The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass Read online

  He shrugged. “An interesting definition of deity. I hope this notion stays with me the next time I am . . . brought awake.”

  She suddenly took his hand in hers, and tugged at it. Startled, he stopped walking. He stood before her, only slightly taller than she.

  “Tell me,” said Liaei, staring into his eyes. “What kinds of things have you seen? I know you have seen wonders. . . .”

  “Wonders? You might say so. I’ve seen world wars and singularities collapsing civilizations repeatedly; entrepreneural chaos and desperate comedy and true love. I’ve seen a young sun that was angry-white and small and round and took up only a small spot of the blue sky. I’ve seen waters fill not just the whole of the Pacific Basin, but the whole world and watched them fade, until they stood only halfway up the Basin walls. And now I see this, the wonder of a sun that spans the sky.”

  “Who are you?” she whispered, still grasping his fingers. “No, really, who are you?”

  “A man,” said the Clock King. “Just a man who can never look back, only forward. It is all I can remember about myself.”

  “But why?” she said. “Why are you . . . you?”

  “And why are you letting them do this to you?” he countered.

  Liaei released his hand.

  “Because this is all I can do. I was born for this, and I fit the function. And because I can, it is my duty to do so.”

  “But you always have a choice,” he said. “You can do anything you want, and you can tell them no, and you can live your life any way you like. Even right this moment. You can just walk away from me, from this place. I, on the other hand—”

  “What?” she said harshly. “You what?”

  “I am . . . the Clock King.”

  “But that is not an answer. You have not answered my question.”

  The Clock King looked at her with amused sorrow. “You must ask a kind of question that I can answer. My mind does not seem to be fully my own.”

  The wind blew heat at them, and the filaments of their hair stood up, twisting, getting into their faces.

  “I see . . .” said Liaei. “So then, there are questions that you might answer and others that you might not? You sound just like the harmonium. I ask it some things and it tells me, ‘This is not a correct question.’ Stupid literal thing.” She snorted. And then she again took his hand, and she said, “What is the harmonium? Do you know? Can you tell me anything?”

  He started to walk again, and she moved at his side, holding him by the arm as though he were an old man—which he was.

  “Harmonium technology is based on the smallest moving parts known to humankind,” he said. “It is sub-atomic, and invisible to the eye, able to switch quantum states from particle to wave. Unlike original artificial intelligence machines that were visualized to progressively mimic human intelligence, and take on a life of their own, harmonium tech created such perfectly task-compliant machines that they were deemed to be absolutely function-static. In other words, they were bound within limits of function and at the same time completely self-reliant, self-repairing, and perfectly indestructible. Like . . . clockwork.”

  “Okay, but what is the energy source? What makes the harmonium work?” Liaei said. “I have a feeling it is something important for me to know. Something terribly vital, a missing link. . . .”

  He smiled suddenly. “You are so alive, you know that? Your own energy source is wonderful to witness. . . .”

  “No, really,” said Liaei. “Please, tell me!”

  “Very simple. It is the energy that comes from the fluctuation between the states. Between particle and wave. Between on and off. Between existence and non-existence, life and death, love and hate—any opposites.”

  “So then . . . the harmonium is powered by forces of change?”

  “Yes, movement, to be precise. Transition. But, why don’t I show you, instead?”

  Liaei stared hard at him, her thoughts in turmoil, when the man standing next to her glanced around them suddenly, looking for a familiar landmark in the air.

  “There,” he said, pointing to a flash of transparent molten dayfire suspended in the air. “You call it The River That Flows Through The Air.”

  “Oh, Day God, yes!” exclaimed Liaei. “You know it! I mean, you know what makes it behave the way it does?”

  Her speech gained an urgency. “Clock King,” she said, and the pressure of her fingers bit into his. “It has been obsessing me for the greater part of my life! We know—that is, our modern science knows—or at least has a good idea of many things, if not the underlying principles of the harmonium. But this impossible, inexplicable River phenomenon is still just beyond us! They are guessing that the high-tech civilization that created the harmonium level technology, disappeared—possibly to the stars—and now we have these functional harmonium systems that rely on no known power source, generate minor static fields upon occasion, and yet are able to respond to us in vocal harmonics, and readily interpret some of our commands. They are mostly unfathomable, alien things that are somehow a common part of our lives. Harmonium powers everything, or rather converts everything, and yet what makes the River flow uphill? What keeps it suspended?”

  He interrupted her flow of words with a gentle touch in return, so that they were now facing each other, once again stopped.

  “You think I am insane, don’t you?” said Liaei suddenly. “That I am crazy? Instead of asking you prying personal questions about your own life, or just letting you be, I am trying to get a science lesson!”

  “You are excited by the chance,” he said. “And it appears we have stumbled upon the one thing that you really care about in your life—this River.”

  Liaei frowned. “I care about a great deal. About my world and these human beings who need me, about Amhama. About—”

  “I know,” he said. “But you care about knowing even more. It is natural, since just like me you are a stranger here. But to learn you need to learn how to ask.”

