Chapter 34
“Please excuse me, sir—your presence is required outside.”
We all looked back at the Timekeeper worker who’d come through the door some fifteen minutes after the lecture began, and he said this to Calren.
Calren, who looked positively shocked. He had definitely not expected that.
“Of course.” Clearing his throat, he turned to us, to Master Talik. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
There were times when Calren had left the workshop briefly before. Never because someone had called for him like that, though. And Master Talik had never looked at the closed door after he left like he was doing now, the screwdriver in his hand shaking slightly, though he refused to move.
“Master Talik,” Reggie said. “You were saying about the clock?”
Finally, he seemed to be back to himself. “I was.”
The man dropped the screwdriver on the table, lowered his head for a moment, took in a deep breath. Whatever it was about him, about this morning, it was only getting stranger and stranger.
Then Master Talik dropped to his knees all of a sudden, and reached for something under the table—the ball.
The ball made out of metal bands that moved in perfect sync whichever way you pushed them.
Holy Hour, he had put it somewhere under the table!
Master Talik cleared his throat. “I changed my mind,” he said. “Let’s talk about this for a moment, shall we? You seemed very curious.”
We looked at one another, lips parted, eyes wide.
“We are,” Reggie said. “What is it?”
Every single one of us in the room held our breaths—not because of the device in his hand, but because it was obvious that Master Talik was only showing it to us because Calren wasn’t there.
It was obvious he’d hidden it when he first came into the workshop, just like I—and probably everyone else—suspected.
“This here is a…new device. A very special device,” said Master Talik. “It’s a timeometer.”
That sounded like a mistake. “Wait—isn’t that just a clock?” Seth asked.
“Not at all,” said the Timekeeper, a small smile playing on his lips now. Then he searched for something in the pocket of his gray, oil-stained apron, and threw it in the air all of a sudden—right into Reggie’s waiting hand. “Mind locking that door for me, boy? Do it quick.”
He’d given Reggie a key—to lock the door of the workshop.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Reggie went and locked the door eagerly, fast, a grin on his face all the while.
“Things are about to get spicy,” he whispered to us as he rushed back to his place in the first row, and Master Talik cleared his throat again.
“A timeometer is very different from a clock,” he started, speaking faster than usual, like he was in a rush.
“As you can see, this is roughly the size of a human head, and it has no face or hands or gears, but instead is made of interlocking rings.” He pushed down a band and the entire circle moved, but didn’t.
The illusion the smoothness created was indeed even more fascinating from afar.
“A clock counts time,” said the Timekeeper, rising up the device a little. “This listens to it.”
“Except it isn’t real,” Silas said, while the rest of us were still trying to figure out the difference of what he was saying.
Counting time and listening to time were two different things? I could have sworn they weren’t.
And how would one listen to time, anyhour? Why?
“Timeometers don’t exist,” Silas continued after a beat. “In fact, it’s illegal to make one.” Illegal. “If I’m not mistaken.”
But he wasn’t, though. We all knew how Silas spoke, how he sounded when he said something he knew for certain, versus something he was guessing, or trying to figure out. This was definitely the first.
Meanwhile the rest of us hadn’t even heard the name once, if the way we were all exchanging looks was anything to go by.
“You’re not,” said Master Talik, giving him a look I couldn’t quite decipher. “However—this is not an actual timeometer, only a prototype of what the device could look like.”
“What exactly does it do, though?” I asked—couldn’t help myself. “What does listening to time mean? Isn’t that the same as counting the seconds?”
“You would think that, but no. A timeometer doesn’t measure time passing, but time allocation. Have any of you learned how the Great Clock emits the time it irons out for our realm?”
I blinked, racked my brain in search for the information, but I had nothing. Nobody did.
Except for Silas, of course.
“A pulse,” he said. “The Great Clock emits time in a steady, even pulse.”
“Precisely.” Master Talik smiled bigger than I’d ever seen him before, even as exhausted as he seemed. “A pulse, which should weaken evenly with distance. That is what the timeometer detect—the compression, the thinning, the flow and turbulence of time as it is allocated throughout the realm.”
“But isn’t that the job of the Great Clock, though?” Helen asked, scratching the back of her head.
