The Lowest Heaven (22 page)

And there were others there with me.

They were near to my shape, seeming to be seated in a ring, but on no visible ledges or stones. I thought them inhabitants of Mars, at first. They were not tripod machines, nor had they oily tentacles – they were beautiful! Then I saw, trailing behind them, the silver thread that could take each of them home (so much more flimsy than it felt when embedded in one’s own guts). Then I knew them to be thoughtforms, visitors like myself, gathered here. Possibly they lived too far apart on Earth to meet through ordinary means, or perhaps they wanted secrecy. I drew close and, under the howling of the storms, I heard them speak faintly to one another.

They had come to Mars to plan war.

last raid of the campaign, guys

need to synchronise

hell yes

mcneill sets up a bombardment

doing it already

ellis, you send in your divisions to draw the initial attack

why mine

because we all had heavier losses than you last time

yeah, because I’m not an idiot

I had thought war would sound grander.

we agreed it already, ellis

your divisions soak up the hits

ellis you agreed

ellis?

bathroom break

The form that had just spoken melted into translucence

every time

has he got some kind of medical condition

we’ll miss our window

Which of these tired youngsters was the general? Perhaps they were all civil servants. I moved closer. The translucent one became more substantial again.

I’m back but my visuals are weird, anyone else?

ours are fine

your machine’s pathetic, ellis

I can see right down the valley to the encampment

well I’ve got some crappy space theme or a desert maybe

so have I, now

it’s really cheap-ass

One of the men of war turned and noticed me.

someone else just checked in

did you invite him?

god no

it’s a closed group, isn’t it? who invited him?

he’s the one messing up the visuals

this is supposed to be a private room

they’re never secure

jesus get the mods to lock him out

and throw up some earthworks while we’re waiting

A wall of Martian rock reared up in front of my feet. But it had no substance, and I stepped through it.

jesus

The men of war threw their weapons at me. Bombs flew, bullets whizzed through me. When their objects failed to touch me, they sent other, uncanny attacks. They blasted out their knowledge of past atrocities and it crumbled my bones. Like a disorientating cloud, I was surrounded by their indifference to suffering. I stumbled back.

But I also instinctively sent a scathing retaliation: flying barbs, then acid drops falling from the Martian clouds. I saw them flinch.

“I mean you no harm!” I called. Could men of war understand such a sentiment? The sound of my voice sent them into new confusion.

where’s he coming in from

tell the mods to block his account

can’t see who his provider is

this is a nightmare

we could change channel?

why should we have to go anywhere?

tell the mods to push him on

call off the raid?

we’ll miss our window!

we’ve missed it, we’re screwed

The men turned to steam. Their walls and bombs and clouds faded with them.

And my silver cord pulled me back, because someone was shaking my physical body, hard.

Whipped back through thousands of miles of space. It felt like the air was sucked out of my lungs, but I had none.

I opened my eyes and saw a crinkled face, bending down into my own. A hairy hand on my chest, shaking me.

“Oh, thank the Lord, I thought you’d died.” Christopher sat with a thump on the bed next to my feet. “Did you take a sleeping draught?”

I found my mouth and tongue where I’d left them. “Sorry. I sleep deeply, these days.” Should I tell him where I’d been? I couldn’t stand him dismissing me again. “Where are we, please?”

“Fifty miles out of Liverpool into the Irish Sea. Heading for the Atlantic.” His frown had lifted. He’d become more accustomed to exile than to England. We were both going to strange lands, but he was also heading home.

Later that night, as I approached Mars for the second time, I wasn’t alone.

“Christopher!”

He flew next to me, wearing a vivid blue necktie I’d never seen in the flesh.

I was delighted – vindicated! I wondered how I’d brought him along. But his substance was different from mine, and different from the warmongers on Mars: crisper, brighter. Had he been here before?

“Oh, I’m not Christopher.” He said it with absolute assurance, in his usual nasal voice. It was as eerie as if he’d said: “I’m dead, of course.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a mod, actually.”

“A what?”

“A guide. Keeping the channels secure.”

He made a little dip in the air and took my hand to tow me along. His hand felt warm.

“I don’t...”

“I’m just steering you away from where you’re not supposed to be.” He smiled away my uncertainty. “Come on, I know this place better than you.”

“Why do you look like my friend?”

“I don’t look any way in particular. You’re making me look like this.”

Of course! The explanation I’d given Christopher, years ago – that my mind was interpreting what I could see. “Because you’re the last person I saw? Or because I think of you as my guide?” I’d always been a passive traveller. It was Christopher who booked the tickets and read aloud from the
Baedeker
.

“It could be that. Or perhaps you’re anxious? You’ve picked something comforting.” He sounded embarrassed for me. “It really all depends on your settings.”

We sailed over a waterfall of asteroids. Christopher’s new necktie glowed in the reflected light of Mars. I was amazed that I’d remembered so many details of him as to make this charming waxwork.

“So do you have any relation to my friend? Are any parts of you him?”

“Well, what parts were you interested in?”

Flying together loosened my tongue. Nothing ventured! Although, perhaps, in this confusing cosmology, nothing could be gained. Could he answer a question to which I didn’t know the answer?

“I’d wondered if you’re happier, these days – and how we stand...”

He laughed again. “How thoughtful!” If I was imagining him, was I mocking myself? “No time to talk, though. You’re being bumped over to the next channel.”

“I don’t...”

Ahead of us reared a clean, silver planet, white caps at its poles.

“One of the recreational channels. Have a good time there.”

