Thief of Time

“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.