The Lowest Heaven Read Online Free PDF

this?”
    “Cyborgized, you mean? No, not at all. A few simple implants, but they don’t really count.” The goggled face was inscrutable, even as it decanted tea into a little receptacle on the end of its beaklike mandible. “It was a difficult decision to stay, but one that in hindsight was almost inevitable. There’s nowhere like this anywhere else in the system, Oleg – nowhere as simultaneously lawless and civilised. Around Jupiter, you’re bound up in rigid hierarchies of wealth and power. Here we have no money, no legal apparatus, no government.”
    “But to become what you are now… that can’t have been something you took lightly.”
    “There’s no going back,” Gris admitted. “The crossing – that’s what we call it – is far too thorough for that. I sold my skin to the flesh banks around Venus! But the benefits are incalculable. On Mars, they’re remaking the world to fit people. Here, we’re doing something much nobler: remaking ourselves to fit Mercury.”
    “And was Rhawn already here, when you were transformed?”
    “Ah,” Gris said, with a miff of disappointment. “Back to that now, are we?”
    “I’ve been sent to make contact. My masters will be very disappointed in me if I fail.”
    “Masters,” Gris dismissed. “Why would you ever work for someone, if you had a choice?”
    “I had no choice.”
    “Then I am afraid you had best prepare to disappoint your masters.”
    Oleg smiled and sipped at his tea. It was quite sweet, although not as warm as he would have liked. He presumed that Gris still had enough of a digestive tract to process fluids. “Rhawn’s early work, what she did before she came here, was just too original and unsettling to fit into anyone’s existing critical framework. They wanted her to be something she was not – more like the artists they already valued. In time, of course, they began to realise her worth. Her stock began to rise. But by then Rhawn had joined your Collective.”
    “None of this is disputed, Oleg. But Rhawn has had her crossing – become one of us. She has no interest in your world of investors and speculators, of critics and reputations.”
    “Nonetheless, my masters have a final offer. I would be remiss if I did not try everything in my power to bring it to Rhawn’s attention.”
    “Forget dangling money before her.”
    “It isn’t money.” Oleg, knowing he had the momentary advantage, continued to sip his tea. “They know that wouldn’t work. What they are offering, what they have secured, is something money almost couldn’t buy – not without all the right connections, anyway. A private moon, a place of her own – the space to work unobstructed, with limitless resources. More than that, she’ll have the attentions of the system’s best surgeons. Their retro-transformative capabilities are easily sufficient to undo her crossing, if that’s what she desires.”
    “I assure you it would not be.”
    “When she completed the crossing,” Oleg said patiently, “she would have surrendered to the total impossibility of ever undoing that work. But the landscape has changed! The economics of her reputation now allow what was forbidden. She must be informed of this.”
    “She’ll say no.”
    “Then let her! All I request – all my masters ask of me – is that Rhawn gives me her answer in person. Will you allow me that, Gris? Will you let me meet with Rhawn, just the once?”
    Gris took its time answering. Oleg speculated that some dialogue might be taking place beyond his immediate ken, Gris communing with its fellow artists, perhaps even Rhawn herself. Perhaps they were working out the best way to give him a brush-off. The Collective needed to trade with outsiders, so they would not want to be too brusque. Equally, they were obviously very protective of their most feted member.
    But at length Gris said: “There is a difficulty.”
    Oleg stirred on his mattress. The suit was starting to chafe – it was not built for