Timepiece

by thayln

thayln@comcast.net

“Like a glowing jewel, the city lay upon the breast of the desert. Once it had known change and alteration, but now time passed it by. Night and day fled across the desert’s face, but in the streets of Diaspar it was always afternoon, and darkness never came.”

--Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars

At first there was only darkness, silence and the slow trickle of water. Each drop of mineral-rich liquid fed them, built them, as it traveled downward through darkness to where they knew not, sensing only the minute ripple of water meeting its own. They slept, believing the darkness and silence were all.

Then came the day that their world cracked open and gushed fire. Many were lost, crushed and broken by the mighty heave of earth, consumed by uncaring magma. They had never known death before.

They mourned and waited for the end under the strange new vibrations of sunlight, but the movement of the world finally ceased; the hot flow cooled and new water came, blessing them with a billion scattering drops. They learned to grow roots deep into the still warm earth to find the water and the precious minerals it carried. They tasted the different vibrations of sunlight and starlight and wind.

It was the wind that taught them to sing and to understand the movement of time.

As they grew and learned they became aware of other resonances, other suns and other beings. There were so many beings, all different, each carrying its own song. They were awed and amazed, so glad to discover they weren’t alone. Their singing grew ever more intricate, rich with knowledge and joy.

Then they learned just how short other lives were.

Hutch sat sideways at the bar, cheek propped on a fist, watching Starsky gloat with Huggy over yet another new watch. Their curly heads were almost touching, bent over the voluminous instructions, reminding him of small boys with a new toy. It had been going on for about twenty minutes now, and it didn’t look like it was going to be over anytime soon.

“Starsk, we’re gonna be late.”

“No we’re not; just give me a sec.” Starsky didn’t even bother to look up.

Hutch sighed heavily and turned, caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the register and paused. For a moment he hadn’t recognized his own face. He scrubbed at the tired lines. His friends’ enthusiasm seemed a foreign emotion, an echo of ages past. A twinge of regret flared briefly back at him in the glass, and then he shrugged and grimaced. The price of police work.

Turning away from the disquieting reflection, his elbow brushed against something on the bar, and he looked down into a shoebox holding some rocks. Hutch rolled his eyes, but he picked through them idly, listening to the oceanlike ebb and flow of his friends’ conversation. There was a soothing rhythm to it, almost like music, and he let the familiar comfort of it wash through him as he looked at the strangely shaped stones. One of them looked like an almost perfect sphere sheared in half. It fit perfectly in the palm of his hand, and it was blue, so blue it was almost black. He felt . . . something . . .

“Hey, Hutch. Ya ready to go?”

Hutch started, glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, Starsk. Give me a second.” He looked back at his hand and saw only an old rock, pitted and scored, its color indeterminate. He should’ve put it back, but instead he turned toward Huggy.

“Hug, what’re these?”

Huggy moved down the bar toward him like a hound that’d caught his scent. “Those, my brother, are genuine meteors, pieces of mysterious outer space. You can have one for your very own for the very reasonable fee of twenty dollars apiece.”

“Meteorites,” Hutch said distantly. The stone was cool in his hand.

“Huh?”

“Meteors are what you call them when they’re still in the air. Meteorites are what you call them after they land.” Hutch finally looked up at Huggy. “If they really are meteorites.”

Huggy stepped back and threw his chest out, slender hands rising in eloquent defense. “Would I steer you wrong? I’m telling you these are the real thing. My cousin picked them up for me in Arizona just last month.”

“Whatcha got there, Hutch?” Starsky had joined them.

Hutch had a strange impulse to hide the stone from his partner. Instead he held it out and shrugged. “Just a rock.” He looked back at Huggy’s face. “Or, okay, maybe a meteorite. Maybe.”

“What would you want something like that for? ’Sides, didn’t you call me a sucker when I acquired my pet rock?”

Starsky flashed him a shit-eating grin, but he was still too busy admiring his watch to really pay much attention. Hutch quickly handed over the cash, appeasing Huggy’s obvious outrage before casually dropping the stone into his jacket pocket.

“I don’t know. It has an interesting shape, and I think it might look good in that new planter I bought last week.”

Starsky gave him a quizzical look as he turned to leave. “You pick the weirdest stuff to get interested in sometimes.”

“Me? You’re the one who dragged me in here so you could show off some old watch.” Hutch waved at a grinning Huggy as they went out the door.

“Hey! It’s not old. It’s state of the art, Swiss made and everything.”

“Yeah, and it’s gonna break just as easily as your other one did.”

“Only if I let you get a hold of it, partner.” Starsky shut his car door with too much force and jabbed his key at the ignition. “Besides, it didn’t break. It was shot. You got it shot.”

Hutch reached for the radio to clock them back in. “And I saved our lives in the process, didn’t I?”

