A Tale of Time City

by Diana Wynne Jones

  There were very few people about in the square anyway, which was odd, considering there had just been a ceremony there. There was only a scattering of tourists and all of them were hurrying in the same direction, towards the Avenue of the Four Ages. Vivian could see a few people in robes or City pyjamas in the distance, but they were hurrying away too. Almost the only people who were not hurrying were some little groups of evacuees who had somehow escaped Dr. Wilander’s efforts to organise them. The Lees walked past more than one bunch of dingy little figures carrying plastic boxes labelled WAR OFFICE.

  “This looks just like Hollywood!” Vivian heard one say. The next group was arguing. “I tell you this ain’t the country!” Vivian heard. “There ain’t no bleeding cows!”

  “Don’t be a Charlie!” another said scornfully. “We’re still in the bleeding station. It’s the trains what’s shaking the ground!”

  “A big posh station then,” a third said dubiously.

  Even if Vivian had been able to call out to them, she did not think they would have been much help. By the time the Lees reached Faber John’s Stone, she was very scared indeed. Sam was biting his lip and Jonathan was whiter than ever.

  The Stone was a mass of tiny pieces. It was like some of the graves Vivian remembered in Lewisham churchyard, neatly spread with little chips of marble. The Lees looked at it with great satisfaction.

  “It really has broken up!” Cousin Vivian said delightedly. “The Lee Documents were quite right, Daddy!”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Lee. “This has to mean that the City’s only an hour or so from the end. We timed it right in spite of the muddles.”

  “We timed it perfectly, my love,” said Inga Lee. “You weren’t to know that they’d go to the Age of Gold first. Time-travel is so confusing.”

  “I love time-travelling!” Cousin Vivian said, skipping round Faber John’s Stone. “It was fun fooling that po-faced Iron Guardian by hopping in and out of the Lee time-lock with Leon Hardy. Then when he caught on to it, I went there by train instead! You should have seen that terrible warty woman’s face when I told her what I thought of her!”

  “Let’s get to the Gnomon,” said Mr. Lee.

  They set off briskly again, towards Continuum, and Vivian, Sam, and Jonathan were forced to trudge through the loose chippings of the Stone and follow. Inga Lee glanced back at Time Patrol Building a little nervously. “No one following,” she said. “We took a risk, coming through a Patrol lock.”

  “It was worth it,” said Mr Lee. “We needed our hostage.”

  Aeon Square was almost deserted when they came to Continuum. Mr Lee looked up at its towers with what seemed to be real affection and then across to the twin domes of Science. Cousin Vivian came skipping back.

  “There’s funny lop-sided old Perpetuum!” she said excitedly. “I remember it ever so well!”

  Her father looked up at Perpetuum with the grim look he had had in the Age of Gold. “The most useful place in Time City,” he said. “I intend to keep all that knowledge under lock and key. The Fixed Eras are going to have to pay a realistic price for anything they want to know, from now on. And I’m going to throw that fool Enkian out into history. I’ll keep Wilander and put him in charge. I want Wilander to suffer. He was the one who gave me that lousy low report and got me stuck in history as an Observer.”

  “You told me, my love,” said Inga Lee. “Just hand him over to me.”

  “And me,” said their daughter. “I hate him too. He told me I was a silly little girl.”

  She went skipping ahead to the steps that led to the Avenue of the Four Ages, where she began pointing excitedly to the right. When Vivian came up behind Mr. Lee, obedient to the Silver Casket in his hat, she found the Avenue crowded. Tourists and Time City people were hastening from both ends towards the arches that led to the river. Long lines of City people were waiting at the arches where you could hire boats, and all of these were carrying bundles and bags. Out in the country, where the River Time wound through the fields, Vivian could see the footpaths along its banks dotted with hurrying figures, all going the same way towards the time-locks up the river. It was not exactly a panic. But Vivian thought of the time-ghosts they had seen beating at the locks, and she knew it soon would be. Most of those people were going to arrive to find that the locks had stopped working.

  Cousin Vivian was pointing over the heads of the crowds. “What’s that beautiful place with the blue glass dome?” she said.

