The Clock Man

by Eric Lahti

  “Go home, Crow,” he says as he backs into the shadows. It’s probably supposed to be dramatic, but the movement is hurried. Desperate, almost. “Go home and sleep late. Tomorrow you’ll have all the money for all the baiju on Aluna.”

  Desperate people make me nervous. Actually this whole setup is making me nervous. Why meet in an alley, anyway? If all he wanted to do was talk why not do it out front? Before I was just a little jittery, like a kid that had too much X, but now I’m actually curious.

  “Poorly how?” I call after him before he can disappear.

  He stops partway into the shadows but I can see he wants to keep going. His left arm is shaking so badly now that he has to hold it steady with his right. “What?” he asks.

  “You said it would go poorly. Poorly how?” I ask.

  “Bad.” Is it just me wanting a drink or is his voice different? Slower or something.

  “That’s kind of nebulous,” I tell him. “Care to elaborate?”

  “It will be bad.” His voice is slurring. A few minutes ago we had a witty dialogue going on. Now he’s slurring his words and his sentences are getting simpler. What’s going on here?

  “Bad like eating long pork? Or bad like enjoying long pork? Come on. You’ve got me with the money thing but you still need to scare me some more, don’t you?” I take a step forward and he takes a slight step back.

  “Stay back,” he mumbles. “Have a barker.”

  “No thanks,” I tell him and take another step. “I don’t care for them.”

  He twitches and fumbling hands reach toward his pocket. “No. I have barker. Stay back.”

  I take two steps forward just to see what he’ll do. His hands are desperately searching, trying to get into a pocket but he can’t control himself. “Pull it,” I tell him. “Shoot me down where I stand and you won’t have to worry about me.”

  “Will shoot,” he says.

  “Do it. If you don’t kill me I’ll be breaking into that tower tomorrow morning and killing the Clock Man.” I start walking toward him, slowly and calmly.

  Shuddering hands search try and fail to get into a pocket. “Stop there,” he says in a voice so slurred I can barely make out the words.

  “I’ll pull his heart out and drink his blood,” I snarl. “Shoot me down or watch him die.”

  We’re close enough now I could almost reach out and touch him. Three maybe four feet separate us. He finally manages to get a hand in his pocket. I wait patiently while he pulls out his barker. The weapon is a small two-barrel piece, the kind of thing you only use when you want to keep it hidden. Tiny, but at this range it’ll kill me easily.

  I take a deep breath – even with Mr. Shaky barely being able to aim a barker is a barker. As I exhale I launch forward, twist and grab his barker and push it down as I step into him. My free hand clamps down under his hand and twists his arm, barker and all, up and around, keeping the barrel of the barker away from me. The twist puts stress on his shoulder and his whole body leans to the side to ease the pressure. When I see his shoulder drop I push the twist further and step back, pulling his arm out of the socket.

  It’s terribly painful. Chan taught me how to do this and like everything else he taught me, he taught it to me by doing it on me.

  There’s an almost audible pop when his shoulder rips free; I can feel it all the way down his arm. His mouth opens in a silent scream and his whole body collapses. His body hits the ground and squirms like a fish out of water. The squirms turn to spasms and foam pours from his mouth.

  Okay, so having your arm ripped out of its socket hurts, but I don’t recall lying on the ground spasming and foaming at the mouth.

  When he hit the ground his hat came off and rolled partway down the alley. Free of the shadows covering his face I get my first glimpse of the man who threatened me. His eyes are wide open and wild; the sinister eyes of a madman with an axe to grind. His body stops spasming and goes tense. Every muscle tightens and his lips pull back in a pained and awful sneer.

  There’s a crashing sound behind me and I nearly jump out of my skin. A few seconds later there’s another crash and I spin around to see what’s making all the racket.

  The dumpster’s lid is bent and warped outward like something big hit it from inside. The first crash must have been the lid getting smacked around and the second was the same lid crashing down. I ease forward carefully, lift the lid of the dumpster and find nothing.

