A Tale of Time City (3 page)

“Great Time!” he said, as he dropped the trousers on top of the jacket, “These clothes are vile! They prickle me even through my suit. How do Twenty Century people bear it? Or these?” He plucked his glasses off his nose and pressed a knob on the belt that went round his suit. A flicker sprang into being across his eyes, shifting queerly in the blue light. The fold in his eyelids was much plainer to see like that. Vivian saw that Sam had the same fold. “A sight
-function is so much simpler,” Jonathan said. He pulled the striped school cap off his head and let about a foot of plaited hair tumble out of it across his shoulder. “That’s better!” he said as he hurled the cap down too and rubbed his neck under the pigtail to loosen the tight hair there.

Vivian stared. Never had she seen a boy with such long hair! In fact, she had a vague notion that boys were born with their hair short back and sides and that only girls had hair that grew long. But Jonathan had twice as much hair as she had. Perhaps he was Chinese and she had been spirited away to the Orient. But Sam was not Chinese. Whoever heard of a red-haired Chinaman?

“Who are you?” she said. “Where
is
this?”

Jonathan turned to her, looking very lordly and solemn—and not particularly Chinese. “We are Jonathan Lee Walker and Samuel Lee Donegal,” he said. “We’re both Lees. My father is the thousandth Sempitern. The Sempitern is the head of Time Council in Chronologue, in case you didn’t have those in your day. And Sam’s father is Chief of Time Patrol. We feel this qualifies us to talk to you. Welcome back. You have just come through Sam’s father’s private time-lock and you are now once more in Time City.”

A mistake has happened, Vivian thought miserably. And it seemed to be a mistake ten thousand times wilder than any of the mistakes she had imagined on the train. She pressed her lips together. I will
not
cry! she told herself. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying. What do you mean, ‘Welcome back’? Where
is
Time City?”

“Come, come now, V.S.,” Jonathan leant one hand on the back of the peculiar chair, in the way Inquisitors did in the kind of films Mum preferred Vivian not to see. “Time City is unique. It is built
on a small patch of time and space that exists outside time and history. You know all about Time City, V.S.”

“No I don’t,” said Vivian.

“Yes you do. Your husband built the City,” Jonathan said, with his flicker-covered folded eyes staring eerily into Vivian’s. “We want you to tell us how to wake Faber John, V.S. Or if he isn’t sleeping under the City, tell us how to find him.”

“I haven’t
got
a husband!” Vivian said. “Oh, this is
mad
!”

Sam, who was breathing noisily and rustily on the other side of Vivian, said, “She looks awfully stupid. Do you think she had her brain damaged in the Mind Wars?”

Vivian sighed and looked rather desperately round the strange dark office. Was it really outside time? Or were they both mad? Both of them seemed to have it fixed in their heads that she was some other Vivian Smith. So how was she going to convince them that she was not?

“Her brain’s all right,” Jonathan said confidently. “She’s just acting stupid so we’ll think we’ve made a mistake.” He leant over Vivian again. “See here, V.S.,” he said persuasively, “we’re not asking for ourselves. It’s for Time City. This patch of time and space here is almost worn out. The City is going to crumble away unless you tell us how to find Faber John so that he can renew the City. Or if you hate him too much, you could tell us where the polarities are and how to renew those. That isn’t too much to ask, is it, V.S.?”

“Don’t keep calling me Vee-Ess!” Vivian almost shrieked. “I’m not—”

“Yes you are, V.S.,” said Jonathan. “You were spotted coming up the First Unstable Era in a wave of chronons. We heard Chronologue
discussing it. We
know
you are. So how do we wake Faber John, V.S.?”

“I don’t
know
!” Vivian screamed at him. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not
her
! I don’t know you and you don’t know me! I was being evacuated from London to stay with Cousin Marty because of the War, and you can just take me back! You’re a kidnapper!” Tears came streaming down her face. She scrabbled to get her handkerchief out of the string bag. “And so are you!” she added to Sam.

Sam leaned forward and breathily inspected her face. “She’s crying. She means it. You got the wrong one by mistake.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Jonathan said scornfully. But when Vivian found her handkerchief and looked at him with her face mostly hidden in it, she could tell he was beginning to have doubts.

Vivian did her best to strengthen those doubts. “I’ve never ever heard of Faber John, or Time City either,” she said, trying to stop herself sobbing. “And you can
see
I’m too young to have a husband. I won’t be twelve until just after Christmas. We’re not in the Middle Ages, you know.”

