The Lowest Heaven Read online

  “You’ll burn through then quickly enough. And then what?”

  “Something beyond this. But not death. There is no art in death, Oleg. Only art’s supreme negation.”

  He smiled thinly. “The world will await your next masterpiece with interest, Rhawn. Even if it never leaves Mercury.”

  “Well, something shall. Does this surprise you? And you shall be its custodian.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It is… traditional… among the Totalists. At the time of our second crossing, we concieve of a new piece. A celebration of transition, if you will. The work is initiated before the crossing’s start, and not fully completed until the crossing is done. I have … planned such a work. I call it A Map of Mercury. It is a minor piece, in the scheme of things. Almost beneath me. But since you have gone to such pains to find me, I should consider it fitting if it should fall upon you, the great and glorious Oleg, to bring the work to public attention.”

  “A new piece by Rhawn?”

  “Exactly that,” she said proudly. “A new piece by Rhawn. And, as far as the outside world is concerned, the last. No, I shan’t be abandoning art. But the realms into which I expect to push… these will shortly lie beyond your conceptual horizon. You would not only fail to recognise my art as art, you would fail to recognise that it was anything at all. But this last piece will be my gift to you – and your meat cousins. You will find it comprehensible. Take it to your masters. Fight over it like dogs. I will enjoy watching the overheated spasms of your Jovian economy.”

  “It’s not what they asked for,” Oleg said.

  “But they won’t be displeased with you?”

  “No,” he supposed. “I came for you, but never with much expectation that you’d agree to the offer. They’ll hand that moon over to someone else, I suppose. But to return with a new piece by Rhawn … that was never in my plans. They’ll be pleased, I think.”

  “And will their pleasure be of benefit to you? Will you also profit from this?”

  “I should imagine.”

  “Then we are all satisfied. You will return to the Collective? Delay your departure by a couple of days, and the work will be packaged and delivered to you. It really is a trifling little thing.”

  She had not been exaggerating, Oleg reflected.

  He tugged more of the packaging away. The upper quarter of A Map of Mercury was now visible. But everything below that was concealed by a thin layer of protective material with a circular hole cut into it. He dug his fingers around the layer until it began to come free. He grew incautious. If he damaged the material, he could always say it had been that way when he found it.

  Besides, he was starting to suspect that his masters would think very little of this offering no matter the condition in which it had arrived. It wasn’t the sort of thing they had been hoping for at all. Yes, it was a late Rhawn. But a globe? A Map of Mercury?

  Something that literal?

  The layer came free. He could see more of the globe now. There was in fact something a bit odd about it. Instead of continuing with the shape of the sphere he had been expecting, the object began to bulge in some directions and turn inwards in others. There was more packaging material to be discarded. He tugged it away with increasing urgency. There were two cavities opening up in one side of the no longer very spherical thing. Above the cavities was the fine swell of a brow ridge. Beneath the cavities – the eye-sockets – was the slitted absence where her nose would have been, and beneath that the toothy crescent of the upper jaw. There was no lower part.

  He pulled the whole thing from its box. The colours of the top part, the emulation of the planet’s surface features and texturing, continued across every part of it. There were ochres and tangerines and hues of jade and turquoise. It had a fine metallic lustre, sprinkled with a billion glints of stardust. It was simultaneously lovely and horrible.

  A Map of Mercury.

  That was exactly what it was. She had not lied. Nor would this piece – this piece of her – dent Rhawn’s reputation in the slightest. No wonder she had needed a couple of days to make it ready. At the start of their conversation, ten percent of her had still been inside this skull.

  Oleg had to smile. It was not exactly what he had come for, and not exactly what his masters had been after either. But what was art without an audience? She had made him her witness, and she had made art of herself, and she was still there, down on Mercury, having crossed twice.

  Clever, clever Rhawn.

