by Jeff Noon
“Oh, just look at the time, will you. You’re late! I don’t know. A dreadful affair.” She was moving from clock to clock, adjusting the hands of each in turn. “No matter how I try, there’s always something wrong. The time is wrong. There now!” She turned the hands of a large clock on the mantelpiece, appeared to be satisfied for a second, but then noticed some other timepiece nearby had already moved on. She rushed over to it. “Oh my. Look at the time. Is that the time?” She started to adjust the hands of this new instrument. Nyquist realised that she was trying to make sure that every clock in the room always registered the exact same time: twenty to four.
It was an impossible task.
“Mrs Bale?”
The woman stopped, her body suddenly tense. For a moment she looked like a young girl caught performing some naughty deed, and then she turned to look at Nyquist, evidently seeing him clearly for the first time. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice on the edge of breakdown. Now she fumbled with a desk drawer, pulling it open. “What are you doing in my room? Get out of my room!”
“I’m trying to find…”
She pulled something from the drawer, a small metal object. Nyquist saw what it was. He stopped moving.
“My father gave this pistol to me,” she said, “for my sixteenth birthday. He knew that many people, many men, would take an unhealthy interest in me, in both my body and my fortune. It’s a lovely thing, don’t you agree? Do you see the handle, here, decorated with jewels?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t wish me any harm, do you?”
“None at all–”
“Leave me alone!” Her voice broke in fear and the pistol trembled in her grip.
“I’m trying to…”
“Get out of my sight! Can’t you… can’t you… can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Mrs Bale. I’m trying to find your daughter.”
The woman cringed at the statement. Both of her hands wound themselves tightly around the pistol’s stock. Her mouth set itself in a grim line and her eyes blazed with fear. Then, finally, she let the weapon fall back onto the desktop. Her whole demeanour changed, growing softer. “My daughter? My daughter, sadly, has been taken away from me.”
“Taken where?”
“Taken from me. Passed over. Sadly.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“All is gone. Gone.”
“I’m trying to find Eleanor.”
“Ah. Yes. Eleanor. That is her name. Now I remember.”
Nyquist shook his head in despair. The woman’s mind was so conflicted with itself that any conversation would be broken at best; and at worst, of little or no use to him. He moved to her. “Mrs Bale. Please. I need to speak with Eleanor. It’s urgent.”
The woman gathered herself together, standing tall and proud, seemingly more in charge of herself. She said, “Oh, but you must call me Catherine.”
“Catherine.” He tried to smile. “My name is John Nyquist.”
“I know who you are.”
“You do?”
Nyquist was startled. Eleanor’s mother had lost all sense of being disturbed. She appeared now to be perfectly normal. “I believe that my husband employed you to find my child, isn’t that so?”
“That’s correct.”
“And you did find her. My dear Eleanor came home a short while ago. But now she has gone again. I don’t know where she is, I’m afraid. I really don’t.”
Nyquist steeled himself. He said, “I think she’s in trouble. She’s in danger.”
Catherine grimaced. She seemed to be struggling, trying to decide which of several worlds to focus on. Her eyes ranged over a line of clocks on the mantelpiece, and then found Nyquist once again. “How do you know this?”
“I was attacked, by people who were searching for her.”
“People?”
“Men. Two men. They wore… they wore masks of shadow.” Even as he said the words, he could hear how absurd they sounded.
But the statement obviously meant something to Mrs Bale. She was tipped back over the edge. Her entire body shuddered.
“Oh, my dear little child. In danger!”
Nyquist’s head was filled with strange music, generated by the complex pattern of ticking sounds, each mechanism slightly out of sync with its neighbours.
He tried to concentrate. “Do you know who those men might be?”
Catherine Bale stared at him without speaking.
He carried on: “I believe these same men will stop at nothing until they find your daughter. I believe… I believe they want to kidnap her. Or worse.”
He had hoped that such words would instil fear, and make her tell him where Eleanor was; but instead her eyes started to lose focus. “No. No,” she said. “Look at this now! It’s all wrong.” She broke away from Nyquist, moving quickly to a clock far across the room, adjusting it feverishly. “Wrong! All wrong. Look at the time. Time, time, time. I’m late! I really am so very, very late.”
Nyquist followed her. “Mrs Bale…”
“I am so very sorry. I simply haven’t got a moment to spare.”
“But you asked to see me. You let me through, the gate was opened.”
“Ah…”
“Yes?”
“Mr Nyquist. Now I understand.” And once again, she seemed to re-enter the real world. “You were looking for Eleanor. Yes, that’s right. My husband employed you. Did you find her?”
Nyquist felt exhausted.
“Well? Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. Of course. And you were well paid, I hope?”
“I just need to speak with Eleanor. That’s all. That’s all I ask.”
Now Catherine looked nervous. She would look anywhere but into Nyquist’s eyes. “This is my home,” she said.
“I know that–”
“I was born here, in this house, on the dark side of the city.” She moved on to another clock, adjusting the hands. “They say it’s a curse, being born in the night. But those born in daylight would say that. They are jealous of our knowledge.” She picked up the next clock. “My husband was a dayside birth. He married me for the company’s fortunes, of course. You do understand, the business was created by my family?”
