Thief of Time

    By Terry Pratchett

    According to the First Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen stepped out of the cave where he had received enlightenment and into the dawning light of the first day of the rest of his life. He stared at the rising sun for some time, because he had never seen it before.

    He prodded with a sandal the dozing form of Clodpool the apprentice, and said: 'I have seen. Now I understand.'

    Then he stopped, and looked at the thing next to Clodpool.

    'What is that amazing thing?' he said.

    'Er... er... it's a tree, master,' said Clodpool, still not quite awake. 'Remember? It was there yesterday.'

    'There was no yesterday.'

    'Er... er... I think there was, master,' said Clodpool, struggling to his feet. 'Remember? We came up here and I cooked a meal, and had the rind off your sklang because you didn't want it.'

    'I remember yesterday,' said Wen thoughtfully. 'But the memory is in my head now. Was yesterday real? Or is it only the memory that is real? Truly, yesterday I was not born.'

    Clodpool's face became a mask of agonized incomprehension.

    'Dear stupid Clodpool, I have learned everything,' said Wen. 'In the cup of the hand there is no past, no future. There is only now. There is no time but the present. We have a great deal to do.'

    Clodpool hesitated. There was something new about his master. There was a glow in his eyes and, when he moved, there were strange silvery-blue lights in the air, like reflections from liquid mirrors.

    'She has told me everything,' Wen went on. 'I know that time was made for men, not the other way round. I have learned how to shape it and bend it. I know how to make a moment last for ever, because it already has. And I can teach these skills even to you, Clodpool. I have heard the heartbeat of the universe. I know the answers to many questions. Ask me.'

    The apprentice gave him a bleary look. It was too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning. That was the only thing that he currently knew for sure.

    'Er... what does master want for breakfast?' he said.

    Wen looked down from their camp and across the snowfields and purple mountains to the golden daylight creating the world, and mused upon certain aspects of humanity.

    'Ah,' he said. 'One of the difficult ones.'

    For something to exist, it has to be observed.

    For something to exist, it has to have a position in time and space. And this explains why nine-tenths of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for.

    Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth. Every atom has its biography, every star its file, every chemical exchange its equivalent of the inspector with a clipboard. It is unaccounted for because it is doing the accounting for the rest of it, and you cannot see the back of your own head.[1]

    Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.

    And if you want the story, then remember that a story does not unwind. It weaves. Events that start in different places and different times all bear down on that one tiny point in space-time, which is the perfect moment.

    Supposing an emperor was persuaded to wear a new suit of clothes whose material was so fine that, to the common eye, the clothes weren't there. And suppose a little boy pointed out this fact in a loud, clear voice...

    Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.

    But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty, and Was Locked Up.

    Or The Story of the Whole Crowd Who Were Rounded Up by the Guards and Told 'This Didn't Happen, Okay? Does Anyone Want to Argue?'

    Or it could be a story of how a whole kingdom suddenly saw the benefits of the 'new clothes', and developed an enthusiasm for healthy sports[2] in a lively and refreshing atmosphere which got many new adherents every year, and led to a recession caused by the collapse of the conventional clothing industry.

    It could even be a story about The Great Pneumonia Epidemic of '09.

    It all depends on how much you know.

    Supposing you'd watched the slow accretion of snow over thousands of years as it was compressed and pushed over the deep rock until the glacier calved its icebergs into the sea, and you watched an iceberg drift out through the chilly waters, and you got to know its cargo of happy polar bears and seals as they looked forward to a brave new life in the other hemisphere where they say the ice floes are lined with crunchy penguins, and then wham! Tragedy loomed in the shape of thousands of tons of unaccountably floating iron and an exciting sound track...

    ... you'd want to know the whole story.

    And this one starts with desks.

    This is the desk of a professional. It is clear that their job is their life. There are... human touches, but these are the human touches that strict usage allows in a chilly world of duty and routine.

    Mostly they're on the only piece of real colour in this picture of blacks and greys. It's a coffee mug. Someone somewhere wanted to make it a jolly mug. It bears a rather unconvincing picture of a teddy bear, and the legend 'To The World's Greatest Grandad' and the slight change in the style of lettering on the word 'Grandad' makes it clear that this has come from one of those stalls that have hundreds of mugs like this, declaring that they're for the world's greatest Grandad/Dad/Mum/Granny/Uncle/Aunt/Blank. Only someone whose life contains very little else, one feels, would treasure a piece of gimcrackery like this.

    It currently holds tea, with a slice of lemon.

    The bleak desktop also contains a paperknife in the shape of a scythe and a number of hourglasses.

    Death picks up the mug in a skeletal hand...

    ... and took a sip, pausing only to look again at the wording he'd read thousands of times before, and then put it down.

    VERY WELL, he said, in tones of funeral bells. SHOW ME.

    The last item on the desktop was a mechanical contrivance. 'Contrivance' was exactly the right kind of word for it. Most of it was two discs. One was horizontal and contained a circlet of very small squares of what would prove to be carpet. The other was set vertically and had a large number of arms, each one of which held a very small slice of buttered toast. Each slice was set so that it could spin freely as the turning of the wheel brought it down towards the carpet disc.

    I BELIEVE I AM BEGINNING TO GET THE IDEA, said Death.

    The small figure by the machine saluted smartly and beamed, if a rat skull could beam. It pulled a pair of goggles over its eye sockets, hitched up its robe and clambered into the machine.

    Death was never quite sure why he allowed the Death of Rats to have an independent existence. After all, being Death meant being the Death of everything, including rodents of all descriptions. But perhaps everyone needs a tiny part of themselves that can, metaphorically, be allowed to run naked in the rain[3], to think the unthinkable thoughts, to hide in corners and spy on the world, to do the forbidden but enjoyable deeds.

    Slowly, the Death of Rats pushed the treadles. The wheels began to spin.

    'Exciting, eh?' said a hoarse voice by Death's ear. It belonged to Quoth, the raven, who had attached himself to the household as the Death of Rats' personal transport and crony. He was, he always said, only in it for the eyeballs.

    The carpets began to turn. The tiny toasties slapped down randomly, sometimes with a buttery squelch, sometimes without. Quoth watched carefully, in case any eyeballs were involved.

    Death saw that some time and effort had been spent devising a mechanism to rebutter each returning slice. An even more complex one measured the number of buttered carpets.

    After a couple of complete turns the lever of the buttered carpet ratio device had moved to 60 per cent, and the wheels stopped.

    WELL? said Death. IF YOU DID IT AGAIN, IT COULD WELL BE THAT-

    The Death of Rats shifted a gear lever and began to pedal again.

    SQUEAK, it commanded. Death obediently leaned closer.

    This time the needle went only as high as 40 per cent.

    Death leaned closer still.

    The eight pieces of carpet that had been buttered this time were, in their entirety, the pieces that had been missed first time round.

    Spidery cogwheels whirred in the machinc. A sign emerged, rather shakily, on springs, with an effect that was the visual equivalent of the word 'boing'.

    A moment later two sparklers spluttered fitfully into life and sizzled away on either side of the word: MALIGNITY.

    Death nodded. It was just as he'd suspected.

    He crossed his study, the Death of Rats scampering ahead of him, and reached a full-length mirror. It was dark, like the bottom of a well. There was a pattern of skulls and bones around the frame, for the sake of appearances; Death could not look himself in the skull in a mirror with cherubs and roses around it.

    The Death of Rats climbed the frame in a scrabble of claws and looked at Death expectantly from the top. Quoth fluttered over and pecked briefly at his own reflection, on the basis that anything was worth a try.

    SHOW ME, said Death. SHOW ME... MY THOUGHTS.

    A chessboard appeared, but it was triangular, and so big that only the nearest point could be seen. Right on this point was the world - turtle, elephants, the little orbiting sun and all. It was the Discworld, which existed only just this side of total improbability and, therefore, in border country. In border country the border gets crossed, and sometimes things creep into the universe that have rather more on their mind than a better life for their children and a wonderful future in the fruit-picking and domestic service industries.

    On every other black or white triangle of the chessboard, all the way to infinity, was a small grey shape, rather like an empty hooded robe.

    Why now? thought Death.

    He recognized them. They were not life forms. They were... non-life forms. They were the observers of the operation of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell.

    And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. Humanity practically was things that didn't have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.

    Intelligent life was, therefore, an anomaly. It made the filing untidy. The Auditors hated things like that. Periodically, they tried to tidy things up a little.

    The year before, astronomers across the Discworld had been puzzled to see the stars wheel gently across the sky as the world-turtle executed a roll. The thickness of the world never allowed them to see why, but Great A'Tuin's ancient head had snaked out and down and had snapped right out of the sky the speeding asteroid that would, had it hit, have meant that no one would have needed to buy a diary ever again.

    No, the world could take care of obvious threats like that. So now the grey robes preferred more subtle, cowardly skirmishes in their endless desire for a universe where nothing happened that was not completely predictable.

    The butter-side-down effect was only a trivial but telling indicator. It showed an increase in activity. Give up, was their eternal message. Go back to being blobs in the ocean. Blobs are easy.

    But the great game went on at many levels, Death knew. And often it was hard to know who was playing.

    EVERY CAUSE HAS ITS EFFECT, he said aloud. SO EVERY EFFECT HAS ITS CAUSE.

    He nodded at the Death of Rats. SHOW ME, said Death. SHOW ME... A BEGINNING.

    Tick

    It was a bitter winter's night. The man hammered on the back door, sending snow sliding off the roof.

    The girl, who had been admiring her new hat in the mirror, tweaked the already low neckline of her dress for slightly more exposure, just in case the caller was male, and went and opened the door.

    A figure was outlined against the freezing starlight. Flakes were already building up on his cloak.

    'Mrs Ogg? The midwife?' he said.

    'It's Miss, actually,' she said proudly. 'And witch, too, o'course.' She indicated her new black pointy hat. She was still at the stage of wearing it in the house.

    'You must come at once. It's very urgent.'

    The girl looked suddenly panic-stricken. 'Is it Mrs Weaver? I didn't reckon she was due for another couple of we-'

    'I have come a long way,' said the figure. 'They say you are the best in the world.'

    'What? Me? I've only delivered one!' said Miss Ogg, now looking hunted. 'Biddy Spective is a lot more experienced than me! And old Minnie Forthwright! Mrs Weaver was going to be my first solo, 'cos she's built like a wardro-'

    'I do beg your pardon. I will not trespass further on your time.'

    The stranger retreated into the flake-speckled shadows.

    'Hello?' said Miss Ogg. 'Hello?'

    But there was nothing there, except footprints. Which stopped in the middle of the snow-covered path...

    Tick

    There was a hammering on the door. Mrs Ogg put down the child that had been sitting on her knee and went and raised the latch.

    A dark figure stood outlined against the warm summer evening sky, and there was something strange about its shoulders.

    'Mrs Ogg? You are married now?'

    'Yep. Twice,' said Mrs Ogg cheerfully. 'What can I do for y-'

    'You must come at once. It's very urgent.'

    'I didn't know anyone was-'

    'I have come a long way,' said the figure.

    Mrs Ogg paused. There was something in the way he had pronounced long. And now she could see that the whiteness on the cloak was snow, melting fast. Faint memory stirred.

    'Well, now,' she said, because she'd learned a lot in the last twenty years or so, 'that's as may be, and I'll always do the best I can, ask anyone. But I wouldn't say I'm the best. Always learnin' something new, that's me.'

    'Oh. In that case I will call at a more convenient... moment.'

    'Why've you got snow on-?'

    But, without ever quite vanishing, the stranger was no longer present...

    Tick

    There was a hammering on the door. Nanny Ogg carefully put down her brandy nightcap and stared at the wall for a moment. Now a lifetime of edge witchery[4] had honed senses that most people never really knew they had, and something in her head went 'click'.

    On the hob the kettle for her hot-water bottle was just coming to the boil.

    She laid down her pipe, got up and opened the door on this springtime midnight.

    'You've come a long way, I'm thinking,' she said, showing no surprise at the dark figure.

    'That is true, Mrs Ogg.'

    'Everyone who knows me calls me Nanny.'

    She looked down at the melting snow dripping off the cloak. It hadn't snowed up here for a month.

    'And it's urgent, I expect?' she said, as memory unrolled.

    'Indeed.'

    'And now you got to say, "You must come at once."'

    'You must come at once.'

    'Well, now,' she said. 'I'd say, yes, I'm a pretty good midwife, though I do say it myself. I've seen hundreds into the world. Even trolls, which is no errand for the inexperienced. I know birthing backwards and forwards and damn near sideways at times. Always been ready to learn something new, though.' She looked down modestly. 'I wouldn't say I'm the best,' she said, 'but I can't think of anyone better, I have to say.'

    'You must leave with me now.'

    'Oh, I must, must I?' said Nanny Ogg.

    'Yes!'

    An edge witch thinks fast, because edges can shift so quickly. And she learns to tell when a mythology is unfolding, and when the best you can do is put yourself in its path and run to keep up.

    'I'll just go and get-'

    'There is no time.'

    'But I can't just walk right out and-'

    'Now.'

    Nanny reached behind the door for her birthing bag, always kept there for just such occasions as this, full of the things she knew she'd want and a few of the things she always prayed she'd never need.

    'Right,' she said.

    She left.

    Tick

    The kettle was just boiling when Nanny walked back into her kitchen. She stared at it for a moment and then moved it off the fire.

    There was still a drop of brandy left in the glass by her chair. She drained that, then refilled the glass to the brim from the bottle.

    She picked up her pipe. The bowl was still warm. She pulled on it, and the coals crackled.

    Then she took something out of her bag, which was now a good deal emptier, and, brandy glass in her hand, sat down to look at it.

    'Well,' she said at last. 'That was... very unusual...'

    Tick

    Death watched the image fade. A few flakes of snow that had blown out of the mirror had already melted on the floor, but there was still a whiff of pipe smoke in the air.

    AH, I SEE, he said. A BIRTHING, IN STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES. BUT IS THAT WHAT THE PROBLEM WAS OR WAS THAT WHAT THE SOLUTION WILL BE?

    SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.

    QUITE SO, said Death. YOU MAY VERY WELL BE RIGHT. I DO KNOW THAT THE MIDWIFE WILL NEVER TELL ME.

    The Death of Rats looked surprised. SQUEAK?

    Death smiled. DEATH? ASKING AFTER THE LIFE OF A CHILD? NO. SHE WOULD NOT.

    ''scuse me,' said the raven, 'but how come Miss Ogg became Mrs Ogg? Sounds like a bit of a rural arrangement, if you catch my meaning.'

    WITCHES ARE MATRILINEAL, said Death. THEY FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO CHANGE MEN THAN TO CHANGE NAMES.

    He went back to his desk and opened a drawer.

    There was a thick book there, bound in night. On the cover, where a book like this might otherwise say 'Our Wedding' or, 'Acme Photo Album', it said 'MEMORIES'.

    Death turned the heavy pages carefully. Some of the memories escaped as he did so, forming brief pictures in the air before the page turned, and they went flying and fading into the distant, dark corners of the room. There were snatches of sound, too, of laughter, tears, screams and for some reason a brief burst of xylophone music, which caused him to pause for a moment.

    An immortal has a great deal to remember. Sometimes its better to put things where they will be safe.

    One ancient memory, brown and cracking round the edges, lingered in the air over the desk. It showed five figures, four on horseback, one in a chariot, all apparently riding out of a thunderstorm. The horses were at a flat gallop. There was a lot of smoke and flame and general excitement.

    AH, THE OLD DAYS, said Death. BEFORE THERE WAS THIS FASHION FOR HAVING A SOLO CAREER.

    SQUEAK? the Death of Rats enquired.

    OH, YES, said Death. ONCE THERE WERE FIVE OF US. FIVE HORSEMEN. BUT YOU KNOW HOW THINGS ARE. THERE'S ALWAYS A ROW. CREATIVE DISAGREEMENTS, ROOMS BEING TRASHED, THAT SORT OF THING. He sighed. AND THINGS SAID THAT PERHAPS SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SAID.

    He turned a few more pages and sighed again. When you needed an ally, and you were Death, on whom could you absolutely rely?

    His thoughtful gaze fell on the teddy bear mug.

    Of course, there was always family. Yes. He'd promised not to do this again, but he'd never got the hang of promises.

    He got up and went back to the mirror. There was not a lot of time. Things in the mirror were closer than they appeared.

    There was a slithering noise, a breathless moment of silence, and a crash like a bag of skittles being dropped.

    The Death of Rats winced. The raven took off hurriedly.

    HELP ME UP, PLEASE, said a voice from the shadows. AND THEN PLEASE CLEAN UP THE DAMN BUTTER.

    Tick

    This desk was a field of galaxies.

    Things twinkled. There were complex wheels and spirals, brilliant against the blackness...

    Jeremy always liked the moment when he had a clock in pieces, with every wheel and spring carefully laid out on the black velvet cloth in front of him. It was like looking at Time, dismantled, controllable, every part of it understood...

