A Tale of Time City (36 page)

As Dr. Wilander opened his mouth to reply, Vivian said quickly, “Would you mind waiting a second, Dr. Wilander?” The little eyes looked at her and looked amused. The big face nodded. “
Thank
you!” said Vivian. And she flew at Cousin Vivian. She seized the hand that was holding the butter-pie and made Cousin Vivian stick the butter-pie into her own eye. Then she snatched it away and forced it down the neck of Cousin Vivian’s frilly blue frock. Cousin Vivian shrieked and kicked and fought harder than Sam, but Vivian Smith was something of an expert by now and she held that butter-pie inside Cousin Vivian’s frilly collar until the cold part melted and the hot ran out. “Ow!” screamed Cousin Vivian.

Vivian let her go. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day!” she said.

“I can’t go to China like
this
!” Cousin Vivian screamed.

But she had to. The ripples expanded while she was still screaming. Vivian and Jonathan looked with great interest at an instant of rainy street and a house with tipped-up ends to its roof. A person in stiff robes under a large umbrella halted and stared at Cousin Vivian across his long moustache, looking haughtily unable to believe his folded eyes.

“And that’s that,” grunted Dr. Wilander as the scene disappeared. “Pity I didn’t realise what they were up to before this. I knew Time City was bound to go critical when it got back to the beginning. That blinded me, I’m afraid. Let’s go down. Would each of you take one of those Caskets?”

Jonathan rather nervously picked up the jewelled silver egg. Vivian took the heavy iron box quite gladly. After all, it belonged to her own era. Dr. Wilander stepped to the glass pillar again. They realised that it was no longer turning, “Has the clock stopped?” Jonathan asked.

“For the moment,” Dr. Wilander answered, bulging the pillar as he went in. He vanished smoothly downwards. Jonathan followed, then Vivian. It was just the same as going up, just as mysterious. When Vivian stepped out into the round ground floor of the Gnomon, all twelve doors were open and the Annuate Guard was sitting on the floor, looking dizzy and puzzled. Dr. Wilander patted his shoulder as he limped past. “Feeling better now?” he asked and went out through the front door on to the platform at the top of the steps.

Mr. Donegal was standing at one side with a group of Patrollers.
Elio was standing at the other side, panting rather, with Sempitern Walker, Mr. Enkian, Ramona, and a number of other people. Sam was sitting on the ground near his mother’s feet. He looked tired and his mind-suit was indeed a mass of fluttering strips. Everyone called out gladly when Vivian and Jonathan came through the door behind Dr. Wilander, but they did not move. It was clear none of them liked to get in the way of the three Guardians. The Guardians were standing in a row in front of the door like Patrollers on duty, except that they looked a great deal more powerful than any Patroller ever did.

The Watcher of the Gold came slowly forward, smiling all over his blunt face, and held the Gold Casket out to Dr. Wilander. It was very beautiful, a miniature golden model of the Gnomon. The golden bell tinkled in the top as the Watcher presented it.

“One moment,” Dr. Wilander said to him, and he asked Vivian and Jonathan, “Would you mind giving the other two their property back?”

Jonathan carefully put the Silver Casket into the long shiny hands of the Silver Keeper, who bowed courteously as he took it. Vivian gave the Iron Casket into the eager, cloudy hand of the Iron Guardian. He rewarded her with a great smile, wide and sly, but she felt the same jolt of fear when he touched the Casket that she had felt from him before. She realised now that she had had the same jolt off Dr. Wilander more than once.

“Thank you,” the iron Guardian said softly. He joined the other two Guardians and they all stood holding their Caskets out expectantly to Dr. Wilander.

Dr. Wilander sighed a little. “Very well,” he said. “Now, I suppose.” He held out the time-egg and the three Guardians brought their Caskets forward to meet it. Vivian noticed that they were all exactly the same height as Dr. Wilander, no taller, no shorter, different as they were. The four Caskets came together at the centre of their four outstretched arms, where they wavered for a moment and then dissolved into the small egg-shape of the Lead Casket. As they did, three of the Guardians shimmered also and faded forwards and inwards to overlay Dr. Wilander. For an instant, he had the long mad face of the Iron Guardian. Then that gave way to the sad, polite skull of the Silver Keeper; and that, in turn, became the countryman’s face of the Watcher of the Gold.

