A Tale of Time City (30 page)

“I ask because I had some skill in healing once,” the warrior said, in his nervous, fluting voice. When Vivian did not answer, he sighed loudly. “You may not believe this, but I am quite peaceful,” he said. “I was a lover of all arts before these terrible wars began. I painted pictures and made music. I even wrote an epic once.”

Vivian went on lying still and tried to let her eyes fall gently shut. I’m dead, she thought. My last word was
damn
!

The warrior sighed again. “Perhaps it will convince you that I am harmless,” he said, “if I were to recite you my poem. It is in twelve parts in the ancient manner and its title is ‘The Silver Sea.’ The opening line is ‘Mind and the men I sing’—this because it
celebrates the great civilizations that once flourished around the shores of this sea. Do you follow me? Shall I recite?”

No! Just go away! Vivian thought.

Rasping footsteps sounded overhead. Elio’s veiled face looked down at her through the torn slit overhead. “Miss Vivian?” he said. His voice sounded thick and wobbly.

Vivian sat up with a jerk. And far from trying to kill her, the warrior cringed away against the wall of the hole. “Oh Elio!” Vivian called. “You’ve hurt yourself trying to run after me!”

“Are you all right?” Elio called down.

“Yes,” she called back. “There’s a mind soldier down here, but I think his brain’s been hurt in the fight.”

This was the wrong thing to say. Elio instantly came floating down on his low-weight-function. Even that hurt him. He gasped as he landed and turned to the warrior crouching by the wall. “If you have harmed this young lady, you shall pay,” he croaked.

The warrior shook his head and held up both shiny hands. “Not I,” he said. “I am an artist and a man of peace. My mind is indeed hurt, but not in any fight.”

Elio simply grunted at this and sank down to sit beside Vivian, panting. This seemed to interest the mind-warrior. To Vivian’s alarm, he left the side of the hole and came crawling cautiously towards Elio. She was very relieved when Sam’s voice boomed out overhead. “They’re in here.” The warrior at once darted back to cringe against the wall again. “Hold on to me,” Sam boomed. “Then press the stud and jump.”

The slit above went dark. Vivian realised what was happening
and scrambled up in time to give Jonathan and Sam a shove as they both came heavily down on Jonathan’s overweighted low-weight- function. That way they missed Elio and landed in the other side of the pit from the mind-warrior.

“Ow!” said Jonathan. “What’s
this
now?”

“It’s a shelter,” Sam told him, “with a warrior in it.”

Jonathan made an exasperated noise and pressed his eye-function stud. He tried to peer round the pit in spite of its flicker being criss-crossed by an opposite flicker from the mind-suit. “I think Elio’s much worse than he says,” he whispered to Vivian. “Is that warrior fellow safe?”

“He’s potty,” Vivian whispered back. “He’s the one that fell out of that raft and I think they got him with their ripples.”

“No. I am not that one,” said the warrior. He was kneeling half-way across the pit, with his hands spread out in a helpless sort of way. Now he was under the light from the split covering and she could see him clearly, Vivian thought she had never in her life seen a face that was so much like a skull. It was the warrior’s real face too. He did not have a veil to his suit. “That man fell some metres away from here,” he said, “and I fear he is dead.” His skull of a face turned to Elio. “Forgive me, friend, but you seem badly hurt too. Will you allow me to help you? I was once quite good at healing.”

Elio drew himself up proudly against the wall. “Thank you—no,” he said. “It is the merest scratch. I shall just catch my breath and then we shall leave. We have an important errand elsewhere.”

The Warrior bowed his head politely. “Of course. Forgive me—how big is the scratch?”

“No more than a foot long, and probably only six inches wide,”
Elio said dismissively. “I cannot think why I allow it to inconvenience me.”

Long before he had finished saying this, Sam, Jonathan and Vivian were shouting, “Oh
Elio
! That’s
serious
!”

“It is?” Elio asked, looking questioningly from them to the warrior.

“Most people would consider that a serious wound,” the warrior agreed.

“I did not know!” Elio said. “I have never had my flesh injured before. Perhaps then I have been after all functioning quite well in adversity. Can you repair me, sir?”

“I can try,” said the warrior. He crawled forward and stretched a bony silver-covered hand towards the crumpled blue part of Elio’s suit. Long before his hand came anywhere near, Elio made a noise that was almost a scream and threw himself away sideways. The warrior crawled after him, reaching out again. As far as Vivian could tell, he never did actually touch Elio. Elio went on making the noise and she and Jonathan and Sam all rushed to stop the warrior.

