A Tale of Time City

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Vivian found that she had perfected the art of lying by telling the truth. She did not even have to think. “He was quite bad to begin with, but he got better soon after that,” she said sedately. “He felt a lot better as soon as he was in bed. He laughed.”

  “Oh good. Then he can’t be too bad,” Jenny said.

  Sempitern Walker did not speak to Vivian, but he kept shooting her strange anguished looks. Oh dear! Vivian thought. He’s not forgiven me for laughing at him yesterday. She sat and listened to the two of them talking. It seemed that the Iron Guardian had joined in the procession again. Poor thing! This time, however, Mr. Enkian had seen it. He was so angry that he had refused even to come to dinner and let himself be soothed.

  “I feel quite grateful to whichever student it was,” said Jenny. “Enkian in that mood is dreadfully hard work.”

  But it wasn’t a student! Vivian thought. Leon Hardy was in long ago Italy long before the ceremony stopped, so he couldn’t have been working his gramophone. That proves Elio’s right. It is the real Guardian.

  “I always hope,” Sempitern Walker said wistfully, “that some day Wilander will break Enkian’s neck. It’s a long thin neck, perfect for breaking. I’d break it myself if I had the strength.” And he shot Vivian another anguished glare. Vivian looked hurriedly down at her plate in order not to laugh.

  Towards the end of dinner, Jenny said, “By the way, Vivian, did Jonathan tell you there’s no school tomorrow morning or the day after?”

  “He forgot,” said Vivian. “Why isn’t there?”

  “It’s so the children can come and watch the ceremonies,” Jenny explained. “Everybody comes to the last ones. Time City simply grinds to a halt for these two days.” This turn of phrase gave Vivian an uncomfortable jolt. Nor did she feel much better when Jenny added, “But Dr. Wilander asked me to tell you to come to him in the afternoons as usual.”

  Vivian realised that they would have the whole morning in which to look for the Lead Casket in the Gnomon Tower. She got up early the next day and went to Jonathan’s room to see if he was well enough to come with her. Jonathan was not there. Nor was he downstairs in the matutinal or anywhere else Vivian looked. She could not understand it at first. Then the Palace began to resound with running footsteps and shouting.

  “Oh no!” Vivian exclaimed. “He has started early!”

  “He has indeed, miss,” Elio said, rushing past with a heavy pleated coat. “The ceremony does not begin until ten-thirty.”

  Jonathan must have an instinct! Vivian thought, watching Elio race away along the hall. Elio was not running anything like as fast as she now knew he could. He was humouring the Sempitern. But she had no doubt that if Sempitern Walker did seem likely to be late, Elio would start moving with blurred speed and get the Sempitern there in time.

  She turned to go back to the matutinal and almost ran into Sempitern Walker charging the other way. He was wearing nothing but pale green underwear and a red scarf. His hair had come out of its topknot and was hanging down over one ear. Vivian found herself starting to laugh. She tried to dodge round him in order to go away quickly, but Sempitern Walker reeled backwards as if she had almost knocked him down and pointed at her accusingly.

  “You,” he said. “Find me my Semiotic Slippers—quickly!”

  “What—what do they look like?” Vivian quavered, biting the insides of her cheeks.

  “Black with twisted toes and platinum embroidery,” said the Sempitern. “They must be upstairs somewhere. They’re not down here anywhere. Hurry up, girl!” He rushed past her and raced away up the stairs in a patter of long bare feet.

  Vivian clattered up the stairs after him with her hand over her mouth, trying to keep her eyes off the streaming red scarf and the flying hairy legs. This must be his revenge on me for laughing! she thought. I shall die trying not to giggle!

  At the top of the stairs, the Sempitern swung round. “Don’t follow me!” he shouted unreasonably. “You go that way. I’ll look along here,” he said, and went bounding away along the railed landing. Half-way along, he swung round again and saw that Vivian was still standing there with both hands helplessly over her mouth. “What are you doing?” he bawled. “You’re all useless, useless! I shall be late!” And he went into a dance of rage and frustration.

