Kitabı oku: «A Tale of Time City»

1 KIDNAPPED

The train journey was horrible. There was a heatwave that September in 1939, and the railway authorities had fastened all the windows shut so that none of the children packed on to the train could fall out. There were several hundred of them and nearly all of them screamed when they saw a cow. They were all being sent away from London from the bombing and most of them had no idea where milk came from. Each child carried a square brown gas mask box. All of them had a label with their name and address on it, and the littlest ones (who cried and wet themselves rather often) had the label tied round their necks with string.

Vivian, being one of the bigger ones, had her label tied to the string bag Mum had found to take the things that refused to fit into her suitcase. That meant that Vivian did not dare let go of the string bag. When your surname is Smith, you need to make very sure everyone knows just which Smith you are. Vivian had carefully written Cousin Marty’s name and address on the back of the label, to show that she was not just being sent into the country, like most of the children, to be taken in by anyone who would have her.

Cousin Marty, after a long delay, had promised to meet the train and have Vivian to stay with her until the danger of bombs was over. But Vivian had never met Cousin Marty and she was terrified that they would somehow miss each other. So she hung on to the string bag until its handles were wet with sweat and the plaited pattern was stamped in red on her hands.

Half of the children never stayed still for a moment. Sometimes the carriage where Vivian was filled with small boys in grey shorts, whose skinny legs were in thick grey socks and whose heads, each in a grey school cap, seemed too big for their bare, skinny necks. Sometimes a mob of little girls in dresses too long for them crowded in from the corridor. All of them screamed. There were always about three labels saying Smith on each fresh crowd. Vivian sat where she was and worried that Cousin Marty would meet the wrong Smith, or meet the wrong train, or that she herself would mistake someone else for Cousin Marty, or get adopted by someone who thought she had nowhere to go. She was afraid she would get out at the wrong station, or find out that the train had taken her to Scotland instead of the West of England. Or she would get out but Cousin Marty would not be there.

Mum had packed some sandwiches in the string bag, but none of the other evacuees seemed to have any food. Vivian did not quite like to eat when she was the only one, and there were too many children for her to share with. Nor did she dare take off her school coat and hat for fear they got lost. The floor of the train was soon littered with lost coats and caps – and some labels – and there was even a lost, squashed gas mask. So Vivian sat and sweltered and worried.

By the time the train chuffed its crowded hot fighting screaming crying laughing way into the station at last, it was early evening and Vivian had thought of every single thing that could possibly go wrong except the one that actually did.

The name of the station was painted out to confuse the enemy, but porters undid the doors, letting in gusts of cool air and shouting in deep country voices. “All get out here! The train stops here!”

The screaming stopped. All the children were stunned to find they had arrived in a real new place. Hesitantly at first, then crowding one another’s heels, they scrambled down.

Vivian was among the last to get off. Her suitcase stuck in the strings of the luggage rack and she had to climb on the seat to get it down. With her gas mask giving her square, jumbling bangs and her hands full of suitcase and string bag, she went down on to the platform with a flump, shivering in the cool air. It was all strange. She could see yellow fields beyond the station buildings. The wind smelt of cow dung and chaff.

There was a long muddled crowd of adults up at the other end of the platform. The porters and some people with official arm bands were trying to line the children up in front of them and get them shared out to foster homes. Vivian heard shouts of “Mrs Miller, you can take two. One for you, Mr Parker. Oh, you’re brother and sister, are you? Mr Parker, can you take two?”

I’d better not get mixed up in that, Vivian thought. That was one worry she could avoid. She hung back in the middle of the platform, hoping Cousin Marty would realise.

But none of the waiting crowd looked at her. “I’m not having all the dirty ones!” someone was saying, and this seemed to be taking everyone’s attention. “Give me two clean and I’ll take two dirty to make four. Otherwise I’m leaving.”

Vivian began to suspect that her worry about her Cousin Marty not being there was going to be the right one. She pressed her mouth against her teeth in order not to cry – or not to cry yet.

