Tribe of Men

Author’s Note:

Valles Marineris, what I call in this book either “the Mariner Valley” or just plainly “the Valley” is the deepest canyon in our solar system. In places it is ten kilometers deep, which is similar to the depth of the Mariana Trench here on Earth. It is over one hundred kilometers wide along practically its entire distance, a distance which is roughly equivalent to the distance from New York to Los Angeles. On a planet with a very thin atmosphere, one that you’re trying, via liberal application of engineering, to thicken to Earth pressures and raise to Earth temperatures, a canyon with those starting characteristics is the ideal place to start. For any realistic colonization of Mars, Valles Marineris is “the good land”, and the best property overall.

A rational first step in colonizing a planet like Mars would be to use domes. The idea of a dome is to have a nice little self-contained Earth that you bring with you and plop down wherever you’re going. Nothing escapes the dome - you have plants, ideally ones you can eat, that recycle the air and you bring a soil biome that maintains the nitrogen cycle and the dome lets through sunlight and can even provide a considerable amount of warming via the greenhouse effect. It’s really a perfect idea. But it hinges on one simple precept - nothing can ever escape the dome, and really, nothing should ever enter the dome. All of those cycles that you depend upon to run automatically in the background, they can’t really bear drastic changes in inputs or outputs or in the contexts within which they run. Any small change can produce cascading failures that arise down the line from that.

I think any civilization attempting to colonize another planet via dome would inevitably run into this central problem of isolation. I think there are many rational responses to this problem, but the easiest and cruelest, and therefore most obvious solution that people might fall upon, is to draft religion to the cause. After all, life in a dome, when things are working, is pretty much guaranteed to be better than practically any other option on the planet. You could live in a stark habitation module, basically a tube with windows. You could dig deep caves. You could try to live on the surface, wear a spacesuit everywhere, passing between tightly-sealed homes. Or you can live pretty much like we do on Earth, possibly even an idealized version of such, with lots of space for crops and sturdy, cozy farmhouses and kids running and playing in the mud. Living in a dome is going to look like heaven.

It is a small thing to say “hey, look - God gave you heaven here on Mars. But He wants you to maintain it.” This is an innocent request, a reasonable one. A Noble Deed. Except the reality of the request is that you cannot leave. You can’t bring stuff in. Any change to the system must be compensated for. And, once you have people thinking that way, then it’s easy to isolate them further. Those outside the domes don’t deserve our outputs and can’t be allowed inside because they aren’t like us. They’re worse. Of course, Us and Them is a constantly shrinking circle around Us, and as it becomes smaller, the atrocities we’re willing to visit upon Them become all the greater.

Nestor sat at the long brown table surrounded by a battalion of Eagan’s children, ranging across the full spectrum of childhood. A few looked even older than he was. They had lined up elbow-to-elbow about a table laden with mounds of food, with green vegetables that Nestor had not before seen and diverse piles of meat and bread and pastries and fruits. More food than he could remember seeing. The only sounds in the room were of people eating and wheezing, for every resident of this house wheezed a bit when they breathed, and for a few it was loud and labored, like they were breathing smoke. Eagan sat at the head of the table, buttressed across the expanse of false wood by his wife Ester, a brittle-looking woman matching Eagan’s age but with much grayer hair and a face chiseled through with dourness.

Around the table floated a triumvirate of women serving food and drink, who attended to the younger children’s messes and took away emptied plates. All three serving women were pretty, roughly the same age as Nestor himself, and one of them was in the advanced stages of her pregnancy and waddled about the table with her back arched to keep her distended belly’s weight more evenly over her center. Eagan had introduced all the other members of the household in a litany of names, of which Nestor could remember none, but had not introduced the pretty servant-women at all, and seemed to avoid acknowledging their very presence.

He was watching the pregnant one clean the face of a young boy who had somehow doused himself with gravy when Eagan spoke. Nestor turned to look at Eagan and found that his host was speaking to Ester at volume across the table, telling her the same story Nestor had told him on their way in:

“Nestor here is a terrafarmer, from up on the Thaumasia Highlands. Headed in to Mensa, to finish up his studies to be a shuttle pilot.”

Nestor nodded and tried to remember all the details of his on-the-fly lie from earlier, “Yessir. We’re hydrofarmers up there, but I always jes dreamed of bein’ a shuttle pilot instead.”

Ester nodded sagely at him, her face still stone. Eagan seemed to not be paying attention, and was instead looking meaningfully up and down the ranks of his children.

“Leaving the family farm to go fly ice shuttles instead, eh? Pardon my bluntness, but that don’t seem to honor your father’s efforts very much,” he said, ostensibly directed at Nestor, though his attention was still very much on his children.

Nestor, unsure how to respond, sat in silence. This seemed to draw Eagan’s attention, as the older man now looked directly at him, bushy eyebrows raised in question.

“Don’t you think such a thing is important? He surely worked long and hard, and sacrificed much to carve out a stake for his family, and to have his son leave like that…don’t you think he finds that disrespectful?”

“Well, sir, like I said, my daddy’s died, which is why I went back. To attend to matters of his estate.”

Now Ester spoke from his other side, “He died with his son far away, having abandoned his legacy? Oh, what a horrible shame.”

All eyes around the table were now fixed on Nestor, pinning him to his seat and demanding an accounting of his morals.

Never one to be quick with a lie, Nestor faltered, “I…uh…well, ma’am,” he turned from Ester and faced Eagan, “…sir…I don’t know if he saw it that same way. In any instance, he always encouraged me.” Nestor shrugged the last few words out, hoping his desultory gesture would help to sell the falsehood.

“Well, no parent wishes to squash their children’s dreams, young man. I suppose he did encourage you. But I’m willin’ to bet seein’ you leave like that wounded him all the same,” Eagan remonstrated, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands upon his stomach.

“I surely hope I didn’t hurt him, sir,” was all Nestor could think to respond, which seemed to do little to help his cause with the audience around the table, as all eyes shot back to Eagan.

“I’m sure you do hope for that, son. But the Lord knows the truth of the matter. The real truth of it. I’m certain if you pray on it, He’ll show you the proper path forward from here, too.”

