THE CLOCK KING AND THE QUEEN OF THE HOURGLASS

 

— 1 —

 

The Hourglass

 

 

Her reason for existence was to become the Queen of the Hourglass.

Liaei was formed from the purest ancient genetic material preserved by the horticulturists, from the largest most succulent ovum of a batch of millions, and from one of the liveliest vector-driven spermatozoa of trillion. Following countless failures, both gametes were filtered and isolated in a superselection process, guaranteeing down to a near-infinite degree of certainty the viability of the combined DNA.

After the egg and sperm were joined in a drop of liquid, the bundle of quickly multiplying cells that was to be Liaei was incubated for the traditional six months under warm golden lights in the nursery, submerged in amber life fluid. The embryo became a delicate pastel bundle of flesh, and then a perfectly formed infant. Microscopic tubes supplied liquid and serum-based nutrients, feeding her while the heart and lungs developed, blood vessels branched out and other organs grew and took on the final female configuration.

On the last day before birth, Liaei floated in the life fluid and was observed with wonder by a room full of darkly golden skinned human and dull metallic machine horticulturists through the glass of her three-tier womb. Amhama, the nurse whose charge Liaei would be, gazed at the perfect child. There were no words. She wiped tears from her dark cheeks with the back of her thin hand and tried to imagine that the fluttering in her lower stomach was merely nerves and not the most sacred and most ancient of human emotions called love.

And yet, it was motherly love that Amhama felt, a strange abstraction, and knowing it she prayed in silence, sending up great soul cries to the bright Day God in gratitude for the honor that had fallen to her.

The voice harmonic echoed meaningless numerics from the natal system. “Thirteen baktun, zero katun, zero tun, zero uinal, zero kin. Time to give birth.”

“Go on,” said the chief nurse Riveli to Amhama. “Do the honors, Amhama.”

Riveli stood back, motioning to the others also, and they crowded away in respect, the combined sheen of their surfaces—golden human skin, pastel organic cloth, and grey machine metal alloy—blending in a soft curvilinear mosaic. Outside the large transparent windows the Day God filled the sky with orange light, and it was the apex of noon. Serendipity or eon-shaped intent, it signified an event of singular importance.

Amhama alone remained standing before the glass womb. She was a frail, gently fading woman with smooth gold skin wrinkling into delicate time-etchings around her egg-shaped face. The sterile natural fiber nursery robe of brilliant white fell in soft listlessness to cover her shallow spots of breasts and torso, wrapping around her thin hips and ending in weightless folds about her bony golden knees.

All smooth, aging, hairless, sterile.

A true mother, she stood.

Amhama lifted her hands to the womb’s rotund cover, pressed the release of the first tier, then the second and third, like a falling away of taut onion skins, and finally lifted the inner cover glass for the first time since the incubation six months ago. Slightly arid, sterile nursery air rushed in to disturb the perfect balance of humidity inside the womb, while the infant floating upon the amber liquid sensed the difference and began to stir. Amhama reached inside and started to remove the delicate cobweb of tubing, and with each tug the child squirmed, not so much in pain or discomfort but in surprise.

The final surprise of parting came when the largest central tube was retracted and its thickest portion detached from the navel—a mechanical umbilical cord.

Liaei was now completely separated from the womb, and in the world. Air came into her stimulated lungs and filled her, and pain entered through her navel, and she cried, high pitched agonized, overwhelmed innocent.

She was born.

Amhama gently supported her head and lifted Liaei from the liquefied amber. It ran in rivulets down the newborn’s pale delicate surfaces, dripping back into the womb basin, and splattered on Amhama’s clothing.

Liaei screamed as she was wrapped in brilliant white sterile fiber.

Parted from the birth ocean, she was completely alone.

 

At the bottom of the Pacific Basin, a mere rock’s toss from the dark lapping waters of the great shallow lake that was all that was left of the Oceanus, huddled the Basin City. It was like a film of mineral deposit at the Oceanus’s edges, rimming it, a growth of crystalline structures that in places emerged out of the thick waters like stalagmites, and in others were formed from the clays and rock of the ancient marine sediment that lined the surface of the Basin.

Colors were all tertiary—mauve, teal, dull ocher brown, rich sienna, pale cream, honey amber, salmon clay. Interspersed were patches of gray and ebony rock formations, and chalk-dusted earth. The Basin City structures stood out like islands of chromatic uniformity, impositions of strange, unnatural sterile order. Buildings were placed in rows to approximate city blocks, and streets were upraised platforms of artificial alloy, separated from the unreliable floor sediment that underwent liquefaction so frequently that it was impossible to build upon. Closer to the water’s edge, and in some places jutting brazenly into the Oceanus, were grim water refinery plants, domes of concrete and steel surrounded with bands of metal scaffolding and pipes that siphoned off the super-saturated salt sludge-water into appropriate reservoirs for processing. Here the toxic blood of the Oceanus was vaporized, then returned back to liquid state, and captured in post-processing reservoirs that delivered distilled water to the whole of Basin City and beyond. Pipes and tubes ran off in all directions below and above the sediment ground. Some of the water was redirected into local aqueducts that rested on thick columns fifty meters in height and covered with transparent plasti-glass on the topside to prevent evaporation into the thin arid atmosphere.

Finally, the largest thickest post-processing waterpipe, with the diameter of a small canal, fed directly from the tallest processing dome and ran through the heart of Basin City and out and up the Basin slope.

It was said that it had been originally built thousands of years ago with enough clay and concrete and metal alloy to reach the halfway point of the slope walls of the Pacific Basin, and then for some reason the project was abandoned. Looking back, some thought the building materials had run out. Others supposed it was lack of interest or funding. Whatever the reason, the high-tech civilization of the time did not complete the building of the waterline pipe all the way up the Pacific Basin walls. But instead of abandoning the water delivery project completely, a marvelous impossible technology was used to continue to channel the water up the Basin slope without the pipe.

The water was made to run uphill, never touching the ground, suspended through the air.

 

Amhama liked to smile and talk to the child Liaei. As the girl grew human and the woman grew older, the bond between them was formed with words.

“Liii-aaah-eeeh-iiih,” Amhama sang in a breathy voice, leaning over the crib. The light came amber-sweet from the window, coloring Amhama’s smooth forehead and hairless scalp, coloring the infant’s face, overflowing into the room, and the distant heavy indigo shape of the Oceanus defined the horizon. Above and beyond stretched the great slope of the Basin—no sky was visible from the vantage point of the window, only remote Basin walls that loomed like golden shadows of slate, and desiccated dust sweeping bedrock in the haze-filled background. The Basin gathered the intense light from the sky and kept it, pooling inward where it reflected off the walls and colored the air golden. The surface of the Oceanus shimmered, the film over its thick waters iridescent like benzene, undulating with temporary rainbows and then again dark.

Amhama moved her gaze farther outward, narrowed her eyes to better focus, and saw the pale white speck of a ship sailing out into the heart of the waters. “Look,” she whispered, knowing that Liaei was too young to respond or be aware, but wanting to speak nevertheless. “There goes a white ship! A great voyager, a brave explorer! Imagine how fearless, how insolent, to skim along the treacherous surface of the Oceanus.”

Liaei stared back, great jewel eyes glistening with moisture and of indeterminate hue.

“That’s right, the fearless ship sails!” said Amhama again. “It will never come back, probably. Fearless white ship! Silly, silly ship that will sink in toxic salt.”

And then she laughed and drew her fingers along the child’s soft cheek and the amazing growth of pale white-gold hair that started from above her forehead. “You are safe here, my sweet-eyes. Unlike the ship, you are here with me, and you are safe.”

Liaei looked back with wide eyes at her nurse and voluntary mother. And she looked through her, maybe. Because her infant eyes did not focus or see—not yet.

 

When Liaei was five, she jumped and danced like a creature of fluid and no bones or flesh—flexible and malleable like a jellyfish, resilient and light like the bouncing ball she played with. “Ama! Ama!” she sang as she moved seemingly nonstop around the rooms, galloping barefoot through their apartment. And Amhama answered fondly with “Liii-aaah-eeeh-iiih!” as she went about her own chores.

Each night Amhama left the child sleeping as she rose and got dressed in the deepest period of darkness and left their apartment to work her shift at the medicineal. She walked along the winding upraised streets illuminated softly with transparent lanterns, with absolute darkness pressing in from above, the sky and Basin a kettle of ink. There was no need to take a transport, since the walk was less than ten blocks along the largest street of Basin City. The lantern light dispelled the night and made it safe. And the patrolling police cars swept along frequently, hovering without a sound, their vaguely oval shapes skimming the air at street level. One of the cars had its security plasti-glass top down and an officer—familiar to Amhama because they nearly always seemed to share this shift—waved to her and then was on his way.

Amhama smiled and waved back, then drew her street jacket closer against the night’s dry chill breeze, and hurried, so as not to be late. The medicineal building was one of the tallest structures in Basin City, a tower of several hundred floors, and it loomed before her. Once inside, she entered the first sterilization floor, was cleansed and then proceeded in a lift to the two hundredth floor in the horticulturist section, where she worked with other growers of mammal embryos to produce human gametes. Amhama was one of the specialists with the highest experience in genetics and was thus often assigned to special case homo sapiens. Elsewhere in the building, the horticulturists developed other very occasional animal species and mostly plantlife DNA and created hybrids that were brought to hothouse maturation. Here, in the Special Projects section, were the unusual select projects, such as Liaei. Indeed, it was so easy to forget that Liaei was Amhama’s project, a unique responsibility, and not merely a beloved child.

“How is she?” Chief nurse Riveli asked Amhama every time as Amhama came to the section desk to begin her shift. There was never a need to clarify whom Riveli meant.

“Sleeping well tonight,” Amhama replied with an involuntary smile. “I gave her a kiss and she did not even stir as she usually does. I fed her the thick protein and melatonin-enriched cocktail before bedtime, and it seems to be calming her down enough to allow her to sleep within the hour of lying down. Otherwise she is still unstoppable.”

“You are rather unstoppable yourself,” replied Riveli, smiling widely, without looking up from the work display on her desk. “No one else in our section would have dared to do this thing, you know. To singlehandedly raise the Queen of the Hourglass.”

“Ah, she is just my Liaei,” said Amhama. “Not a Queen of anything yet.”

Riveli looked up, and for a moment there was a pitying expression in her steady eyes. “She is what she is, Amhama. Since the moment of fertilization. You know it since you put her cells together. She may seem an ordinary child, even though hyperactive, but soon enough the differences will become prominent. Her energy levels alone are but precursors.”

“Oh, I know,” said Amhama, and as though remembering, ran her hands down her own slender undifferentiated body, the line of her waist and hips completely lacking concavity. “It is just a nice way of talking about her now, while I still may.”

“Forgive me for being blunt as always,” said Riveli. “I just don’t want you to get hurt from yearning.”

But Amhama unfolded her sterile white robe and was putting it on, and had turned her back to Riveli.

 

The following year, Liaei had reached formal learning age, and she now accompanied Amhama to the medicineal every morning. To accommodate Liaei’s fragile sleeping schedule, Amhama had taken a later shift, and now worked starting an hour after dawn. They walked together in the dawning hours, the child Liaei harnessed to Amhama with a short safety leash just in case, even though they held hands. The air was cool and crisp with dryness, with occasional slightly noxious and humid gusts from the Oceanus reaching them here many meters away. The moisture was ephemeral however, for it immediately dispersed upon the wind and more often it was an arid breeze that swept along the surface of the skin. They watched the sky that started high above at the distant lofty edges of the Basin walls take on color. First, it paled from darkness into silver, then, as the Day God rose and engulfed all overhead, it became sudden flaming amber and the Basin was filled with light.

Dawns came sudden in the Basin.

“Look!” Amhama would say, pointing to a sudden flaring speck of brightness, a hair-line ribbon of light that began halfway up the Basin slope and culminated at the high edges.

“The River!” Liaei said, bounding along at her side, clutching Amhama’s larger dry hand in her soft moist own.

“The River That Flows Through The Air!” said Amhama. “Isn’t it wonderful and bright? We can see it all the way from here, when it is so far away. Kilometers upon kilometers.”

“Why is it so bright, Ama?” Liaei asked, while the dawn wind stirred her hair into brightness also. “Is it made from light?”

“No, it’s water, silly. When the Day God shines upon clean transparent water, its light reflects back into your eyes and mine. The Oceanus would be shiny too, but it is so thick with salt and chemicals that the light does not reflect the same way.”

“Is that why the Oceanus is so dark always? I hate it, it is creepy,” said Liaei.

“The Oceanus is nasty, but at the same time it is wonderful, because that’s where the last of our water comes from. Nowhere on our Earth is there any more water left, only here. That’s why we live here.”

But Liaei continued to stare at the thin distant ribbon of light on the Basin slope. “I want to see the River,” she said softly.

Amhama sighed. “You will, child, soon enough. There’s another city up there, on the very top. Just beyond where the River flows into the horizon and disappears. One day you will go there.”

“I want to see the River now.” There was a whiny tone to Liaei’s normally musical voice. “Please!”

“Well, we can’t. I need to work and you have class. And the way there is just too long and difficult and uncomfortable, and besides we can’t afford it.”

Liaei tugged at Amhama’s hand, and then frowned so that her whole little face contorted like a soft malleable thing. Her dark gold eyebrows shaped evenly with follicles of natural hair swept upward at the inner edges, then down, lending expressiveness to her face that was already so much more defined than Amhama’s own. Compared to her, Amhama was a smooth egg-headed doll with generic even features and only warm eyes that added individuality. But unlike Liaei, Amhama’s eyes were infinitely tired, it seemed, tired in essence, in their origin.

The girl did not seem to notice it or understand the nature of this tiredness, and continued to pull at the woman’s hand periodically, all the while repeating, “Ama, I want to see the River, please, oh please, can we go see the River, Ama, oh please!” She whined and stomped her feet with forcefulness so that her light sandals made a clatter against the dull alloy surface of the street. She jumped up and down and then leaned down in a crouch and tried to drag Amhama’s hand to her level.

“No!” said Amhama finally, tightening her hold on the small moist living hand, and pulled her along, almost with regret, as they turned the final block to the medicineal building. “Not now, Liaei, not now. Stop that, girl! I have to work. Understand? And you have to study.”

Liaei began to wail, her six-year old lungs grasping the arid air, and then suddenly stopped. She saw a multicar passing by, the standard Basin City school transport. Amhama watched Liaei as she stared at the many smooth hairless heads of the other children visible through the plasti-glass, their faces even-featured and similar to each other, their skins of all golden shades from light to dark. Liaei was mesmerized.

It was a wrenching feeling Amhama got every time she saw Liaei like that. Liaei wanted to be there in that multicar with the other children, wanted to attend the ordinary public school. And although it had been explained to her by both Amhama and Riveli with careful gentle tact, Amhama knew that Liaei stifled inside of her a rebellious intensity and did not believe their reasons for keeping her separate were good enough.

The school transport moved past them and down the street. Its hover path was swept clean of dust, leaving the surface of the road dark in the place where it had been. Liaei stood staring in its wake, watching it disappear beyond the curve of the street. She had grown silent, forgetting that only a moment ago she had been struggling and almost crying. The grip of her fingers had loosened in Amhama’s own. She walked in numb obedience at Amhama’s side and did not speak another word as they entered the medicineal building.

 

“You have old DNA,” Amhama had explained to Liaei that day as they sat in a sterile metallic office on the 204th floor together with Riveli. Riveli’s smooth even-featured face was almost like Amhama’s and her skin was only a few shades of darker gold. The difference was, Riveli watched the child seated on a chair before them with her expression blank, and her smile seemed pasted on for lack of true involvement. She watched Liaei as though she were a clinical specimen—which she was—watched her initial fidgeting and mobility, observed it change into malleable silence and seriousness, the whole transition mercurial and impossibly alive.

“Old DNA means that your genetic makeup is almost original to the ancient homo sapiens species, and not a tapering off post-hybrid like most of the rest of us,” said Amhama kindly. “It means that you are special and your life force and will and developmental potential is very very strong.”

“Do you understand what that means, Liaei?” asked Riveli.

Amhama, uncomfortable with the girl’s continued silence, went on. “You know how I always get tired, Liaei? And how you almost never seem to be tired, and want to move around so much so that I scold you constantly? Well, to be honest, sweetheart, I have no right to tell you to stop moving so much, since this is part of what makes you so very special. I am the one who is dull and slow, compared to you.”

“You are not dull, Ama,” blurted Liaei suddenly. “And I don’t want to be special. I want to be like you.”

