A Wreath of Stars

Chapter Five

The day began to go wrong while Boyce Ambrose was having breakfast.

His fiancee, Jody Ferrier, had stayed at his family home near Charleston all week-end, which had been fine with Ambrose except that—in deference to his mother’s famous Puritanism—they had had separate bedrooms. The arrangement meant that he had spent more than two days in Jody’s company without being able to indulge in any of the love games at which she was so naturally and deliciously good. Ambrose was not oversexed and had not been particularly disturbed by the two days and three nights of abstinence, but the experience had focused his attention on an alarming fact.

Jody Ferrier—the girl he had promised to marry—talked a great deal. Not only did she talk a great deal, but none of the subjects which engaged her attention was of the slightest interest to him. Furthermore, each time he had tried to divert the conversation towards more fruitful grounds, she—with masterly ease—had brought it back at once to fashion trends, local real estate values, and the genealogies of important Charleston families. These were the points at which, had they been alone in one of their apartments, he would have silenced her with a bout of old-fashioned physical grappling—and, during the week-end, Ambrose had come to suspect that what he had been regarding as a richly sexual relationship had, in fact, been a prolonged struggle to keep Jody quiet.

By Sunday night his forebodings about his planned marriage had reached the pitch at which he had become morose and withdrawn. He had gone to bed quite early, and in the morning had found himself actually looking forward to the day’s work at the planetarium. There had, however, been an unexpected development. Jody was clever, as well as rich and beautiful, and it appeared that during the night she had correctly deduced his frame of mind. At breakfast she had announced, for the first time since they had met, that she had always possessed a burning curiosity about all things astronomical and was proposing to gratify it by spending the day at the planetarium. The idea, once it had germinated, seemed to blossom in her mind.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” she had said to Ambrose’s mother, “if there was some way I could help Boyce with his vocation? On a purely voluntary basis, of course—perhaps for two or three afternoons a week. Some tiny little job. I wouldn’t care how unimportant it was as long as I was helping to make people aware of the wonders of the universe.”

Ambrose’s mother had been impressed with the scheme and thought it was splendid that her son and her future daughter-in-law shared the same intellectual interests. She was certain Jody could find something useful to do at the planetarium, perhaps on the public relations side. For his part, Ambrose had been disappointed in Jody. He regarded himself as a leading expert on every aspect of pretence—after all, he had made a career of it—and he had previously felt a grudging respect for his fiancee’s honesty in openly not giving a damn about his work. All right, he had thought, I’ll go along with this thing…provided she never says ‘light years in the future’.

He had remained quiet during the early part of the drive to the planetarium, preferring to listen to the radio, and this had given Jody the chance to demonstrate her cosmic awareness.

“If only people could be made to realise how insignificant the Earth is,” she was saying, “if they would just understand that it’s only a speck of dust in the universe, there’d be less war and less petty strife. Isn’t that so?”

“I don’t know,” Ambrose replied, determined to be unhelpful. “It might work the other way round.”

“What do you mean, darling?”

“If they start thinking the Earth is insignificant, they could decide that nothing they do will make any difference to anything and start raping and pillaging even harder.”

“Oh, Boyce!” Jody laughed incredulously. “You didn’t mean that!”

“I do. Sometimes I worry in case the shows at the planetarium are encouraging the human race to snuff itself out.”

“That’s nonsense.” Jody fell silent for a moment, gauging Ambrose’s mood, and a shift took place in his hearing, bringing the words of a radio newscast to the forefront of his attention.

“…claims that the ghosts are real beings, which can only be seen with the aid of magniluct low-light glasses. The diamond mine is in Barandi, one of the small African republics which have not yet been admitted to the United Nations. Real or not, the ghosts have caused…”

“I’ve heard you say dozens of times that the only real justification for astronomy is…”

“Let me hear this,” Ambrose put in.

“…science correspondent says that Thornton’s Planet, which passed close to the Earth in the spring of 1993, is the only other known example of…”

“That’s another thing—your mother says the lectures you gave about Thornton’s Planet were the best…”

“For God’s sake, Jody, I’m trying to hear something.”

“Well, all right! There’s no need to shout.”

“…new theories about the atomic structure of the sun. South America. The dispute between Bolivia and Paraguay came one step closer to all-out war last night when…” Ambrose switched the radio off and concentrated on the mechanical tasks of driving. There had been a fall of snow during the night and the road, which had been cleared down to the tarmac, was like a swathe of India ink in a scraperboard landscape.

Jody put a hand on his thigh. “Go ahead and listen to the radio—I’ll be quiet.”

“No you go ahead and talk -1 won’t listen to the radio.” It occurred to Ambrose that he was being unfair. “I’m sorry, Jo.”

