City of Time (3 page)

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shook his head, groggy. Cati's face swam into focus. She looked both anxious and relieved.

"What happened?" he asked. "I was calling Dr. Diamond. ..."

"And I heard you," a voice said.

Owen looked up. Dr. Diamond was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking down at him. There was a half smile on his face.

"Then that was you ...?" Owen said.

"Who came and joined my mind to yours? Yes, indeed. I don't think either of us could have awoken on our own."

"We'd better get out of here," Cati said, her eyes heavy, "before the Starry sends us all to sleep."

"Yes," agreed the doctor, stretching. "It gets very musty in here after a year or so."

More than musty this time
, Owen thought. He watched Dr. Diamond looking carefully around the Starry, as though there was something wrong that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He was definitely worried.

Ten minutes later they were sitting on the sofa in the Den with Dr. Diamond examining the camping stove. "Ingenious," he said. "Now, Cati, tell me everything that has happened in the past year."

Cati went quiet. How could she explain how it had felt, autumn stretching into winter? Standing under the trees as they changed, then lying awake at night listening to the wind howling through the Workhouse

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battlements. How could she tell him about the time it had snowed, and how in the stillness she could hear the voices of children playing? How there was no one to talk to when she was worried or scared?

"Nothing much happened," she said finally. "It was just ... a little bit lonely sometimes." Owen reached out and touched her hand.

They both know what loneliness is
, Dr. Diamond thought.
That is why their friendship will endure
.

"And what happened then?" he said eventually, his eyes shrewd and penetrating. "What happened that you reached out of the shadows to contact Owen? Is time under threat?"

"I was watching on the battlements," Cati said. "There was a flight of geese that turned to skeletons and then to dust." She looked defiantly at Dr. Diamond as though he might disbelieve her.

"I saw something the same," Owen said. He told Dr. Diamond about the girl in school who had changed in front of his eyes.

"I tried to wake the Resisters, but when I touched them it was as if my fingers were hurting them," Cati continued. "I didn't know what to do, so I called Owen."

Dr. Diamond looked grave. "You did the right thing," he said. "Something or someone is interfering with time. That is why you saw what you did, and why the Sleepers could not be woken."

The scientist looked at Owen and Cati over the top

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of his glasses. "I don't know what is happening yet, but I do know one thing, my two young friends. There is a mystery here. And where there is mystery there is an adventure. Now, where is my pencil?"

"I think it's behind your ear," Cati said, exchanging a smile with Owen. Dr. Diamond produced a notebook from his overalls, licked the tip of the pencil, then started to write at lightning speed. This action had a strangely soothing effect and Owen and Cati both felt their eyelids grow heavy. Within minutes they had both fallen asleep, as Dr. Diamond had intended they should.

The doctor got up, lifted their feet onto the sofa, and covered them with sleeping bags. Then he sat down with his notebook again.

"Night good," he said, speaking backward, as he tended to do when distracted. He bent his head and began to write.

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Chapter 4

Dr. Diamond woke Owen at six o'clock. There was no sign of Cati.

"Cati has gone to check on the world. Her 'morning round,' she calls it," Dr. Diamond said. "You had better get home before your mother misses you."

"But--" Owen began.

"It's better if you carry on as normal. Go home, then to school, and come back here this evening before dark. We have much to plan." Owen jumped up. At least he would see his friends again that evening.

He ducked out of the Den into the chill morning air and ran along the riverbank. As he crossed the river on the old tree trunk he heard someone calling. Cati was standing on top of the ruins of the Workhouse. He

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waved at her and she waved back, then disappeared from view.

After school, he came straight back to the Workhouse without returning home first. Approaching the gaunt ruin, he found it hard to believe the building had ever come alive when time was threatened, and that it had teemed with people. If you looked closely, you could see the outline of the defenses along the river and some of the scars left by exploding ice lances during the battle with Johnston and the Harsh. But otherwise the building was sunk into decay and dereliction.

The wind funneling down the river valley toward Owen was cold, but it was the kind of cold he didn't mind, where you pulled your scarf around your neck and looked forward to sitting at a warm fire. Not the terrible cold that the Harsh had used as a weapon, the chill that froze your heart as well as your limbs.

He couldn't see any sign of Cati or Dr. Diamond, so he followed the riverbank to the Den. He pulled aside the bushes at the entrance and paused. There was something strange in the air, something different. Not danger, definitely not danger. He moved cautiously forward.

The first thing he saw was Cati, fast asleep on the battered sofa. As he went over to wake her, he spotted something lying on the table. At first he thought it was a cornflower. The Resisters used them as tokens of remembrance and Cati had left one in exactly the same

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place for him when she had faded back into the shadows of time. But then he realized that it was in fact a cornflower brooch, very old and beautifully made from silver and enamel. He turned it over in his hand.

"Where did you get that?"

Owen turned. Cati was sitting bolt upright, her eyes unnaturally bright. "It was on the table," he said.

"Give it to me!" She sprang up and snatched it from his hand.

"Take it easy," Owen said. She was staring down at the brooch and Owen saw tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just saw it lying there. I didn't mean any harm. Where did it come from, anyway?"

She didn't answer. Her hands were trembling.

"Cati?" he said softly.

"I don't know how it got on the table," she said, her voice shaking, "but I know where it comes from."

"Where?"

"My father," she said. "He was here, Owen! It belonged to my mother. He carried it on a chain around his neck."

Owen looked at her. His heart was beating so loudly that he thought she could hear it. He had seen what had happened to her father, the Sub-Commandant, how he'd been sucked into the Puissance, the maelstrom that had been draining time from the world. He could never have survived.

"He wasn't killed," Cati said, as though reading his thoughts. "Just lost in time."

