Apogee Again by Brian W. Aldiss I don't know if you'll believe this but there was a time when I lived in a different world. Much like ours but just a little different. One different thing was the way the female sex behaved. But then, as we always expected, the women had wings and could fly. The wings were not like angels' wings: more like a peacock's tail, fragile-seeming, many-coloured, in hues which caught and reflected the sunlight. And were enormous: the length of a bruiseball patch. Oh, the women looked so lovely as they flew naked overhead. Young men had been known to die from the shock of the beauty of it. Because of the nature of their diet, their droppings were light and floated gently to the ground, almost defying gravity. The women lived at the top of great hollow columns, I should mention. No one knew how ancient were the columns; nor would anyone knowing have been believed. These were the columns supporting the high platforms. Females young and old flew from one huge aerial platform to another - to those huge platforms where no men were allowed to set foot. Of course, as I shall relate, the flying women would come down to ground level on occasions. Some of them got married to men. On their wedding day, or when they lost their virginity, whichever came sooner, the feathers fell from their wings. The wing structures withered and died. And from that day forth, the married woman had to walk everywhere. And behave like an ordinary person, who cannot possibly imagine taking flight. There was, at the time of which I am speaking, when the world was growing darker, and the sun shrinking, a saying among men: 'If the Hallon had meant us to fly, she would not have given us testicles'. The men who lived on the ground had no beliefs. Even the idea of there being a Hallon had come from the women. They lived by the day, which meant they found it hard to imagine anything that was not in front of their eyes. But the women had a faith, and a rather ridiculous one, full of bizarre imaginings. The women clutched their genitals as they recited: 'I believe that our brief life is not all. I believe that after our lives are over, the darkness will live. I believe that dragons will fly and will eat us all, every bit of us, including those useful parts of which we have hold.' Delicious shivers overcame them as they recited this mantra each day at evenfall. For they both believed and did not believe. The idea of flying dragons sounded so -well, dear, preposterous, really. Of course the women had many other things to preoccupy them. Singing was practically a martial art. Wing-preening took up much time. Flap-motion was a daily exercise. It was said that by night two women, working together, would swoop down on an unsuspecting man and fly with him back to their platform, where they shared him. On such occasions, their wings did not perish. Women sang their happiness above the ground. Men could catch the faint strains. Some men had died from love of the music. Large amplifiers of beaten tin had been invented, so that the music could be heard more clearly. The amplifiers were the trade of the Amplificers. Heatmaker was a poor occupation. No one could invent fire, since flames could not tolerate our complex atmosphere. The favoured trade at ground level on our planet was that of Upwardsman. The Upwardsmen were perpetually creating false wings, which the purchaser could attach to himself and attempt to fly up to the platforms. Anything to capture one of those winged beauties! So far, only young Dedlukki had succeeded. Others had managed to hover on a level with the platforms, only to have the women repel them with poles until, worn out from flapping their arms, they plunged to their deaths on the ground far below. So the women flew free, enjoying the breezes, and the men laboured, or tended their herds. The women flew free, against a turquoise sky that was slowly changing colour, month by month, into a more ominous grey, and the grey into a dull red. The women flew free while warmth was gradually giving way to cold. Upwardsman Wissler was a man who knew a little about such things. Wissler it was who called a council and first declared that what he called Glowbal Kooling was taking place, and that the time would come when the atmosphere would freeze unless - ah, but unless what7 The matter was much debated. Finally, it was decided that the women should be consulted on the matter. The great tin amplifiers were turned about. The women were addressed from below to on high. 'Beautiful ladies, we are subject to terrible changes in our world. The Glowbal sun goes ever further away. Before it reaches maximum distance, most of our air will become as ocean. So the wise men say. 'And the wise men talk of dragons devouring the world. 'How may we restore heat to our lands? Only by the heat of our bodies. We therefore humbly petition you that you permit a number of our young and handsome men to climb up the two thousand steps concealed within your columns and enter your platforms. There they will cohabit with you and, by pressing their pegos into your gorgeous lars, enter into fornication with you. The friction from which will return heat to our suffering world. Tell us, pray, that you accept this offer.' Silvery laughter came back from the upper world. Derisive voices called out in mockery. Some said, 'Good try, you fool men! You don't fool us!' Others called, 'We are not having you lot up here! No way!' So the men returned to minding their sheapp and cahows. The weather grew colder. Our atmosphere was composed of four main gases. The gas we called aspargo became agitated. Strange storms arose. Although aspargo is not breathable on its own, it seemed to ease our breathing. Now it was rising, so that ground level breathing became disorderly. The colder it grew, the higher the aspargo rose. As for the women in the upper world, being naked they suffered greatly. Their beautiful wings lost lustre. Feathers were shed until most of them were unable to fly. Finally, when the sky seemed to have turned red for ever, and a strange mist prevailed, an older woman who still retained her wings flew down to the ground and called forth Upwardsman Wissler and others. When she addressed the assembled crowd, she said, 'I speak for the majority of our women. We have observed that the air grows colder and harder to breathe. We therefore propose that we come down to your level to present our lars to your pegos, that mass intercourse may take place, so that the heat generated will return our planet to the happy state in which it previously was. 