The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass

by Vera Nazarian

  The River That Flows Through The Air continued past it, about fifteen meters forward into the air, and about ten meters above the ground. The water flew sparkling, clear, joyous, reflecting amber and persimmon light.

  And then, at about fifteen meters from the last ring, the water simply faded into the air.

  It did not cascade down upon the ground, did not scatter into a pressureless chaos, did not fan out and rain upon the land around it.

  It simply disappeared.

  As though someone took an eraser and rubbed it away from the world, dissolving its edges into the air.

  “Oh Day God . . .” whispered Liaei.

  Ginadi slowed the cruiser and, losing hover altitude, it came to an even stop, parking extensions gripping the pavement.

  For a moment they sat motionless, watching.

  Then Liaei pressed a release and the doors were unlocked and she burst outside into the scalding dry wind and rarified air. The two men followed her.

  Liaei walked, tripping over small rocks that were scattered along the long unused pavement of the road, and then her footsteps slowed as she came to the place where, overhead, the sheet of water disappeared into nothing.

  Liaei stretched out her hand to feel the air just below the point of end, expecting an invisible barrier, an energy field, a something.

  There was none.

  She craned her neck, standing right underneath, but did not even feel any moisture in the wind, a spray, nothing.

  “What . . . in the world . . . is that?” asked Ginadi, coming to stand at her side.

  Just behind them the Clock King laughed.

  “Please . . .” said Liaei, turning to him. “Please explain!”

  The Clock King stopped laughing because he might have seen that the Queen of the Hourglass had tears in her eyes.

  “What is that? Where is the water going?”

  “Liaei,” he said. Although he spoke quietly, he sounded sober and hard. “Remember that you have to ask the right questions, both of me and the harmonium.”

  Officer Ginadi folded his hands, listening.

  “Yes . . .” breathed Liaei. “I remember.”

  “Then, think! Before you ask, consider the whole River. You have seen its full length. Tell me what you have seen.”

  She gripped her shirt, wringing its ends with her fingers.

  “I don’t know. There was . . . first there was the big canal pipe coming straight out of the refinery plant that’s on the shore. We drove by it. It had those same rings around it—”

  “Yes,” the Clock King said. “Go on.”

  “Then, the Basin slope started to incline uphill, and the water pipe went with it. I have no idea how the water was behaving inside the enclosure of the pipe, but I am assuming it moved the same way it did later on up-slope, once the pipe ran out. In other words, no pressure mechanism to pump it. The support rings made sense for the pipe, holding it in place against the steep slope. But once there was no pipe, it stopped making sense. Are the support rings harmonium-based? Am I right to guess that they have some kind of effect upon the water?”

  “Yes.”

  Liaei exclaimed. “Oh, then—then, are they generators of some kind of force fields?”

  The Clock King smiled. “You are almost on the right track. Let me help you to think this through. Consider for a moment, Liaei—what did the water look like, running through the rings? I am sure you’ve had plenty of time to observe it as you traveled alongside it.”

  “It was shining. And it looked clear and transparent—”

  “And?”

  “Well, it was purified, we know that much. So, unlike the Oceanus water, it had no pollutants.”

  “What did it look like, Liaei?”

  Liaei’s forehead was puckering with effort.

  “I already told you, it was clear and sparkling in the light—”

  “What colors did you see?”

  “Colors? Well, it seemed golden yellow in the light, or it seemed—”

  Liaei clutched her hands together. She dwelled deep into her memory of the several days before, the monotony, the mesmerizing shadows, the prismatic flow of light. . . .

  “There were blue and green shadows at times, and other colors. In fact, I saw all kinds of colors in it.”

  “Good! And did you notice any pattern about the occurrence of colors, from the point where the water first emerged from the pipe, up till now?”

  “I think there were maybe more green and blue shadows when it first emerged halfway up the slope? While here near the end it seems perfectly clear . . .”

  “Yes!” the Clock King said. “Then you did see it, Liaei! Yes!”

  “What did I see?” she said, frowning. “I am confused!”

  “Liaei, think! Clean water is transparent, and darker water, the kind that seems to contain colors in it, indicates it contains some other particles, possibly pollutants. So, how can that be? You are saying the refinery plant pumps clean water into the canal, so then unless the pipe is dirty or contaminated, is should be perfectly transparent as it emerges and stay that way all along.”

  “That pipe is not dirty,” put in Ginadi. “We do regular non-intrusive molecular tests every two years along random checkpoints, and it is near-sterile on the inside.”

  “So then,” the Clock King said, “somehow the River water emerges from the unknown conditions of the pipe with acquired pollutants, and then gradually loses them as it moves along the length of its course until it is perfectly clear, yes?”

  “Yes, but I don’t understand!” Liaei said.

  “And,” continued the Clock King, “it also moves uphill against the force of earth’s gravity, without any known mechanical means. Finally, it seems to be suspended in the air. Three unexplained phenomena. Can you put the three together and come up with the right question?”

  They stood through long moments of silence. Wind blew at them, scalding.