  The sight of the Sempitern in his green underwear leaping and jumping and waving his arms was too much for Vivian. She doubled up over the banisters, screaming. “This is no time to be seasick!” the Sempitern yelled.

  Vivian managed to raise her head. The Sempitern’s yells had enabled the Palace helpers to find him. Petula was tiptoeing from one end of the landing with a bundle of embroidered robe and the others were creeping up from the other end, hoping to trap the Sempitern between them and get him into the things they were carrying. But the Sempitern continued to caper about, his topknot flying like Jonathan’s pigtail, waving his arms at Vivian. “Hunt the Slippers!” he bawled at her.

  Vivian went on laughing, but she was laughing with amazement now. Good Heavens! she thought. He knows he’s funny and he wants me to laugh! “Only if you haven’t hidden them yourself!” she screamed back at him.

  “I never hide things. It happens quite naturally,” the Sempitern roared. He avoided Petula with a leap like a ballet dancer’s, just as Petula seemed sure to catch him, and sprinted away round the landing. “Slippers!” his voice shouted in the distance. “Where has that fool Elio put my Caucasian coat?”

  Vivian wiped her eyes and sniffed and tottered after everyone as they tore after the Sempitern. The slippers were half-way up the next flight of stairs, where the Sempitern must have known they were. Vivian picked them up and joined in the pursuit. I think everyone’s taken him far too seriously up to now, she thought as she pelted up the stairs. Maybe he took himself seriously, until I started to laugh and he discovered he liked it!

  Whatever the reason, Sempitern Walker excelled himself that morning. He careered along corridors, plunged down stairs two at a time, threw golden hats into baths and shoes at people. He shouted. He danced. And whenever they seemed to have him cornered, he escaped all the hands reaching to give him vestments and trousers as if they belonged to so many time-ghosts and sped off in a new direction, bawling for different garments. Vivian became weak with laughing. Jenny kept turning up to join in the chase, in various stages of getting dressed herself, and after a while she caught Vivian’s laughter. She had to stagger away with her hands over her face. One of Petula’s younger helpers was soon as bad as Vivian, and they lost one of the men who polished the floors half-way, when he had to sit on the back stairs and guffaw. By the end, nearly everyone was in fits of laughter. There were even lines round the ends of Elio’s mouth when he caught Sempitern Walker in the hall and firmly put him into the pleated coat.

  It was nearly time for the ceremony by then. Outside in the Close, the Annuate Guard was lining up in scarlet and gold, and Sam was on the steps of the Palace, looking in through the glass doors and grinning all over a face that was once more pink and healthy. Sempitern Walker stood still and let Elio clip the red scarf to his head-dress. He climbed meekly into the pleated trousers Jenny passed him and let everyone pass him the various staffs and chains that went with the clothes. Last of all, he held up each foot in turn so that Vivian could put the Semiotic Slippers on them. When she stood up, he gave her an unusually anguished glare. She was fairly sure that this was the Sempitern’s way of winking.

  Elio brushed the stiff coat into order and sent Sempitern Walker safely out to meet the Annuate Guard, with Jenny beside him. Then he turned to Vivian. “We have all suffered a good deal of amusement,” he said. “Will you investigate the Gnomon, miss, while I explore the other possibilities?”

  “Yes, I was going to,” Vivian said. “But I can’t find Jonathan.”

  Elio nodded to the stairs. Jonathan was coming down them, looking cool and lordly and as healthy as Sam. “Let’s get going,” Jonathan said.

  Jonathan, Vivian though
t, did not take the right attitude to his father. In fact, now she considered it, she had scarcely even seen them speak to one another. As she and Sam and Jonathan followed the last of the Annuate Guard across the Close, she tried to put things right. “Why do you always vanish when your father’s getting ready for a ceremony?” she said. “You shouldn’t. It’s so funny! I ache from laughing!”

  “I’m not going to stand and watch my father making an ass of himself,” Jonathan answered haughtily. “I’m a Lee after all.”

  “He’s a very good ass!” Vivian protested. But she saw from Jonathan’s face that he would not forgive her if she said any more. So she gave up.

