The Lowest Heaven

by Alastair Reynolds

  “Thank you for using FentiCorp’s assisted departure service. We hope your experience has been a pleasant one. Your ship’s communicator will remain in range of the Neptune signalling array for 48 hours, during which time your feedback is welcome. As you depart on your uniquely crafted trajectory out of human space, we would like to thank you for your custom and wish you the very best of luck on your journey of discovery. Please remember to prioritise the regular maintenance of the ship’s engines and your hiber-units, to ensure your continued survival on your journey.”

  Ted unclipped his own harness and followed Marco. “Babe? Baby, I’m sorry. I’m a fucking idiot…”

  “Your ship will shortly be accelerating to near-light speeds made possible by FentiCorp’s gravitational engineers’ Push-Pulse network. In a matter of moments, you will be propelled beyond the edge of the solar system and beyond the limits of current human exploration. FentiCorp thanks you for your bravery and pioneering spirit. You carry the destiny of humanity with you among the stars, and FentiCorp is proud to be a part of your journey.”

  There was a soft chime from the console, but there was no one there to hear it.

  “You are now leaving the solar system. Goodbye, and good luck.”

  Don’t you think I look beautiful now, Pluto?

  * * *

  A satirical cartoon showing a near-collision between the Earth and what appears to be a comet. The 19th and early 20th centuries saw many media scares about collisions of this kind. (c1900)

  WE’LL ALWAYS BE HERE

  S. L. GREY

  Pluto’s skin is sallow, almost grey, when she stands in the darkness, something she does often. She shivers against the bulkheads, wishing that she could just drop this burden, walk outside and crumble to icy shards in the first impossible wind. Sharon, on the other hand, spends all her time in the solarium, playing childish games with the braindeads.

  Pluto was cursed from the very start. She grew up believing her parents had named her after the planetoid, and something about that resonated with her – the coldness, the peripheral darkness, the loneliness – but found out on her last birthday, when she turned fifteen, that they named her after an animal in an ancient fucking cartoon on 2D. A “dog”, they’d told her in the delayed-release message, a symbol of loyalty and friendship and joy, colour and innocence, but she’d never seen a dog and in the pictures she saw they looked like deformed freaks, bent and cowered, using their arms to walk and covered with matted hair. Their holos emitted the most unholy stink of rot and halitosis.

  Nice one, parents. She reminds herself what cunts they were every time she misses them.

  Pluto and Sharon were sent away when their parents died. Whoever was in charge considered it an unproductive use of Earth’s dwindling hospitable space to harbour orphans, and they certainly weren’t going to be sent to any of the plush new territories on Mars or the Moon. The day after the service they were packed off to Eros, the furthest, really, they could be sent from home without being dead.

  Pluto looks out of the viewport across the lilting wastes to the solarium, the colourful, fake terraforming, the sun lamps embedded in its dome outglaring the real sun, which lurches in and out of view as the bone-shaped rock topples through space. Just the thought of that nauseous sun sends Pluto fishing for her motion sickness inhaler. Unbidden, a memory of her mother intrudes, cradling her hand, damping her forehead when she had a fever, her father lying in the next cot, reading a story to Sharon. Pluto was always the sick one; throat infections, ear infections. Sharon would just blunder along through her childhood, always wrapped up in her own imagination; padded, impervious.

  She had a vague sense of the enclaves back then, places where they would be made safe from the virus. Some of her school friends and their parents had already gone, sold everything they could to leave, but there was the one-child limit. She didn’t understand it all then; it only played out in those late-night discussions in the lounge. “We can’t separate them. We just can’t.” Both of them crying. She forgives her mother, but she hates her father for crying. It was his job to be strong, to come up with a solution. But he just sat and cried. Until it was too late and they got it too. Just as well, then, that they died before they had to choose. It was only logical that they’d choose Sharon.

  Pluto moves to the back wall and touches her hand to the bulkhead, trying to feel the frigid, real vacuum outside. Just a couple of metres and she could be frozen to nothing in the fresh void. She thinks of her parents in those last days, always trying too hard to be cheerful, trying to put a positive spin on it. “The solariums on Eros are beautiful, honey,” her mother would say. “They try to make it nice for you. They know what the young people want. And we’ll always be here.” She’d pat Pluto’s chest, as if that would make everything better.