  “Think outside of everything, Liaei!” said the Clock King suddenly, wildly. “Think beyond and outside the limits and think the most insane impossibilities!”

  Liaei raised an intense face to look at him silently.

  “When?” she said. “When does the River flow?”

  The Clock King seemed to let out a great breath of relief. “That’s the question!”

  He spoke, then suddenly moved forward and took her by the shoulders and pulled her into an embrace. “You can think, yes you can think, my Queen of the Hourglass. . . . All will be well now,” he muttered softly into her hair, stroking the back of her head.

  They were back inside the cruiser, turned around and driving home toward Edge City.

  “To be precise, the River actually does not flow through space at all,” the Clock King was continuing his explanation. “It simply exists along a near infinite range of temporal phases throughout the course of the past several million years. What you see is the water at the different levels of the great earth ocean all along the rising incline of the Basin slope, as it had been when the waters stood high, low, and all places in-between, and with various levels of salt and chemical content. Also, there is no force of uphill gravity to contend with, because the containment rings select and keep the ‘cross-section’ of water in that other place and time.”

  “So, then,” said Liaei, “as far as the water is concerned, it is supported by many cubic tons of other water underneath it—in another time. And the containment rings define and focus the time field boundaries.”

  “Exactly. It’s never flowing through the air but existing at a time when there was other water there to support it underneath. Where there is now air, used to be a great universal ocean. Indeed, when the ancient polar snow caps melted, water levels rose to cover all the surface of the earth. It receded eventually, due to global warming and greenhouse effects that broke down the protective atmospheric layers and allowed evaporation into space. Indeed, it receded several times, and yet the ingenious scientists of those epochs managed to bring it back. They
did it many times, in fact. Only with the advent of the harmonium civilization did homo sapiens finally figure out the best way to keep water indefinitely on this planet, to hold on to it—by recycling it in time.”

  Ginadi shook his head, in sincere amazement.

  “But why the canal pipe?” Liaei asked. “Why bother building it at all when the time field rings were there already, going all the way to the bottom of the Basin?”

  “Not sure,” the Clock King said. “But it seems to me that the canal pipe was not built by the harmonium civilization at all, but was an ignorant, unnecessary retrofit by some less knowledgeable and more recent civilization.”

  “There is one other question left,” Liaei mused. “What happens to the River in the very end? When does it go?”

  “Again, think about the overall pattern, Liaei. With the last support ring, the range of the temporal field is dissipated, but the water has to go somewhere. Since the water starts at the most recent time phase at the bottom of the Basin, here at the end of its course it’s most likely that it goes farther and farther into the depths of history, to the very beginning. To the time when the planet was young and the oceans were newly forming. I would not be surprised—knowing the harmonium’s reliance upon single perfectly circular function—if this water in fact “seeds” our planet in the first place.”

  Liaei had a faraway expression on her face. “Somewhere in prehistory, a strange mysterious waterfall is pouring cubic tons of water seemingly from out of the thin air, and the water is pooling around and moving out. . . .”

  “Why not? Like the Clock, like the Hourglass, like any other chronometric device, time is an endless circle,” the Clock King said.

  She never did conceive. Liaei was tested in the Edge City medicineal, and the remaining two days she spent with the Clock King, but they were engaged in mental intimacy. They did not touch again, but sat across from each other, or walked together, and talked with all the voices they had, deep into the nights.

  Vioma and other Committee members were upset and unhappy with the course of events, but they would never coerce. Personal coercion of any kind was not legal in the here and now, and so they had to make do with hoping and waiting, and attempts at persuasion.

  “You remember nothing at all of your life before this strange confinement? What happens to you when you are inside the Clock device?” asked Liaei as the two of them spent the last evening together.

  “Nothing. I remember only the loss of consciousness. Each time I regain awareness, I am in a new world, and a new hopeful Queen of the Hourglass with her new agenda greets me.”

  “How many?” Liaei said softly. “How many Queens had there been?”

  He glanced into the cup he held in his hands, swirling the dark warm brew. “They blur into one woman. I cannot tell you. Not because any of them are not unique and memorable in their own way, but because in the performing of their function they necessarily lose the self and became the function. Except for you—”

  Liaei listened.

  “You are the first to be more concerned with how the function fits within the overall greater framework of the world. You are so eager and ready to think outside the apparent limits.”

  “Maybe because it seems to me that the future of our species depends more on originality of thought and eccentricity of action than on good old fashioned genetic procreative viability. You gave me that much—oh, Clock King, I could never express how much you opened me! All my life was for this. And I expected some kind of resigned inevitable outcome—a pregnancy, the child, the rest of our pre-planned lives, constant medic intrusion, frustrated loneliness for both of us. And now, oh Day God, I don’t know anything anymore! And it is so liberating! If we all die as a species tomorrow—which we will not—even so, it is now a fresh clean vista of possibility. Not fertile genes but a fertile mind.”

  He got up and since it was still light outside, suggested they take a walk. He was fierce with eagerness to see, once they had come outside on the Palace terraces.

