A Tale of Time City (11 page)

As Vivian and Jonathan climbed the stairs after him, Jonathan said consolingly, “It only
feels
like a long wait. But now we know that the lock works, we can go back to that precise moment any time we want.” Vivian thought he was trying to console himself as much as her.

Here the light from Jonathan’s belt turned dim purple and faded out. There was a strange noise from up in front. “I’m not frightened,” Sam called down. “I just can’t see.”

“Neither can we,” Jonathan called back, in a voice that was too
carefully calm. It was not just dark. It was a thick blackness that made you feel the world had gone away. “You’ll have to go by touch.”

They fumbled their way slowly up the steep stone blocks. In that dark, it was hard to believe they were climbing at all. And Vivian suddenly had the horrors. She was certain that a spider was going to drop off the roof and down her neck any second. She hated spiders. She had not noticed any spider webs on the way down, but then of course she had not been looking. She shut her eyes and kept her neck scrunched down. She wanted to scream.

“Bring a torch next time,” Sam said, in a wavery wanting-to-scream voice.

“Yes. Do,” said Vivian. “Are—are there many spiders in Time City?”

“Only in Erstwhile Science museum,” Jonathan said from below. He sounded properly calm now. “I’ve found what to do. Think of something quite different. I’m doing timefield equations in my head.”

“I’ll do Roman script spelling,” Sam called, suddenly cheerful again.

Vivian tried the seven-times table, but she had always had difficulty with that one and, besides, school things seemed very far away from a hole in the floor in Time City. She was forced to think of something nearer at hand. Tomorrow, she thought, she would be back in her own century staying with Cousin Marty. Except, if you went by those time-ghosts, Sam shouldn’t have been there. There were only herself and Jonathan, and they were coming
back
, not going. Perhaps that meant that Sam would not be able to get any clothes, or catch measles or something. But even if Sam didn’t
come too, that still did not explain why Vivian had to come back, or look so excited doing it.

The stairs were becoming shallower. They must be getting near the top.

“Eff, Eh, Bee, Ee, Are,” Sam’s voice came down. “Jay, Oh, Aitch—I can
see
!”

By the next step, Vivian could see too, enormous stones in a very dim light that must be coming through from the passage in the Palace. She stood up and galloped the rest of the way, with Jonathan jostling her behind and Sam’s shoelace flipping the stones in front of her face. In seconds, they were squeezing through the gaps beside the pivoting false wall and into light that seemed so bright their eyes watered. Jonathan had to switch off his eye-flicker in order to scrub his eyes with his rather smudged white sleeve. Then he swung the false door carefully shut again so that it looked once more like an archway that was walled up.

“Oof!” Sam said, as they went along the passage. “That was exciting!”

Almost
too
exciting! Vivian thought, but she did not say anything because, now she had started thinking about those puzzling time-ghosts, she could not stop. What
could
be going to happen? she wondered, while Jonathan slid the chain back to the right place on the door and while he was telling Sam to turn up at nine the next morning or they would go without him. Perhaps Sam turns up too late, Vivian thought, but she was not really sure. Sam went trotting off. Vivian went on wondering until Jonathan interrupted her thoughts at the top of the polished stairs.

“V.S., I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I really am. It was stupid of me to keep on believing you were the Time Lady. I know you’re not now. And I know I’ve got you into a mess. You can go home if you like, when we’ve found the real Time Lady.”

That was pretty surprising from a proud boy like Jonathan, Vivian thought. “Thanks,” she said. “But won’t people wonder if Cousin Vivian just disappears?”

“We’ll get round that somehow,” Jonathan said confidently. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Vivian said, but she said it rather absent-mindedly because now she was thinking: if even Jonathan thinks I can go home, why
did
—I mean why
will
—I be coming back?

This was still a complete mystery to her next morning when she got up. After thinking about it all over again, she decided that, as a precaution, she ought to wear the same clothes as her ghost. So when I
do
come back for whatever reason, she thought, that will be got-over-with and I can go home straight after that.

She unfolded the wall cupboard and looked at the row of suits hanging so strangely on nothing. And she had not the foggiest idea which of them her ghost had been wearing. She remembered the diamonds on Jonathan’s suit, but all she knew about her own was that it was coloured, and not the white one with the ghostly blue flowers.

“Bother!” she said.

