Neverness (8 page)

   The day before my departure, a day of fierce, sudden gales and stinging ice-powder, the Timekeeper summoned me to his tower. As I skated between the dark gray buildings separating Resa from the great tower, I shivered beneath my too-thin kamelaika. I wished that I had either greased my face or worn a mask against the freezing wind. It would be an insult, I thought, to appear before the Timekeeper with patches of white, frostbitten skin blighting my face. It was good to enter the warm tower, good, even, to stand impatiently in an anteroom below the top of the tower as I stamped my boots on the red carpet and waited for the master horologe to announce my arrival.

   "He is waiting for you," the horologe said in a voice almost breathless from his climbing up and down the stairs into the Timekeeper's chambers. "Be careful," he said, "he's in an ugly mood today," and then he ushered me up the winding stairs into the circular sanctum of the tower where the Timekeeper stood waiting.

   "So, Mallory," he said, "the pilot's ring looks good on your hand, eh?"

   The Timekeeper was a grim-faced man with a mane of thick white hair erupting from his taut skin. Most of the time he seemed very old, though no one knew just how old he was. When he frowned, which he often did, the muscles of his jaws stood out like knots of wood. His neck was thick and popping with tendons, as was the rest of his tense, large-boned body. I stood in the spacious, well-lighted room, and he stared at me as he always did when I came to see him. His eyes were black and fathomless like chunks of barely cooled obsidian hammered into his skull; his eyes were hot, restless, angry and pained.

   "What would it take to kill you?" he asked me.

   The muscles of his bare forearms tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed. Once, when I was a novice, when he had taught me leverage grips and killing holds and other wrestling skills, I had had occasion to view the powerful body beneath the long red robe he always wore. His torso and legs were etched with scars; a fine network of hard, white cicatrices more intricate and convoluted than the glidderies of the Farsider's Quarter began at his neck, twisted through his dense, white, body hair, and ran down his groin and muscular legs to his feet. When I had asked him about the scars, he had said, "It takes a lot to kill me, you see."

   He motioned for me to sit in an ornate, wooden chair facing the southern window. The tower, a monolith of white marble imported from Urradeth at extraordinary cost, overlooked the whole of the Academy. To the west were the granite and basalt arches of the professionals' colleges, Upplyssa and Lara Sig; to the north, the densely clumped spires of Borja, and looking south towards Urkel, I saw my beloved Resa. (I should mention that the tower windows are made of fused silica, and calcium and sodium oxides, a substance the Timekeeper calls glass. It is a brittle substance given to shattering when the gales of midwinter spring come roaring across the Starnbergersee. Nevertheless, the Timekeeper, who is fond of archaisms, claims that glass allows in a cleaner light than does the clary used in all the buildings of the Civilized Worlds.)

   "Do you hear the ticking, Mallory, my brave, foolish,
young
pilot? Time - it ticks, it runs, it twists, it dilates, shrinks, and kills, and one day for each of us, no matter what we do, it stops. Stops, do you hear me?"

   He pulled up a chair identical to mine and rested his red-slippered foot on the seat. The Timekeeper - afraid perhaps that if he ceased his restless motions,
his
internal clock might stop - did not like to sit. "You're the youngest pilot in history. Twenty-one years old - a nano in the life of a star, but it's all the time you've had. And the clock beats; the clock tolls; the clock ticks; do you hear it ticking?"

   I heard it ticking. All around us, in the Timekeeper's circular tower, were clocks ticking. Interspersed with the curved panes of glass around the circumference of the room, from the fur-covered floor to the white plaster ceiling, were wooden shelves upon which sat the clocks. Clocks of every conceivable design. There were archaic weight-driven clocks and spring clocks encased in plastic; there were wood-covered pendulum clocks, electric clocks and quartz crystal clocks; there were bio-clocks powered by the disembodied heart muscles of various organisms; there were quantum clocks and hourglasses filled with cobalt and vermilion sands; I saw three water clocks and even a Fravashi driftglass, which measured the time since the drifting super-galactic clusters had erupted from the primeval singularity. As far as I could determine, no two of the clocks told the same time. On top of the highest shelf was the Seal of our Order. It was a small glass and steel atomic clock which had been set on Old Earth the day the Order was founded. (The largest clock of course, was - is - the tower itself Far below, set into the circle of ice surrounding it, twenty rows of granite radiate outward and mark the passing of the sun's shadow. This giant sundial, inaccurate though it may be, is theoretically the only clock in the city by which we citizens can direct our activities. The Timekeeper abhorred the tyranny of time, and so he long ago ordered all clocks banned. This prohibition has proved a boon to the wormrunners who make fortunes smuggling in Yarkona pocket watches and other contraband.)

   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 in 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 practiced 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 centers 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 of life. He brooded too much about death. It was said that he had once killed another human being with his own hands to save his own life. There were rumors that he used a nepenthe to ease the panic of lapsing time and to forget, for a little while, the pains of his past and the angry roar of pure existence. I looked at the lines of his scowling face, and I thought the rumors might be true.

   "I don't understand," I said, "how a book of poems could save my life." I began to laugh.

   He stopped by the window, smiling at me without humor. His large, veined hands were clasped behind his back. "I'll tell you something about the Entity that no one else knows. She has a fondness for many things human, and of all these things, she likes ancient poetry the best."

   I sat quietly in my chair. I did not dare ask him why he thought the Solid State Entity liked human poetry.

   "If you learn these poems," he said, "perhaps the Entity will be less likely to kill you like a fly."

   I thanked him because I did not know what else to do. I would humor this somewhat deranged old man, I decided. I accepted the book. I even turned the pages, carefully, pretending to take an interest in the endless lines of black letters. Near the middle of the book, which contained thirteen hundred and forty-nine brittle pages, I saw a word that I recognized. The word reminded me that the Timekeeper was not a man to be laughed at or mocked. Once, when I was a young novice, the horologes had caught a democrat with a laser burning
written words
into the white marble of the tower. The Timekeeper - I remember his neck muscles writhing like spirali beneath his tight skin - had ordered the poor man thrown from the top of the tower in atonement for the dual crimes of destroying beauty and inflicting his ideas on others. Barbaric, According to the canons of our Order, of course, slelling is supposedly the only crime punishable by death. (When slel-neckers are caught stealing another's DNA they are beheaded, one of the few ancient customs both efficient and merciful.) We hold that banishment from our beautiful city is punishment enough for all other crimes, but for some reason, when the Timekeeper had seen the graffito, FREEDOM, etched into the archway above the Tower's entrance, he had raged and had discovered an exceptionary clause in the ninety-first canon permitting him, so he claimed, to order that: "The punishment will fit the crime." To this day, the graffito remains above the archway, a reminder not only that is freedom a dead concept, but that our lives are determined by sometimes capricious forces beyond our control.