A Tale of Time City (25 page)

As Vivian followed the light downwards, with Sam behind her and Jonathan behind Sam, they could hear Leon bracing his feet on the walls and trying to hang on to the ceiling, but the light kept moving remorselessly downwards. “Let me go! Don’t shoot me! I’ll do anything you want!” Leon yelled.

“Then tell me who the people were who sent you to Time City,” Elio’s voice said calmly.

There was a short silence. “I can’t do that,” Leon’s voice said pathetically. “He’s learnt things—from the Mind Wars. My brain won’t let me.” And a moment later, he screamed, “It’s true! I
can’t!
I swear!”

“But you have a secret time-lock,” Elio’s voice rang up. “Where is that?”

“I can’t tell you that either!” Leon’s voice yelled. “Let me
go
!”

“Maybe I believe you,” Elio’s voice came up. “But I do not believe you are from Hundred and One Century as your dress suggests.”

“No, no—I’m from Sixty-six Century,” Leon babbled. It was clear he was glad to tell the things he could tell. “I was a student in Helsinki, studying History and Holographics. There. I’ve told you all about myself. You needn’t take me down here to shoot—Why! That’s their secret time-lock!”

They had obviously reached the bottom. Vivian slid hurriedly down and round the huge old stairs and sat on the last one, with Sam and Jonathan staring over her shoulders. Elio had let Leon go and Leon was backed against the wall. The lurid light glittered on the gun and shone smoothly off the egg-shaped control Elio had in his other hand. It was like the one Jonathan was still holding, except that it looked a little smaller and seemed to be a reddish colour.

“This is indeed a time-lock,” Elio agreed. The flickering slate vanished and a strong smell of manure blew in their faces. It seemed to be a rather primitive place beyond the slate. They could see a stack of old wooden barrels beside a patchily plastered wall, some washing blowing on a line and a carefully trained creeper overhead with unripe grapes dangling from it. A goat wandered into view and peered through the opening at Elio curiously. “You have a choice,” Elio said to Leon. “You can go through this lock or you can be shot. Which do you choose?”

Leon gestured rather hopelessly towards the goat. “Where is that place?” he said. “
When
is it?”

“It is Fifteen Century,” Elio said. “The location is a farmyard near a small place in Italy called Vinci.”

“But that’s primitive!” Leon protested. “And it’s an Unstable Era! And I
hate
goats! You can’t mean you’re going to strand me
there
!”

“Then you would rather be shot,” Elio said, and trained the gun very precisely on Leon’s heart.

“No, no! I’m going through now!” Leon said. He jumped hurriedly into the farmyard, where he landed with a squelch. They had
a last sight of the goat turning to stare at him, before Elio used his control-egg again and the wall turned back into flickering slate.

Elio turned away, looking satisfied. “That disposes of him,” he said, “most tidily. Forgive me that I allowed him to threaten you for so long. He had the gun hidden in his clothing while he approached the door, and when I saw he had it, I could not readily see how to attack him without causing him to shoot you. It was fortunate that Master Samuel interrupted.”

A proud grin spread over Sam’s face. “But why did you send him to that farm?” he said.

“Because,” said Elio, “an amusing thought struck me as soon as you told me his name.” He stuck the gun in his belt and gestured politely to the stairs. They all found themselves obediently getting up and climbing the steps. Elio followed them. “I instantly recalled,” he said, “a certain Italian from Fifteen Century, named Leonardo da Vinci. That man was always considered to have ideas far ahead of his own time, and it occurred to me that this must be the reason for it. Master Leon may well feel a little out of place where he has gone, but I assure you he will make his mark there. I knew he was a genius the moment I viewed the hologram he termed the Iron Guardian.”

“What else do you know about?” Jonathan said, weary and subdued, from up in front.

Elio seemed not to have heard. He did not say anything else until they had all squeezed past the false wall into the passage. Then, as he swung the door shut, he said, “I believe we must talk. Will you all please come to my room?”

They followed him obediently, out of the passage and into the gallery. There Elio opened a door between two of the display cases and led them into the back parts of the Palace where Vivian had never been. She felt rather as if she was at school, being taken to the Headmaster in disgrace. Jonathan and Sam trudged after her, obviously feeling much the same. Elio opened a door and ushered them in.