Riveli sighed.

Amhama moved her lips, tightened them.

“I don’t want old DNA,” continued Liaei. “Why must I have it? Can you take it away?”

Amhama opened her mouth to speak, but Riveli raised her hand to stop her, and then said, “What you have, child, is what everyone in the world right now would give everything to have. You were made with the best of what we have left. The strongest, cleanest of defect, most likely to survive. We made you that way so that you would do great wonderful things for the remainder of the human species.”

“Why?” said Liaei, staring somewhere between Riveli’s chin and her thin neck.

“Don’t you want to help all of us?” persisted Riveli, and her pasted on smile did not waver. Amhama wanted to wipe that smile off her face with a swipe of her fingers.

“I want to be just like everyone else . . .” replied Liaei. She was beginning to frown, and a stormy expression was gathering which Amhama knew so well. And so, to distract the oncoming tempest, she brought up that thing for the first time, the thing which sat like a rock in her innards.

“Why would you want to be like everyone else, boring and ordinary, when you are going to be the Queen of the Hourglass?”

“Amhama!” said Riveli, her gaze coming into focus with alarm. “No, she is too young.”

“Not too young to start learning,” retorted Amhama. “At least some of it.”

Liaei’s frown relaxed and she was immediately mesmerized. “What is the Queen of the Hourglass, Ama?” she said in a completely different tone, forgetting her complaints.

Amhama smiled, then laughed. “The Queen of the Hourglass!” she said in her familiar sing-song tone. “The Queen of the Hourglass is a most wonderful thing to be! That’s you, Liaei! But first you must go to your class, and behave, and after that I promise I will tell you more.”

 

When Liaei had her mind set on something, she became focused and intensely driven. That day Liaei paid precise, almost unhealthy attention to her lessons from the edu-system voice harmonic—as Amhama discovered when she ran the child’s regular progress report—and when they returned home after eating dinner at the medicineal building cafeteria, Amhama saw how Liaei was unusually subdued, biting her lips and looking at a point before her, paying no attention to anything around them. She wanted so badly to ask her, Amhama knew, and yet, something held her back.

It was as though the child was afraid of hearing the answer. Twilight gathered over Basin City in ephemeral rolling mists that would fade even before full night came, dissipating into arid darkness, when Liaei finally came up to Amhama who sat, fingers moving lightly, reading the dots from her armchair display. She tapped her arm and said, “Ama.”

Amhama looked up to see the earnest eyes, the dark golden brows and curls forming over a smoothly curving oval face, frozen in intensity like a doll, a peculiar mechanical creature. Liaei was so living that she seemed unreal. Her facial muscles were microscopic and perfect in their organization.

“The Queen of the Hourglass,” she said. “Tell me.”

Amhama bit her own lip. And then, thinking in a tumult, she said, “Let me show you.” Amhama turned the reading display so that both of them could see the rows of raised reading dots impressed in the slowly turning drum. Then she thought for a moment, put her fingers on the switch to stop the drum rotation and called up a search on the harmonium pad. “Search Hourglass,” she told the machine.

And instants later the search came tumbling back at them. “The Hourglass,” said the harmonium at the same time as the drum turned, “is an ancient device to measure the passing of an abstract construct called time. It postdates the sundial, predates the clock and the computer and the harmonium.”

Amhama watched Liaei’s face.

“I don’t understand,” said the girl, why would anyone measure the passing of time? I thought time just is? And what are all those things it mentioned?”

“Ancient machines,” replied Amhama. “The closest predecessors of the harmonium systems were these things called computers that relied on the fluctuation of an energy called electricity that had something to do with the magnetic poles of the earth, I think. Or maybe it’s a type of solar radiation? A bit of it’s what’s in those weak static fields that sometimes can be detected by the harmonium. Though, I am not sure, since much of this information has been lost with the same civilization that had built the River That Flows Through The Air.”

For a moment Liaei’s expression lightened, as Amhama imagined she was distracted by the pleasant memory of Day God’s dayfire reflected upon a thread of white flame along the Basin slope. Liaei really loved the River, loved hearing about it, seeing it every day as they walked outside. Someday they must visit, but now, there was this to deal with.

“So anyway, there was this energy source that ran all that technology that no longer functions. All those weird machine relic carcasses that people sometimes find buried along the Basin walls or even up there on the Plateau beyond. They say there are ancient cities there, covering the surface of the earth with their sad rubble, all useless parts and objects that once meant a great deal but now there isn’t even a memory of their function. They just lie there, overgrown with drybrush cacti and half-covered with sand.”

“The Hourglass . . .” whispered Liaei, interrupting Amhama gently.

“Oh yes. Sorry, let’s ask it some more, let’s see what it says about that.”

They asked what the hourglass looked like and how it worked. “A sealed glass container of specific cubic volume separated into two equal parts by a slim tube neck with an opening of a certain width and one part filled with just enough granules of sand or other powdered material to mark the passage of a specific period of time,” the harmonic voice told them. “It is turned repeatedly so that the powder runs from one side to the other through the narrow opening.”

“How weird and useless!” said Liaei.

“But it was not useless, back in those ancient times, sweet,” said Amhama. “People used it to keep track of their daily activity, their lives. They didn’t know about the clockwork mechanism just yet, did not know about interlocking gears and counterweights and pulleys, so they had to use this simple device.”

“What about the Queen?” said Liaei.

“That’s another story for another day.”

 

Amhama had the rare ability to stall—not just for days and weeks but for months and years. Amhama dropped tiny snippets of new information about the Queen, and Liaei continued to ask relentlessly, so that in a sense they tortured each other constantly without getting anywhere.

Liaei grew very quickly, grew tall and filled out with softness, and was now fourteen years old. There was a bountiful layer of pale golden hair growing from Liaei’s scalp, and it now reached below her waist. Amhama, her own scalp bare as everyone else’s, helped Liaei cut it many times, touching the soft strands in wonder, amazed at the profusion of this energy. She traced the brow hair at the ridge above Liaei’s golden-green eyes, and marveled at the spikes of lashes fringing the eyes—for Amhama had none of her own.

Liaei’s slender long-limbed body had also taken on strange prominent curves, hips expanding and waist tightening, and the breasts budding at first with sharp tips and then swelling with roundness that was so alien compared to Amhama’s own flat chest.

“What is happening to me?” asked Liaei often. She also asked the harmonium so many variations of questions about the Queen of the Hourglass that she knew now for a fact that the Queen was a creature made to perform a single very important function, and that had something to do with the Clock King—another creature similar to herself yet specialized in a different way.

“You are growing,” replied Amhama, smiling gently. Liaei was used to the ambiguity of that smile, unsure whether it contained sorrow or pleasure or a mixture of both and something else altogether.

“So I am to be the mate of this Clock King,” said Liaei, a statement of fact, for she no longer asked Amhama things as much as she restated what she learned on her own. Even her voice was deep and mellifluous now, unlike Amhama’s somewhat childish androgynous timbre.

“Yes.”

“Is that why my body is so animalistic?”

Amhama sighed. “Must you call it so? It is simply the body of a younger human race with a different level of hormonal development.”

It was fascinating how fluid was the movement of Liaei’s face, the dance of her brows that reflected every emotion. Compared to her, Amhama was a mechanized puppet with a limited set of facial movements. Even now, Liaei’s facial muscles fluttered, expressing anger, a suppressed violent mystery of some emotion alien to Amhama. And her eyes—the intensity was painful to observe.

“Yes, animalistic,” said Liaei. “What else would you call this? I am fertile and disgusting, and soon—any day now—will bleed on a regular basis. Yes, the harmonium told me thoroughly what you and the medicineal have been trying to keep from me so carefully. All the while as you watch me, and record every tiny new thing. Apparently I am almost ready to begin the full Queen training. It has to do with my interaction with the Clock King.”

Liaei got up from the seat before Amhama. She moved about the room with a grace and speed, so that the finely woven fiber material of her clothing seemed to lag behind her in delayed motion, sweeping around her curves as though driven by an invisible wind. Liaei came to the window of their apartment, the same window from which she had stared for the past fourteen years, and the Day God shone brightly outside, reflecting against the inky darkness of the Oceanus in the distance. It, the great lake, had receded inward even more within those fourteen years, so that the black water that had lapped at the edges of the shore at the refineries when Liaei was born, was now about a meter away, revealing more crystalline rock and sediment at the rim.

Amhama watched Liaei’s form as she stood illuminated by the brilliant dayfire, watched her curving profile, the parabolic lines. “Ama,” said Liaei, not turning her head. “How long do I have, before I am Queen?”

Amhama was still, even her breath falling off.

“Ama!” said Liaei, turning suddenly to face her almost-mother. “Please tell me! I’d rather hear it from you than the harmonium.”

“Two more years.”

The words came reluctant, slow. For in that moment Amhama did not want to speak at all, wanted to postpone, to delay, to put off forever. Words always seemed to speed up the course of events. Words made them concrete and inevitable.

Liaei took several steps and then came down in a crouch before the seated woman and put her hand on Amhama’s golden skin, her forearm. Her palms were moist and warm. She looked into Amhama’s motionless tired eyes.

“And when will I begin the training?”

There was a breeze that blew in the open window, and it carried a moist and queasy scent of Oceanus. Liaei’s face wrinkled in involuntary revulsion from the toxicity, and in that moment it occurred to Amhama how sensitive, how fragile she was, this growing child. Her child and yet not hers. How ephemeral.

“I’ll talk to Riveli,” said Amhama. “Tomorrow.”

 

Neither Riveli nor Amhama had changed much over the fourteen years. Liaei saw Riveli on a regular basis, every several months, for various interviews, physical and psychological tests, and at every sign of developmental change. Riveli always remained neutral, showing as little emotion as possible, even less so than was normal. Amhama told Liaei that it was her way of maintaining professional distance, but Liaei had the distinct impression Riveli did not like her, even resented her progress over the years. But Riveli and Amhama were two main individuals of the few people Liaei interacted with, since she was never enrolled in a regular school. Other children Liaei’s age grew into poised androgynous teens and she saw them in passing on the streets, in the apartment complex where they lived, in the transport vehicles along roadways, at the food centers and general stores. They were young smooth aliens.

But Riveli was a comfort in her predictability, and Liaei knew what to expect.

“We’ll start the training this week,” said Riveli, watching her desk display as she nearly always did, not looking at Liaei directly. “Most of the training will involve reading material, and the harmonium will provide it. Some of it will be physical exercises—since you will have to maintain absolute muscle tone and precision in addition to proper hormone levels. A horticulturist tech pair will work with you.”

“And all of my progress will be measured and recorded.”

Riveli glanced briefly in the girl’s direction. “That is correct.”

Liaei nodded. She then wrinkled her nose.

 

“A Queen rules at the side of the King, as his consort,” said the harmonium. “In a matriarchal society the Queen has the primary power, while in a patriarchal society, it is the King.”

“What about our society?” asked Liaei. She was seated before her display in the classroom cubicle of the medicineal, a tiny room beneath a directed skylight that had been set up specifically for her, and the harmonium adjusted to interact with her voice at all levels of knowledge. The display consisted of the slowly turning plasti-alloy drum frame covered like a sieve with dotholes at specific intervals. As the drum turned with inner mechanical clockwork, rounded pins entered and receded from the dot holes in various combinations of semantic code, and Liaei observed them and derived meaning. Once she had had to keep her fingertips upon the dots but now it had become second nature, so all she needed was to look. The drum simply turned at individual rates, as needed, and Liaei’s drum moved faster than anyone’s, because she was a natural speed reader.

The voice option was also enabled, so that Liaei heard what she was reading spoken by a synthetic machine voice. And occasionally, there would be a fluid sparkle and crackle of static as the small rectangle above the drum lit up with the strange energy that was neither particle nor wave, and it would display still or moving images to better illustrate the textual material.

“Our society is a multicracy based on resource allocation. The sexes are limited in function, so the allocation of power along such lines is irrelevant. Thus, the King and the Queen are ritualized roles and their influence upon our society is only in a very specific area. They do not rule in the ancient traditional sense.”

“So what do they do?” said Liaei, a mixture of frustrated curiosity and tension evident in her voice and in the way she leaned forward and fingered the smooth edge of the quickly turning drum.

Unlike a human being, the harmonium never hesitated when presented with a clear question. It replied, “The Queen of the Hourglass and the Clock King manipulate time.”

 

The Oceanus was a blotch of darkness, a dull spill of crude oil upon the horizon of the Basin. It was an overcast morning and the Day God was hidden beyond a layer of whisper-thin airborne precipitate—a most unusual sight in any season, but now it was winter. Liaei wore a thick windbreaker garment with a hood, ankle-high water-impermeable boots, and thermal pants. And yet she shivered because her face was open to the wind. It was a spot of absolute cold on her otherwise climate-controlled body.

“Almost done, only another two hundred meters,” spoke the childlike machine voice of the horticulturist tech moving smoothly behind her along the crumbling rocks of the shoreline. Liaei took careful footholds, for the sediment closest the water was frozen in places with a fine paper-thin layer of slippery ice, dull gray and impure like the water itself. It was so fine that it crumbled at the slightest pressure, but even so, one had to walk carefully. The Oceanus never froze over because of its chemical content, but the proximity of moisture created that strange dirty semi-rime on the shore.

Liaei’s daily walk was made difficult today by the wind pressure. She glanced occasionally at the Basin slope beyond the City but there was no sky brilliance to tell her where on the slope lay the thread that was The River That Flows Through The Air—there was only the overcast. The Basin walls rose in increasing darkness from all directions, and the rust and earth-tone colors of the rock were supplanted by the monochrome gray.

About a hundred meters in the distance, along the shoreline was a dark silhouette of a human figure. As Liaei made her way toward it, the figure waved, and with proximity the shape resolved itself into Toliwe the human tech, also assigned to work with her. Toliwe was only a little older than Liaei, but he was one of the most advanced horticultural interns at the medicineal.

Toliwe stood immobile, waiting for her. His gauntness was obscured by the thick windbreaker garments, and the dark seared-gold patch of skin that was his face was impenetrable from the distance.

Liaei quickened her walk and as soon as she had reached Toliwe’s side he silently nodded and matched her stride, falling in line several paces behind her. They were all walking the last hundred meters, strung out among the rocks of the shore, toward the designated mark.

The rock and sediment tapered off, ending at a long artificial pier that formed somewhere inland toward Basin City and protruded out past the sloping shore into the lapping inky thickness of the waters. Here it was suspended on slim columns of concrete that disappeared into the water, and the last few meters it seemed to float.

Liaei was the first to reach the pier. Fleet-footed and light, she almost ran the last few steps, so that angry sand and gravel poured down the remainder of the slope before the pier began. Jumping onto the smooth surface she stood immobile, just as suddenly frozen with intensity, her face turned to the Oceanus wind, full force. Toliwe was a few steps behind, but he lacked her energy as he stepped upon the pier.

“Course completed successfully,” said the machine tech behind them, gliding in place. It stood and folded its runners and now unfurled glide-wings from the ovoid surface of its metallic hull. “I’ll be on my way, Liaei,” it continued. “Great job today, once again. See you tomorrow.”

Liaei smiled, even though there was no need, and said, breathless from the chill wind, “Thank you, Mara. Yes, it was great as always, see you!”

“The stats, please?” Toliwe said. His human voice was somehow more machinelike than Mara’s. Liaei glanced at him only once and then back again at the dark liquid expanse. She often felt a kind of emotional void in Toliwe’s company—not because she did not like him but rather because he was reserved and serious and almost never smiled, never engaged in fake small talk.

“She did very well,” Mara said. “With base capacity resting heart rate 72 beats per minute, maximum heart rate 212 bpm, her current heart rate is 131 bpm. Heart rate is not particularly elevated considering the oxygen requirement of her smaller-capacity lungs, and red blood cell levels. This was a brisk walk, nearly a jog, and the windchill factor must be taken into consideration.”

Toliwe nodded. “Thank you, Mara. Please forward the results to my lab, including the wind and barometric pressure.”

“As always, forwarding now,” responded Mara, with more human inflection in the machine voice than his, and with a hint of a vocal smile. And then Mara’s glide wings activated, extending on both sides of its chassis, and a near-silent hum of cutting air turbulence was all around them. In seconds Mara rose, was meters above them like an ovoid metal bird, and then hurtled into the sky, on its way back to the medicineal.

Liaei turned from her view of the Oceanus to stare at the receding gray speck of the horticulturist, fading quickly into the overcast.

