Discworld 26 - The Thief of Time (30 page)

 
 
  
That was not in itself a problem. Most of the things humans busied themselves with weren't
real, either. But sometimes the mind of the most sensible person encountered something so
big, so complex, so alien to all understanding, that it told itself little stories about it instead.
Then, when it felt it understood the story, it felt it understood the huge incomprehensible
thing. And this, Susan knew, was her mind telling itself a story.
There was a sound like great heavy metal doors slamming, one after another, getting louder
and faster...
The universe reached a decision.
The other glass rooms vanished. The walls clouded. Colour rose, pastel at first, then
darkening as timeless reality flowed back.
The bed was empty. Lobsang had gone. But the air was full of slivers of blue light, turning
and swirling like ribbons in a storm.
Susan remembered to breathe again. 'Oh,' she said aloud. 'Destiny.'
She turned. The bedraggled Lady LeJean was still staring at the empty bed.
'Is there another way out of here?'
'There's an elevator at the end of the corridor, Susan, but what happened to-?'
'Not Susan,' said Susan sharply. 'It's Miss Susan. I'm only Susan to my friends, and you are
not one of them. I don't trust you at all.'
'I don't trust me either,' said Lady LeJean meekly. 'Does that help?'
'Show me this elevator, will you?'
It turned out to be nothing more than a large box the size of a small room, which hung from a
web of ropes and pulleys in the ceiling. It had been installed recently, by the look of it, to
move the large works of art around. Sliding doors occupied most of one wall.
'There are capstans in the cellar for winching it up,' said Lady LeJean. 'Downward journeys
are slowed safely because of a mechanism by which the weight of the descending elevator
causes water to be pumped up into rainwater cisterns on the roof, which in turn can be
released back into a hollow counterweight that assists in the elevation of heavier items of-'
'Thank you,' said Susan quickly. 'But what it really needs in order to descend is time.' Under
her breath she added, 'Can you help?'
The ribbons of blue light orbited her, like puppies anxious to play, and then drifted towards
the elevator.
'However,' she added, 'I believe Time is on our side now.'
Miss Tangerine was amazed at how fast a body learned.

 
 
  
Until now Auditors had learned by counting. Sooner or later, everything came down to
numbers. If you knew all the numbers, you knew everything. Often the later was a lot later,
but that did not matter because for an Auditor time was just another number. But a brain, a
few soggy pounds of gristle, counted numbers so fast that they stopped being numbers at all.
She'd been astonished at how easily it could direct a hand to catch a ball in the air, calculating
future positions of hand and ball without her even being aware of it.
The senses seemed to operate and present her with conclusions before she had time to think.
At the moment she was trying to explain to other Auditors that not feeding an elephant when
there was no elephant not to feed was not in fact impossible. Miss Tangerine was one of the
faster-learning Auditors and had already formulated a group of things, events and situations
that she categorized as 'bloody stupid'. Things that were 'bloody stupid' could be dismissed.
Some of the others were having difficulty understanding this, but now she stopped in mid-
harangue when she heard the rumble of the elevator.
'Do we have anyone upstairs?' she demanded.
The Auditors around her shook their heads. 'IGNORE THIS NOTICE' had produced too
much confusion.
'Then someone is coming down!' said Miss Tangerine. 'They are out of place! They must be
stopped!'
'We must discuss-' an Auditor began.
'Do what I say, you organic organ!'
'It's a matter of personalities,' said Lady LeJean, as Susan pushed open a door in the roof and
stepped out onto the leads.
'Yes?' said Susan, looking around at the silent city. 'I thought you didn't have them.'
'They will have them now,' said Lady LeJean, climbing out behind her. 'And personalities
define themselves in terms of other personalities.'
Susan, prowling along the parapet, considered this strange sentence.
'You mean there will be flaming rows?' she said.
'Yes. We have never had egos before.'
'Well, you seem to be managing.'
'Only by becoming completely and utterly insane,' said her ladyship.
Susan turned. Lady LeJean's hat and dress had become even more tattered, and she was
shedding sequins. And then there was the matter of the face. An exquisite mask on a bone
structure like fine china had been made up by a clown. Probably a blind clown. And one who

