by Adam Roberts
Eventually the skywhal swung round the globe and out of sight of his telescope. This was, Cleonicles calculated, the beast’s closest approach to the moon yet. His mind worked through possibilities. Was it deranged in some way? Was this bizarre flight-path merely the skywhal equivalent of youthful high spirits? Was the beast suicidal, to tempt the fatal tug of the gravity of this world?
Cleonicles went back inside and took a glass of coffee and some marinated and freshly grilled chitterlings, before writing up his observations properly. Something very interesting going on, he was certain of that.
He took an interest in everything, as was (he thought) proper for a scientist. But he had given over the majority of his energy, in these last years, to the mysteries of the cosmos beyond the System. Stars! Vacuum! A scale that some experts calculated at thousands of miles, some at billions – difficult to judge which was more likely. For the man hungry for mystery this arena was the most mysterious of all. It was this impossible place, outside the cosmos, that chiefly animated him now. If he had one regret at devoting his life to science, at choosing his researches over partner and family, it was simply that he now had no son with whom to enthuse over each day’s new startling discovery. He tried, sometimes, to engage Polystom; but much as he loved his nephew he had to concede the boy’s mind was weak and vacillating, infected by what the great physicist Cinesias called ‘the virus of subjectivity’. For a time he had come close to irritation (without, luckily, actually succumbing to the vulgar impulse) at his nephew’s presence. It was that period of six or seven months after his wife’s death when he seemed forever visiting, forever sleeping in a guest room, forever wearying Cleonicles’ ear with his sorrow and his self-pity. Throughout those months he had distracted Cleonicles from research at a particularly exciting juncture, and it had crossed the old man’s mind simply to ask him to go. He was glad, in retrospect, that he had never given way to so base an instinct. It wasn’t Polystom’s fault that he had fallen for a madwoman, and when all was said and done he was family, after all.
The mail had arrived.
An official-looking letter, the envelope crested with the Bear of Enting, had come from some officious civil service officer. It related to the execution of a servant that had taken place two days earlier on Cleonicles’ estate. Cleonicles glanced at it: an endorsement, nothing more. A waste of paper. But this other one looked more interesting – a long pale-orange envelope, evidently a communication from his onetime rival and now occasional collaborator, Scholides. Cleonicles pulled the corner off the envelope and slid his finger in to rip away the top. What was the old boy saying?
. . . my preference, as you know, refuses to apprehend ‘vacuum’ as any but an extreme, laboratory-induced phenomenon. And, dear friend, although I know you mistrust numerical sciences, I have brought ‘mathematics’ to bear on the issue. Following on from my recent paper, the one you kindly endorsed, I worked with a notional ‘planet’ with a notional atmosphere existing in the sort of ‘vacuum-space’ you postulate as existing beyond the borders of the cosmos. I have now utilised a force algorithm to examine the effect of the pressure gradient from one bar to zero bar over a length of seventy kilometres. Now you will say that this final measurement is arbitrary, and so it is; but I would counter that it needs must be arbitrary, believing as I do that no such situation could ever actually obtain in the universe! And given the need for this arbitrary number, I have taken seventy thousand metres from your own models! With these initial data, and the equation F = G[(m1)/x — (m1m2)/x2], such that x is the figure of seventy thousand which we have mentioned and the ms 1 and 2 the respective atmospheric pressures, we arrive at a force of one seventh of a Kratos – a small force, but one capable of accelerating a particle as tiny as an oxygen or nitrogen particle up to fifty thousand kilometres an hour! Acceleration of such force, occasioned by the effective decompression of going from one bar to zero in so short a space of time, would, as I have demonstrated, suck any atmosphere clean away from any planet. Any liquid would also be boiled away into space, and some mineral matter, although minerals such as granite or compression-formed marbles may possess tensile strength enough to resist the force (a related question is whether rocks as we understand them could form in the extreme conditions you posit). You will note that assuming a vacuum of zero bar effectively eliminates the second part of the equation, but even if we assume a vacuum of very low bar – say one one-thousandth – it does not materially affect the equations. The gravitational G in the equation might be thought to have the power to rein in some small proportion of the particles, but only if G approached infinite levels could an atmosphere be maintained – atmosphere being at the molecular level, as we both know, billions of individual missiles travelling ballistically at velocities great enough to escape the gravitational attraction of any world. Clearly, then, no worlds as we understand them could exist in the conditions of a vacuum cosmos: and if my own world of Rhum were translated there by magic the ‘vacuum’ would boil its atmosphere and seas away in moments, rip away its biomass and whirlwind away much of its soil and rock.
