King of Morning, Queen of Day (3 page)

Perhaps reality was too much for me after months with nothing to call upon but my imagination: I could have sworn that I was not alone as I came down from the Bridestone through the green woods; that there were shadowy shapes flitting from tree to tree, unseen when I looked for them, giggling at my foolishness. Ah, well, I have always thought it was an enchanted faery place.

The Bushes

Stradbally Road

Sligo

Dear Mrs. Desmond,

Thank you for inviting Grace to the surprise parry you are holding in honour of Emily’s fifteenth birthday; I am delighted to accept on her behalf. She is looking forward to the twelfth with mounting excitement. A grand and gay time will be had by all, I am certain.

With regard to transport out to Craigdarragh, I have arranged for Grace to travel with the O’Rahilly twins, Jasmine and Briony, in the O’Rahillys’ motor car. Reilly the chauffeur will see to it that they get themselves up to no mischief and are home by a decent hour.

Yours sincerely,

Janet Halloran

April 9, 1913

Clarecourt

Bailisodare

County Sligo

My Dear Edward,

I shall be only too delighted to accept your invitation to Craigdarragh House, and am honoured to learn that I will be the first recipient of the most eagerly awaited event in the astronomical world at the moment, the secret of Bell’s Comet.

However, I fear that the fifteenth is impossible for me. I am required at the House of Lords for the reading of a piece of legislation close to my heart, the Irish Home Rule Bill, and what with trains and steam packets and the like, I must leave on or around the fourteenth. Would the twelfth be acceptable? Please let me know. I am most eager to visit, as this business in London will prevent me from attending the meeting of the Royal Irish Astronomical Society. My intention is to travel on the train which will arrive at Sligo Station at 6:16
P.M.
I look forward to seeing you then. Until the twelfth, then, my warmest regards to you, your wife, and your charming daughter.

Sincerely,

Maurice: Clarenorris

A
NOTHER DOMESTIC FURORE! HONESTLY,
I am beginning to feel I am no longer master of my own household! I bring the Marquis of Clarenorris home from the station and what do I find? My home and place of work overrun by shrieking, silly schoolgirls! Caroline’s idea—a surprise birthday tea for Emily. Result, the house is in an uproar. Why was I not informed of this? I am quite certain that I notified Caroline of the changed dates of Lord Fitzgerald’s visit. Sometimes she seems to go out of her way to upset my plans and arrangements.

To his endless credit, Lord Fitzgerald showed no embarrassment at the girlish proceedings and indeed took the whole debacle in exceedingly good spirit; nevertheless, I was only too glad to hurry him out to the observatory, where, with the aid of telescope and photographs, I took the opportunity to explain to him my hypothesis concerning this object erroneously named
Bell’s Comet.
This he received openly and without prejudice, asking me perceptive and informed questions. However, it is more than the Marquis’s favourable ear I must win. I have need of his considerable fortune also, if the second stage of my investigations, which I have tentatively christened
Project Pharos,
is to be brought to fruition.

Domestic memo:
I must remind Mrs. O’Carolan to waken Lord Fitzgerald at six thirty and provide him with a substantial breakfast; the worthy Marquis has far to go tomorrow. Also, I must have a man up from the town to look at the electricals: tonight’s unexpected current failure was somewhat disconcerting, and judging by the shrieks and cries from the drawing room, caused great distress to the young folk at the party.

D
EAR MRS. O’C,

Another one! Last night, just after supper, for the space of a good thirty minutes or so. Now I know, Mrs. O’C, that you know as much as I do about the mysteries of electricity, which is precisely nothing, but you have the advantage over me in knowing virtually every soul between here and Enniskillen. Would it be possible for you to find among this host of acquaintances and relatives
someone
who could come and have a look at the wiring or the junction box or whatever is the matter with the infernal thing? I do not, positively
not,
want a repeat of Tuesday’s catastrophe. First Emily storms out in tears and tantrums muttering how
embarrassing
it all was,
little children’s stuff,
and how she’d wanted
boys
there, like an
adult
party; not cakes and ginger ale and blindman’s bluff. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth, indeed, Mrs. O’C! And as if that wasn’t enough, the lights go out and I am left trying to calm a roomful of hysterical, screaming girls. The trials of parenthood, Mrs. O’C. That aside, Mrs. O’C, do give it a try, will you? Edward promised to get a man up from town to do something on Wednesday, but you know how utterly useless he is about anything that isn’t a million miles away in the depths of space. If you can’t sort it out, it’ll mean my tedious brother Michael calling out to have a look and going on and on and on about the grand all-electric future the Sligo, Leitrim, Fermanagh, and South Donegal Electrical Supply Company is going to provide for us. The man cannot even change an incandescent bulb!