'We are aware that this action may seem unpleasant, but can see no other course to take. Your young men must do their duty for the good of the race.' She showed no surprise when the youths agreed readily to this proposal. Many strode forward to volunteer. They confessed that their pegos were already on the alert to do their duty in entering various lars. A day was arranged, and that rather hurriedly, since the increased cold threatened to produce a terrible lethargy. The sun was now little more than a frozen eyeball, diminished under its eyelid of eclipsing cloud. The men were in dismay, for already some of the animals on which their livelihood depended had gone into a strange catalepsy from which it proved impossible to awaken them. The women, on the agreed day, climbed down the two thousand steps inside their great columns. None was able to fly. Their useless wings scraped against the interior walls as they descended. Hanging overhead, on the undersides of the great steps, were large snail-like objects. These stirred as the women were passing. One or two even put out crisp prawn antennae which waved about, as if keeping the downward procession under scrutiny. To the women, the ground seemed very dark. Some were afraid. The men greeted them with torches filled with firebirds, although it was noted that no longer did the torches gleam brightly as once they had done. The dull things, however, sufficed for the men to lead the women into their Grand Hall, where forty rough beds had been laid out, spread with gaudy rugs, twenty to each side of the hall, with a narrow space in the middle down which everyone could walk to take up their positions. Most of the women had lengths of cloth wrapped about their bodies for warmth. While they divested themselves of these cloths, the men were hurriedly removing their own crude garb. They presented themselves to their partners. Some of the pegos were already alert. Others needed a little coaxing. A gong was struck - its note slightly flat. The eighty partners got down on the beds and lay beside each other. They kissed and felt each other's principle parts, such as pegos, lars and tutties. At another stroke of the gong, mass fornication commenced. Eighty bottoms moved as one. A slurping sound filled the chamber. Much excitement and warmth was generated. Indeed, as the awestruck superintendent remarked afterwards, 'Enough semen was generated to fill enough mijik-bottles to feed all the cahows on the planet.' The logic of the remark hardly stands up under examination, unlike the pegos involved. Towards the end of this day-long event, the men found that they were preferring immobility. A neuroleptic effect was taking place. Buttock after buttock ceased to move, became as unmoving as a carving. The women disengaged themselves and stood up with difficulty, for they too found themselves verging on the side of immobility. They climbed over the inert bodies of the men and left the great Hall of Recreation and Copulation. There a strange prospect met their half -closed eyes. A deep blue haze, nearly as thick as treacle, covered the ground, almost up to knee-high, and rising. The air was a blur of snowflakes, and full of strange noises, some rude, some musical. The atmosphere was precipitating out. Clutching each other for support, in many cases with their body-wrapping flapping in the wind far behind them, the women made their way back to their pillars. They struggled to enter, struggled to mount a few steps, before a strange catalepsy seized them. The last woman to enter, glancing upwards, saw through a gap in the cloud that their once friendly sun was now but a distant spark. 'We got it wrong,' she gasped. 'Thank Hallon!' Now the phenomena of apogee increased, speeded up, as if the next perihelion were not several thousand years away in the future. Like a lamp in the tormented sky, the moon went out. It failed to illumine. It rolled dead in its orbit. And the snow that fell came down in long twirling rods instead of individual flakes. The deep blue haze became deeper, and turned into fluid as it deepened. Within a few hours, even the great Hall of Recreation and Copulation was inundated. Only its roof showed above the flood. Then the roof itself sank beneath sullen waves. No great cry emerged from the throat of any man: all had become in love with darkness and submergence and the voracious silences of eternity. And still it rained. And the flood rose up the sides of the columns. And what of the women inside those columns? The changeover in atmosphere reduced them to catalepsy, there on the great steps. They curled together in parodies of some ethnic disaster, became solid. Lungs ceased to move, hearts to beat, blood to travel. Their wombs, those receptacles of a far future, became porcelain. And what was contained within that porcelain chamber was a tiny patient thing, a mere multiplicity of cells, content to wait through centuries of chill and dark, until once more planet and primary sailed into centuries of contiguity. Above these heaps of mummified motherhood, the shells hanging from the underside of steps showed movement. Things were stirring, awakening from a long phylogenic dream in which night was day and day night, and all dimensions were contained within a shrimp's scrotum. Now the shrimps were roused, and carried, still half a-doze, upwards through the flooding cylinders - finally to burst in glory upon their fine revived environment, all glooming dark and refreshing espargo air. Espargo, with its low freeze-point, skittered on new winds above a great brimming sea, which occasionally splashed and broke on the platforms. All below them was an ocean of old atmosphere. All above them was the magnificent cloak of stars, as if the galaxy were ablaze with newly kindled flame. There was fire indeed, turned to diamonds . . . Their whiskers grew at the sight and smell of it. Their bodies stretched like elastic stockings. Their many legs took on height and muscle and activity. Colour rippled along their hollow bodies. They ran squealing in happiness, rejoicing in the privilege of being alive, conscious - airborne. As they ran, their wings blossomed out like giant flowers, spreading, beating, flapping kite -like, carrying their fragile bodies into the merry dark espargo. When their bodies lifted, so did their spirits. The espargo was alight with hastening colour. There they sailed, the negative race, free of information, free of knowledge, free of any wisdom but the wisdom of sailing on the winds above the ocean - that atmosphere which was to remain ocean for thousands of years - to scatter their seed in great scented streamers on the icy zephyrs, until the solar dawn broke, and once more returning sunlight performed its duties for the creatures that existed blindly below the atmospheric ocean. Neither species knew the other. Each had its turn of happiness. To each, the other species was but a dream. As I said, this world was much like ours, only a little different.