Thief of Time tds-26 Read online

It was taller than a man. Within the transparent case red and blue lights twinkled like stars. The air smelled of acid.

  Now his point of view dived into the thing, the crystalline thing, plunging down through the layers of glass and quartz. They rose past him, their smoothness becoming walls hundreds of miles high, and still he fell between slabs that were becoming rough, grainy…

  …full of holes. The blue and red light was here too, pouring past him.

  And only now was there sound. It came from the darkness ahead, a slow beat that was ridiculously familiar, a heartbeat magnified a million times…

  …tchum…tchum…

  …each beat slower than mountains and bigger than worlds, dark and blood red. He heard a few more and then his fall slowed, stopped, and he began to soar back up through the sleeting light until a brightness ahead became a room.

  He had to remember all this! It was all so clear, once you saw it! So simple! So easy! He could see every part, how they interlocked, how they were made.

  And now it began to fade .

  Of course it was only a dream. He told himself that and was comforted by it. But he had gone to some lengths with this one, he had to admit. For example, there was a mug of tea steaming on the nearby workbench, and the sound of voices on the other side of the door…

  There was a knocking at the door. Jeremy wondered if the dream would end when the door was opened, and then the door disappeared and the knocking went on. It was coming from downstairs.

  The time was 6.47. Jeremy glanced at the alarm clocks to make sure they were right, then pulled his dressing gown around him and hurried downstairs. He opened the front door a crack. There was no one there.

  “Nah, dahn 'ere, mister.”

  Someone lower down was a dwarf.

  “Name of Clockson?” it said.

  “Yes?”

  A clipboard was thrust through the gap.

  “Sign 'ere, where it says ‘Sign 'Ere’. Thank you. Okay, lads…”

  Behind him, a couple of trolls tipped up a handcart. A large wooden crate crashed onto the cobbles.

  “What is this?” said Jeremy.

  “Express package,” said the dwarf, taking the clipboard. “Come all the way from Uberwald. Must've cost someone a packet. Look at all them seals and stickers on it.”

  “Can't you bring it in—?” Jeremy began, but the cart was already moving off, with the merry jingle and tinkle of fragile items.

  It started to rain. Jeremy peered at the label on the crate. It was certainly addressed to him, in a neat round hand, and just above it was the seal with the double-headed bat of Uberwald. There was no other marking except, near the bottom, the words:

  Then the crate started to swear. It was muffled, and in a foreign language, but all swearing has a certain international content.

  “Er… hello?” said Jeremy.

  The crate rocked, and landed on one of the long sides, with extra cursing. There was some thumping from inside, some louder swearing, and the crate teetered upright again with the alleged top the right way up.

  A piece of board slid aside and a crowbar dropped out and onto the street with a clang. The voice that had lately been swearing said, “If you would be tho good?”

  Jeremy inserted the bar into a likely-looking crack, and pulled.

  The crate sprang apart. He dropped the bar. There was a… a creature inside.

  “I don't know,” it said, pulling bits of packing material off itself. “Eight bloody dayth with no problemth, and thothe idiotth get it wrong on the doorthtep.” It nodded at Jeremy. “Good morning, thur. I thuppothe you are Mithter Jeremy?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “My name ith Igor, thur. My credentialth, thur.”

  A hand like an industrial accident held together with stitches thrust a sheaf of papers towards Jeremy. He recoiled instinctively, and then felt embarrassed and took them.

  “I think there has been a mistake,” he said.

  “No, no mithtake,” said Igor, pulling a carpet bag out of the ruins of the crate. “You need an athithtant. And when it cometh to athithtantth, you cannot go wrong with an Igor. Everyone knowth that. Could we go in out of the rain, thur? It maketh my kneeth rutht.”

  “But I don't need an assist—” Jeremy began, but that was wrong, wasn't it? He just couldn't keep assistants. They always left within a week.

  “Morning, sir!” said a cheery voice.

  Another cart had pulled up. This one was painted a gleaming, hygienic white and was full of milk churns, and had “Ronald Soak, Dairyman” painted on the side. Distracted, Jeremy looked up at the beaming face of Mr Soak, who was holding a bottle of milk in each hand.