Dr. Wilander did not seem to find this at all comfortable. He worked his elbows and stamped his feet and a scowl of what might have been pain came across the four blending faces. But finally he shivered and harrumphed and took a look at the Lead Casket. It was paler now, with silvery and brown and gold streaks, and the air around it played in tighter and stronger whorls, shivering the front of Dr. Wilander’s purple robe. He nodded in a satisfied way. He was still Dr. Wilander, but with a difference. His face was more shapely, with a long twitch to the mouth, which was like the Iron Guardian’s, except that it had the nervous politeness of the Silver Keeper. His chin was the blunt and obstinate chin of the Watcher of the Gold. When he looked suddenly and sharply over at Vivian, his eyes were not so small, but they were still bearishly shrewd and they still laughed at Vivian.

“Know who I am?” he asked her. His voice was less of a grunt.
It blared like the Watcher of the Gold’s and was lightened by the voices of the Iron Guardian and the Silver Keeper.

“Still making fun of me,” Vivian said. “Well, you seem to be all sorts of people. Perhaps everyone is. But I think you
might
be Faber John.”

Everyone else gasped. “Correct!” shouted Dr. Wilander. “She got the right answer for once in her life! But then she
has
met all the other parts of me that were out in history trying to hold the City in place.”

Elio hurried forward and went down on one knee. “Faber John,” he said. “My lord. You ordered me to be made—”

“Oh, get up, man!” said Faber John. “So I did order you, but don’t start my-lording me for that. I’m in a hurry to get to Aeon Square.” He strode past Elio and away down the steps. He still limped a little, Vivian saw, as they all hurried after him, wondering what he was going to do in Aeon Square.

Time City was in upheaval all round them as they went down the steps. Vivian had grown used to the ground shaking, the way you get used to riding in a train, and she had not noticed that it had been getting worse all the time. Now it was really bad. The steps heaved under them with long shudders and cracks appeared under their feet. In the distance, people were running across the Avenue of the Four Ages, in order to get to the river and escape, and Vivian did not blame them. A particularly grinding shudder produced a long crashing, over to her right. She looked in time to see the golden dome of The Years slide away sideways and disappear in a great billow of dust. One of the metal arches in the Avenue tipped
crooked and, beyond that, with a mighty tinkling, the blue glass dome of Millennium crumbled down on itself and poured blue shards into the River Time.

Faber John simply limped on as if none of it were happening. Vivian found she trusted him. When they reached the bottom of the steps, she ran as well as she could over the heaving road, and caught him up. Jonathan was beside him, and so was Elio, who was carrying Sam. Sam was leaning on Elio’s shoulder with a smug and heroic look. He gave Vivian a two-toothed grin as she came up.

“A lot of rebuilding to do,” Faber John remarked to her. “Most of it shoddy stuff put up after I divided.” Something had happened to whatever made the streamers of light on the arches. They were producing wild misty scribbles and making popping noises, although the first arch seemed to revive a little as Faber John limped under it with the time-egg.

“Did you know what was going to happen?” Vivian asked, as they left it behind.

“I guessed most of it,” said Faber John. “Stupid of me to leave it all written down in Lee House where that trigger-happy failure could get hold of it. But I thought my descendants ought to have a few clues in case something went wrong. I didn’t want the Caskets lost for ever. So I left some documents describing more or less what I’d done with them. I made the Iron Casket quite easy to find, because that was the weakest and it didn’t matter if it fell into the wrong hands. I said where the Silver was too, but I took care to put it in such a confusing site that it needed advanced technology out of late history to find. And I gave three different locations for the
Gold to muddle anyone who tried to steal that. Luckily I didn’t say a word about the Lead. I hoped part of me would be here in the City to look after that.”

“And did you know about me?” Vivian asked.

“How could I? I didn’t know about myself,” he grunted. “I spotted you were a sham of course, straight away. And I knew you were one of those time-ghosts. So I figured that the safest thing to do was to take you as a pupil and make sure you knew the important facts. But don’t ask
me
to decide what to do about you now. That’s the Time Lady’s department.”

This sounded alarming. Vivian trotted beside his huge figure in silence after that, under arch after arch, each of which sputtered back to life as they went under it, until they were near the end of the Avenue. There were only a few scattered people running away by then. As Faber John got near them, a house fell down and poured rubble across the road in a long sliding heap, almost at his feet. Mr. Enkian jumped nervously sideways from it.

“If you want to run away, Enkian,” Faber John said, pointing to the fleeing people, “feel free to follow those.”

