by Baen Books
Gaston thought that was rich coming from Fairbold.
“The Professor became interested in Nodens because of The Ring.”
More capital letters but Gaston had a horrible feeling that he knew all about The Ring. But it wasn’t real, was it?
“Perhaps I should explain.”
Oh Dear God, another lecture, thought Gaston.
“Wheeler found a number of defixiones at Lydney Park. They’re curse tablets,” Fairbold said, noting Gaston’s blank expression.
“One of them was from a certain individual called Silvianus. It asked Nodens to curse a ring that had been stolen by a man named Senicianus and promised the god half the value of the ring if it was returned. A heavy gold ring had already been found at Silchester in the eighteenth century with a depiction of Venus. Someone had badly inscribed on it an exhortation to the Christian God to protect a Senicianus. Senicianus is an unusual name,” Fairbold said, dryly, “so we can be sure it is the one named in the defixio.”
“At least it wasn’t inscribed with One Ring to Find Them All,” Gaston said. “So we have a cursed ring. Where is it now?”
“Why here in The Black Museum’s Roman collection, of course. A properly authenticated fake, properly authenticated by the British Museum that is, is on public display at Vyne House but we keep the original secretly under lock and key. Can’t have cursed rings lying around rural England, can we now. That ring must be the key to all this.”
“Lead on,” Gaston said.
Fairbold lead the way through the winding underground corridors of The Museum to another door. He knocked and they walked into a study room that was identical to the one they had just left. Identical except for the occupant, that is. The man wore the stained white lab coat uniform of a BM academic but the antler horns tied to his head were presumably not standard. He had a silver glove on his right hand with a large gold ring on the forefinger. He was waving both arms around and chanting in what sounded like Latin.
The man would have looked ridiculous were it not for the heavy static charge of magic in the room. Fairbold stopped in the doorway, gaping at the sight of his colleague.
Gaston was now on familiar territory. He had never claimed to be any sort of intellectual but when it came to swift violent action he could recover a great deal of ground lost in debate. He shoved Fairbold to one side. Throwing himself at the man with the ring, Gaston seized his right wrist with one hand and hit him good and hard on the jaw with the other. The BM academic flew backwards into a wall and collapsed, the glove spinning off his hand. Gaston bent down to pick it up.
“No, don’t touch it!” Fairbold said.
Fairbold hunted around the room until he found a lead box. Carefully teasing off the ring with a pair of tweezers he manoeuvred it into the box, snapping tight the lid. The he picked up the glove and tossed it to Gaston.
“A souvenir of your memorable visit.”
Gaston examined the glove. It was ordinary leather coated in tightly wound silver paper. Fairbold picked up the antiquated black Civil Service Bakelite phone on the desk and dialled a number.
“Security, Fairbold here. Could you come to the Roman Section, immediately please.”
The man on the floor sat up, brushing a broken antler branch away from his face. Blood ran out of his mouth.
“I think that Commission thug has broken my jaw,” he said, thickly. “Violence, that’s all they know. Bloody animals.”
“Really, Dumpkins, you thought a bit of tinfoil would protect you from the Vyne Ring’s curse? I suppose you got the idea from the Welsh myth of King Lludd of the Silver Hand. Absurd! Everyone knows that tinfoil is only useful for keeping out CIA brainwashing beams,” Fairbold said
“It would have sufficed for my limited purpose,” Dumpkins said, defensively.
“Nonsense, for pity’s sake man we are dealing with the Vyne Ring. All those Lord of the Rings books, movies, toys, dreams. You know mythology is charged by human dreams and imagination. If only one per cent has flowed into that artifact from the Tolkien connection then the damned thing has more latent power than the Spear of Longinus. The Ring would have eaten you in the end.”
“I think you overestimate the danger, Fairbold. You were always prone to hyperbole. Take that paper you wrote on the decommissioning of Mycenaean cult figurines,” Dumpkins said.
“If we could save the academic argument for another time,” Gaston said.
“What were you trying to achieve anyway?” Fairbold asked Dumpkins, ignoring Gaston.
