Learning the World

Darvin watched the students who had attended his lecture swirl skyward, shuffled his notes together, and sighed. Most of the students might have understood his presentation of the method of estimating stellar distances by parallax, but he was certain that some would not. A few essays would come his way explaining that it was done by looking at stars through binoculars and closing one eye at a time. He switched off the projector, stuffed his notes in his belt pouch, and began clambering up the expanding concentric rings of the lecture tower. He didn’t have the energy to take a ru

The winter months had been trying. Since the collapse of the contact he had not been called upon to do anything for Project Signal. Debarred from publicising his only-significant discovery, the Object, Darvin had lost enthusiasm for his search for the hypothetical outer planet. That research project falling fallow, he’d turned more of his time over to teaching. It was a measure of his avoidance of contention that he conducted, not advanced seminars with his peers who might have shown interest in his own work, but lectures to novice students. Their reminders of himself a few years earlier irritated and depressed him.

Orro, on the other wing, had spent half his time away on aeronautical research, at some distant strip in the desert. On his returns to the university he’d been too preoccupied with catching up with his teaching — about which he was conscientious — to say much, even of the little the project’s secrecy permitted. Once, after a second or third stumblefruit, he had confessed to feeling burdened by the deaths of two test pilots in flying machines of his design. He understood perfectly the moral logic of his i

Halfway up the slope of circular rails Darvin clutched with his feet, leaned forward, and launched off. He swooped, then climbed, and flitted out between the lip of the pit and its canopy. As soon as he was out of the tower’s shadowy interior, with the sun on his face and the fresh wind rushing through his fur, he felt better. As he banked towards the Faculty of Impractical Sciences he spotted a new and tall ship down at the quay. He guessed from its lines that it was a Southern Rule ship, and then noted with satisfaction the long triangle of the ba

Outside his office door a stranger waited. The man wore bright beads on the bristles of his ears and a belt made from the linked scales of some gigantic grazer around his hips. Within the belt was stuffed a curved scabbard, from which projected a chased handle. Around his neck hung a broad leather satchel, its lower corners secured by coloured tapes to the belt. Spider-silk ribbons were knotted below his knees. Silver sheathed his toe-claws. As Darvin approached he raised his arms and erected his wings in an excess of welcome.

“Do I have the honour,” he asked in flawless but accented Selohic, “of the presence of the renowned astronomer Darvin of Five Ravines?”

Darvin stopped before the stranger and spread his own hands. “You flatter my fame beyond all reason, sir, but I am Darvin.”

The stranger pressed his palm against Darvin’s. “My name is Lenoen, sky-watcher to the superlunary survey of the court of Narr, a province of the land you call the Southern Rule and we” — at this point he smiled — “call the Roost of Man.”

“Your presence honours me,” said Darvin. “My disorderly office, I fear, is unprepared for such a guest, but if you would deign to enter, the freedom of it is yours.”

Another glint in Lenoen’s eye assured Darvin that he had caught the right note, and that the formality of self-deprecation amused the stranger as much as himself. He pushed the door open and ushered Lenoen within.

“Take a perch,” he said. “Or a seat.”

Lenoen chose a seat by the table, and watched in silence as Darvin prepared tea. It was only after his first sip — at which he failed to quite suppress a wince — that he spoke again. “You feigned surprise at your renown,” he said, “but I can affirm that you need do so no more. Your name is between the teeth of every sky-watcher in the South who is more than a scryer of portents.”

“You astonish me,” said Darvin. He dreaded what was to come next. “My sole contribution to the science is the discovery of a handful of the Camp-Followers. Are they, perhaps, of some astrological significance unknown to me?”

Lenoen’s beaded bristles rattled. “To fence well takes a balanced sword,” he said.

Darvin set down his cup. “You catch me off guard,” he said.

Lenoen nodded. He opened his satchel and withdrew a sheaf of papers, from which he selected a stiff, glossy sheet and placed it on the table. Darvin stepped over and looked at it. White spots speckled the shiny black background. In the centre, small but distinct, lay an irregular blob, whitish with dark spots. It was the clearest and largest picture of an asteroid that Darvin had ever seen. For a moment he hoped against hope that this impressive achievement was all that his visitor had come to show.

“That is a photograph of one of what you call the Camp-Followers,” said Lenoen. He laid on top of it a similar sheet. “Here we see another.”

In the centre of this one was a long rectangle with a triangular point at each end. Though fuzzy — it was at the limits of magnification — the object tantalised with a hint of internal structure, of lines and panels.

“More of the same.”

One after another, Lenoen slapped down eight-and-four more sheets. They showed the object — the Object, Darvin knew with cold certainty — from a variety of angles that made it obvious that it was a cylinder with two conical ends.

“This,” said Lenoen, “is the distant, decelerating celestial object of which you spoke in the now justly famous paper by you and your esteemed colleague Orro.”

“I’m astounded,” said Darvin. “Our best telescopes can resolve it to no more than a dot.”

Lenoen leaned back and looked Darvin in the eye. “You are surprised at the resolution, but not at the shape revealed?”

Darvin knew he had blundered. “Hints of structure have been inferred,” he said. “From, ah, changes in its albedo and… and so forth.”

“And so forth,” said the Southerner. “I do not doubt it.” He tweaked the elaborate bow at his knee. “May I ask what the astronomers of this great Reach of mighty Seloh’s think it is?”

“I don’t know,” said Darvin. “There has been little discussion of it. None, if I am honest.”

Lenoen raised his brows.

“I speak the truth,” said Darvin. He waved a hand at teetering stacks of offprints. “See for yourself — take the papers, I’ll be glad to have them off my hands.” A thought occurred to him. “How did you come across ours? Do you receive the physics wire?”

“Not directly,” said Lenoen. “Until telegraph wires are strung across the equatorial ocean, we must perforce rely on copies of the prints. Which make their way to us, by one or other route.” He slapped his knee, setting the fixed ribbon ornament aflutter. “But enough. What is your own opinion?”

“I suppose,” said Darvin, “that some gigantic crystal, formed in the far reaches of the system by processes beyond our ken, could perhaps account—”

Lenoen guffawed. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I remind you of the proverb of the sword. You slash, you flail, you are in danger of spi