Orpheus on the Underground and Other Stories, page 9
‘—why do you have horns?’ I continued stubbornly.
‘It is of no real concern to you, but I will tell you anyway. I am busy, but he is even more overwhelmed with tasks and chores than I. You know to whom I refer? Sometimes I stand in for him, act as his double. That is all.’
This answer was satisfactory and I could hardly continue to use his horns as an excuse for more conversation, even if he was willing to banter with me on the subject, which plainly he was not. They must be false and stuck onto his bare skull with a powerful adhesive: this is what I told myself. And then . . .
I realised that I was not ready for him.
Doubtless many men before me in situations similar to my own have come to the same conclusion. I suspect the majority of those he claims believe the time is not yet right. But unlike those poor souls I thought I might be in a position to persuade him to postpone what he planned to do. I frowned, and it was painful to hold my frown in place as I declared: ‘You are late.’
He sighed and the glow in his empty sockets darkened, as if he was shutting eyelids that did not exist. I felt his exasperation as a tangible force that radiated from his body in all directions and washed over me.
‘No, Mr Hanwell, I assure you I am not.’
‘You are.’
‘Consider the facts. The window struck you and you fell down. Instantly, I was there. How could I have come quicker? It is nonsense to suppose that I am anything other than frighteningly efficient.’
On the final word the glow in his eyes returned and he took a step closer.
I remained calm and spoke with forceful clarity:
‘You did not come immediately. In fact you were extremely tardy. The window stunned me and I lay unconscious for more than an hour before your arrival woke me up! It felt as if one moment had passed between the accident and your appearance but in fact the lapse was seventy-two minutes and eighteen seconds. You are late, my friend. Late.’
I forced myself to smile, down there on the floor.
He sighed. ‘If you were unconscious, how could you be aware of time passing?’
I gestured at the surface of my workbench.
His skull creaked as he turned. I thought he trembled a little as his mind processed the sight that now confronted him, the reality of a wonderful contraption, a machine I had built with my own hands that no other man of my era could have created.
‘A chronometer,’ I said simply.
He regained control of himself. ‘What of it?’
‘I was working on the device when the storm flung open the window. I was adding the finishing touches to the outer casing. The inner mechanism is perfect. I recall exactly the position of the hands on the dial when I went to shut the window. And when you appeared and woke me up I stole a glance at them. That is how I am aware of the discrepancy. You are late, sir, in coming to claim me. This is poor form.’
He nodded slowly. ‘No point in denying it.’
‘And I think I know why.’
‘Have I not already made clear, Mr Hanwell, what a busy and overtaxed entity I am? That is the sole explanation for my delay. There are vast quantities of men and women dying every minute.’
I snorted at this and cried:
‘A pallid excuse. We both know you are equipped to handle as much mortality on this planet as there ever can be; that in terms of numbers of clients and rate of expiration you are still below capacity. If this was not so, you would not have been given the secondary task of impersonating him. Your delay has nothing at all to do with workload.’
‘Then what,’ leered he unpleasantly, ‘is the reason?’
‘An unreliable timepiece.’
I still felt sick and dizzy but smirked and my expression must have been convincing, for he reacted with a haughty petulance, turning slightly to the side to conceal the object that dangled from his left hip. I knew it was there, of course, and he knew that I knew. His action was childish in the extreme and I took full advantage.
‘In this day and age you still use a sandglass!’
The long teeth embedded in the exposed bones of his jaw ground together with a sound like many distant millstones and black saliva streamed from his thin mouth.
‘It is a traditional part of my attire, an accessory that helps me keep track of passing time and defines me as what I am. The latter function is no less vital than the former and cannot be artificially separated from it. I always carry a sandglass.’
‘Be sensible,’ I chided him, ‘and confess you are recognisable without it and that it is redundant to your identity.’
His eye sockets smouldered and I added:
‘Time is my speciality.’
‘Yes, Mr Hanwell. Nonetheless you are dead and I must take you from this place to an elsewhere beyond description, a realm that can only be experienced, never discussed.’
I laughed, for I had spent many afternoons in coffee shops that sounded direly similar to the destination my unwanted guest was proposing to guide me to. He did not seem to appreciate the facetiousness of my response and was walking towards me with a look of determination on his face. I played my trump card:
‘I am in a position to improve matters.’
He paused, and while he stood there I seized the opportunity to clamber to my feet.
I swayed, my head throbbing.
‘Improve them for whom?’
‘For you. For both of us,’ I said. ‘Listen!’
And fortunately he did.
‘The sandglass is a venerable invention, and I would be the last one to demean it in ordinary conversation,’ I began, and his hand strayed down to gently touch the object at his side.
‘But?’ he almost spat.
‘It is obsolete for your purposes, for the efficient running of a service as pivotal as the one you provide.’