“I suppose I may as well tell you as it will all come out now anyway. I intended to win the National Lottery with the help of a little magic. Harmless enough, surely?”
“Harmless! Using heavy duty magic within our wards, playing games with probability, you could have collapsed the walls of reality letting God knows what into London. But why, what did you need money for? You haven’t bought a new suit in twenty years to my knowledge.”
“The winnings were not for me personally, Fairbold you old fool, but to finance my next project. My grant to investigate Easter Island was rejected—as well you know since you were the anonymous referee who canned it.”
“Rightly so, your ideas were ludicrous. The whole thing would have been an enormous waste of money.”
“Unlike your Etruscan Expedition,” Dumpkins sneered.
“I was unlucky there.”
“Ha!”
“Ha yourself!”
Fortunately for Gaston’s patience, not to say sanity, the two learned savants were interrupted by a knock at the door. An elderly face almost completely obscured by a black peaked cap and a snow-white walrus moustache peered around the door.
“Did you call security?” the face asked.
“Ah, Grindyke, detain Doctor Dumpkins and hold him in your Lodge while the Director decides his fate.”
“Certainly, Professor Fairbold. Now you come-along-with-me, young fellah-me-lad,” Grindyke said as he tottered in.
Gaston thought he had now seen it all but The Museum still had a surprise in store. Grindyke had bought two assistants with him, from the Egyptology Section no doubt, where they were part of the Collection. They moved astonishingly quickly for mummies, for the sort of mummies wrapped in bandages rather than snot-nosed brats. Each took one of Dumpkins’ arms and hauled him out, still exchanging obscure insults with Fairbold.
“Wait!” Gaston shouted.
They all stopped and looked at him.
“I have been hexed by a crow, bitten by dogs and nearly spitted like a suckling pig by an Iron Age god. Now in the name of all that’s unholy would someone please tell me what the Hell your internal squabbles in The Museum have to do with me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Dumpkins asked.
“Not to me, so humor me with an explanation?” Gaston replied.
“When I was washing out my mug in the kitchenette after this afternoon’s tea, I heard Fairbold talking to the Director in the Senior Common Room. They didn’t know I was there, of course,” Dumpkins said smugly, “but I could hear every word through the hatch.”
“So?” Fairbold asked
“I heard you warn the Director that Jameson was coming on an unscheduled visit. I mean, why would the Head of The Commission’s enforcement arm be coming here secretly? Obviously, somehow, they found out about my magical experiments. Why else would Jameson come except to terminate me with, with…”
“Extreme prejudice is, I believe, the current expression,” Fairbold said, helpfully, doubled over, unable to contain his mirth.
"Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer," he said, wiping tears from his eyes.
“I merely came to deliver a package to Professor Fairbold as a favor for Major Jameson,” Gaston said carefully, feeling like shooting someone or perhaps just banging his head on a wall.
“I thought you were Jameson,” Dumpkins said.
“No, I’m Sergeant Gaston.”Gaston replied firmly. “Just Jameson’s deliver
y boy—which reminds me.”
He fished in his pocket and held out the package.
Fairbold took it from him and broke the seal, snapping open the hinged cardboard box.
“Excellent, Jameson remembered to get my Turkish cigarettes when he was in Ankara,” Fairbold said, in delight.
“All this over a packet of fags?” Gaston asked in disbelief.
“Not just any cigarettes,” Fairbold said, huffily. “These are Murad’s special shag. You just can’t get them in Britain anymore. The European Health and Safety Directorate banned them. Dangerously high tar content, don’t you know.”
That was when Dumpkins screamed.
John Lambshead is retired research scientist from the British Museum of Natural History. He is the author of swashbuckling fantasy Lucy’s Blade and coauthor, with best seller David Drake, of science fiction adventure, Into the Hinterlands. This story takes place in the world of The Commission and his new contemporary fantasy novel Wolf in Shadow.
The Lamplighter Legacy
by Patrick O'Sullivan
Winner of the 2013 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Competition for best forward-looking original science fiction story.
