As the sun begins to set, one of his automatons walks out of the tower, its gears in need of tuning and grease, and hoists the Astronomer onto its back, hauling him inside. The next day, the Astronomer is back to normal.
Or mostly normal.
The village notices that a smile has begun to play on the Astronomer’s lips. One that has not been there before. It is fixed into his face as though with paste or paint or solder. And what’s worse, he has started muttering.
“Wings,” the Astronomer whispers over and over again. “Wings, wings, wings. Thorax and segment and luminous eye. But, oh! Wings!”
Sunup to sundown, he mutters without ceasing.
And the villagers begin to worry.
5.
By the beginning of the Bug’s second day in Vingus Country, the loneliness of the journey has begun to take its toll. Now when he sees the figure of a man moving in the same direction that he, himself, is traveling, the Insect increases his speed, his long legs bounding down the road in great, leaping strides. He adjusts his five pinces-nez on his long snout and smooths his finely tailored waistcoat. He ignores the itching of his tightly bound wings. He clears his throat. He knows the value of a good first impression.
“Tempora mutantur et nos mutantur in illis,”3 the Insect says to the man—a farmer, by the look of him. He dearly hopes that the man is impressed by this greeting. Indeed, it is terribly impressive, as well as being profoundly true. Has not the Pyca been changed by his time away? Has not his home country been changed as well?
It is nearly noon, and the Hon. Professor is feeling peckish and overly warm. He would not mind an invitation to lunch on a blanket in the shade, or, even more desirable, to lunch in a farmhouse with cold milk and cold ale and a highly solicitous farmwife. He waves to the farmer and uncurls the final segment of his right arm to shake the man’s hand. With his left, he adjusts the two final pinces-nez at the end of his impressively long proboscis and gives what he is sure must be a winning smile.
(The winning smile is important. After all, did Professor Pedantare not implore his students over and over with the same sage proclamation: Ut ameris, amabilis esto4? Surely, after all this time, the lesson still stands.)
“Come again?” the farmer says. He is an aged fellow. His face is deeply creased and his back is bent. The Insect, in possession of a sensitive heart and a loving soul, is moved to pity. He reaches into his pack and pulls out a brightly colored parasol and proffers it to the farmer with a flourish. The farmer jumps backward and screams. “Attack an old man, will you?”
“Pardon?”
“I have no money if that’s what yer asking.”
The Pyca peers at the parasol, its bright point gleaming dangerously in the midday sun, and understands. “My apologies,” the Bug says. In the Capital City—a cosmopolitan, forward-thinking place—his appearance is, while unusual, rarely commented on. No one finds him particularly dangerous. Why would they? The Hon. Professor spent his career cultivating his erudition and his appearance. To see an insect standing eye to eye with a man must surely be a surprise for the uninitiated, but seeing him decked in a perfectly tailored waistcoat of the finest brocade and a top hat imported from the Lands Beyond the Sea—well. Clearly the man is in shock. The Pyca decides to try a different tack.
“My good man,” he says, “it occurs to me that my appearance alarms you. Fear not. I seek education and nothing more. As the scholars tell us, scientia potentia est.5 Have we not found such pearls of wisdom to be more than true? And if not, who are we to argue with scholars?”
“Yer lookin’ for the Astronomer?”
“My good man,” says the Pyca. “That is exactly who I seek. Quaere verum,6 my good professor once said to me. If I am to seek the truth, I believe the truth must rest in the hands of the man who watches the stars.”
“Hmph,” the farmer grunts. “Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.”7
So startled is the Professor that all five of his pinces-nez fly from his proboscis and tumble to the ground. One shatters irrevocably. “Why,” he sputters, pressing his hands to his heart, “my dear sir! You are a scholar!” In all his years in Vingus Country, he had never heard anyone respond in Latin—except glumly, in school, before the headmaster’s downward stare. It was the custom to, instead, bear the weight of learning with the patience of a snapping turtle, and leave it behind as soon as possible. This, after all, is why the Insect left.
“No,” the farmer says darkly. “That man in the tower’s the scholar. If you can call him a man.” He pauses, rubs his hand over the gnarl of his face, expels breath through pursed lips. “It is rude, I know, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I won’t share the road with you, Mister . . . whatever you are. I’ll not invite you to my home, nor to my table, neither, but you’re welcome to the lunch my good wife packed for me in this sack.” He lets his sack fall to the ground, and he backs away. “This road’ll take you right to where you want to go. Walk ’til you find that infernal tower. It’s unnatural, is what it is. Stars. The Astronomer. All of it. Unnatural. And I’ll bid you good day.”
And the farmer turns on his heel and walks down the road in the opposite direction. The Bug does not call out to him, nor does he beg him to return. “A strange sort of fellow,” he says, and pulls a hunk of meat from the satchel. He eats it slowly and presses onward through the shimmering hills.
6.
The Astronomer lives alone. He has always lived
