In early December, Seto notices that Atem has started going out into the garden at night. No coat, around midnight, fifteen to twenty minutes, never on nights when the weather turns. The data indicates a clear habit. It also indicates that Atem faces precisely north every time, and moves his head as though searching for something he cannot find.
The answer takes five minutes to look up, and it is on an elementary page of astronomy. The celestial pole is not fixed. Three thousand years of precession have moved it, and the star that stood at the axis of Atem's world — the one he was taught to look for when lost, the one that never set — now turns at fourth magnitude in a dark part of the northern sky, like any other star.
Atem knew the desert was gone, and the river, and the palace. He had accepted all of it. He had assumed the sky, at least, would be the same.
Seto has no words of comfort. He has never had any. What he does have is a projection dome and forty-eight hours.
This is a translation of an Artificial Intelligence work.
Original Title: 周極星
Original Author: Gemini with 葉人(@Hathor_yuki)
Personal site: https://prideshipping.sakura.ne.jp
At first he took it for coincidence. He finished work, switched off the study lamp, and there below the window, in the winter-bare garden, was a figure. No coat, standing there, looking at the sky. A man who had been a king, gazing up at the night sky with his mouth open, entirely undefended.
The second time, he knew it was not coincidence. The third time, Seto began recording the times. Around midnight, more or less. Duration, fifteen to twenty minutes. On nights when the weather turned, he did not go out. The data indicated a clear habit.
"What are you doing in the garden at night."
Asked at the breakfast table, Atem answered without pausing the hand that was carrying egg to his mouth.
"I'm taking the night air. It clears my head."
"Without a coat."
"Desert nights were colder than this."
"This is not the desert. Is that a line from a man who has only just had a cold?"
"I passed that one on to you and made a full recovery," Atem said, and puffed out his chest. Having puffed it out, he set about changing the subject. "Never mind that, Kaiba, about today's Duel——"
The reasoning held. The explanation was in order. Too much in order. Seto suspended the pursuit. Beneath this man's too-orderly explanations, something was always buried. If he was going to dig, it would be once he had the data.
The next night, Seto observed from the study window.
Atem stood in the same position in the garden. And looked at the sky. Not idly. The direction his face turned was the same every time.
North.
Precisely north. And in that posture, he moved his head slightly from side to side. It was the movement of a man searching for something. Searching for something in one corner of the wide night sky, in the north — and not finding it, giving up after fifteen minutes or so, and coming back in. That was repeated every night.
Seto returned to the desk in the study and thought.
The northern sky. A search. An Egyptian from three thousand years ago.
The search took five minutes. The answer was on an elementary page of astronomy.
Axial precession. The Earth's axis of rotation, like the wobble of a spinning top, traces a slow circle with a period of roughly twenty-six thousand years. The celestial north pole is not fixed. It travels among the stars.
The present North Star is Polaris, in Ursa Minor.
But three thousand years ago — in Atem's time, what stood near the celestial north pole was a different star. Thuban, in Draco. The architecture of ancient Egypt was designed to the northern sky of its own era. The shafts of the pyramids point at the pole star of that time.
Which meant this.
Every night, that man was searching the northern sky for the sky he knew.
And not finding it.
Because the constellations, all of them, had shifted. Three thousand years of wobble had moved the axis of the heavens. The star that in that man's sky had stood immovable, as though nailed to the centre of the world, was now turning in a dark place off the pole, as a fourth-magnitude star like any other.
The desert, the river, the palace — that these were lost, that man knew. He had come back here having accepted it. But the sky — surely he had thought the sky, at least, was the same. Anyone would. That however much the world below might change in three thousand years, the constellations alone would not.
They had changed. Even the sky had moved house.
Seto looked out of the window. In the garden, tonight again, that man was standing. Facing north. The one man in the world who had lost the landmark for the way home, without a coat.
"You won't find it."
The next night, Seto went down into the garden and stood beside him. Atem turned round and looked, for an instant, caught out. The face of someone found picking at food in the middle of the night.
"……What are you talking about."
"Your North Star."
The colour of evasion dropped away from Atem's face. He was silent for a while, and then let out a breath, like a man giving in. The white of it came loose in the night air.
