The Real Heart of the Universe

Sometimes, a lie will set you free.

At least, that’s what Ceilidh O’Malley Barnes wanted to believe.

It was May the 20th of 1879, and she was standing next to Jacob Radford of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. On the other side was a young man who wasn’t a man at all – he was a colony being from another world who was, in a way, bonded to her. She’d dubbed him Shannon Duffy. Shannon’s cells were all sentient and voted on their every move. There were trillions of them, and they could shape and reshape. But Shannon kept a human appearance most of the time.

The three of them had just been sworn into a secret society called SPHERE. It was a life far removed from Ceilidh’s earlier days in Ireland, and then life as a scullery maid in Judge John Lowell’s home, where the group currently was. It was also her third wedding anniversary, but the only entity in all of Boston or even North America which knew such a particular detail was Shannon. Ceilidh wasn’t about to tell the others, at least, not yet.

Her life was changing, going from somewhat dull drudgery to what looked to be exciting. Her heart pounded. She was excited, nervous, and a touch apprehensive about those changes, all at the same time.

Standing nearby, and looking proud, were their three sponsors for SPHERE membership. Hers was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Radford’s sponsor was Henry Brooks Adams. And Shannon’s sponsor was George Walker Weld, who leaned heavily on a cane. The others in the North American group were Amos Bronson Alcott, Alexander Graham Bell, and there was the judge himself, who led the North Americans. The sole European representative was her direct employer, Dr. Devon Grace.

The moment stretched, feeling long than only a few minutes, between being sworn in, and a brief silence directly afterwards. During the silence, Radford had surreptitiously taken her hand for about a second or two, squeezed it, and let it go. Ceilidh could’ve stopped it. But she hadn’t.

She felt her pale face redden just a touch and then the room erupted in loud congratulations. Alcott kissed her hand. The others shook her hand. “Thank you, thank you,” she kept repeating as the round of congratulations seemed to go on forever. Even Dr. Grace smiled at her, and he was not a man who smiled often.

Her fellow inductees also shook her hand. Shannon was still getting used to the concept of human hand shaking. The colony being shimmered at her a little bit, as it maintained a human-like appearance. Jacob smiled at her broadly, a true and full smile from the most dashing man she’d ever known.

She reluctantly broke away from Jacob’s side and went to a sideboard to serve the refreshments. SPHERE or no SPHERE, she was still of the serving class and still had a job to do. She served the elder men first. This left just Jacob. Nervous, she put a teacup on a saucer and it clattered slightly. Jacob sprang up and joined her. “I can serve myself,” he drawled to her, his accent betraying an origin in Virginia.

“Oh, yes, yes, of course, yes,” she stammered, brogue as thick as it ever had been. She busied herself using a pair of tongs to place a biscuit on a small plate for him. “I just,” she admitted, “I want it to be right.”

“It already is,” he replied, voice low, gazing into her eyes, and she almost dropped the plate she was handing him.

“Gentlemen!” Lowell called out. “And Miss O’Malley,” he added, “this is going to be a short meeting today. We’ll need to begin to determine how our newest members will be working together as a traveling team. The foreign threat from beings from other worlds remains, no matter how splendid the tea is. We have work to do.”

“Plus I imagine,” Devon said, “the staff in this household will be wondering just what Miss O’Malley’s name truly is.”

“Yes, yes, the news story by the Hadley fellow,” Alcott said, “printing her Irish name. The press is a touch invasive; I’d say.”

“Oh, a free press is the, the, oh what the devil is the word? Oh, sorry Miss O’Malley,” Emerson said.

“Important?” asked Adams.

“Vital?” prompted Alcott.

“No, no, it’s, blast, I’m getting worse, aren’t I? But at least I can’t reveal any secrets when I can barely recall my own street address,” Emerson grumbled. His face was lined and a little gaunt, but not as lined and gaunt as Devon Grace’s. “It’s the curse of aging, I’m afraid.”

“Is it something else, sir?” asked Jacob. “Cornerstone, maybe?” His eyes flashed for a second as he glanced at Ceilidh, and she could have sworn they were blue, green, and gray, all at the same time. She had to concentrate to not spill her tea on the black uniform dress she wore.

“Yes, yes, that’s it! Oh, Mr. Radford, you are indeed a wizard!” Emerson exclaimed. “The press; it is the cornerstone of our democracy. There!”

