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“How do you know the story?”
“The horology world is small.”
“All the clocks you’re talking about are analog. Wheels, springs, weights, chains. No interest in digital ones?”
“I respect them but, no, not really. Other than one. The atomic clock.”
“I’ve heard of it. It sets universal time, right?”
He nodded.
“Even when working perfectly, mechanical and electric and electronic clocks’re affected by temperature, solar flares, magnetic fields, altitude changes. The highest level—nearly faultless—are ones that measure time according to the resonant frequency of atoms. In the U.S., the National Institute of Standards and Technology uses cesium atoms cooled to near absolute zero.”
“Nearlyfaultless?”
“They lose or gain one second every three hundred million years.”
“Does life need to be that accurate?”
“Business meetings, luncheon dates, theater curtains, weddings, no. Airline scheduling, trains, timing of radiation bursts in cancer treatments, yes. Outer space? A timing error of a billionth of a second can mean nearly a twelve-inch positioning error on reentry. And your spaceship disintegrates. Atomic clocks are being replaced by optical. Even more accurate. Do you collect anything? Poetry, I suppose.”
“And miniature steam engines. They run on alcohol.”
“Don’t know that I’ve ever seen one.”
“I find them hypnotic. The blue flame, the smell of the fire.”
“What do they do?”
“Turn wheels and belts, spin governors. There are a few that’re practical. One can run a generator in a safe house I have that’s off the grid. Steam can do just about anything electrons can. Charles Babbage had a design for a steam-powered computer, the Analytical Engine, he called it—1834. It was never finished, but I’ve always thought I might like to get the plans and do it myself. Were there ever any steam-powered clocks?”
“One, also the eighteen hundreds, Birmingham, England. It was essentially a promotion piece for the values of steam. Here and there nowadays, some tourist attractions.”
“Are they accurate?”
“As accurate as the escarpment. The steam doesn’t turn the hands. It lifts weights that drive the wheels. There’s one in the Midwest. Instead of chiming the hour, it blows a whistle.”
“Why do you want Rhyme dead?”
“When a horologist builds a clock or watch, the rooms are as clean as scientists making a space telescope. Not a single bit of dust or a hair or grain of sand. The room I use, in Europe, has negative pressure.”
“Like a biohazard lab.”
“Lincoln is a grain of sand that keeps ending up in my wheelworks. We’ve been on a collision course for years. There was a job I wanted, last year. An oligarch. London. Highest security in the city. More than for the king.”
“Dmitry Olshevsky.”
“That’s him. Five million.” He felt the irritation once again. “I was passed over. Pierre LeClaire got the job. The buyer didn’t say, but I think it was what Lincoln had done to my reputation.”
“And you’rehisgrain of sand. Because he may have stopped some projects, but you’re still free.”
True. But little consolation.
Hale happened to glance at the security camera monitor. Someone—a man, he believed—stood at the mouth of the cul-desac just on the other side of the chain barring entry. Had the man gotten closer, the alarm would have sounded.
This was not unusual. People were curious about the demolition site.
Was this just a passerby who’d noted the crumbling buildings?
