A Tale of Time City (24 page)

The young man shifted the straw to the other side of his mouth. “They call me the Watcher of the Gold,” he said. He had a raw, rather booming voice. “And if that’s what you mean, then yes I am. Who are you?”

“We’re from Time City—” Jonathan began.

“Then you’re too early,” the young man interrupted. “I know my business. When the City comes to rest in the gap between the beginning and the end of time, that’s when I bring the Gold to the City, and not before. Don’t worry. I’ll be there.”

“But it’s nearly got to the gap now,” Vivian said.

“And someone’s trying to steal the Caskets, we’re fairly sure,” Jonathan said. “He got the Iron Casket. We saw him take it. We came to warn you—”

“Kind of you,” the young man said, shifting the straw back to the left-hand corner of his mouth. “But I know all about him, thanks. He’s been lurking round here and Spauls and Buck House for two weeks now—he knows the Gold’s in one of those places, but he doesn’t know which. So I’m staying right here in this patch of time with him. He’s not getting a chance to come near the Gold.”

“But he’s got the Iron—couldn’t that help him against you?” Vivian asked.

The Watcher shrugged. “Only maybe. Gold’s stronger than Iron ever was.”

“From what Mr. Donegal said this morning, I think he’s nearly got to the Silver by now,” Vivian said. “I didn’t listen properly, but if he steals that too, couldn’t that be too strong for you?”

“It
might
,” the Watcher conceded, wrinkling up his ploughman’s face. “But he’s left it too late. You said yourself the City’s nearly in the middle of the gap. When it is, I bring the Gold and it unites with the Lead, and Lead and Gold together are stronger by three than the other two. No, no need to worry. It’ll be all right.”

“Listen,” Jonathan said. “The City’s in a bad way. It may be going to break up. Faber John’s Stone has cracked all over since the Iron Casket was stolen. I think you ought to take the Gold to the City
now
, to be on the safe side. Or we could take it for you, if you like.”

The Watcher spat out his straw and laughed. “And unbalance the whole of time? No thanks. The Gold goes where I go, and we
both stay here until the proper moment. When midday strikes on the tower clock on the last day, I’ll be there. But thanks for the warning.”

He turned away as if he was going back among the briars. Jonathan said hurriedly, “Then, please—tell us which Unstable Era the Lead Casket’s hidden in. Tell us where the Silver Casket is. We ought to warn those Guardians too.”

The Watcher gave him a wary look over his shoulder. “Uh-huh,” he said. “I don’t fall for that one. If you know how to find me, you know where Silver is. As for Hidden Lead, if you’re honest about coming from Time City, you can work out where it is for yourself. If you’re not, you don’t find out from me!” He unfolded his arms and stretched, in a lazy way, like people do who know they are very strong. Then he was gone. The bushes quivered a little, but it could have been through heat-haze. The Watcher had not walked away into them. Vivian thought he had just ceased to be in that particular piece of time. She had a feeling he had not gone far—perhaps only a week or so back to keep watch on the lurking thief—but he was definitely not where they were.

“He seemed very sure of himself,” she said.

Jonathan leant on the lion-shaped mound. Under his flickering eye-function, his eyes were smudged and his face had a queer blueness to it. “I don’t think he had much brain,” he said. “If the thief’s clever, he could trick him easily. We
have
to find the Lead Casket. If that’s the strongest, it’s
got
to be kept safe!”

Vivian did not like the way Jonathan looked. The woman had warned him to go easy. “Let’s find her first, and then perhaps eat something,” she suggested.

Jonathan agreed, rather limply. They went back to the place where the woman had been sitting, but she was not there. They thought at first that she had gone away entirely. Then they saw the huge shape of the horse Leon had stolen for them, browsing down in the corner of the meadow. The woman was stumping after it with one side of her dress held up, trying to coax it to come to her. They sat on the ledge that might have been a fallen column and watched her. It seemed safe enough to do that while the woman was behaving so peacefully. She got almost up to the horse, but the horse cunningly moved on just as they thought she had it. This happened over and over again. They got out the squares of nourishing food that Jonathan had brought and ate them while they watched. At first, they carefully saved some for the woman. But after a while, the horse edged away into the forest and the woman followed it.

