Thief of Time

stall! No one is to touch the brown material!”

He stooped carefully and picked up a large fragment of chocolate, on which could just be made out the shape of a smiling duck in yellow icing. Hand shaking and sweat beading his forehead, he raised it aloft and flourished the cleaver triumphantly. There was a collective sigh from the crowd.

“You see?” he shouted. “The body can be overcome! You see? We can find a way to live! If you are good, there may be brown material! If you disobey, there will be the sharp edge! Ah…” He lowered his arms as a struggling Unity was dragged towards him.

“The pathfinder,” he said, “the renegade…”

He walked towards the captive. “What will it be?” he said. “The cleaver or the brown material?”

“It's called chocolate,” snapped Unity. “I do not eat it.”

“We shall see,” Mr White said. “Your associate seemed to prefer the axe!”

He pointed to the body of Lu-Tze.

To the empty patch of cobbles where Lu-Tze had been.

A hand tapped him on the shoulder.

“Why is it,” said a voice by his ear, “that no one ever believes in Rule One?”

Above him the sky began to burn blue.

Susan sped up the street to the clock shop.

She glanced sideways, and Lobsang was there, running beside her. He looked… human, except that not many humans had a blue glow around them.

“There will be grey men around the clock!” he shouted.

“Trying to find what makes it tick?”

“Hah! Yes!”

“What are you going to do?”

“Smash it!”

“That'll destroy history!”

“So?”

He reached out and took her hand. She felt a shock run up her arm.

“You won't need to open the door! You won't need to stop! Head straight for the clock!” he said.

“But—”

“Don't talk to me! I've got to remember!”

“Remember what?”

“Everything!”

Mr White was already raising the axe as he turned round. But you just can't trust a body. It thinks for itself. When it is surprised, it does a number of things even before the brain has been informed. The mouth opens, for example.

“Ah, good,” said Lu-Tze, raising his cupped hand. “Eat this!”

The door was no more substantial than mist. There were Auditors in the workshop, but Susan moved through them like a ghost.

The clock glowed. And, as she ran towards it, it moved away. The floor unrolled in front of her, dragging her back. The clock accelerated towards some distant event horizon. At the same time it grew bigger but became more insubstantial, as if the same amount of clockness was trying to spread itself across more space.

Other things were happening. She blinked, but there was no flicker of darkness.

“Ah,” she said to herself, “so I'm not seeing with my eyes. And what else? What's happening to me? My hand… looks normal, but does that mean it is? Am I getting smaller or bigger? Does—?”

“Are you always like this?” said the voice of Lobsang.

“Like what? I can feel your hand and I can hear your voice—at least, I think I can hear it, but maybe it's just in my head—but I can't feel myself running—”

“So… so analytical?”

“Of course. What am I supposed to be thinking? ‘Oh, my paws and whiskers’? Anyway, it's quite straightforward. It's all metaphorical. My senses are telling me stories because they can't cope with what is really happening—”

“Don't let go of my hand.”

“It's all right, I won't let you go.”

“I meant, don't let go of my hand because otherwise every part of your body will be compressed into a space much, much smaller than an atom.”

“Oh.”

“And don't try to imagine what this really looks like from outside. Here comes the cloooccckkkkkkk—”

Mr White's mouth closed. His expression of surprise became one of horror, and then one of shock, and then one of terrible, wonderful bliss.

He began to unravel. He came apart like a big and complex jigsaw puzzle made of tiny pieces, crumbling gently at the extremities and then vanishing into the air. The last piece to evaporate was the lips, and then they too were gone.

A half-chewed chocolate-coated coffee bean dropped onto the street. Lu-Tze reached down quickly, picked up the axe and flourished it at the other Auditors. They leaned back out of the way, mesmerized by authority.

“Who does this belong to now?” he demanded. “Come on, whose is it?”

“It is mine! I am Miss Taupe!” shouted a woman in grey.

“I am Mr Orange and it belongs to me! No one is even sure that taupe is a proper colour!” screamed Mr Orange.

An Auditor in the crowd said, rather more thoughtfully, “Is it the case, then, that hierarchy is negotiable?”

“Certainly not!” Mr Orange was jumping up and down.

“You have to decide it amongst yourselves,” said Lu-Tze. He tossed the axe into the air. A hundred pairs of eyes watched it fall.

Mr Orange got there first, but Miss Taupe trod on his fingers. After that, it became very busy and confusing and, to judge by the sounds from within the growing scrum, also very, very painful.

Lu-Tze took the arm of the astonished Unity.

“Shall we be going?” he said. “Oh, don't worry about me. I was just desperate enough to try something I'd learned from a yeti. It did sting a bit…”

There was a scream from somewhere in the mob.

“Democracy at work,” said Lu-Tze happily. He glanced up. The flames above the world were dying out, and he wondered who'd won.

There was bright blue light ahead and dark red light behind, and it amazed Susan how she could see both kinds without opening her eyes and turning her head. Eyes open or shut, she couldn't see herself. All that told her that she was something else besides mere point of view was a slight pressure on what she remembered as her fingers. And the sound of someone laughing, close to her.

A voice said, “The sweeper said everyone has to find a teacher and then find their Way.”

“And?” said Susan.

“This is my Way. It's the way home.”

And then, with a noise that was unromantically very similar to the kind Jason would make by putting a wooden ruler on the edge of his desk and twanging it, the journey ended.

It might not even have begun. The glass clock was in front of her, full size, glittering. There was no blue glow inside. It was just a clock, entirely transparent, and ticking.