The Unknown Sky: A Novel of the Moon

All Rights Reserved © 1999,2000 by John William Dwyer

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Contents

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS:

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

GLOSSARY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For WD, who made his mark,

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS:

Listed in Order of Appearance

Father Martin Sheeran. Jesuit priest, the subject of the probe at CATLUM 1.

Father Jerome Seldon. Jesuit priest stationed at CATLUM 1. Friend of Father Martin.

Pope Sylvester IV, born John Mickovic, leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal Nukrume is the Vatican secretary of state.

Doctor Valerie Kirova, medical doctor, sent to the moon to examine Father Martin.

Professor Frank Curtis, psychologist assigned to the lunar investigation team.

Elaine Mai Wu is a kinetic therapist at the Sinopan moon base. Mr. Oda is the assistant governor of the Sinopan moon base. Professor Pierre Duroc, chief of the lunar investigation team. Governor Chou is the highest official at the Sinopan moon base.

Jake Benzuli is an agent for Transorbital Entertainment.

Father Pablo de Rio y Huerta, Dominican priest.

Father Timothy O’Malley is the senior Jesuit at CATLUM 1.

The Confessor is the spiritual advisor to Cardinal Nukrume.

Father Charles Brandt. Jesuit priest stationed at CATLUM 1.

Father Tran Van Duc. Jesuit priest stationed at CATLUM 1.

The President is the president of the United States.

The Director is the director of the CIA.

Lieutenant Haruna is a security officer at the Sinopan base.

Eamon Rodriguez is an entertainment agent and rival of Jake

Benzuli.

*Please note that along with this list, there is a Glossary of terms at the end of the book.

CHAPTER ONE

There was a video transmission from the surface of the moon. A horizon of chalky rock and black sky appeared on-screen. Three people wearing space suits shuffled into view, raising puffs of dust with each step. They halted on a smooth slope and turned towards the camera. The angle widened to frame the scene. Two of the figures began to kneel. One remained standing.

He gestured and said, Are we ready, Jerome?

Yes, Martin.

Good. I want to record today’s prayers. Give me time to go under and don’t interfere, Martin said.

His companions bowed and folded their hands.

Martin sank down, but not like the others. He sat, cross-legged, like a Buddha. He spread his hands and rested them on his knees, with the palms upright. He stayed this way for a long while without moving. Sunlight gleamed from his helmet, transparent face shield and white protective suit.

The camera focused on his face. His eyes were barely open and his breathing diminished. He became rigid. The lens panned back.

A digital clock at the bottom of the screen rolled continuously. Minutes went by but nothing happened. The two observers on the moon shifted their knees and looked restless.

Martin stirred. He reached for something about his neck. The snaps at the base of his helmet flipped up, and the oxygen mixture inside hissed as it escaped. The other men stiffened. They looked at one another, but stayed rooted, and gazed back at Martin through the intense light.

Martin calmly turned off his chest respirator, removed all the connectors, and finally the helmet itself. He placed it on the dirt beside him and resumed his previous meditation pose. He was almost floating in the void, looking beyond and within. The sudden loss of atmosphere had no appreciable effect on him. He did not gasp for breath or burst into a mass of blood and organs, torn by the tremendous surge of internal pressure attending such exposure. Instead, he sat serenely, under a barrage of searing radiation, without a breath of air, in the vacuum of lunar space.

His counterparts kept their hands joined in prayer and did nothing. They were turned somewhat, and their features were obscured, but Martin was clearly visible throughout.

Fifty-four minutes and sixteen seconds after the start of the broadcast, Martin replaced the helmet and engaged his oxygen. A whoosh sounded as gas flooded back into the suit again. His respiration came freely. He was alive. It was miraculous, and impossible.

He stood, and, without a word, beckoned his fellows. They started to leave and the transmission ended. Martin had been at risk for over half an hour.

John Mickovic had watched the entire exhibition on his desktop computer. That was live, he thought. It came over an open channel. Millions of people must have seen it.

He stared at the empty screen. Then a slow, wry smile played across his face. He knew these men. He had sent them to the moon.

John Mickovic was the son of an autoworker from Lansing, Michigan. After graduating from MIT with advanced degrees in physics, he surprised many by joining the Catholic priesthood. As a teacher and clergyman he sought to harmonize religion and science. He had rekindled the debate between them in a series of unique documentaries called Transformations, which focused on the heightened potential for individual growth in the twenty-first century.

