Bearing an Hourglass

by Piers Anthony

  Assuming he took the Hourglass. He hadn't decided yet whether to do that. He didn't like to be jammed into something like this, especially when there were so many imponderables.

  "Oh, but you have to," Gawain said, guessing his thought. "Believe me, Norton, this is the job for you! Gaea says you're perfect for it, and Clotho says they need a man like you to—" He broke off.

  "To what?" Norton asked with abrupt suspicion.

  "Look out—it's time!" Gawain was peering at the region above the X. "I guess this is farewell, friend. May your past be happy!"

  Norton looked. There was nothing over the X. "It's not time. There's a minute to go."

  "Your watch could be off."

  "Quit avoiding the subject. Why do the Incarnations want me as Chronos?"

  "Well, I'm not really in a position to know, being only a ghost—"

  Norton turned and started to walk away.

  "Okay, I'll tell you!" Gawain screamed. "It's Satan, the Incarnation of Evil! He's up to something—"

  "I'll go to Hell?"

  "No, not you! He can't touch you without your permission—or your acquiescence, anyway. He'll send all humanity to Hell, somehow, if he isn't stopped."

  "How can I stop Satan? I'm only one man—"

  "There it is!" Gawain cried.

  This time he was correct. A tall, white-caped figure had appeared at the marked spot, bearing a bright Hourglass. So it was true! Chronos had arrived from the future. And his office was there for the taking.

  The Hourglass shone like the Grail, its brightness inherent and marvelous. A thin thread of silvery sand fell from its upper segment to its lower. The upper chamber was virtually empty; in fact, in a few seconds the flow would stop, the measure completed. That process had a mesmerizing effect; there was a transcendent significance to the termination of that flow.

  Norton's mind was a whirl of speculations and doubts—but though he had come to no decision, his body acted. He stepped forward, reached up, and grasped the shining Hourglass.

  The figure of Chronos faded out in the fashion it had faded in. The white robe seemed to detach itself from that fading figure and cross over to Norton as he took the Hourglass. He found himself standing on the X spot, the robe coalescing about him, sinking into his body, permeating him and giving him an odd sensation of timelessness and power. Now he held the symbol of his new office—but he did not know what to do. The universe seemed frozen.

  A faint whisper came to him: "Over... over!" Without thinking it out, Norton turned over the Hourglass, just as the last sand passed through the central aperture.

  The new upper chamber, almost full of sand, began to spill into the nether one. The first sand touched the bottom—

  And the universe changed.

  Chapter 5 - LACHESIS

  It took Norton a moment to figure out the nature of the change, for it was subtle, but he did know it was horrendously significant. He remained in the vacant lot, and the other two figures remained also, and the wind still blew the flag at the top of a nearby building. All ordinary things.

  Yet the two figures did not seem to be looking at him, but rather through him. He glanced down at himself and found himself solid, though surrounded by the diaphanous white robe, which seemed to be more mist than material. What was the matter with those people?

  Then he realized one aspect of what bothered him: one figure was Gawain the Ghost—but who was the other? A man in a Martian hiking costume—

  Himself! Standing and watching—what?

  "Hi!" he said, somewhat tremulously, but the figures did not respond.

  It was coming clear. This was himself—as he had been a minute ago, waiting for Chronos to appear. Himself—moving backward in time. Evidently the former Norton, oriented toward the future, could not perceive the present Norton, oriented toward the past.

  And that flag on the building—Norton could feel the wind and knew in which direction it was blowing. But the flag was extending in the opposite direction. Either the wind at the top of the building differed from the wind below—or the flag was blowing into the wind.

  Norton fished in his pocket for a fragment of paper. He held it up to the wind. It tugged directly into the wind—the opposite of what it should have done. He let it go—and it fluttered windward like a salmon forging upstream. Strange!

  He stretched his arm so that his wrist slid out from the sleeve of his new white cloak and he looked at his watch.

  It was running backward.

  So it was true! Chronos lived backward. The course of his life was opposite to that of the rest of the universe. The flag tugged into the wind because he was perceiving it backward. He felt the wind going back toward its source—but that did not change its actual effect.

  He could not communicate with his former self, because he was now in a different frame. People were geared to perceive things of their own frame; they simply could not relate to something outside it. He himself had not seen what there was there to see, standing on the spot marked X: himself as Chronos. So now he knew how it was. In fact, he reminded himself, that was no stranger out there; it was Norton-normal. He had followed normal time until he took the Hourglass and turned it over to start the sand of his term of office. Now he followed the new time. He could relate to the rest of the world, perceiving it clearly, because he understood it. His new life continued forward—in reverse.

  But what was he supposed to do now? Surely there was more to this job than merely existing!

  His eye fell on the ring Orlene had given him. Maybe this could help. "Sning, are you still functioning?"

  Squeeze.

  "That's a relief! Do you know anything about this time reversal effect?"

  Squeeze. Excellent. Now all he needed to do was figure out the right questions. Sning's presence was an enormous comfort to him at the moment! "Is it true that I am living backward, so am seeing the world like a holoshow played in reverse?"

  Squeeze.

  "But how can I relate to normal people, then?"

  Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  Of course; he had phrased his question improperly. "Can I relate to normals?"

  Squeeze.

  "Is there something I can do to effect this interaction? So they can relate to me, too? So they can see me?"

  Squeeze.

  "Does it have anything to do with the Hourglass?"

  Squeeze!

  So the Hourglass was important; that was hardly a surprise! Norton contemplated the instrument. The thin line of sand was still gently glowing, off-white in color, a steady thread connecting top and bottom.

  Very well. This flow measured time, and it was evident that, though the instrument was called an Hourglass, it actually measured his full career. He had about thirty-nine years ahead of him—behind him—until the date of his birth, when presumably the sand would run out and he would have to pass the thing on to someone who had lived before him. That much he understood and accepted now, albeit grudgingly.

  But obviously there was more to this office than merely living backward. Surely Chronos had a job to do—and surely, then, Chronos had to relate to the real world. The Hourglass enabled him to do that—if he only could figure out how.

  He studied the instrument. There were no visible controls on it. He turned it over—and suffered an abrupt wrenching of his being. Hastily he turned it back, and normality was restored. What had happened?

  In a moment he worked it out; if the Hourglass measured his life, reversing the instrument would reverse his life. He would be undoing what he had just been doing; he would be returning to the moment of his assumption of the office, a few minutes hence. The wrenching was because living backward biologically was not normal; his blood would be reversing its flow, and his digestion—just so. He would lose his free will, unraveling the just-made skein—and to what point? To renege on the commitment he had made when he took the Hourglass? That was not his way! So he would not do that again! He could continue his natural course, though that was now oppos
ite to that of the rest of the universe. He would see this office through—whatever that might mean.

  "Sning, are there other ways to affect my status?" he asked the ring.

  Squeeze.

  "Even though there are no physical controls on the Hourglass?"

  Squeeze.

  Whatever would he have done without the little snake! Orlene had given him a greater gift than he had realized at the time—and there, of course, had been the earliest true indication other love. She would always be with him while Sning was with him—and he had no intention of parting with the ring, ever.

  But back to business! "But how? Do I just will it to do what I want?"

  Squeeze. Oh. Well, he would find out. Let me travel swiftly in time! he thought grandly.

  The sand in the Hourglass turned bright blue. The world outside became a gray void. He was traveling—somewhere. Swiftly.

  Stop! he thought, alarmed.

  Abruptly the scene was stationary. The sand in the Hourglass was now black.

  He stood in a dusky glade. Before him was something like a large cabbage-palm, and monstrous ferns were everywhere. There were bottle-brush things, but no grass. This was definitely not familiar territory!

  He walked, examining the scenery. The only really familiar thing he spied was a distant fir tree. He saw no animal life—though of course any animals would hide from a strange creature like himself, so that was not in itself abnormal. He listened, but heard no buzzing of insects. Where was he? Had he moved in space rather than in time?

  "Sning, did the Hourglass malfunction?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "It moved me in time?"

  Squeeze.

  "Which direction? Forward?"

  Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  Hmm, a problem there. Had his question been imprecise? Perhaps so. Which direction was "forward"? The way he lived, or the way the world went?

  "Did it move me into the world's future?" That worried him, because it was evident that human life had been eliminated, or at least greatly restricted here, and perhaps all mammalian life too. War or other disaster?

  But Sning reassured him: squeeze, squeeze.

  "Into my future—the world's past?"

  Squeeze.

  Back on track! He had it now. Forward, to the Hourglass, had to be his forward. Since he hadn't specified direction in his thought command, the Hourglass had simply accelerated him in the direction he had been going. Instead of moving backward at the rate of one minute per minute, or one year per year, he had moved much faster and farther. Obviously years, for the city was gone; it had not yet been built. How long had this spot been inhabited by man? Decades, surely! In fact, it could be centuries, for even the local vegetation had changed radically. "How many years into Earth's past have I gone?"

  Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. "That's not three years, is it?"

  Squeeze.

  Norton smiled. That meant yes—that it was not three years. The three squeezes had been the signal of Sning's inability to answer.

  "Is the answer better expressed in centuries?"

  Squeeze—squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  That was a new one! Four squeezes, for a yes-no answer. But there had been a pause after the first. That translated to yes-can not answer.

  "Centuries are better than years—but still not enough?"

  Squeeze. He was getting better at this! "How about millennia?"

  Four squeezes, with the pause after the first. This was getting serious. "Units of a million years?"

  Four squeezes. Serious indeed! "Units of a billion years?"

  Squeeze, squeeze. "So it's not a billion years back—but a lot of millions?"

  Squeeze. "How many hundred million—to the nearest unit?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "What do you mean, 'No'? That was a numbers question!"

  Squeeze. Oh. "Two hundred million, approximately?"

  Squeeze. "The time of the dinosaurs?"

  Squeeze.

  "Then how come I don't see any dinosaurs? No, cancel that; like most naturalists, I have a passing interest in paleontology. This is obviously along about the Triassic period; I should have recognized it before. No grasses, no flowering plants, but plenty of palms and pines and cycads. I'll rephrase my question: are there dinosaurs here—or rather, the pre-dinosaurs, the developing lines?"

