فصل سی و هفتم

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Telling the Time

George and the Clocker sat in the dim light, watching Edie sleep. And in the end—perhaps because it was a companionable silence—George found himself filling it with unexpected words.

“I said something bad to my dad.”

“Ah,” said the Clocker, “most sons do. One day or another.” “Something really bad. I was angry and I said stuff that was bad and a lie, and I was just trying to hurt him. And I did hurt him. He told me I didn’t mean it. And I told him I did. And I spat at him. I mean, I was a kid, I was ten . . . and he left and drove off. And there were—” He stopped because it suddenly seemed very important to examine the peeling plaster on the wall to his right. The only sounds were Edie’s breathing and the quiet click of the Clocker’s tally beads marking off the seconds.

Telling the Time “You see, there were tears in his eyes, and I didn’t say sorry or good-bye or … I didn’t say anything. He wiped the spit off his cheek and said I didn’t mean it, and I was just trying to hurt because I was hurting. And I swore I meant it, swore I would always mean it, and he looked stranger than I ever saw him look. I thought he was going to . . . then he left.” He paused to examine more plaster and wipe his nose.

“Don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

The Clocker smiled.

“Because you can. Everyone can tell the time.” Sorry?

“Joke. Wordplay. Lighten atmosphere. Bad habit. Apologies again.” “Oh,” said George.

“Can tell the time everything. Won’t change anything. Time ticks on regardless.” “Right,” said George. And then he told the Clocker of how his father had driven off and never driven back, because someone else hadn’t been looking and had driven into him the next day, and he’d been killed instantly, and so there was nothing left to say except a sorry that seemed as hollow and empty as a coffin now no one was there to hear it. And then because he had got over the hardest thing, the rest of the words came easy.

They flowed so fast that he suspected he was gabbling hysterically, but each time he checked the Clocker’s eye for a reaction, it was just smiling in friendly understanding. George told him about everything that had happened since the Natural History Museum, and the Sphinxes’ words and the need to find the Stone Heart and the sacrifice that must be made, and he told him about the Black Friar and his word-map of how to find the heart of stone. He told him about the Winding Stair leading to the Memory of Fire where the memory is caged, and how he was to catch a fire to show him the path to the Stone Heart. And then he was suddenly exhausted and talked out, and he closed his eyes and wished he were home in bed, where everything seemed real.

He jerked awake with the touch of the Clocker’s hand on his shoulder.

He hadn’t realized he had nodded off.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Too long and not long enough, perhaps. No harm. Time to think.” “I wasn’t thinking. I was asleep.”

In rising panic he realized he had wasted time when he could have been puzzling things out.

“No harm. Sleep good. Thinking done by self. Now, re: Black Friar. Your worries? No reason to mistrust, per se. None known to me, any rate. But right to mistrust all. Your predicament? Wariness essential. Take pinch of salt every time. Self included. Take pinch of salt with me. But if interested, have thoughts.” George sat up straight.

“Of course I’m interested! It’s all mumbo jumbo to me!

“Memory of Fire? Hearts of Stone? Winding Stairs? Many things in London. Needles in haystack.” “I know.”

“Many things. But only one Fire. Only one Great Fire.” The eye looked at George encouragingly. George thought of London and fires, and thought of the Blitz, and then he thought further back in history lessons—and he got it.

“The Fire of London?”

“Indubitably. Corroborating evidence? Memory of Fire? Memorial to fire?” George scrabbled back in his own memory, raking over the lukewarm coals of past lessons. They’d done a wall chart of the Great Fire. Men in wigs pulling down flaming timbered houses, and the great plague that had happened before the fire. And after, he remembered helping cut out the tall cardboard outline of a pillar— “The Monument!” he said.

“Exactly. Monument memorial to fire. And inside monument? Stair, circular. Winding, might say. Lead to top. And on top? Urn. Urn of fire.” “That,” said George with a grin, “is just brilliant.” He began to get up. The Clocker pushed him gently back.

“That,” he said, “is not open to public in middle of night. You sleep. Bad time to be on streets. Low hours of night. Servants of the Stone walk.” “Servants of the Stone?”

“Doom-thralls like self. Thralled to ancient vows broken on blood stone. Self free of servitude to any but own doom. Keep eye on time as punishment. Not service like Stone Servants. Watch for them. They will watch for you. Now sleep. In morning can leave by other door. Via church. Will be open. Used by Russian Orthodoxes. Early risers. Better than alarm clock.” He clicked his beads with a smile and bent his head over them. Something in the way his head bent reminded George of the Gunner, and remembering the Gunner brought another question to his mind.

“Excuse me. One more thing. When all this began, when the Gunner saved me, he said something.” “No doubt. Startling event. Worthy of comment.”

“He said I’d got no idea of what I’d started.”

“Man of perspicacity.”

“No,” said George. “I mean—yes, but he didn’t know about any of this, about the Stone Heart or the Heart of Stone or whatever. He was speaking about something else, I think. Something about spits and taints. . . .” The Clocker nodded grimly.

“Spits, taints. Hostile. Uneasy peace always. Equilibrium of distrust. Gunner kills four taints? Equilibrium gone. Things out of balance. Gauntlet thrown.” “What do you mean?”

“Don’t know. Not fully. But has happened before. War between spits and taints always on cards. In background. Is why some statues walk and others don’t. Non-walkers are— “Dead statues?”

“Precisely. Casualties of earlier wars. Taints, see, just voids with no spirit. Only lack and need to fill void. Appetites, envy, green-eyed monster, etcetera. Hate spirited statues. Hate meaning. Want it, too, always hate what can’t have. But not worry self. If spit-war to come, beyond stopping.” “But you’re saying I might be starting a war?”

“Only a ‘might.’Never sleep worrying about ‘might.’Especially if beyond control. Concentrate on what can do. Understand? Now sleep. Will keep watch.” There was no way George was going to sleep; his mind was racing with all this new information. He turned it over and over, and as he tried to sort it out, the loops in his thinking kept repeating themselves, and he returned to his fears and his memories in such a repetitive and inescapable pattern that it became soothing and regular—and this was the thing that did, in the end, send him to sleep.