“That horse is just like the Watcher,” Jonathan said. “It’s obstinate as—as Sam and won’t listen to people and it probably thinks it’s as clever as Wilander. But she’ll catch it in the end, I know she will. Do you think everyone in the Golden Age is as gifted as she is?” He did not sound as gloomy as he had done before. The food had done him good.

They sat until it was clear that the woman was not coming back. Then they shared out the food they had saved for her. “We never said thank you,” Vivian said guiltily. “And I think she saved your life. Hadn’t we better get back to Time City?” Long tree shadows were slanting over the meadow by then.

“I suppose so.” Jonathan stood up and fetched the egg-control out of his purse. “I hope this works from here. I’m not going back
down that glade and facing that bandit again, not for anything! Here goes. Time City, just after we left.”

The egg worked, but it worked even more slowly and erratically than it had done when they made it take them back before. Jonathan and Vivian were pulled, and hung, and pulled, and hung again. Strange sights flickered in front of them: rows of mud huts, a town burning in great rolls of smoke, a frozen river, then crowds of people dancing and waving flags. Once, Vivian clearly saw a big red London bus, but it was not the shape of the buses she knew. Finally, when they were getting quite frightened, they were in a stony-smelling darkness lit by a faint flicker from the slab of slate.

“Thank goodness!” said Vivian.

“You knew we’d get back,” Jonathan said. He sounded very depressed. He got out his torch and began to climb the stairs. “This is all wrong,” he said as they went, “It’s not how we looked to be feeling as the time-ghosts. You could tell from those we were really excited, and I feel miserable as sin, don’t you? We haven’t done a scrap of good. He wouldn’t even say where the Lead Casket was. It’s enough to make you think Time City’s gone critical like Twenty Century!”

“Except that the Twentieth Century went critical because someone stole the Iron Casket,” Vivian called up.

At that, with a sort of
snap
, the truth hit both of them.

V
ivian said, “Time City’s an Unstable Era!”

Jonathan answered, “The longest one there is!”

Then they both said together, “Then the Lead Casket must be
here
!”

They climbed the rest of the stairs without noticing them. At the top, the false wall had closed itself. They swung it round and squeezed past, one on each side. Jonathan turned off his torch and they hurried up the passage, talking eagerly the whole way.

“That’s what he meant about Gold uniting with Lead,” Vivian said.

“I bet it’s in the Gnomon Tower somewhere!” Jonathan said. “That fits in with the clock striking midday. What a relief! We can make sure it’s safe.”

“We can tell someone it’s here without giving away how we know,” Vivian said.

“Yes, and get them to put a proper guard on it,” said Jonathan. “We don’t want old grannies from the Annuate Guard. We want real Time Patrollers who know what they’re doing.”

“Let’s tell Sam’s father,” said Vivian.

“Let’s. He might take it seriously—not like Scientists talking about polarities,” Jonathan agreed.

“That means the same thing,” Vivian said. “Where do you think the Lead Guardian is? He must be in the City. We ought to warn him too.”

“He’ll be hard to find. The old paper said he kept secret,” Jonathan said. Here, half-way along the passage, he looked down and discovered he was still holding the control-egg. “Oh blast!” he said. “I forgot to put this back!”

“Agents were always losing them,” said Vivian. “This is how.” They both laughed about it.

Jonathan said, “I’ll keep it for now. We’d better get to the Gnomon before we do anything else.”

Vivian said, “It sounds as if
all
the Caskets are supposed to come back to the Gnomon when the City gets to the end of time. And the Iron one won’t.”

“I know,” Jonathan said. “As soon as we’ve made sure of the Lead Casket, we’ll go after the Silver and make the egg get us there before the thief.” He swung the chained door open, saying, “And let’s hope that Guardian’s a bit more reasonable than the Gold.”

Leon Hardy was waiting outside. He had a thing in his hand with a shiny snout and a blue bulb halfway along. He was pointing it at them as pitilessly as the rider’s spear. Vivian knew it was a gun as quickly as Jonathan did. They stopped dead and stared at him. Leon laughed in their faces, with his handsome white teeth bared in a most unpleasant way. “I knew he wouldn’t kill you,” he said.
“Not after you told me about those time-ghosts. I led you up the forest path in red armour beautifully, didn’t I? How did you like my hologram Iron Guardian? Convinced you, didn’t he, Jonathan? Hand over that Gold Casket and I won’t shoot you.”

