“Visit-it-itors please-ease pay no attent-ention to-to the per-ersons apar-arently runn-unning to-towards the ti-time-lo-locks. They-ey are a Ti-time City-ity phenom-enomenon know-own as Ti-time–gho-ghosts and qui-quite harm-arm-less.”
A number of the real tourists looked as if they had half a mind to go straight home again until they heard this message. Only one person took no notice of the ghosts at all. He stepped out of a booth and strode forward as if the platform was empty. But he was a time-ghost too, Vivian realised. She was beginning to be able to tell. He was wearing old-fashioned-looking clothes and he had a slight blurring round the edges of him. But the odd thing was that she thought she had seen this particular ghost before somewhere. She tried to follow him as he strode through the crowd of running ghosts and among surprised, slower-moving tourists, but he vanished in the way time-ghosts did.
“Let’s go,” said Jenny. “I really hate time-ghosts.”
They were all glad to go. The waves of silently rushing figures made them all uncomfortable. It was hard not to feel panicked at the way the ghosts were so desperately beating on the time-booths, even when you knew they were not real. They went down the steps to the boat again.
“The Lagoon,” said Jenny. “We’ll tell you when to moor.”
The Lagoon was a bend of the river that the river had left behind. It had turned into a long, curved lake with a narrow channel for boats at either end. A filter in the channels kept the water a pure clean green so that people could bathe.
“You can swim first or eat first,” said Jenny, when the boat drew in to a grassy bank. “But if you eat first, you must wait at least an hour before swimming.”
“Eat first,” they all said. They were ravenous. The time they had spent in 1939 had stretched the morning nearly four hours longer than it should have been. It was as if they had missed lunch. They made up for it now, sitting under flowering bushes on airy rugs that Ramona had brought. They wolfed down long loaves with savoury fillings and round buns with cheesy centres, and they crunched apples. There were butter-pies after that, to Sam’s loud delight. Then there was an hour to pass. The ladies spent it stretched on a rug in the shade of the bush, talking in low voices.
“Abdul’s really worried,” Vivian heard Ramona say. “The outbreak of that war has gone back a whole year now, to September 1938. They seem to be inventing weapons they shouldn’t have had till the end of the century.”
“I wish they’d recall the Observers!” Jenny said. “Viv could be killed. Don’t tell me Observers haven’t been killed before this! Remember that poor girl who was covering the Reconquest of America.”
“Viv’s all right,” said Ramona. “His report was one of the ones that came this morning. The new developments seem to have taken him by surprise. I’m afraid Abdul will keep him out there for a while, because he sent straight back to Viv for an explanation. At least Vivian’s safe.”
Sam, fell asleep on his face in the grass.
Jonathan wandered off round the lake, jerking his head at Vivian to come along. When Vivian grudgingly followed him, she found him sitting on a fallen tree looking white and scared. “We’ve got to think what to do,” he said. “If it really was one of the polarities that boy stole, Time City isn’t balanced any more and nor is history.”
“Do you think he was the Time Lady in disguise?” Vivian said.
“I don’t know,” said Jonathan. “I don’t know who he is or what’s going on, but he time-travelled after he took that box, so he has to be a threat to Time City whoever he is.”
“I think we should tell someone,” said Vivian. “It’s serious.”
“But we can’t!” Jonathan said. “Think. The only way we could have known about that boy and that box is by illegal time-travel to an Unstable Era. And if we tell them how we happened to find out through your Cousin Wartface, it’ll come out that you’re illegal too. We can’t tell. We have to do something ourselves.”
“Would it really be so bad—what they’d do to us if they found out?” Vivian asked.
“I don’t know what they’d do to you. It could be very bad,” Jonathan said. “But I know what they’d do to me. They’d send me out into history, into a really boring Fixed Era, and I’d have to stay there. And I can’t face that!” He was shaking at the mere idea. “I’ve always been afraid I wouldn’t qualify to stay when it came to the Leavers’ Tests. I worked and worked at school, and I made a fuss about being a Lee so that I could have Dr. Wilander for my tutor, because he’s the best there is. And I stuck with him though he scares me stiff most of the time—because I know I’d go batty in a week somewhere where the land just goes on and on and on!”