It was a large room on the ground floor, looking out on to a narrow strip of garden behind the Chronologue. Elio must have had it for the whole hundred years he had been in Time City. The furniture in it was a wild mixture of styles and colours and on top of every bit of furniture there were things. Vivian stared at a pink empty-frame desk with a statue of Frankenstein’s monster on it. Then her eyes shifted to a thing like a cakestand, loaded with clutter. The thing on the top shelf was a golden hat full of padlocks and marbles. Next shelf down was a jar labelled
Moon Dust (Titan)
. Her eyes went to a model spaceship hanging from the ceiling and then to a screen on the wall showing a cartoon film without the sound. She looked again and saw the film was
Snow White
.

“Oh! Can you get that here?” she cried out.

“Certainly, miss,” Elio said, going over to his automat. It was a vast object, with three times more pipes and gold paint than Jonathan’s. “Time City has copies of every film that was ever made. You need merely request Whilom Tower to relay you whichever one you want.”

Vivian began to feel like Sam at the prospect of a butter-pie orgy. “Oh, I
love
films!” she said.

“I too,” Elio said. “I have a special preference for cartoons and horror films—but you must allow me also to introduce you to the chariot-race episode from a film called
Ben Hur
. That ranks high with me.” He came away from the automat and politely passed her a frothy, fruity drink. He handed Jonathan another. “This is a stimulant,” he said. “I judge you need it. Please sit down.” He turned to Sam. “I am not sure what to prescribe for you.”

“Nothing, thanks,” Sam said hastily. His face was still an unhealthy yellow.

They found seats by clearing dolls and motor tyres and paintings off some of the empty-frames and padded sofas. Jonathan found a set of false teeth just where he was going to sit down. He gave them a long dubious look before he collapsed into the opposite corner of the sofa. “How long have you known about that time-lock?” he said.

“For four days now,” said Elio. “To be exact, from the time Miss Vivian came through a door I thought was chained up and tried to distract my attention from her companions.”

“Oh!” said Vivian, hanging her head over her drink. “You were fooling me!”

“I felt some guilt at doing so,” Elio admitted. “But I wished to know the facts. I therefore waited until that afternoon and refreshed my memory of the time-ghosts which so much distressed Madam Sempitern some years before. I recognised them for Master Jonathan and Miss Vivian and I noticed that Miss Vivian’s clothing was not that in which I had seen her emerge from the door. I concluded from this that the two of you would be doing something of
great import at some future date, and that it was impossible to prevent you, since I clearly had not. I then went down the passage and discovered the false door and the time-lock below. And I do not think that the control provided for it is fully functional, Master Jonathan.”

Jonathan looked at the egg he still had in his hand. “No—it doesn’t get you back properly. But how do you know
that
?”

Elio brought his own control from his pocket and held it out. It was slightly smaller, with the sheeny redness to it that Vivian had noticed before, and it had various hollows on its surface to make places for a person’s fingers. “I think,” he said, “that yours is a very much older model than this. As was natural, I made a couple of experimental journeys through the lock, using the control you have there. It malfunctioned slightly on my first trip. I went to Twenty Century, where I was somewhat aghast to find napalm and rocketry already in use in nineteen-thirty-nine. This should not have been so. It proved to me that the era had gone critical and I made haste to get out of it. But I found myself simply advanced in time. It was most embarrassing. I was in Twenty-four Century in the middle of a ladies’ nude bathing party—”

Vivian could not help laughing. Even Jonathan’s anxious face relaxed into a grin. “What happened?” he said.

Vivian was interested to see that androids could blush, just like ordinary people. “The ladies objected and the control then returned me home,” Elio said primly. “Considering that, it was perhaps foolish of me to make another trip the following day. But I wished to know if the Second Unstable Era had gone critical too. It
had not, perhaps because it is too short, though it remains barbaric. I then once more attempted to return to Time City, but the control instead switched me to the Third Unstable Era—”

“We know that’s the Silver Age for certain now,” Jonathan muttered to Vivian.

“—which is in a state of great upheaval,” Elio said, “and close to going critical too. And I had such difficulty returning from there that I very nearly became alarmed. I could of course have called on Time Patrol for aid, but I would then have been liable for prosecution for trespassing in a banned era. So I redoubled my commands to the control and I was quite glad when it at length responded and brought me back to the lock.” He looked blandly at the three of them. “I then made investigations in Time City,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Jonathan said uneasily.

