A Tale of Time City (35 page)

“I think those creatures set up some kind of interference,” Inga Lee said irritably. “I can’t pick up what they’re saying in the bushes at all.”

“At least the steps are clear for the other two Guardians,” Mr. Lee
said. He passed his daughter the gun and turned to help his wife. There was more tinfoil crunching from the machine. A voice that might have been Elio’s said, “We could not discover…”

“Where will the other Guardians come from?” Cousin Vivian asked.

“A time-lock at the bottom of the steps—don’t interrupt,” said her father.

At that point, Mr. Enkian, who was clearly not much of a runner, reached the bottom of the steps. He leant on the balustrade to pant before taking the climb. And Vivian saw a small figure come towards him round the hill at a tired, rolling trot. It was Sam. She recognised him mostly by the trot, because most of him was a fluttering shapeless bundle. His mind-suit seemed to have got shredded into a thousand trailing strips.

Jonathan’s elbow went into her side. They both did what they could to distract the Lees. “I’m hungry,” Jonathan said. “That automat over there still works.”

“Does it?” Vivian cried with loud, artificial delight. “I’d
love
a butter-pie!”

“Can I work the automat, Daddy?” Cousin Vivian asked.

Mr. Enkian was not listening to Sam, Vivian saw from one eye. He was waving him angrily away.

“Give your mother the gun first, Vivvie,” Mr. Lee said, still bending over the crunching apparatus.

From one eye, Vivian saw Cousin Vivian’s skinny arm stretching out to pass the gun to Inga Lee. From the other, she saw Dr. Wilander rise out of the bushes like a purple whale and go crashing down Endless Hill towards Sam. When the stairs zigged the right
way, he jumped the balustrade in a whirl of robe and went down them three at a time in huge, limping leaps. When they zagged at the landings, he jumped the balustrade again and tore his way through the shrubbery. He reached the bottom while Mr. Enkian was still waving Sam off. Mr. Enkian whirled round angrily and the two of them began shouting at one another.

What a time to start another quarrel! Vivian thought, as her other eye watched Cousin Vivian fetch the little pot with a stick in it out of the antique automat. “One butter-pie,” Cousin Vivian announced. She laughed jeeringly and began to eat it herself.

Elio went tearing down the hill, following the broken path Dr. Wilander had made. As soon as he reached the bottom, Sam grabbed his arm and seemed to be explaining.

“Mean beast!” Vivian said, desperate to distract the Lees. “I’m starving!”

“She always was,” Jonathan joined in, shaking with nerves. “When I got a new automat, she poured quickset plastic into it and I had to make do with the old one.”

“Serve you right for being so snooty!” said Cousin Vivian. She closed her eyes in bliss. “Oh, I’d forgotten the beautiful taste of these things!”

When Vivian looked away from her out of the window, there was no one at all at the bottom of the steps. Even Mr. Enkian had disappeared.

Mr. Lee gave up on the amplifier and turned it off. “There’s not much anyone can do now anyway,” he said, looking tensely at the watch on his wrist. “It’s one minute to twelve.”

They waited, and the minute seemed endless. Jonathan switched on his time-function. It said twenty-nine minutes past six. They watched the green-lit second hand creep round to half-past. It had got two-thirds of the way, when Vivian caught sight of a blur in the distance down the Avenue of the Four Ages. It came closer and larger with astonishing speed and she saw it was Elio—Elio running faster than she could have believed possible. He was getting bigger and nearer as if there was a zoom-lens on him. She could see his legs pounding, his arms beating and his head rolling from side to side, and she knew he was running flat out. But fast as Elio was coming, the second hand on Jonathan’s arm seemed to move faster still. It was nearly at half-past now. She could hear chinks and slidings overhead where the works of the endless clock were adjusting to the shaking of the tower and getting ready to strike.

Elio is bringing the time-egg, Vivian thought, but what if it’s
not
 the Lead Casket? Or what if it
is
, but this just helps the Lees to get their hands on it?

BOING went the great clock, burring everything around them.

And as soon as it did, a tall young man in green strode to the steps and began jauntily and confidently to climb them.

T
his young man was not the time-ghost, but the Watcher himself, bringing the Gold Casket. He cast a solid shadow that folded across the steps. Everything about him was solid and confident. Elio was still running, off to one side. The Watcher was going up briskly, sure of his duty, and he was half-way up the first flight of steps already.