Toliwe meanwhile took out his recording pad and called up yesterday’s data.

“How do you feel, Liaei?” he asked politely, without looking away from his task.

“I’m fine,” she replied. “A little cold. I mean, I am warm from the exercise, but the breathing is cold. Hurts a little to inhale when it’s windy and cold like this.”

“Understandable, since your lung capacity is genetically not optimal for our present atmospheric conditions. Ideally you require about 10 percent more oxygen in the cocktail.”

“Yes, me and my primitive lungs.” Liaei looked down at the bits of gravel and sand scattered along the edges of the pier where she stood, bits that had fallen from her boots.

Toliwe looked up, his face a mask of fine regular features, androgynous, smooth and deep gold skin, hairless. “Your lungs are perfectly fine, but they would function at optimal capacity in a more oxygen-rich and more humid atmosphere. So you must be careful to exercise at a heightened level to maintain regular tone.”

“You sound like the harmonium, do you know?” said Liaei. She glanced at him and for a moment met his eyes—dark and placid and cool in their composure. Studying her as a specimen.

For the first time Toliwe smiled. It was bright, a grin baring perfect white teeth, charming and forceful. Liaei looked away briefly, dazzled.

“Sorry, Liaei, I get carried away with numbers, and thanks for reminding me,” he said, his voice taking on a more gentle inflection, his intelligent eyes matching hers. “Now, are you ready for the balance routine?”

Liaei nodded. She then adjusted the laces at her throat that held the hood of her windbreaker, and then pulled, releasing so that it fell back. A strong gust of wind came in that moment, tugging at her ponytail, sending up fine shorter strands in all directions so that they stood up like a fierce static field, while the bulk of her gathered hair flapped against her back.

Toliwe slipped off his own hood, revealing a bare deep golden scalp. He then proceeded to unseal his windbreaker, heedless of the chill factor, folded it neatly, then placed it down on the pier and rested his data pad on top to keep it from being blown away. Underneath he wore only a loose natural fiber short-sleeved t-shirt, and it flapped wildly about his slender perfectly toned torso.

“Keep yours on,” he said, seeing that Liaei considered momentarily if she should also take off her windbreaker. “At least for today. It really is too cold for you.”

“But I cannot move very well in this.”

“You can move well enough.”

And with those words he started the routine, and Liaei followed him.

They moved in fluid acrobatic figures, repeating the ancient motions of Fua, the most ancient of hybrid martial defense and philosophy arts. Toliwe breathed lightly, heedless of the freezing gusts that beat at him, and Liaei focused, trying to distance herself from the cold that swept her head, focus on the living breath and inner tranquil balance. She moved like a delicate perfect dancer despite her heavy thick outer clothing, and did not know that her grace matched Toliwe effortlessly, matched his slim androgynous long limbs with her more rounded flexibility. Their movements were precise like repetitive motion of mechanical blades, and yet smooth and organic.

Gentle, yielding, flexible, always in motion to stay in place—the principle of Fua.

The moments stretched into a wind-filled timelessness, and eventually the routine was done.

Toliwe stilled in the final form, with his feet planted together and his hands coming forward with palms meeting each other, then finally falling at his sides. Liaei was in the same moment, moving like his mirror image, and stopped exactly when he did. They stood one opposite the other, wind-beaten statues. Taking three deep breaths they then bowed to one another.

“Well done,” said Toliwe, becoming his own remote self, fluidity seeming to pull inward and retreat somewhere deep inside of him, to be replaced with stilted silence. In that moment the Day God broke through the overcast momentarily, filling the gray dimness of the Basin with an outpouring of warm golden light.

Liaei looked up to see the spider-thin string of light rising from the midpoint of the Basin slope, like a single blazing hair fallen from the head of the Day God. She smiled involuntarily and then met Toliwe’s gaze.

Toliwe watched her, his dark eyes steady, and again she could not read the depth of his expression. Finally he looked away and went to retrieve his windbreaker and data pad. He observed the small recording drum turning rapidly, and the simultaneous output of the raised dot code, then the harmonium image diagram that arose like a film of invisible energy above the pad within the containing rectangle window.

Liaei released a breath she did not know she had been holding, and once again looked at the distant thread of light that was The River That Flows Through The Air.

 

“Your body has nearly achieved menarche,” said the harmonium, “and your hormone production is surging. Very soon the levels will be at their peak, at which point you will be ready to perform as the Queen of the Hourglass.”

“I am to copulate with the Clock King,” responded Liaei. “Yes I know. But to what end? Will my body actually become a viable reproduction mechanism, as it had been in the ancient times? Am I to bear human offspring, is that it? What good will it do for the bulk of humanity, our basically asexual, functionally sterile modern homo sapiens, for me to bear one or two children the ancient way? A replenishing of the dying gene pool? Am I not an anachronism already and not viably integrateable with this pretty much different human species?”

“These are all rhetorical questions, or do you want me to answer them?”

Liaei grimaced. “Answer, please. All of them.”

“Liaei, your role is vital. Not only are you going to mate and procreate, but you and your offspring will be integrated into the current gene pool in order to invigorate it. Despite what it might seem, your material is still close enough to be genetically homogenized. Even if you bear one offspring only, it should be sufficient, and no one is expecting for you to become the new Eva.”

Liaei snorted, recalling the ancient story of the first woman and man. “It’s funny,” she said to herself in a soft voice, “how the sophisticated ancient technologies that once ruled the world fade from memory and record but simple ancient stories like this one remain, passed on by word of mouth. But then, it probably comes down to the nature of simplicity, the rule of the ordinary. Doesn’t it?”

But the harmonium continued, ignoring her aside. “Creating the Queen from the ancient DNA is a meticulous and difficult task, and with each generation it becomes more difficult due to the dearth of preserved viable material to work with. It is not a well-publicized fact, but in the process of matching the numerous gamete pairs to form you, we have likely depleted the stores of ancient genetic material. You therefore, are possibly not the first woman of your kind but the last.”

“Great, that really makes me feel better,” said Liaei. “Why couldn’t you make a whole bunch of Queens? I find it hard to believe that there were not enough ova and sperm cloning material for more than just me.”

The harmonium was momentarily silent. And then it said, “We tried. But we could not. True, there was plenty of genetic material in the stores, preserved for thousands of years in pristine cryo-condition. But your pair was the only one that became fertilized after several thousand attempts. The rest simply died. As you see, Liaei, the true reason you are so special is because in the past thirteen decades you are the only one who lived.”

 

Liaei danced. The door to her room was locked for privacy and to shut out the sound. She knew that on the other side, Amhama was reading in the living room, trying to ignore the pulsing base vibrations that came from the sound system. Ever since Liaei discovered that her body enjoyed moving quickly and in rhythm, and that there were certain types of music that made her excited and breathless and wanting to whirl and jump in time, heedless of actual physical form or control, unlike the precision of Fua—ever since, Liaei made it a habit to lock herself away and call up the wildest, usually ancient music from the archives. Fua was just not enough. Other young people like Toliwe and some of the other horticulturists at the medicineal, gathered together to listen to melodious complex soundfests, attended concerts, pub-clubs, and would often get up and move in rhythm also, but soft, fluid, stately—completely Fua in its nature. Modern music was all like that, even the beat remote and barely supporting the melody, like an afterthought. Beat, rhythm, time, was never emphasized. Grace and continuity was what drove them, what captured their imagination and physical need.

But Liaei needed something more. “I am the Queen of the Hourglass, whatever that really means,” she thought, “and damn it, but I enjoy time, enjoy its manifestation in the continuity and intervality of human-made melodic sound. Time is the cessation and resumption of movement. Just like music, time is binary, on-off. It is a thing of complexity and energy bound inextricably into one. Modern music just does not have the same energy that I need. It may be enough for them. But I am an anachronism, and I will unabashedly enjoy anachronistic things that resonate within me.”

And so Liaei danced, locked away in her room, with the shades drawn over the one window. She had asked the harmonium to synchronize the indoor illumination with the pulse of sound it generated in the audio projectors, and the room was filled with the breath of sound and the sway of tertiary color hues—rose, mauve, rust, sienna, teal, heliotrope.

The sound of ancient instruments preserved for millions of years was terrifying in its beauty and remoteness, the raw essence spanning time. There were instruments that created sound by means of air passing through narrow enclosures, instruments of the wind. There were others, based on friction, the sound of ancient hair follicles of extinct animals rubbing against taut strings of artificial and natural substances for which there were no longer any definitions. Finally, there were the instruments of percussion, resulting in sound based on the striking of hard surfaces against other variable surfaces of various texture and tension. When it all came together in peculiar smooth harmony, syncopation, shattered with instants of dissonance, it was like coming home. Time splintered, blended, streamed, heightened in tension and then resolved.

And Liaei moved with it.

Liaei swayed, her hands moving in waves that began at her fingertips and ended at her shoulders, all of her body fluid, malleable. Her torso and waist were the center of warmth, radiating outward, and the muscles of her legs were springs of living clockwork, chaotic, random and yet precise, blending their movement with the outpouring of sound. She spun around the center of herself, the burning heart of the spindle, and her long loosened hair flew in a curtain.

The music was a wild feast of whistle-notes and rich rolling vibrato of strings, the soaring of the many played as one, the clangor of ethereal reverberation and the thunder of the drums. The sound made all the tiny hairs on her body stand on end, and her nerve endings buzzed with exultation.

And there were occasional recordings that contained on them human voices. They were glorious and alien, for they had come from the deepest antiquity, and they rang in the here and now like ghosts of the original humanity.

Liaei internalized the plurality of sound, moving faster or slower according to the rhythm that drove it all. And as she heard the voices calling from the past, it tore through her, pulled at the basic building blocks of her genetic makeup, stirred the essence of her DNA, so that she rebounded with all of her being, and was made wild, ethereal, weightless, and then senseless with the animal motion.

The lights flickered and pulsed, and her eyes narrowed into slits, then opened wide with dilated pupils, while sweat issued from primeval pores and seeped down her pale gold skin. She bounced and sprang, threw her head back and forward, self-hypnotizing, pounding the floor with her feet, wanting to break past it into the earth itself, throwing her arms out to embrace the air and to rake with her nails the drafts that slithered over her surface.

When she was all white fire, her lungs scalded and gasping at the thin oxygen, needing a richer ancient draught, she collapsed, her feet stopping, while she stood panting and doubled over.

“Stop music . . .” she managed to whisper, and the harmonium obliged.

Ancient reeds faded, slipped into non-being, and the strings vibrato dissipated into silence. The last percussion beat clashed and fell, and was no more.

And Liaei stood panting, in the silent and now dark room, while tears streamed down her face and she sobbed convulsively from the gut, for what was gone, for the voices of her ancestors wrenched out of time, remembering she was so alone and they who were most like her were all no longer.

 

The human sexual act resulted in a great deal of pleasure for the male and female,” said the harmonium. “Not all other species experienced the same during mating, and often there was pain involved in the moments during the release of hormones. But for homo sapiens, mating and pleasure became a social obsession, and coupling and monogamy was more than the means of continuing the race but formed the economy and family structure. Casual and serious relationships evolved into various phases in a range between monogamy and polyamory, based on current economic and social conditions, and often discounting the needs and wants of the individuals—not to mention the needs of various same-gender and transitional-gender combinations of the so-called homosexual and otherwise differentiated portion of the population. But in the long run what drove it all was the physical need of the male and the female, and then simply the hormonal need of any individual for another individual, regardless of sexual orientation, and based only upon the emotional need for love.”

“Yes, love . . .” mused Liaei, listening to the machine’s lecture. “What a silly thing the ancients made of it by associating it with sex. What does love—genuine bonds of affection—have to do with hormonal excitement? Sorry, I don’t get it. I mean, I do, on a strange remote level, but I also understand how illusory that connection is.”

“You have reached the hormonal balance such as that you can understand sexual desire now, Liaei?” asked the harmonium. There was no lurid shadow in that question, and yet something made Liaei blush as she heard it. And in that same moment as she felt herself grow warm with the strange embarrassment, she self-reflexively understood what she was doing and how odd it was to feel shame.

“It must be vulnerability . . .” she muttered to herself. “The shame and the blushing is related to vulnerability, an opening to intimacy. The surrendering of self, the loss of power, must result in initial fear.” And for some reason she thought of the tech Toliwe, and the warmth on the surface of her skin intensified.

The harmonium continued. It described in detail the physical structures of the female and male bodies that were involved in the reproductive moment. “In the earlier young homo sapiens species, the male procreative organ, the penis was much larger, and more responsive to stimuli. The engorging with blood resulted in a stiffening and expansion of its tissues which the modern human genitals no longer experience. The female genitals were also deeper and more sensitive to hormonal fluctuation and to engorgement that paralleled the male organ on a smaller scale, in the small organ called the clitoris. The ancient vagina had to be able to expand enough to receive the swollen male organs and later to allow the newborn child to pass from the body—that flexibility was also a function of hormone levels and blood circulation. The modern female has a rudimentary vaginal canal that cannot accept any entry, and the womb and ovaries are pseudo-organs. The clitoris has devolved to such a tiny size that in most women it cannot be located. The modern male penis is a tiny blunt urinary ovoid protuberance of passive soft tissue, and the vestige testes have receded near the perineum. None are sensitive to ero-tactile stimulation.”

“I am such a freak . . .” muttered Liaei. She thought of her own body with its deep vaginal canal and viable womb and functional ovaries and. . . .

“Not at all,” replied the machine. “You are perfectly normal for your genetic makeup.”

“And I am so sick of hearing that,” she said, getting up, and then slammed the surface of the desk with her fist.

“Please don’t hurt yourself. To change the subject, let us switch to the duties that await the Queen of the Hourglass,” said the machine without missing a beat. “The seduction ritual is an important part of what will happen when you are with the Clock King, and the importance of the background material will become clear. Much of what we have discussed as foreplay is necessary for the sexual levels of arousal that initiate the reproductive process.”

“You know what? I really don’t want to hear it. So just shut yourself up,” said Liaei tiredly. Then added, “Sorry, I mean, let’s just continue this tomorrow, okay? I feel like crap.”

 

Liaei hated to admit this to anyone, and especially to the medicineal techs who now measured every aspect of her development, but she was restless. Hormones were awash in her body, and her energy was boundless, so that she thought she could jump up and soar. On the other hand she did not mind admitting this to the harmonium.

“Feeling better today, Liaei?” it asked her, as she arrived for the next morning’s lesson.

“Yes. Sorry about yesterday,” said Liaei, yawning, and holding her hands around a warm mug of tonic herbal brew that she brought with her from the cafeteria.

The daylight was barely beginning to color the sky, and the patch of it in the overhead skylight was soft and dilute mauve.

“Today’s lesson is seduction,” said the harmonium. “It involves a buildup of excitement so that copulation becomes imminent, and is achieved by a combination of human skin contact, visual enticement, auditory stimulation, subtle smell, and a number of other environmental factors. Little of this can be described, and most must be experienced in practice. Regretfully I cannot show you much beyond the ancient so-called porn, short slang for pornography, which is visual recordings of homo sapiens copulating, for the sole purpose of eliciting sexual arousal or lust in the audience. Pornography was a powerful quasi-legal factor in the societies of all the civilizations of which we have records. Glimpses of it could be observed in the arts, music, even fashion of clothing and architecture. For thousands of years, sex and its mystique shaped the entertainment industries, drove the development of technology, and the staying power of it was such that even now, after the sex drive has dissipated in the species, some modern humans still attempt to capitalize on it, to recapture the energy and the allure, the animal life force—”

“Yeah, I know,” said Liaei. “Some people in the clubs talk about gettogethers to watch the old fuckfests. They laugh, of course. It means nothing to them, just an ancient nature documentary. But I am afraid. They invited me once, and I really wanted to go and—and see. But I was afraid that it would have a different effect on me. I did not want to turn into a savage in front of them, to lose control.”

“The possibility is very low that you would lose control under such circumstances, Liaei. According to our records, there is a difference between sex-based entertainment and the actual act.”

Liaei shivered. “Okay, good to know. Do you think you can show me the porn, then?”

“Of course,” replied the harmonium. “Let’s start with the more softcore also known as erotica, and then we can build you up to the hardcore variants. Please feel free to stop the displays at any time and ask questions. In fact, you are encouraged to ask, since much of it can seem to make little sense, and is based on various individual fetishes throughout history.”

