by Exurb1a
The bartender was organic and I was thankful for that; said his name was Beomus something something. He fetched my drink without fuss. Strange thing though, when I went to pay he said, “No need.”
“Really,” I said, and offered the money, knowing just how poor this poor deck was.
“Really,” he echoed. “This one’s already paid for.” He nodded over my shoulder. I followed the nod.
At the very back of the bar, sat next to the window, was a lantern. I’d never seen one before but I’d heard enough stories to be certain what it was. It looked to be about eight feet high, if stood. The skin was a gentle blue, though scaled like a reptile. The mouth was a small red-rimmed pucker-hole that opened and shut every few seconds.
And the eyes: great dinner plates the width of a man’s head with emerald green irises bedded around the centre.
The thing appeared to glance at us and I turned back to the barman quickly. “What do you mean already paid for?” I said.
“Just that. The thing paid for your tab in advance.”
“What?”
“Just that.” The barman leant in. “Best you go and see what he wants, no?”
“I think I might just drink up and go,” I said. “I think that’s what I’ll do.”
The bartender leant even closer. “I’ve been working here 20 years, or thereabouts. Not once has one of those things ever even come down to the deck, let alone into the bar. Nothing good will come of ignoring it, you hear? Go and see what it wants.”
I threw back my drink and the barman poured another and gave a nod.
When I reached the table the creature didn’t look up.
“Hello,” I said. “I believe you paid for my drinks.”
The thing had its eyes set on something out the window and didn’t speak, just kicked a chair out for me with a great metal leg. The other leg appeared to be organic and there wasn’t a shred of clothing on the body, save for a strip of blue silk across the genitals. About its neck hung a pendant and as it swang it appeared to fall back through extra dimensions: hyper-geom jewellery. You know how expensive that is.
But it was the smell that really rankled: the tang of ozone, the wreak of iron, and a few spices I knew no name for.
I sat down. The creature kept its gaze out the window and perhaps a minute passed between us without a thing being said. Then, in a voice that sounded like gargled barbed wire, it moaned, “That planet has eighty-nine names. In the human tongue it is Sandansk, though others call it Ik’Quoeb and others call it No Mo5 and others call it by other names.”
I followed its gaze and sure enough there was the purplish orb below us, minding its own business.
The creature continued. “But none of those eighty-nine designations are its true name. All objects in the universe have a true name, the name the universe recognises that thing by.” It turned to me then and its burning irises bore in like mining lasers. “You have a true name,” it said.
“Do I?” I said very quietly.
“Yes. If a planet or an atom should have one, why not a person?”
“Ah.”
“Would you like to hear it?”
“Not just now, thank you.”
It raised a quivering tentacle to the bartender and he rushed over with another drink and set it down in front of me and raced off again.
“A thing’s true name is not just its designation,” the monster said. “But it contains all the information one might want to know about an object. Its age, for example. Its form. And the time when it will die.” The thing nodded slowly to the barman. “His true name is Shat’Nusemit and from this we know he is a good man and that a heart attack with get him three years, one month, and thirteen days from now.” It blinked slowly. I wondered to myself if the monster had a true name.
“Ah,” it said. “Yes of course I do.” My blood ran colder. It waved a tentacle idly and turned back to the window, to Sandansk below. “But let’s not talk about that now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said in a mouse’s voice, “but what do you want with me?”
The mouth opened and shut, taking snaps of breath. The eyes blinked dreadfully slowly. “Do you know what I am?” the creature rasped.
“I’m…not sure.”
“What do they call a thing like me?”
“A lantern, I think.”
“And do you know why?”
I shook my head.
It nodded to a docked voidskipper, perhaps a half-mile away. The ship looked like a nimble black fish. “I suppose you don’t know how your voidships reach the stars.”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a complicated process. It is made even more complicated by the fact that when a ship enters etherspace, computers do not function and humans do not function either. Any complicated machinery must be switched off and humans must be put into transitsleep. Packed away like sardines.” The mouth made some strange imitation of a smile, then corrected. “Failure to do this will result in broken machinery or broken humans. The only processes left online during the trip are very simple life support and very simple piloting equipment. When I say very simple, I mean it. The control yoke is linked to the motion fins by wire. Wire. Travelling to the stars by thread and pulley.”
“That can’t be true…” I said. The thing fixed me with a glare. “I’m sorry…I mean, I didn’t know that.”
“Now you do,” it purred. “Man will solve all of his problems one day, but starships will always travel by thread. That never changes.”
Talk of the future with such certainty would normally have signalled extreme bullshit, but instead I just felt prickles spreading up my head.
The lantern said, “If you knew Time’s true name you would understand that it is a bread loaf already baked.” It gave me a moment to think about this, watching all the while with those burning green irises, then continued. “As I said, ships enter etherspace to cross great distances. Since computers and the majority of humans can’t take the stress of the journey, special minds were engineered by scientists back on Aerth. These minds would stay awake and pilot the ship through impossible geometries, riding at the very front of the ship in a little out-bubble, a single beacon leading ten thousand human cattle to safety.”