‘For countless millennia, Mr Hanwell—’
I silenced him with an outstretched arm and a wagging finger. ‘Please do not exaggerate. I am conversant with the history of the sandglass; and though they have a long lineage it is not one that extends into prehistory. They first appeared in Europe shortly after they were invented in the Orient. It was a monk by the name of Luitprand in the 8 Century who brought one back to the cathedral of Chartres after one of his pilgrimages east. He also determined that crushed marble was superior to sand grains as the ingredient inside the bulbs as it flowed more smoothly, like a liquid.’
‘You are right,’ he admitted, his cloaked shoulders drooping, ‘Well do I recall that fellow. Before his timely introduction I used a clepsydra, a water clock, and it was forever leaking over my bones, which grew mouldy and imparted a yeasty odour to my attire which has never quite dispersed. With great relief I switched to using a sandglass.’
‘So you are not as stubborn as you pretend to be?’
He actually looked bashful.
‘The sandglass proved to be more versatile than the water clock which preceded it, because it could be used on ships; and in fact the jiggling that made clepsydras impractical on voyages of any kind had a minimal effect on the sandglass. So it was superior in that way, and in others too, and is at least as accurate as the ordinary weight or spring driven clock. It demands no special attention to keep it working, which is another bonus. In short, it is a fine instrument and a boon to civilisation.’
‘Mr Hanwell, you are doing a poor job of turning my mind against the merits of the contrivance. What is your point?’
‘It was not until a few decades ago, when my esteemed predecessor John Harrison built his best chronometer, that the sandglass was superseded in accuracy and reliability. That was in 1761, and his remarkable achievement was the main inspiration for my present career. From an early age I desired nothing more than to create a chronometer even more perfect than his.’
‘And you have done so, Mr Hanwell?’
We both looked at it for a moment.
‘Yes,’ I said proudly.
He nodded a few times to himself. ‘I respect what you have done and am pleased you saw fit to explain your masterpiece to me, but I still fail to comprehend what relevance any of it has to what is about to happen to you. I must take your soul.’
‘What if I offer you my chronometer?’
‘Offer it to me, Mr Hanwell?’
‘Give it to you as a replacement for your obsolete sandglass. With its aid you will never be late again. Consider it carefully. In exchange, I ask for my life back.’
‘But you’re already dead. I cannot give that to you.’
‘Then do not collect me. Leave me as I am now, dead but unclaimed, free to continue with my work, my soul unextracted from my corpse and thus still capable of animating it.’
His licked his nonexistent lips with a tongue of lambent fire. And he kept glancing sideways at the chronometer.
‘There is no law against this . . . I see no reason why either he or He might be annoyed by the transaction . . . I was never specifically prohibited from making private deals with my clients and in fact. . . ’
His eyes had become spirals of tiny stars, rotating galaxies.
‘I accept, Mr Hanwell!’
Clapping a hand to my brow I staggered to the nearest chair and collapsed into it, finally giving myself permission to shudder and feel the fear, shock and bafflement I had been painfully suppressing.
‘It is a deal?’ I muttered.
‘I give you my word and I never break that.’
I believed him utterly.
‘Take it then,’ I said, ‘and I will begin the construction of another. I will tell my investors that it was destroyed in a fire. I will think of some excuse. It is the product of the toil of five years.’
He gave me a look that might almost be described as coy had it not also been hideous and horrific. ‘For you, Mr Hanwell, the years will no longer be what they were. Time will pass but you will grow no older. More shrivelled and stooped, yes, as the elements gradually erode you, as the wind and rain lash and castigate your face and limbs. But you will not age from within. You are outside the governance of biology.’
‘I look forward to immortality,’ I answered.
‘Remember that not having a finite lifespan does not mean you are immune to extreme violence. A large gunpowder explosion could still destroy you, blasting you to atoms that will be scattered by winds over the face of the planet. The lava of an erupting volcano can still turn you to ash. And, if I ever find a timepiece superior to this chronometer, the deal we struck will be null and void, and I will return for your soul.’
‘There is no timepiece better than mine,’ I asserted with the confidence of a man who has forgotten the future.
‘Nowhere in the present world, no,’ he replied.
I said no more. I was exhausted.
‘Farewell, Mr Hanwell, and thank you for the gift. It is a work of art as well as science and I will take good care of it. I will leave my sandglass behind as a memento of my visit. Until next time!’
‘There will be no next time,’ I said, with eyes shut tight.
I remained in a stupor for several minutes and then opened my eyelids. I was alone and unwell. My guest was gone and so was the chronometer, but the storm still raged outside. I staggered out of my workshop and into the adjacent small room, where my bed waited for me.
I climbed between the sheets and fell into a sleep that was an adventure in itself, for my dreams were hectic and confused and I was unable to relax inside them for a single instant. Despite the acute agitation of my mind, my body benefitted from the rest.
When I awoke I felt much stronger, as if a fever had broken.
Someone was pounding on my door.
I went downstairs and answered it cautiously.
It was one of my most important investors and his face betrayed his panic at my bedraggled appearance.
It turned out that I had been asleep for three days. In that time, his colleagues had been unable to contact me, for I had been oblivious while they knocked on my door; and a rumour had started that I was a charlatan who had fled town with the money they had given me.
