by Ian McDonald
(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.)
Emily’s Diary: April 22, 1913
IT 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.
Now ensured of support, we may proceed apace with Project Pharos. Enclosed are blueprints for the signalling device. Nevertheless, I will here summarise in my own hand the principles of said device, lest my enthusiasm in draughting the designs has rendered my diagrams a trifle hard to comprehend.
The device takes the form of a cross of floating pontoons supporting electrically powered lanterns. The cross must necessarily be of immense size: I have estimated that to be visible from the perigee position, the arms will have to be five miles in diameter. This of course necessitates the use of the pontoons. An artifact of such dimensions could never be constructed on land, but on sea it is a relatively simple task to construct on such a scale, and possesses the additional benefit of the signal being clearly distinguishable from the humbler lamps of civilization, namely, Sligo town. Electrical supply for the pontoons can be cheaply provided by my brother-in-law, Mr. Michael Barry, of the Sligo, Leitrim, Fermanagh, and South Donegal Electrical Supply Company. How useful it is to have relations in positions of influence!
Here, Your Lordship, I must beg leave to conclude. I once again thank you for your kind patronage of this experiment, which will surely be regarded by history as one of the epochal events of the millennium. I will keep Your Lordship closely informed of further developments, particularly with regard to the blueprints, which are in the hands of Gilbey, Johnson, and O’Brien, Architects, of Sligo town; and also of my efforts to compile a code with which to signal the presence of guiding intelligence to the Altairii, as I have termed our extrasolar visitors. Finally, I would wish God’s richest blessing upon yourself and all at Clarecourt, especially the Lady Alexandra, who is never far from our affections here at Craigdarragh.
I remain,
Your Humble Servant,
Edward Garret Desmond, Ph.D.
Emily’s Diary: May 26, 1913
SUCH A STRANGE THING, today. I almost hesitate to set it down in these pages. I am still not certain that the whole incident was not a dream… Yes! I am certain. However strange, however uncanny, it happened, it was real, and I shall set it down for all time in these pages so that I will always remember that it happened.
I was up at the bower in the woods above Cross and Passion after evening chapel. It was lovely and bright, a gorgeous late evening, everything just as full of life as it could be; bees and butterflies and birds and everything. I thought I’d like to read some poetry. Mummy’d just sent me one of Mr. Yeats’s books of poems. With it in my hand I slipped away across the back field. I’m sure no one saw me, but I kept having that funny feeling you get when you are sure someone is watching you but you can never catch who they are. I would look behind me every so often, but I still couldn’t see anyone or anything. But I still kept getting that peculiar prickling-between-the-shoulder-blades feeling. I should have gone back then, I suppose. If I’d known then, I would have.
Even in the bower the funny feeling would not go away. Funny feelings. There was another one, sort of like the one you get just before a thunderstorm, that something is going to happen, as if every leaf, every flower, every blade of grass is humming with a power that might at any moment burst in release. But it wasn’t a scary feeling, this other one—not like the invisible eyes. It felt safe and comforting.
I was reading poetry from Mr. Yeats’s book, and I must have been far, far away in it, even with all the funny feelings, because I never heard him coming up on me. All of a sudden I heard the crashing of branche
s and leaves and the light was cut off by this big shadow at the entrance to the bower—the huge, horrible, frightening shadow of a man, blocking the way. It was Gabriel, the groundsman’s son. He was standing there in front of me, looking at me. Not a word did he say, not a muscle did he move. He just looked at me, and that was horrible because the way he looked was as if he was saying all the horrible, horrible things I knew he wanted to do to me. I was too scared even to scream, let alone move to get away from him. Everything was spinning in front of me.
And then there was a sound, just like a bee buzzing against my cheek. I felt a tiny puff of air, as if stirred by an insect’s wings, and there was an arrow between his feet. Right between his feet, an arrow, out of nowhere. Then it was as if he had seen the most awful thing he could imagine. I have never seen such a look of shock and horror ever before. I have never seen anyone run as fast as he ran away, shrieking and screaming and wailing.