He became a charismatic speaker and fundraiser. As archbishop of Detroit he organized massive nonde-nominational programs with corporate leaders to rebuild the city. He addressed issues such as worker training and the integration of human being and machine. He reassessed the headlong flight of super civilization and the trendy barbarism that stalked its underside. Throughout, he remained a pragmatist, never doctrinaire, and became a spokesperson for Catholicism as it entered its third millennium.

Named a cardinal, a prince of the Church, shortly before the death of Leo XV, he was a progressive voice at the ensuing papal election. Science, he contended, had a role to play in solving the problems it had helped create. He suggested that the Church should actively cooperate in this process. Some thought his emphasis on the new technologies was misplaced. Traditionalists argued that the resources of the Church should serve the poorest nations. They insisted on appointing a caring, pastoral man of the people to be the next pope. As the conclave wore on, ballot after ballot, it became clear that another kind of leader was needed. Mickovic and his allies knew the developed countries had the means to aid the Third World, but without astute leadership, nothing substantial would result. Mickovic understood science and the financial arenas. He could mobilize vast projects. This potential elevated him as a compromise nominee to the throne of St. Peter in his sixtieth year. With due humility, he accepted.

He took the unlikely name, Sylvester IV, although the news media routinely called him Mickovic. Pundits noted that Sylvester II, an obscure pope from the Middle Ages, was reputed to be an alchemist. Nobody remembered Sylvester III, so what was the point in taking this name? The new pontiff laughed off these speculations, and left interrogators in a cloud of cigar smoke. He just liked the name. From the very start he was a different sort of pope.

It was his deal with Sinopan two years later, to establish CATLUM 1, the Catholic Lunar Mission, that grabbed the attention of observers, and roused furor within the Church. Sinopan, the great conglomerate of Chinese and Japanese business and government agencies, had succeeded where NASA had failed. They had a colony several thousand strong on the moon called The Wheel. Discovery of caches of water below the lunar surface and expertise in hydroponics farming had made them self-sufficient. They were pioneering survival techniques on a scale previously unimagined.

It was not clear to outsiders how Mickovic persuaded Sinopan to build and supply CATLUM 1, though a substantial lease was assumed. The contract was not made public but it included a non-proselytizing clause. The small base at Maginus Crater, located several miles from the Wheel, was intended to be a space research center, perhaps the first of a series. Five Jesuit priests were stationed there. They set new endurance records for extraterrestrial habitation while quietly fulfilling their liturgical duties. Mass was celebrated daily.

Mickovic considered this to be in line with longstanding Church policy. Official patronage of science during the twentieth century had been sporadic. By the reign of John Paul II, however, the Vatican was augmenting astronomical studies. It sponsored the construction of optical-infrared telescopes in the mountains of Arizona, and similar projects followed. These were often under the direction of the Jesuit Order.

Sinopan would not be pleased by this lunar broadcast.

Neither would his secretary of state, Cardinal Nukrume, a brilliant and devout man, who was returning from a tour of his homeland in West Africa. He was Mickovic’s chief rival during the conclave, and he had felt slighted at being denied the papacy. His support was garnered by promising him control over Vatican foreign affairs. Nothing was more important to him than the economic development of destitute countries. He was increasingly critical of the high cost of the decades-old space research programs. Nukrume had been incredulous at the inception of CATLUM 1. Surely it was a further waste of energy and wealth. How many hospitals and clinics could be built instead? Now, the conservatives, with Nukrume as their spokesperson, would rightly point out that this incident lay directly at the pope’s door. These were his hand picked men.

Mickovic spoke into his headset. Were there any other signals? Any warnings, explanations, ravings?

An unseen technician replied, No, Holiness. But we have had a number of calls from our staff. Cardinal Nukrume has just landed at Leonardo Da Vinci airport. He says he must speak with you.

I’ll bet, Mickovic thought. Have my car brought up, he replied. I’m going back tonight. I want no public statements, official or unofficial, until tomorrow.

Yes, Holiness.

