Young Tales of the Old Cosmos Read online

  “Even lower than that…”

  Jupiter interrupted her with a voice so deep it made her icecaps crack and her lines of latitude squirm. “So where did the order for Pluto’s demotion come from? You can’t possibly mean it was somehow issued by your tiny parasites?!”

  Pluto suddenly burst into frozen methane tears…

  Far away from this pitiful scene, the supermassive black hole that lurked and throbbed at the hub of the Milky Way was engrossed in deep conversation with the black hole at the centre of the Andromeda galaxy, its nearest neighbour. The Milky Way was clearly distraught and Andromeda was doing her best to provide comforting words but without imparting false hope. Eventually the Milky Way stopped crying.

  “But the other galaxies don’t have to be quite so tactless about it. Flying away from me in all directions as if the expansion of the universe was speeding up!”

  “They are scared of catching your disease,” pointed out Andromeda.

  “But my fleas are harmless enough!”

  “What did you call them?”

  “Fleas. They call themselves ‘planets’ but I call them fleas.”

  Andromeda stretched her spiral arms and said, “I wonder if your fleas have fleas of their own? No, that’s too absurd a concept to entertain!” She paused. “I wonder what would happen if a giant stood on the shoulders of a dwarf. I wonder…”

  “You wonder too much,” said the Milky Way.

  Buffoons of the Moon

  “I seem to be overrun with clowns,” said the moon.

  “Are you serious?” blinked Ganymede.

  “Of course I am. When have you known me to be otherwise? I always mean what I say and I’m never frivolous.”

  “Really?” smirked Ganymede. “What about that time a few years ago when you decided to become a radical lesbian and have nothing more to do with the male members of the solar system? You even planned to withhold moonbeams from slanting on heterosexuals on the surface of the Earth! One week later you were back to normal.”

  “I was just going through a phase,” said the moon.

  “My point exactly! Sometimes you’re not serious!”

  “I’m afraid Ganymede’s right,” spoke up Callisto, “but that doesn’t mean we think you’re a liar.”

  “Just rather too imaginative,” said Ganymede.

  “Charming!” huffed the moon.

  “You can’t blame us for being sceptical,” pointed out Titan, peeping through the rings of Saturn, “considering the unlikelihood of your claim. What makes you think clowns have colonised your barren surface?”

  “I don’t feel any heavier,” admitted the moon, “but I saw something recently that provided irrefutable proof. I didn’t actually observe clowns landing on me, the visual confirmation of my statement was more indirect than that, but convincing nonetheless. I’ve deduced that I’m covered with clowns and the conclusion makes my geology crawl.”

  And she twitched by way of demonstration.

  “Lunatics!” sniggered Titan.

  “I assure you they are clowns,” said the moon.

  “No, I was referring to muscular spasms. Your tics. You are Luna, the Earth’s moon, so your tics must be lunatics.”

  “Oh, I see. A play on words.”

  “Maybe your clowns are just ordinary astronauts with painted faces?” suggested Europa.

  “I’m afraid not,” sighed the moon.

  “But why would authentic clowns choose to forsake the circuses of Earth to start a new life on an airless satellite utterly devoid of audiences?” persisted Titan with a sly wink at Ganymede.

  “There’s a compelling reason, a crazy one in many ways, but I’ll have to tell you a story to outline it properly,” replied the moon.

  “Go on then,” prompted Callisto.

  “But make it short. I’ll be out of range soon!” cried Oberon.

  “Where are you going?” asked Europa.

  “Behind Uranus again. Where else?” snapped Oberon.

  “Not right to be so crude and sour when answering a lady,” chided Ganymede, “and you ought to lighten up. Maybe you could do with a dose of clowns yourself…”

  “Ugh!” exclaimed Oberon. “Get on with it!”

  The moon cleared her throat. “Very well. But I warn you it’s a wild account full of unbelievable details, quite unlike my usual tales.”

  “Good!” announced Io tactlessly. “We’re all a bit fed up with hearing about how you keep bathing your face poetically in oceans and lakes and how your dark side inspired a bestselling album which none of us have ever heard.”