“Are you always grouchy in the morning?”

“Not every morning. But the trouble with being a trendy astronomer is that I hate being reminded that other people are doing real work.”

“I don’t understand you. Your work is important.”

Jody’s hand moved higher on Ambrose’s thigh, sending a tingle of sensation racing into his groin. He shook his head, but was grateful for the little intimacy, with its message that there were other values in life besides those of the laboratory. Forcing himself to relax, he tried to enjoy the remainder of the journey to the pleasant modern building in which he worked. The air was sharp and jewel-bright after the snowfall, and by the time they had got from his car to the office at the side of the dome Ambrose was feeling better. Jody was pink-cheeked and fresh, like a girl in a health foods advertisement, and he felt absurdly proud as he introduced her to his secretary and office manager, May Tate.

He left the two women together and went into his private suite to see what communications had filtered through the various systems to reach his desk. At the top of the heap was a fax sheet on which May had put a ring of dayglow ink around one of the main stories. Ambrose read the terse, tongue-in-cheek story of how a Canadian teacher, with the inelegant name of Gil Snook, had gone down a diamond mine in Barandi and taken a photograph of a grotesque ‘ghost’ -and, as he stood there in the warm luxury of his office, he began to feel ill.

Ambrose’s sudden lack of well-being stemmed from a number of factors.

There was the guilt he felt about the betrayal of his own academic potential. In the past this guilt had manifested itself as jealousy towards the amateur astronomer who, as the reward of years of quiet diligence, had been privileged to attach his name to a star. And here, represented by a few lines of type, was another example of the same kind of thing. How had it come about, Ambrose demanded of himself, that an obscure teacher with a ridiculous name had been at the right place at the right time? And how had this man known to do all the right things, the things which would make him world-famous? There was no mention of Snook having any kind of scientific qualifications—so why had he, of all people in the world, been chosen to make an important discovery?

There was no doubt in Ambrose’s mind that what had

happened in the backwoods African republic was important, although it was as yet too early for him to say what the significance of the event actually was. The news story contained two items which clamoured in his thoughts—and one of these was that the ghostly sightings happened just before dawn. Ambrose was good at geography, and therefore he knew that Barandi straddled the Earth’s equator.

As an astronomer, regardless of his trendiness, he also knew that the Earth was like a vast bead sliding along the unseen wire which was its orbit. The wire did not enter and leave the surface of the globe at fixed positions, as with an ordinary bead—these two points wove a lazy curve up and down the Earth’s torrid zone as the planet completed a daily revolution on its axis. And at this time of the year, late winter in the northern hemisphere, when it was dawn in Barandi—and the ghosts were walking—the ‘forward’ orbital intersection point would be passing invisibly through the tiny republic. Every instinct Ambrose possessed told him there was no element of coincidence involved.

The second news item was that the apparitions were visible only with the aid of magniluct glasses, and in Ambrose’s opinion this linked them in some way with the passage of Thornton’s Planet almost three years earlier.

He sat down at his desk, filled with a sense of imminence, feeling cold and sick and yet curiously elated. Something was happening inside his head, right behind his eyes, a strange and rare event he had only read about in connection with a few other men. He folded his arms on the deep-glazed wood of the desk, lowered his forehead to rest on them, and remained absolutely still. For the first time in his life, Doctor Boyce Ambrose was encountering the phenomenon of inspiration. And when he raised his head he knew exactly why it was that apparitions had begun to appear in the lower levels of Barandi National Mine No. 3.

Jody Ferrier entered his office a minute later and found Ambrose white-faced and chill behind his desk. “Boyce, darling!” Her voice was taut with concern. “Are you all right?”

He looked at her with bemused eyes. “I’m all right, Jo/ he said slowly. “The only thing is…I think I have to go to Africa.”

The journey to Barandi was a difficult one for Ambrose, even with his money and extensive family connections.

He had originally planned to make an SST flight from Atlanta to Nairobi, and perhaps charter a light aircraft to cover the remaining three hundred kilometres to his destination. This scheme had been scrapped, on the advice of the travel agency, because relations between Kenya and the newly-formed Confederation of East African Socialist Republics were particularly bad at the time. Ambrose had accepted the situation philosophically, remembering that Kenya and other countries had lost valuable territory to the Confederation. He then had aimed for Addis Ababa, only to be told that Ethiopia was on the point of mounting a military operation against the Confederation—to re-establish her southern border—and that all commercial flights between the two were on the point of being suspended.