Heads around the table were nodding in agreement that this was the best course of action. He worked his mouth around several aborted responses, his cheeks pits of fire upon his face, before settling on meekly apologizing, “I’m afraid we don’t have much religion where I’m from, sir. Cain’t say I’ve ever prayed on…well, on anythin’.”

Eagan leaned forward now, “Not surprising, and I’m sorry to say it. There ain’t many left that know the ways of the Lord. Folk everywhere in this world choose to live lives of sin, not knowing all that the Lord has for ‘em if they just follow the path He has laid out for ‘em.”

“I don’t follow, sir. What path are you talkin’ about? Prayin’?”

“Well, praying is part of it. Knowing his words and his deeds as laid out in the Good Book is another. But mostly it’s about livin’ a proper life. Rebuilding his garden here anew.”

“You said that a few times, now, sir. Are these domes the garden you’re talkin’ about? God has helped you grow plants on the surface in ‘em?”

Nestor had been dying to ask more about the domes ever since Eagan had pulled through the airlock into this one. The huge, clear structure was many kilometers across and soared high above the Valley floor, which was reason enough for awe, but what had captivated Nestor on the way in were the row upon row of green plants growing throughout, interlaced with thin gravel roads leading to freestanding houses, of which the Maries’s was one. He’d not seen real plants before of any kind, and he desperately wished to understand how they’d come to be in this place.

“You truly don’t have religion, do you? Son, Eden’s Garden is much more than just domes and crops. Though they are very much part of it. But you do speak truth, in your ignorance. It has only been through Him that these things have been made possible.”

Nestor was unsure how to respond and sat again in silence while Eagan looked at him and seemed to size up some quality of his.

“I wonder if your ignorance in all this ain’t the reason He sent you to us.”

“What’s that, sir? What would God want me to come here for?”

“The Lord often directs his wayward children towards those who can best help. Maybe he saw how far from his path you’ve strayed, but felt like you could be saved, and that’s why he caused you to become lost, and that’s why he sent a sandstorm to waylay you until I could find you. Maybe he intends for you to learn his ways from us, his last tribe of men.”

“What does any of that mean? His ways? You mean growin’ crops? And how can you be the last tribe of man? There’s lots of folks alive all over this world.”

“We are the Lord’s last tribe, son. He punished the rest of mankind for their many sins, but he spared us. The angel Gabriel intervened during the Lord’s Apocalypse on Earth, and convinced the Lord to allow us to travel here, to Mars, to try again anew. We’re his last tribe, the last of the true sons and daughters of Adam, and our salvation came when we recreated the Lord’s Garden, the Garden of Eden itself, here on this terrible world.”

“But the rest of the folks here on Mars,” Nestor asked, cocking his eyebrow at Eagan across the table, “were we spared too?”

“Everyone else has moved away from Him, everyone but us. That they cohabitate this world with us does not make them of our kind and does not extend the Lord’s covenant to them. They are no longer mankind, they are something else. They fail in their efforts at terraforming this world and will continue to do so until they accept the Lord’s word into their hearts. Until they join with us in recreating the Garden, and earn back their humanity.”

“Yer sayin’ God is punishin’ us? And he don’t punish you?”

“Exactly that, son, yes. We prosper in our domes. We grow food, real food, when everyone else has failed. Our children don’t die of horrible diseases like they do elsewhere, and we live long, happy lives here. Can you say the same for the Tharsians? The Chryseans? The Hellians? No. They all reject the covenant we’ve broached with the Lord. They all disdain the humanity He offers them, and they deserve their fates.”

Eagan seemed to work himself up as he spoke, and Nestor watched the older man gesticulate before him and leaned back in his chair. He sat for some time after Eagan finished, still unsure how to respond.

Finally, he offered, “Well, sir, I do have to say I never seen as much food as you all have here, nor plants nor domes such as these. So might be yer on to somethin’. But I ain’t never heard of no Apocalypse and I ain’t never heard of any sort of covenant with God to reject. I jes don’t understand why he’d punish folks for somethin’ they didn’t even know about.”

“The Lord asks that you help yourself, son. He doesn’t need to make you aware of his rules. It’s your responsibility to know them all the same. Just like you cannot steal and then claim ignorance of the law against theft as your defense, you cannot claim ignorance of the Lord’s covenant as defense for your sins.”

Nestor shook his head and tried to reason through what Eagan was saying to him, “I jes don’t know how I’m supposed to have known any of this, sir,” he finally responded, while Eagan gazed upon him with holy beneficence.

“You’d learn it by living a righteous life. Every child sitting at this table knows about our covenant and how they contribute towards it in the eyes of the Lord. Every person in this dome and every other Edenite dome in all this Great Valley knows as well. It is only the outsiders who are blind to it. Do you wish to remain an outsider, or do you wish to know as well? Are you human or are you less-than?”

“Sir, it shore does sound interestin’, but I cain’t stay here. I do have to be movin’ on. Which, speakin’ of, when can you all take me on to Mensa? Is it too late to go tonight?”

“No, no…we cain’t make it to Mensa tonight, son. We all have work in the fields tomorrow, enough to last us a couple days at least. It wouldn’t be fair to leave the boys here to do all the work themselves. Besides,” he squinted down the table at his two eldest sons, “they won’t get nothin’ done if I’m not here to watch over ‘em.”

The boys were shaking their heads, opening their mouths to protest, but at a stern look from Eagan, they said nothing.

“Of course,” Eagan continued before anyone else could speak, “an extra pair of hands in the field will get us done all the quicker, if you’re interested.”

Nestor bit back his anger and frustration, staring at the now-bare brown table in front of him, measuring the grain of the fake wood for a few moments while he collected himself.

“That’s not what we agreed to at all, Eagan. You made it seem out in the dunes like we could figure somethin’ out while we ate, and now I’m here and yer tellin’ me I cain’t get to town for at least a couple days? I cain’t help you in no fields. I don’t know nothin’ about growing food. I work on machinery back home, sir.”

Eagan smiled a beneficent smile, “I know what we agreed upon, son. But I never did say I’d take you anywheres tonight. If I’m to drive you to Mensa, that’ll take the better part of a day. We should call it a whole day, because I gotta come back, too. Which is lost labor, wear on my skimmer…all of which costs. Don’t you think it’s fair for me to be made whole? Surely, I shouldn’t be put out all that just to give you a ride?”

