A Tale of Time City

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “For four days now,” said Elio. “To be exact, from the time Miss Vivian came through a door I thought was chained up and tried to distract my attention from her companions.”

  “Oh!” said Vivian, hanging her head over her drink. “You were fooling me!”

  “I felt some guilt at doing so,” Elio admitted. “But I wished to know the facts. I therefore waited until that afternoon and refreshed my memory of the time-ghosts which so much distressed Madam Sempitern some years before. I recognised them for Master Jonathan and Miss Vivian and I noticed that Miss Vivian’s clothing was not that in which I had seen her emerge from the door. I concluded from this that the two of you would be doing something of great import at some future date, and that it was impossible to prevent you, since I clearly had not. I then went down the passage and discovered the false door and the time-lock below. And I do not think that the control provided for it is fully functional, Master Jonathan.”

  Jonathan looked at the egg he still had in his hand. “No—it doesn’t get you back properly. But how do you know that?”

  Elio brought his own control from his pocket and held it out. It was slightly smaller, with the sheeny redness to it that Vivian had noticed before, and it had various hollows on its surface to make places for a person’s fingers. “I think,” he said, “that yours is a very much older model than this. As was natural, I made a couple of experimental journeys through the lock, using the control you have there. It malfunctioned slightly on my first trip. I went to Twenty Century, where I was somewhat aghast to find napalm and rocketry already in use in nineteen-thirty-nine. This should not have been so. It proved to me that the era had gone critical and I made haste to get out of it. But I found myself simply advanced in time. It was most embarrassing. I was in Twenty-four Century in the middle of a ladies’ nude bathing party—”

  Vivian could not help laughing. Even Jonathan’s anxious face relaxed into a grin. “What happened?” he said.

  Vivian was interested to see that androids could blush, just like ordinary people. “The ladies objected and the control then returned me home,” Elio said primly. “Considering that, it was perhaps foolish of me to make another trip the following day. But I wished to know if the Second Unstable Era had gone critical too. It had not, perhaps because it is too short, though it remains barbaric. I then once more attempted to return to Time City, but the control instead switched me to the Third Unstable Era—”

  “We know that’s the Silver Age for certain now,” Jonathan muttered to Vivian.

  “—which is in a state of great upheaval,” Elio said, “and close to going critical too. And I had such difficulty returning from there that I very nearly became alarmed. I could of course have called on Time Patrol for aid, but I would then have been liable for prosecution for trespassing in a banned era. So I redoubled my commands to the control and I was quite glad when it at length responded and brought me back to the lock.” He looked blandly at the three of them. “I then made investigations in Time City,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Jonathan said uneasily.

  “I mean that I looked at Observers’ reports from the era you just now termed the Silver Age,” Elio said. Jonathan tried to nod wisely to cover up his relief that this was all Elio meant. “There is very little evidence for the disorder I noticed in minutes myself,” Elio said. “Either the disorder is very new or the reports are wrong. Something strange is going on either way.” He sauntered away to the window, tossing the red control-egg in his hand, and from there, just as Jonathan and Sam were grinning at one another, sure that no one knew about their adventure in 1939, Elio sprang his bombshell. “I also checked the lock entries,” he said. “There is no record of Miss Vivian Lee entering Time City. That was very careless of you.”

  They stared at him. Sam’s yellowness increased and so did Jonathan’s paleness. Vivian thought she probably looked a mixture of the two. “What are you going to do?” she said hopelessly.

  “I have done it,” said Elio. “I inserted an entry for the morning you arrived.”

  They went on staring at him. On the wall screen, the Wicked Queen was changing into a witch, which might or might not have been a fitting thing to happen. “Why—why did you do that?” Jonathan said at last.

