by Pam Crane
feet lost contact with the earth.
Back to Top
CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON
"It surely depends on your definition of a year," said Jim-Jam. "Are you measuring your 365 days from the start of January? Or one of the quarters?"
He fidgeted with his dressing-gown cord. His friend, as usual, was ready for the working day in sweater and jeans.
"I was looking at the winter solstice - what else?"
"Oh come on, Patrick. Engage brain. Why should we always start a cycle with winter? And why not spring? Everything's beginning. It's the Aries point for Pete's sake."
"True."
"And you have to take into consideration the civil year. It's an agreed human cycle. The calendar is an idea that morphed into an event. Regular as clockwork. You know as well as I do that astrology maps the life of ideas just as vividly as physical phenomena. I need some more coffee."
"You get it - it's your kitchen!"
When James returned with two large mugs of Lazy Sunday the laptop was back on and Patrick was staring at the screen.
"Thanks, Jim-Jam. OK, I've got Solar Fire running and the winter solstice horoscope for 2011. You want me to check out the spring equinox?"
"Yes, and also the start of the calendar year 2012. I mean, when all the red-tops are yelling 'wettest year since records began!' in mile-high capitals ..."
"You do exaggerate!"
"... they are talking about the year that started at 0h00 on the first of January. End of."
"So you don't want me to look at spring."
"Of course I do! If we want to discover the connections between astrology and our weather we have to keep all options open. Don't forget what Jung said, 'Whatever is born or done at a moment of time has the qualities of that moment of time.' We know what the qualities should be ..."
"We think we do."
"... and we are looking for the moment...."
"... when there are clouds on the horizon?"
The moment that was looking back at the two friends from a white circle on the starry desktop showed two planets overhead and the rest below the line of the Ascendant-Descendant,
"Oh just look at that!" Patrick was exultant. "A rising Moon! In Scorpio! How much destructive water do you want? How's that for storm clouds? Eh, Jim-Jam?"
"Well, it's certainly looking good for the winter solstice I have to admit. What does spring 2012 have to show us?"
"Not a lot." The diagram was devoid of angular planets, nothing hugging the lines of the horizon or meridian. Nothing in the sky of March 20th 2012 at 5h14 am had the prominence and power of that winter Moon. James was deflated. Spring should have been another valid beginning.
Patrick wagged a finger. "Don't forget there was actually a serious drought in the spring - totally misleading as it turned out. No, the traditional year wins this one!"
"Your memory is rubbish, my friend. We had a dangerously dry winter; it was spring when the downpours began. But why can't I see them?..." he added more to himself now.
How easy it was these days to search through the planetary patterns; no more hours and hours of aching eyes and writers cramp as the hard-pressed astrologer crawled through calculations with books of logarithms and reams of paper, no more Tippex, no more nasty inky edges on the ruler, no more leaky and dying biros. Astrological software had evolved from 1970s punch-cards through the blue and white of DOS to the current generation of programs for Windows; these now performed every conceivable mathematical handspring for the enthused researcher, and displayed the results with clarity and beauty.
"I still want to put up the chart for 2012."
"OK Jim-Jam. I do take your point."
A few keystrokes and mouse-clicks entered the data for New Year, 0h00 on January 1st 2012, in London. They stared at it in silence. A little smile appeared like a sunrise on James's face as he realised how right his instincts had been.
"Clouds on the horizon, Patrick."
"Angular Moon again."
"Not only the Moon setting but of course square to the New Year Sun, down there at the lower meridian with Pluto. Ever since Pluto went into Capricorn, with the Sun at the start of the year, we've been getting extreme weather. Add the Moon at right-angles and the whole country is lined up for exceptional rain. Wow,"
"It's a double whammy, with the solstice."
"A double whammy."
"Even changing location doesn't make much difference. The New Year horizon and meridian are always square."
"Exactly."
Then Jim-Jam had another thought.
"But suppose we did the dwad?"
"Trust a bonkers Aquarian to make a suggestion like that."
"Patrick, you are as square as these angles. You know how easy it is with Solar Fire. We just go into the Indian Astrology module."
"But why?"