“I thought you salvaged my range truck as payment?”

“There wasn’t hardly anything worth salvagin’ on that truck, son. Some computer hardware for us to recycle. The lead radiation shielding is worth something, maybe the batteries, though they’re plenty old. I’m sorry to say, but that truck was barely worth our time spent salvagin’ it. Plus, this food you ate here is another burden on this whole family.”

“So yer gonna keep me here, and make me work off some sort of debt you jes made up?” Nestor’s head swam with déjà vu, “like some sort of captive?”

“You’re free to leave whenever you’d like, son. You have your old envirosuit, with a few dead batteries. You are welcome to go face the dust and the desolation outside the doors of this dome whenever you would like. No one is keeping you. But if you wish for me to help you, then I need some help in return. I promise you, as a man of God, that I will take you to Mensa, just as soon as I’m able. Just as soon as I’m made whole for my end of things. If you know machinery, it might could be pretty darn useful around here. We have a horrible time with our irrigation pumps. Keepin’ ‘em running. I’m sure you could help with that, if nothin’ else.”

*****

After dinner, Eagan escorted Nestor out to the barn next to the Maries’ house, which he proclaimed was to serve as Nestor’s lodgings for the night. Nestor held his envirosuit bunched up in his arms and watched while Eagan grabbed one of the thick metal handles on the main barn door and slowly trundled it open. Nestor looked inside the building to see several other men already there, men who had not been at the evening’s dinner table, and who were at work cooking their own dinner in a pot in the corner of the singular barn room, and who seemed very disinterested in their new visitor.

Eagan seemed unconcerned with personally introducing him to the others, and shouted to the room at large that this was Nestor, and he would stay with them for a while. Few in the barn seemed to hear, and all turned their backs on the boy and returned to their tasks as soon as Eagan exited. Nestor walked forward and held out his hand in greeting to the man nearest him, but that man just stared blankly back before turning away to attend to his bed. Nestor stood self-consciously for a moment watching the man dress a small folding cot and then looked around the room, counting the other remaining cots set up lackadaisically between the boxes and crates and machinery otherwise occupying the barn. He counted one cot for every man, and could see no more. He wondered silently where his own cot was, or if he was going to be expected to sleep on the floor as an ultimate insult to his difficult day.

He noticed a man staring at him from the corner, who was wearing only the pants from an envirosuit and a jumpsuit underneath. The man looked to be perhaps a few years older than Nestor, with dark skin and hair, and he towered over the other men in this place. Nestor nodded to this potential comrade, and the man broke from his leaning support of the wall to walk over to stand before Nestor and offer a hand to shake.

Nestor shook the man’s hand, “Howdy.”

The man firmly shook once, “Hello there.”

“Nestor Creede. Nice to meet you.”

“Jack Patel. Nice to meet you, too, Nestor,” he looked at the strange boy in front of him with a certain cautious amusement.

“Say, any idea where a guy could get a cot?” Nestor squeaked, a deferential tone in his voice.

Jack leaned back against a crate on his hands. He squinted at Nestor for a moment, then said, “Cot? Nah, there’s no extra cots around here. You might could sleep up in the loft. They’s some old blankets up there.” Jack gestured with his chin towards the ladder dead-center in the room, which led up to the partial second floor of the barn.

Nestor followed his glance, “That where you sleep?”

Jack shook his head and pointed to a cot and chest wedged between two pieces of machinery, “My cot’s over yonder.”

Nestor looked up at the loft and then looked all around the room again, before bringing his eyes back to rest upon Jack, “You all live in here? Why don’t you have rooms in the house?”

“House is for the family,” Jack replied with a shrug.

Nestor looked Jack up and down, “You ain’t family?”

Jack shook his head, but said nothing else.

“What are you, then? Because if I can be honest, you don’t look much like the rest of the people here.”

“Well, yer right that I’m no Edenite. Wouldn’t want anyone to make that mistake,” Jack smiled hugely at Nestor, “I’m Chrysean, originally from Aram. Ever heard of either of those places?”

Nestor shook his head, “I’ve heard of Chryse, but never heard of that other place.”

“Aram’s on the far eastern edge of the Mariner Valley. It’s a great crater that filled with water back in ancient times. The water left behind a chaos of mesas, and the original Aramaen settlers excavated those mesas. Used the drainages between them as city streets. Aram is one of the only open-air cities on Mars. You never heard any of that before?”

Nestor shook his head again, “I don’t think so, but I been out of school for a while. Maybe I did learn it and forgot.”

It was Jack’s opportunity to look him up and down, now, “You been out of school for a while? How old are you, Nestor?”

Nestor told him the same lie he’d told the Edenites, “I’m ten. I know I look young. But I’m already a year into my studies to be a shuttle pilot.”

“That so? How’d you come to be here, Nestor? This place is about as far from any pilot school as you can get, I imagine,” Jack said, looking theatrically around the inside of the barn.

“I had to head back home to the Sinai Plains to take care of my pa. He was dyin’ and I wanted to be with him in his last moments. After he died, I was drivin’ back and got caught in a helluva sandstorm. These folks rescued me.”

Jack looked at him for an uncomfortable several moments, “Bet they stole your truck, too? Claimed it as salvage?”

Nestor blinked, “How did you know?”

Jack smiled a knowing smile at Nestor and shook his head, “They do that all the time. Claim outsider’s vehicles as salvage. They done it to me, too, ‘cept I wasn’t broke down, I was jes parkin’ for the night.”

“How in the world did they justify that? They claim it as salvage with you in it?”

“Outsiders ain’t people to ‘em, is how. They come out to my truck and knocked on my door while I was fixin’ dinner. Tol me I couldn’t stop there, and tol me they couldn’t let me drive on the roads at night neither. Said it was unsafe to be out. Offered me a meal and a bed in they dome, which I took ‘em up on. Then, next morning when I went to recover my truck, they tol me they’d confiscated it as salvage.”

“When was this?”

“’Bout a year ago, now. Wasn’t even at this dome, neither. They sold me couple months in, to Eagan.”

“Yer tellin’ me they made you a slave?”

