The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels

by Brian Stableford

  When he had set it in place, Jehan Thun stepped back, and looked at what he had done.

  It did not seem, now that he had finished, that it was his work. He was a printer, after all, not a locksmith or a clockmaker. He had played at being a locksmith and a clockmaker when he was a child, using the very same tools that had served him so well now, but it had always been play rather than work. Clock-making had never been his vocation, even though circumstance seemed to have turned him into something more like clockwork than flesh, at least for a while.

  He watched the dwarf set the hands of the clock.

  He watched the pendulum swing back and forth, with a regularity that was quite astonishing, in spite of its utter obviousness.

  “If only the world were like that,” he murmured.

  “It shall be,” the dwarf assured him. “We have the example now, far better than any commandments from on high.”

  As he spoke, the clock’s faster moving hand reached the vertical, and the clock began to chime.

  Even though he had watched the dwarf set the clock’s hands, Jehan had not bothered to wonder whether the time that was being set was correct, or take any particular notice of what it was.

  The clock chimed seven times, and with a barely-perceptible click the blank face of the copper plate was replaced by a plaque bearing words. They were not inscribed in red but in black, the letters having been engraved with loving care by a patient shortfingered hand.

  TIME, said the legend, IS THE GREAT HEALER.

  Jehan let out his breath, having been unaware of the fact that he was holding it. His grandmother could hardly have objected to such an innocent adage. There was little enough piety about it, but there was certainly no diabolism.

  Jehan became aware then that the clock was ticking as the pendulum swung back and forth, almost as if the machine had a beating heart. He was not afraid, however, that he had surrendered his soul to the mechanism while he worked to complete it. If he had lost that, he had left it somewhere in Paris, smeared on the bloodstained cobbles.

  “It’s a masterpiece all right,” the dwarf stated, his tone indicating that he was only half-satisfied, as yet. “All that remains is to see how well it keeps time. I can compare it against my watch, for now, but in order to prove that it can do far better I’ll need to calibrate it against the movements of the zodiac stars.”

  “A pity, then, that you rebuilt the facade in a room that has no window,” Jehan observed.

  “I can measure brief intervals accurately enough,” the dwarf assured him. The question is how well the clock will measure days and weeks. Even so, the more rapidly information can be conveyed between the clock and the observation-window, the better my estimates will be. You may help me with this too, if you wish. I hope you will—but if you would like to leave, to carry the secret of the pendulum to the cities of the world, you may go with my blessing.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” Jehan assured him, “and I’m as interested as you are to see how accurately your clock keeps time.”

  What he had said was true; Jehan Thun was momentarily glad to have the prospect of further work to do—even work that could not possibly absorb his mind as the intricate labor of delicate construction. Any hope that it might permit him to extend the quasimechanical phase of his own existence was quickly dashed, however. Indeed, the work of attempting to calibrate the clock against the movements of the stars was worse than having nothing to do at all, for it involved a great deal of patient waiting, which made the time weigh heavily upon his mind. Waiting called forth daydreams, memories and questions, as well as the horrors of Saint Bartholomew’s Eve and its hideous aftermath.

  For weeks before his arrival in Andernatt Jehan had been walking, not with any rhythmic regularity but at least with grim determination, never laying himself down to sleep until exhaustion had robbed him of any prospect of remembering his nightmares. For days after his arrival at the chateau he had been able to focus his attention on demanding tasks, which had likewise been devoid of any kind of rhythmic regularity, but had nevertheless supplied him more than adequately with opportunities for grim determination. Now that the clock was finished, though, he could not use the time it mapped in any such vampiric fashion. Its demands were different now, not suppressing thought but nourishing and demanding it, forcing him to fill the darkness of his own consciousness with something more than blind effort.

