Led by a Star
A science fiction short story by Zaklog the Great
One afternoon in mid-October, two men sat at a small round table in the Starbucks in Mishawaka, Indiana watching the light traffic pass by on Lincolnway. The sky was covered by a blanket of dark grey clouds. The two looked very similar with dark brown hair, slightly receding hairlines, and narrow faces, although one had a close-cut beard and rectangular glasses in contrast to the other’s smooth shave and rounder glasses.
The clean-shaven one took a sip from the straw of a Frappuccino while the other let his cardboard coffee cup warm his hands for the moment.
The bearded one said, “You know, you really should cut back on the sugar.”
The other rolled his eyes, “Yes, Father.”
“Tom, I’ve asked you not to call me that.”
“But Father Gabriel, I have to show due respect to your office.”
“Well, if you insist, Dr. Bruno.”
“Touché, Gabe, and not yet.” He groaned. “Not another year, at least. So how’s your parish these days?”
Gabe took a sip of his coffee. “The usual. Hearing sins, counselling, preparing sermons. Not too long before we’ve got to start planning for Christmas masses.” After a pause, he continued. “You’d be surprised how quickly hearing people’s sins becomes boring. Talked to Mom lately?”
“Yeah, I need to call. It’s been a while.”
“You go much longer and she’ll get on my case about it. So how’s astronomy these days?”
“Teaching classes, grading essays, reviewing my own research data. Same old.… Although…nah, it’s too nerdy.”
Gabe leaned forward. “What? What is it?”
Tom took another sip from his straw, then leaned back. He got an abstract look in his eyes. “Weirdest thing. Everybody’s arguing about it and no one has any clue what to make of it.”
Gabe chuckled. “Controversy in the contentious field of astronomy, huh?”
But Tom continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Zeta Puppis. Over the past year or so, it’s completely shifted its spectrum. Blue all the way to red.”
He stared off into space a moment. “Never seen or heard of anything like it.”
Seeing how serious his brother was, Gabriel asked, “Okay. So what does it mean?”
“Like I said, no one knows. I mean…it looks like the damned star aged several million years overnight.” He finally looked back at Gabe. “Oh, uh, sorry.”
“Act of contrition and two Hail Marys,” said Gabe drily. “So this star just…aged for no apparent reason?”
Tom nodded. “Yes, aged a lot. In human terms this would be like going to bed age 30 and waking up 85. I mean either that or changed velocity…”
He got up, went over to the counter, and came back with a few napkins. After scribbling numbers on them for a minute, he said, “Yeah, changed velocity at something like a third of the speed of light. I don’t know which is more insane.”
“Changed velocity? How’s that work?”
Tom took a didactic tone, as if this were something he’d been over many times with a class: “It’s called redshift. When a light source moves away from you, the speed of light remains constant, so the wavelength shifts, moving towards the red end of the spectrum.”
Gabe took a gulp of his coffee. “So…what if it’s coming towards us?”
Tom smiled. “Good question. That’s called blueshift. Much less common, but it does happen.”
Gabe nodded. “So this star either aged ridiculously fast or else just started speeding away from us?”
“A truly massive gravity source suddenly appearing could also do it, but that’s even crazier than the other two. Three explanations, but none of them make any sense.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a real conundrum.” Gabe stood up. “Well, I’m due back in my office to do some pre-marital counseling. Good kids. I think they’ll do well.”
“Good to see you, bro.” Tom stood as well, and the two hugged goodbye.
Gabe said, “I’ll come your way next time?”
Tom nodded, and sat back down, apparently getting absorbed in his own thoughts again.
Passing the trash can, Gabe drank down the rest of his coffee and tossed the cup in. As he was about to go out the door, Gabe turned back, his eyebrows pulled together in a question. “Hey Tom…what color is Betelgeuse?”
Tom turned his head to look. “Red. Betelgeuse is red.”
Gabe nodded to himself and walked out, leaving his brother to ponder newly red Zeta Puppis.
A Friday afternoon two weeks later, Tom and Gabe were leaving the racquetball court at the U. of Chicago field house. The two were sweaty and breathing hard.
“I see the priesthood hasn’t slowed you down any.”
“Nowhere in church teaching will you find it say that God wants weak men. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
Tom tilted his head a bit in acknowledgment. “Plein Air after?
“Sounds good.”
Just as they entered the locker room, Gabe asked, “Hey, you star-gazers still puzzling over that red star?”
