Stone Clock

by Andrew Bannister

  It reminded Skarbo of something he had once found amongst the basement junk on Experiment, lifetimes ago. It had been a model of an ancient spaceship. He had kept it for a while.

  He nodded towards it. ‘Is that where we’re going?’

  ‘Nearly. See the thing just this side of it?’

  Skarbo sighed, and strained his eyes. There was an irregular shape, slightly lighter in colour than the ship, passing slowly across it.

  ‘It doesn’t look very big,’ he said.

  ‘It’s big enough. Look, matching paths with it is a bit fiddly. Do you mind if I go quiet for a while?’

  Skarbo glanced down at The Bird. It was shaking its head, very slowly. ‘Be my guest,’ he said.

  The irregular thing was in orbit around the waist of the old ship. Without the machine seeming to do anything much, their basket nudged a little hesitantly towards it. When they were a few metres above it a hatch slid open beneath them, letting out a little puff of ice crystals that fluttered past them. They dropped through the aperture and came to rest with a faint click, and the hatch closed over them. Air hissed in, and their bubble-field disappeared with a popping noise. Then a thick door squeaked open.

  The machine had been – Skarbo wanted to say perching but that didn’t seem right – on the end of the basket. Now it rose. ‘Shall we go?’ And without waiting for an answer it floated through the door.

  The Bird swivelled its neck so it was looking sideways up at Skarbo. ‘Well, shall we?’ it asked, in a fair imitation of the machine’s voice. Then it hopped up into the air and flapped slowly after the machine. Skarbo heard it mutter, ‘Low gravity. Makes a change …’

  He shrugged and followed. Then he came to a halt while his mind adapted. He was surrounded by trees.

  The inside of the object was just that – the inside of an irregular shape a few hundred metres across, as if the thing had simply been hollowed out, and then the inner surface planted with forest. Or, he corrected himself – forests: a tessellation of patches of different greens, blues and browns, lit from above by a blue-white orb in the middle of the space.

  He heard a croak overhead and looked up. The Bird was perching on a branch just above head-height. It pecked at the wood. ‘Is this real? Looks real. Feels real. What kind of lunatic plants the inside of an asteroid full of trees?’

  The machine rose until it was level with The Bird. ‘That lunatic would be your host,’ it said.

  Skarbo blinked. ‘You?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Your ultimate host. Come with me. I’ll explain.’

  It led them through the trees. There was space between the trunks, but no real path, and the ground was uneven with leaf drift and roots. Skarbo guessed that large creatures that walked didn’t visit often; he trod carefully.

  After a few hundred paces the forest changed. The trees around the airlock had been short and twisted, with deeply grooved blue-black bark that gave off a sour smell. Now they were taller – maybe thirty metres, Skarbo guessed, with straight slim trunks that seemed to have almost no bark at all but just a smooth pale-brown skin. There was more space, and the ground was even. He relaxed a little.

  Then the machine stopped. ‘This will do,’ it said. ‘Skarbo? Please stand a few paces further back.’

  Skarbo blinked, and shuffled backwards. ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you. Now …’

  A puff of displaced air flicked Skarbo’s face, and a platform appeared, floating a few centimetres above the ground just where Skarbo had been standing.

  ‘Please stand on the platform. Bird? You may use it too, if you would prefer not to fly?’

  The Bird hopped on to the platform and scraped at it with a claw. It trembled slightly. ‘No thanks! Rather trust my wings.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  The Bird flapped off to one side and hovered. Then Skarbo felt the platform pressing upwards against his claws, and he was rising slowly. The platform was almost close enough to the nearest tree trunk for him to touch it. He watched it, frowned, and turned to look at another, a little further away. Then he looked round for the little machine.

  It was floating level with his head, a metre or so away. He pointed to the tree trunk next to them. ‘That one looks different.’

  ‘Yes. It’s not a tree. Look up.’

