The Lowest Heaven (17 page)

She entered the viewing platform alone. Our mother, the astronaut, in our sights for the first time since our births. There was the tall, lean figure, there were the eyes the colour of an ocean on a stormy day, flecked with recklessness, just like the documentaries said.

As soon as she appeared we knew we had been right to be nervous.

It was clear that Saga was not expecting us. She recognized us in the way that we might recognize a celebrity from a photograph –disorientation, followed by slow comprehension. She looked shocked. Yes, we agreed afterwards that she looked shocked. She said:

What are you doing here?

It was a horrible moment. Taken aback, we rushed to explain. The invitation - the transmission! We had replied. Had she not received our replies? We did not like to say, had she not paid for our flights, arranged for our stay, organized all of this?

Gradually the shock faded from her face.
Of course, of course.
She smiled. But we were thrown, obviously, by this peculiar greeting.

Struck by a terrible shyness, we felt our tongues grow huge and clumsy. How should we introduce ourselves, how should we greet her? We had agreed before that we would address her as Saga, but now alternate possibilities ran through our heads: mamma, mǔqīn, mom. We were stunned by the lean, stark beauty of her face. Her youthfulness shocked us, although we knew, we had read, that she had had no restorative work or even enhancements, as many of the astronauts did, to make them faster, sharper, better. We wondered if she were real; we wondered if she might live forever.

We wondered why she had born us and what we were doing there, but all the things we had planned to say evaporated.

Saga spoke in Mandarin, although Signy swears there was a moment when we all digressed into Scandi.

She said our names.

Ulla, Per, Signy. Look at you! I’m so happy you could come.

(But that moment of shock?)

She asked us questions. She wanted to know about our little, insignificant lives, and all we wanted to know was her, her inner life, her private thoughts. Alone in her ship in the outback of space, did Saga ask the questions we all asked? Did Saga wonder where she came from, if there was a god? We wanted to know, but did not dare to ask.

We did our best to make ourselves interesting; gave her the answers we thought she wanted to hear. The evening passed too quickly. Over dinner, Saga told us about the mission. She told us Ceres would become the most important mining station in the solar system, a source of water and fuel for travellers back to Earth and out to Jupiter and Saturn. We watched the way she held her chopsticks, scooping up noodles with easy elegance. We mirrored her gestures. We were offered wine, but Saga took only water. Her storm-at-sea eyes surveyed us, smiling. We thought she was pleased, and this gave us a feeling of warm satisfaction.

The next day we watched her descend to Ceres. She had her own ship, and it was built, she had told us, to her exact specifications. She gave us some technical details that we did not understand.

We watched Saga’s ship land, and the others of the mission followed. Saga appeared first on the surface link. We watched her suited figure lope across the surface of the planet. In the low gravity she appeared like a mythical being gliding over her territory. The expedition team were to meet with another team stationed on the surface. They had been drilling for samples for some months, and would perform the extractions today. Big results were expected.

Before the astronauts could reach the drilling station, the transmission cut out. There was confusion in the room: what had happened to the link? An engineer came and tried to fix it. She could not get a picture. We watched, silently, hoping everyone would forget we were there, but of course they did not. After a few minutes we were told that there had been a technical mishap (nothing to worry about, only the connection) and were escorted firmly from the room.

We went to the viewing platform and stood about aimlessly. Ceres hung, mute and ghostly against her velvet backdrop. This was how we came to witness Saga’s exit.

We saw a pinpoint of fire, small but distinct on the surface of the pale planet. A brief flare, there then vanished.

We saw a ship emerging from near the point of flare. It grew steadily larger, catching flecks of sunlight, like the carapace of a golden insect. Although there were no identifying markers, we knew, we sensed that it was Saga. We turned to one another, pointing.

Isn’t that–?

Was that an explosion?

It must be–

We watched the lone ship orbit the planet several times, gaining velocity. It was then that we realized what was happening. Saga was preparing to leave. Her ship made one final circuit, before it shot away in the direction of the outer solar system.

We stared without comprehension. On Ceres, a cloud bloomed where the fire had been. Saga was gone.

