The room was almost silent. Dilyara was reading, Mikhail was leafing through a magazine, and Pai was about to do something important: nothing. But the wall clock kept working.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Pai opened one eye. The employee on the wall clearly hadn't received the rest-time memo. The boss came closer and gave it a stern look. The clock replied, “Tick.” Negotiations were off to a poor start.
“It tells the time,” Mikhail explained.
Pai looked back at his cozy spot. The time was perfectly obvious: lying-down time. Why announce it every second?
Dilyara proposed a compromise: the clock stays on the wall, Pai goes back to resting, and all disputed matters wait until he wakes up. Pai agreed, though he kept listening for a while.
Tick. Tock. Snrrr. Tick. Tock. Snrrr.
Now the clock had a partner. Mikhail put down his magazine and whispered:
“I think we have a new mechanism.”
“Yes,” Dilyara smiled. “A pendulum with ears.”
A minute later, Pai was sound asleep. The clock behaved itself too: not once did it try to say “walkies.” For that, it was allowed to stay.