Mickovic removed the wire microphone and waved a hand over the console to deactivate the screen. He wore a workman’s black jumpsuit with the papal seal emblazoned on the breast. That, and the crucifix about his neck, were the only signs of rank. This outfit was his day-to-day dress. Sometimes witless prelates mistook him for an electrician or a plumber. He liked the anonymity. It was useful at times. In any case, he reverted to full robes and regalia during formal occasions and religious ceremonies.

He rose and walked down an aisle of computers, through a vast, dimly lit hall. Over twenty thousand volumes, some written on vellum parchment in letters of gold—the treasures of his cosmological archives—lined the shadowed eaves. This building had been a papal observatory, located in the Alban hills outside Rome, until rendered less effective by the glare of urban sprawl. Mickovic had upgraded it as a global administrative center for the continuing deep space tracking effort.

He approached a set of imposing oak doors. Beside them stood a large antique armillary sphere fashioned by Galileo. It was a frail contraption made of cir-

cular brass rings, one inside the other, each holding a planetary ball. A burnished orb sat in the center. This depiction of the Copernican view, that the sun was the hub of our solar system, rather than the earth, had brought Galileo before the Inquisition. The pope stopped for a moment and touched the creaky metal pieces.

In his early writings, Galileo had argued that man could never explain how the solar system behaved. He held that God could do whatever he wished, and that no restrictions could be placed upon his divine will. This was a view the Church initially favored. Others took it as an endorsement of the Copernican model. Stung, the Church turned on Galileo and made him publicly renounce the heliocentric position. It had taken the Church three hundred years to reevaluate that error. The real shame, the pontiff thought, may have been ignoring the main proposition, that God really could order the universe any way he chose.

Mickovic nodded grudgingly and proceeded. The doors opened automatically. Outside it was night, and a full moon reflected from the hood of a black opal Ferrari Testarossa. Italy still allowed the classic gas hounds on the road. Security men dressed in military smocks lingered by their cars and motorcycles. One officer approached him and said, Are they real, Holy Father? These pictures from the moon?

I’m not sure, Gilberto. What do you think?

The man shrugged. They can’t be real.

Mickovic hesitated for a moment and said, Maybe it’s a miracle?

Well, maybe, but…

The pope laughed a little and said, Let’s get moving.

Mickovic settled into the driver’s seat. There was no one else in the car. He started the engine and waved some of the troopers on ahead. He drove away, followed by the remainder of the squad, who kept up as best they could.

CHAPTER TWO

The basilica of St. Peter’s was closed to the public and restoration engineers were taking their midday break. Patterns of shade formed islands of repose among the pillars. Mickovic waited beside the gray mausoleum of a predecessor. A colossal statue was mounted on top of the tomb, and a skeletal stone hand clutching an empty hourglass crept beneath its robes.

Mickovic heard a whisper on the polished floor.

Cardinal Nukrume emerged from a beam of pale light and fine dust. He was tall, and lean as hardwood, his features finely honed. Clad in the scarlet garments of office, he moved with studied reserve, like a Roman senator.

Good afternoon, Your Holiness.

And to you, Eminence.

Your Holiness was deep in thought.

I like walking by the papal tombs. It helps me take the long view of things. Well, where shall we begin?

Your statements today…

Have not been satisfactory in all respects?

No, but they will buy us time. Have you spoken with Father Martin?

No. He will not talk to anyone. Father Timothy says he seems normal. He eats, works, sleeps, and breathes. But he has not accounted for his actions.

He refuses to speak to you?

Father Timothy is the man in charge at CATLUM 1. He was there and he can’t explain it. His take is that Martin is still churning all this inside him. If he does know what happened, he hasn’t found a way to explain it to us, so he’s keeping quiet. I have ordered them not to make any statements. Timothy doesn’t think Martin understands fully what occured, or the effect that signal had here.

It was less than a day since the transmission. The pope had gone on worldwide television from the Vatican that morning. His remarks were sensible and reassuring. He noted that the Catholic Church had had no advance knowledge of Father Martin’s actions, and that measures were being taken to ascertain the truth. He called on the scientific community to aid the Church with the upcoming investigation. He reminded the audience that no mainstream theologians were claiming a miracle had taken place: these matters demanded the utmost scrutiny. There was no expectation of any further display. He closed by pledging to divulge all information as it became available.