The only thing to do seemed to be to shut her eyes and pull out the suit she touched first. If it’s the right one, it’s going to be right however I choose it, she decided. And not, if not. Her hand met a
suit. She opened her eyes and discovered it was electric yellow and violet, in zebra-like stripes that moved this way and that of their own accord.

“I don’t think this is right,” she said. “I’d have remembered
this
.” Still, it was chosen, so she put it on fatalistically. As soon as the suit sealed itself up the back, it became even more memorable. Big scarlet hearts lit up on her knees, her elbows and her front.

Vivian was so busy looking down at them dubiously that she ran into Petula in the corridor outside. “Oh, you’re up!” said Petula. “I was just coming to wake you. Elio
will
be pleased you’re wearing that suit. He liked the colours ever-so. Androids don’t have much colour-sense, you know.”

“It’s very bright,” Vivian said truthfully.

Petula took her downstairs and showed her to a room she called the matutinal. Jonathan was there eating pancakes in a blaze of light from a swirly window. He had clearly been thinking the same way as Vivian, because he was wearing the suit with diamonds.

“I’ll give Sam until five-to,” he said. “Then we’ll go.”

Vivian could tell that he was regretting his fair-mindedness of last night. “Yes, but is this the right suit?” she said.

Jonathan glanced at it. “I can’t remember, but it’s bound to be wrong if Sam comes too. Unless something’s happened to Sam,” he added hopefully.

Sam’s name was hardly out of his mouth when the door slid aside and Sam came in, hauling a birdcage carrier with a big white bundle floating under it. “I’m here,” he announced. “She gave me all the right clothes.”

“Speak of the devil!” Vivian said.

Jenny followed Sam into the room. “Meaning me?” she said, laughing. “What have you got there, Sam?”

“Dressing-up clothes,” Sam said guiltily.

“Oh. I wondered if you’d brought the picnic,” Jenny said. “Jonathan, Vivian, since it’s the last day of half term, Ramona and I have decided to take the day off and show Vivian the country. We’ve checked the weather, and it’s going to be a lovely hot day, so we thought we’d go down the river with a picnic.”

It was lucky Jenny had her back to Sam. He went purple with dismay. Vivian had to push a big smile on to her face in order not to look as bad as Sam did. Jonathan’s face went rather fixed, but he answered smoothly, “Good idea! When do you want to start?”

“Will about eleven do?” Jenny asked. “I’ve a load of things to see to here first.”

Sam held his breath in order not to sigh with relief.

“We’ll meet you in the hall at eleven, then,” Jonathan promised. As soon as Jenny had gone, he surged to his feet. “Pick up a pancake and bring it with you, V.S. We’ve got to get going.”

Vivian picked up a pancake, but she sat down to eat it. Jonathan’s mother is being really kind, she thought. I know it’s because she thinks I’m her niece, but if I don’t turn up for the picnic, she’ll have wasted a day off work and she’ll worry where I am. And then it’ll all come out and Jonathan and Sam will be in really bad trouble. Oh bother! This must be the reason why my ghost was coming back!

“Come on,” said Sam.

“Listen,” said Vivian. “We can get to the right precise moment on the station, can’t we?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said impatiently. “All the same—”

“So can’t we get back to the right precise moment here too?” said Vivian. “How
do
we get back?”

Jonathan and Sam stared at one another. “Yes, how
do
we get back? You never thought of that!” Sam said accusingly.

“I—er—” said Jonathan. “Well, we know we did get back, so it must be going to be all right.”

“Yes, when you and her go off on your own,” said Sam. “What about me? Find out. Ask Elio. He knows everything.”

“All right,” Jonathan agreed. “But I’ll have to be awfully cunning about asking him. If he gets a hint of what we’re doing, he’ll tell. It would be his duty. Androids are like that.”

Sam rubbed his behind nervously. “Be cunning,” he said. “Very cunning. But find out or
I’ll
tell.”

Jonathan made an impatient noise and rushed to the door. It opened as he got there and he nearly bumped into Elio coming in. “I was just coming to look for you!” he said.

Speak of the devil again! Vivian thought, taking three more pancakes and carefully pouring syrup over them. She was not going to let Jonathan rush her off to the Twentieth Century without breakfast first.

“You see, Elio, I’ve been reading this book,” Jonathan began cunningly.