Only two postulates can possibly follow from this state of affairs. One . . .
From the flowery language it looked as though Scholides was planning to publish this letter; the ‘My Dear Cleonicles . . .’ at the top would be enough to find it a home in half a dozen respectable journals, and it was a quicker way of publishing than working through the tortuous rituals of refereed Proceedings and Journals. Well, let him publish. It was dull stuff, and not particularly original. Worse, there was a degree of dishonesty about it: for Scholides knew perfectly well (though he didn’t say so) that Cleonicles had never suggested this bizarre model . . . planets existing out in vacuum, beyond the cosmos, with atmospheres that simply sat, like pools in an indent. That was patently ridiculous. Clearly any such atmosphere would be boiled away into space, either immediately or else through a process of depletion over time. He folded the letter to throw it away, and then thought better of it. Perhaps it was worth checking the ‘two postulates’ that the old rogue mentioned. Maybe he had something new to say.
Only two postulates can possibly follow from this state of affairs. One is that the ‘stars’ and ‘atmosphere-bearing planets’ of what we may be pleased (in your honour) to term Cleonicles’ vacuum cosmos – that these stars and planets preserve themselves against the tendency of universal vacuum to dissipate their constituents by means of some force-field or barrier. So incredible this barrier would have to be, of such surpassing might and power, draining such quantities of power, that it has properly been called not a function of Physics at all, but rather a manifestation of God. For the renowned atheist Cleonicles to be endorsing a Religious reading of the universe is ironic indeed! The second postulate, on the other hand, is to my mind the inevitable one – that there is no ‘vacuum’ beyond our cosmos, and that no planets and no stars exist in the mighty imaginary emptiness of ‘Cleonicles’ Space’. That the objects observed at the boundary of the cosmos have some other, more rational explanation. Is there any way, my old friend, in which I can convince you of the folly of denying . . .
Cleonicles dropped the letter to the floor. A servant would clear it away. A less placid man might have been annoyed by the impertinent tone of Scholides’ communication, but Cleonicles had been through so many petty disputes with so many petty scientists he no longer cared. The introduction of religion was a clever twist of the argument, though; he had to concede that.
Polystom – for some reason, this day, his mind kept wandering back to his nephew – Polystom had once advanced the ‘religion’ argument. It was a fundamentally unscientific manoeuvre, which was why Scholides had inserted it into his letter, hoping to discredit Cleonicles’ theories by association. Of course, to simply brush everything a man could not immediately understand into the satchel marked ‘God’ was nothing more than intellectual laziness. So people had once called the planets ‘gods’, shining through the sky, before the age of flight; the same pl
anets that the descendants of those same people now inhabited. ‘But uncle,’ Polystom had said, his face flushed. ‘What holds the System together?’
‘Gravity,’ said Cleonicles.
‘Isn’t this gravity just another name for God?’ he had said, wide-eyed. But Cleonicles had no desire to be unfair to his nephew, even in his own mind. When he had said that he had been fourteen years or so. It was of course a characteristically adolescent way of seeing things. The boy had grown up a little since then, if only a little.
It was mid-morning. Cleonicles was in his study, with charts in front of him. He had, the previous year, calculated the relative luminosities of the various stars to be observed from the margins of the cosmos, and using a candle-scale of his own devising he had calculated and plotted their distances. The scale had much educated guesswork about it, of course, and it assumed that all stars were the same size and luminosity as the sun. Latterly, Cleonicles had begun to doubt this postulate. The sun, after all, burned air, as all such fires did. The electrical combustion of ‘stars’ must needs follow some different, anaerobic physics, and this in turn implied a different refractive index. But until he understood exactly how the ‘stars’ shone, he could not properly map them out.
