Каарон Уоррен - The Lowest Heaven

It glances round my office◦– and for a second I see myself through its cold gaze. It’s like the Dutch settlers offering the Algonquin beads for the island that will become Manhattan. If I refuse how do I know the dog head won’t give me a stripy blanket as a present anyway. And we’ll only discover it’s a trick and the blanket is infected with smallpox when everyone begins to die.

The dog head turns its cold gaze on me.

“Of course it’s possible. The gas giant you call Jupiter is mostly hydrogen anyway. Like the sun,” it adds helpfully. “Obviously, it’s far too small to achieve stellar ignition for itself and even increasing its density won’t really help. So, we’re going to have to cheat a little.” It tips its head to one side. It could be thinking, but I suspect it’s just trying to impress me. “The planet core is tiny, of course. So that’s no real help. Our best bet is to seed the centre with tiny black holes. We’ll have to tune those carefully. Make them self-replenishing. You know the kind of thing.”

“I’ll give the White House your message.”

“Mr. Carelli, you misunderstand me.” It produces its pad again, and places it on my desk, not with a bang but forcefully enough to make the point that chitchat is at an end. “I don’t need to negotiate with local leaders. I’m already negotiating with you. Your world owes us. Decide now if we get repaid or the debt is rescheduled.”

Mostly debt collectors kick your door off its hinges on their way in, and kick your balls on the way out. This one scares me more, for all my door and privates are intact. I think about our world without a moon and that reworked map. And I think about those bastards in the far future. People I didn’t know and who might not even be people by then. They sold us out. It’s not as if we owe them anything. All the same, I want to say I got us the best deal I could.

It watches in distaste as I take a cigar from my box, bite off the end and spit it at the gash bin, reaching for my desk lighter and taking my time as I put a flame to the end. I blow smoke at the ceiling and watch it swirl as the fan folds it into the air. ‘This sun you’re going to make. It’s going to work? You guarantee that. It’s in the contract?’

It turns the pad towards me. The contract is ten lines. Simple. A real moneylender’s special. What was owed. The new deal. What will be owed. The fact the contract is entered into voluntarily with no threats applied. There is nothing about the new sun actually working, and I make the creature add this before taking the leadless pencil it offers me and signing where it points:

Tito Cravelli

Larkin Street, San Francisco

1951

To Deputy Director

From Chief: DOI

Top Secret

POTUS asks us to confirm the Cravelli issue has been dealt with. For my own satisfaction, please confirm an EZ 21 was instigated and not an EZ 19 or below. I will let you have my decision on the other matter after I’ve heard from the bureau.

For the eyes of the Chief; DOI only

From Deputy Director

Top Secret

I can confirm◦– and have confirmed with the Oval Office◦– that there is no evidence Tito Cavelli existed. No records of any kind are available. No copies or originals of the following:

Birth Certificate

Social Security card or number

Driver’s license

Passport

Library card

Medical Insurance card

Medical records

Dental records

School records

Exams taken or certificates issued

Army Service record

Military ID

PI license

Mortgage forms

Rent book for any building

Death certificate

Can I ask if a decision has been reached on the PKD issue?

From Chief; DOI

To Deputy Director

Top Secret

The FBI’s new dept. of psychological affairs has asked us NOT to instigate an EZ 21 or EZ 19 on PKD. The White House has authorised JEH to use him as a test case and I include a copy of their proposed reply (plus their most recent communication to me). As of now, PKD becomes their problem. I understand they will be watching the man for life.

From Head; Dept. of Psychological Affairs

To Chief: DOI

Top Secret

We note from your bureau’s records that the subject is of nervous disposition, dislikes authority, recently dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley, and currently works in a record store, that he recently married, and has aspirations to be a novelist.

This is, we feel, both an ideal bedrock and fertile ground on which to sow our ideas. In the first instance, we will be writing as follows.

Please note, we suggest our agent claims to work for your Deputy Director, since this will supply a plausible link between your holding letter and this reply [attached].

To Philip K. Dick

From Joan Reiss

Dear Mr. Dick,

I’ve been passed your letter by my section head. He asks me to extend the dept’s apologies for the tardiness of this reply to your letter about Mr. Tito Cavelli, your “missing friend”. He further asks me to tell you there is no record of a Mr. Cavelli in any government file. The apartment you say Mr. Cravelli owned has been lived in by a Polish refugee for the last five years. There was no Cavelli Detective Agency at the address you gave. More to the point, the Bureau of Investigative Services in Sacramento had no record of issuing a Mr. Cavelli with a PI license. As you might know, the office block in which you say this office existed was recently demolished but we are certain of our facts.

Yours truly,

Joan Reiss

P.S. I probably shouldn’t say this◦– in fact, I’m supposed to be curt with you for wasting the bureau’s time◦– but I loved the short story you sent us and just want to say it’s as good as anything I’ve read in a magazine. You should be a writer. As we’re both fans of science fiction, I wondered if you’d like to meet? We could always have a drink after work. Do let me know if you like the idea.

People call me Felix, or sometimes Felix the Athenian. Though, I have little memory of Athens, or even Earth for that matter. I was manufactured, or so it has been explained to me, in the workshops of Athens during the two-hundred-year period where Greece had returned to ancient and more primitive city-states. During those ongoing conflicts, I was fortunate enough to be removed from the violence. I was fortunate enough to become a slave.

Felix means lucky, you see.

Since then I served as a slave on three planets and four moons, and under two cruel masters, before being bought up for my writing skills◦– a forgotten craft◦– by Magnus Lucretius.

Magnus acquired me at a slave auction almost one year ago to the day. His purchase came eagerly after he saw the Athenian-branding on my right arm. It was, he told me later, a sure sign of quality craftsmanship, the likes of which he had rarely seen. It is common knowledge that Greek slaves had forever been the preferred choice of a discerning master.