Elio advanced in his soft, respectful way. He walked round Jonathan and then round Sam. He came over to the table. Vivian looked up from her first bite of pancake to find Elio standing beside
her and smiling all over his pale face. “Ah, Miss Vivian,” he said. “Petula told me you were wearing that suit. I’m so glad you like it. Those are my favourite colours.”

“Very pretty,” Vivian said, with her mouth full. “Thanks for choosing it.”

“Thank
you
,” Elio said, with a little bow. He switched himself from Vivian to Jonathan. “You mentioned a book, Master Jonathan?”

Vivian had time to eat a hearty breakfast while Jonathan exercised his cunning. He gave a long, long description of the book. Elio stood with his head bent, listening attentively, and did not move for nearly ten minutes.

“It sounds a rather confused plot,” he said at length. “What is the title?”

“I’ve forgotten,” Jonathan said hurriedly. “But the point is—well, it’s not important what happens in the end. It was the time-locks they kept using that I wanted to ask you about. They sounded too simple to be true. The book says they were just a sheet of energised greenstone and no controls, no chronometers—nothing!”

“Ah,” said Elio. “I see it was a very old book. Those are the most primitive kind of time-locks there were. They were discontinued many centuries ago, because agents were always losing the controls.”

“The controls?” Jonathan said trying not to sound too eager.

“An egg-shaped device, which nobody understands,” said. Elio, “since they are all reputed to have been made by Faber John himself. The power source and chronometer, together with spatial directionals of great accuracy, are all contained within it. Thus, in order to open the lock back into Time City from history, the agent
had to take the device with him. In the hurly-burly out there, it was fatally easy to drop, mislay, or be robbed of this control. It happened so frequently that there were eventually very few left. They were, you must understand, irreplaceable. If you wish to examine one of the remaining few, you will find it on display in Erstwhile Science.”

“We’ll go and see it now,” Jonathan said, with a meaning look at Vivian who had started to eat melon. “Er—how did the egg-things work?”

“Upon mental orders from the agent,” said Elio. “As I said, they were somewhat mysterious, but I believe that they obeyed commands of the voice, or thoughts properly directed. Does that explain your difficulty?”

“I hope so,” said Jonathan. “I mean, yes—thanks, Elio.”

“Then I must go,” said Elio. He bowed to them and went to the door. “Please try to remember the title of that book,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “I do not like to hear of something I do not know.”

“I’ll think hard,” Jonathan promised. As soon as the door closed behind Elio, he rounded on Vivian. “Come on, V.S! Stop guzzling and get your Twenty Century clothes.”

Pushing me about! Vivian thought. “When I’ve eaten my fruit,” she said. “I’ve never had this huge juicy kind before. Anyway, now you know, all you’ve got to do is tell that egg-thing to get us back before eleven. It doesn’t matter
when
we go.”

“Yes, but I’m going to need a butter-pie if I have to wait much longer,” Sam said plaintively.

J
onathan was well prepared this time. He had found a square box on a strap, which looked almost like a gas mask case, to carry the egg-shaped control in. From this box he took a slender tube of oil and oiled the big old-fashioned hinges of the chained door to stop it creaking. This might be only an adventure to him, Vivian thought, as they all tiptoed down the stone passageway carrying their clothes, but he was being quite serious about it.

Jonathan had a powerful little flashlight in his box too. At the blocked archway, he shone it over the stones until he found the white mark his sandal had made the night before. Then he kicked the same place. The false door pivoted smoothly round and they squeezed through the gaps. With the stronger light, it was much easier to go down the stairs. When they reached the stone room at the bottom, Jonathan propped the torch on the stairs to give them light while they changed into Twenty Century clothes.

Sam’s excited breathing filled the room as he unwrapped his bundle. Vivian was silent with dismay as she unfolded hers. Petula
or someone had put her clothes through the cleaner that washed the Time City pyjamas and it had not suited them at all. Her coat was two sizes too small and her school hat was ruined. She decided to leave them behind and wear just her skirt with the top of the pyjama suit as a blouse. Her skirt seemed the right size, but it felt strange and tight when she put it on, and it felt worse when she had rolled up the legs of her pyjamas under it and fastened them with the garters from her socks. Then the top of her pyjamas shone out luridly in the torch-light. Vivian realised that nobody in 1939 was likely to wear purple and yellow stripes that moved about all the time. She was forced to ram her arms into her navy blue knitted cardigan, which had shrunk almost as badly as her coat, and then use all her strength to get it buttoned up. She felt terrible.