“Stop it! You’re hurting him!” Vivian cried.

“He’s killing him!” Jonathan said.

“He’s an enemy! Stop him!” Sam shouted.

Then they all fell quiet and stood still when Elio stood up with the silver egg under one arm. He ran his hand rather wonderingly down his crumpled blue side. He did not look well. His face was shiny with sweat. “That must have been pain,” he said. “Thank you, sir. You have given me another experience I have never had before. And the scratch appears to be mended.”

“I am afraid I am not able to mend your suit,” the warrior said
apologetically. He had gone back to his side of the pit, but he was standing up too. They looked at him nervously. He was very tall and almost as thin as a skeleton. “What are you?” he asked Elio. “You are not easy to mend either.”

“I am an android,” Elio said. He said it as proudly as Jonathan said he was a Lee. “Are you one also? You do not strike me as normal for a human.”

“I am not sure,” said the warrior. “I think, like you, I was specially made.” His skull face turned up towards the torn cover of the pit. He sighed. “It is over,” he said. “The woman has gone and I should go back to my task, the one. I was made for. I was designed to be Keeper of Faber John’s Silver Casket, if that means anything to you. But I think I have been a poor Keeper.”

“You can’t be!” Jonathan exclaimed.

“He
is
potty!” Sam whispered loudly to Vivian.

“I fear,” Elio said politely, “that you are under a misapprehension, sir. The Guardian of the Casket is female and she gave the Casket to me just now. This is it.” He took the silver egg from under his arm and showed it to the warrior.

The warrior smiled, a sad grin that made him look more like a skull than ever. He shook his silver head. “That is not the Casket,” he said. “It is not even silver.” He came forward and stretched a long, bone-like finger towards the egg. He did not touch it. But one end of it melted and dripped like wax between Elio’s fingers. “See?” he said. “Primitive plastic.”

Elio peeled silver stuff off his hand and looked at it dubiously. “Are you sure?”

“Open the thing,” said the warrior.

Elio took hold of the egg in both hands and pulled it into two halves. He held the halves dumbly out to the rest of them. “What does it say?” Jonathan asked, peering at them.

“On one half,” Elio said disgustedly, “there is the legend
A Present from Easter Island
. On the other there is written
Made in Korea
2339
, which I take to be the place and date of its origin. We must go back to that female and show her we are aware she has tricked us.”

“She has gone,” the warrior said desolately.

“We will see about that,” Elio said. “I do not like to be tricked. And, if you are in truth the Keeper of the Silver, sir, then this female must be a born-human. Would you say she was?”

“I think so,” said the warrior. “But she wore many mind veils to make me the more helpless against her and it was hard to tell.”

“That’s the one!” said Jonathan. “Of course they were layers of mind-suit now I think!”

It looked as if Elio was having another new experience and getting angry. “I have my honour as an android to consider,” he said. “We are not
supposed
to be fooled by ordinary humans! Let us get out of this hole.” He threw the two halves of the plastic egg down and leapt for the edge of the pit without bothering to turn on his low-weight-function. There was much flabby rending of the stuff that covered the hole. They were dazzled by daylight. “One of you catch hold of my hand,” Elio called down from the glare.

Vivian boosted Sam up the wall of the pit. Elio caught hold of one of Sam’s waving arms and pulled him out with no trouble at all. Vivian and Jonathan turned on their low-weight-functions and
Elio pulled them out just as easily. Vivian could hardly see at first. Elio set off across the glaring ground so fast that she had trouble catching him up. As for Jonathan, his eye-function went dark again and he floundered about, trying to turn it off and keep up with the rest of them while he did.

“We’re going wrong,” Sam was puffing, as Vivian came panting up beside Elio. “The mound was over there.”

Vivian could see by then. She looked round the jumble of blue shadows until she saw one she thought she recognised. “No, it’s over there,” she said pointing the opposite way to Sam. “I remember that ditch—oh no, that’s not right! Maybe it was that one.”

They stared round the confusing desert. It all looked the same. Elio cried out, “We are lost! I got turned round in my weakness! I have no memory of the spot at all!” He banged his own head violently with the time control. “I am a failure!”

“You were hurt,” Vivian pointed out.

