Victor speaks to time. "Go faster," he says.

It has been an hour, and he is used to quick responses. It doesn't help that all around him time is literally ticking. A mantel clock sits on his desk. His computer screen clicks off the seconds. His cell phone, desk phone, printer, and DVD player all have digital time displays. On the wall is a wooden plaque with three clocks in three time zones-New York, London, Beijing-representing the major offices of another company he owns.

All told, there are nine different sources of time in his study.

The phone rings. Finally. He answers.

"Yes?"

"I'm faxing something over."

"Good."

He hangs up. Grace enters.

"Who was that?"

He lies. "Something for tomorrow's meetings."

"You have to go?"

"Why not?"

"I just thought-"

She stops. She nods. She takes the plates to the kitchen.

The fax machine rings, and Victor moves closer as the paper slides through.

15.

Dor lay on the ground beside his wife. The stars took over the sky.

It had been days since she had eaten. She was perspiring heavily, and he worried about her labored breathing.

Please do not leave me, he thought. He could not bear a world without Alli. He realized how much he relied on her from morning until night. She was his only conversation. His only smile. She prepared their meager food and always offered it to him first, even though he insisted she eat before he did. They leaned on each other at sunsets. Holding her as they slept felt like his last connection to humanity.

He had his time measures and he had her. That was his life. For as long as he could remember, it had been that way, Dor and Alli, even as children.

"I do not want to die," she whispered.

"You will not die."

"I want to be with you."

"You are."

She coughed up blood. He wiped it away.

"Dor?"

"My love?"

"Ask the G.o.ds for help."

Dor did as she asked. He stayed up all night.

He prayed in a way he had never prayed before. In the past, his faith was in measures and numbers. But now he begged the most high G.o.ds-the ones that ruled over the sun and moon-to stop everything, to keep the world dark, to let his water clock overflow. If this would happen, then Dor would have time to find the Asu who could cure his beloved.

He swayed back and forth. He repeated a whisper, "Please, please, please, please, please ...," squeezing his eyes shut because it somehow made the words more pure. But when he allowed his eyelids the slightest lift, he saw what he dreaded, the first change of colors on the horizon. He saw the bowl was nearly to the notch of day. He saw that his measures were accurate, and he hated that they were accurate and he cursed his knowledge and the G.o.ds who had let him down.

He knelt over his wife, her face and hair soaked with sweat, and he leaned in, put his skin on her skin, his cheek on her cheek, and his tears mixed with hers as he whispered, "I will stop your suffering. I will stop everything."

When the sun rose, he could no longer wake her.

He rubbed her shoulders. He nudged her chin.

"Alli," he whispered. "Alli ... my wife ... open your eyes."

She was quite still, her head limp on the blanket, her breathing feeble. Dor felt an angry surge inside him, a primal howl that began in his feet and shot up through his lungs.

"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh ..."

His cry wafted into the empty air of the high plains.

He rose, slowly, as if in a trance.

And he began to run.

He ran through the morning and he ran through the midday sun. He ran with his lungs burning, until, at last, he saw it.

Nim's tower.

It stood so tall; its peak was hidden by clouds. Dor raced toward it, obsessed with one last hope. He had watched time and charted time and measured time and a.n.a.lyzed time, and he was determined now to reach the only place where time could be changed.

The heavens.

He would climb the tower and do what the G.o.ds had not.

He would make time stop.

The tower was a terraced pyramid, its stairs reserved for Nim's glorious ascent.

No one dared set foot on them. Some men even lowered their eyes as they pa.s.sed.

Thus, when Dor reached the base, several guards looked up, but none suspected what he would try. Before they could react, he was sprinting up the king's special steps. Slaves watched, confused. Who was this man? Did he belong? One yelled to the other. Several dropped their tools and bricks.

Quickly the slaves began ascending, too, convinced the race for the heavens had begun. The guards followed. People near the base joined in. The l.u.s.t for power is a combustible thing, and soon thousands were scaling the tower's facade. You could hear a rising roar, the collective yowl of violent men, ready to take what was not theirs.

What happened next is a matter of debate.

The way history tells the story, the Tower of Babel was either destroyed or abandoned. But the man who would become Father Time could testify to something else, because his fate was sealed on that very same day.

As the people climbed, the structure began to rumble. The brick grew molten red. A thundering sound was heard-and then the bottom of the tower melted away. The top burst into flame. The middle hung in the air, defying anything man had ever seen. Those who sought to reach the heavens were hurled off, like snow shaken from a tree branch.

Through it all, Dor climbed, until he was the only figure still clinging to the stairs. He climbed past dizziness, past pain, past his legs aching and his chest constricting. He pulled up on each step, as bodies swirled all around him. He saw glimpses of arms, elbows, feet, hair.

Thousands of men were cast from the tower that day, their tongues twisted into a mult.i.tude of languages. Nim's selfish plan was destroyed before he shot another arrow into the sky.

Only one man was allowed to ascend through the mist, one man lifted as if pulled from beneath his arms, landing on the floor of someplace deep and dark, a place no one knew existed and no one would ever find.

16.

This will happen soon.

An ocean wave begins to break and a boy rises on his surfboard. He presses his toes. He steers into the curl.

The wave freezes. So does he.

This will happen soon.

A hairstylist pulls back a clump of hair and slides her scissors underneath. She squeezes. A small crunching sound.

The hair breaks free and falls towards the floor.

It stops in midair.

This will happen soon.

In a museum off the Huttenstra.s.se in Dusseldorf, Germany, a security guard glances at a strange-looking visitor. He is lean. His hair is long. He moves to an exhibit of antique clocks. He opens a gla.s.s case.

"No, bi-" the guard warns, wagging a finger, but instantly he feels relaxed, foggy, lost in thought. He thinks he sees the strange man remove all the clocks, study them, take them apart, then put them back together, an act that would take weeks.

Emerging from the thought, he finishes his word: "-itte."

But the man is gone.

CAVE.

17.

Dor awoke inside a cave.

There was no light, yet he could somehow see. There were rocky lumps beneath his feet and jagged peaks pointing down from above.

He rubbed his hands over his elbows and knees. Was he alive? How did he get here? He had been in such pain climbing the tower, but now that pain was gone. He was not breathing hard. In fact, as he touched his chest, he was barely breathing at all.

He wondered for a moment if this was a lair of the G.o.ds, and then he thought about the bodies hurled from the tower, and the bottom melting, and the promise he had made Alli-I will stop your suffering-and he fell to his knees. He had failed. He had not turned back the hours. Why had he left her? Why had he run?

He buried his face in his palms. He wept. The tears poured through his fingers and turned the stone floor an iridescent blue.

It is hard to say how long Dor cried.

When he finally lifted his gaze, he saw a figure sitting in front of him-the old man he had seen as a child, his chin now resting atop the staff of golden wood. He was watching Dor the way a father watches a sleeping son.

"Is it power that you seek?" the old man asked. The voice was unlike any Dor had ever heard, muted, light, as if it had never been used.

"I seek," Dor whispered, "only to stop the sun and the moon."

"Ah," the old man said. "Is that not power?"

He poked Dor's sandals and they disintegrated, leaving Dor's feet bare.

"Are you the most high G.o.d?" Dor asked.

"I am but His servant."

"Is this death?"

"You were spared from death."

"To die here instead?"

"No. In this cave, you will not age a moment."