Part 3 (1/2)
For an instant he felt it: just how far he was from home.
He was weary at the thought of the officers' mess on Sirius and yet another evening meal there. All those faces were known too well, and the voices that could only utter words he had heard ten dozen times before. In the congestion of the s.h.i.+p he had perfected the art of creating a bubble of mathematics that no one quite dared to burst. Until there were enough tents and huts he would have to continue to live on board. But an astronomer was obliged to be close to his instruments at all hours of the night, so as soon as he could he would remove to the promontory.
From the end of the point the view was worth the climb. To the east the bright waters of the harbour went out towards the sea, serrated by so many headlands, so many inlets, a few islands. To the west were more headlands, more inlets, more islands.
Just before the end of the ridge dropped away to the water there was a level place about the size of Major Wyatt's parade ground, backed by a low cliff. No trees obscured the sky. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich must once have been just such a high open hilltop.
As a crow might fly, the settlement was less than a mile distant, but this spot felt remote. Rooke could not see the encampment, only hear the distant clunk of axes and the occasional shout. The person he was among those people-Second Lieutenant Rooke, good with numbers although inclined to be awkward with people-was someone he inhabited like a stiff suit of clothes. To stand here, where the solitude without matched the solitude within, was to be unburdened.
A man on this promontory would be part of the settlement, but not in it. Present, but forgotten. Astronomy would make a convenient screen for a self that he did not choose to share with any of the other souls marooned along with him.
The wind had fallen away. The western horizon was sliding up to meet the sun, making the port a sheet of soft gold patched with the shapes of headlands and islands.
Rooke was turning to go back to the settlement when he realised that he was being watched. Two native men were standing a short distance away, as still as the rocks, men whose dark skin made them part of the landscape. They were not looking at him but out at the water.
He remembered the men he had greeted on the first day, and the way they had reacted to Surgeon Weymark's pistol. Rooke thought its power might have been more eloquent than Weymark intended.
This seemed another chance.
'Good afternoon! Good afternoon!'
He took a few steps towards them.
'I am pleased to meet you!'
That was absurd, but at least it was words.
One man s.h.i.+fted the spear in his hand fractionally. Neither of the natives acknowledged by the slightest flicker of expression that a man was calling out that he was pleased to meet them.
When they began to move towards him, he thought that they were responding at last. They were not. They walked past, an arm's length away, for all the world as if he were invisible.
Hoy, he thought of saying. Hoy, I am here, you know! He even opened his mouth to speak, rehearsing the tone he would try for: amused, light, cheerful. But something about the dignified way they walked kept him silent.
Where the rocks dropped away to the water, the two men stepped down. Rooke could see that they had no sense of deliberating how to descend, thinking this way or that way? Their path was as familiar to them as Rooke's had been beside the Round Tower.
He went to the edge and looked down. One of the men was lying on a rock with his face almost in the water, spear over his shoulder. The other had waded in knee-deep and, as Rooke watched, he darted his spear with a movement too quick to see and held it up with a s.h.i.+ning fish flapping on the p.r.o.ngs. He flipped it off, broke its spine in his hands and tucked it into the cord around his hips. Rooke was ready to give a congratulatory wave. But the man only bent back towards the water.
Why had he not spoken up when they pa.s.sed so close? A different sort of fellow-Gardiner for instance, or Silk-would not have let himself be ignored. Silk would be down there with them on the rocks, trying his hand with a spear, probably, and taking notes.
When they came back up he would not be shy. He would stand in their way until they stopped and would offer them something, his handkerchief perhaps. Good afternoon, he would say again, right into their faces. They would not be able to pretend no one was there. Good afternoon, he would say, and hold out the handkerchief. Would you care to accept this?
But as he continued to watch the men, they moved around the point towards the next bay and out of sight without once glancing up.
Rooke was taken aback when the governor resisted the idea of him establis.h.i.+ng an observatory.
'The stars will have to wait, Mr Rooke,' he snapped. 'Dr Vickery will understand that we have more urgent matters to attend to here.'
Rooke watched his brows drawing together, creating two deep grooves. He had not prepared for this. On Sirius, he had been an astronomer, alongside the governor in the cabin with Mr Kendall's timekeeper, but on land he had to recognise that things were different.
'Hear me on this, Lieutenant: I have more than a thousand souls for whom I am responsible, and so far nothing but a few tents to offer them by way of shelter.'
The governor was turning away.
'But, sir, you will remember that the Astronomer Royal has provided instruments. On the basis that they will be used in the furtherance of science. In particular the comet which Dr Vickery has predicted later this year. Which he considers of the highest degree of importance.'
The governor seemed as surprised as Rooke at this fluent speech and looked at him dourly.
'I would not wish to take issue with the Astronomer Royal. That is certainly true. But why so far, Lieutenant? My wish is that the settlement remain compact, for the security of all its members. Until we can establish an intercourse with the natives we have no way of knowing their intentions.'
He was turning away again, but Rooke could not yield. He must have that lonely headland. Desperation gave his mind wings, his mouth words.
'With the greatest respect, sir.' That was a useful phrase he had heard Silk use with the governor to good effect. 'An observatory must be in a position of perfect darkness. For its best operation. As you would know.'