In the end he had flown in an uncomfortably crowded SST to Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, and had been forced to wait seven hours for a place on a shabby turboprop. The latter had taken him to the new ‘city’ of Matsa, in the republic of the same name, which was Barandi’s neighbour to the west. Now he was waiting at the airport for a commuter flight to Kisumu, and was beginning to question the impulse which had driven him to leave the States in the first place.

With the advent of the dangerous Nineties, the great age of tourism had ended. Ambrose was a wealthy man and yet had rarely been abroad, and then only to recognised stable countries such as England and Iceland. As he stood in the searing brilliance of the concourse, with its dioramas of mountain ranges and shimmering ferrocrete runways, he could feel a growing xenophobia. Many of the waiting travellers appeared to be journalists or photographers, presumably being attracted to Barandi by the same magnet, but the faint sense of kinship they inspired was more than offset by the frequent sight of black soldiers wearing short-sleeved drills and carrying machine guns. Even the gleaming newness of the building disturbed Ambrose by reminding him that he was in a part of the world where institutions were not revered, where things which were not present yesterday could equally well have vanished by tomorrow.

He had lit a cigarette and was wandering in a lonely little circle, keeping within easy view of his luggage, when he noticed a tall blonde girl looking cool and composed in a white blouse and lime green tailored skirt. She seemed so out-of-place, so much like a fashion plate for expensive British clothes, that Ambrose glanced around half-expecting to see cameras and lighting equipment being set up in the vicinity. The girl was alone, however, and unperturbed by the stares of the heterogeneous males standing nearby. Ambrose, both captivated and filled with the desire to appoint himself protector of the fair lady, was unable to resist staring too. He was filling his eyes with the sight of her when she took out a cigarette, pouted her lips on to it and continued peering into her purse with traces of a frown. Ambrose stepped forward and offered her a light.

“I’ve seen this happen so many times on old TV movies,” he said, “that I feel selfconscious about doing it in real life.”

She lit the cigarette, appraising him all the while with calm grey eyes, then smiled. “It’s all right—you do it very well. And I did need a smoke.” Her accent was English. Well-educated English, Ambrose thought.

Encouraged, he said, “I know the feeling. Hanging around airports depresses me.”

“I do it so much that it has ceased to register.”

“Oh?” Unused to dealing with British girls, Ambrose tried in vain to assign a background to this one. Actress? Air hostess? Model? Jet setter? He stopped musing when she gave a delighted laugh, showing perfect teeth which had a very slight inward slope. His puzzlement increased.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but you looked so baffled. Perhaps you would like everybody to wear labels showing their occupations.”

“I’m sorry. It was just…” Ambrose turned away, but she stopped him by touching his arm.

“Actually, I do have a label. A badge, really, but I never wear it because it’s a silly thing and the pin destroys my clothes.” Her voice had become warmer. “I work for UNESCO.”

Ambrose made one of his best smiles. “The badge makes you sound like an investigator.”

“You could say I’m a kind of investigator. Why are you going to Barandi?”

“I’m an investigator, too.” Ambrose debated with his conscience about claiming to be a physicist or an astronomer, and in the end he added one vague qualifier. “Scientific.”

“How interesting! Are you ghost hunting?” The complete absence of mockery in her voice made Ambrose think of the incredulous scorn he had endured from both Jody and his mother when he had announced his plans to visit Barandi.

He nodded. “But right now the only thing I’m hunting is a cold drink. How about you?”

“I’d love one.” The girl gave Ambrose a direct smile which modified all his opinions about Africa, foreign travel and the design of airports. The potential rewards for the globe-trotter, he decided, greatly outweighed the dangers and discomforts. Leaving his luggage to fend for itself, he escorted the girl to the mezzanine bar, feeling boyishly pleased at the resentful glances from men who had witnessed the entire meeting.

Over chilled Camparis with soda he learned that her name was Prudence Devonald. She had been born in London, read economics at Oxford, travelled extensively with her father who was in the Foreign Office, and joined UNESCO three years earlier. Currently she was on secondment to the Economic Commission for Africa, visiting the African states of recent origin who had applied for UN membership and checking that the money they received in the form of educational grants was being spent in an approved manner. Ambrose was intrigued to hear that her trip to Barandi was not a matter of routine, but had been occasioned by the sensational news stories concerning National Mine No. 3.

Barandi was promoting itself as one of the most progressive members of the CEASR, with high educational standards for all its citizens. Prudence’s office had been surprised, therefore, to hear that a man called Gilbert Snook—who had no listed teaching qualifications, and had been involved in the theft of a military aircraft from another country—apparently was head of the mine school. The affair was a delicate one because there had been pressure from some quarters to suspend educational grants to Barandi. Her brief was to investigate the situation, with special reference to Gilbert Snook, and make a confidential report.