  Squeeze. "But not right at this spot. I'd see some if I walked around enough, or waited here long enough, if my appearance or smell or noise didn't keep them away?"

  Squeeze.

  Now Norton noticed that there was no wind, no movement of fern or frond, not even when he brushed against them. In fact, he had no contact with them; his hand passed right through them. "Ah, I get it—time is frozen! The way Thanatos froze it—I'm Chronos now, so I can do that trick too! I ordered the Hourglass to stop, so it stopped me—absolutely, right where I was at the moment." He contemplated the black sand in the Hourglass. It still flowed from upper to lower chamber, measuring out his life with its silken thread of motion; he was not frozen, just the world. "So black is the color of absolute stasis—of everything except me."

  Squeeze... squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  Another qualified yes. He had better run it down; Sning did not squeeze just for the fun of it. "The world is in stasis?"

  Four squeezes.

  "The world seems in stasis?"

  Squeeze.

  Fair enough. He was way out of his own time; he couldn't go around stopping the clock of the universe incidentally. Probably Thanatos hadn't really stopped the world, either—but the appearance was as useful as the reality. Perhaps Norton was in a special state of acceleration, so that the world seemed still by comparison. He stretched out his arm to view his watch—and saw that it had stopped.

  Now, wait! He had not stopped, and he was wearing his watch. Was it broken? He brought it close to his eyes—and found it was moving, after all, forward.

  He stretched out his arm again—and the watch stopped. Experimenting, he discovered that when the watch was more than a foot out from his torso, it reflected the world's time; when it was closer, it kept his own personal time. That was a worthwhile discovery! His ambience was limited, so that he himself could reach out of it. And of course that had to be; otherwise he would be carrying chunks of the world backward with him, and that wouldn't do. He verified by further experiment that his time frame stopped at the level of the soles of his feet and the top of his head, and spread out like an aura between; actually, the white cloak pretty well defined it.

  Then he remembered that his watch had been running backward when he had checked it before. But he had been holding it out from his body then, so that was the world's time. His time was forward.

  "So black sand means stasis—that can affect me also, if I so choose," he said aloud. "Partially, anyway; my blood flow does not reverse in my hand when I reach out, but my watch does change. So it's a kind of compromise state."

  Squeeze.

  "Thank you for alerting me about this, Sning. I'm awfully glad to have your advice."

  The little snake did not squeeze, but turned a darker shade of green, evidently with pleasure.

  Norton reviewed another aspect. "And when the sand is blue—that's the color of accelerated motion in time?"

  Squeeze.

  "So I can tell what's going on by the color-coding of the sand. But how can I be here at all? This is far outside my timeline! No, don't give me three squeezes; I'll figure it out in a moment. I'm here—but not solidly. I'm like a ghost here. I can't touch anything, and probably no creature can touch me or even perceive me. So it's like looking at a holo—the world is a holograph, less real for me than it seems, and it is not aware of me at all."

  He paced along the paleontological terrain. "I can travel anywhere in time, probably, forward and back. But I can't do anything; it's just a visit, a sightseeing tour. Only in my own time span—the span of my living life—can I actually affect the world. Once I figure out how."

/>   Squeeze.

  "Good enough. Let's go home now." He concentrated. Back to starting point—but not as fast.

  The Hourglass glowed a little more brightly. The black sand changed color, becoming pink. The world moved.

  The sun traveled across the sky, picking up speed as the sand darkened. Night came—and passed in a minute. Day and night, of course! He saw an animal, in the day, but it was gone so quickly he had only a fleeting impression of something reptilian. The creature might have taken half an hour to pass, but that would have been mere seconds to Norton. Rain came, making the herbiage sparkle momentarily.

  The pace picked up. Now it was like an old-fashioned motion picture, the frames flickering; he was able to tune out the dark intervals and see the land as a continuing thing, the plants growing and aging and disappearing. The seasons passed, but there seemed to be no winter here, just a browning of some plants; this was before the day of deciduous trees. Overall, there was very little change.

  Faster, he thought. The sand became a brighter red, and the world buzzed through its paces at accelerated velocity. A fir tree sprouted near him, grew in seconds to a robust specimen, stabilized—and was abruptly gone. A bolt of lightning? Root rot? Life ended so suddenly for plants! But, of course, a century or more had passed.

  A hundred million years, he discovered, was a long time, even at the rate of a century a minute; he would have to watch, at this rate, for a couple of years, his time. Full speed, he directed, and the grayness of impossible temporal velocity returned.

  Then he remembered: he had changed his position! He had walked away from his starting point, looking at vegetation. He would land a similar distance away—perhaps in the middle of a building. In the middle of a wall!

  Before he could correct his error, the world firmed. He stood in the vacant lot, on the X. The two figures remained nearby.

  "But I moved!" he protested, relieved.

  Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  Again he worked it out. He had moved—but he had been outside his bailiwick, unable to affect that world. So apparently he had not affected himself, either. It might have been a different story, had he traveled only a year or two and walked about. He would have to be very careful in future. Past. Or whatever. This time the nature of the system had saved him from his own folly, but that might not always be so.