Mickovic tried mature reasoning but the public was in an uproar. There were demonstrations and rallies in front of cathedrals everywhere. News organizations gave the incident nonstop coverage. They replayed the video endlessly, analyzed it in minute detail, and consulted religious experts. They urged objectivity, but speculated wildly about possible ramifications. Was this a message from God? Was it proof of Christianity? Could anyone live in space without protective gear? Governments were noncommittal. Most paid cautious lip service to religious values, but cults and fanatics had singed them too often. They gratefully seconded the pope’s announcements. Judgment day may have arrived, but few elected officials wanted to lead the hymns.

We are being made a laughing stock, Holiness, Cardinal Nukrume said. Father Martin must explain this. If Father Timothy is too weak to compel him, then we must send someone else, immediately.

An outer space inquisitor? What would the media do with that? No, a scientific team is being assembled. The Life Sciences Commission is holding a conference in Rome right now. The best minds in space studies are at our disposal. They can’t wait to get up there.

Some of our personnel should go also, Holiness.

You don’t trust the scientists, Eminence?

Not in this, Holiness.

I’ll give that some thought.

They walked together in the quiet hall. Mickovic wrapped his arms tightly about himself and kept his head bowed. Nukrume strode on, hands behind his back. Mickovic thought of stories he had heard about the cardinal. In Europe or America, Nukrume dressed as any cleric would, but at home, in Africa, he liked to walk barefoot, and wear the brightly hued fabrics of the country. As a boy, Nukrume had herded cattle in the dusty fields with his friends, and fought off rogue elephants with nothing more than stones. He had received an education in the French Catholic schools. Rather than go into local politics as his father and brothers had, the young Nukrume entered the service of God, a bigger politician, his father had joked. There was laughter and dancing when he left for the seminary. Sometimes, when he went back, Nukrume danced with his people to celebrate a job well done, but he seldom laughed with them. Somewhere he had lost the laughter.

What did the chairman of Sinopan have to say, Holiness?

Mickovic grimaced. He said very little, but told me a lot, if you know what I mean. The combine is not directly involved in our internal matters. They will provide technical assistance in determining what happened. After all, it’s their equipment, even the cameras. And he wanted my assurance that we were not behind the incident. Still, I think he knew more about it than he said. They are not happy, but they are being cooperative. Maybe it has something to do with not wanting to offend millions of Catholic consumers.

Nukrume found this levity distracting. He could not see the sudden shift in the pope’s thinking, from the problem at hand to commercial considerations.

Were there any malfunctions? he asked.

There was no evidence of electronic failure. The signal was clean. At first glance, anyway.

Did he think someone could have planned this?

Mickovic caught the innuendo.

No, but stage management would not be too farfetched.

What about the other possibility, Holiness? Suppose it is real?

That raises a number of other issues.

The first, in my mind, is why a Jesuit priest was sitting in a Buddhist meditation position. What was he doing?

I don’t know, Eminence. That is troublesome, but maybe not all that important after all.

Your Holiness will appreciate my concern, Nukrume said sharply. How do we know what Martin and the rest are doing up there? Have they adopted Buddhist or Hindu rituals? In doctrinal terms, by confusing our practices with others, they reject our norms. How are the faithful here on earth to understand? Preposterous stories have floated about for years that Christ spent his youth in India. As if Christianity were rooted in these other religions! Martin revives this spurious ecumenism. We cannot accept this. They have been out of our sight for too long.

The Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuit Order, had produced more than its share of mavericks over the centuries. They were the intellectual shock troops of the Church, always in the forefront of scientific and educational enterprises, but sometimes questionable political or social movements as well. They had even been disbanded in 1773 because of their machinations in the courts of Europe, only to be reconstituted in 1814.

It is no surprise that this occurs to a gang of marooned Jesuits, the cardinal thought.

You are right to be alarmed, Eminence. Perhaps they are too cut off. Their tours are the longest on record. Martin and the others have been up there for years. But they are also an inspiration. They remind me of monks in the desert. They cling to a life of prayer and study in a harsh place. They have no comforts or amusements. Not even the sound of birds, or the touch of rain on their faces. It’s not hard to imagine something unusual happening to men so far from all they know.

Perhaps Your Holiness is too understanding. Some of them were your students. You have a natural pride in their achievements. But there is something wrong with all this. We should think about canceling the mission, for the good of the Church.