  Elio glanced at the screen too. “I was breaking the law by time-travelling in secret,” he said. “One more transgression seemed unimportant. After that, I confess I transgressed again. I forged an official request from the Sempitern to Erstwhile Science to have this newer control delivered to the Palace.” He tossed the red egg up again. “My mind was in turmoil, you see,” he said. “I had of course recognised Miss Vivian as one of the time-ghosts as soon as I first saw her. Matching her with my memories of Miss Vivian Lee, I became sure that she was not the Sempitern’s niece. But her presence here was important enough to have created a time-ghost many centuries ago and I was anxious to know why.” He looked at them gravely. “I have told you that I do not like to discover facts of which I have been unaware. I am then compelled to find out.”

  “And you did,” Jonathan said glumly. “What did you do—keep watch every afternoon until we went?”

  “I did,” said Sam. “And I saw her skipping round the fountain, but I had to go away and be ill then, so I missed going with them.”

  “Ah. Then you did not happen to see where Leon Hardy came from?” Elio said.

  “Nope,” said Sam.

  “A pity,” Elio said. “For I think there must be more than one secret time-lock in Time Close. All I know is that Master Hardy did not come from Aeon Square, as one might expect, if he had used a lock up the river or in the Patrol Building. The Officials at Erstwhile Science refused to release this control-egg unless I fetched it myself this afternoon. That is how I know. I was coming back with it, when I saw Master Jonathan and then Miss Vivian go ahead of me through the archway. This made me hurry. I was the next person to go through the arch and yet when I came into Time Close, Master Hardy was already there ahead of me, walking towards the Palace from the other side of the Close. I thought at the time that he might have been sitting by the fountain, waiting—”

  “He wasn’t,” said Sam. “The first time I saw him was by the door to the ghost passage.”

  “He went ahead of me there,” Elio said, “and I conjectured he intended to meet Miss Vivian and Master Jonathan as they returned. I confess to concealing myself in order to hear what was said. If I had known he had a gun—”

  “Thanks about that,” Jonathan said awkwardly. “He was going to shoot us.”

  There was a silence. Elio tossed the egg from hand to hand. Snow White on the screen bit into the witch’s apple. The silence stretched from awkward, to meaningful, to unbearable.

  “There are still many things I do not know,” Elio pointed out at last. “It would relieve my mind if you were frank—though I shall find out some other way if you do not tell me.”

  “Tell him,” said Sam. “I want to know too.”

  Vivian looked at Jonathan. Jonathan made an effort to look lordly, but it did not come to much. He nodded. And they told Elio. Elio stopped tossing the red egg and stood still with his face absolutely expressionless, drinking everything in with an efficiency Vivian found quite frightening. She wondered how she had ever thought she could deceive him, particularly when he began to ask questions. Each of Elio’s questions pounced on something they had not told him and brought that up to the light, so that they went on and on telling him things. Meanwhile, Snow White and the Prince rode away together. The screen flickered a moment and then began another cartoon film, one about rabbits which Vivian did not know.

  Elio’s last question pounced on something they had not even noticed. He said, “How did Master Hardy discover the whereabouts of the Golden Casket?”

  “From the records,” said Jonathan. “Why?”

  “He lied,” said Elio. “It is something even I do not know, I have looked in the records, in Perpetuum, Continuum, and Erstwhile, and then
in Millennium and Whilom Tower and all the other places I could think of, over many years. I found much written of polarities, and some old accounts which tell of Caskets, but nowhere is there any mention of their hiding places. Yet Master Hardy found out in half a day. It is clear he had some other source of information, which he used to get you to fetch him the Golden Casket—or, if that failed, to get Miss Vivian to identify Laununsun for him.”

  “And he used that hologram to get me interested,” Jonathan said mournfully. “It was so real, too! I suppose we can’t believe a word it said.”

  “Ah no, the being you spoke to was real,” Elio said. He was frowning slightly, with most of his huge mind on something else. “When the hologram appeared a second time, I took care to go out and walk through it, and it had no solidity at all. Even Sixty-six Century art cannot make an image solid. This simply proves that Master Hardy’s employers must have taken him to the First Unstable Era, perhaps to interview the real Guardian. But that is a side issue. The main thing that perturbs me is that I did not guess that the Lead Casket is in Time City—though now you point it out, I naturally see how the Caskets work. I should have seen before. It makes me feel very unintelligent.”