At first there was media attention. People wanted to interview us. Our pictures were broadcast: Saga’s children, said the captions. Witnesses to her final farewell. That was what they called it, the media. Saga’s final farewell. We thought it wrong: it implied she had said goodbye before, and this was not the case, and she had not said goodbye now, not to us. Saga became a rebel. She had thwarted the CSSA, and some even believed she had caused the explosion, which was the result of unstable gases released by the drilling. There was a warrant for her arrest. Interplanetary outrage was so great that the CSSA backtracked and declared themselves Saga’s eternal ally, and wished her safe travels, wherever she was going. Later it was announced that the whole thing had been a set-up: Saga had been dispatched on a secret mission, known only to the Republic of China. Mars made a bold statement: the truth was that Saga had defected. She was working for another planet now. She was an agent, a double-agent, a triple-agent.

The solar system held its breath, anticipating a dramatic return. Months passed. There was no sign of Saga.

Next the experts appeared. Doctors and psychiatrists spoke to Saga’s colleagues and analysed her state of mind. Fellow astronauts agreed: yes, she had been distracted, yes, there had been lapses. She had fallen prey to star sickness, said the doctors. It happened sometimes, to astronauts. She had been consumed by a kind of madness.

We thought of Signy’s penguins in the Antarctic. Had Saga gone the wrong way?

Our opinions were sought, and discarded (we had little to say). The frenzy passed more quickly than we expected. We are less interesting; not so photogenic as our mother. We lack the thing which makes her magnetic, the reckless spark in the storm-sea eyes. We did not know enough to make a story.

We returned to our old lives on Earth and Moon. Once a year we met. We talked about Saga, speculated as to her whereabouts. We did not believe she was dead. We were not sure if she had gone mad.

Every few years there was a new rumour or sighting. Her ship had been spied upon Dione. The wreckage of her ship had been found in the asteroid belt, and a human spacesuit was drifting through the skies. But no, Saga herself had been witnessed in the embassy on Europa. We examined these theories, shared our musings late into the nights.

The years passed.

Now we are sept-and-octogenarians, unavoidably middle-aged. We have partnered, we have separated, some of us have children, some of us have money. We have weathered breakdowns and crises. We have dreamed.

We are wiser, enough to know that what we know is nothing. We can seek but we may not find.

We decided to return to Ceres. The colony is fully established now, an independent civilisation. Its population increases steadily. There is provision for tourists.

This time we take a shuttle down to the planet surface. Still a little wobbly with the after-effects of hibernation, we support one another, steadying elbows, watching our steps. We are amused by the low gravity, find ourselves acting like children. Even Per wishes to see how high he can jump. After a night to acclimatize, we are taken on a tour of the capital, before we suit up and board a surface transport out to the mining station. The constructions loom as we approach. The machinery is colossal. Our guide, a tall young man with thin, bird-like arms, is deferential and eager to please. He knows our mother’s name, of course. He shows us the plaque. The letters are glittering minerals which he tells us are from the mines. He says, proudly, that Ceres is the largest supplier of fuel in the solar system.

The plaque says:

This marks the last known flight of Saga Wärmedal.

We ask him for some time alone. He nods respectfully. We stand around the plaque. We suppose this is what we have come to see. We remember her ship, streaking away like a comet. This is the last place that she was seen. We think that she was never really seen.

There is a place on Earth beneath the Siberian permafrost, where those who died in the gulags of the twentieth century are said to be buried. With every winter, a new layer of ice crystals hardens over the tundra, fusing and compacting upon what lies below, sealing the mass graves forever. It is said that their descendants still search for bones. There are women who go out day after day with ice picks and radars, their boots crunching on the new fallen snow with that particular sound, heard only on Earth.

They are looking for something. They are prepared to spend a lifetime looking.

Just for you, just because I like you... when we do come for for the Sun, we’ll shift the Earth into a new orbit around Jupiter.

One of a set of nine mahogany lantern slides. Each slide is rotated by a handle of brass and wood to demonstrate the movements of the Earth and planets, some with complex systems. (c1850)

JON COURTENAY GRIMWOOD

Document 1

“Mr. Cravelli,” the Cynocephali says, “I think you’ll find this offer irresistible.”