Mr. Enkian cast a tempted look at the river and then drew up his chin in a very dignified way. “I am proud and pleased to stay and serve the City,” he replied.

“What a damned lie!” said Faber John. “Seriously, Enkian, I won’t hold it against you if you want to go.”

“I—er—” said Mr. Enkian. “If you must know, the wide open spaces of history frighten me more than anything else.”

Just like Jonathan! Vivian thought. It made her feel kinder
towards Mr. Enkian. Perhaps Faber John felt the same. As they climbed across the rubble of the house, he said to Jonathan, “Keep reminding me not to bait that man in future, will you?”

They went up the steps and between Perpetuum and Science. The twin domes of Ongoing and Erstwhile were standing quite unmoved. Faber John squinted up at them and seemed pleased. Perpetuum was tottering, shaking in every lop-sided honeycomb part, but it seemed to be holding together, almost as if it had been made to take just such a strain. “Good,” said Faber John. “Built all these myself.” And he swept on into Aeon Square.

Here the buildings were shaking too, though most of them were whole, except for Time Patrol Building which had lost large pieces off its white front. There were a lot of people out in the middle of Aeon Square, because that was clearly one of the safest places to be. Most of them were City people, but there were quite a few stranded tourists and a large crowd of evacuees, who were staring rather nervously at the falling domes and shaking towers.

“It’s bombs,” Vivian heard an evacuee say as Faber John swept up to the crowd. “We didn’t ought to be here. We ought to be in an air raid shelter.” But around that, Vivian could not quite tell how, a murmur was spreading among the City people and the tourists.

“It’s Faber John!”

By the time Faber John reached the Stone in the middle, he was in a ring of awestruck spectators who all seemed to know who he was. Here Jenny gave up trying to organise the evacuees and rushed up to Jonathan. “Oh, you’re safe! But what is happening? What
is
happening and
where
is Viv?” She looked at Sempitern Walker and
then at Ramona and the way they looked back told her about the Lees. Jenny’s face then made Vivian think soberly: you can’t put something like that right. Not really. It isn’t all right and it never will be.

Faber John took up a position a little way from the broken chippings of the Stone, where he folded his arms and stood looking at it. “I seem to have timed it about right,” he remarked. “Nothing yet, but should be any moment now.”

Almost at once, there was the most violent bucking of the ground yet. In the distance, Vivian saw the tall finger of Whilom Tower sway to and fro. She watched it anxiously, thinking of all the films stored inside it, and she almost missed the moment when the rubble of the Stone blew away into fine dust. Dust stung her face like a sandstorm. She put her arm over her face and looked back to see it showering away sideways in clouds, leaving a dark oblong hole.

“There’s the air raid shelter!” an evacuee cried out in great relief.

But next moment, the evacuees were backing away with everyone else. Something was moving in the hole, something huge and slow and rather clumsy. There were heavy heaving footsteps. Vivian’s back prickled as she realised that whatever had been sleeping under Time City was awake and about to come out.

The footsteps slithered and seemed to find a purchase. Pound–slide—bang. The face of a huge horse appeared in the hole. It pricked its ears and blinked at the sight of Aeon Square and the ring of staring faces. Then it gave a mighty scramble and climbed out on to the flagstones, putting each enormous hoof with great care. There was a woman on its back, dressed in home-made
clothes—a fair, untidy woman with her hair in a bun and worried lines on her face.

Faber John’s face broke into a great smile at the sight of her. “Time Lady, my wife,” he said, “why the horse?”

The Time Lady smiled slightly too. “Why not?” she said. “I found him going begging in the Age of Gold while I was wandering in spirit. And I brought him because I was fairly sure there wouldn’t be enough animals here when I woke.”

“There aren’t
any
,” said Faber John. “People didn’t like the mess.”

“How stupid!” said the Time Lady. “I must get some more at once.” She swung her leg across the vast back of the horse as if she were going to dismount, but she stayed there, looking round at Aeon Square. Jonathan and Vivian exchanged incredulous looks. They knew that horse, rather too well for comfort, and they knew the Lady too. She was the one who had cured Jonathan. But she was not quite the same as the woman in the Age of Gold. She was paler, and she seemed a more complicated person, as if it was a very important part of her that had been asleep under the City. How silly of me! Vivian thought. When I saw that sleeper, I thought of Mum first thing, but I never realised it was a woman even then! But she’s not big enough! I don’t understand.