    He wished his life was like that. It would be nice to reduce it to bits, spread them all out on the table, clean and oil them properly and put them together so that they coiled and spun as they ought to. But sometimes it seemed that the life of Jeremy had been assembled by a not very competent craftsman, who had allowed a number of small but important things to go ping into the corners of the room.

    He wished he liked people more, but somehow he could never get on with them. He never knew what to say. If life was a party, he wasn't even in the kitchen. He envied the people who made it as far as the kitchen. There would probably be the remains of the dip to eat, and a bottle or two of cheap wine that someone had brought along that'd probably be okay if you took out the drowned cigarette stubs. There might even be a girl in the kitchen, although Jeremy knew the limits of his imagination.

    But Jeremy never even got an invitation.

    Clocks, now... clocks were different. He knew what made clocks tick.

    His full name was Jeremy Clockson, and that was no accident. He'd been a member of the Guild of Clockmakers since he was a few days old, and everyone knew what that meant. It meant his life had begun in a basket, on a doorstep. Everyone knew how it worked. All the Guilds took in the foundlings that arrived with the morning milk. It was an ancient form of charity, and there were far worse fates. The orphans got a life, and an upbringing of a sort, and a trade, and a future, and a name. Many a fine lady or master craftsman or city dignitary had a telltale surname like Ludd or Doughy or Pune or Clockson. They'd been named after trade heroes or patron deities, and this turned them into a family, of a sort. The older ones remembered where they came from, and at Hogswatch they were free with donations of food and clothing to the various younger brothers and sisters of the basket. It wasn't perfect, but, then, what is?

    So Jeremy had grown up healthy, and rather strange, and with a gift for his adoptive craft that almost made up for every other personal endowment that he did not possess.

    The shop bell rang. He sighed and put down his eyeglass. He didn't rush, though. There was a lot to look at in the shop. Sometimes he even had to cough to attract the customer's attention. That being said, sometimes Jeremy had to cough to attract the attention of his reflection when he was shaving.

    Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available. He was puzzled that people seemed to think he was a boring conversationalist. Why, he could talk about all kinds of clock. Mechanical clocks, magical clocks, water clocks, fire clocks, floral clocks, candle clocks, sand clocks, cuckoo clocks, the rare Hershebian beetle clocks... But for some reason he always ran out of listeners before he ran out of clocks.

    He stepped out into his shop, and stopped.

    'Oh... I'm so sorry to have kept you,' he said. It was a woman. And two trolls had taken up positions just inside the door. Their dark glasses and huge ill-fitting black suits put them down as people who put people down. One of them cracked his knuckles when he saw Jeremy looking at him.

    The woman was wrapped in an enormous and expensive white fur coat, which might have explained the trolls. Long black hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her face was made up so pale that it was almost the shade of the coat. She was... quite attractive, thought Jeremy, who was admittedly no judge whatsoever, but it was a monochromatic beauty. He wondered if she was a zombie. There were quite a few in the city now, and the prudent ones had taken it with them when they died, and probably could afford a coat like that.

    'A beetle clock?' she said. She had turned away from the glass dome.

    'Oh, er, yes... The Hershebian lawyer beetle has a very consistent daily routine,' said Jeremy. 'I, er, only keep it for, um, interest.'

    'How very... organic,' said the woman. She stared at him as if he was another kind of beetle. 'We are Myria LeJean. Lady Myria LeJean.'

    Jeremy obediently held out a hand. Patient men at the Clockmakers' Guild had spent a long time teaching him how to Relate to People before giving it up in despair, but some things had stuck.

    Her ladyship looked at the waiting hand. Finally, one of the trolls lumbered over.

    'Der lady does not shake hands,' it said, in a reverberating whisper. 'She are not a tactile kinda person.'

    'Oh?' said Jeremy.

    'But enough of this, perhaps,' said Lady LeJean, stepping back. 'You make clocks, and we-'

    There was a jingling noise from Jeremy's shirt pocket. He pulled out a large watch.

    'If that was chiming the hour, you are fast,' said the woman.

    'Er... um... no... you might find it a good idea to, um, put your hands over your ears...'

    It was three o'clock. And every clock struck it at once. Cuckoos cuckooed, the hour pins fell out of the candle clock, the water clocks gurgled and seesawed as the buckets emptied, bells clanged, gongs banged, chimes tinkled and the Hershebian lawyer beetle turned a somersault.

    The trolls had clapped their huge hands over their ears, but Lady LeJean merely stood with her hands on her hips, head on one side, until the last echo died away.

    'All correct, we see,' she said.

    'What?' said Jeremy. He'd been thinking: perhaps a vampire, then?

    'You keep all your clocks at the right time,' said Lady LeJean. 'You're very particular about that, Mr Jeremy?'

    'A clock that doesn't tell the right time is... wrong,' said Jeremy. Now he was wishing she'd go away. Her eyes were worrying him. He'd heard about people having grey eyes, and her eyes were grey, like the eyes of a blind person, but she was clearly looking at him and through him.

    'Yes, there was a little bit of trouble over that, wasn't there?' said Lady LeJean.

    'I... I don't... I don't... don't know what you're-'

    'At the Clockmakers' Guild? Williamson, who kept his clock five minutes fast? And you-'

    'I am much better now,' said Jeremy stiffly. 'I have medicine. The Guild was very kind. Now please go away.'

    'Mr Jeremy, we want you to build us a clock that is accurate.'

    'All my clocks are accurate,' said Jeremy, staring at his feet. He wasn't due to take his medicine for another five hours and seventeen minutes, but he was feeling the need for it now. 'And now I must ask-'

    'How accurate are your clocks?'

    'Better than a second in eleven months,' said Jeremy promptly.

    'That is very good?'

    'Yes.' It had been very good. That was why the Guild had been so understanding. Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

    'We want much better accuracy than that.'

    'It can't be done.'

    'Oh? You mean that you can't do it?'

    'No, I can't. And if I can't, then neither can any other clockmaker in the city. I'd know about it if they could!'

    'So proud? Are you sure?'

    'I'd know.' And he would. He'd know for certain. The candle clocks and the water clocks... they were toys, which he kept out of a sort of respect for the early days of timekeeping, and even then he'd spent weeks experimenting with waxes and buckets and had turned out primitive clocks that you could, well, very nearly set your watch by. It was okay that they couldn't be that accurate. They were simple, organic things, parodies of time. They didn't grind across his nerves. But a real clock... well, that was a mechanism, a thing of numbers, and numbers had to be perfect.

    She put her head on one side again. 'How do you test to that accuracy?' she said.

    They'd often asked him that in the Guild, once his talent had revealed itself. He hadn't been able to answer the question then, either, because it didn't make sense. You built a clock to be accurate. A portrait painter painted a picture. If it looked like the subject, then it was an accurate picture. If you built the clock right, it would be accurate. You didn't have to test it. You'd know.

    'I'd know,' he said.

    'We want you to build a clock that is very accurate.'

    'How accurate?'

    'Accurate.'

    'But I can only build to the limit of my materials,' said Jeremy. 'I have... developed certain techniques, but there are things like... the vibration of the traffic in the street, little changes in temperature, that sort of thing.'

    Lady LeJean was now inspecting a range of fat imp-powered watches. She picked one up and opened the back. There was the tiny saddle, and the pedals, but they were forlorn and empty.

    'No imps?' she said.

    'I keep them for historical interest,' said Jeremy. 'They were barely accurate to a few seconds a minute, and they'd stop completely overnight. They were only any good if your idea of accuracy was "around two-ish".' He grimaced when he used the term. It felt like hearing fingernails on a blackboard.

    'How about invar?' said the lady, still apparently inspecting the museum of clocks.

    Jeremy looked shocked. 'The alloy? I didn't think anyone outside the Guild knew about that. And it is very expensive. Worth a lot more than its weight in gold.'

    Lady LeJean straightened up. 'Money is no object,' she said. 'Would invar allow you to reach total accuracy?'

    'No. I already use it. It's true that it is not affected by temperature, but there are always... barriers. Smaller and smaller interferences become bigger and bigger problems. It's Xeno's Paradox.'

    'Ah, yes. He was the Ephebian philosopher who said you couldn't hit a running man with an arrow, wasn't he?' said the lady.

    'In theory, because-'

    'But Xeno came up with four paradoxes, I believe,' said Lady LeJean. 'They involved the idea that there is such a thing as the smallest possible unit of time. And it must exist, mustn't it? Consider the present. It must have a length, because one end of it is connected to the past and the other is connected to the future, and if it didn't have a length then the present couldn't exist at all. There would be no time for it to be the present in.'

    Jeremy was suddenly in love. He hadn't felt like this since he'd taken the back off the nursery clock when he was fourteen months old.

    'Then you're talking about... the famous "tick of the universe",' he said. 'And no gear cutter could possibly make gears that small...'

    'It depends on what you would call a gear. Have you read this?'

    Lady LeJean waved a hand at one of the trolls, who lumbered over and dropped an oblong package on the counter.

    Jeremy undid it. It contained a small book. 'Grim Fairy Tales?' he said.

    'Read the story about the glass clock of Bad Schüschein,' said Lady LeJean.

    'Children's stories?' said Jeremy. 'What can they tell me?'

    'Who knows? We will call again tomorrow,' said Lady LeJean, 'to hear about your plans. In the meantime, here is a little token of our good faith.'

    The troll laid a large leather bag on the counter. It clinked with the heavy, rich clink of gold. Jeremy didn't pay it a great deal of attention. He had quite a lot of gold. Even skilled clockmakers came to buy his clocks. Gold was useful because it gave him the time to work on more clocks. These earned him more gold. Gold was, more or less, something that occupied the space between clocks.

    'I can also obtain invar for you, in large quantities,' she said. 'That will be part of your payment, although I agree that even invar will not serve your purpose. Mr Jeremy, both you and I know that your payment for making the first truly accurate clock will be the opportunity to make the first truly accurate clock, yes?'

    He smiled nervously. 'It would be... wonderful, if it could be done,' he said. 'Really, it would... be the end of clockmaking.'

    'Yes,' said Lady LeJean. 'No one would ever have to make a clock again.'

    Tick

    This desk is neat.

    There is a pile of books on it, and a ruler.

    There is also, at the moment, a clock made out of cardboard. Miss picked it up.

    The other teachers in the school were known as Stephanie and Joan and so on, but to her class she was very strictly Miss Susan. 'Strict', in fact, was a word that seemed to cover everything about Miss Susan and, in the classroom, she insisted on the Miss in the same way that a king insists upon Your Majesty, and for pretty much the same reason.

    Miss Susan wore black, which the headmistress disapproved of but could do nothing about because black was, well, a respectable colour. She was young, but with an indefinable air of age about her. She wore her hair, which was blond-white with one black streak, in a tight bun. The headmistress disapproved of that, too - it suggested an Archaic Image of Teaching, she said, with the assurance of someone who could pronounce a capital letter. But she didn't ever dare disapprove of the way Miss Susan moved, because Miss Susan moved like a tiger.

    It was in fact always very hard to disapprove of Miss Susan in her presence, because if you did she gave you a Look. It was not in any way a threatening look. It was cool and calm. You just didn't want to see it again.

    The Look worked in the classroom, too. Take homework, another Archaic Practice the headmistress was ineffectually Against. No dog ever ate the homework of one of Miss Susan's students, because there was something about Miss Susan that went home with them; instead the dog brought them a pen and watched imploringly while they finished it. Miss Susan seemed to have an unerring instinct for spotting laziness and effort, too. Contrary to the headmistress's instructions, Miss Susan did not let the children do what they liked. She let them do what she liked. It had turned out to be a lot more interesting for everyone.

    Miss Susan held up the cardboard clock and said: 'Who can tell me what this is?'

    A forest of hands shot up.

    'Yes, Miranda?'

    'It's a clock, miss.'

    Miss Susan smiled, carefully avoided the hand that was being waved by a boy called Vincent, who was also making frantically keen 'ooo, ooo, ooo' noises, and chose the one behind him.

    'Nearly right,' she said. 'Yes, Samuel?'

    'It's all cardboard made to look like a clock,' said the boy.

    'Correct. Always see what's really there. And I'm supposed to teach you to tell the time with this.' Miss Susan gave it a sneer and tossed it away.

    'Shall we try a different way?' she said, and snapped her fingers.

    'Yes!' the class chorused, and then it went 'Aah!' as the walls, floor and ceiling dropped away and the desks hovered high over the city.

    A few feet away was the huge cracked face of the tower clock of Unseen University.

    The children nudged one another excitedly. The fact that their boots were over three hundred feet of fresh air didn't seem to bother them. Oddly, too, they did not seem surprised. This was just an interesting thing. They acted like connoisseurs who had seen other interesting things. You did, when you were in Miss Susan's class.

    'Now, Melanie,' said Miss Susan, as a pigeon landed on her desk. 'The big hand is on the twelve and the enormous hand is nearly on the ten, so it's...'

    Vincent's hand shot up. 'Ooo, miss, ooo, ooo...'

    'Nearly twelve o'clock,' Melanie managed.

    'Well done. But here. ..'

    The air blurred. Now the desks, still in perfect formation, were firmly on the cobbles of a plaza in a different city. So was most of the classroom. There were the cupboards, and the Nature Table, and the blackboard. But the walls still lagged behind.

    No one in the plaza paid the visitors any attention but, oddly, no one tried to walk into them either. The air was warmer, and smelled of sea and swamp.

    'Anyone know where this is?' said Miss Susan.

    'Ooo, me, miss, ooo, ooo...' Vincent could only stretch his body taller if his feet left the ground.

    'How about you, Penelope?' said Miss Susan.

    'Oh, miss,' said a deflated Vincent.

    Penelope, who was beautiful, docile and frankly dim, looked around at the thronged square and the whitewashed, awning-hung buildings with an expression close to panic.

    'We came here in geography last week,' said Miss Susan. 'City surrounded by swamps. On the Vieux river. Famous cookery. Lots of seafood... ?'

    Penelope's exquisite brow creased. The pigeon on Miss Susan's desk fluttered down and joined the pigeon flock prospecting for scraps among the flagstones, cooing gently to the others in pidgin pigeon.

    Aware that a lot could happen while people waited for Penelope to complete a thought process, Miss Susan waved at a clock on a shop across the square and said: 'And who can tell me the time here in Genua, please?'

    'Ooo, miss, miss, ooo...'

    A boy called Gordon cautiously admitted that it might be three o'clock, to the audible disappointment of the inflatable Vincent.

    'That's right,' said Miss Susan. 'Can anyone tell me why it's three o'clock in Genua while it's twelve o'clock in Ankh-Morpork?'

    There was no avoiding it this time. If Vincent's hand had gone up any faster it would have fried by air friction. 'Yes, Vincent?'

    'Ooo miss speed of light miss it goes at six hundred miles an hour and at the moment the sun's rising on the Rim near Genua so twelve o'clock takes three hours to get to us miss!'

    Miss Susan sighed. 'Very good, Vincent,' she said, and stood up. Every eye in the room watched her as she crossed over to the Stationery Cupboard. It seemed to have travelled with them and now, if there had been anyone to note such things, they might have seen faint lines in the air that denoted walls and windows and doors. And if they were intelligent observers, they'd have said: so... this classroom is in some way still in Ankh-Morpork and also in Genua, is it? Is this a trick? Is this real? Is it imagination? or is it that, to this particular teacher, there is not much of a difference?

    The inside of the cupboard was also present, and it was in that shadowy, paper-smelling recess that she kept the stars.

    There were gold stars and silver stars. One gold star was worth three silver ones.

    The headmistress disapproved of these, as well. She said they encouraged Competitiveness. Miss Susan said that was the point, and the headmistress scuttled away before she got a Look.

    Silver stars weren't awarded frequently and gold stars happened less than once a fortnight, and were vied for accordingly. Right now Miss Susan selected a silver star. Pretty soon Vincent the Keen would have a galaxy of his very own. To give him his due, he was quite uninterested in which kind of star he got. Quantity, that was what he liked. Miss Susan had privately marked him down as Boy Most Likely to Be Killed One Day By His Wife.

    She walked back to her desk and laid the star, tantalizingly, in front of her.

    'And an extra-special question,' she said, with a hint of malice. 'Does that mean it's "then" there when it's "now" here?'

    The hand slowed halfway in its rise.

    'Ooo...' Vincent began, and then stopped. 'Doesn't make sense, miss...'

    'Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent,' said Miss Susan. 'But answers do.'

    There was a kind of sigh from Penelope. To Miss Susan's surprise the face that one day would surely cause her father to have to hire bodyguards was emerging from its normal happy daydream and wrapping itself around an answer. Her alabaster hand was rising, too.

    The class watched expectantly.

    'Yes, Penelope?'

    'It's...'

    'Yes?'

    'It's always now everywhere, miss?'

    'Exactly right. Well done! All right, Vincent, you can have the silver star. And for you, Penelope...'

    Miss Susan went back to the cupboard of stars. Getting Penelope to step off her cloud long enough even to answer a question was worth a star, but a deep philosophical statement like that had to make it a gold one.

    'I want you all to open your notebooks and write down what Penelope just told us,' she said brightly as she sat down.