“I mean that I looked at Observers’ reports from the era you just now termed the Silver Age,” Elio said. Jonathan tried to nod wisely to cover up his relief that this was all Elio meant. “There is very little evidence for the disorder I noticed in minutes myself,” Elio said. “Either the disorder is very new or the reports are wrong. Something strange is going on either way.” He sauntered away to the window, tossing the red control-egg in his hand, and from there, just as Jonathan and Sam were grinning at one another, sure that no one knew about their adventure in 1939, Elio sprang his bombshell. “I also checked the lock entries,” he said. “There is no record of Miss Vivian Lee entering Time City. That was very careless of you.”

They stared at him. Sam’s yellowness increased and so did Jona
than’s paleness. Vivian thought she probably looked a mixture of the two. “What are you going to do?” she said hopelessly.

“I have done it,” said Elio. “I inserted an entry for the morning you arrived.”

They went on staring at him. On the wall screen, the Wicked Queen was changing into a witch, which might or might not have been a fitting thing to happen. “Why—why did you do that?” Jonathan said at last.

Elio glanced at the screen too. “I was breaking the law by time-travelling in secret,” he said. “One more transgression seemed unimportant. After that, I confess I transgressed again. I forged an official request from the Sempitern to Erstwhile Science to have this newer control delivered to the Palace.” He tossed the red egg up again. “My mind was in turmoil, you see,” he said. “I had of course recognised Miss Vivian as one of the time-ghosts as soon as I first saw her. Matching her with my memories of Miss Vivian Lee, I became sure that she was not the Sempitern’s niece. But her presence here was important enough to have created a time-ghost many centuries ago and I was anxious to know why.” He looked at them gravely. “I have told you that I do not like to discover facts of which I have been unaware. I am then compelled to find out.”

“And you did,” Jonathan said glumly. “What did you do—keep watch every afternoon until we went?”

“
I
did,” said Sam. “And I saw her skipping round the fountain, but I had to go away and be ill then, so I missed going with them.”

“Ah. Then you did not happen to see where Leon Hardy came from?” Elio said.

“Nope,” said Sam.

“A pity,” Elio said. “For I think there must be more than one secret time-lock in Time Close. All I know is that Master Hardy did not come from Aeon Square, as one might expect, if he had used a lock up the river or in the Patrol Building. The Officials at Erstwhile Science refused to release this control-egg unless I fetched it myself this afternoon. That is how I know. I was coming back with it, when I saw Master Jonathan and then Miss Vivian go ahead of me through the archway. This made me hurry. I was the next person to go through the arch and yet when I came into Time Close, Master Hardy was already there ahead of me, walking towards the Palace from the other side of the Close. I thought at the time that he might have been sitting by the fountain, waiting—”

“He wasn’t,” said Sam. “The first time I saw him was by the door to the ghost passage.”

“He went ahead of me there,” Elio said, “and I conjectured he intended to meet Miss Vivian and Master Jonathan as they returned. I confess to concealing myself in order to hear what was said. If I had known he had a gun—”

“Thanks about that,” Jonathan said awkwardly. “He was going to shoot us.”

There was a silence. Elio tossed the egg from hand to hand. Snow White on the screen bit into the witch’s apple. The silence stretched from awkward, to meaningful, to unbearable.

“There are still many things I do not know,” Elio pointed out at last. “It would relieve my mind if you were frank—though I shall find out some other way if you do not tell me.”

“Tell him,” said Sam. “I want to know too.”

Vivian looked at Jonathan. Jonathan made an effort to look lordly, but it did not come to much. He nodded. And they told Elio. Elio stopped tossing the red egg and stood still with his face absolutely expressionless, drinking everything in with an efficiency Vivian found quite frightening. She wondered how she had ever thought she could deceive him, particularly when he began to ask questions. Each of Elio’s questions pounced on something they had not told him and brought that up to the light, so that they went on and on telling him things. Meanwhile, Snow White and the Prince rode away together. The screen flickered a moment and then began another cartoon film, one about rabbits which Vivian did not know.