Starsky grunted and peeled out from the curb. Hutch turned his head to scan the storefronts on his side of the street, content to let it rest if Starsky was. In a distant way he felt bad for bringing up yet another close call just to divert his partner’s attention.

They never talked about it. Death had been too close too often, and to speak of fears and realizations might have made things worse, made them lose their edge. So they went through their days doing their jobs and trading barbs, orbiting each other like twin stars, putting out shared energy, and yet staying self-contained. It was better that way, easier. It was the price of police work.

Hutch fingered the chill lump in his pocket, only partially feeling the sidelong look Starsky gave him. It had been so blue.

A compact, oval form streaked across a burnt orange sky, discs whirring like helicopter blades under the light shell. The rust storms had come early this cycle and his cilia caught at a tangy particle or two as he dodged among the more placidly feeding adults. Early rust was a good omen after a harsh time of want. It was good, so good to be young and strong.

He savored the warmth and vibrations of life as he flew toward the distant sun. If only he could spin that far, far enough to discover all that was or could be. He wanted to grab all the wonders of the universe and savor their flavors. He flew as high as he could till lack of friction forced him down again, down to his clan and the rust that would keep them strong.

His cilia tangled in mischievous warning as he screeched to a halt bare inches from his mother, but she didn’t show any sign of being startled. She never did. It was almost impossible to get a rise out of any of the adults, though it never stopped him and the other young spinners from trying.

Suddenly a strange ringing filled his head, a sound he’d never known. He whirred with fear and scooted under his mother’s body to hide, seeking the comforting brush of her cilia . . .

Hutch mumbled and slapped repeatedly at his alarm, but it wouldn’t stop its incessant ringing. He finally woke up enough to realize that it was his phone and not the clock.

“What?” he barked into the receiver once he was able to snag it from its rest.

“Good morning, sunshine. Or should I say afternoon.”

Starsky’s voice was irritatingly cheerful and the low vibration of it in his ear moved through Hutch strangely. “Can it, Starsk. I’m up,” he grumbled.

Starsky chuckled, sending shivers through him again. “Pick you up in half an hour, grumpy.”

“Yeah, all right. Hey. Pick up some coffee, will you? I’m out.”

“You got it, partner.”

Starsky rang off. Hutch scrubbed at his face and tried to remember the dream, but it was gone, leaving only an odd sense of his own body as an alien thing, unaccountably heavy and awkward, with too few limbs.

He groaned and stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. Maybe a shower would help. Switching to nights always threw his body off. He stood under the pounding water, letting it bring him back to life. And what a miraculous thing a shower was, really. That everyone had a virtual waterfall in their home and took it for granted was almost sacrilege. Water was a blessing and should be treated as such. He stood there awhile, listening as the drops hit the tub and disappeared to where he knew not. The last drip rang, a single note of music in his mind . . .

Someone was banging on his bathroom door.

“Come on, Hutch. Hurry it up, or we’re gonna be late.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” Had he really been in the shower that long?

Hutch threw on his robe, scrubbed a towel over his head and darted out of the bathroom past his smugly grinning partner into his bedroom. He yanked on his clothes over still-damp skin and reached under his pillow for his gun. The Magnum was lumpy to sleep on, but after the fiasco in the barn, he didn’t want to ever be unprepared, not even in sleep. As he pulled out the piece his fingers brushed something cool.

It was the half-circle of stone. Funny, he didn’t remember putting it there. Shrugging, he set it on the table and holstered the Magnum, turning to move into the other room. Halfway there, he stopped and looked back. The rock gleamed with the blue of twilight. I’ll just stick it in the planter on my way out.

As he came back into the living area Starsky handed him a still warm cup of coffee. “Cheer up Hutch, it might even rain tonight.”

“Oh, joy.”

Starsky shook his head and started down the steps. Hutch followed him out, the stone still tucked in his pocket.

The rain held off till halfway through their patrol, when dispatch radioed and asked them to fill in on a stakeout for a pair of detectives who’d been stricken with food poisoning.

“Probably ate at one of your favorite taco joints.” Hutch punched the button on the side of the mike. “Yeah, we’ll be there. Zebra 3 out.”

Starsky kept quiet instead of rising to the bait. An irritable Hutch was best left alone, at least till he knew what the underlying problem was, and right now Starsky didn’t have a clue.

Something’s off, though. He’s got some kind of bee buzzing under all that blond. Has had for days. He’s either a thousand miles away or acting like life is just one long interruption into something else he’d rather be doing.

Starsky would never have admitted it, but he tended to bask in Hutch’s attention, and to have it withdrawn made him feel disjointed, edgy. But Hutch had apparently already called dibs on being moody, making it his turn to be the rational one.