    And then she saw the inkwell on her desk beginning to rise like Penelope's hand. It was a ceramic pot, made to drop neatly into a round hole in the woodwork. It came up smoothly, and turned out to be balanced on the cheerful skull of the Death of Rats.

    It winked one blue-glowing eye socket at Miss Susan.

    With quick little movements, not even looking down, she whisked the inkwell aside with one hand and reached for a thick volume of stories with the other. She brought it down so hard on the hole that blue-black ink splashed onto the cobbles.

    Then she raised the desk lid and peeped inside.

    There was, of course, nothing there. At least, nothing macabre...

    ... unless you counted the piece of chocolate half gnawed by rat teeth and a note in heavy gothic lettering saying:

    SEE ME

    and signed by a very familiar alpha-and-omega symbol and the word

    Grandfather

    Susan picked up the note and screwed it into a ball, aware that she was trembling with rage. How dare he? And to send the rat, too!

    She tossed the ball into the wastepaper basket. She never missed. Sometimes the basket moved in order to ensure that this was the case.

    'And now we'll go and see what the time is in Klatch,' she told the watching children.

    On the desk, the book had fallen open at a certain page. And, later on, it would be story time. And Miss Susan would wonder, too late, why the book had been on her desk when she had never even seen it before.

    And a splash of blue-black ink would stay on the cobbles of the square in Genua, until the evening rainstorm washed it away.

    Tick

    The first words that are read by seekers of enlightenment in the secret, gong-banging, yeti-haunted valleys near the hub of the world, are when they look into The Life of Wen the Eternally Surprised.

    The first question they ask is: 'Why was he eternally surprised?'

    And they are told: 'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.'

    The first words read by the young Lu-Tze when he sought perplexity in the dark, teeming, rain-soaked city of Ankh-Morpork were: 'Rooms For Rent, Very Reasonable'. And he was glad of it.

    Tick

    Where there is suitable country for grain, people farm. They know the taste of good soil. They grow grain.

    Where there is good steel country, furnaces turn the sky to sunset red all night. The hammers never stop. People make steel.

    There is coal country, and beef country, and grass country. The world is full of countries where one thing shapes the land and the people. And up here in the high valleys around the hub of the world, where the snow is never far away, this is enlightenment country.

    Here are people who know that there is no steel, only the idea of steel.[5] They give names to new things, and to things that don't exist. They seek the essence of being and the nature of the soul. They make wisdom.

    Temples command every glacier-headed valley, where there are particles of ice in the wind, even at the height of summer.

    There are the Listening Monks, seeking to discern within the hubbub of the world the faint echoes of the sounds that set the universe in motion.

    There are the Brothers of Cool, a reserved and secretive sect which believes that only through ultimate coolness can the universe be comprehended, and that black works with everything, and that chrome will never truly go out of style.

    In their vertiginous temple criss-crossed with tightropes, the Balancing Monks test the tension of the world and then set out on long, perilous journeys to restore its equilibrium. Their work may be seen on high mountains and isolated islets. They use small brass weights, none of them bigger than a fist. They work. Well, obviously they work. The world has not tipped up yet.

    And in the highest, greenest, airiest valley of all, where apricots are grown and the streams have floating ice in them even on the hottest day, is the monastery of Oi Dong and the fighting monks of the Order of Wen. The other sects call them the History Monks. Not much is known about what they do, although some have remarked on the strange fact that it is always a wonderful spring day in the little valley and that the cherry trees are always in bloom.

    The rumour is that the monks have some kind of duty to see that tomorrow happens according to some mystic plan devised by some man who kept on being surprised.

    In fact, for some time now, and it would be impossible and ridiculous to say how long, the truth has been stranger and more dangerous.

    The job of the History Monks is to see that tomorrow happens at all.

    The Master of Novices met with Rinpo, chief acolyte to the abbot. At the moment, at least, the position of chief acolyte was a very important post. In his current condition the abbot needed many things done for him, and his attention span was low. In circumstances like this, there is always someone willing to carry the load. There are Rinpos everywhere.

    'It's Ludd again,' said the Master of Novices.

    'Oh, dear. Surely one naughty child can't trouble you?'

    'One ordinary naughty child, no. Where is this one from?'

    'Master Soto sent him. You know? Of our Ankh-Morpork section? He found him in the city. The boy has a natural talent, I understand,' said Rinpo.

    The Master of Novices looked shocked. 'Talent! He is a wicked thief! He'd been apprenticed to the Guild of Thieves!' he said.

    'Well? Children sometimes steal. Beat them a little, and they stop stealing. Basic education,' said Rinpo.

    'Ah. There is a problem.'

    'Yes?'

    'He is very, very fast. Around him, things go missing. Little things. Unimportant things. But even when he is watched closely, he is never seen to take them.'

    'Then perhaps he does not?'

    'He walks through a room and things vanish!' said the Master of Novices.

    'He's that fast? It's just as well Soto did find him, then. But a thief is-'

    'They turn up later, in odd places,' said the Master of Novices, apparently grudging the admission. 'He does it out of mischief, I'm sure.'

    The breeze blew the scent of cherry blossom across the terrace.

    'Look, I am used to disobedience,' said the Master of Novices. 'That is part of a novice's life. But he is also tardy.'

    'Tardy?'

    'He turns up late for his lessons.' 'How can a pupil be tardy here?'

    'Mr Ludd doesn't seem to care. Mr Ludd seems to think he can do as he pleases. He is also... smart.'

    The acolyte nodded. Ah. Smart. The word had a very specific meaning here in the valley. A smart boy thought he knew more than his tutors, and answered back, and interrupted. A smart boy was worse than a stupid one.

    'He does not accept discipline?' said the acolyte.

    'Yesterday, when I was taking the class for Temporal Theory in the Stone Room, I caught him just staring at the wall. Clearly not paying attention. But when I called out to him to answer the problem I'd chalked on the blackboard, knowing full well that he could not, he did so. Instantly. And correctly.'

    'Well? You did say he was a smart boy.'

    The Master of Novices looked embarrassed. 'Except... it was not the right problem. I had been instructing the Fifth Djim field agents earlier and had left part of the test on the board. An extremely complex phase-space problem involving residual harmonics in n histories. None of them got it right. To be honest, even I had to look up the answer.'

    'So I take it you punished him for not answering the right question?'

    'Obviously. But that sort of behaviour is disruptive. Most of the time I think he's not all there. He never pays attention, he always knows the answers, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy.'

    The acolyte thoughtfully watched a flight of white doves circle the monastery roofs. 'We cannot send him away now,' he said at last. 'Soto said he saw him perform the Stance of the Coyote! That's how he was found! Can you imagine that? He'd had no training at all! Can you imagine what would happen if someone with that kind of skill ran around loose? Thank goodness Soto was alert.'

    'But he has turned him into my problem. The boy disrupts tranquillity.'

    Rinpo sighed. The Master of Novices was a good and conscientious man, he knew, but it had been a long time since he'd been out in the world. People like Soto spent every day in the world of time. They learned flexibility, because if you were stiff out there you were dead. People like Soto... now, there was an idea...

    He looked towards the other end of the terrace, where a couple of servants were sweeping up the fallen cherry blossom.

    'I see a harmonious solution,' he said.

    'Oh, yes?'

    'An unusually talented boy like Ludd needs a master, not the discipline of the schoolroom.'

    'Possibly, but-'

    The Master of Novices followed Rinpo's gaze.

    'Oh,' he said, and he smiled in a way that was not entirely nice. It contained a certain anticipatory element, a hint that trouble might be in store for someone who, in his opinion, richly deserved it.

    'A name occurs,' said Rinpo.

    'To me also,' said the Master of Novices.

    'A name I've heard too often,' Rinpo went on.

    'I suppose that either he will break the boy, or the boy will break him, or it is always possible that they will break each other...' the Master mused.

    'So, in the patois of the world,' said Rinpo, 'there is no actual downside.'

    'Would the abbot approve, though?' said the Master, testing a welcome idea for any weak points. 'He has always had a certain rather tiresome regard for... the sweeper.'

    'The abbot is a dear kind man but at the moment his teeth are giving him trouble and he is not walking at all well,' said Rinpo. 'And these are difficult times. I'm sure he will be pleased to accept our joint recommendation. Why, it's practically a minor matter of day-to-day affairs.'

    And thus the future was decided.

    They were not bad men. They had worked hard on behalf of the valley for hundreds of years. But it is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. One is that, while all important enterprises need careful organization, it is the organization that needs organizing, rather than the enterprise. And another is that tranquillity is always a good thing.

    Tick

    There was a row of alarm clocks on the table by Jeremy's bed. He did not need them, because he woke up when he wanted to. They were there for testing. He set them for seven, and woke up at 6.59 to check that they went off on time.

    Tonight he went to bed early, with a drink of water and the Grim Fairy Tales.

    He had never been interested in stories, at any age, and had never quite understood the basic concept. He'd never read a work of fiction all the way through. He did remember, as a small boy, being really annoyed at the depiction of Hickory Dickory Dock in a rag book of nursery rhymes, because the clock in the drawing was completely wrong for the period.

    He tried to read Grim Fairy Tales. They had titles like 'How the Wicked Queen Danced in Red Hot Shoes!' and 'The Old Lady in the Oven'. There was simply no mention of clocks of any sort in any of them. Their authors seemed to have a thing about not mentioning clocks.

    'The Glass Clock of Bad Schüschein', on the other hand, did have a clock. Of a sort. And it was... odd. A wicked man - readers could see he was wicked because it said he was wicked, right there on the page - built a clock of glass in which he captured Time herself, but things went wrong because there was one part of the clock, a spring, that he couldn't make out of glass, and it broke under the strain. Time was set free and the man aged ten thousand years in a second and crumbled to dust and - not surprisingly, in Jeremy's opinion - was never seen again. The story ended with a moral: Large Enterprises Depend upon Small Details. Jeremy couldn't see why it couldn't just as well have been It's Wrong to Trap Non-Existent Women in Clocks, or, It Would Have Worked with a Glass Spring.

    But even to Jeremy's inexperienced eye, there was something wrong with the whole story. It read as though the writer was trying to make sense of something he'd seen, or been told, and had misunderstood. And - hah! - although it was set hundreds of years ago when even in Uberwald there were only natural cuckoo clocks, the artist had drawn a long-case clock of the sort that wasn't around even fifteen years ago. The stupidity of some people! You'd laugh if it wasn't so tragic!

    He put the book aside and spent the rest of the evening doing a little design work for the Guild. They paid him handsomely for this, provided he promised never to turn up in person.

    Then he put the work on the bedside table by the clocks. He blew out the candle. He went to sleep. He dreamed.

    The glass clock ticked. It stood in the middle of the workshop's wooden floor, giving off a silvery light. Jeremy walked around it, or perhaps it spun gently around him.

    It was taller than a man. Within the transparent case red and blue lights twinkled like stars. The air smelled of acid.

    Now his point of view dived into the thing, the crystalline thing, plunging down through the layers of glass and quartz. They rose past him, their smoothness becoming walls hundreds of miles high, and still he fell between slabs that were becoming rough, grainy...

    ... full of holes. The blue and red light was here too, pouring past him.

    And only now was there sound. It came from the darkness ahead, a slow beat that was ridiculously familiar, a heartbeat magnified a million times...

    ...tchum...tchum...

    ... each beat slower than mountains and bigger than worlds, dark and blood red. He heard a few more and then his fall slowed, stopped, and he began to soar back up through the sleeting light until a brightness ahead became a room.

    He had to remember all this! It was all so clear, once you saw it! So simple! So easy! He could see every part, how they interlocked, how they were made.

    And now it began to fade .

    Of course it was only a dream. He told himself that and was comforted by it. But he had gone to some lengths with this one, he had to admit. For example, there was a mug of tea steaming on the nearby workbench, and the sound of voices on the other side of the door...

    There was a knocking at the door. Jeremy wondered if the dream would end when the door was opened, and then the door disappeared and the knocking went on. It was coming from downstairs.

    The time was 6.47. Jeremy glanced at the alarm clocks to make sure they were right, then pulled his dressing gown around him and hurried downstairs. He opened the front door a crack. There was no one there.

    'Nah, dahn 'ere, mister.'

    Someone lower down was a dwarf.

    'Name of Clockson?' it said.

    'Yes?'

    A clipboard was thrust through the gap.

    'Sign 'ere, where it says "Sign 'Ere". Thank you. Okay, lads...'

    Behind him, a couple of trolls tipped up a handcart. A large wooden crate crashed onto the cobbles.

    'What is this?' said Jeremy.

    'Express package,' said the dwarf, taking the clipboard. 'Come all the way from Uberwald. Must've cost someone a packet. Look at all them seals and stickers on it.'

    'Can't you bring it in-?' Jeremy began, but the cart was already moving off, with the merry jingle and tinkle of fragile items.

    It started to rain. Jeremy peered at the label on the crate. It was certainly addressed to him, in a neat round hand, and just above it was the seal with the double-headed bat of Uberwald. There was no other marking except, near the bottom, the words:

    THIS SIDE UP [?this text upside down]

    Then the crate started to swear. It was muffled, and in a foreign language, but all swearing has a certain international content.

    'Er... hello?' said Jeremy.

    The crate rocked, and landed on one of the long sides, with extra cursing. There was some thumping from inside, some louder swearing, and the crate teetered upright again with the alleged top the right way up.

    A piece of board slid aside and a crowbar dropped out and onto the street with a clang. The voice that had lately been swearing said, 'If you would be tho good?'

    Jeremy inserted the bar into a likely-looking crack, and pulled.

    The crate sprang apart. He dropped the bar. There was a... a creature inside.

    'I don't know,' it said, pulling bits of packing material off itself. 'Eight bloody dayth with no problemth, and thothe idiotth get it wrong on the doorthtep.' It nodded at Jeremy. 'Good morning, thur. I thuppothe you are Mithter Jeremy?'

    'Yes, but-'

    'My name ith Igor, thur. My credentialth, thur.'

    A hand like an industrial accident held together with stitches thrust a sheaf of papers towards Jeremy. He recoiled instinctively, and then felt embarrassed and took them.

    'I think there has been a mistake,' he said.

    'No, no mithtake,' said Igor, pulling a carpet bag out of the ruins of the crate. 'You need an athithtant. And when it cometh to athithtantth, you cannot go wrong with an Igor. Everyone knowth that. Could we go in out of the rain, thur? It maketh my kneeth rutht.'

    'But I don't need an assist-' Jeremy began, but that was wrong, wasn't it? He just couldn't keep assistants. They always left within a week.

    'Morning, sir!' said a cheery voice.

    Another cart had pulled up. This one was painted a gleaming, hygienic white and was full of milk churns, and had 'Ronald Soak, Dairyman' painted on the side. Distracted, Jeremy looked up at the beaming face of Mr Soak, who was holding a bottle of milk in each hand.

    'One pint, squire, as per usual. And perhaps another one if you've got company?'

    'Er, er, er... yes, thank you.'

    'And the yoghurt is particularly fine this week, squire,' said Mr Soak encouragingly.

    'Er, er, I think not, Mr Soak.'

    'Need any eggs, cream, butter, buttermilk or cheese?'

    'Not as such, Mr Soak.'

    'Right you are, then,' said Mr Soak, unabashed. 'See you tomorrow, then.'

    'Er, yes,' said Jeremy, as the cart moved on. Mr Soak was a friend, which in Jeremy's limited social vocabulary meant 'someone I speak to once or twice a week'. He approved of the milkman, because he was regular and punctual and had the bottles at the doorstep every morning on the stroke of 7a.m. 'Er, er... goodbye,' he said.

    He turned to Igor.

    'How did you know I needed-' he tried. But the strange man had gone indoors, and a frantic Jeremy tracked him down in the workshop.

    'Oh yeth, very nithe,' said Igor, who was taking it all in with the air of a connoisseur. 'Thatth a Turnball Mk3 micro-lathe, ithn't it? I thaw it in their catalogue. Very nithe indee-'

    'I didn't ask anyone for an assistant!' said Jeremy. 'Who sent you?'

    'We are Igorth, thur.'

    'Yes, you said! Look, I don't-'

    'No, thur. "We R Igorth", thur. The organithathion, thur.'

    'What organization?'

    'For plathementth, thur. You thee, thur, the thing ith... an Igor often findth himthelf between marthterth through no fault of hith own, you thee. And on the other hand-'

    '-you have two thumbs,' breathed Jeremy, who had just noticed and couldn't stop himself. 'Two on each hand.!'

    'Oh, yeth thur, very handy,' said Igor, not even glancing down. 'On the other hand there ith no thortage of people wanting an Igor. Tho my Aunt Igorina runth our thelect little agenthy.'

    'For... lots of Igors?' said Jeremy.

    'Oh, there'th a fair number of uth. We're a big family.' Igor handed Jeremy a card.

