A Tale of Time City (13 page)

They climbed another stile and went steeply up a second field. There were cows in this field. Sam shot them a sideways look and tried to walk behind Vivian. “This bit of history’s not so good,” he said.

Vivian had never been near any cows before and she was quite as scared as Sam. They were unexpectedly big. They stared and they chewed, like gangsters in films. She tried to walk on the other side of Jonathan. But Jonathan shot the cows a look too and began to walk twice as fast.

“We want to be in time to catch her,” he said.

They all walked as fast as they could. Maybe it was the cows. Or maybe it was some other reason. A feeling grew on them that they had to get to the top of the Tor as fast as possible. The tower was out of sight now. All they could see was a sheer grassy slope with a mud path zig-zagging up it. But they all wanted to get to the tower, more and more urgently. Jonathan took the first part of the path at
a run, with his box bouncing on his back. Then, to save time, he took to scrambling straight up the grassy slope, sliding and panting and pulling himself up with his hands. Vivian and Sam clambered and panted and slid behind. One of Sam’s boots came untied with the effort. Vivian supposed that she should be eating her socks at that, but she was far too busy trying not to slip on the short grass or put her hands on the flat thistles that had cunningly disguised themselves as grass.

Sam gradually got left behind, being smaller and burdened with boots. Vivian climbed furiously and kept just under the soles of Jonathan’s shoes. That was all she ever seemed to see of him, climb as she would, until he slowed down over the last grassy bulge. Vivian thought her chest was going to burst by then.

“My legs ache,” Jonathan said. “Let’s rest.”

They were clinging to the bulge, panting, when someone came up the hill beside them, running as fast as if the slope were level ground. Vivian saw long legs and caught a glimpse of an old squashed hat on the head above them as the man raced past them. He shouted something as he passed. Then he ran on and disappeared over the bulge of the hill.

“What did he say?” asked Jonathan.

“It sounded like
hurry
!” said Vivian. “Come on!”

Somehow, neither of them had any doubt that it was urgent. They went up over the bulge in a floundering run, into sudden wide blue sky at the top of the hill. The space was quite small and flat. The tower was only some yards away and it was indeed a church tower without a church. There were two open church-like
archways in it at the bottom. Vivian could see sky right through it for a second, before Jonathan blocked her view by springing upright and sprinting for the tower.

“
Stop that!
” he yelled. His cap fell off and his pigtail flailed as he ran.

Vivian pelted after him. She had had just a glimpse of something going on inside the tower, low down on the floor, and she knew that was what the man with the hat had been shouting about. Jonathan flung himself through the archway. Vivian hurtled after him. Over his shoulder, she saw a small figure in grey flannel crouched over a hole in the tower floor and a mound of broken stone and loose earth beside that, with a spade stuck in it. The boy looked up as they came. He was fair. His thin face glared like a cornered animal’s. Then his thin hands dived for the earthy hole in front of him, found something, wrenched at it, and pulled it free. It looked like a rusty iron box.

Jonathan pounced for it and tried to drag it out of the boy’s hands. But the boy was up, quick as a flash, and running out through the opposite archway with the box under his arm. Jonathan stumbled forward. Vivian dodged round him, past a clear sight of Jonathan’s glasses falling into the hole and Jonathan’s stumbling foot coming down on top of the glasses, and raced after the boy.

“Sam!” she shrieked. “Stop him!”

The boy was running down the other side of the hill, his thin legs flying under his grey shorts. Sam came round the tower, with his face crimson and both sets of bootlaces flapping loose, and pounded across the hill to cut the boy off.

Sam should have caught the boy and Vivian would have arrived an instant later to help. But the boy was no longer there. By the time Vivian converged with Sam, there was only bare green slope where there had just before been a boy running away. One of Sam’s bootlaces whipped itself round his ankles and he fell on his face, breathing like someone sawing wood.

“I may be dying!” he gasped.

“But where did he
go
?” Vivian said, quite bewildered. She looked round. There was no sign the boy had ever been there. Nor was there any sign of the man who had run past them shouting, and that was quite as puzzling now that she thought about it. The only other person in sight was Jonathan, coming slowly and fumblingly down the hill.