  “I keep on thinking what else is different,” the Clock King said, looking up at the blazing sky, “and now it occurs to me. There are no birds. Nothing living flying overhead. No insects.”

  “All extinct,” said Liaei in a quiet voice. “The horticulturists have some of the old species’ DNA in storage, and in theory they could bring to term and harvest avian or insect beings. Only, why should they? With such frugal distribution of resources, it is senseless and irresponsible—at least in the here and now.”

  “You are Gods,” he said. “Really, you are. In the way you make such decisions.”

  “Isn’t every complex organism a God compared to a less complex one? Well, maybe not, I suppose—not unless they are capable of the function of creation.”

  He nodded.

  “And you are the Clock King. What exactly do you rule? I am sorry to be blunt, but it seems to me that you are the one ruled by the whim of others, by this harmonium device, and by time itself.”

  The Clock King nodded again. “That is exactly so. What I rule is one thing only. Not myself but my function—as do you.”

  Liaei moved long strands of hair out of her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “Now I think I rule nothing at all, and I am not really the Queen of the Hourglass.”

  “We can go back inside and try once more,” he offered with kindness, and she knew exactly what he meant, and that he was indeed now showing her that he was ruled by and ruling in turn his sole function, which required the activation of hers.

  But she was not fooled.

  “No,” she replied, taking his hand. “It would be best that we left it at that.”

  Intense dark eyes were looking into hers.

  “You will be alone for the rest of your life, Liaei,” he said. “After I am gone, there may not be another . . .”

  “Yes, I know. But fortunately, hormonal levels diminish. Time will be my friend in this sense. There will be other ways, and other things and people to occupy me.”

  He smiled.

  The evening went on, filled with their animated voices, long into the night. He told her of glittering seas and ships and wars and armies spreading flaming destruction, of miraculous breakthroughs of science, of religions and sacrament, of family units and bonds, of the arts and human achievement, of languages and the different forms of writing used by the ancients to symbolically record speech, of other species of animals and of green plants that once grew freely on the surface of the planet, of civilizations falling, rising, and going to the stars. . . .

  In the morning, it was time for him to go.

  There was no ceremony this time. Vioma, several medic techs, and Liaei, accompanied the Clock King to the grand hall where the ancient Clock device lay gaping open, ready to swallow him up again and sweep him forward in time.

  The Clock King had shaved and cleansed himself and was once more smooth and naked and ever-so vulnerable to time and atomic decay and all of the world. But his eyes were wild and glittering with bright moisture, more alive than they had ever been. Just before entering the device chamber he turned to Liaei, took her face between his hands, and kissed her on the lips.

  His mouth was cool and gentle and kind. “It’s been a time. Remember to always ask the right question, Queen of the Hourglass . . .” he whispered, for her ears only. And then he turned his gaze away from her and stepped within the Clock.

  As the techs initiated the lock sequence, Liaei stood rooted to the spot and motionless and numb with loss. With a rising hum the face of the Clock lifted and covered his form, and his eyes were already staring vacant into eternity.

  But Liaei was not deceived.

  The Clock King was ruling his function, but he had been the one who showed her how to grow beyond hers.

  And because he did thus, because she now visualized so many options, Liaei knew that one day it may no longer be necessary to awaken the Clock King ever again. Thus, insidiously he freed himself.

  She only hoped that by
then the circle of time swept him forward sufficiently that none of this any longer mattered.

  Whatever that meant.

  Liaei listened to the hum and the ticking, watched the many hands of the Clock rotating and aligning. And when the particular sequence was over and silence returned, she followed Vioma to the medicineal for the last sequence of tests.

  They may be hopeful still, and she owed them that much, but she knew full well that she was already free.

  Later in the day she would request they give her access to the old harmonium files, the records kept of the Clock King. She would read them in silence as she learned the act of letting go.

  “I missed you, Ama!” Liaei said over the voice comm in her room at the Palace. On the other end, somewhere far down in Basin City, her foster parent’s gentle timbre sounded as intimate and dear as anything Liaei ever imagined.

  “Yes, it has been wonderful and incredible,” Liaei continued. “But unfortunately I did not manage to become pregnant. Yes, he is gone now, and I miss him in a strange way. I miss his mind. And yet, Ama, I miss you even more. The things he told me and taught me, they are even more wonderful and important in retrospect! I am going to study some more on my own and work on the harmonium and think. And I will stay here in Edge City just a while longer.”

  After their conversation ended, Liaei stood up, and stretched, and called for music, and danced in the privacy of her self, to the rhythms of the ancients. She shut her eyes and pretended he spun with her, his olive-skinned hands touching hers lightly in a remote circle of an embrace.

  There was so much to do, to learn, to try. So many questions to ask. There was The River That Flows Through The Air, and she had to visit its end-place one more time and look and think.

  Liaei danced, hands outflung, spinning and moving, her hair fanning with the circular motion.

  At one point she noticed the gift box from Toliwe and Finnei, still unopened, still lying on top of her things on the cabinet. “Open it when you are bored,” they had told her.