Vivian knew this was a real confession of Jonathan’s true feelings. It was the kind of thing nobody ever said except as a last resort. “But if that really was a polarity,” she said, “someone who can do something ought to know. Couldn’t you drop hints to your father?”
“No,” said Jonathan. “He’d wonder how I knew.”
“Then drop hints to someone else,” said Vivian.
They wandered along the lake arguing about it for the rest of the hour. Jonathan thought of a hundred different reasons why hinting was impossible. But Vivian thought of her own mum and dad out in history that seemed to have been sent wrong and bad by that beastly thief of a boy, and argued grimly on. In the end, she won. When Jenny appeared on the lakeside, waving what seemed to be a swimsuit and shouting, “Are you going in, you two?” Jonathan set off towards her saying, “All right. You win. I’ll drop Mother a hint.”
“Wait a sec!” Vivian called after him, “I can’t swim. Does it matter?”
Jonathan stopped as if she had shot him. “Oh no! My cousin Vivian could swim like a fish. She was always ducking me. Mother and Ramona are bound to remember she could.”
“Couldn’t I have forgotten how?” Vivian suggested.
“Swimming’s not a thing people forget. It’s like walking or something,” Jonathan said. “Look—let me give Mother that hint now I’ve got all nerved up to do it. Then we’ll think what to do.”
When they got back to the boat and the picnic, Jonathan looked casually at the sky and remarked, “I’ve had an idea, Mother, about all that upset in Twenty Century. Suppose someone there had stolen a Time City polarity—wouldn’t that send history critical around it?”
Jenny just laughed and threw a swimsuit over his head. “Shut up and get into that. You and your ideas, Jonathan!” The swimsuit was large, because it covered your whole body and had heaters in it to keep you warm when the water was cold, and it muffled the rest of Jonathan’s hint completely. All anyone heard of his reply was, “Oh but—” When he had fought his way free he had stopped trying.
It was quite easy to disguise the fact that Vivian could not swim, because Jenny and Ramona were busy teaching Sam and Sam was making a great noise objecting. Jonathan and Vivian just went further down the shore and put some bushes between themselves and Sam’s roars and splashes. There Jonathan did his best to teach Vivian to swim too. She splashed about bravely with Jonathan’s hand under her chin, and sank every time he took his hand away. She drank pints of lake. And all the time she knew perfectly well that Jonathan was secretly very glad that Jenny had only laughed at his hint. So, every time she came spluttering out of the water, she pawed the water out of her own eyes and looked into Jonathan’s, which were strangely naked and folded-looking without his sight-function. “You will try hinting again, won’t you?” she said.
“Oh all right!” Jonathan said at last. “If I’d known what a nag you were, I’d have left you with Cousin Wartface. The two of you would have got on wonderfully!”
He kept his word. When they came back to the Annuate Palace, tired and sun-soaked and feeling very jolly, Jonathan honourably made another attempt to drop a hint during dinner. The guests that night were the High Scientist, Dr. Leonov, from Ongoing, a lesser Scientist from Erstwhile, and a World Premier and her husband from 8210. Jonathan waited for a pause in
the stately talk and said loudly, “I have a theory that Twenty Century is being disturbed because someone there has stolen one of Faber John’s polarities. Does anyone think that’s possible?”
The Premier said, “Do you people really believe in those legends here?”
Jenny looked very embarrassed. The Premier turned to Dr. Leonov for an answer, but Dr. Leonov did not deign to reply. He left it to the lesser Scientist, who said, quite kindly, “Well, no, lad. The forces that interact with history to hold Time City in place are not really of a kind that anyone could steal. And Faber John’s only a myth, you know.”
“But suppose the polarity was quite small and buried in the ground or something,” Jonathan said bravely. “Someone could steal it.”
Sempitern Walker gave him an anguished glare. “Stop talking nonsense, Jonathan. That idiotic notion was disproved in your grandfather’s day.”
