“What’s wrong with it?”
“I’m not certain,” said Mr. Harrison, stepping forward to lay his hand on the column. “Something has jammed up in the linkage above, and I can’t see it from here. Likely, it’s something a little nudge will divine. Hand up that wrench there.”
Neil picked through the iron tools in the valise. They were nothing like his father’s. He handed up the one that looked closest to a wide-mouthed wrench, wiping the grease from his hand.
“Do you know what this is?” asked the old man as he fumbled the tool onto a tooth at the base of the great column. The jaws fit awkwardly, not quite slipping all the way on.
“It looks like an arbor,” said Neil. “Does it power all of this from above?”
“Your father taught you something,” said the old man, trying to get the black wrench to fit but failing rather badly. “Hold it here,” Mr. Harrison said, pressing Neil’s hands to the wrench. Neil crouched down and gripped the tool, nervous that he would break something vital. The old man picked up the truncheon again and swung it at the head of the wrench. The tool jerked onto the gear with a clang that rang through Neil’s head so that he lost his grip and sat down hard. The hammer-strike in his mind was so much worse than the one he heard outside that a tear raced down to hang off the edge of his ear.
Mr. Harrison waved the truncheon. “This has the power to hit things uncommonly hard, but I must say you’ve got sensitive ears, boy. That’s good. I used to be pretty sharp at listening for problems in the works before my hearing went.” The old man pressed his ear to the column and tapped it with the wrench. It felt as if the old man were tapping it against Neil’s skull.
“No,” gasped Neil. “When you hit it, I can feel it inside my head.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound right. How could you make the proper repairs? You’d be constantly giving yourself a headache.”
Neil tried to speak, but Mr. Harrison shushed him and gripped the wrench. A groan escaped his lips as he put his weight against it. A shudder went through Neil’s body as the gears around them twitched with a thousand intricate clicks.
A loud crack rang out above as if someone had thrown a horseshoe down a set of stairs. Neil slapped his hands to his ears, but this time the sound did not hurt.
The old man, however, tumbled to his knees as if they’d been broken.
“No, no!”
“What is it?” cried Neil. “What happened?”
The old man staggered to his feet, and began scaling the wall of gears. There was no way he could fit through the gaps above.
“Come quickly, boy, you can fit. You must. This must be the reason the clock brought you.”
The great teeth of the gears were tightly meshed. Neil wasn’t sure he could fit, even if he wanted to.
“I…I don’t want to break something.”
“You won’t. Just call down what you find. The jam must be very close, probably just beyond my reach.”
Neil breathed deeply and considered the few openings that he might fit through. A gap next to the gold arbor let in a dim shaft of light.
“I guess I could look,” said Neil, haltingly reaching out to touch the shiny clockwork of the wall. It felt so massive, yet delicate. He wondered if just climbing on it could break it.
“Now if you hear anything moving up there, Neil, tell me.”
“Like what?”
The old man hesitated and studied the machinery above. “Just listen.”
Neil put one foot on the clockwork and tested it, then began to climb carefully upward. When he made it to the gap, he let out a breath and pushed inside. For an instant he felt panic, wondering if he could get back out. He was squeezed into an irregular chimney, his back pressed against the arbor at its heart. Something fluttered above.
“Jack?” Neil whispered. He craned his head toward the faint light that filtered as if from the top of a well. The space widened just above him and something small and black perched upon a gear, like a bird.
“Jack?” he called again.
He stretched his hand over the top of the gear for Jack, and instead found a squat piece of iron with a pointed head, like the tip of a weathervane.
“I found something!” yelled Neil.
“What is it?” came the echo of the old man’s voice.
“A broken piece of metal,” said Neil.
“Loose metal? Bring it down. Let me see it!”
“Hold on,” said Neil, peering farther up the shaft. He thought he could see the top now where the passage opened into soft light.
Wings fluttered again. As he lifted himself farther, he felt something alight on his left shoulder. And bite.
He yelled and hit at the pain with the broken metal in his right hand. When he pulled his hand back, a blotch of crushed gold shell and one glassy wing were smeared against iron.
“What’s going on, boy?” Mr. Harrison cried. Neil yelled again and tried to squeeze down through the gears. The mechanical buzz of wings arced above him, and below the way seemed so tight, he could barely see it. A metallic locust lit on his trouser leg, its skin shining gold, as if it had stepped from the fanciful wheels that Neil clung to. The eyes glinted at him like rubies. It flexed its wings and began to gnaw silently through the cuff above his shoes.
Neil kicked his leg. The insect buzzed like a saw, and launched itself at his face.
Just as one of the insect’s burred legs cut Neil’s lip, a flash of black swept by his flinching eyes. Neil gasped as Jack perched on a cog next to him, the squirming insect in its beak. Jack bobbed his head back and snapped at the insect with a crunch, downing all but the wings and one quivering leg.
“Jack!”
Neil slipped the iron into his jacket pocket. He grasped Jack and tucked him against his chest.