 
 
  
was wearing boxing gloves. In a fog. Lady LeJean looked at the world through panda eyes
and her lipstick touched her mouth only by accident.
'You don't look insane,' lied Susan. 'As such.'
'Thank you. But sanity is defined by the majority, I am afraid. Do you know the saying “The
whole is greater than the sum of the parts”?'
'Of course.' Susan scanned the rooftops for a way down. She did not need this. The... thing
seemed to want to talk. Or, rather, to chatter aimlessly.
'It is an insane statement. It is a nonsense. But now I believe that it is true.'
'Good. That elevator should be getting down about... now.'
Slivers of blue light, like trout slipping through a stream, danced around the elevator door.
The Auditors gathered. They had been learning. Many of them had acquired weapons. And a
number of them had taken care not to communicate to the others that gripping something
offensive in the hand seemed a very natural thing to do. It spoke to something right down in
the back of the brain.
It was therefore unfortunate that when a couple of them pulled open the elevator door it was
to reveal, slightly melting in the middle of the floor, a cherry liqueur chocolate.
The scent wafted.
There was only one survivor and, when Miss Tangerine ate the chocolate, there wasn't even
that.
'One of life's little certainties,' said Susan, standing on the edge of the museum's parapet, 'is
that there is generally a last chocolate hidden in all those empty wrappers.'
Then she reached down and grabbed the top of a drainpipe.
She wasn't certain how this would work. If she fell... but would she fall? There was no time to
fall. She had her own personal time. In theory, if anything so definite as a theory existed in a
case like this, that meant she could just drift down to the ground. But the time to test a theory
like that was when you had no other choice. A theory was just an idea, but a drainpipe was a
fact.
The blue light flickered around her hands.
'Lobsang?' she said quietly. 'It is you, isn't it?'
That name is as good as any for us. The voice was as faint as a breath.
'This may seem a stupid question, but where are you?'
We are just a memory. And I am weak.

 
 
  
'Oh.' Susan slid a little further.
But I will grow strong. Get to the clock.
'What's the point? There was nothing we could do!'
Times have changed.
Susan reached the ground. Lady LeJean followed, moving clumsily. Her evening dress had
acquired several more tears.
'Can I offer a fashion tip?' said Susan.
'It would be welcomed,' said her ladyship politely.
'Long cerise bloomers with that dress? Not a good idea.'
'No? They are very colourful, and quite warm. What should I have chosen instead?'
'With that cut? Practically nothing.'
'That would have been acceptable?'
'Er...' Susan blanched at unfolding the complex laws of lingerie to someone who wasn't even,
she felt, anybody. 'To anyone likely to find out, yes,' she finished. 'It would take too long to
explain.'
Lady LeJean sighed. 'All of it does,' she said. 'Even clothing. Skin-substitutes to preserve
body heat? So simple. So easy to say. But there are so many rules and exceptions, impossible
to understand.'
Susan looked along Broad Way. It was thick with silent traffic, but there was no sign of an
Auditor.
'We'll run into more of them,' she said aloud.
'Yes. There will be hundreds, at least,' said Lady LeJean.
'Why?'
'Because we have always wondered what life is like.'
'Then let's get up into Zephire Street,' said Susan.
'What is there for us?'
'Wienrich and Boettcher.'
'Who are they?'

 
 
  
'I think the original Herr Wienrich and Frau Boettcher died a long time ago. But the shop still
does very good business,' said Susan, darting across the street. 'We need ammunition.'
Lady LeJean caught up. 'Oh. They make chocolate?' she said.
'Does a bear poo in the woods?' said Susan, and realized her mistake straight away.[16]
Too late. Lady LeJean looked thoughtful for a moment.
'Yes,' she said at last. 'Yes, I believe that most varieties do indeed excrete as you suggest, at
least in the temperate zones, but there are several that-'
'I meant to say that, yes, they make chocolate,' said Susan.
Vanity, vanity, thought Lu-Tze, as the milk cart rattled through the silent city. Ronnie would
have been like a god, and people of that stripe don't like hiding. Not really hiding. They like
to leave a little clue, some emerald tablet somewhere, some code in some tomb under the
desert, something to say to the keen researcher: I was here, and I was great.
What else had the first people been afraid of? Night, maybe. Cold. Bears. Winter. Stars. The
endless sky. Spiders. Snakes. One another. People had been afraid of so many things.
He reached into his pack for the battered copy of the Way, and opened it at random.
Koan 97: 'Do unto otters as you would have them do unto you.' Hmm. No real help there.
Besides, he'd occasionally been unsure that he'd written that one down properly, although it
certainly had worked. He'd always left aquatic mammals well alone, and they had done the
same to him.
He tried again.
Koan 124: 'It's amazing what you see if you keep your eyes open.'
'What's the book, monk?' said Ronnie.
'Oh, just... a little book,' said Lu-Tze. He looked around.
The cart was passing a funeral parlour. The owner had invested in a large plate-glass window,
even though the professional undertaker does not, in truth, have that much to sell that looks
good in a window and they usually make do with dark, sombre drapes and perhaps a tasteful
urn.
And the name of the Fifth Horseman.
'Hah!' said Lu-Tze quietly.
'Something funny, monk?'