Jonathan looked white and wretched. “Why did I have to shout?” he said. “He hadn’t seen us. I could have got there in time to save that polarity, if I’d only held my tongue!”

“What do you mean?” said Vivian.

“That thing he stole,” Jonathan said. “It was one of Faber John’s polarities—the things that keep Time City in place. I
know
it was. I can feel. And now he’s stolen it and gone time-travelling with it, messing up history for ten centuries to come, and it’s all my
fault!
”

Vivian would have liked to say that this was nonsense. There was not a scrap of proof of what Jonathan said. But there was no doubt that the boy
had
stolen something from the tower. And she could feel that something important had gone from the Tor. It was suddenly a much duller place. Mist was forming down near the bottom of the hill and, though the evening light was red on the low
land all round, it was a melancholy and final sort of light. From somewhere in the distance an air-raid siren began to howl. Vivian shivered and took hold of Sam to pull him up. “Let’s go back to Time City,” she said.

But Jonathan said at the same moment, “We’ve
got
to go after him!” He was carrying the egg-control in the box on his shoulder and the egg obeyed him instantly.

It was suddenly afternoon again. Sam was now lying on his face in a road. The air felt different, heavier and more dusty. But the houses lining the road were not very different from the ones Vivian had known all her life. Apart from one or two new yellow ones, they were the sort of houses that lined the main roads out of London and had probably been built about the time she was born. But they had been cared for since with bright white paint to a smartness Vivian had never seen in houses before. The only obviously future thing was a giant silver building standing smoking quietly out near the horizon.

“I think we’ve moved about a hundred years.” she said. Somehow she was rather more awed to be in 2039 than she had been to be Time City.

“Yes, but I’ve lost those stupid glasses,” Jonathan said. “Is the boy here?”

“There,” said Sam, waving his boots about in an effort to get untangled.

The boy was walking away from them up the road with the box still under his arm. His clothes had changed. He was now in wide trousers that were either too long or too short, depending whether
you thought they were shorts or not, and his jacket had immense gathered sleeves. As Vivian looked and Jonathan peered at him, the boy sensed they were there. He jerked and looked over his shoulder. The thin face stared angrily back at them. Then he was gone again.

“I can’t see him,” said Jonathan.

Sam struggled to his knees. “Gone again,” he said. “He’s probably got one of those egg-things too.”

A roaring, which they had been hearing without truly noticing, came suddenly louder out of the distance and swept up to them, where it settled to a dull drumming. Before Jonathan could suggest following the boy again, they were surrounded by six things a bit like motor-cycles. Six men in wide-sleeved uniforms sat on the cycles, looking jeering and grim.

“North Circular Vigilante Group Seven,” one of them announced. “What are you folk doing going around dressed like that?”

Vivian uncomfortably realised that nearly all the buttons on her cardigan had burst off and that one of her pyjama legs had fallen down from its garter under her skirt.

Another of the six men produced a board with a form clipped to it. “Unseemly clothing,” he said, leaning back in his saddle and ticking off squares in the form. “Disturbing the peace. Littering.” He looked at Sam’s cap, which had fallen off beside him. “Failure to wash,” he said, looking from the blackberry stains round Sam’s mouth to Vivian’s muddy hands. “Not from round here, are they? That makes unauthorised travel. Vagrancy too.”

“This is going to earn them a right good whipping!” one of the other men said, obviously liking the idea very much. “Twelve strokes each already.”

“Jonathan!” said Vivian.

“Truancy from school—that’s obvious,” said the man with the form. “Lying down in a public road. Think they’ve stolen anything?”

“Use that egg, you fool!” Sam bellowed, rolling round in the road and grabbing Vivian’s ankle as he tried to get up.

“Abusive language,” said the man, ticking another square.

“Eighteen strokes,” said the other man, even more pleased.

“Time-lock,” Jonathan said desperately. “Time City!
Time-lock!
Oh, why won’t it—?”