Tom side-eyed him. “Yes.”
Gabe grunted noncommittally.
Forty-five minutes later, freshly showered and changed, the two sat at a table in the Plein Air Cafe chatting as they waited to order. The usual, their parents’ health, jobs, local politics.
When the waitress, probably a U. of C. student went to get their drinks (Coke for Tom, water with lemon for Gabe), Gabe asked, “So will you be coming to Christmas mass? It’ll be the first I’m leading myself.”
Tom hemmed, “A-a-ah, I don’t know, Gabe. I haven’t been in a while.”
“Hey, Mom’s coming. I even got Dad.” After a skeptical look from Tom, he continued, “I won’t even ask you to do confession or take communion. Just show up.”
Tom sighed lightly, and only said, “We’ll see.”
After the waitress left with their sandwich orders, Gabe said, “I found something interesting related to the star that turned red.”
Tom raised an eyebrow. “O-o-okay.”
Despite his older brother’s obvious skepticism, Gabe continued, “In Chaucer’s ‘Carpenter’s Tale,’ he refers a few times to ‘blue Betelgeuse.’”
Suddenly Tom’s expression became more serious, and he leaned forward. “Really?”
“Yeah, and not only that. One of the villains in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Won says he ‘was born by baleful scarlet Betelgeuse.’”
Tom shook his head and stared off to the side, open-mouthed, for a moment. Turning back to Gabe, he said, “So, to Chaucer it was blue, but Shakespeare called it red?”
“Yup.”
Slowly, as if thinking it through as he spoke, Tom asked, “What are the dates there?”
Gabe smiled broadly, “I thought that might be your next question. Chaucer lived in the 1300s. Shakespeare was 200 years later.”
Apparently to himself, he added, “Amazing how much English changed between the two.”
The waitress came back with their sandwiches. Gabe immediately dug into his, but Tom just sat staring into space like he didn’t even notice.
After a couple bites, Gabe said, “Hey bro, you don’t eat that soon, I’m going to.”
Tom looked down at his plate, shook himself and then started eating as well.
Their talk returned to more mundane topics, the prospects of the Bears that season, Tom’s relationship with his girlfriend Sarah (whom Gabe gently but persistently nudged him to finally marry).
Half an hour later, they again hugged before Gabe made the drive back to Mishawaka. As they walked out, Gabe said quietly, “That star thing is reminding me of something. Was it Origen? Tertullian? Anyway, good game today, bro. Catch you again soon.”
“Yeah, Gabe. Chaucer and Shakespeare you said?”
Gabe smiled and nodded and said, “Not sure if I’ve helped or made you more confused.”
As he closed his car door, Gabe continued, “Good luck with this. It sounds like there’s a real mystery here.”
In the middle of November, Tom was sitting in his small office at the school. He’d shoved aside his keyboard, and most of his desk was occupied by several open books and a small notepad he’d been scribbling notes in.
He leaned back in his chair, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called his brother.
After a few rings, “Hey Tom, what’s up?”
“I just had to tell you you sent me down one hell of a rabbit hole, Gabe.”
Gabe sounded puzzled. “I…did?”
Tom chuckled. “Yeah, I feel like I’m creating an entirely new academic discipline: literary-historical-astronomy. I’ve been searching through all kinds of old books for references to blue or red stars. Sarah’s pissed at me because she says I’m barely home these days. I gotta keep digging though.”
“So…found anything?”
“Yes, three more stars that show the same pattern. They’re red today, but in the not-too-distant past, were described as blue. At least one I’ve already found a slightly later source calling it red.”
“There are several of these?”
Tom got up and paced back and forth in the small office he shared with another doctoral student/instructor.
“Looks like. I have no idea how many. I suspect people have noticed them one-by-one before, but no one else has put together a pattern.”
“Yeah. Uh, hey Tom, I’m driving and about to get on the highway. Can’t talk much longer.”
“Ok. But man, if I can figure this out and write this up, I’m going to win a name for myself. This could be huge.”
“I can imagine. Hey Tom, that first one you told me about…Zeta—”
“Zeta Puppis.”
“That’s it. How far away is it?”
Tom went back to his computer. “Let me double-check. Um…latest measurements put it about 1,015 light years away.”
“Right…”
“Why?”
“Just thinking about something. Hey, gotta go. See you at Mom & Dad’s for Thanksgiving.”
“See you, Gabe.”
