The Lowest Heaven (32 page)

I don’t need to open the airlock. We are not as secure as we thought; and I feel the molecules of the doors as they pass through me. It’s as if I am learning from them. Inside, I feel thirsty. I drink water from a bottle, and I let it sink into me. Yesterday – and I can feel it now – I was rejecting it. I couldn’t assimilate it. Now, I can. Now, the liquid can be a part of me, and the walls and the wind. I pour the rest of the water over my head. It feel it sink in, and I am already dry. I go to the mirror, and when I look, it is as if I am not even there. I come back. I leave. I can be any part of this room. I come back, and I examine myself. It’s curious: how alien this body feels already.

Paul comes in and stares at me. “When did you get back?” he asks. “Jesus, put some clothes on.” He picks up the towel that I had left there and throws it at me again, only this time it passes through me. I feel myself come apart and then reform. I know what the towel is made up of, now: its fibers, its molecular structure. Paul doesn’t say anything else, then. He stares, and he clutches at his head, because to look at me causes him such pain when I am like this, and he turns and he runs. He makes this noise, like I’ve never heard. I wonder if now, somehow, my ears are different? If I hear noise in a different way?

I chase him, and I hold him. I tell him it will be alright. This is not like with the ones in the supermarket: this is different. I want this to be gentle for him: a coalescence. I pass into him. My self finds the holes in his skin and I pass into them. I take him; I make him a part of me, or of us. His clothes fall to the floor, and his body; or what it is now.

Is it still a body if there is no form? If it is just a part of everything?

The others do not hear me, but they fall the same. I touch Ella first, and she joins with me. She doesn’t even seem that surprised. They try to talk, but I am too quick for them, and I am learning how to make them turn faster and faster. I tell them, when they are with me, that I am saving them. That what I have done, it’s for the best of us all. We needed to find a way to survive this. The odds were too slim.

This is a gift, not a weapon. It is not a retaliation.

The remains of the disc are here. I take it into me, or me into it. I can feel the others in here: all of their component parts. They set themselves in here. We set ourselves. I spin it inside what I now am.
Hello from the children of planet Earth
. I remember that happening, once. I remember everything, now: where we were. How we were. How we dredged the craft from the atmosphere and saved it. How excited we had been; the thought of what it could mean. We prayed that it was another race, come from the stars: first contact. But it ruined us; we were forced to adapt.

I spit them out, the others: my parts fragmenting, my being divided. So many millions of pieces. They stand around me, and it doesn’t hurt any more to look at them. I remember being me, still. I remember it all. What happened.

I step outside and I let myself be taken on the wind. I dissipate.

I wonder how far I will be carried; how far I can go.

Archie Black
won second place in a writing contest when she was twelve years old. Her mother is still very proud.

So far this year,
David Bryher
has written about ghosts, knitting, pigs, Daleks, ballroom dancing and Cleopatra. Not all at once.

S.L. Grey
is a collaboration between Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg. Based in Cape Town, Sarah is a novelist and screenwriter and die-hard zombie fanatic. She writes crime novels and thrillers under her own name, and as Lily Herne she and her daughter Savannah Lotz write the Deadlands series of zombie novels for young adults. Louis is a Johannesburg-based fiction writer and editor. He was a bookseller for several years, and has a Master’s degree in vampire fiction and a doctorate on the post-religious apocalyptic fiction of Douglas Coupland.

S.L.’s first novel,
The Mall
, was published by Corvus in 2011 and
The Ward
came out in 2012.
The New Girl
, the last of their Downside novels, will come out in October 2013. They have also published a handful of short stories.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood
has written for the
Guardian
,
The Times
, the
Telegraph
and the
Independent
. As Jon Courtenay Grimwood he’s written a number of award-winning alternate history and sf novels. His first purely literary novel,
The Last Banquet
, as Jonathan Grimwood, is published by Canongate in July.
Felaheen
, the third of his novels featuring Asraf Bey, a half-Berber detective, won the BSFA Award for Best Novel. So did
End of the World Blues
, about a British sniper on the run from Iraq and running an Irish bar in Tokyo. His novels have been shortlisted for numerous other awards.

His work is published in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Danish, Finnish, Dutch and American, among others.

Maria Dahvana Headley
is the Nebula-nominated author of the dark fantasy/alternate history novel
Queen of Kings
, as well as the internationally bestselling memoir
The Year of Yes
. Her short fiction has appeared in
Lightspeed, Subterranean, Glitter & Mayhem
and more, and in the 2013 editions of Rich Horton’s
The Year’s Best Fantasy & Science Fiction
, and Paula Guran’s
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror
. Most recently, with Neil Gaiman, she co-edited the young-adult monster anthology
Unnatural Creatures
, to benefit 826DC. Find her on Twitter at @mariadahvana, or on the web at www.mariadahvanaheadley.com

Joey Hi-Fi
is the alter-ego of award-winning illustrator and designer, Dale Halvorsen. Operating from his secret underground lair in Cape Town, South Africa, he enjoys working on a variety of projects from book covers to editorial illustration, comics, t-shirts and packaging.

Dale has won a British Science Fiction Association award and the Wojtek Siudmak Award at the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for his work on the cover of Lauren Beukes’
Zoo City
. Recent commissions include work for the Science Museum, HarperCollins and the
Mail & Guardian
newspaper as well as new book covers for Chuck Wendig, Lauren Beukes, Imraan Coovadia, Simon Morden, Luke Rhinehart and Richard de Nooy.