  But then a peculiar and impish impulse overcame Oleg. He thought back to their conversation again. It was true, much of what she had said about him. He had been supine. He had tried and failed at art, and allowed himself to become the servant of powers to whom he was no more than an instrument. He had become spineless. He did what they told him – just as he was now executing Rhawn’s wishes.

  A tool. An instrument.

  A machine made of meat.

  A little while later a little door opened in the side of Oleg’s spacecraft. It was a disposal hatch, the kind he used for waste dumps. A small grey nebula coughed out into vacuum. The nebula, for an instant, glittered with hints of reflectivity and colours that were not entirely grey.

  Then it dispersed, and the ship continued on its merry way.

  Days and nights aren’t even real; they’re a lie, a lie within a lie.

  * * *

  A square glass plate negative of the Transit of Venus. Taken at Luxor in 1874 with one exposure of the planet Venus crossing the Sun’s limb.

  ASHEN LIGHT

  ARCHIE BLACK

  I

  The village of Hartmann stands on the high sorghum plains of Ishtar Terra, a lonesome area that other Venusians call “out there.” This area of the IT is known as the Lakshmi Planum. It is a little less that two and a half thousand kilometers across, and surrounded on all sides by mountains – the four main mountain ranges found on the planet. When, in 2392, planetary engineers finally liquified Venus’ core, kickstarting the planet’s dynamo and strengthening its magnetic field enough to maintain an atmosphere and make terraforming feasible, the decision was made to begin the planet-wide colonization process on Venus’ highland regions. Aphrodite Terra, warmer, larger and topographically rougher than its sister, was dedicated to mining. Ishtar Terra’s Lakshmi Planum, with its smooth plains and gently rolling wrinkle ridges, was deemed more suitable for agriculture. Following successful completion of the terraforming process, farming colonies were migrated to the IT from Earth. They dispersed to create widespread, albeit close–knit, communities, centered around small towns scattered seemingly at random across the planum.

  Hartmann was founded in 2448, one of a hundred roughly nucleated villages developed on the IT by the Venusian terraformers. Farms, it had been decided, would most closely mimic the comfortable terrestrial existences that the colonists would be forsaking and create the powerful sense of community the terraformers believed necessary to their long-term colonial agenda: the creation of a self-sustaining second Earth.

  Hartmann is a strange assortment of buildings, none more than three stories tall, and home to only about two hundred and fifty people. It is, generously, a suburb of Riccioli, a small city twenty–five kilometers away, but, by 2519, no one from Riccioli went to Hartmann, unless to visit relatives, and most of the citizens of Hartmann tended to have little interest in Riccioli – except Hartmann’s teenagers, of course, who were drawn to Riccioli, Hartmann’s only significant neighbor for hundreds of kilometers, like moths to a candle’s flame.

  Despite the success of the terraforming project, and particularly the terraformers’ crowning achievement, the Overdome, an artificial layer between Venus’ thermosphere and mesosphere, Hartmann’s fortunes have risen and fallen with the same unpredictable regularity of any other farming community’s. Although the Overdome, which mimics a consistent, Earth–like cycle of day and night and maintains Venus’ reasonably Earth–like atmospheric conditions, assists in regulating temperat
ure and average rainfall on the Lakshmi Planum, it was nevertheless designed to allow for ‘natural’ variations, with the result that the Lakshmi Planum is prone to drought. Fortunately, however, the variation of sorghum that is grown in and around Hartmann was designed to be spectacularly drought–resistant, and so the little community is well enough off, if not prodigiously wealthy. They live their lives solidly, predictably, and comfortably. “No better place to live,” says the sign on the road leading into town. And, indeed, it’s a refrain often repeated after Hartmann’s citizens win pie–making contests at the county fair, or following a satisfying meal at Mrs. McCallan’s Shumai Shack.

  Until one morning in early November of 2519, few Venusians – in fact, few Ishtarians – had ever heard of Hartmann. At the time, those few souls awake in Hartmann at that hour saw it – the pale green light that warmed the dark sky and, all told, heralded the end of eight lives. But afterward the townspeople, no longer content with Hartmann’s comfortable isolation, began to take stock of their lives, their decisions. To wonder if, perhaps, there wasn’t a better place to live, after all.