  “Millennium, dear,” said her mother.

  “Oh, do let’s live in it when we’ve got the City!” Cousin Vivian said.

  Her father looked rather taken aback. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  “Oh, please let’s, Daddy!” his daughter said, snuggling up to him as they all went down the steps. “After all, Mummy’s an Icelandic Emperor’s daughter and we’re both Lees. The Annuate isn’t really grand at all.”

  “We haven’t taken over the City yet,” Mr. Lee said, laughing, as he turned left towards the Gnomon. “But I’ll see.”

  The walk along the Avenue was hard going. Everybody else was hurrying the opposite way. The Lees threaded their way through them easily enough, but they did not bother to find a path that gave room for Jonathan, Vivian, and Sam. They were continually bumped and jostled, and often there was no way they could dodge the people hurrying towards them. And the shaking of the ground seemed worse here. The lacy metal arches were vibrating, giving an unpleasant blurred feeling when they had to walk under them. Inga Lee kept glancing over her shoulder at something that seemed to be behind Vivian. She was so obviously nervous that Vivian began to feel hopeful. By bumping sideways into a fat woman hurrying the other way, Vivian managed to get herself turned half round, before the power of the Silver Casket pulled her straight again.

  The Iron Guardian and the Silver Keeper were gliding among the people side by side, a few yards behind her. The Iron Guardian’s long face was sober. The Silver Keeper’s skull-face looked grim and sad. Vivian did not wonder that Inga Lee was nervous of them, but she did not think they were going to be any more help than the evacuees.

  “Take no notice,” Mr. Lee said soothingly. “They’re probably forced to follow wherever the Caskets go.”

  They came to Endless Hill and climbed the steps, to and fro, between the ornate balustrades. Every time the steps turned, Vivian caught a glimpse of a silver figure and a drab one, following behind on long, silent feet. Oh please let them do something to stop the Lees! she prayed.

  But when they turned into the last flight, with the tower straight above, the two Guardians simply stopped on the landing below the stairs. Vivian saw them standing there, side by side, by imitating Sam, who had found a way of looking behind under his own arm. Her heart sank.

  Mr. Lee gave a loud joyous laugh, that showed he had been as nervous as his wife. “You see?” he said. “They’re quite helpless!” He looked irritably up at the Gnomon, standing like a lighthouse, with sky showing through the windows and sunlight dazzling off the midday, bell in the pagoda at the top. “Where’s Leon?” he said. “I told him to meet us here.”

  “That young man is a born double-crosser,” Inga Lee said. “I warned you.”

  “I know,” said Mr. Lee. “But we had to have someone to keep watch in Time City in case anyone got suspicious. And you must admit he did a good job enticing the children to find you the Silver. And he did set the boy Jonathan up for me to kill when we knew he was getting dangerous.”

  Again they were talking as if Jonathan was not there, trudging up the steps behind them. Inga Lee said, “Maybe—but he didn’t warn us they were going for the Gold first, Viv. Don’t trust him.”

  “I won’t,” said Mr. Lee. “We’ll get rid of him as soon as he shows up.”

  They went up the last flight of steps, across the platform in front of the tower, and in through its nearest open door. There was an Annuate Guard on duty there. He came towards them, beaming all over his wrinkled face. “Mr. Lee, isn’t it? Wel
come back. I thought no one was going to come to the Gno—”

  That was all he said. Mr. Lee waved his hat like someone swatting a fly. The Guard fell over on his back and lay there, still smiling. None of the Lees took any more notice of him. Mr Lee stepped to the spiral pillar and went riding up it. His daughter followed him. Inga Lee waved her hand-bag and Jonathan was compelled to follow his cousin. After him, Vivian found herself stepping on to the mysterious spiral ledge. Up she went and, to her surprise, found herself stepping out into the bright sunlight of the museum room, through what looked like the solid glass of the pillar. As she did so, Jonathan fell heavily in front of her. Vivian could not stop her own feet from going on walking and she fell over on top of him. From where they lay in a heap, she could see that there had been a Patroller up here, looking after the museum. She was lying against a display case and her head did not seem to be on straight.