September 15, 2021
Earth
The astronaut gripped Ernesto's wrist. "Look, kid, you want to put the phone down and look around?" He had to shout to be heard over the helicopter's deafening noise. "This is a once in a lifetime experience."
Ernesto adjusted the gain on his aviation headset. "Yes sir." He reluctantly pocketed his cloudnode and leaned back in the plush leather seat. He peered out the helicopter's window at the broad, open ocean off the coast of Ecuador. They'd passed over the shrouded mass of the Galápagos an hour before. Now the ocean looked the same as it had ten minutes earlier, and ten minutes before that: wet, choppy, and indistinguishable from the ocean he could see any day at home in San Diego. It was a wild and memorable experience meeting an astronaut, but that was yesterday. When the astronaut had to shout over the helicopter's thumping rotors it reminded Ernesto not of Captain Weber, a real American hero, but of Ernesto's dad after half a bottle of Captain Morgan.
Shouting and astronauting did not go together. Ernesto would write a blog post on that topic later tonight. He would also mention that too much dollar-store after-shave and astronauting didn't go together either, at least not in the confined cabin of a trillionaire's ramjet helicopter. Ernesto was mortified at his mistake, but man enough to admit the truth for once: that he was more enthusiastic than experienced when it came to both astronauting and shaving.
cosmicgrrl wouldn't have made such an egregious error. She would have consulted an expert. She had once messaged ernesto2003 that admitting ignorance was a virtue, not a weakness. That exposing oneself was the first step to understanding. Then she'd ruined everything by making a joke about his screen name. That was nearly four years ago and Ernesto's face still burned whenever he thought about her message.
Last month, when cosmicgrrl discovered that ernesto2003 had won the Lamplighter Prize for Best Amateur Space Blog, she'd been shocked, shocked, shocked. Ernesto was convinced he'd admitted to cosmicgrrl that Blogespacial! was his creation. Even if he hadn't boasted so baldly, it said 'moderador' under his screen name in all his posts. Did she think he was just some high school slacker with nothing but time on his hands? Or because he wasn't a NASA engineer like her, he had all day to pontificate on some else's blog?
The astronaut shouted. "Something bugging you, kid?"
Yeah, there was. Ernesto had blown all he'd saved waiting tables on a worldwide data plan and he wanted to use it. "No, sir," Ernesto said.
The problem with virtual keyboards was that you had to look at them to type. Ernesto could touch type sixty words a minute on an old-school keyboard, in the dark, with the covers pulled over his head. He couldn't input a word here without insulting the astronaut and Mr. James Lamplighter, whose generous award had funded Blogespacial! for as long as Ernesto cared to continue posting, and who had invited Ernesto to witness the launch of Lamplighter's latest satellite. The launch would take place from a floating platform positioned on the equator, somewhere up ahead. Ernesto clutched his cloudnode powerlessly and gazed out at the broad, empty ocean.
One wave looked just like another.
#
In pictures Lamplighter seemed bigger, more imposing. He was the richest man on Earth, and when the newsblogs ran posts with his photo they were inevitably shot from below, as if Lamplighter was a rocket set to blast off and the photographer a mere mortal like Ernesto, so much extra payload crowding the launching pad.
Ernesto's voice quivered when he said, "Pleased to meet you, sir,” but he looked Lamplighter in the eye and managed to shake hands without sweating all over the man's manicured nails.
"Call me Jim," Lamplighter said. His voice was an average voice, his eyes average eyes, neither blue, nor green, nor brown. He was in his late fifties and dressed in a white guayabera shirt, jeans, and sandals. Ernesto might have waited on Lamplighter's a thousand times at Casa Suarez without noticing him, if not for one thing. Lamplighter quivered with energy, like Hidalgo, Mr. Calderón's golden retriever, after Ernesto had thrown the ball but still had a grip on Hidalgo's collar.
