“Welcome to Honest John’s,” said Boldar.
“Where’s John?” she asked.
“He is over there.” He pointed to the long bar. At the near end stood a man wearing a strange suit of shining cloth. It consisted of trousers that broke without cuffs at the top of shiny black boots with oddly pointed toes. The jacket was open in front, revealing a white shirt with ruffles, closed by pearl studs and sporting a pointed collar, set off with a cravat of bright yellow. Upon his head he wore a wide-brimmed white hat with a shimmering red silk hatband. He spoke closely with a creature that looked like a man with an extra set of eyes in his forehead.
Boldar waved as they approached and the man identified as John said something to the four-eyed man, who nodded once and departed.
With a wide smile, John said, “Boldar! It’s been, what, a year?”
“Not quite, John. But close enough.”
“How do you tell time in the Hall?” asked Miranda.
John glanced at Boldar, who said, “My current employer, Miranda.”
With a theatrical gesture, John doffed his hat and swept it across his chest, bowing at the waist as he reached out with his other and took one of hers lightly in it. He then made a gesture of kissing it, though his lips never touched skin.
She withdrew it quickly, feeling somewhat awkward at the contact. John said, “Welcome to my humble establishment.”
Suddenly Miranda’s eyes widened. “What language are you—are we . . .”
John said, “Your first visit, I see. I thought it unlikely we should host as lovely a guest as yourself before without my notice.” He waved them to a table located near the bar, and pulled out a chair. She blinked at it a moment before she realized he was waiting for her to sit. She was unused to this odd behavior, but considering the range of human custom, she chose not to offend and let him seat her.
“One of the few magic spells allowed. It is not only useful, it is necessary. It’s not foolproof, I fear, for we do occasionally have the odd visitor whose personal frame of reference is so alien to the majority of sentient life that only the most basic communication is possible, if any, and we also do get the occasional fool.”
Boldar chuckled and said, “That we do.”
John waved his hand. “Now, as to your first question, measuring time is simple. Outside the Hall, time passes as it does everywhere else in the universe, as far as I know. But to answer what you meant to ask, we measure it as we did on my homeworld. It’s a vanity, but as I am the owner of the establishment, it’s my right to make the rules. What world do you hail from, if I might know?”
“Midkemia.”
“Ah, then, it’s very close to what you’re used to. Mere hours different per year; enough to trouble scribes and philosophers, but in the course of a normal lifetime, you’d only be off by a few days on your birthday between the two calendars.”
Miranda said, “When I first learned of the Hall, I thought it a magic gate through which I might seek other worlds. I had no idea . . .”
John nodded. “Few do. But humans, for that is what I judge you to be, are like most other intelligent creatures—they adapt. And they find things that are useful and continue to do them. Likewise, those of us who are privileged to walk the Hall, well, we adapt, too. There are too many reasons to stay within the Hall, too many benefits, once one finds one’s way into it, to ignore, so most of us become citizens of the Hall, abandoning our former ties or at least neglecting them shamefully.”
“Benefits?”
John and Boldar exchanged looks. “So I don’t bore you, my dear, why don’t you tell me what you know about the Hall?” suggested John.
Miranda said, “In my travels I have heard of the Hall of Worlds several times. I had to look for quite some time to find the entrance. I know it is a means of traveling through space, to reach distant worlds.”
“And through time, as well,” said Boldar.
Miranda said, “Time?”
“To reach a distant world by conventional means takes lifetimes; the Hall reduces transit to days, in some cases hours.”
John said, “Then to the heart of the matter: the Hall exists independent of objective reality as we like to define it when standing on the surface of our homeworlds. It links worlds that may be in different universes, different spacetimes, for lack of a better term. We have no way of knowing. For that matter, it may link worlds at different times. My homeworld, a not very distinguished sphere orbiting an unremarkable sun, may very well have died of old age before your world was born, Miranda. How would we know? If we move through objective space, then why not through objective time?