THE NIGHT IS COLD, THE STARS ARE FAR AWAY

by Mildred Downey Broxon

Mildred Downey Broxon was raised in Rio de Janeiro and now lives on a houseboat in Seattle with her husband and a boa constrictor named Sigmund. A former psychiatric nurse, she attended the Clarion-West sf writers’ workshop in 1972 and sold her first story to Clarion III.

“The Night Is Cold, The Stars Are Far Away” is the second story she’s sold; of it she says, “I wrote this while studying the overturning of the geocentric theory in astronomy class, and wondering what would happen to a race living in a one-planet system with little or no axial tilt, therefore no seasons, etc., and no reason to think that everything did not, in fact, revolve around them.”

* * * *

Inar stepped out of the gray dead-earth tower and rubbed his eyes; age and the nightwatch combined to make him tired. His fur was graying and brittle, his eight-fingered hands were stiff, and his eyes were clouding. The breeze was chill; he shivered in his cloak and wrapped his long thick tail around his neck. The glow of approaching dawn was dimming the stars; it was time to go home, time to crawl into his darkened cubicle and sleep the daylight hours away while the rest of the world went on about its business.

His neighbors regarded him as an eccentric, the mad old one who had wasted his life watching the stars. He was harmless, all agreed, and the Mother cherishes fools. But his own children had forsaken the work and him. Inar wondered if his mother had felt so alone. But no; she, of course, had relied on him to carry on.

“Long ago,” she had said, standing small and bent beside the tower, “our entire family watched the sky and hoped. Now there are only my brother, myself, and your father.”

“What happened to all the others?” he said. The sun was warm; he wanted to play, not spend his nights in the dusty old tower. But his duty was plain.

“They grew old and died. Some say the Mother of All receives us no matter what we believe.” She crouched by the tower wall and wrapped her arms against the wind. “Your brother has left us. He has gone into the service of the Mother. And since your uncle had no sons or daughters, only blindthings, there is no one left but you, Inar, to carry on. Find a good wife, one who will help you. Raise children, not blindthings. Remember to watch the sky.”

Out of love and respect he had promised that night, and for the rest of the nights of his life he had watched, he and his wife. His wife had worked with him, talked to him, supported him until the Mother of All took her in the last childbirth, took her and the child conceived too late and born too soon—and that was many sixty-fours of days ago.

Now he was alone, for his promise could not bind his sons and daughters, who laughed and called him mad. They never came to the tower.

“Why? You have watched since you were a child, and your mother and father watched before you, and their parents before them. The sun circles us and the stars are jewels on the nightcloak of the Mother.”

A cold sharp wind sang through him and he huddled inside his thin cloak. Was his family, indeed, cursed with blindthings and madness, cursed by the misdeeds of Ancestor Caltai who had, in the dim back-reaches of time, committed them all to the skywatch?

He rose and went into the tower to gather his notes and cover the mirror against the dust and heat of day. Pulling open the ancient metal door, he stood looking into darkness. The curved mirror shone dimly on the door, gathering skylight, now intensifying the faint glow before dawn. Above hung another mirror, angled to focus on his working platform halfway up the wall. He climbed the ladder, put away his notes, and climbed painfully back down. He shook out the soft silvery cloth and draped it over the mirror.

Outside again, he stood on the hillside looking down at the city of Asdul and wondered why he did not merely curl up in some part of the tower and sleep till dusk. He supposed if he did his neighbors would come looking for him, concerned, asking stupid questions, raising dust to foul the mirror; they worried for his health and wanted him to be cared for. He did not want care; he did not want to be humored like a blindthing.

It was light enough now that he could see a figure, risen early or still up late, coming up the path to the tower. It would be rude to lock the door and leave, though he did not welcome visitors. He stood and waited.

As the figure drew closer, walking briskly, he thought for a moment he saw his eldest son, and he felt a sudden joy. But he was wrong, of course: his eldest son had grown portly and smug and never left the city. It could not be him; Inar had seen little of him lately.