  “It’ll be like a holiday camp,” her father would chip in, but so unconvincingly. She’d watch him turn and wipe his eyes dry.

  Sharon has decided that it’s time for another group makeover. As the leader of the Ugly Pretties, it’s up to her to choose the group’s new hair style. After much deliberation, she’s chosen something called a “short Dutch boy cut” from cycle sixteen of her all-time favourite history show, America’s Next Top Model. Last night she managed to procure a pair of scissors and a mirror without L.O.L.A the hygiene bot noticing (an easy feat as L.O.L.A’s surveillance units have decayed past the point of no return) and a comb from the box containing Sister Angelique’s last effects. While she waits for the Ugly Pretties’ feeding tubes to be removed by the canteen bots, she heads to the solarium to practice her walk. It’s hard to keep straight-backed and focused now that Eros’s gravity stabilisers are on the fritz, but she does her best to imagine that she’s striding down a fashion show runway, Tyra Banks and Miss J cheering her on from the sidelines. She loves Tyra Banks. Tyra’s what a perfect mother should be. Harsh yet kind, always full of advice on how to smize – smile with your eyes, find your inner confidence and pose for that perfect ugly-pretty shot.

  The rest of the Ugly Pretties finally file into the solarium. Pluto calls them brain-fucked retards, which isn’t really fair as they can’t help the way they are. Before Sister Margaret’s bones deteriorated and she went to the great nunnery in the sky, she told Sharon the reason why the Ugly Pretties are unable to speak and understand only the most basic of commands. According to Sister Margaret, their parents put them into cryogenic storage during the Canadian cataclysm decades ago in an attempt to keep them safe. No one knew what to do with them when they were accidentally defrosted and brain-damaged, so they were shipped off, like Sharon, Pluto and the other unwanted girls, to Our Lady of Eternal Resolution’s orphanage on Eros. Sedna is the most damaged of the group (“nothing more than a meat puppet” Pluto calls her), Makemake’s skin is always clammy, and Eris and Haumea’s eyes never seem to focus. But they’re all Sharon’s got since the other girls succumbed to the bone-rot that wiped out the nuns and the counsellors. “You and your little followers,” Pluto likes to hiss whenever they run into each other in the canteen, “make me fucking sick.” Still, Sharon always feels a thrill when her twin sister speaks to her. Insults are better than being ignored.

  “Welcome,” Sharon says to the Ugly Pretties. “I see before me four beautiful young ladies. Four beautiful young ladies who are in need of a... makeover!“ Sedna merely grunts, Haumea absently bats at the drool that continuously leaks from the corner of her mouth and Eris and Makemake sway as the gravity pull knocks them off balance. Sharon wishes, just once, that they’d squeal and jump up and down like the models on Tyra’s 2D show. Any reaction at all would be good. Sharon smothers a wave of despair. She can’t give into it. She’s the leader, the queen bee, she needs to keep upbeat and perky. She decides to start with Makemake. “Girlfriend,” Sharon says to her, “I’m going to wipe away that dreckitude for once and for all.”

  Makemake slumps obediently while Sharon gets to work with the scissors. She doesn’t even flinch when Sharon accid
entally nicks her ear and blood dribbles sluggishly onto the collar of her robe. The hairstyle isn’t as easy to pull off as it looked on the 2D. Sharon can’t get the edges even and ends up cutting Makemake’s limp black hair shorter and shorter until she resembles one of the pre-euthanised oldies on the holos. “There!” Sharon says with forced cheer. “Makemake, you are still in the running to be America’s Next Top Model!” Sharon looks into the mirror and starts hacking away at her own hair, slicing her fringe into what she hopes is a straight line. It’s easier the second time, although the scissors aren’t as sharp as she’d like.

  There are only two things that Sharon wants. One is to be able to smize; the other is for her sister to love her. The things Pluto says sometimes, it’s as if she blames her for their parents’ death. But how can that be? She didn’t inject them with the euthanising fluid, did she? She was only eight when they died. Pluto won’t let her see their holos, and Sharon can’t even recall their faces. When she tries to remember them, an image of Tyra Banks and Nigel, Tyra’s fellow cycle-sixteen judge, pops into her head.