“What use is an android who cannot function when hurt?” Elio demanded and hit his head again.

Luckily, since they were beginning to find Elio quite alarming, the warrior came up behind them just then, courteously helping Jonathan along. At least, he seemed to be helping Jonathan, but Vivian noticed that whenever he put out his long, glistening hand to help Jonathan over a hummock or across a ditch, that hand did not really touch Jonathan. Yet Jonathan behaved as if someone was firmly supporting his elbow. He kept saying, “Thanks,” and “That’s kind of you,” and “You needn’t!” in the bothered way you do when someone is giving you help you wish you didn’t need.

This made Vivian sure all of a sudden that the warrior really was the Keeper of the Silver. The sunlight flashed gently off his long silver body, making it hard to see whether or not he had the same spread-thin look as the Iron Guardian. He seemed as solid as the Watcher of the Gold. But the silver body was not a mind-suit. His bare, skull-like face was silvery too.

As the two came up, Vivian could see Jonathan was as upset as Elio. “The place is over here,” the Keeper said in his gentle fluting voice. “Come quickly and quietly. The era was very disturbed for some time before that woman arrived. It will certainly have gone critical now. There will be enemies about.”

At this, Elio pulled himself together enough to look carefully round the empty blue sky. Vivian and Sam turned to stare nervously over their shoulders almost every step. Those rafts flew so quietly.

“Who
was
that woman?” Jonathan burst out as the Keeper urged him along.

“I have no idea,” said the Keeper. “All I know is that she had the aura of time-travel about her, as you four do, and she knew about the Caskets. When she and the child appeared, I therefore greeted them politely, just as I greeted you. I told you I am civilized. My ways are peaceful. But she rudely demanded the Silver Casket. ‘We need it,’ she said, ‘to take possession of Time City.’ Of course I refused. I pointed out that I would be bringing the Casket to Time City shortly in the natural course of things and she might have it then. She laughed. ‘But we want it now,’ she said. ‘We want to be ready when the City is standing still with its defences down.’ And
when I refused to let her have it, she took the Iron Casket from under her veiling.”

“I bet she was the thief’s mother,” Sam said.

“Whoever she was, she knew the properties of the Caskets,” the Keeper said sadly. “They respond to the will of the one who holds them. Iron is weaker than my Silver, but she was protected by veiling and she turned her will on me before I was aware. ‘Go and crouch in a hole over there,’ she said, ‘and don’t dare come out until we’ve gone!’ And that I was forced to do. I told you I was hurt in my mind. Here is the mound.”

The mound looked like any of the others, although Vivian thought she recognised the wide blue ditch beyond it for the ditch where the boy had hidden. The Keeper led them swiftly round the other side of it.

They all stood and stared miserably. A hole had been hacked in the white side of the mound. In deep bluish shadow inside the hole there was a square space beautifully lined with shiny, feathery stuff. In the middle of the feathery stuff was a large egg-shaped hollow, quite empty. Another wad of the feathery stuff was blowing around the side of the mound where the thieves had thrown it. The Silver Keeper sadly picked the wad up and floated it between his hands back into the hole. “They have taken the Casket,” he said.

“The green
rats
!” said Sam. “I found that Casket for them with the metal detector!”

“They were waiting for us to find it for them!” Jonathan said bitterly. “It’s all my fault for telling Leon Hardy so much!”

At that, Elio had another burst of despair. “I have been most
horribly unintelligent!” he cried out. “I am like a goose, given a china egg to sit upon! I deserve to be recycled!”

Vivian looked at the tall Silver Keeper drooping desolately beside her. “I’m sorry,” she said. She knew she had made the worst mistake of all when she let the boy decoy her away from the mound. He had been waiting in the ditch, listening for the right moment to show himself.

“There is no further use for me,” the Keeper said.

Sam was angry, and being the kind of boy he was, he expressed his anger in a perfect roar. “I WANT TO GET BACK AT THEM!” he bellowed.

“Oh, hush!” Elio said distractedly. “That could fetch mind-warriors.”

But it already had. The booming echoes of Sam’s voice were mixed almost at once with the thud and crunch of boots. Warriors in filmy mind-suits sprang out of trenches on two sides of them. More came leaping across the top of the mound. Before the echoes of Sam’s roar had finished rolling out across the glaring plain, the warriors had them surrounded. Shiny boots covered with film trampled the ground on all sides and things that were certainly guns pointed at them.