“That’s quite a big responsibility for somebody your age,” Ambrose commented. “Can it be that, in secret, you’re a hardhearted woman?”

“There’s no secret about it.” Prudence’s finely-moulded features assumed an impersonal quality, like those of a beautiful but highly functional robot. “Perhaps we should get it clear that it was I who picked you up a few minutes ago. It didn’t happen the other way round.”

Ambrose blinked. “Who said anybody got picked up?”

“What would you call it? What’s the latest Americanism?”

“All right—why should you want to pick me up?”

“I need a male escort as far as Barandi—to save me the trouble of fending off various undesirables—and I picked you.” She took a sip of her drink, grey eyes unyielding above the glassy rim.

“Thanks.” Ambrose considered her remarks and found a crumb of comfort. “It’s good to know I’m not an undesirable.”

“Oh, you’re very desirable—much more so than any ordinary scientist.”

Ambrose felt an impostor’s guilt. “Assuming there is such an animal as an ordinary scientist,” he said, “what makes you think I’m not one?”

“In the first place, your wristwatch cost you at least three thousand dollars. Shall I go on?”

“Don’t bother.” Ambrose was taken aback and unable to prevent himself being pompous. “I’m interested in the value of things, not the price.”

•“Wilde.”

Ambrose floundered for a moment—convinced she had used the word ‘wild’ like a mid-century hipster—then understanding came. “Did Oscar Wilde say that?”

Prudence nodded. “Something like it. In “Lady Windermere’s Fan”.”

“That’s a pity—I’ve been going around for years passing it off as my own.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Christ knows how many people I’ve convinced that I’m semi-literate.”

“Don’t worry about it—I’m sure you’ve got lots of other qualities.” Prudence leaned forward and, unnecessarily, touched the back of his hand. “I like your sense of humour.”

Ambrose looked closely at her, made wary by his glimpse of the tough-minded, hard-edged person who inhabited such an essentially female body. Prudence’s face had not altered, but he found he could now see it in two different ways, revealing two different characters, as with an op art picture in which shifts of perception changed heights into depths. He was intrigued, impressed and attracted all at once, and for this reason the idea of simply being picked up, used and discarded rankled more than ever.

“What would happen if I refused to chaperone you to Barandi?” he said.

“Why should you refuse?”

“Because you don’t need me.”

“But I explained that I do need you—to fend off undesirables. That’s what chaperones are for.”

“I know, but…”

“Would you abandon any other girl in the same situation?”

“No, but…”

“Then why me?”

“Because I…” Ambrose shook his head, lost for words.

“I’ll tell you why, Doctor Ambrose.” Prudence’s voice was low, but firm. “It’s because I don’t play the old game. You know the one I mean. Every time a helpless female accepts courtesy from a gallant male there’s the implication—even though it’s rarely taken seriously—that, if everything develops favourably, she’ll repay him by making herself available.

Now, I like you, and it’s possible that if we were in Barandi long enough, and you were keen, that we might go to bed together—but it wouldn’t be because you held a door open for me or carried my case on to a plane. Do I make myself clear?”

“Gin clear.” Ambrose swallowed a large portion of his drink. “That’s a British expression, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but feel free to use Americanisms as well. I’ve been around.” Prudence gave him another of her perfect, dizzying, ambiguous smiles.

Ambrose cleared his throat and surveyed the baking landscape outside. “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

“All right—equality isn’t fair.” Prudence took out another cigarette and accepted a light for it. “Tell me what you’re going to do about these ghosts. Are you going to exorcise them?”

“No exorcism is possible in this case,” Ambrose said soberly.

“Really? You’ve got a theory?”

“Yes—I’m here to check it out.”

Prudence shivered with an excitement Ambrose found gratifying. “Does it explain why they can only be seen with those special glasses? And why they keep rising up and sinking back into the ground again?”

“Hey! You’ve really been paying attention to the news.”

“Of course! Come on—don’t keep me in suspense.”

Ambrose cooled his fingertips on the dewy sides of his glass. “This is a little awkward. You know how an artist doesn’t like anybody to see a painting until it’s finished? Well, scientists are like that with their pet theories. They don’t like making them public until they’ve tied up every loose end.”

“I can understand that,” Prudence was unexpectedly docile. “I’ll look forward to hearing about it on the radio.”

“Ah, hell,” Ambrose said. “What difference does it make? I know I’m right. It’s a bit involved, but I’ll try explaining it to you if you want.”

“Please.” Prudence moved forward on her chair until her knees were touching Ambrose’s.

“You remember Thornton’s Planet?” he said, trying to ignore the distraction. “The so-called ghost world that came near tie Earth about three years ago?”

