The Lowest Heaven

by Alastair Reynolds

  “I am Shereen. I clean here.”

  “My name is Aliyah. I’m a Novice.”

  “I can tell.”

  “Can you? I guess you can, at that.”

  “I saw you here, before.”

  “Yes, I saw you, too. I think.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, I suppose...”

  “Your eyes are very beautiful.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry, I have the strangest feeling, as if we’d met before. There are things moving behind my eyes, at least it feels that way.”

  “How long do you have before Initiation?”

  “Twelve orbits to an Earth year of grafts and surgery.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It’s worth it. Or so they say. I would be a part of the Sisterhood. It’s a way of never really dying, isn’t it. Think about it. Haifa al-Sahara is still alive, in some form, in the Three-times-Three, and soon I will be a part of her, and she a part of me.”

  “Who’s to say if it is right not to die? Isn’t our humanity defined by our death?”

  “But which humanity? I’m sorry, I –”

  “You look flushed. Here, let me help you –”

  “It is probably the medication. Your hand feels so hot.”

  “Your brow is icy cold. Here, let me loosen your scarf.”

  “Thank you, I –”

  “I feel strange, sitting like this with you.”

  “No one can see us, can they?”

  “We are alone.”

  “Hold me. Shereen? Shereen.”

  “Aliyah. Aliyah?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  Things escalated when the Guild of Porters – swearing nominal allegiance to the House of Domicile – declared a general strike.

  Without porters there can be no movement of cargo. Without cargo, Polyport and its adjacent settlements suffered. The House of Mirth sent its own people to replace the Porters, third-hand RLVs rising and falling from orbit. The strike turned violent. One of the RLVs crashed and burned in the violent atmosphere of the moon, and the scabs retired without grace. When at last the Porters went back to work the Cleaners went on strike. Beyond Polyport the nearest large settlement was El Quseir, on the other side of the moon. Now it threatened to rise in prominence as the Houses fought.

  Human cells of each Sisterhood met to confer, and try to resolve the impasse. Shereen, cleaning, watched the meeting unobtrusively in the House of Domicile. The two women were almost sister-like – both short, dark haired, dark skinned, with violet eyes. Bare-headed, they were an amalgamation of protrusions and augs, their dark hair a mere fuzz on their shaven skulls. They spoke little in language, communicating somewhat by gestures but mostly in the high-bandwidth toktok of the Sisterhoods, which was both like and unlike the protocols of Others, the Toktok blong Narawan.

  Their conversation in audio form, then, did not make much sense –

  “Cannot?”

  “Times three, times four. Mirth –” a raised finger. A shake of the head. “Port.”

  “Cargo. Flow.”

  “Ours.”

  “All.”

  “None –” a face turned sideways, light falling on augs. “Impasse?”

  “Repeat.”

  Silence, two sets of violet eyes staring into each other. Shereen wiping the surface of a desk. “Loop.”

  “Loop.”

  “Impasse.”

  “Yes.”

  And depart, disengaging swiftly, the one Sister leaving the room, the House, the other remaining as its others joined her, a Quarter, Four-times-One of an Eight-times-Eight.

  The rest of their conversation Shereen could not hear, they did not converse, they thought in parallel. Later, when she left...

  Shereen lived on Level Two of Polyphemus Port. An old neighbourhood, dug-in about a century after first settlement. There were hydroponics gardens on that level, the lush vegetation that was everywhere in the humid, Earth-tropical weather of Polyport. Vines grew over the windows of Shereen’s bedroom. She lay in bed with Aliyah. It was late. Aliyah’s body was black and blue, bruised from her latest surgery. A One-times-Nine of one of the Sisters of the House of Mirth was ailing, dying. Aliyah would replace her, become a cell in the Three-times-Three. She was almost ready.

  “I can almost hear them, now,” Aliyah said. Shereen ran her finger lightly down Aliyah’s spine, marvelling at the enforced skeleton that pressed against the delicate skin. “Whispering, at the edge of consciousness. It’s not quite a singular identity, not really, it’s more of a choir of voices, that merge into one. With old echoes, old voices weaving into the music. One day soon I will cease being a singular note, and become an orchestra.”