"Because it's a fractal. Astrology is all about twelve. We work with twelve signs whether in the western zodiac or the eastern constellations. All the dwad does is divide each sign into twelve more tiny ones. It's a natural system of fine-tuning; it exposes the inner truth of every chart - every person - every event. You should know that by now!"
His friend had been straightening the higgledy-piggledy pile of books and magazines on the breakfast table, and brushed away some crumbs.
"I'm not convinced. You're confusing two entirely different zodiac systems."
"Look at you! Picky old Virgo. No sense of adventure. Yet you're so meticulous; you're perfectly cut out for dwad work if only you'd let go of your prejudice."
"You do it then. It's your computer. I don't see what more it can add. And I wish you'd put some clothes on."
"I prefer to be comfy, thank you ... and stop tidying everything! You've been fiddling with my stuff ever since you arrived. Right. Dwads. The whole lot. Here we go."
It took only a minute to fill the screen with the second set of tiny charts, their kaleidoscope of Suns, Moons and planets dispersed on the circles with no apparent respect to astronomy.
"One more thing ..."
Jim-Jam selected the winter chart and its dwad offspring for December 22nd 2011 at 5h30 am, and put them up on the screen as concentric circles, one inside the other.
"Oh my."
"That's wet."
"Now will you listen to me when I tell you about fractals?"
"Could be coincidence."
"Patrick!"
"Beginners luck."
"Patrick I am not a beginner."
"Do the others then. Show me the bi-wheels."
"Let me check our winter chart for different cities..." a further flurry of clicks and keys, then " ... no, they all show that rising Scorpio Moon with the Dragon's Tail and Ceres - already at the lower meridian - hitting it from the dwad. It's a pattern that spells environmental disaster. Look at poor Chichester - the dwad lower meridian is there too, the symbol of the land itself; and Sussex was drowning."
"Ceres is only an asteroid. I don't see the significance."
"Oh Patrick! Where have you been for the last six years? She's officially a dwarf planet now. And - crucially - rules agriculture. And she was discovered on the very day the UK came into being, January 1st 1801, so she has an intimate connection with our affairs. Look what has been happening! Months of destructive rain impacting the whole of the UK, bringing our farmers close to ruin and whacking up food prices just when her son-in-law Pluto plunged the EEC into a multi-dip recession. And you don't see the significance."
"OK." His friend sounded weary. He never could keep up with Jim-Jam. "What about New Year?"
"Moonset ... moonset ... moonset," James muttered to himself. "... but what have we got in the dwad? ... Ah!"
He was looking at chart after chart with Pluto and Chiron at the Imum Coeli making a dramatic triangle with the Moon and Ceres, directly connecting to the astronomical Ceres from the fractal pattern.
"You do see what I mean? Shall we take a look at spring now?"
They looked at spring. Once again the double whe
els threw tiny, crucial Ceres into prominence and Britain's agriculture into the spotlight. But -
"No clouds on the horizon!" said Patrick.
"No. No clouds on the horizon. These patterns can tell us a lot about the season; but they have nothing to say about our wettest year. It was vital to check them out - but on this point I concede. Clearly, spring is just spring. However! ... that winter solstice and the New Year chart are both so full of rain that surely we have two reliable forecasts here? Don't you agree, Patrick?"
"I still think the winter solstice has the edge."
"You may be right."
"We need more coffee."
"We need to look at droughts."
"And more wet years."
"And blizzards?"
"Coffee!"
"Do you think Piers Corbyn does this?"
"He doesn't give much away."
"He says he uses the sun. And the moon."
"That could mean anything."
"If we get this right we could steal some of his trade!"
"And upset the Met Office."
"And Carol Kirkwood."
"Which mug do you want? ..."
Back to Top
NEVER
"Swear!" said Jim-Jam.
"Swear you will never, ever tell!"
"Never?"
"Never!"
"Ow! That hurts!" Patrick managed to disengage his twisted arm and rubbed it frantically. "You didn't have to do that."
"I really mean it," said Jim-Jam. "This is something that must never come out."
The two friends were having their usual coffee; Jim-Jam (James) uncharacteristically, was dressed. After a fashion. He had exchanged blue paisley pyjamas for a jogging suit in a strange shade of lime green but had still thrown his tatty old dressing gown over the top.
"Habit," he said.