  “One pint, squire, as per usual. And perhaps another one if you've got company?”

  “Er, er, er… yes, thank you.”

  “And the yoghurt is particularly fine this week, squire,” said Mr Soak encouragingly.

  “Er, er, I think not, Mr Soak.”

  “Need any eggs, cream, butter, buttermilk or cheese?”

  “Not as such, Mr Soak.”

  “Right you are, then,” said Mr Soak, unabashed. “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “Er, yes,” said Jeremy, as the cart moved on. Mr Soak was a friend, which in Jeremy's limited social vocabulary meant “someone I speak to once or twice a week”. He approved of the milkman, because he was regular and punctual and had the bottles at the doorstep every morning on the stroke of 7a.m. “Er, er… goodbye,” he said.

  He turned to Igor.

  “How did you know I needed—” he tried. But the strange man had gone indoors, and a frantic Jeremy tracked him down in the workshop.

  “Oh yeth, very nithe,” said Igor, who was taking it all in with the air of a connoisseur. “Thatth a Turnball Mk3 micro-lathe, ithn't it? I thaw it in their catalogue. Very nithe indee—”

  “I didn't ask anyone for an assistant!” said Jeremy. “Who sent you?”

  “We are Igorth, thur.”

  “Yes, you said! Look, I don't—”

  “No, thur. ‘We R Igorth’, thur. The organithathion, thur.”

  “What organization?”

  “For plathementh, thur. You thee, thur, the thing ith… an Igor often findth himthelf between marthterth through no fault of hith own, you thee. And on the other hand—”

  “—you have two thumbs…” breathed Jeremy, who had just noticed and couldn't stop himself. “Two on each hand!”

  “Oh, yeth thur, very handy,” said Igor, not even glancing down. “On the other hand there ith no thortage of people wanting an Igor. Tho my Aunt Igorina runth our thelect little agenthy.”

  “For… lots of Igors?” said Jeremy.

  “Oh, there'th a fair number of uth. We're a big family.” Igor handed Jeremy a card.

  He read:

  We R Igors

  “A Spare Hand When Needed”

  The Old Rathaus

  Bad Schuschein

  c-mail: Yethmarthter Uberwald

  Jeremy stared at the semaphore address. His normal ignorance of anything that wasn't to do with clocks did not apply here. He'd been quite interested in the new cross-continent semaphore system after hearing that it made quite a lot of use of clockwork mechanisms to speed up the message flow. So you could send a clacks message to hire an Igor? Well, that explained the speed, at least.

  “Rathaus,” he said. “That means something like a council hall, doesn't it?”

  “Normally, thur… normally,” said Igor reassuringly.

  “Do you really have semaphore addresses in Uberwald?”

  “Oh, yeth. We are ready to grathp the future with both handth, thur.”

  “—And four thumbs—”

  “Yeth, thur. We can grathp like anything.”

  “And then you mailed yourself here?”

  “Thertainly, thur. We Igorth are no thtrangerth to dithcomfort.”

  Jeremy looked down at the paperwork he'd been handed, and a name caught his eye.

  The top paper was signed. I
n a way, at least. There was a message in neat capitals, as neat as printing, and a name at the end.

  HE WILL BE USEFUL

  LEJEAN

  He remembered. “Oh, Lady LeJean is behind this. She had you sent to me?”

  “That'th correct, thur.”

  Feeling that Igor was expecting more of him, Jeremy made a show of reading through the rest of what turned out to be references. Some of them were written in what he could only hope was dried brown ink, one was in crayon, and several were singed around the edges. They were all fulsome. After a while, though, a certain tendency could be noted amongst the signatories.

  “This one is signed by someone called Mad Doctor Scoop,” he said.

  “Oh, he wathn't actually named Mad, thur. It wath more like a nickname, ath it were.”

  “Was he mad, then?”

  “Who can thay, thur?” said Igor calmly.

  “And Crazed Baron Haha? It says under Reason for Leaving that he was crushed by a burning windmill.”

  “Cathe of mithtaken identity, thur.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeth, thur. I underthtand the mob mithtook him for Thcreaming Doctor Bertherk, thur.”

