Night Lamp

by Jack Vance

  Skirlet looked over her shoulder toward her father’s offices. “This is not the best place to talk. Come.”

  The two descended to the street and crossed to an open-air café beside the broad Flammarion Prospect. They seated themselves at a table under a green and blue parasol and presently were served iced fruit juice.

  For a time an awkward constraint held them silent. Jaro finally asked a polite question, “Are you planning to enroll at the Institute?”

  Skirlet laughed: a strange bitter laugh, as if the question were hopelessly naive. “No.”

  Jaro raised his eyebrows. The response had been incisively final. He tried again. “What have you been doing since last you were home?”

  Skirlet looked at him stonily. Jaro became uncertain. He said, “On second thought, it’s not important. Don’t feel obliged to answer.”

  Skirlet spoke with dignity: “Excuse me. I was trying to arrange my thoughts. What happened was, in a sense, simple. I was sent off-world, to the Aeolian Academy at Glist, on Axelbarren. I was graduated with honors. I met a number of people; I had some interesting adventures, and now I am home.”

  “It sounds pleasant enough,” said Jaro. “Is this what you are trying to tell me?”

  “Not altogether.”

  Jaro waited while Skirlet brooded upon her experiences. She said at last, without emphasis: “There were good times and times not so good. I learned a great deal. Still, I don’t want to go back now or ever.” Then, after a pause: “What of you? I see that you have not yet run off into space.”

  “No. Not yet. But nothing has changed.”

  “You still feel compelled to trace down your past?”

  Jaro nodded. “As soon as possible—which means after I take a degree at the Institute. The Faths insist and I have no choice.”

  Skirlet studied him dispassionately. “And you are not angry with the Faths?”

  Jaro stirred in his chair. “No.”

  “Hmf. Still, you’d skite off into space this instant, if you were able.”

  “Probably. I’m not sure. There’s much to be done before I go.”

  “Hmm. What are you studying at the Institute?”

  “Engineering, dynamics, space science. Also, Gaean history and musicology, to appease the Faths.”

  Skirlet asked, “Do you think I have changed since you saw me last?”

  Jaro reflected. “I don’t know what you want to hear. But it seems to me that you are still Skirlet Hutsenreiter, though even more so. I’ve always thought you—I can’t find the proper word—pretty? Beautiful? Perturbing? Charming? Amazing? Nothing quite fits.”

  “What about ‘enthralling’?”

  “Yes, that’s close.”

  Skirlet nodded thoughtfully, as if Jaro had corroborated one of her own deeply felt convictions. “The years go past. I used to think of them as slow tragic heartbeats.” She turned her head, looked down the Prospect. “I remember a handsome boy from long ago. He was very clean and neat; he had long eyelashes and a face fall of romantic dreams. One afternoon, on an impulse, I kissed him. Do you remember?”

  “I remember. My head was in the clouds. I’ll become that boy again, if you’ll kiss me some more.”

  “You couldn’t change back, Jaro. Even worse, I could never, ever be that girl again. When I think of it, I want to weep.”

  Jaro reached out and took one of her hands. “Perhaps we haven’t changed quite as much as you think.”

  Skirlet shook her head. “What has happened to me is beyond your knowing. In fact, it’s probably beyond your imagining.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Skirlet spoke with sudden resolution. “Very well; if you are interested. But there is something you must do. The girl who left four years ago was Skirlet. She has become someone else called ‘Skirl and that is what you must call me now.”

  “Just as you say.”

  “I’ll tell you more or less what happened. It can only be an outline, with most of the details omitted—otherwise I’d be talking for a month. It will be hard to abbreviate, since what I leave out will be as strange and intricate as the rest.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Skirl slouched back into the chair. “A hundred things, a thousand things have happened. It’s hard to put them into order.” She deliberated. “After I left Langolen School, my father said he was closing Sassoon Ayry, and I must go to live with my mother on Marmone. I explained that her palace was an erotic jungle; he said: Tish-tush!’; that I should be able to cope with it, with whatever degree of involvement suited me best. I told him the question was moot, since I refused to go there. I reminded him that he had promised to send me to the Aeolian Academy, which was rated highly by experts. The staff not only provided an education, but exerted themselves to make the school congenial. The countryside was beautiful, with a sea to the north, forests and moors to the south and the city Glist nearby.