    He read:

    We R Igors

    'A Spare Hand When Needed'

    The Old Rathaus

    Bad Schüschein

    c-mail: Yethmarthter Uberwald

    Jeremy stared at the semaphore address. His normal ignorance of anything that wasn't to do with clocks did not apply here. He'd been quite interested in the new cross-continent semaphore system after hearing that it made quite a lot of use of clockwork mechanisms to speed up the message flow. So you could send a clacks message to hire an Igor? Well, that explained the speed, at least.

    'Rathaus,' he said. 'That means something like a council hall, doesn't it?'

    'Normally, thur... normally,' said Igor reassuringly.

    'Do you really have semaphore addresses in Uberwald?'

    'Oh, yeth. We are ready to grathp the future with both handth, thur.'

    '-and four thumbs-'

    'Yeth, thur. We can grathp like anything.'

    'And then you mailed yourself here?'

    'Thertainly, thur. We Igorth are no thtrangerth to dithcomfort.'

    Jeremy looked down at the paperwork he'd been handed, and a name caught his eye.

    The top paper was signed. In a way, at least. There was a message in neat capitals, as neat as printing, and a name at the end.

    HE WILL BE USEFUL LEJEAN

    He remembered. 'Oh, Lady LeJean is behind this. She had you sent to me?'

    'That'th correct, thur.'

    Feeling that Igor was expecting more of him, Jeremy made a show of reading through the rest of what turned out to be references. Some of them were written in what he could only hope was dried brown ink, one was in crayon, and several were singed around the edges. They were all fulsome. After a while, though, a certain tendency could be noted amongst the signatories.

    'This one is signed by someone called Mad Doctor Scoop,' he said.

    'Oh, he wathn't actually named mad, thur. It wath more like a nickname, ath it were.'

    'Was he mad, then?'

    'Who can thay, thur?' said Igor calmly.

    'And Crazed Baron Haha? It says under Reason for Leaving that he was crushed by a burning windmill.'

    'Cathe of mithtaken identity, thur.'

    'Really?'

    'Yeth, thur. I underthtand the mob mithtook him for Thcreaming Doctor Bertherk, thur.'

    'Oh. Ah, yes.' Jeremy glanced down. 'Who you also worked for, I see.'

    'Yeth, thur.'

    'And who died of blood poisoning?'

    'Yeth, thur. Cauthed by a dirty pitchfork.'

    'And... Nipsie the Impaler?'

    'Er, would you believe he ran a kebab thop, thur?'

    'Did he?'

    'Not conventhionally tho, thur.'

    'You mean he was mad too?'

    'Ah. Well, he did have hith little wayth, I mutht admit, but an Igor never patheth judgement on hith marthter or mithtreth, thur. That ith the Code of the Igorth, thur,' he added patiently. It would be a funny old world if we were all alike, thur.'

    Jeremy was completely baffled as to his next move. He'd never been very good at talking to people, and this, apart from Lady LeJean and a wrangle with Mr Soak over an unwanted cheese, was the longest conversation he'd had for a year. Perhaps it was because it was hard to think of Igor as coming under the heading of people. Until now, Jeremy's definition of 'people' had not included anyone with more stitches than a handbag.

    'I'm not sure I've got any work for you, though,' he said. 'I've got a new commission, but I'm not sure how... anyway, I'm not insane!'

    'Thalth not compulthory, thur.'

    I've actually got a piece of paper that says I'm not, you know.'

    '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.

    'Let us see what the abbot wants,' he said, unrolling the rice paper. 'Oh. You are to take me to see him, it says here.'

    A look of panic froze the novice's face. 'What? How can I do that? Novices aren't allowed inside the Inner Temple!'

    'Really? In that case, let me take you, to take me, to see him,' said Lu-Tze.

    'You are allowed into the Inner Temple?' said the novice, and then put his hand over his mouth. 'But you're just a swee- Oh...'

    'That's right! Not even a proper monk, let alone a dong,' said the sweeper cheerfully. 'Amazing, isn't it?'

    'But people talk about you as if you were as high as the abbot!'

    'Oh, dear me, no,' said Lu-Tze. 'I'm nothing like as holy. Never really got a grip on the cosmic harmony.'

    'But you've done all those incredible-'

    'Oh, I didn't say I'm not good at what I do,' said Lu-Tz:e, ambling away with his broom over his shoulder. 'Just not holy. Shall we go?'

    'Er... Lu-Tze?' said the novice, as they walked along the ancient brick path.

    'Yes?'

    'Why is this called the Garden of Five Surprises?'

    'What was your name back in the world, hasty young man?' said Lu-Tze.

    'Newgate. Newgate Ludd, ven-'

    Lu-Tze held up a warning finger. 'Ah?'

    'Sweeper, I mean.'

    'Ludd, eh? Ankh-Morpork lad?'

    'Yes, Sweeper,' said the boy. The suddenly dejected tones suggested he knew what was coming next.

    'Raised by the Thieves' Guild? One of "Ludd's Lads"?'

    The boy formerly known as Newgate looked the old man in the eye and, when he replied, it was in the singsong voice of someone who'd answered the question too many times. 'Yes, Sweeper. Yes, I was a foundling. Yes, we get called Ludd's Lads and Lasses after one of the founders of the Guild. Yes, that's my adopted surname. Yes, it was a good life and sometimes I wish I still had it.'

    Lu-Tze appeared not to hear this. 'Who sent you here?'

    'A monk called Soto discovered me. He said I had talent.'

    'Marco? The one with all the hair?'

    'That's right. Only I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.'

    'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,' said Lu-Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him. They gave him a field posting really quickly after he came up with that one. Hard-working fellow, mark you, and friendly as anything provided you don't touch his hair. Important lesson there: you don't survive in the field by obeying all the rules, including those relating to mental processes. And what name were you given when you were enrolled?'

    'Lobsang, ven- uh, Sweeper.'

    'Lobsang Ludd?'

    'Er... yes, Sweeper.'

    'Amazing. So, Lobsang Ludd, you tried to count my surprises, did you? Everybody does. Surprise is the nature of Time, and five is the number of Surprise.'

    'Yes, Sweeper. I found the little bridge that tilts and throws you into the carp pool...'

    'Good. Good.'

    '... and I have found the bronze sculpture of a butterfly that flaps its wings when you breathe on it...'

    'That's two.'

    'There's the surprising way those little daisies spray you with venomous pollen...'

    'Ah, yes. Many people find them extremely surprising.'

    'And I believe the fourth surprise is the yodelling stick insect.'

    'Well done,' said Lu- Tze, beaming. 'It's very good, isn't it?'

    'But I can't find the fifth surprise.'

    'Really? Let me know when you find it,' said Lu-Tze.

    Lobsang Ludd thought about this as he trailed after the sweeper.

    'The Garden of Five Surprises is a test,' he said, at last.

    'Oh, yes. Nearly everything is.'

    Lobsang nodded. It was like the Garden of the Four Elements. Every novice found the bronze symbols of three of them - in the carp pond, under a rock, painted on a kite - but none of Lobsang's classmates found Fire. There didn't appear to be a fire anywhere in the garden.

    After a while Lobsang had reasoned thus: there were in fact five elements, as they had been taught. Four made up the universe, and the fifth, Surprise, allowed it to keep on happening. No one had said that the four in the garden were the material four, so the fourth element in the Garden could be Surprise at the fact that Fire wasn't there. Besides, fire was not generally found in a garden, and the other signs were, truly, in their element. So he'd gone down to the bakeries and opened one of the ovens, and there, glowing red hot below the loaves, was Fire.

    'Then... I expect that the fifth surprise is: there is no fifth surprise,' he said.

    'Nice try, but no cylindrical smoking thing,' said Lu- Tze. 'And is it not written, "Oo, you are so sharp you'll cut yourself one of these days"?'

    'Um, I haven't read that in the sacred texts yet, Sweeper,' said Lobsang uncertainly.

    'No, you wouldn't have,' said Lu-Tze.

    They stepped out of the brittle sunlight into the deep cold of the temple, and walked on through ancient halls and down stairways cut into the rock. The sound of distant chanting followed them. Lu-Tze, who was not holy and therefore could think unholy thoughts, occasionally wondered whether the chanting monks were chanting anything, or were just going 'aahaaahahah'. You could never tell with all that echo.

    He turned off the main passage and reached for the handles of a pair of large, red-lacquered doors. Then he looked behind him. Lobsang had stopped dead, some yards away.

    'Coming?'

    'But not even dongs are allowed in there!' said Lobsang. 'You have to be a Third Djim ting at least!'

    'Yeah, right. It's a short-cut. Come on, it's draughty out here.' With extreme reluctance, expecting at any moment the outraged scream of authority, Lobsang trailed after the sweeper.

    And he was just a sweeper! One of the people who swept the floors and washed the clothes and cleaned the privies! No one had ever mentioned it! Novices heard about Lu-Tze from their very first day - how he'd gone into some of the most tangled knots of time and unravelled them, how he'd constantly dodged the traffic on the crossroads of history, how he could divert time with a word and used this to develop the most subtle arts of battle...

    ... and here was a skinny little man who was sort of generically ethnic, so that he looked as if he could have come from anywhere, in a robe that had once been white before it fell to all those stains and patches, and the sandals repaired with string. And the friendly grin, as if he was constantly waiting for something amusing to happen. And no belt at all, just another piece of string to hold his robe closed. Even some novices got to the level of grey dong in their first year!

    The dojo was busy with senior monks at practice. Lobsang had to dodge aside as a pair of fighters whirled past, arms and legs blurring as each sought an opening, paring time into thinner and thinner slivers-

    'You! Sweeper!'

    Lobsang looked round, but the shout had been directed at Lu-Tze. A ting, only just elevated to the Third Djim by the fresh look of his belt, was advancing on the little man, his face red with fury.

    'What for are you coming in here, cleaner of filth? This is forbidden!'

    Lu-Tze's little smile didn't change. But he reached in his robe and brought out a small bag.

    ' 's a short-cut,' he said. He pulled a pinch of tobacco and, while the ting loomed over him, began to roll a cigarette. 'And there's dirt everywhere, too. I'll certainly have a word with the man who does this floor.'

    'How dare you insult!' screamed the monk. 'Back to the kitchens with you, sweeper!'

    Cowering behind Lu-Tze, Lobsang realized that the entire dojo had stopped to watch this. One or two of the monks were whispering to one another. The man in the brown robe of the dojo master was watching impassively from his chair, with his chin on his hand.

    With great and patient and infuriating delicacy, like a samurai arranging flowers, Lu-Tze marshalled the shreds of tobacco in the flimsy cigarette paper.

    'No, I reckon I'll go out of that door over there, if you don't mind,' he said.

    'Impudence! Then you are ready to fight, enemy of dust?' The man leapt back and raised his hands to form the Combat of the Hake. He spun round and planted a kick on a heavy leather sack, hitting it so hard that its supporting chain broke. Then he was back to face Lu-Tze, hands held in the Advancement of the Snake.

    'Ai! Shao! Hai-eee-' he began.

    The dojo master stood up. 'Hold!' he commanded. 'Do you not want to know the name of the man you are about to destroy?'

    The fighter held his stance, glaring at Lu-Tze. 'I don't need to know name of sweeper,' he said.

    Lu-Tze rolled the cigarette into a skinny cylinder and winked at the angry man, which only stoked the anger.

    'It is always wise to know the name of a sweeper, boy,' said the dojo master. 'And my question was not addressed to you.'

    Tick

    Jeremy stared at his bed sheets.

    They were covered in writing. His own writing.

    It trailed across the pillow and onto the wall. There were sketches, too, scored deeply into the plaster.

    He found his pencil under the bed. He'd even sharpened it. In his sleep, he'd sharpened a pencil! And by the look of it he'd been writing and drawing for hours. Trying to draw a dream.

    With, down one side of his eiderdown, a list of parts.

    It had all made absolute sense when he'd seen it, like a hammer or a stick or Wheelbright's Gravity Escapement. It had been like meeting an old friend. And now... He stared at the scrawled lines. He had been writing so fast he'd ignored punctuation and some of the letters, too. But he could see some sense in there.

    He'd heard of this sort of thing. Great inventions sometimes did arise from dreams and daydreams. Didn't Hepzibah Whitlow have the idea of the adjustable pendulum clock as a result of his work as the public hangman? Didn't Wilframe Balderton always say that the idea for the Fish Tail Escapement came after he'd eaten too much lobster?

    Yes, it had all been so clear in the dream. By daylight, it needed a bit more work.

    There was a clatter of dishes from the little kitchen behind his workshop. He hurried down, dragging the sheet behind him.

    'I usually have-' he began.

    'Toatht, thur,' said Igor, turning away from the range. 'Lightly browned, I thuthpect.'

    'How did you know that?'

    'An Igor learnth to antithipate, thur,' said Igor. 'What a wonderful little kitchen, thur. I've never theen a drawer marked 'Thpoonth' which jutht hath thpoonth in it.'

    'Are you any good at working with glass, Igor?' said Jeremy, ignoring this.

    'No, thur,' said Igor, buttering the toast.

    'You're not?'

    'No, thur. I am bloody amathing at it, thur. Many marthterth have needed... thpethial apparatuth not obtainable elthewhere, thur. What wath it you wanted?'

    'How would we go about building this?' Jeremy spread the sheet on the table.

    The slice of toast dropped from Igors black-nailed fingers.

    'Is there something wrong?' said Jeremy.

    'I thought thomeone wath walking over my grave, thur,' said Igor, still looking shocked.

    'Er, you haven't actually ever had a grave, have you?' said Jeremy.

    'Jutht a figure of thpeech, thur, jutht a figure of thpeech,' said Igor, looking hurt.

    'This is an idea I've...I've had for a clock...'

    'The Glath Clock,' said Igor. 'Yeth. I know about it. My grandfather Igor helped build the firtht one.'

    'The first one? But it's just a story for children! And I dreamed about it, and-'

    'Grandfather Igor alwayth thaid there wath thomething very thtrange about all that,' said Igor. 'The ecthplothion and everything.'

    'It exploded? Because of the metal spring?'

    'Not ecthactly an ecthplothion,' said Igor. 'We're no thtrangerth to ecthplothionth, uth Igorth. It wath... very odd. And we're no thtrangerth to odd, either.'

    'Are you telling me it really existed?'

    Igor seemed embarrassed about this. 'Yeth,' he said, 'and then again, no.'

    'Things either exist or they don't,' said Jeremy. 'I am very clear about that. I have medicine.'

    'It ecthithted,' said Igor, 'and then, after it did, it never had. Thith ith what my grandfather told me, and he built that clock with thethe very handth!'

    Jeremy looked down. Igor's hands were gnarled, and, now he came to look at them, had a lot of scar tissue around the wrists. 'We really believe in heirloomth in our family,' said Igor, catching his gaze.

    'Sort of... hand-me-downs, ahahaha,' said Jeremy. He wondered where his medicine was.

    'Very droll, thur,' said Igor. 'But Grandfather Igor alwayth thaid that afterwardth it wath like... a dream, thur.'

    'A dream...'

    'The workthop wath different. The clock wathn't there. Demented Doctor Wingle, that wath hith marthter at the time, wathn't working on the glath clock at all but on a way of ecthtracting thunthine from orangeth. Thingth were different and they alwayth had been, thur. Like it had never happened.'

    'But it turned up in a book for children!'

    'Yeth, thur. Bit of a conundrum, thur.'

    Jeremy stared at the sheet with its burden of scribbles. An accurate clock. That's all it was. A clock that'd make all other clocks unnecessary, Lady LeJean had said. Building a clock like that would mean the clockmaker went down in timekeeping history. True, the book had said that Time had got trapped in the clock, but Jeremy had no interest whatsoever in things that were Made Up. Anyway, a clock just measured. Distance didn't get tangled up in a tape measure. All a clock did was count teeth on a wheel. Or... light...

    Light with teeth. He'd seen that in the dream. Light not as something bright in the sky, but as an excited line, going up and down like a wave.

    'Could you... build something like this?' he said.

    Igor looked at the drawings again. 'Yeth,' he said, nodding. Then he pointed to several large glass containers around the drawing of the central column of the clock. 'And I know what thethe are,' he said.

    'In my dr- I mean, I imagined them as fizzing,' said Jeremy.

    'Very, very thecret knowledge, thothe jarth,' said Igor, carefully ignoring the question. 'Can you get copper rodth here, thur?'

    'In Ankh-Morpork? Easily.'

    'And thinc?'

    'Lots of it, yes.'

    'Thulphuric athid?'

    'By the carboy, yes.'

    'I mutht have died and gone to heaven,' said Igor. ' Jutht put me near enough copper and thinc and athid, thur,' he said, 'and then we thall thee thparkth.'

    Tick

    'My name,' said Lu-Tze, leaning on his broom as the irate ting raised a hand, 'is Lu-Tze.'

    The dojo went silent. The attacker paused in mid-bellow.

    '-Ai! Hao-gng! Gnh? Ohsheeeeeeohsheeeeeee ...'

    The man did not move but seemed instead to turn in on himself, sagging from the martial stance into a kind of horrified, penitent crouch.

    Lu-Tze bent over and struck a match on his unprotesting chin.

    'What's your name, lad?' he said, lighting his ragged cigarette.

