by Ian McDonald
PRAISE FOR THE WORK OF IAN McDONALD
“[McDonald is] a master for a new generation of sf.” —Analog
King of Morning, Queen of Day
Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award
“Filled with wondrous language, marvelous events.” —Science Fiction Chronicle
“A brilliant book.” —Charles de Lint
Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone
“Cyberpunk’s first lyrical poem, mixing Kabbalah, manga, pop-culture trivia and Zen with enough style and dexterity to actually pull it off . . . [McDonald] does more in a page than most writers do in a chapter.” —Neal Stephenson
The Broken Land
“At once disturbing and beautiful; superbly realized.” —The Times (London)
“Ian McDonald takes on all the atrocity and strife of the 20th Century, radically displaces it, and dares to envision a means of change. It’s a brilliant achievement.” —Locus
“McDonald is a superior writer.” —Booklist
Sacrifice of Fools
“A spell-binding tale of intrigue and empathy.” —SF Site
“A powerful and effective story.” —Jo Walton
King of Morning, Queen of Day
Ian McDonald
Contents
PART I CRAIGDARRAGH
Emily’s Diary: February 14, 1913
Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: February 15, 1913
Emily’s Diary: March 6, 1913
March 12, 1913
Emily’s Diary: March 18, 1913
From the Private Notebooks of Constance Booth-Kennedy: March 23, 1913
March 29, 1913
Emily’s Diary: April 2, 1913
The Bushes
April 9, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: April 12, 1913
Memorandum from Mrs. Caroline Desmond to Mrs. Maire O’Carolan
Excerpts from Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Lecture to the Royal Irish Astronomical Society; Trinity College, Dublin, April 18, 1913
Emily’s Diary: April 22, 1913
April 26, 1913
Emily’s Diary: May 26, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: May 28, 1913
May 31, 1913
Emily’s Diary: June 29, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: July 2, 1913
Emily’s Diary: July 3, 1913
Emily’s Diary. July 7-12, 1913
July 22, 1913
Excerpts from the Craigdarragh Interviews: July 27, 28, 29,1913, as Transcribed by Mr. Peter Driscoll, Ll.B., of Sligo.
The Beau English Club, Nassau Street, Dublin
August 2, 1913
August 3, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: August 4, 1913
Emily’s Diary: August 28, 1913
Extracts from Edward Garret Desmond’s Notes and Commentaries on Project Pharos toward an uncompleted paper to be submitted to the Royal Irish Astronomical Society.
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: September 4, 1913
From the Report of Constable Michael O’Hare, Drumcliffe R.I.C Station
The Sligo and Leitrim Impartial Reporter
Extracts from the casebooks of Dr. Hubert Orr, Fitzwilliam Street Clinic, Dublin.
September 12, 1913
September 24, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: October 3, 1913
Emily’s Diary: October 12, 1913
October 26, 1913
Emily’s Diary: November 5, 1913
November 8, 1913
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: November 16, 1913
December 2, 1913
Emily’s Diary: December 21, 1913
December 28, 1913
May 27, 1913
The Lost Girl
PART II THE MYTHLINES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
PART III CODA LATE SUMMER
PART IV SHEKINAH
AFTERWORDS
THANKS
A Biography of Ian McDonald
PART I CRAIGDARRAGH
We have followed too much
the devices and desires of our own hearts…
—The General Confession: Book of Common Prayer
To My Faery Lover
OH, WOULD THAT WE were many things,
My golden-shining love and I;
Bright-flashing scales, a pair of wings
That draw the moonlight down the sky,
Two hazel trees beside the stream
Wherein our fruit in autumn drop,
A trout, a stag, a wild swan’s dream,
An eagle cry from mountaintop.
For we have both been many things:
A thousand lifetimes we have known
Each other, and our love yet sings.
But there is more that I would own.
Oh, would that we could naked run
Through forests deep and forests fair,
Our breasts laid open to the sun,
Our flesh caressed by summer’s air,
And in some hidden, leafy glen
My striving body you would take;
Impale me on your lust and then
Me Queen of Daybreak you would make.
And we would dance and we would sing,
And we in passion’s fist would cry;
Loud with our love the woods would ring,
If we were lovers, you and I.
If we were lovers, I and you,
I would cast off all mortal ills
And you would take me, Shining Lugh,
To feast within the hollow hills.
For the world of men is filled with tears
And swift the night of science falls
And I would leave these tears and fears
To dance with you in Danu’s halls,
So let us cast our cares away
And live like bright stars in the sky,
Dance dream-clad till the break of day,
For we are lovers, you and I.
—Emily Desmond
Class 4a, Cross and Passion School
Emily’s Diary: February 14, 1913
HAIL TO THEE, ST. Valentine, Prince of Love. Hail to thee on this, thy festive day!
We, thy adoring servants, praise thee!
