The Clocks

Thursday October 15, in the Year 723 After the Founding

As they were walking along the Circle Road, Jason suddenly pulled up short, causing the girls to almost lose their footing. Less than a second later he resumed walking, as if nothing had happened.

Before they could say anything he spoke to them, "Just keep walking. Whatever you do, don't turn around. I mean you Yoko. Don't do it. It could be dangerous. Just this once stomp on your curiosity."

"Oh, all right Jason, I won't, but only if ya tell us what's goin' on."

He led them on a seemingly random stroll across a grassy area then sat them on the old curtain wall around The Park so that they faced outward toward the valley south of The City. Next he slowly and deliberately lifted the hands that he was holding to his lips, one at a time, and kissed them. The girls reacted exactly as he has expected, both physically and mentally. They blushed bright as beets and "yelled" at him.

"What in blue blazes are you doing?! Ya can't be doin' something like that in public Jason! What will people think?"

"They're going to think exactly what I want them to, if anyone is watching, which I both doubt that they are and hope that they're not. They'll think that I'm in love with two lovely young ladies and that I'm a bit overly demonstrative for someone as young as me. The last thing anyone watching will think is that I was watching one of them just a minute ago."

That instantly got their undivided attention. Unlike him, they were well aware of at least some of what their mother was doing. Consequently they didn't waste time asking questions. Rather, without speaking, even to each other, they leaned up against him and gently rubbed their cheeks on his upper arms.

Now it was Jason's turn to be embarrassed. He was accustomed to their touching him, but this was far more intimate than they'd ever been before, and he had no idea how to respond. Fortunately his body responded for him, and he blushed just as brightly as they had earlier.

Hibiki purred, "Well, how about that Yoko. It would be most prudent for us to remember this, especially should we want something from him in the future."

"Hmmm. You're probably right Biki. Besides, he's so cute when he blushes. Maybe we should investigate other ways ta get him ta do it."

"I concur with your analysis Yoko. This could be a great deal of fun."

Jason managed to blush even brighter, after which both girls broke out in peals of genuine laughter.

It should be noted that, as they sat there for the next 10 minutes, neither girl let go of his hand, nor did they lift their heads off of his arms.

Hibiki broke what had been an amicable silence, "Jason dear, do you think it is now safe for us to leave? More importantly, will you tell us what is going on? Being with you like this is extremely pleasant, but my curiosity is about to drive me to distraction."

"Yes, let's go, shall we?" He stood and brushed himself off, then waited while the girls did likewise.

This time they held onto his arms and leaned into him as they headed back up the hill toward home. After a few minutes of silence Yoko said, "Well? Get on with it. We're waiting."

"Waiting for what? Oh. Never mind. I was thinking of something. Several somethings actually. Let's see. I want to do this right. Let me organize my thoughts or I'll ramble all over the place and make you angry with me again. I don't like it very much when you get like that."

The girls leaned forward enough that Jason's body wouldn't be in the way, then turned and looked at each other. Each found that the other looked just as chagrined as she felt herself. Obviously they hadn't been quite as patient with Jason as they'd convinced themselves that they were.

Jason seemed not to notice. He was looking toward the sky, at nothing in particular, while he sorted out what he wanted to say.

"OK. I think I have it straight. Starting about a month after I learned how to talk to you properly, I started to feel things. No, that's not right. What I did was start to feel what other people were feeling. I guess that's the best way to put it. At first I thought it was just me feeling angry or sad or happy or whatever -- for no reason. It frightened me. I have enough trouble sorting out my feelings already, and this happening off and on all day was hard to deal with.

"Later I noticed that I would feel like that when someone in class or near me was upset or happy. Eventually I figured out that it wasn't me but them I was feeling. Let me tell you, that was a big relief. I'd been afraid that I was going crazy or something.

"I've been practicing since then. First I had to work out when it was someone else's feelings and not mine. Then I had to figure out who it was. Finally I had to figure out how to block it off when it was irritating me, which it was most of the time, especially when everyone panicked because one of the teachers was about to give us another pop quiz."

He sighed. "So that's it. That's what happened."

He figured that any passerby who heard that part would just think he was talking to himself, so he'd said it aloud. Thinking at the twins burned calories, substantially more than regular speech, and it tired him out when he had to say as much as he just had.

