Free The Lowest Heaven by Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts, Sophia McDougall, Kaaron Warren, E.J. Swift, Kameron Hurley Page B

flakes of skin, eyelashes, traces of blood, of sweat, of saliva, of semen, dried mucous, brain matter, fecal matter – that had drifted about the house and grounds to settle in cracks and corners and the quiet, dark spaces. They found DNA from more than five hundred and fifty discrete human beings, an astonishing number of people to have left evidence of themselves in an isolated farmhouse on the edge of the Lakshmi Planum. There were, moreover, no fewer than ninety–eight usable finger– and palm–prints from separate people and fifty–seven different sets of footprints, as well as traces of twelve unique tire–tracks on the driveway. Even using the planet’s central biometric database, the majority of the DNA evidence could not be easily identified.
    There were no shotgun casings – the killers must have removed them – and the knife used to slit Hershel Keck’s throat could not be found.
    The forensics team did find something, however; something Philips specifically asked them to search for. At six separate locations outside the house, nestled up against the wall, the forensics team found powerful, non–brand, professional–grade dampers – those clever little machines that schools use to block radio and electromagnetic signals from wireless devices, preventing their students from calling or texting or in any way interacting with each other or with the outside world when they should be listening to their lectures. Back in the forensics lab at Riccioli, it was discovered that the six dampers interfaced in such a way as to emit a pale green glow.
    III
    Ashen light is the name a seventeenth–century astronomer gave the soft, greenish glow he detected emanating from the dark side of Venus. Although a number of astronomers, both amateur and professional had, over the centuries, claimed to observe the ashen light, sightings remained rare enough that it was generally considered a fluke, a phantom of wishful thinking and unrelated, easily explained, phenomena. An early observer argued that the light came from the fires Venusians lit to celebrate the crowing of a new emperor. Once it was determined that Venus was neither habited nor habitable, and, in fact, that its atmospheric composition was so inimical to life as we understand it that it is improbable to the extreme that biological life ever existed there, other hypotheses were proposed to explain the occasional soft green glow of which some few observers caught sight. Perhaps, some suggested, it was caused by carbon dioxide being torn apart into carbon monoxide and oxygen, the process of which splitting emits a faint green light. Or, it was proposed, the greenish light could have been nothing more than the glow of lightning from Venus’ many electrical storms, diffused through carbon dioxide and nitrogen clouds that suffocated the planet pre–activation. Whether the effect was even real remained a topic of heated debate well into the twenty–second century.
    When the dynamo was activated and the terraforming project began in earnest, a strange and entirely unexpected effect was noted. Although the planet’s atmosphere, both real and artificial, was configured to resemble the Earth’s, something about the way sunlight refracted off the Overdome meant that, very rarely, on dark, cloudy nights, a faint greenish glow could be seen on the horizon. Papers were written, doctorates were awarded, and academic conferences were convened to discuss and dissect the new ashen light, but the majority of Venusians cared not one whit about official explanations. They were content in the knowledge that Venus’ Overdome, the greatest feat of engineering in all human history, which was otherwise wholly invisible, had this single, rare, beautiful manifestation. That it was something unique to their planet. To them.
    The Keck family, Riccioli’s forensics team determined, died several hours after they’d first been tied up. To this day, Alvin Go, the man who lives in the cabin