The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass Read online

  When she was all white fire, her lungs scalded and gasping at the thin oxygen, needing a richer ancient draught, she collapsed, her feet stopping, while she stood panting and doubled over.

  “Stop music . . .” she managed to whisper, and the harmonium obliged.

  Ancient reeds faded, slipped into non-being, and the strings vibrato dissipated into silence. The last percussion beat clashed and fell, and was no more.

  And Liaei stood panting, in the silent and now dark room, while tears streamed down her face and she sobbed convulsively from the gut, for what was gone, for the voices of her ancestors wrenched out of time, remembering she was so alone and they who were most like her were all no longer.

  The human sexual act resulted in a great deal of pleasure for the male and female,” said the harmonium. “Not all other species experienced the same during mating, and often there was pain involved in the moments during the release of hormones. But for homo sapiens, mating and pleasure became a social obsession, and coupling and monogamy was more than the means of continuing the race but formed the economy and family structure. Casual and serious relationships evolved into various phases in a range between monogamy and polyamory, based on current economic and social conditions, and often discounting the needs and wants of the individuals—not to mention the needs of various same-gender and transitional-gender combinations of the so-called homosexual and otherwise differentiated portion of the population. But in the long run what drove it all was the physical need of the male and the female, and then simply the hormonal need of any individual for another individual, regardless of sexual orientation, and based only upon the emotional need for love.”

  “Yes, love . . .” mused Liaei, listening to the machine’s lecture. “What a silly thing the ancients made of it by associating it with sex. What does love—genuine bonds of affection—have to do with hormonal excitement? Sorry, I don’t get it. I mean, I do, on a strange remote level, but I also understand how illusory that connection is.”

  “You have reached the hormonal balance such as that you can understand sexual desire now, Liaei?” asked the harmonium. There was no lurid shadow in that question, and yet something made Liaei blush as she heard it. And in that same moment as she felt herself grow warm with the strange embarrassment, she self-reflexively understood what she was doing and how odd it was to feel shame.

  “It must be vulnerability . . .” she muttered to herself. “The shame and the blushing is related to vulnerability, an opening to intimacy. The surrendering of self, the loss of power, must result in initial fear.” And for some reason she thought of the tech Toliwe, and the warmth on the surface of her skin intensified.

  The harmonium continued. It described in detail the physical structures of the female and male bodies that were involved in the reproductive moment. “In the earlier young homo sapiens species, the male procreative organ, the penis was much larger, and more responsive to stimuli. The engorging with blood resulted in a stiffening and expansion of its tissues which the modern human genitals no longer experience. The female genitals were also deeper and more sensitive to hormonal fluctuation and to engorgement that paralleled the male organ on a smaller scale, in the small organ called the clitoris. The ancient vagina had to be able to expand enough to receive the swollen male organs and later to allow the newborn child to pass from the body—that flexibility was also a function of hormone levels and blood circulation. The modern female has a rudimentary vaginal canal that cannot accept any entry, and the womb and ovaries are pseudo-organs. The clitoris has devolved to such a tiny size that in most women it cannot be located. The modern male penis is a tiny blunt urinary ovoid protuberance of passive soft tissue, and the vestige testes have receded near the perineum. None are sensitive to ero-tactile stimulation.”

  “I am such a freak . . .” muttered Liaei. She thought of her own body with its deep vaginal canal and viable womb and functional ovaries and. . . .

  “Not at all,” replied the machine. “You are perfectly normal for your genetic makeup.”

  “And I am so sick of hearing that,” she said, getting up, and then slammed the surface of the desk with her fist.

  “Please don’t hurt yourself. To change the subject, let us switch to the duties that await the Queen of the Hourglass,” said the machine without missing a beat. “The seduction ritual is an important part of what will happen when you are with the Clock King, and the importance of the background material will become clear. Much of what we have discussed as foreplay is necessary for the sexual levels of arousal that initiate the reproductive process.”