Jack nodded, with a gleam in his eyes, and said nothing else.

“How can they get away with somethin’ like that?”

“Who’d stop ‘em? They whole economy runs on slaves and on kids. Which is in a lot of ways better’n slaves. Surely you noticed how many kids Eagan’s got…”

“What about the authorities? In Tharsis, or in Chryse? Cain’t they do somethin’ to help?”

“No authorities want to deal with these people. They cain’t even get in these domes if the Edenites don’t want ‘em in here.”

“So they jes made you a slave, and you didn’t do nothin’ about it? Jes stayed and worked?” Nestor heard a couple of snorts from the other occupants of the room, who had been overhearing their conversation. He looked around to see who it had been, but all eyes were on other tasks.

“Where am I gonna go? Where are any of us gonna go? We walk out those doors and it’s a thousand kilometers before you find someone who ain’t an Edenite. Or at least, to find one who would be interested in rescuin’ an Edenite slave. Walkin’ out of these places is either death or bein’ brought back. It’s why they don’t have none of us chained, and why the door yonder is unlocked. This whole damn dome is a prison, and we jes inmates within it, and those like Eagan are the guards and wardens.”

Nestor felt a sense of self-important justice as he replied, “When Eagan takes me to Melas in a few days, I’m gonna find someone who can come out here and fix this. Ain’t right to have slaves, no matter how much your economy depends on it.”

There were more snorts and a few suppressed chuckles about the room as Nestor said this, and he looked around again, puzzled at the faces that were now staring incredulously back at him. Finally, Jack leaned forward with a devilish grin and said, “What makes you think you ain’t a slave too?”

*****

Nestor set up a nest of blankets in the barn loft that night, and found a place for his meager sundries, and he lay in that pile of ratty cloth and pressed his eyes closed. But sleep would not come in this strange place. His mind raced as he replayed the night’s dinner, the bright faces all pointed towards him, hanging on every word, the food which even now strained his belly, and what Jack had said to him, but mostly he lay there thinking about what to do next. He knew Jack was right about some elements of his situation, namely that he had no transport, no money, and no idea of where to go. He’d been on the run for only a few days, but as he laid in this strange barn in the dark and listened to the men below him snore, it felt to him he’d been running much longer, and if he left this place would continue to do so forever, never tarrying, finding no solace in all this windswept world.

He nevertheless convinced himself to confront Eagan about Jack’s assertions and to question his prospective captor closely about his status in this place. By the time the sun’s rays came streaking through the cracks in the barn’s wallboards, Nestor had prepared all his arguments to the finest detail and had argued them inside the confines of his head innumerable times, each time with great merit, and was feeling quite confident that he would be no slave in this place. He would be different. He would argue for his freedom and be granted it by virtue. Assuming Jack hadn’t been lying to him entirely.

He climbed down from the loft and demurred eating any of the porridge the men offered him for breakfast and marched out the main doors and left them open for all to bear witness to his impending rhetorical success. He walked up to the house, and he knocked on the door and the pregnant serving-girl from the night before answered, wearing a thin housedress that clung to her extended belly and supple breasts like film, stretched nearly translucent. She noticed Nestor staring, and she reached and grabbed a housecoat from a hook by the door and covered herself with it, smiling an embarrassed sort of smile while she beckoned him inside.

Nestor looked at his shoes, “Morning, ma’am. I come over to talk to Eagan. Is he up and about yet?”

“Oh. Well, I believe just about everone’s up, just waiting for breakfast. You might could find them in the dining-room,” she turned from him with an air of dismissal and moved towards the back of the house.

“Eagan didn’t introduce us last night. I’m Nestor,” Nestor called out to her receding back.

The girl looked over her shoulder, a thin smile upon her lips, “Eagan didn’t introduce us because he don’t need to introduce us. But it’s nice to make your acquaintance, Nestor. I’m Asa.”

Nestor jogged a couple of steps to catch up with her, “It’s nice to meet you, too, Asa. Why don’t he need to introduce us? You’re a member of the family too, ain’t you? He introduced everone else that’s in his family.”

Asa stopped and looked at Nestor, stretching her back a bit as she did so, “Well, it’s complicated. I really ain’t a member of Eagan’s family, no. Menfolk call girls like me ‘fillies’. But we do stay in the house and take our meals with the same food as the family, if not at the same table. So I guess there’s that.”

“You a kind of servant?”

“I keep the house and cook and serve the meals, sure. But I ain’t exactly a servant, neither.”

“I don’t understand,” Nestor shook his head, trying to reason out the riddles that Asa seemed dead-set on telling.

“I ‘spose you don’t. You’re an outsider to us, Nestor. It ain’t your place to understand,” Asa turned and began walking again towards the back of the house.

Nestor followed her, choosing to ignore her dismissal once again, “Well, I think it’s cruel to make a girl as preg-…as… as you do all the work I seen you do last night. Is there anythin’ I can do to help you out?”

Asa grinned at him as they passed into the kitchen, where the two other ‘fillies’ were busy cooking strips of bacon and mounds of pancakes. “Oh, I like keepin’ busy. What you can do for me is let me get back to it. You’ll be helpin’ out plenty. Trust in that, Nestor.” With that, Asa shoved Nestor gently back out of the kitchen and closed the door in his face.

He turned and walked to the dining room, and Eagan saw him darkening that door and excused himself from his cup of coffee and backed Nestor out of the room and closed the dining-room door behind them and looked domineeringly at his charge, “What you need, Nestor? Them boys out in the barn not offer you anything to eat?”

Nestor shook his head perfunctorily and jumped right into his opening arguments, “Nah, I wanted to come talk to you. I’m wonderin’ about the terms of our arrangement.”

Eagan nodded and looked at the boy with a half-smile and replied, “Our arrangement?”

“About you takin’ me to Melas. About me payin’ you back fer what you out.”

“Ok,” Eagan responded with a deliberate tone, “I thought we understood each other just fine last night, but what questions you got?”

“I’m wonderin’ if there’s an amount or a tally or somethin’ to help me know when I’ve got you paid back.”

Eagan shook his head and with the same slow manner as before responded, “No, there’s no ledger book, or what have you, trackin’ anything like that. I’ll keep track, up here,” he tapped his temple twice with his index finger.