It sits back in my office chair, reaches for a highball glass filled with gin sling and enough ice to sink a White Star liner and watches me through glittering eyes. I’m told the damn thing doesn’t need to have a dog’s head but likes the way it makes us jumpy. You’d think after twenty years in this game, with a break for that business with Germany, I’d be over feeling nervous as a teen boy walking towards the school bully on a darkened street. But this thing was delivered to my office by the Secret Service and I’ve been told to handle it with extreme care, commit to nothing and report back as soon as the meeting is done.

It waits for me to reply and I offer silence.

The thing shrugs, looks amused and reaches for its glass. It’s hard to drink a gin sling with the jaw of a dog, but the Cynocephali manages a sip and shuts its eyes as if savouring juniper berries. There is, of course, a chance that this entire coming from another world thing is a hoax. A whole bunch of creeps at Langley think the Soviets are behind it and mention a Russian novelist, and a book called
Heart of a Dog
, as proof Moscow have been planning this for years.

If it demands we give up the bomb I’m to push a button newly fixed under my desk, and someone
responsible
will come by. Cracks me up. My guess is if I push that button we can both kiss the world goodbye. That’s why, in my opinion, they’ve cleared this bit of Tenderloin and ‘plumbers’ turned up yesterday to work on the boiler in the basement.

Luckily, President Truman recognises the CIA for the fools they are. The FBI also tried to muscle in. According to one of Truman’s men the dope is they’ve losing clout since the White House found a photograph of a certain fat fruit in a pink tutu. He said I might not want to repeat that. Anyway, the President agreed to the Cynocephali’s demands to meet me. I mean, when a dog-headed thing in a silver suit turns up in the Oval Office, and Secret Service bullets bounce off it, and it says, Chill, all I want to do it talk to this guy in California… I don’t doubt the Feds will be crawling all over my life once this thing is done.

“Before we talk,” I say.

“
Why me?
” The Cynocephali does a passable imitation of my voice. “The obvious answer is,
‘Why not?’
” It shrugs, heavy shouldered, and I’m sure it’s mocking me. It was bad enough it turned up in a belted trench. Had it worn a trilby I’d have known it for sure. “But that would be unkind. So let me say you were chosen. Very carefully.”

I run through my resumé in my head while it sips the highball and spins on my swivel chair, grinning all the while.
Ex SFPD, half decent war, functioning PI?
Nothing there to attract the attention of the White House, never mind my visitor. The skills I bring to the table are few. I make a decent omelette; I can find a lost dog or a missing kid. I can tell you if your wife is having an affair, if you’re too fat-headed to work that out for yourself; or your husband is paying too much attention to his secretary, whether she wants it or not. They’re not unique skills. In the Tenderloin they’re not even rare. You’d have a harder time finding a decent cook than a licensed PI.

“For my skills?”

“Skills?” It says, voice light. “No. For your absolute averageness.”

It ticks off my charms. Human, white, male, middle-aged, divorced once, unimpressive job record, near alcoholic, too sick of both political parties to bother to vote, no kids, my ex wife returns my letters unopened… I’ve been chosen, it tells me, because I’m paradigmatic of my planet’s dominant culture – that is, early Fifties America – to such an extent I’ll probably want to ask what “paradigmatic” means and waste time picking over the answer. “Instead,” it says. “We should get on.”

“With what?”

“With this irresistible offer of mine.”

I sit back in the chair usually used by my clients. Weeping widows, unhappy mobsters, crooked insurance agents, you know the types. I’m doing my best to look like someone used to cutting deals with dog-headed negotiators. I’d light a cigar, but it’s already said, almost apologetically, that it really hates smoke. A side effect of the dog stuff. And I haven’t reached a point where I want to light up simply to be rude. “The floor’s all yours,” I say.

“You’re in debt.”

Yeah, I know that. I owe seven weeks rent on this office. Some months it’s a struggle to make the mortgage on my apartment. If I don’t renew my paperwork soon the grace period is going to run out and I won’t be licensed as a PI much longer. “You’re offering help to clear my debts?”

The Cynocephali sighs and I almost light that cigar after all.

