The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(61)

And what might that story be? Locke was aware that a scientist by the name of John Herschel, son of William Herschel, the famous astronomer royal to the court of King George, was in South Africa that August carrying out astronomical observations. Two years earlier, he had set sail from England to the Cape of Good Hope with a battery of optical instruments, in order to set up an observatory and catalog the stars, nebulae, and other objects of the southern skies, in the hope of completing the survey of the northern heavens undertaken by his father. But there had been no news of the astronomer in two years, and from where he was now, communication with New York took at least two weeks. This would give Locke more than enough time to bombard the American public with a series of articles listing Herschel’s numerous alleged discoveries, without the astronomer knowing or being able to refute them.

Locke immediately set to work, his usually solemn face wearing a playful grin, and on August 21 his first report appeared under the heading “Important Astronomical Discoveries.” The article announced that during a visit to New York, an erudite Scotsman had provided the Sun with a copy of the Edinburgh Journal of Science, which contained a fragment of the travel diary of Doctor Andrew Grant, a fictitious collaborator of Herschel’s. The first section of Locke’s article was taken up with a description of the wondrous telescope built by the astronomer, with its massive lens that could capture objects as small as eighteen inches on the Moon’s surface and project them onto the observatory wall. Thanks to Herschel’s brilliant invention, he and other astronomers had been able to study every planet in the solar system, and many others in adjacent ones. It had also enabled them to elaborate a convincing theory about comets and to solve almost every problem of mathematical astronomy. Having laid the groundwork, the subject of Locke’s second article was the Moon itself. On careful examination of its surface, the astronomers had been able to make out an area of dark green rock and what looked like a field of rose-colored poppies. While exploring Riccioli’s Mare Nubium, they had discovered beautiful white sandy beaches dotted with strange trees and purple quartz pyramids more than sixty feet tall. And then, as they continued peering through that extraordinary lens, they had noticed strange stirrings of life. Astonished, they glimpsed the first animals. Herds of creatures resembling bison filled the Moon’s plains, and crowning its gentle hills, like watery blue etchings, were a few graceful unicorns. In his third article, taking the hoax to an extreme, Locke continued his zoological classification of lunar species. He described Herschel and Grant’s mixture of shock and fascination as they contemplated a dwarf reindeer, a horned bear, and even some charming two-legged beavers busily building wooden huts with plumes of smoke billowing from their tall chimneys.

Thanks to Locke’s articles, sales of the Sun superseded those of the Times of London. However, he was not done yet. His fourth article contained the most surprising revelation of all: the astronomers had seen the Moon’s inhabitants, whom they named Homo vespertilio, or bat man. According to their description, these creatures were about three feet tall, covered in a coppery coat of fur, and equipped with membranous wings that reached from their shoulders to their knees. With their wings folded, they had the same elegant bearing as humans, and with them spread, they soared through the air like graceful ballerinas. Their faces were like those of the orangutan, except more intelligent looking, and their prominent lips moved as if they were speaking. The telescope showed them lazing happily in the grass, albeit in a manner that on Earth might have been deemed somewhat improper. And after that fabulous disclosure, which left readers of the Sun reeling, Locke prepared to deliver the final blow. In his last article, he described how, in the midst of that primitive Eden, Herschel had glimpsed what was unquestionably an enormous religious temple of polished sapphire with a roof of golden metal. What god did those creatures worship? But just as readers’ interest had reached its peak, the paper reported that owing to an unfortunate oversight on the part of the astronomers, what had come to be known as the Telescope of Marvels had been left pointing toward the Sun, and its rays, intensified by the enormous lens, had burnt a twenty-foot-wide hole in the floor of the observatory, rendering it useless.

After the stir the story caused in the United States, it had appeared in almost every newspaper around the world, many of which claimed to have had access to the original articles in the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Consequently, a committee of scientists from Yale University was encouraged to pay a visit to the Sun’s offices, with the innocent intention of seeing the documents for themselves. However, despite being deceived by the newspaper’s employees, who sent them on a wild goose chase for several days, and never actually seeing the articles, the scientists returned to New Haven without suspecting that these antics concealed an elaborate hoax. Other newspapers were more skeptical and accused the Sun of hoodwinking its readers. The Herald even claimed that the Edinburgh Journal of Science had gone out of print several years earlier. A few days later, the Sun’s editors hurriedly published an article considering the possibility that the story was a hoax, while asserting they could not be sure until the English press corroborated it.

Locke never publicly admitted that the whole thing had been a practical joke. He was surprised it had taken on such proportions. He had only intended to show the American people the fragility of the foundations underlying all religions. However, the majority of readers had failed to notice the irony and continued to believe that the Moon was actually inhabited by those ludicrous creatures, that it was an imitation Eden or a playground for the characters in fairy tales. A few members of the clergy considered the possibility of printing Bibles for the bat men, while a group of Baptists even began a collection to fund a mission to the Moon aimed at saving the souls of the planet’s depraved inhabitants. And even though with the passage of time such sophisticated telescopes as that of John Draper produced daguerreotypes showing a pristine, uninhabited Moon, where there was no sign of Locke’s fanciful creatures, many New Yorkers stubbornly believed that science would one day confirm the veracity of Grant’s descriptions. In case any of you are wondering what Herschel’s response to all this was, the astronomer did not in fact find out about the hoax implicating him for some time, because, as the articles stated, he was indeed in Cape Town carrying out astronomical observations. When the story finally reached Herschel’s ears, he took it in good humor, perhaps because he was aware that his own observations would never be as astonishing. However, when steadfast believers began bombarding him with questions about obscure details such as the sexual habits of Homo vespertilio, the smile soon vanished from his face.