  “In any case my heart was set on Aeolian Academy, but my father said that it was too expensive, and that he needed all his money to finance his trip to Old Earth. The money for this trip he had ‘borrowed’ from one of my trust funds—which meant, of course, that I would never see the money again. I told him that unless he sent me to Aeolian I would appeal to the Clam Muffin Committee for redress, and they would surely clap him into what is called ‘corrective jurisdiction,’ which would severely limit his options. I had a few hundred sols left in another trust fund; he took this money and said: ‘Very well; you want to attend the extremely expensive Aeolian Academy, and so you shall!’ He showed me his peculiar grin which makes him look like an old fox eating garbage, and I knew that something might be awry. Nonetheless, he told me to pack, that I was enrolled at Aeolian Academy, and the next day I was on my way.” Skirl paused. “Now I must cover more time and many more events. I’ll try to hint at them, but for the most part you must use your imagination—which is a pity, since the reality was so wild and rich. I won’t even try to describe Axelbarren itself.

  “I arrived at Glist, and was delivered to the Aeolian Academy. I fell in love with the place instantly. The euphoria lasted until I found that I was not enrolled as a Clam Muffin with private quarters and a formal cuisine. Instead, I was assigned to what was called ‘Scratch-arse Dormitory,’ a kind of economy class barracks where disadvantaged students were accepted. I took my meals at a long table in Roaring Gut Refectory, and bathed in a communal shower. Further, I was required to work twelve hours a week to help defray my expenses. I explained to the Superintendent that there was some mistake; that I was Skirl Hutsenreiter, a Clam Muffin, and would require accommodations commensurate with my status.” Skirl smiled at the recollection. “The Superintendent laughed, as did everyone else in the room. I told them quite smartly that their conduct was boorish, and if they did not correct their attitudes, I would see that they were reprimanded. ‘By whom?’ they asked. ‘By me,’ I told them, ‘if no one of the proper authority were on hand.’ They lost patience with me and declared, rather curtly, ‘We are that authority!’ They told me to read, digest and obey all school regulations, or risk expulsion. But as I turned to go, the Superintendent told me that I could work my stint as a tutorial assistant. I agreed, and presently was introduced to my ward, a girl about my own age, from a very wealthy family. Her name was Tombas Sunder; she was not in any way backward or deficient. Her problem seemed to be absentmindedness and a disinclination for the drudgery involved in schoolwork. She was rather slight, languid and graceful, romantically pale, with long dark hair, large dark eyes. We became friends at once and she insisted that I share her private rooms, which were more than adequate for the two of us. I met Myrl Sunder, her father: a legal consultant, so he described himself. He was not a large man, but deft and strong, with patrician features and soft gray hair in notable contrast with his dark sun-beaten skin. His wife had been killed five years before in an accident, and he never referred to her, nor did Tombas.

  “His conduct was civil and correct. I told them something of m
yself and my background, I mentioned that I was a Clam Muffin, and tried to explain the Sempiternals and their relationship with the striving under-clubs, but I fear that I only confused them, so I spoke no more of my status.

  “Myrl Sunder adored his dreamy absentminded daughter. He was pleased to find that we worked well together. The material itself gave her no trouble, but she would start daydreaming unless I kept her attention fixed upon the topic at hand. We never quarreled; she was docile and affectionate, and she also had a mind teeming with wonderful and strange ideas. When I listened to her I was often fascinated, often a bit taken aback by the macabre elements which decorated her fantasies. She prattled cheerfully of her erotic experiments, which were more playful than profound, and I responded with anecdotes of Piri-piri. All the while I wondered how anyone could have thought her deficient. We talked hours into the night, and always I heard something surprising or unconventional. Sometimes her ideas were so wild and mysterious that I wondered if they might not have reached her from a higher psychic plane.