A hand reached round Vivian and spread out the label on the string bag. “Ah!” said someone. “Vivian Smith!”

Vivian whirled round. She found herself facing a lordly-looking dark boy in glasses. He was taller than she was and old enough to wear long trousers, which meant he must be at least a year older than she was. He smiled at her, which made his eyes under his glasses fold in a funny way along the eyelids.

“Vivian Smith,” he said, “you may not realise this, but I am your long-lost cousin.”

Well, Vivian thought, I suppose Marty is a boy’s name. “Are you sure?” she said. “Cousin Marty?”

“No, my name’s Jonathan Walker,” said the boy. “Jonathan Lee Walker.”

The way he put in that Lee made it clear he was very proud of it for some reason. But Vivian knew there was something peculiar about this boy, something not as it should be that she could not pin down, and she was far too worried to wonder about his name. “It’s a mistake!” she said frantically. “I was supposed to meet Cousin Marty!”

“Cousin Marty’s waiting outside,” Jonathan Lee Walker said soothingly. “Let me take your bag.” He put out his hand. Vivian snatched the string bag out of his way and he picked up her suitcase from the platform instead and marched away with it across the station.

Vivian hurried after him, with her gas mask banging at her back, to rescue her suitcase. He strode straight to the Waiting Room and opened the door. “Where are you going?” Vivian panted.

“Short cut, my dear V.S.,” he said, holding the door open with a soothing smile.

“Give me my suitcase!” Vivian said, grabbing for it. Now she was sure he was a robber. But as soon as she was through the door, Jonathan Lee Walker went galloping noisily across the bare boards of the little room towards the blank back wall.

“Bring us back, Sam!” he shouted, so that the room rang. Vivian decided he was mad, and grabbed for her suitcase again. And suddenly everything turned silvery.

“Where is this?” Vivian said. They were crowding one another in a narrow silvery space like a very smooth telephone booth. Vivian turned desperately to get out again and knocked a piece of what seemed to be the telephone off the wall. Jonathan whirled round like lightning and slammed the piece back. Vivian felt her gas mask dig into him and hoped it hurt. There was nothing but a bare silvery wall behind her.

In front of Jonathan, the smooth silvery surface slid away sideways. A small boy with longish nearly-red hair looked anxiously in at them. When he saw Vivian, his face relaxed into a fierce grin with two large teeth in it. “You got her!” he said, and he took what may have been an earphone out of his left ear. It was not much bigger than a pea, but it had a silvery wire connecting it to the side of the silver booth, so Vivian supposed it was an earphone. “This works,” he said, coiling the wire into one rather plump hand. “I heard you easily.”

“And I got her, Sam!” Jonathan answered jubilantly, stepping out of the silver booth. “I recognised her and I got her, right from under their noses!”

“Great!” said the small boy. He said to Vivian, “And now we’re going to torture you until you tell us what we want to know!”

Vivian stood in the booth, clutching her string bag, staring at him with a mixture of dislike and amazement. Sam was the sort of small boy Mum called “rough” – the kind with a loud voice and heavy shoes whose shoelaces were always undone. Her eyes went to his shoes – such shoes! – puffy white footgear with red dots. Sure enough, one of the red and white ties of those shoes was trailing on the marble floor. Above that, Sam seemed to be wearing pyjamas. That was the only way Vivian could describe his baggy all-over suit with its one red stripe from his right shoulder to his left ankle. The red clashed with his hair, to Vivian’s mind, and she had never seen a boy so much in need of a haircut.

“I told you, Sam,” Jonathan said, dumping Vivian’s suitcase on a low table Vivian could dimly see behind Sam, “that it’s no good thinking of torture. She probably knows enough to torture us instead. We’re going to try gentle persuasion. Do please come out of the booth, V.S., and take a seat while I get out of this disguise.”

