A puff of exhaust fumes wafted into the open cabin of the automobile. The days of driving along the clinker pavement of Park Street in Zasems Puoms without a loud bump and a clatter had passed irretrievably in the last decade. The clouds of dust raised by the wheels of the magomechanical vehicle reached the passengers, forcing them to cover their faces with the sleeves and sides of their light autumn coats.
Cautiously, the young Renas raised his eyes to the walls of the multi-storey townhouses. The grim façade, crowned by semicircular roofs, had finally ended in something other than a crossroads. Lo and behold, they found themselves beside the trees of Telescope Park, clearly suffering from the annual drought. As the name suggested, the park was a hill in the metropolitan grove – a place more off-limits than anything else in the city. A special gate had been built into its iron fence to make it clear to outsiders that only those with a pass could go there.
A duke and duchess were no exception, and a Kammerdiener stopped them, as he did all intruders who dared to dream of a view of the stars. He deliberately waited until the automobile had driven away and then asked:
“Your permit?”
He took the token from the ten-year-old’s outstretched hand, not particularly interested in the answer.
“Duke Renas bearing the arms of the Fourth Serpens and Duchess Rozerin bearing the same.”
The kammerdiener turned the token in his hands a few more times.
“Is it certain –”
“Please let us in!” Rozerin exclaimed.
“No rudeness, please, it’s unbecoming of a duchess,” the man replied sternly. He threw the token to the ground and watched as the children rushed to pick it up. “Come in if you must… HURRY, HURRY, I’M CLOSING NOW!”
He shoved them through the narrow gate. They both fell, the sharp gravel hurting their faces. Meanwhile, the kammerdiener had returned to his booth.
Renas helped his sister to her feet.
“Father was right,” Rozerin groaned. “We knew it would be like this.”
“Let’s go!” Renas took his sister’s hand and together they ran along the path towards the top of the hill.
* * *
The rooms inside the building seemed deserted. There were a few books in the bookcases and a few very simple appliances on the shelves. The cleanliness was exceptional: the floor was shiny and the papers were neatly stacked on all the desks. Renas thought that even with servants at his side, he would not have been able to organise himself like this.
A large telescope mechanism filled half the main chamber and beckoned him to look through its eyepiece. Maddalyn, at whose invitation they had come, did not allow them to approach. As if on cue, an iron railing rose from the floor and separated the semicircular staircase at the top of which was the main object of her guests’ desire.
“Not yet. I don’t want you to mess it up.”
The supervisor of the astronomers was in her fifties; it was becoming increasingly clear that she wanted to pass on her fascination with the sky to future generations. Today’s lesson looked promising.
“How does this telescope work?” Renas asked.
“Like a magnifying glass, you look and see what there is to see… nothing to ponder here,” Rozerin gloated, proud that she already knew this.
“But I’d like to know more!”
Maddalyn smiled brightly.
“Follow me, I’ll show you our maps.”
She took them to one of the desks against the wall, where there were rounded drawings full of clusters of smaller and larger dots and circles drawn with a compass.
Hardly any of the stars had a name instead of a number, especially one that Renas would have remembered from his previous limited experience with astronomy.
“I always wondered… why write it down and map it all? What good is it to name a star – ” He leaned over the map and began to spell out: “E… I… three hundred and eighteen, or whatever? What does that add to our knowledge?”
“If you are interested in a particular star, you can find it.”
“For example, Bright Zelal?”
“And who will be the first to find it?”
The children rushed to the sheet of paper and began to push for a better view.
“What enthusiasm! Except that this star is not on this map.” This finally distracted them for a moment and called them to order. “You have to find the right map first.” She pointed to a pile of papers. “Just be careful and don’t mix them up, or I’ll never invite you here again.”
It turned out that the individual sheets of paper had been clipped together in groups and placed on a special stand. Renas carefully pulled out one collection after another and, with increasing confidence, read out what they contained. His sister was the first to find the main sheet, on which the entire sky was drawn, with the numbers of the smaller maps from the catalogue. She pointed to the large dot numbered RA-04.
“I’ve got it now!” she exclaimed, pleased with herself.
“OK, but show it on one of the detailed maps – ”
“Like this one?” Renas finished for her. He held up one of the maps of the right part of the sky. There, Bright Zelal was also described by name, not just a number.
“What?” groaned Rozerin. “No way. He was lucky.”
“The indicators of Zelal and Tireje are bright because they are close together, so it was clear that they were either under C or under R.”
“Both are under R,” Maddalyn corrected.
“Aha… that means luck,” he admitted, and his sister laughed.
“Speaking of indicators, have you been taught how to use the stars to find north?”
The children stood at attention, then recited in soldierly voices:
“Halfway between Bright Zelal and Tireje Ges.”
“And you can see right away that your father only teaches you what he thinks you need to know, instead of stimulating at least a reasonable amount of curiosity. Let me show you something he hasn’t told you about.”
She pulled out her wand, a red one with a star at the end, and waved it at a box hanging from the ceiling. The magic switched on and after a moment a beam of light fell on the wall, forming an image. Renas had already noticed Maddalyn use her wand to extend the railing that protected the telescope. He dreamed of the moment when he would be allowed to do the same.
“The planets,” recognised Rozerin immediately. “Cin, Xebate, Derew, Derdore, Mezin, Sar, Windakirin.”
“Good. Do you know any more?”
“So these are not all?”
Maddalyn smiled mischievously.
“That’s what I meant.” She switched to a close-up of another gas giant with scarlet clouds. “Do you know this one?”
“It looks like Cin, only it’s more red.”
“And it orbits another star.”
“Wow, can they be like that too?”
“We’re no exception,” Maddalyn explained. “I’ll show you some others. We have waited years for some of these images.”
“Why?”
“We can’t make spells that fast, and the stars are far away.”
She scrolled through a few more planets, mostly other gas giants, though fortunately there was a super-Earth, all covered in ice. It was then that Maddalyn began to discuss the search for life on distant worlds.
“No, it’s definitely too cold. If there is life out there, it’s unlikely to be anything you could talk to,” she said.
“What about those closer to us? I think Derew is still pretty close.”
“Well, it is… but…” Maddalyn hesitated.
“But?” Rozerin asked.
“There… there’s nothing there. Yes, there’s nothing. We checked. I even showed you a picture of it at the beginning.”
“Ah… I thought it was just a drawing.”
“Just a drawing? And who said that?”
“One of the kammerdieners.”
Maddalyn stood with her back to them, staring into the telescope.
“Yes… The Kammerdinate certainly knows a thing or two about how depleted Derew is of life.”