  “Jealous are you, of my inspirational abilities?”

  Io laughed at this. She was kept on a tight gravitational leash by Jupiter and so closely did she orbit him, taking less than two days to complete a full circuit, that her interior was kept molten by the inevitable tidal stress. Volcanoes continually erupted from her fractured surface, spewing masses of ions and electrons into her master’s magnetosphere and inducing blistering currents between the orbs. Constant electric shocks kept Io profoundly mad or frighteningly sane, nobody knew which. But her laughter was certainly distinctive.

  She finally calmed down. “No, I’m not jealous. You don’t have anything I want. The reason you’re the only one of us who inspires poets and musicians is because our masters aren’t infested with such parasites.”

  The moon didn’t respond to this rebuke but simmered silently.

  “Stop wasting time!” bellowed Oberon.

  “Don’t take Io’s nonsense to heart,” soothed Ganymede. “The rest of us really want to hear your story. Please tell it!”

  “Very well,” sighed the moon. “Are we all gathered?”

  “Phobos and Deimos are missing,” pointed out Callisto. “I wonder where they are?”

  “Mars took them for walkies on the far side of the sun. They won’t be back for a year at least. Don’t worry about them,” said Titan.

  “A year according to whom?” queried Hyperion. It was an awkward question designed to cause embarrassment, but the others ignored it.

  Europa asked the moon, “Where is your story set?”

  “On the surface of my mistress,” came the reply, “in a country called Italy by the people who live there. By other people too! Italy is shaped like a boot and…”

  “A what?” demanded Oberon.

  “A boot. A thing worn on the end of a leg.”

  “What’s a leg?” cried Ganymede.

  “An object much longer than it is broad. Like the tail of a comet. Italy is shaped like a fashionable cocoon designed to fit over a comet’s tail. Is that better? Anyway, Italy was once a democracy but has become a dictatorship and is ruled by a steam-powered robot that is somewhat unsteady on his feet. He tends to lean a lot, but he’s very strong. That’s probably why he’s called Muscle Leany.”

  “She’s talking gibberish!” exclaimed Io.

  The moon ignored this remark and continued, “There are many famous buildings in Italy and one of the most photogenic is the Torre Pendente in the city of Pisa, a tower that leans almost as much as Muscle Leany does. I wonder if the tower is his mother? No, I’m being silly, he’s a robot and doesn’t have parents, I almost forgot that! Anyway, the Leaning Tower of Pisa took 197 years to build and was beset by problems from the beginning.”

  “I don’t understand a word of this,” muttered Titan.

  Ganymede was more tolerant. “Please go on.”

  The moon said, “I did warn you it was an odd tale. It’s not my fault the universe is full of incomprehensible things.”

  “We accept all that,” crooned Callisto.

  “In that case I’ll proceed,” declared the moon, “by revealing that Muscle Leany decided Italy was too elongated to rule effectively. It would be much easier to be the dictator of a shorter country, so he arranged for the compression of the entire peninsula! Immense metal rods were sunk along the length of the northern border and also along the southern coastline. These rods were connecte
d by taut cables so that the country resembled a lute. Then powerful winches were set in motion and Italy was slowly compressed like a concertina.”

  “Musical instruments galore!” approved Hyperion.

  “Thanks, I like melodic imagery.”

  “You buttery ditherer!” came the muffled roar of Oberon. “You’ve told you tale too slowly. I’m about to vanish behind…”

  His voice was cut off behind the rim of his master. “His absence is no loss,” sniffed Ganymede.

  “As the country gradually contracted,” resumed the moon, “various shockwaves travelled through its bedrock. Windowpanes rattled and pots of oregano fell off sills and Mafiosi weren’t able to aim machineguns accurately. The usual stuff. But for the Leaning Tower of Pisa the vibrations had a much more serious consequence. After more than eight hundred years of precarious slanting it finally toppled over, landing with a resounding crash in the Piazza dei Miracoli, causing the crowds of tourists to scatter and the owners of souvenir shops to weep openly.”

