A clock gonged, and he gripped his forearms, one in either hand. He said, ‘I’ve heard that Soli has dissolved your oath.’
‘That’s true, Timekeeper. And I wish to apologize for my mother. She had no right to come to you, asking you to talk to Soli on my behalf.’
With his foot he pushed back the chair as he kneaded the tight muscles of his forearms. ‘So, you think I ordered Soli to release you from your oath?’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘No.’
‘My mother seems to think –’
‘Your mother – forgive me, Pilot – your mother often thinks wrongly. I’ve known you all your life. Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe you’d desert the Order to become a merchant pilot? Ha!’
‘Then you didn’t speak to Soli?’
‘You question me?’
‘Excuse me, Timekeeper.’ I was confused. Why else would Soli have released me from my oath, unless it was to shame me before all my friends and masters of the Academy?
I confided my doubts to the Timekeeper who said, ‘Soli has lived three long lifetimes; don’t try to understand him.’
‘It seems there are many things I don’t understand.’
‘You’re modest today.’
‘Why did you send for me?’
‘Don’t question me, damn you! I’ve only so much patience, even for you.’
I sat mutely in the chair looking out the window at Borja’s beautiful main spire, the one the Tycho had built a thousand years ago. The Timekeeper circled around to my side so that he could look upon my face as I stared straight ahead. It was the traditional position of politeness between master and novice that I had been taught when I first entered the Academy. The Timekeeper could search my face for truth or lies (or any other emotion) while preserving the sanctity of his own thoughts and feelings.
‘Everyone knows you intend to keep your oath,’ he said.
‘Yes, Lord Horologe.’
‘It seems that Soli has tricked you.’
‘Yes, Lord Horologe.’
‘And your mother has failed you.’
‘Perhaps, Lord Horologe.’
‘Then you’ll still try to penetrate the Entity?’
‘I’ll leave tomorrow, Lord Horologe.’
‘Your ship is ready?’
‘Yes, Lord Horologe.’
‘“To die among the stars is the most glorious death,” is it not?’
‘Yes, Lord Horologe.’
There was a blur from my side and the Timekeeper slapped my face. ‘Nonsense!’ he roared. ‘I won’t listen to such nonsense from you!’
He walked over to the window and rapped the glass pane with his knuckles. ‘Cities such as Neverness are glorious,’ he said. ‘And the ocean at sunset, or deep winter’s firefalls – these things are glorious. Death is death; death is horror. There’s no glory when the time runs out and the ticking stops, do you hear me? There’s only blackness and the hell of everlasting nothingness. Don’t be too quick to die, do you hear me, Mallory?’
‘Yes, Lord Horologe.’
‘Good!’ He crossed the room and opened a cabinet supporting a jar of pulsing, glowing red fluid. (I had always presumed that this evil-looking display was a clock of some sort, but I had never had the courage to ask him exactly what sort.) From the cabinet’s dark interior – the wood was a rare ebony and so dully black that it shed little light – he removed an object that appeared to be an old, leather-covered box. I soon saw that it was not; when he opened the ‘box,’ that is to say, when he turned back one section of the stiffened pieces of the brown, cracked leather, there were many, many sheets of what seemed to be paper cleverly fastened to the middle section. He came closer to me; I smelled mildew and dust and centuries-old paper. As his fingers turned the yellow sheets he would occasionally let out a sigh or exclaim, ‘Here it is, in ancient Anglish, no less!’ Or, ‘Ah, such music, no one does this now, it’s a dead art. Look at this, Mallory!’ I looked at the sheets of paper covered line after line with squiggly black characters, all of which were alien to me. I knew that I was looking at one of those archaic artifacts in which words are represented symbolically (and redundantly) by physical ideoplasts. The ancients had called the ideoplasts ‘letters,’ but I could not remember what the letter-covered artifact itself was called.
‘It’s a book!’ the Timekeeper said. ‘A treasure – these are the greatest poems ever dreamed by the minds of human beings. Listen to this … ,’ and he translated from the dead language he called Franche as he recited a poem entitled ‘The Clock.’ I did not like it very much; it was a poem full of dark, shuddering images and hopelessness and dread.
‘How is it that you can interpret these symbols into words?’ I asked.
‘The art is called “reading,”’ he said, ‘It’s an art I learned long ago.’
I was confused for a moment because I had always used the word ‘read’ in a different, broader context. One ‘reads’ the weather patterns from the drifting clouds or ‘reads’ a person’s habits and programs according to the mannerisms of his face. Then I remembered certain professionals practised the art of reading, as did the citizens of many of the more backward worlds. I had even once seen books in a museum on Solsken. I supposed that one could read words as well as say them. But how inefficient it all seemed! I pitied the ancients who did not know how to encode information into ideoplasts and directly superscribe the various sense and cognitive centres of the brain. As Bardo would say, how barbaric!
The Timekeeper made a fist and said, ‘I want you to learn the art of reading so you can read this book.’
‘Read the book?’
‘Yes,’ he said as he snapped the cover shut and handed it to me. ‘You heard what I said.’
‘But why, Timekeeper, I don’t understand. To read with the eyes; it’s so … clumsy.’
‘You’ll learn to read, and you’ll learn the dead languages in this book.’
‘Why?’
‘So that you’ll hear these poems in your heart.’
‘Why?’
‘Question me again, damn you, and I’ll forbid you to journey for seven years! Then you’ll learn patience!’
‘Forgive me, Timekeeper.’
‘Read the book, and you may live,’ he said. He reached out and patted the back of my neck. ‘Your life is all you have; guard it like a treasure.’
The Timekeeper was the most complicated man I have ever known. He was a man whose selfness comprised a thousand jagged pieces of love and hate, whimsy and will; he was a man who battled himself. I stood there dumbly holding the dusty old book he had placed in my hands, and I looked into the black pools of his unfathomable eyes, and I saw hell. He paced the room like an old, white wolf who had once been caught in a wormrunner’s steel trap. He was wary of something, perhaps of giving me the book. As he paced, he rubbed the muscles of his right leg and limped, slightly. He seemed at once vicious and kind, lonely, and bitter at his loneliness. Here was a man, I thought, who had never known a single day’s (or night’s) peace, an old, old man who had been wounded in love and cut in wars and burnt by dreams turned to ashes in his hands. He possessed a tremendous vitality, and his zest and love of life had finally led him to that essential paradox of human existence. He loved the air he breathed and the beating of his heart so fully and well that he had let his natural hatred of death ruin his living