Thief of Time

The frame of what once had been Sir Robert Cuspidors Waggon Stuck In River was leaning against a wall in front of her. It was empty. The bare canvas was neatly rolled beside it. In front of the frame, carefully heaped in order of size, were piles of pigment.

Several dozen Auditors were breaking these down into their component molecules.

“Still nothing?” she said, striding along the line.

“No, Miss Tangerine. Only known molecules and atoms so far,” said an Auditor, its voice shaking slightly.

“Well, is it something to do with the proportions? The balance of molecules? The basic geometry?”

“We are continuing to—”

“Get on with it!”

The other Auditors in the gallery, clustered industriously in front of what had once been a painting and in fact still was, insofar as every single molecule was still present in the room, glanced up and then bent again to their tasks.

Miss Tangerine was getting even angrier because she couldn't work out why she was angry. One reason was probably that, when he gave her this task, Mr White had looked at her in a funny way. Being looked at was an unfamiliar experience for an Auditor in any case—no Auditor bothered to look at another Auditor very often because all Auditors looked the same—and neither were they used to the idea that you could say things with your face. Or even have a face. Or have a body that reacted in strange ways to the expression on another face belonging to, in this case, Mr White. When he looked at her like that she felt a terrible urge to claw his face off.

Which made absolutely no sense at all. No Auditor should feel like that about another Auditor. No Auditor should feel like that about anything. No Auditor should feel.

She felt livid. They'd all lost so many powers. It was ridiculous to have to communicate by flapping bits of your skin, and as for the tongue… Yuerkkk…

As far as she knew, in the whole life of the universe, no Auditor had ever experienced the sensation of yuerkkk. This wretched body was full of opportunities for yuerkkk. She could leave it at any time and yet, and yet… part of her didn't want to. There was this horrible desire, second by second, to hang on.

And she felt hungry. And that also made no sense. The stomach was a bag for digesting food. It wasn't supposed to issue commands. The Auditors could survive quite well by exchanging molecules with their surroundings and making use of any local source of energy. That was a fact.

Try telling that to the stomach. She could feel it. It was sitting there, grumbling. She was being harassed by her internal organs. Why the… why the.. why had they copied internal organs? Yuerkkk.

It was all too much. She wanted to… she wanted to… express herself by shouting some, some, some terrible words…

“Discord! Confusion!”

The other Auditors looked around in terror.

But the words didn't work for Miss Tangerine. They just didn't have the same force that they used to. There had to be something worse. Ah, yes…

“Organs!” she shouted, pleased to have found it at last. “And what are all you… organs looking at?” she added. “Get on with it!”

“They're taking everything apart,” whispered Lobsang.

“That's the Auditors for you,” said Susan. “They think that's how you find out about things. You know, I loathe them. I really do.”

Lobsang glanced sideways at her. The monastry was not a single-sex institution. That is to say, it was, but corporately it had never thought of itself like that because the possibility of females working there had never crossed even minds capable of thinking of sixteen dimensions. But the Thieves' Guild had recognized that girls were at least as good as boys in all areas of thieving—he had, for example, fond memories of his classmate Steff, who could steal the small change out of your back pocket and climb better than an Assassin. He was at home around girls. But Susan scared the life out of him. It was as if some secret place inside her boiled with wrath, and with the Auditors she let it out.

He remembered her hitting that one with the wrench. There had been just a faint frown of concentration, as if she was making certain the job was done properly.

“Shall we go?” he ventured.

“Look at them,” continued Susan. “Only an Auditor would take a picture apart to see what made it a work of art.”

“There's a big pile of white dust over there,” said Lobsang.

“Man with Huge Figleaf” said Susan absently, her eyes still intent on the grey figures. “They'd dismantle a clock to search for the tick.”

“How do you know its Man with Huge Figleaf?”

“I just happen to remember where it is, that's all.”

“You, er, you appreciate art?” Lobsang ventured.

“I know what I like,” said Susan, still staring at the busy grey figures. “And right now I'd like quite a lot of weaponry.”

“We'd better move—”