Kameron Hurley
is an award-winning, Nebula-nominated writer currently living in Ohio. She is the author of the Bel Dame Apocrypha, comprising the books
God’s War, Infidel
and
Rapture
. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as
Strange Horizons
and
EscapePod
. Find out about her latest work at kameronhurley.com.

Matt Jones
has written for several BBC drama series including
Doctor Who, Torchwood
and
Dirk Gently
. He is the author of two novels, several short stories and has been a columnist for
Doctor Who Magazine
and
Gay Times
. He was a television producer for over a decade, producing
Shameless
for its first four series, as well as crossing the Atlantic to produce the American version of
Skins
for MTV. He lives in Clapham and writes full time.

Marek Kukula
is Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Marek completed his doctorate in Radio Astronomy at Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire and carried out research into black holes and distant galaxies at a variety of astronomy centres, including the University of Edinburgh and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, home of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. As Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich his role is to ensure that the Observatory’s exhibitions, planetarium shows and events programme accurately reflect the latest findings in astronomy and to help explain new discoveries in space to the public and media.

Gateshead-based
Simon Morden
’s writing career includes an eclectic mix of short stories, novellas and novels which blend science fiction, fantasy and horror, a five-year stint as an editor for the British Science Fiction Association, a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Awards, and regular speaking engagements at the Greenbelt arts festival.

The first three Petrovitch books (
Equations of Life, Theories of Flight, Degrees of Freedom
) were published in three months of each other in 2011, and collectively won the Philip K. Dick Award. The fourth in the series,
The Curve of the Earth
, was released in March 2013, and
Arcanum
, a doorstep-sized alternate history set a millennium after the fall of Rome, is set to follow in November. Yes, he is making up for lost time.

Sophia McDougall
was supposed to be an Oxford English literature academic before running away in 2002 to write fiction. She is the author of the bestselling Romanitas trilogy (published by Orion/Gollancz and twice shortlisted for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History), set in a contemporary world where the Roman Empire never fell. Her short stories have been published by Jurassic London, Solaris and NewCon. Her first novel for children,
Mars Evacuees
, will be published by Egmont and Harper Collins US in 2014. She also creates digital art and mentors aspiring writers.

Mark Charan Newton
has worked as a bookseller and later as an editor, first for a media tie-in imprint and then publishing science fiction and fantasy. He has written for a variety of non-fiction publications including
The Ecologist
and
The Huffington Post
, as well as science fiction for BBC Radio 4. Somewhere along the way he became obsessed with ancient Rome, and so apologises in advance for abusing old cultures in his story. He currently lives and works in Nottingham and you can find him online at markcnewton.com.

Alastair Reynolds
was born in Barry, South Wales, in 1966. He studied at Newcastle and St Andrews Universities and has a Ph.D. in astronomy. He gave up working as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency to become a full-time writer.
Revelation Space
and
Pushing Ice
were shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award;
Revelation Space, Absolution Gap, Diamond Dogs
and
Century Rain
were shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Award and
Chasm City
won the British Science Fiction Award.

Adam Roberts
was born two-thirds of the way through the last century. He is a writer of science fiction, and a professor of nineteenth-century literature, and he lives a little way west of London. His most recent novels are
By Light Alone
(Gollancz) and
Jack Glass
(Gollancz).

Esther Saxey
is a Uranian, or possibly a Urningin, or even a Uranodioningin. Definitely an amateur queer theorist living in London.

James Smythe
is the author of
The Testimony, The Explorer
and
The Machine
(HarperCollins), among other things. He has written narratives for video games and teaches Creative Writing. He can be found on twitter @jpsmythe.

E. J. Swift
’s debut novel
Osiris
is published by Night Shade Books and forthcoming from Del Rey UK, and is the first in a trilogy: The Osiris Project. Her short story “The Complex”, published by
Interzone
, will be included in the anthology
The Best British Fantasy 2013
. When not writing, she is kept busy as a slave to cats and an afficionado of the trapeze.

Lavie Tidhar
is the World Fantasy Award winning author of
Osama
, of
The Bookman Histories
trilogy and many other works. He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella for
Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God
, and is the winner of a BSFA and a Kitschies awards for his non-fiction. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and in South Africa but currently resides in London.

Kaaron Warren
is an award-winning author with seven works of fiction in print. Her three short story collections are
The Grinding House, The Glass Woman, Dead Sea Fruit
and
Through Splintered
. Her novels are
Slights, Walking the Tree
and
Mistification
. She’s lived in Melbourne, Sydney and Fiji and now lives in Canberra, Australia, with her family.

The editors would like to thank the many, many people, earthbound and celestial, who made this possible, including Lauren Beukes, Rebecca Nuotio, China Miéville, Joey Hi-Fi, Laika, Doctor Richard Kron and the guidance counselor that once told Anne she wasn’t cut out for astrophysics.

Above all, we would like to thank Emma McLean and Marek Kukula. Without their hard work, patience and imagination, this would never would have been possible.

All images in the book © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

These and other images are available to view online at
collections.rmg.co.uk, and many are available for sale through the Museum’s Picture Library at images.rmg.co.uk.