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.

A Clock And The Wind

Jack Havig and Leonce visit Robert Anderson for the last time. Leonce says that they might raise their children on a New Earth or wander the universe till they die. Then:

"'That'd be enough.'
"Silence fell. The clock on my mantel ticked aloud and the wind outside flowed past like a river."
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XVI, p. 171.

The silence is of speech, not of sound. The clock ticks. The wind blows/flows. The clock measures time. The wind often seems to comment in Anderson's works. This wind flows past and is compared to a river, which is a frequent metaphor for time. The clock is precise whereas the wind is unpredictable but are clocks clouds? See here. Chaos underlies order in Anderson's Time Patrol series although perhaps the unchanging timeline of There Will Be Time is more orderly?

This passage leaves us with the contrast between a ticking clock and a flowing river before the doorbell peals and the trick-or-treaters arrive, a return to normality in the form of children who can have no conception of what has just been discussed in Dr. Anderson's house.

Clocks And Time Machines

Clocks are machines that measure time and chronometers are more accurate clocks so clocks and chronometers could have been called "time machines" except that, thanks to HG Wells, that phrase means a chronomobile - to coin a new term. Sf writers should be able to link familiar clocks to unfamiliar time machines:

a film adaptation of The Time Machine begins with many ticking clocks;

the Doctor Who villain, the Master, had a space-time vehicle that was disguised as a grandfather clock;

decades ago, a comic book villain dismantled several clocks and reassembled some of their parts into an intertemporal communicator to summon help from the future, as if time was a medium that was detected by timepieces and that could be modulated to carry a message;

Tourmalin's Time Cheques by F. Anstey involves time travelling by leaving a cheque behind a clock (I think);

"What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people."

-Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (London, 1977), p. 103;

when Jack Havig has discussed the significance of time travel:

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

-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XVI, p. 175.