BOING went the clock, a second time, and again everything burred. Vivian looked for Elio, but he must have reached the bushes. The only person in sight was the briskly climbing Watcher. “Here comes our Gold Casket!” Mr. Lee said triumphantly through the burring.

BOING came the third stroke. And the Watcher was suddenly struggling. He laboured to put each foot on the next step as if his boots weighed a ton apiece. BOING went the fourth stroke. He staggered on to the first landing and dragged himself across it by holding on to the balustrade. Doggedly he began to climb the next flight, foot by weighty foot.

“Now we know what’s stopping him,” Mr. Lee said, as the fifth stroke rolled out. “It’s those two damned Guardians.”

The Iron Guardian and the Silver Keeper had materialised at the bottom of the last flight before the tower. They were standing, waiting. As Vivian looked at them, her eye caught something purple and a glimmer of mind-suit down the hill beyond them, at the edge of the path Dr. Wilander had torn through the bushes. Then she knew what was really stopping the Watcher. The time-egg. It
was
the Lead Casket. They had been right. Elio was using it as a kind of magnet to pull the Gold Casket back. But he did not dare be seen, in case the Lees shot one of their hostages. When the steps zig-zagged away from him, he could only come to the edge of the broken bushes.

In proof of this, the Watcher dragged himself up that flight while the next mighty BOING was ringing out. But Elio was waiting in the bushes at the second landing. The Watcher lurched and almost fell to his knees. Vivian could see the Gold Casket, distantly, tall and heavy and glinting. The Watcher held it proudly in front of him, which only left him one hand to drag himself across the landing with.

“He never does get to the top,” Inga Lee said anxiously.

“We don’t know that. He disappears on the twelfth stroke,” Mr. Lee contradicted her. “Vivvie, fetch me the Silver Casket. I’ll give him some help.”

BOING rang the great clock. Vivian had lost count by then. Cousin Vivian went to the pillar, licking her butter-pie slowly to make it last. By the time she came back with the huge pearl-
embossed egg, the Watcher was on his knees, crawling near the top of the third flight. From the swirling of the bushes, Vivian thought that there were a lot of people with Elio, pulling one another in a line, to help hold the Watcher back. She prayed that Mr. Lee would not notice as he took the pearly egg and bent over it. Funny! she thought. I
wanted
the Watcher to get up the steps when he was a time-ghost. Now I hope and hope he doesn’t! Beside her, Jonathan had most of his pigtail in his mouth.

The steps zagged away from the Lead Casket. With Mr. Lee’s help, the Watcher doggedly plugged up that flight during the next great stroke of the bell. But he almost stuck on that landing. It seemed that the three Caskets might balance out and pin him to the spot.

“Get me the Iron Casket, quickly!” Inga Lee said. Cousin Vivian ran this time and got back as the great clock went BOING again.

“We
are
going to win, aren’t we?” she asked plaintively as she handed the square rusty box to her mother.

“Of course. We’re intended to,” Inga Lee said. She put the gun down on the amplifier and bent over the Iron Casket.

Now, by looking sideways at the struggling green climber, Vivian could see the force that was being used. It was roiling and streaking the air with nearly invisible whorls, so that when the clock rang out yet again, burring everything, Vivian could hardly see the Watcher. He was a green smear, still creeping upwards. As the burring went off a little, she saw the whorling force bellying upwards to cover the two waiting Guardians, then down to eddy across the Watcher as he rounded another landing and toiled on to the next flight.

BOING went the clock. Jonathan murmured through his pigtail, “Eleven.” The Guardians were moving, walking slowly down to join the Watcher. The Watcher, still holding the Casket carefully to his chest, seemed to look up at them.

“We’re winning,” said Mr. Lee. “They’ve had to go to meet him. Obstinate, isn’t he?”

BOING went the clock for the last time. The burring died to silence except for the shaking and chinking of the tower. The whorls of force died away too, fading and curling gently to nothing.

The Watcher stood up, near enough for Vivian to see he was smiling, and climbed briskly to meet the two Guardians. They turned and came up the steps on either side of him. Up they came and up, to the very foot of the Gnomon. Elio and the other people in the bushes, who seemed to be on both sides of the stairs, kept pace with them, but it was clear that the Lead Casket now had no effect at all.

“We’ve won!” said Mr. Lee. The Lees stood and laughed at one another.