He went through his charts. According to these earlier calculations, the nearest star was less than four thousand miles beyond the outer limit of the System. But a recent paper in the Proceedings of the Organisation of Constitutive Sciences argued for distances of millions or even billions of miles – an impossible gap to bridge. Cleonicles still nurtured the dream of one day reaching out into the emptiness at the edge of the System. Of course, conventional flying devices had no purchase upon vacuum, for their wings and propellers needed atmosphere in which to operate. But a projectile fired from near the edge of the cosmos might hurtle to a nearby star. He had drawn up plans, once, long ago: a sealed projectile, fired by an enormous tube; a second projectile fired afterwards and carrying enough explosives for the voyagers in the first projectile to be able to blast themselves back into the cosmos when their journey was complete. There were difficulties, most particularly, the difficulty of not killing the crew with the severity of the acceleration at firing. But if they could be overcome! Scientists could travel to these stars, to other worlds, and all this tedious debate would be superseded!
So much depended upon accuracy of observation. A journey of a few thousand miles would be nothing, but millions of miles? Billions? It would take up the whole lifetime of the crew; and of their children, and their children’s children. There had to be a way to determine what the distances were to the stars. But it was hard! Many scientists, like Scholides, refused to accept that ‘stars’ existed. They argued that Cleonicles’ observations were amenable to some other explanation. For many years now, Cleonicles had tried to find a definite proof for his speculations. Alas, the fundamental relativity of observation thwarted him. Was he looking at great objects far away, massive globes of fire in a vacuum? Or small objects very close by? Had the photographic lenses fitted to his balloon-probes captured miniature sparks, atmospheric effect? Was it some sort of fogging of the film? Were they flecks of the stuff that marked the border of all things?
Cleonicles tried, for the tenth time that day perhaps, to focus his mind on the physics of this, but his mind slipped from the problem, and once again he found himself thinking of his nephew. It was puzzling. For some reason the ghost of Polystom lingered still about the house he left only days before. It had been a good visit, better than most. The boy had not whinged endlessly about his nightmares, his loneliness, his – worst of all! – sense of purposelessness. He had attended the execution of the servant with Cleonicles, which was good for morale all round, although he had (it was true) gone unwillingly, and grumbled about it. But still! The two of them had chatted, uncle and nephew, about stars again, which Polystom had insisted on interpreting in a ‘poetic’ rather than a ‘scientific’ manner . . . a common fault of his. They had taken a stroll down by the lakeside, and had talked about the management of the estate on Enting. Cleonicles had suggested, as gently as he could, that it would soon be time for the boy to visit Stahlstadt, to take up some of the larger responsibilities of Stewardship. The System didn’t run itself, he chided gently. Order was a fragile blossom, a delicate crystal, and needed constant attention. Polystom had nodded, sucked at his lower lip, plunged his hands into the very bottom of his pockets, and said nothing.
What a pitiable, and yet lovable, figure his nephew cut sometimes! The mannerisms of a teenager in an adult man. His belief, evident in all his actions and all his statements, that he had suffered appalling and soul-forging tragedy . . . and why? Because some ridiculous girl had put her hands down his pants and then gone off to die. This wasn’t tragedy! This was an interlude, symptomatic of an inability to see the larger scale of things; as if – and thinking about the boy seemed to trip Cleonicles’ mind unconsciously towards poetry – as if the lad perceived all his own emotions through a microscope, magnified, and everything else out of view. And yet, despite this immaturity, Cleonicles couldn’t help loving the boy. His earnestness! The vertical crease running up his brow, already distinctly marked despite Polystom’s youthfulness – all that fretting and worrying. There was something oddly refreshing about it, Cleonicles supposed, or he’d have long found it tiresome. It was the positive contrast he made with the languid good manners of most of polite society. Cleonicles could see Stom now: his jerky long limbs, arms dangling at his sides and bouncing like a girl’s two long pigtails, like a rag-doll puppet’s arms. His legs, all angular knees and jutting feet, linked by long-boned thighs and shins like the handles of hitball bats. His eyes always wide, his mouth always drooping open. His brown-blonde hair cut short, starting to thin a little even at his young age, the fine strands stirring in any breeze to show flashes of scalp. He was his father’s boy in a great many ways. It was his father in him, if Cleonicles was honest with himself; this was probably the root of his affection for the lad. Cleonicles had loved his brother so deeply. Old Polystom had been the one person to whom he had felt bonded when he was younger. But now Old Polystom was dead, sucked into the vacuum of death (to turn poetic again), and young Polystom his only relic.
