Thief of Time

Susan gave a little smile that, on anyone less obviously in full control of themself, might have seemed slightly nervous.

“Yes,” she said. “And, then again, no.”

“No?”

“Take War, now,” said Susan, backing away from the point. “Big man, hearty laugh, tends to fart after meals. As human as the next man, you say. But the next man is Death. He's human-shaped, too. And that's because humans invented the idea of… of… of ideas, and they think in human shapes—”

“Get back to the ‘and, then again, no’, will you?”

“Your mother is Time.”

“No one knows who my mother is!”

“I could take you to the midwife,” said Susan. “Your father found the best there's ever been. She delivered you. Your mother was Time.”

Lobsang sat with his mouth open.

“It was easier for me,” said Susan. “When I was very small my parents used to let me visit my grandfather. I thought every grandfather had a long black robe and rode a pale horse. And then they decided that maybe that wasn't the right environment for a child. They were worried about how I was going to grow up!” She laughed mirthlessly. “I had a very strange education, you know? Maths, logic, that sort of thing. And then, when I was a bit younger than you, a rat turned up in my room and suddenly everything I thought I knew was wrong.”

“I'm a human! I do human things! I'd know if—”

“You had to live in the world. Otherwise, how could you learn to be human?” said Susan, as kindly as she could.

“And my brother? What about him?”

Here it comes, Susan thought. “He's not your brother,” she said. “I lied a bit. I'm sorry.”

“But you said—”

“I had to lead up to it,” said Susan. “It's one of those things you have to get hold of a bit at a time, I'm afraid. He's not your brother. He's you.”

“Then who am I?”

Susan sighed. “You. Both of you… are you.”

“And there I was, and there she was,” said Mrs Ogg, “and out the baby came, no problem there, but that's always a tryin' moment for the new mum, and there was…” she paused, her eyes peering through the windows of memory, “like… like a feelin' that the world had stuttered, and I was holdin' the baby and I looked down and there was me deliverin' a baby, and I looked at me, and I looked at me, and I remember saying, ‘This is a fine to-do, Mrs Ogg,’ and she, who was me, said, ‘You never said a truer word, Mrs Ogg,’ and then it all went strange and there I was, just one of me, holdin' two babies”.

“Twins,” Susan said.

“You could call them twins, yes, I s'pose you could,” said Mrs Ogg. “But I always thought that twins is two little souls born once, not one born twice.”

Susan waited. Mrs Ogg looked in the mood to talk.

“So I said to the man, I said, ‘What now?’ and he said, ‘Is that any business of yours?’ and I said he could be damn sure it was my business and he could look me in the eye and I'd speak my mind to anyone. But I was thinking, you're in trouble now, my girl, 'cos it'd all gone myffic.”

“Mythic?” said schoolteacher Susan.

“Yep. With extra myff. And you can get into big trouble, with myffic. But the man just smiled and said that he must be brought up human until he's of age and I thought, yep, it's gone myffic all right. I could see he hadn't got a clue about what to do next and it was all going to be down to me.”