    'His name is mud, Lu-Tze,' said the dojo master, striding forward. He gave the unmoving challenger a kick. 'Well, Mud, you know the rules. Face the man you have challenged, or give up the belt.'

    The figure remained very still for a moment, and then cautiously, in a manner almost theatrically designed not to give offence, started to fumble with his belt.

    'No, no, we don't need that' said Lu-Tze kindly. 'It was a good challenge. A decent "Ai!" and a very passable "Hai-eee!", I thought. Good martial gibberish all round, such as you don't often hear these days. And we would not want his trousers falling down at a time like this, would we?' He sniffed and added, 'Especially at a time like this.'

    He patted the shrinking man on the shoulder. 'Just you recall the rule your teacher here taught you on day one, eh? And... why don't you go and clean yourself up? I mean, some of us have to tidy up in here.'

    Then he turned and nodded to the dojo master.

    'While I am here, master, I should like to show young Lobsang the Device of Erratic Balls.'

    The dojo master bowed deeply. 'It is yours, Lu-Tze the Sweeper.'

    As Lobsang followed the ambling Lu-Tze he heard the dojo master, who like all teachers never missed an opportunity to drive home a lesson, say: 'Dojo! What is Rule One?'

    Even the cowering challenger mumbled along to the chorus:

    'Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!'

    'Good rule, Rule One,' said Lu-Tze, leading his new acolyte into the next room. 'I have met many people who could have heeded it to good advantage.'

    He stopped, without looking at Lobsang Ludd, and held out his hand.

    'And now, if you please, you will return the little shovel you stole from me when first we met.'

    'But I came nowhere near you, master!'

    Lu-Tze's smile did not flicker. 'Oh. Yes. That is true. My apologies. The ramblings of an old man. Is it not written, "I'd forget my own head if it wasn't nailed on"? Let us proceed.'

    The floor in here was wood, but the walls were high and padded. There were reddish-brown stains here and there.

    'Er, we have one of these in the novices' dojo, Sweeper,' said Lobsang.

    'But the balls in that are made of soft leather, yes?' said the old man, approaching a tall wooden cube. A row of holes ran halfway up the side that faced down the length of the room. 'And they travel quite slowly, I recall.'

    'Er, yes,' said Lobsang, watching him pull on a very large lever. Down below there was the sound of metal on metal, and then of urgent gushing water. Air began to wheeze from joints in the box. 'These are wooden,' said Lu-Tze calmly. 'Catch one.'

    Something touched Lobsang's ear and behind him the padding shook as a ball buried itself deeply and then dropped to the floor. 'Perhaps a shade slower...' said Lu-Tze, turning a knob.

    After fifteen random balls, Lobsang caught one in his stomach. Lu-Tze sighed and pushed the big lever back.

    'Well done,' he said.

    'Sweeper, I'm not used to-' said the boy, picking himself up.

    'Oh, I knew you wouldn't catch one,' said Lu-Tze. 'Even our boisterous friend out there in the dojo wouldn't catch one at that speed.'

    'But you said you had slowed it down!'

    'Only so that it wouldn't kill you. Just a test, see. Everything's a test. Let's go, lad. Can't keep the abbot waiting.'

    Trailing cigarette smoke, Lu-Tze ambled away.

    Lobsang followed, getting more and more nervous. This was Lu-Tze, the dojo had proved that. And he knew it, anyway. He'd looked at the little round face as it gazed amicably at the angry fighter and known it. But... just a sweeper? No insignia? No status? Well, obviously status, because the dojo master couldn't have bowed lower for the abbot, but...

    And now he was following the man along passages where even a monk was not allowed to go, on pain of death. Sooner or later, there was surely going to be trouble.

    'Sweeper, I really ought to be back at my duties in the kitchens-' he began.

    'Oh, yes. Kitchen duties,' said Lu-Tze. 'To teach you the virtues of obedience and hard work, right?'

    'Yes, Sweeper.'

    'Are they working?'

    'Oh, yes.'

    'Really?'

    'Well, no.'

    'They're not all they're cracked up to be, I have to tell you,' said Lu-Tze. 'Whereas, my lad, what we have here' - he stepped through an archway - 'is an education!'

    It was the biggest room Lobsang had ever seen. Shafts of light speared down from glazed holes in the roof. And below, more than a hundred yards across, and tended by senior monks who walked above it on delicate wire walkways, was...

    Lobsang had heard about the Mandala.

    It was as if someone had taken tons of coloured sands and thrown them across the floor in a great swirl of coloured chaos. But there was order fighting for survival in the chaos, rising and falling and spreading. Millions of randomly tumbling sand grains would nevertheless make a piece of pattern, which would replicate and spread across the circle, rebounding or merging with other patterns and eventually dissolving into the general disorder. It happened again and again, turning the Mandala into a silent raging war of colour.

    Lu-Tze stepped out onto a frail-looking wood and rope bridge.

    'Well?' he said. 'What d'you think?'

    Lobsang took a deep breath. He felt that if he fell off the bridge he'd drop into the surging colours and never, ever hit the floor. He blinked and rubbed his forehead.

    'It's... evil,' he said.

    'Really?' said Lu-Tze. 'Not many people say that the first time. They use words like "wonderful".'

    'It's going wrong!'

    'What?'

    Lobsang clutched the rope railing. 'The patterns-' he began.

    'History repeating,' said Lu-Tze. 'They're always there.'

    'No, they're-' Lobsang tried to take it all in. There were patterns under the patterns, disguised as part of the chaos. 'I mean... the other patterns...'

    He slumped forward.

    The air was cold, the world was spinning, and the ground rushed up to enfold him.

    And stopped, a few inches away.

    The air around him sizzled, as though it was being gently fried.

    'Newgate Ludd?'

    'Lu-Tze?' he said. The Mandala is...'

    But where were the colours? Why was the air wet and smelling of the city? And then the ghost memories faded away. As they disappeared, they said: How can we be memories, when we have yet to happen? Surely what you remember is climbing all the way up onto the roof of the Bakers' Guild and finding that someone had loosened all the capping stones, because that just happened?

    And a last dying memory said, Hey, that was months ago...

    'No, we're not Lu-Tze, mysterious falling kid,' said the voice that had addressed him. 'Can you turn round?'

    Newgate managed, with great difficulty, to move his head. It felt as though he was stuck in tar.

    A heavy young man in a grubby yellow robe was sitting on an upturned box a few feet away. He looked a bit like a monk, except for his hair, because his hair looked a bit like an entirely separate organism. To say that it was black and bound up in a ponytail is to miss the opportunity of using the term 'elephantine'. It was hair with personality.

    'Mostly my name's Soto,' said the man underneath. 'Marco Soto. I won't bother memorizing yours until we know if you're going to live or not, eh? So tell me, have you ever considered the rewards of the spiritual life?'

    'Right now? Certainly!' said... yes, Newgate, he thought, that's my name, yes? So why do I remember Lobsang? 'Er, I was thinking about the possibility of taking up a new line of work!'

    'Good career move,' said Soto.

    'Is this some kind of magic?' Newgate tried to move but hung, turning gently, in the air just above the waiting ground.

    'Not exactly. You seem to have shaped time.'

    'Me? How did I do that?'

    'You don't know?'

    'No!'

    'Hah, will you listen to him?' said Soto, as if talking to a genial companion. 'There's probably the spin time of a whole Procrastinator being used up to prevent your little trick causing untold harm to the entire world, and you don't know how you did it?'

    'No!'

    'Then we'll train you. It's a good life, and it offers excellent prospects. At least,' he added, sniffing, 'better than those that confront you now.'

    Newgate strained to turn his head further. 'Train me in what, exactly?'

    The man sighed. 'Still asking questions, kid? Are you coming or not?'

    'How-?'

    'Look, I'm offering you the opportunity of a lifetime, do you understand?'

    'Why is it the opportunity of a lifetime, Mr Soto?'

    'No, you misunderstand me. You, that is Newgate Ludd, are being offered, that is by me, the opportunity of having a lifetime. Which is more than you will have shortly.'

    Newgate hesitated. He was aware of a tingling in his body. In a sense, it was still falling. He didn't know how he knew this, but the knowledge was as real as the cobbles just below him. If he made the wrong choice the fall would simply continue. It had been easy so far. The last few inches would be terminally hard.

    'I must admit I don't like the way my life is going at the moment,' he said. 'It may be advantageous to find a new direction.'

    'Good.' The be-haired man pulled something out of his robe. It looked like a folded abacus, but when he opened it up parts of it vanished with little flashes of light, as if they'd moved somewhere where they could not be seen.

    'What are you doing?'

    'Do you know what kinetic energy is?'

    'No.'

    'It's what you have far too much of.' Soto's fingers danced on the beads, sometimes disappearing and reappearing. 'I imagine you weigh about a hundred and ten pounds, yes?'

    He pocketed the little device and strolled off to a nearby cart. He did something that Newgate couldn't see, and came back.

    'In a few seconds you will complete your fall,' he said, reaching under him to place something on the ground. 'Try to think of it as a new start in life.'

    Newgate fell. He hit the ground. The air flashed purple and the laden cart across the street jerked a foot into the air and collapsed heavily. One wheel bounced away.

    Soto leaned down and shook Newgate's unresisting hand.

    'How do you do?' he said. ' Any bruises?'

    'It does hurt a bit,' said the shaken Newgate.

    'Maybe you're a bit heavier than you look. Allow me...'

    Soto grabbed Newgate under the shoulders and began to tug him off into the mists.

    'Can I go and-?'

    'No.'

    'But the Guild-'

    'You don't exist at the Guild.'

    'That's stupid, I'm in the Guild records.'

    'No, you're not. We'll see to that.'

    'How? You can't rewrite history!'

    'Bet you a dollar?'

    'What have I joined?'

    'We're the most secret society that you can imagine.'

    'Really? Who are you, then?'

    'The Monks of History.'

    'Huh? I've never heard of you!'

    'See? That's how good we are.'

    And that was how good they were.

    And then the time had just flown past.

    And now the present came back.

    'Are you all right, lad?'

    Lobsang opened his eyes. His arm felt as though it was being wrenched off his body.

    He looked up along the length of the arm to Lu-Tze, who was lying flat on the swaying bridge, holding him.

    'What happened?'

    'I think maybe you were overcome with the excitement, lad. Or vertigo, maybe. Just don't look down.'

    There was a roaring below Lobsang, like a swarm of very angry bees. Automatically, he began to turn his head.

    'I said don't look down! Just relax.'

    Lu-Tze got to his feet. He raised Lobsang, at arm's length, as though he was a feather, until the boy's sandals were over the wood of the bridge. Below, monks were running along the walkways and shouting.

    'Now, keep your eyes shut... don't look down! ... and I'll just walk us both to the far side, all right?'

    'I, er, I remembered... back in the city, when Soto found me... I remembered...' said Lobsang weakly, tottering along behind the monk.

    'Only to be expected,' said Lu-Tze, 'in the circumstances.'

    'But, but I remember that back then I remembered about being here. You and the Mandala!'

    'Is it not written in the sacred text, "There's a lot goes on we don't know about, in my opinion"?' said Lu-Tze.

    'I... have not yet come across that one either, Sweeper,' said Lobsang. He felt cooler air around him, which suggested they had reached the rock tunnel on the far side of the room.

    'Sadly, in the writings they have here you probably won't,' said Lu-Tze. 'Ah, you can open your eyes now.'

    They walked on, with Lobsang rubbing his head to take away the strangeness of his thoughts.

    Behind them the livid swirls in the wheel of colour, which had centred on the spot where Lobsang would have fallen, gradually faded and healed.

    According to the First Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen and Clodpool reached the green valley between the towering mountains and Wen said: 'This is the place. Here there will be a temple dedicated to the folding and unfolding of time. I can see it.'

    'I can't, master,' said Clodpool.

    Wen said, 'It's over there.' He pointed, and his arm vanished.

    'Ah,' said Clodpool. 'Over there.'

    A few cherry blossom petals drifted down onto Wen's head from one of the trees that grew wild along the streamlets.

    'And this perfect day will last for ever,' he said. 'The air is crisp, the sun is bright, there is ice in the streams. Every day in this valley will be this perfect day.'

    'Could get a bit repetitive, master,' said Clodpool.

    'That is because you don't yet know how to deal with time,' said Wen. 'But I will teach you to deal with time as you would deal with a coat, to be worn when necessary and discarded when not.'

    'Will I have to wash it?' said Clodpool.

    Wen gave him a long, slow look. 'That was either a very complex piece of thinking on your part, Clodpool, or you were just trying to overextend a metaphor in a rather stupid way. Which do you think it was?'

    Clodpool looked at his feet. Then he looked at the sky. Then he looked at Wen.

    'I think I am stupid, master.'

    'Good,' said Wen. 'It is fortuitous that you are my apprentice at this time, because if I can teach you, Clodpool, I can teach anyone.'

    Clodpool looked relieved, and bowed. 'You do me too much honour, master.'

    'And there is a second part to my plan,' said Wen.

    'Ah,' said Clodpool, with an expression that he thought made him look wise, although in reality it made him look like someone remembering a painful bowel movement. 'A plan with a second part is always a good plan, master.'

    'Find me sands of all colours, and a flat rock. I will show you a way to make the currents of time visible.'

    'Oh, right.'

    'And there is a third part to my plan.'

    'A third part, eh?'

    'I can teach a gifted few to control their time, to slow it and speed it up and store it and direct it like the water in these streams. But most people will not, I fear, let themselves become able to do this. We have to help them. We will have to build... devices that will store and release time to where it is needed, because men cannot progress if they are carried like leaves on a stream. People need to be able to waste time, make time, lose time and buy time. This will be our major task.'

    Clodpool's face twisted with the effort of understanding. Then he slowly raised a hand.

    Wen sighed.

    'You're going to ask what happened to the coat, aren't you?' he said.

    Clodpool nodded.

    'Forget about the coat, Clodpool. The coat is not important. Just remember that you are the blank paper on which I will write-' Wen held up a hand as Clodpool opened his mouth. 'Just another metaphor, just another metaphor. And now, please make some lunch.'

    'Metaphorically or really, master?'

    'Both.'

    A flight of white birds burst out of the trees and wheeled overhead before swooping off across the valley.

    'There will be doves,' said Wen, as Clodpool hurried off to light a fire. 'Every day, there will be doves.'

    Lu-Tze left the novice in the anteroom. It might have surprised those who disliked him that he took a moment to straighten his robe before he entered the presence of the abbot, but Lu-Tze at least cared for people even if he did not care for rules. He pinched out his cigarette and stuck it behind his ear, too. He had known the abbot for almost six hundred years, and respected him. There weren't many people Lu-Tze respected. Mostly, they just got tolerated.

    Usually, the sweeper got on with people in inverse proportion to their local importance, and the reverse was true. The senior monks... well, there could be no such thing as bad thoughts amongst people so enlightened, but it is true that the sight of Lu-Tze ambling insolently through the temple did tarnish a few karmas. To a certain type of thinker the sweeper was a personal insult, with his lack of any formal education or official status and his silly little Way and his incredible successes. So it was surprising that the abbot liked him, because never had there been an inhabitant of the valley so unlike the sweeper, so learned, so impractical and so frail. But then, surprise is the nature of the universe.

    Lu-Tze nodded to the minor acolytes who opened the big varnished doors.

    'How is his reverence today?' he said.

    'The teeth are still giving him trouble, O Lu-Tze, but he is maintaining continuity and has just taken his first steps in a very satisfactory manner.'

    'Yes, I thought I heard the gongs.'

    The group of monks clustered in the centre of the room stepped aside as Lu-Tze approached the playpen. It was, unfortunately, necessary. The abbot had never mastered the art of circular ageing. He had therefore been forced to achieve longevity in a more traditional way, via serial reincarnation.

    'Ah, Sweeper,' he burbled, awkwardly tossing aside a yellow ball and brightening up. 'And how are the mountains? Wanna bikkit wanna bikkit!'

    'I'm definitely getting vulcanism, reverend one. It's very encouraging.'

    'And you are in persistent good health?' said the abbot, while his pudgy little hand banged a wooden giraffe against the bars.

    'Yes, your reverence. It's good to see you up and about again.'

    'Only for a few steps so far, alas bikkit bikkit wanna bikkit. Unfortunately, young bodies have a mind of their own BIKKIT!

    'You sent me a message, your reverence? It said, "Put this one to the test."'

    'And what did you think of our want bikkit want bikkit want bikkit NOW young Lobsang Ludd?' An acolyte hurried forward with a plate of rusks. 'Would you care for a rusk, by the way?' the abbot added. 'Mmmm nicey bikkit!'

    'No, reverend one, I have all the teeth I need,' said the sweeper.

    'Ludd is a puzzle, is he not? His tutors have nicey bikkit mmm mmm bikkit told me he is very talented but somehow not all there. But you have never met him and don't know his history and so mmm bikkit and so I would value your uninfluenced observations mmm BIKKIT.'

    'He is beyond fast,' said Lu-Tze. 'I think he may begin to react to things before they happen.'