  He craned his head back, feeling his neck creak. Most of the trees tapered with height until they spread abruptly into neat round crowns that looked like the tops of very tall thin fungi. This one continued straight up without thinning, past the forest canopy up into the clear air above before dividing into five symmetrically splayed limbs that cradled a broad inverted cone made out of dull stony-looking stuff.

  Skarbo eased his neck back to the horizontal and looked at the machine. ‘And this is?’

  ‘Water tank. Used for irrigation in the wet season and fire safety in the dry. There are a couple of hundred of them in here. They’re recycled – they used to be used as microwave antennae.’

  The platform was still rising, floating slowly outward to match the splay of the limbs holding the cone. Then they were above the lip of the cone itself and looking down into it.

  It was full of water, almost up to the brim. The cone was bigger than he had thought, and the surface of the water made a circle about twenty metres across. In the middle of the circle there was a floating object – a black sphere about half the width of the water. There was something rough and organic-looking about it; its surface was pocked and rippled, and there were orange spots that looked uncomfortably like mould.

  The Bird flew over it and circled. ‘What the fuck? Think this is a seed! Tell me it’s not a seed?’

  The machine laughed. ‘It’s a seed,’ it said. ‘The biggest seed in the known bubble. They grow over there.’ It made a darting motion upwards and to one side, towards an area of forest halfway across the space.

  ‘Well this one won’t grow. Hollowed out!’ The Bird dived towards the top of the thing and disappeared. Skarbo heard a couple of echoey squawks.

  The machine floated over to him. ‘So, the flying creature … How long have you known it?’

  Skarbo sighed. ‘Centuries, but it seems longer. Do we follow it?’

  ‘Yes.’ The platform was already floating towards the upper surface of the huge seed. The very top had been sliced cleanly off, leaving a circular entrance just big enough for the platform, which dropped neatly through.

  Skarbo wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. The inside of the seed was a curved space, with the walls panelled in smoothly jointed wood – different sorts of wood, in a riot of different shapes and colours. He turned round slowly, trying to see if any of the shapes repeated. They didn’t seem to. He looked at the machine. ‘Who did this?’

  ‘The ship. I think it was bored.’

  Skarbo thought about that. ‘The ship – the one this asteroid is circling around?’

  ‘That’s right. It liked the idea of having a moon.’

  The Bird had been flying slowly round the perimeter of the space. Now it dropped to the floor. ‘A bored ship that wants a moon, eh? There are names for that sort of thing.’

  There was a slim column in the middle of the floor, spreading into five arms in an imitation of the pretend tree that supported the tank. The machine settled into the space between two arms. ‘We need to talk about the ship. We need to talk about many things, including you. And you are Skarbo the Horologist?’

  ‘We’ve established that.’

  ‘As far as the ship is concerned that makes you another of the interesting things.’

  Skarbo looked at it. ‘Does that mean I’ve been collected?’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘I see. I suppose this wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘No. And, if I may ask, your remaining life? I hesitate to be indelicate …’

  Skarbo was going to answer but The Bird saved him the trouble. ‘Old fool’s for the shredder. Eighty-three days and counting.’

  The machine made a clicking sou
nd. ‘That is tight. Very tight … but possible. Possibly possible.’

  ‘What is possible?’ Skarbo felt himself beginning to lose his temper. ‘My planet has been destroyed, my life’s work has been obliterated, I have been kidnapped. I will die in weeks. What is possible, and why should I care?’

  The machine made its sighing noise. ‘Apologies. Yes. You have been roughly treated, although most recently you were not kidnapped. You were rescued, by us, from a privateer who had kidnapped you and destroyed your planet.’

  ‘Hemfrets?’

  ‘Yes. The thing called Hemfrets.’

  ‘But how?’ Skarbo remembered the weapon blisters on Hemfrets’s ship. ‘How could anything attack it?’

  The machine made a sound that might have been a laugh. ‘Do you think all the ships this Sphere ever collected are inside it? But it doesn’t matter really. The main thing is, your life’s work was not obliterated.’

  ‘Yes it was. I watched it.’ Skarbo felt bitterness rising to his throat.

