A Tale of Time City (33 page)

“You three,” said Jenny. “Can you take the Lees for a walk round the City? They want to get used to it all again, and we’ve all got such a lot to do.”

Nobody seemed to wonder who Vivian was. She stared at Jenny and at the smiling Lees. It was like not getting smacked when you richly deserved it, she thought—or worse. It was all wrong. “What? Now?” Jonathan said.

“Yes, but be sure to bring them to the Palace for lunch,” Jenny said.

“I’m not going,” said Sam.

“Oh, come on. Of course you are,” Mr. Lee said, smilingly waving his trilby hat at Sam.

And there they all were, not quite knowing how, walking with the Lees across the busy hall and out through the glass doors, while Sam’s parents and Jonathan’s cheerfully waved them off from beside the kiosk.

A
s they stepped out into Aeon Square, Mr. Lee laughed. “That was easy!” he said. “I hadn’t realised the Silver Casket was so powerful. They were eating out of my hand in seconds!” He gestured with his hat again and silver flashed from inside it.

Inga Lee patted her square white handbag. “The Iron Casket helps it, I think.” She had the slightly foreign accent Vivian remembered from the Age of Silver. “You should have seen that Silver Keeper react when I turned it on him!”

“Wasn’t that fun!” Cousin Vivian said, skipping along beside them. “I do think I was clever, finding that silver egg to trick them with! And you did it beautifully, Mummy! I loved the way you got them to tell you all the things we wanted to know!” She stopped skipping. “The ground
is
shaking, isn’t it?” she said. “Let’s go and see how Faber John’s Stone’s getting on. I want to see if the Lee Documents were right about that too.”

The ground was indeed shaking, much harder than it had been before, making Aeon Square strange to walk on. There was a grinding feeling coming from below somewhere. But this did not
bother Vivian nearly so much as the way the three Lees behaved as if she and Jonathan and Sam were not there at all. As they crossed the square, walking briskly towards Faber John’s Stone, Vivian tried to call out to a group of tourists who were hurrying past quite near. She found she could not. She could not seem to do anything but walk after the Lees. It was frightening.

There were very few people about in the square anyway, which was odd, considering there had just been a ceremony there. There was only a scattering of tourists and all of them were hurrying in the same direction, towards the Avenue of the Four Ages. Vivian could see a few people in robes or City pyjamas in the distance, but they were hurrying away too. Almost the only people who were not hurrying were some little groups of evacuees who had somehow escaped Dr. Wilander’s efforts to organise them. The Lees walked past more than one bunch of dingy little figures carrying plastic boxes labelled WAR OFFICE.

“This looks just like Hollywood!” Vivian heard one say. The next group was arguing. “I tell you this ain’t the country!” Vivian heard. “There ain’t no bleeding cows!”

“Don’t be a Charlie!” another said scornfully. “We’re still in the bleeding station. It’s the trains what’s shaking the ground!”

“A big posh station then,” a third said dubiously.

Even if Vivian had been able to call out to them, she did not think they would have been much help. By the time the Lees reached Faber John’s Stone, she was very scared indeed. Sam was biting his lip and Jonathan was whiter than ever.

The Stone was a mass of tiny pieces. It was like some of the
graves Vivian remembered in Lewisham churchyard, neatly spread with little chips of marble. The Lees looked at it with great satisfaction.

“It really has broken up!” Cousin Vivian said delightedly. “The Lee Documents were quite right, Daddy!”

“Yes,” said Mr. Lee. “This has to mean that the City’s only an hour or so from the end. We timed it right in spite of the muddles.”

“We timed it perfectly, my love,” said Inga Lee. “You weren’t to know that they’d go to the Age of Gold first. Time-travel is so confusing.”

“I love time-travelling!” Cousin Vivian said, skipping round Faber John’s Stone. “It was fun fooling that po-faced Iron Guardian by hopping in and out of the Lee time-lock with Leon Hardy. Then when he caught on to it, I went there by train instead! You should have seen that terrible warty woman’s face when I told her what I thought of her!”

“Let’s get to the Gnomon,” said Mr. Lee.

They set off briskly again, towards Continuum, and Vivian, Sam, and Jonathan were forced to trudge through the loose chippings of the Stone and follow. Inga Lee glanced back at Time Patrol Building a little nervously. “No one following,” she said. “We took a risk, coming through a Patrol lock.”

“It was worth it,” said Mr Lee. “We needed our hostage.”