  “Oh. Ah, yes.” Jeremy glanced down. “Who you also worked for, I see.”

  “Yeth, thur.”

  “And who died of blood poisoning?”

  “Yeth, thur. Cauthed by a dirty pitchfork.”

  “And… Nipsie the Impaler?”

  “Er, would you believe he ran a kebab thop, thur?”

  “Did he?”

  “Not conventhionally tho, thur.”

  “You mean he was mad too?”

  “Ah. Well, he did have hith little wayth, I mutht admit, but an Igor never patheth judgement on hith marthter or mithtreth, thur. That ith the Code of the Igorth, thur,” he added patiently. “It would be a funny old world if we were all alike, thur.”

  Jeremy was completely baffled as to his next move. He'd never been very good at talking to people, and this, apart from Lady LeJean and a wrangle with Mr Soak over an unwanted cheese, was the longest conversation he'd had for a year. Perhaps it was because it was hard to think of Igor as coming under the heading of people. Until now, Jeremy's definition of “people” had not included anyone with more stitches than a handbag.

  “I'm not sure I've got any work for you, though,” he said. “I've got a new commission, but I'm not sure how… anyway, I'm not insane!”

  “Thalth not compulthory, thur.”

  “I've actually got a piece of paper that says I'm not, you know.”

  “Well done, thur.”

  “Not many people have one of those!”

  “Very true, thur.”

  “I take medicine, you know.”

  “Well done, thur,” said Igor. “I'll jutht go and make thome breakfatht, thall I? While you get drethed… marthter.”

  Jeremy clutched at his damp dressing gown. “I'll be down shortly,” he said, and hurried up the stairs.

  Igor's gaze took in the racks of tools. There was not a speck of dust on them; the files, hammers and pliers were ranged according to size, and the items on the work bench were positioned with geometrical exactitude.

  He pulled open a drawer. Screws were laid in perfect rows.

  He looked around at the walls. They were bare, except for the shelves of clocks. This was surprising—even Dribbling Doctor Vibes had had a calendar on the wall, which added a splash of colour. Admittedly it was from the Acid Bath and Restraint Co., in Ugli, and the colour it splashed was mostly red, but at least it showed some recognition of a world outside the four walls.

  Igor was puzzled. Igor had never worked for a sane person before. He'd worked for a number of… well, the world called them madmen, and he'd worked for several normal people, in that they only indulged in minor and socially acceptable insanities, but he couldn't recall ever working for a completely sane person.

  Obviously, he reasoned, if sticking screws up your nose was madness, then numbering them and keeping them in careful compartments was sanity, which was the opposite—

  Ah. No. It wasn't, was it…?

  He smiled. He was beginning to feel quite at home already.

  Tick

  Lu-Tze the sweeper was in his Garden of Five Surprises, carefully cultivating his mountains. His broom leaned against the hedge.

  Above him, looming over the temple gardens, the big stone statue of Wen the Eternally Surprised sat with its face locked in its permanent wide-eyed expression of, yes, pleasant surprise.

  As a hobby, mountains appeal to those people who in normal circumstances are said to have a great deal of time on their hands. Lu-Tze had no time at all. Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.

  At the moment, in the never-ending, ever-recreated moment of this peaceful, sunlit little valley, he was fiddling with the little mirrors and shovels and morphic resonators and even stranger devices required to make a mountain grow to no more than six inches high.

  The cherry trees were still in bloom. They always were in bloom, here. A gong rang, somewhere back in the temple. A flock of white doves took off from the monastery roof.

  A shadow fell over the mountain.

  Lu-Tze glanced at the person who had entered the garden. He made the perfunctory symbol of servitude to the rather annoyed-looking boy in novice's robes.

  “Yes, master?” he said.

  “I am looking for the one they call Lu-Tze,” said the boy. “Personally, I don't think he really exists.”

  “I've got glaciation,” said Lu-Tze, ignoring this. “At last. See, master? It's only an inch long, but already it's carving its own little valley. Magnificent, isn't it?”

