Thief of Time - Glass Clock

The sweeper bowed, while the abbot started to beat the acolyte gently over the head with a wooden bear. 'History has repeated, Lu-Tze. DumDumBBBRRRR ...'

'Glass clock?' said Lu-Tze. The senior monks gasped.

'How could you possibly know that?' said the chief acolyte. 'We haven't rerun the Mandala yet!'

'It is written, “I've got a feeling in my water,”' said Lu-Tze. 'And that was the only other time I ever heard of when all the spinners went wild like that. They all cut loose. Time-slip. Someone's building a glass clock again.'

'That is quite impossible,' said the acolyte. 'We removed every trace!'

'Hah! It is written, “I'm not as green as I'm cabbage-looking!”' snapped Lu-Tze. 'Something like that you can't kill. It leaks back. Stories. Dreams. Paintings on cave walls, whatever-’

Lobsang looked down at the Mandala floor. Monks were clustered around a group of tall cylinders at the far end of the hall. They looked like Procrastinators, but only one small one was spinning, slowly. The others were motionless, showing the mass of symbols that were carved into them from top to bottom. Pattern storage. The thought arrived in his head. That is where the Mandala's patterns are kept, so that they can be replayed. Today's patterns on the little one, long-term storage on the big ones. Below him the Mandala rippled, blotches of colour and scraps of pattern drifting across its surface. One of the distant monks called out something, and the small cylinder stopped. The rolling sand grains were stilled.

'This is how it looked twenty minutes ago,' said Rinpo. 'See the blue-white dot there? And then it spreads-’

'I know what I'm looking at,' said Lu-Tze grimly. 'I was there when it happened before, man! Your reverence, get them to run the old Glass Clock sequence! We haven't got a lot of time!'

'I really think we-' the acolyte began, but he was interrupted by a blow from a rubber brick.

'Wannapottywanna if Lu-Tze is right, then we must not waste time, gentlemen, and if he is wrong then we have time to spare, is this not so? Pottynowwannawanna!'

'Thank you,' said the sweeper. He cupped his hands. 'Oi! You lot! Spindle two, fourth bhing, round about the nineteenth gupa! And jump to it!'

'I really must respectfully protest, your reverence,' said the acolyte. 'We have practised for just such an emergency as-'

'Yeah, I know all about practising procedures for emergencies,' said Lu-Tze. 'And there's always something missing.'

'Ridiculous! We take great pains to-'

'You always leave out the damn emergency.' Lu-Tze turned back to the hall and the apprehensive workers. 'Ready? Good! Put it on the floor now! Or I shall have to come down there! And I don't want to have to come down there!' There was some frantic activity by the men around the cylinders, and a new pattern replaced the one below the balcony. The lines and colours were in different places, but a blue-white circle occupied the centre. 'There,' said Lu-Tze. 'That was less than ten days before the clock struck.' There was silence from the monks. Lu-Tze smiled grimly. 'And ten days later-'

'Time stopped,' said Lobsang.

'That's one way of putting it,' said Lu-Tze.

***

The Thief of Time - p132-134