The girls once more leaned forward and looked at each other. This time they nodded, pulled back their free arms and punched him.

"OW! What did you do that for?"

Yoko snarled, "Whadda ya mean, 'That's what happened'? Ya didn't tell us diddly about why you got all weird on us today! We want ta hear the rest of it!"

Hibiki chimed in mentally, "Indeed. Give us a complete answer, or we shall do worse than punch you in the arm. If you do not begin speaking, we will...we will pull you down and kiss you into submission!"

Moments later her blush returned when a vengeance when she realized what she'd said.

Jason's response was barely above a whisper, and again accompanied by his own blush, "I think, just maybe, that I'd like that...a lot."

"But I'd better tell you the rest now or I may forget. I think if you start kissing me I'll forget everything else but that."

The girls clutched at his arms. All three of them were blushing madly, but the setting sun was bathing them in an orange-red light that masked it from everyone else on the street. At least they all hoped so.

He cleared his mental throat, "What I felt in the park scared me, a lot. There was a man who passed us going the other way. His emotions were so strong that I could barely stop from shaking. Mostly what I felt was an incredible determination. I could tell that he wasn't going to let anything or anyone stop him. I couldn't tell who, but he's planning to kill someone!

"He was looking at everyone who passed by, though he was trying not to look like that's what he was doing. It seemed like...automatic, like he wasn't paying a lot of attention, but he would if he saw something odd. He was looking sorta toward me when I felt what he was thinking, and I'm pretty sure that he might have seen me look scared. I didn't want him to think that I knew what he was doing, so that's why I did what I did in the park."

Other than tightening their grips on his arms, the girls showed no visible response. Instead they had a discussion on what they'd begun calling "twin channel two." They'd figured out a way to talk to each other that Jason couldn't hear. Like it was for him when he spoke overly long to them, it was tiring, but sometimes a girl needed to be private with another girl. No men allowed.

"Biki, I think it's time to tell Mother. Whatta ya think?"

"Agreement here. Now, before anything else happens."

"Jason, let us go home. This is something we need to tell Mother, OK?"

He looked down at Hibiki and then Yoko who nodded agreement, so he said, "Sure. Why not?"

They avoided hurrying, sticking to their usual pace, just in case. In case of what they weren't sure, but neither did they want to find out, so they behaved as much like they always did as they could.

It didn't take long, as they'd been near a side street that lead almost directly up the hill to their home. When they arrived, Yoko went to find their mother. Hibiki stayed in the entryway with Jason. Their father would be home soon, and she didn't want Jason to run into Hiroshi without at least one of them with him.

Yoko found their mother in the kitchen, giving some last minute directions to the cook. "I'm home Mother."

"Welcome home dear. Where's Hibiki?"

"She's in the entryway with Jason."

That caused Blair's left eyebrow to twitch upward. The girls rarely brought him to visit, and never before unannounced. Yoko's next action resulted in the right eyebrow also rising. She tugged on her mother's sleeve, gently given that there were potential witnesses, and led her out of the room.

Once they were in the hall, Yoko waved her mother a bit down the hall, then stood on her toes and whispered in Blair's ear the words she'd heard an occasional visitor say. In each case her mother had begun a flurry of activities from which all other family members were gently but firmly excluded. What she said was, "We have a situation."

Both of Blair's eyebrows rose. She looked a question at Yoko who responded with, "Yes."

"My office, now, all of you."

Yoko called the others as she followed Blair up a flight of stairs and then to her office, which was at the end of the hall and shared no wall with any other rooms. It had perhaps once been a tower room, but, if so, numerous rounds of remodeling over the centuries had obscured its origins. Once there Blair entered. Yoko waited outside for the others to arrive.

When the children entered the room, they saw that three chairs had been arranged across from Blair's desk. She was sitting in the chair behind it. However, unlike her usual relaxed, friendly pose, she was leaning forward, her elbows on the desk and her fingers steepled. She nodded at them. "Sit. Sit and explain. You can tell me later how it came that you know that phrase. For now, start talking."

The girls had never in their lives seen this stern personage before, and they were taken aback. This was their mother? If so, and there truly was no doubt who she was, there was much more going on than they'd ever supposed, even in their wildest imaginings.

Hibiki began, "Well Mother, first we need to tell you something. We have not exactly been hiding it, but, well, we didn't, uh..."