 

“So, you managed to see some of that antique porn?” said Amhama chuckling and shaking her head as they were eating dinner. “Does any of it make sense to you, girl? I mean, at least your hormonal levels may make it more interesting for you. Just to think, they used to have obsessions over body parts and body size, used to have grotesque operations to modify organs such as the female breasts. At the same time, many of their societies had rigid moral rules and weird intolerance in regard to the true range of gender. Makes you wonder why so much dissonance.”

Liaei blushed then laughed, and continued to chew the hot spicy soya protein and vegetables. “It’s rather amazing actually. There were enormous genitalia, breasts and buttocks, long legs and smooth or hairy chests, contorted backs and various other limbs, and these red colored lips—all huge and exaggerated. Actually, no, not always huge—they were of all shapes and sizes. But always something was exaggerated in those displays, to the point of grotesque. At least the early super-archaic stuff was all live real human video or stills. But then this computer simulart took over. The animated porn just went all caricature, with almost insectoid body distortion, and unreal motion.

“Oh, and you wouldn’t believe the things they were wearing! Clothing that served no other function but emphasis of certain body parts. Full or partial nudity, and one or more men or women involved, group scenes. And they had toys—implements? There was even some truly disgusting subject matter. I mean, I had no idea, but anything and everything—body fluids, inanimate objects, food, force, pain, other animal species, even auditory playacting—could serve as sexual turn-ons for the ancients. You know, Ama, I was afraid at first, afraid that I’d respond to any of this, but then it just got to be ridiculous. Too much maybe, for one sitting. I started to giggle and then laughed for hours, watching. Laughed and laughed. . . .”

Liaei suddenly put her utensils down with a clatter and raised her fingers to rub against her burning cheeks. “I am blushing again, damn it, aren’t I?” she said. “Oh, why do I have to take it all so personally? It’s as if I am embarrassed for all of them and their focused naturalism—primitivism, I should say—as if I take responsibility for all the foibles of the ancient race. Why, why, damn it, why—”

Amhama watched her with a meaningful expression and even put her spoon to rest in the bowl. “It’s all right, Liaei. Really, it is, keep telling yourself. Now, if it does affect you at some point, sweet, don’t feel bad. For you it would be a normal thing to feel something. Always remember that. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with having a living response.”

“Sure, Ama, whatever,” said Liaei. And then she began to either laugh or cry, rubbing her face in her hands, and taking in convulsive gasps of air into her primitive lungs.

Amhama continued to watch, frozen with sympathy and impotence.

 

Liaei was obsessed with imagining Toliwe nude. It seemed absurd in her own mind, especially after the visual overload of the antique lurid images she had seen of naked male and female flesh in intimate contact. But her young curiosity was a driving force, as powerful and erratic in its fluctuations and intensity as her life energy. Toliwe was an ordinary man, and yes, she had seen the banal anatomy of modern male genitalia numerous times, and yes this was nothing new. And yet. . . .

At the gym, when she and Toliwe did the workouts every other day, Liaei would sneak glimpses of his androgynous body in motion.

The local gym was a large well-lit complex with a high ceiling of transparent glassoid to allow in the bright Day God light. In addition to the usual full-body tone machines, steppers, runwalks, rowers, weights, stretchers, muscle-stims, there was much aerial equipment for the latest modern exercise fad, Sky Dancing or SD. Music with a very light underlying on-off binary rhythm filled the place, and the overhead expanse was always occupied with at least three or four people at a time doing one or more of the suspended forms of Sky Dance, using the hand-swingers, the aero-spin, or the ever-popular wings.

Toliwe was great at Sky Dancing. They had come in today after dinner, their group of five consisting of Toliwe, Liaei, and three other horticulturist techs, Chwanta, Finnei and Olato.

Olato was the youngest of the techs, just fresh out of school, and his handsome earnest face was sweetened by an easy smile. He was pale gold, a faint and delicate hue, and his smooth skin overlay defined musculature. Olato worked out more than anyone else Liaei knew, and right now he and Toliwe had gone up to the aerials and were swinging by their arms, strong hands gripping the handlebars, on their way to the upper rung advanced SD equipment. Both were dressed in loose-clinging natural fiber sweat pants and t-shirts that rippled in the faint breeze of the overhead air vents.

Liaei and the two women were still on the floor equipment. Chwanta, taller and darker than everyone and lithe like a thing of molten metal—Liaei thought—was finishing the five kilometer run cycle on the runwalk, her limbs flashing deep bronze as she sped in place, arms and elbows pumping, knees contracting and expanding in rhythm, and legs flying. Chwanta’s smooth head, beautifully oval, was thrown back and beads of sweat made tracks along the contours of her scalp, face, neck and chest, sinking into the absorbent fibers of her red sport shirt. Her eyes were closed and she was panting slightly in measured powerful intakes and exhales while the equipment voice-over recited the remaining distance.

“Almost done . . .” she gasped, without opening her eyes, “Hold on just a little, everyone, all right? Don’t go up without me.”

“Sure,” said Liaei who had just finished her stretching routine on the mats followed by a series of balanced extended handstands against the support wall. She was adjusting the band that was holding up her mane of hair into a gathered tail and considered twisting and then tying it up into a bun contraption that she had seen an antique woman do in—of all places—one of the ancient live porn displays.

From the back, Finnei tugged gently at Liaei’s tail of hair, saying in her sonorous voice, “Don’t, just leave it swinging, Li. I like it that way.”

Liaei turned to stare at Finnei with a slightly self-conscious expression. She always felt that way when her physical differences were in any way drawn attention to.

Finnei was one of the most beautiful young women that Liaei knew. Even now after the bit of teasing, as she watched Liaei with her eyes the color of the iridescent surface film of Oceanus water, Liaei could not ignore her other attributes. Her skin appeared pearly silver-rose; an exquisite bone structure underlay her scalp; her nose had a delicately sculpted bridge that gave way to a charming, slightly upturned tip with fine chiseled nostrils. Finnei’s lips were somewhat fuller than average, curved and soft. She was very slim and her black sports top hugged a perfect flat chest with tiny buds of nipples, while underneath were toned hips and long powerfully muscled legs, clad in shorts. Two sensitized metal studs were embedded in the pierced lobes of Finnei’s ears, metal contrasting with pearlescent skin, and the cabochon surfaces danced in a shimmering surface motion with the smallest change of light.

“What?” said Finnei, grinning at Liaei’s sour expression. “I love your hair, Li, really. I wish I had some. Just think of all the curious things I could do with it, build braid geo-structures over my head, organize the individual hair follicles into fractal weaves of high intricacy . . .”

Liaei knew the other was being kind and meant well. But she could never escape the underlying subtle sense that they were all just fondly tolerating her, as though she were a weirdly sentient pet animal or plant—an exotic specimen of another primitive species who was entrusted under their watchful care. Even their pointed kindness grated at Liaei.

And Finnei’s goodwill grated in particular. Liaei did not miss the profound looks that Finnei and Toliwe exchanged with one another when they thought the others were otherwise preoccupied.

Looks of intimacy, the kind that led to Life Bonding.

At the thought of it, a painful wrenching sensation came inside Liaei’s chest, somewhat unlocalized, and caused by nerve spasms which in turn were caused by the thoughts.

Well, why not, Liaei thought, forcing herself to experience the alien pangs. Why not, when it would make perfect sense for Toliwe to bond with someone like Finnei, an older, subtle, wise woman. Serious in some ways, just like him.

They had so much in common, those two. Brilliant, intellectual.

“Done!” panted Chwanta as her runwalk came to an even halt. She jumped off, wiping her forehead and back of the neck, and said, “Give me a moment and then let’s go up.”

Overhead, Toliwe already soared, locked in the wings, his powerful arm and thigh muscles rhythmically pumping the kinetic energy via connecting pulleys into the generators attached at the wing bases to harmonium converters. The harmonium in turn used the kinetic energy to power the movement of the wings which spun like sharp deadly blades and kept the user aloft, treading air. It was the ultimate culmination of the Sky Dance exercise routine.

Once he hit the rhythm, Toliwe could tread air for hours.

Next to Liaei, Finnei looked up, momentarily watching Toliwe with a smile, then waved at Olato who had engaged the aero-spin and was whirling so fast that his golden shape was a blur.

“He can’t see you, silly,” said Chwanta, holding a water-conserving gym towel to her face, still cooling off.

“Ah, but he can,” said Finnei with a mischievous smile that crinkled the skin at the bridge of her delicate nose. “Toliwe says there’s an amazing point of balance during the aero-spin when you can actually learn to spot and focus on a specific landmark, so that there is this weird stereophonic visual awareness of all the points around you, relative to that mark.”

“I don’t think Olato’s that advanced yet,” said Chwanta with a chuckle.

Liaei remained quiet. Indeed she was always somewhat uncomfortable with heights, and aero-spin made her dizzy and even sick, something to do with the balance in her inner ear, she was told. She preferred to stick to the beginner hand-swingers and just watch the others do the more advanced stuff.

And that way she could look at Toliwe, watch him move.

“I am going up,” said Finnei. And then she glanced at Liaei. “Coming, Li?”

Liaei nodded, and then the three of them began to ascend the stair-bars to the SD equipment section.

Reaching the top, Finnei released the final staircase cross-bar and stood up on the platform. She then spread out her hands and took an elegant dive forward through the air and caught the first hand swinger with a sure grip of both hands.

With a gentle hum the exercise machine came alive and started to rotate along its drum axis, so that new handlebars came into view along its edges with the slow initial rotation. Finnei gripped each handlebar with alternating right then left hands and with her motion and distribution of weight the rotation of the hand swinger drum increased until Finnei hung upright rapidly moving her hands in place to keep up.

Eventually the hand swinger moved forward, its cycle near the middle, while a second hand swinger emerged from the overhead compartment, descended in place for the next user.

Liaei’s turn was next.

Her heart beginning to pound in silent terror of the abyss of empty space before her, Liaei forced herself to move forward. There was the remote awareness of the safety nets stretched taut below the aerial portion of the gym, but it was not enough for the irrational ancient part of her. She emptied her mind with a force of will, inhaled deeply and at the same time plunged toward the bars hovering in the air less than a meter before her. For one sickening second she felt the imminent weightless void—the safety nets seemed a thousand meters away below—and then her hands connected with the bars and she landed with a jarring initial shock, holding on in an instinctive death grip. As the instrument began to move, she forced herself again to unclench her grip, and never looking down, grabbed for the first new bar on her right, then the second one on the left, and so on.

Only several meters ahead of her Finnei was effortlessly nearing the end of the cycle and saying something to Olato who had stopped aero-spinning and then to Toliwe who was doing yet another cycle on the wings. There was casual laughter.

They never knew what terror clamored inside Liaei. She made sure each time that they would not know, especially that Toliwe never would.

 

“The difference between modern Life Bonding and the similar ancient social rituals,” said the harmonium, “those inter-personal affirmation rituals of the extinct people whose genetic material was closest to yours—was mostly economics. At first, contracts between individuals were superseded by contracts between families, tribes, even nations. And for the earliest homo sapiens the contract was valid only between a man and a woman pair. It was only after several thousand years had passed that same-sex bonding was legally recognized. And by then the economic rules had relaxed enough that pair and group bonding became the choice of the individuals involved only, regardless of gender, but still based on sex drive and, when applicable, medical conditions.”

Liaei sipped from her mug of morning tea. “So then, this sex-based form of social slavery was abolished and people were free to desire and bond as they wanted?”

“Essentially, yes,” the harmonium responded. “Since economics were no longer based on groups but on individuals. Each individual of the species became a unique resource. As a result, the power of decision belonged to that individual alone. Much of this was concurrent with the evolution of individual rights. Rights guaranteed personal freedoms, and set specific societal safeguarding limits, and in the long run it guaranteed sovereignty of the human unit.”

“I cannot imagine inter-human slavery of any sort,” Liaei said, as the morning light came to fall on her face from overhead through the skylight, painting her skin warm mist-gold, and rendering her hair into metallic fire. “Even now, it is bad enough we are slaves to our own personalities, to duty, to what we believe is right, to resources. But to be enslaved by the idiotic and arbitrary selfish will of another, even if they are a family member? Must have been infuriating, frustrating, impossible. No wonder those poor abused people died so young after such tormented lives.”

“Modern Life Bonding is based on affection and personal compatibility,” the harmonium said. “But it was not so before the sex drive became extinct. The power of hormonal urges was so strong in the ancients that sexual attraction was the primary factor for bonding, and then came all other reasons, even though this was publicly denied by all involved. The union of commitment called marriage, in its brief historical period when it was based on love, resulted in separations, divorces and frequent cheating on the contract, called adultery. The one positive of this supremely brief period was that the cheaters at least were not punished as severely as they had been in the even earlier times when the marriage contract was not based on the love-sex complex but economics. In those dark ages of humanity the contract breakers were often punished by severe social shunning, corporal punishment, mutilation, and even death.”

“What?” said Liaei with a snort. “Death for no longer wanting to be with someone? Oh, Day God. . . .”

At that point someone had come up from behind and touched Liaei on the shoulder. The contact was gentle, but she started, since she was already trembling from what the harmonium had just said.

It was Amhama.

“Ama? What are you doing here? I am still in class,” said Liaei.

Amhama’s normally placid soft face was more tense than normal. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But Riveli needs to see you now.”

“Why? What about? I am not scheduled with her until the day after tomorrow.”

“I know. But this is something that just came up. Riveli will see both of us.”

 

Riveli’s office visit was as clinically dull as usual, except for the somewhat unexpected announcement that Liaei will be assuming her role as the Queen of the Hourglass next year as opposed to the two years she had been told recently.

“Have you had sexual urges, Liaei?” Riveli asked suddenly, after she had asked all the usual questions. “Do you find yourself regularly thinking about physical stimulation? Have you experienced sexually stimulating dreams, or attempted to stimulate yourself in any way?”

The room seemed very chill all of a sudden.

Liaei became motionless.

But Riveli did not seem to notice as she continued, “And do you think more than usual, and more intimately than usual, about any persons you know? For example, any male persons, male techs? Intimate thoughts are natural at this point—”

Liaei, sitting on the edge of the beige fabric-upholstered chair, stared at Riveli in thunderstruck silence, while Amhama clenched her hands in the corner seat.

Riveli shook her head then sighed. “Come now, no need to be shy or embarrassed, my dear, I am your medcare giver. This is all normal for someone in your situation, with your hormonal makeup and genetics.”

“If that’s the case,” Liaei said with an empty face, and in a strange calm voice, “then why ask me these personal prying questions? You say I am normal, so there’s the answer. You know all about me from the regular tech diagnostic reports. You have samples of all my tissues and bodily fluids. Would you like me to void myself now and bring you the most recent—”

“Liaei!” said Amhama. “Please don’t be rude. . . .”

“All right. I won’t. I am sorry, Riveli.”

Her voice was like ice. Liaei got up and without saying another word walked out of the office.

 

News of her rebellion spread. The horticulturist techs who worked with Liaei that week acted and talked to her with such care that Liaei was even more infuriated and embarrassed. In the medicineal cafeteria stares followed her more than usual as she walked between the food selection aisles and seated eaters. When she got home each night, Amhama said nothing but looked at her with what Liaei thought was pity.

Liaei ate her dinner, then cleaned up after the two of them, then immediately went to her room and locked the door after herself. She knew Amhama would sit at her harmonium display in the living room, pretending to be reading despite the sounds of savage ancient music that clearly seeped through the inadequate insulation of the door.

Let her think I am sexually stimulating myself like a primitive in the porn displays, thought, Liaei, standing before her mirror and watching the flow of her hair, loosened and long against her shoulders, the hairs overlying in twin arches her browline, the lashes surrounding her eyes. With her hands she brushed the surface of her arms with its fine almost invisible hair . . . everywhere.

The music thundered around her, and the lights flickered to the savage percussion beat, while a man and woman dead for a million years sang in discord and harmony, wailing out of the past and pulling at the lump in her throat. She tried to imagine them jumping around, torsos twisting, hips gyrating, contorting, naked, twined around one another with virile limbs soaking in wanton perspiration that did not have to be recycled, massage oil and pheromones, while their hair-covered skin mingled and fused in the act of mindless burning desire.

Her personal razor tool, specially made to accommodate the trimming of her long head hair, was in its place in her grooming cabinet. Liaei picked it up, unfolded the safety lock to reveal the short field of micro-blades and looked at it. Then, standing in front of the mirror again, she lifted the foremost lock of hair over her forehead in a taut grip and sheared it off, directly against the skin, leaving a bare spot. The skin which the hair had covered was pristine and paler than the rest of her face.

As she worked, she hummed along with the music in a low sonorous voice.