“And what about Eleanor’s real father?”
Catherine froze, and Nyquist saw that he had got to her now, shocked her into some kind of reality.
“Dominic Kinkaid,” he said.
“Dominic…” She was trying to locate a memory. “Dominic?”
“Tell me about him. What does he mean to you?”
“Ah yes. The lovely Dominic.” Her voice softened. “My beau. My handsome young lover. Oh, but I haven’t seen him, no, not for a long while now. Not for such a long, long time.”
“Tell me about him.”
Her hands paused in the winding of a clock, and she nodded eagerly, smiling, catching hold of a sudden memory. “We would meet in secret, in secret places, in little pockets of shared darkness. He was a painter, a sculptor, a maker of things. A magician. Oh, he kissed me! How he kissed me. Dominic took me to the edge of Dusk, where his lips first met mine; and then we walked further on, into the mist itself, the moon-white lands.” The story had taken her over completely. “The mist was cold against my face and my hands. Dew clung to my hair, making it sticky. I could hear voices in the fog. Such cries of pain. But we kept on walking. He seemed to have no fear of the dusk, no fear at all, and I felt quite safe by his side. Along the way we talked of art and lost time and the world of spirits.” Now she looked directly at Nyquist, her eyes taking on a young woman’s brilliance. “And still we kept on, entering a circle of strange wooden figures, like… like sculptures.”
“Effigies?”
“Yes! That is the word. And there, and there we made love, we made our love together, oh, with the fog rolling over our naked forms and the blue sparkle of Venus low in the sky like a guardian angel. I could hear voices in the gloom, a chanting sound. I felt
I was being watched. I was part of something at last, a ritual. A spell. It was very exciting. Ever so! And this is where my dear sweet Eleanor was conceived; conjured from the dusk, a child of the fog and the moon and the shadows.”
At last her voice slowed and came to silence. She turned her face away from Nyquist, suddenly embarrassed. Nyquist let her be for a moment. He remembered what the dealer Sumak had told him, about Eleanor being born in the dusk. But he’d got the story slightly wrong: not born, but conceived there.
Catherine Bale spoke in a whisper. “Tell me, have you seen Dominic lately?”
“I’m afraid…”
“Yes? What is it?” Her face was still hidden.
“I’m afraid Dominic Kinkaid is dead.”
“He’s dead.”
The clock fell from her hands, smashing on the floor, and it seemed that all the other clocks in the room stopped their ticking for a long drawn-out moment, as though in shock or sympathy. Catherine shuddered. She picked up another timepiece, hardly aware of what she was doing, and began to turn the winding mechanism. The room started ticking again.
Nyquist brought out the music box. He said, “You placed this on Kinkaid’s grave.” Catherine glanced over, as he lifted the lid to allow the music to start, the ballerina to dance. “You were seen, at the graveside.”
“Well then. I suppose I must’ve done. Yes, I remember now. Melissa came with me. She looked after me.”
Nyquist felt a sudden compassion for this strangely damaged woman. He asked gently, “What’s the significance of twenty minutes to four?”
Catherine hesitated. Then she said, “There are certain times of the day and night that must never be forgotten. Never! Do you believe that to be true, Mr Nyquist?”
“I used to think that only the present moment counted for anything real. But now, I’m not so sure.”
“My daughter was taken from me at twenty minutes to four.”
Nyquist thought she was referring to Eleanor and her current disappearance, but then he glimpsed a more disturbing reason for Catherine Bale’s behaviour. He could think of no easy way to express it without opening a wound, and bringing further pain to this woman. He kept his council, and his silence infected Catherine as well, and the two of them stood in the room of ticking clocks for a few moments. Then she shook her head, saying, “I don’t know where she is, can you imagine that? My husband has hidden Eleanor away.”
Nyquist touched her on the arm. “I’ll find her for you,” he said.
“You will?”
Nyquist nodded. Catherine held his gaze. Her face took on the most serious aspect she had yet managed, her fragmented mind in control of itself, for this brief period at least. “Be careful,” she said. “There are forces at play in this city, they are not to be trifled with. We are reaching the limits of time itself.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will find out.”
Nyquist drew in a breath. The conversation was coming to an end, and yet the difficult question remained. “Mrs Bale, tell me…” He paused, nervous of her reaction, before asking: “How many children do you have?”
A shadow passed over the woman’s face, a shadow generated from within by some terrible thought or memory which had risen to the surface, to her pale and drawn skin, entirely unbidden. “I have… I have…” The words struggled in a dry throat. Nyquist felt he had gone too far. He could see the hurt he had caused and was all set to apologise when Catherine’s eyes widened with knowledge and her mouth moved to speak, this time with a sudden, fierce determination: “I have two children!”
“What happened to the other child?”
“Passed over.”
The same phrase she’d used before.
“You mean she died?”
Catherine nodded, a barely noticeable movement. Her mouth opened to speak, but then she stuttered once more as she looked across from Nyquist over to the doorway where Patrick Bale now stood.