“I’m jes to take it on faith, then? How will I know when I’m paid up and can leave?”

“We all take the whole world on faith, Nestor. This ain’t no different. I’ll let you know when you’s paid up. But you ain’t done a lick of work yet, son, so how’s about we focus on getting some work done…any work done, really…before we talk about you bein’ square with me?”

Nestor had other arguments prepared, but Eagan’s nonchalant approach to his young captive so angered the boy that he bluntly blurted out, “Am I a slave, Eagan? Do you think you own me now?”

Eagan cocked his head and stared at Nestor for a long time and finally responded, “You ain’t no slave, boy. Who been tellin’ you that? One of them boys out in the barn?”

Nestor didn’t respond, for in that moment he felt danger radiating from his host in waves and instinctively knew that offering Jack’s name carried unforeseeable implications. Eagan didn’t wait long for a response and his face reddened as he continued, “Well, fine. Don’t tell me then. Whoever said that to you didn’t give you the whole story, Nestor. It’s our custom to ask strangers to work to repay their debts. We don’t really use money, you see. Not the way you’re used to, at least. It does get tricky, with those who owe us bigger debts, because we take on a certain amount of cost to keep ‘em fed and clothed and sheltered. Some folk never do get clear of their debt. But most do, eventually. A couple of them boys out there have been clear of any debt to me for years, and they choose to stay on even now they are clear. You understand? I ain’t holding no one captive and I ain’t got no slaves, nor would I accept one if one were offered to me.”

Nestor scrunched up his face in confusion and asked, “You mean some of them men are free and they still stay out there in the barn? Why?”

“Everyone don’t have a home, son. Nor a place to go back to. Nor a way to get there. And what would they do if I took ‘em into a city and just left ‘em there? Call it whatever you want, but a lot of folk would much rather stay and work for me and live in my barn and eat my good food than sleep rough on the streets of some hole in the ground eatin’ whatever passes for food in those places.”

Nestor felt a sting as Eagan uncovered his deeper angst and looked down at his feet for several moments while he tried to compose himself or mount some new rhetorical charge, but he felt so deflated nothing came to mind. Eagan seemed to lose patience with him and leaned down to put himself in Nestor’s view line and drew his gaze and asked, much like a disappointed father, “Can I go back to my coffee, now? We got ourselves a busy day and we need to get ready for it. Seems to me you got some reckoning to do with your situation.”

Nestor did not reply and after only a couple more moments of his silent stare, the older man spun on his heel and walked back into the dining room with nothing further said.

*****

Days so similar they ran together into one shared memory followed, days of ceaseless manual labor where the passage of time was only marked by meals taken and work performed, where both meal and labor consisted from day to day of so little variation that past, present, and future were indistinguishable. Nestor found the work novel, and he found he quite liked the open-feeling environs within the dome, and he formed a quick friendship with Jack, and he felt guilt towards all matters equally.

The other laborers in Eagan’s indenture were not at all friendly to Nestor, nor to their companions in this place, with the only exception being a man known to all as Old Nate. Old Nate was so aged that little manual labor was requested of him, but he seemed to serve duty as a sort of elder slave statesman and go-between of Eagan’s, and in this role he shone. Old Nate looked to be composed of little more than bones, and preferred to sit cross-legged upon a large box in the barn that Nestor never once witnessed him ascend, but which served adequately as a lectern from which he could dispense his wisdom.

One evening, after a day spent coercing a belligerent person-sized ‘automatic’ tiller through a barren field, Nestor fell to sit beside the cookstove within the barn, and with exhaustion questioned Jack why the Edenites didn’t use some other form of technology for the task. He’d been at it all day, and had at least another day of tilling waiting for him, and could not grasp at all why a person was necessary for this job and not a robot of sorts. Or at least a larger piece of machinery that could be sat inside and driven.

Jack smiled at Nestor and shook his head and shrugged, “Don’t know where they’d get such a thing, personally. These people don’t really manufacture stuff. They’re farmers. The only ones, really.”

“No one else lives in domes like this?”

Old Nate interjected from his station above them, “There are others, but not many. Mostly lowland countries. Hellas uses some domes to grow food, and Isidis too. But these domes ain’t ‘xactly reliable. They fail pretty regular.”

“Fail?” Nestor asked the old bald head protruding over the edge of the box and gazing down upon him.

“Yup. Seen more’n a few of these domes fail in my time. Usually when that happens, everone inside dies. No other domes’ll want to take ‘em on. Fair amount of superstition about that. Plus, it’s a drain on resources wherever they go.”

“How does a dome fail? Why cain’t they jes fix whatever goes wrong and recover?”

“They fail lots of ways. I seen soil go bad in some. Couldn’t grow nothin in it. Storms’ll sometimes cause domes to crack and leak air. Sometimes crops jes won’t produce. No one really knows why.”

Jack piped in, looking back and forth between Nestor and Old Nate, “Worryin’ about tryin’ to recover is why they don’t trade much. Ever one of these domes is jes full of folks who are deathly afraid of a failure, and are stockpilin’ their food to wait one out. Cain’t hardly get ‘em to even trade for water ice.”

Old Nate nodded, “It’s sacrilege to trade foods. And that’s why. A man trading food for anything else is givin’ away his family’s chance of survival during a failure, for somethin’ he likely needs less.”

“Plus, they’d rather steal any tech that comes through here,” a man sitting against the far wall offered, to a round of snickers from the others.

Old Nate smiled and nodded at that, too, “Salvage’s a heckuva resource, that much is true. Helps to motivate all the ice delivery comp’nies to offer steep discounts for leavin’ they trucks alone, too.”

The others picked up the conversation here and began speaking of all the Edenite fairytales, both witnessed and recounted, and Jack gave Nestor a hooded look and led him out of the barn to stand in the building’s foreyard. Nestor looked at Jack questioningly, and Jack leaned forward and gestured Nestor closer.

“Might want to be a bit more careful what you say around Old Nate,” Jack whispered, “you cain’t be sure that none of it’ll get back to Eagan.”

“Ain’t Old Nate in the same situation as the rest of us?”

“Old Nate’s been livin’ here longer’n any of us. Includin’ Eagan. He been here so long, whatever debt he owed was paid off ‘fore Eagan took over.”

