The Talking Clock

Начало книги

Old Simon Quisenberry was going to die. He was only four years past his allotted three score and ten, but he’d put too much strain on the old heart and two years ago, Dr. Wykagl had given him only six months more. He’d made a liar of the doctor by eighteen months.

It wouldn’t be nineteen months. Old Simon knew that and he sat in his wheel chair and listened to the ticking of the clocks as they tolled the moments that were left him. There were a thousand clocks and each told the same story. Each tick a second, sixty ticks a minute, a thousand ticks a thousand seconds… No, a thousand ticks were only one second.

Simon scowled at the clocks. They were confusing him. Damn the things. He’d put so much into them and now at the end, they were betraying him. They were ticking out his life — too fast.

There were a thousand clocks. They were of all shapes and sizes. Some were new, some old. Simon had gathered them from the corners of the earth, had delved into history to acquire some. A fifteenth century papal prince had owned one, another had been the prized possession of a Russian czar. The mistress of an archbishop had owned another and an eighteenth century pirate had gone to the gallows wearing one.

Читать дальше →