  “A part of an orchestra.”

  “Maybe. But at least I will keep on living, as sound, as one note in a perfect symphony.”

  “While mine will fade and die?” Shereen said, wryly. Aliyah touched her face. “I did not mean...” she said.

  “I know what you meant.”

  Aliyah withdrew her hand. “I don’t want a fight,” she said, softly.

  “Then don’t start one.”

  They stared at each other in silence across the bed. Then: “I’m sorry,” Shereen said.

  “No, I’m –”

  Outside a mosque was calling the faithful to prayer; green cockatoos sang to each other across the tall spindly trees; a group of children ran down the corridor chasing a ball; inside the room it was dark; and nothing, for the moment, was resolved.

  It was, essentially, a trade dispute.

  Though what is trade if not religion, and what is religion if not commerce? It was, perhaps, first and foremost about prestige.

  Old tensions rose to the lunar surface...

  The Houses were never so crass as to engage in open warfare. A century earlier the so-called Format Wars erupted in Polyport. Who is to say a Three-times-Three is the perfect format, for instance, for a human network? It is linked on a grid. A single unit – a One-times-One – can operate independently when need be, at normal human capacity, but it can also link with two of its sisters, forming a One-times-Three linear triple processor. Those Trips can then link vertically and horizontally to form a grid, a perfect – so they say – unit, a true Sisterhood.

  Haifa al-Sahara, or rather the Three-times-Three Sisterhood that had once contained the human once known by that name, argued for the perfection of the form. But others had ambition, and no such faith in the purity of her numbers.

  The first Eight-times-Eight had founded the House of Domicile, and others soon followed. The Sisters of the House of Mirth argued the form was too cumbersome, processing ponderous, optimal operations sluggish at best.

  And yet the Eight-times-Eights flourished, and the House of Domicile soon encompassed five Sisterhoods, of which it was said that they sometimes joined, in a grid of Five-times-Eight-times-Eight, a massive processing mind occupying some four stories of real estate, only one of which was above ground.

  Obviously, the House of Domicile proclaimed its own superiority, and that – naturally – rankled with the House of Mirth, as the oldest and – up to that time – strongest of the newly-risen Houses and Sisterhoods. Then came the Sisterhoods of Odd, the Five-times-Sixes of the House of Forgetting, asymmetrical and strange, and they allied themselves with the House of Domicile’s Eight-times-Eights.

  Two factions, then: the three houses of the Three-times-Threes, versus the other two houses and their multiplicity of Sisterhoods.

  A century back, the rise of the Houses led to conflicts both within and without; over a period of some twenty years the Houses consolidated, accumulated followers and adherents, and finally rested in an uneasy peace.

  That peace was now in danger of breaking, and thus unsettling Titanic society as a whole.

  The Houses, therefore, sought a compromise...

  It was late at night, in Shereen’s apartment. That special silence that comes with deep night, when even the birds sle
ep. When I-loops all across and down the city processed slowly, neural networks embedded in a grey mass within a bone skull, billions of neurons firing together into the illusion of an “I”, a “me”, all sinking, momentarily, into a dream or dreamless state, the one akin to hallucination, the other to death.

  They had made love; the bedsheets clung to their skin with the sweat. A single candle burned on Shereen’s windowsill. Aliyah said, “The old cell, the One-times-One: her health is better.”

  “I see.”

  “You are happy?”

  Shereen pulled herself up, the light from the candle threw shadows on the wall. “I don’t want you to become one of them,” she said. The words cost her everything. Getting them out at last felt like a revelation. Aliyah laughed, softly. “Do you think I don’t know?”

  “Then why do you do it? Do you not love me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I want to. I need to. Because there is more to life than you or me. I want to be a part of something bigger than either of us.”

  “But why?” all the pain inside her came out in that voice.

  “I don’t know why,” Aliyah said, but gently. That night she was very gentle, even her love-making was filled with care; it contrasted with Shereen’s urgency. “I just know.”

