Alasdair Gray - Unlikely Stories Mostly

Sir: Shortly before midnight I conducted tests which show there is a vast obstruction sixty feet above the top platform of your tower. This is either a zone of intense heat or the under-surface of that great transparent ceiling our ancestors called the sky . Please allow me to supervise the final stage of your building and test the nature of the barrier it will strike. As professor of air, director of international climate and inventor of the smokelift I am clearly qualified to do this.

We were taken to the president’s office soon after dawn. He sat at the head of a long table with directors and generals down each side, and we stood at the foot of it, but were not greatly impressed. This was the most powerful committee in the world but it had the exhausted, unshaven look of men who had been arguing all night, and compared with his official portraits the president seemed small and furtive. Without raising his eyes from a paper on the table he read these words in a quick monotone.

“By virtue of the powers invested in me by this great Company I grant your request to supervise the final stage of the work. You are allocated a director’s salary, office, and apartments at the highest executive level of our summit, and your employment commences upon signing your agreement of the following conditions.

FIRSTLY Your superior in this project is the commander of the armed forces. All requests for materials and assistance, all orders and all communications with the world below will pass through his office.

SECONDLY You will create as soon as possible a thick cloud to hide our building operation from other summits, and will give scientific reasons for this which raise no political, financial or religious speculations in the management of other summits or in the general public.

THIRDLY On reaching the sky you will conduct tests for the purpose of answering these questions: How thick is it?

Can it be penetrated?

Is the substance of it commercially useful?

Does the upper surface support life?

If so, is that life intelligent and/or belligerent and/or commercially useful?

Can the upper surface support men?

Is it strong enough to support big buildings?

LASTLY All your activities, and the reasons for them, and any discoveries you make, are official secrets, and from the present moment in time any failure to fulfil these conditions is a treasonable act punishable by life imprisonment or death without public trial as stipulated in the Company Laws Employees Protection Section paragraph 73 clause 19.”

The president raised his eyes and we all looked at the chief, who nodded thoughtfully then said, “I am grateful for the trust you have placed in me, sir, and will try to deserve it. But secrecy is impossible. My tests last night were observed by experts on all the adjacent summits. Several hours have passed since then, and although this is a holiday I see that our neighbour in the east is already shifting large amounts of building material onto his upper platform.”

One wall of the room was a single sheet of glass and the directors and generals sprang up and crowded to it. The co-operative summit had become very dark and distinct against the brightness of the ascending sun and there was spiderlike activity among the bristling cranes at the top. The commander of the armed forces punched one hand with the other and cried, “If they want to make a race of it they haven’t a hope in hell! We’ve sixty feet to go, they’ve six hundred. Professor, I’ll see you later.” He strode from the room. After a variety of exclamations the rest of the company stared at the president who had sunk into his chair looking very tired and cross. At last he sighed and said, “Well, if other governments know the facts already we can show we have nothing to hide by announcing them publicly. But God knows how the stock exchange will react. On second thoughts, no public announcements. I bind everyone here to the strictest secrecy. I will pass the information to other heads of state in a private memorandum. I’m sure that even old —” (he named the chairman of the co-operative) “— will see the value of keeping his people ignorant. So sign the agreement, professor, and get on with the job.”

Three days later I stood with the chief on top of a strong, prefabricated silver pylon, and the sky was a few inches above my upturned face. It was too transparent to be seen directly, but glanced at sideways the lucid blue was rippled by rainbow glimmerings like those golden lines cast by sunlight on sand under shallow water. The ripples came from the point in the sky where the sun’s rays pierced most directly, and their speed and tints changed throughout the day. At dawn they were slow and tinted with saffron, quickening toward noon with glints of gold, green and crimson, then gradually toward purple-blue in the gloaming. It took a while to recognize this. The summit was swaying through a wide circle, so the ripples crossed our vision in a cataract of broken dazzlings until the pylon started travelling in the same direction, and then they only became clear for five minutes. At these times I did not feel I was looking up. The whole axletree seemed a long rope tied to my heels. I felt I was hanging above a heavenly floor from a world as remote as the moon. Yet I was not dizzy. I liked this immensity. I wanted the axletree to break and let me fall into it. As gently as possible I stretched out my hand and touched. The sky was cool and silken-smooth with an underlying softness and warmth. I felt it with my whole body. The feeling was not sexual, for it excited no part more than the rest, not even the fingertips touching the slender rippling rainbows. The sway of the tower began diverging from the flow of the ripples, which took on a broken look. Fearing that the loveliness was escaping, my hand pressed instinctively harder and a tide of blood flowed down from the fingertips, staining the arm to the elbow. I stared at it, still pressing hard and feeling no pain until the chief struck my arm down and I fainted.

I woke with a bandaged hand and four fingers shortened by the length of the nails. It was late afternoon and the chief was poking the sky with little rods. He stopped when he saw I was conscious, asked about my exact sensations before fainting, wrote them down, then pointed east and said, “We are no longer alone.”

Several towers had sprouted surprisingly in the last three days. One of them, by employing acrobats as construction workers, had gained a mile-high superstructure of bamboo canes. But the big co-operative summit, though still the second highest, had grown very little in spite of its early start. And now the vastest smokelift I have ever seen was tethered to the top of that summit by many cables. The bag was shaped like an upside-down pyramid. The top surface was level with our platform, and in the centre a crouching figure handled something which flared and sparkled. We heard a brief humming of almost painful intensity and above the lift appeared a white mark which sped across the sky and curved down into a cloud which hid the horizon. The chief said, “He’s started testing it with fire. I’m leaving that till last.”

Next day the company’s directors came up to the platform and stared at the sky with all the expressions of men faced by a beautiful woman. The eyes and mouths of many gaped very wide and a few were moved to tears. The president kept sighing and nodding as if the sky was defeating him in a crucial argument. The commander of the armed forces frowned and fidgeted as if it was wasting his time; he was more interested in the co-operative lift, on which a group of men like our own had gathered. Only the chief looked eager and happy. He grinned determinedly upward as if saying, “Yes, sky, you dazzle and baffle other men, but not me. You won’t be able to keep anything from me.”