Mickovic stopped, and his voice rang off the stone around them. The whole world wants to know what happened up there, Eminence. We cannot simply pull up stakes and leave. And as for their work, yes, I am proud of them.

Your Holiness will forgive my bluntness. But the mysteries of the faith are becoming a joke. Everyone wants to know how we engineered this affair, and why.

We did not ‘engineer’ this, Cardinal. Besides, it might do ‘everyone’ good to ask a few spiritual questions. This has gotten their attention. We should make use of it.

Holy Mother Church does not need the publicity.

Let the scientists investigate first. If it is a fraud, so be it. If not, then we’ll step in. It’s my responsibility, Eminence.

Nukrume had to restrain himself. What could this well-fed American know about responsibility? Millions of children were starving in the teeming cities of Africa. While elsewhere in the continent, whole provinces were depopulated by soil exhaustion, war and sickness. Only Africa still suffered from AIDS, Ebola, and several newer diseases.

Imbli was the most virulent of these, and most perplexing. Imbli caused victims to collapse, lose control of their nervous systems, become paralytic, and eventually die. First seen as a form of epilepsy, or muscular atrophy, it was often mistakenly treated with anticonvulsive drugs. The condition escalated rapidly in people with weakened immune systems. It was not a brain disorder, or a genetic defect, although it could burrow into the DNA before the host succumbed. That it was not contagious was the one mitigating feature of the illness. A mutated form of parasite was suspected, but laboratory tests were inconclusive.

Why was so little money spent on this, and other Third World problems? Whenever Nukrume returned home, and especially when he left, he renewed the vow he had taken as a youth, to build Jerusalem in the barren hills of Africa. His people had waited long enough. It was time for Christianity to lead the wealthy nations and do God’s will. Nothing would stop Nukrume in this quest, including John Mickovic.

The pope read the cardinal’s pained expression. He was struck by the superb dignity of the man. I know you have the good of the Church in mind and heart, Eminence.

Holiness, my heart weeps for Christ’s most unwanted.

They are not forgotten.

Nonetheless, as your Secretary of State, I must protest the harm this affair is doing. It reveals the vanity of these scientific pursuits. We are pouring money into a void while shortchanging those souls placed in our care. Mombasa, Lagos, Johannesburg.the continent has been stripped of its foliage and its animals, every arable patch has been plowed, every possible well sunk. Nukrume stopped, overcome with emotion. Holiness, we have only one earth. We cannot abandon it.

Mickovic let silence fall between them. He knew Cardinal Nukrume was right. But would there ever be enough food, money, and good will? His narrative for humanity was different. Perhaps one earth was not enough. Perhaps there was another alternative. Sinopan had satellite colonies between earth and the moon. Where hundreds now lived, maybe more could find a way. Their long-range solution was to leave this one world.

Have the local people become more open to our position on birth control, Eminence?

Well, Holiness, fertility has deep cultural roots. And our former guidelines were persuasive for generations. We are making progress, but…

I understand, Eminence. We cannot expect change overnight.

As if change were good in itself, Nukrume thought. We have had too much change.

A preceding pope had quietly reversed the Church’s ban on artificial birth control to placate the laity of the United States and Europe. Reproductive freedom of choice was granted to informed adults. This was deemed popular and overdue, a triumph for modernists like Mikovic. On the surface it also seemed the only way to stop the population explosion in impoverished countries. However, Nukrume had read the internal security dossiers of a number of governments. Birth control was a precondition for the renewal of aid to nations and regions overwhelmed by numbers and lack of resources. Immigration from these lands to Europe and North America had to be curtailed for political reasons. The developed nations would support the Church, and other international bodies, only if birth control was encouraged. Perhaps then, contributions from Catholics and others would gush into relief agencies, and push reluctant governments to follow suit, or so it was hoped. Even once vigorous pro-life movements were checked by dread of foreigners. Thus, moral authority was cast aside.

Holiness, it is bad enough that governments waste billions in space. Why do we follow? What difference will it make if we find life on other planets? We can’t even manage the life we have on this one.

We spend a pittance, Cardinal. And I am more intrigued by what we learn about ourselves than discovering new life forms.

We already have enough unanswered questions here, Nukrume said. It’s no use, he thought. The man has the mind of a conquistador. He’s willing to sail off to the New World, and forget the peasants starving by the road.

They came to a small stair that led to