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"Forever," Owen said. "Remember what he said. He was saying goodbye to you forever, Cati. You know that."

"Stop it!" Cati cried. "He left the brooch! He's not gone. You don't know what it's like."

"I do," Owen said quietly. "I do know, Cati."

"I ... I'm sorry," Cati said.

"Don't be," Owen said. "I'm glad he's out there somewhere. But we have to think what this means, Cati. Your father wouldn't have done this for no reason."

"It wasn't for no reason," Cati said. "It was for me."

"Yes, Cati. But ... you know what type of man he was."

"Kind and loving and--"

"Yes, but he knew his duty too. There has to be a message here somewhere, Cati. About time. Can I see it?"

Cati handed over the brooch. "Ouch!"

"What is it?"

"The pin stuck into me. It's all bent."

They examined the brooch. The pin at the back was badly bent, turned almost at right angles to where it should have been. "I wonder how that happened," Cati said, sucking at her sore finger.

"I wonder," Owen said. "Hang on a second. ..."

The late afternoon light coming through the perspex roof of the Den made dust motes dance above the table. But it was the surface of the table that had caught Owen's eye, the fresh scratches in the battered wooden top.

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"That's why the pin is bent!" Cati said. "It must have been used to scratch a message."

They bent over the table together. The scratches were definitely words gouged into the surface. They were hard to read; the wood was splintered and the letters uneven and clumsy.

go to the city of time

not enough time a tempod

"Do you know what it means?" Owen asked.

"No." Cati frowned. "I've never heard of a city of time. And what does he mean by 'not enough time'? Not enough time for what? And what is a tempod?"

"I don't know," Owen said, "but he went to a lot of trouble to get the message to us, so it must be important." He looked at Cati. She was tracing the letters with her finger, a dreamy smile on her face.

They found Dr. Diamond in his laboratory, the Skyward. The Skyward was a glass building fixed to the top of a metal column called the Nab. When the Workhouse was fully awake, the Nab opened out like an old-fashioned telescope, becoming a slender column that stood high above the building like a metal lighthouse, the Skyward on top. But now the Nab was folded away deep under the ground.

Owen had followed Cati through one of the hidden openings to the interior of the Workhouse. This one looked like a badger sett. It opened out into a damp earthen corridor that led steeply downward and they stumbled over rocks and tree roots on the way. Small pieces of magno set into the wall cast a dim light, but it wasn't bright enough to see properly.

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Finally Owen saw the outlines of the Nab, the brass body going downward into a dark aperture in the ground. Above it were the glass walls of the Skyward, lit from within.

They had to climb a rickety wooden ladder to get to the door. When the Nab stood high above the Workhouse the top revolved, so you had to wait for the inner and outer doors to line up, but now the doors were already open. Cati and Owen stepped inside.

The interior of the Skyward was familiar and comforting. Much of Dr. Diamond's equipment was made from objects he had found and recycled. There was the old fridge that produced temperatures so low that it took things weeks to defrost. There was the old airplane seat. Next, the vacuum cleaner with mysterious pipes flowing into it. A submarine periscope hung from the ceiling that you could use to see backward or forward in time. There were odors of strange chemicals and varnish and hot solder, and a delicious smell of baking. Dr. Diamond was an excellent cook and Owen knew there must be a cake in the little oven.

The middle of the room was taken up by a big clock with five faces. Dr. Diamond was standing in front of it with a notebook, frowning. Owen remembered that the

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clocks all moved at different speeds. Now, though, three of the clocks weren't moving at all. Of the two remaining clock faces, one was moving slowly and steadily, while the hands of the other one were spinning round at immense speed.

Dr. Diamond scribbled furiously in the notebook, then sucked the end of his pencil.

"Dr. Diamond!" Cati burst out. "We got a message from the Sub-Commandant!"

The scientist wheeled around to look at them. Owen was uncomfortably aware of how penetrating the gaze from those kindly blue eyes could be. "That is impossible--"

"It's not impossible!" Cati exclaimed. "It happened!"

"If you will let me finish," Dr. Diamond said patiently. "It
is
impossible, but there are other impossible things happening. Look at the clocks."

Owen studied them. He always felt a little stupid in the Skyward. Dr. Diamond had said that there were at least five different kinds of time and that was why there were five clocks, but Owen didn't really understand it.

"The clocks are slowing down," Dr. Diamond said, "and that should be impossible. And now a message from my old friend the Sub-Commandant. What does he say, Cati?"

Cati told the doctor how they had found the message scratched on the table, and showed him the cornflower brooch.

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"Yes, of course," Dr. Diamond said softly. "Your mother used to wear it. She looked very beautiful."

"Did she?" Cati said.

"Yes." Diamond ruffled Cati's hair fondly.

Owen had never thought about Cati having a mother before. He wondered where she was and what had happened to her. But now was not the time to ask. He told Dr. Diamond what had been scratched in the table.

"City of Time?" Diamond said sharply. "Are you sure it said City of Time? Those words exactly?"

"Yes," Owen said.

Dr. Diamond got up and began to pace. "City of Time and not enough time," he repeated to himself. "Obviously, he didn't have the strength to spell out exactly what he meant. It is a long while since I heard the City mentioned. And I wonder why we need a tempod? Wait here. ..."

With bewildering speed, he disappeared through the door at the back of the Skyward that led into his private quarters.

"What do we do now?" Owen said, staring after him.

"Don't know," Cati said. "It feels late. Are you going home?"

"No." He knew his mother would be asleep, unaware that he was out.

Cati sniffed the air. "You know what?"

"What?"

"You think Dr. Diamond would mind if we checked the cake?"