The astronaut had passed Ernesto off to Lamplighter on the command vessel's helipad. The helicopter had circled the launch vessel so that Ernesto could photograph from above and up close. It was a letdown. The platform was huge, a converted North Sea oil rig, but there was no launch vehicle in sight. Ernesto wanted to ask the astronaut what was up, but didn't fancy shouting at a real American hero over a helicopter's thumping racket. Instead Ernesto took shot after shot, camera clicking in bracketing exposures, more shots of an empty launch deck than he felt necessary, but his activity seemed to please the astronaut, and Ernesto had no end to image storage on his cloudnode.
The command vessel was big but not huge, like a cruise ship, but empty. Lamplighter said the ship's crew of forty was on board, but the people involved in the launch numbered only eight, including Captain Weber, who was acting as a technical advisor.
Ernesto asked how many people were on the launch platform and Lamplighter told him only the ship's twelve person crew. No technical staff yet. There'd been a change of plans.
Mr. Lamplighter asked if Ernesto would like to get the personal interview over with. As part of the Lamplighter Prize Ernesto had won the right to an exclusive interview with the richest man on Earth. Mr. Lamplighter said things would get hectic later and now was as good a time as any. Ernesto must have looked worried because Mr. Lamplighter asked if he was feeling okay.
Ernesto pasted a confident grin on his face. "Never better, sir."
It was a good thing that Mr. Lamplighter was paying for Blogespacial!'s bandwidth fees going forward, because an interview with Mr. Lamplighter was like gold, and traffic to Ernesto's site would explode. It wouldn't just be regulars like cosmicgrrl and lucky_yellow_dragon, and cornelius_simeon, and vikenti_123 who would argue back and forth on Blogespacial!. Many people were interested in Mr. Lamplighter for all sorts of reasons, but most had nothing to do with his space projects.
"Tell you what," Lamplighter said. "Why don't you get your kit settled, and get freshened up, and meet me on the fantail?"
"I don't know what a fantail is," Ernesto said. "Let alone where it is."
Lamplighter grinned. "You're the real deal, aren't you, ernesto2003?"
Ernesto started to look at his feet before he forced himself to meet Mr. Lamplighter's gaze. "Sir?"
"Many young men would have said, 'Sure,’ and then wandered around for half an hour in ignorance, wasting their time. And mine."
"Maybe they'd already know what a fantail was, and where it was." cosmicgrrl certainly would. Her family had a boat. A yacht. Until today the closest Ernesto had ever gotten to a boat was on Sundays, when he helped his mom load the minivan with fresh dorado from the fish market.
"Tell you what." Lamplighter subtly tapped the cloudnode
implanted behind his right ear, an Hermés Executive II, certifiably uncrackable, nearly invisible, and more costly than the helicopter Ernesto had arrived in. "I'll squirt you my id addy. Ring me when you're ready."
#
Ernesto stared at the cloudnode in his hands. On its display was the address of the richest man on Earth. The temporal cloud address of the richest man on Earth. This was unreal. He flicked to his friendnet glyph. There was a message waiting, one from cosmicgrrl.
Well? What's it like?
Ernesto typed madly. Exciting. I've met him, and he's calm, just like you. There's been a delay in the launch, but he doesn't seem perturbed. Very collected, like sending a payload into orbit is an everyday occurrence. Like it's normal. Ernesto pressed the send glyph and waited.
He didn't have to wait long. Wouldn't that be fantastic? If it was?
Ernesto stared at the display projection and contemplated the implications. I'm not so sure. Maybe then no one would view my blog. Not if space missions were normal.
The satellite time lag was minimal. I would.
No, she wouldn't. Not if she realized just how close she'd cut when she'd joked about his screen name. He'd never replied to her message. 2003? Is that your birth year or something?
Like cosmicgrrl would even look at him twice. Ernesto Suarez, heir to the great Suarez restaurant fortune. Ernesto went into the tiny ship's bathroom and splashed water on his face. He stared at the boy in the mirror. He was about as far from a great American hero as they came.
His fingers worked the keyboard projection. Got to go. Can't keep the big man waiting. He hammered the send glyph and went to search his suitcase for a shirt that didn't reek of astro-shave.
#
It turned out the fantail was the rear of the command vessel. The stern.
Mr. Lamplighter leaned against the rail. He looked like a king, or a god. "I imagine you have some prepared questions."