“Nyquist!” Bale strode into the room, followed by the security guard. “What are you doing in my house?” He was livid with anger.
Nyquist stood his ground. “Looking for Eleanor.”
“You’re upsetting my wife.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“If you would step into the other room. Please.”
The guard came nearer. Nyquist felt himself tighten up, ready for a fight, but then he heard Catherine’s voice softly murmuring. She had retreated once again, her hands working and twisting at a clock’s mechanisms as though to wind up the world itself and hold it tight, forever held in that one precious moment.
Private Affairs
Nyquist was standing in front of the large oil painting of figures lost to twilight, with the security guard Jacob close at hand. Patrick Bale stood a few feet away, rubbing his brow with his fingers. “I don’t understand you,” he said. Nyquist kept silent, forcing Bale to look up at him. “I’ve paid you. I’ve paid you for work that strictly speaking you didn’t even do, that is, find my daughter for me and bring her safely home. Instead, a police car brought her home to me, from a murder scene!”
Nyquist started to speak, but stopped himself.
Bale carried straight on: “I’ve given you every warning. What do I have to do?”
“Beat me up. Kill me. I don’t know.”
This statement angered Bale even further. He looked around the room before settling on the guard, who was trying to suppress a grin. “Jacob!” he shouted at the employee. “Get out of my sight. Now!”
The guard left the room.
Bale waited until the door was closed before he walked over to a cabinet and poured himself a drink. He didn’t offer one to Nyquist. He said, “You don’t know me. I don’t think anybody knows me. Not truly.”
“Maybe not. But I’d like to understand.”
“Why?”
“Because of Eleanor.”
“What of her?”
“Is there anybody you know that might want to harm her in any way?”
“No.”
“You’re the head of the most important company in Dayzone. You must have enemies.”
“Yes, but–”
“What drives you, Bale? Tell me that.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I don’t think it’s just greed…”
“Of course not. I have made my fortune ten times over and feel hardly better for it.”
“Well then?”
Bale looked to be on the edge of admitting something, but then he pulled back and said, “The family business was in the doldrums when I took over its running. They made clocks, wristwatches, fancy timepieces. A few rudimentary timelines. The monetary value was fine but it lacked, shall we say, imagination. No, what fascinated me, was time itself, our ability to capture it, and manipulate it. To no longer be its slave. And that has always been my driving force.”
Nyquist stepped a little closer. “I was talking to your wife earlier, and she mentioned something strange; that we’re reaching the limits of time.”
“Ah well, Catherine says many odd things.”
“The limits of time. I wonder what she meant by that? And what happens to us, to the city, once we step beyond that point?”
“We have everything under control.”
“And if we have another time crash, what then?”
“We have been working extensively to ensure that such an event does not happen again.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Nyquist remembered the last two crashes, when the city’s carefully constructed web of timelines had suddenly overloaded and collapsed into chaos. He shuddered at the thought: many people were frozen in place, incapable of moving from the spot; others could move but only at a dreadfully slowed rate. Nyquist had been affected in the opposite manner: his body clock had speeded up so that whole days would seem to pass in a few seconds. In the end he’d retreated to his Nocturnal home and stayed in bed, in the dark, until the nausea had passed and
the city’s system had regained its equilibrium.
“And what about those being damaged by all this?” he now asked. “That woman I read about in the newspaper, for instance. Over seventy different timelines coursing through her psyche.”
“And each of them individually tested. What can we do–”
“The poor woman sliced her wrists.”
Bale faltered slightly. “Yes.”
Nyquist moved in. “I hear that questions are being asked in parliament. What are you going to do? Buy them off?”
“This has nothing to do with you. Nothing at all!”
“I believe Eleanor is tied up in your struggles.”
“My struggles?”
“Your battle. Against time. And I think the death of Dominic Kinkaid is connected to all this. I just don’t know how yet.”
Bale’s whole body shook fiercely, as though experiencing physical pain.
Nyquist softened his voice. “You have to believe me, Eleanor is being targeted. I just need to find out why this is happening, and who’s seeking her. And then I can… and then we can make sure that she’s safe.”
The approach had no good effect. Instead, Bale’s eyes filled with a cold anger. “I will ask you one final time to leave my family alone. Leave my daughter alone.”
Nyquist let a few seconds pass, before he spoke: “But Eleanor’s not your daughter, is she?”
Bale swallowed the last of his drink in one gulp. For a moment, Nyquist thought the empty glass was going to break in the man’s hand. But he drew in a few breaths and then smiled. It was like watching an ice shard snap in two. “You’re right. You’re right, Nyquist. She’s not my daughter.”
Nyquist was surprised by the sudden admission, but he resisted the urge to follow up the questioning. Instead, he watched as Bale put down his glass and walked over to examine one of the oil paintings. The room was so dimly lit, his figure seemed to merge with the surreal landscape. “It was a tawdry affair,” he began. “That’s all. I don’t know the details. I don’t want to know. Some kind of artist. My wife was always attracted to such sensitive types. Of course, he was much younger than her.”