A Tale of Time City (15 page)

She meant this to be covered up by the noise from all round and by Sam’s shouts of “Thirsty!” But Sam’s voice dropped to a mutter just then and Vivian heard her clearly. She was forced to invent some reason for her ignorance.

“They didn’t trust me not to say something at school,” she said. “That
would
spoil history, wouldn’t it? Does it matter much?”

“Yes, it does,” Ramona said, looking very uncomfortable. “If your general knowledge isn’t good enough when you come to the Leavers’ Tests at school, you’ll be sent away to live in history even though you
are
a Lee.”

“Nobody stays in Time City by right, Vivian,” Jenny explained. “We all have to earn our place. And there’s a lot of competition from the students. Most of the young people studying in Continuum are hoping for jobs in the City when they finish.”

Jonathan swung away from the rail and stalked off. Vivian could see he was upset by this. But next moment he was back. “I say! Look at all these!”

They turned round to find the platform full of frantic people all coming from nowhere. A few did seem to be coming up the steps from the wharf, and one or two came swarming over the edge of the platform, but most of them were just there out of nowhere. They all went rushing towards the line of time-locks. There, some of them vanished into silvery doors or open silvery spaces, but most of them beat at the booths in a panic as if they were trying to get the doors open. This looked very odd when the door they were beating on happened to be open already. They were coming across the platform in waves, and later waves were running through earlier ones. The platform was suddenly a melting rushing tumble of running figures and waving arms. They were in all sorts of clothes, but the greatest number were in Time City pyjamas.

“Time-ghosts,” said Sam.

“I’d heard about these, but I’d no idea there were so many,” Ramona said, as the running crowd grew thicker yet.

The man standing by the gate to check tickets said, “There’s been more of them every day this month. They start around midday and tail off around two in the afternoon. We’ve no idea what’s causing them.”

“Don’t they frighten the tourists?” Jenny asked.

The man shrugged. “A bit. But what can anyone do?”

Certainly some of the real people coming out of the silver booths cringed rather when they found a crowd of ghosts rushing straight at them. But when they discovered they could walk through them, most of them laughed and seemed to decide that this was one of the sights they had come to see. The kiosk had a loud-speaker going now, muddled a bit by the loud-speaker from the kiosk on the platform across the river, where more frantic time-ghosts were also rushing at the time-locks.

“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.

P
etula 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.