The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass

by Vera Nazarian

  The voice option was also enabled, so that Liaei heard what she was reading spoken by a synthetic machine voice. And occasionally, there would be a fluid sparkle and crackle of static as the small rectangle above the drum lit up with the strange energy that was neither particle nor wave, and it would display still or moving images to better illustrate the textual material.

  “Our society is a multicracy based on resource allocation. The sexes are limited in function, so the allocation of power along such lines is irrelevant. Thus, the King and the Queen are ritualized roles and their influence upon our society is only in a very specific area. They do not rule in the ancient traditional sense.”

  “So what do they do?” said Liaei, a mixture of frustrated curiosity and tension evident in her voice and in the way she leaned forward and fingered the smooth edge of the quickly turning drum.

  Unlike a human being, the harmonium never hesitated when presented with a clear question. It replied, “The Queen of the Hourglass and the Clock King manipulate time.”

  The Oceanus was a blotch of darkness, a dull spill of crude oil upon the horizon of the Basin. It was an overcast morning and the Day God was hidden beyond a layer of whisper-thin airborne precipitate—a most unusual sight in any season, but now it was winter. Liaei wore a thick windbreaker garment with a hood, ankle-high water-impermeable boots, and thermal pants. And yet she shivered because her face was open to the wind. It was a spot of absolute cold on her otherwise climate-controlled body.

  “Almost done, only another two hundred meters,” spoke the childlike machine voice of the horticulturist tech moving smoothly behind her along the crumbling rocks of the shoreline. Liaei took careful footholds, for the sediment closest the water was frozen in places with a fine paper-thin layer of slippery ice, dull gray and impure like the water itself. It was so fine that it crumbled at the slightest pressure, but even so, one had to walk carefully. The Oceanus never froze over because of its chemical content, but the proximity of moisture created that strange dirty semi-rime on the shore.

  Liaei’s daily walk was made difficult today by the wind pressure. She glanced occasionally at the Basin slope beyond the City but there was no sky brilliance to tell her where on the slope lay the thread that was The River That Flows Through The Air—there was only the overcast. The Basin walls rose in increasing darkness from all directions, and the rust and earth-tone colors of the rock were supplanted by the monochrome gray.

  About a hundred meters in the distance, along the shoreline was a dark silhouette of a human figure. As Liaei made her way toward it, the figure waved, and with proximity the shape resolved itself into Toliwe the human tech, also assigned to work with her. Toliwe was only a little older than Liaei, but he was one of the most advanced horticultural interns at the medicineal.

  Toliwe stood immobile, waiting for her. His gauntness was obscured by the thick windbreaker garments, and the dark seared-gold patch of skin that was his face was impenetrable from the distance.

  Liaei quickened her walk and as soon as she had reached Toliwe’s side he silently nodded and matched her stride, falling in line several paces behind her. They were all walking the last hundred meters, strung out among the rocks of the shore, toward the designated mark.

  The rock and sediment tapered off, ending at a long artificial pier that formed somewhere inland toward Basin City and protruded out past the sloping shore into the lapping inky thickness of the waters. Here it was suspended on slim columns of concrete that disappeared into the water, and the last few meters it seemed to float.

  Liaei was the first to reach the pier. Fleet-footed and light, she almost ran the last few steps, so that angry sand and gravel poured down the remainder of the slope before the pier began. Jumping onto the smooth surface she stood immobile, just as suddenly frozen with intensity, her face turned to the Oceanus wind, full force. Toliwe was a few steps behind, but he lacked her energy as he stepped upon the pier.

  “Course completed successfully,” said the machine tech behind them, gliding in place. It stood and folded its runners and now unfurled glide-wings from the ovoid surface of its metallic hull. “I’ll be on my way, Liaei,” it continued. “Great job today, once again. See you tomorrow.”

  Liaei smiled, even though there was no need, and said, breathless from the chill wind, “Thank you, Mara. Yes, it was great as always, see you!”