  “But they will not take you. Not the Three-times-Threes. Not when they have all their parts –”

  “Yes –”

  “What?” Shereen said – demanded. Suspicion, hurt, in her eyes.

  “I have been going to the House of Domicile,” Aliyah said quietly.

  “When?” Shereen’s voice, too, was low. “I did not see you there.”

  “I know. I went when you were not working. I did not want to upset you.”

  “And now?”

  “You’re upset. We can talk about it in the morning.”

  “We can talk about it now.”

  Aliyah sighed.

  “Why have you been going to the House of Domicile?” That suspicion, again. “You want to join another Sisterhood?”

  “Not... exactly.”

  “Then what? I don’t –”

  “Don’t you?”

  It was so quiet in the room. The candle fluttered in invisible wind from outside. “They won’t,” Shereen said. “They can’t.”

  Aliyah moved to her; Shereen moved away. “Don’t,” she said.

  “They can. We can. Shereen –”

  “Don’t!”

  “It is better that I do this. It is better than conflict. Better than war. We cannot afford it, not again, not so soon. Not the city, not the world. The Houses have too much power, now.”

  “It should never have come to that.”

  “What would you have instead? Others?”

  “People,” Shereen said.

  “Oh, grow up, Shereen.” She made as if to push back a lock of hair, then found that, of course, it wasn’t there. There was something innocent, human, about that gesture. At that moment Shereen couldn’t help but love her very much. “And we are people, too.”

  “Since when is it we?” Shereen said; but she sounded defeated. “When?” she said.

  “Soon.”

  “And they agree? Both of them?”

  “They agree to try.”

  “We would not see each other.”

  “No.”

  “Would you even know who I was?”

  “Of course I would. We would. You would always live on, Shereen. In my – in our – memory. Even when my body and yours are back in the ground, fertilisers of new life in the gardens.”

  “Trust you to bring the conversation back to death, and fertiliser?” Shereen tried to laugh; it came out choked. “Were you always so obsessed with death?”

  “Not with death but with not dying,” Aliyah said; her body shook, and it took Shereen a moment to realise she was crying.

  “Come here,” she said, awkwardly. Aliyah came to her and nestled in Shereen’s arms. Shereen could feel her heart beating, inside the fragile, human frame of her. “Is it really so bad?” she said, but even as she spoke, she knew it was futile; that Aliyah had already decided, decided long ago, perhaps; and that this was simply her choosing of a time to finally say goodbye.

  The Initiation and the end of Aliyah’s Novitiate came some two weeks later, at a private ceremony in the House of Forgetting, which was historically the least affiliated – and the weakest – of the Houses. A Three-times-Three from the House of Mirth was there, and an Eight-times-Eight from the House of Domicile. And there, in between them, was Aliyah – dressed in a plain white shift, her head unscarfed and bare, the fine blue veins of filaments running underneath her translucent skin.

  Shereen, too, was there – not as a guest, but unobtrusive, cleaning. She saw the Sisterhoods meet, half-heard as they conversed, aware of the high-bandwidth transfer of data around her, and the half-understood words, and subtle signals of physical signs. She daren’t watch too much, there was something in her eyes, it must have been the chemicals in the new cleaning fluid, its smell made it hard for her to breathe.

  Aliyah shone brightly, like an angel. Light suffused her, it rose from her skin, from her eyes. The Houses could not fight and so they’d reached a compromise, a way of speaking which was a way of sharing: and a One-times-One became a point linking two networks, became a router and a hub, became a One-times-Eight-times-Eight-times-Three-times-Three, was cleaved in two; and spliced together.

  When it was over there was no discernible sign; only the act of both Sisterhoods slowly departing, without words; only their hosts remaining, and the newest Sister, the one who belonged to two Sisterhoods, and had once known Shereen.