“Eagan tol me some men here have paid off they debt,” Nestor whispered in reply, nodding his head as he spoke.

“Some? Nah. Jes Old Nate. He might could live in the house if he wanted. You should ask yerself why he’d choose to live out here with us instead.”

Nestor looked at Jack, hoping he would clarify his implication, but Jack held his gaze for a moment and straightened and turned and wandered off down the driveway into the dark.

*****

The only thing that broke the monotony of Edenite life were the sermons, which were mandatory for all. Nestor was assured by Jack and the other indentured men that the sermons occurred on a weekly basis, and Nestor agreed with this only begrudgingly, because to him they seemed much more frequent. Nestor enjoyed the sermons, even if he understood little of the settings or morals of their subjects. He enjoyed them as stories of another world, one populated with ancient people more blessed than his who, though primitive, lived a life of inconceivable abundance and comfort. It was a wonderful fantasy.

At first Nestor walked with his indentured brethren to the church, and on those first few walks he noticed that Asa and her compatriots were nowhere to be found, but were present at the sermons themselves, sequestered at the back corner of the building amongst others with whom they seemed kin. He decided they must come by covert routes, and on the next church day he feigned nausea and told the others that he’d be along shortly and waited until they disappeared down the road and watched the house through the slits in the barn wallboards to see when the bondmaids would emerge, which they did after no time at all. Asa’s compatriots were the first to leave, shouting assurances over their shoulders to Nestor’s subject herself that they would save a seat for her when they got there.

It was quite some time longer before Asa waddled forth from the house, so long that Nestor practically burst from the barn with impatience to assert himself as her willing chaperone when she finally appeared. Asa seemed to understand implicitly what the boy was about, as she responded to his sudden and awkward emergence with little more than a stern look.

“Were you waiting for me in there, Nestor?” she asked bluntly, a wry smile upon her face.

Nestor felt his cheeks redden and shook his head, neither wishing to repeat his nausea story nor acknowledge the outright truth to her. She cocked her head at Nestor while he struggled, then shook her head in apparent disbelief and forged ahead on her own, “I don’t mind the company, if you were.”

Nestor looked at his shoes and after brief moments of this, Asa tired of his timidity and began walking down the road towards the church. Nestor fell in beside her, still not daring to look at her. After a while, he muttered, just loud enough for her to hear, “Jes noticed that you all don’t get to come with everone else, is all. It didn’t feel right to go with them, and…”

He could see her staring at him from the corner of his eye as he tried and failed to put his thoughts to words. Finally she tried, with a questioning tone, “It didn’t feel right to make the pregnant girl walk by herself?”

Nestor looked up and caught her eyes and they glistened, “I do appreciate it, Nestor. You are a thoughtful young man. Even if you seem to go out of your way to avoid understandin’ how things work here.”

Nestor looked at her, but didn’t have time to annunciate any question before Asa continued, seeming to read his mind, “It’s adorable. Don’t take offense, please. You’re so earnest, and you just want to help, and that’s so special. But hun, I’m a filly. You shouldn’t feel…any of the feelin’s you have for me. You understand?”

“It ain’t romantic…” Nestor lied, but Asa raised her small hand to silence him.

“It don’t matter if it is or isn’t. Like my momma used to say - ‘young men form they intentions first and give reason to ‘em afterwards’.” She smiled at Nestor.

Nestor smiled back, and they walked in silence for some time down the road. “She around still? Your momma?”

Asa shook her head, “No, she died some time back. How about yours? She still back on the farm?”

“No, she died a long time ago, now,” Nestor stared at the verdant fields around them, bowing in the breeze blown from the dome’s giant recirculating fans held suspended high above, “was yours a…a filly too?”

Asa nodded, “She was, yeah. She come from outside, just like you, except she was just a little one when the people here found her. No one knows what happened, and she couldn’t never remember neither. They said they found her by some smoking wreckage out in the dunes, just her, her whole family burnt to a crisp in the truck they’d been in. How she ended up outside and them in…I think it had to’ve been the Lord done that.”

She was looking at Nestor meaningfully. He tried for a sage nod in response, “It would take a miracle, and another one to find her before she ran out of air.”

They walked for a short time longer and listened to their feet scrape on the gravel.

“She grew up and became a filly and then that made you a filly too? That how it works?”

“Not quite. The elders in the community decide those kinds of things, and it just ended up the way it ended up.”

“They decided for you? And for your momma too?”

“Everyone’s got a role, Nestor. And all them roles are necessary to keep our tribe thriving. Look around you. You ever seen anything like this back where you’re from?”

Nestor shook his head, “I ain’t never seen a single plant, let alone anythin’ like this.”

“That’s it. We…these people in this dome and in the other Edenite domes, we’re all of us doing things that no one else on this world is capable of, and the reason why we’re able is that we each do our role and the Lord blesses us in accordance with that.”

“It’s incredible, it truly is,” Nestor said, looking around them, the din of the pre-sermon crowd inside the church growing in volume as they approached, “but don’t you ever wonder if they got somethin’ even more wonderful someplace else? They’s a lot of planet neither of us has ever seen out there.”

Asa gave him a stern look, “No, never. That would be doubting the Lord’s blessings and I won’t do it and no one here will stand for such a thing either, you understand? In fact, a lot of folk around here would take that question as sacrilege, and would want you out. Gone. And there ain’t nothing out beyond these walls, Nestor.”

*****

Nestor bent over the pump, trying to fit the motor housing back on while the wind whipped off the dome and stirred up the fine grained sand into a miniature vortex all around him. He worked at a frantic pace to prevent any of it from blowing into the motor itself. The pump motor was a mess of purloined parts from other, better devices. Some even looked as though they originated from vehicles, and nothing seemed to fit with any sort of precision, which did not help Nestor’s anxiety. He finally seated the housing, and he tightened the screws and then he straightened himself out of his awkward bend, feeling the muscles of his back stretch and burn at being allowed to move. He craned back to take in the multiple-kilometers-wide crystalline latticework structure made of doped glass and tiny conductive wires looming up and away from him, and imagined that it must join the sky itself at the unseen vertex.