Vivian took another look at the blank, shiny back wall of the booth. Since there seemed no way out that way, she went forward. Sam backed away from her looking just a mite scared, and that made her feel better, until the door of the booth slid shut behind her with a quiet hushing sound and cut out most of the light in the room beyond. It seemed to be night out there, which was probably what had given her the idea that Sam was running around in pyjamas.

What dim light there was came from some kind of street lights shining through a peculiar-shaped window, but there was enough of it for Vivian to see she was in some kind of ultra-modern office. There was a vast half-circle of desk at the far end, surrounded by things that reminded Vivian of a telephone-exchange. But the odd thing was that the desk, instead of being of steel or chromium as she would have expected a modern desk to be, was made of beautifully carved wood that looked very old and gave off silky reflections in the low bluish light. Vivian looked at it doubtfully as she sat in an odd-shaped chair near the booth. And she nearly leaped straight up again when the chair moved around her, settling into the same shape that she was.

But Jonathan started tearing off his clothes then, right in front of her. Vivian sat stiffly in the form-fitting chair wondering if she was mad, or if Jonathan was, or if she ought to look away, or what. He flung off his grey flannel jacket first. Then he undid his striped tie and threw that down. Then – Vivian’s face turned half away sideways – he climbed out of his long grey flannel trousers. But it was all right. Underneath, Jonathan was wearing the same kind of suit as Sam, except that his had dark-coloured diamonds down the legs and sleeves.

“Great Time!” he said, as he dropped the trousers on top of the jacket. “These clothes are vile! They prickle me even through my suit. How do Twenty Century people bear it? Or these?” He plucked his glasses off his nose and pressed a knob on the belt that went round his suit. A flicker sprang into being across his eyes, shifting queerly in the blue light. The fold in his eyelids was much plainer to see like that. Vivian saw that Sam had the same fold. “A sight function is so much simpler,” Jonathan said. He pulled the striped school cap off his head and let about a foot of plaited hair tumble out of it across his shoulder. “That’s better!” he said as he hurled the cap down too and rubbed his neck under the pigtail to loosen the tight hair there.

Vivian stared. Never had she seen a boy with such long hair! In fact, she had a vague notion that boys were born with their hair short back and sides and that only girls had hair that grew long. But Jonathan had twice as much hair as she had. Perhaps he was Chinese and she had been spirited away to the Orient. But Sam was not Chinese. Whoever heard of a red-haired Chinaman?

“Who are you?” she said. “Where is this?”

Jonathan turned to her, looking very lordly and solemn – and not particularly Chinese. “We are Jonathan Lee Walker and Samuel Lee Donegal,” he said. “We’re both Lees. My father is the thousandth Sempitern. The Sempitern is the head of Time Council in Chronologue, in case you didn’t have those in your day. And Sam’s father is Chief of Time Patrol. We feel this qualifies us to talk to you. Welcome back. You have just come through Sam’s father’s private time-lock and you are now once more in Time City.”

A mistake has happened, Vivian thought miserably. And it seemed to be a mistake ten thousand times wilder than any of the mistakes she had imagined on the train. She pressed her lips together. I will not cry! she told herself. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying. What do you mean, ‘Welcome back’? Where is Time City?”

“Come, come now, V.S.,” Jonathan leant one hand on the back of the peculiar chair, in the way Inquisitors did in the kind of films Mum preferred Vivian not to see. “Time City is unique. It is built on a small patch of time and space that exists outside time and history. You know all about Time City, V.S.”

“No I don’t,” said Vivian.

“Yes you do. Your husband built the City,” Jonathan said, with his flicker-covered folded eyes staring eerily into Vivian’s. “We want you to tell us how to wake Faber John, V.S. Or if he isn’t sleeping under the City, tell us how to find him.”

“I haven’t got a husband!” Vivian said. “Oh, this is mad!”

Sam, who was breathing noisily and rustily on the other side of Vivian, said, “She looks awfully stupid. Do you think she had her brain damaged in the Mind Wars?”