  By the time I turn back to the guy on the ground I find myself facing a corpse. The guy died while I was playing the fool. I’m not sure how I should feel right about now. Should I feel sad? Well, it was a lot of money and I suspect the bargain may be gone now. Angry? Can’t pull that one off. I’m too tired to care. Joyous or happy to be alive would be good but I don’t think I was ever threatened.

  What just happened? Why was the car out front when the guy was back here? What was in that dumpster? Did I just cross paths with whatever or whoever’s been leaving corpses in Croatoa’s dumpster?

  Too many questions, not enough baiju.

  The guy’s hat is a few feet away from him, knocked from his head when he fell in a spasming heap on the ground. I know I should call the cops, let them know there’s a dead guy back here but I don’t want to deal with all the questions right now, so I rifle through his pockets and find nothing. The hat’s nice, though and it fits my head. The barker is a beautiful design, but I leave it where it fell. I never did truck with those things.

  “Thanks for the lid, buddy,” I mumble and head back through the alley with my fancy new hat.

  V

  My apartment is quiet and messy, just like I like it. I’ve found a messy place cuts down on both looters and people ransacking the place. If it looks like someone’s already tossed the joint anyone looking for valuables will assume all the good stuff is already gone.

  Joke’s on them, though, I’ve got a bunch of money scattered all around this place. I’m an expert at hiding things and the money I got from graft and outright theft while I was on the force is no exception. I mean, let’s face it, if I can hide the graft itself how hard could it be to hide the sweet, sweet payoffs I got from various bosses and criminals over the years?

  And that right there is one of the reasons I left the force. They made it too easy, stopping just short of encouraging us to shake down criminals for extra money. I guess from their point of view, there was no reason to give out bonuses when we were all taking our own from every bust.

  When I walk into my hovel every piece of junk is exactly where I left it. That statuette of the girl with the kwan dao is still fighting the guy with two daos. It’s exactly as I suspected; there can be no clear winner. Her short sword on the edge of a staff is matched by his two broadswords. Every time she thrusts he can parry with one hand and strike with the other. She has to respond by stopping her strike and dealing with the incoming blade. She has reach and power; he has two quick strikes ready for her.

  So it goes, and so it goes. If they’re evenly matched there will never be a true winner unless one of them makes a mistake or tires. Or cheats. The pair are my own little yin yang in the form of two warriors carved from soulstone and darkrock.

  I guess I should say everything is exactly as I left it except for one thing. The table has been cleared, something I’ve contemplated doing for years but could never find a good reason to do. I drink my coffee, eat my noodles, and sip my baiju on the balcony; what do I need with a table? It’s usually piled high with notes, books, bills, and empty bottles. Now those things have been neatly stacked on the floor, the table’s been polished to a high shine, and there’s a single box on the table that wasn’t there the last time I could see the top of the table.

  The box is a couple feet long by a foot wide and about six inches thick. It’s wrapped in paper featuring the cat from the alley. This time, instead of rolling a dàmá blunt, the cat is holding a pair of chopsticks in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.

  Who would dare enter my home
and clean even a small part of it? This affront will not stand. My hands and body go loose, ready to unleash my vibrating hand of death on whoever dared enter my safe area. Without conscious thought, my body relaxes and uncoils. If whoever left the box is still here they’ll taste my wrath.

  “Chūlái,” I call. “Come on out. I promise to not hurt you. Much”

  The apartment remains silent. It’s times like this when I wish I could afford a Jiufeng to hang out when I’m gone. I love the idea of coming home and finding an intruder shredded, but the little magical buggers cost a fortune and refuse to eat take out.

  “Anyone here?” I call out again. “Last chance to get out before I call down the thunder.”

  No response.

  Maybe I have a secret admirer. Who else would break in and leave something? I look around the living room and take in the piles of stuff I’ve accumulated over the years; towering stacks of books, weapons both blunt and bladed, my fabled collection of mah jong tiles. I guess it’s possible someone came in and decided I needed more stuff. This part of town teems with crazies.