  They made their way towards the Gnomon through an increasing throng of people. What Jenny had told Vivian seemed to be true. Though there were tourists there in thousands, more than half the throng were in Time City pyjamas. When they got to the Avenue of the Four Ages, the crowd was thicker still and the Avenue itself was roped off, with Time Patrollers standing by the ropes. The zig-zag stairs up Endless Hill were roped off too and guards in coloured uniforms lined the ropes the whole way up.

  “Bother!” said Jonathan. “I’d forgotten the ceremony was here today. We’ll have to go round the back.”

  They worked their way out again, the opposite way all the other people were going. Vivian looked back regretfully. A band was playing. The Avenue looked very splendid with the streamers of light fluttering from the arches in wonderful combinations of colour. Children in the crowd had flags and long sticks that played musical chimes. This ceremony looked fun.

  “It is,” said Sam. “Never mind. We can see it next year.”

  But I can’t! Vivian thought, just as Jonathan said, “There may not be a next year unless we can find that Casket.” This made Vivian think, Jonathan’s the only person in the City who isn’t like Sam. Sam thinks it’s all right deep down. I know Sam’s little, but even Elio thinks everything will be all right. And everybody else is carrying on just as usual, even though they must know there’s a crisis—as if Time City is going to go on for ever. I suppose there’s not much else most of them can do. But you’d think some of them would be worried!

  It took them quite a while of pushing and squeezing to work their way round to the back of Endless Hill. There all the alleyways were empty and Jonathan took them quickly to a tall, gilded iron gate, which opened on to a long flight of stairs. The gate was kept shut, he said, so that people would not realise there was another way into the Gnomon, but it was not forbidden.

  The stairs went straight up among the ornamental bushes planted all over Endless Hill. Jonathan took them at a run. Vivian switched on her low-weight-function, but even so she was puffing by the time they reached the Tower. She had already run up and down more stairs than she cared to think that morning.

  “No entry today,” said the Annuate Guard at the small door opposite the end of the stairs. “The procession’s due here soon.” There were twelve doors into the Tower and there was an Annuate Guard standing to attention in front of all the doors Vivian could see. She began to feel that if the Lead Casket was in the Gnomon, it was probably quite safe anyway.

  Jonathan managed to look piteous. “But we have to get in! Dr. Wilander’s giving us a test on the Gnomon this afternoon. He told us to come here.”

  “Dr. Wilander, eh?” the Guard said respectfully. “He’s not someone I want to fall foul of. I’ll see if we can stretch a point.” She opened the door and put her head inside to speak to someone there. After a while, two heads looked out at them round the next door along. They belonged to two Patrollers who knew Sam well. They let them all inside.

  The round room at the bottom of the tower was empty except for a spiral pillar in the middle. The empty spaces between the twelve doors were painted to look like flowering trees half-hiding views of Time City. They could tell at a glance that nothing could be hidden here. The floor was one huge round slab of stone. If the Casket’s under that, we’ll never find it! Vivian thought.

  Sam’s voice boomed through the room. “He wants us to see the whole tower.”

  “All right, son,” a Patroller said. “That can be arranged.”

  They were given a guided tour. The way up the tower was by the spiral pillar in the middle. The Patroller put his foot on one of the ridges that wound round the pillar and began to travel up and round the pillar. When his head was near the painted ceiling, there was room for Sam to put his foot on a ridge and travel upwards too. Vivian followed Sam and Jonathan followed her. They were carried up and round miraculously, through the ceiling—where there had not seemed any place to get through—and up into somewhere that was full of light. Vivian had to shut her eyes. She opened them in time to see that they were spiralling upwards inside what seemed to be a glass pillar. Up they went, into a part where the light was so confusingly split and reflected that she could not tell what was doing it, and after a time they spiralled out into the Time Pagoda at the very top of the Gnomon. Vivian, a little giddily, stared out through lacy arches at Time City spread about her. She could see the jets of the Pendulum Gardens rising and falling behind the dome of The Years, and the graceful finger of Whilom Tower in front of strange, lopsided Perpetuum. There was even a glimpse of the sloping golden roof of the Chronologue in the distance, and a grey roof in front that must be the Annuate Palace. Beyond, the green country stretched away to its sudden end in the sky.