    'How can anyone tell that? Want teddy want teddy wanna wanna TEDDY!'

    'I put him in front of the Device of Erratic Balls in the senior dojo and he was moving towards the right hole fractionally before the ball came out.'

    'Some kind of gurgle telepathy, then?'

    'If a simple machine has a mind of its own I think we're in really big trouble,' said Lu-Tze. He took a deep breath. 'And in the hall of the Mandala he saw the patterns in the chaos.'

    'You let a neophyte see the Mandala?' said chief acolyte Rinpo, horrified.

    'If you want to see if someone can swim, push him in the river,' said Lu-Tze, shrugging. 'What other way is there?'

    'But to look at it without the proper training-'

    'He saw the patterns,' said Lu-Tze. 'And reacted to the Mandala.' He did not add: and the Mandala reacted to him. He wanted to think about that. When you look into the abyss, it's not supposed to wave back.

    'It was teddyteddyteddywahwah strictly forbidden, even so,' said the abbot. Clumsily, he fumbled among the toys on his mat and picked up a large wooden brick with a jolly blue elephant printed on it and hurled it clumsily at Rinpo. 'Sometimes you presume too much, Sweeper lookit 'lephant!'

    There was some applause from the acolytes at the abbot's prowess in animal recognition. 'He saw the patterns. He knows what is happening. He just doesn't know what he knows,' said Lu-Tze doggedly. 'And within a few seconds of meeting me he stole a small object of value, and I'm still wondering how he did it. Can he really be as fast as that without training? Who is this boy?'

    Tick

    Who is this girl?

    Madam Frout, headmistress of the Frout Academy and pioneer of the Frout Method of Learning Through Fun, often found herself thinking that when she had to interview Miss Susan. Of course, the girl was an employee, but... well, Madam Frout wasn't very good at discipline, which was possibly why she'd invented the Method, which didn't require any. She generally relied on talking to people in a jolly tone of voice until they gave in out of sheer embarrassment on her behalf.

    Miss Susan didn't appear ever to be embarrassed about anything.

    'The reason I've called you here, Susan, is that, er, the reason is-' Madam Frout faltered.

    'There have been complaints?' said Miss Susan.

    'Er, no... er... although Miss Smith has told me that the children coming up from your class are, er, restless. Their reading ability is, she says, rather unfortunately advanced...'

    'Miss Smith thinks a good book is about a boy and his dog chasing a big red ball,' said Miss Susan. 'My children have learned to expect a plot. No wonder they get impatient. We're reading Grim Fairy Tales at the moment.'

    'That is rather rude of you, Susan.'

    'No, madam. That is rather polite of me. It would have been rude of me to say that there is a circle of Hell reserved for teachers like Miss Smith.'

    'But that's a dreadf-' Madam Frout stopped, and began again. 'You should not be teaching them to read at all yet!' she snapped. But it was the snap of a soggy twig. Madam Frout cringed back in her chair when Miss Susan looked up. The girl had this terrible ability to give you her full attention. You had to be a better person than Madam Frout to survive in the intensity of that attention. It inspected your soul, putting little red circles around the bits it didn't like. When Miss Susan looked at you, it was as if she was giving you marks.

    'I mean,' the headmistress mumbled, 'childhood is a time for play and-'

    'Learning,' said Miss Susan.

    'Learning through play,' said Madam Frout, grateful to find familiar territory. 'After all, kittens and puppies-'

    '-grow up to be cats and dogs, which are even less interesting,' said Miss Susan, 'whereas children should grow up to be adults.'

    Madam Frout sighed. There was no way she was going to make any progress. It was always like this. She knew she was powerless. News about Miss Susan had got around. Worried parents who'd turned to Learning Through Play because they despaired of their offspring ever Learning By Paying Attention to What Anyone Said were finding them coming home a little quieter, a little more thoughtful and with a pile of homework which, amazingly, they did without prompting and even with the dog helping them. And they came home with stories about Miss Susan.

    Miss Susan spoke all languages. Miss Susan knew everything about everything. Miss Susan had wonderful ideas for school trips...

    ... and that was particularly puzzling, because as far as Madam Frout knew, none had been officially organized. There was invariably a busy silence from Miss Susan's classroom when she went past. This annoyed her. It harked back to the bad old days when children were Regimented in classrooms that were no better than Torture Chambers for Little Minds. But other teachers said that there were noises. Sometimes there was the faint sound of waves, or a jungle. Just once, Madam Frout could have sworn, if she was the sort to swear, that as she passed there was a full-scale battle going on. This had often been the case with Learning Through Play, but this time the addition of trumpets, the swish of arrows and the screams of the fallen seemed to be going too far.

    She'd thrown open the door and felt something hiss through the air above her head. Miss Susan had been sitting on a stool, reading from a book, with the class cross-legged in a quiet and fascinated semicircle around her. It was the sort of old-fashioned image Madam Frout hated, as if the children were Supplicants around some sort of Altar of Knowledge.

    No one had said anything. All the watching children, and Miss Susan, made it clear in polite silence that they were waiting for her to go away.

    She'd flounced back into the corridor and the door had clicked shut behind her. Then she noticed the long, crude arrow that was still vibrating in the opposite wall.

    Madam Frout had looked at the door, with its familiar green paint, and then back at the arrow.

    Which had gone.

    She transferred Jason to Miss Susan's class. It had been a cruel thing to do, but Madam Frout considered that there was now some kind of undeclared war going on.

    If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds, except when it came to inventive cruelty to small furry animals, when he could be quite patient. Jason kicked, punched, bit and spat. His artwork had even frightened the life out of Miss Smith, who could generally find something nice to say about any child. He was definitely a boy with special needs. In the view of the staff room, these began with an exorcism.

    Madam Frout had stooped to listening at the keyhole. She had heard Jason's first tantrum of the day, and then silence. She couldn't quite make out what Miss Susan said next.

    When she found an excuse to venture into the classroom half an hour later, Jason was helping two little girls to make a cardboard rabbit.

    Later his parents said they were amazed at the change, although apparently now he would only go to sleep with the light on.

    Madam Frout tried to question her newest teacher. After all, glowing references were all very well, but she was an employee, after all. The trouble was, Susan had a way of saying things to her, Madam Frout had found, so that she went away feeling quite satisfied and only realized that she hadn't really had a proper answer at all when she was back in her office, by which time it was always too late.

    And it continued to be too late because suddenly the school had a waiting list. Parents were fighting to get their children enrolled in Miss Susan's class. As for some of the stories they brought home... well, everyone knew children had such vivid imaginations, didn't they? Even so, there was this essay by Richenda Higgs. Madam Frout fumbled for her glasses, which she was too vain to wear all the time and kept on a string around her neck, and looked at it again. In its entirety, it read:

    A man with all bones came to talk to us he was not scarey at all, he had a big white hors. We pared the hors. He had a sighyve. He told us interesting things and to be careful when crosing the road.

    Madam Frout handed the paper across the desk to Miss Susan, who looked at it gravely. She pulled out a red pencil, made a few little alterations, then handed it back.

    'Well?' said Madam Frout.

    'Yes, she's not very good at punctuation, I'm afraid. A good attempt at "scythe", though.'

    'Who... What's this about a big white horse in the classroom?' Madam Frout managed.

    Miss Susan looked at her pityingly and said, 'Madam, who could possibly bring a horse into a classroom? We're up two flights of stairs here.'

    Madam Frout was not going to be deterred this time. She held up another short essay.

    Today we were talked at by Mr Slumph who he is a bogeyman but he is nice now. He tole us what to do abot the other kind. You can put the blanket ove your head but it is bettr if you put it ove the bogeymans head then he think he do not exist and he is vanishs. He tole us lots of stores abot people he jump out on and he said sins Miss is our teachr he think no bogeymen will be in our houses bcos one thing a bogey dos not like is Miss finding him.

    'Bogeymen, Susan?' said Madam Frout.

    'What imaginations children have,' said Miss Susan, with a straight face.

    'Are you introducing young children to the occult?' said Madam Frout suspiciously. This sort of thing caused a lot of trouble with parents, she was well aware.

    'Oh, yes.'

    'What? Why?'

    'So that it doesn't come as a shock,' said Miss Susan calmly.

    'But Mrs Robertson told me that her Emma was going round the house looking for monsters in the cupboards! And up until now she's always been afraid of them!'

    'Did she have a stick?' said Susan.

    'She had her father's sword!'

    'Good for her.'

    'Look, Susan... I think I see what you're trying to do,' said Madam Frout, who didn't really, 'but parents do not understand this sort of thing.'

    'Yes,' said Miss Susan. 'Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.'

    'Nevertheless, we must respect their views,' said Madam Frout, but rather weakly because occasionally she'd thought the same thing. There had been the matter of Parents' Evening. Madam had been too tense to pay much attention to what her newest teacher was doing. All she'd been aware of was Miss Susan sitting and talking quietly to the couples, right up to the point where Jason's mother had picked up her chair and chased Jason's father out of the room. Next day a huge bunch of flowers had arrived for Susan from Jason's mother, and an even bigger bunch from Jason's father.

    Quite a few other couples had also come away from Miss Susan's desk looking worried or harassed. Certainly Madam Frout, when the time came for next term's fees to be paid, had never known people cough up so readily.

    And there it was again. Madam Frout the headmistress, who had to worry about reputations and costs and fees, just occasionally heard the distant voice of Miss Frout who had been quite a good if rather shy teacher, and it was whistling and cheering Susan on.

    Susan looked concerned. 'You are not satisfied with my work, madam?'

    Madam Frout was stuck. No, she wasn't satisfied, but for all the wrong reasons. And it was dawning on her as this interview progressed that she didn't dare sack Miss Susan or, worse, let her leave of her own accord. If she set up a school and news got round, the Learning Through Play School would simply haemorrhage pupils and, importantly, fees.

    'Well, of course... no, not... in many ways...' she began, and became aware that Miss Susan was staring past her.

    There was... Madam Frout groped for her glasses, and found their string had got tangled with the buttons of her blouse. She peered at the mantelpiece and tried to make sense of the blur.

    'Why, it looks like a... a white rat, in a little black robe,' she said. 'And walking on its hind legs, too! Can you see it?'

    'I can't imagine how a rat could wear a robe,' said Miss Susan. Then she sighed, and snapped her fingers. The finger-snapping wasn't essential, but time stopped.

    At least, it stopped for everyone but Miss Susan.

    And for the rat on the mantelpiece.

    Which was in fact the skeleton of a rat, although this was not preventing it from trying to steal Madam Frout's jar of boiled sweets for Good Children.

    Susan strode over and grasped the collar of the tiny robe.

    SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats.

    'I thought it was you!' snapped Susan. 'How dare you come here again! I thought you'd got the message the other day. And don't think I didn't see you when you turned up to collect Henry the Hamster last month! Do you know how hard it is to teach geography when you can see someone kicking the poo out of a treadmill?'

    The rat sniggered: SNH. SNH. SNH.

    'And you're eating a sweet! Put it in the bin right now!'

    Susan dropped the rat onto the desk in front of the temporally frozen Madam Frout, and paused.

    She'd always tried to be good about this sort of thing, but sometimes you just had to acknowledge who you were. So she pulled open the bottom drawer to check the level in the bottle that was Madam's shield and comforter in the wonderful world that was education, and was pleased to see that the old girl was going a bit easier on the stuff these days. Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.

    She also spent a little while going through Madam's private papers, and this has to be said about Susan: it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong about this, although she'd quite understand that it was probably wrong if you weren't Susan Sto Helit, of course. The papers were in quite a good safe that would have occupied a competent thief for at least twenty minutes. The fact that the door swung open at her touch suggested that special rules applied here.

    No door was closed to Miss Susan. It ran in the family. Some genetics are passed on via the soul.

    When she'd brought herself up to date on the school's affairs, mostly to indicate to the rat that she wasn't just someone who could be summoned at a moments notice, she stood up.

    'All right,' she said wearily. 'You're just going to pester me, aren't you? For ever and ever and ever.'

    The Death of Rats looked at her with its skull on one side.

    SQUEAK, it said winsomely.

    'Well, yes, I like him,' she said. 'In a way. But, I mean, you know, it's not right. Why does he need me? He's Death! He's not exactly powerless! I'm just human!'

    The rat squeaked again, jumped down onto the floor and ran through the closed door. It reappeared for a moment and beckoned to her.

    'Oh, all right,' said Susan to herself. 'Make that mostly human.'

    Tick

    And who is this Lu-Tze?

    Sooner or later every novice had to ask this rather complex question. Sometimes it would be years before they found out that the little man who swept their floors and uncomplainingly carted away the contents of the dormitory cesspit and occasionally came out with outlandish foreign sayings was the legendary hero they'd been told they would meet one day. And then, when they'd confronted him, the brightest of them confronted themselves.

    Mostly sweepers came from the villages in the valley. They were part of the staff of the monastery but they had no status. They did all the tedious, unregarded jobs. They were... figures in the background, pruning the cherry trees, washing the floors, cleaning out the carp pools and, always, sweeping. They had no names. That is, a thoughtful novice would understand that the sweepers must have names, some form by which they were known to other sweepers, but within the temple grounds at least they had no names, only instructions. No one knew where they went at night. They were just sweepers. But so was Lu-Tze.

    One day a group of senior novices, for mischief, kicked over the little shrine that Lu-Tze kept beside his sleeping mat.

    Next morning, no sweepers turned up for work. They stayed in their huts, with the doors barred. After making inquiries, the abbot, who at that time was fifty years old again, summoned the three novices to his room. There were three brooms leaning against the wall. He spoke as follows:

    'You know that the dreadful Battle of Five Cities did not happen because the messenger got there in time?'

    They did. They learned this early in their studies. And they bowed nervously, because this was the abbot, after all.

    'And you know, then, that when the messenger's horse threw a shoe he espied a man trudging beside the road carrying a small portable forge and pushing an anvil on a barrow?'

    They knew.

    'And you know that man was Lu-Tze?'

    They did.

    'You surely know that Janda Trapp, Grand Master of okidoki, toro-fu and chang-fu, has only ever yielded to one man?'

    They knew.

    'And you know that man is Lu-Tze?'

    They did.

    'You know the little shrine you kicked over last night?'

    They knew.

    'You know it had an owner?'

    There was silence. Then the brightest of the novices looked up at the abbot in horror, swallowed, picked up one of the three brooms and walked out of the room.

    The other two were slower of brain and had to follow the story all the way through to the end.

    Then one of them said, 'But it was only a sweeper's shrine!'

    'You will take up the brooms and sweep,' said the abbot, 'and you will sweep every day, and you will sweep until the day you find Lu-Tze and dare to say "Sweeper, it was I who knocked over and scattered your shrine and now I will in humility accompany you to the dojo of the Tenth Djim, in order to learn the Right Way." Only then, if you are still able, may you resume your studies here. Understood?'[6]

    Older monks sometimes complained, but someone would always say, 'Remember that Lu-Tze's Way is not our Way. Remember he learned everything by sweeping unheeded while students were being educated. Remember, he has been everywhere and done many things. Perhaps he is a little... strange, but remember that he walked into a citadel full of armed men and traps and nevertheless saw to it that the Pash of Muntab choked innocently on a fish bone. No monk is better than Lu-Tze at finding the Time and the Place.'

    Some, who did not know, might say: 'What is this Way that gives him so much power?'

    And they would be told: 'It is the Way of Mrs Marietta Cosmopilite, 3 Quirm Street, Ankh-Morpork, Rooms For Rent, Very Reasonable. No, we don't understand it, either. Some subsendential rubbish, apparently.'

    Tick

    Lu-Tze listened to the senior monks, while leaning on his broom. Listening was an art he had developed over the years, having learned that if you listened hard and long enough people would tell you more than they thought they knew.

    'Soto is a good field operative,' he said at last. 'Weird but good.'

    'The fall even showed up on the Mandala,' said Rinpo. 'The boy knew none of the appropriate actions. Soto said he'd done it reflexively. He said he thought the boy was as close to null as he has ever witnessed. He had him put on a cart for the mountains within the hour. He then spent three whole days performing the Closing of the Flower at the Guild of Thieves, where the boy had apparently been left as a baby.'

    'The closure was successful?'

    'We authorized the run time of two Procrastinators. Perhaps a few people will have faint memories, but the Guild is a large and busy place.'

    'No brothers, no sisters. No love of parents. Just the brotherhood of thieves,' said Lu-Tze sadly.

    'He was, however, a good thief.'

    'I'll bet. How old is he?'

    'Sixteen or seventeen, it appears.'

    'Too old to teach, then.'

    The senior monks exchanged glances.

    'We cannot teach him anything,' said the Master of Novices. 'He-'

    Lu-Tze held up a skinny hand. 'Let me guess. He knows it already?'

    'It's as though he's being told something that had momentarily slipped his memory,' said Rinpo. 'And then he gets bored and angry. He's not all there, in my opinion.'

    Lu-Tze scratched in his stained beard. 'Mystery boy,' he said thoughtfully. 'Naturally talented.'