After both of them had overstuffed themselves with turkey, mashed potatoes and Mom’s spiced blueberry pie, the two brothers were taking a walk around their parents’ neighborhood in Rochester, Indiana. Each held a lidded paper cup of hot chocolate. While it wasn’t punishingly cold, their breath puffed out in visible clouds under the orange streetlights.
“Can’t believe you forgot to bring your homemade cranberry sauce, Tom.”
“Yeah, I know. Been busy wrapping up the semester, trying to get that research together.”
“Yeah? Anything new?”
Tom shook his head. “No conclusions, at least. Just a bigger puzzle.”
Gabriel nodded and the two walked a dozen or so steps in silence, both taking a long drink from their hot chocolate.
Gabriel looked up at the evening sky where Venus was bright in the west and just a few stars were starting to appear.
“Hey Tom, is there an infrared star in the Virgo constellation?”
Tom gulped a mouthful of hot chocolate too fast and ended up coughing a few times before he finally replied: “Why would you know that?”
Gabriel grinned and took another drink from his own, swishing it in his mouth a moment before swallowing.
“If a star was moving away from us, it would shift toward red, right?”
“Yes, but what does that—”
“And if it kept accelerating, it might shift all the way into infrared?”
“Uh…yes. But you still haven’t answered my—”
“It took me a while to find it, but when you first mentioned this, it reminded me of something. I finally found it last week.”
He paused and watched a puff of his breath dissolve and disperse in the night air.
Gabe continued, “Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in his letter to the Thebans, mentioned the miracle of the star Poimén changing blue to red 10 years after the destruction of the Temple.”
Tom nodded. “Yeah, like the others.”
“Ignatius said Poimén, in the Virgo constellation, changed to herald the birth of our savior.” He chuckled. “Which is a very strange thing to say about something that happened over 80 years later.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense.”
“He said it was told him in a dream by my namesake. Then 600 years later, St. John of Damascus wrote that Poimén had disappeared completely, and said that, ‘In the heavens, as on Earth, the Shepherd went forth from the Virgin to spread the news of his birth.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, right.” Gabe sipped again. “Poimén is Greek for shepherd.”
The two by this point had circled halfway around the block, and were now at a park near their parents’ home. Gabe crossed the grass to one of the benches and sat down. Tom followed a few steps behind and sat beside him.
“Ok, so he was talking about that star. And…and you think that star, uh, Poimén, started moving away from us, turned red, and eventually went infrared.”
Gabe gave a brief shrug. “Looks like.”
“But,” Tom chewed his lower lip a moment, “I still don’t get why they thought this had to do with Jesus’s birth.”
Gabe watched the sky where the crescent moon had just emerged from behind a patch of clouds.
“Historians are pretty sure whoever set the year 1 AD got it slightly wrong, that he was born in 4 BC.”
Tom threw his paper cup at a trash can nearby. It missed and dinged off the side. “Dammit, Gabe! Stop talking in circles! If you know what they’re talking about, just tell me.”
“And ruin your chance to see it for yourself? What kind of brother would I be then?”
Walking over to pick up his cup and toss it in the trash, Tom sighed and rolled his hand in a “get on with it” gesture.
“I’m getting there. I promise. How far away did you say Zeta Puppis was?”
Tom sat down next to Gabe again, “Um, 1,015 light years.”
“So for a signal to get from us to there and back would be…?”
“Double that, so 2,030 years.”
“And what was 2,030 years ago, give or take a little room for error?”
Tom looked over at his brother with a raised eyebrow, then his his eyes suddenly widened.
“No,” he said. “You’re not saying…”
“Check the dates on the other stars. I think you’ll find they fit the same pattern.”
Gabe stood up and started walking back towards the house. As he passed the trash can, he tossed his own cup in, then turned around and took a few steps backwards and, with arms raised to embrace the sky, continued talking.
“I doubt you’ll be able to publish on this, but I can tell you why they’re moving away from Earth: They’re spreading the word.”
He turned back and kept walking.
Tom turned to the stars in the sky above him, finding Betelgeuse from Orion’s Belt. He stared open-mouthed for three slow breaths, then jumped to his feet and hurried to catch up to his brother.
They walked side by side for a few minutes before Tom spoke up: “Hey, Gabe?”
“Yeah?”
“I think…I think I might come to your Christmas mass.”
Gabe turned his head and smiled. “I’d love to see you there.”
As they walked back into their childhood home together, the stars shone brightly down out of the black sky.