Even after all this time here, he still struggled with the scale of the Edenite domes, especially from the outside, as they looked both part of the landscape and alien, both geologic and plastic. He twisted at the waist and stretched out his muscles more and looked at the many other domes, tiny in the distance, with black lines of road snaking between them all. He quelled a fleeting thought that he could run, take off across that expanse to find his freedom out there in the dust, and test the truth of Eagan’s repeated assurance that he was no captive here, but looking out to the horizon he saw nothing but other domes, and knew that there was no salvation in this entire Valley for him.

Nestor picked up the toolbox Eagan had lent him and walked over to the small airlock set into the wall half a kilometer clockwise from him around the dome, and he passed through at this point to see Eagan waiting for him on the other side.

Eagan looked sternly at him as they met, “Get that pump fixed, Nestor?”

“Yessir. Jes a bad stator. I was able to get ‘er workin’ though, without replacin’ it.”

“You sure? We have the parts. It’s no problem.”

“It’ll hold, trust me. We did this kinda fix all the time back home.”

Eagan nodded and looked distractedly away, “Ok. That’s fine. Nice work, Nestor. Listen, you been hanging about with one of my fillies, have you not?”

Nestor tried to look Eagan in the eye, but found it impossible, as Eagan was staring at something in the distance, or maybe nothing. It was hard to tell.

“You mean Asa? Yeah, we been goin’ to sermons together ever once in a while. She moves slower, bein’ pregnant as she is, and it seems to make her feel better to have someone stay behind and walk with her.”

Eagan looked back at Nestor and met his gaze and squinted, “You cain’t be doin that, Nestor. To other folk, folk who don’t know you like I do, it looks like you two are courtin’. Which cain’t be, because she’s my filly, you understand?”

“Nossir, I don’t think I rightly do. You all ain’t married, are you?”

Eagan winced, “It ain’t ‘xactly that simple, boy. A man is allowed some fillies, beyond his marriage, his wife consenting, of course. So few children make it, it’s a man’s duty to spread his seed, and it shore is hard on women, being pregnant. We need to till di-verse fields, if you catch me.”

“Yeah, I believe I understand that. I ain’t courtin’ her, sir, and I jes don’t see why anyone would care if we go to meetin’s together. But I didn’t mean to cause no trouble, Eagan, and I can stop walkin’ her, if it’s a problem.”

Eagan nodded curtly, “Good. See that you do. Speaking of meetings, you coming to service this afternoon?”

Nestor smiled, “I wouldn’t miss it for anythin’, Eagan.”

*****

Over the weeks, Nestor and Asa had developed a sort of post-dinner habit whereby they would sit in the chairs set up alongside the far barn wall after dinner and chat about their day. On this night, he’d been sitting in his usual seat for some time before Asa arrived and had spent his time alone, staring up at the stars. The cells of the dome, designed to focus the sun’s meager light enough to raise the temperature inside the dome to acceptable levels, crazily distorted the stars, magnifying some while disappearing others, and Nestor decided in that moment that he hated how wrong it made them all look, how it broke up the whorl of the Milky Way into twisted chunks. He tried to find Phobos or Deimos, but could make nothing out through the distortion. After several minutes of silent astronomy, he heard the crunch of Asa’s heavy footsteps as she approached. She eased down next to him and sighed heavily, and said naught else.

After a few moments of peaceful companionship, Nestor looked over to her and said, “Eagan come out to talk to me this mornin’ before service. He don’t want me walkin’ you to meetin’s no more.”

Asa looked at Nestor in the dark, “He don’t? Well, he is allowed to decide that. Cain’t have folks thinking the wrong thing.”

Nestor curled his lip and looked down, “But why, though? I jes don’t understand why he’s allowed to choose what you do and what anyone does with you. It don’t seem fair.”

Asa turned and looked up at the insane stars above them and without turning away said, “I’m carryin’ his child, Nestor. I agreed to let him choose to do what he wishes when I agreed to be his.”

“Yeah, his ‘filly’. What does that word even mean? I ain’t never heard that word before comin’ here.”

“Don’t rightly know. It has somethin’ to do with horses, I think. Back on Old Earth.”

“You ever even seen a horse? I only ever heard of ‘em in real old stories.”

Asa shook her head, and thought for a moment, finally offering, “I hear one of the domes has ‘em, but I ain’t never seen ‘em.”

“So then what does it have to do with you? What makes you a filly and not Ester?”

Asa glared at him in the dark and her eyes shone and she held her finger to her mouth, “Now just you be quiet. They’s a world of difference between us. For one, she’s his wife, the mother of his children. ALL of his children, you understand? Even this babe inside me right now. She is its mother, too. I am just a field for his seed.”

“Don’t that bother you, though? You won’t get to raise your own child, be a mother?”

“It don’t bother me at all. I was born of a filly too, and both her and my mother raised me up just the same as all the other kids. That’s what’ll happen with this one, too, with Ester.”

“But what if this one’s a girl? You gonna be fine with havin’ your baby girl traded off to some man to be his filly, jes somethin’ he gets to fuck and get pregnant and don’t owe nothin’ to?”

Asa spun in her seat and in the dark he could see that her eyes were glossy with tears, and then she reached across and slapped Nestor hard.

“You watch your mouth, Nestor. Eagan provides for me, and everone else in this house, too. Just as a man should. Eagan even provides for you, ungrateful as you’re bein’. He don’t owe me nothin’ because what he owes me, he been payin’ since he took me on. And I’m lucky to have him. A lotta girls ain’t so lucky to even be fillies, and I’m grateful to be here. As should you be.”

*****

Nestor stayed sitting in that chair beside the barn for a long time after Asa waddled away to the house. Jack appeared in the fan of light cast by the open barn doors and stood there as a shadow and looked at him before sauntering over.

“Nice to be out in the open like this, ain’t it? Almost makes it feel like you livin’ in a real environment.”

Nestor shrugged and stared up at the crazy stars, and Jack dropped into the chair next to him with a groan.

“Your parents ever tell you the story of Ascraeus’s love?”

Nestor shrugged, “I think my momma use to tell it ever once in a while when I was little. Why?”

“Want to hear it again?”

Nestor shrugged again, “What for.”

“Maybe it’d help.”

“Help?”