“I remember the riots -1 was in Ecuador at the time.”

“Everybody remembers the riots, but the thing that sticks in the average physicist’s craw is that Thornton’s Planet was captured by our sun. It’s composed of antineutrino matter and therefore should have gone through the Solar System in a straight line and never been seen again. The fact that it went into orbit upset a lot of people and they’re still trying to dream up whole new sets of interactions to account for it. But the simplest explanation is that inside our sun there’s another one composed of the same kind of matter as Thornton’s Planet. An antineutrino sun inside our hadronic sun.”

Prudence frowned. “Underneath the big words, it sounds as though you’re saying two things can occupy the same space at the same time. Is that possible?”

“In nuclear physics it is. If a field has a flock of sheep in it does that stop you driving in a herd of cows?”

“Please let’s try it without the Will Rogers routine.”

“Sorry—it’s hard to know how far to go with analogies. What I’m saying is that if there’s an antineutrino planet centred on the Earth. Who is Will Rogers?”

“Before your time. Are you serious about this world within a world?”

“Absolutely. It’s slightly smaller than the Earth and that’s why, even if magniluct had been around a long time, we would not know about the inner world. Its surface would normally be many kilometres below our ground level.”

Prudence dropped her unsmoked cigarette into a pedestal ashtray. “And this inner world is inhabited by ghosts.”

“Well, ghosts is a terribly unscientific word, but you’ve got the idea. To the inhabitants of that world we would be ghosts. The big difference is that, because the Earth is bigger, we inhabit their stratosphere—so it’s unlikely they would ever have detected us.”

“So what happened? Was it something to do with…?”

Ambrose nodded. “Thornton’s Planet is composed of the same kind of matter as our inner world, and therefore would have had a strong effect on it. Strong enough to disturb it in its orbit. That’s why the inner world has begun to emerge through the Earth’s surface—the two worlds are steadily separating from each other.” He looked beyond Prudence’s raptj dreaming face and noticed the heat-wavering image of an aircraft on final approach. “I think this is our plane.”

“There’s no need to hurry—besides, you haven’t told me everything.”

Prudence was gazing at him with what seemed to be open admiration. Ambrose found himself reluctant to break the spell of the moment, and yet his memory told him there was another Prudence Devonald, self-interested and pragmatic, who might be playing him along for reasons of her own.

“Are you interested in astronomy?” he said.

“Very much.”

He grinned. “Do you ever say “light years in the future”?”

Prudence gave a good-natured sigh. “Is that your own personal pans asinorum ?”

“I guess so. I’m sorry if I…”

“Don’t apologise, Doctor. Is it enough to say that a light year is a measurement of distance, or do I have to work it out in metres?”

“What else did you want to know?”

“Everything,” Prudence” said. “If there’s an inner world coming out through the Earth, as you say, why do the ghosts keep rising up to where they can be seen and then sinking back down out of sight again?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that.”

“Why? Does it hurt your theory?”

“No—but it’s hard to explain without diagrams. If you draw a circle, then draw another circle inside it and slightly off centre so that they touch at the left side, it will give you an idea of the current relative positions of the two worlds.”

“That seems simple enough.”

“It’s simple because your diagram is static. The fact is that the Earth turns on its axis once every day—and apparently the inner world does the same—so both your circles should be rotating. If you put a mark at the point where they touch, and rotate both circles, you’ll find the mark on the inner circle sinking below the same point on the outer circle. By the time you’ve given both circles a half turn the inner point will have sunk to its maximum distance below the outer point, then if you go on turning they’ll gradually approach each other again. This is why the ghosts have only been sighted around dawn—there’s a twenty-four hour wait for your points to coincide again.”

“I see.” Prudence spoke with the wondering voice of a small child.

“As well as rotating your circles, it’s also necessary to keep moving the inner circle to the left. This means that, instead of coinciding once a day, your inner point will begin travelling further and further outside the outer point.”

“It’s beautiful,” Prudence breathed. “It all^w.”

“I know.” Again, Ambrose was gratified.

“Are you first with this theory?”

Ambrose laughed. “Before I left home I wrote a couple of letters staking a claim to it, but it will soon be in the public domain. You see, the ghosts are going to spread. Before long they’ll be visible on the surface—there’ll be no need to go down a diamond mine—then the circle of emergence will grow quite rapidly. At first the sightings will be confined to the equatorial regions, places like Borneo and Peru, then they’ll spread north and south through the tropics into the temperate zones.”

Prudence looked thoughtful. “That’s going to cause some excitement.”

“You,” Ambrose said, finishing his drink, “are a master of the art of understatement.”