He scrambled down and squeezed himself through the gears, afraid to look up at the buzzing air. His feet slipped, and he tumbled into the old man’s outstretched hands. Jack fluttered away to land on the lid of the valise.
“What are those things?” shouted Neil as he clutched his shoulder.
“What did you see?”
“Bugs. Gold, like the animals on the wheels.”
“The chronophage,” said Mr. Harrison, tenderly touching the hole in Neil’s coat. “I was afraid they might have caused this. They are the devourers of time. Our embalming globes are supposed to keep them at bay.”
“It bit me!”
“They eat anything not of this place. They eat the ironwork of the timekeepers and everything that falls out of time. Eventually, they will wear through the World Clock itself, destroying all.”
“Why would they want to hurt the clock?”
“Want? They’re too mindless to want. They merely destroy. They are entropy. Death. If I ever find a mechanism in this clock that rules their existence, I swear I will smash it.”
“But—” said Neil.
“Bring out the metal piece you found, boy.”
Neil drew out the iron. The gold insect he’d squashed still hung by one leg.
“What?” The old man snatched the iron from Neil’s hand. Nonsensical gouges crossed the surface of the black metal as if it had been worried at by some blind animal.
“No,” the old man moaned as he hugged the black metal to his chest. “Not this.”
“What is it?”
“This is a piece of the Grande Complication itself.”
“How do you know?”
“I know its every moving part. This piece was mounted directly upon the World Clock’s old Grande Complication. If the jam cracks the golden gears beneath, it co
uld unmake the world.”
The old man stretched to touch the delicate gold clockwork above. “I am going to have to disassemble this part of the World Clock somehow. I don’t even know what it would break if I did.” His fingertips traced the sun and the moon and a handful of other strange spheres Neil had never seen in the sky. “I can fix these again,” said the old man. “Put them back the way they once were, after I’m through. I know I can. I must.” His brow was furled, fearful.
The old man pulled the truncheon from the tools he’d laid out. He held the tip of it against the assembly as he whispered something Neil couldn’t hear. Then he swung it against the golden gears with unexpected strength.
The clang of the metal rang through Neil’s entire body like a cathedral bell again and again. “I must repair it!” shouted the old man as he smashed the truncheon against the gold wheels.
“Stop!” cried Neil as if the blows were raining down on him. “Please stop!”
The old man dropped the truncheon and slumped down the wall, gasping.
There wasn’t a scratch in the polished gold, but as the old man struck the gears, Neil had felt something inside his head twist and almost break.
“You’re hurting the clock. You’ve got to stop.” Neil gripped the arm of the old man’s coat.
“But I must fix it,” croaked Mr. Harrison. He seemed shrunk against the wall, almost smaller than Neil. He reached a bony hand out to the boy. “You. You must do it. This must be why the clock called you.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You must know something. Maybe something your father taught you?”
“I’ll try,” whispered Neil, taking the truncheon from the old man’s hand. “Just don’t hit it anymore.” Mr. Harrison closed his eyes.
Neil slipped the truncheon into one pocket and put the wooden top in another. He picked through the tools, but none seemed familiar, so he took Jack from where he roosted on the valise. “You’re coming with me.” He tucked the bird into the lapel of his jacket. Jack cooed softly.
Mr. Harrison loomed over Neil, slipping the black iron key around his neck so that it dangled near the bird’s head. The little gold pinion trapped in the key’s head was the only thing that gleamed. “Take this. Perhaps this will wake for you when the World Clock needs it most.”
Neil nodded and slipped it into his collar, where it scratched against his skin.
Neil clambered back up the arch of the ceiling. He listened at the silent gap, and then, when he thought his arms would almost give out, he pushed himself through. The space was even harder to squeeze past with his pockets full, but he focused on climbing toward the growing glow until it bathed him like moonlight.
With a push and a wriggle, he reached the top, drawing a big breath that became a gasp of surprise. The soft glow was not issuing from the darkness above. It came from the world outside.
A huge wheel, similar to the clock face of Big Ben, stretched like a window next to him. Neil felt dizzy as he approached. The view dropped, as if he stood on the tallest tower in London. Ferris-wheel gears stretched high across a sky of strange stars. The glow came from a huge number in the sky—a roman number IV bigger than a harvest moon. Far off in the firmament hung V and VI. The World Clock glimmered beneath it like a city, vast and perfectly still.
“It’s beautiful,” said Neil. Beneath the sound of his breath, he heard the seething buzz of wings. He glanced back over his shoulder, his hand reaching automatically to touch the bird tucked against his heart.
The dark space above him where the arbor rose up was as tall and dark as a belfry, and something hung in the center that was larger than any bell.
The silhouette of black clockwork stretched out to touch everything. Something about the gears seemed to be moving, as if they spun by themselves while the rest of the clock lay dormant.
Neil stepped closer and saw thousands of jeweled ruby eyes staring down at him. The insects crawled and scrabbled over every surface of the black metal. A large embalming globe, like the ones below, was bolted to the very top, but this one had cracked open like an empty bowl.