Starsky flicked the wipers on, deftly guiding the Torino toward the warehouse district through crazy eight circles of water.

“Sorry.” Hutch’s face was still turned to the window.

Starsky glanced over at him briefly, watching how the angular movement of streetlight moved across Hutch’s face, and then returned his focus to the road.

“Yeah, okay.”

There was always a strange intimacy in nighttime stakeouts. The lack of engine sounds magnified everything. Word and movement and thought assumed larger meaning, and Starsky had been feeling Hutch’s discomfort grow since they’d parked. They exchanged a few desultory remarks, but then Starsky felt the shift of attention as Hutch finally gave up and turned his eyes and thoughts away, outward to the watery night.

Starsky took the opportunity to quietly check out his partner. It was Hutch’s turn to nap, but Starsky could see that his eyes were watchful, still in work mode, patrolling the landscape.

Starsky sighed and looked out his own window, counted the raindrops clinging to the glass. The streets were slick with reflected light, dimpled by spitting drops.

“Hey, it really does sound like bacon frying.”

“Huh?” Hutch pulled his attention back into the car.

“Rain. It sounds like bacon frying. You know, like in that M*A*S*H episode where Hawkeye went blind. He’s talkin’ to BJ about being blind, and he starts describing what a rainstorm sounds like when you take the time to really listen.”

“Oh yeah, I remember.”

Hutch listened to the rain spattering for a moment, body settling further into the upholstery, eyes turning idly back to the warehouse.

“Hey Hutch, what do you suppose spiders think about?”

“What? Starsky . . . what are you talking about?”

“No really, think about it for a minute.” Starsky shifted in his seat, turning more fully toward Hutch.

“Okay, look. I’ve got this spider that’s moved onto my landing. Every night when I turn on the porch light there she is, sitting in the middle of this huge web, and every morning she’s still there in the exact same spot. So I started thinking—that’s about what? Six hours or so of just sitting at least, give or take the occasional fly. Think about it, Hutch. Hours and hours of just waiting in one place, day after day.” Starsky shrugged. “I just wonder what they spend all that time thinking about.”

Hutch shook his head a little to clear it. “Starsky, spiders don’t think. They just react to stimuli.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Charlotte seems pretty smart to me. It can’t be easy to build one of those webs.”

“Starsky, it’s a scientific fact that . . . wait a minute. You actually named the spider? I don’t believe you. Starsk, there is absolutely no way that spider has a brain big enough to think about anything, much less be sentient and need a name . . .”

“You name your plants.”

“Wha—”

“You name your plants. You even talk to your plants.”

Hutch shifted uneasily. “That’s different.”

“How? How is that different? Because from where I sit plants have even less brains than spiders.”

“All right! All right already. You win! I hope you and Charlotte will be very happy together. Geez!” Hutch threw his hands up in exasperation, but his eyes were clearer, and a small laugh quivered somewhere around his lips.

Starsky hid his own smug grin as Hutch finally relaxed completely and slumped against the seatback, rolling his head a little to survey his partner.

“What?”

Hutch didn’t say anything. He just smiled and closed his eyes.

The Weaver sighed with contentment and blinked slowly at the comfort of the fire. The making of it was still a new skill for her people, its warmth an undreamed of luxury only a generation ago. She turned slowly and fluffed out her tail to dry it more thoroughly while her clever fingers worked mindlessly on the new pattern she was creating. It was best not to think too much about the weaving. The patterns were more vibrant and told better stories when they came from the place within. Adding a handful of the blue-veined leaves to her work, she turned once more to the fire. It was the perfect focus. Her eyes could watch its sparks chasing starlight while her hands worked the pattern.

There were other patterns out there, she knew. She was beginning to sense them a little, intersections of energy and thought and light, the weave of the universe. It was all connected in ways that no one could fully understand except for maybe the Singers, but they’d been alive since the universe had begun and no one of her people could ever hope to attain all their knowledge.

But there was knowledge and then there was wisdom, and maybe she was beginning to be a little wise. Perhaps true wisdom was simply the understanding of how much you didn’t and couldn’t know. She snorted. After having raised five litters she’d better have gained some wisdom. She’d earned it.

There. The piece was done. It had been her most ambitious work yet, had taken a full season to create, and now she could finally look at it and see what she’d wrought. The familiar buzz of excitement thrilled through her as she spread her work on the ground to see.

What met her eyes caused her to chitter with dismay. It was a confusing mess of broken lines and corners going nowhere, somehow managing to spiral down upon itself till nothing was left. Her mind kept trying to make order of the chaos, but the sense of it was gone. Her small hands worried at each other and all the fur on her body rose. Something in her looked more closely at the pattern, and . . .

Hutch was back in the barn, brain on overdrive, turning horror into calculations of combustion and mechanics as he tried frantically to get the tractor to start, to get Starsky out before . . .