  Michelle Keck was forty–nine years old. A third–generation Venusian, she had been born in IT’s capital city, Helios, the only daughter of a banker and a lawyer. Despite her white–collar upbringing, Keck found herself drawn to Lakshmi’s wide–open spaces and, to the surprise of all, took her degrees in geoplanetary physics and agriculture. While at college she was introduced to Franz Van, the younger brother of a classmate, and found herself immediately drawn to the sensitive young man, whose retiring personality and love of the ancient poets contrasted so starkly with her own robust practicality. Following a swift courtship, the two married and left Helios upon her graduation. Keck took a farming apprenticeship in Riccioli and, within five years, had taken over management of one of Lakshmi’s larger farming collectives. Keck, however, wished to own her own farm. After saving up enough money to buy property outside Hartmann, Shelly and Franz packed up their young children and Franz’s beloved collection of ancient books and moved to the little town. They lived in a two–room apartment above the local grocery store while Keck oversaw the construction of their house, out on a parcel of land she’d taken to calling Blackacre. In fall of 2507, the family had installed itself in its new home, a large and comfortable farmhouse set far off the road, down an avenue of London plane trees, their growth artificially accelerated to provide shade within a year of planting.

  Hartmann agreed with Keck, whom many townsfolk already knew personally from her activities in Riccioli. After leaving the farming collective, Keck took a chair on the collective’s governing board and remained deeply involved in Riccioli’s politics. In Hartmann, her first act, after purchasing Blackacre, was to join the local council. Within six months she had established herself as a likable, dependable, and recognizable personality in Hartmann’s close–knit community.

  While the relocation suited Keck and her children, Franz had already begun to struggle. Rural life did not suit him quite as neatly as it had his wife, and while he found Riccioli difficult, life in Hartmann was even more of a struggle. The shy, sensitive man, so different from his outgoing partner in both temperament and personality, began to withdraw, spending long hours in his study translating passages from the Vedas with, he claimed, an eye toward publishing the definitive examination of the ancient texts. His databites grew and grew, but the intended book never materialized. People in Hartmann spoke gently of him among themselves, generally with reference to his wife and children, and praising Keck’s unflagging support of and loyalty to a man who had, it was clear, would never realize his potential.

  The younger Kecks, meanwhile, received no such side–eyed commentary, being both intelligent and well–liked children. Although the son, Hershel, took a little after his father in terms of his interests in ancient works, he was, by his fifteenth birthday, a healthy young man with a string of accolades, both intellectual and active, to his name. His sister, Jen, shared her mother’s robust enthusiasm for life and, in her sixteenth year, was both class president and on a clear path towards becoming class valedictorian.

  By 2519, the Keck family was firmly established in Hartmann, their farm having grown to more than a thousand acres, and employing no fewer than eighteen laborers. Although by no means the wealthiest family in town, the Kecks were nonetheless comfortable. Shelly was known for, among other things, her habit of never paying for anything in cash. She claimed that using credits for everything, down to the smallest purchases, was the most efficient way for her to keep track of her expenditures. “I remember the lean years,” she often explained, “when I had to budget down to the last penny. I picked up the habit of only paying in credits then, and it’s served me well ever since.” Although her children found her insistence on paying in credits only – including their allowances – frustrating, they, and the rest of Hartmann, nevertheless accepted the habit with a shrug and a shake of the head. After all, Keck was one of Hartmann’s most prominent citizens; considering all she did for the local economy, she could be allowed her few eccentricities.

  And, moreover, considering the number of drifters who wander the IT, robbing the occasional isolated farmhouse, it was only reasonable to keep the cash on hand to a minimum. Although Hartmann was itself so isolated that it entertained very little crime, there was no reason not to be sensible about the issue.