  “All right,” she said. “I already know that we learn new things about harmonium technology constantly, by asking the correct type of leading questions. The harmonium is so infinitely complex that even our questions are often too basic for it. True harmonium breakthroughs are rare and momentous occasions for modern science.”

  “You are on the right track,” he said.

  “So then stop making me crazy, damn you, and just tell me!”

  But the Clock King shook his head. “Not yet,” he said.

  Liaei was furious. She hated him then, his smug alien face with pronounced masculine features, his ageless watery eyes, his passive gentleness—what was wrong with him anyway, was he not supposed to have the same virile energy as she? She hated the way his hair tendrils curled in the heat, and how the sweat beaded along the edges of his hairline. But mostly she hated that he knew and she did not. He was withholding it from her now, just as he withheld—

  “Liaei,” said the most hateful man in the world. “I am to spend this time with you, and we might as well look at the world together briefly, and just observe. So then, why don’t we look at The River That Flows Through The Air? How would you like to follow it as far as it flows and see what is there?”

  “Absolutely not!” said Vioma in a high voice that was very unlike her, or maybe Liaei just didn’t know all sides of Vioma yet. “The River flows beyond Edge City, and right into the barren desert. We are talking kilometers with hardly a road, and no one knows for how long! How can I allow this, when the two of you are supposed to be building intimacy? What if something happens to either one of you? Until you conceive, Liaei—yes, don’t make embarrassed faces at me, you know perfectly well what needs be done—”

  They were in Vioma’s small office in the Palace lower floor. Vioma was pacing while Liaei was seated very primly on the edge of the visitor chair before the nurse’s desk.

  “It was the Clock King’s own idea,” said Liaei, looking ahead of her at the cream-colored wall and the decorative harmonium d
isplay field. “I agree with him that the two of us should go. What better way of cementing intimacy than to be alone with him on this journey? You can send some mechanical techs to watch out for us, if you like.”

  Vioma sighed. She stopped pacing and stood looking at Liaei, in thought. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this fact, Liaei, but the Clock King has only a limited amount of time here, with you. In fact, there are only a couple of days, three at most, that I can allow him to remain here with us. . . .”

  Liaei stared. “What do you mean?”

  “You have to conceive soon—tonight, tomorrow. And even if you do not, he still has to go back into the device. He cannot stay in this phase of existence, in our time, or he will begin accelerated atomic decay. Several times a day I monitor him—the room he is in has special bio-equipment—and he is still fine for the moment, but the decay is imminent. Left unchecked, his body will rapidly deteriorate, age and collapse. We don’t know how but that ancient harmonium thing—the device—is what gives him cohesion.”

  “So, put him back in the device to—to recharge and take him out again in a couple of days?”

  Vioma gave a rueful laugh. “It will take several decades before the chrono-mechanism will allow that. It’s been timed perfectly, so that he can only be brought out to service sufficiently distinct generations.”

  “I see . . .” Liaei said in a dead voice.

  “Officer Ginadi? Are you still in Edge City?” Liaei said in a quiet but definitely living voice, using a public harmonium voice comm in the voidroom on the third floor of the Palace.

  “This is Officer Ginadi,” a familiar calm voice replied and Liaei heard the babble voices and sounds of a police station in the background.

  “Officer, I am about to walk up a very steep slope, and I need your help.”

  “Liaei! Hey, is that you, kid? I mean, Queen of the Hourglass—what’s wrong?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling even though he could not see her since this was a basic voice link only.

  “Remember the River? If you would like to see where it ends, I’d love to take a ride in your cruiser again. That is, if you don’t mind two passengers.”

  “This is definitely going to cost me some demerits from the Committee,” Ginadi was saying the next morning as he elevated the cruiser to the precise city limits hover altitude. In the back seat were the Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass.

  “Don’t worry,” said Liaei, decisive and serious. “I’ve convinced Vioma that if we don’t find the River’s end by the end of the day, we head back immediately.”

  “That woman is a harpy,” said the Clock King, also very serious, and yet there was something new in his expression. “A loving one, but a harpy nevertheless.”

  “A what?” said Liaei.

  “I have no idea,” he replied. “Things I have known at other times often randomly come to mind. Terms, images, ideas, junk. All prompted to recall by a detail, by something or other in the here and now. It’s good to be . . . alive.”

  “Clock King, you are a funny one,” said Ginadi, as they started along the main street that ran by the tall support aqueduct rings of the River. “I expected you to be, well, different.”

  In the back seat, the Clock King smiled. “I am different every time,” he said.

  They moved rapidly through Edge City, past apartment buildings and shopping areas, and Liaei threw occasional glances behind her at the tall needle-tower of the Palace, still visible. The Day God sky was a searing bright abyss overhead, and the surrounding streets were all alike, pavement surfaces well maintained, building fronts sporting mirror-glass and harmonium displays everywhere.

  “What if one day,” said the Clock King all of a sudden, “the harmonium stops working? All energy just dies out? What will you do?”

  “Oh, Day God, don’t say that,” whispered Liaei. She remembered a conversation that now seemed many years ago, Riveli speaking with her and Amhama in Basin City, saying that several transports had failed.

