“It could be that. Or perhaps you’re anxious? You’ve picked something comforting.” He sounded embarrassed for me. “It really all depends on your settings.”
We sailed over a waterfall of asteroids. Christopher’s new necktie glowed in the reflected light of Mars. I was amazed that I’d remembered so many details of him as to make this charming waxwork.
“So do you have any relation to my friend? Are any parts of you him?”
“Well, what parts were you interested in?”
Flying together loosened my tongue. Nothing ventured! Although, perhaps, in this confusing cosmology, nothing could be gained. Could he answer a question to which I didn’t know the answer?
“I’d wondered if you’re happier, these days◦– and how we stand…”
He laughed again. “How thoughtful!” If I was imagining him, was I mocking myself? “No time to talk, though. You’re being bumped over to the next channel.”
“I don’t…”
Ahead of us reared a clean, silver planet, white caps at its poles.
“One of the recreational channels. Have a good time there.”
Morning star, evening star, bright beautiful planet. I somehow knew it would be more hospitable to life than Mars. More fecund.
“It won’t be like the last channel,” Christopher confirmed. “You can talk to anyone who takes your fancy, there.”
“There’ll be people?”
“Plenty of people.”
“Venus-ians?” I shuddered slightly at the nomenclature of the dread Wells.
“Travellers. Like yourself.”
“Will you stay and speak to them?”
He shook his head. “Don’t think that would even work. I’m just moving you over. I’d best head off.”
Venus was thick like soup with heat.
A cluster of figures stood not far from me. Again, wholly astral creatures. I extended my◦– interest? Sight? Soul?◦– to them. Several were women, the first naked women I’d ever seen and more naked than they could be in the flesh. But we were beyond reserve or modesty.
They turned on me. Their lust washed over me. The heat of it bubbled and blistered me. I was eyed up without eyes, handled without hands.
“Ladies!” I responded, to prevent a misunderstanding. “I do not desire you!”
The soupy heat of Venus grew chilly.
“I mean no offense! I am a disciple of another love, in which the female has no part!”
I was spat out. They turned their backs-not-backs on me. It was exactly like being cut at a party. As I made further protests, I was astonished to hear them refer to me as an arsehole, a complete cock, and other epithets.
My anger took form. I was more adept than the last time I’d tried it, on Mars; walls flew up around me, almost before I knew I was their architect. The women exploded the walls by flooding them with lava. I sprouted a pillar from the ground beneath me to lift me above the red flow, and I rained grey fog all over my opponents. The lava around their legs coagulated into greyish rock. I was quite merciless, scrutinising their agonised coils, reminiscent of those who perished at Pompeii.
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.