"How long have you known."
"Since the point at which I had three nights' record of you turning your head at the same angle."
"……You've a nasty hobby. Same as ever."
Atem looked up at the sky again.
"At first I thought it was the light. The nights in this country are too bright. I thought the town lights were putting the stars out. So I picked a good clear night and looked. Still nothing. It doesn't make sense. That isn't the kind of star it is. Every star in the sky can turn, and that one alone doesn't. It's the star of the world's axis. The priests measured the hours by it every night, and the baselines of the temples were drawn from it. I was——"
There, the words broke off a little.
"……I was taught it as a child, too. If you're lost, look for that one. North is under that one. That one is a star that never sets, so you can see it any time, from anywhere. And that's…… Kaiba. Laugh at me. I looked for it after three thousand years, and the whole sky had moved house."
Atem did, in fact, laugh a little. He was bad at it.
"I did think the shapes of the constellations felt wrong. But my knowledge of the stars only goes as far as a king's general education, you know. I thought I was imagining it. That it was my memory that had faded. That after three thousand years anyone would misremember the sky. But no. You looked it up, didn't you? Of course you did. Tell me. Where has my star gone."
"It hasn't gone anywhere," Seto said. "What moved wasn't the star. It was the Earth's axis. Thuban — your star is still in Draco. It has only stepped down from the post of pole star. The present pole star is Polaris. Your star is turning at fourth magnitude, partway up the northern sky, along with all the others."
"……Turning?" Atem's eyes went wide. "That one? Not turning was the whole of what that one was."
"The post of pole star gets passed around, on a twenty-six-thousand-year cycle. Polaris will step down in time. In twelve thousand years it's Vega's turn."
"Passed around." Atem repeated the words as though chewing them. Then, as if the strength had gone out of him, he sat down on a garden stone. "……I see. So even the eternal star works a rota. It was my own fault for being away three thousand years. I missed the notice about the move."
It had the shape of a joke, but the voice was not at the temperature of one. Seto remained standing beside him and looked at that profile. The garden's night lamp traced the man's outline, thinly.
"I trusted the sky, at least."
Atem said it quietly, all at once.
"When I came back, everything had changed, hadn't it. The course of the Nile, the language, the shape of the country. That's fine. It's three thousand years. Of course it has. I was prepared for it. But when night came and I looked up — I felt as though, if I could just find that star, I'd be able to think this place was a continuation of the world I knew. However much the ground changed, if north was under that one, then I wasn't lost."
"……"
"And I couldn't find it. Looking every night. Stupid, isn't it. I couldn't tell anyone. Not you, not Aibou. Think about it — a king, on the verge of crying because he'd lost a star."
He has become human, Seto thought. He had thought the same thing the other day, and thought it again now. And this time it came from somewhere far deeper than bacon talked about in his sleep.
Seto said nothing. He did not have words of comfort. What he did not have, he could not produce. What he did have, on the other hand, was to hand.
"Atem."
"What."
"Keep the night after tomorrow free."
"A Duel?"
"Just keep it free."
Two nights later, Seto put Atem in the car.
He did not tell him where they were going. One of KaibaCorp's research facilities. There is a dome on the roof. It was the full-sky projection facility for next-generation Solid Vision. Its proper purpose was the development of theme park attractions.
That this development had been entirely halted for the past forty-eight hours, Atem did not know. External astronomical data had been purchased, precession and proper motion calculated three thousand years backwards, and the whole sky of the middle Nile in the tenth century BCE — clear weather, moonless night — reproduced from first magnitude down to sixth.
The department in charge worked through the night with the expression of people to whom this was happening again. The employees of this company do not distinguish between their president being in earnest and their president being sane.
Seto stood Atem in the centre of the dome and said:
"I'm cutting the lights."
The lighting went out. Complete darkness, for one beat.
Then the sky came on.
The sound of Atem drawing breath was audible in the dark.
It was the night sky of three thousand years ago, with no light pollution. The Milky Way crossed overhead at a density that did the name river no shame. And in the northern sky — at one point in it, there was a blue-white star. Even when the stars around it began to rotate slowly about an invisible axis, that one point alone did not move.
