The Lowest Heaven

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Can you move?” he asked me. “Is anything broken?”

  I could move. Nothing was broken. The roof rotated and where the sky had been dark, it was now all stars and Milky Way. I stood up, bruised, and tried to figure out where my feet were. My dad had me by the arm, and he was moving me out of there, faster than I wanted to move. I looked back at the telescope, and I could feel everything getting taken away from me, forever, and all at once.

  My dad carried me to the car, fastened my seatbelt, and drove me down the spiral road, and to the hospital. He told the nurses I’d fallen from something high, and they looked into my eyes and agreed that I was looking out at the world through a concussion. They showed me my pupils in a handmirror, one big, one tiny, Martian moons in an eclipse, or the sun trying to shine through a sky full of ash.

  I put my face into a crisp white shoulder and cried there, but when I lifted my head, I was done, and no one asked.

  Mr. Loury’s abandoned house and its volcano got paved over when they redid the spiral road in the late 70’s.

  My dad drowned in 1984, on a trip to the South Pacific, diving into an underwater cave and failing to equalize his pressure, but he was an old man by then and hadn’t been in touch with me in a long time. There were no more mothers.

  The astronomers at Palomar kept finding supernovae and charting galaxies, but the largest telescope in the world was surpassed in size in the early 90’s. The last time I drove there, up the spiral road and to the tourist center, it was daylight, and the only person I saw was not an astronomer, but a painter pulleying himself around the walls, rolling white paint slowly over the dome.

  When I tried to ask him a question, he shrugged and turned back to his job, pulling himself along the dome, hand over hand.

  I stood there a while, watching him spackling the fine cracks all over the surface, the ones that stretched up from the gravel and all the way to the top of the dome itself. The observatory was getting old. I bent down, and put my ear to the ground, but there was nothing to hear. When I stood up, the painter was looking at me.

  He reached into the pocket of his overalls, and tossed me a small white rock. Later that night, in my hotel room, I soaked it in alcohol. Underneath the paint, the rock was black and porous, but that was all.

  We regret the loss of you, for although we know how to subsist without you, yet we do not know why.

  * * *

  Slide, formerly from the collection of the British Astronomical Association, showing a total solar eclipse – when the disk of the Sun is fully obscured by the Moon. (c1900)

  AN ACCOUNT OF A VOYAGE FROM WORLD TO WORLD AGAIN, BY WAY OF THE MOON, 1726, IN THE COMMISSION OF GEORGIUS REX PRIMUS, MONARCH OF NORTHERN EUROPE AND LORD OF SELENIC TERRITORIES, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH. UNDERTAKEN BY CAPTAIN WM CHETWIN ABOARD THE COMETES GEORGIUS.

  ADAM ROBERT

  My Commission

  In all respects aiming at brevity, I here set down the account of the cruize I undertook to the Moon, afterwards returning again to this, our world, in the years of our Lord, 1726 & 27. There is (as is well known) littel enough in the Moon to justify the expence of crewing and leasing a vessel; save only that it is upon the Moon that the Patiens make their habitation, and as such some do go in hopes of obtaining or otherwise laying hands upon any and all devices or vessels of their design. Howsoever rarely this is achiev’d, and with what poor returns upon the market here is well known, for perhaps one in every four items brought back to our world is of any use to us at all, and the main amount of such chattel merely reproduces what is already in the possession of mankind, where such novelties most often prove impossible for the wits of men to decipher.

  So was I sworn by the First Lord Commissioner, the Earl of Berkeley Viscount Dursley, during the early days of the late war between Spain and Peru; for at time of war was the urge to uncover such Arms as may be secreted amongst the machinery of the Patiens, tho’ never yet accomplished. It is known now (forall that I was bound with oaths of secrecy at that time) that His Majesty’s Own Ambassadors were treating with Brasilia and Peru, and that the Americas were eager to have a European allie in their struggle against the Spaniards. To that end, and to ease such discussion with proof of our intent in stopping Spain from locating any Weapons such as may or may not have been available in the Sky-lands. I was Commission’d to make my way thither, and funds were furnished upon the Stock of Sir George Oxenden, Bart, and Sir John Jennings, who became Certificated Gentleman with shares of 20/100 apiece in any prize we might win. But this manner of voyage is so different to admiralty work, and plunder so rare to come by, that their shares were in turn underwritten by His Majesty’s Office of Swedish Finance.

