Nation - Пратчетт Терри Дэвид Джон. Страница 69

Today

IN A CORNER OF the office, a seismograph ticked away quietly to itself.

The old man stopped talking to watch a flying boat land on the lagoon. “Ah, that will be young Jason, who’s come to work on the Submillimeter Array.” He sighed. “I’m sure they’re doing wonderful things over there, but between ourselves I’ve never been happy with a telescope you can’t look into. Sorry, where was I?” he said.

The boy and the girl stared at him. “You said the ship sailed away?” said the boy.

“Oh, yes,” said the old man. “That was it. The ship sailed away. It’s what they do.”

“And?” said the boy.

“That was all of it. The ship sailed away.”

“And they didn’t get married or anything?” said the girl, looking truly shocked.

“Oh no,” said the old man. “Well, they didn’t get married. I’m not so sure about ‘anything.’ A kiss or two, maybe?”

“But that’s just no way to end a story,” said the boy. “He went fishing!”

“But it’s the kind of ending you get in real life,” said the old man, “and isn’t the story about being real? Though I’ve always thought he went fishing so that people wouldn’t see him cry. He must have felt very lonely. ‘If you will sacrifice,’ Mau said later, ‘then sacrifice your time on the altar of the common good. Eat the fish, or give it to someone who is hungry.’”

He looked at their downcast expressions, coughed gently, and said, “A ship did come back.”

“And the ghost girl was on it, wasn’t she?” said the girl.

“Oh yes,” said the old man. “About a year later.”

“Ah, I knew it!” said the girl triumphantly.

“And the telescope?” asked the boy.

“Certainly! A sixteen-inch Newtonian telescope was one of the first things they unloaded! That night everyone looked through it!” said the old man. “And there were all the things that had been on the list and six gentlemen from the Royal Society, just as promised.” The old man smiled broadly as he recalled. “Of course, we’ve had quite a few scientists since then. My father told me that Mr. Einstein sat in this very chair and played the violin. An interesting little fact is that my father accompanied him on the drum, and the effect was considered… unusual. I myself was privileged to accompany Sir Patrick Moore and Professor Richard Feynman when they were up here together. Xylophone, bongos, and war drum. Wonderful! Very musical people, scientists. And I was very proud to shake the hand of Professor Carl Sagan when he came here with people from the electric television. Do you remember that the ghost girl thought the glass beads on the ceiling of the cave were a star map, but she couldn’t work it out? The professor showed the world that it did indeed map the stars, but the stars as they were thirty-one thousand years ago, and that was confirmed by something called Fission Track Dating of the glass our little toy stars were made of. We’re learning new things all the time. I can’t recall how many astronauts came here. Interestingly, although several of them went to the moon, none of them met the lady who lives there.”

“Yes, but did the ghost girl ever come back again?” said the girl in a determined voice.

“Not exactly, but her son and granddaughter did,” said the old man.

“Then it’s still sad,” said the girl.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said the old man. “I understand she married a very nice gentleman from Holland. A prince, I believe. And of course you know she became queen.”

“Yes, but it still shouldn’t have happened like that,” the girl insisted.

“Well, she went back for the sake of her nation, and he stayed here for the sake of his. Wasn’t that right?”

The girl considered this and said: “I suppose they both thought more about their people than they thought about each other.”

“And you, young man?”

The boy looked down at his feet. “I think they both thought more about their people than they thought about themselves.”

“Good answers. And I think they were happy, in their own ways.”

“But they were still sweet on each other,” said the girl, not giving up.

“What a delightfully archaic term! Well, yes, when she died — which was not long after Mau died — the trousermen were not very happy, because they wanted to bury her in a stone box in one of their god houses, but she had the Gentlemen of Last Resort on her side. They brought her here in a steamship full of ice, and she was wrapped up in papervine and weighed down with stones and sent into the dark current, where we had gently sent Mau only two months before. And then, my great-grandfather wrote, everyone cried and cried… as I see the two of you are now, in fact, doing.”

“It was just dust,” said the boy.

The old man smiled and fished a handful of folded papervine out of his pocket and handed it to the girl, saying, “Feel free to blow your nose.”

“And then two dolphins were seen swimming in the lagoon,” said the girl firmly. She blew her nose and gave the papervine back.

“I don’t recall ever being told that,” said the old man, taking it by what seemed to be the least damp corner.

“It must have happened, though,” the girl insisted. “It’s the only right ending. They would have been swimming in the lagoon, but people were probably crying too much to notice.”

“Yes, that could have been it,” said the old man tactfully. “Now, I think, for the official bit.”

He led the way out of his little office and along a wide wooden veranda. It had one of the best views on the island. One end of it was tangled in the canopy of the low forest, so that leaves and flowers cascaded over it, and the other had a breathtaking view across the lagoon. There was a little shed at that end.

“And since the night the first telescope was set up here, we have had the Tell and the Show, for young people when they come of age,” the old man said. “Ha! By now, of course, you kids have hung out around every dome and telescope array on the mountain, right? They spring up like mushrooms, don’t they? But perhaps you think you have seen it all? People hardly look these days — have you noticed that? It’s all photography and the electric internet. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s not stargazing, it’s just computers!” He stopped by the little shed. “So I’m going to show you something that you have never seen before. It’s a little trick, really, and once you think about it, you will say ‘huh’ or some similar ejaculation, but I happen to think it is rather, as you would put it, ‘neat.’”

He undid the shed door, which ran back on little rails, to reveal a telescope very much smaller than the ones in the big white domes on the mountaintop.

“Is that it?” said the girl. “It’s very small.”

“Only in size, not in history,” said the old man reproachfully, glancing at his watch and moving the telescope with the care of someone who has done this a thousand times before. “Ah, got it first time,” he said, looking into the lens.

“It’s not dark for a long time yet,” the boy pointed out.

“The universe doesn’t care about that,” said the old man, stepping back. “Go on, one of you. Take a look.”

“But the sky is still blue!” said the girl.

“Oh, be clever, then, and don’t look,” said the old man cheerfully. “I dare you to look!”

She looked, and gasped. “It’s in daylight!”

She stepped away from the telescope. The boy looked through the eyepiece and backed away quickly, staring at the clear blue sky.

“Yes, it took me like that the first time, too,” said the old man gleefully. “The planet Jupiter, in the daylight. You saw the storm belts and three of his sons, which of course we now call moons. Callisto is behind the planet right now. And it was a shock, wasn’t it? A moment of uncertainty? The world turned upside down?”

“It was a bit creepy, as well,” said the boy.

“Oh, indeed. And now you know the universe isn’t just a light show. They keep it running during the day, too!” The man clenched his wrinkled hands and said: “Live for those moments! They keep you alive! There is no better medicine than finding out that you are wrong! What did your mother put in your hand when you were born, young man?”