 

“Liaei! Oh, what have you done to yourself?” Chwanta exclaimed when Liaei came in for her first daily test.

Liaei’s head formerly covered by a luxurious mane of hair was now a bare smooth scalp with the faintest hint of subdermal stubble. Instead of eyebrows, she had pale shadow-lines over her brow areas. Her eyes were red-rimmed because she had pulled out all her eyelashes and the skin was inflamed. And her arms and legs, what was visible from underneath her clothing were bare of hair also.

Liaei shrugged.

Chwanta, who today was wearing a sterile coat and held a harmonium pad, put the pad away on her cluttered desk, and approached Liaei.

It was only then that Liaei was stricken by the comprehension of what she had done. Chwanta’s normally placid expression was replaced by an intense stare and a focus of such concern that Liaei was afraid.

“Why did you do it?” said Chwanta. She put both her hands on Liaei’s shoulders, and just stood waiting.

But Liaei had no overt explanation. To say “I want to look like everyone else” was too trite. She was already pathetic in so many ways that such a blatant call for attention was more humiliating than anything she could imagine.

Liaei smiled, and maybe it was unnatural, but Chwanta did not know her well enough in that sense to judge. Chwanta knew all about her heart rate and estrogen balance and fluid circulation. Chwanta knew that Liaei liked to eat spicy foods and did not fancy heights. But not how she smiled when she was trying to lie.

“Don’t worry,” said Liaei gently, as though she was the one to be consoled. “It will grow back soon enough. I am trying to see what it’s like to look like all the rest of you, for a change. Yeah, I know it’s a silly fashion phase, but just humor me for now.”

“Oh, Li,” said Chwanta. “You are beautiful and your natural growth of hair is lovely, and you are fine just exactly the way you were formed—perfect, in fact. If anything is bothering you, if you want to talk about anything at all, you know you can talk to me, all right?”

“Sure.”

Chwanta exhaled in relief. “All right, then, and you look cute, girl!” She drew her tickling fingers over Liaei’s bare scalp.

“Thanks.”

The rest of the daily test went on as usual. Chwanta took organ function measurements and when all was done, waved at Liaei, saying she’ll see her later tonight. “Have fun with the harmonium’s history of gender differences lecture.”

Liaei nodded with the same soft smile, and then headed to see Toliwe. Harmonium time came later; for now she had other plans.

 

Toliwe was in the development lab on the 78th floor of the medicineal, where he normally checked Liaei’s breathing patterns and lung capacity. Liaei walked into the room noiselessly, more self-conscious than usual. She did not look at ecosystems of transparent glassoid which lined the walls, and where various living plant and animal cells grew in gaseous fluid cocktails of mauve and amber and green hues under a variety of illumination.

She looked at the man who stood with his back to her, focused intently on his task of processing genetic material through micro-filtering equipment.

Toliwe had on the requisite sterile coat, and held a bouquet of fine transparent tubes in one hand, delicately playing each tube with an agile finger when needed, which extended to various living mass containers on the work surface. With the other hand he directed a beam of harmonium-tuned energy from a fine pointing device which activated and shaped the arrangement of genetic material inside living cells.

Liaei watched his silhouette, the smooth head, strong but slender neck, coat fabric covering wide tapering shoulders.

A spasm of nerves squeezed her throat, but she forced herself to speak.

“Hi . . . I’m early.”

Toliwe’s shape froze for a moment, then without turning around he continued the complex set of motions with his hands, saying, “I’ll be with you in a moment. Go on and sit down.”

Liaei obeyed, and walked over to the other side of the lab where the lung machine was, and sat down in one of the chairs. With movement she felt the air wash over her naked scalp, and it was an odd feeling. She was still not used to it, the cold and vulnerability.

As she sat waiting for him, her arms itched. She’d removed hair from every possible surface of her body. Her eyelids itched also, but she knew not to touch them so as not to induce an infection. Idle moments poured in an endless stream.

Toliwe finally came around, tired and reserved as always, carrying his usual data pad. Only this time, seeing Liaei he stopped. His handsome face did not show any significant change of expression, but Liaei knew, because she had watched him so closely for so long, that when he stilled like that it meant he was paying attention.

“What happened to your hair?” Toliwe asked.

Liaei laughed and shrugged. “I got tired of it. Wanted to try another look. What do you think?”

“Oh,” he said.

“So, what do you think?”

“Fine either way. I like it, but I think your head of hair looked just as good. It was natural to you.”

“Oh.” This time she said it.

Toliwe was staring at her, it seemed. Or maybe not. Maybe he was looking blankly, as he usually did.

Liaei felt cold gripping her, nervous clenching, spasms in her gut.

“Go ahead and grab the breathing tube,” Toliwe said after another brief moment, and turned to engage the lung machine. It was going to be the extent of his reaction, Liaei realized.

As the harmonium energy field came alive with a hum that was just out of human hearing range, but giving off vibrations that were still tactile, Liaei held the long pale tube end and breathed into it rhythmically, the best she could. She was feeling short of breath and somewhat lightheaded.

The data drum began to turn and Toliwe observed the incoming data dots, then frowned slightly. “Your exhalations are weaker than normal today,” he said. “Are you feeling okay?”

His cool voice struck Liaei with a jarring impact, and more spasms echoed in her gut and chest.

She forced herself with a superhuman effort to relax, and started taking deeper breaths, so as to produce richer exhalations.

Toliwe glanced at her a couple of times with his beautiful dark eyes. For the rest of the test he said nothing.

 

“As the Queen of the Hourglass, you will need to master the art of sensual movement, which is one of the key elements of seduction,” said the harmonium.

Liaei sat half-listening, one hand propping up her cheek, and the tips of her fingers brushing absentmindedly against the faint stubble at the edge of her scalp. All of her body surfaces from which she had removed hair itched, and now she wished she had not removed her animalistic coating. Only a day had passed and already it was growing back. And her new habit was to feel the stubble, to run her fingers against the growth on her head, arms, and legs.

“Since you like to dance, Liaei,” the harmonium said, “you will probably enjoy this portion of your sexuality education.”

The display screen came alive.

“Unfortunately we have no other records of real ancient sex dance, except for this one synthetic digitalization of something called belly dance. And it is also regrettable that the image used in the animation is not of a homo sapiens female but an artificially generated composite creature with some of the sexually prized proportions of the female human body but the head and hindquarters of an extinct mammalian animal called a cat. Try to imagine the rest of the body as human as you observe the very brief display.”

“Oh, great,” said Liaei.

A rhythmic percussion and wailing wind instrument soundtrack came on, and the display crackled in broken-up frames of the million-year-old recording. Bluish-green background took on rudimentary perspective as a female cartoon creature with greatly exaggerated spherical breasts, pronounced recessed umbilical cord area, and round hips began to undulate. The feline head of the image had long eyelashes that it batted over great unnatural round eyes, and it swished its tail in curving arcs as it moved. Back and forth the hips ground, covered with a thin low-slung belt of shining material and tassels, while the strange giant mammaries jiggled under their presumed weight. The creature waved its plump arms in delicate soft curves, and clicked some kind of tiny snapping instrument with the fingertips. As the performance ground to a halt, the cat woman pouted with her swollen human female lips that grew in size, nearly filling up the display area, and were colored the typical red. She made a kiss sound, then flicked a pink tongue provocatively.

The display faded.

Liaei snorted. “You really expect me to do something like that belly dance?”

“Try it when you get home,” the harmonium said.

 

“Liaei, girl, aren’t you going to have something to eat? I made us a spicy amaranth and corn medley, with leeks and freshly ground pepper, homelab made. I cultivated the pepper DNA myself just last week, and it worked out wonderfully, cayenne—”

Amhama’s voice came from the other side of the locked door to Liaei’s room. Liaei had locked it from the inside, and now stood before the tall mirror. She replied, “I’m not hungry yet, thanks! A little later, Ama!”

“All right, but don’t wait too long because it tastes better freshly warm, not reheated. The full strength of the pungent spice has been released and the leftovers will be of weaker potency—”

The window to her bedroom was open, and the Day God-gilded Basin walls were shining bright, and reflecting upon the narrow visible strip of Oceanus. Arid wind moved the pale fabric curtains, and the light and movement reflected in the mirror, in which Liaei’s backlit form was a dark silhouette.

“Music, 3/4 measure, balanced percussion beat, rate very slow to medium fast to slow fadeout, wind and strings, no voices.”

Sound filled the room, swelling out of the air itself, it seemed.

Liaei watched her own silhouette moving with grace to the beginning notes. She removed her clothes, swaying with the sound, gently, trying to keep her body fluid and confident. When she was completely nude, she looked at her own dark silhouette and its natural curves. Without the usual curtain of hair over her head, for the first time she saw the true balance of her body. The proportions were mathematically pleasing, with shoulders and hips being almost parallel, and the narrow inward-curving line of waist was cinched parallel to her slender line of neck. Narrow and wide, in aesthetic balance. Her legs, when drawn together, tapered into equally narrow feet, which echoed the neck and head dimensions.

Liaei squinted her eyes, relaxing her imagination, and a visual gestalt formed, of two masses, vaguely triangular or even circular, one on top of the other. It was the prehistoric mathematical symbol of infinity flipped on its side.

And if she squinted and blinked, it approximated the same general proportions of the ancient device called the hourglass.

 

Toliwe seemed more remote than usual to Liaei. If it were possible, he was avoiding her, and yet she knew it was not the case, not with someone like Toliwe. He was forthright and stubborn and wise, and he never shirked facing his duty and responsibility—such as herself.

At their regular checkup appointments, Toliwe was reserved and polite, when needed, gentle, and he seemed capable of facing her calmly. And yet there was something very subtle, a new barrier between them. Sometimes it was a mere difference of seconds—moments fewer spent in her company than possible.

Yes, they would still meet at the gym, sometimes with a group of other techs, sometimes just the two of them, but Liaei noticed now that Toliwe had learned to be impeccable in never crossing the line between a professional relationship and friendship.

Liaei’s hair was coming back. She now had a soft fuzzy centimeter-high buzz growth on her head, pale flax. Her lashes and brows too were regrowing, coming in a bit bristly and not as soft as they had originally been.

“You’re like a brush, you realize?” Amhama said often, patting her on the hair. “I still don’t understand why you cut it off in the first place, but I suppose it is a good thing you did it once, so now you know how it is.”

“No problem,” said Liaei in a flippant banter. “My next thing is to get my earlobes pierced, like Finnei.”

Amhama smiled, shaking her head.

Thus Liaei had learned to placate Amhama with the semblance of youthful rebellion. It was easier to act out than what was really inside.

 

It was early spring of the year of the Day God 51,003 Post Harmonium, about 4 months after Liaei had cut off her hair for no clear reason, that the psychological truce between Liaei and Toliwe reached a crisis.

They were walking along the crystallized and calcified shoreline of the Oceanus, salt encrusted between the water and the land like pale exquisite lace. All around the Basin walls towered, filling the vista, and directly in zenith stood the golden swollen light of the Day God, poured into all of sky. The Oceanus wind reeked of toxic matter as it wafted inland.

Toliwe was several steps ahead of her, and Liaei walked with her gaze down, watching the sharp rocks and the occasional partially buried remains of old water pipes under her sport shoes—rocks and boulders striated orange, rose, cream. The wind was warm, and it swept them in irregular gusts, taking Liaei’s breath away momentarily. On one of the slopes a jagged, razor-thin meandering line of white fire marked The River That Flows Through The Air.

The pier that was the spot of their usual exercise was only a few meters away.

It was at that point that Toliwe, glancing sideways to his right, and somewhat stiffer than usual in his movements, suddenly tripped and lost his footing. He didn’t make a sound, only slid down the gravel incline, stopping only several steps away from the thick inky water, right in the middle of the pale crystalline salt growth on the edges that separated the water from the land.

“Toliwe!” exclaimed Liaei. She scrambled after him down the slope.

Toliwe was already up on his feet, hands covered with pale salt, and was shaking off the seat of his jeans, and limping. His bronze scalp glistened with sudden moisture. When he turned his face toward her, Liaei saw him wince with pain.

“Damn . . .” he said. “Liaei, I am sorry, looks like I am not going to be able to do the stretching balance routine with you today.”

“Are you okay?” she said, knowing he was not okay but needing to say it out loud. She leaned toward him and then crouched to observe his right foot, already swollen at the ankle and the torn leg of his jeans.

“I don’t think anything’s broken,” he replied. “Probably just a bad sprain. Hurts to step on it, so you’ll need to help me walk up the slope.”

“Of course . . .” She locked his right arm with hers, stiff in all of her body at the contact, and afraid to press, afraid to feel what she was holding, and yet his arm was firm and warm. They walked slowly with measured steps up the incline, while small rocks came clattering from under their feet. Once on the pier, Liaei helped him sit down on the warmed ground, with his right foot stretched out in front of him, elevated slightly.

She stood away, releasing his arm, releasing the strange warm solid bond, and just stood there, watching him as he pressed the voice comm on his datapad and requested medical assistance from the medicineal. He spoke in a controlled level voice, not giving any indication of his true discomfort, and only his facial expression seemed more grim than usual, facial muscles nearly frozen, the black pupils of his eyes dilated in pain.

When he was done, Toliwe looked up at her and made the effort of a grin. “They’ll be here soon,” he said. “Meanwhile, why don’t you go ahead and do the routine as usual? Pretend I am doing it too. Here, let me first set the recorder to take your heart rate measurements—”

Liaei stared at him, watching him struggle to seem normal. “Oh, come on,” she said, frowning. “I can’t do it now, now seeing you hurt!”

He winced again, his eyes narrowing, and then lifted a hand to shield his vision from the blazing orange light from overhead.

“Why not?” he said. “We are kind of stuck here, wasting time, and you might as well use it to your advantage.”

Liaei felt her head spin with a sudden wildness. She crouched again, just centimeters away from him, so that they were seeing eye to eye and he did not have to make the extra effort to look up into the brightness of the Day God. For several long moments they stared.

Toliwe’s expression was unreadable, but if she could smell fear, she was smelling it now.

“Do you know,” she said, “that it would be a little crazy of me to be doing Fua motions with you like this? Do you really think I am such a quaint specimen of old DNA, so different from you, that even though we cannot technically mate you can discount me as a person? Liaei, jump, breathe, walk, dance! Liaei, do the Fua routine like a good little primitive bitch!”

“What do you mean . . .”

But she continued, coming down on her knees in front of him, then slumping and sitting down with her legs folded. “Don’t you think of me in any other way than something weird that you grew in your lab?”

The stench of his fear was rising in her mind. She was not sure if it was his or her own, but she could not stop.

“Liaei,” he tried, “I never imagined this—”

“That’s because you only imagined the datapad readout, excellent progress, eh, Toliwe? I am doing so well, and you are so proud of me!”

“Of course I am proud of you!” For the first time his voice lost its calm and he made a movement with his body toward her, forgetting his injury, then winced in pain. His eyes had an expression of shock.

Liaei sat before him, her palms gripping the warm ground, while tears started blinding her, started to run in torrents down her face, and the wind swept dust into her eyes.

“You are proud of Liaei, the survivor, the viable Queen of the Hourglass, who will be fertile when the time comes and who will bear a child and enrich the gene pool, and—”

“Oh, no, Liaei!” he was speaking fast now, his hands—strong and firm and warm—pressing down her shoulders, pressing hard. “Listen to me, you are really upset because I think there’s a misunderstanding between us, right? Liaei? What is it that you think that I think about you—or not think—I mean, I am not making any sense. You have strong feelings, you are young and intense and your hormonal levels are—”

“Oh yes, that’s right!” she interrupted. “I knew you were going to mention hormones at one point or another! Well guess what? I am not just the sum of interacting chemicals and genetic soup, but a sentient being! And yes, I feel! There’s joy and sorrow, and there’s this other—this utter crap. Unlike you who are like this rock on which you are sitting, so stable, so intellectually and physically advanced, so wise and confident and beyond me. Hell, you have a million or so years of evolution on me!”

He was shaking his head, frown lines and pain lines mixed up in his face. “Oh Liaei, I am so sorry—”

She was floating away from him, cold and remote, looking through a curtain of tears. “Are we so different?” she said as she sobbed. “Are we like two different species? Show me your body, please, Toliwe, please . . . Let me see what you are, a man? I am a woman, and you are a man, how can we be so different and remote? How can you not feel? Why aren’t you drawn to me, not even with the tiniest bit of something, some stupid chemical in your bloodstream—”

Speaking thus, she reached out with her hands, putting them to his chest, then drew the shaking palm of her right hand to stroke him, feeling the curve of body, the warmth.