“Grandfather?” The visitor had reached the tower and stood, cape thrown carelessly back, tail curved about his body.

Inar blinked, “Oh. Ah—”

“Shavna,” the youth said.

“Oh, yes. Shavna.” Inar looked at him more closely. “I have not seen you for some time—you have grown. My eyes are no longer young—”

The youth shifted from one foot to another. Inar realized he was rambling on like an old fool. “What brings you here, Shavna?”

“I rose early to speak with you; I know you are a day-sleeper.” He looked at the tower. “I have questions to ask you, questions my parents would not answer.”

“Such as?”

Shavna avoided his eyes and crouched low to the ground, running a hand through the live-earth there. “People say that the family carries a curse, and that is why my brother was a blindthing. People say you are mad, and that you do not believe in the Mother of All” He looked at Inar then, his eyes large. “People say my great-great-grandfather Caltai was mad as well.”

“People have been quite talkative,” Inar said. “But surely you have heard these whispers all your life. They are no secret to me. Why do you come here now?”

Shavna’s fingers found a small plant growing in the live-earth. He touched it gently and withdrew his hand. “Because now I wish to marry, and I wonder if it is true, as they say, that madness is passed on. And there are the blindthings—”

Inar sighed. “It is true our family has produced many more blindthings than other families have. I do not know whether it has anything to do with Ancestor Caltai. And I cannot answer you about the madness; for if I am mad, my speech is only raving.”

“You do not sound like the madmen I have aided in the market,” Shavna said. “Would you tell me the story of Ancestor Caltai, then, and explain what you do here?’

Inar watched the rising sun touch the mountains beyond Asdul. “Your parents could have told you the story as well. They know it.”

“They said to ask you.” Shavna arranged himself on the ground and wrapped his tail around his feet.

Inar settled his stiff limbs into a semblance of comfort and drew his cloak against the dawn breeze. “Very well. Long ago, when your great-great-grandfather Caltai was still young—before he married—he lived in M’larfra.”

“That’s far to the south,” Shavna said. He sat straighten “I have studied the maps in school. I thought only barbarians lived there.”

“All strangers are barbarians to some,” Inar said. “The M’larfrans are nomads, wanderers, driven by the wind and the sand and the sun. They had a custom regarding their young: when a man or woman was ready to wed, he or she went out to the desert alone to consider how to have a good marriage and how to raise children. The young person had to list all the mistakes his parents had made, resolve not to make the same mistakes himself, and then—most important—forgive his parents. If he did not forgive them, he knew his own children would never forgive him for the mistakes he would make in turn.

“Each one sought solitude as best he could; Ancestor Caltai was strong and healthy, and he walked far into the desert until he came to one lone seng tree. There he crouched in its small shade and thought.

“The sun was hot, as it always is in M’larfra. He sat for hours, thinking, then looked up surprised, for the Mother of All seemed to have sent him a vision, and he did not consider himself worthy of visions.

“He saw a bright gleam in the air and felt the ground shake. Sand flew in a fountain and settled again; he went to see what had happened. He thought it was close-by.

“He walked farther than he had expected, and found plants shattered and small sunskimmers dead. At last he came to the crest of a sand-hill and looked down into the next hollow where a metal form lay partly buried in the sand. He was not afraid; the Mother lives in the sky, and he thought she had sent him a gift. He went closer and saw a hole in the side of the metal object, and on the sand, a white figure sprawled. When he came yet closer, he could see that the being—for such it was—was much larger than he. It lay on the sand; he came up to it and greeted it with word and gesture of reverence. For it had, indeed, come from the sky.

“When he touched the figure, Ancestor Caltai was surprised to hear it speaking—’

The youth was astonished. “It came from the sky, and it spoke M’larfra-speech?”

“No. As the story goes, it spoke no clear words at all— it spoke to his knowing. It did not seem to know where it was; it sounded sick and hurt, and spoke as those who rave in fever.”

“How could that be? How could it speak without language?”

“It had some device for speaking to strangers. Pictures and ideas formed in Caltai’s mind. Or so the story goes.”

