Discworld 26 - The Thief of Time (5 page)

 
 
  
I've actually got a piece of paper that says I'm not, you know.'
'Well done, thur.'
'Not many people have one of those!'
'Very true, thur.'
'I take medicine, you know.'
'Well done, thur,' said Igor. 'I'll jutht go and make thome breakfatht, thall I? While you get
drethed ... marthter.'
Jeremy clutched at his damp dressing gown. I'll be down shortly,' he said, and hurried up the
stairs.
Igor's gaze took in the racks of tools. There was not a speck of dust on them; the files,
hammers and pliers were ranged according to size, and the items on the work bench were
positioned with geometrical exactitude.
He pulled open a drawer. Screws were laid in perfect rows.
He looked around at the walls. They were bare, except for the shelves of clocks. This was
surprising - even Dribbling Doctor Vibes had had a calendar on the wall, which added a
splash of colour. Admittedly it was from the Acid Bath and Restraint Co., in Ugli, and the
colour it splashed was mostly red, but at least it showed some recognition of a world outside
the four walls.
Igor was puzzled. Igor had never worked for a sane person before. He'd worked for a number
of... well, the world called them madmen, and he'd worked for several normal people, in that
they only indulged in minor and socially acceptable insanities, but he couldn't recall ever
working for a completely sane person.
Obviously, he reasoned, if sticking screws up your nose was madness, then numbering them
and keeping them in careful compartments was sanity, which was the opposite-
Ah. No. It wasn't, was it... ?
He smiled. He was beginning to feel quite at home already.
Tick
Lu-Tze the sweeper was in his Garden of Five Surprises, carefully cultivating his mountains.
His broom leaned against the hedge.
Above him, looming over the temple gardens, the big stone statue of Wen the Eternally
Surprised sat with its face locked in its permanent wide-eyed expression of, yes, pleasant
surprise.

 
 
  
As a hobby, mountains appeal to those people who in normal circumstances are said to have a
great deal of time on their hands. Lu-Tze had no time at all. Time was something that largely
happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the
sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe
into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.
At the moment, in the never-ending, ever-recreated moment of this peaceful, sunlit little
valley, he was fiddling with the little mirrors and shovels and morphic resonators and even
stranger devices required to make a mountain grow to no more than six inches high.
The cherry trees were still in bloom. They always were in bloom, here. A gong rang,
somewhere back in the temple. A flock of white doves took off from the monastery roof.
A shadow fell over the mountain.
Lu-Tze glanced at the person who had entered the garden. He made the perfunctory symbol
of servitude to the rather annoyed-looking boy in novice's robes.
'Yes, master?' he said.
'I am looking for the one they call Lu-Tze,' said the boy. 'Personally, I don't think he really
exists.'
'I've got glaciation,' said Lu-Tze, ignoring this. 'At last. See, master? It's only an inch long,
but already it's carving its own little valley. Magnificent, isn't it?'
'Yes, yes, very good,' said the novice, being kind to an underling. 'Isn't this the garden of Lu-
Tze?'
'You mean, Lu-Tze who is famous for his bonsai mountains?'
The novice looked from the line of plates to the little wrinkled smiling man.
'You are Lu-Tze? But you're just a sweeper! I've seen you cleaning out the dormitories! I've
seen people kick you!'
Lu-Tze, apparently not hearing this, picked up a plate about a foot across on which a small
cinder cone was smoking.
'What do you think of this, master?' he said. 'Volcanic. And it is bloody hard to do, excuse my
Klatchian.'
The novice took a step forward, and leaned down and looked directly into the sweeper's eyes.
Lu-Tze was not often disconcerted, but he was now.
'You are Lu-Tze?'
'Yes, lad. I am Lu-Tze.'

 
 
  
The novice took a deep breath and thrust out a skinny arm. It was holding a small scroll.
'From the abbot... er, venerable one!'
The scroll wobbled in the nervous hand.
'Most people call me Lu-Tze, lad. Or “Sweeper”. Until they get to know me better, some call
me “Get out of the way”,' said Lu-Tze, carefully wrapping up his tools. 'I've never been very
venerable, except in cases of bad spelling.'
He looked around the saucers for the miniature shovel he used for glacial work, and couldn't
see it anywhere. Surely he'd put it down just a moment ago?
The novice was watching him with an expression of awe mixed with residual suspicion. A
reputation like Lu-Tze's got around. This was the man who had - well, who had done
practically everything, if you listened to the rumours. But he didn't look as though he had. He
was just a little bald man with a wispy beard and a faint, amiable smile.
Lu-Tze patted the young man on the shoulder in an effort to put him at his ease.
'Let us see what the abbot wants,' he said, unrolling the rice paper. 'Oh. You are to take me to
see him, it says here.'
A look of panic froze the novice's face. 'What? How can I do that? Novices aren't allowed
inside the Inner Temple!'
'Really? In that case, let me take you, to take me, to see him,' said Lu-Tze.
'You are allowed into the Inner Temple?' said the novice, and then put his hand over his
mouth. 'But you're just a swee- Oh...'
'That's right! Not even a proper monk, let alone a dong,' said the sweeper cheerfully.
'Amazing, isn't it?'
'But people talk about you as if you were as high as the abbot!'
'Oh, dear me, no,' said Lu-Tze. 'I'm nothing like as holy. Never really got a grip on the cosmic
harmony.'
'But you've done all those incredible-'
'Oh, I didn't say I'm not good at what I do,' said Lu-Tz:e, ambling away with his broom over
his shoulder. 'Just not holy. Shall we go?'
'Er ... Lu-Tze?' said the novice, as they walked along the ancient brick path.
'Yes?'
'Why is this called the Garden of Five Surprises?'

 
 
  
'What was your name back in the world, hasty young man?' said Lu-Tze.
'Newgate. Newgate Ludd, ven-'
Lu-Tze held up a warning finger. 'Ah?'
'Sweeper, I mean.'
'Ludd, eh? Ankh-Morpork lad?'
'Yes, Sweeper,' said the boy. The suddenly dejected tones suggested he knew what was
coming next.
'Raised by the Thieves' Guild? One of “Ludd's Lads”?'
The boy formerly known as Newgate looked the old man in the eye and, when he replied, it
was in the singsong voice of someone who'd answered the question too many times. 'Yes,
Sweeper. Yes, I was a foundling. Yes, we get called Ludd's Lads and Lasses after one of the
founders of the Guild. Yes, that's my adopted surname. Yes, it was a good life and sometimes
I wish I still had it.'
Lu-Tze appeared not to hear this. 'Who sent you here?'
'A monk called Soto discovered me. He said I had talent.'
'Marco? The one with all the hair?'
'That's right. Only I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.'
'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,' said Lu-Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature
that just happens to live on him. They gave him a field posting really quickly after he came up
with that one. Hard-working fellow, mark you, and friendly as anything provided you don't
touch his hair. Important lesson there: you don't survive in the field by obeying all the rules,
including those relating to mental processes. And what name were you given when you were
enrolled?'
'Lobsang, ven- uh, Sweeper.'
'Lobsang Ludd?'
'Er... yes, Sweeper.'
'Amazing. So, Lobsang Ludd, you tried to count my surprises, did you? Everybody does.
Surprise is the nature of Time, and five is the number of Surprise.'
'Yes, Sweeper. I found the little bridge that tilts and throws you into the carp pool...'
'Good. Good.'

 
 
  
'... and I have found the bronze sculpture of a butterfly that flaps its wings when you breathe
on it...'
'That's two.'
'There's the surprising way those little daisies spray you with venomous pollen...'
'Ah, yes. Many people find them extremely surprising.'
'And I believe the fourth surprise is the yodelling stick insect.'
'Well done,' said Lu- Tze, beaming. 'It's very good, isn't it?'
'But I can't find the fifth surprise.'
'Really? Let me know when you find it,' said Lu-Tze.
Lobsang Ludd thought about this as he trailed after the sweeper.
'The Garden of Five Surprises is a test,' he said, at last.
'Oh, yes. Nearly everything is.'
Lobsang nodded. It was like the Garden of the Four Elements. Every novice found the bronze
symbols of three of them - in the carp pond, under a rock, painted on a kite - but none of
Lobsang's classmates found Fire. There didn't appear to be a fire anywhere in the garden.
After a while Lobsang had reasoned thus: there were in fact five elements, as they had been
taught. Four made up the universe, and the fifth, Surprise, allowed it to keep on happening.
No one had said that the four in the garden were the material four, so the fourth element in
the Garden could be Surprise at the fact that Fire wasn't there. Besides, fire was not generally
found in a garden, and the other signs were, truly, in their element. So he'd gone down to the
bakeries and opened one of the ovens, and there, glowing red hot below the loaves, was Fire.
'Then... I expect that the fifth surprise is: there is no fifth surprise,' he said.
'Nice try, but no cylindrical smoking thing,' said Lu- Tze. 'And is it not written, “Oo, you are
so sharp you'll cut yourself one of these days”?'
'Um, I haven't read that in the sacred texts yet, Sweeper,' said Lobsang uncertainly.
'No, you wouldn't have,' said Lu-Tze.
They stepped out of the brittle sunlight into the deep cold of the temple, and walked on
through ancient halls and down stairways cut into the rock. The sound of distant chanting
followed them. Lu-Tze, who was not holy and therefore could think unholy thoughts,
occasionally wondered whether the chanting monks were chanting anything, or were just
going 'aahaaahahah'. You could never tell with all that echo.