  “The stats, please?” Toliwe said. His human voice was somehow more machinelike than Mara’s. Liaei glanced at him only once and then back again at the dark liquid expanse. She often felt a kind of emotional void in Toliwe’s company—not because she did not like him but rather because he was reserved and serious and almost never smiled, never engaged in fake small talk.

  “She did very well,” Mara said. “With base capacity resting heart rate 72 beats per minute, maximum heart rate 212 bpm, her current heart rate is 131 bpm. Heart rate is not particularly elevated considering the oxygen requirement of her smaller-capacity lungs, and red blood cell levels. This was a brisk walk, nearly a jog, and the windchill factor must be taken into consideration.”

  Toliwe nodded. “Thank you, Mara. Please forward the results to my lab, including the wind and barometric pressure.”

  “As always, forwarding now,” responded Mara, with more human inflection in the machine voice than his, and with a hint of a vocal smile. And then Mara’s glide wings activated, extending on both sides of its chassis, and a near-silent hum of cutting air turbulence was all around them. In seconds Mara rose, was meters above them like an ovoid metal bird, and then hurtled into the sky, on its way back to the medicineal.

  Liaei turned from her view of the Oceanus to stare at the receding gray speck of the horticulturist, fading quickly into the overcast.

  Toliwe meanwhile took out his recording pad and called up yesterday’s data.

  “How do you feel, Liaei?” he asked politely, without looking away from his task.

  “I’m fine,” she replied. “A little cold. I mean, I am warm from the exercise, but the breathing is cold. Hurts a little to inhale when it’s windy and cold like this.”

  “Understandable, since your lung capacity is genetically not optimal for our present atmospheric conditions. Ideally you require about 10 percent more oxygen in the cocktail.”

  “Yes, me and my primitive lungs.” Liaei looked down at the bits of gravel and sand scattered along the edges of the pier where she stood, bits that had fallen from her boots.

  Toliwe looked up, his face a mask of fine regular features, androgynous, smooth and deep gold skin, hairless. “Your lungs are perfectly fine, but they would function at optimal capacity in a more oxygen-rich and more humid atmosphere. So you must be careful to exercise at a heightened level to maintain regular tone.”

  “You sound like the harmonium, do you know?” said Liaei. She glanced at him and for a moment met his eyes—dark and placid and cool in their composure. Studying her as a specimen.

  For the first time Toliwe smiled. It was bright, a grin baring perfect white teeth, charming and forceful. Liaei looked away briefly, dazzled.

  “Sorry, Liaei, I get carried away with numbers, and thanks for reminding me,” he said, his voice taking on a more gentle inflection, his intelligent eyes matching hers. “Now, are you ready for the balance routine?”

  Liaei nodded. She then adjusted the laces at her throat that held the hood of her windbreaker, and then pulled, releasing so that it fell back. A strong gust of wind came in that moment, tugging at her ponytail, sending up fine shorter strands in all directions so that they stood up like a fierce static field, while the bulk of her gathered hair flapped against her back.

  Toliwe slipped off his own hood, revealing a bare deep golden scalp. He then proceeded to unseal his windbreaker, heedless of the chill factor, folded it neatly, then placed it down on the pier and rested his data pad on top to keep it from being blown away. Underneath he wore only a loose natural fiber short-sleeved t-shirt, and it flapped wildly about his slender perfectly
toned torso.

  “Keep yours on,” he said, seeing that Liaei considered momentarily if she should also take off her windbreaker. “At least for today. It really is too cold for you.”

  “But I cannot move very well in this.”

  “You can move well enough.”

  And with those words he started the routine, and Liaei followed him.

  They moved in fluid acrobatic figures, repeating the ancient motions of Fua, the most ancient of hybrid martial defense and philosophy arts. Toliwe breathed lightly, heedless of the freezing gusts that beat at him, and Liaei focused, trying to distance herself from the cold that swept her head, focus on the living breath and inner tranquil balance. She moved like a delicate perfect dancer despite her heavy thick outer clothing, and did not know that her grace matched Toliwe effortlessly, matched his slim androgynous long limbs with her more rounded flexibility. Their movements were precise like repetitive motion of mechanical blades, and yet smooth and organic.