"……Thuban."
Atem's voice was shaking.
"It's there. That's it. That's the position. Kaiba, that's it, there's no mistaking it, that height, that——" The words would not continue, and then, as though a dam had given way, they continued. "Look, over there, that's Sah! The star of Osiris! And the one following after it is Sopdet — when that rises, the river floods. It's the start of the year. And those, in the north — those are the stars that never set. We called them the Imperishable Stars. A dead king ascends there, I was taught. He becomes a star that never, ever sinks below the horizon——"
Atem pointed at the sky like a child and called out the names. In the names of three thousand years ago. In the star-names of his mother tongue, whose pronunciation had not been lost. Seto listened to it in the dark, in silence. As a lecture on the stars it was incoherent. There was no order to it; he simply pointed and shouted as each thing came back to him.
It did not matter. The data had been reproduced perfectly. But the only one in the universe who could add this voice to this sky was this man.
Before long, Atem went quiet. He sat down on the floor of the dome and simply looked up until his neck ached. Seto sat down too, a little apart. The rotating false stars flowed slowly above the two of them.
"Kaiba."
"What."
"Can this be seen any time?"
"The equipment stays. If you want it, I'll have it projected every night."
Atem was silent for a while. Seto waited for thanks. But what came back was not thanks.
"No," Atem said. "It's all right. This is — now and then is enough."
"……You're dissatisfied?"
"No, the opposite." Atem laughed. This time he was not bad at it. "How could I possibly be dissatisfied. You gave me back the sky. The whole sky of three thousand years ago. No one in history has ever made anyone a present like this. But if I looked at this every night, I wouldn't be able to live here."
"Meaning what."
"This is the sky of the place I came from." Atem said it with his eyes still on the false stars overhead. "It's beautiful, and I miss it, and if I saw it every night I'd start to think of the sky out there as the wrong sky. That won't do. Because — well, of course — the sky I'm going to live under from now on is the shifted one. Under that current sky, with some newcomer called Polaris in the axis seat. That's where I'm going to live. With you."
In the darkness, Seto was at a loss for an answer. At a loss, he looked at that profile. The false starlight seemed to catch, faintly, at the rim of the man's eye.
"So I'll learn the current sky over again. The name of the North Star, the shapes of the constellations, the ones we have now. Not knowing the sky of the place you live is, for a king — no." Atem corrected himself. "— for a resident, not a good look."
On the way home, in the car, Atem watched the real night sky the whole way from the passenger window. The city sky, sparse with stars, too bright, shifted. Then, abruptly, he said:
"Kaiba. I have one request."
"Let's hear it."
"Teach me how to find the North Star as it is now. And — Thuban as well. I want to know where it is in the sky we have. Fourth magnitude, you said. Borderline for the naked eye. That's fine. If I know the position, I can at least pay my respects."
"Pay your respects."
"It's a star I'm indebted to. Stepping down from the post is no reason to neglect an obligation."
Seto kept his eyes on the road and smiled with one corner of his mouth.
The next clear night, the two of them stood in the garden of the Kaiba mansion. Seto taught him how to trace from the Plough to Polaris, and then pointed at the dark region between Ursa Minor and Lyra. Atem strained his eyes for a long time, and eventually said, quietly, "There."
At fourth magnitude, in a city sky, it was light right at the edge of being visible. The star that three thousand years ago had been the axis of the world. Now a dark star that no one would notice unless it announced itself. Atem turned towards that quarter of the sky and murmured something, briefly. It was a language Seto did not know. In the correct sound, vowels and all.
Then Atem looked up at the man beside him and said:
"Right. That's done. — So, Kaiba. The pole star now is that way, wasn't it?"
"It is."
"Good. I've got it. North is under that one." Atem pointed at Polaris, and then lowered the finger slowly and turned it on the man in front of him. "And home is whichever way you are. That way I won't get lost again."
Seto started to say something, stopped, and in the end chose the one thing he always chose.
"……Obviously."
Overhead, the current sky turned quietly about its new axis. In another ten thousand years this sky, too, will move house again. It does not matter, Seto thought. The pole star is a rota.
But this one's landmark is no longer set in the sky.