“Not your debts. Your
world’s
. Our articles of agreement allow us to collect now but we’re willing to help you restructure.” He sounds like a fancy loan shark, the kind you find on Wall Street in suits and big cars. “We think you’ll like our terms.”

“Low initial interest, rising later? A little more cash to sweeten the deal?”

“No more cash,” it says, looking shocked. “You’ve had that.”

“When did we have it?” I’m getting a little cross. “You’d think we’d have noticed if we’d been borrowing from dog-headed people.”

He spun his chair, sat back and steepled his fingers. I notice he has very long nails. “When I say you,” he says. “I mean Earth.”

“Who had it?” I demand. “The Soviets?”

It looks slightly shifty for a moment. As if we’ve reached small print it’s been hoping I wouldn’t read on the back of whatever imaginary bit of paper we’re arguing about. “When I say Earth, I mean this planet, just… Not you people living on it right now.”

“So this is an old debt?”

“Oh no,” it says, “the loan hasn’t been made. Won’t be for millennia. The borrowers have just chosen an inverse interest model for financing. We’d be quite within our rights to simply collect, you know. We’re trying to help.”

“Inverse interest model?”

“You, Tito Cravelli, have a mortgage?” It looks pleased with itself for having remembered the word, or perhaps for coming up with a primitive analogy I might actually understand. “If I’ve got this right, you borrowed money, bought somewhere near here to live and will pay back the bank a much bigger amount? Now, suppose your great grandfather bought where you live for you. It would cost him much less, right? Even less if his great grandfather did it. Now imagine his great grandfather settled the debt in advance. Practically nothing.”

“To me,” I say. “To him it’s probably still a lot.”

“Well, there is that. The point is, a debt is being created and must be paid.” It’s obviously decided the time’s come to get tough.

“What do you believe we owe you?”

The Secret Service agent with a bulge bigger than me under his arm who delivered my visitor, and popped ahead to check my office was safe, had suggested I be polite and assume my visitor was serious. Very serious. When I asked what that meant he said it was, need to know – and I didn’t.

But then he doesn’t know what this is about. And nor do I, but I’m about to find out and for a while… Well, until my visitor goes and the Secret Service come flooding back I’ll be the only person in the world to does.

“You borrowed an extra hundred thousand years.” It shrugs. “I know, seems like nothing, but you were time critical. That extra hundred got you out of a fix and let you reclaim the tens of millions you were about to lose. So it was a good deal, really. Now we’re here to collect.”

“How can we pay you back a hundred thousand years?”

“We don’t want years,” it says. “We have a surfit of years. You can’t get rid of years for love or money. We want your moon.”

I gape at him. I’ve handled most things, from happy undertakers to honest cops, and it’s a long time since someone threw me this kind of curve ball. But for a moment I feel the room swim around me and then settle. Cars growl in the distance. The Venetian blinds are down and still dusty, my filing cabinet is still scuffed, the gash bin is still black round the inside where I tossed in a cigar and built myself an accidental bonfire. It even still smells like my office. Still, somehow, it seems to me the world’s changed.

“They offered the Moon as collateral?”

The Cynocephali nods. “You’ll cope. It will mean an end to tides. A few changes to the ocean currents. Maybe some new weather patterns…” It hesitates, then says what it was intending to say. “Obviously, the moon produces an equatorial bulge in your oceans. You’ll find water distributes to higher latitudes.” He sees my face, sighs. “Your coastline’s going to change.”

“How badly?”

“
Badly
’s a loaded word. You’ll need to redraw a few maps. We haven’t modelled this in detail but I can give you a general idea.” He pulls a slab-like device from its pocket and dances its claws across the top, before turning the slab towards me. Africa’s bigger, the western edge of Europe’s mostly islands, Japan seems to have largely disappeared. “Your night sky will be darker,” it adds. “Probably take you a while to grow used to that. And there’s that whole spin thing. Your days will probably get shorter as the earth’s rotation speeds up.”

“What’s the alternative?”

It looks at me.

“You said you had an offer I’d find irresistible. There’s nothing irresistible about losing the moon. So you must have something else in mind.”