  Gentle, yielding, flexible, always in motion to stay in place—the principle of Fua.

  The moments stretched into a wind-filled timelessness, and eventually the routine was done.

  Toliwe stilled in the final form, with his feet planted together and his hands coming forward with palms meeting each other, then finally falling at his sides. Liaei was in the same moment, moving like his mirror image, and stopped exactly when he did. They stood one opposite the other, wind-beaten statues. Taking three deep breaths they then bowed to one another.

  “Well done,” said Toliwe, becoming his own remote self, fluidity seeming to pull inward and retreat somewhere deep inside of him, to be replaced with stilted silence. In that moment the Day God broke through the overcast momentarily, filling the gray dimness of the Basin with an outpouring of warm golden light.

  Liaei looked up to see the spider-thin string of light rising from the midpoint of the Basin slope, like a single blazing hair fallen from the head of the Day God. She smiled involuntarily and then met Toliwe’s gaze.

  Toliwe watched her, his dark eyes steady, and again she could not read the depth of his expression. Finally he looked away and went to retrieve his windbreaker and data pad. He observed the small recording drum turning rapidly, and the simultaneous output of the raised dot code, then the harmonium image diagram that arose like a film of invisible energy above the pad within the containing rectangle window.

  Liaei released a breath she did not know she had been holding, and once again looked at the distant thread of light that was The River That Flows Through The Air.

  “Your body has nearly achieved menarche,” said the harmonium, “and your hormone production is surging. Very soon the levels will be at their peak, at which point you will be ready to perform as the Queen of the Hourglass.”

  “I am to copulate with the Clock King,” responded Liaei. “Yes I know. But to what end? Will my body actually become a viable reproduction mechanism, as it had been in the ancient times? Am I to bear human offspring, is that it? What good will it do for the bulk of humanity, our basically asexual, functionally sterile modern homo sapiens, for me to bear one or two children the ancient way? A replenishing of the dying gene pool? Am I not an anachronism already and not viably integrateable with this pretty much different human species?”

  “These are all rhetorical questions, or do you want me to answer them?”

  Liaei grimaced. “Answer, please. All of them.”

  “Liaei, your role is vital. Not only are you going to mate and procreate, but you and your offspring will be integrated into the current gene pool in order to invigorate it. Despite what it might seem, your material is still close enough to be genetically homogenized. Even if you bear one offspring only, it should be sufficient, and no one is expecting for you to become the new Eva.”

  Liaei snorted, recalling the ancient story of the first woman and man. “It’s funny,” she said to herself in a soft voice, “how the sophisticated ancient technologies that once ruled the world fade from memory and record but simple ancient stories like this one remain, passed on by word of mouth. But then, it probably comes down to the nature of simplicity, the rule of the ordinary. Doesn’t it?”

  But the harmonium continued, ignoring her aside. “Creating the Queen from the ancient DNA is a meticulous and difficult task, and with each generation it becomes more difficult due to the dearth of preserved viable material to work with. It is not a well-publicized fact, but in the process of matching the numerous gamete pairs to form you, we have likely depleted the stores of ancient genetic material. You therefore, are possibly not the first woman of your kind but the last.”

  “Great, that really makes me feel better,” said Liaei. “Why couldn’t you make a whole bunch of Queens? I find it hard to believe that there were not enough ova and sperm cloning material for more than just me.”

  The harmonium was momentarily silent. And then it said, “We tried. But we could not. True, there was plenty of genetic material in the stores, preserved for thousands of years in pristine cryo-condition. But your pair was the only one that became fertilized after several thousand attempts. The rest simply died. As you see, Liaei, the true reason you are so special is because in the past thirteen decades you are the only one who lived.”