She faltered when she felt and saw her mother's gaze, but somehow managed to start over. Uncharacteristically she blurted it out, "Jason can speak twin!"

This time when Blair's eyebrows rose, they seemed almost to disappear in her hairline. She swiveled her eyes toward Jason, much like a cannoneer adjusts the aim of his cannon. "Explain."

For once it was a blessing that Jason wasn't very good at reading expressions. Because of that, he wasn't at all intimidated. Consequently he did exactly as instructed, starting with the moment he'd first heard the buzzing of the girl's conversation at school and ending with the happenings of the day.

By the time he was finished, he was elated. An adult who wasn't a family member had listened to everything he had to say! Not only that, she'd not interrupted him, not even once! He was pretty sure that his practice with sticking to the point when he was talking to the twins had helped a lot, but he was also certain that he'd still gotten off track one or two times.

Blair pushed herself back from her desk with both arms and stared at the ceiling for a long while, obviously thinking. When she was finished, she turned her attention to the children once more. "So, the ramifications of your ability to speak 'twin' we will explore later. Your ability to sense emotions, will also have to be dealt with later, probably after the first. What we have now is a little problem that isn't so little.

"If I'm to believe what you say, there's a man in town who is planning to murder someone. That narrows it down to one of about 23,000 adult males, given that the rest of the population consists of women and children. If we accept the possibility that a woman is his target, the number is more than double that. Without more to go on, it's going to be a bit hard to find him, don't you think?"

Jason raised his hand, just as he would in class when he had an answer for the teacher. Blair nodded and said, "Yes, Jason, what is it?"

"Ah I guess I hadn't thought it all the way through. Would it help if you knew who he was? Well, no, wait, I don't know his name, but, ah, would a drawing of him help?"

Blair's eye lit up. "You can draw well enough that we could tell who he is? I don't mean a picture that looks sort of like him, but exactly like him or near that?"

Jason spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. Blair fell back in her chair. It hadn't been likely, but she'd had to ask. However Jason wasn't finished. "I can't but Yoko can. She draws better than anyone I know. No, not that. She draws better than anyone whose pictures I've seen. I don't know how well everyone I know draws. Sorry."

Blair looked at him with surprise. Yoko looked at him in astonishment. "How..how do ya know that I draw? I've never showed anyone, not even Biki. How could you....." She trailed off into silence.

"Oh. That's easy. Sometimes, when you're really, really concentrating hard on something, I can see what you're seeing. And when you draw, you concentrate super hard. That's how I know how well you draw. It's the same as when you look in the mirror in your bathroom after you take a bath and wonder what you'll look like when you're full grown, or when you look at Hibiki and wonder if she's prettier than you are. You always concentrate real hard when you do that."

He looked at her with puzzlement. "That's silly you know. I know that identical twins aren't exactly identical, but you're so close to each other in looks that there's no reason for you to compare yourself to her. You're both the prettiest girls in town."

He looked down at his feet. "I guess I shouldn't say that either. Besides my sisters and you two I've never seen any naked girls."

He looked up again. "But I'm sure that you'll always be the prettiest girls to me. Mom says that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' and I think that you're both beautiful."

He expected to be praised. He'd complimented them twice. He'd called them "pretty" and "beautiful." Therefore he was completely surprised by their reactions.

The first thing he noticed was a choking sound from Blair's direction. He looked that way and saw her bent over her desk with both her hands clapped over her mouth. Her entire body was shaking as if she were having a seizure.

Before he could ask what was wrong, he was distracted by Hibiki flying across his field of vision as she leapt from the chair on his right and onto Yoko who was just beginning to stand up. He couldn't see Hibiki's face because she had her back to him. She was holding onto Yoko with all her might as Yoko struggled to get out of her chair.

The look on her face was one of incandescent fury. For the first time in his life Jason understood the phrase, "If looks could kill." The only problem was he had no idea why she was acting like that.

Fortunately the explanation was forthcoming. Unfortunately, it came from Yoko. "What...do...you...mean...you've...seen...us...naked? Have you been peeping at us in the changing room at school?"

Jason raised his hands and made the "calm down" gesture he'd learned from his mother, "Whatever are you talking about? I'd never do anything like that. Peeping is wrong. Why would I peep into the changing room? I'm not interested in any of the other girls.

"Besides, you're the one who showed me. It's not like I was trying to find a way to look at you."