I gave the fellow the reassurance he needed and sent him away without inviting him inside. I would have to begin my chronometer from scratch and it would be no easy task to persuade them to wait until it was ready.
There was nothing I could do to alter this situation. As it happened, in the coming weeks I was able to persuade all of them to retain confidence in me, and I explained the destruction of the prototype and my own three-day vanishing as the result of a small fire and its toxic fumes.
I set to work with determination and skill.
It took three years but finally it was done. By this time the economic and political climate had changed and my investors lost interest in me, preferring to make money out of the new war with the French. It mattered to me not, for now I had my device all to myself.
I had made it to the best of my ability; but it was no finer a device than the original. There were two reasons for this. Firstly I was simply incapable of improving the mechanism; and secondly I did not wish to break the terms of the deal struck with my grim visitor. Had this second timepiece been superior to my first, he would have returned for my soul.
The contraptions were identical, twins, equal in performance, elegance, practicality and ingenuity. But no one was prepared to buy the new one for what it was worth, so I never made a third version.
The months passed and so did the years, for the universe is also a clock, and the people I knew aged and died. But I remained as I was. In order to allay suspicion I changed my name and residence a few times. In this manner I was a permanent feature of the century, flowing from one generation to another, never attracting attention through my activities. I made an honest living as a man who fixed broken clocks and watches.
I also became a philosopher of time, a subject that obsessed me. And in due course I wrote a book on the theme that was well-received by academics and theoreticians. They wrote letters to me.
In order to obscure my tracks I pretended I was a professor from a foreign country. I was invited to give lectures about my findings and speculations. I knew I should decline and remain in obscurity but I was too polite and perhaps too egotistical, so I accepted the offers and my talks were generally received with enthusiasm.
I never became famous, which was just as well.
Nobody pried into my background.
My body changed as it was licked by rain and pecked by the wind and I was acutely aware that I was in essence a living cadaver. I took care to remain as dry as possible, exposing my entire body to sunlight whenever I could, hogging the flames of fires in the hearths of every house or inn in which I chanced to find myself, rolling in salt in the privacy of my own home, until I succeeded in mummifying my flesh and thus preserving it from rot.
My grotesque appearance did not count against me, for in those days it was acceptable to muffle oneself in clothes that concealed far more of the form than is currently fashionable; and ordinary people were tolerant of ugliness in men of good repute. Not once did anyone draw attention to my grisly visage, nor did it adversely affect my career.
I kept fully informed of the latest developments in the science of timekeeping. Clocks were becoming more accurate and reliable every year; but they were a long way from matching the quality and excellence of my own chronometer. I had nothing to worry about . . . yet. For more than a century after my mysterious visitor had come to claim my soul I was untroubled by the threat of competition.
The invention of the quartz clock did unsettle me temporarily. This was an entirely new method of measuring time that made use of electrical pulses in crystals in order to mark the passing of fractions of seconds. But even the best quartz clocks failed to equal my chronometer in performance, though they came close. I still had the edge and was safe.
When the prototype of the atomic clock was announced I felt only a mild twinge of nervousness. The use of an electronic transition frequency in the microwave, optical or even ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum as a frequency standard for a timekeeping element certainly had the potential to outperform my device. But when the prototype was set in operation it turned out to be even less precise than existing quartz clocks.
I knew the engineering problems inherent in the system would be solved and the design improved but I could not see my visitor of so long ago switching from my highly portable device to a cumbersome contraption so large it would dwarf him. Chaining an atomic clock to the hip is as extreme as manacling oneself to a dungeon wall. That is how I deluded myself into believing that my remaining time on Earth was still considerable.
It was while I was attending the National Physical Laboratory to give an informal talk on my ideas concerning the relative merits of tensed and tenseless time that I first realised my end was imminent.
I arrived early and explored the empty lecture theatre before the students turned up, as was my custom, for I could not rid myself of the superstition that I might find you-know-who lurking somewhere.
As I went back into the corridor to stretch my legs, I had to stand aside for a couple of researchers who were hurrying along the passage and babbling about a breakthrough made that very morning.
‘He has done it! Louis finally has cracked the problem. It will be far more accurate than any quartz mechanism . . .’
‘An atomic clock that works properly . . .’
‘Yes, the greatest timepiece in the history of timekeeping . . .’
‘Louis is a genius, a mastermind . . .’
I took immediate and instinctive action. Somewhere in this building could be found the apparatus in question and also its inventor. I became wild, running up and down corridors like the shockwave of an explosion, opening and closing doors, questing frantically for my doom.
Down a flight of stairs and into a basement I went.
Here was located an extensive network of laboratories for experimental work and I systematically explored them.
At last I burst through a set of double doors and confronted the esteemed Louis, who was in the process of adjusting a dial on his infernal contraption. Before he could look up and even blink at me, I had snatched a spanner from a nearby desk and was rushing at him, the tool rising and falling in my withered, desperate fist.
