Thief of Time

“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 chanted.

“Good, good, now just work your way up to the bit where it says chocolate, okay?”

“That's the hard one!”

In fact, it seemed to Susan, as she walked past the vats and counters, that chocolate lost some of its attraction when you saw it like this. It was the difference between seeing the little heaps of pigment and seeing the whole picture. She selected a syringe that seemed designed to do something intensely personal to female elephants, athough she decided that here it was probably used for doing the wiggly bits of decoration.

And over here was a small vat of cocoa liquor.

She stared around at the trays and trays of fondant cremes, marzipans and caramels. Oh, and here was an entire table of Soul Cake eggs. But these weren't the hollow-shelled, cardboard-tasting presents for children, oh, no—these were the confectionery equivalent of fine, intricate jewellery.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. One of the statue-like workers bent over her tray of Praline Dreams was shifting almost imperceptibly.

Time was flowing into the room. Pale blue light glinted in the air.

She turned and saw a vaguely human figure hovering beside her. It was featureless and as transparent as mist, but in her head it said, I'm stronger. You are my anchor, my link to this world. Can you guess how hard it is to find it again in so many? Get me to the clock…

Susan turned and thrust the icing syringe into the arms of the groaning Myria. “Grab that. And make some kind of… of sling or something. I want you to be carrying as many of those chocolate eggs as possible. And the cremes. And the liqueurs. Understand? You can do it!”

Oh, gods, there was no alternative. The poor thing needed some kind of morale boost. “Please, Myria? And that's a stupid name! You're not many, you're one. Okay? Just be… yourself. Unity… that'd be a good name.”

The new Unity raised a mascara-streaked face. “Yes, it is, it's a good name…”

Susan snatched as much merchandise as she could carry, aware of some rustling behind her, and turned to find Unity standing to attention holding, by the look of it, a benchworth of assorted confectionery in…

…a sort of big cerise sack.

“Oh. Good. Intelligent use of the materials to hand,” said Susan weakly. Then the teacher within her cut in and added, “I hope you brought enough for everybody.”

“You were the first,” said Lu-Tze. “You basically created the whole business. Innovative, you were.”

“That was then,” said Ronnie Soak. “It's all changed now.”

“Not like it used to be,” agreed Lu-Tze.

“Take Death,” said Ronnie Soak. “Impressive, I'll grant you, and who doesn't look good in black? But, after all, Death… What's death?”

“Just a big sleep,” said Lu-Tze.

“Just a big sleep,” said Ronnie Soak. “As for the others… War? If war's so bad, why do people keep doing it?”

“Practically a hobby,” said Lu-Tze. He began to roll himself a cigarette.

“Practically a hobby,” said Ronnie Soak. “As for Famine and Pestilence, well…”

“Enough said,” said Lu-Tze sympathetically.

“Exactly. I mean, Famine's a fearful thing, obviously—”

“—in an agricultural community, but you've got to move with the times,” said Lu-Tze, putting the roll-up in his mouth.

“That's it,” said Ronnie. “You've got to move with the times. I mean, does your average city person fear famine?”

“No, he thinks food grows in shops,” said Lu-Tze. He was beginning to enjoy this. He had eight hundred years' worth of experience in steering the thoughts of his superiors, and most of them had been intelligent. He decided to strike out a little.

“Fire, now: city folk really fear fire,” he said. “That's new. Your primitive villager, he reckoned fire was a good thing, didn't he? Kept the wolves away. If it burned down his hut, well, logs and turf are cheap enough. But now he lives in a street of crowded wooden houses and everyone's cooking in their rooms, well—”

Ronnie glared.

“Fire? Fire? Just a demi-god! Some little tea-leaf pinches the flame from the gods and suddenly he's immortal? You call that training and experience?” A spark leapt from Ronnie's fingers and ignited the end of Lu-Tze's cigarette. “And as for gods—”

“Johnny-come-latelys, the pack of 'em,” said Lu-Tze quickly.

“Right! People started worshipping them because they were afraid of me,” said Ronnie. “Did you know that?”

“No, really?” said Lu-Tze innocently.

But now Ronnie sagged. “That was then, of course,” he said. “It's different now. I'm not what I used to be.”

“No, no, obviously not, no,” said Lu-Tze soothingly. “But it's all a matter of how you look at it, am I correct? Now, supposing a man—that is to say a—”

“Anthropomorphic personification,” said Ronnie Soak. “But I've always preferred the term ‘avatar’.”

Lu-Tze's brow wrinkled. “You fly around a lot?” he said.