We stole the statue of St. Valentine from its niche in the corridor by the Chapel and smuggled it up to the dormitory. If the Sisters were ever to find out what we did to it we would all be expelled, every last one of us, but I have made all the girls take blood oaths of utter secrecy, and we will have it back in its rightful place before even Mother Superior comes on her rounds. At the last stroke of midnight, the first stroke of St. Valentine’s Day, we stood the statue on a chair we had placed on a table and decorated it with the snowdrops and crocuses I had instructed the others to collect in botany class. We placed a crown made from chocolate wrappers on his head and, with much giggling, Charlotte and Amy got the thing they had made out of stolen modelling clay and erected it in front of the statue. Then we all performed the St. Valentine’s dance in our déshabille and went up one at a time to kiss the clay tiling and dedicate ourselves to the service of love. Then we sat down in a circle around the statue to read, by the light of one small candle which we passed around, the love poems we had written. Everyone thought mine was the best, but then they always think my
ideas are the best; the whole St. Valentine’s Day celebration was one of my ideas.
Charlotte told me that Gabriel O’Byrne, the groundsman’s son, had told her that he had been trying to give me a letter for over a week but hadn’t been able. I wonder, she said, what it’s about? and nodded at the clay thing she had made for St. Valentine.
I should wonder: as if I didn’t know, from the way Gabriel O’Byrne stops work every time I pass, and doffs his cap and smiles at me. All that waving and smiling. Well, she can just tell him I don’t want any letters from Gabriel the groundsman’s son. I don’t want his dirty little affections; I want, I deserve, better than him. I deserve a faery prince, a warrior hero, strong-thewed and iron-willed, with raven black hair and lips like blood.
Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: February 15, 1913
AFTER THREE WEEKS OF sleet, snow, and lowering clouds, last night the sky was at last sufficiently clear to permit me my first view of the newly discovered Bell’s Comet through the Craigdarragh eighteen-inch reflector. For all its doubtless charms and graces, County Sligo is not blessed with the most equable of climates for the astronomer; namely, those clear-as-crystal skies beloved of the astronomer-priests of ancient Mesopotamia and noble Greece. And since the notification of this object’s entrance into our theatre of interest in December last’s Irish Astronomical Bulletin, it has been a source of major frustration to me (my dear Caroline would declare that I have become positively ratty on the subject) that I alone of all the country’s—no! damn it! Europe’s astronomers—have been unable to observe the phenomenon. That is, until today. At about four o’clock, as I was taking my usual ill-tempered post-afternoon-tea turn about the rhododendron gardens, generally bemoaning the nation of Ireland and the county of Sligo in particular, its winds, weathers, and climates, bless me if the wind didn’t blow (capriciously as ever in this part of the globe), the clouds part, and a glorious golden late-winter radiance suffuse the countryside! Within half an hour the sky was clear blue all the way to the horizon, a sight so gladdening to the heart that I at once returned to the house and informed Mrs. O’Carolan that I would be taking supper in the observatory that evening. It was some time before I was able to locate the subject of my observations in the eighteen-inch reflector; the comet had moved across a considerable arc since first observed by Hubbard Pierce Bell of the Royal Observatory at Herstmonceux. Finally it lay squarely within my cross hairs and I was without doubt the only man in Ireland for whom this was a novelty.
In my excitement at finally being afforded the opportunity to observe Bell’s Comet, I had forgotten how cold the night would be on account of the clear sky. I was shivered to the very pith of my bones. But, oh! Most estimable woman! Most worthy servant! With typical foresight and wisdom, Mrs. O’Carolan came through the frost to provide me with rugs, comforters, a steady stream of bricks warmed in the kitchen range, and, most welcome of all, a bottle of potín, a present, she maintained, from the widows of the parish. Thus fortified, I returned to my labours with enthusiasm.
No tail had yet developed, Bell’s Comet being still beyond the orbit of our Earth. I noted positions, luminosity, apparent and proper motions in my observer’s notebook and made some sketches. On returning to the telescope, it seemed to me that the object’s luminosity had altered, a thing I at the time dismissed as a defect of vision in adapting to the Stygian blackness of space. By now the cold had confounded all Mrs. O’Carolan’s ramifications, and for the good of my health, I decided to take a series of timed photographic exposures through the telescope and withdraw indoors to the comforts of hearth and wife. I was familiar with the local meteorology, as an astronomer must be, and I knew that this clear, cold weather would linger for several days.
This morning, on developing the plate, I noticed the anomaly. To be certain that it was not an imperfection in the emulsion (a series of such imperfections had caused me to terminate my arrangement with Pettigrew and Rourke Photographic Suppliers of Sligo, a pretty bundle of rogues, indeed), I quickly produced a full set of prints from all the exposures. Patience is the keystone of professionalism; the amateur would have hurried the job, and in his haste smeared the photographs so badly as to render them worthless. I bided my time, and when the little alarm clock rang was therefore able to see immediately that what I had recorded was no photographic error, but an unprecedented, and quite extraordinary, astronomical phenomenon.
