Каарон Уоррен - The Lowest Heaven

But this early morning stroll was a daily habit; up before dawn no matter what the season, Keck would spend the first hour of the day walking her property. “It makes me feel that I’ll catch any problem, anything not right, first thing,” she would explain. “And,” she would chuckle, “it lets everyone else get up without having me harangue them.” And so the day began as such days always did: Keck took her constitutional, her husband woke and retreated to his study, and her children got ready for school. They carpooled to Riccioli with one of Hershel’s schoolmates, a young woman named Alia Goya, whose mother was the band teacher and could be depended upon to get the children there on time. Jen and Hershel, the latter of whom had cherished a secret crush on Alia for at least a year, were, as usual, waiting outside at 6.50 when the Goyas pulled up.

At the same time, on the other side of the planum, Sloane and Griffith were sitting in a diner on the outskirts of Helios, eating pancakes and discussing the day’s plans. Sloane, who had never left the IT and wished desperately to do so, had instigated an argument with Griffith two months before. Despite three years spent roaming the Lakshmi Planum, engaging in both casual work and casual crime, the two were once again down to their last dollars. This, Sloane had noted, made even taking a transport to the AT impossible, much less would it allow for the life of sun–bathing on the resort islands off the AT coast she had dreamed of since first meeting Griffith. Following their argument the two had drifted apart for a few days, until Griffith tracked her down and promised her a big score, a sure–fire half–million in cash. A cell–mate up at Garden City had told him about the rural towns on the outskirts of the planum, in the west, about as far from Helios as you could get without leaving the IT. “All those farmers, they don’t trust banks,” he had said, leaning forward and dropping his voice. Sloane hung on to his every word. The itinerant prospectors she’d known had hoarded what little cash they had, afraid that putting it in a bank would result in taxes, in fines, in who knew what else. “So they just keep all their cash in their houses,” Griffith continued. “And I know one where it’s just a rich old man living by himself. Richest old man in the area, apparently. So we get ourselves an alibi◦– I already got one cooked up◦– and we zip over. Grab the cash, get back to Helios, and take the very next transport out.”

That morning, over their pancakes, the two went over the plan for the last time.

“New Tahiti by tomorrow?” Sloane asked.

“New Tahiti by tomorrow,” he said. “Only, baby, no witnesses.”

Sloane shrugged.

Jen and Hershel made their separate ways home that night. Jen spent the afternoon studying for a calculus final with a friend in the school library, and Hershel hitched a ride home with a teammate on the school’s varsity baseball team. Jen finished late, and her friend tried to talk her into staying in Riccioli for the evening, but Jen’s father had called earlier to say a promisingly large envelope had come for her from another college, and Jen wanted to get home and open it. Her friend, who had known Jen since the fifth grade, would never forgive herself for not insisting that Jen spend the night. But Jen insisted, and took the bus back to Hartmann where she was given a lift home by Mychael Ticoe, a family acquaintance who happened to be passing by when Jen stepped off the bus. He drove them slowly along the darkened avenue of plane trees, wary of hitting rabbits or deer, and dropped Jen off in front of the house◦– waiting until she opened the door and waved at him before putting his car into reverse and driving away. He recalled nothing unusual about the house. It was ten thirty.

At about 2.30 am, the small hours of Friday, November ninth, Alvin Go got up to use the bathroom. Go lived in a cabin approximately two kilometers to the east from Blackacre, down a long, tree–lined drive. He remembered well that the dark living room of his cabin was lit with a soft greenish light, that he looked out the window at the pale glow coming from the west and wondered at it. “There were no clouds in the sky,” he said later. “But I didn’t think too hard about that. I was glad I was awake to see it. I just thought it was the ashen light.”

That Friday, the ninth of November, 2519, was another gloriously bright day on the high plains of Ishtar Terra. Before the activation of the dynamo in 2392, Venus had the slowest rotation period of any planet in the solar system. A Venusian day lasted two hundred and forty–three Earth days, nearly twenty days longer than the time it took to complete an orbit around the sun. Activating Venus’ dynamo required solidifying some portion of the entirely liquid core of the planet, and restarting the convection of liquid iron from the core to the surface◦– the geodynamo◦– and the creation of an artificial atmosphere◦– the Overdome. Activation, it was proposed, would speed up the planet’s rotation, creating not just shorter days but, eventually, a self–sustaining atmosphere. Twenty–five years after activation, Venus’ rotation period was a quarter of what it had been: approximately sixty Earth days. The Overdome was programmed to simulate a conventional Earth sidereal day of about twenty–four hours, but some concession to Venus’ unique rotational properties, it was felt, must be maintained. Venus is the only planet in the solar system to rotate in a clockwise direction, so that, to a person standing on the planet’s surface, the sun appears to rise in the west and set in the east. The Overdome was, therefore, set to mimic the same pattern; on Venus, now as then, the sun appears to rise in the west and sets in the east.

The Keck children were not standing outside waiting when the Goyas pulled up to the family farm at 6.50 am, on Friday the ninth of November. It was early, and the shadows the farmhouse cast were long, stretching east across the gold and brown fields. Alia hopped out and rang the doorbell several times, but to no avail. She tried calling both Jen and Hershel, but both times got only their voicemail. Although the Keck children were dependable, it was not entirely unreasonable to suppose that something unexpected had happened◦– perhaps Shelly Keck’s elderly mother had taken sick in the night, and the family had left without thinking to let the Goyas know. Or perhaps there had simply been a prior engagement◦– they’d had to leave unusually early, say◦– and they’d neglected to mention their plans to her. Alia got back into the car and drove to school with her mother.

Both Jen and Hershel were absent from school that day without an excuse. When the school’s secretary called their mother, the phone went straight to voicemail. The secretary made a note to call again on Monday.

No one saw Shelly Keck in Hartmann all day Friday, but that was not, in and of itself, notable. Keck’s visits to town were regular but not so frequent that she was missed. And her husband rarely ventured off the Keck property; no one remarked his absence.

It wasn’t until Monday the twelfth of November that anyone became concerned. The Goyas called before driving to Blackacre, and again got only voicemail. Both mother and daughter left concerned messages, but did not drop by the farm on their way to school. The Keck children were, again, absent without excuse or explanation; the school secretary called every phone number she had for the Keck family, and received no answer. Most alarmingly, perhaps, was when Shelly Keck missed a council meeting on Monday evening. Shelly, who had never missed a single appointment for anything, as far as anyone could remember, was a no–show.

Friday the ninth of November found Sloane and Griffith disembarking from an all–night transport to the AT. Caps from the transport hall’s CCTV show the pair red–eyed and slouching, staggering as though very tired. Neither carries much baggage.