Empire Dreams (10 page)

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EMILY’S DIARY: APRIL 13, 1909.

HOW WONDERFUL IT
is to be home again! All the dreary hours I spent in Sister Immaculata’s Latin 5th dreaming of home have not dulled Craigdarragh’s wonderfulness: for three days I have gone round hugging every wall, window, and door in the place! I almost hugged Mrs. O’Carolan when she met me off the train in Sligo town; oh, the look there would have been on her face! How good it is to see people who are round and plump and happy after the pinched black and white nuns. They are like magpies, the nuns, always miserable, always cackling and rubbing their black wings together. I hate them and I hate Cross and Passion, it is like a prison, old and grey, and it is always raining.

I had forgotten the colors of Craigdarragh in the spring, the new greens of the hills and the woods, the blue of the sea and beyond it, purple Knocknarea, the red of the early rhododendrons, my father’s red cheeks and beard: it is funny how easily you forget the colors when there is only grey around you. But oh, nothing has changed, and that is so good; everything is as it was when I left after Christmas, Mrs. O’Carolan is fat and fusty and kind. Mama is Mama, pretending she is an artist and a poet and a tragic queen from a legend all rolled into one; Papa is Papa, worried and hurried and so busy with his telescopes and sums I’m sure he has already forgotten I’m here. And Craigdarragh is Craigdarragh: the woods, the mountain, the waterfall. Today I revisited the Bridestone up above the woods on the slopes of Ben Bulben. How peaceful it is there with only the wind and the song of the blackbird for company. Peaceful, and, dare I say, magical? It is like nothing has changed for a thousand years, one can imagine Finn MacCumhall and his grim Fianna warriors hunting the leaping stag with his red-eared hounds through some woodland glade, or the sunlight glinting from the spearpoints of the Red Branch Heroes as they march to avenge some slaughtered comrade.

Perhaps my imagination is too vigorous after months of confinement in that grey prison of Cross and Passion: I could have sworn that I was not alone as I came down through the woods from the Bridestone, that there were shadowy shapes flitting from tree to tree, unseen when I looked for them, giggling at my foolishness. Ah well, I did say it was an enchanted, faery place.

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EXCERPTS FROM DR. EDWARD GARRET DESMOND’S ECTURE TO THE ROYAL IRISH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, APRIL 16, 1909.

THEREFORE, GENTLEMEN, IT
is clearly impossible for these fluctuations in luminosity from Bell’s Comet to be due to the differing albedos of its spinning surfaces, as my mathematical proofs have demonstrated. The only explanation for this unprecedented phenomenon is that these 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 works of intellects: minds, learned fellows, as great as, if not greater than, 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 by respected men of science and learning.

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

What I am now proposing, if I may, gentlemen, is a concept of a whole order of magnitude greater than these 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 Wolfe 359, for it is from the direction of this star that the object called Bell’s Comet originates. Having ascertained that the object was indeed no mere lifeless comet, I attempted to ascertain its velocity. As the learned fellows are doubtless too aware, it is difficult in the extreme to calculate the velocity of astronomical phenomena; nevertheless, I estimated the object’s velocity to be three hundred and fifty miles per second.

(
Murmurs of amazement from the learned fellows
.)

However, over the four-week period during which I kept the object under daily observation, weather permitting, the 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 this information only one conclusion is possible—that the object is a spatial vehicle of some form, despatched by the inhabitants of Wolfe 359 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 as to its motive power. Our French colleague, M. Verne has written most imaginatively (
Heckler: “Not as imaginatively as you, sir.”
) of how a great space-gun might propel a capsule around the moon. Intriguing though this notion is, it is quite impractical for a journey from Wolfe 359 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 its voyagers. (
Heckler: “Will this lecture be completed within the lifetimes of its audience?” Laughter
.) Therefore I suggest, if I may do so without interruption, learned fellows, that the vehicle accelerates and decelerates through a series of self-generated explosions, of titantic force, which propel the vehicle through transtellar space at colossal velocities. Of course, such star-crossing velocities must be shed to rendezvous with our earth at the completion of the journey, and I would submit that the immense flarings of light we are witnessing are the explosions by which the vehicle slows its headlong flight.

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

Gentlemen, I cannot say with any measure of scientific certainty (
Catcalls, booing. Heckler: “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 flight. (
Heckler: “Oh certainly!” Laughter
.) 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!” Laughter
.) Could it be that the extrasolar stellanauts of Wolfe 359 have learned to duplicate artificially the force that kindles the sun itself and tamed it to power their space 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 active imagination?” Uproarious laughter
.)