  Sloane Deeds was eighteen years old in November of 2519. Born in Kitt, a hardscrabble community on the slopes of Ioligam, a mountain in the Maxwell Montes on the eastern edge of the IT, Sloane was the outcome of the short union between two prospectors. Initially developed as an outpost to monitor volcanic activity in the years following the dynamo’s reactivation, the town of Kitt had, by the end of the twenty–fifth century, been entirely abandoned by its scientific personnel. By the year of Sloane’s birth, Kitt was made up of no more than twenty–seven souls, their number seasonally padded by itinerant prospectors. Sloane’s own parents had both abandoned the town by 2512, leaving their daughter in the care of a local who abused the girl physically and sexually. One stormy night in 2516, the then–fourteen year old stole a knife from a neighbor and hid it under her bed. On the night of April seventh, 2516, she stabbed him five times while he slept and fled the town. It took her twelve days to hitchhike to Helios, during which time she first met Griffith Sinkman.

  Griffith was twenty–seven in 2516, the second of five children born to an Aphrodite Terra couple. Aphrodite Terra had, in the decades since the dynamo’s activation and the installation of the Overdome, developed from a large–scale mining colonization project into the most notorious resort settlement of the inner planets. The Sinkman family was, like most residents of the AT, peripherally involved in the resort/casino–driven economy, the family business being a small motel on the outskirts of Eos. All five Sinkman children received decent primary educations, but only Griffith, with his love of reading and movie–star good looks, seemed to be college material. So his mother and father invested their small savings in Griffith’s potential and sent him to the University of Aphrodite Terra, Aethon. Eight months later Griffith was back home, recuperating from the helibike accident that had nearly killed him. When it was discovered that he had been on academic probation for a semester, and was near to flunking out, Griffith’s parents withdrew him from the university. Following his recovery, a process of nearly a year, Griffith, scarred and newly jittery, stole what remained of his parents’ savings and left home.

  For nearly three years Griffith moved from city to city on the AT, regularly landing jobs and just as regularly losing them, thanks to his violent and unpredictable temper. In 2512, the same year that Sloane’s parents abandoned her in Kitt, Griffith stole an old woman’s purse, knocking her down and breaking her hip in the process. When he was caught, seven hours later, it was discovered the old woman had had only four dollars in change, half of which Griffith had already spent on gum. Griffith was sent up to Garden City, a prison on the outskirts of Aethon,
and served four years.

  Upon his release, Griffith returned home, borrowed $300 from his family, and took a transport to the IT in violation of his parole. Within four hours of his arrival in Helios, Griffith had stolen a car and driven out into the Lakshmi Planum. It was on one of those long, empty roads, about a week after he’d first landed on the IT, that he picked up a fourteen–year–old girl who was looking for a ride to Helios.

  Sloane and Griffith were immediately attracted to one another. Sloane, who’d never been more than twenty kilometers from Kitt, was enchanted by the handsome older man’s descriptions of the bright lights of the AT: the glittering casino–cities, the tropical island–resorts situated off the coast of the AT’s artificial sea, the endless excitement. For his part, Griffith was delighted by the pretty girl’s instantaneous adoration. The two became lovers within days of meeting, and spent no more than two years apart for the rest of their lives.

  Hartmann on Thursday, November 8, 2519, dawned clear, cold and bright. Venus’ terraformers had made every effort to mimic the Earth’s abiotic environment, so fall in Hartmann is as fall on a planet 261 million kilometers away. November is the last gasp of a dying year; the days are short and dry and the light is pure, cold white. The few leaves left on the trees rattle in the light breeze and the world feels used up and empty. Shelly Keck stood on a low hill looking out over her lands, watching the birds flutter among the plowed and broken grain fields. The wildlife of the IT were introduced by the terraformers to maintain the illusion of Earth for the first colonists, and had adapted more successfully than anyone could have hoped; on that cold day, Keck might have seen up to fifty-seven distinct species of bird alone.