He managed to look both pensive and confused. "I'll be seeing you naked now and then for the rest of our lives together. Why are you so upset?"

By then Hibiki had turned around, and she was glaring at him too, though not in anger but in exasperation. She'd just realized that they had a lot further to go with Jason's social education than they'd thought. While the idea that he'd seen her naked in the bathroom was a bit upsetting, what he'd said about the rest of their lives was right. It was after all part of being married. It was a bit disconcerting, but not an unpleasant feeling.

Yoko's fury was, in truth, not directed at him as much as it was toward herself. She'd always prided herself on her awareness of her surroundings, and on the fact that she was almost always the first in class to notice something new or different. But here she was, totally unaware of something significant that had probably been going on for months.

In addition there were telltale signs, at least to her twin, that much of her anger was designed to cover up her embarrassment. Somehow she hadn't wanted anyone to know about her drawing.

By now Blair had gotten her laughter under control. She stood and walked around her desk to the girls. She smiled at Hibiki and stroked her hair. Then she knelt and wrapped her arms around Yoko. "Don't you think that's about enough little one? You've known for several years that Jason isn't like other boys. It's not his fault that he doesn't understand that part of your reaction. Nor is it his fault that he's unaware that this ability has never before been documented. Even I've never heard of it. That being so, how should he know that it's unusual?"

Yoko turned to her mother, the fury falling away from her face as she did so. She let her head drop so she didn't have to see Blair's face.

Blair put her index finger under Yoko's chin and lifted her head, "Haven't I taught you that running away from a problem usually makes it worse? What then should you do in a situation like this?"

Yoko mumbled, "Analyze the situation, sort out the possible ways to address it, then implement the one that seems most suitable at the time. Hold the others in reserve in case the first one doesn't pan out."

Blair patted her on the head. "Good girl. I was sure that you were listening. That being the case, what are your appropriate actions right now? There's one pressing question of some urgency. The others need to be addressed, but that one thing is what we all need answered immediately. What is it?"

"Please let me stand Mother."

Blair backed up and Yoko stood. She glared once more at Jason, then surprised both of them by grinning at him. After that she began to pace back and forth, five small steps in each direction. Blair's office was fairly good sized, but it contained an unusual number of furnishings and bookcases.

After a while she stopped and spun toward Jason. "How does my being good at drawing help with identifying this person when I've never seen him?"

Blair, who was by then standing behind Jason, silently applauded.

Jason looked back at her with some exasperation of his own. "That's a silly question."

Then he stopped and thought for a moment. "I'm sorry. No it isn't. I supposed that you know what I do, but I see that it doesn't always work that way. What we do is I put the image of his face in your mind and you draw it. It's that simple."

He smiled at her. "I know you can do it. You draw people better than anything else you do, and all your drawings are really, really good!"

While Yoko struggled to absorb Jason's statement, Blair quietly, but quickly walked over to the chaise lounge in the corner and laid herself down on it. It wouldn't do for her to faint. Her falling on the floor would distract the others, and they might forget something important.

While she was lying there she could vaguely hear Yoko and Jason discussing how to go about producing the necessary portrait. She herself was far too busy to pay much attention. He mind was swirling, having been faced with three outrageous impossibilities that she had suddenly learned weren't impossible at all.

1) Someone other than a twin could speak twin, at the very least in certain specific situations.

2) Likewise, in certain situations, one member of a twin pair could see what the other could see.

3) In addition, said other member was, apparently, sometimes able to project something that he/she had seen in the recent past into the mind of their twin clearly enough that an accurate rendering could be drawn.

The mind boggled with possibilities, right now nothing more so than numbers two and three. If a spy could project the image of a document that needed copying, directly to the mind of his or her twin, there'd be no need to carry writing tools and paper with them during an infiltration. If caught they wouldn't have anything incriminating on them and they might be able to explain being where they weren't supposed to be as an accident.

She was sure that a number of other ideas would come to her, but that was for later. As she'd taught the girls, what needed doing first should be done first. She took a few deep breaths then sat up gingerly. Good, no dizziness. Time to get back to work.

She went to the cabinet behind her desk and removed a medium size sheet of paper from a stack that was usually used for drawing up floor plans. She carried it over and laid it flat on her worktable. Turning to Yoko, she held up a pen in her left hand and a pencil in her right, "Which do you want to use?"