  But maybe, now that she’s had another makeover, now that she looks beautiful, like a real model, Pluto will want to spend time with her.

  “Come on,” she says to the Ugly Pretties. Makemake moans in assent, the others dribble and fidget but file obediently behind her as she makes her way to the library where she hopes she’ll find her sister.

  The power stutters again and the screen goes blank. Shit. Pluto considers ripping the tablet out of its bracket and hurling across the room, but she can’t be bothered. Besides, she’s got too much on her mind.

  She checked the maintenance rosters this morning, just as Sister Margaret showed her. Everything’s still at optimal levels. There shouldn’t be a problem. “Eskombot? Eskombot?” she calls. “Are you here?”

  Bleedity-bleat, goes the logistics system’s voice interface in response.

  “I’m trying to read,” she says. “Why is there intermittent power in the library?”

  Eedilty-bleat.

  Pluto’s grown practised at interpreting the system’s failing voice chip. She guesses he – it – is saying the power’s been restored. True enough, all the tablets are rebooting themselves.

  “Now I’ve lost my fucking bookmark,” she mutters. “When I –” but something makes her stop. A small hitch in the background noise. She spins around, but there’s nothing, nobody. The door’s closed, as always; the library vacant except for her, as always. She listens. The air system is pumping along as inconspicuously as ever.

  But now the nuns are all dead and the bots are malfunctioning. If the power can fail, even for a second…

  A thump of panic cracks her ribs. She forces herself to calm down and looks around her. She’s sitting in a medium-sized room outfitted to be comfortable, the upholstery smelling of mould, and has been complaining to the wires in the wall. It’s not productive if she’s going to keep this place running. This is her life now, just her and her twin, rolling in darkness, alone. She can’t find solace, like Sharon, in the cold company of the braindeads. She sometimes wishes that her parents hadn’t given them the expensive immune boosters before they died. If she and Sharon died along with all the others, there would be nothing to worry about.

  She tries to disappear into her novel about a robot law-enforcer who rides a camel, but she can’t relax. She keeps running through the maintenance tables in her mind. Is it her fault? Is she doing something wrong?

  “Eskombot?”

  Eedle.

  “Send Sister Margaret’s maintenance roster to this screen, please.”

  Eedle-doot. The figures array themselves in front of her.

  The rock topples just so and there’s a flash from the outside, then a glare. Pluto gets up and walks across to the viewport. It’s probably another panel failing in one of the generator stacks, but she can almost imagine a golden hue to the light, that the air outside is warm and fragrant. She feels the cold sweat of her hands cleave to the glass and closes her eyes. She imagines – or does she remember? – a place where there was blue water lying all over the surface, and blue sky, and bending trees with huge, green leaves; and people, lying in their underwear in a glaring sun. So many people, little children too, laughing, running, all smelling of fruit and flowers and blue and green, saturated and hot. Something inside her remembers the heat, the sense of being wrapped up in colour and moisture. It doesn’t feel like a holo memory but surely that’s all she’s got. Did she ever go to a place like this when she was small? But places like this didn’t exist when she was alive; the world was burnt black when they had to send her away. All the holos of places like this were from a long time ago.

  But still, the memory’s so strong, it’s as if she’s there. She presses her face to the cold surface and breathes in, deeper than she ever has. She’s in a place where she could walk outside and not freeze and not burn and take off all her clothes and melt into the air and the colour. She remembers being there, how the sun thawed them like something sweet and sticky and brown. Her mother was lacing her fingers up Pluto’s neck and into Pluto’s hair. She swears she can recall her father holding Sharon on her hip. Sharon was giggling, eating something – that soft, cold thing they used to have – and offering it to her father. Who was laughing. If she tried hard enough, she could become one with the –

  The door punches open.

  “We thought we’d find you here!” Sharon trills. “Why’re you crying?”

  One of the braindeads, the egg-shaped one, gurgles hur-hur-hur behind her.