"Why the jog-suit?"
"Been for a run."
"A run? You?"
"Getting a paunch."
"No you're not."
"I'm not fit."
"You're bone idle!"
"That's exactly my point. So I've been out this morning and had a run round the square. It was quite nice."
" That's hardly going to break you into a sweat!"
"Depends how often I do it."
"And how often did you do it?"
"Three times. Said hallo to the squirrels. Met next-door-but-one with his wolfhound."
"Doesn't sound very taxing!"
"It's a start."
Patrick took a long swig of cooling coffee and stared pensively at his friend.
"Never. It's a funny word."
"All words are funny if you look at them long enough!" said James. "Book had me scratching my head for a week, once."
"Never is so ... empty!"
"But it just means 'on no occasion'."
"No it doesn't; it's huge. It's never, ever. It's a big nothing from the beginning of everything to the impossible end of everything! Think about it Jim-Jam. 'Never' is the diametric opposite of 'Forever' ... which is eternity, ie infinity ... so it's the dark side of infinity! It's the most massive temporal black hole you could ever ... ever! ... conceive of."
"Black holes aren't empty."
"How do you know?"
"I do my reading!"
"You can't believe everything you read. All so-called science is speculation and blackboard chalk. Charisma and lies."
"Patrick!!!"
"Well - they're always arguing, aren't they. And changing their minds. Look at butter. Look at eggs."
"Are you suggesting we should be making lunch already?" Jim-Jam looked wistfully at his greasy but cold stove.
"All those things that were supposed to be killing us, and now all of a sudden they're really good for us again. And we knew it all the time. They're idiots."
"We've got away a bit from black holes!"
"Nobody knows what a black hole is. They only have theories."
"D'you know what I think? I think black holes are the interface between universes. Like wormholes."
"They might be the doorways to the afterlife!"
"Try telling that to the Greg Cribbinses of this world."
" I did, once. And once .." said Patrick, "he was actually open to that sort of idea. Once he was a first-class sandal-wearing barefoot hippie interested in all the stuff we do. I did his chart - and his family. We had lunch. He was a great guy. But then he got famous."
"He is a jolly good astronomer. And a prolific writer."
"Exactly. And I went to one of his talks - this was years later - at a bookshop, and he cut me dead."
"Really?"
"Really. He definitely didn't want to know his astrologer any more. So I've never tried to make contact again."
"Never! ..."
"He can go get lost in Never as far as I'm concerned. I sat next to Patrick Moore once and got into conversation about the way the whole thing hangs together and is full of purpose and consciousness but he was just rude. Wasn't going to buy it at all. Wouldn't even listen. Kept interrupting."
"Shame on your namesake!"
"They do say 'Never meet your heroes'!"
"They also say 'Never speak ill of the dead.'"
"I'm not, Jim-Jam. I'm just telling you the facts. He was another great guy. But a closed mind."
"Considering he was a Pisces with Sun conjunct Uranus that is so disappointing!"
"Cribbins is another Piscean. What is it with these blokes that they slam the shutters down on their own imagination? You'd think they would intuit the truth behind the appearance of things."
"I think Einstein did, didn't he? He was a Sun-Pisces too. But he had good old open-minded, flexible, philosophical Sagittarius 'under the hood' and the other two are both fixed in their attitude, even though Cribbins's Aquarius used to be quite experimental. Moore had Leo inside and liked to be right all the time."
Jim-Jam paused, waiting for agreement.
"How do you remember all that detail, Jim-Jam? It must be ages since you looked that deep into their patterns. I thought you did that work years ago."
"Once I've seen it I never forget. Visual memory."
"Never?!"
"Never."
"To the putative end of time you would never, ever forget anything you have ever seen in anyone's pattern, at any level of detail?"
"Well ... as long as I was alive ..."
"Aha!" cried Patrick, winning at last, "That's not 'never'. You have closed the funeral curtains round it."
"Oh no I haven't," retorted Jim-Jam. "I am including eternal life, which is forever, and my 'never' extends throughout that 'forever'."
"Come on. You can't possibly guarantee that in a discarnate state you will be capable - or even desirous - of recalling intricate planetary patterns at the drop of a hat."
"Who says I'll be discarnate?"