  My Lords approach’d me, I do not doubt, on account of my experience going thither into the tallest hights, and having previously publish’d Round the World by Way of the Attenuat’d Hights, published at Mr. Crowther’s, 1717, I do commend this account to my present readers. As to the obtaining of the vessel, I shall here say littel; for it is well known that most of the Patien devices with useful function reside in private hands, for all that the Crown urges its Subjects to sell them to the State. There being in divers hands four devices for Communication over Vast distance, none of which I have ever seen; and upwards of two dozen devices for elevating vessels to the greatest hight; yet these latter have yet to be prov’d, for only when the Vessel so uplifted has left the thickness of Earthly ayr below it may it be in any fashion steer’d, such that the creation of craft that may Fly about the Skies of this world has not been accomplish’d. Yet the Chinese claim they have modify’d such a Vessel, as we may very well expect it shoud be possible to do; or else (as in the present wars) Craft must fly up to the Attenuat’d Hights in order to come back down again in another place. There was but one device found useful for applying Heat via a wand of some metallick quality, and it the only Patiens-ware ever seiz’d by the Crown, upon the Royal Warrant, and taken to the Royal Armouries where its mysteries were not exhum’d and (as I heard) it was spoyl’d by those who examin’d it and now rests mere junk.

  At any rate, the Guild that attends to building and caulking the Vessels, and the Guild that has possession of the Propulse, and the Guild that attends to Ayr, and the Guild that possesses the Royal Patent for provisioning such cruizes, all stand off from all, such that bringing together a crew is a tiresome business. It might benefit the Commonwealth of all Northward European peoples, under His Gracious Majesty’s rule, were they but encouraged to allign their commerce. On this occasion it requir’d a threeweek’s tedious use of my time to provision and construct the Vessel, which I named the Cometes Georgius; most of which labour was in having my men running from office to office along the Dover roads. At fine, the Vessel was readied: it being if pyramidic shape the better to cleave through the ayr close to our world; builded of alternate layers of wood, well caulked with plastick’d tarr, and sheets of the new India-rubber, to preserve the atmosphear within. A number of balons of ayr must be carried thither, each twice the size of the Vessel itself; and I know that the Americans, when they ascend, begin the cruize by heating the ayr within and so are lifted on the first stage, although the Propulse-device of the Patiens must soon be engag’d. We had no such unnecessary complexness about our Voyaging, and the balon lay alongside us, ty’d with cord to the base and link’d via a spiggot-tube. The ayr being so precious a commodity limits the size of the crew; one man per Guild and myself being four in all; or else the number of balons tow’d behind must needs become troublesome. Dobrée took twenty with him on his supraplanetary, hoping to replenish them at journey’s end, but was compell’d to return on the same supply and thereby perished the majority of his crew. It has been found, since then, that the seeding the interior with green vegetation goes some way toward avoiding the parching of the lungs, tho’ Dobrée knew nothing of that. My crew was roster’d as follows:

  Captain, my self

  Gabriel Cano, Ayr

  Eberhard Christian Kindermann, Pilot

/>   James Moulville, Purser

  As for the Propulse itself, it is a manner of seven-tine starr’d structure, of weight equivalent to a small cannon but spread thin, and constructed not of metal, altho’ it is of a substance akin to metal. As to the operation of this device, it is easy enough to deduce it, for all that the Guild pretends it is of passing secrecy and difficulty; for each of the tines may be operated independent, or in any combination, by the scraping of a blade or rod along the groove in each, as I have often observ’d the Pilota doing; and in truth it was only my respect for the terms of the Royal Guild Charter, and my own Commission, and not any insufficiency in my own skill, that prevented me kicking the Pilot (a fellow given to insolence of address when speaking to me, by name Kindermann, out of Prussia) off the Vessel. When in the lower ayr, all seven tines are needful at their greatest power, in order to keep the Vessel steady; and attempts to steer the course in amongst the turbulence below the clouds will like as not cause it to o’ertopple and crash. But above the lower ayr the matter of the atmosphear becoming so difuse, the tines may be individually activated to propell the vessel this way or that.