  ‘Only the physical part. And, if you’re interested, it isn’t over.’

  Skarbo stared at the machine. ‘Not over? How? I have been studying something which will destroy itself in a few hundred years. It took me hundreds of years to set up equipment. How can I start afresh, and to what end?’

  After a short pause the machine said, simply: ‘Who said anything about starting afresh?’

  There was silence. Then Skarbo shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. A universal no, if you like.’

  ‘Universal?’ The machine laughed. ‘That’s ambitious.’

  ‘Yes would be ambitious. No is realistic. There is nothing you can suggest that would be feasible.’

  ‘Fine.’ The machine turned slowly through three hundred and sixty degrees, stopped, and sank into the cradle. ‘I’ll tell the Orbiter you don’t want to visit the Spin, then.’

  Skarbo sat down, very slowly. ‘Visit? But that’s impossible …’

  ‘Yes, but clearly you don’t want to. Don’t worry about it. So, given that you’re not going to the Spin, where would you like to die instead?’

  Thinking was getting difficult. Maybe he was getting ready to die now, right here in the middle of a web of impossible promises – but he wasn’t ready to accept that just yet. From the chaos he heard his own voice. It sounded calm. ‘How can I reach the Spin? I would like to go.’

  The Bird laughed. He ignored it.

  ‘Well, now.’ The little machine rose from the cradle again. ‘The Orbiter has a plan.’

  Skarbo looked up at the machine wearily. ‘What’s an Orbiter?’

  Then he jumped, and The Bird fluttered quickly upwards and back, as if retreating and gaining height both at once. Someone had spoken.

  I am.

  It was a scratchy whisper like blown leaves – barely a voice at all – and it sounded old. Not just old in the way that Skarbo was old, and presumably The Bird as well (and that was yet another thought about the creature that he examined and filed away), but old.

  The machine made a throat-clearing noise. ‘Ah. That’s our host. It doesn’t speak much, do you?’

  No.

  ‘No … but, well, here is Skarbo the Horologist.’ It paused. ‘And companion.’

  Yes.

  The Bird dropped to the floor and scraped at it. ‘This is going well. Senile, is it?’

  Skarbo looked sharply at it. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘For once, enough.’

  It scraped at the floor again. ‘Agreed. Enough! Enough of everything. This is madness. I want out.’

  The machine dropped on to the floor in front of The Bird, making a sharp click at which The Bird jumped back. ‘Feel free to leave,’ it said quietly. ‘The core’s still alight.’

  The Bird looked steadily at it, then turned its head away. ‘My choice, if I take it.’

  ‘Yes.’ The machine rose off the floor. ‘The Orbiter is my friend. Yours too; and you’re going to need one. Skarbo?’

  Skarbo nodded. ‘Yes. Erm, Orbiter? Hello.’

  Hello.

  ‘Yes.’ The taciturnity of the thing was almost harder to deal with than silence. He looked round the room, at the expectant machine and the sulking bird. Then it occurred to him.

  ‘Orbiter? Can I come on board? I’d like to meet you properly.’

  The machine floated quickly upwards. ‘I don’t think …’

  Yes. That would be better.

  There was silence for a moment. Then the machine said, ‘Well, well.’

  ‘Well, well?’ The Bird wagged its head. ‘You deserve each other.’

  Skarbo ignored it.

  Skarbo hadn’t seen inside many ships in what he knew to have been a sheltered life – but the interior of the ancient Orbiter was unlike any of them. Where the inside of the moon, if that was what it should be called, was forested, the Orbiter was completely overgrown, to the extent that the mechanism of the airlock had had to grind vegetation out of the way to open fully. The airlock itself sounded like something that hadn’t been used for a while.

  The machine hadn’t come with him. ‘I’ve never been on board,’ it had said. ‘I don’t think anyone has, certainly since it’s been here. It likes privacy.’

  Skarbo had thought about that. ‘How long has it been here?’

  ‘About twenty thousand years.’