  And Pluto’s back here again, locked in a metal box on a cold rock, with a cluster of dense freaks for company. She’s going to fucking kill Sharon.

  “Pluto! What do you think of my makeover?” Sharon twirls in front of her sister, who pushes away from the viewport, which she’s been kissing or something, wipes at her face, and takes a hit of her inhaler. Sharon rarely needs hers. She isn’t as susceptible to motion sickness for some reason. Haumea bangs against the bulkhead as Eros’s cycle reaches its zenith and Sharon automatically reaches out to steady her. “Don’t you think I look beautiful now, Pluto?”

  Pluto snorts and shakes her head. “You look like a fucking idiot. Take your retards and leave me alone.”

  Sharon struggles to keep her smile in place. Sister Angelique used to advise her not to take Pluto’s spiteful words to heart. “Jealousy is a terrible emotion, Sharon,” she’d say whenever Pluto sniped at her during Mass or in class. Still, Sharon has to admit that the nuns and the older girls always gave her far more attention than they ever gave Pluto. She and Pluto may be twins, but they don’t look or act alike. Pluto’s hair is dyed a flat lifeless black whereas everyone said that Sharon’s hair shimmered like the sun. Maybe, Sharon thinks, the way to Pluto’s heart is to make herself uglier, rather than beautifuller. But what would Tyra say about that? She’d say that by not making the most of her appearance Sharon wasn’t being true to herself, she say that Sharon wasn’t owning her look, and that if she’s not careful she’ll be eliminated.

  Visiting Pluto was a mistake. Since Sister Margaret went to join Jesus three days ago, there are no nuns or older girls to mediate. “Please don’t be mean to me, Pluto. I haven’t done anything to you.”

  “You’ve done everything to me!” Pluto roars. “I was first. I came out first. It’s not fair that they kept you too. You’re the reason our parents are dead, Sharon.”

  Makemake shakes her head. “Uh-uh.”

  “Shut up, retard,” Pluto hisses at her.

  “I didn’t kill them!”

  “Maybe not literally, but it’s because of you they had to die. They couldn’t go to the enclave with both of us. They should have chosen me. They should have survived.”

  “That’s not true. They got sick, that’s why they –”

  “It is true.” Pluto snaps and Haumea flinches. “If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be in this cold, stinking place. I wouldn’t have to...”

 
Sharon can’t stop the tears. “You wouldn’t have to what?” The Ugly Pretties have picked up on Sharon’s distress and start moaning in unison.

  Pluto straightens up and glares. “I hate you, Sharon.”

  Sharon backs away from her, tries to remember the words to the Novena of Our Child Jesus, but can’t find the words. “Hail Mary full of grace. The Lord is with –”

  “Prayers aren’t going to help you. The nuns aren’t going to help you. Your pathetic life is in my fucking hands.”

  They may be twins, but Pluto is bigger and stronger. She darts forward, her dyed hair swinging in front of her face, filling Sharon’s vision. Sharon drops to her knees, covers her head with her hands.

  “Ug.”

  Sharon looks up. Makemake is swaying in front of Pluto. Pluto is staring in disbelief at her, blood gouting out of her nose.

  “Your retard hit me!” Pluto roars. “Get out get out get out get out!”

  “Come on,” Sharon whispers. Tears soaking her face, she flees the library, the thump of the Ugly Pretties’ feet close behind her. She stumbles blindly to the hatch that leads down into the chapel. She’ll pray to Jesus and Tyra for guidance and if that doesn’t work, well, she’ll think of something else.

  When Sharon and her circle have left, Pluto closes the door carefully. She’d love to slam it but she doesn’t want to risk a leak. She rubs her hand over her throbbing nose and looks at the blood on her palm. She can’t believe that freak hit her but, in a way, she’s impressed that she did. Showed some initiative, some fucking backbone. The blood pools dark in her palm and thins out to scarlet where it slips over the edge, by far the brightest colour in this room, on the whole godforsaken rock. She wipes it into her T-shirt, not in the mood to swallow her pride and go down the corridor to the bathroom. She sits on her chair and leans back, swallowing the warm choke until the flow stops.