  “You know what? I really don’t want to hear it. So just shut yourself up,” said Liaei tiredly. Then added, “Sorry, I mean, let’s just continue this tomorrow, okay? I feel like crap.”

  Liaei hated to admit this to anyone, and especially to the medicineal techs who now measured every aspect of her development, but she was restless. Hormones were awash in her body, and her energy was boundless, so that she thought she could jump up and soar. On the other hand she did not mind admitting this to the harmonium.

  “Feeling better today, Liaei?” it asked her, as she arrived for the next morning’s lesson.

  “Yes. Sorry about yesterday,” said Liaei, yawning, and holding her hands around a warm mug of tonic herbal brew that she brought with her from the cafeteria.

  The daylight was barely beginning to color the sky, and the patch of it in the overhead skylight was soft and dilute mauve.

  “Today’s lesson is seduction,” said the harmonium. “It involves a buildup of excitement so that copulation becomes imminent, and is achieved by a combination of human skin contact, visual enticement, auditory stimulation, subtle smell, and a number of other environmental factors. Little of this can be described, and most must be experienced in practice. Regretfully I cannot show you much beyond the ancient so-called porn, short slang for pornography, which is visual recordings of homo sapiens copulating, for the sole purpose of eliciting sexual arousal or lust in the audience. Pornography was a powerful quasi-legal factor in the societies of all the civilizations of which we have records. Glimpses of it could be observed in the arts, music, even fashion of clothing and architecture. For thousands of years, sex and its mystique shaped the entertainment industries, drove the development of technology, and the staying power of it was such that even now, after the sex drive has dissipated in the species, some modern humans still attempt to capitalize on it, to recapture the energy and the allure, the animal life force—”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Liaei. “Some people in the clubs talk about gettogethers to watch the old fuckfests. They laugh, of course. It means nothing to them, just an ancient nature documentary. But I am afraid. They invited me once, and I really wanted to go and—and see. But I was afraid that it would have a different effect on me. I did not want to turn into a savage in front of them, to lose control.”

  “The possibility is very low that you would lose control under such circumstances, Liaei. According to our records, there is a difference between sex-based entertainment and the actual act.”

  Liaei shivered. “Okay, good to know. Do you think you can show me the porn, then?”

  “Of course,” replied the harmonium. “Let’s start with the more softcore also known as erotica, and then we can build you up to the hardcore variants. Please feel free to stop the displays at any time and ask questions. In fact, you are encouraged to ask, since much of it can seem to make little sense, and is based on various individual fetishes throughout history.”

  “So, you managed to see some of that antique porn?” said Amhama chuckling and shaking her head as they were eating dinner. “Does any of it make sense to you, girl? I mean, at least your hormonal levels may make it more interesting for you. Just to think, they used to have obsessions over body parts and body size, used to have grotesque operations to modify organs such as the female breasts. At the same time, many of their societies had rigid moral rules and weird intolerance in regard to the tru
e range of gender. Makes you wonder why so much dissonance.”

  Liaei blushed then laughed, and continued to chew the hot spicy soya protein and vegetables. “It’s rather amazing actually. There were enormous genitalia, breasts and buttocks, long legs and smooth or hairy chests, contorted backs and various other limbs, and these red colored lips—all huge and exaggerated. Actually, no, not always huge—they were of all shapes and sizes. But always something was exaggerated in those displays, to the point of grotesque. At least the early super-archaic stuff was all live real human video or stills. But then this computer simulart took over. The animated porn just went all caricature, with almost insectoid body distortion, and unreal motion.

  “Oh, and you wouldn’t believe the things they were wearing! Clothing that served no other function but emphasis of certain body parts. Full or partial nudity, and one or more men or women involved, group scenes. And they had toys—implements? There was even some truly disgusting subject matter. I mean, I had no idea, but anything and everything—body fluids, inanimate objects, food, force, pain, other animal species, even auditory playacting—could serve as sexual turn-ons for the ancients. You know, Ama, I was afraid at first, afraid that I’d respond to any of this, but then it just got to be ridiculous. Too much maybe, for one sitting. I started to giggle and then laughed for hours, watching. Laughed and laughed. . . .”