The pattern skewed.

He was stumbling out of the house, broken watch in hand. Where was Starsky? Hadn’t he been inside the house? He scanned the barnyard quickly, turning in awkward circles, trying to see everything at once. The third time he eyed the trailer sitting in the yard, a sudden gust of wind brushed against him, raising goose bumps. There was a steady drip of blood that moved sluggishly out from between the bails on the back of the trailer. The wind rose. Hutch took a shuddering breath and looked down at his own feet stumbling across the yard as he doggedly walked toward the tip-tilted end of everything.

He stood mute, gazing down, frozen in utter defeat. Starsky was in the trailer, floating placidly in a still pool of blood, calmly looking at the empty sky. “You shouldn’t have gotten my watch shot, Hutch. Now it’s too late . . . too late . . .” His last words echoed as Starsky glanced reproachfully up at his partner and sank beneath the surface.

“Hutch, wake up! Dammit, Hutch! Wake up!” Starsky finally resorted to grabbing his moaning partner and giving him a shake. Hutch gasped and woke up, looking around blindly as he panted.

Starsky palmed the back of Hutch’s neck and rubbed at the tense muscles a moment. “Bad one, huh? Want to talk about it?”

Hutch slumped a little and looked through Starsky. “Nah, I can’t . . . it’s . . . gone. I don’t remember it.” He took a shuddering breath and fumbled in his pocket, wrapping stiff fingers around the comfort of stone. “What time is it?”

“Quarter to two. Shift’s almost over.”

Hutch looked up in surprise. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“Wasn’t sleepy.” Starsky shrugged and gave his partner a careful look. “’Sides, you’ve been cranky for days. The peace and quiet was kinda nice.”

Hutch lowered his eyes, but Starsky caught the flash of rueful acknowledgment anyway.

“Zebra 3, come in.”

Starsky shot his partner a grin and reached for the mike. Hutch huffed and straightened up, rubbed the back of his neck, and ran his fingers around under his open shirt collar. Starsky found his eyes drawn to those fingers as he listened to Control confirm that the replacement team was in place.

Hutch hid a strained sigh as Starsky signed off. The Torino started with a quiet rumble, as if it were happy to be out of there, too.

Starsky did a neat turn and drove past several dark buildings before he turned the headlights on.

“What do you say we head for the station and finish our reports before Dobey gets in?”

Starsky threw Hutch a conspiratorial glance, and Hutch suddenly wanted to ruffle his hair, give him a noogie, pull Starsky in and bury his face in his neck.

“Yeah, good idea. Don’t want to give him a chance to cancel our weekend off.” Hutch tried to match Starsky’s tone, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong, like he’d woken up in a universe not his own. His head began to ache.

It had stopped raining, but the tires of the Torino still hissed gently against wet pavement as they drove, each puddle holding its own darkly wavering, upside-down world. They passed a Union 76 station and its tiny sun of a sign cast an orange glow over everything. Or was that just the glow of the city bouncing off the remaining cloud cover and ever-present smog? Hutch had a strange vision of all the separate streams of photons merging and intersecting, creating a net of light over the city, trapping its inhabitants in their own heads, binding them to the earth.

“Something’s missing, Starsk.” He said the words before he thought.

Starsky’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, and Hutch felt his sharp look. “Yeah, you’ve said that before. Sorry buddy. I don’t have any Russian ballerinas up my sleeve tonight.”

Hutch waved the words away as if they were gnats. “I don’t mean that. Can’t you feel it, Starsk? Don’t you wish there was more than . . .”

“Hutch, look. It’s too late for philosophy—or too early. Whatever.” Starsky shifted in his seat. “Besides, you’re probably just out of whack from flipping shifts. You’ll feel better after the weekend.”

“Yeah, maybe. It’s just . . .”

Starsky sighed again. “What?”

“I don’t know. Something’s wrong.” Hutch’s words were soft, worried.

Starsky gave him a concerned glance as he stopped for a light. Hutch could almost feel his street sense clicking on. “What’s wrong?” Starsky’s head turned, scanning for trouble.

“I don’t know!” Hutch banged a fist into the armrest in a flare of frustration, and then dropped his head against the seatback. He took a deep breath and rubbed at the crease on his forehead. “Sorry. Maybe I’m just not used to rain anymore.” He shrugged and rubbed harder. “I don’t know.”

Starsky gave him a sympathetic look and eased the Torino through the intersection. “Just take it easy, partner. Whatever it is, it’ll come to you sooner or later. It always does.”

The utter confidence in his voice acted as a balm on Hutch’s nerves and he relaxed a little, fingers tracing the stone’s texture.

Then the Torino turned a corner and there was the moon, slipping down from behind the remaining clouds, a huge crescent above the narrow canyon of buildings.