 
 
  
He turned off the main passage and reached for the handles of a pair of large, red-lacquered
doors. Then he looked behind him. Lobsang had stopped dead, some yards away.
'Coming?'
'But not even dongs are allowed in there!' said Lobsang. 'You have to be a Third Djim ting at
least!'
'Yeah, right. It's a short-cut. Come on, it's draughty out here.' With extreme reluctance,
expecting at any moment the outraged scream of authority, Lobsang trailed after the sweeper.
And he was just a sweeper! One of the people who swept the floors and washed the clothes
and cleaned the privies! No one had ever mentioned it! Novices heard about Lu-Tze from
their very first day - how he'd gone into some of the most tangled knots of time and
unravelled them, how he'd constantly dodged the traffic on the crossroads of history, how he
could divert time with a word and used this to develop the most subtle arts of battle...
... and here was a skinny little man who was sort of generically ethnic, so that he looked as if
he could have come from anywhere, in a robe that had once been white before it fell to all
those stains and patches, and the sandals repaired with string. And the friendly grin, as if he
was constantly waiting for something amusing to happen. And no belt at all, just another
piece of string to hold his robe closed. Even some novices got to the level of grey dong in
their first year!
The dojo was busy with senior monks at practice. Lobsang had to dodge aside as a pair of
fighters whirled past, arms and legs blurring as each sought an opening, paring time into
thinner and thinner slivers-
'You! Sweeper!'
Lobsang looked round, but the shout had been directed at Lu-Tze. A ting, only just elevated
to the Third Djim by the fresh look of his belt, was advancing on the little man, his face red
with fury.
'What for are you coming in here, cleaner of filth? This is forbidden!'
Lu-Tze's little smile didn't change. But he reached in his robe and brought out a small bag.
' 's a short-cut,' he said. He pulled a pinch of tobacco and, while the ting loomed over him,
began to roll a cigarette. 'And there's dirt everywhere, too. I'll certainly have a word with the
man who does this floor.'
'How dare you insult!' screamed the monk. 'Back to the kitchens with you, sweeper!'
Cowering behind Lu-Tze, Lobsang realized that the entire dojo had stopped to watch this.
One or two of the monks were whispering to one another. The man in the brown robe of the
dojo master was watching impassively from his chair, with his chin on his hand.
With great and patient and infuriating delicacy, like a samurai arranging flowers, Lu-Tze
marshalled the shreds of tobacco in the flimsy cigarette paper.

 
 
  
'No, I reckon I'll go out of that door over there, if you don't mind,' he said.
'Impudence! Then you are ready to fight, enemy of dust?' The man leapt back and raised his
hands to form the Combat of the Hake. He spun round and planted a kick on a heavy leather
sack, hitting it so hard that its supporting chain broke. Then he was back to face Lu-Tze,
hands held in the Advancement of the Snake.
'Ai! Shao! Hai-eee-' he began.
The dojo master stood up. 'Hold!' he commanded. 'Do you not want to know the name of the
man you are about to destroy?'
The fighter held his stance, glaring at Lu-Tze. 'I don't need to know name of sweeper,' he
said.
Lu-Tze rolled the cigarette into a skinny cylinder and winked at the angry man, which only
stoked the anger.
'It is always wise to know the name of a sweeper, boy,' said the dojo master. 'And my
question was not addressed to you.'
Tick
Jeremy stared at his bed sheets.
They were covered in writing. His own writing.
It trailed across the pillow and onto the wall. There were sketches, too, scored deeply into the
plaster.
He found his pencil under the bed. He'd even sharpened it. In his sleep, he'd sharpened a
pencil! And by the look of it he'd been writing and drawing for hours. Trying to draw a
dream.
With, down one side of his eiderdown, a list of parts.
It had all made absolute sense when he'd seen it, like a hammer or a stick or Wheelbright's
Gravity Escapement. It had been like meeting an old friend. And now... He stared at the
scrawled lines. He had been writing so fast he'd ignored punctuation and some of the letters,
too. But he could see some sense in there.
He'd heard of this sort of thing. Great inventions sometimes did arise from dreams and
daydreams. Didn't Hepzibah Whitlow have the idea of the adjustable pendulum clock as a
result of his work as the public hangman? Didn't Wilframe Balderton always say that the idea
for the Fish Tail Escapement came after he'd eaten too much lobster?
Yes, it had all been so clear in the dream. By daylight, it needed a bit more work.
There was a clatter of dishes from the little kitchen behind his workshop. He hurried down,
dragging the sheet behind him.