  Sam was emerging from the pillar. “I didn’t know—” he began, and stopped when he saw the Patroller.

  Inga Lee came out of the pillar behind Sam. She must have stopped using the Iron Casket, because Vivian and Jonathan both found they could move as they wanted. They started to get up. Cousin Vivian dodged out from behind the pillar and kicked them both, hard. “I’ve been longing to do that!” she said. “That’s for interfering!”

  “Stop it, Vivvie,” Mr. Lee said, not very seriously. He was carrying a suitcase and he seemed very pleased about it. “Look at this, Inga! The Silver Casket sent all our stuff through, right on time. It appeared just as I came up here. Put those three upstairs. I don’t want them in the way while we set things up.”

  Vivian was no sooner back on her feet than she was forced to walk, past the first-ever automat, through the archway in the wall and up the stairs. When she reached the tall archway leading to the next floor, she found herself turning smartly through it, into the bright, bright tinkling space beside the works of the great clock. There, nothing seemed to stop her turning round to look at the archway. Sam came through it behind her, puffing hard, with that look a person has who is trying not to cry. Jonathan came after him and his face was a dull red. Vivian heard Inga Lee’s high heels clattering on the stairs and expected her to come in behind Jonathan. Instead, there was a slight swishing noise. A panel of yellowish stone began sliding across the archway. Jonathan whipped round and tried to put his foot in the gap before it slid home. But he was too late. He clawed at the panel and then kicked it, but it was firmly in place, filling the arch, and he could not budge it.

  He turned back again. His eyes were staring and strange behind the darkening flicker of his eye-function. He said, in a queer strangled voice, “He killed that Patroller! Himself! She wasn’t dead when I came out of the pillar. He knocked her over with the Casket and then kicked her head. I tried to stop him, but he just knocked me down with the Casket too!” He put his hands over his face, even though his flicker was now black, and turned his back on Sam and Vivian.

  Sam sat down on the glassy floor. “He’s not my uncle any more,” he said thickly. “And she’s not my cousin. I disinherit them.”

  Vivian stood uncertainly between them until she saw a tear trickle down Sam’s cheek. She sat down beside him and patted his shoulder under the slithery mind-suit. The mind-suits had not done much to help them against the two Caskets, she thought, but then look at the layers and layers Inga Lee had worn to protect herself from the Silver Keeper!

  Sam did not say anything, but he did not shake Vivian’s hand off either. Vivian sat there, staring into the twinkling, turning glass heart of the clock, listening to the faint chime and jangle and chinking as it moved, wondering if there was anything they could do now. She did not seem to be able to cry like Sam. Things were too bad for that. She tried not to think of home, or to wonder what had happened to Mum and Dad now that the Twentieth Century had changed so queerly. She tried not to think what would happen to Time City. That was not easy. She could feel the tower shaking, smoothly and constantly, so that she felt almost as if she was riding on a train. And she could see a big dark blot rising slowly up the glass pillar in the middle, turning, turning, and becoming strange shapes as she saw it through different pieces of the glass works. It took her a moment to realise it was the dead Patroller. Then she tried not to follow it up with her eyes. She was glad that Jonathan and Sam were not looking.

  Time City is going to be a terrible place with someone like Mr. Lee in charge, she thought, looking firmly at her own knees. That brought her to the thing she wanted most of all not to think of. Suppose Mr. Lee meant them to stay here while the clock struck and be deaf for the rest of their lives? Try as she would, Vivian kept thinking of that. The myriad glass cogs in front of her kept reminding her of it. The shaking of the tower was causing all sorts of extra glassy noises, jingles and tinks and squeaks, which cut across the regular chiming hum of the works in a way that was urgent and irritating. It got on Vivian’s nerves so, that she just had to switch on her clock-function to see how near it was to midday.

  Her wrist lit up, and of course it said ten past six. Their journeys to the Silver Age and then to Twenty Century had put it completely out of step with Time City. There was no knowing how soon the great clock would strike. “Oh blast!” Vivian muttered.

  As she said it, the glass works dimmed to a yellowish twilight. All three of them looked up. The windows were now covered by panels of the same yellowish translucent stone as the walls. They could hardly tell which was window and which was wall.