  At first, there was a certain fascination in scurrying back and forth between the dwarf’s observatory and the room where the clock was entombed, to check the position of the hands against the position of the stars. Perhaps—just perhaps—there might have been enough activity in that to keep dark meditation at bay, if only the sky had remained clear. But this was a mountainous region where the air was turbulent, and the sky was often full of cloud. It was not always possible for the dwarf to make the observations he needed to make, and although the dwarf was philosophical about such difficulties, they preyed on Jehan Thun’s mind, teasing and taunting him.

  There was also a certain interest, for a while, in discovering what was inscribed on the other plaques, which had been hidden from Jehan while he worked on the completion of the clock by their housing. He did not see them all within the first twelve hours of the clock’s operation, nor even the second, but it only required two days for him to see each of them at least once, and thus to reconstruct their order in his mind.

  One o’clock brought forth the legend CARPE DIEM.

  Two o’clock supplied TIME TEACHES ALL THINGS.

  Three o’clock suggested that TIME OVERTAKES ALL THINGS.

  Four o’clock claimed that THERE IS TIME ENOUGH FOR EVERYTHING.

  Five o’clock observed that TEMPUS FUGIT.

  Six o’clock warned that OUR COSTLIEST EXPENDITURE IS TIME.

  Eight o’clock advised that THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE.

  Nine o’clock pointed out that FUTURE TIME IS ALL THERE IS.

  Ten o’clock stated that EVERYTHING CHANGES WITH TIME.

  Eleven o’clock was marked by TIME MUST BE SPENT.

  Midnight and noon alike, perhaps reflecting increasing desperation in the expansion of the homiletic theme insisted that TIME NEVER WAITS.

  All in all, Jehan Thun concluded, while there was nothing among the legends to which a good man could object, there was also nothing as adventurous or imaginative as the blasphemies that his grandmother had seen...or imagined that she had seen.

  He had not thought before to question the dwarf as to what he had read before discarding the allegedly-blasphemous ones, but now he did. “Was there really one that said: Whoever shall try to make himself the equal of God shall be damned for all eternity?” Jehan asked his host, while they were gathering apples in the orchard one day.

  “I can’t remember the exact wording,” the dwarf told him, “but I think not. The sayings were pithier than that, and more enigmatic. Do you not approve of mine? I’m a clockmaker after all—or would be, if I had not been cursed with the body and hands of a clumsy clown. A clock ought to symbolize time, do you not agree? Common time, that is, not the grand and immeasurable reach of eternity.”

  “Even common time reflects the time of the heavens,” Jehan observed. “The movements of Creation spell out the day and the year, with all their strange eccentricities.”

  “The stars are mere backcloth,” the dwarf informed him, as he moved off up the slope with his basket half-full. “The earth’s rotation on its own axis specifies the day, and its rotation about the sun defines the year. The eccentricity of the seasons is a matter of the inclination of its axis.”

  “So says Copernicus,” Jehan agreed, “but how shall we ever be sure?”

  “We shall be sure,” the dwarf told him, “When we have better clocks, more cleverly employed. Calculation will tell us which of the two systems makes better sense of all that we see. Better mechanisms will give us more accurate calculations, and more accurate calculations will enable us to make even better mechanisms.”


  “And so ad infinitum?” Jehan suggested.

  “I doubt that perfection is quite so far away,” said the dwarf, smiling as he set his basket down by the door. “And I doubt that mere humans will ever attain to perfection, even in calculation—but there’s scope yet for further improvement. The milking-goat is tethered on the far side, where the grazing is better. Will you come with me to soothe her?”

  Jehan agreed readily enough, and they went around the ruins together, to the side which looked out towards Evionnaz. They saw the platoon of soldiers as soon as they turned the corner, for the approaching men were no more than a thousand paces away. The men—a dozen in all—were heading directly for the chateau.

  “That’s Genevan livery,” the dwarf said bleakly. “Not that a party of men carrying half-pikes would be a more reassuring sight if their colors were Savoyard or Bernese.”

