Lucy and I cleared the table and returned with the main course. After a discussion regarding the intractability of finding a way around the Spoon Question and a discourse on the unhelpfully random nature of pre-Epiphanic family names, Mrs. Ochre asked if anyone had come across anything “odd” in the past month that they wished to bring to the society’s attention.
“May I speak?” I asked, and when no one objected, I produced Dorian’s picture of the village taken at night. I passed it to my father, who studied it closely before he passed it on.
“This picture was taken a few weeks ago,” I explained. “Dorian G-7 accidentally left the camera shutter open all night and photographed these strange concentric light rings in the sky. Does anyone have any idea what they are?”
Dad passed the photograph to the Widow deMauve, who passed it to Mrs. Gamboge, who made another invisible yellow-ink note before handing it on. Mrs. Lapis Lazuli stared at it for some time and even traced the path of one of the lines with her finger. “They are not full rings,” she observed. “They are simply a series of interlocking arcs, all moving around a central point.”
She gave the photograph to Mrs. Lemon-Skye. “I would suspect that it is either a hoax,” she said, passing it on, “or a fault in manufacturing.”
“I don’t think so,” said her husband. “You can clearly see the lines falling behind the silhouette of the crackletrap.” He looked closer. “There are other lines, too—wispy ones, crisscrossing the circles.”
“Not circles,” corrected Mrs. Lapis Lazuli, “arcs.”
“Arcs, then—but for what purpose?”
“Circles in the sky we cannot see?” remarked Sally Gamboge, whose eagerness to believe nonsense about Riffraff did not leave much space in her head for objectivity. “I have never heard of anything more ridiculous.”
“Cats and Nocturnal Biting Animals can see on a moonless night,” observed Lucy, “so there must be some light, and from some where.”
“You are all mistaken,” said the Apocryphal man. “They are distant suns.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. We all wanted to know what he meant, but no one dared even acknowledge him.
“It’s of . . . distant suns,” said Granny Crimson, who was now staring at the picture intently. Everyone looked at one another, but no one challenged her on the impiety. Not even Sally Gamboge. We were all too curious.
“And could you tell us more?” asked my father.
“I’m not sure,” said Mrs. Crimson doubtfully, looking surreptitiously at the Apocryphal man.
“Distant suns,” repeated the Apocryphal man, “very like our own, but at such an immeasurable distance from the earth that they appear only as points of light, too dim for the Homo coloribus eye to see.”
“Suns,” repeated Granny Crimson, so all could legally reflect upon the Apocryphal man’s words, “too far away to be seen . . . points of light.”
“Stars?” murmured Lucy. The obsolete word sounded ancient to our ears. But we all murmured our understanding. We’d heard about them but hadn’t considered that we would ever be able to observe them in any meaningful way. Like the Pyramids, the Great Sweat, Chuck Naurice, Tariq Al-Simpson, M’Donna and the Rainbowsians, we all knew they had once existed, but there was no record, or proof—they were now just labels on lost memories, cascading down the years from resident to resident, echoes of lost knowledge.
“But these are not points of light,” observed Aubrey. “They’re circles.”
“Arcs,” repeated Mrs. Lapis Lazuli. “Let’s just stick to the facts, eh?”
“They move,” said the Apocryphal man, “and describe a circular motion in the night sky. What you see is not a moment in time, but seven hours of time, seen as one.”
Granny Crimson repeated what he had said, word for word.
There was another silence as we all took this in, and I felt a thrill of discovery, of gained intelligence. But there was something else, too: an overwhelming sense of inconsolable loss. Progressive Leapbacks had stripped so much knowledge from the Collective that we were now not only ignorant, but had no idea how ignorant. The moving stars in the night sky were only one small part of a greater understanding that had gone for good. And as I stood there frowning to myself, I had a sense that everything about the Collective was utterly and completely wrong. We should be dedicating our lives to gaining knowledge, not to losing it.
“But why do the stars move?” asked Mrs. Crimson.
“They don’t.”
“They don’t,” repeated Granny Crimson.
“But you said—”
“We move,” remarked Lucy with a flash of understanding. “The earth rotates about its axis once a day. If you think about it, our own sun also describes a circle about us.”
I saw the Apocryphal man nod his head agreeably, and everyone went silent, pondering the notion carefully.
“I must say I find this extremely far-fetched,” said Mrs. Gamboge, who was doubtless miffed that we were debating anything at all. “It is well known that mental incapacity places Granny Crimson not a week from Variant-G. Besides, what you are saying cannot be true, for there is a single point, right in the middle of the rings, which does not move at all.”
“Arcs,” said Mrs. Lapis Lazuli.
“I suggest,” replied Granny Crimson, once the Apocryphal man had spoken, “that it is a distant star perfectly aligned with the rotating axis of the earth.”
We all fell into a hushed silence. The Apocryphal man spoke self-evident truths with such clarity that we all felt humbled. But my father put it best. He looked straight at Granny Crimson and said, “I have been to Debating Society meetings for over twenty years. In all that time I have listened to nothing but poorly reasoned theories and weakly argued supposition. Tonight, we have listened to true knowledge.”
“I’ll get the rice pudding,” said Mrs. Ochre, and hurried from the room.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Lemon-Skye, addressing the Apocryphal man but looking at Granny Crimson, “you might bring your keen intellect to bear on another intractable puzzle that has confounded our weekly gathering for some years?”
The Apocryphal man made no sound, but Aubrey didn’t get to ask his question, for Lucy interrupted to pose one of her own. “What is the music of the spheres?”
The Apocryphal man stared at her for a long time, then, with great deliberation, said, “Once, music was everything. It answered all problems, fulfilled all needs. It powered industry, transport, entertainment. It delivered comfort and light, information, books, communications and death. It could even bring . . . music.”
He then yawned as though tired of the proceedings. He took out a pocket handkerchief, filled it with food and walked out of the room.
Before Granny Crimson had even finished repeating his answer, Aubrey Lemon-Skye let his feelings be known. “Well, thank you very much,” he said sarcastically to Lucy. “There I am, about to ask the timeless riddle about why apples float and pears sink, and you go and annoy him—sorry, her, with your silly harmonic pathways, which, might I say, are of questionable relevance. Music bringing music?
Ridiculous!”
There was a sharp intake of breath at Aubrey’s rudeness. He had almost—but not quite—raised his voice.
Lucy stared back at him, hot with indignation. “Their relevance might be in doubt, sir,” she replied with a thin veneer of cordiality, “but compared to your question, they are raised to a level of unprecedented profundity.” She was talking heavily out of hue—Crimson was higher and redder than she—but we were all guests in the Ochre house, so her conduct, while unacceptable, was not technically actionable.