Jonathan stuck his chin in his chest to hide how red his face was and gave up. Vivian could hardly blame him. She knew it had taken a lot of courage for Jonathan to hint at all. And that night in her room she tried to have a serious think about what they ought to do now. She felt she ought to help Jonathan put the mess right before she went home, but the only idea that came into her head was the thought of Mum sitting in Lewisham with bombs dropping and history going wronger and wronger around her.
8
DURATION
Petula woke Vivian early the next day. She was carrying a studded belt, like Jonathan’s but pale and stiff and new. “Elio sent you this,” she said. “It’s school today, so get moving. But do us all a favour and don’t wear that yellow and purple horror that Elio likes so much. I can’t bear to think of them setting eyes on it in Duration.”
Vivian chose a plain blue suit and buckled the stiff belt round it. She went downstairs fingering the studs, wondering which was which and not quite daring to experiment. There seemed to be a lot of activity in the Palace. She could hear feet hammering up and down the other staircases and voices calling out.
“What’s going on?” she asked Jonathan when she met him in the hall.
But Jonathan only said, “Hints are no good. Nobody takes any notice. I was awake half the night trying to think what to—”
He had to jump to one side. Sempitern Walker came bursting out of a door by the stairs and went flying past them down the hall. He was wearing a stiff red robe and a gold embroidered cloak, but the robe was undone and streaming on both sides of him. Vivian saw a suit of white underclothes underneath and a lot of thin hairy leg. She stared after him as he dashed away, unable to believe her eyes.
“Gold bands!” Sempitern Walker roared. “Where in Time’s name are my gold bands?”
Elio came racing out of the door too, carrying a red silk hat, Jenny rushed out after him with a huge gold necklace like a Mayor’s chain. After her, Petula came running, followed by the ladies who served at dinner and five other people Vivian had not seen before, and behind them pelted the men who polished the stairs. They were all carrying bundles of robe, or hats, or golden boots, or different sorts of gold chain, and Petula was waving a pair of wide gold ribbons. Vivian watched, fascinated, as they all tore after Sempitern Walker and managed to corner him at the end of the hall.
“No, you stupid android!” Sempitern Walker shouted out of the midst of them. “The other hat! And I said the gold bands, you stupid woman! Find them, can’t you! The ceremony’s due in twenty minutes!” He came bursting, out of the crowd and sped towards Jonathan and Vivian again.
This is marvellous! Vivian thought, as the others all turned themselves hastily round and raced after the Sempitern. Sempitern Walker swung himself nimbly round on the end of the banisters and went flying up the stairs two at a time. “And I have to have the carnelian studs!” he bellowed. “Can’t anyone find anything in this place?”
A giggle began to rise up Vivian’s throat as everyone else went streaming up the stairs after him. “You’re all useless!” she heard him shout. “Gold bands!” They all went running round the railed landing overhead, tripping over mats and getting in one another’s way. Vivian nearly laughed outright. This is as good as a film! she thought, turning to see what Jonathan thought of it.
Jonathan swung haughtily away. “This happens every time there’s a ceremony,” he said wearily. “Come on. We’d better get breakfast.”
The giggle was sitting right behind Vivian’s teeth, fighting to get out. She swallowed it down. “Do you have ceremonies very often?” she asked, trying to stop her voice shaking.
“About every two days,” Jonathan said dourly.
They had breakfast to the din of running feet, shouting, and one or two metallic crashes, as if someone had thrown a gold chain downstairs. Jonathan pretended not to notice. Vivian understood perfectly that he would be very hurt if she laughed, but the giggle would keep rising up her throat whenever the running feet and the roars came close to the matutinal. This made it hard for her to follow what Jonathan was saying.
“We ought to go after that boy and get the box back,” he said. “If he was doing a hundred years with every time-jump, he’ll be in the middle of a Fixed Era by now and probably sending that crazy too. We should be able to find him if that time-egg works. But I didn’t like the way it nearly didn’t bring us back. We don’t want to get stranded in history.”
The Sempitern’s feet pounded past the matutinal, followed by the feet of everyone else. Vivian struggled with the rising giggle again. “Do you think he might be trying to steal all the polarities?” she asked, trying to think sensibly. “Couldn’t we go to them first and ask the people in those places to keep guard on them? How many of them are there?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan said, almost groaning. “I don’t know where or when they are. I’m not even sure that it was a polarity he stole.”