  “Their presence may have nothing at all to do with the chateau, let alone the clock,” Jehan said, although he could not believe it. He knew, as he watched the armed men coming on, that he had spoken his name too often during his brief sojourn in the city, He had stirred up old rumors and old memories that had been too shallowly buried, even after all this time. Someone had begun asking questions, and exercising an overheated imagination. The dwarf’s presence here might not be widely known, but the little man had been to Evionnaz and other villages in the vicinity; the suspicion that he had been joined at Andernatt by Aubert Thun’s grandson had been the kind of seed that could grow into strange anxieties.

  “They’re soldiers,” the dwarf said, “not churchmen. They have lived with clocks all their lives. They cannot be so very fearful.” But he too sounded like a man who could not believe what he was saying. He had been a wanderer before settling here; he knew what fears were abroad in a world torn apart by wars of religion. He knew, probably better than any man of common stature ever could, how often people spoke of witchcraft and the devil’s work, and what fear there was in their voices when they did so. He knew that Geneva was a city under permanent siege, where all kinds of anxiety seethed and bubbled, ever-ready to overflow.

  “We should run and hide,” Jehan said. “They will not stay long, whatever they do while they are here.”

  “No,” said the dwarf. “I shall receive them as a polite host, and speak to them calmly. I shall persuade them, if I can, that there is nothing here to be feared. What manner of man, do you think, is the one who bears no arms and who seems to be guiding them?”

  Jehan shaded his eyes against the sunlight and squinted. The dwarf was presumably afraid that the man walking with the captain at the head of the column might be a churchman, but he was not. “I know him,” Jehan said. “He’s a colporteur by the name of Nicholas Alther. Our paths crossed on the far side of Evionnaz, and he guessed where I was bound. He told me he’d seen the ruins of the chateau on the horizon. That may be why they brought him as a guide—but he didn’t seem to me to be a fearful or a hateful man.” This judgment proved not unsound, for as the party came closer Jehan was able to read in Nicholas Alther’s face that he was certainly not the leader of the expedition, and that he would far rather be somewhere else, about his own business.

  “I know him too,” murmured the dwarf. “I’ve seen him in Evionnaz, and bargained with him for needles and thread—and metalworking tools, alas.” Raising his voice, the little man added: “Ho, Master Alther! Welcome to my home. Where’s your pack?”

  Alther did not reply, but thumped his chest to imply that he was out of breath in order to excuse his rudeness. It was the captain who spoke, saying: “This is not your home; the land belongs to the city of Geneva, and the ruins too. You have no right here.”

  “I am doing no harm, captain,” the dwarf replied. “I make no claim upon the land or the house; I merely took shelter here when I was in need.”

  “Is your name Pittonaccio?” the captain demanded.

  “No,” said the dwarf. “It’s Friedrich Spurzheim—and Spurzheim is a good Swiss family name, worn by many a man in Geneva and even more in Bern. I’m a Christian, as you are, and I have my own Bible.”

  It was the first time that Jehan had ever heard the dwarf’s surname—and he realized, as he heard the little man’s forename spoken for the second time, that he had never addressed him by it, or even thought of doing so, since he had first heard it pronounced. He had always thought of his host as “the dwarf.”

  The captain did not repeat the name either. “Where is the Devil’s clock?” he demanded.

  “I doubt that the Devil possesses a clock, or needs one,” Friedrich retorted, boldly. “If he does, he certainly does not keep it here. The only clock here is mine.”

  Jehan was not in the least displeased to be offered no credit for he restored Clock of Andernatt. He had seen the expression on the captain’s face before. There had been soldiers abroad on Saint Bartholomew’s Eve and the day that followed; there were always soldiers abroad when there was killing to be done, for that was their trade.

  Jehan felt fingers plucking at his sleeve, and allowed himself to be drawn aside by Nicholas Alther.

  “It was not I who betrayed you,” the colporteur whispered, fearfully. “They do not know that I met you on the road. For the love of God, don’t tell them. I could not refuse to lead them here, for they knew that I knew the way, but I mean you no harm. Say nothing, and they’ll let you alone—but you must say nothing, else we’ll both be damned.” He stopped when he saw that the captain was looking at him, and raised his voice to say: “This man only took shelter in the chateau—he has nothing to do with the clock.”