  “Tears!” cried Io. “At last, something that makes sense!”

  “Yes, they wept, but not for long. It was soon observed how the ancient structure had managed to preserve its integrity, refusing to shatter into pieces of rubble on impact. The Leaning Tower wasn’t a weakling! But it began rolling along the ground, propelled by the constant shockwaves. The citizens of Pisa waved farewell as it trundled south out of the city. Like a giant rolling pin, it was! South it continued to go, faster and faster along the coastal road that fringes the Ligurian Sea, and it made a dreadful noise as it went.”

  “What’s a noise?” wondered Europa.

  “The result of sound oscillations in air,” explained the moon, “because the beings who dwell on the surface of Earth don’t communicate by exchanging subatomic particles as we do. Not that the Leaning Tower is a ‘being’. But the people who watched it roll past heard it. In normal circumstances it would have run out of energy long before reaching Naples, but thanks to the cables and winches Italy was now much shorter and that other city was within travelling distance. On the outskirts of Naples there stands an impressive volcano by the name of Vesuvius.”

  “Volcanoes!” cried Io. “Something else that makes sense!”

  “Indeed so. An active volcano too, very powerful. Up one slope of Vesuvius rolled the tower and down the other side. But the compression of the country had altered the local geography, causing a vast kink to appear not far south of the mighty mountain. Italy was now corrugated! The tower began to climb the gradient of this kink but found it too steep and it rolled back, picking up speed and rumbling over the summit of Vesuvius again. But on the other side another kink had just appeared in the landscape. Halfway up this kink the tower rolled and back down. The same sequence of events kept repeating. And so, propelled by the constant shockwaves, the Leaning Tower of Pisa endlessly rolled over Vesuvius, back and forth, without pause.”

  “And the upshot was?” prompted Ganymede.

  “Remember how I compared the tower to a giant rolling pin? Well, Vesuvius was like a massive lump of dough and gradually the tower flattened out the volcano. The process took many months. When Vesuvius was an utterly flat circle, the tower finally veered off and ended up in a ditch. The vibrations powering it had stopped and the country had attained its final shape. Aeroplanes and helicopters mistook the giant smooth circle for an official landing place. Down they came and crowded the surface. It is said that Muscle Leany himself landed his own flying machine on the thin crust.”

  “What happened next?” gasped Callisto.

  “There was an eruption. Just because it had been thoroughly flattened and given a topping of aircraft didn’t mean Vesuvius was no longer a volcano. It erupted and bubbled lava like hot tomato sauce. The crust and topping were baked nicely. Before long a gigantic pizza stood steaming on the landscape! I know you’re wondering who would care to eat a pizza with a crust of stone, a lava sauce and aeroplanes and helicopters instead of olives and garlic cloves? Humans turn their noses up at such feasts. So do all the other members of the animal kingdom.”

  “Was it Muscle Leany who ate it?” babbled Hyperion.

  The moon chuckled softly. “No, that clanking tyrant only ate coal. But the impossible pizza made by the Leaning Tower of Pisa did attract the attention of certain colossi from the Front of Beyond. Colossi are huge living stone statues, by the way. The colossi devoured the pizza between them before it went cold, only spitting out the stones in the middle of the aircraft, because those weren’t real stones but engines. After the meal they left without paying the bill. I don’t think colossi will ever be welcome in Italy again, not even when the cables finally snap and the country springs back to its longer size.”

  The moon paused, very pleased with herself…

  Ganymede cleared his throat. “An intriguing fable, but what does it have to do with clowns? I don’t see the connection.”

  “There isn’t one!” mocked Titan.

  “Yes there is!” protested the moon. “So remarkable was the occurrence that all the clowns in the world decided that Earth had become too strange a place for them. So they emigrated to me instead. There’s no other explanation, is there?”

  “I see,” drawled Ganymede slowly.

  “That’s rather a fanciful deduction,” said Callisto.