I looked behind me and still I cannot quite believe, dear diary, what I saw. Standing there was a fair-haired man with a small harp. He had little rags tied all over him—in his hair, in his beard, to his clothes, to his arms, his legs, his toes, his fingers. Even his little harp had coloured rags tied to the tops of its strings. He was blind—I could see that at once. He had no eyes. He had never had eyes. Where eyes should have been, there was smooth skin growing over empty sockets.
Beside him was a red-haired woman dressed in a sort of harness made out of leather straps. She carried a huge bow as tall as she was, which was not very tall, smaller even than I am, and the wood of that bow was marvellously painted with spirals and twisted, twining animals. At her waist she wore a quiver of arrows.
I stared so long, diary—I just could not believe what I was seeing. Then, without a word, the blind man and the woman turned and walked away, back out of the bower, up into the woods, and I heard the song of the ragman’s harp drifting on the still evening air.
As I have written, it all seems now like a dream, or a nightmare. I just don’t know which is more disturbing—if it was real, or if it was a dream?
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: May 28, 1913
WORK IS PROCEEDING APACE on the signalling device. The labourers are addressing themselves to their tasks with an enthusiasm I would like to attribute to a desire to communicate with higher intelligences but I think is rather due to Lord Fitzgerald’s generous purse; the little I have managed to scrape together from the estate is paltry in the extreme compared to the Clarenorris fortunes.
Already the first pontoon sections have been floated into Sligo Harbour and the lanterns tested and found to operate satisfactorily. Such successes are heartening after the delays and confusions of the early weeks. The plan is to assemble the cross from 170 pontoon sections, each one hundred yards long. This sounds a daunting proposition, given the sober truth that astronomical mechanics wait for no man, but the sections have been largely preassembled in the town boat yards and only remain to be floated and bolted into their finished form. Observing the great legion of labourers (of which there are no shortage in this poverty-blighted county), I have no fear that Project Pharos will not be completed by the time the extrasolar vehicle attains perigee. My outstanding concern—that of devising a universally comprehensible mode of communication with which to converse with the Altairii—has recently been resolved to my complete satisfaction. It is a universal truth that the laws of mathematics are the same upon the worlds of Altair as they are upon this one; to wit, the ratio of the circle’s radius to its circumference, which we call pi, must be as familiar to the Altairii as to us. Therefore I have designed an electrical relay whereby one arm of the cross will flash its lights twenty-two times for the other’s seven, this being the approximate fractional ratio of pi. Such a signal cannot fail to attract the attention of our stellanauts and pave the way for more intimate conversation, a code for which I am currently devising using primes and exponents.
May 31, 1913
Craigdarragh
Drumcliffe
County Sligo
My Dearest Constance,
Just a brief note to express my thanks for your generous invitation to the boating party at Rathkennedy. Of course I shall be there. Few things are more delightful to me than an afternoon on Lough Gill aboard Grania, and, coupled with a reading by Mr. Yeats, you temptress, how can I resist? Since our little soiree at the Gaelic Literary League, I have looked for an opportunity to meet him again. My dear Constance, wild horses wouldn’t keep me! I wonder, however, might I bring Emily? She will shortly be returning for the summer, and I know nothing would thrill her more than to hear Mr. Yeats reading his own incomparable verse. I sent her copies of In the Seven Woods and The Green Helmet and Other Poems, and she has devoured them as a starving man would a crust of bread! To actually meet this Olympian figure— I can assure you that she will be on her very best behaviour; no repeat of the histrionics at her birthday party. She conducts herself exceedingly well in adult company; quite the little charmer. It has been said by others that she reminds them of me, but it sometimes seems to me that she is a little too eager to grow up. Please do give it your consideration. Emily would be thrilled if it is acceptable. If the request is within your powers to grant, I will write to Emily to inform her, and I thank you once again for your kindness and hospitality. It will be good to meet Mr. Yeats again.