But he took her hand in his, firmly and gently, and she realized that the fear she was smelling in him was pity.

Toliwe was looking at her, his eyes like dark jewels, moist, she realized, also like her own, his beautiful face tragic.

“You do know that what you are asking and insisting is a form of interpersonal harassment, Liaei? It would be a form of pressure, illegal and wrong, to force yourself on another individual, and if you were anyone else, it would be so. But—”

He paused, and then his grip tightened around her fingers, and then just as suddenly he was gentle, and he put his hands on the clasp of his jeans.

Liaei stared, terrified, as Toliwe undid the front of his clothing, then undid the pale layer of underclothing, exposing himself to her. She looked and saw what she knew to find there. A small blunt protuberance of flesh, skin almost colorless, washed out by the strong daylight, the organ flaccid and rudimentary. Not a trace of pubic hair. Not a trace of movement or life.

“Is this what you wanted to see?” he whispered, then slowly covered himself up again, and closed up the opening in his jeans. “I am sorry with all my heart, with all my ability to feel as a human being. I cannot feel what you want me to feel, for you or anyone. No means to respond, no way to give you what you want, what you have every right to have. I belong to a dying race, Liaei. The physical excitement is so faint, that it’s like an echo. Yes, I feel something. But not enough to even name it. A shadow of desire.”

“A shadow of desire . . .” she echoed him, and laughed and wept at the same time, using the back of her hand to wipe the running mess of her face.

And then he took her by the shoulders and drew her close, and he ran his hand through her short pale gold hair, that was now just covering her ears.

“I can feel intellectual affection, I can fall in love, but it is a thing of the mind,” he whispered near her ear. “It is like a complex mathematical construct, wherein the physical contact of flesh is a tiny single-digit variable, and all the rest—affinity, thoughts, life experience, personality gestalt, even gestures and motion and appearance and tone of voice—all of it matter to create the desire to Bond. It is a desire of experience, not of a physical sensation. Does that make sense? A desire for shared time.”

“Shared time . . . Common time, yes. I should understand this, being the Queen of the Hourglass, should I not?” she whispered suddenly, pausing in comprehension. Her voice was thick with misery, tears. It cracked, and then she coughed, sputtering against Toliwe’s plain fiber shirt.

“Soon . . .” he said in his softest and most gentle tone. It was cryptic, yet not quite.

“You mean, soon the Clock King will be the one for me, to make the savage Bond and share Common Time with?” said Liaei. “While you and Finnei make your serene Bond with only a shadow of desire . . .”

“In a way . . .” he replied, watching her with kindness, and she was not sure whether he answered her first or second question.

It did not particularly matter. At that point an ambulance car approached, hovering a couple of meters over the crumbling sand and salt dust of the pier and leaving a smooth swept trail, and Liaei sat back, to give Toliwe space, and to allow the techs to assist him.

But the tension wall between them was now broken, and in the breaching of it, Liaei found a peculiar combination of newfound distance and proximity. The distance would be eternal, a dividing line of lack of common will. While the proximity was also permanent now, an understanding of sorts.

It was an understanding across genetic time.

 

Liaei menstruated for the first time just a month before her fifteenth birthday. She had been trained in what to expect and still it was traumatic. She woke up and used the voidroom, and there was blood.

“Ama!” she cried, holding the voidroom door partway closed for privacy, and looking out into the corridor through a narrow crack. “It’s happened, Ama! Red discharge! What do I do? Where are the pads? Oh, Ama!”

Amhama felt a moment of panic herself. Putting her night robe on, she hurried to the hallway and rummaged through their closet for the specially made soaking pads, formulated just for Liaei’s needs. Holding a couple, Amhama thrust them around the door and through the opening. Liaei’s hand snaked forward, grabbing them.

“Are you sure it’s blood?” said Amhama. “And are you sure it’s coming from your vaginal area and not from an injury somewhere else? It’s okay, sweet, just trying to be very certain here. It is wonderful if it’s so! Congratulations! Oh, what a wonder this is!”

Fumbling and rustling sounds came from the other side of the door. Then, “Yes, I am sure . . . what else would it be? Red fruit juice?”

On the other side of the door Amhama laughed, trembling, rubbing one thin arm with the other, in a peculiar gesture of self-consolation. There was joy and amazement and fulfillment of many years of work and not daring to hope, and then expectation. Amhama felt as proud as if she had been the girl’s mother in the ancient genetic and gestational sense.

But, standing in the half-light of the hallway, thin and pale gold, Amhama looked just as she did fourteen years ago. Those times of intimate motherhood were long past. Such physical experience was alien to Amhama. Her glacial rate of aging was a reminder of the difference between her and her heart’s child who will live and die in such an ephemeral span.

Now, it was almost time to let go.

 

“I’ve made arrangements, and you will be assuming your role of the Queen of the Hourglass next week,” said Riveli in a far more gentle tone than she’d used for years.

Liaei and Amhama were seated in stiff silence in the chief nurse’s office.

“How do you feel, Liaei?” Riveli continued. She was seated at her desk and as always observing her harmonium display as she talked. Liaei wondered if this was merely a safety barrier in her communication style or whether Riveli was indeed so infernally busy that she could never take a moment away from her minutiae of work and make consistent eye contact like a normal person.

“Fine,” Liaei said.

“Good. Do you feel you are ready?”

Liaei’s eyes focused somewhere just ahead of her, staring at a spot on the wall, while her lips moved into a smile. She took a deep breath, exhaled loudly, then said, “Yes.”

“Excellent. I’ve contacted the Committee up at Edge City, and we think it is the right time to proceed with the project. My colleague up there, horticulturist medic Vioma, will take over my supervisory duties and you will be well cared in her charge. Once you get there, they will train you briefly in the Protocol and then you will become the Queen of the Hourglass.”

For the first time Amhama spoke up. “How will Liaei travel to Edge City?”

Riveli stood up and faced them.

“You know about the risks of inter-city travel. It’s a sterile wasteland out there, filled with bio-hazard. We cannot exactly risk putting her in an air transport, not all the way up the Basin slope.”

Amhama frowned. “Why not?” she said. “What’s wrong with the air transports? I know we use them mostly for lugging cargo up and down the Basin, but you’d think in this important case they could equip one with a temporary habitat and facilities?”

“They are failing. The air transports.”

“What?”

Riveli started to pace. Amhama and Liaei stared at her with curious attention.

“It’s not been generally announced so as not to generate public worry, but there have been some foodstuff delivery issues, and some water refinery shipment problems. The Basin City water purification plant had a transport crash halfway up the slope. When they examined what was left of it, the harmonium field was gone, completely lifeless. And there’s nothing they can do but trash the equipment when that happens. And so,” continued Riveli, “they’ve had to trash fifteen transports since this winter. That’s an unheard of failure rate, not with harmonium-powered equipment.”

“Oh, my . . .” said Amhama.

Liaei snorted. “We’re all falling apart, aren’t we?” she said.

“So then how do we get Liaei up there safely?”

Riveli thought for a moment. “She’ll take a police patrol car. Yes, I know it is not ideally equipped to hover at such a steep angle as the Basin slope, but if going slowly, and well-fortified with emergency supplies and plenty of water, she’ll be fine. In fact, the safest course is to follow the waterpipe canal and then the River all the way up the slope.”

“Goodness, that might take days,” Amhama said.

But Liaei spoke up. “I’d like that,” she said. “I will finally get to see The River That Flows Through The Air.”

 

“I am all packed,” Liaei announced to the harmonium. “Not that many personal items in my box, mostly datapad and audio library components and extra power packs. A couple of pretty self-decorative presents from the horticulturists and Amhama, for my fifteenth birthday. My cool weather jacket, even though it is hot here now. Extra underwear and . . . pads.”

“Sounds like you are prepared,” replied the harmonium.

Liaei shrugged. “Prepared for not sure what. But yes, I am.”

“Then the last lesson from this node in Basin City will be about intimacy, and about fear.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is a natural thing to be afraid of the unknown,” said the harmonium. “And another entity, a person you have never met, is an unknown. When you come together, unless you trust that no harm will befall you, you will not be receptive. We will practice an exercise that focuses your thoughts on the calm and acceptance that might be needed at that point. First, imagine a bowl of water, smooth and placid and perfectly clear. . . .”

 

The next morning, in the bright amber sky glow, many of them came to see her off.

“Take good care of her, Ginadi,” said Amhama, releasing Liaei from a long close embrace during which she stroked the back of Liaei’s head and whispered something, while moisture ran down her face. She was speaking to the patrolman who would drive Liaei up the Basin slope. It was the same police officer who had watched the streets of the night City, stopping to wave occasionally to Amhama when she worked the various night shifts over the years. She had requested him specifically for this task, because she felt she could trust him. He was a stranger, yet familiarity was a thing of degrees. And over the many nights she had seen his calm reliable solid face from the other side of the car’s security glass, Amhama sensed that she need have no fear.

Ginadi was a tall, large-built man, approximately Amhama’s age, with muscled arms that showed through the fabric of his gray uniform. But ages were hard to tell, Liaei knew. They all looked gently alike, these people of a human species separate from herself.

“Don’t worry,” he replied, squinting in the bright morning glare of the Day God, watching Amhama with dark warm eyes. “She will be fine, I promise. The back cargo space has been converted into a rest bunk and the closet’s a voidroom, and there is plenty of food and water. She can use the rear harmonium port to pass the time. Or she can watch the scenery. We’ll make as many stops as necessary.”

“Thank you,” said Amhama. “I wish I could be there with you, but I will slow you down.”

Ginadi nodded.

Liaei knew it was true because the police cruiser could not support more than two people and be remotely efficient—not with all the habitat modifications in the rear cargo area. And not when it will be climbing up a 25 degree and higher slope for most of the journey and would have to keep its tail end from bumping the uneven and sharp rock formations of the ground.

The horticulturists from the medicineal—the closest she had to a real family, Liaei realized—stood just behind Amhama. Chwanta was still wearing her sterile lab coat, since she had come directly from a night shift to see Liaei. Chwanta patted and then tousled Liaei’s already longer than shoulder-length hair, and said, “You are beautiful, Queen. Remember that.”

Finnei and Toliwe were next. Liaei understood that they must have discussed the significance of this gesture beforehand, because Toliwe said, “We have something for you,” while at the same time Finnei proffered a small metallic gift box decorated in a bright harmonium field pattern that danced in illusory motion around the center and rotated along the box’s perimeter.

“Open it later,” Finnei said. “Open it when you get bored with the scenery.”

I will never get bored with the scenery, Liaei wanted to retort.

But at that point Mara, the machine tech, pulled up from the back of their group and smoothly extended a limb from her chassis. It was holding a new datapad attachment. “This is an expanded memory music player, the latest model,” said Mara’s lively pseudo-living voice. “So that you can always dance, Liaei. It’s been a pleasure!”

Liaei bit her lip, holding back something that was breaking inside of her. That except for her dear Amhama, Mara would act the most human of them all. . . .

Ginadi cleared his throat and then checked his right armband. He set a custom chronometer to start measuring at that point, which would divide their multi-day journey into appropriate rest periods. “We should be on our way.”

 

Whoever said the Pacific Basin was only a toxic wasteland, had not been faced with the grandeur of the near upright walls of this deepest and likely most ancient of earth’s planetary craters.

One had to imagine the greatest mountain range, its invisible peaks lost in a horizon line that was so far overhead that it amounted to heaven. Beyond that dissipated edge, the remaining portion of sky was all solar orange radiance, a burning atmospheric mass of deflected radiation and particles of airborne matter, a soup of pale amber cream that somehow blinded the eye.

As the police cruiser left the outskirts of Basin City, Liaei, sitting in the front passenger seat next to Officer Ginadi, stared at the receding familiar landmarks. There went the concrete water refinery domes, the tall city center with the medicineal building towering above many others, the crisscrossing network of suspended streets, suspended aqueducts, various residential and shopping complexes, everything dotted by blazing panels of light that were solar energy collectors plugged into the harmonium systems all around the city.

There, if she blinked, she could see the glare of light reflecting in the windows of the multi-floor complex where she and Amhama had lived for the past fifteen years.

And beyond everything in the receding distance of the horizon was the oil slick stripe of the Oceanus. A black metallic snake, it rested, mirroring the Day God.

Road traffic was light as usual, consisting of occasional city buses, freight transports, and personal units. They had taken the wide main street that ran alongside the grayish concrete and metal waterline, as wide in circumference as the street itself.

“See that?” said Ginadi, as they swept onward, hovering about half a meter above street level, at a precise speed and height limit for this particular city area. “Can you guess how many cubic tons of purified water it carries?”

“Hmm, I used to know this,” Liaei replied. “I believe it varies seasonally, doesn’t it?”

Ginadi shook his head in reproach, eyes steady on the road as he steered the two pilot rods in manual mode. “What, they don’t teach you the basics in school any more? It’s thirty cubic tons per hour on the average, which is pretty low volume for this pipe diameter. And yes, it varies from the low of about twenty cubic tons in the summer to a high of about forty during the highest precipitate winters.”

“Sorry that I don’t know this off the top of my head. And I was taught in a special school,” Liaei retorted. She stared at him with a beginning frown, but then noticed lines of humor at his lips. Officer Ginadi was teasing her.

The main street and the waterline meandered past natural land structures around which they had been built, with fewer and fewer human-made structures on both sides, while the angle of the slope incline started to increase, until they left the city limits, marked by nothing other than a sign and a small border station.

As they approached the border station, Ginadi talked to them on the voice comm, and without even slowing down they were cleared to proceed. Liaei saw two officers wave at them from the rounded transparent windows in a small three story concrete tower.

Since hardly anyone ever left Basin City, they were now the only ones on the road.

On both sides of them, reddish sedimentary rock, striated layers, rust, amber, rose, teal, sienna. No earth, no soil, thought Liaei. Such was only to be found in enclosed city parks and in the greenhouses where under pristine climate-controlled conditions the horticulturists grew plantlife for food and other organic consumption.

Except for microbes in the atmospheric cocktail distributed by the winds and the almost non-existent rainfall, there was no life.

The cruiser top and windows were closed for comfort, and the air conditioning and oxygenator and humidifier were on, the comfortable mixture coming like a breath of life through the vents. Otherwise, Liaei knew, they would be bathed by very dry rarified air at this point, the kind that normally made her lightheaded and gave her a sinus headache. But at least at this distance the stink of Oceanus would be almost gone. She was not sure if that was such a good thing since in many ways the Oceanus was home. She had lived along its mineral-encrusted shoreline all her life and it was a familiar bloated monster of inky-black poison and life, a paradox.

So long, Oceanus, she thought. Then she turned around and kept her eyes on the rising way before them.

The road that had been a city street was now a faded and unmarked strip of dust-blown ashen pavement, cracked in many places, as it crawled upward only a couple of meters on the left side of the waterline.

The great water pipe itself, a monstrous concrete worm burrowing above ground, rested within circular support rings of black metal alloy. The supports were placed at regular intervals along the pipeline. They were anchored in place on the nether side by subterranean posts in the sloping ground like giant nails driven deep into the rock flesh of the Basin.

If one looked far enough overhead, the worm narrowed as it receded in the distance, slivering upward, curving occasionally, meandering along natural formations. And the support rings running along its surface appeared to be the annelid segments of the creature.

And then, at some point up the slope, the worm ended, and a line of reflected fire began.

They were about a day’s travel distance from it.

 

Liaei watched the monotony of the sienna and rust rock coloration bathed in bright Day God glare as the world on both sides of them had become a single massive slope. As they ascended higher and higher there was a new sensation, a frequent popping pressure in her ears.

She glanced occasionally and shyly at the rather quiet Officer Ginadi next to her, who engaged the autopilot function, and now occupied himself by watching data on the harmonium display field. He looked up only to make sure they were indeed on course and hovering above the smoother safety of the ancient road and not the sharp boulders just meters away. Were the cruiser to scrape its bottom due to a miscalculation in hover altitude and angle, at least they would not attain as much damage on pavement as they would on irregular rock.

The road was ancient indeed. At one point historically, Liaei knew, people had traveled up and down it by foot, or by manually held sedan chair. No wheeled or other road-contacting vehicles were allowed, because if such a vehicle’s braking mechanism failed, it would roll down out of control due to the high incline, and would cause an unpredictable amount of damage to others on the road below it. Thus, all traffic had been pedestrian.