  “I feel stupid then,” Sam said. “How do they work?”

  “Like magnets on the face of a clock, naturally.” Elio said. “I will find a chart of history and show you.” He sped about the room, searching, upending sofas, opening cupboards and lifting huge piles of clutter. Finally, he lay flat on his face and looked under all the furniture. The chart was rolled up under the automat. He pulled it out and spread it open on the floor.

  Vivian saw the horseshoe of known time, very familiar by now, with Stone Age near the beginning on the left and Depopulation at the end on the right. Elio put his finger on the gap at the top, right in the middle of it.

  “Time City starts here,” he said. “Like the hour hand of a clock at midday. And, like the hand of a clock, it moves from right to left, in the opposite direction to history. It has to do this in order not to mingle with normal time. But it needs something to push it round the circle. So it is provided with a powerful motor. That is the Lead Casket. But the Lead Casket, like all motors, needs fuel on which to move, for it is highly unnatural to go backwards through time. So the other Caskets are placed regularly round history to catch the City as it comes and fling it onwards. The Gold comes first—a little before three o’clock, as it were—and that is the most powerful because the City has not long been moving and there is much temporal inertia to overcome. It attracts the Lead and flings it onwards to Silver—placed around six-thirty—which in turn flings it on to Iron. Iron is weakest, for it is obvious to me now that the City was intended to slow down and stop when it gets back to the end of time, at midday again.”

  “Why is that?” Jonathan said indignantly. “I thought it went on for ever!”

  “I conjecture that the Caskets need to be recharged and placed out again,” Elio said. “Or maybe the small area of time which contains the City has to be replaced by a fresh area. Those are both things which I stupidly do not know yet. However, what is clear to me is that the whole system is in danger now that the Iron Casket has been stolen. We must think what to do about it.”

  They sat staring at him trying to absorb the picture of Time City stopped like a broken clock, unable to start again. All those people and buildings! Vivian thought. What happens to Jonathan and Sam and Elio and Jenny? And she remembered the frantic time-ghosts beating at the locks down the river. They were trying to get away! she thought, and it was too late because the City had broken down! That made it certain that the City was indeed going to break down. And there was nothing they could do about it.

  “The City is an Unstable Era,” Elio pointed out, seeing their faces. “Our future is not fixed. So it follows that there is something we can do. First, we must locate the Lead Casket and ensure its safety. We must also discover how it works. There are Scientists and Historians here who can do that—or I can do it myself. But I should need to examine one of the other Caskets to find out how they interact. The only one which seems within our reach is the Silver.”

  Jonathan scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go at once. If we get there before the thief does—”

  Elio shook his head. “Master Jonathan,” he said, “you are not fit. You have been at death’s door, and I should not have kept you talking. We can go at any moment and still arrive before the thief. And there are two days before the City reaches its beginnings. Much can be done in two days. You must go to bed.”

  Now Elio pointed it out, Jonathan clearly felt fainter than ever. He clutched at the back of a sofa. “But—”

  “But nothing,” said Vivian. “You look awful.”

  “But I’ve still got this,” Jonathan said, holding up the egg. “I ought to put it back.”

  “That would be most unwise,” Elio said. “Were someone else to find that lock and use it, the thing might malfunction more seriously yet and strand that person in history. Let us put it where it will do no harm.” He took the egg from Jonathan’s fingers and buried it in the golden hat on the cakestand, among the marbles and the padlocks. “There—we will keep it for use in an emergency,” he said. Then he took Jonathan’s arm and marched him from the room, much more gently than he had marched Leon to the time-lock, but quite as irresistibly. “We will see you to bed,” he said, “and I will inform Madam Sempitern that you have a slight fever.”

  Jonathan protested all the way to his room. Sam followed, protesting too. “I’m coming too when you get the Silver! You’ve no right to leave me behind!”

  “You shall go,” Elio promised. “But first give me time to prepare. The Silver Age is at least as dangerous as the Gold.”

  If Elio hoped to put Sam off by saying that, he made a mistake. Sam insisted he was not afraid, and went on insisting while Vivian was helping Elio bundle Jonathan into his bed. A look of great relief came over Jonathan as soon as he was lying floating under his cover. “Great Time! This feels good!” he said, “I feel as if I’ve been on the go for a week!”

  “A night’s sleep will restore you,” Elio said and he left to tell Jenny that Jonathan had a fever.

  Sam, to Vivian’s secret delight, doubled up in the empty-frame chair. “I feel awful too,” he complained. “My stomach’s all green obscene.”

  “Serve you right,” Jonathan said, turning over with his back to them both. “Go away to bed and leave me in peace.”

  Sam sighed and got up. Now for it! Vivian thought. “Oh, Sam,” she said sweetly. “Before you go, can you work Jonathan’s automat for me? I want a butter-pie and I don’t know how to get one.”

  Sam saw nothing peculiar in this. He trudged to the automat and banged away at its pipes and kicked its brass twiddles, until the flap finally came up to show the usual flowerpot with the stick in it. “There you are,” he said.

  “Don’t you want one?” Vivian asked, picking up the flowerpot.

  Sam, to her great pleasure, actually shuddered. “Not till tomorrow,” he said.

  “Then,” said Vivian, “you are going to eat this one. Now. As a punishment for stealing all my money.” She grabbed Sam by the back of his head before he could move and forced the butter-pie against his mouth. Sam bawled and kicked and struggled. But he was smaller than Vivian and she held on to him almost as easily as Elio had held Leon. Every time he yelled, she got butter-pie into his mouth. If he shut his mouth, she stuffed it down his neck. Jonathan rolled over under his cover and laughed till his eyes ran.

  “That’s made me feel better!” he said, when Vivian decided Sam had had about one hundred creditsworth and let go of him at last.

  “It’s made me feel worse,” Sam said glumly. “I think you’ve put me off butter-pies for life.”

  Vivian was glad to see from this that she had got Sam’s character right. Sam knew a fair punishment when he met one. He was not going to try for another revenge.

  13

  THE GNOMON

/>   Vivian went to her own room feeling almost as exhausted as Jonathan. That was the real disadvantage of time-travel. She and Jonathan had come back only five minutes or so after they left Time City, but in between they had spent half a day in the Age of Gold and had some frightening experiences there. And there were still hours of the day left in the City. Vivian let her door slide shut, very thankful that Dr. Wilander had not been able to set her any more brain damaging tasks.

  Elio’s voice spoke out of the bedside Deck. “Miss Vivian, I have ordered a selection of my favourite films to be relayed to your room. Just press the white button on your Deck and the first one will start to play.”

  “Thanks, Elio. You’re an angel,” Vivian said.

  “My pleasure,” said Elio’s voice.

  Vivian sat on the floating cover of her bed. It made a great difference to have someone as efficient as Elio helping them. All the same, she had a suspicion that Elio was thinking of it all as an adventure, just the way she had herself. She knew it was serious now. She could still see Jonathan half-sitting in that bush if she closed her eyes. And there was another serious thought. If Time City broke down entirely, it could damage the rest of history horribly. In which case, what would become of Mum and Dad? I have to stay here now, Vivian thought, and do my best to put it right. Nobody else here cares about history except me.

  Then she pressed the white button and forgot her worries. She had a film orgy. She saw films that were made before she was born and films that would not be made until long after her lifetime was over. She would have forgotten to go down to supper if Petula had not come along to remind her. As it was, she forgot that Jonathan would not be there. She went down with her head in the clouds and came out of them with a bump when she found that the only other people there were Jenny and Sempitern Walker. They seemed rather tired too after the Founding Ceremony that afternoon.

  “I looked in on Jonathan, but he was asleep,” Jenny said anxiously. “Did he seem very ill to you?”