“Oh,” said the youth. “What did it say—think?”

“It wept inside,” Inar said, “for it was dying, and alone. It had made an error, and had crashed its ship—”

“It’s ship?” In the desert? You said it came from the sky!”

“It thought of a ship, a sky-ship, that had crashed. It thought of stars, and it looked once at our sun and moaned. For its sun was golden, not silver, and it was far from home. And as it thought of its sun, it thought of our world, like a ball of earth and water, spinning around the sun, a ball of flame.”

“It was, perhaps, ill to madness,” Shavna said.

Inar continued. “The pictures were quite clear. It thought of its own world, green like old copper and blue like young lichen. It revolved around a burning, golden sun, and around the sun were its sister worlds, hot and cold and far away. Then it thought again of our world, where it now lay injured, and it thought ‘one-planet system’ and ‘no astronomy’—by which it meant study of the stars. It thought also of ideas Caltai could not understand; the pictures that formed made no sense.”

“It must have been raving in madness,” Shavna said.

“If so, then from where did it come? Would the Mother drop a child and let it die? Have you ever heard madness like this madness? Madmen rave of things they know, not of things they know not.”

“True.”

“The creature looked away from the sky and saw Caltai, and it was afraid. Caltai was sorry for it, hurt and lost as it was, and made the sign for ‘no harm’; the creature seemed to understand. But then grief replaced its fear, and it thought about ‘interference,’ and it cursed itself for a fool.

“Caltai made the sign for ‘whence came you?” but the creature either did not understand or would not answer. It looked up again at the sky and thought of ‘sun’ and ‘home.’ Then it turned to Ancestor Caltai and waved its arms, pounded the sand, and pointed over the hill, thinking ‘Run! Poison! Danger! Death!’

“He did not want to leave the injured thing, until it thought about a poison-explosion and great destruction. Then he was afraid. As he left, the creature was growing weaker, and thinking of flying home, but it was near death and much confused, and mostly it felt pain and loneliness. Caltai left, and a short time after he was over the crest of the sand-hill, there was a bright orange flash, thunder threw him to the sand, and when he could stand again he saw a strange-shaped cloud.

“Later, when his fear left, he crept back over the sandhill; there was no creature, no large silvery shape, nothing but a bowl of hot green glass. So he went home.”

‘How did his people receive his story?” Shavna asked.

“Badly. They said the sun had addled his brains, that he had been on the desert too long, or that he had not been on the desert long enough. They wanted to take care of him. Only one person believed him: the girl he was to marry. She too had been on the desert, and she too had seen the light fall from the sky, and the flash later. But she had not seen the creature, and of course it was gone. When they returned, the sands had covered even the bowl of glass.

“They talked about what this might mean, but they came to no conclusion, so they decided to come to Asdul, where the wise men live. They took space on a fishing boat, worked a hard, cold, salty passage, and landed here. They spoke to many, and no one could understand their story; finally it was suggested they attend People’s Day at the University and ask the wise men themselves.

“They waited in the crowded hall with the other questioners, and when their turn came, some laughed, even though this is forbidden. But one wise man listened with interest, and asked to see them privately.

“They sat in his cool courtyard and drank sweet water while he explained what they must do; for, after all, if the creature came from heaven, it came from the Mother, and if it came from another world, it brought ideas not yet conceived.

“The wise man explained that his studies left him no time, but that they could watch the sky for him; they could watch to see if another creature arrived, and while they watched they could also study the stars.

“For, as he explained, if the creature’s tale was true, that the world moved around the sun, and the stars were other suns farther away, then as the world moved, one should see a change in pattern among the stars.”

“Why?” asked Shavna.

“Walk around the tower. The green light on the Mother’s temple will shift closer to the white light on the University, and then shift back again.”

Shavna was silent a moment. “I have seen it,” he said

“The wise man taught them how to observe the stars; he gave them a scrying mirror, and told them how to watch by night, and how to make metal plates to record what they had seen. He told them that if they found anything they should tell him, and he gave them money with which to live; but he died old with no reward, and so did your Ancestor Caltai.