Aeon Square was almost deserted when they came to Continuum. Mr Lee looked up at its towers with what seemed to be real affection and then across to the twin domes of Science. Cousin Vivian came skipping back.

“There’s funny lop-sided old Perpetuum!” she said excitedly. “I remember it ever so well!”

Her father looked up at Perpetuum with the grim look he had had in the Age of Gold. “The most useful place in Time City,” he said. “I intend to keep all that knowledge under lock and key. The Fixed Eras are going to have to pay a realistic price for anything they want to know, from now on. And I’m going to throw that fool Enkian out into history. I’ll keep Wilander and put him in charge. I want Wilander to suffer. He was the one who gave me that lousy low report and got me stuck in history as an Observer.”

“You told me, my love,” said Inga Lee. “Just hand him over to me.”

“And me,” said their daughter. “I hate him too. He told me I was a silly little girl.”

She went skipping ahead to the steps that led to the Avenue of the Four Ages, where she began pointing excitedly to the right. When Vivian came up behind Mr. Lee, obedient to the Silver Casket in his hat, she found the Avenue crowded. Tourists and Time City people were hastening from both ends towards the arches that led to the river. Long lines of City people were waiting at the arches where you could hire boats, and all of these were carrying bundles and bags. Out in the country, where the River Time wound through the fields, Vivian could see the footpaths along its banks dotted with hurrying figures, all going the same way towards the time-locks up the river. It was not exactly a panic. But Vivian thought of the time-ghosts they had seen beating at the locks, and she knew it soon would be. Most of those people were going to arrive to find that the locks had stopped working.

Cousin Vivian was pointing over the heads of the crowds. “What’s that beautiful place with the blue glass dome?” she said.

“Millennium, dear,” said her mother.

“Oh, do let’s live in it when we’ve got the City!” Cousin Vivian said.

Her father looked rather taken aback. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Oh,
please
let’s, Daddy!” his daughter said, snuggling up to him as they all went down the steps. “After all, Mummy’s an Icelandic Emperor’s daughter and
we’re
both Lees. The Annuate isn’t really grand at all.”

“We haven’t taken over the City yet,” Mr. Lee said, laughing, as he turned left towards the Gnomon. “But I’ll see.”

The walk along the Avenue was hard going. Everybody else was hurrying the opposite way. The Lees threaded their way through them easily enough, but they did not bother to find a path that gave room for Jonathan, Vivian, and Sam. They were continually bumped and jostled, and often there was no way they could dodge the people hurrying towards them. And the shaking of the ground seemed worse here. The lacy metal arches were vibrating, giving an unpleasant blurred feeling when they had to walk under them. Inga Lee kept glancing over her shoulder at something that seemed to be behind Vivian. She was so obviously nervous that Vivian began to feel hopeful. By bumping sideways into a fat woman hurrying the other way, Vivian managed to get herself turned half round, before the power of the Silver Casket pulled her straight again.

The Iron Guardian and the Silver Keeper were gliding among
the people side by side, a few yards behind her. The Iron Guardian’s long face was sober. The Silver Keeper’s skull-face looked grim and sad. Vivian did not wonder that Inga Lee was nervous of them, but she did not think they were going to be any more help than the evacuees.

“Take no notice,” Mr. Lee said soothingly. “They’re probably forced to follow wherever the Caskets go.”

They came to Endless Hill and climbed the steps, to and fro, between the ornate balustrades. Every time the steps turned, Vivian caught a glimpse of a silver figure and a drab one, following behind on long, silent feet. Oh please let them do something to stop the Lees! she prayed.

But when they turned into the last flight, with the tower straight above, the two Guardians simply stopped on the landing below the stairs. Vivian saw them standing there, side by side, by imitating Sam, who had found a way of looking behind under his own arm. Her heart sank.

Mr. Lee gave a loud joyous laugh, that showed he had been as nervous as his wife. “You see?” he said. “They’re quite helpless!” He looked irritably up at the Gnomon, standing like a lighthouse, with sky showing through the windows and sunlight dazzling off the midday, bell in the pagoda at the top. “Where’s Leon?” he said. “I told him to meet us here.”

“That young man is a born double-crosser,” Inga Lee said. “I warned you.”

“I know,” said Mr. Lee. “But we had to have someone to keep watch in Time City in case anyone got suspicious. And you must
admit he did a good job enticing the children to find you the Silver. And he did set the boy Jonathan up for me to kill when we knew he was getting dangerous.”

