The Telling Of the Tale

There Will Be Time, XVI.

"Their tale was hours in the telling. Sunset flared gold and hot orange across a greenish western heaven, beyond trees and neighbor roofs, when I had been given the skeleton of it. The wind had dropped to a mumble at my threshold." (p. 172)

The dialogue at the end of XV fits in here. 

The peaceful sunset signifies a satisfactory conclusion to their tale and to this novel. The wind dropping signifies an end to any threat from the Eyrie.

"Havig sought words. 'Doc,' he said after a bit, 'once we've left here, you won't see us again.'

"I sat quite quietly. Sunset in the windows was giving way to dusk." (p. 173)

 

Sunset becoming dusk signifies an even closer approach to the end. Havig might be referring to the imminence of Robert Anderson's death although Leonce immediately denies this.

 

Havig explains that in the future, after the Eyrie and the Maurai, his people prepare for interstellar travel:

 

"'We'll have started man on his way to infinity.'

"I stared past him. In the windows, the constellations were hidden by flamelight." (p. 174)

 

The hiding of the constellations signifies that that interstellar future is a long way beyond Anderson's lifetime.

 

When Leonce says that maybe they will raise their children on a New Earth or maybe they will wander the universe till they die:

 

"Silence fell. The clock on my mantel ticked aloud and the wind outside flowed past like a river." (p. 175)

 

Silence falls because there is nothing more to be said. They hear the passage of time both in the ticking of the clock and in the flowing of the wind. Time is both measured, divided into ticks, and continuous, endlessly flowing. See A Clock And The Wind.