  The box can wait. If it’s survived this long left to its own devices in my apartment, it can survive a little longer. Right now I need a drink.

  I don’t keep the best baiju on Aluna in my apartment; hell, I can’t even afford the best baiju on Aluna. My bottle, a jade jar engraved with dragons, is filled with stuff made right here in my neighborhood. There’s a woman down the way a bit that makes homebrew baiju. It’s pretty good stuff and the price is right.

  Bottle in one hand, glass in the other I make my way to the table and prod the box with my foot. It doesn’t explode or fill the air with toxic magic so I gently nudge it out of the way and set my drink and glass down. While I pour out a couple fingers I peer at the box. This close the paper looks expensive. The folds are perfectly creased and the wrapping is held together with an intricate system of interlocking paper weaves. Someone took their time on this.

  A deep thrumming fills the room and my glass shakes and rattles on the table. One of the nicer aspects of my place is its location along a blimp flight path. The thrumming turns to the low growl of engines as one of the early evening flights lumbers by.

  After it passes the room goes back to being basically quiet and I return my senseless peering at the box on my table. So far it hasn’t tried to kill me, so that’s one thing in its favor. It’s also neatly wrapped. Very neatly wrapped. I don’t know of anyone who would wrap a bomb this nicely. Well, there was that one guy, but he’s dead now so he doesn’t count.

  Time to pay the piper, I guess. I down my baiju in one gulp and smile as it burns its way down my throat. My stomach lights up with that delicious fiery sensation you only get with decent liquor. For a moment I pause and wonder if I should have another but decide to wait. The first drink is still toying with me.

  I slide the box toward me and realize the paper is more than expensive. This is boutique stuff. Normally only the royalty are even allowed to own paper like this. It’s smooth and cold to the touch almost like silk that’s been left out during the winter. This kind of paper - shén zhǐ, literally God Paper – is amazing stuff. It stays cold and smooth even with my fingertips on it.

  I’ve never touched God Paper before. This calls for a drink.

  Another glass of baiju, another round of admiring the package. I should be careful unwrapping this. Paper like this demands at least some level of sophistication.

  The sweet, sweet sorghum liquor is slowly calming my blood, blurring my edge, and making the world seem saner. Fuck it. I pull my balisong knife out, flick it open and slice the package open. The silky paper falls open like a tuōyī wǔ’s gown before she spins on the pole. Under the wrapping a plain brown wooden box with yòng nǐ de mófǎ etched onto the top.

  Use your magic. Chan.

  Why would Chan leave me a package with “Use your magic” written on the top?

  Well, at least the box is safe. Probably. Chan hasn’t tried to kill me lately and he seemed pretty chummy earlier today, so the chance that he dropped off a bomb is kind of slim. Although Chan is a complicated man and I’m not actually sure if anyone understands him, even that witchy woman he hangs out with.

  I pull the top off and find a piece of folded black fabric. It’s smooth and cold to the touch; some sort of waxed cotton. Pulling it out, I find a tailored duster. I have to admit, it’s nice, but why would Chan send me a duster?

  At least it fits nicely. When I check myself in the mirror the coat and I are a perfect match. Something’s missing, though. The black duster, my scruffy few-day-old beard, tousled hair, all go together, but the look is still missing something.

  A hat. I need a hat. Something that will match the ensemble. Something like the hat I took earlier tonight. I grab it off my couch, screw it onto my head and check the mirror again. Perfect. A tip of the hat, a brush of the brim. It’s like I’ve worn this all my life.

  Right now, I need a drink, a bidi, and my balcony. A couple fingers of baiju and I walk out to the balcony to show the world my new duds. That’s right, folks, Felix Crow is watching the world and the world had best be ready.

  The sky rumbles and another blimp trudges smoothly across the sky-way. The people on that ship have crossed deserts, forests, oceans, all in luxury. I want to fly away on one of those ships someday. I want to eat giant prawns and watch the world slide smoothly by while I sit high above it, away from the riff-raff.

