Appointment in Time

James S. Dorr

The Englishman was shown to the chair, the first of four he would sit in that day. This one, more a wide bench really, he shared with his escort, two members of the 17th Fusiliers in full dress uniform despite the beastly heat—even on the last day of December! He, a civilian, wore a black morning coat buttoned over a pale yellow waistcoat, grey wool pinstriped trousers, a starched white shirt and a Windsor tie, with polished boots, lavender gloves and a tall-crowned bowler completing his attire. This was, after all, not England he found himself in, where full formal evening wear might have been called for.

He had, however, been chosen in England for the important role he was to play before he had even boarded the steamship out, a special arrangement commemorating the love that remained, the continuation of British ways, even though the land he was in now no longer retained its colonial status. It was out of this love, as that between a now grown child and its parent, that the ceremony continued virtually unchanged, just as it had from the earliest times, to guarantee prosperity for the year to come for what remained of a once far-flung empire. And it was only in this land that it could be conducted, with its unique mix of ancient gods and shamanistic culture alongside the modern customs of the West—the latter exemplified by the high clock tower they had even now started to ascend.

One of the soldiers, their uniforms modeled on those of the British they’d recently replaced, steadied the Englishman as the chair left the ground. “You be okay, Sir?” he asked.

The Englishman looked up first, craning his neck, to see the first puffs of steam high in the air from the vents in the roof above the great clock face. He nodded, yes. He could not show nervousness even though they were fifty feet above the plaza already, even now beginning, before the sun had fully set, to attract the vanguard of what would soon be throngs of celebrants, shoulder to shoulder, packing the square.

Stiff upper lip, he thought. England expects. He hadn’t exactly volunteered for what was to happen, but as a member of the foreign service he had known that, any year, he could be the one chosen to represent the erstwhile mother country.

It was what he had been trained for, in a way. With everything else. That he had been unmarried was a factor also, allowing him more freedom when he arrived, for evenings in the capital city’s less sedate sectors. For drinking. For love. For civilized pleasures as well as those less so.

But what was civilization, he thought, except accommodation for that which was needed, even if not fully understood. To acquiesce to the local culture, even while representing his own.

The best of both worlds, yes?

Still lost in his thoughts, he felt the sudden rise as the troopers on either side stood. They were on the first ledge. “Help you, Sir?” one said as he stood up too, then let himself be led—glancing once back and down, toward the increasing crowd—through the narrow door into the tower’s clockwork filled interior.

Here the Englishman was led between the great twin boilers that powered the mechanisms above them. The tower was still lighted, the last rays of the sun shining in through open louvres that pierced its walls. He climbed the metal stairs up to the catwalk that wound around and, in some cases, through the slowly turning gear train, from flywheel to axle to crankshaft to belt to the central arbor that turned the clock’s hands, so high above and lost in shadow that he had to strain his eyes to make it out.

“This way, Sir,” a new voice said, breaking into the Englishman’s thoughts. He had to admit what he was seeing was impressive! He allowed this new person, wearing the goggles and white pressed duster of a clock mechanic, to strap him into a second chair, one he would ride alone up past the pendulum chamber, with its verge and crown wheel, its own gear train regulating the power train he had just viewed. And above it, the gong that sounded the hours, especially the twelve chimes that would sound at midnight, signifying the turning of the year. And, above that, the glint of more metal, of more machinery again hooked to pendulum and power train, to arbor and gong, for the culmination of this, the final day of December.

The technician handed the Englishman a bottle before he released the chair for its trip up. “To show our appreciation, Sir,” he said. “It’s imported Scotch whisky, from your own country. A man above will help you to a table and chair, where you can enjoy it, along with ice. Or seltzer, if you prefer. There’ll be a light supper too.”

The Englishman thanked him. He rode the chair up, then, noting how surprisingly fast it went, wondering if it, too, was connected to the main works of the clock, through yet one more gear train, or if it just had its own belt and flywheel independently taking it up and down as needed.

The chair finally stopped, hundreds of feet above where it had started, letting him off on a rough plank floor, with a crimson carpet muting its starkness. A man in a butler’s livery appeared, ironically dressed in more formal style than the Englishman himself, in a swallow-tailed coat and linen shirt with a standing collar. A second servant, head bowed, stood behind him.

The butler led the Englishman to the third chair he would sit in, this one with a comfortably padded seat and back. “Please relax as much as you can, Sir,” he said. “I and my colleague are here to serve you, in any way that we can, until it’s time to go outside.”

It was at this point the Englishman balked, if just for a moment. No, he thought. He made to turn back, to find a staircase, a ladder, anything leading down. It was all a horrible farce! But then he looked at the butler again, the calm determination on that man’s face as he nodded to his assistant.

The Englishman nodded too. What was, was, he thought as the second servant brought up a small table with a single place setting, bringing as well a bottle of water and several dishes. They left the Englishman then to his own meditations until, several hours later, they returned to lead him outside to the ledge beneath the huge clock itself.

The Englishman was tipsy by then, feeling little pain as the butler handed him a snifter. “A special drink, Sir,” he said. “Once more to show our appreciation—all England’s appreciation, as well as those of us once in its family. You know what you must expect, I trust?”

The Englishman nodded. He drank down the brandy—if he had almost had second thoughts before, it was certainly too late now. The under servant strapped him into a chair—the fourth chair that evening—that was bolted to the stone ledge it stood on.

“It wouldn’t do if you were to fall,” he said.

“No,” the Englishman said, “it would certainly not.” He gazed out into the night, drinking in the square below, now packed with cheering men and women, their eyes looking up to him. Behind him he heard the click of turning gears.

Looking up briefly, he saw the clock’s longer hand climbing to meet the hour hand at twelve. He heard the blood rushing thorough his veins and arteries—it was as if he had lived for this moment, when all eyes were on him. When time itself seemingly depended on him.

And so, let it be, he thought. He heard another click, one more minute passed, then that drowned out by the beating of his heart. Everything concentrated on one thing, the necessary. The pre-appointed. That which must be.

He felt a stirring in his stomach as, with a reverberating clang! the first stroke of the hour of midnight chimed. Driving out all other sound as spider-hands, made of articulated brass, reached out from a door in the clock face behind him and gripped him fast in the confines of his chair. With the second chime other hands reached out, divesting him of his coat and outer clothes, tattering, ripping the fabric from him. Letting it drift to the crowd beneath as, on the third chime, knife blades appeared to glint in the searchlights that trained on him from below.

He felt no pain—he was caught in the moment. Destiny could not be stopped in any event as the fourth gong sounded, starting the carving. Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, with each of these strokes of approaching midnight an arm or a leg was torn from his body and let fall below. With the ninth chime more blades appeared as the crowd roared louder, those that had already done their work retreating back into the great clock’s interior, and with the tenth his gut was slit open, letting his entrails unfold themselves in his lap.

Two chimes to go.

And with the eleventh the flaying commenced, and with it the cutting off of his head, while, with what was left of his body slumped, still strapped in its chair, more stirrings began. The crowd fell to silence. Sprawled on its narrow seat, the Englishman’s limbless corpse trembled as the final, twelfth stroke rang—and, scratching, clawing its way through blood and flesh, shakily standing, the New Year came forth.