  Liaei danced. The door to her room was locked for privacy and to shut out the sound. She knew that on the other side, Amhama was reading in the living room, trying to ignore the pulsing base vibrations that came from the sound system. Ever since Liaei discovered that her body enjoyed moving quickly and in rhythm, and that there were certain types of music that made her excited and breathless and wanting to whirl and jump in time, heedless of actual physical form or control, unlike the precision of Fua—ever since, Liaei made it a habit to lock herself away and call up the wildest, usually ancient music from the archives. Fua was just not enough. Other young people like Toliwe and some of the other horticulturists at the medicineal, gathered together to listen to melodious complex soundfests, attended concerts, pub-clubs, and would often get up and move in rhythm also, but soft, fluid, stately—completely Fua in its nature. Modern music was all like that, even the beat remote and barely supporting the melody, like an afterthought. Beat, rhythm, time, was never emphasized. Grace and continuity was what drove them, what captured their imagination and physical need.

  But Liaei needed something more. “I am the Queen of the Hourglass, whatever that really means,” she thought, “and damn it, but I enjoy time, enjoy its manifestation in the continuity and intervality of human-made melodic sound. Time is the cessation and resumption of movement. Just like music, time is binary, on-off. It is a thing of complexity and energy bound inextricably into one. Modern music just does not have the same energy that I need. It may be enough for them. But I am an anachronism, and I will unabashedly enjoy anachronistic things that resonate within me.”

  And so Liaei danced, locked away in her room, with the shades drawn over the one window. She had asked the harmonium to synchronize the indoor illumination with the pulse of sound it generated in the audio projectors, and the room was filled with the breath of sound and the sway of tertiary color hues—rose, mauve, rust, sienna, teal, heliotrope.

  The sound of ancient instruments preserved for millions of years was terrifying in its beauty and remoteness, the raw essence spanning time. There were instruments that created sound by means of air passing through narrow enclosures, instruments of the wind. There were others, based on friction, the sound of ancient hair follicles of extinct animals rubbing against taut strings of artificial and natural substances for which there were no longer any definitions. Finally, there were the instruments of percussion, resulting in sound based on the striking of hard surfaces against other variable surfaces of various texture and tension. When it all came together in peculiar smooth harmony, syncopation, shattered with instants of dissonance, it was like coming home. Time splintered, blended, streamed, heightened in tension and then resolved.

  And Liaei moved with it.
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  Liaei swayed, her hands moving in waves that began at her fingertips and ended at her shoulders, all of her body fluid, malleable. Her torso and waist were the center of warmth, radiating outward, and the muscles of her legs were springs of living clockwork, chaotic, random and yet precise, blending their movement with the outpouring of sound. She spun around the center of herself, the burning heart of the spindle, and her long loosened hair flew in a curtain.

  The music was a wild feast of whistle-notes and rich rolling vibrato of strings, the soaring of the many played as one, the clangor of ethereal reverberation and the thunder of the drums. The sound made all the tiny hairs on her body stand on end, and her nerve endings buzzed with exultation.

  And there were occasional recordings that contained on them human voices. They were glorious and alien, for they had come from the deepest antiquity, and they rang in the here and now like ghosts of the original humanity.

  Liaei internalized the plurality of sound, moving faster or slower according to the rhythm that drove it all. And as she heard the voices calling from the past, it tore through her, pulled at the basic building blocks of her genetic makeup, stirred the essence of her DNA, so that she rebounded with all of her being, and was made wild, ethereal, weightless, and then senseless with the animal motion.

  The lights flickered and pulsed, and her eyes narrowed into slits, then opened wide with dilated pupils, while sweat issued from primeval pores and seeped down her pale gold skin. She bounced and sprang, threw her head back and forward, self-hypnotizing, pounding the floor with her feet, wanting to break past it into the earth itself, throwing her arms out to embrace the air and to rake with her nails the drafts that slithered over her surface.