“Well,” it says, stretching the word. “We could always fold your debt into a new one with a payment plan that works for you.” Outside, a police siren howls several streets away and I wonder if it has anything to do with this meeting. The Tenderloin’s a place the SFPD try to avoid unless they have no choice. Inside my office, the overhead fan clicks away in a language only it can understand. I have Jim Beam in my bottom drawer. A humidor that once belonged to a Mexican gangster on my desk. I desperately want a cigar or a shot, preferably both, but the
thing’s
waiting for my reaction.

“Lay the new deal out for me,” I say.

“We take the Sun instead.”

I gape at the creature for a second time. It seems perfectly serious.

“It’s a good deal. You get to keep the Moon now and we come back later to take the Sun. I can’t offer fairer than that.”

“How much later?”

Reaching for its pad, it taps and the screen comes up with a number that, were it on a cheque, would make Wall Street dizzy with delight. If we’re talking years that’s a long long time from now. “The way to think of this,” it says, “is the future sold you out. So have to protect yourself, and the easiest way to do that is take up my offer. In fact, sign now and I’ll throw in a bonus.” It grins. “Jupiter.”

My face probably says it all.

“Largest of the gas giants? 500,000,000 odd miles away, two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in your system put together? Third brightest object in your sky?” For a split second the dog-head looks like a sulky child who’s done the wrong homework.

“What about Jupiter?”

“Just for you, just because I like you… when we do come to take the Sun, we’ll shift the Earth into a new orbit around Jupiter before we do anything else. Well, we’ll turn Jupiter into a little sun for you first, or there’d be no point moving you, would there?”

This is the point I help myself to a whisky, and listen to three minutes of small talk as it pretends to give me time to think about its offer while talking enough to ensure that isn’t possible. All the same, inside myself I know I like this deal. As some time, in the impossibly far future, we’ll give up the Sun. In return, we ‘d keep the Moon now; and, as a bonus prize, they’ll relocate the planet for us and throw in a new sun to keep us warm before they take the old one. But I don’t want it to know I’m keen.

“Yeah, right,” I say. “Like any of that’s even possible.”

It glances round my office – and for a second I see myself through its cold gaze. It’s like the Dutch settlers offering the Algonquin beads for the island that will become Manhattan. If I refuse how do I know the dog head won’t give me a stripy blanket as a present anyway. And we’ll only discover it’s a trick and the blanket is infected with smallpox when everyone begins to die.

The dog head turns its cold gaze on me.

“Of course it’s possible. The gas giant you call Jupiter is mostly hydrogen anyway. Like the sun,” it adds helpfully. “Obviously, it’s far too small to achieve stellar ignition for itself and even increasing its density won’t really help. So, we’re going to have to cheat a little.” It tips its head to one side. It could be thinking, but I suspect it’s just trying to impress me. “The planet core is tiny, of course. So that’s no real help. Our best bet is to seed the centre with tiny black holes. We’ll have to tune those carefully. Make them self-replenishing. You know the kind of thing.”

“I’ll give the White House your message.”

“Mr. Carelli, you misunderstand me.” It produces its pad again, and places it on my desk, not with a bang but forcefully enough to make the point that chitchat is at an end. “I don’t need to negotiate with local leaders. I’m already negotiating with you. Your world owes us. Decide now if we get repaid or the debt is rescheduled.”

Mostly debt collectors kick your door off its hinges on their way in, and kick your balls on the way out. This one scares me more, for all my door and privates are intact. I think about our world without a moon and that reworked map. And I think about those bastards in the far future. People I didn’t know and who might not even be people by then. They sold us out. It’s not as if we owe them anything. All the same, I want to say I got us the best deal I could.

It watches in distaste as I take a cigar from my box, bite off the end and spit it at the gash bin, reaching for my desk lighter and taking my time as I put a flame to the end. I blow smoke at the ceiling and watch it swirl as the fan folds it into the air. ‘This sun you’re going to make. It’s going to work? You guarantee that. It’s in the contract?’

It turns the pad towards me. The contract is ten lines. Simple. A real moneylender’s special. What was owed. The new deal. What will be owed. The fact the contract is entered into voluntarily with no threats applied. There is nothing about the new sun actually working, and I make the creature add this before taking the leadless pencil it offers me and signing where it points: