Discworld 26 - The Thief of Time (4 page)

 
 
  
Rinpo sighed. The Master of Novices was a good and conscientious man, he knew, but it had
been a long time since he'd been out in the world. People like Soto spent every day in the
world of time. They learned flexibility, because if you were stiff out there you were dead.
People like Soto ... now, there was an idea...
He looked towards the other end of the terrace, where a couple of servants were sweeping up
the fallen cherry blossom.
'I see a harmonious solution,' he said.
'Oh, yes?'
'An unusually talented boy like Ludd needs a master, not the discipline of the schoolroom.'
'Possibly, but-'
The Master of Novices followed Rinpo's gaze.
'Oh,' he said, and he smiled in a way that was not entirely nice. It contained a certain
anticipatory element, a hint that trouble might be in store for someone who, in his opinion,
richly deserved it.
'A name occurs,' said Rinpo.
'To me also,' said the Master of Novices.
'A name I've heard too often,' Rinpo went on.
'I suppose that either he will break the boy, or the boy will break him, or it is always possible
that they will break each other...' the Master mused.
'So, in the patois of the world,' said Rinpo, 'there is no actual downside.'
'Would the abbot approve, though?' said the Master, testing a welcome idea for any weak
points. 'He has always had a certain rather tiresome regard for... the sweeper.'
'The abbot is a dear kind man but at the moment his teeth are giving him trouble and he is not
walking at all well,' said Rinpo. 'And these are difficult times. I'm sure he will be pleased to
accept our joint recommendation. Why, it's practically a minor matter of day-to-day affairs.'
And thus the future was decided.
They were not bad men. They had worked hard on behalf of the valley for hundreds of years.
But it is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. One is that,
while all important enterprises need careful organization, it is the organization that needs
organizing, rather than the enterprise. And another is that tranquillity is always a good thing.
Tick

Discworld 26 - The Thief of Time

Discworld 26 - The Thief of Time

 
 
  
There was a row of alarm clocks on the table by Jeremy's bed. He did not need them, because
he woke up when he wanted to. They were there for testing. He set them for seven, and woke
up at 6.59 to check that they went off on time.
Tonight he went to bed early, with a drink of water and the Grim Fairy Tales.
He had never been interested in stories, at any age, and had never quite understood the basic
concept. He'd never read a work of fiction all the way through. He did remember, as a small
boy, being really annoyed at the depiction of Hickory Dickory Dock in a rag book of nursery
rhymes, because the clock in the drawing was completely wrong for the period.
He tried to read Grim Fairy Tales. They had titles like 'How the Wicked Queen Danced in
Red Hot Shoes!' and 'The Old Lady in the Oven'. There was simply no mention of clocks of
any sort in any of them. Their authors seemed to have a thing about not mentioning clocks.
'The Glass Clock of Bad Schüschein', on the other hand, did have a clock. Of a sort. And it
was... odd. A wicked man - readers could see he was wicked because it said he was wicked,
right there on the page - built a clock of glass in which he captured Time herself, but things
went wrong because there was one part of the clock, a spring, that he couldn't make out of
glass, and it broke under the strain. Time was set free and the man aged ten thousand years in
a second and crumbled to dust and - not surprisingly, in Jeremy's opinion - was never seen
again. The story ended with a moral: Large Enterprises Depend upon Small Details. Jeremy
couldn't see why it couldn't just as well have been It's Wrong to Trap Non-Existent Women in
Clocks, or, It Would Have Worked with a Glass Spring.
But even to Jeremy's inexperienced eye, there was something wrong with the whole story. It
read as though the writer was trying to make sense of something he'd seen, or been told, and
had misunderstood. And - hah! - although it was set hundreds of years ago when even in
Uberwald there were only natural cuckoo clocks, the artist had drawn a long-case clock of the
sort that wasn't around even fifteen years ago. The stupidity of some people! You'd laugh if it
wasn't so tragic!
He put the book aside and spent the rest of the evening doing a little design work for the
Guild. They paid him handsomely for this, provided he promised never to turn up in person.
Then he put the work on the bedside table by the clocks. He blew out the candle. He went to
sleep. He dreamed.
The glass clock ticked. It stood in the middle of the workshop's wooden floor, giving off a
silvery light. Jeremy walked around it, or perhaps it spun gently around him.
It was taller than a man. Within the transparent case red and blue lights twinkled like stars.
The air smelled of acid.
Now his point of view dived into the thing, the crystalline thing, plunging down through the
layers of glass and quartz. They rose past him, their smoothness becoming walls hundreds of
miles high, and still he fell between slabs that were becoming rough, grainy...
... full of holes. The blue and red light was here too, pouring past him.

 
 
  
And only now was there sound. It came from the darkness ahead, a slow beat that was
ridiculously familiar, a heartbeat magnified a million times...
...tchum...tchum...
... each beat slower than mountains and bigger than worlds, dark and blood red. He heard a
few more and then his fall slowed, stopped, and he began to soar back up through the
sleeting light until a brightness ahead became a room.
He had to remember all this! It was all so clear, once you saw it! So simple! So easy! He
could see every part, how they interlocked, how they were made.
And now it began to fade .
Of course it was only a dream. He told himself that and was comforted by it. But he had gone
to some lengths with this one, he had to admit. For example, there was a mug of tea steaming
on the nearby workbench, and the sound of voices on the other side of the door...
There was a knocking at the door. Jeremy wondered if the dream would end when the door
was opened, and then the door disappeared and the knocking went on. It was coming from
downstairs.
The time was 6.47. Jeremy glanced at the alarm clocks to make sure they were right, then
pulled his dressing gown around him and hurried downstairs. He opened the front door a
crack. There was no one there.
'Nah, dahn 'ere, mister.'
Someone lower down was a dwarf.
'Name of Clockson?' it said.
'Yes?'
A clipboard was thrust through the gap.
'Sign 'ere, where it says “Sign 'Ere”. Thank you. Okay, lads...'
Behind him, a couple of trolls tipped up a handcart. A large wooden crate crashed onto the
cobbles.
'What is this?' said Jeremy.
'Express package,' said the dwarf, taking the clipboard. 'Come all the way from Uberwald.
Must've cost someone a packet. Look at all them seals and stickers on it.'
'Can't you bring it in-?' Jeremy began, but the cart was already moving off, with the merry
jingle and tinkle of fragile items.

 
 
  
It started to rain. Jeremy peered at the label on the crate. It was certainly addressed to him, in
a neat round hand, and just above it was the seal with the double-headed bat of Uberwald.
There was no other marking except, near the bottom, the words:
THIS SIDE UP [?this text upside down]
Then the crate started to swear. It was muffled, and in a foreign language, but all swearing
has a certain international content.
'Er ... hello?' said Jeremy.
The crate rocked, and landed on one of the long sides, with extra cursing. There was some
thumping from inside, some louder swearing, and the crate teetered upright again with the
alleged top the right way up.
A piece of board slid aside and a crowbar dropped out and onto the street with a clang. The
voice that had lately been swearing said, 'If you would be tho good?'
Jeremy inserted the bar into a likely-looking crack, and pulled.
The crate sprang apart. He dropped the bar. There was a... a creature inside.
'I don't know,' it said, pulling bits of packing material off itself. 'Eight bloody dayth with no
problemth, and thothe idiotth get it wrong on the doorthtep.' It nodded at Jeremy. 'Good
morning, thur. I thuppothe you are Mithter Jeremy?'
'Yes, but-'
'My name ith Igor, thur. My credentialth, thur.'
A hand like an industrial accident held together with stitches thrust a sheaf of papers towards
Jeremy. He recoiled instinctively, and then felt embarrassed and took them.
'I think there has been a mistake,' he said.
'No, no mithtake,' said Igor, pulling a carpet bag out of the ruins of the crate. 'You need an
athithtant. And when it cometh to athithtantth, you cannot go wrong with an Igor. Everyone
knowth that. Could we go in out of the rain, thur? It maketh my kneeth rutht.'
'But I don't need an assist-' Jeremy began, but that was wrong, wasn't it? He just couldn't keep
assistants. They always left within a week.
'Morning, sir!' said a cheery voice.
Another cart had pulled up. This one was painted a gleaming, hygienic white and was full of
milk churns, and had 'Ronald Soak, Dairyman' painted on the side. Distracted, Jeremy looked
up at the beaming face of Mr Soak, who was holding a bottle of milk in each hand.
'One pint, squire, as per usual. And perhaps another one if you've got company?'