"Well if you aren't then you'll have a totally different body and brain somewhere - which might not even be in this solar system! You might be some blue multi-legged alien thingy! - and you'll suffer from exactly the same amnesia as we all do when we reincarnate here. Am I right or am I right?"
"Oh my critical Virgo friend! Yes, I suppose I have to give you that one. We have no idea how much we have forgotten, after all. Lives lost in the limbo of never-ending change."
"There," said Patrick. "You're off again. 'Never-ending'. How do you know it's never-ending? Aren't we supposed to get off the Wheel of rebirth eventually?"
"Well, we haven't yet!"
"True."
There was a silence - in which Patrick looked at Jim-Jam's Star Trek wall clock and noted with satisfaction that it was indeed twenty minutes past the hour. Silences always fell at twenty past or twenty to.
"So what is it that you were about to tell me that I must on pain of death or at least extreme discomfort never, never divulge to any soul living or dead, Jim-Jam?"
"This."
James woke his crumb-laden laptop from sleep and silently turned the screen t
oward his friend. Patrick's eyes widened.
"What the hell is that?"
The pattern was unlike anything he had seen before. James had gone to another level. In all the years they had been studying together no astrological technique had ever produced a result like this. In ring after concentric ring, Sun, Moon and planets converged to a point of energy that surely would turn the world and its civilisations on its head.
"I'm not going to tell you what I did - even you, Patrick. Well, not yet. And as you can see, the date is a long way off. But if anyone in the press got hold of this, or the politicians, or the general public, and took it seriously ..."
"Would they be likely to?"
" ... if they did, which they might. You never know! ... it could make them very nervous and who knows might precipitate a lot of panic and disorder."
"Or it might focus everyone's mind for the first time on the things that really matter!"
"But the things that really matter are often the very ones that most divide people - look at the wars we have had to endure, all on points of inflexible principle that neither side can tolerate. It might make things a lot worse."
"And in the end it may never happen. Again."
"Well, something will!"
"Second Coming?"
"We wish!"
"Who knows what the world will be like by then, anyway, Jim-Jam. Change is accelerating. Perhaps we'll reverse all the damage, and this will be a fresh start?"
"Or it could be the Rapture."
"Whatever it is, I doubt we'll be here to see it."
"We may be looking down from Upstairs, going, 'Told you so!'"
"But you're right, Jim-Jam. I think we bury this. Just let history unfold. We mustn't interfere. Even if only one person believed us it might be the proverbial butterfly's wing that starts a hurricane. What will you do with it?"
"Just file it. Let go and let God."
"Supposing someone finds it?"
"How?"
"They steal your laptop. Or it's discovered after you die."
"Thank you, Patrick, for that cheering thought. No, you have a point. Perhaps I should erase the file ..."
"Completely shred it."
"Then it will never come to light."
"Never be a danger."
"But I shall never forget what I have seen, and now neither will you! This is a secret that we share; and we must never speak about it."
"Never, Jim-Jam. And you will never have to twist my arm!"
James was already breaking eggs.
Back to Top
PIONEERS
The leaves were turning brown, and the handwriting had faded into the foxing round their edges. If Jack had been picking through a book from 18th century London he would have thought nothing of it; its plates would have been salvaged, a little careful Chloramine-T applied to clean the pages, then rabbit-skin size to strengthen and restore them. In his previous life as an antiquarian print dealer he had done this hundreds of times for customers of all kinds from souvenir-hunters to museum archivists. But here ... this was part of a miracle. This diary, almost invisible in its hiding-place, had degraded through humidity. Not so long ago this would have been impossible.
He had stumbled upon it in a foray beyond the disaster area. The rest of the team were still assessing the damage to the settlement and treating the few survivors. Skeletally thin, most had breathing difficulties; the storm that raged over Elysium for nine days had been planet-wide, and swept into its vortex a scouring fury of dust that tore into young plantations, choked helpless livestock and ripped to splinters every structure exposed to the Martian weather. That had been nine terrible months ago. The distress calls had been answered with praiseworthy speed but the rescue party had to endure the mental agony of two hundred and sixty days in space before they could help the stricken pioneers.
What had gone wrong? Elysium had been built to withstand
