Каарон Уоррен - The Lowest Heaven

Their thoughtforms reached out to drag me down. I streaked away in disgust at myself and them.

The airs above Venus were far cooler than the surface. I became aware of other fliers, an escort surrounding me. Their forms were minimal, their greetings like chirping or cooing.

hullo!

who are you!

I introduced myself and asked, in wonder, who they were.

just mods!

“Like that vision of Christopher? But you don’t look…”

who’s Christopher?

just here to keep the channel friendly!

had reports about you

losing us custom!

terms of service!

who’s your account provider?

A friendly hailstorm. A floating conscience, almost. How could I have been so violent, so cruel? I had been contaminated by Venusian feelings, of the body rather than the mind. I apologised profusely for my behaviour.

no problem!

where you coming in from?

“Earth,” I said. Their giggles were icicles.

don’t know your way around the channels!

not the right place at all

you’d rather be with the boys!

are we right? we’re right!

try another channel!

They sprang away across space and I knew what they referred to, where I needed to go.

The luminous pale blue planet. My namesake. Far out away from the sun, but it might shed its own light (Christopher’s small book told me), and it might also be heated from within. I’d always hoped its colour was the blue of a year-round Spring sky.

Could I get there?

But fear prevented me, and I let the silver cord pull me back. Snap!

I had to hunt Christopher all over the ship before I found him in a bar with a crowd of other passengers, chattering in German and drinking Schnaps . I thought it unfair he hadn’t told me his friends would be aboard, but then I realised he’d only met them that morning. I sat on the edge of the group. An Englishman with a walrus moustache enthused about how there would soon be larger and better ships than this mammoth transatlantic liner. I, dizzy from another kind of travel, could not share his excitement.

I saw that Christopher had become more and more interesting over his ten year in exile, while I’d stagnated. Had he made peace with being a Uranian? Perhaps brotherly love was enough for him, the brief, intense connections that form between travellers. Maybe he was never tempted. Maybe he frolicked nightly with his chess opponents. I didn’t think he was still grubbing around in Whitman’s poems looking for a solution. Unlike me.

Eventually, I had drunk enough that my friend had to help me to my cabin and my bed. He poured me a glass of water. I was melancholy and I had to concentrate to remember that this Christopher hadn’t steered me across the void. I’d never held his hand.

“Are you alright? Do you need the ship’s doctor?”

“It’s not that.”

He was the spit and image of my celestial guide. My heart poured out of me despite myself.

“Christopher, if you have a great longing for a◦– thing, a feeling of great kinship with this thing, and then you realise that it might actually be possible to see it, to feel …”

“What thing?”

But I could not speak the name of my planet. He would think me ridiculous, again. Or he’d enthusiastically tell me to dream, again, for dreaming was all I’d done. I tried to describe my dilemma in less specific terms.

“Chris, is it normal to feel wary◦– to not even know if you should try to approach …”

I suddenly feared that he might misunderstand me, and think I was declaring a long-overdue love. Then his raised eyebrow deflated that notion. I blustered on.

“Because what if it’s not the answer? What if you’re stuck with being lonely, and not at ease, and it’s not because you have any particular connection to◦– this thing. What if it’s nothing to do with…?”

He smiled and turned down my cabin light. We were used to helping one another when worse for wear. He wasn’t waiting for my revelation; he had given up on loving me, years ago. But, I realised, I had not given up the idea that he loved me. He’d go back to his deck friends as soon as I fell asleep. I closed my eyes.

Brave again in the dark, I decided to tell him. I murmured:

“I still want to. I want it. I want to touch …”

My knuckles struck the cabin wall. My hand had been foraging about without my volition.

Christopher had already gone.

Later, I went back, drunker, to the deck. I shouted: “The female has no part!” Christopher’s friends stared at me. Christopher helped me to bed, again.

It was no hardship, the following morning, to leave my body.

As soon as I was moving among the planets, my companions from Venus re-joined me.

you again!

we lost you!

we like you!

can’t let you back in there though

sorry!

Their feather-light push speeded me on. And I heard-without-ears the voices of my warmonger foes:

my view’s gone fuzzy

it’s him again

call in the supermod

have him shut down

Christopher appeared, for a brief moment, in the air before me, waving his arms in warning. Overtaking him was something like a flock of carnivorous birds, or a rock fall that twisted in space to chase me. They called to one another in a grating crackle.

how is he moving across the damn channels

can’t cut him off through his provider

provider’s unclear

I sped on but the missiles dogged me. I raced them; they were hard put to keep up with me. I only need to outpace them for a little longer! We swung together around the enormous bulk of Jupiter, dodged between the rings of Saturn. I was out of breath, I had no breath, they were shouting behind me.

wandering all over

not a user, it can’t be

only an error

clean it up

The blue planet came into sight. I knew at once that I’d been right◦– that it was a warm planet, a perpetual spring morning.

I went lower and dropped through the blue.

The planet wasn’t featureless at all. There was a wood, a great greenwood, moss paths dusted with pollen.

where is it now

there, in that empty channel

looks busy in there

it’s coming from him

he’s populating the place

There was dew on the grass, and I delighted in it, and the dark in among the trees was homelike and wholesome.

we should lock him in

cut the account off from the machine

just disconnect it

lock him in there

yeah try it

And in a clearing of the woods was a college quad and the quad was the agora of Greece, and a crowd of young men smiled to see me come to join their conversation. My college friends, unencumbered by wives and children, stood with other men I had not yet met.

I felt pain all through me. The hideous mod-birds were above me, tearing at my silver rope with metal teeth. I knew they wanted to stop me from travelling. If I hurried, I could still use the rope, still let it pull me, and I might manage to get home.

I didn’t want to go home. I’d come home. Christopher would understand. I took up the tight-stretched silver cord in my hands, near to my not-body, and wrapped it neatly around each not-fist. It would only take one quick –

locked him in

done it

Snap!