“A lantern,” I said.
The lantern nodded and raised its scaled tentacles. “The process comes with something of a cost, however.”
We watched a voidskipper undocking from one of the civilian ports. It backed away from the station and hung like a dog waiting for permission to go bounding. Then it swung around, pointing its nose to some invisible destination ahead and set off. I spied a little bubble protruding from the front of the craft.
“There is no time and no duration in etherspace,” the lantern said, watching the voidskipper. “All events occur at once. It is the privilege of one awake during that journey to see events ahead and events behind. We learn the true names of everything and we learn to say them. Given the complexities of the ribbondash travel process, we occasionally arrive before we set off.”
“You’ve been to the future?” I said.
“Relatively. And the past.”
Is that a blessing or a curse? I thought.
“Both, depending on the day,” the lantern said quietly to itself. “One day the services of the lanterns will not be needed. Men and women will learn to bear etherspace in school as you learned the alphabet. That time will not be for another three thousand years, however.” It snapped its tentacles tight, then loose. “Her name is Paola Hammond.”
“What?”
The creature gestured with a tentacle.
I looked behind. A woman had come in, perhaps mid-thirties. She sat alone at the other side of the bar, reading. “She has lived a fairly dull life, full of waiting. Waiting for the right relationship, the right career. This was all in vain, of course, as she’ll be killed in a welding accident two and a half months from now down on the Construction Deck.”
The girl glanced over at us, at the lantern
I suppose, then quickly turned her attention back to her book.
I remembered a bit of temporal physics from school and I said, “It’s not a changeable thing, is it?”
The lantern shook its head. “Of course, though now you’re wondering what your future looks like.”
“I am.”
Another silence passed and I snatched a glance at the girl with her book. I knew the paradox well enough. In trying to change her fate I’d only seal it.
“You’re tired, I’m tired,” the lantern said quietly. “Let’s not bullshit anymore.” It took my drink in its tentacles and necked the thing. It wiped its strange snapping mouth. It said, “Lanterns live a very long time, but we’re not immortal. Every now and then we must recruit. It isn’t a pleasant initiation process, but the rewards outweigh the growing pains.”
It left that hanging in the air and stared into me. “What?” I said.
“I’ve told you how it is. You have the mind for the career. You’ll be beyond the limits of distance and duration. You will see into things as they are. You will learn the true names of the world. In return you need only guide a few starships from sun to sun. All of eternity in exchange for a little shepherding.”
“What?” I said again.
“You’ll need some work done to you, back on Aerth, but it won’t hurt so much. I’ll give you a few moments to think it over.”
I was quiet a little while, then gave in to the giggles. It watched me without expression or comment. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but—”
“My time is short,” it interrupted. “I’ll save you the trouble. You’re going to protest about what short notice this is, how ridiculous it seems. You’ll thank me politely, but ultimately explain in a roundabout way so as not to offend that you like your life now and don’t feel the need to go jaunting off into the universe at a moment’s notice. You won’t say this, of course, but there, that's the shape of the thing, yes?” I nodded meekly.
It turned its massive eyes back to the voidskipper. The ship was barely visible now, a smudge among the stars, probably powering up its main drive. I imagined the interior, the crew all frosted in longsleep, the ship drones cleaning the corridors and the canteens and the laboratories. And at the front of the ship, in a small transparent enclosure, I supposed, was a hunched monster with enormous vermillion green eyes and a puckered mouth that frantically opened and shut, its tentacles wrapped about the control yoke, its mind already trained on infinity.
“Let me make this easier for you,” the lantern said in a dark voice, its gaze still on the voidskipper. “You haven’t recovered from the breakdown of your marriage. You never will. You’re constantly waiting for a promotion to the Craftman’s Deck. It will come, two and a half years from now, but the work will be hard and the pay won’t be much better and even though you’ll regret taking the position, you will remain in it due to your, frankly, excessive pride. You will die thirty years, seven months, four days, and ten hours from now in a—”
“Please don’t,” I said.
“—decompression accident aboard a voidskipper bound for Ithaca. As your lungs explode and your blood boils you will think very quickly about what a boring life you led, and how fear constantly held you back from pursuing your true passions. Ironically, you will not realise your true passions until that very moment.” The puckered mouth appeared to smile again. “This is how events will unfold.”
“Then I won’t board that ship,” I said.
“Yes you will.”
“I won’t go to Ithaca.”
“Yes you will.”
“God damn it, why even tell me this if there’s nothing I can do?”
It folded its tentacles over on each other, business-like. “Lanterns see possible futures also. Your death aboard the voidskipper is one. But there is something you can do about it. I’m leaving tomorrow on a voidskipper bound for Absente. Come along.”
“And what?”