    'And we ask ourselves wanna potty wanna potty poo why now, why at this time?' said the abbot, chewing the foot of a toy yak.

    'Ah, but is it not said, "There is a Time and a Place for Everything"?' said Lu-Tze. 'Anyway, reverend sirs, you have taught pupils for hundreds of years. I am but a sweeper.' Absentmindedly, he stuck out his hand just as the yak left the fumbling fingers of the abbot, and caught it in mid-air.

    'Lu-Tze,' said the Master of Novices, 'to be brief, we were unable to teach you. Remember?'

    'But then I found my Way,' said Lu-Tze.

    'Will you teach him?' said the abbot. 'The boy needs to mmm brmmm find himself.'

    'Is it not written, "I have only one pair of hands"?' said Lu-Tze.

    Rinpo looked at the Master of Novices. 'I don't know,' he said. 'None of us ever sees this stuff you quote.'

    Still looking thoughtful, as if his mind were busy elsewhere, Lu-Tze said, 'It could only be here and now. For it is written: "It never rains but it pours."'

    Rinpo looked puzzled, and then enlightenment dawned. 'A jug,' he said, looking pleased. 'A jug never rains, but it pours!'

    Lu-Tze shook his head sadly. 'And the sound of one hand clapping is a "cl",' he said. 'Very well, your reverence. I will help him to find a Way. Will there be anything else, reverend sirs?'

    Tick

    Lobsang stood up when Lu-Tze returned to the anteroom, but he did it hesitantly, embarrassed at appearing to show respect.

    'Okay, here are the rules,' said Lu-Tze, walking straight past. 'Word one is, you don't call me "master" and I don't name you after some damn insect. It's not my job to discipline you, it's yours. For it is written, "I can't be having with that kind of thing." Do what I tell you and we'll get along fine. All right?'

    'What? You want me as an apprentice?' said Lobsang, running to keep up.

    'No, I don't want you as an apprentice, not at my age, but you're going to be so we'd both better make the best of it, okay?'

    'And you will teach me everything?'

    'I don't know about "everything". I mean, I don't know much forensic mineralogy. But I will teach you all that I know that is useful for you to know, yes.'

    'When?'

    'It's getting late-'

    'At dawn tomorrow?'

    'Oh, before dawn. I'll wake you.'

    Tick

    Some distance away from Madam Frout's Academy, in Esoteric Street, were a number of gentlemen's clubs. It would be far too cynical to say that here the term 'gentleman' was simply defined as 'someone who can afford five hundred dollars a year'; they also had to be approved of by a great many other gentlemen who could afford the same fee.

    And they didn't much like the company of ladies. This was not to say that they were that kind of gentlemen, who had their own, rather better-decorated clubs in another part of town, where there was generally a lot more going on. These gentlemen were gentlemen of a class who were, on the whole, bullied by ladies from an early age. Their lives were steered by nurses, governesses, matrons, mothers and wives, and after four or five decades of that the average mild-mannered gentleman gave up and escaped as politely as possible to one of these clubs, where he could snooze the afternoon away in a leather armchair with the top button of his trousers undone. [7]

    The most select of these clubs was Fidgett's, and it operated like this: Susan didn't need to make herself invisible, because she knew that the members of Fidgett's would simply not see her, or believe that she really existed even if they did. Women weren't allowed in the club at all except under Rule 34b, which grudgingly allowed for female members of the family or respectable married ladies over thirty to be entertained to tea in the Green Drawing Room between 3.15 and 4.30p.m., provided at least one member of staff was present at all times. This had been the case for so long that many members now interpreted it as being the only seventy-five minutes in the day when women were actually allowed to exist and, therefore, any women seen in the club at any other time were a figment of their imagination.

    In the case of Susan, in her rather strict black schoolteaching outfit and button boots that somehow appeared to have higher heels when she was being Death's granddaughter, this might well have been true.

    The boots echoed on the marble floor as she made her way to the library.

    It was a mystery to her why Death had started using the place. Of course, he did have many of the qualities of a gentleman: he had a place in the country - a far, dark country - was unfailingly punctual, was courteous to all those he met - and sooner or later he met everyone - was well if soberly dressed, at home in any company and, proverbially, a good horseman.

    The fact that he was the Grim Reaper was the only bit that didn't quite fit.

    Most of the overstuffed chairs in the library were occupied by contented lunchers dozing happily under tented copies of the Ankh-Morpork Times. Susan looked around until she found the copy from which projected the bottom half of a black robe and two bony feet. There was also a scythe leaning against the back of the armchair. She raised the paper.

    GOOD AFTERNOON, said Death. HAVE YOU HAD LUNCH? IT WAS JAM ROLY-POLY.

    'Why do you do this, Grandfather? You know you don't sleep.'

    I FIND IT RESTFUL. ARE YOU WELL?

    'I was until the rat arrived.'

    YOUR CAREER PROGRESSES? YOU KNOW I CARE FOR YOU.

    'Thank you,' said Susan shortly. 'Now, why did-'

    WOULD A LITTLE SMALL TALK HURT?

    Susan sighed. She knew what was behind that, and it wasn't a happy thought. It was a small, sad and wobbly little thought, and it ran: each of them had no one else but the other. There. It was a thought that sobbed into its own handkerchief, but it was true.

    Oh, Death had his manservant, Albert, and of course there was the Death of Rats, if you could call that company.

    And as far as Susan was concerned...

    Well, she was partly immortal, and that was all there was to it. She could see things that were really there,[8] she could put time on and off like an overcoat. Rules that applied to everyone else, like gravity, applied to her only when she let them. And, however hard you tried, this sort of thing did tend to get in the way of relationships. It was hard to deal with people when a tiny part of you saw them as a temporary collection of atoms that would not be around in another few decades.

    And there she met the tiny part of Death that found it hard to deal with people when it thought of them as real.

    Not a day went past but she regretted her curious ancestry. And then she'd wonder what it could possibly be like to walk the world unaware at every step of the rocks beneath your feet and the stars overhead, to have a mere five senses, to be almost blind and nearly deaf...

    THE CHILDREN ARE WELL? I LIKED THEIR PAINTINGS OF ME.

    'Yes. How is Albert?'

    HE IS WELL.

    ... and not really have any small talk, Susan added to herself. There wasn't room for small talk in a big universe.

    THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END.

    Well, that was big talk. 'When?'

    NEXT WEDNESDAY.

    'Why?'

    THE AUDITORS ARE BACK, said Death.

    'Those evil little things?'

    YES.

    'I hate them.'

    I, OF COURSE, DO NOT HAVE ANY EMOTIONS, said Death, poker-faced as only a skull can be.

    'What are they up to this time?'

    I CANNOT SAY.

    'I thought you could remember the future!'

    YES. BUT SOMETHING HAS CHANGED. AFTER WEDNESDAY, THERE IS NO FUTURE.

    'There must be something, even if it's only debris!'

    NO. AFTER ONE O'CLOCK NEXT WEDNESDAY THERE IS NOTHING. JUST ONE O'CLOCK NEXT WEDNESDAY, FOR EVER AND EVER. NO ONE WILL LIVE. NO ONE WILL DIE. THAT IS WHAT I NOW SEE. THE FUTURE HAS CHANGED. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

    'And what has this got to do with me?' Susan knew this would sound stupid to anyone else.

    I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE END OF THE WORLD IS EVERYONE'S RESPONSIBILITY, WOULDN'T YOU?

    'You know what I mean!'

    I BELIEVE THIS HAS TO DO WITH THE NATURE OF TIME, WHICH IS BOTH IMMORTAL AND HUMAN. THERE HAVE BEEN CERTAIN... RIPPLES.

    'They're going to do something to Time? I thought they weren't allowed to do things like that.'

    NO. BUT HUMANS CAN. IT HAS BEEN DONE ONCE BEFORE.

    'No one would be that stu-'

    Susan stopped. Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

    She thought some more. Death was watching her intently.

    Then she said, 'Funnily enough, there is this book I've been reading to the class. I found it on my desk one day. It's called Grim Fairy Tales...'

    AH, HAPPY TALES FOR LITTLE FOLK, said Death, without a trace of irony.

    '... which is mostly about wicked people dying in horrible ways. It's strange, really. The children seem quite happy with the idea. It doesn't seem to worry them.'

    Death said nothing.

    '... except in the case of the Glass Clock of Bad Schüschein,' said Susan, watching his skull. 'They found that quite upsetting, even though it's got a kind of happy ending.'

    IT MAY BE BECAUSE THE STORY IS TRUE.

    Susan had known Death long enough not to argue.

    'I think I understand,' she said. 'You made sure the book was there.'

    YES. OH, THE RUBBISH ABOUT THE HANDSOME PRINCE AND SO ON IS AN OBVIOUS ADDITION. THE AUDITORS DID NOT INVENT THE CLOCK, OF COURSE. THAT WAS THE WORK OF A MADMAN. BUT THEY ARE GOOD AT ADAPTING. THEY CANNOT CREATE, BUT THEY CAN ADAPT. AND THE CLOCK IS BEING REBUILT.

    'Was time really stopped?'

    TRAPPED. ONLY FOR A MOMENT, BUT THE RESULTS STILL LIE ALL AROUND US. HISTORY WAS SHATTERED, FRAGMENTED. PASTS WERE NO LONGER LINKED TO FUTURES. THE HISTORY MONKS HAD TO REBUILD IT PRACTICALLY FROM SCRATCH.

    Susan did not waste breath saying things like, 'That's impossible,' at a time like this. Only people who believed that they lived in the real world said things like that.

    'That must have taken some... time,' she said.

    TIME, OF COURSE, WAS NOT THE ISSUE. THEY USE A FORM OF YEARS BASED ON THE HUMAN PULSE RATE. OF THOSE YEARS, IT TOOK ABOUT FIVE HUNDRED.

    'But if history was shattered, where did they get-'

    Death steepled his fingers.

    THINK TEMPORALLY, SUSAN. I BELIEVE THEY STOLE SOME TIME FROM SOME EARLIER AGE OF THE WORLD, WHERE IT WAS BEING WASTED ON A LOT OF REPTILES. WHAT IS TIME TO A BIG LIZARD, AFTER ALL? HAVE YOU SEEN THOSE PROCRASTINATORS THE MONKS USE? WONDERFUL THINGS. THEY CAN MOVE TIME, STORE IT, STRETCH IT... QUITE INGENIOUS. AS FOR WHEN THIS HAPPENED, THE QUESTION ALSO MAKES NO SENSE. WHEN THE BOTTLE IS BROKEN, DOES IT MATTER WHERE THE GLASS WAS HIT? THE SHARDS OF THE EVENT ITSELF NO LONGER EXIST IN THIS REBUILT HISTORY, IN ANY CASE.

    'Hold on, hold on... How can you take a piece of, oh, some old century, and stitch it into a modern one? Wouldn't people notice that...' Susan flailed a bit, 'oh, that people have got the wrong armour and the buildings are all wrong and they're still in the middle of wars that happened centuries ago?'

    IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.

    'Very insightful, but what I meant was-'

    YOU MUST NOT CONFUSE THE CONTENT WITH THE CONTAINER. Death sighed. YOU ARE MOSTLY HUMAN. YOU NEED A METAPHOR. AN OBJECT LESSON IS CLEARLY IN ORDER. COME.

    He stood up and stalked into the dining room across the hall. There were still a few late lunchers frozen in their work, napkins tucked under their chins, in an atmosphere of happy carbohydrates.

    Death walked up to a table that had been laid for dinner, and gripped a corner of the tablecloth.

    TIME IS THE CLOTH, he said. THE CUTLERY AND PLATES ARE THE EVENTS THAT TAKE PLACE WITHIN TIME-

    There was a drum roll. Susan glanced down. The Death of Rats was seated in front of a tiny drum kit.

    OBSERVE.

    Death pulled the cloth away. There was a rattle of cutlery and a moment of uncertainty regarding a vase of flowers, but almost all the tableware remained in place.

    'I see,' said Susan.

    THE TABLE REMAINS LAID, BUT THE CLOTH CAN NOW BE USED FOR ANOTHER MEAL.

    'However, you knocked the salt over,' said Susan.

    THE TECHNIQUE IS NOT PERFECT.

    'And there are stains on the cloth from the previous meal, Grandfather.'

    Death beamed. YES, he said. AS METAPHORS GO IT IS RATHER GOOD, DON'T YOU THINK?

    'People would notice!'

    REALLY? HUMANS ARE THE MOST UNOBSERVANT CREATURES IN THE UNIVERSE. OH, THERE ARE LOTS OF ANOMALIES, OF COURSE, A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF SPILLED SALT, BUT HISTORIANS EXPLAIN THEM AWAY. THEY ARE SO VERY USEFUL IN THAT RESPECT.

    There was something called the Rules, Susan knew. They weren't written down, in the same way that mountains weren't written down. They were far more fundamental to the operation of the universe than mere mechanical things like gravity. The Auditors might hate the untidiness caused by the emergence of life, but the Rules did not allow them to do anything about it. The ascent of mankind must have been a boon to them. At last there was a species that could be persuaded to shoot itself in the foot.

    'I don't know what you expect me to do about it,' she said.

    EVERYTHING THAT YOU CAN, said Death. I, BY CUSTOM AND PRACTICE, HAVE OTHER DUTIES AT THIS TIME.

    'Such as?'

    IMPORTANT MATTERS.

    'That you can't tell me about?'

    THAT I DO NOT INTEND TO TELL YOU ABOUT. BUT THEY ARE IMPORTANT. IN ANY CASE, YOUR INSIGHT IS VALUABLE. YOU HAVE WAYS OF THINKING THAT WILL BE USEFUL. YOU CAN GO WHERE I CANNOT. I HAVE ONLY SEEN THE FUTURE. BUT YOU CAN CHANGE IT.

    'Where is this clock being rebuilt?'

    I CANNOT TELL. I HAVE DONE WELL TO DEDUCE WHAT I HAVE. THE ISSUE IS CLOUDED FROM ME.

    'Why?'

    BECAUSE THINGS HAVE BEEN HIDDEN. SOMEONE IS INVOLVED... WHO IS NOT SUBJECT TO ME. Death looked awkward.

    'An immortal?'

    SOMEONE SUBJECT TO... SOMEONE ELSE.

    'You're going to have to be a lot clearer than that.'

    SUSAN... YOU KNOW THAT I ADOPTED AND RAISED YOUR MOTHER, AND FOUND A SUITABLE HUSBAND FOR HER

    'Yes, yes,' snapped Susan. 'How could I forget? I look in my mirror every day.'

    THIS IS... DIFFICULT FOR ME. THE TRUTH IS, I WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE TO INVOLVE MYSELF LIKE THAT. WHY LOOK SURPRISED? IS IT NOT WELL KNOWN THAT GODS DO THIS SORT OF THING ALL THE TIME?

    'Gods, yes, but people like you-'

    PEOPLE LIKE US ARE STILL LIKE PEOPLE...

    Susan did an unusual thing, and listened. That's not an easy task for a teacher.

    SUSAN, YOU WILL KNOW THAT WE WHO ARE... OUTSIDE HUMANITY.

    'I'm not outside humanity,' said Susan sharply. 'I just have a few... extra talents.'

    I DID NOT MEAN YOU, OF COURSE. I MEANT THE OTHERS WHO ARE NOT HUMAN AND YET PART OF HUMANITY'S UNIVERSE - WAR AND DESTINY AND PESTILENCE AND THE REST OF US - WE ARE ENVISAGED AS HUMAN BY HUMANS AND THUS, IN VARIOUS FASHIONS, WE TAKE ON SOME ASPECTS OF HUMANITY. IT CAN BE NO OTHER WAY. EVEN THE VERY BODY SHAPE FORCES UPON OUR MINDS A CERTAIN WAY OF OBSERVING THE UNIVERSE. WE PICK UP HUMAN TRAITS... CURIOSITY, ANGER, RESTLESSNESS...

    'This is basic stuff, Grandfather.'

    YES. AND YOU KNOW, THEREFORE, THAT SOME OF US... TAKE AN INTEREST IN HUMANITY.

    'I know. I am one of the results.'

    YES. ER... AND SOME OF US TAKE AN INTEREST WHICH IS, ER, MORE...

    'Interesting?'

    ... PERSONAL. AND YOU HAVE HEARD ME SPEAK OF THE... PERSONIFICATION OF TIME...

    'You didn't tell me much. She lives in a palace of glass, you once said.' Susan felt a small, shameful and yet curiously satisfying sensation in seeing Death discomfited. He looked like someone who was being forced to reveal a skeleton in the closet.

    YES. ER... SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH A HUMAN...

    'How very romantick,' said Susan, inserting the k. Now she was being childishly perverse, she knew, but life as Death's granddaughter was not easy, and just occasionally she had the irresistible urge to annoy.

    AH. A PUN, OR PLAY ON WORDS, said Death wearily, ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT YOU WERE MERELY TRYING TO BE TIRESOME.

    'Well, that sort of thing used to happen a lot in antiquity, didn't it?' said Susan. 'Poets were always falling in love with moonlight or hyacinths or something, and goddesses were forever-'

    BUT THIS WAS REAL, said Death.