Incidentally, only cold meats and salads for supper, if you please; Emily and I will be over at Rathkennedy House all of today. We hope to be back here by about eight o’clock.

T
HEREFORE, LEARNED GENTLEMEN, IT
is clearly impossible for these fluctuations in luminosity to be due to the differing albedos of the spinning surfaces of Bell’s Comet, as my mathematical proofs have demonstrated. The only—I repeat,
only
—explanation for this unprecedented phenomenon is that the emissions of light are artificial in origin.

(General consternation among the Learned Fellows)

If artificial, then we must address ourselves to the disturbing truth that they must,
must,
gentlemen, be the works of intellects, minds, Learned Fellows, immeasurably superior to our own. It has long been held that we are not the unique handiwork of our Creator, the possibility of great civilizations upon the planets Mars and Venus, and even beneath the forbidding surface of our own moon, has been many times mooted, even in this very lecture hall, by respected gentlemen of science and learning.

(Heckler: “Intoxicated gentlemen of absinthe and bourbon!” Laughter.)

What I am proposing, if I may, Learned Fellows, is a concept of a whole order of magnitude greater than even these lofty speculations. I am proposing that this artifact, for artificial it must be, is evidence of a mighty civilization
beyond our solar system,
upon a world of the star Altair, for it is from that quadrant of the sky that the object called Bell’s Comet originates. Having ascertained that the object was indeed no lifeless chunk of stellar matter, I attempted to ascertain its velocity. As the Learned Fellows are doubtless all too aware, it is difficult in the extreme to calculate with absolute mathematical precision the velocity of any astronomical phenomenon; nevertheless, with persistence and application, I estimated the object’s velocity to be in the close proximity of three hundred and fifty miles per second.

(Murmurs of amazement from the Learned Fellows)

Moreover, during the four–week period during which I kept the object under daily observation, or as regularly as the climate of County Sligo would permit, this velocity decreased from three hundred and fifty miles per second to one hundred and twenty miles per second. Clearly, the object is decelerating, and from such behaviour only one conclusion is possible—that the object is a spatial vehicle of some form, despatched by the inhabitants of Altair to establish contact with the inhabitants of our Earth.

(Heckler: “Oh, come now!”)

While the exact design of such a spatial vehicle is beyond my conception, I have some tentative suggestions with regard to its motive power. That most estimable Frenchman, M. Jules Verne, has written most imaginatively…

(Heckler: “Not one half as imaginatively as you, sir!”)

…thank you, sir, of how a great space gun might propel a capsule around the Moon. Intriguing though this notion is, it is quite impractical as a means to journey from Altair to our Earth. The velocity imparted by such a space gun would not be sufficient for the journey to be completed within the lifetimes of the voyagers.

(Heckler: “Will this lecture be completed within the lifetimes of the Learned Fellows?” Laughter.)

Therefore, I would suggest, if I might do so without interruption, Learned Fellows, that the vehicle accelerates and decelerates through a series of
self-generated explosions,
of titanic force, which propel the vehicle through transtellar space at the colossal velocities necessary to traverse such an immense distance. Of course, such star-crossing velocities must be shed to rendezvous with our Earth at the completion of the journey, and I would suggest that the immense flarings of light we have all witnessed are the explosions by which this vehicle slows its headlong flight.

(Heckler: “Are we in any seriousness meant to accept these fanciful vapourings over the Astronomer Royal’s reasoned and cogent arguments?”)

Learned Fellows, I cannot with any degree of scientific certainty speculate…

(Catcalls, booing. Heckler; “Scientific certainty? What scientific certainty?”)

…what such a propulsive explosive might be; certainly no earthly explosive would possess sufficient power for its weight to be a practical fuel for such a transtellar journey.