“We haven’t got it,” said Vivian. “The Watcher wouldn’t let us near it.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Leon said, moving the gun menacingly a fraction, from Jonathan to Vivian.

“We’re not,” Jonathan said. His face had gone bluish again and he looked like death. “I swear! What do you want it for?”

“Because it’s the most powerful thing in the world after the Lead Casket,” Leon said, “and it’s clear nobody’s going to find that. The people who sent me here to look after the Time City end of things told me a bit much for their own good—just like you did, Jonathan my boy! It must be my frank open face that does it!” He laughed, in another flash of white teeth. Then his face went straight and pitiless. “Where’s that Gold Casket?”

“We haven’t got it!” they both said. Vivian added, “Guides’ Honour!” She had a slow sick feeling, because she knew Leon was going to shoot them whatever they said. He was working himself up to it, because they knew too much about him. It seemed queer that it was going to happen here, in the sunlit marble gallery, with Elio’s museum cases lined up on either side. He’s going to break a lot of glass! she thought.

“Very well then,” Leon said, not believing them. “Both of you turn out your pockets. And hand over that time-egg first. I can use one of those.”

Vivian numbly pulled her pocket inside out and held out the piece of seaweed chew that was in it. Jonathan looked at the egg in his hand and, in a dazed sort of way, held that out too. There seemed nothing else to do.

There was a scutter of shoelaces from the end of the gallery. Sam’s voice boomed along it. “You rats! You
did
go without me!”

Leon jumped—they all jumped—and Leon swung round. As soon as he moved, there was another movement, so fast that it was blurred, from among the museum cases behind him. Someone leapt from crouching there and hurled himself on Leon. The next moment, Elio’s left arm was across Leon’s throat in a strangling grip, and Elio’s right hand was crunched round Leon’s hand with the gun in it. Elio’s face looked calmly over Leon’s shoulder, beside Leon’s furious frightened one. “Will one of you please remove the gun from his hand?” he asked politely.

Jonathan looked about to faint, so Vivian did it. While she worked the weapon carefully loose from Leon’s white, crushed fingers, Sam came up and stared. “What’s going on?” he said. He had not yet got over the butter-pies. His face was quite yellow. There was not much to choose between Sam and Jonathan at that moment, Vivian thought, and ridiculously, as the gun came loose, she thought of a way to teach Sam a lesson.

But that was for later. “What do I do with this?” she said, pointing the gun uncertainly at Leon in a way that made Leon give a choking sound and shut his eyes.

Elio swung Leon round sideways in order to unwrap his arm from Leon’s neck and take the gun away from her. He dug it into
Leon’s back. “Keep very still!” he warned him. “Who is this man?” he said to Vivian. “Why is he doing this?”

“Leon Hardy. He’s a student,” Jonathan said, in a faint, wretched voice. “I—I went and told him far too much.”

Leon grinned slightly at that. Elio noticed. “Then we had better get him out of the way at once,” he said. “I take it that none of you wish the Sempitern or Patrol Chief Donegal to be made aware of these events?”

“
No
!” they all said together, and Sam said it even more devoutly than Leon.

Leon, in fact, looked quite happy. He must have thought that Elio was going to let him go. But his face changed when Elio politely asked Vivian to open the chained door. When Elio bundled him through into the passage, Leon braced his feet and said, “What’s this?” Then he tried to dive back through the door again. But Elio kept hold of his wrist and dug the gun into him and pushed him on down the passage as if he had not noticed Leon move. He stopped in front of the blocked-up archway. “Will you open this, please,” he said to Vivian. “A kick on the third stone from the left three courses up will do it.”

Vivian kicked the stone and the false wall pivoted round. The sight of the two dark openings was too much for Leon. “What are you going to do?” he cried out. “Take me underground and shoot me?” And as Elio pushed him towards the nearest opening he yelled, “No, no
no
!” and braced his feet again.

Elio took no notice. He simply forced the yelling, kicking Leon through the slit and followed him in. Vivian had not realised how
strong Elio was. Leon was taller than Elio, with brawny muscles rippling out all over him, but Elio handled him as if he was the same size as Sam. In the midst of the struggle, he somehow found time to switch on a very strong light from his belt. Then he dragged and bundled the yelling Leon down the spiral stairs.