“Now that it’s settled,” Devon said, “and I do agree with you, Waldo, but it doesn’t address the question at hand. Miss O’Malley here referred to herself as Kay Lee Charles when she was hired, and then as Ceilidh O’Malley or Ceilidh Charles when she and the Edwards’s scullery maid were in a bit of trouble.”

“Frances Miller,” Ceilidh prompted, finishing her tea. She got up and began collecting dirty dishes. “She always knew my surname.”

“Yes, Frances. She’s proven to be a good hire,” the judge interjected. “I suppose I should be the one to reintroduce you to the rest of the staff as Ceilidh O’Malley. There are bound to be a few questions. I can ignore them, but I imagine you cannot, even though you no longer live downstairs with the rest of them.” He had an impressive brown moustache flecked with gray, and he twisted one of the ends of it briefly.

“It’s those horrible NINA signs,” Adams commiserated, “making a nice girl like you lie about something so basic as your identity. Truly, they are unjust and cruel.” He was losing his hair and, when he leaned in slightly to give Ceilidh his cup and saucer, she caught a glimpse of the balding top of his head shining a little in the light, camouflaged slightly by remaining wisps of blond hair. He passed Bell’s plates to her.

“Such an irregularity is unfortunate. Does such a name change happen often?” asked Bell, wiping at his beard with a napkin.

“I believe this is our first time contending with such,” said Weld. “Were you planning on telling your coworkers your true name, Ceilidh?”

“Someday, I suppose.” She shrugged. “It seems such a small thing, and ’twas in the beginning. I hid my name and my accent to get work with the Edwardses – may the good Lord rest their souls – and I had to do so again here when the cook – may the good Lord rest her soul as well – had a NINA sign up. I guess it all got larger as it went along, as if I were baking a loaf of bread and had put in too much yeast.”

“Right,” said Devon. “So, you’ll take care of the name business, John?” The judge nodded, so Devon continued, “And now about the traveling group. Three people traveling can stick out and seem odd to people, I feel. I think you’d do better to have a fourth.”

Upon hearing Devon’s statement, Shannon flew apart into a million or more shimmering bits and coalesced into the appearance of two children, Jemima and Cecil Edwards, the two elder children of Ceilidh’s late former employers, Winthrop and Margery Edwards. Winthrop had been a member of SPHERE, and so the Lowells were currently taking care of their three children as final arrangements were made for Mr. Edwards’s brother to move to Boston from Philadelphia.

Bell rubbed at his eyes. “I feel that’ll take some getting used to.”

“It does,” Ceilidh said. “First time I saw Shannon do it, I swooned. But I have to say, children? I think they’d be problematic at best. I mean, are Mr. Radford and I to play at, at marriage? And parenthood?”

She could feel Jacob seemed a little nervous at the thought, as he touched the chain on his pocket watch briefly.

“Besides,” Weld agreed, “children cannot go where adults go, a lot of the time. If you’re to be trying to gather intelligence or even combating the threats from those from outside the Earth, then you must remain at full strength. Shannon, you may need to try to shield either Ceilidh or Mr. Radford, and you won’t be able to do so if you’re stuck in a nursery somewhere.”

“It should be an adult. The fourth should be an adult,” said Alcott.

“It can’t be any of us,” Emerson said, “Lidian would not be amused if I were to travel without her. I imagine such would be true of all the wives.”

“You’re forgetting I have no wife,” Devon declared. “This is the most reasonable and intelligent course of action. I shall go. I’ll just avoid Edinburgh, is all.” He swallowed a little, and Ceilidh could tell he missed the city.

“Then I suppose it’s settled,” the judge said. “Let’s adjourn, and I’ll take Miss Charles – I mean, Miss O’Malley – see, I’m doing it as well. I’ll take her to the kitchen and we’ll get her name all straightened out. Thank you, gentlemen. Our cause is just.” He stood up and he had cards in his hands. He handed them back to the members of SPHERE, even to Ceilidh, who had a new card. Every card had a circle and a six-pointed star on it. The points were all the different colors of the rainbow except for indigo, which was reserved for the center of the star drawing. On the indigo background, there was an arrangement of five stars in the shape of the constellation Cassiopeia. Except for Devon’s card, all the cards had the blue point at the top of the decoration, signifying North America. His card had a red point at the top of its design, which meant Europe. Everyone’s three initials were on the back of their card – Ceilidh’s was CAO, for Ceilidh Aisling O’Malley.

