Thief of Time

end. Three Auditors were following them. They weren't running, but there was something about their synchronized step that had a horrible we'll-keep-on-coming quality.

“All right, let's go this way—”

“No, let's go this way,” said Lobsang.

“That's not the way we need to go!” Susan snapped.

“No, but the sign up there says ‘Arms and Armour’!”

“So? Are you any good with weapons?”

“No!” said Lobsang proudly, and then realized she'd taken this the wrong way. “You see, I've been taught to fight without—”

“Maybe there's a sword I can use,” Susan growled, and strode forward.

By the time the Auditors entered the gallery there were more than three of them. The grey crowd paused.

Susan had found a sword, part of a display of Agatean armour. It had been blunted by disuse, but anger flared along the blade.

“Should we keep running?” said Lobsang.

“No. They always catch up. I don't know if we can kill them here, but we can make them wish we could. You still haven't got a weapon?”

“No, because, you see, I've been trained to—”

“Just keep out of my way, then, okay?”

The Auditors advanced cautiously, which struck Lobsang as odd.

“We can't kill them?” said Lobsang.

“It depends on how alive they've let themselves become.”

“But they look scared,” he said.

“They're human-shaped,” said Susan over her shoulder. “Human bodies. Perfect copies. Human bodies have had thousands and thousands of years of not wanting to be cut in half. That sort of leaks into the brain, don't you think?”

And then the Auditors were circling and moving in. Of course they would all attack at once. No one would want to be first.

Three made a grab at Lobsang.

He'd enjoyed the fighting, back in the training dojos. Of course, everyone was padded, and no one was actually trying to kill you, and that helped. But Lobsang had done well because he was good at slicing. He could always find that extra edge. And if you had that edge, you didn't need quite so much skill.

There was no edge here. There was no time to slice.

He adopted a mixture of sna-fu and okidoki and anything that worked, because you were dead if you treated a real fight like the dojo. The grey men were no contest, in any case. They just attempted to grab and hug. A granny would have been able to fend them off.

He sent two reeling and turned to the third, which was trying to grab him around the neck. He broke the hold, spun around ready to chop, and hesitated.

“Oh, good grief!” said a voice.

Susan's blade whirled past Lobsang's face.

The head in front of him was parted from its former body in a shower not of blood but of coloured, floating dust. The body evaporated, became very briefly a grey-robed shape in the air, and vanished.

Lobsang heard a couple of thumps behind him, and then Susan grabbed his shoulder.

“You're not supposed to hesitate, you know!” she said.

“But it was a woman!”

“It was not! But it was the last one. Now let's go, before the rest get here.” She nodded at a second group of Auditors that were watching them very carefully from the end of the hall.

“They weren't much of a contest anyway,” said Lobsang, getting his breath. “What are those doing?”

“Learning. Can you fight better than that?”

“Of course!”

“Good, because next time they'll be as good as you just were. Where to now?”

“Er, this way!”

The next gallery was full of stuffed animals. There'd been a vogue for it a few centuries before. These weren't the sad old hunting-trophy bears or geriatric tigers whose claws had faced a man armed with nothing more than five crossbows, twenty loaders and a hundred beaters. Some of these animals were arranged in groups. Quite small groups, of quite small animals.

There were frogs, seated around a tiny dining table. There were dogs, dressed in hunting jackets, in pursuit of a fox wearing a cap with feathers in it. There was a monkey playing a banjo.

“Oh, no, it's an entire band,” said Susan in tones of horrified astonishment. “And just look at the little kittens dancing…”

“Horrible!”

“I wonder what happened when the man who did this met my grandfather.”

“Would he have met your grandfather?”

“Oh, yes,” said Susan. “Oh, yes. And my grandfather is rather fond of cats.”

Lobsang paused at the foot of a staircase, half hidden behind a luckless elephant. A red rope, now hard as a bar, suggested that this wasn't part of the public museum. There was an added hint in the shape of a notice saying: “Absolutely No Admittance”.

“I should be up there,” he said.

“Let's not hang around, then, eh?” said Susan, leaping over the rope.

The narrow stairs led up onto a large, bare landing. Boxes were stacked here and there.

“The attics,” said Susan. “Hold on… What's that sign for?”

“‘Keep left’,” Lobsang read. “Well, if they have to move heavy items around—”

“Look at the sign, will you?” said Susan. “Don't see what you expect to see, see what's in front of you!”

Lobsang looked.

“What a stupid sign,” he said.

“Hmm. Interesting, certainly,” said Susan. “Which way do you think we should go? I don't think it'll take them too long to decide to follow us.”

“We're so close! Any passage might do!” said Lobsang.

“Any passage it is, then.”

Susan headed for a narrow gap between packing cases. Lobsang followed.

“What do you mean, decide?” he said, as they entered the gloom.

“The sign on the stairs said there was no admittance.”

“You mean they'll disobey it?” He stopped.

“Eventually. But they'll have a terrible feeling that they ought not to. They obey rules. They are the rules, in a way.”

“But you can't obey the Keep Left/Right sign, no matter what you do… oh, I see…”

“Isn't learning fun? Oh, and here's another one.”

DO NOT FEED THE ELEPHANT.