Yes, yes—a way out is exactly what I want.I swallowed hard and said, “Is there one?”
“Oh, several.” His fingers traced a spinning gear. “Noneyoucan use, I’m afraid.”
There went my hope, out the window and down a hole in the ground that never ended. “Why not?”
He slowly loosened a pin from a piece of metal, and it hissed, and it steamed. He didn’t even move his head away.
“Did you know thatweare no different than machinery, Miss Reese?” I didn’t even know he knew my name, but I said nothing. “In here, we are.” He looked at me then, studied me that way he’d studied the gears that evening, like he could see so much more with his eyes than we did. “Pieces missing. Edges filed down. A few screws rattling in the wrong place. Broken in the weak places.”
My ears heated up suddenly, and I took a step back, suddenly self-conscious, like maybe my soul was on display and I hadn’t even realized it. “I’m not broken,” I said—again, just to say something.
“Hmm.” Master Talik returned to his work. “Incomplete,then.”
Incomplete.
Strange word. But I was whole, wasn’t I? Two arms, two legs, a head on my shoulders.
“The trials take, Miss Reese. They take and take and take. That’s why they work so well. That’s why they produce so much Sparetime.” He dropped his tools, turned his back to me and went to a bigger box before he started pushing metal pieces to the sides, searching. Whatever it was, it took him a long time to find, and I was left staring after him, waiting uncomfortably for the noise to stop.
When it finally did, the words were at the tip of my tongue. “What did it take from me?”
He looked at me once. “How should I know?”
“Well, how do you know I’m incomplete, then?”
“Because you don’t know what you want.”
Frustrating.
I gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “I wantout.” It’s what everybodyshouldwant when in such an absurd position.
“You want freedom, yes, but you haven’t even found yourself yet.”
“What does that mean?!” I demanded, but if he cared, Master Talik didn’t show it.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out when the time is right, Miss Reese.”
By then I wanted to explode. I wanted to scream and shout, demand a normal, straightforward answer right now.
Instead, I forced myself to calm down, to breathe, because I couldn’t really make this Timekeeper tell me anything he didn’t want to tell me. But maybe, if I kept my calm, maybe…
There were devices all over the table. I touched a few, then moved to the other side, across from Master Talik, and I continued to explore in an attempt to calm my mind and my heart.
It worked better than I’d expected.
A slipdial, a whispercoil, a strange round shape that looked like a ball made of sheets of metal in all shades of gray. I reached my hand for it, when?—
“Don’t.” Master Talik was looking at me from under his lashes. “Don’t touch that yet.”
I moved to a half-assembled device—a spindle with razor-thin blades that I couldn’t figure out the use of for the life of me, but I still tried.
For a while, I let him work. Not terribly difficult to do, tobe honest. The way he moved his hands, the way he sometimes hummed to the melody coming from the music box that strangely never needed to be wound. If I had a place to lay down, or even sit, I was sure I’d be sleeping by then—it was so calming.
Master Talik guided a slender metal rod through the dustlace, coaxing its loose gears into a slow, deliberate rotation as if he was trying to teach them how to move. With his other hand, he adjusted a tiny screw that made the entire mechanism breathe. It gave a soft, pulsing click, like a heartbeat. So incredibly satisfying, that sound.
Eventually, I spoke. “Is this really real? Has the Great Clock really stopped?”
“Have you eyes?”
