Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (18 page)

Neil glanced away and jammed his hands in his pockets. “You made the
top?” he asked in a low voice.

“No,” said the old man, “My father found it a long time ago, in Denmark,
when he was fixing the Baltic Sea current. It's a particularly useful tool for
finding things that have fallen out of time.” The old man righted the top and spun
it very gently. The tug came again and the constable's truncheon that had fallen
between the rails rolled slowly into the gravel.

“You mean things like me?”

“Well, not precisely,” said Mr. Harrison. “You're no mere tool that's
fallen out of time.”

“Is the bird a tool? What can it do?”

“Other than eat far more than it should, nothing I've yet found. Come
down here, Jack!” Mr. Harrison waved at the black pigeon roosting on the headlamp.
It turned its back to him. “Blasted bird. Come down here!”

Neil let out a warbling whistle and held out his hands. The bird cocked
its head at him and fluttered down to the tracks. Neil herded it into his hands and
looked into its red-rimmed eyes. He could feel its tiny heart racing.

“How did you do that?” asked Mr. Harrison.

“We had a loft of racing pigeons. Father always said I was good with
living things.”

“There's not much alive in the World Clock that you'd want to meet,”
said Mr. Harrison. He reached down and dug through the jumbled motley in the valise,
drawing a tarnished silver spyglass from beneath a yellow candle stub. He leaned
into the hole and peered through the intricate clockwork.

“Strange,” whispered Mr. Harrison. The hand holding the spyglass
trembled.

“What is it?”

“Stay here,” he said. He closed and hoisted the valise up into the gears
and shoved it inward.

“But—”

“Mind the portal.” With a groan, the old man dragged himself up and into
the darkness.

Neil listened at the opening and heard nothing but that hollow heartbeat
tick. It seemed to echo out into the world around him. When he turned and saw the
towering black face of the engine, he stumbled back, wondering if it hadn't crept
closer when he wasn't looking.

Neil walked up to it tentatively and stood beneath its hooded eye. He
cupped the bird in one hand and held the other out, almost touching the long rusted
scratches that whiskered the steel face.

Jack let out a shrill cry, flapping against Neil's chest. Neil felt that
if he let himself touch the black metal, he would freeze before that eye until time
woke and bore him under. He stumbled back.

“Your name's Jack then?” said Neil. His voice sounded too loud in the
still world. “Do you have something special you can do?”

The bird cocked its head at him.

“It's okay. I don't know what I'm good for either.”

A shout echoed from behind him. The old man. Neil ran over to the
portal, craning his neck to hear. “Mr. Harrison?”

Neil peered into the darkness, listening, but all was as still as the
world outside.

“Mr.—”

A hammer-strike of metal on metal rang through Neil's head as it echoed
from the portal. Jack burst from Neil's hands at the clang, as wide-eyed as the
birds out front. He flapped wildly against the edge of the dark portal and flew
in.

“Wait!” cried Neil. Throwing one last glance at the train engine, he
leapt for the edge of the hole and yanked himself over the gears.

He cried out as he slipped forward, one hand stretched over the edge of
a pit just large enough to swallow him whole. He could not see the bottom but he
could hear the echo of his yell for a long time.

“Boy, what are you doing?” asked the old man as he ducked from beneath a
gear, the constable's truncheon clutched in his hand.

Neil stood carefully. “There was a terrible noise. Jack flew into the
portal.”

Mr. Harrison glanced up. “Never mind that old cock, I never did find a
use for him. Go back and mind the entrance.”

“Please,” said Neil throwing a glance at the black engine, “I don't want
to be alone.”

The old man hesitated. “This part of the World Clock is delicate but
it's true that I must begin your training if you are to be any kind of apprentice at
all. You must stay close, and don't touch anything unless I say so.” Mr. Harrison
ducked back under the hanging gears and into the shadows.

Neil glanced up again, but Jack was nowhere to be seen. He hurried
after, almost stumbling in the darkness. He reached for the old man, but Neil's
fingers brushed a startling coldness.

With a hiss, the shadows before him erupted with a sickly green light.
Neil let loose a shriek.

“Don't be afraid,” came Mr. Harrison's voice from behind him. “It's just
an embalming globe. The light preserves our work.”

Neil blinked. The radiance he shielded his eyes against was more painful
than illuminating. He saw a greenish globe bolted like a street lamp above a dark
piece of machinery. The metal of this clockwork box was black and greasy. No
fanciful animals graced the surface, only stains. Mr. Harrison stepped into the
light.

“What is it?” asked Neil. He leaned down to touch the rough, pitted
surface. It made the tip of his fingers itch.

“Never mind. It's just another complication,” said the old man. “Come,
and stay close to me this time.”

“Why does it look different?”

“Because it's an improvement,” the old man said, his voice tight. “That
is my father's fine work, if I'm not mistaken. It takes Atlantic storms and points
them safely at the new world.”

Neil saw another black mechanism close by it. He waved his hand at it
cautiously. Another teakettle hiss and the globe above it revealed a squat
collection of black iron cogs with a crude decoration of a frog on top. The frog was
missing its head.

“That's an old one, before my time,” said the old man. “Keeps the
amphibians in the river Thames from making such a damnable racket. Doesn't always
work properly. Sometimes it makes them rain.”

“What's wrong with frogs singing?” asked Neil, and he realized he'd
never heard frogs in the city before.

“Never mind that, boy,” said the old man, drawing him forward into a
space just beyond the portal. “We must focus. If there is any heart of this clock
that is precious, it is the one above us.”

They stood in a bell-shaped vault of interlocking gears as tall as a
little chapel. The light from the portal revealed a golden column that rose through
the massive wheel of the floor to meet a ceiling tiled with the clockwork of birds
and beasts.

“What is it?”

“The Grande Complication. The heart that turns the cycles of the world.
Without it, there would be no complications, no movements, no living creatures such
as the ones you are so fond of.”

Neil looked up and saw a faint golden light leaking through the
clockwork above as if whatever was up there glowed like the old man's key.

“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?”