Or maybe not, she remembered her lessons suddenly. Around the time the road was being built in various stages there had still been some domestic non-human species of animals, mostly quadruped, and they had been used as pack-animals and cargo carriers—a form of intra-species slavery.

No wonder they were now extinct. As technology developed and the world went on, nearsighted homo sapiens did not find enough value in other species and thus did not provide for them. Since, in that dawn of sentience, the health hazards of eating meat increased and compassion slowly flowered and overtook cruelty, the designation of animals as food became irrelevant. And companion animals, the few fortunate non-food species that had served the dubious purpose of pets, were also eventually left to dissipate as an unnecessary luxury in a world of dwindling resources.

They had been marvelous terrestrial aliens, Liaei thought.

We ate them, we tortured and abused them as consumable things, and we abandoned them in the end. And in all our wisdom and profundity of logic and thought we never did learn to properly value those beings, thought Liaei, those wondrous true aliens on our own planet, for their own sake—for the sake of the miracle of life that they stood for, just as much as we did. Sentience had not been enough to guide us. It had been the people of my own genetic makeup, responsible for the loss. And now, for these modern homo sapiens, who do know better than to use and enslave others, it is too late. These human beings live in a world where they are the only animals left. And I too, I live along with them.

And as the pavement flew by, eternally falling in an optical illusion before her eyes, Liaei imagined ghosts out of the depths of millennia, millions walking up and down that road, biped and quadruped, burdened and not, of their free will and—on behalf of someone else—without. They trudged, clad in pale cotton that covered flesh of all hues, while the Day God rose and set above them millions of times, and at the same time gradually swelled to fill most of the sky until the sky held no more ancient blue, only gold.

And the Oceanus, it had stood closer to the top edge and higher then, probably almost at this same exact point which they passed now along the slope. And there was no Basin City. . . .

“Hungry?” said Ginadi, interrupting her reverie. “Almost midday meal time.”

Liaei glanced his way, nodding, then added, “Sure.”

“Then let’s stop for a stretch and lunch.”

The cruiser had to be decelerated very carefully. And then—since in motion it had been positioned at a slight opposite angle to the slope, to correct the extreme leaning-back effect they would have had to experience otherwise—it had to be made parallel to the slope, and then the hover altitude was diminished as it gently plastered itself closer and closer against the road.

Liaei and Ginadi were nearly lying back in their chairs when the cruiser finally slipped to a stop and its parking grip-supports were extended to attach to the pavement.

The air systems turned off and the doors came open with a slight hiss, then warm and thin air came to engulf them. It beat at Liaei’s face with shocking impact, tangling her hair.

“We’re sitting in the middle of the road,” she said.

“Right,” said the officer in his usual calm voice, with a touch of humor. “You think anyone would mind that we’re blocking their way?”

Liaei laughed.

But then he added, “Careful, by the way, if you’re afraid of heights. As you stand up and get out of the car, move slowly, and don’t look back immediately. Get a feel for the ground first.”

He wasn’t kidding. As Liaei got out of the cruiser, she was buffeted by the dry wind and an immediate overpowering vertigo. She remembered the gym back at Basin City, how the aerial exercises made her weak and faint in the pit of her stomach at first, and how she breathed to control the terror.

Breathing deeply in a similar fashion, she stood up, the non-slip soles of her shoes gripping the road. And then slowly she turned around, extending her arms at both sides a little way, for natural balance.

An impossible vista was before her.

The world was falling away into a rust-orange haze, dissolving in the distance.

Down, down, down.

All perspective lines receded. Rocks that were huge boulders and cliffsides, when they passed by, appeared tiny handfuls of pebbles far below. The paved road behind the cruiser was a stripe that slipped away along the pipe waterline, curved occasionally, and disappeared in the incalculable distance, narrowing to a point.

They were now too far to see Basin City or even the Oceanus, in the atmospheric haze.

Liaei had grown so light and weightless and bereft of anchor that she knew that if she were to take another step down the road, she would fall, then roll down the slope forever. . . .

With a force of will Liaei swallowed to loosen the constriction in her throat, then turned her back on the road. As a result of her movement she heard tiny pebbles crunch under her feet, then heard them clatter and roll away, down, down, down. . . .

Inside the cruiser, Ginadi was making a call to the City, to report on their progress. He was talking with his mouth full, holding a half-eaten pre-packaged vegetable roll sandwich in one hand, and gesticulating with the other as he attempted to describe something about hover propulsion to the party on the other end of the harmonium link. He stopped only to offer Liaei another sandwich, a small jar of creamy white dipping sauce, and a chilled drink container.

Liaei ate, then went to the back to use the tiny voidroom, lingered for a moment next to her spare luggage rack, wondering if she should open the gift box from Toliwe and Finnei. But no, she was not bored yet. And she was somehow unwilling to find out what it contained. And so she returned to the front seat.

 

Ginadi ended the call and they were once again on their way.

 

While the Day God continued its cycle in the sky, toward late afternoon, they had stopped twice more, and soon it would be dark. With the approach of twilight and falling away of bright light, the colors gold and orange rust began to fade, while the Basin walls darkened and deep browns and blues took the place of ambers. With the departure of focus, Liaei was nodding off, hypnotized by the relentless optical illusion of the falling road.

They finally stopped for the night when the road was completely dark and only the twin rows of five headlights of the cruiser cut through the ebony thickness of night.

“We could keep going, but it is no longer as safe,” said Ginadi, landing them smoothly. “And you are far too important to risk.”

“What about you?” asked Liaei in a sleepy voice, unable to repress a smile.

“Me? I’m terribly important, of course. But I am not going to be the Queen of the Hourglass like you, kid,” he said. “Now, off to the back, with you. Get some rest for tomorrow. Oh, and here’s an extra sandwich. Chew—helps to clear out the pressure in your ears.”

“Can we please have some tea first?”

He grumbled about demanding Queens and heating water at this hour, but then, grinning, rummaged in their supply bag, and plugged in the small water pot.

Liaei got her hot soothing mug and took it with her to sip as she got comfortable in the strange narrow bunk bed.

When she finally slept, she dreamt of an Oceanus full of aromatic tea, and on its surface were floating ancient temporal devices, clocks and hourglasses and bits of unknown machinery, half submerged in warm amber liquid that all started running down an endless downhill slope.

In the morning, what woke Liaei was the sound of the wind. It was buffeting the parked cruiser on all sides, howling in gusts, whistling, and in the background stood a constant low hum. She never realized how different this humming silence was, a thousand meters above Basin City, how much movement and tonality it contained.

Ginadi was napping in the front, his large uniformed frame stretched out along the two front seats. He grunted and got up as soon as Liaei moved into the front, and grumbled again, then opened the outside doors to her, saying “Careful, all right?”

While Ginadi used the facilities in the back, Liaei stood just outside on the pavement, stomping her feet and stretching after a strange cramped night. She had gotten used to the extreme slope and was no longer as dizzy when looking at the grand vista below.

The Day God had barely risen, and a large portion of the slope overhead was still in shadow, while off on the horizon opposite, the world was already in orange reflected flame.

The air was a bit more chilly at this altitude and had not warmed up yet, so that Liaei, wearing no jacket and only a thin t-shirt and long pants, felt goosebumps along her arms. But it was a strange invigorating sensation, a wildness in her lungs, as she breathed the rarified air and spread her arms wide, and watched the precipice below the slope fill with rich creamy light.

They got going once again, and this time Liaei looked at the roadway before them and noticed suddenly how much closer the line of fire was that indicated the end of the waterpipe and the beginning of The River That Flows Through The Air.

“How long till we are up close to it?” she whispered in reverence.

Officer Ginadi thought for a moment, checking their progress on his bulky chronometer. “I’d say middle of the afternoon. You really want to see it, don’t you?”

“Oh, Day God, yes. I’ve been wanting to see it ever since I knew that it was there to be seen.”

Looking ahead at the moving road, Ginadi smiled.

 

Nothing could have prepared her.

As they drew closer, the stripe of razor light grew closer, aligning itself with the end of the winding waterpipe, becoming a distant extension of it, becoming thicker, brighter.

And yet, nothing the mind could visualize beforehand was even remotely close.

By lunchtime, Liaei felt herself growing tense, as she retreated deeply into her seat, staring intently ahead, staring at it in the dwindling distance. Muscles of her neck and shoulders were tightening, clenched internally, expectation gnawing at her. She wasn’t even hungry and wanted to refuse the food offered her, but the officer insisted, and so she chewed something that was as exciting as dust to her single-minded focused senses. Chewed, as she watched it, always bright and coming more and more into focus, yet always just out of reach of comprehension.

Finally, as the imaginary center point of the Day God stood nearly in perfect zenith overhead, covering the sky with golden orange radiance, they had climbed high enough so that Liaei could see the edge of the waterpipe as it ended about two hundred meters above them up the slope. . . .

“We’ll stop now so that you can see,” said Ginadi, aware of her intensity.

Liaei did not answer immediately, she was so clenched. Then she nodded.

The cruiser decelerated and Liaei watched the last dozen support rings flash past them along the gray concrete of the water pipe surface.

As they slowed and lost hover altitude, there was an approaching roar up ahead. They could hear it through the closed windows of the cruiser, a sound rising above the constant wind hum.

The cruiser doors shot open, and Liaei stepped outside, followed by Ginadi, with his usual, “Be careful now, okay? Watch your step.”

Liaei stared, her eyes drying from not blinking for so long.

Just ahead, the angle of slope showed her the topside curvature of the concrete pipe as it ended, and beyond it she heard the waterfall roar of escaping water, but did not quite see it, not from this low angle, not just yet.

“Watch your step, slowly now.” Ginadi, again.

Liaei walked uphill, mesmerized, toward the curving concrete visible edge, toward the roar on the other side.

And then suddenly, the angle of the slope and her proximity allowed her to see.

A three-dimensional wall of water, transparent and clear, with only a shadow tint of reflected sky orange, as seen through it.

A wall of water, even and smooth, bursting through, out of the shadowed darkness of the pipe, out of its long containment of concrete, and rushing up.

Up along the slope, into the air.

Day God shining through it, its glory scattering, diffracting, splintering, fragmenting into shards, as though seen through a wall of moving faceted crystal, a sheet of variegated living liquid glass.

Liaei took another step or two, up the paved road, until she stood a meter away from the edge of the pipe, its gaping circumference balanced on the last support ring that just protruded about half a meter out of the ground. She looked down and saw that the rocks immediately below it were different from the ruddy barren stonescape all around. They were dark with moisture, dark with greenish discoloration of algae growth. Slippery, smooth-polished, they glistened, as they might have a million years ago when the Oceanus waters would have submerged them.

Smooth, they were, polished by the million-year continued erosion caused by mere water spray. While all around, the dry rocks had undergone an opposite kind of erosion—once smooth beneath the water, they were now carved, grated, and sharpened by the abrasive sand particles and wind.

And then Liaei realized she felt a difference against her face, the pores of her skin, a coolness in the air—the wet spray. It was as though she were standing with her face against a humidifier unit.

Except this moisture was in the air itself, for many meters in the surrounding area.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Ginadi’s voice came from behind. “They still don’t know what mechanism makes the water flow up like that, without mechanized pressurization. Just look at it, it is flowing smoothly, slowly even. Like a sheet of glass sliding up.”

“Yes . . .” said Liaei. She never took her eyes off the flow. “Could it be a force opposite of the earth’s pull? Or maybe a displacement of tiny sub-particles to make the water molecules change physical state temporarily so that they become weightless and can be made to go up, or something?”

“Or something,” said Ginadi. “No one knows. Not even the harmonium knowledge base. We just know it is an amazingly neat trick, and wish we could copy it.”

“Could it be an illusion of the eye?” said Liaei.

“Nope,” Ginadi said. “It’s real, kid. Real water flowing up. We draw the sludge out of the Oceanus, put the purified stuff into the pipe end down in Basin City refinery, and it just comes up here. And keeps on going. Been that way for as long as we can remember.”

“Do you think maybe I can stick my hand in it to make sure?”

He laughed. “I am sure it’s been done before. But probably you shouldn’t, since they’ll have my hide down in the City for putting you into any unnecessary risk situation, and this one’s a definite unknown. Why don’t you look instead at how the water continues moving up, there, just ahead? Let’s walk a bit farther along so that you can see.”

They walked with slow very careful paces, and Liaei watched the bizarre sheet of water at least three meters thick (she guessed by its level of transparency) and who knew how wide climb alongside her up the slope. Then slowly it rose even higher in a gradually up-curving arc that was departing the angle of the Basin slope. As it finally leveled out, the moving wall of water lay at least thirty meters up in the air like a curtain of liquid molded light through which the Day God was distorted and pulled askew, bent into new directions. . . .

It was akin to a transparent bridge standing overhead, Liaei realized suddenly, and she could probably walk right underneath it and stare at the Day God broken up as though in a kaleidoscope toy.

And then, in the distance interval of several car lengths Liaei saw the first support pillar.

“What is that?” she asked, but then realized that this was the same type of black metallic support ring as had held in place the water pipe earlier, and that it was somehow continuing to “hold” together the water of The River that Flows Through The Air. Except, this support ring seemed taller and it extended out farther from the sloping ground, with its circular band portion about twenty meters in the air.

Water flowed through the center of the ring and onward to the next support ring in the same interval distance, and so on, until it again disappeared into a fiery thread up-slope.

“Again, we don’t know,” said Ginadi. “It’s like it is guiding the water somehow, from ring to ring.”

“What are those pillars made of?”

“Some kind of metal alloy, I believe the harmonium analyzed it as such.”

“Oh, Day God! How does it work?” Liaei exclaimed in a burst of frustration. She watched the bridge of water that was now high overhead, belted with the strange containment rings. Its roar was barely diminished but the microscopic spray stood in the air, softening the rocks directly below which seemed painted with a moist shadow.

Without asking permission this time, Liaei approached the closest rock and placed a fingertip along its sleek surface. It came away slippery and likely coated with invisible life.

“All right, I think we’ve seen enough, so let’s be on our way,” said Ginadi immediately, giving her a brief concerned glance.

“I am sure it’s non-toxic.”

“Right, well, still. You can watch the River as we drive right next to it all the way up.”

 

The rest of the afternoon was monotonous and a kind of disoriented haze. Once the cruiser gained hover altitude, they were only about halfway up between the River and the paved roadway, and Liaei watched the water’s glittering mass and surface, at times appearing transparent, and at others, molten fire, depending on the angle of their parallel movement.

Liaei stared at it constantly—through it, and at it, and around it—until the glittering line of reflected fire imprinted upon her retinas even when she looked away for brief moments. In her field of vision the River image was pasted like a white snake against the reddish rocks.

Liaei remembered them taking another rest stop and chewing more prepackaged food for dinner at some point. And then, as darkness of evening slowly approached, the transparent water took on strange blue-greenish hues, and it left a deeper shadow upon the rocks below.

With the coming of night, the River at last disappeared, blending into the darkness of sky. They parked the cruiser on a strip of pavement, and ate, then slept, and this time Liaei remembered having no dreams, only an image of a stripe of flowing white fire.

 

The following day was to be the last of their journey. They were to reach the uppermost edge of the Basin slope and emerge onto the earth’s Plateau surface by the middle of the afternoon.

Liaei spent the time not listening to music, not checking out her harmonium entertainment modules in the port in the back, but just looking outside the window in a self-induced stupor. Sometimes she counted the seconds that passed between the appearance of the support ring posts that flashed outside the window like dark upright shadows. At other times she tried to see an infinitesimal difference between the hue of the water as it entered each new stretch of segment between each ring. Sometimes it seemed to stand still, then flow wildly forward; sometimes it was all clear and transparent cream-orange, at other times there would be just a hint of green, then blue, then a bit of violet. She knew it had to be the prismatic effect of refracted light. But it was still fun to watch for different colors of the rainbow appear here and there, like wondrous surprises.

About two more rest stops, and without realizing it—since she was so busy staring at the flowing water to the side of her—the horizon defined by the slope was coming down lower and lower ahead of them, closer and closer. It no longer seemed halfway up the sky, but was now just the height of a tall mountain.

And in the course of mid-afternoon, the edge seemed to draw so close up ahead that Liaei could reach out and touch it.

“Almost there,” said Ginadi. He glanced at her. “You excited?”

Liaei nodded.

He grinned. “If that’s your way of being excited. . . . Nah.”

But then he pointed with his finger to the quickly approaching upper edge of the horizon. “See that bright dot of light, just to the right of where the River seems to disappear over the top? That is the border patrol tower of Edge City.”

“I see it. Neat!”