Again they were talking as if Jonathan was not there, trudging up the steps behind them. Inga Lee said, “Maybe—but he didn’t warn us they were going for the Gold
first
, Viv. Don’t trust him.”

“I won’t,” said Mr. Lee. “We’ll get rid of him as soon as he shows up.”

They went up the last flight of steps, across the platform in front of the tower, and in through its nearest open door. There was an Annuate Guard on duty there. He came towards them, beaming all over his wrinkled face. “Mr. Lee, isn’t it? Welcome back. I thought no one was going to come to the Gno—”

That was all he said. Mr. Lee waved his hat like someone swatting a fly. The Guard fell over on his back and lay there, still smiling. None of the Lees took any more notice of him. Mr Lee stepped to the spiral pillar and went riding up it. His daughter followed him. Inga Lee waved her hand-bag and Jonathan was compelled to follow his cousin. After him, Vivian found herself stepping on to the mysterious spiral ledge. Up she went and, to her surprise, found herself stepping out into the bright sunlight of the museum room, through what looked like the solid glass of the pillar. As she did so, Jonathan fell heavily in front of her. Vivian could not stop her own feet from going on walking and she fell over on top of him. From where they lay in a heap, she could see that there had been a Patroller up here, looking after the museum. She was lying against a display case and her head did not seem to be on straight.

Sam was emerging from the pillar. “I didn’t know—” he began, and stopped when he saw the Patroller.

Inga Lee came out of the pillar behind Sam. She must have stopped using the Iron Casket, because Vivian and Jonathan both found they could move as they wanted. They started to get up. Cousin Vivian dodged out from behind the pillar and kicked them both, hard. “I’ve been longing to do that!” she said. “That’s for interfering!”

“Stop it, Vivvie,” Mr. Lee said, not very seriously. He was carrying a suitcase and he seemed very pleased about it. “Look at this, Inga! The Silver Casket sent all our stuff through, right on time. It appeared just as I came up here. Put those three upstairs. I don’t want them in the way while we set things up.”

Vivian was no sooner back on her feet than she was forced to walk, past the first-ever automat, through the archway in the wall and up the stairs. When she reached the tall archway leading to the next floor, she found herself turning smartly through it, into the bright, bright tinkling space beside the works of the great clock. There, nothing seemed to stop her turning round to look at the archway. Sam came through it behind her, puffing hard, with that look a person has who is trying not to cry. Jonathan came after him and his face was a dull red. Vivian heard Inga Lee’s high heels clattering on the stairs and expected her to come in behind Jonathan. Instead, there was a slight swishing noise. A panel of yellowish stone began sliding across the archway. Jonathan whipped round and tried to put his foot in the gap before it slid home. But he was too late. He clawed at the panel and then kicked it, but it was firmly in place, filling the arch, and he could not budge it.

He turned back again. His eyes were staring and strange behind the darkening flicker of his eye-function. He said, in a queer strangled voice, “He
killed
that Patroller! Himself! She wasn’t dead when I came out of the pillar. He knocked her over with the Casket and then kicked her head. I tried to stop him, but he just knocked me down with the Casket too!” He put his hands over his face, even though his flicker was now black, and turned his back on Sam and Vivian.

Sam sat down on the glassy floor. “He’s not my uncle any more,” he said thickly. “And she’s not my cousin. I disinherit them.”

Vivian stood uncertainly between them until she saw a tear trickle down Sam’s cheek. She sat down beside him and patted his shoulder under the slithery mind-suit. The mind-suits had not done much to help them against the two Caskets, she thought, but then look at the layers and layers Inga Lee had worn to protect herself from the Silver Keeper!

Sam did not say anything, but he did not shake Vivian’s hand off either. Vivian sat there, staring into the twinkling, turning glass heart of the clock, listening to the faint chime and jangle and chinking as it moved, wondering if there was anything they could do now. She did not seem to be able to cry like Sam. Things were too bad for that. She tried not to think of home, or to wonder what had happened to Mum and Dad now that the Twentieth Century had changed so queerly. She tried not to think what would happen to Time City. That was not easy. She could feel the tower shaking, smoothly and constantly, so that she felt almost as if she was riding on a train. And she could see a big dark blot rising slowly up the glass pillar in the middle, turning, turning, and becoming strange
shapes as she saw it through different pieces of the glass works. It took her a moment to realise it was the dead Patroller. Then she tried not to follow it up with her eyes. She was glad that Jonathan and Sam were not looking.