Everyone but Jacob, Shannon, Devon, Ceilidh, and the judge left and began to walk down the stairs. Devon, who lived in another part of that floor, bid his adieus and opened a locked door to a hidden hallway. Ceilidh lived in the same area, an old in-law apartment, but didn’t join him. Instead, she turned to Shannon, “If you want to go and do something else ’twould be fine.”

“I saw,” he said, his voice barely audible to her.

She swallowed. The colony probably meant when Jacob had held her hand. The colony didn’t know her husband, who was back in Ireland anyway, but she had the sinking feeling the colony might blurt out the information at the most inopportune moment. “We can discuss it later,” she whispered, knowing the colony would hear her. Shannon nodded, and exited in the same direction as Dr. Grace.

The three of them walked down the four flights of stairs. When they were by the front door, Jacob quietly asked her, “May I call on you?” she nodded twice, quickly, but said no more. She smiled a bit at him. He shook her hand again, and then the judge’s and left. She fought the urge to sigh at his departure. Instead, she paid attention to the task at hand.

The other servants were seated around a table in their dining area. There was Frances, who smiled sincerely and nodded at the judge. The gardener, Donald Smith, got up quickly and spat some tobacco juice out, barely missing a pot on the floor. “What’s this?” he asked. “You gettin’ fired, Duchess?” he said, using a sneering nickname he had given her.

The butler, John Darlington, had seniority, and really should have commented first if anyone was going to. He just said, “It doesn’t look like a firing; Mrs. Lowell does those.” The others, who were another scullery maid, a pair of stable hands, and a stable boy, just sat there.

“No one’s being let go,” the judge began. “And Smith, I should like for you to clear away any tobacco messes. Frances and Abigail,” he said, referring to the second scullery maid, “don’t have the time to clean up after you, particularly not with the Edwards children here for an extended visit.”

“Yes, Judge Lowell,” Donald said, head bowed. He returned to his seat next to the more senior stable hand, Gerald Price, who poked him in the ribs and expertly spat his own wad of tobacco into the pot with perfect accuracy. “Won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t. Now, my wife and I will be hiring a new cook to replace Bessie,” upon hearing the late Bessie’s name, Ceilidh crossed herself quickly, “and we may be a part of hiring help for the Edwards House as well. In the meantime, you should know who you’re working with. I take it you read the Globe when Bessie was killed and Ceilidh here and Frances were taken into custody?”

Not everyone nodded. Martin Norman, the stable boy asked, “Who’s Ceilidh?”

“That’s me,” Ceilidh admitted. “When I was hired, I had to hide my Irish heritage because there was a NINA sign. The name Kay Lee Charles seemed to make the most sense, as the Christian name is similar to my own and the surname was just after the Charles River, but when I was under oath, I had to come clean.” Almost, although she didn’t add that part.

“So you’re Irish?” asked Abigail. “Did you know this?” she addressed Frances.

“I did,” Frances stated. Frances was from Manchester in England. Ceilidh had done her best to imitate Frances’s way of speaking, and that of the captain of the ship that had brought her to America. It was all to sell the idea of being a woman named Katherine Lee Charles.

“Did they put you in jail for lying?” asked Timothy West, the other stable hand, a tall, gawky fellow.

“No, not for that,” Ceilidh said. “It was because they weren’t sure if Frances or I had poisoned Bessie with those spoons. They hadn’t been sure about the governess and nurse for the Edwards children, either, if you recall, but we didn’t do it, and my, well, my untruths about my name and my background, the court found those didn’t matter, not really.”

“Will you still be working upstairs with that sick guest?” asked the butler, referring to Devon, who wasn’t sick at all. Yet keeping Devon’s presence as confidential as possible had required such a deception.

“Yes,” Ceilidh said. Coming clean was far from perfect. There were still deceptions to be continued.

“In any event,” Judge Lowell said, “I wanted you all to be aware of the truth of the matter. I forgive Miss O’Malley’s deception, as I have seen any number of people in my courtroom who are of Irish ancestry and those NINA signs keep them from getting work.”

“Them dirty mickeys steal,” Donald said.

“And you will never use such a term in my home again,” the judge added, looking daggers at Donald. “And haven’t you some weeding to do?”

“Yes, sir.” Donald got up and seemed to be at a loss as to whether he could leave the gathering.

“Anyone else have any objections to Miss O’Malley remaining in my employ?” The rest of the servants looked down, and Martin seemed to be far more interested in the scratches and ruts in the table than anyone normally would be. “Good, that’s settled. There’s work to be done, and a new cook to be hired. If you have any leads in this area, please tell me. Thank you.”