    'How real do you mean?'

    TIME HAD A SON.

    'How could-'

    TIME HAD A SON. SOMEONE MOSTLY MORTAL. SOMEONE LIKE YOU.

    Tick

    A member of the Clockmakers' Guild called on Jeremy once a week. It was nothing formal. In any case there was often some work for him to do, or some results to be collected, because whatever else you might say about him, the boy had a genius for clocks.

    Informally, the visit was also a delicate way to make sure that the lad was taking his medicine and wasn't noticeably crazy.

    The clockmakers were well aware that the intricate mechanisms of the human brain could occasionally throw a screw. The Guild's members tended to be meticulous people, always in pursuit of an inhuman accuracy, and this took its toll. It could cause problems. Springs were not the only things that got wound up. The Guild committee were, by and large, kind and understanding men. They were not, on the whole, men accustomed to guile.

    Dr Hopkins, the Guild's secretary, was surprised when the door of Jeremy's shop was opened by a man who appeared to have survived a very serious accident.

    'Er, I'm here to see Mr Jeremy,' he managed.

    'Yeth, thir. The marthter ith in, thur.'

    'And you, mm, are...?'

    'Igor, thur. Mr Jeremy wath kind enough to take me on, thur.'

    'You work for him?' said Dr Hopkins, looking Igor up and down.

    'Yeth, thur.'

    'Mm... Have you been standing too close to some dangerous machinery?'

    'No, thur. He ith in the workthop, thur.'

    'Mr Igor,' said Dr Hopkins, as he was ushered into the shop, 'you do know that Mr Jeremy has to take medicine, don't you?'

    'Yeth, thur. He mentionth it often.'

    'And he, mm, his general health is... ?'

    'Good, thur. He ith enthuthiathtic for hith work, thur. Bright-eyed and buthy-tailed.'

    'Buthy-tailed, eh?' said Dr Hopkins weakly. 'Mm... Mr Jeremy doesn't usually keep servants. I'm afraid he threw a clock at the head of the last assistant he had.'

    'Really, thur?'

    'Mm, he hasn't thrown a clock at your head, has he?'

    'No, thur. He actth quite normally,' said Igor, a man with four thumbs and stitches all around his neck. He opened the door into the workshop. 'Dr Hopkinth, Mr Jeremy. I will make thome tea, thur.'

    Jeremy was sitting bolt upright at the table, his eyes gleaming.

    'Ah, doctor,' he said. 'How kind of you to come.'

    Dr Hopkins took in the workshop.

    There had been changes. Quite a large piece of lath-and-plaster wall, covered in pencilled sketches, had been removed from somewhere and stood on an easel on one side of the room. The benches, usually the resting places of clocks in various stages of assembly, were covered with lumps of crystal and slabs of glass. And there was a strong smell of acid.

    'Mm... something new?' Dr Hopkins ventured.

    'Yes, doctor. I've been examining the properties of certain superdense crystals,' said Jeremy.

    Dr Hopkins took a deep breath of relief. 'Ah, geology. A wonderful hobby! I'm so glad. It's not good to think about clocks all the time, you know!' he added, jovially, and with a soupçon of hope.

    Jeremy's brow wrinkled, as if the brain behind it was trying to fit around an unfamiliar concept.

    'Yes,' he said at last. 'Did you know, doctor, that copper octirate vibrates exactly two million, four hundred thousand and seventy-eight times a second?'

    'As much as that, eh?' said Dr Hopkins. 'My word.'

    'Indeed. And light shone through a natural prism of octivium quartz splits into only three colours?'

    'Fascinating,' said Dr Hopkins, reflecting that it could be worse. 'Mm... is it me, or is there a rather... sharp smell in the air?'

    'Drains,' said Jeremy. 'We've been cleaning them. With acid. Which is what we needed the acid for. For cleaning the drains.'

    'Drains, eh?' Dr Hopkins blinked. He wasn't at home in the world of drains. There was a crackling sound and blue light flickered under the door of the kitchen.

    'Your, mm, man Igor,' he said. 'All right, is he?'

    'Yes, thank you, doctor. He's from Uberwald, you know.'

    'Oh. Very... big, Uberwald. Very big country.' That was one of only two things Dr Hopkins knew about Uberwald. He coughed nervously, and mentioned the other one. 'People there can be a bit strange, I've heard.'

    'Igor says he's never had anything to do with that kind of person,' said Jeremy calmly.

    'Good. Good. That is good,' said the doctor. Jeremy's fixed smile was beginning to unnerve him. 'He, mm, seems to have a lot of scars and stitches.'

    'Yes. It's cultural.'

    'Cultural, is it?' Dr Hopkins looked relieved. He was a man who tried to see the best in everybody, but the city had got rather complicated since he was a boy, with dwarfs and trolls and golems and even zombies. He wasn't sure he liked everything that was happening, but a lot of it was 'cultural', apparently, and you couldn't object to that, so he didn't. 'Cultural' sort of solved problems by explaining that they weren't really there.

    The light under the door went out. A moment later Igor came in with two cups of tea on a tray.

    It was good tea, the doctor had to admit, but the acid in the air was making his eyes water.

    'So, mm, how is the work on the new navigation tables going?' he said.

    'Ginger bithcuit, thur?' said Igor, by his ear.

    'Oh, er, yes... Oh, I say, these are rather good, Mr Igor.'

    'Take two, thur.'

    'Thank you.' Now Dr Hopkins sprayed crumbs as he spoke. 'The navigation tables-' he repeated.

    'I am afraid I have not been able to make very much progress,' said Jeremy. 'I have been engaged on the properties of crystals.'

    'Oh. Yes. You said. Well, of course we are very grateful for any time that you feel you can spare,' said Dr Hopkins. 'And if I may say so, mm, it is good to see you with a new interest. Too much concentration on one thing is, mm, conducive to ill humours of the brain.'

    'I have medicine,' said Jeremy.

    'Yes, of course. Er, as a matter of fact, since I happened to be going past the apothecary today...' Dr Hopkins pulled a large, paper-wrapped bottle out of his pocket.

    'Thank you.' Jeremy indicated the shelf behind him. 'As you can see, I have nearly run out.'

    'Yes, I thought you might,' said Dr Hopkins, as if the level of the bottle on Jeremy's shelf wasn't something the clockmakers kept a very careful eye on. 'Well, I shall be going, then. Well done with the crystals. I used to collect butterflies when I was a boy. Wonderful things, hobbies. Give me a killing jar and a net and I was as happy as a little lark.'

    Jeremy still smiled at him. There was something glassy about the smile.

    Dr Hopkins swallowed the remainder of his tea and put the cup back in the saucer.

    'And now I really must be on my way,' he mumbled. 'So much to do. Don't wish to keep you from your work. Crystals, eh? Wonderful things. So pretty.'

    'Are they?' said Jeremy. He hesitated, as though he was trying to solve a minor problem. 'Oh, yes. Patterns of light.'

    'Twinkly,' said Dr Hopkins.

    Igor was waiting by the street door when Dr Hopkins reached it. He nodded.

    'Mm... you are sure about the medicine?' the doctor said quietly.

    'Oh yeth, thur. Twithe a day I watch him pour out a thpoonful.'

    'Oh, good. He can be a little, er, sometimes he doesn't get on well with people.'

    'Yeth, thur?'

    'Very, um, very particular about accuracy...'

    'Yeth, thur.'

    '... which is a good thing, of course. Wonderful thing, accuracy,' said Dr Hopkins, and sniffed. 'Up to a point, of course. Well, good day to you.'

    'Good day, thur.'

    When Igor returned to the workshop Jeremy was carefully pouring the blue medicine into a spoon. When the spoon was exactly full, he tipped it into the sink. 'They check, you know,' he said. 'They think I don't notice.'

    'I'm thure they mean well, thur.'

    'I'm afraid I can't think so well when I take the medicine,' he said. 'In fact I think I'm getting on a lot better without it, don't you? It slows me down.'

    Igor took refuge in silence. In his experience, many of the world's greatest discoveries were made by men who would be considered mad by conventional standards. Insanity depended on your point of view, he always said, and if it was the view through your own underpants then everything looked fine.

    But young Master Jeremy was beginning to worry him. He never laughed, and Igor liked a good maniacal laugh. You could trust it. Since giving up the medicine, Jeremy had not, as Igor had expected, begun to gibber and shout things like 'Mad! They said I was mad! But I shall show them all! Ahahahaha!' He'd simply become more - focused.

    Then there was that smile. Igor was not easily frightened, because otherwise he wouldnl be able to look in a mirror, but he was becoming a little troubled.

    'Now, where were we... ?' said Jeremy. 'Oh, yes, give me a hand here.'

    Together they moved the table aside. Under it, dozens of glass jars hissed.

    'Not enough power,' said Igor. 'Altho, we have not got the mirrorth right yet, thur.'

    Jeremy pulled the cloth off the device on the workbench. Glass and crystal glittered, and in some cases glittered very strangely. As Jeremy had remarked yesterday, in the clarity that was returning now that he was carefully pouring one spoonful of his medicine down the sink twice a day, some of the angles looked wrong. One crystal had disappeared when he'd locked it into place, but it was clearly still there because he could see the light reflecting off it.

    'And we've thtill got too much metal in it, thur,' Igor grumbled. 'It wath the thpring that did for the latht one.'

    'We'll find a way,' said Jeremy.

    'Home-made lightning ith never ath good ath the real thort,' said Igor.

    'Good enough to test the principle,' said Jeremy.

    'Tetht the printhiple, tetht the printhiple,' muttered Igor. 'Thorry, thur, but Igorth do not "tetht the printhiple". Thtrap it to the bench and put a good thick bolt of lightning through it, thatth our motto. Thatth how you tetht thomething.'

    'You seem ill at ease, Igor.'

    'Well, I'm thorry, thur,' said Igor. 'It'th the climate dithagreeing with me. I'm uthed to regular thunderthtormth.'

    'I've heard that some people really seem to come alive in thunderstorms,' said Jeremy, carefully adjusting the angle of a crystal.

    'Ah, that wath when I worked for Baron Finklethtein,' said Igor.

    Jeremy stood back. This wasn't the clock, of course. There was still a lot more work to do (but he could see it in front of him, if he closed his eyes) before they had a clock. This was just an essay, to see if he was on the right lines.

    He was on the right lines. He knew it.

    Tick

    Susan walked back through the motionless streets, sat down in Madam Frout's office and let herself sink back into the stream of time.

    She had never found out how this worked. It just did. Time didn't stop for the rest of the world, and it didn't stop for her - it was just that she entered a kind of loop of time, and everything else stayed exactly as it was until she'd finished what she needed to do.

    It was another inherited family trait. It worked best if you didn't think about it, just like tightrope walking. Anyway, now she had other things to think about.

    Madam Frout turned her gaze back from the rat-free mantelpiece. 'Oh,' she said. It seems to have gone.'

    'It was probably a trick of the light, madam,' said Susan. Mostly human. Someone like me, she thought.

    'Yes, er, of course...' Madam Frout managed to get her glasses on, despite the fact that the string was still tangled with the button. It meant that she'd moored herself to her own chest, but she was damned if she was going to do anything about it now.

    Susan could unnerve a glacier. All she had to do was sit quietly, looking polite and alert.

    'What precisely was it you wanted, madam?' she said. 'It's just that I've left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they've finished.'

    'Algebra?' said Madam Frout, perforce staring at her own bosom, which no one else had ever done. 'But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds!'

    'Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out,' said Susan. It was time to move things along. 'I expect you wanted to see me about my letter, madam?' she said.

    Madam Frout looked blank. 'Wh-' she began.

    Susan sighed and snapped her fingers.

    She walked round and opened a drawer by the motionless Madam Frout, removed a sheet of paper and spent some time carefully writing a letter. She let the ink dry, rustled the paper a bit to make it look slightly second-hand, and then put it just under the top of the pile of paperwork beside Madam Frout, with enough of it peeking out so that it would be easy to see.

    She returned to her seat. She snapped her fingers again.

    '-at letter?' said Madam Frout. And then she looked down at her desk. 'Oh.'

    It was a cruel thing to do, Susan knew. But while Madam Frout was not by any means a bad person and was quite kind to children, in a haphazard way, she was silly. And Susan did not have a lot of time for silly.

    'Yes, I asked if I might have a few days' leave,' said Susan. 'Pressing family matters, I'm afraid. I have prepared some work for the children to get on with, of course.'

    Madam Frout hesitated. Susan didn't have time for this, either. She snapped her fingers.

    'MY GOODNESS, THAT'D BE A RELIEF,' she said, in a voice whose harmonics went all the way into the subconscious. 'IF WE DON'T SLOW HER DOWN WE'LL RUN OUT OF THINGS TO TEACH THEM! SHE HAS BEEN PERFORMING SMALL MIRACLES ON A DAILY BASIS AND DESERVES A RAISE.'

    Then she sat back, snapped her fingers again, and watched the words settle into the forefront of Madam Frours mind. The woman's lips actually moved.

    'Why, yes, of course,' she murmured at last. 'You have been working very hard... and... and,' and since there are things even a voice of eldritch command can't achieve and one of them is to get extra money out of a head teacher, 'we shall have to think about a little increment for you one of these days.'

    Susan returned to the classroom and spent the rest of the day performing small miracles, which included removing the glue from Richenda's hair, emptying the wee out of Billy's shoes and treating the class to a short visit to the continent of Fourecks.

    When their parents came to pick them up they were all waving crayoned pictures of kangaroos, and Susan had to hope that the red dust on their shoes - red mud in the case of Billy's, whose sense of timing had not improved - would pass unnoticed. It probably would. Fidgett's was not the only place where adults didn't see what couldn't possibly be true.

    Now she sat back.

    There was something pleasant about an empty classroom. Of course, as any teacher would point out, one nice thing was that there were no children in it, and particularly no Jason.

    But the tables and shelves around the room showed evidence of a term well spent. Paintings lined the walls, and displayed good use of perspective and colour. The class had built a full-size white horse out of cardboard boxes, during which time they'd learned a lot about horses and Susan learned about Jason's remarkably accurate powers of observation. She'd had to take the cardboard tube away from him and explain that this was a polite horse.

    It had been a long day. She raised the lid of her desk and took out Grim Fairy Tales. This dislodged some paperwork, which in turn revealed a small cardboard box decorated in black and gold.

    It had been a little present from Vincent's parents.

    She stared at the box.

    Every day she had to go through this. It was ridiculous. It wasn't even as if Higgs & Meakins did good chocolates. They were just butter and sugar and-

    She scrabbled amongst the sad little scraps of brown paper inside the box and pulled out a chocolate. No one could be expected not to have just one chocolate, after all.

    She put it in her mouth.

    Damndamndamndamn! It was nougat inside! Her one chocolate today and it was damn artificial damn pink-and-white damn sickly damn stupid nougat!

    Well, no one could be expected to believe that counted. [9] She was entitled to another-

    The teacher part of her, which had eyes in the back of its head, caught the blur of movement. She spun round.

    'No running with scythes!'

    The Death of Rats stopped jogging along the Nature Table and gave her a guilty look.

    SQUEAK?

    'And no going into the Stationery Cupboard, either,' said Susan, automatically. She slammed the desk lid shut.

    SQUEAK!

    'Yes, you were. I could hear you thinking about it.' It was possible to deal with the Death of Rats provided you thought of him as a very small Jason.

    The Stationery Cupboard! That was one of the great battlegrounds of classroom history, that and the playhouse. But the ownership of the playhouse usually sorted itself out without Susan's intervention, so that all she had to do was be ready with ointment, a nose-blow and mild sympathy for the losers, whereas the Stationery Cupboard was a war of attrition. It contained pots of powder paint and reams of paper and boxes of crayons and more idiosyncratic items like a spare pair of pants for Billy, who did his best. It also contained The Scissors, which under classroom rules were treated as some kind of Doomsday Machine, and, of course, the boxes of stars. The only people allowed in the cupboard were Susan and, usually, Vincent. Despite everything Susan had tried, short of actual deception, he was always the official 'best at everything' and won the coveted honour every day, which was to go into the Stationery Cupboard and fetch the pencils and hand them out. For the rest of the class, and especially Jason, the Stationery Cupboard was some mystic magic realm to be entered whenever possible.

    Honestly, thought Susan, once you learn the arts of defending the Stationery Cupboard, outwitting Jason and keeping the class pet alive until the end of term, you've mastered at least half of teaching.

    She signed the register, watered the sad plants on the windowsill, went and fetched some fresh privet from the hedge for the stick insects that were the successor to Henry the Hamster (chosen on the basis that it was quite hard to tell when they were dead), tidied a few errant crayons away and looked around the classroom at all those little chairs. It sometimes worried her that nearly everyone she knew well was three feet high.

    She was never certain that she trusted her grandfather at times like this. It was all to do with the Rules. He couldn't interfere, but he knew her weaknesses and he could wind her up and send her out into the world...

    Someone like me. Yes, he'd known how to engage her interest.