  “Tombas liked to brood about questions to which there were no answers: What came before the beginning? Would the universe persist if all living things were dead? What was the difference between Something and Nothing? Then she would ponder the meaning of death. Perhaps, so she suggested, life was no more than a dress rehearsal for what happened afterwards. It was a subject to which she returned far too often, and finally I insisted upon more cheerful topics for our conversations.

  “So went the second term. It was a pleasant situation for me. I had luxurious lodgings and all the money I needed. My father never communicated with me. Tombas was more or less as before, though we no longer talked at such intimate lengths. She had other friends: a sculptor, teaching assistants in the Philosophy Department, a musician. Her social life seemed ordinary enough. The second term ended. We removed for the summer to their beach house on Cloud Island. Here many strange things occurred but I can’t digress. Though there is one thing I should mention. Tombas spent much time alone on the beach, watching the surf roll in. Then, for a time, she occupied herself building sandcastles, using a slurry mixed from sand, water and the juice of sea-pink bulbs which hardened into a light crusty foam. She formed this material into domes, spires, cloisters, arcades, courts, balconies. She used an architecture expressing fantasy and magic in a style quite strange to me. Tombas always seemed to become restless when I went with her to the beach, so for the most part I let her go alone. One day I went down to find her doing nothing very much and she seemed disposed to talk. The castle was finished, she said; she would build no more. I told her it was beautiful and asked where she had seen such an architecture. She just shrugged and said it came from a place twelve universes away from our own. She pointed to a window. ‘Look through there.’ I looked through the window and could not believe my eyes. The chamber was furnished with beautiful rugs, chairs, tables; in a large bed a girl lay sleeping.

  “Tombas spoke. ‘Her name is Earne; she is about our own age, and this is her palace. She has notified her two best paladins that they must come to her and that she will receive whomever arrives first. From the west comes Shing, built of jet and silver. From the east comes Shang, built of copper and green moidras. They will meet in front of the palace and fight to the death. The survivor will go to her bed and take her in love. Which shall it be? One, should he win, will give her a life of delight and loving care; the other would visit upon her a set of horrifying degradations.’

  “I thought that it was rather a doleful story, and bent to look once again through the window. I saw only sand; nothing else.

  “Dusk was falling and a cold wind was blowing in from the sea. Tombas turned away; in silence we returned to the house.

  “Thereafter, Tombas lost interest in the beach. The wind and the spray worked on the castle; it crumbled and became a heap of sand. Whenever I passed I wondered what had happened to Earne. Who had claimed her: Shing or Shang? But I never raised the question with Tombas.

  “The summer passed, third term began. Things were much as before. Late one evening we were sitting together in the dark. We were drinking a soft Blue-flower wine, and we were both in an unusual mood. Quite casually Tombas said that she thought she would die quite soon, and that she loved me and wanted me to accept all her possessions and use them as my own.

  “I told her that the idea was preposterous, and that she would do nothing of the sort; further, that she should not allow herself to think such dismal thoughts.

  “Tombas only tilted her head to the side in her own particular way, smiling. She told me she had been shown expansion beyond limits, in a revelation. Now she knew so much, and her head was so crammed with facts, that she could only process a small segment of her knowledge during any given interval.

  “I said that it sounded interesting, but why must it include her death?

  “ ‘It was inevitable,’ said Tombas. She went on to explain that the five senses had constructed a cardboard façade to deceive the mind. With enlightenment had come a tragic vision of reality. She had glimpsed the terrible truth behind the façade. There was no recourse; submission was the optimum response, in that it put an end to struggle. Submission offered surcease from agonies of hope and love and wonder.

  “So—there was the answer: total abnegation, and a quick yielding to death, if only to put an end to hope.

  “I said that it was sheer hysteria which caused her to say such things. How, for instance, could she know that death was at hand? She told me that she could see her body as a three-dimensional armature, washed with films of color: pink, yellow, blue, cerise—these colors flowed over the armature and—according to her preception—signified various phases of normality. But now a rust-colored shape had appeared and indicated the onset of mortefaction.

  “I had heard enough. I jumped to my feet and turned on all the lights. I told her that such talk was obscene and disgusting.

  “Tombas only laughed her gentle laugh, and said that truth could not be altered by invective. Why recoil from sweet beautiful death in such a passion of righteousness?