  The captain immediately fixed his stare on Jehan’s face. “Are you Jehan Thun?” he demanded.

  “I am,” Jehan replied, knowing that it would do no good to lie. “What business have you here?”

  “I was a Protestant in Paris, until it became impossible to be a Protestant in Paris,” Jehan said, flatly. “My father was born in Geneva, which is a Protestant city, so that was where I came—but everywhere I went in the city, people who heard my name looked strangely at me, and I was afraid all over again. My grandmother had spoken of a village named Evionnaz as a remote and peaceful place, so I decided to go there, but when I arrived I found the same dark stares, so I continued on my way. Friedrich Spurzheim is the first man I have met hereabouts who did not look at me that way, and he made me welcome as a guest.”

  “Are you a clockmaker?” the captain asked.

  “No,” Jehan said. “I’m a printer. I made Bibles in Paris. My father was murdered, my press smashed and my home burned.”

  “Have you seen the Devil’s clock?”

  For the first time, Jehan hesitated. Then he said; “There is only one clock in the chateau. It is shaped to resemble a church. There is nothing devilish about it.”

  “Lead us to it,” the captain instructed.

  Jehan exchanged a glance with Friedrich; the little man risked a brief nod of consent. Jehan led the way around the chateau, through the garden ad in through the door on whose step the basket of apples still lay. Then he led the captain and his men to the Clock of Andernatt.

  It was an hour after noon; while the soldier was studying the clock, the hour struck and the words CARPE DIEM appeared, as if by magic, in the space beneath the rose window.

  “What does that say?” demanded the captain of Nicholas Alther, his voice screeching horribly.

  “I don’t know!” the colporteur replied.

  “It says Carpe Diem,” Friedrich told them. “It’s Latin. It means Seize the Day. The other mottoes....”

  But it did not matter what the other mottoes were, any more than it mattered what carpe diem actually signified. It would have made no difference had the motto been in French or German rather than Latin, or whether it had been a quotation from the Sermon on the Mount.

  Much later, Jehan guessed, the captain and all of his men would be willing to swear, and perhaps also to believe, that the mysterious legend that had appeared as if by magic had sa
id HAIL TO THEE, LORD SATAN or DAMNATION TO ALL CALVINISTS or CURSED BE THE NAME OF GENEVA, or anything else that their fearful brains might conjure up. They would also be willing to swear, and perhaps also to believe, that when they attacked the clock with half-pikes and maces, sulfurous fumes belched out of its mysterious bowels, and that the screams of the damned could be heard, echoing all the way from the inferno. They would probably remember, too, that the chateau itself had been buried underground, extending its corridors deep into the rock like shafts of some strange mine, connected to the very centre of the spherical earth.

  When they had finished smashing the clock the soldiers smashed everything else Friedrich Spurzheim had owned, and cast everything combustible—including his printed Bible—into the flames of his fire. They killed his milking-goat, and as many of the others as they could catch. They ripped up all the vegetables in his garden and stripped the remaining apples from his trees. Then they smashed the shutters that remained on some few of the chateau’s windows, and the doors that remained in some few of its rooms. But they did not kill the dwarf, nor did they kill Jehan Thun. They worked out all their ire and fear on inanimate objects, and contented themselves with issuing dire warnings as to what would happen if Friedrich Spurzheim or Jehan Thun were ever seen again within twenty leagues of Geneva.

  Afterwards, when the captain and his men were preoccupied with the items they had kept as plunder-which included, of course, the silver disc that had served as a pendulum bob—Nicholas Alther took Jehan aside again, and offered him something wrapped in silk. Jehan did not need to unwrap it to guess that it was the colporteur’s watch.

  “Your grandfather made it,” the colporteur said. “You should have it, since you do not have one of your own. It keeps good time.”