  We set off first from Kent on a clear day, 12th June, 1726; and were delay’d at once, for the of our three balons one was indifferently ty’d to the Cometes, such that the cord broke and the balon fell away. This involv’d us in delay and expense, for, 1, the balon went into the English Canal and bobb’d, for all that I know, to France; and, 2, tho’ I instruct’d the pilot to descend immediately, yet he contin’d the ascent until he was perswaded cross-winds had become negligible, and only thence reverse the direction of travel; such that we set down again some thirty leagues away from our departing point. The Cometes having to be carried across the country, and a new balon obtained and fill’d and other sundry annoyances requir’d a further three days and near-enough £80 of extraneous expence. But we set off again, the 15th June, and had no further difficulty in quitting the Earth’s thicker ayr altogether. The experience of this flight is not unpleasing, for the motion in the lower ayr being slow’d by the need to drag our balons behind us, is neither precipitous nor startling; yet in the upper ayr the lack of obstruction to our passage means that we shoot faster and faster, as a Cannon-bullet. It is a three-night journey to reach the Moon, and the days in that place are night in all respects. Some take candles with them, but I prefer to preserve our supply of breathable and subsist on such sunlight as the portholes inmit. The road is clear; for altho’ others have affirmed the existence of rubble and other obstacles in the way, causing annoyance and worse to the fabrick of any vessel, I have not found it so. The most remarkable thing at first is that the people swim and and turn like fish in a tank, by whatsoever strange Magnetick or Nimphidic power of the high sky. Yet Custom works so strongly upon us that tho’ we find ourselves amaz’d at the first, yet soon we become us’d and even bored with the facility.

  The higher sky is so capacious, and the passage rapid, it is near impossible to observe whate’er other Vessels are traversing the distance between Earth and the Moon; although I am perswaded that the Chinese and the Peruvians both make more frequent cruizes thither and back than is generally suppos’d. For the Peruvian Cristal House must be supply’d with ayr, that cannot be found except upon the Earth. And whilst the means by which the Patiens’s devices are fuell’d or power’d or do otherwise draw their means of subsistence is entirely unknown, we are in no ways restrict’d by the need to supply such fuel, or to any degree incommoded from making as many voyages as we chuse; and it is only the necessity of bringing along ayr, water and victuals for the crew that acts as any restriction upon travelling as far and often as we might wish. I do believe the Americans ply the distance on a continual round, such that their Cristal House lose nothing in the cleanness of its atmosphear, and afterwards had occasion to confirm.

  The Moon appears at first in the porthole no larger than it does from the ground upon our own Mundus; and a full day may pass before any increase in dimension be observ’d; but by the third day it is large enough to make out the structures upon it, and by the fifth it fills the view. Here the Pilot reverses the action of the Propulse, which caus’d the fabrick of the Cometes to tremble and groan like to fly apart, and occasion’d us all grave anxiety; and also our balons, from being dragged behind, did swallow around us, and obstruct’d our vision from portholes, which was by no means conducive to good navigation. But the celerity of passage must be quench’d; and after a ten-minute of complaining it settled again. By wagging the Vessel from side to side, Kindermann clear’d one porthole, and from this was looked out upon the Selenic landscape.

  There being no ayr in that place, nothing prevents a craft with access to a Patiens’ device from moving about the sky at leisure, and we made a road for ourselves according to my instructions, passing over a number of large Crateric and Ridged features. The face of the Moon being familiar to all, and the location of all structures well-mapp’d, there was no difficulty in navigating over the surface of it. Shortly thereafter we pass’d over one of the habitations of the Patiens, not far from the Crater nam’d Blenheim by us, but Sancta Maria by other nations. We could see the spread of structures, radiating out from a hub, and lit at all points by those same ever-burning lanterns two samples of which have fall’n into the hands of the Turques, as I hear it. We all clustered about the porthole and looked down to see the Patiens themselves; from the prospect of altitude reduc’d even more to insectile seeming, hurrying in and out of their houses on their incomprehensible tasks. They paid us no heed, save only one of their aerial machines, or as some assert their birds (though it looks unlike any bird) that flew up and about us and then flew away.

  Soon we approach’d the Cristal House of the Peruvians; for it is but a roof’d-over Crater three leagues S.S.W of the Great Copernick Crater that is familiar to any who have cast their eye upon the Moon. My thought was: should the Spaniards ever obtain a Propulse and build a Vessel, it would present them no challenge at all to find the House and break its roof, whereby all its ayr would be lost and the crops within kill’d. We made a pass low over the structure, and admir’d its shine in the unhaz’d sunlight very much; and once passed we saw men at work on the other side of the glass tending their vegetation; and we saw also the pier, or pavement, construct’d alongside for the reception of their own ships. Shadows upon the Moon are drawn tight as draughtsman’s lines, and very stark and clear; and the light is such as not like to be forgotten. And here I instructed the pilot to set the Cometes down. It landed with some commotion, for we missed the pavement, and landed on the desart soil nearby; and moreover the landing near tipped us aside, at the which I was wrathful with Kindermann. Shortly thereafter we pass’d over one of the habitations of the Patiens Kindermann the while spoke to me very insolent, and assur’d me he had power to blacklist me from further trade with his Guild, if I thought to treat him as a slave or remitted the slightest courteous usage. I reminded him of the great sums I had defray’d, and bade him only do his job. At this Cano and Mulville took the Pilot’s side, and we endur’d an ill mood in that craft whilst awaiting the Pervuians.