Sam nodded knowingly. “She is. She’s just an ordinary Twenty Century native,” he pronounced.

“But I recognised her!” Jonathan said. He wandered uneasily across the office. A sort of darkening to his flickering face told Vivian that he was beginning to suspect that he had been a fool—and he was the sort of boy who would do anything not to look a fool. Vivian knew he would take her straight back to the station and try to forget about her if she could convince him properly.

So she sniffed away what she hoped were the last of her tears
and said, “I know it says Vivian Smith on my label, but Smith’s a very common name. And Vivian’s quite common too. Look at Vivien Leigh.”

This misfired a little. Jonathan turned and stared at her. “How do you know her? he said suspiciously.

“I don’t. I mean—she’s a film star,” Vivian explained.

She could see this meant nothing to Jonathan. He shrugged. “We could go through her luggage,” he suggested to Sam. “That might prove something.”

Vivian would have liked to go and sit on her suitcase and clutch the string bag to her and refuse indignantly, but she said with desperate bravery, “Do what you like. Only you’re to take me back to the station if you don’t find anything.”

“I might,” said Jonathan. Vivian was fairly sure that meant that he would. She tried not to mind too much when Jonathan dragged the suitcase over into a beam of light from the odd-shaped window, where he began briskly unpacking it. Sam attended to the string bag. Vivian spread it out on her knee for him, because that took her mind off Jonathan going into all her new winter underwear, and wished Sam would not breathe so heavily. The first thing Sam found was her sandwiches.

“Can I eat these?” he said.

“No,” said Vivian. “I’m hungry.”

“I’ll give you half,” Sam said, plainly thinking he was being generous.

Jonathan stood up holding Vivian’s new liberty bodice with suspenders attached to hold up her winter stockings. “Whatever do you use this for?” he asked, really puzzled by it.

Vivian’s face went fiery hot. “Put that down!” she said.

“Corsets,” Sam suggested with his mouth full.

There was a sort of buzzing from outside somewhere. Light came on and swiftly grew bright from all the corners of the room. It showed Jonathan standing frozen by the window with the liberty bodice in one hand and Vivian’s best jumper in the other. Vivian saw that the flicker over his eyes hardly showed in bright light, and that the diamonds on his suit were dark purple. Sam was frozen too, with a third sandwich in his hand.

“Someone’s coming!” Jonathan whispered. “They must have heard her yelling.”

“They make regular rounds,” Sam whispered back hoarsely.

“Then why didn’t you
tell
me? Quick!” Jonathan whispered. He bundled everything back into the suitcase and shoved the lid down. Sam seized the string bag and a handful of Vivian’s skirt with it and dragged. It was clear to Vivian that something frightening was about to happen. She let Sam tow her across the marble floor and round behind the huge carved desk.

“Hide!” he said. “Come
on
!”

There was a deep hollow inside the half-circle of desk, so that a person’s knees could swivel this way and that to reach the banks of switches. Sam pushed Vivian into it and dived in after her. Before Vivian had a chance even to sit up properly, Jonathan came scrambling into the space too, dragging the suitcase behind him. Vivian ended up half-lying on her side with a clear view through the space at the bottom of the desk. She could see her last sandwich in its paper lying in the middle of the marble floor, and the heap of Jonathan’s grey flannel suit beside it.

Jonathan saw them too. “
Damn
!” he whispered, and he was off after them and back again while Vivian was still being shocked to hear him swear. “Don’t make a sound!” he said to her breathlessly. “If they find us, they might even shoot you!”

Vivian looked from his face to Sam’s, not sure if she believed this. They both had that tense look people have in films when gangsters are looking for them with guns. This made everything completely unreal to Vivian, like a film. She reached out and took her last sandwich from Jonathan before Sam’s stretching hand quite got to it. She bit into it. It made her feel better to chew bread she had watched Mum butter and sardines she had helped Mum mash. It told her that real life was still there somewhere.

She was still eating when a door rumbled and the light grew stronger. Two sets of heavy, clacking boots marched into view across the grey-veined white floor. Vivian watched them under the desk, clumping hither and thither, as the people wearing them checked the room. Beside her, she could feel Jonathan beginning to shake and Sam puffing little tiny snorts in an effort to breathe quietly, but she could not believe in any of it and she went on calmly eating her sandwich.