  “I know,” said the Clock King with his former apathetic tone of voice. “Your society will fall apart and you all immediately become civilized savages. And, since modern homo sapiens is born in a hothouse lab, probably using all kinds of harmonium equipment and methods, then your crisis would be severe indeed. Unless you can use other means, you are faced with total extinction within one generation.”

  “You certainly know how to cheer someone,” said Ginadi. They were driving in a remote city area, past huge complexes of hothouse fields under plasti-glassoid cover. Here the River was flowing at a much lower altitude, a mere ten feet in the air, and frequent, narrow siphoning pipes were connected to it at the junction of the support rings. They drew the water from it by means of simple suction, to irrigate the hothouses.

  “Look at all that food being grown,” said the Clock King. “None of it can survive the conditions outside. Yet when the harmonium goes, you will need to come up with new mechanical means—or a new technology altogether—to keep it alive.”

  “Well, the economy is straightforward,” said Ginadi. “All production is short-term and to order. Nothing gets wasted—unlike the historical famines and failed harvests you ancients used to experience in the agriculture of the open air and inclement weather. Now, we grow what we need, and I am sure we can figure out a way to keep it that way, ecologically self-contained.”

  “Self-contained is good,” the Clock King said. “But self-reliant is better. Every perfect ecosystem in a bottle like yours can be shattered. You need an imperfect system that can fight to survive in the mess of broken shards. Until it can become another perfect circle. . . .”

  Liaei listened to the two of them speak, and something heavy and final was settling over her, a burden of inevitable thought.

  In that moment the Clock King turned to her and pointed to the dancing stripe of River outside the cruiser window.

  “So, Liaei,” he said. “Here it is, and we are right alongside it. What do you see?”

  “What do you mean?” Liaei squinted from the reflected Day God radiance. “I see it moving and glittering, all kinds of colors and yet transparent.”

  The Clock King nodded in silence, and smiled. He said nothing for a long time after.

  It was noon when they left the outer reaches of Edge City. There was no guard tower here, merely a small kiosk with one police officer on duty surrounded by four glassoid walls, who nodded to them while barely looking up from his harmonium display. The last walls of concrete were behind them, empty paved lots of undeveloped city property.

  The paved road continued onward, past the city limits into amber desolation. On the right of it, dancing like a streak of pure energy flew the airborne River. It swept through the aqueduct rings that receded like black sentinels into the heat horizon.

  “That way,” said Ginadi, “lies nothing. Nothing and the rest of the world.”

  “We will be fine,” said Liaei. “Even if the cruiser breaks down, we’ve plenty of water for several days, while they come to get us.”

  But Ginadi was more subdued. “What about him? According to your Vioma who left me very detailed instructions, he does not have several days.”

  “Ah, so you know . . .” said Liaei.

  The Clock King grinned. “You mean that at the stroke of midnight I become a pumpkin?”

  Liaei had no understanding of his words or juxtaposition of ensuing images, but she had never seen his face like that, bared teeth, fierce, exuberant, cheeks dark with the shadow of stubble. He was coming alive indeed, she realized. The shadow man who had attempted to mate with her two days ago was someone else altogether.

  Here was the real Clock King.

  The cruiser was speeding forward now, much more rapidly and at a higher hover altitude. The landscape of dry bleached rocks, sand, stone, and solitary spots of stunted desert cacti that required almost no water and got exactly that—all flew by in a kaleidoscope of bland scorching light.

  The River That Flows Through
The Air continued also, on and on into the desert, and there was no end in sight.

  Ginadi spoke nothing for many kilometers now, and Liaei was guessing that he was more disturbed than he was letting on.

  “Wait,” she said, breaking the silence, and looked at the man seated next to her. “You must know that the River ends, don’t you? Otherwise we wouldn’t be just driving off into nowhere.”

  “Yes,” the Clock King said. “I know its end. Soon.”

  He was looking before them as he replied, and Liaei watched his even profile, the straight nose and brow, proportioned shape of skull. It felt odd for her not to see the uncovered head shape of someone, since his was covered by hair in the back, and so his exact shape remained a mystery.

  “Good,” Ginadi said. And almost he exhaled in relief.

  When the afternoon deepened and the Day God was just letting go of the eastern sliver of sky, the angle perspective of the receding aqueduct rings seemed to shorten in the farthest distance. Instead of continuing to recede to a sharp point, Liaei saw it grow and turn blunt and there was a widening of the horizon just beyond it.

  The cutoff point was coming to them in the distance, the dark distant shape of the last support ring.

  The fiery line of the River also was seeming to fade at the end of the horizon.

  The road ahead was still a strip of pavement, old and weathered, and the cruiser hover-flew over it like a metallic arrow, while the cruiser’s ovoid shadow raced just underneath and slightly to the left.

  Judging by the angle of the Day God, they were moving north.

  “There,” the Clock King said suddenly. “Look!”

  Liaei was already staring so hard that for the last several long moments she forgot to blink.

  The end came softly.

  The paved road continued on before them, fading into the horizon. But the last thick black metal ring support was just meters ahead.