Discworld 26 - The Thief of Time

Discworld 26 - The Thief of Time

 
 
  
'Obvious, when you think about it,' said Lu-Tze, as much to himself as to Ronnie. Then he
turned in his seat and stuck out his hand. 'Pleased to meet you,' he said. 'Let me guess your
name.'
And said it.
Susan had been unusually inexact. To call Wienrich and Boettcher 'chocolate makers' was
like calling Leonard of Quirm 'a decent painter who also tinkered with things', or Death 'not
someone you'd want to meet every day'. It was accurate, but it didn't tell the whole story.
For one thing, they didn't make, they created. There's an important difference.[17] And,
while their select little shop sold the results, it didn't do anything so crass as to fill the
window with them. That would suggest... well, over-eagerness. Generally, W&B had a
display of silk and velvet drapes with, on a small stand, perhaps one of their special pralines
or no more than three of their renowned frosted caramels. There was no price tag. If you had
to ask the price of W&B's chocolates, you couldn't afford them. And if you'd tasted one, and
still couldn't afford them, you'd save and scrimp and rob and sell elderly members of your
family for just one more of those mouthfuls that fell in love with your tongue and turned your
soul to whipped cream.
There was a discreet drain in the pavement in case people standing in front of the window
drooled too much.
Wienrich and Boettcher were, naturally, foreigners, and according to Ankh-Morpork's Guild
of Confectioners they did not understand the peculiarities of the city's tastebuds.
Ankh-Morpork people, said the Guild, were hearty, no-nonsense folk who did not want
chocolate that was stuffed with cocoa liquor, and were certainly not like effete la-di-dah
foreigners who wanted cream in everything. In fact they actually preferred chocolate made
mostly from milk, sugar, suet, hooves, lips, miscellaneous squeezings, rat droppings, plaster,
flies, tallow, bits of tree, hair, lint, spiders and powdered cocoa husks. This meant that
according to the food standards of the great chocolate centres in Borogravia and Quirm,
Ankh-Morpork chocolate was formally classed as 'cheese' and only escaped, through being
the wrong colour, being defined as 'tile grout'.
Susan allowed herself one of their cheaper boxes per month. And she could easily stop at the
first layer if she wanted to.
'You needn't come in,' she said, as she opened the shop door. Rigid customers lined the
counter.
'Please call me Myria.'
'I don't think I-'
'Please?' said Lady LeJean meekly. 'A name is important.'
Suddenly, in spite of everything, Susan felt a brief pang of sympathy for the creature.
'Oh, very well. Myria, you needn't come in.'

 
 
  
'I can stand it.'
'But I thought chocolate was a raging temptation?' said Susan, being firm with herself.
'It is.'
They stared up at the shelves behind the counter.
'Myria ... Myria,' said Susan, speaking only some of her thoughts aloud. 'From the Ephebian
word myrios, meaning “innumerable”. And LeJean as a crude pun of “legion” ... Oh dear.'
'We thought a name should say what a thing is,' said her ladyship. 'And there is safety in
numbers. I am sorry.'
'Well, these are their basic assortments,' said Susan, dismissing the shop display with a wave
of her hand. 'Let's try the back room- Are you all right?'
'I am fine, I am fine ...' murmured Lady LeJean, swaying.
'You're not going to pig out on me, are you?'
'We... I... know about will-power. The body craves the chocolate but the mind does not. At
least, so I tell myself. And it must be true! The mind can overrule the body! Otherwise, what
is it for?'
'I've often wondered,' said Susan, pushing open another door. 'Ah. The magician's cave...'
'Magic? They use magic here?'
'Nearly right.'
Lady LeJean leaned on the door frame for support when she saw the tables.
'Oh,' she said. 'Uh ... I can detect... sugar, milk, butter, cream, vanilla, hazelnuts, almonds,
walnuts, raisins, orange peel, various liqueurs, citrus pectin, strawberries, raspberries, essence
of violets, cherries, pineapples, pistachios, oranges, limes, lemons, coffee, cocoa-'
'Nothing there to be frightened of, right?' said Susan, surveying the workshop for useful
weaponry. 'Cocoa is just a rather bitter bean, after all.'
'Yes, but...' Lady LeJean clenched her fists, shut her eyes and bared her teeth, 'put them all
together and they make-'
'Steady, steady...'
'The will can overrule the emotions, the will can overrule the instincts-' the Auditor intoned.
'Good, good, now just work your way up to the bit where it says chocolate, okay?'
'That's the hard one!'