Death, not something Cleonicles would usually spend time thinking about, had been the topic of many of the conversations he had had with his nephew, ever since the death of the girl, the death of whatever-her-name-was. Young Polystom’s grieving for his dead wife, it seemed to Cleonicles, had passed through the stages of absence, sorrow and regret into something much less healthy, into something obsessive. The lad had forgotten, or chose not to remember, how unhappy he had actually been when she was alive. Or so it seemed to Cleonicles. One evening, the two of them drinking together, he had suddenly said: ‘Uncle, what is the name you scientists have for this groove in the upper lip?’ He ran his hand from the underside of his nose to the centre of his top lip. ‘This little downward guttering, here, this little crease?’
‘I’m not sure, my boy, I’m not sure of the technical term,’ Cleonicles had replied. ‘I could check in Validicles’ textbook of anatomy – shall I have a servant fetch it?’
But Polystom hadn’t really been interested in the name. ‘Isn’t it strange?’ he had said. ‘The way it divides the upper lip into two, like two fleshy epaulettes. It’s like the contour made by roof-tiles meeting. Don’t you think?’
‘How fanciful your imagination is,’ Cleonicles had said, with a hint of severity. Being fanciful was, after all, in itself no virtue.
‘I dreamt about it the other night,’ Polystom said, with the gloomy little shrug that tended to accompany his pathetic indiscretions concerning his own emotional turmoil. Cleonicles didn’t say anything. ‘I dreamt I was looking at Beeswing’s face, and in particular that I was looking at that ridge. That beautiful little mark. I told her that I . . . I loved her because of that line, because of the way it pointed me towards her lips. And because of the unbrushed, pale, ghostly little
hairs lined up upon it.’ Wasn’t that just the way? A scientific question – a scientific answer – and then off into these windy irrelevances. Epaulettes? Hardly!
After a suitable pause, Cleonicles had said: ‘You need a new wife, I think, my dear boy. It’s time to put your first marriage behind you, your unhappy first marriage.’ He repeated this last phrase, to draw his nephew’s attentions back to the facts of the case. ‘Your unhappy marriage.’
But the boy’s young mind had drifted away, into whatever melancholic poetic inner wildernesses it visited. Cleonicles, clucking his disapproval, had given up.
The very next day, Cleonicles had gone off to preside over the hanging of one of his servants, and he had invited the boy to accompany him. It was one of the estate servants, a man who had been caught stealing several times, and who had tried finally to abscond by making his way through the Speckled Mountains. He had been caught, of course, and now he was facing the consequences. It was rare for Cleonicles to have to execute a servant – he was pleased to say, because it was not something in which he took any pleasure. But on the occasions when it was necessary he preferred hanging as more humane, in its way, than flogging. Flogging was more common on the sunward worlds. Hanging was regarded as a better method on the outward planets. And so Cleonicles had set the time, and decided that the best place was one of the courtyards in the western stables, a forum large enough for all the servants from that part of the estate to assemble. Their watching the event was more important than the execution of the individual, in fact, which was why (in Cleonicles’ opinion) hanging was more effective than flogging. Watching a man flogged roused levels of passionate excitement in the breasts of servants, he thought, that counteracted the deterrent effect. Hanging was a cooler business, more rational, and more likely to promote serious thought. It was also good, of course, that several representatives of the governing class be present, to give weight to the proceedings. And so Cleonicles asked Polystom to attend.