Yours Sincerely,
Caroline
Emily’s Diary: June 29, 1913
OH, TO BE IN Craigdarragh now that summer’s here! It is the little, magical things that make the summer for me: Michael and Paddy-Joe, Mrs. O’Carolan’s sons, scything the front lawn; the sound of their scythes reaping the tall grass; the smell of bruised hay; the sagging tennis net run out for another year; old Dignan the gardener trying to creosote straight tram lines; the smell of sun-warmed wood and old, peeling paint in the summerhouse; the sound of opera from the garden when Mummy takes her big black deckchair with the sunshade, her phonogram and her workbooks out into the sunken garden (how she can work with people screaming at each other in Italian I do not know), the house filled with clicks and creaks and strange little animal sounds, as if it were stretching back into the life and heat of summer after months of hibernation; early morning light streaming through my window onto the counterpane; outside, the quiet rustle of the Irish Times. I always know that summer has truly arrived when Daddy has his alfresco breakfasts at the table by the rhododendrons. And just to make everything perfect, there is the promise of a boating trip on Lough Gill with Mummy’s friend Mrs. Booth-Kennedy, and of actually meeting with Mr. William Butler Yeats, the greatest poet who ever lived! It is as if everything is in some great, benign conspiracy to make this the most perfect summer yet.
To prepare myself, I have been rereading all my copies of Yeats; sometimes aloud outside in the gardens, because they seem to perfectly match each other—the wonderful words, the magical summer. Poor Paddy-Joe and Michael, what must they think when they see the daughter of the house pirouetting, barefoot, among the rhododendrons, reciting The Lake Isle of Innisfree?
The weather is exceptional; since the day I came home from Cross and Passion there has not been one cloud in the sky. I love the weather when it is like this, when every day is the same as the one before and it seems that they will go on like this forever—day after day after day of perfect, unchanging blue, when the sun rises at four in the morning and sets so late that it never gets properly dark at all and the whole world seems suspended somewhere beyond time, changeless, like a flower in a glass paperweight. The air feels strangely charged, as if This World and the Otherworld are at the closest points of their orbits and the friction of their passage is being translated into a lazy, sensual magic. It is quite impossible to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes without my imagination flying away like mayflies above the minnow-burn—one minute hovering in one place, the next, somewhere else, so fast you would think they had the gift of instantaneous movement. With everything so pregnant
and potential, it seems impossible that there has been no faery manifestation; yet every day since I came home I have gone into Bridestone Wood, expecting, hoping, wanting to see something. But there is nothing! Not even that sensation of watching I remember from the spring, and again, that time in the bower, just before…
Perhaps the problem is that I am expecting too hard. Faeries have always been tricksome, flighty creatures. Maybe when I stop wanting something to happen, then something will happen, but oh, how difficult it is not to want the thing which deep down in your heart you want more than anything.
Mummy has been working in the garden—how, in this heat, I don’t know. All I want to do is flop about in a sun frock, but she is hard at it, researching a book. Not a book of poetry this time, she told me, but a proper book, a serious book. It will be called The Twilight of the Gods, she thinks, and it will be about how Christianity has dethroned the old, elemental gods of the Celts, first driving them underground to become the Host of the Hollow Hills, the sidhe; and ultimately, to reduce them into leprechauns and pookahs and brownies and Trooping Faeries. That seems to me like a sad and terrible end for the old gods who could be many things at once—young and old, male and female, human and animal. Much better, I told Mummy, for them all to have died in some great and noble last battle than to dwindle and shrivel like the old generals at Kilmainham Hospital with their medals and bath chairs, changed into green-gaitered pixies guarding crocks of gold. Mummy agreed, but said that the secret of the Old Gods was that they were never totally defeated by Christianity; they merely changed form again and went more deeply into the land. Irish Catholicism, she maintained, contains many elements that are not Christian at all but stem directly from the old pagan religions. Many Irish saints are just old gods and goddesses sealed with the Pope’s stamp of respectability, and the so-called Holy Wells, like the one at Gortahurk where Mrs. O’Carolan goes for her rheumatism, are nothing more than old Celtic votive sites to the water spirits. Old sacrificial stones were often decorated over with new Christian symbols. There is a standing stone in a village in County Fermanagh where an old deity has been converted into a bishop, complete with bell, crozier, and mitre! And many of the Church festivals, including Christmas, Michaelmas, and Halloween, are the old Celtic festivals of Lughnasadh and Samhain, Christianized, tamed and stripped of their old pagan power, like lions in a circus with their teeth pulled.