“Open the door for him,” said Inga Lee.

“In a second,” said Mr. Lee. “I’ll just get rid of the hostages first. We don’t want another Lee around to claim the City, and both of them know too much.” He leaned over and picked the gun off the amplifier.

Vivian could not feel as if she was in a film then, though she wanted to very much. The gun was horribly real as it came up to point at her. And it seemed to to be true that all your life came flooding into your mind in your last moments. She thought of
Mum and Dad and London and the War and Time City, and she wanted to shout to Mr. Lee, Wait—I haven’t thought of everything yet! Beside her, Jonathan let his pigtail fall out of his mouth and stood straight and lordly looking.

But it seemed as if the Guardians were already coming. There was the sound of shutters and doors sliding all over the tower, above and below. The yellow panels over the windows swept sideways into the walls, flooding the museum-room with sunlight. Vivian’s eyes watered, but she could just see the pillar in the middle go suddenly dark as a person rose up inside it. Mr. Lee turned and peered to see who it was, pointing the gun uncertainly.

Dr. Wilander stepped out of the pillar, bulging the strange material of it wide with the size of him. He was holding the time-egg in one huge hand. It looked no bigger than a pigeon’s egg.

Mr. Lee fired the gun at him, twice, two blunt coughing sounds.

All that happened was that Dr. Wilander gathered his shabby gown round him with his other huge hand and cleared his throat. “Hrrrhm.” The gun clattered to the floor. “I apologise,” Dr. Wilander grunted to Jonathan and Vivian. “I should never have let you get into this mess.” There was embarrassment all over his big bear’s face. “The truth is that I have to have this artefact in my hand before I recollect what I am. Oh no,” he growled. Mr. Lee was reaching for the Silver Casket. “Oh no. You drained that one and the Iron one trying to fight this.” He held up the little leaden egg on the palm of his huge hand. The air was in transparent whorls and shimmers over it. “All the force went back into this one, where it belongs,” he said. “Elio’s idea. But you Lees couldn’t have won anyway,
not with Lead and Gold both outside the tower. We just didn’t want anybody to get shot. Now I’m afraid I’ll have to get rid of you.”

Cousin Vivian took the butter-pie away from her mouth. “You can’t get rid of us,” she said. “We’re Lees!”

“What does that mean?” growled Dr. Wilander. “You descend from a very nice young man who happened to wander into Time City from China a very long time ago and ended up marrying the ruler’s daughter. But that doesn’t entitle you to anything, you know. I told you that when you were six. Now what shall I do with you all?” He frowned at the little grey egg, considering. “I can’t have you anywhere where you can get at that time-lock in Lee House and it’ll have to be somewhere stable, because you’re all three thoroughly disruptive. Let’s see. I think young Vivian had better go to Ancient China—”

“Over my dead body!” Inga Lee exclaimed. “My daughter descends from the Icelandic Emperor!”

“Then I’d better remove you first before you do anything silly,” grunted Dr. Wilander.

The rippling in the air from the time–egg surged out to surround Inga Lee. Just for an instant, she seemed to be standing on rather soggy grass beside a low house made of rough bits of stone. There was sea edged with ice in front of her and a sheer and frosty-looking mountain behind. Then the rippling edges of the air surged together and there was nothing but a cold draught and a writhing swirl in the air where Inga Lee had been.

“What have you done?” Mr. Lee said chokily.

“Sent her to Iceland, at the time it was first settled,” growled Dr.
Wilander. “It should suit her. Her kind used to be known as ‘a stirring woman’ there. For you, Viv, I’m afraid it’ll have to be the last days of the Depopulation of Earth. I can’t have you getting together with her again. She pushes you into things. I’ll put you near the last spaceship, and if you ask them nicely they may take you aboard. But I don’t promise you they will.”

The ripples surged from the egg again. Mr. Lee was surrounded by a hot-looking concrete field with pieces of broken brick wall sticking up here and there. He cried out, “No! I’ll reform!”

“You said that before, several times,” Dr. Wilander grunted as the ripples came together again, leaving a hot wind and a chemical smell where Mr. Lee had been. Dr. Wilander turned to Cousin Vivian.

Cousin Vivian tipped her head sideways and held her butter-pie as if it were a posy of flowers. A tear trickled prettily down her nose. “You won’t do that to me, will you, Uncle Hakon?” she said in a little lisping voice. “I’m only just eleven.”