  “I asked after the source of these ideas, and who had been talking to her? I asked if she were having a love affair, perhaps with the same person who was guiding her thoughts? Tombas became vague, and said that such questions led into blind alleys; that only truth was important, not personalities.

  “There the matter rested.” Skirl paused, then: “Once again, there is too much to tell. These are the high points. I reported to Myrl Sunder. He became furious. I told him all I knew and all I suspected. He altered before my eyes, to a man focused upon a single objective. He intended to find and deal with the person or persons who had suborned his daughter’s mind and possibly her body. Suddenly, I saw that he was a very dangerous man. I learned that by profession Myrl Sunder was an effectuator who masked himself as a legal consultant. Together, he told me, we would learn what was going on. As a start, he arranged medical examinations for both myself and Tombas. We were pronounced sound, though Tombas showed symptoms of some odd and ambiguous mental disorder for which they could recommend no treatment.

  “Tombas resented the attention. She felt that I had betrayed her trust, even though I had been subjected to the same examination. She saw through the game, and became rather cool.

  “I conferred again with Myrl Sunder. He pointed out that I was optimally situated to discover who had such influence over Tombas, and he commissioned me to do so. Very discreetly, I started to collect information. The trail was not hard to follow. It led to a certain Ben Lan Dantin and two others. They were instructors in the School of Religious Philosophy. Tombas had taken a course in Religious Derivations from Dantin and they had engaged in long after-class discussions, and evening meetings as well.

  “Myrl Sunder called on Dantin after I told him what I had learned. Both the romance and the instruction came to an instant halt. Dantin made some lame excuse to Tombas. She seemed puzzled but not greatly disturbed. I thought it was very odd, and m
y opinion of Dantin was not enhanced. He was a curious sort: slim, graceful, quite young but intellectually precocious, with a grave pale face in an aureole of dark curls. His eyes were large, luminous, dark hazel; his mouth was so tender and his smile so sweet that many of the girls wanted to kiss him where he stood. This group did not include me. To look at him turned my stomach. I thought him over-ripe, decadent and depraved, if in an interesting way.

  “Tombas knew nothing about my involvement and it wasn’t long before we resumed our old relationship. One day she told me, quite casually, that she had decided to die at the end of the following day.

  “I was shocked. I argued for an hour, but she said only that it was for the best. I pointed out that she would be leaving behind her father and myself to grieve. Tombas said that there was an easy solution: all of us could die together. I told her that we wanted to live, but she only laughed and said that we were being foolishly stubborn. I left her to herself and informed Myrl Sunder of her plan.

  “The day passed and the night. On the next day Myrl Sunder took us to lunch at Cloud Country, a restaurant floating high in the sky just under the drift of cumulus clouds. It is a beautiful place, unique in the Gaean Reach, and an inducement for the saddest and most defeated person to stay alive. We sat at a table beside a low balustrade, overlooking the city Glist and the surrounding territory. Tombas showed no great appetite and seemed very pensive, but Myrl Sunder managed to introduce a powerful sedative into her food. By the time we had returned to the surface she was drowsy and by middle afternoon she was sound asleep in her own bed at home.

  “The afternoon waned and the sun fell toward the horizon. At sunset Tombas stopped breathing and was dead.”

  Skirl hesitated, then said, “I don’t want to go through all the details but, touching just the high points, this is what happened next. I have already mentioned that Myrl Sunder was an effectuator, and a person of very strong character. I went to live in his house, where I disposed of Tombas’ belongings: a very melancholy task. I sorted through her letters and her diary and discovered names. I continued my classes at the academy and after several frightening adventures I learned what there was to be known. It was heartbreaking information. Tombas had been induced to die for several reasons. The most mysterious was a sort of refined necrophilia, elaborately codified so as to produce an erotic mental sensation. Dantin was the leader. He had invented the precepts of the cult as an exercise in a peculiar sort of psychic sexual perversion. The two disciples were Flewen and Raud, all equally twisted. Tombas was their fourth victim, and had brought them all a weird joy impossible to describe in ordinary language.