The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,162

in their bunions. I sense perturbations in that dreamlike dimension, which lies, I am convinced, just alongside our own, separated by a barrier thinner than the thinnest veil yet impossible for humans to cross unaided. That barrier, Mr Quare, is time.’

‘Time?’

Longinus gestured, indicating the gossipy assemblage of clocks. ‘What I have deduced over the years, through trial and error, and from my memories of Märchen, is that time is as much an artifice as the clocks that purport to measure it. It is not some intrinsic property of the universe, an extension of the mind of God or a manifestation of the natural order. It has been imposed upon the world – upon us. Indeed, we have been infected with it, like a plague. Or, rather, we are the plague, for we are not separate from time, Mr Quare. We are its very embodiment.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Quare confessed.

‘Time is foreign to Corinna and her kind. So she told me, and so I have come to believe. It is something strange and terrifying to them. Unnatural, as it were. Yet beautiful, too. It attracts them. Draws them like moths to a flame. And then burns them. Being immortal, they do not die of it. They do not age, as we do – for what else is aging but a slow burning, a fire that consumes itself in the end? Mortality is the fire in our veins. It feeds on us, swells and gutters over the course of our lives, leaving naught but ashes. But it spreads, too, does it not, that fire? Through procreation, we pass it on to our progeny, who do the same in turn, ad infinitum. Do you not see that we are mere vehicles for its expression? We are like lumps of coal endowed with mobility and reason, yet ignorant of our true nature. But not Corinna and her kind. They know what we are, what we carry. And do we not make tribute of it for their sake? Recall the effect that the townsfolk of Märchen had upon me. I was helpless to resist the demands of their desire, whether openly expressed or not. I spilled my seed at their whim. I employed the metaphor of fire, yet you might also think of us as bottles of wine, Mr Quare. We must age a bit to achieve our full potency. But then we must be drunk. And a true connoisseur of wine does not drain his bottles at a gulp. No, he sips them. Savours them. So it is with these connoisseurs of time. They sip at our mortality, at the wine of time that has matured within us. And they do not perish of it, as we do. No doubt that is why the taste of us is so sweet to them, Mr Quare – sweeter than we can imagine. That is why they are fascinated by us. Why they long for us … yet hate us, too. We are their laudanum. Their weakness. They are addicted to us. Addicted to time.’

Quare made an effort to marshal his thoughts. ‘You said imposed. Imposed by whom? And for what purpose?’

‘As to whom, why, Doppler, of course – that is, Corinna’s father, whatever his true name may be. It was plain to me, as I thought back over the circumstances of my escape from Märchen, that Herr Doppler, not Wachter, was the real power in that place. Corinna had told me, you will recall, that the Otherwhere was shaped by strength of will, and that her father’s will was the strongest of all. Wachter, or Immelman, rather, seemed a pathetic creature, frightened, his spirit broken. He claimed to be as human as I. No doubt he had been brought across the border much as I had. They had need of him, just as they had need of me. Indeed, Corinna said that I was meant to replace him. But for what purpose, to what end, I do not know. Only that it must have had something to do with time. With clocks and time, Mr Quare.’

‘What, then, of the watch that Corinna gave to you? What is its purpose?’

‘I cannot say for certain. But I have some ideas. It is plain that Doppler does not rule over his realm unopposed. Clearly, there are factions among his kind. Some, like Adolpheus, are loyal, while others are engaged in a rebellion of sorts. Corinna went in search of the rebels at the end, to join their fight. Why, if