  From the next archway round there was a marvellous view of the Avenue of the Four Ages, down to Millennium, and the procession of the ceremony half-way along it. The thing that took up most of the Pagoda behind was the huge bell of the Midday Clock. They could see that there was no Casket hidden in the bell. It was made of something transparent, right down to its giant clapper, and the sun flashed blindingly off it in the southern arch.

  “Best not to spend too long up here,” the Patroller warned them. “You’d go deaf when it strikes. It breaks your eardrums.”

  Jonathan checked the lacy stone all round the Pagoda, but it was too open to hide anything. A tourist had tried to hide the stick from a butter-pie in one of the larger openings and the Patroller found it at once. He sternly removed it before he led the way down a staircase that spiralled outside the tower. It was a cunning staircase, with a high outer wall, only open to the sky. You could not tell it was there from the ground. It was a long way down, because the next floor took up half the height of the tower.

  “The works of the clock,” the Patroller announced proudly, as he turned off the stairs and in through a tall thin doorway.

  The works were all made of glass and they were all moving. Vivian stared round in amazement at shining cogs slowly turning to connect with transparent ratchets and glass rods and springs—hundreds and hundreds of them, each brightly and gently moving and each connecting somehow to the giant glass pillar in the middle, which was slowly, slowly turning too. We came up that pillar! she thought, dazzled by the rainbow twinkles and stunned by the clear greenish depths of the glass. But there was nowhere for anything to be hidden because you could see through everything. Even the walls between the long thin windows were made of something half transparent. The light shone through them almost the colour of a butter-pie. Anything made of lead would have shown up like an ink blot.

  The flicker over Jonathan’s eyes had thickened to protect him from the light, but Vivian could see his eyes screwed up in disappointment as they turned to follow the Patroller again. The Patroller did not want them to stay for long here either, because the Midday Clock could deafen you in this part too.

  “Faber John wanted to show people it wasn’t hidden here,” Sam whispered breathily.

  “Hush!” Vivian whispered back, although the space was filled with faint chiming tinkles from the moving glass and the Patroller probably could not hear.

  The outside staircase went on to the ground, but there were stairs inside the wall to the next floor, because the tower was thicker near its base. It must have been a sort of look-out place at one time,
because the room below had wide windows all round, but now it was done up as a small museum and was really rather dull. The only unusual thing was the glass pillar in the middle, gently turning, turning all the time. But the Lead Casket might easily have been put in as a museum exhibit. They rushed eagerly to the nearest display case.

  “This is one of the first-ever automats,” the Patroller said, stopping at a machine by the doorway. “Still in working order too! Do any of you fancy butter-pie?”

  Sam shuddered.

  “Er—no thanks,” Jonathan said. “We—er—we’re supposed to be working.”

  He switched on his pen-function. As they went round the cases, he pretended to be very busy taking notes on a rather bent note–sheet he fished out of his pocket.

  Vivian went round ahead of him and saw quite quickly that there was nothing at all like a Casket here either. Most of the things had once belonged to Faber John. There was a hat rather like Sempitern Walker’s Amporic Mitre, only it was for a much bigger head—and it was on its side so that Vivian could see nothing was hidden in it—and a very large frayed glove; a star-shaped gold medal; a page of notes in Universal Symbols; documents; and nothing interesting at all. Vivian loitered over to the glass pillar and waited for Jonathan to give up.

  There were four niches in the pillar, about level with Vivian’s eyes. She saw each niche in turn, as the pillar slowly revolved and the boys slowly investigated each case. She walked round the pillar and looked at the niches again. They were all different. She could see they had been moulded specially to fit four things that were not the same size and shape. One was flat and square and quite large. The Iron Casket! Vivian thought. The two niches on either side of that were both oval, one small and one big. I bet those are for the Silver and the Lead! she thought. But she had no way of telling which was which. The fourth space, on the side of the pillar opposite to the square niche, was for something tall, with several sides. The Gold! Vivian thought. From the tiny grooves in that niche and the large oval one, she could see that two of the Caskets were beautifully ornamented.