  Liaei suddenly put her utensils down with a clatter and raised her fingers to rub against her burning cheeks. “I am blushing again, damn it, aren’t I?” she said. “Oh, why do I have to take it all so personally? It’s as if I am embarrassed for all of them and their focused naturalism—primitivism, I should say—as if I take responsibility for all the foibles of the ancient race. Why, why, damn it, why—”

  Amhama watched her with a meaningful expression and even put her spoon to rest in the bowl. “It’s all right, Liaei. Really, it is, keep telling yourself. Now, if it does affect you at some point, sweet, don’t feel bad. For you it would be a normal thing to feel something. Always remember that. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with having a living response.”

  “Sure, Ama, whatever,” said Liaei. And then she began to either laugh or cry, rubbing her face in her hands, and taking in convulsive gasps of air into her primitive lungs.

  Amhama continued to watch, frozen with sympathy and impotence.

  Liaei was obsessed with imagining Toliwe nude. It seemed absurd in her own mind, especially after the visual overload of the antique lurid images she had seen of naked male and female flesh in intimate contact. But her young curiosity was a driving force, as powerful and erratic in its fluctuations and intensity as her life energy. Toliwe was an ordinary man, and yes, she had seen the banal anatomy of modern male genitalia numerous times, and yes this was nothing new. And yet. . . .

  At the gym, when she and Toliwe did the workouts every other day, Liaei would sneak glimpses of his androgynous body in motion.

  The local gym was a large well-lit complex with a high ceiling of transparent glassoid to allow in the bright Day God light. In addition to the usual full-body tone machines, steppers, runwalks, rowers, weights, stretchers, muscle-stims, there was much aerial equipment for the latest modern exercise fad, Sky Dancing or SD. Music with a very light underlying on-off binary rhythm filled the place, and the overhead expanse was always occupied with at least three or four people at a time doing one or more of the suspended forms of Sky Dance, using the hand-swingers, the aero-spin, or the ever-popular wings.

  Toliwe was great at Sky Dancing. They had come in today after dinner, their group of five consisting of Toliwe, Liaei, and three other horticulturist techs, Chwanta, Finnei and Olato.

  Olato was the youngest of the techs, just fresh out of school, and his handsome earnest face was sweetened by an easy smile. He was pale gold, a faint and delicate hue, and his smooth skin overlay defined musculature. Olato worked out more than anyone else Liaei knew, and right now he and Toliwe had gone up to the aerials and were swinging by their arms, strong hands gripping the handlebars, on their way to the upper rung advanced SD equipment. Both were dressed in loose-clinging natural fiber sweat pants and t-shirts that rippled in the faint breeze of the overhead air vents.

  Liaei and the two women were still on the floor equipment. Chwanta, taller and darker than everyone and lithe like a thing of molten metal—Liaei thought—was finishing the five kilometer run cycle on the runwalk, her limbs flashing deep bronze as she sped in place, arms and elbows pumping, knees contracting and expanding in rhythm, and legs flying. Chwanta’s smooth head, beautifully oval, was thrown back and beads of sweat made tracks along the contours of her scalp, face, neck and chest, sinking into the absorbent fibers of her red sport shirt. Her eyes were closed and she was panting slightly in measured powerful intakes and exhales while the equipment voice-over recited the remaining distance.

  “Almost done . . .” she gasped, without opening her eyes, “Hold on just a little, everyone, all right? Don’t go up without me.”

  “Sure,” said Liaei who had just finished her stretching routine on the mats followed by a series of balanced extended handstands against the support wall. She was adjusting the band that was holding up her mane of hair into a gathered tail and considered twisting and then tying it up into a bun contraption that she had seen an antique woman do in—of all places—one of the ancient live porn displays.

  From the back, Finnei tugged gently at Liaei’s tail of hair, saying in her sonorous voice, “Don’t, just leave it swinging, Li. I like it that way.”