It was clear that what the Scientist said last night had shaken Jonathan’s faith badly. And he certainly had jumped to that conclusion, Vivian thought. There was no proof. On the other hand—here Sempitern Walker’s feet thumped across the ceiling of the matutinal and she had to swallow the giggle again. “Do cheer up,” she said. “Think of our time-ghosts. You can tell we did—do do something.”
“That’s true!” Jonathan said, brightening a little.
Soon after this, the Palace went suddenly quiet. Jonathan pressed the clock-stud on his belt and said that they ought to be going. Vivian got up and followed him, feeling very nervous. Jonathan did not seem to be taking anything to school with him, not even a pen. This made Vivian feel odd and incomplete. She thought she had got used to the naked feeling of wearing Time City pyjamas, but she felt naked all over again without any books or even a pencil box.
The hall and the stairs were littered with silken cloaks, various hats, shoes, and several golden chains. Elio was soberly backing down, the stairs, picking everything up. Vivian could not see his face clearly, but she could have sworn that Elio was smiling.
Sam was definitely smiling when they met him by the fountain in Time Close, his widest smile with two teeth in it. “Your father ran,” he said. “Like a rocket. He picked up his robes and he sprinted. Was it a big fuss?”
“About average,” Jonathan said haughtily. “Get moving. It’s due to rain in ten minutes.”
Vivian looked up at the sky as they came through the archway into Aeon Square. White clouds were billowing up, with grey ones following, but it did not look very much like rain. “Are you sure it’s going to rain?”
“Yes, because we’re getting this year’s weather from Thirty-five-eighty-nine,” said Jonathan. “They never pick a drought year because of the crops. You can get a forecast from your belt.”
“Which stud?” said Vivian.
They went across Aeon Square showing Vivian how her belt worked. The weather-stud lit up a shining green list along her forearm:
5.00–8.40 FAIR TEMP 14–17; 8.40–10.27 RAIN,
Thunder c. 9.07; 10.28–15.58 SUN TEMP 13–19
“See h
ow efficient Elio is,” Jonathan said. “He’s got you one you can read. Mine’s all in Universal Symbols.”
“How many units credit did he give you?” said Sam. “No—that stud, stupid!”
Vivian put her finger on that stud and the palm of her hand lit up.
VSL/90234/7C TC Units 100.00
she read, rather awed. Two hundred pounds? Surely not!
“Lucky blister!” said Sam. “Two hundred butter-pies!”
“You’ve got a low-weight-function too,” Jonathan said. “And that one’s the pen-function. What’s your time-function—clock-face or digital?”
Vivian was so fascinated by her belt that she did not notice straight away that the ceremony that had caused all the fuss at the Palace was taking place on the other side of Aeon Square. A line of figures all in red, looking tiny below the huge buildings, was pacing slowly down the square. Jonathan’s father was walking near the head of them, behind someone carrying a silver battle-axe thing, pacing in the most grave, stately, and important way. You wouldn’t believe, to look at him, that he’s spent the last half hour rushing about and yelling! Vivian thought.
“Who are the ones with him?” she asked.
“Annuate Guard,” said Sam.
“A lot of old folk retired from Time Patrol,” Jonathan said. He pointed to the other end of the square. “And the blue lot look to be the Librarians. Hurry up. Everyone’s going into Duration.”
The blue line was pacing towards the red one, robes billowing, tall blue hats on their heads, led by two who seemed to be carrying a gigantic old book open on a cushion. Behind them, where Jonathan was really pointing, much smaller figures were streaming along the end of the square from right and left and going in through the high open door of Duration. The sight made even Sam hurry. But he stopped again at Faber John’s Stone. By this time the two processions of the ceremony were close enough for Vivian to recognise Mr. Enkian under the tall blue hat, just behind the two Librarians with the book, looking very sour and self-important. The two lines were obviously going to meet just beside Faber John’s Stone.
A Tale of Time City Page 12
