“You’ll burn through then quickly enough. And then what?”
“Something beyond this. But not death. There is no art in death, Oleg. Only art’s supreme negation.”
He smiled thinly. “The world will await your next masterpiece with interest, Rhawn. Even if it never leaves Mercury.”
“Well, something shall. Does this surprise you? And you shall be its custodian.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It is… traditional… among the Totalists. At the time of our second crossing, we concieve of a new piece. A celebration of transition, if you will. The work is initiated before the crossing’s start, and not fully completed until the crossing is done. I have … planned such a work. I call it A Map of Mercury. It is a minor piece, in the scheme of things. Almost beneath me. But since you have gone to such pains to find me, I should consider it fitting if it should fall upon you, the great and glorious Oleg, to bring the work to public attention.”
“A new piece by Rhawn?”
“Exactly that,” she said proudly. “A new piece by Rhawn. And, as far as the outside world is concerned, the last. No, I shan’t be abandoning art. But the realms into which I expect to push… these will shortly lie beyond your conceptual horizon. You would not only fail to recognise my art as art, you would fail to recognise that it was anything at all. But this last piece will be my gift to you◦– and your meat cousins. You will find it comprehensible. Take it to your masters. Fight over it like dogs. I will enjoy watching the overheated spasms of your Jovian economy.”
“It’s not what they asked for,” Oleg said.
“But they won’t be displeased with you?”
“No,” he supposed. “I came for you, but never with much expectation that you’d agree to the offer. They’ll hand that moon over to someone else, I suppose. But to return with a new piece by Rhawn … that was never in my plans. They’ll be pleased, I think.”
“And will their pleasure be of benefit to you? Will you also profit from this?”
“I should imagine.”
“Then we are all satisfied. You will return to the Collective? Delay your departure by a couple of days, and the work will be packaged and delivered to you. It really is a trifling little thing.”
She had not been exaggerating, Oleg reflected.
He tugged more of the packaging away. The upper quarter of A Map of Mercury was now visible. But everything below that was concealed by a thin layer of protective material with a circular hole cut into it. He dug his fingers around the layer until it began to come free. He grew incautious. If he damaged the material, he could always say it had been that way when he found it.
Besides, he was starting to suspect that his masters would think very little of this offering no matter the condition in which it had arrived. It wasn’t the sort of thing they had been hoping for at all. Yes, it was a late Rhawn. But a globe? A Map of Mercury?
Something that literal?
The layer came free. He could see more of the globe now. There was in fact something a bit odd about it. Instead of continuing with the shape of the sphere he had been expecting, the object began to bulge in some directions and turn inwards in others. There was more packaging material to be discarded. He tugged it away with increasing urgency. There were two cavities opening up in one side of the no longer very spherical thing. Above the cavities was the fine swell of a brow ridge. Beneath the cavities◦– the eye-sockets◦– was the slitted absence where her nose would have been, and beneath that the toothy crescent of the upper jaw. There was no lower part.
He pulled the whole thing from its box. The colours of the top part, the emulation of the planet’s surface features and texturing, continued across every part of it. There were ochres and tangerines and hues of jade and turquoise. It had a fine metallic lustre, sprinkled with a billion glints of stardust. It was simultaneously lovely and horrible.
A Map of Mercury.
That was exactly what it was. She had not lied. Nor would this piece◦– this piece of her◦– dent Rhawn’s reputation in the slightest. No wonder she had needed a couple of days to make it ready. At the start of their conversation, ten percent of her had still been inside this skull.
Oleg had to smile. It was not exactly what he had come for, and not exactly what his masters had been after either. But what was art without an audience? She had made him her witness, and she had made art of herself, and she was still there, down on Mercury, having crossed twice.
Clever, clever Rhawn.
But then a peculiar and impish impulse overcame Oleg. He thought back to their conversation again. It was true, much of what she had said about him. He had been supine. He had tried and failed at art, and allowed himself to become the servant of powers to whom he was no more than an instrument. He had become spineless. He did what they told him◦– just as he was now executing Rhawn’s wishes.
A tool. An instrument.
A machine made of meat.
A little while later a little door opened in the side of Oleg’s spacecraft. It was a disposal hatch, the kind he used for waste dumps. A small grey nebula coughed out into vacuum. The nebula, for an instant, glittered with hints of reflectivity and colours that were not entirely grey.
Then it dispersed, and the ship continued on its merry way.
-
ASHEN LIGHT
ARCHIE BLACK
The village of Hartmann stands on the high sorghum plains of Ishtar Terra, a lonesome area that other Venusians call “out there.” This area of the IT is known as the Lakshmi Planum. It is a little less that two and a half thousand kilometers across, and surrounded on all sides by mountains◦– the four main mountain ranges found on the planet. When, in 2392, planetary engineers finally liquified Venus’ core, kickstarting the planet’s dynamo and strengthening its magnetic field enough to maintain an atmosphere and make terraforming feasible, the decision was made to begin the planet-wide colonization process on Venus’ highland regions. Aphrodite Terra, warmer, larger and topographically rougher than its sister, was dedicated to mining. Ishtar Terra’s Lakshmi Planum, with its smooth plains and gently rolling wrinkle ridges, was deemed more suitable for agriculture. Following successful completion of the terraforming process, farming colonies were migrated to the IT from Earth. They dispersed to create widespread, albeit close–knit, communities, centered around small towns scattered seemingly at random across the planum.
Hartmann was founded in 2448, one of a hundred roughly nucleated villages developed on the IT by the Venusian terraformers. Farms, it had been decided, would most closely mimic the comfortable terrestrial existences that the colonists would be forsaking and create the powerful sense of community the terraformers believed necessary to their long-term colonial agenda: the creation of a self-sustaining second Earth.
Hartmann is a strange assortment of buildings, none more than three stories tall, and home to only about two hundred and fifty people. It is, generously, a suburb of Riccioli, a small city twenty–five kilometers away, but, by 2519, no one from Riccioli went to Hartmann, unless to visit relatives, and most of the citizens of Hartmann tended to have little interest in Riccioli◦– except Hartmann’s teenagers, of course, who were drawn to Riccioli, Hartmann’s only significant neighbor for hundreds of kilometers, like moths to a candle’s flame.