  Liaei turned to stare at Finnei with a slightly self-conscious expression. She always felt that way when her physical differences were in any way drawn attention to.

  Finnei was one of the most beautiful young women that Liaei knew. Even now after the bit of teasing, as she watched Liaei with her eyes the color of the iridescent surface film of Oceanus water, Liaei could not ignore her other attributes. Her skin appeared pearly silver-rose; an exquisite bone structure underlay her scalp; her nose had a delicately sculpted bridge that gave way to a charming, slightly upturned tip with fine chiseled nostrils. Finnei’s lips were somewhat fuller than average, curved and soft. She was very slim and her black sports top hugged a perfect flat chest with tiny buds of nipples, while underneath were toned hips and long powerfully muscled legs, clad in shorts. Two sensitized metal studs were embedded in the pierced lobes of Finnei’s ears, metal contrasting with pearlescent skin, and the cabochon surfaces danced in a shimmering surface motion with the smallest change of light.

  “What?” said Finnei, grinning at Liaei’s sour expression. “I love your hair, Li, really. I wish I had some. Just think of all the curious things I could do with it, build braid geo-structures over my head, organize the individual hair follicles into fractal weaves of high intricacy . . .”

  Liaei knew the other was being kind and meant well. But she could never escape the underlying subtle sense that they were all just fondly tolerating her, as though she were a weirdly sentient pet animal or plant—an exotic specimen of another primitive species who was entrusted under their watchful care. Even their pointed kindness grated at Liaei.

  And Finnei’s goodwill grated in particular. Liaei did not miss the profound looks that Finnei and Toliwe exchanged with one another when they thought the others were otherwise preoccupied.

  Looks of intimacy, the kind that led to Life Bonding.

  At the thought of it, a painful wrenching sensation came inside Liaei’s chest, somewhat unlocalized, and caused by nerve spasms which in turn were caused by the thoughts.

  Well, why not, Liaei thought, forcing herself to experience the alien pangs. Why not, when it would make perfect sense for Toliwe to bond with someone like Finnei, an older, subtle, wise woman. Serious in some ways, just like him.

  They had so much in common, those two. Brilliant, intellectual.

  “Done!” panted Chwanta as her runwalk came to an even halt. She jumped off, wiping her forehead and back of the neck, a
nd said, “Give me a moment and then let’s go up.”

  Overhead, Toliwe already soared, locked in the wings, his powerful arm and thigh muscles rhythmically pumping the kinetic energy via connecting pulleys into the generators attached at the wing bases to harmonium converters. The harmonium in turn used the kinetic energy to power the movement of the wings which spun like sharp deadly blades and kept the user aloft, treading air. It was the ultimate culmination of the Sky Dance exercise routine.

  Once he hit the rhythm, Toliwe could tread air for hours.

  Next to Liaei, Finnei looked up, momentarily watching Toliwe with a smile, then waved at Olato who had engaged the aero-spin and was whirling so fast that his golden shape was a blur.

  “He can’t see you, silly,” said Chwanta, holding a water-conserving gym towel to her face, still cooling off.

  “Ah, but he can,” said Finnei with a mischievous smile that crinkled the skin at the bridge of her delicate nose. “Toliwe says there’s an amazing point of balance during the aero-spin when you can actually learn to spot and focus on a specific landmark, so that there is this weird stereophonic visual awareness of all the points around you, relative to that mark.”

  “I don’t think Olato’s that advanced yet,” said Chwanta with a chuckle.

  Liaei remained quiet. Indeed she was always somewhat uncomfortable with heights, and aero-spin made her dizzy and even sick, something to do with the balance in her inner ear, she was told. She preferred to stick to the beginner hand-swingers and just watch the others do the more advanced stuff.

  And that way she could look at Toliwe, watch him move.

  “I am going up,” said Finnei. And then she glanced at Liaei. “Coming, Li?”

  Liaei nodded, and then the three of them began to ascend the stair-bars to the SD equipment section.