Thief of Time

before.

“Don't say a word,” she said quietly. “They have some very acute senses. Just ease back among those big glass vats behind you and try to look inconspicuous. And do it NOW.”

The last word had odd harmonics to it and Lobsang felt his legs begin to move almost without his conscious control.

The door moved a little and a man came in.

What was strange about the face, Lobsang thought afterwards, was how unmemorable it was. He'd never seen a face so lacking in anything to mention. It had a nose and mouth and eyes, and they were all quite flawless, but somehow they didn't make up a face. They were just parts that made no proper whole. If they became anything at all it was the face of a statue, good looking but without anything looking out of it.

Slowly, like someone who had to think about his muscles, the man turned to look at Lobsang.

Lobsang felt himself bunch up to slice time. The spinner groaned a warning on his back.

“That's about enough, I think,” said Susan, stepping forward. The man was spun around. An elbow was jabbed into his stomach and then the palm of her hand caught him so hard under his chin that he was lifted off the floor and slammed against the wall.

As he fell, Susan hit him on the head with a wrench.

“We might as well be going,” she said, as if she'd just shuffled some paper that had been untidy. “Nothing more for us here.”

“You killed him!”

“Certainly. He's not a human being. I have… a sense about these things. It's sort of inherited. Besides, go and pick up the hose. Go on.”

Since she was still holding the wrench, Lobsang did so. Or tried to do so. The coil she'd flung into the corner was knotted and tangled like rubber spaghetti.

“Malignancy, my grandfather calls it,” said Susan. “The local hostility of things towards non-things always increases when there's an Auditor about. They can't help it. The hosepipe test is very reliable in the field, according to a rat I know.”

Rat, thought Lobsang, but he said: “What's an Auditor?”

“And they have no sense of colour. They don't understand it. Look how he's dressed. Grey suit, grey shirt, grey shoes, grey cravat, grey everything.”

“Er… er… perhaps it was just someone trying to be very cool?”

“You think so? No loss there, then,” said Susan. “Anyway, you're wrong. Watch.”

The body was disintegrating. It was a fast and quite ungory process, a sort of dry evaporation. It simply became floating dust, which expanded away and vanished. But the last few handfuls formed, just for a few seconds, a familiar shape. That, too, vanished, with the merest whisper of a scream.

“That was a dhlang!” he said. “An evil spirit! The peasants down in the valleys hang up charms against them! But I thought they were just a superstition!”

“No, they're a substition,” said Susan. “I mean they're real, but hardly anyone really believes in them. Mostly everyone believes in things that aren't real. Something very strange is going on. These things are all over the place, and they've got bodies. That's not right. We've got to find the person who built the clock—”

“And, er, what are you, Miss Susan?”

“Me? I'm… a schoolteacher.”

She followed his gaze to the wrench that she still held in her hand, and shrugged.

“It can get pretty rough at break time, can it?” said Lobsang.

There was an overpowering smell of milk.

Lu-Tze sat bolt upright.

It was a large room, and he had been placed on a slab in the middle of it. By the feel of the surface, it was sheeted with metal. There were churns stacked along the wall, and big metal bowls ranged beside a sink the size of a bath.

Under the milk smell were many others—disinfectant, well-scrubbed wood and a distant odour of horses.

Footsteps approached. Lu-Tze lay back hurriedly and shut his eyes.

He heard someone enter the room. They were whistling under their breath, and they had to be a man, because no woman in Lu-Tze's long experience had ever whistled in that warbling, hissing way. The whistling approached the slab, stayed still for a moment, then turned away and headed for the sink. It was replaced by the sound of a pump handle being operated.

Lu-Tze half opened one eye.

The man standing at the sink was quite short, so that the standard-issue blue-and-white striped apron he wore almost reached the floor. He appeared to be washing bottles.

Lu-Tze swung his legs off the slab, moving with a stealthiness that made the average ninja sound like a brass band, and let his sandals gently touch the floor.

“Feeling better?” said the man, without turning his head.

“Oh, er, yes. Fine,” said Lu-Tze.

“I thought, here's a little bald monk sort of a fellow,” said the man, holding a bottle up to the light to inspect it. “With a wind-up thing on his back, and down on his luck. Fancy a cup of tea? Kettle's on. I've got yak butter.”

“Yak? Am I still in Ankh-Morpork?” Lu-Tze looked down at a rack of ladles beside him. The man still hadn't looked round.

“Hmm. Interestin' question,” said the bottle-washer. “You could say you're sort of in Ankh-Morpork. No to yak milk? I can get cow's milk, or goat, sheep, camel, llama, horse, cat, dog, dolphin, whale or alligator if you prefer.”

“What? Alligators don't give milk!” said Lu-Tze, grasping the biggest ladle. It made no noise as it came off its hook.

“I didn't say it was easy.”

The sweeper got a good grip. “What is this place, friend?” he said.

“You are in… the dairy.”

The man at the sink said the last word as if it was as portentous as “castle of dread”, placed another bottle on the draining board, and, still with his back to Lu-Tze, held up a hand. All the fingers were folded except for the middle digit, which was extended.

“You know what this is, monk?” he said.

“It's not a friendly gesture, friend.” The ladle felt good and heavy. Lu-Tze had used much worse weapons than this.

“Oh, a superficial interpretation. You are an old man, monk. I can see the centuries on you. Tell me what this is, and know what I am.”

The coldness in the dairy got a little colder.

“It's your middle finger,” said Lu-Tze.

“Pah!” said the man.

“Pah?”

“Yes, pah! You have a brain. Use it.”

“Look, it was good of you to—”

“You know the secret wisdoms that everyone seeks, monk.” The bottle-washer paused. “No, I even suspect that you know the explicit wisdoms, the ones hidden in plain view, which practically no one looks for. Who am I?”

Lu-Tze stared at the solitary finger. The wall's of the dairy faded. The cold grew deeper.

His mind raced, and the librarian of memory took over.

This wasn't a normal place, that wasn't a normal man: A finger. One finger. One of the five digits on a—