The egg worked at last, in a slow, heavy, swirling way. They seemed to be dragged away backwards a long, long distance, and then hung there. Vivian had time to think that only the accident that she had grabbed Jonathan for balance when Sam took hold of her ankle had caused the egg to take all three of them. Then she had time to wonder if the egg was working at all. And at last they were in pitchy darkness. Jonathan, after furious fumbling, found the flashlight in his pocket and switched it on. The light seemed weak and yellow after the open street, but it showed the massive stones and the glimmering slate of the time-lock. They all sighed with relief.

“That was frightening,” Sam said, still on the floor. “What went wrong?”

“The egg wouldn’t work at all at first,” Jonathan said. “Maybe it’s too old and worn out. Or maybe we asked it to do too much.” He put it carefully back in its hollow. “Now I don’t know what to do,” he said dejectedly.

“What time is it?” asked Vivian.

Jonathan fumbled again and found the clock-stud on his belt. He stared at the green-glowing dial on his hand. “Twelve forty-two. No, that
can’t
be right! I don’t know. I’ve no idea what time we’ve come back to!”

“That picnic!” said Sam. He wrenched off his tangled boots and began tearing off the rest of his disguise. The other two pulled off their things in an equal hurry.

Vivian was so alarmed at what Jenny might be thinking that she was ready first. Mum hated to be kept waiting. Jenny was probably the same. Vivian rushed in front up the staircase and was first out into the passage. All she could think of was the uproar there was bound to be if it was really nearly one o’clock. She left Jonathan to swing the false door back and ran up the passage. She barged through the chained door.

It was lucky that Jonathan had oiled the door. Elio was standing only a few yards away, straightening an exhibit in one of the showcases. He had not seen Vivian. She had made barely a sound coming through the door. She had the presence of mind to catch hold of the chain before it could rattle as the door swung, and ease the door shut behind her. If she stayed there, she could stop Sam and Jonathan barging through behind her. But Elio was bound to wonder if he saw her. And if he realised what they were doing, he would tell. Jonathan had said so.

Elio started to turn round.

V
ivian took three giant strides until she was more or less level with Elio. “Er—hallo,” she said.

Elio finished turning round with astonishing speed. “Hallo, Miss. You walk very quietly. I failed to hear you approach.”

“You were busy with your museum,” Vivian said. “That’s why you didn’t hear me.”

“True,” said Elio. He looked back at the display case in a dissatisfied way. It was labelled
Seventy-three Century Mountain Boots (Mars)
and Vivian supposed that you could just tell that the things inside
were
boots. “Would you say these were shown to advantage?” he asked. “They tell me I have very little artistic sense.”

“I think,” Vivian said, “that they may be the kind of things that never look right. We had bathroom curtains like that.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the chained door move. Sam’s face came round it and vanished again in a hurry. “By the way, do you know the time?” she said.

Elio turned to her contritely. Luckily the door was shut by then.
“Of course, you have no belt yet. I will get you one for tomorrow, Miss, I promise.” He pressed one stud out of several dozen on his own belt and a clock-face lit up on his wrist. It looked much more complicated than Jonathan’s. “Ten forty-six and ten seconds,” he said.

Thank goodness! Vivian thought. We’re in time for the picnic after all! At least, she realised, they
would
be, if only Sam and Jonathan could get out of the passage without Elio seeing them. The only thing to do seemed to keep Elio distracted somehow. She smiled at him. “Er—” she said. “I’ve heard people call you an android, Mr. Elio. What is an android, please?”

“It means that I am a manufactured human being,” Elio said.

“What? Made in a factory!” Vivian exclaimed, truly surprised.

“Not quite a factory. It was more like a highly equipped laboratory,” said Elio. “I was assembled from human protoplasm by scientists working at a bench.”

All the Frankenstein films she had seen flooded into Vivian’s mind. She gave Elio a wary look. He seemed like an ordinary person, only rather smaller and paler than most. Nevertheless she would have gone away quickly if she had had any choice. But she seemed to have got him talking. So she moved gently down the gallery towards the hall. “Did it hurt at all?” she asked.

“I was not conscious for much of the process,” said Elio. He took a step along the gallery with Vivian. But he turned back almost at once and frowned at his show-case. “Perhaps I should move the boots a half-turn to the right.”