Read Online Two Moons by Thomas Mallon - Free Book Online

me.”
    “A good question,” said Cynthia. She stood up and walked over to the parlor’s small fireplace, fingering some china ornaments on its mantel and carefully choosing her words. “Because I half believe you,” she said, not taking her eyes from the object in hand. Once trigonometry had brought her own attention to the stars, she had found herself tempted by astrology’s mathematics. They seemed to be a gaudy grease for the heavens’ machinery, something to set the spheres moving even faster. “The stars and the planets are too orderly to be without meaning. I doubt your Master Gabriel actually knows how to read that meaning, and I’m certain no Presbyterian preacher has seen into it.” She paused to pick up another figurine. “But I want to see into it.”
    “It sounds as if you want me to be teachin’ you the trade,” said Madam Costello, who quickly corrected herself: “the art of reading the planets.”
    “Right now,” said Cynthia, “I want you to help me see the heavens through a telescope.” She walked briskly back to her chair and pulled it close to Mary Costello’s. “The first thing I want you to tell me are my prospects for getting off Venus.”
    Within a few seconds, she had dispelled the astrologer’s perplexity, explaining to her the past month and a half with Professor Harkness. She described the comings and goings of the Observatory men, the sights and sounds beyond the walls and above the ceilings. She needed to know the likelihood—and best methods—of penetrating them. Madam Costello listened intently, not even rising when the colored man from the nearby hotel arrived with the dinner pail she ordered three or four nights a week.
    “Set it down in back, Charlie. Would you be wantin’ to join me, Mrs. May?”
    “No,” said Cynthia. “And I shouldn’t keep—”
    “I can warm it later on the stove. Right now I want you to answerme somethin’. What happened to the young feller who figured into things the last time we spoke? The one whose coloring you was so keen on.”
    Pleased by the astrologer’s memory, Cynthia had no hesitation responding: “I’m still not sure what he does. He doesn’t advertise himself like Professor Newcomb.”
    The older woman got up and went over to a bureau near the front of the room. From a middle drawer she extracted a large sheet of paper, which she set down between herself and Cynthia.
    “What is this?” the younger woman asked.
    “The beginnings of your star chart,” said Madam Costello, who pointed to a small annotation at the paper’s bottom right corner. MRS. MAY, APRIL 10, 1842 . “I’m an honest woman,” she explained. “You gave me your book in exchange for my readings, and so I set to work, before you disappeared.”
    “Tell me my chances of transiting away from Venus.”
    Madam Costello sighed. “Well, there’s all sorts of figurin’ to be done. First, we need to know where the moon was when you came forth from your mammy.” She took The Gospel of the Stars from the top of the bureau and opened it to the chart of constants on page 59. “ ‘Divide the year of birth by 19, multiply the remainder by 11 and divide the result by 30,’ ” she read, trying to conceal the anxiety that this part of her job always provoked. “ ‘To this remainder add the day of month and the constant according to the above table and divide the result by 30. The remainder will be the moon’s age. To find her longitude’ ”—she pronounced the word with a hard “g”—“ ‘on any date, multiply her age by 12, which will give the number of degrees that are to be added to the Sun’s longitude at noon.’ ”
    She reached behind her for some paper and a pencil, wincing as her corset pinched.
    “Three hundred and forty-eight degrees,” said Cynthia.
    “Sweet Jaysus! How did you do that?”
    “I applied the constant and did the arithmetic.” Impatient with theolder woman’s marveling, she asked, “Now what do I do with the