“Yeah,” Jack directed a meaningful look at Nestor in that gloom.

“Go on then.”

Jack adopted a theatrical tone, and turned to face his young friend, “Well not many people know it, but Ascraeus is the eldest of the Tharsis Mountains, and is even older than Olympus, who himself has caused so much turmoil over the eons. This also makes Ascraeus one of the eldest mountains on the planet, surpassed in age by only old Mount Alba. In the early years of his life, Ascraeus felt quite alone. Sure, he had Alba to keep him company, but old Alba was already quite the crank, even in those days, and while Ascraeus enjoyed his presence ever once in a while, he could only take so much complaint.”

“Ascraeus took a journey to see if he could find anyone else to be his companion. Ascraeus journeyed long and far, criss-crossin’ the surface of young Mars many times, hopin’ against hope that he would find some other geology who would love him. But Mars was still quite young, and her surface was mostly flat and empty, but for Ascraeus and Alba and her primordial oceans, and so Ascraeus could find no one to be his friend.”

“Ascraeus fled the highlands and headed north, thinkin’ that perhaps at the North Pole he might meet someone. He’d never been to the North Pole before, and it seemed like just the place to meet someone new. But as he traveled north, he came upon a vast, impassable sea. The ocean Chryse. Chryse was young at this time, havin’ just been formed from the waters that settled from Mars’s early clouds, and she was curious about this huge fiery mountain that had appeared on her shores. Ascraeus called to Chryse and asked if she could part her waters for him, explainin’ to her he wished to venture to the North Pole in search of a soul mate, or at least a new friend.”

“Chryse found the huge volcano intriguin’, if fairly naïve, for while Chryse was much younger than Ascraeus, her waters touched many things and she was very wise in the ways of the world, as all oceans must be. Chryse told Ascraeus that there was nothin’ for him at the North Pole, and that her waters extended to and covered the Pole entirely. Ascraeus was crestfallen to hear this, and Chryse felt pity and empathy for him, for she often felt alone as well, and she asked him if he would like to stay awhile on her shores. Ascraeus eagerly agreed and, practically unprompted, he told her all about his journeys, and Chryse asked him many questions about them, for she liked hearin’ him speak and liked that he seemed to grow happier as he talked to her.”

“Ascraeus had never told his story to anyone, as few others in those times had bothered to ask him, nor had they even seemed to care, and he rattled on over every detail, afraid to come to the end and stop speakin’. Chryse was enthralled with his story too, and makin’ him happy made her happy, and so she let him speak. Eventually, they both noticed that Ascraeus’s huge bulk was pullin’ down the beach lands where he’d settled. Chryse warned him that, if he didn’t move soon, a depression would form there that Chryse could never fully remove her waters from. So, with great reluctance on both parts, Ascraeus left that place, and wished Chryse well.”

“Over the followin’ months Ascraeus thought more and more about Chryse. He decided he was in love with her, for no one else had ever been so interested in what he had to say, and no one else had made him feel so wanted. And so he went back to the beach where he first met her, and he proposed he would settle his bulk strategically, creatin’ a broad drainage that Chryse could safely backflow into and out of, so they could be together. Chryse could see that the young volcano had fallen caldera over slope in love with her, and while she didn’t wish to break his heart, she could not love him back, no matter how much she otherwise enjoyed his company. Chryse begged Ascraeus not to follow through with his plan, for fear that he might do all of this only to come to the truth of the matter, that she would never love him, but there is no reasonin’ with volcanoes.”

“Eventually Ascraeus was done with his works, and had created a broad alluvial plain for Chryse to flow her waters onto, and so she did. Ascraeus chose a perch on the cliffs above that plain, and from here they found they could communicate quite comfortably. But upon settlin’ on his perch, Ascraeus quickly ran out of new things to say to Chryse, and Chryse became bored of hearin’ the same stories from Ascraeus, and soon they fell into an awkward silence which made plain how big of a mistake Ascraeus’s efforts had been. Chryse grew very uncomfortable with the shallow waters of the plain, and informed Ascraeus that she needed to return to her normal basin, to stretch herself into someplace deep and cool and dark.”

“Ascraeus panicked at the thought of bein’ left alone again, and grew possessive and begged Chryse to stay, but Chryse didn’t want to lead the poor mountain on any further, and told him she was leavin’. To convince her to stay, Ascraeus explained his undyin’ love to the ocean, and demanded that she stay, or risk breakin’ his heart. Chryse told Ascraeus that sometimes a broken heart is a necessary part of life, and that he couldn’t love her, for he did not truly know her, and that once she was gone for good, he would come to his senses and be the better for the experience.”

“Ascraeus refused to hear it and explained to Chryse that volcanoes only survive through their passion. It is what keeps their magma chambers hot, and it is what allows them to rebuild those parts of themselves that wind and water wear away. He told Chryse that leavin’ him now would quell his passion and would break his heart, and then he would cool and surely die.”

“Chryse felt great sympathy for the volcano, but she explained to him she couldn’t love him, and there wasn’t nothin’ that could change that, and then she left those plains forevermore.”

“Ascraeus’s prediction came true, for her leavin’ broke his heart and cooled his vast magma chamber, and so Mount Ascraeus began to die. His lava could never again gurgle up past his caldera, and he could never again hurl pyroclastic flows down his slopes, and after many eons he eventually froze, in the place we find him today.”

“One day, far into our very own future, he will erode away, and the wind will blow all his dust into the basin that Chryse once occupied, and will make a new ocean there, composed of only Ascreaus. In this way and this way alone will he finally be able to join his true love.”

Nestor looked at Jack as he finished, “You think I got a broken heart?”

“Don’t think that. Is that the only thing you got from that whole damn story?”

“That’s about it. And I guess you think I’m pretty naïve.”

The boy looked out at the field of wheat in the dark and listened to it rustle in the false wind.

“Don’t think that neither. What I do think is that folks get stuff in they heads all muddled up, and sometimes others are happier to let them be muddled if it means not hurtin’ ‘em in the present. Which jes makes everthin’ worse. A little pain now can prevent a lot later.”

Nestor nodded and looked at the stars. “You got any stories about preventin’ pain altogether?”

Jack smiled in the dark and shook his head. “None of those.”