Vivian sighed and looked rather desperately round the strange dark office. Was it really outside time? Or were they both mad?

Both of them seemed to have it fixed in their heads that she was some other Vivian Smith. So how was she going to convince them that she was not?

“Her brain’s all right,” Jonathan said confidently. “She’s just acting stupid so we’ll think we’ve made a mistake.” He leant over Vivian again. “See here, V.S.,” he said persuasively, “we’re not asking for ourselves. It’s for Time City. This patch of time and space here is almost worn out. The City is going to crumble away unless you tell us how to find Faber John so that he can renew the City. Or if you hate him too much, you could tell us where the polarities are and how to renew those. That isn’t too much to ask, is it, V.S.?”

“Don’t keep calling me Vee-Ess!” Vivian almost shrieked. “I’m not—”

“Yes you are, V.S.,” said Jonathan. “You were spotted coming up the First Unstable Era in a wave of chronons. We heard Chronologue discussing it. We know you are. So how do we wake Faber John, V.S.?”

“I don’t know!” Vivian screamed at him. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not her! I don’t know you and you don’t know me! I was being evacuated from London to stay with Cousin Marty because of the War, and you can just take me back! You’re a kidnapper!” Tears came streaming down her face. She scrabbled to get her handkerchief out of the string bag. “And so are you!” she added to Sam.

Sam leaned forward and breathily inspected her face. “She’s crying. She means it. You got the wrong one by mistake.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Jonathan said scornfully. But when Vivian found her handkerchief and looked at him with her face mostly hidden in it, she could tell he was beginning to have doubts.

Vivian did her best to strengthen those doubts. “I’ve never ever heard of Faber John, or Time City either,” she said, trying to stop herself sobbing. “And you can see I’m too young to have a husband. I won’t be twelve until just after Christmas. We’re not in the Middle Ages, you know.”

Sam nodded knowingly. “She is. She’s just an ordinary Twenty Century native,” he pronounced.

“But I recognised her!” Jonathan said. He wandered uneasily across the office. A sort of darkening to his flickering face told Vivian that he was beginning to suspect that he had been a fool – and he was the sort of boy who would do anything not to look a fool. Vivian knew he would take her straight back to the station and try to forget about her if she could convince him properly.

So she sniffed away what she hoped were the last of her tears and said, “I know it says Vivian Smith on my label, but Smith’s a very common name. And Vivian’s quite common too. Look at Vivien Leigh.”

This misfired a little. Jonathan turned and stared at her. “How do you know her?” he said suspiciously.

“I don’t. I mean – she’s a film star,” Vivian explained.

She could see this meant nothing to Jonathan. He shrugged. “We could go through her luggage,” he suggested to Sam. “That might prove something.”

Vivian would have liked to go and sit on her suitcase and clutch the string bag to her and refuse indignantly, but she said with desperate bravery, “Do what you like. Only you’re to take me back to the station if you don’t find anything.”

“I might,” said Jonathan. Vivian was fairly sure that meant that he would. She tried not to mind too much when Jonathan dragged the suitcase over into a beam of light from the odd-shaped window, where he began briskly unpacking it. Sam attended to the string bag. Vivian spread it out on her knee for him, because that took her mind off Jonathan going into all her new winter underwear, and wished Sam would not breathe so heavily. The first thing Sam found was her sandwiches.

“Can I eat these?” he said.

“No,” said Vivian. “I’m hungry.”

“I’ll give you half,” Sam said, plainly thinking he was being generous.

Jonathan stood up holding Vivian’s new liberty bodice with suspenders attached to hold up her winter stockings. “Whatever do you use this for?” he asked, really puzzled by it.

Vivian’s face went fiery hot. “Put that down!” she said.

“Corsets,” Sam suggested with his mouth full.