  Shereen scrubbed the surface of the table, scrubbed it until its wooden surface shone. When she raised her head again even the host Sisters were gone; when she turned back to the surface of the table, she saw Aliyah, momentarily, reflected in it. She turned her head. Aliyah stood there, watching her. Shereen raised her hand. Her fingers brushed Aliyah’s cheek, the skin of her face. Aliyah bore it without words. Her eyes watched Shereen, and yet they didn’t see her. After a moment she inched her head, as if acknowledging, or settling, something. Then she, too, were gone.

  There are four Three-times-Three Sisters in the House of Mirth, and five in the House of Heaven and Hell, and two in the House of Shelter. Four plus five plus two Three-by-Threes, and they represent one faction of the city.

  There are two Five-time-Six Sisters in the House of Forgetting, and five Eight-by-Eights in the House of Domicile, and they represent a second faction of the city.

  There is a bridge between them, now. An understanding, and cargo continues to come and go through Polyphemus Port. And Shereen who is a one, and will one day be zero, continues to work in the House of Mirth, and in the House of Domicile, and she watches the Sisters on their silent comings and goings; and she wonders, sometimes, of what could have been, and of what didn’t; but to do that is, after all, only human.

  I qualied at the prospect of the void between the planets. Would it be cold or fiery? In a perpectual storm?

  * * *

  Detail of “Urania’s Mirror”: one of 32 cards illustrating the heavens for the latitude of London. The cards are hand-coloured and show the constellations. Each star is pricked out in the centre, and due to the tissue paper backing, the light shines through when the card is held up. (c1825)

  URANUS

  ESTHER SAXEY

  The RMS Carmania stood at dock, serene despite the gull screams and mud stink. Christopher had left me watchdog to three trunks and a brace of hatboxes.

  A lad rushed over to earn a tip.

  ‘Saw yer friend,’ he said, as he loaded the trunks onto a trolley. “Are you two artists?”

  I would be leaving England within the hour. A queer impulse prompted me to announce: “No. We are Uranians.”

  To my surprise, he grinned.

  “What, is that like a Martian? Are you two from another p
lanet?”

  It wasn’t even the first time I’d heard this witticism. I began to hate Mr. H.G. Wells.

  Being Uranians has led Christopher and me to travel a lot. Never fleeing in disgrace. Not yet. Not quite. Few trips came as near the knuckle as our escape to Paris, ten years ago.

  Christopher and I had met at College (Trinity) but we hadn’t been the best of friends, only two of a group. As we lost good men to marriage, we grew more intimate. Not loving, not on my part. Perhaps had he been taller, less hairy, less like an anxious mole... But why would all that matter, you ask, when Uranian love is for the noble disposition? (Plato told Christopher so, and Christopher told me.) At the time, I believed that nobility would shine through in some physical way: graceful movement, sparkling eyes. So I would love my beloved’s mind, but my beloved would also be beautiful. I was insufferable.

  Christopher took me out every week for art or opera. He gave me Uranian pamphlets, which I forgot to read, and poetry, which made me melancholy. In his presence I felt, always, that I was failing an examination.

  Until one night when he burst into my rooms, hatless and agitated.

  “He’ll be arrested this evening!”

  We were admirers of Oscar Wilde (you could have known it by our neckties alone). Oscar’s libel case had just taken a disastrous turn.

  Christopher cried: “We have to leave England!” He then made the most eloquent plea of his life. His proposal: we take the boat train that night to Paris, to live where laws were more liberal.

  I’d been torn between two idols, until that moment. Should I be a witty cynic, like Wilde? Or embrace the world as my brother, and find delight in every drop of dew, like Walt Whitman in his poems? I’d ricocheted between the two approaches, by turns aloof and sentimental. Now, Christopher was pushing me hard towards Whitman-ish optimism: freedom, he said, brotherhood!

  While my man packed for me, I mused aloud: “If you think it’s dangerous to stay, perhaps I should warn some of my friends...”

  “Oh. Well, we could.” He was right to be sullen, because I was lying. I wasn’t thinking of danger. No, I was thinking: I could burst in on a friend, the same way Christopher had burst in on me. Make the same impassioned speech, steal all Christopher’s best lines. Woo my friend! Win him!