Learned fellows … gentlemen, please, if I might have 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 intelligences immeasurably superior to our own. Therefore, in the August of this year, when Bell’s Comet makes its closest approach to earth (
Heckler: “I don’t believe it! Gentlemen, a fact! A cold, hard fact!”
) I will attempt to signal the presence of intelligent life on this world (
Laughter grows louder
.) to the extrasolar intelligences…. (
General laughter: 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
.)

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EMILY’S DIARY: APRIL 22, 1909.

I DO BELIEVE
there are strange and magical things in Bridestone Wood! Real magic, magic of sky and stone and sea, the magic of the Old People, the Good People who live in the halls beneath the hills. Oh, this sounds foolish, this sounds like whimsy, but last night I looked out of my bedroom window and saw lights up there on Ben Bulben, like the lights of many lanterns there on the slopes of the hill, like there were folk dancing by lantern light in a ring around the Bridestone. Mrs. O’Carolan used to tell me stories of the faery lords who would take their mortal brides by the joining of hands through the hole in the middle of the Bridestone. Could this have been such a faery wedding? For as the hour of midnight struck the dancing lights lifted from under the shadow of Ben Bulben and flew through the air into the west; over Craigdarragh, over this very roof! As I leaned out to watch I imagined I could hear the whinnying of the faery horses and the laughter of the host of the air and the playing of the faery harpers.

Oh diary, it was such a wonder! My heart would still be full to the brim with it but for the shadow that has fallen across both it and Craigdarragh. Ever since Papa’s return from Dublin there has been the most horrid atmosphere in the house. I wanted to tell him all about the wonderful things I have seen, but Mama warned me not to disturb him, for he has locked himself up in his observatory and works like a man possessed by demons, growling like an angry dog at the least annoyance. Whatever has happened in Dublin has so soured the atmosphere that my Easter has been quite spoiled, and now there is another shadow hanging over me; in two days I must return to Cross and Passion. That horrible place … oh, come quickly, summer! Even now I am counting the hours until I am home again, in Craigdarragh, beneath the shadow of Ben Bulben, where the faery folk are waiting for me …

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Craigdarragh
Drumcliffe
County Sligo
April 26th

My dear Lord Fitzgerald,

I am deeply, deeply grateful for your letter dated April 24th in which Your Lordship expressed an interest in, and indeed pledged support for, my project to communicate with the transtellar vehicle from the star Wolfe 359. I am glad that Your Lordship was spared the humiliation of my embarrassment before the Society; would that I had been spared it myself. Christians to the lions, my dear Claremorris, were none such as I in that lecture hall. Yet like those early martyrs, my faith is undiminished, my zeal for the successful pursuance of Project Pharos is greater than ever: we shall teach these arrogant pedagogues a thing or two when the star-folk come! And I am delighted, no less honored, to hear that Your Lordship has submitted a letter of support for my propositions to the Chairman of the Society, though I regret that, for all Your Lordship’s cogent arguments, it will achieve little: the gentlemen of Dublin are not as open-minded to revolutionary concepts as we men of the West.

Now ensured of support, we may proceed apace with “Project Pharos,” and I enclose blue-prints for the signalling device. Nevertheless, I will here summarise in my own hand the principles of the signalling device, lest my enthusiasm in draughting the designs has rendered my diagrams a trifle incomprehensible.

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 astronomical distances the arms will have to be five miles in diameter. This of course necessitates the use of the pontoons; an artifact of such size could not be accommodated on land, but on sea it is a relatively simple task to construct, and possesses the additional benefit of being clearly distinguishable from the humbler lamps of civilization, namely, those of Sligo town. The electrical supply for the pontoons can be cheaply supplied 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 places of influence! Indeed, he has successfully influenced the recent disruptions of Craigdarragh’s electrical supply, which Your Lordship will recall from the night of my daughter’s birthday. The man he personally despatched, a Mr. MacAteer of Enniskillen, a dour Presbyterian but quite the man with the electricals, has eradicated the power failures which plagued us that night and indeed for most of the Easter time.

Here, Your Lordship, I must beg leave to conclude. I once again thank the Marquis for his 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 my compiling of a code with which to signal the presence of guiding intelligence to the “Wolfii,” as I have termed them, and finally wish God’s richest blessing upon Your Lordship’s self and all at Claremorris House, especially the Lady Alexandra, who is never far from our affections here at Craigdarragh.

I remain Your Lordship’s devoted servant,

Edward Garret Desmond Ph D

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(Submitted to the Cross and Passion School magazine
Veritas:
not accepted.)