But Ginadi was already calling ahead, to discuss their approach.

Liaei again looked at the wall of water at their side, ever rushing by, transparent yet filled with hidden or implied color.

Then it happened.

They were out of the Basin suddenly, for the horizon fell away completely at their feet, and suddenly the cruiser was straightening to match the curve-and-then-flattening of the roadway.

They hung in the air at the edge of a grand flatland the size of the whole world. The earth was bathed in gold, all orange, amber, rust. It was pale and uniform.

Everything impossible, flat.

There, like a stalagmite growth from the cliffside stood the gray concrete tower, swept featureless by the daylight, almost the twin of the one down in Basin City.

And then Liaei glanced to the right of her. She observed how The River That Flows Through The Air also curved along an imaginary line and straightened out, water running from ring to ring, and on into the endless distance.

Beyond it, rising in many shapes of pale and dark concrete and metal, was Edge City.

 

“I’m to take you directly to the Palace of the Clock King,” said Ginadi. He noticed Liaei’s dazed, frozen expression, as though she was still submerged in a multi-day dream state.

“Okay,” Liaei said in a dull voice, as their cruiser started to move away from the edge of the Plateau surface. Onward it swept, reducing its hover altitude and speed for the city limits, past the guard tower into this alien city of pale brilliant surfaces that looked not all that different than the one she had called home for the last fifteen years.

Except, there were more people on the streets here, moving energetically, their skin shades ranging from palest alabaster to deep bronze, smooth heads gleaming, dressed in brighter clothes, with more fashion variety than the jeans and fiber t-shirt that was the most commonly seen outfit in the Basin. Pedestrians walked along newer sidewalks of solid well-cared-for pavement which was not upraised from the ground itself but smoothed right on top of it.

“The ground is firm here, unlike down where we came from,” Ginadi mentioned, seeing the direction of her stare. Remember that we’re on the normal surface level now, just like most of the earth—none of that sedimentary crumbling stuff. This is all mostly solid rock.”

Liaei continued looking.

“How are your ears?”

“Fine. A little stuffed.”

“It’ll clear up fast enough as your body gets used to the different pressure.” And then he added, “The name of the chief nurse is Vioma, by the way. She is the horticulturist medic who is waiting to see you. She just told me she is very happy to finally meet you.”

“Yes,” Liaei said. “Chief nurse Riveli told me.”

“Tired?”

“Yes. But I am okay, really, thank you. This is very interesting, this city.”

Ginadi smiled. “Don’t be too scared now. We’re going to the cultural center of this place, the so-called Palace of the Clock King. There’s all kinds of neat stuff there, museums, libraries, theaters, performance arenas. Even that River of yours, you know it flows right past the Palace courtyard? See, we’re still following it, even now.”

And as Liaei turned to glance off to the side, about three street blocks away, she saw the gleaming fire of it, the living moving transparent entity. It appeared and disappeared beyond buildings and city structures, a glittering worm.

“Where does it go?” she asked. “I mean, where does it end?”

Ginadi wrinkled his smooth bronze browline. “I’m not sure. Never thought to ask. Sorry, don’t know. I’ve been to Edge City a couple dozen times but never followed the River much farther than here and there. You need to ask the locals.”

The Palace was recognizable in the distance, even to someone who had no idea what to look for.

It was a vaguely dome-shaped circular structure of deep gray-rose granite stone, a work of ancient art. As they approached through city traffic, Liaei noticed that it was in fact a circular pyramid of expanding platforms, like great stepping-stones in a circular staircase. The floors, ever narrowing in diameter toward the center, were often enhanced by regular columns, and there were many windows of modern plasti-glass and glassoid material. They shone like mosaic panels from a distance. At the center of the Palace stood a tall thin needle-tower of several hundred floors, the tallest structure in the city. At its tip was a harmonium-powered antenna that could broadcast into the atmosphere and beyond.

Liaei gasped in wonder, seeing it. She had been taught in her schooling that this was the oldest structure known to the moderns, a remainder from the dawn of the harmonium civilization.

But she had no idea it was part of the Palace where she was now headed. Or maybe, at some point she did, but she had paid no attention in class, had forgotten. . . .

And now it was drawing near, a titan alone in a flat world, and the Palace structures were emerging in places all around them, drawing them in, engulfing.

Another couple of minutes, and they arrived.

 

Vioma was a petite tiny woman dressed in a sterile mauve lab coat, completely unimposing, completely unlike Riveli. And yet she had energetic eyes, unusual to Liaei who was so used to measured softness and a kind of dissipated lack of focus in the eyes of all the people who comprised her limited world.

Vioma met them outside the front entrance of the Palace, where Ginadi stopped his cruiser and several strangers came out to begin helping them unload Liaei’s meager baggage items.

“Let me look at you, Liaei!” Vioma exclaimed, staring unabashedly at Liaei’s deep gold hair gathered in a thick tail at the back, at her brows, the curves of her form. “Oh, you are wonderful, just lovely, child! They did so well with you, in Basin City.”

And then Vioma corrected herself. “Not a child for much longer of course, since the Ceremony is scheduled for the coming week.”

“The Ceremony?” Liaei said. Then she understood. “Oh, yes, of course. Nice to meet you, Vioma, and I look forward to the detailed last minute training. I have a general idea of it, of course—”

Vioma shook the palm of her hand. “Not here, Liaei. We can talk of all this after you’ve settled into your apartment and rested up a bit. Today you move in, tomorrow we run a couple of last minute physical tests, then we train. All right?”

“Good,” said Ginadi, who in that moment got out of the cruiser. “Because the poor kid is barely keeping awake, she’s so tired. Go easy on her.”

“Thank you for all your help on the trip, Officer Ginadi,” said Liaei.

But he only smiled, then reached out and unexpectedly patted her on the top of her head.

“Always a pleasure. Now, you take care, girl! Remember what I say, always be careful when you walk up a slope, all right?”

And then with a wink and a nod he retreated back into the cruiser, and was on his way. With his departure the last bit of familiarity left Liaei. She was now truly away from home.

Or maybe not quite.

Liaei glanced up once as they were heading indoors, and saw a familiar razor-gleam of clean transparent water rushing suspended through the air, just around the corner of the Palace building.

 

“The Clock King,” Vioma said. “How much did they tell you about him?”

“Not that much. I mostly asked the harmonium a million leading questions, so I have some idea that he is my biological mate.”

Liaei was seated in a comfortable chair in a room with a tall airy ceiling and walls decorated with pleasing warm earth tones. Across from her in another chair sat Vioma. They were both holding warm mugs of slightly sweet saffron tea. On a small glass table between them stood a decanter and a tray of fresh hothouse fruits and baked goods.

“His story is an ancient puzzle.” Vioma took a sip, then licked her austere lips with the tip of her tongue. “The Clock King has been here, or rather, has been discovered here, in this structure of the early harmonium age, by the earlier generations.”

Liaei nodded.

“He is within a device which maintains him in a biological suspended state. The function of that device is also unclear, but we do know how to bring him back to us. And we’ve been reviving him periodically over the years.”

“I see,” Liaei said.

“Your task is indeed to be there when the Clock King is revived, greet him and become comfortable with him, and mate with him. Don’t be afraid, he knows exactly what is expected of him, and much of the ritual is in fact to facilitate your acquaintance and give you time before the resulting biological mating act.”

“How will we speak?” Liaei asked. “His language must be ancient and different.”

Vioma smiled. “Good question. The device which contains him will prepare him somehow. He will speak and understand—at least our records show that he always does.”

“Records?”

“You may see them later. They are rather old document files that the harmonium stored for the last several generations. They will give you some idea. But—actually, no, I don’t think you need to see them just yet. Nothing terribly important, but just so as not to have preconceptions when you meet him.”

“Oh . . .” said Liaei, thinking that Vioma was being evasive. “Is there something about him that will disturb me?”

But Vioma put her mug down and leaned forward, closer. “No, I think you will be just fine.”

Liaei was becoming very cold suddenly. True realization, an awakening to the full implications of what was about to happen to her, made her as numb as though she was back somewhere along the Basin slope, looking down over the abyss.

Except, this abyss was even less familiar, less comprehensible.

“Okay . . .” she said softly. “Does the Clock King have a human name?”

 

On the day of the Ceremony, Liaei was taken to a strange bathing area the like of which she had never seen. Whereas normally everyone would shower in a cube closet with a timed high-pressure spray of rationed water, here was a generous basin the size of a bed, filled with precious water. The water was scented with some kind of flower and herb essence, and had a fine oily film that sparkled. She was told to enter and submerge herself in the warm water and stay there for as long as her skin needed to be soothed and lubricated and acquire a sheen.

When Liaei came out, her damp hair plastered to her in long curling strands, holding a large absorbent towel around herself, she was in a chamber filled with colors and scents. Two appearance professionals greeted her, and they worked on her, drying and brushing her hair so that it lay soft and shining down her back, then applied adult makeup on her face.

Liaei thought of the suave women in the dance clubs who had colorful designs painted on the skin of their face and head and arms, with color and sparkle cosmetics. She also thought of the funny old porno displays the harmonium had shown her—the big, puffy red lips of the ancient women.

Her outfit was lying ready for her on a side table. It was a white diaphanous gown of lightweight, translucent material which reached below her ankles and swept on the floor. Underneath she was supposed to wear an odd looking halter for her breast area, and something that looked like a pair of underwear pants. The items were made of shiny metallic stretch-fabric, colored delicate bronze and gold and patterned with complex designs of various shades of deep brown. Colorful faceted faux jewel stones encrusted the belt area, and fine metallic jewelry chains hung in looping clusters, brushing against her thighs with a fringe of cold sensation.

Liaei said nothing when putting this on. She slipped the halter around her front and it fit uncomfortably around her rounded breasts, pushing them together to create a crevice. Then one of the assistants came around from the back and showed her how to clasp the thing together, and it bit into her ribcage.

The pants were slipped on next, tight against her bare skin, and the belt was low against her hips, below her exposed navel.

“Stop for a moment,” said an appearance professional, as Liaei took hold of the white outer gown. “We are going to put a whole lot of traditional antique jewelry on you.”

The appearance professional brought forward a large box and inside, Liaei saw sparkling decorative costume pieces made of stones, metallic chains, odd pretty shapes, carved, molded, faceted, rounded.

“I don’t suppose your earlobes are pierced?”

Liaei shook her head.

“Then we’ll use loops that go over the ear and hang beneath. Now, put out your hands.”

Liaei did, and several moments later, was burdened.

Metal bands circled around her wrists and upper arms, rings stifled her fingers, various lengths of loops of metal and stones were strung together around her neck. Symmetrical looped bunches of jewelry went around and over her ears. Finally, a band of metal, a torque, was placed around her forehead and the back of her head, horizontal and just above her browline. In the center of the torque a suspended brilliant jewel of deep amber rested in the cradle between her brows like a third eye.

“Now, the outer gown. It will come off, as you approach the Clock King.”

“So I get to greet him in underwear,” said Liaei.

“Oh, no, no! This is an ancient traditional costume of seduction. Trust me, he will love you in it!” The appearance professional laughed, and Liaei wondered if the person was a man or a woman, since he or she was glam-dressed to the point of obscurity.

“Now, just a final touch-up of facial paint around the eyes, and you are ready to go! What a gorgeous exotic creature!”

Minutes later, they were done with her at last.

When Vioma came to fetch her, also dressed in her finest, Liaei was an unreal, sparkling, jeweled, veiled statue with dark glass eyes.

 

In the monolithic Palace central hall that could hold thousands, a mere handful of people gathered—all of them horticulturist techs, medics, and other scientists.

In the center, upraised on a sort of stone dais, was a strange mechanical device. It was circular and flat, about a meter in height, and six meters in diameter and the topside of it was bisected by many radii that came from the exact center and out, in even intervals. The edges along the circumference of the device were marked in archaic symbols that Liaei recognized as an ancient form of symbolic recording, a numeric decimal code of combinations of linear, angular, and circular strokes. They were impressed onto the metallic surface of the device, pale metal against dark deep brown, near-black. Several arrows of various lengths overlay the device like radii extending from the middle. There were at least ten of them, and they were all movable around the small palm-sized hub in the center.

The thing was a clock. An ancient time measuring device. Except, Liaei realized, as she stood on the platform before it, this one was a monstrous, somehow useless thing. She imagined the network of interlocking gears of all diameter sizes and coiled tension springs underneath its dark metallic face. And somewhere, among the cold sharp parts of angular metal, he was imprisoned, the Clock King.

He was inside, waiting for her.

Two of the scientists in the foreground stepped forward and started to wind the arrows on the face of the Clock. They aligned them in precise order next to various symbols on the outer border, along the faint concentric circles that Liaei only now noticed were etched on the surface. A third tech assisted by holding down combinations of several recessed buttons that were along the outer edge, as various motions were carried out by the other two.

Vioma drew closer to Liaei and took her cold right hand in her own, only slightly more living one. “They are setting time the old fashioned way,” she whispered in a comforting tone of voice. “It’s based upon the very first harmonium calendar which we no longer use. It’s certainly not the oldest known to humanity, but it is the closest that makes sense to this device. Took them several decades to figure that out.”

Liaei listened in silence.

“When they are done, we will hear the clockwork mechanism come to life. We will wait for the cycle to end, and the Clock King will emerge. At that point it will be time for you to proceed as discussed. Are you ready?”

Liaei nodded.

The last arrow hand was aligned, and all those standing in the hall heard a rumbling hum. The sound came to life from nothing and built on a very low frequency, until its echo made the floor and walls vibrate.

Liaei felt herself lightheaded, faint, sick to her stomach. The bright illumination in the hall made all things appear washed out, pale, and her mouth was dry, while all the rings, bracelets and chains lying like armor against her cold skin began to constrict—an illusion of pressure was building.

The hum grew, rising in frequency, and then became recognizable as rhythmic grating of gears, moving parts aligning, something happening on the inside.

For long interminable moments the whole world was vibrating, humming, contorting. The Clock was a monster coming to life, contracting and expanding its innards. Then, suddenly, the Clock began to rise. As it came up a meter off the ground, there were metallic arms revealed in a recess underneath. They extended, gradually bringing the device to an inclined position, and then completely upright.

The Clock stood up on its edge, a single point of its diameter resting against a portion of the recessed floor—what was down there, below, in the murk, Liaei could not tell.

The Clock stood. The rhythmic hum had become high-pitched and gentle, like droplets of water hitting a filled bowl.

It was ticking.

The hands on its face made several turns around the face, and one by one they all stopped on the topmost notch symbol marked against the border. They were pointing directly up.

When the last shortest radius hand came to a stop in the upright position, the ticking stopped.

There was a moment of perfect silence.

And then the face of the clock separated from the body and fell forward and out and down—without a sound.

An inner compartment was revealed.

Within the compartment was a man. He was like a life-size toy, a statue colored blue—no, colored rose, or maybe he was black—but no, the surface of his skin was shimmering, iridescent, light waves passing over him.

The play of strange light stopped. The skin underneath was dark olive, almost with a greenish tint. His head had dark hair, and his browline too was covered with hair. He moved then, at first like a doll, then with fluid, living, albeit slow movements.

The Clock King stepped out of his chamber, and stood before them, nude and alien and unreal. His eyes were pale, possibly colorless. His shoulders were significantly wide and top-heavy compared to his hips; his body musculature well-defined. Between his thighs, his genitals were prominent, belonging to homo sapiens from ages past, and just above was a growth of dark hair, a patch.

Liaei did not stare at it as she stepped forward. Instead she looked at his beautiful impassive face, that of a stranger, as she walked the several steps, pausing when they were face to face and she could, if she wanted, embrace him.

With a slow fluid gesture that she practiced a number of times, Liaei slipped off from her shoulders the white gown that was made to separate in the middle, and she offered it to the man before her.

“Welcome, Clock King, to our time.” Her voice rang out in the hall. “I am the Queen of the Hourglass.”

As instructed, Liaei smiled, feeling the quivering nervous tension in her jaw. Still holding the white cloth she sank to the floor, sweeping her hands forward in a dramatic gesture of offering, and gently inclining her head. Her mane of hair followed her motion. It spilled about her shoulders, fanning out like liquid gold.

It was the hair that he observed as he took the cloth and immediately bound it around his hips, covering himself in the front.

Liaei recalled that the ancients found nudity of that portion of the body a public shame.

And then, like a shock out of the primeval ages, she heard his voice. It was deep and low, rich unlike any modern male voice she ever heard.

“When and where . . . is this?” the Clock King said.