 
 
  
'Er, er, er ... yes, thank you.'
'And the yoghurt is particularly fine this week, squire,' said Mr Soak encouragingly.
'Er, er, I think not, Mr Soak.'
'Need any eggs, cream, butter, buttermilk or cheese?'
'Not as such, Mr Soak.'
'Right you are, then,' said Mr Soak, unabashed. 'See you tomorrow, then.'
'Er, yes,' said Jeremy, as the cart moved on. Mr Soak was a friend, which in Jeremy's limited
social vocabulary meant 'someone I speak to once or twice a week'. He approved of the
milkman, because he was regular and punctual and had the bottles at the doorstep every
morning on the stroke of 7a.m. 'Er, er ... goodbye,' he said.
He turned to Igor.
'How did you know I needed-' he tried. But the strange man had gone indoors, and a frantic
Jeremy tracked him down in the workshop.
'Oh yeth, very nithe,' said Igor, who was taking it all in with the air of a connoisseur. 'Thatth a
Turnball Mk3 micro-lathe, ithn't it? I thaw it in their catalogue. Very nithe indee-'
'I didn't ask anyone for an assistant!' said Jeremy. 'Who sent you?'
'We are Igorth, thur.'
'Yes, you said! Look, I don't-'
'No, thur. “We R Igorth”, thur. The organithathion, thur.'
'What organization?'
'For plathementth, thur. You thee, thur, the thing ith ... an Igor often findth himthelf between
marthterth through no fault of hith own, you thee. And on the other hand-'
'-you have two thumbs,' breathed Jeremy, who had just noticed and couldn't stop himself.
'Two on each hand.!'
'Oh, yeth thur, very handy,' said Igor, not even glancing down. 'On the other hand there ith no
thortage of people wanting an Igor. Tho my Aunt Igorina runth our thelect little agenthy.'
'For ... lots of Igors?' said Jeremy.
'Oh, there'th a fair number of uth. We're a big family.' Igor handed Jeremy a card.
He read:

 
 
  
We R Igors
'A Spare Hand When Needed'
The Old Rathaus
Bad Schüschein
c-mail: Yethmarthter Uberwald
Jeremy stared at the semaphore address. His normal ignorance of anything that wasn't to do
with clocks did not apply here. He'd been quite interested in the new cross-continent
semaphore system after hearing that it made quite a lot of use of clockwork mechanisms to
speed up the message flow. So you could send a clacks message to hire an Igor? Well, that
explained the speed, at least.
'Rathaus,' he said. 'That means something like a council hall, doesn't it?'
'Normally, thur ... normally,' said Igor reassuringly.
'Do you really have semaphore addresses in Uberwald?'
'Oh, yeth. We are ready to grathp the future with both handth, thur.'
'-and four thumbs-'
'Yeth, thur. We can grathp like anything.'
'And then you mailed yourself here?'
'Thertainly, thur. We Igorth are no thtrangerth to dithcomfort.'
Jeremy looked down at the paperwork he'd been handed, and a name caught his eye.
The top paper was signed. In a way, at least. There was a message in neat capitals, as neat as
printing, and a name at the end.
HE WILL BE USEFUL LEJEAN
He remembered. 'Oh, Lady LeJean is behind this. She had you sent to me?'
'That'th correct, thur.'
Feeling that Igor was expecting more of him, Jeremy made a show of reading through the rest
of what turned out to be references. Some of them were written in what he could only hope
was dried brown ink, one was in crayon, and several were singed around the edges. They
were all fulsome. After a while, though, a certain tendency could be noted amongst the
signatories.

 
 
  
'This one is signed by someone called Mad Doctor Scoop,' he said.
'Oh, he wathn't actually named mad, thur. It wath more like a nickname, ath it were.'
'Was he mad, then?'
'Who can thay, thur?' said Igor calmly.
'And Crazed Baron Haha? It says under Reason for Leaving that he was crushed by a burning
windmill.'
'Cathe of mithtaken identity, thur.'
'Really?'
'Yeth, thur. I underthtand the mob mithtook him for Thcreaming Doctor Bertherk, thur.'
'Oh. Ah, yes.' Jeremy glanced down. 'Who you also worked for, I see.'
'Yeth, thur.'
'And who died of blood poisoning?'
'Yeth, thur. Cauthed by a dirty pitchfork.'
'And... Nipsie the Impaler?'
'Er, would you believe he ran a kebab thop, thur?'
'Did he?'
'Not conventhionally tho, thur.'
'You mean he was mad too?'
'Ah. Well, he did have hith little wayth, I mutht admit, but an Igor never patheth judgement
on hith marthter or mithtreth, thur. That ith the Code of the Igorth, thur,' he added patiently. It
would be a funny old world if we were all alike, thur.'
Jeremy was completely baffled as to his next move. He'd never been very good at talking to
people, and this, apart from Lady LeJean and a wrangle with Mr Soak over an unwanted
cheese, was the longest conversation he'd had for a year. Perhaps it was because it was hard
to think of Igor as coming under the heading of people. Until now, Jeremy's definition of
'people' had not included anyone with more stitches than a handbag.
'I'm not sure I've got any work for you, though,' he said. 'I've got a new commission, but I'm
not sure how... anyway, I'm not insane!'
'Thalth not compulthory, thur.'