  Those majestic ships are freedom. Freedom filled with hydrogen, powered by magical engines, and adorned in polished brass and jade. I’ve only been on one once, back when I was still on the force. We had a conference in Yuan Ting, a cozy little beach resort town. The flight from here took a few days of relaxation and watching the world and drinking. When we hit Yuan Ting, we played horseshoes and ate barbeque. I think the conference was on forensics or some such thing. Then they dropped us all back in town and we went about our business cleaning up the city.

  Of the five guys I went to the conference with three were dead in a month. I love this town, but it’s tough; it’ll carve you up and sell your organs on the black market. The body in the alley back there? The one I left on the ground? No one will bat an eye. Since I left his money alone it’ll look like just another gangland hit. Maybe the cops will think he’s just another corpse that didn’t make it to the dumpster.

  In a place like this tragedy doesn’t come in buckets, it comes in dozens of little packets. Each of those packets is a little hit to your sense of worth and faith in others. All of those little packets demand a drink, a fight, a traipse with a jìnǚ, or some sort of walk on the wild side. Mostly I just drink and watch the world go by from my porch.

  There’s thunder boiling in the distance and the humidity is crazy. There’s no way a rational person would be wearing this jacket on this night. I’m sweating like a fiend but it’s important to, uh, wear the jacket. For some reason.

  I really should get ready for the morning, but I can’t bring myself to care overmuch. It’s the Clock Man, a tired old man who regulates the flow of magic into the power grid. How hard could it be? Walk in, walk upstairs, and run a dagger through his heart.

  Shit. I have agreed to kill the Clock Man.

  My chair on the porch is right where I left it and my ass hits it like a ton of bricks. It just hit me, I just agreed to kill the Clock Man. I’ve killed plenty of people in the past; I was a cop, after all.

  The Clock Man is more than people, though. He’s responsible for regulating the way magic rolls through the world. It powers our lights, vidders, cars, everything. The crazy thing about magic is its inherently chaotic nature. In order for the stuff to work and make things, you know, go, you have to control how it flows through the wires.

  They call him the Clock Man because he handles the clock cycles, managing the flow of magic to keep it neat and orderly. If the stuff gets out of hand all sorts of bad things can happen. Magic is, at its heart, energy. But it’s more than just power flowing through
a wire. This is primal energy we’re talking about, wild and free and capable of warping reality at the most basic level. There was a time, not long ago, when the former Clock Man started dicking around with the way the magic was transmitted. He thought he had a new and more efficient way of transmitting power, but he tried to make it work on his terms. He tried to violate the rules and an entire city in the center of the continent fell through reality into the dreaming lands.

  I understand the things that have crawled out of that place will crush your soul.

  Which makes me wonder if Alyssa has a plan to replace her dad. Without him at the helm the effects of an unregulated, wide-spread magic distribution system would be catastrophic. End of the world level catastrophic.

  I kill him and the world might end. I don’t kill him and Chan kills me. Either way I end up dead.

  Fuck it.

  I need another drink and some sleep. Tomorrow I’ve got to kill the world.

  VI

  Some people like to say everything looks better in the morning. To me it just looks brighter and for the umpteenth time I wonder why I keep the blinds open when I sleep. Tàiyáng’s light is red-hot pokers in my eyes. At least Xiǎo Mèimei is still hidden below the horizon; both of them together would be more than I can handle right now.

  The little dragons outside my window are squawking; staccato chirps and whistles demanding their breakfast. I don’t know why I started feeding the little vermin, maybe I’m just a sucker for watching them fly. The red one on the left is the leader. I don’t know if Red is a boy or a girl, but I always assumed a girl. There’s a certain grace to her movements that the others don’t have.

  While I’m making coffee I dredge up some lizards I keep handy, break their backs, and toss them onto the patio and watch the little dragons feed. Red places a talon on the biggest lizard and coils her long body into a circle around her prey. I can’t be certain but I think she gave me the dragon version of a smile.