  They came at last, after the dust had settled; and in truth it sifted but slowly to the ground; for weight on the Moon is less than on our world. For it is the efficacy of the various worlds to cast their charm upon men in divers ways; such that to stand upon 1 planet is to be made from stone, and upon another into cork. It is accordingly a different matter entire to stand upon the Moon as it is upon the Earth; in the former place the substance of that world causeth the body to become buoyant almost to the current of floating into the ayr; yet to return again to the Earth is to become heavy again, with a sense of sinkage of body and spirit both. As to how this effect is form’d, opinion is divided, some adhering to the French school of Des Cart, some to the English of Viscount Coldstream and some the German of Neuton. Some affirm (and I do myself believe) that the Earth, as the site of the sin of Adam, was endued with weightiness as a portion of its especial cu
rse; and that other planets surrounding the sun being free of such taint are all lighter worlds; as we can see of Jupitter, the most large; for that none have yet voyaged thither, yet it is plain that to look through a Prospective glass is to see a world, as the poet says,

  .................curious we behold thy many Belts

  That gird thy Spacious Body round and large,

  Formed from thick Vapours, Stormfronts dire

  From which we may deduce that Jupitter is a vaprous world, such as could not be if its weight were consummate with its great size (as Neuton affirms), or those vapours would be drawn out of the sky to fall as rain and the obscurant clouds would clear away, as may be observ’d in the case the Earth.

  Concerning the Patien race

  As to whether the Patien specie have the knowledge to explain this anomalous circumstance I do not know, and some affirm they lack all knowledge themselves, and are mere clowns, or puppets, of some greater power. For (it is said by some) it may be that the Patien are not the inventors of the devices and vessels we call theirs, but only receiv’d them as gifts from a Higher race—or pilfer’d them from thence—much as we have come by such devices as are ours. Certain the Patien have not that force about their affaires such as we might think fitting for great inventors, and on the contrary seem distrait and eccentric; for all remarck how great a chance they daily miss to subdue the whole world with their advantages over us.

  But I disbelieve this story myself, for if the Patien are not the progenitors of their machines, but took them from another race, then where is this race? Why have they permitted their advances to be stol’n? Why come they not hither to retrieve it? And as to the Patien claim, that they have come hither from the Pole star, which is Polaris; I believe this may be after the manner of some jest or riddle of their own; for it has been assiduously ascertained by the Chevalier de Mouhy and others that the fix’d stars are too distant for such voyaging. A Cannon-Bullet shot from the Earth must require 26 years in passing from hence to the Sun, and with the same Velocity wherewith it was discharged, it would require, in order to arrive at the fix’d Stars almost Seven hundred thousand Years: and a Ship that can sail 50 miles in a Day and a Night, will require 30,430,400 Years. As to the suppos’d Immortality of the Patien, I do not believe; for I have seen old ones as well as young, and seen that when cut they bleed, tho’ it is a curious form of blood, coloured like as milk or buttermilk; and besides, to advert Immortality to any Being not explicitly Divine is a blasphemous derogation of God’s Will in this Univers. It does less violence to credulity to believe the Patien come from some other world in orbit of the Sun, Mars as some say; which if Dobrée is to be believ’d (and there is much that is hard to credit in his Voyage á le Monde Martien) is near as desart and ayrless as the Moon herself. Some will say that Dobrée reported seeing none of the Patien race upon Mars in his time there; to which I reply, 1, that it being a world entire, it ought not offend our reason to believe that some parts are more inhabited than others, for if a visitor came to our world he might as well stop in the Afric desart and declare the whole globe void of population, as make any such categorical statement regarding Mars; and, 2, that Dobrée so poorly provision’d for his voyage, especially in consideration of ayr, but water also, that his crew, all but one, perish’d on the return, and both he and Valtat were driven from their wits with the suffering of it, such that I doubt a court of law in London would accept his testimony as gospel in any tryal or deposition. But this and other pedantic questioning may best be left for future expeditions to that Scarlet world to determine.