The track of Bell’s Comet was quite clear to see, arcing across the paths of the more familiar constellations. At regular intervals this arc was punctuated by what I can only describe, for want of a more elegant term, as blobs of light—concentrations of luminosity so intense they had actually burned away the photographic emulsion. Every other inch or so another of these blobs occurred at regular intervals along the comet’s track. For a full minute I was so astounded by my discovery as to be incapable of rational thought. Then I gathered my wits and concluded that Bell’s Comet must be emitting bursts of intense light. From the photographs, I calculated these to occur every twenty-eight minutes, a burst of light of such infinitesimally short duration and brilliance as to assume the luminosity of a major planet. Quite extraordinary!
Leafing through Hubbard Pierce Bell’s article, I was unable to find the slightest mention of any fluctuation in luminosity. Such a phenomenon could not have been overlooked; the only possible conclusion was that it had not at that time occurred.
Delicious irony! That I, the last astronomer in Europe to observe Bell’s Comet, should be the discoverer of its most fascinating secret! I have dashed off a hasty letter to Sir Greville Adams at Dunsink Observatory claiming the discovery; this evening, God willing, I will observe again.
Is it unprofessional (and, more to the point, unscientific), I find myself asking, to feel elation at the possibility of being the discoverer of a major astronomical event? (Might even the comet be renamed Desmond’s Comet? I would even consider double-barrelling acceptable, but only as a last resort: Comet Bell-Desmond.) And there you have it. A quite inappropriately proprietorial attitude toward a lump of stellar matter! Terrible indeed to be reduced to an excitable schoolboy by the vainglorious thought of being the toast of the astronomical societies.
To matters more mundane, and sobering. Typical of Caroline to puncture my mood of ebullience by choosing luncheon today as her platform to raise the unpleasant issue of Emily’s schooling. Now, I do not deny that Emily’s problems at Cross and Passion are important, and that I, as a father, should be deeply concerned with the improvement of her academic standards; indeed, it is of paramount importance if daughter is to follow father down the noble highway of science. However, there is a time and a place for everything, and Caroline’s insistence that we discuss this at length over luncheon so soured my mood of geniality that it is quite impossible for me to develop the tranquility of mind necessary for the proper contemplation of the heavens. Priorities! Like mother, like daughter. Neither, alas, knows the importance of priorities.
Emily’s Diary: March 6, 1913
I HEARD THEM AGAIN last night, I’m sure I did—the Hounds of the Gods, out there among the trees. I heard them give tongue, like the baying of dire wolves it was, as they caught the scent of their quarry. I heard the cries of their faery master. Like the songs of nightingales they were, sweet and lovely. Rathfarnham Woods rang with their song. I imagined the woodland creatures fleeing from their footsteps: Make way, make way, make way, for the Wild Hunt of the Ever-Living Ones! But what could have been their quarry, out there in the rain-lashed wood? What was the scent the hounds tasted that set them baying so? Surely nothing so ignoble as the vulgar fox or badger that O’Byrne sometimes shoots when they raid the school chicken runs, nothing as common as that. Perhaps the noble stag. That would be quarry worthy of the Riders of the Sidhe. Maybe one of Lord Palmerstown’s herds, or, is it possible? a faery stag from the pages of legend and story, the stag that is hunted and killed each night by the Wild Hunt only to rise again with the morning sun? Or, most romanti
c of all, one of their own kind, a manhunt, a faery warrior fleet-footed and daring, laughing as he slips tirelessly between the trees of Rathfarnham, making sport of the hounds and the spearmen dogging his footsteps. Charlotte in the next bed asked what did I think I was doing, sitting up all hours of the night looking out the window, didn’t I know that I’d get in trouble if Sister Therese caught me? And just what, she asked, was I looking for out there in the pitch-blackness anyway?
“The hunt of the Ever-Living Ones, chasing a golden-antlered stag through the forest of the night with their red-eared hounds. Listen! Can you hear them, baying out there in the night? Can you hear the jingle of the silver bells on their horses’ harnesses?”
Charlotte scrambled out of the sheets and knelt beside me on my bed. We looked out through the barred window and listened as hard as we could. I was certain I heard the call of a hound, very far off, as if the Night Hunt had passed by and moved onward. I asked Charlotte if she had heard anything.
“I think so,” she said. “Yes, I think I heard something, too.”
March 12, 1913
The Royal Irish Astronomical Society
Dunsink Observatory
County Dublin
My Dear Dr. Desmond,
A few lines of admiration and appreciation (and, I must admit, envy) on your success concerning the periodicity of Bell’s Comet. For once the quixotic climate of that wretched county of yours has done you a service: interest having waned while you languished beneath your blanket of Celtic mist, yours was indeed the sole eyepiece in the United Kingdom to be trained on the comet at the precise moment it began to display its unique behaviour. Some gossoon from some wretched little city-state university in Germany has lodged a counterclaim; quite frankly, I suspect it is purest jealousy. These Huns will attempt anything to outdo His Britannic Majesty. So, the claim is yours, indisputably and unequivocally, and as a result, all those telescopes that turned away in search of celestial pastures new are turning back with wonderful haste to Bell’s Comet. Alas, your name will not be joined with that of the comet’s discoverer, but your fame, I think, will be the more enduring for having disclosed an unprecedented astronomical phenomenon. A flashing comet! Quite remarkable!