“The story would have ended there, but Caltai and his wife had taught their children—all but the blindthings, of which they had many—and their children taught theirs. Out of reverence for their parents they watched, though they lost hope after a time and the family was cursed with blindthings, as if the stock had become tainted. Finally the duty to parents strove against duty to the Mother of All. My brother was the first to defect; he entered the priesthood. Of my children, none followed me. My wife died long ago. Now I watch alone.”

“Do you think your work has reason?” Shavna said.

“Yes, I do. Most of the time. Why should a goddess watch over us? Why, if she watches, does she not prevent evil? Why did she not keep my wife from dying in the healers’ temple? Why were my nephews all blind-things?”

The youth stood. “I wonder too. Show me what you do, and how. Show me how you make the records on the metal plates, and how you watch the sky. Tell me the names you have given the stars, and where they live.”

The old one looked at him. “You really want to learn?” His voice was shaking.

“I want to understand if this is madness or a new knowledge.”

* * * *

Inar showed him the scrying mirror, the same as the diviners used, but ground perfect and smooth. He told how the wise man had helped his great-great-grandparents construct it. He showed him the tower, and how it pointed at the sky and kept the lights of the city from the mirror. He climbed stiffly up to his desk to show him the metal plates and the blackening chemicals; he told him how the bright stars made black streaks on the plates. And sometimes when he was discouraged, even he looked up at the night sky, and instead of shrieking empty space, saw the jewel-studded cloak of a protecting Mother.

He edged down the ladder toward the shelf where he kept the collected records of generations. He took measuring instruments, selected a streaked plate from the records of his grandfather, and crouched on the ground. He wanted to be certain; he measured and re-measured, and finally closed his eyes in defeat.

The same, always the same, made with the same instruments, readings taken night after night, lifetime after lifetime, and yet there was no shift among the stars. They rose earlier each night, but in the same fixed patterns. The earth did not move.

He slumped discouraged on the live-earth floor, holding the metal plates in his stiff and tired hands. Why go on? Why not go back to Asdul, sleep at night and wake during the day as other people did? Why not enjoy the brief time he had left? Why give up the world for an ancient dream, an old delusion?

As he sat, the sky grew redder and the shadows lengthened. His mind was numb.

* * * *

Had he slept, or had he merely stared entranced as shadows fell across the metal plates? When the knock came, he was startled, and the plates clattered to the floor.

He rose on aching limbs and shuffled toward the door. It was Shavna who stood there, with one other, a young female. Shavna’s cape swirled carelessly about him; he stood close to the young woman.

“I have thought all day, Grandfather,” he said. “I do not believe Ancestor Caltai was mad, nor do I think you are mad. There is a mystery here, and you are trying to solve it as best you know. That does not make you mad.”

The last glow faded from the sky; one by one the brightest stars came out. The twin stars, the Eyes of the Lover, were the brightest of all.

The young woman spoke. “Shavna told me of your watching, and how you and your ancestors have watched for generations to see any change among the stars, the change that would mean the world moves.’

“Yes,” said Inar. He was tired, and he had lost hope. The young woman reminded him of his long-dead wife.

“I have noticed,” she said, “that if you walk around Asdul the city lights shift position, but if you look at the mountains beyond the city, the mountains themselves do not appear to change, though that does not mean you are standing still. If you travel for many days, you can see a change even in the mountains.

“What if the stars are very far away, farther than we can imagine? We might not be able to see a shift even if there is one. There might be other ways to tell if the world moves, ways we ourselves can measure. I would learn what you know.”

Inar looked up at the Mother’s cloak. It was no longer warm, no longer enveloping. There was no cloak, nothing but endless distances and tiny scattered suns. There was no one there to shield the world from harm. What difference does it make if the world moves? he wondered. But it was too late for such thoughts.

The Eyes of the Lover stared blindly down; they did not see him. He shivered and took Shavna and the woman inside out of the empty night