There was a sort of buzzing from outside somewhere. Light came on and swiftly grew bright from all the corners of the room. It showed Jonathan standing frozen by the window with the liberty bodice in one hand and Vivian’s best jumper in the other. Vivian saw that the flicker over his eyes hardly showed in bright light, and that the diamonds on his suit were dark purple. Sam was frozen too, with a third sandwich in his hand.

“Someone’s coming!” Jonathan whispered. “They must have heard her yelling.”

“They make regular rounds,” Sam whispered back hoarsely.

“Then why didn’t you tell me? Quick!” Jonathan whispered. He bundled everything back into the suitcase and shoved the lid down. Sam seized the string bag and a handful of Vivian’s skirt with it and dragged. It was clear to Vivian that something frightening was about to happen. She let Sam tow her across the marble floor and round behind the huge carved desk.

“Hide!” he said. “Come on!”

There was a deep hollow inside the half-circle of desk, so that a person’s knees could swivel this way and that to reach the banks of switches. Sam pushed Vivian into it and dived in after her.

Before Vivian had a chance even to sit up properly, Jonathan came scrambling into the space too, dragging the suitcase behind him. Vivian ended up half-lying on her side with a clear view through the space at the bottom of the desk. She could see her last sandwich in its paper lying in the middle of the marble floor, and the heap of Jonathan’s grey flannel suit beside it.

Jonathan saw them too. “Damn!” he whispered, and he was off after them and back again while Vivian was still being shocked to hear him swear. “Don’t make a sound!” he said to her breathlessly. “If they find us, they might even shoot you!”

Vivian looked from his face to Sam’s, not sure if she believed this. They both had that tense look people have in films when gangsters are looking for them with guns. This made everything completely unreal to Vivian, like a film. She reached out and took her last sandwich from Jonathan before Sam’s stretching hand quite got to it. She bit into it. It made her feel better to chew bread she had watched Mum butter and sardines she had helped Mum mash. It told her that real life was still there somewhere.

She was still eating when a door rumbled and the light grew stronger. Two sets of heavy, clacking boots marched into view across the grey-veined white floor. Vivian watched them under the desk, clumping hither and thither, as the people wearing them checked the room. Beside her, she could feel Jonathan beginning to shake and Sam puffing little tiny snorts in an effort to breathe quietly, but she could not believe in any of it and she went on calmly eating her sandwich.

“Seems all right in here,” the owner of one pair of boots said, in a rumbling murmur.

“Funny though,” murmured the other. This one sounded like a woman. “I can smell fish – sardines. Can you smell sardines?”

Vivian stuffed the rest of the sandwich into her mouth and held both hands across it in order not to giggle. Jonathan’s face was white and the lordly look had somehow crumpled away from it entirely. Vivian saw that he had gone from being the Inquisitor to being a scared boy in bad trouble. Sam was holding his breath. His face was going a steadily darker red and his eyes were rolling at Vivian and the sandwich, quite horrified. She could tell they were both very frightened indeed, but she still wanted to laugh.

“No,” said the rumbling man’s voice. “Don’t smell a thing.”

“Then I’ll blame you,” said the woman, “if the Chief gets attacked by a mad sardine tomorrow.” They both laughed. Then the woman said, “Come on,” and the boots clacked away.

The door rumbled. After a while the lights dimmed. As soon as they did, Sam let out his breath in a near roar and threw himself on his face, gasping.

“I’m dying!” he panted.

“No you’re not,” Jonathan said. His voice had gone shrill and quavering. “Shut up and sit up. We’ve got to think what to do!”

Vivian knew Jonathan’s nerve had broken. It was time for her to be firm. “I’ll tell you what to do,” she said. “Open that silver booth again and put me back in it and send me back to the station to meet Cousin Marty.”

“No, we absolutely won’t,” Jonathan said. “We can’t. If we use it again that will make three times and the computer will register it. It always checks the odd numbers anyway, in case an agent goes out and gets lost. And they’ll find out we’ve broken the law. They’ll be on to us at once. We’re right in the middle of Time Patrol Building here. Don’t you understand?”