"I must be getting back," said the Clockwork man to himself, as he
trundled slowly over the hump of the meadow and approached the stile.
"I shall only make a muddle of things here."
There was still a touch of complaint in his voice, as though he felt
sorry now to leave a world so full of pitfalls and curious adventures.
Something brisker about his appearance seemed to suggest that an
improvement had taken place in his working arrangements. You might
have thought him rather an odd figure, stiff-necked, and jerky in his
gait; but there were no lapses into his early bad manner.
"I have a feeling," he continued, placing a finger to his nose, "that
if I put on my top gear now I should be off like a shot."
But he did not hurry. He twisted his head gradually round as though to
embrace as much as possible in his last survey of a shapely, if limited
world.
"Such a jolly little place," he mused. "You could have such fun--and be
yourself. I wonder why it reminds me so of something--before the days
of the clock, before we _knew_."
He sighed, and suddenly stopped in order to contemplate the two figures
seated together on the stile. Rose was asleep in Arthur's arms.
"Don't bother," said the Clockwork man, as Arthur stirred slightly,
"I'm not going that way. I shall go back the way I came."
"Oh," said Arthur, smitten with embarrassment, "then I shan't see you
again?"
"Not for a few thousand years," replied the Clockwork man, with a
slight twisting of his lip. "Perhaps never."
"Are you better now?" Arthur enquired.
"I'm working alright, if that's what you mean," said the other,
averting his eyes. Then he looked very hard at Rose, and the expression
on his features altered to mild astonishment.
"Why are you holding that other person like that?" he asked.
"She's my sweetheart," Arthur replied.
"You must explain that to me. I've forgotten the formula."
Arthur considered. "I'm afraid it can't be explained," he murmured, "it
just is."
The Clockwork man winked one eye slowly, and at the same time there
begun a faint spinning noise, very remote and detached. As Arthur
looked at him he noticed another singularity. Down the smooth surface
of the Clockwork man's face there rolled two enormous tears. They
descended each cheek simultaneously, keeping exact pace.
"I remember now," the mechanical voice resumed, with something like
a throb in it, "all that old business--before we became _fixed_, you
know. But they had to leave it out. It would have made the clock too
complicated. Besides, it wasn't necessary, you see. The clock kept
you going for ever. The splitting up process went out of fashion,
the splitting up of yourself into little bits that grew up like
you--offspring, they used to call them."
Arthur dimly comprehended this. "No children," he hazarded.
The Clockwork man shook his head slowly from side to side. "No
children. No love--nothing but going on for ever, spinning in infinite
space and knowledge."
He looked directly at Arthur. "And dreaming," he added. "We dream, you
know."
"Yes?" Arthur murmured, interested.
"The dream states," explained the Clockwork man, "are the highest point
in clock evolution. They are very expensive, because it is a costly
process to manufacture a dream. It's all rolled up in a spool, you see,
and then you fit it into the clock and unroll it. The dreams are like
life, only of course they aren't real. And then there are the records,
you know, the music records. They fit into the clock as well."
"But do you all have clocks?" Arthur ventured. "Are you born with them?"
"We're not born," said the Clockwork man, looking vaguely annoyed, "we
just are. We've remained the same since the first days of the clock."
He ruminated, his forehead corrugated into regular lines. "Of course,
there are the others, the _makers_, you know."
"The makers?" echoed Arthur.
"Yes, you wouldn't know about them, although you're not unlike a maker
yourself. Only you wear clothes like us, and the makers don't wear
clothes. That was what puzzled me about you. The look in your eyes
reminded me of a maker. They came after the last wars. It's all written
in history. There was a great deal of fighting and killing and blowing
up and poisoning, and then the makers came and they didn't fight. It
was they who invented the clock for us, and after that every man had
to have a clock fitted into him, and then he didn't have to fight any
more, because he could move about in a multiform world where there was
plenty of room for everybody."
"But didn't the other people object?" said Arthur.
"Object to what?"
"To having the clock fitted into them."
"Would you object," said the Clockwork man, "to having all your
difficulties solved for you?"
"I suppose not," Arthur admitted, humbly.
"That was what the makers did for man," resumed the other. "Life
had become impossible, and it was the only practical way out of the
difficulty. You see, the makers were very clever, and very mild and
gentle. They were quite different to ordinary human beings. To begin
with, they were _real_."
"But aren't you real?" Arthur could not refrain from asking.
"Of course not," rapped out the Clockwork man, "I'm only an invention."
"But you look real," objected Arthur.
The Clockwork man emitted a faint, cacophonous cackle.
"We feel real when the dream states unroll within us, or the music
records. But the makers _are_ real, and they live in the real world.
No clockwork man is allowed to get back into the real world. The clock
prevents us from doing that. It was because we were such a nuisance and
got in the way of the makers that they invented the clock."
"But what is the real world like?" questioned Arthur.
"How can I know?" said the Clockwork man, flapping his ears in despair.
"I'm _fixed_. I can't be anything beyond what the clock permits me to
be. Only, since I've been in your world, I've had a suspicion. It's
such a jolly little place. And you have women."