This was two kinds of lie, the first being as you would know. The governor, an adequately competent navy man, knew enough of the night sky to get a s.h.i.+p from one place to another, but nothing whatever of the needs of an astronomer. And the business of perfect darkness: well, that was at best a half-truth. The fires and flickering lamps of the settlement would hardly interfere with anyone's view of the stars.
Rooke watched the governor's narrow face: peevish but thoughtful. He was about to use his authority and simply forbid.
'In addition, sir,' Rooke said quickly, hoping that some further argument would come to him as he spoke. 'In addition, sir, the calculations are difficult. Particularly regarding a comet. For someone of my abilities. Limited abilities.'
Rooke could hear how his words laboured. He sometimes thought that he arrived at a sentence the way other people did multiplication: the hard way, by adding. He felt himself colouring but floundered on. 'Distraction, sir, distraction will tax my powers. To the limit. Solitude and quiet will be essential.'
That was no half-truth but a simple lie. He knew it, and the governor knew it too. The Great Cabin on Sirius had never offered solitude or quiet. At one end of the chart table, Rooke would be calculating the s.h.i.+p's longitude with the aid of Dr Vickery's Almanac and the Requisite Tables. At the other end, the mids.h.i.+pmen would be doing their navigation lessons. By the window the commodore would be at his own desk with his papers and charts. In the corner there might be an animated discussion between a couple of officers about, for instance, the respective merits from a culinary point of view of the various fish that the sailors were catching off the side. Rooke could be called on for his opinion and give it without missing a beat in his calculations.
The governor, isolated both by his position and, Rooke thought, his temperament, might have understood a man who enjoyed his own company best of all. But to allow him that enjoyment could look like an indulgence, and indulgence to one officer would open him to trouble from others.
The governor put his thumb under his chin and caressed his lip with a forefinger. Rooke could feel him performing a brief but complex calculation, one in which the need to demonstrate his authority against this mulish junior lieutenant was set against the future usefulness of a cooperative one. Rooke felt a flush of panic. Gilbert was nothing more than a naval captain of unremarkable talents, older but less gifted than himself. How was it that he could stand between a man and his proper life?
'Very well, Lieutenant Rooke. Have your headland. Let the Astronomer Royal get his comet. But, let me warn you, at the first sign of trouble you will be recalled. We are not so lavishly supplied with men. There may be a time when every musket is needed. And Lieutenant'-he lowered his voice- 'speaking of that, I wish you to ensure that your weapon is loaded at all times.'
Then a private came bustling up and that was the end of the interview.
Out of sight of the governor Rooke stopped and laid a hand on his cheek, hot with the bitter flame of what he had so nearly lost.
Squeaked through, that was his thought. A narrow squeak. What squeaking? Why squeaking? It was a relief to wonder about the silly phrase rather than what would have happened if the governor had said I regret, Lieutenant, but my decision is final, kindly do not ask again.
He must remember how fragile his position was. There might be a destiny awaiting him here, but the governor was not interested in it. If he knew what was in his lieutenant's mind he would remind him that he was not a man of science, an astronomer of the fairest promise, but just another of the governor's subjects.
Unlike Greenwich, an antipodean observatory could not boast a majestic building with every convenience for an astronomer. The best approximation Rooke could devise was a small room surmounted by a cone of wood and canvas, something like an Indian teepee. The cone would have a long slit to accommodate the telescope, and its vertex would be a little off-centre to allow observations at the zenith.
It looked peculiar on his sketch, and he thought it would be peculiar when built. But there was a sharp pleasure in re-inventing the idea of an observatory from first principles.
Major Wyatt took the view that he could not be expected to pander to every whim-he did not spell out whether the whim was the lieutenant's or the governor's-but eventually he let Rooke have some men. They panted and scrambled up the ridge with the canvas and the poles for the tent that was to be Rooke's temporary home, with the bed and the table and the boxes of instruments.
Explaining his sketch to the carpenter, Rooke referred to the teepee as the dome. Perhaps dome was a little grand. He tried to explain why the cone had to be off-centre, went into detail about the need for the instruments to point straight up. He tried to use commonplace words, but he caught an astonished look in the man's eyes.
To speed the business along, Rooke laboured beside the others. A pick was awkward, he discovered, and his hand blistered from its rough wood. But, unlike the prisoners, he enjoyed his experience of heavy labour. Concentrating on striking the rock at just the right spot, and with just the right force, at just the right angle, he worked himself into a pleasantly mindless state.
The observation room was constructed on the top of the low cliff because of the solid base of rock it offered for the instruments. The hut for his own living quarters was below, connected to it by steps cut into the rock. Those steps-so simple to sketch-took the men twice as long as everything else put together. That was the difference between Euclid's world and the actual one.
What with rain, and the men being called away for other duties, it took months to get the thing finished. The awkward angles of timber and the puckered whitewashed canvas nailed to the dome gave the place an improvised look. The carpenter's pride was offended by the way the off-centre peak of the teepee looked as if he had made a mistake. The slit where the telescope would travel up and down showed its rough edges and the shutter that covered it was a crude thing of battens and canvas. He went away grumbling.