  ‘Twenty thousand?’ Skarbo had shaken his head. ‘How old is it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. It’s an old design, certainly. I’ve never seen one like it.’

  And now Skarbo was pushing through stands of gnarled bushes that could easily have been twenty thousand years old. Or millions, for all he knew.

  The ship hadn’t spoken yet, and Skarbo was in no rush to start a conversation. He wanted to understand this thing better, and he had the feeling that it was telling him things all the time, speech or not. He pushed forward through the damp vegetation. It smelled mouldy, and angular branches hooked at his legs so that he had to lift them in high steps to avoid tripping – or, worse, losing another limb.

  After a while he reached a point where the bushes stopped. He walked through a faint violet shimmer and into an overgrown clearing. It was much cooler and the air felt dry and mobile; he looked round and realized that the shimmer was some kind of field. The place seemed to be divided into different habitats. He grinned; perhaps he had found a fellow obsessive.

  There was a flat rock in the middle of the clearing that would do for a seat. He lowered himself on to it. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Would you like to talk?’

  Yes. That would be good. The voice was even drier in here.

  ‘Would it? I had the impression you preferred not to.’

  It depends on the audience.

  Skarbo nodded. ‘I can understand that.’

  You have spent eight lifetimes studying the Spin.

  ‘Nearly, yes. Have you followed my work?’

  From the beginning.

  ‘I’m … flattered.’

  I share your special interest.

  There was silence. Skarbo waited. Was that it? Did ships get senile? Or had it simply forgotten how to talk to people?

  Then the old voice said: You researched, and you published, and then you fell silent.

  ‘Yes.’ Skarbo felt uncomfortable.

  I assume you had discovered that the destruction of the Spin was inevitable?

  Skarbo nodded. ‘Did you hear of that from Hemfrets?’

  No. Hemfrets chose not to cooperate. It died in the furnace, in the remains of its stolen ship. I have studied too. I can see what you saw.

  ‘Ah.’ There was a little cloud of black dots, dancing in the air close to the rock. Insects, presumably. Skarbo watched them. Out loud he said, ‘I tried to prove myself wrong. I built better and better models … but I wasn’t wrong.’

  I followed a similar process.

  Skarbo looked up sharply. ‘Have you built models too?’

  Some physical ones. But mainly in m
y mind.

  ‘Oh. Well then.’ Skarbo sighed. ‘It seems we are both going to lose something precious. But I will die before then.’

  Some things are not inevitable. Would you like to visit the Spin?

  ‘The machine mentioned that. Yes, very much – but I don’t see how it can be done. There isn’t time.’

  Again, some things are not inevitable. I will be leaving the Sphere.

  ‘Why?’

  They are long-lived, but not immortal. This one is dying. It has made certain … decisions. There is the matter of its legacy.

  Skarbo watched the insects. ‘The ships?’

  Yes, among other things. Most of them are antiques, but they are still potent. At the moment they are hidden. When the Sphere dies they will become known, and this in a theatre of war with many participants. You are aware of the Warfront?

  ‘Yes.’

  It represents an existential threat to almost anything it might encounter. The Sphere has discussed this with them, and with me. I shared an idea with it, and it agreed.

  The voice fell silent. Skarbo waited for a while but it didn’t seem eager to add anything. ‘Is this the plan the little machine mentioned?’

  The machine is called Grapf. I have told it as much as its little mind needs. I suggest you go back to the moon. I have preparations to make, but they will not take long.

  ‘How long?’

  Not long. Things are moving.

  ‘I see.’ Skarbo stood up. ‘Um – this feels like an intrusive question, but what happens when a Sphere dies?’

  The inner field fails, leaving the furnace uncontained.

  Skarbo blinked. Uncontained … and suddenly he had a mental image of the incandescent ball of metal plasma raging outwards, consuming everything.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Yes. I would like to leave before that happens, please.’

  I will call for you.

  Wall Energy Collective (unavailable)

  ZEB DIDN’T REMEMBER regaining consciousness. It might have been a while …