“And sit up front with me, catch your first glimpse of etherspace. The ship will jump to ribbondash and you’ll see what it is I’m getting at. You have the brain to handle it. After that we’ll jaunt to Aerth, get you ready for proper training. And after that you’ll be a lantern.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
The lantern shrugged. “Then I wish you luck with the rest of your life and assure you again that there'll be no reaching Ithaca alive.”
Out the window, beyond the planet, in the black, the voidskipper activated its ribbondash drive. Space lensed for a moment, then the ship was gone.
“I’d offer you another drink, but you’re about to go to bed,” the lantern said.
“I was thinking about it.”
It stood, loomed over. It regarded me again with the green dinner plate eyes and didn’t blink. “My voidskipper leaves at ten tomorrow, Standard Time.”
“I appreciate the invitation, but I’m really not interested. Thank you though.”
It bowed to me and the air reeked again of ozone. Then it made for the door.
I sat back and stared out the window, down at Sandansk, then to where the voidskipper had been. There was no trace of it now. One could scour the whole universe and find nothing, not until it popped back out into regular space.
Where had it gone? Into everwhen. Into that place between places. Up to a boundary and beyond it.
I called out, “Why come?”
And from right behind my ear the lantern said, “What’s that?”
I tried not to jump. “You’ve been waiting there?”
“You had a final thing to say. Say it now then.”
I said slowly, “Why did you come to ask me what you asked me? You’ve seen the future, you said, and the future doesn’t change. Why ask me if you knew I’d say no?”
The creature bent down slowly to my ear and I felt the coldness of its skin sucking the warmth out of mine. I smelled its breath and it was not unpleasant and not pleasant. I heard its mouth snap shut, snap open, gasp. Finally it said, “I lied. I came to you because you will think the matter over tonight, and seek me out tomorrow and we’ll travel together. I wouldn’t waste my time on you otherwise. Everyone refuses at first. Everyone reconsiders a little later.” It put a tentacle on my shoulder. “This is one of the few rituals among the lanterns. We may come to our past selves and make the offer. Ten o’clock tomorrow. See you there.”
The Want Machine
A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants.
That’s a very old quote from a very dead philosopher.
In other words, a man can choose to follow his passions, but not choose what his passions are.
And that was true for most of history, of course, from the cave times to the star times.
But with so many humans on so many worlds these days, we can expect some exceptions.
Said exception occurred on a medium-size forest world called Stara Lom, but the inhabitants just called it ‘The World’.
The climate was mild. The cuisine was delicious. The language was beautiful. Many folk from all across the empire came to Lom to unwind.
The real attraction though was the inhabitants.
Lomese is the only language in the galaxy with seventeen versions of thank you and no imperatives. That is, it is very easy to show gratitude and almost impossible to command anyone to do anything.
Instead, on Lom, one learns to put things very gently.
Perhaps you could take my bags up to the room?
I would love to purchase your house.
Now it is time for you to fucking die, I’m afraid.
In this way the Lomese have learned to temper their desires. Slavery is unthinkable. Anger is rare. Waiters are treated very, very well indeed. Lom is a great place to be a waiter actually.
Anyway, given how polite the inhabitants of Lom were, you can imagine what a scuffle the Want Machine created. It happened like this:
Galactic scientists are usually rather introverted types and not great at putting themselves for
ward. Lom is a popular destination for physicists in particular, and one—a Dr. Shervance Ek—travelled to the planet on a short holiday, and decided immediately to settle there after noticing the excellent selection of ways to thank people. He had been raised on the ice world New Canada and believed gratitude was second only to modesty.
A Lomese visa is not difficult to acquire but you do need to be very polite about it. Dr. Ek was very polite and he secured one.
He bought a home on the equator, in a small blueish forest, and settled into his work.
Dr. Ek was a cognitophysicist. Perhaps some of our readers will be unfamiliar with the term. Cognitophysics is that branch of science concerned with the mechanisms of consciousness. By then the cognitron had been discovered of course, the subatomic particle responsible for producing self-awareness in all things. Still, a man might name a species of bird but it doesn’t allow him to fly. Or rather, the Human Empire understood what made it conscious, but not how to dabble with its consciousness.
Until Dr. Ek, of course.
It is true that most great discoveries in human history have come about not through pure angelic curiosity, but morbid obsession. Dr. Ek had a morbid obsession of his own.
By that point in human history, physicists were finally rightfully treated as rockstars, and it was not terribly difficult to find a wife or husband. Dr. Ek had married in the usual way and we can say he had been medium-happy with the whole affair. What was there to complain about? He and his beloved lived in domestic bliss, taking equal share of the chores around the house, playing duets on the four-dimensional piano, and staying well away from dating apps.
But Dr. Ek had a secret and her name was Nadastra.
Dr. Ek and Nadastra had worked together on various scientific problems at the New Canadian University, back when Dr. Ek was still a young man. They were both researchers and considered scientific truth to be quite above any other kind of truth.
Beauty is nice and virtue is attractive, but nothing is more gorgeous than meeting another creature who shares your deepest values.