(Heckler: “Oh, certainly.’”)

However, I have conducted a spectral analysis of the light from Bell’s Comet and found it to be identical to the light of our own familiar Sun.

(Heckler: “Of course: it’s reflected sunlight, man!”)

Could it be that extrasolar stellanauts of Altair have learned to duplicate artificially the force that kindles the Sun itself and tarried it to power their vehicles?

(Heckler: “Could it be that the Member from Drumcliffe has learned to duplicate artificially the spirit of the mountain dew and used it to fuel his somewhat overwrought imagination?” Uproarious laughter.)

Learned Fellows… gentlemen… please, if you would pay me the courtesy of your attention. Since it is now clear that we are not unique in God’s universe, it is therefore of paramount importance, even urgency, that we communicate with these representatives of a civilization immeasurably nobler than our own. Therefore, in September of this year, when Bell’s Comet makes its closest approach to Earth…

(Heckler: “I don’t believe it! Learned Fellows
…
a fact! A cold, hard fact!”)

… I will attempt to signal the presence of intelligent life on this world
(laughter, growing louder)
to the extrasolar intelligences of Altair.

(General laughter and derision: cries of “Poppycock,” “Shame,” “Withdraw.” A rain of pamphlets falls upon the platform. The president calls for order. There being none, he declares the meeting adjourned.)

I
T IS ALL MOST
unpleasant. Ever since Daddy’s return from Dublin there has been the most horrid atmosphere in the house. He has locked himself up in his observatory and works as a man possessed, growling like an angry dog at the least annoyance. Mummy has warned me not to disturb him. She need not fear—I have no intention of going near him until his mood has sweetened. Whatever it was that happened in Dublin, it has so soured the atmosphere that my Easter has been quite spoiled.

Well, maybe not completely. Oh, this sounds foolish, this sounds like whimsy, but last night I looked out of my bedroom window and saw lights up on Ben Bulben, like the lights of many lanterns there on the slopes of the mountain, as if there were people dancing there by lantern light. When I was young, Mrs. O’Carolan told me that years ago, when a betrothal was announced, the people of the parish used to celebrate it by dancing in a ring around the Bridestone and the man and the woman would plight their troth by joining hands through the hole in the middle of the stone. Could what I saw have been a faery wedding? Could noble lords and ladies and moon–silver stallions have stood around to watch by faery light as the King of the Morning and the Queen of the Daybreak joined hands through the ancient troth stone? How wonderful, how romantic! As I leaned out to watch, I imagined I could hear the whinnying of those faery horses, and the playing of the elfin harpers and the gay laughter of the Host of the Air.
I do believe that there are strange and magical things in Bridestone Wood!
Real magic, magic of stone and sky and sea, the magic of the Old Folk, the Good Folk who dwell in the Halls Beneath the Hills, a magic we see, and feel, and touch… but just for a moment, and then it is gone again. How easily such things are lost! How easily the cold light of day dissolves away the magic of the night, like mist. This will be my last night in Craigdarragh; tomorrow I must return again to Cross and Passion. Though I love the other girls, even now I am counting the hours until I am home again in the greenwoods of Craigdarragh, under the wise shadow of ancient Ben Bulben, where the faery folk will be waiting for me.

April 26, 1913

Craigdarragh

Drumcliffe

County Sligo

My Dear Lord Fitzgerald,

I am deeply, deeply grateful for your letter of the twenty–fourth inst. in which Your Lordship pledged support for my project to communicate with the transtellar vehicle from Altair. I am glad that Your Lordship was spared the embarrassment of my humiliation before the Society: Christians to the lions, my dear Clarenorris, were none such as I in that lecture theatre. Yet, like those early martyrs, my faith is undiminished, my zeal for the successful persuance of Project Pharos is greater than ever: we shall teach these arrogant whippersnappers a thing or two when the star folk come! And I am delighted, no less honoured, to hear that Your Lordship has submitted a letter of support for my propositions to Sir Greville Adams, though I regret that, for all Your Lordship’s cogent argument, it will achieve little: the gentlemen of Dublin are stunted in mind—intellectual dwarves compared to we revolutionary thinkers of the West.