  “Sealing the tower,” Jonathan said. “I’d heard there were shutters for all the doors and windows, but I don’t think they’ve ever been used. Do you think that means there’s someone outside and the Lees don’t want them to get in?”

  They looked at one another with a great deal more hope.

  “If you can get in and out of the pillar in the museum-room,” Jonathan said, “mightn’t it work the same here? Do you think there’s a way to get through the works of the clock?”

  Sam jumped up. “I’ll try. I’m smallest.”

  “But—” said Vivian, thinking of the dead Patroller. Then she decided not to say anything. Sam was already crawling nimbly among the nearest huge saw-edged cogs. He looked as if he would be cut to pieces any second. “Come back!” she said feebly.

  “Let him go. He might have a chance,” Jonathan said. “It’s the one good thing left.” He looked up at the high ceiling and more or less howled, “This is all my fault! Every time I get an idea I make a complete mess of it! I found them the Silver Casket—and on top of that I went and told Inga Lee where the Lead Casket is!”

  “Shut up!” Vivian snapped. She had to look away from Sam among the glimmering machinery. He was trying to squeeze under a glass rod that kept coming downwards at him, while an enormous disc edged up on him from behind. She turned on Jonathan instead. “You’re being as bad as Elio!” she said. “It is not your fault! It’s the Lees who’ve done all this! And no one’s got the Lead Casket yet! You ought to be thinking where it is, instead of doing a song and dance like a—like a raving android!”

  “And the same to you!” Jonathan said. He snatched a look at Sam, who was now edging under a giant elbow of glass, dimly going up and down like a bent piston. In order not to see Sam crushed, he turned to Vivian and said reasonably, “The Lead Casket—all we know is that it must be the small egg-shape, because the Silver one’s big. You could see the size from its packing. And we think we know it’s attracted to the other Caskets.” Here he and Vivian both had to look at Sam again. He was backing away from a cog like a circular saw and another, even bigger, was coming sideways at him. The sight sent Jonathan angry. “But if you know anything that size that gets attracted to the Caskets,” he snapped, “do please tell me, because I’ve never seen it!”

  Sam lay down flat on the glass floor and both cogs missed him.

  “But we have!” Vivian cried out, in a burst of relief. “We all have! The time-egg! The one Elio thought was a dud! It took us after the Ir
on Casket a whole hundred years—and it didn’t want to take us back to the City.”

  Jonathan stared at her an instant. Then he called out, “Sam! Lie there for a moment—it’s important. Can you hear us?”

  “Only just,” Sam called back. “It sort of hums. What do you want?”

  “An egg-shaped thing,” Jonathan called back, clearly and precisely. “Dark grey, about the size to fit in my hand, that gets attracted by the Caskets.”

  Sam’s voice boomed among the chiming machinery. “You mean that old time-lock control? The one that took Elio after the Silver and landed him among the bare ladies?”

  Jonathan and Vivian clutched one another. “It is!” said Vivian.

  “Sam,” Jonathan called carefully, “that egg is the Lead Casket. Got that?”

  “I can’t hear!” Sam said petulantly. “I thought you said that egg was the Lead Casket.”

  “It is!” Jonathan and Vivian both called.

  There was a short humming, tinkling silence. Then Sam called, “Who do I tell?”

  “If you can get out, tell Dr. Wilander,” Jonathan called. He said to Vivian, “It sounds as if he had an idea what my uncle’s like. Who else, if Sam can’t find him?”

  “He oughtn’t to tell anyone Mr. Lee used the Silver on, just in case,” Vivian said. And, being unable to think of anyone else, she called, “Mr. Enkian.”

  “Mr. Enkian,” Sam called back: “All right.” He began wriggling on towards the glass pillar, still lying on his back. After about a foot, his way was blocked by a nest of glass rods, where he had to stand up and sidle round them. Beyond that was a flurry of glass shapes, all working very fast, and beyond those was the pillar. Just as Sam sidled behind the nest of rods and his pale mind-suit became very hard to see, the shutter in the archway slid aside. Cousin Vivian came in, holding the Patroller’s gun.