“Not at all! The Great Clock delivers time to us with its regular pulses, but it doesn’t measure its distribution. Think of it as pressure in the air—that’s what unevenly distributed time behaves like.”
All those words had made a mess out of my mind, until March spoke.
“Right.” A word, and my head was wiped clean, and I felt him lying on top of me, kissing me, moving inside me.
How in the world did that feel like hours ago, and years?
How did it feel like it had happened a million times, and also never in the real world?
“Right, so…who would need a timeometer?” March continued, and I had to fist my hands and stick my nails into my palms to get myself under control. “Better yet, why would such a thing be illegal?”
“Laws,” said Master Talik. “And a timeometer would be very helpful in analyzing the allocation of time across the realm.”
“Yes, laws—but why do laws make it illegal? It seems like a pretty straightforward thing to me,” Reggie said.
“I believe the better question is, do we really need to analyze the allocation of time across our realm?” said Silas. “If yes, then is it because we don’t trust the Great Clock, or…”
His voice trailed off. Every set of eyes in the room was turned to him, but Silas only looked at Master Talik.
The Timekeeper didn’t move a single inch for a long moment.
Then said, “Yes, that is the better question.”
Behind us, the handle of the door moved. Someone was outside, trying to get in.
We jumped. A couple screamed in surprise.
Master Talik moved like he had suddenly had hours and hours of rest and sleep, and the timeometer he’d been holding was already gone. Instead he’d raised his other hand, and by the time the handle moved down for the fourth time, the door opened.
No key in the hole, though Reggie had left it there.
No lock had turned, yet Calren came in, looking a little flushed.
“What…” He looked up at Master Talik, disoriented, swinging the door still.
“It’s an old thing. It jams a little sometimes,” the old Timekeeper said, waving Calren off, before he turned to the clock he’d been lecturing us about before.
“Right. Right. I’ll have someone look at it,” Calren muttered as he took his seat again.
Master Talik pretended he hadn’t even heard him. “Now, as I was saying about this clock…”
The rest of us looked at one another, and we all knew not to say a single word. It was obvious that Master Talik didn’t want Calren to know about the timeometer. Very obvious.
But why in the world had he showed it to us? Why had he told us that it was illegal in the first place?
Rotten, rotten seconds.
I wanted to talk to March so desperately.
I had no idea what about, only that I wanted to talk to him.
To be in his proximity—when nobody else was around.
But he’d hardly spoken to me all day, and I was now regretting having slipped out of his room that morning, and regretting that I’d gone to his room last night at all.
Maybe I should have stayed in mine. Maybe I shouldn’t have made this so damn complicated.
But how could I possibly regret having felt all that he made me feel?
I had no plans for the night, and I’d decided to sit in my bath after dinner just to have something to do, but I already suspected that midnight wouldn’t find me in my room at all, if the night before was any indication.
That scared me especially. It scared me because I was eleven-hours certain that March wouldn’t answer the door, and if he did, he’d send me right back to my room again this time.
What would I do with myself then?
But just as I finished bathing and put on a fresh pair of clothes, there was a knock on the door. It was ten o’clock already, and Lida never came this late, so I automatically assumed it was March.
It was Mimi instead.
“C’mon! We’re headed to the kitchen to grab snacks, and we’re meeting outside in the garden,” she said in a hushed whisper, and waved for me to follow.
Others were already out the door, March included. The words were at the tip of my tongue and I wanted to call out to Mimi as she walked up the hallway—I’m not coming!
Except March was there in front of his door, and he was looking right at me. It could have been just me, but I thought he was waiting.
Waiting to see if I’d go.
Without word, I stepped out of my room and closed the door behind me. At that, he turned and followed Mimi and the others up the hallway.
It looked like I was going outside, after all.
My hair was still wet when we made it, all of us with snacks in hand.
I’d taken crackers because I couldn’t find any of that chocolate mousse tonight, and March hadn’t offered to find one for me.
He made sure that we were close, but never too close to actually talk, even when we sat in the mechanical garden.
I was on the bench with Helen and Mimi, and he sat on the ground with Seth and Russ.
We were all there, it seemed, except for Silas, Reggie, Cook and Levana.