Morning star, evening star, bright beautiful planet. I somehow knew it would be more hospitable to life than Mars. More fecund.

“It won’t be like the last channel,” Christopher confirmed. “You can talk to anyone who takes your fancy, there.”

“There’ll be people?”

“Plenty of people.”

“Venus-ians?” I shuddered slightly at the nomenclature of the dread Wells.

“Travellers. Like yourself.”

“Will you stay and speak to them?”

He shook his head. “Don’t think that would even work. I’m just moving you over. I’d best head off.”

Venus was thick like soup with heat.

A cluster of figures stood not far from me. Again, wholly astral creatures. I extended my – interest? Sight? Soul? - to them. Several were women, the first naked women I’d ever seen and more naked than they could be in the flesh. But we were beyond reserve or modesty.

They turned on me. Their lust washed over me. The heat of it bubbled and blistered me. I was eyed up without eyes, handled without hands.

“Ladies!” I responded, to prevent a misunderstanding. “I do not desire you!”

The soupy heat of Venus grew chilly.

“I mean no offense! I am a disciple of another love, in which the female has no part!”

I was spat out. They turned their backs-not-backs on me. It was exactly like being cut at a party. As I made further protests, I was astonished to hear them refer to me as an arsehole, a complete cock, and other epithets.

My anger took form. I was more adept than the last time I’d tried it, on Mars; walls flew up around me, almost before I knew I was their architect. The women exploded the walls by flooding them with lava. I sprouted a pillar from the ground beneath me to lift me above the red flow, and I rained grey fog all over my opponents. The lava around their legs coagulated into greyish rock. I was quite merciless, scrutinising their agonised coils, reminiscent of those who perished at Pompeii.

Their thoughtforms reached out to drag me down. I streaked away in disgust at myself and them.

The airs above Venus were far cooler than the surface. I became aware of other fliers, an escort surrounding me. Their forms were minimal, their greetings like chirping or cooing.

hullo!

who are you!

I introduced myself and asked, in wonder, who they were.

just mods!

“Like that vision of Christopher? But you don’t look...”

who’s Christopher?

just here to keep the channel friendly!

had reports about you

losing us custom!

terms of service!

who’s your account provider?

A friendly hailstorm. A floating conscience, almost. How could I have been so violent, so cruel? I had been contaminated by Venusian feelings, of the body rather than the mind. I apologised profusely for my behaviour.

no problem!

where you coming in from?

“Earth,” I said. Their giggles were icicles.

don’t know your way around the channels!

not the right place at all

you’d rather be with the boys!

are we right? we’re right!

try another channel!

They sprang away across space and I knew what they referred to, where I needed to go.

The luminous pale blue planet. My namesake. Far out away from the sun, but it might shed its own light (Christopher’s small book told me), and it might also be heated from within. I’d always hoped its colour was the blue of a year-round Spring sky.

Could I get there?

But fear prevented me, and I let the silver cord pull me back. Snap!

I had to hunt Christopher all over the ship before I found him in a bar with a crowd of other passengers, chattering in German and drinking
Schnaps
. I thought it unfair he hadn’t told me his friends would be aboard, but then I realised he’d only met them that morning. I sat on the edge of the group. An Englishman with a walrus moustache enthused about how there would soon be larger and better ships than this mammoth transatlantic liner. I, dizzy from another kind of travel, could not share his excitement.

I saw that Christopher had become more and more interesting over his ten year in exile, while I’d stagnated. Had he made peace with being a Uranian? Perhaps brotherly love was enough for him, the brief, intense connections that form between travellers. Maybe he was never tempted. Maybe he frolicked nightly with his chess opponents. I didn’t think he was still grubbing around in Whitman’s poems looking for a solution. Unlike me.

Eventually, I had drunk enough that my friend had to help me to my cabin and my bed. He poured me a glass of water. I was melancholy and I had to concentrate to remember that this Christopher hadn’t steered me across the void. I’d never held his hand.

“Are you alright? Do you need the ship’s doctor?”

“It’s not that.”

He was the spit and image of my celestial guide. My heart poured out of me despite myself.

“Christopher, if you have a great longing for a – thing, a feeling of great kinship with this thing, and then you realise that it might actually be possible to see it, to
feel
...”

“What thing?”

But I could not speak the name of my planet. He would think me ridiculous, again. Or he’d enthusiastically tell me to dream, again, for dreaming was all I’d done. I tried to describe my dilemma in less specific terms.

“Chris, is it normal to feel wary – to not even know if you should try to
approach
...”

I suddenly feared that he might misunderstand me, and think I was declaring a long-overdue love. Then his raised eyebrow deflated that notion. I blustered on.

“Because what if it’s not the answer? What if you’re stuck with being lonely, and not at ease, and it’s not because you have any particular connection to – this thing. What if it’s nothing to do with...?”

He smiled and turned down my cabin light. We were used to helping one another when worse for wear. He wasn’t waiting for my revelation; he had given up on loving me, years ago. But, I realised, I had not given up the idea that he loved me. He’d go back to his deck friends as soon as I fell asleep. I closed my eyes.

Brave again in the dark, I decided to tell him. I murmured:

“I still want to. I want it. I want to
touch
...”

My knuckles struck the cabin wall. My hand had been foraging about without my volition.

Christopher had already gone.

Later, I went back, drunker, to the deck. I shouted: “The female has no part!” Christopher’s friends stared at me. Christopher helped me to bed, again.

It was no hardship, the following morning, to leave my body.

As soon as I was moving among the planets, my companions from Venus re-joined me.