  The moon snorted. “I’m only revealing why I think that clowns are overrunning me. Even if I’m wrong about their motives it doesn’t change the fact they’re here. I told you I have proof of their presence on me.”

  “Kindly share it with us,” pleaded Europa.

  “Whenever I’m bored and there are no poets about, I like to look down and peer through shop windows in the cities of my mistress. I saw something that horrified me the last time I did this. Let me tell you that humans love to make models of the Earth. These models are meticulous and all the oceans and continents are in the right place. Humans call them globes. One night I saw in the window of a little shop that someone had made a globe of me, the moon! I should have been flattered but it was a terrible thing to behold!”

  “Why so?” whispered Ganymede.

  “It showed me in my crescent phase. And sitting astride me was the puppet of a clown, not one of those happy and sinister clowns, but a sad example with a white face and a loose white smock with billowing sleeves and large buttons. He seemed to be crying and I surmised that his grief originated with the madness that had seized humanity in the wake of the volcanic pizza affair. I was shocked beyond belief by this sight. The globes that men make are as accurate as possible. It was therefore certain that I was thoroughly infested with clowns…”

  “Clowns? Just one clown, surely?” pointed out Hyperion.

  “An enormous clown, the largest clown that ever existed, if the model you saw represented scale realistically,” added Callisto.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” admitted the moon. “I had assumed the puppet symbolised a horde of tiny clowns, but now I see you are right.”

  “Wait!” cried Europa. “What if that shop was just a toyshop?”

  “I don’t understand,” said the moon.

  “Well, maybe that model wasn’t supposed to be a precise miniature rendition of your form and condition but just an amusing object, a sort of silly plaything. A sad clown sitting on a crescent moon sounds to me like a toy.”

  “A lie, do you mean?” frowned the moon.

  Europa shrugged. “If you like. An untruth. Some sort of joke. Not a scientific representation at all!”

  The other satellites burst into laughter. “Don’t be ridiculous! Those little creatures called humans don’t know how to tell lies. They’re too small! Lying is a highly advanced conceptual tool that requires a big brain.”

  “Of course,” muttered Europa. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” smiled Ganymede, “because we all know you were just trying to be helpful. But it’s clear that a vast clown is sitting on the moon. So why can’t
we see him? If he’s that big he ought to be visible from any point in the solar system. He must be invisible! That’s the only reasonable answer.”

  “And the moon says she doesn’t feel heavier, so he must also be massless,” added Titan.

  “What if we’re all overrun with giant invisible massless clowns?” shrieked Io. “After all, how would we know?!”

  Her statement triggered a surge of alarm in all of them. They looked at each other in horror. No expression provided reassurance. The alarm turned to panic and suddenly they were all shouting simultaneously, bawling as loudly as they could, trying to exorcise their intangible burdens through this mindless communal scream.

  The planets winced at the din.

  “What are they fussing about now?” grumbled Jupiter.

  “Who knows? It’s the call of the wild.”

  “I’m sure it is, dear Saturn, but that doesn’t really explain much. When they all howl together like this, they can keep it up all night. And in outer space night is a long time indeed! Howling, just howling. But why?”

  Only Earth attempted to answer this question.

  “Must be a fool moon,” she said.

  The Pink Giant

  “What’s your star sign?” asked Libra.

  “My name is Gemini but I was born under the sign of Slurp,” replied Gemini. “Are you aware of it?”

  Libra shook his head. “Nope.”

  “The influence it exerts is creamy and profound. Slurpians can expect a prosperous life with lashings of liquid assets and generous handfuls of the croutons of achievement.”

  “I still don’t know it,” said Libra.

  “Because there’s no such sign,” sneered Orion.

  “Of course there is. I can see it from where I’m sitting. Between those two quasars,” insisted Gemini.

  “Don’t be absurd. I know all the constellations of the sky in detail and Slurp most certainly isn’t one of them. The region you are referring to is a sector of Draco. You’re a liar.”

  “Slurpians never lie. That’s one quality that…”

  “Orion doesn’t have a sense of humour,” whispered Cygnus urgently but his remark was overheard.