“Seems all right in here,” the owner of one pair of boots said, in a rumbling murmur.

“Funny though,” murmured the other. This one sounded like a woman. “I can smell fish—sardines. Can you smell sardines?”

Vivian stuffed the rest of the sandwich into her mouth and held both hands across it in order not to giggle. Jonathan’s face was white and the lordly look had somehow crumpled away from it entirely. Vivian saw that he had gone from being the Inquisitor to
being a scared boy in bad trouble. Sam was holding his breath. His face was going a steadily darker red and his eyes were rolling at Vivian and the sandwich, quite horrified. She could tell they were both very frightened indeed, but she still wanted to laugh.

“No,” said the rumbling man’s voice. “Don’t smell a thing.”

“Then I’ll blame you,” said the woman, “if the Chief gets attacked by a mad sardine tomorrow.” They both laughed. Then the woman said, “Come on,” and the boots clacked away.

The door rumbled. After a while the lights dimmed. As soon as they did, Sam let out his breath in a near roar and threw himself on his face, gasping. “I’m dying!” he panted.

“No you’re not,” Jonathan said. His voice had gone shrill and quavering. “Shut up and sit up. We’ve got to think what to
do
!”

Vivian knew Jonathan’s nerve had broken. It was time for her to be firm. “I’ll tell you what to do,” she said. “Open that silver booth again and put me back in it and send me back to the station to meet Cousin Marty.”

“No, we absolutely won’t,” Jonathan said. “We can’t. If we use it again that will make three times and the computer will register it. It always checks the odd numbers anyway, in case an agent goes out and gets lost. And they’ll find out we’ve broken the law. They’ll be on to us at once. We’re right in the middle of Time Patrol building here. Don’t you understand?”

“N
o I
don’t
understand!” said Vivian. She could see well enough that the clacking boots had jolted both boys back to a sense of whatever passed for real life in this place. She thought: they were having an adventure up till then. Now it’s not fun anymore. She was angry. “What’s this law you’ve broken? What about
me
?”

“Twenty Century’s part of an Unstable Era,” Jonathan said. “It’s against the law even to take a
thing
out of an Unstable Era, and taking a person out is much worse. Putting a person back
in
after they’ve seen Time City is the worst crime you can commit.”

“They’ll send us out into history for it,” Sam said in a shocked whisper, and shivered. Jonathan, Vivian noticed, shivered much harder. “What will they do to
her
?”

“Something even worse,” Jonathan said, and his teeth chattered slightly.

“Well, you might have
though
t!” Vivian said. “What am I going to do now?”

Jonathan got to his knees. “I thought I did think!” he groaned as
he crawled out from under the desk. He turned to face Vivian. His face looked pinched and frightened in the murky blue light. “I was quite sure you were… Look, can you give me your word of honour on the god Mao or Kennedy or Koran, or whatever you worship, that you really are just a plain person from Twenty Century and nothing to do with Faber John?”

“I give you my Bible oath,” said Vivian. “But you ought to know when a person’s real and telling the truth without it.”

Jonathan, to her surprise, took this rather well. “I do know,” he said. “I began to see something had gone wrong by the look on your face when you saw my pigtail—but I still don’t
understand
it! Let’s get out of here and think what to do.”

Crouching in the space behind the desk, they repacked Vivian’s suitcase and tried to cram Jonathan’s grey flannel clothes into it too. Only the trousers went in. They had to stuff the jacket into the string bag and the cap and tie into Vivian’s gas mask case. Sam took that. Jonathan carried the suitcase and Vivian hung on to the string bag. She felt that if she let go of it for an instant she might stop being Vivian Smith and turn into someone else completely.

At the door of the office, Sam produced a rattling bunch of—not keys. They were little squares that might have been made of plastic. He fitted one into a slot beside the door. “Pinched them from my father,” he explained in a loud proud whisper. The door slid aside, and then slid shut behind them when they were through, just as if it had known. They stole along a number of high corridors, where lights flicked on and off in the distance and round corners as the two guards went on their rounds. Unnerving though
this was, it gave Vivian enough light to see that the building was all made of marble, with the same ultra-modern look as the office—except that there were carvings and sculptures up where the walls met the ceiling which did not look modern at all. Vivian glimpsed angel faces in the dimness, winged lions and people who seemed to be half horses. It was like a dream.