Thief of Time

“You see? The universe doesn't stop even for my clock,” Jeremy went on. He folded his hands and sat down. “Watch,” he said calmly.

The clock ticked gently. Then something rattled in the machinery around it, and the big green glass tubes of acid began to sizzle.

“Well, nothing seems to have happened,” said Dr Hopkins. “That's a blessing.”

Sparks crackled around the lightning rod positioned above the clock.

“This is just making a path for the lightning,” said Jeremy happily. “We send a little lightning up, and a lot more comes back—”

Things were moving inside the clock. There was a sound best represented as fizzle, and greenish-blue light filled the case.

“Ah, the cascade has initialized,” said Jeremy. “As a little exercise, the, ah, more traditional pendulum clock has been slaved to the Big Clock, you'll see, so that every second it will be readjusted to the correct time.” He smiled, and one cheek twitched. “Some day all clocks will be like this,” he said, and added, “While I normally hate such an imprecise term as ‘any second now’, nevertheless I—”

Tick

There was a fight going on in the square. In the strange colours involved in the time-slicing state known as Zimmerman's Valley, it was picked out in shades of light blue.

By the look of it, a couple of watchmen were trying to take on a gang. One man was airborne, and hung there without support. Another had fired a crossbow directly at one of the watchmen; the arrow was nailed unmoving in the air.

Lobsang examined it curiously.

“You're going to touch it, aren't you?” said a voice behind Lobsang. “You're just going to reach out and touch it, despite everything I've told you. Pay attention to the damn sky!”

Lu-Tze was smoking nervously. When it got a few inches away from his body, the smoke went rigid in the air.

“Are you sure you can't feel where it is?” he snapped.

“It's all round us, Sweeper. We're so close, it… it's like trying to see the wood when you're standing under the trees!”

“Well, this is the Street of Cunning Artificers and that's the Guild of Clockmakers over there,” said Lu-Tze. “I don't dare go inside if it's this close, not until we're certain.”

“What about the University?”

“Wizards aren't mad enough to try it!”

“You're going to try and race the lightning?”

“It's doable, if we start from here in the Valley. Lightning ain't as quick as people think.”

“Are we waiting to see a little pointy bit of lightning coming out of a cloud?”

“Hah! Kids today, where do they get their education? The first stroke is from the ground to the air, lad. That makes a nice hole in the air for the main lightning to come down. Look for the glow. We've got to be giving the road plenty of sandal by the time it reaches the clouds. You holding up okay?”

“I could go on like this all day,” said Lobsang.

“Don't try it.” Lu-Tze scanned the sky again. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it's just a storm. Sooner or later you get—”

He stopped. One look at Lobsang's face was enough.

“O-kay,” said the sweeper slowly. “Just give me a direction. Point if you can't speak.”

Lobsang dropped to his knees, hands rising to his head. “I don't know… don't know…”

Silvery light rose over the city, a few streets away. Lu-Tze grabbed the boy's elbow.

“Come on, lad. On your feet. Faster than lightning, eh? Okay?”

“Yeah… yeah, okay…”

“You can do it, right?”

Lobsang blinked. He could see the glass house again, stretching away as a pale outline overlaid the city.

“Clock,” he said thickly.

“Run, boy, run!” shouted Lu-Tze. “And don't stop for anything.”

Lobsang plunged forward, and found it hard. Time moved aside for him, sluggishly at first, as his legs pumped. With every step he pushed himself faster and faster, the landscape changing colours again as the world slowed even further.

There was another stitch in time, the sweeper had said. Another valley, even closer to the null point. Insofar as he could think at all, Lobsang hoped he would reach it soon. His body felt as though it would fly apart; he could feel his bones creaking.

The glow ahead was halfway to the iron-heavy clouds now, but he'd reached a crossroads and he could see it was rising from a house halfway down the street.

He turned to look for the sweeper, and saw the man yards behind him, mouth open, a statue falling forward.

Lobsang turned, concentrated, let time speed up.

He reached Lu-Tze and caught him before he hit the ground. There was blood coming from the old man's ears.

“I can't do it, lad,” the sweeper mumbled. “Get on! Get on!”

“I can do it! It's like running downhill!”

“Not for me it ain't!”

“I can't just leave you here like this!”

“Save us from heroes! Get that bloody clock!”

Lobsang hesitated. The downstroke was already emerging from the clouds, a drifting, glowing spike.

He ran. The lightning was falling towards a shop, a few buildings away. He could see a big clock hanging over its window.

He pushed against the flow of time ever further, and it yielded. But the lightning had reached the iron pole atop the building.