  “Yes, yes, very good,” said the novice, being kind to an underling. “Isn't this the garden of Lu-Tze?”

  “You mean, Lu-Tze who is famous for his bonsai mountains?”

  The novice looked from the line of plates to the little wrinkled smiling man.

  “You are Lu-Tze? But you're just a sweeper! I've seen you cleaning out the dormitories! I've seen people kick you!”

  Lu-Tze, apparently not hearing this, picked up a plate about a foot across on which a small cinder cone was smoking.

  “What do you think of this, master?” he said. “Volcanic. And it is bloody hard to do, excuse my Klatchian.”

  The novice took a step forward, and leaned down and looked directly into the sweeper's eyes.

  Lu-Tze was not often disconcerted, but he was now.

  “You are Lu-Tze?”

  “Yes, lad. I am Lu-Tze.”

  The novice took a deep breath and thrust out a skinny arm. It was holding a small scroll.

  “From the abbot… er, venerable one!”

  The scroll wobbled in the nervous hand.

  “Most people call me Lu-Tze, lad. Or ‘Sweeper’. Until they get to know me better, some call me ‘Get out of the way’,” said Lu-Tze, carefully wrapping up his tools. “I've never been very venerable, except in cases of bad spelling.”

  He looked around the saucers for the miniature shovel he used for glacial work, and couldn't see it anywhere. Surely he'd put it down just a moment ago?

  The novice was watching him with an expression of awe mixed with residual suspicion. A reputation like Lu-Tze's got around. This was the man who had—well, who had done practically everything, if you listened to the rumours. But he didn't look as though he had. He was just a little bald man with a wispy beard and a faint, amiable smile.

  Lu-Tze patted the young man on the shoulder in an effort to put him at his ease.

  “Let us see what the abbot wants,” he said, unrolling the rice paper. “Oh. You are to take me to see him, it says here.”

  A look of panic froze the novice's face. “What? How can I do that? Novic
es aren't allowed inside the Inner Temple!”

  “Really? In that case, let me take you, to take me, to see him,” said Lu-Tze.

  “You are allowed into the Inner Temple?” said the novice, and then put his hand over his mouth. “But you're just a swee—Oh…”

  “That's right! Not even a proper monk, let alone a dong,” said the sweeper cheerfully. “Amazing, isn't it?”

  “But people talk about you as if you were as high as the abbot!”

  “Oh, dear me, no,” said Lu-Tze. “I'm nothing like as holy. Never really got a grip on the cosmic harmony.”

  “But you've done all those incredible—”

  “Oh, I didn't say I'm not good at what I do,” said Lu-Tz:e, ambling away with his broom over his shoulder. “Just not holy. Shall we go?”

  “Er… Lu-Tze?” said the novice, as they walked along the ancient brick path.

  “Yes?”

  “Why is this called the Garden of Five Surprises?”

  “What was your name back in the world, hasty young man?” said Lu-Tze.

  “Newgate. Newgate Ludd, ven—”

  Lu-Tze held up a warning finger. “Ah?”

  “Sweeper, I mean.”

  “Ludd, eh? Ankh-Morpork lad?”

  “Yes, Sweeper,” said the boy. The suddenly dejected tones suggested he knew what was coming next.

  “Raised by the Thieves' Guild? One of ‘Ludd's Lads’?”

  The boy formerly known as Newgate looked the old man in the eye and, when he replied, it was in the singsong voice of someone who'd answered the question too many times. “Yes, Sweeper. Yes, I was a foundling. Yes, we get called Ludd's Lads and Lasses after one of the founders of the Guild. Yes, that's my adopted surname. Yes, it was a good life and sometimes I wish I still had it.”

  Lu-Tze appeared not to hear this. “Who sent you here?”

  “A monk called Soto discovered me. He said I had talent.”

  “Marco? The one with all the hair?”

  “That's right. Only I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.”

  “Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,” said Lu-Tze. “He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him. They gave him a field posting really quickly after he came up with that one. Hard-working fellow, mark you, and friendly as anything provided you don't touch his hair. Important lesson there: you don't survive in the field by obeying all the rules, including those relating to mental processes. And what name were you given when you were enrolled?”