"Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" is a science fiction short story by American writer Samuel R. Delany, published in the December 1968 issue of New Worlds.
Relationships change and reverse as a thief and impersonator, whose aliases all have the initials "HCE", rises up through the ranks to established semi-legit crime boss.
As a youth he was sent to work on a highly automated dairy farm in the state of Vermont, although the "cows" were basically inert masses of tissue stacked in a barn and hooked up to tubes.
As the story opens, he arrives in New York City on a space flight, carrying a number of small but extremely valuable objects, which he hopes to sell.
Shedding his travel identity, he enters a bar to contact a man who will buy his goods, only to be accosted by a woman who draws his attention to the stone she is wearing in a bracelet.
The woman identifies herself as Special Services Agent Maud Hinkle, from a police bureau which tracks criminals who are changing their status quickly.
Hawk is also a Singer, a kind of public poet with the ability to improvise a song to celebrate or memorialize a major event.
Reaching the party in a swanky penthouse, HCE meets Arty the Hawk, an established crime boss who attracts no interest from Special Services.
He eventually sets up the first ever ice cream parlor on a moon of Neptune, as an investment and a cover for his activities.
During their conversation, she tells him how Hawk the Singer had dived back into the blazing pool once his song was over, being near death when he was fished out.
Hawk is severely emotionally disturbed, prone to self-injury, and not above asking others to inflict injury on him to satisfy his needs.
The story appears to take place over a little more than a year, as shown by the list of stones which are used as the Word: opal, jasper, agate, malachite, tourmaline, beryl, porphyry, sapphire, cinnabar, turquoise, tiger's eye, garnet, topaz, taafite, and pyrite.
The narrator celebrates his twenty-sixth birthday during "beryl", and buys the ice cream bar during "sapphire".