Jack burbled with excitement and launched himself from Neil’s collar. “No,” cried Neil as the bird fluttered up to land among the black gears. In an instant, Jack snapped up a gold locust and downed half of it. Just as quickly, several of the creatures swarmed up the bird’s legs and set Jack flailing. He flapped blindly, deeper into the seething clockwork.
Neil reached for his pockets. He drew out the top and dropped to his knees, spinning it with all his might.
He grabbed for the gears beneath him and strained to hold on. The air filled with jeweled locusts spraying outward in a skittering cloud through the machinery of the far walls.
The world slowed its spinning and Neil shook his head. He could see the Grande Complication now, skittering with the chronophage that remained. It spread outward like a huge black flower wilting from the golden stem of the arbor. Jack landed atop the cracked embalming globe above, a twitching locust in his beak.
Beneath the globe, Neil saw an irregular shape jammed amidst the gears. It was rough, like the bark of a tree, and honeycombed with hundreds of holes. Little golden locusts stuck their heads from the gaps and stared at him with glistening eyes. The bulk of it was jammed in the wheels as if it had fallen and been crushed. Neil could see the remains of a leathery yellow stalk on the bottom of the broken embalming globe above.
“I found it! I found it!” yelled Neil at the top of his lungs. “Something’s fallen in and jammed it, like you said!”
Neil scrambled up and onto the black metal, the iron biting his fingers. Jack fluttered down about him, gorging on the locusts that came near.
“What did you find, boy?” Mr. Harrison shouted far below, his voice almost lost in the echoes.
“It’s a nest or egg, I think.”
“Of the chronophage? You must destroy it.”
“But—”
“Wait. Wait a moment. Be careful when you smash it. The jam is apt to be under a lot of pressure. I will try to hold it if the clock starts to move.”
Neil crouched and ran the truncheon across the surface of the egg case. He knew just how to break it. Could feel just how it would come apart in his hands, like one of his father’s clocks. He stared long and hard at the little faces peeking out from inside. The golden skin. The red jeweled eyes.
“You’re part of the World Clock, aren’t you?” whispered Neil. “You’re not the ones breaking it at all.”
“All right, boy,” Mr. Harrison said. “I’m ready here. Destroy it.”
Neil gripped the truncheon. “No.”
In the profound silence that followed, Neil wasn’t sure that Mr. Harrison heard him.
“Are you daft?” the old man called. “You must destroy them, now, before they destroy the world!”
“No. They’re alive. The clock is alive too. I’ll prove it.”
“Damn you, boy, where is my truncheon?” Neil could hear the old man’s curses, the clank of tools.
The buzzing inside the egg case grew as Neil slipped the truncheon against it like a lever. The egg shifted a little and the iron gears beneath his feet creaked. He bore down and began to rock it carefully, stopping only to flick off locusts that scurried onto his skin. The gears groaned louder.
Neil cried out “Please, I’ve just about—”
The world became motion. The wheels that Neil balanced himself on spat the egg out with a roar, even as they flung him backward across the spinning teeth. Neil’s yell was matched by the old man’s bellow far below. The world screeched to a halt.
Neil clung to the edge of the Grande Complication. He pulled himself back up to where the egg case lay. The only sound was the occasional flutter of glassy wings.
“Boy,” the old man moaned.
The clockwork groaned all around Neil but held still.
“Jack!” Neil yelled as he picked himself up. The pigeon was nowhere to be seen.
“Hurry,” Mr. Harrison said.
“I’m coming, sir.”
Neil slid the egg into the broken embalming globe above, like a nest tucked onto a branch. Then he dropped from the edge of the black gears and climbed down fast as he dared.
The old man lay on the floor by a twisted wrench, his arm buried to the shoulder in the gears he’d tried to hold back. Coin-sized drops of blood dripped from the teeth of the wheels.
“You’re bleeding. You need a doctor.”
“There is no doctor for me.” The old man reached for Neil. “You must hold the key. You must become the Time Keeper.”
“But I don’t—”
“Please. You must serve the clock or this world will end.” The old man drew the chain from the boy’s collar with his one good hand. Neil hesitantly accepted the key that pressed into his palm.
“Now speak after me. The World Clock is the heart of time.”
“The World Clock is the heart of time,” repeated Neil.
The old man released slowly, leaving the key in the boy’s fist. “I am its keeper.”
“I am its keeper,” Neil whispered.
“I swear to protect the keeper’s work.” The man continued chanting, even as Neil fell silent. “Yes,” whispered the old man, looking through Neil with wide and feverish eyes. “It comes to pass. The key is glowing. The world is…” Mr. Harrison trailed off, his eyelids flickering.
The key in Neil’s palm did not glow. It lay there still and cold. The old man’s breath rattled to a stop and did not start again.
Tears began to trace down Neil’s cheeks. He took the motionless hand and held it, sitting the way he never had the chance to do on the workshop floor by his father’s side. He sat until the tears dried. The clock remained mercifully silent.
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