Thief of Time

For example, the idea of eating seems now to have a… an attraction. The body tells me this.”

One said, Attraction? As in gravity?

“Ye-es. One is drawn towards food.”

One said, Food in large masses?

“Even in small amounts.”

One said, But eating is simply a function. What is the… attraction of performing a function? Surely the knowledge that it is necessary for continued survival is sufficient?

“I cannot say,” said Lady LeJean.

One Auditor said, You persist in using a personal pronoun.

And one added, And you have not died! To be an individual is to live, and to live is to die!

“Yes. I know. But it is essential for humans to use the personal pronoun. It divides the universe into two parts. The darkness behind the eyes, where the little voice is, and everything else. It is… a horrible feeling. It is like being… questioned, all the time.”

One said, What is the little voice?

“Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.”

She could tell this disturbed the other Auditors. “I do not wish to continue in this way any longer than necessary,” she added. And realized that she had lied.

One said, We do not blame you.

Lady LeJean nodded.

The Auditors could see into human minds. They could see the pop and sizzle of the thoughts. But they could not read them. They could see the energies flow from node to node, they could see the brain glittering like a Hogswatch decoration. What they couldn't see was what was happening.

So they'd built one.

It was the logical thing to do. They'd used human agents before, because early on they'd worked out that there were many, many humans who would do anything for sufficient gold. This was puzzling, because gold did not seem to the Auditors to hold any significant value for a human body—it needed iron and copper and zinc, but only the most minute traces of gold. Therefore, they'd reasoned, this was further evidence that the humans who required it were flawed, and this was why attempts to make use of them were doomed. But why were they flawed?

Building a human being was easy; the Auditors knew exactly how to move matter around. The trouble was that the result didn't do anything but lie there and, eventually, decompose. This was annoying, since human beings, without any special training or education, seemed to be able to make working replicas quite easily.

Then they learned that they could make a human body which worked if an Auditor was inside it.

There were, of course, huge risks. Death was one of them. The Auditors avoided death by never going so far as to get a life. They strove to be as indistinguishable as hydrogen atoms, and with none of the latter's joie de vivre. Some luckless Auditor might be risking death by “operating” the body. But lengthy consultation decided that if the driver took care, and liaised at all times with the rest of the Auditors, this risk was minimal and worth taking, considering the goal.

They built a woman. It was a logical choice. After all, while men wielded more obvious power than women, they often did so at the expense of personal danger, and no Auditor liked the prospect of personal danger. Beautiful women often achieved great things, on the other hand, merely by smiling at powerful men.

The whole subject of “beauty” caused the Auditors a lot of difficulty. It made no sense at a molecular level. But research turned up the fact that the woman in the picture Woman Holding Ferret by Leonard of Quirm was considered the epitome of beauty, and so they'd based Lady LeJean on that. They had made changes, of course. The face in the picture was asymmetrical and full of minor flaws, which they had carefully removed.

The result would have been successful beyond the Auditors' wildest dreams, had they ever dreamed. Now that they had their stalking horse, their reliable human, anything was possible. They were learning fast, or at least collecting data, which they considered to be the same as learning.

So was Lady LeJean. She had been a human for two weeks, two astonishing, shocking weeks. Whoever would have guessed that a brain operated like this? Or that colours had a meaning that went way, way beyond spectral analysis? How could she even begin to describe the blueness of blue? Or how much thinking the brain did all by itself? It was terrifying. Half the time her thoughts seemed not to be her own.

She had been quite surprised to find that she did not want to tell the other Auditors this. She did not want to tell them a lot of things. And she didn't have to!

She had power. Oh, over Jeremy, that was not in question and was now, she had to admit, rather worrying. It was causing her body to do things by itself, like blush. But she had power over the other Auditors, too. She made them nervous.

Of course, she wanted the project to work. It was their goal. A tidy and predictable universe, where everything stayed in its place. If Auditors dreamed, this would be another dream.

Except… except…

The young man had smiled at her in a nervous, worrying way, and the universe was turning out to be a lot more chaotic than even the Auditors had ever suspected.

A lot of the chaos was happening inside Lady LeJean's head.

Tick

Lu-Tze and Lobsang passed through Bong Phut and Long Nap like ghosts in twilight. People and animals were blueish statues and were not, said Lu-Tze, to be touched in any circumstances.

Lu-Tze restocked his travel bag with food from some of the houses, making sure to leave little copper tokens in their place.

“It means we're obliged to them,” he said, filling Lobsang's bag as well. “The next monk through here might have to give someone a minute or two.”

“A minute or two isn't much.”

“For a dying woman to say goodbye to her children, it's a lifetime,” said Lu-Tze. “Is it not written, ‘Every second counts’? Let's go.”

“I'm tired, Sweeper.”

“I did say every second counts.”

“But everybody has to sleep!”

“Yes, but not yet,” Lu-Tze insisted. “We can rest in the caves down at Songset. Can't fold time while you're asleep, see?”

“Can't we use the spinners?”

“In theory, yes.”

“In theory? They could wind out time for us. We'd only sleep for a few seconds—”

“They're for emergencies only,” said Lu-Tze bluntly.

“How do you define an emergency, Sweeper?”

“An emergency is when I decide it's time to use a clockwork spinner designed by Qu, wonder boy. A lifebelt's for saving your life. That's when I'll trust an uncalibrated, unblessed spinner powered by springs. When I have to. I know Qu says—”

Lobsang blinked and shook his head. Lu-Tze grabbed his arm.

“You felt something again?”

“Ugh… like having a tooth out in my brain,” said Lobsang, rubbing his head. He pointed. “It came from over there.”

“A pain came from over there?” said Lu-Tze. He glared at the boy. “But we've