A Tale of Time City

He swung towards the line of pointed windows. They clearly were doors. One in the middle flapped aside to let them out, as if it knew they were coming – or Vivian thought it was opening for them, until she saw that two people, a man and a woman, were coming in from the square outside. Vivian stopped politely to let them come in first. But, to her astonishment, Jonathan took no notice of them at all. He went on walking through the opening as if the two people did not exist. And to Vivian’s utter horror, he walked straight through both of them, the man first and then the woman, as if they were made of smoke.

“How – who – how did you do that?” she gasped, as the man and woman walked past her through the hall, looking quite whole and undamaged. “Who – who are they?”

“Those? You don’t want to take any notice of those,” Jonathan said. “They’re only time-ghosts.”

Vivian’s still-shaky legs nearly folded under her. “Ghosts!” she squawked.

3 TIME CITY (#ulink_29913d61-e6b8-5342-aad2-2da3cc47589b)

Jonathan took Vivian’s elbow and towed her down a bank of stone steps into the cobbled square outside. “Not really ghosts,” he said. “Time-ghosts – and you’re supposed to know about them, so don’t make such a noise! This square is called Time Close. All the important people live here. That’s Lee House over there where you were supposed to have been born.”

How can anyone get used to ghosts? Vivian thought, looking where Jonathan pointed. Lee House was the tallest building on the right-hand side of Time Close. It confused Vivian a little because it was built mostly of metal in a most modern-looking style, and yet she could see that it was very old from the gigantic flowering tree trained up the front of it. The tree had reached the straight metal roof and bent across it, and gone on to trail huge branches over the newer houses on either side. And these houses were built of mellow pink brick and weathered old wood in a way that ought to have been ancient. More confusing still, the Annuate Palace, when Vivian turned to look back at it, was simply a very large house built in a style she had never seen before.

“Then tell me about these ghosts, if I’m supposed to know,” she said.

“Time-ghosts,” said Jonathan. “They happen because the City keeps using the same piece of space and time over and over again. If a person does the same thing often enough, they leave a mark in the air, like the ones you just saw. Habit-ghosts, we call them. There’s another kind called once-ghosts – I’ll show you some of those later. They get made—”

But the explanation was interrupted by Sam, who came shuffling gloomily away from the fountain in the middle of the Close. He was in orange pyjamas today and his shoelaces were trailing off both feet. “I got caught. I got hit,” he said, sighing gustily. His face was rather blotchy, as if he might have been crying. “I was tired,” he said. “I took the keys back this morning instead.”

“Oh no!” exclaimed Jonathan. His lordly air vanished and he looked horrified. “I told you not to! You mean they found out?”

“No, I covered up,” Sam said. “My dad came in just as I was putting the keys back, and I pretended I was just taking them that moment for a joke. But he hit me and locked his study. We won’t be able to get at them again.”

“That’s all right!” Jonathan said, much relieved. “We won’t need the keys again. I got V.S. passed off as Cousin Vivian, so we’re quite safe.”

He was far too relieved to show any sympathy for Sam. Vivian felt she ought to make up for it by being sorry for Sam herself, but she was too worried on her own account. This meant there was no chance of forcing Jonathan to send her back to Cousin Marty by the way she had come. She would have to make them send her through another time-lock – and soon. She knew she could not pretend to be Cousin Vivian for long. Someone was bound to find out.

Jonathan did not seem to be worrying about that at all. “Tie your shoes up,” he said confidently to Sam. And when Sam had done so, with much heavy breathing and some cross muttering, Jonathan led the way through an archway in the lower corner of Time Close into a big empty square beyond. “This is Aeon Square,” he said, waving a lordly hand.

There were huge buildings all round the square. But Vivian was a Londoner and used to tall buildings. What impressed her more was that, in the same confusing way as the buildings in Time Close, the ones which should have been ultra-modern seemed to be the oldest there. There was a great turreted place that might have been a department store filling all the right-hand side of Aeon Square, and it was made entirely of glass – glass twisted and wrought into a hundred strange futuristic shapes. But Vivian could see, even from this distance, that the glass was pitted and worn and obviously as old as the hills, while the nearer buildings with stone towers looked much newer.

“What do you think of it?” Jonathan said, clearly expecting her to marvel.

“It’s not much bigger than Trafalgar Square without Nelson and the lions,” Vivian said, refusing to be overawed. “But it’s awfully clean.” This was true. There was no soot or grime. The sunlight slanted on clear grey stone and sparkled green on the glass, or came dazzling off the golden roofs and domes that crowded up from behind the buildings at the end of the square. Vivian looked up into the soft blue and white sky as she followed Jonathan across the wide space and found no chimneys and no smoke. “Why is there no smoke?” she asked. “And don’t you have pigeons?”

“No birds in Time City,” Sam said, stumping along behind.

“And we don’t use fossil fuels,” Jonathan said, striding ahead. “We use energe functions instead. This is Faber John’s Stone.”

Right in the middle of the square, there was a big slab of bluish rock let into the whiter paving-stones. It was very worn from being walked on. The golden letters that had once made up quite a long inscription had been almost wholly trodden away.

Sam stood and gazed at it. “The crack’s got bigger,” he announced.

Vivian could see the crack Sam meant. It was quite a short one, from one corner, stretching to the first golden letters of the inscription. FAB… they said. IOV… AET… IV… and CONDI… on the next line. The rest was too worn away to read. “Is it Greek?” she asked.

“Latin,” said Sam. “Measure the crack. Go on.”

“In a second,” said Jonathan. He explained to Vivian, “They say Faber John put this stone here when he founded the City. The words mean that Faber John founded the City to last the Four Ages. My tutor raves at the way they’ve let it get trodden away. He thinks it should say why the City was made and whereabouts the polarities are out in history. The stories say that when Faber John’s Stone breaks up, the City will break up too. All right,” he said to Sam, who was bouncing impatiently about.

Jonathan put his foot, in a green strappy sandal, carefully along the crack, with his green heel wedged into the corner. “It’s grown quite a bit,” he said. “It’s nearly to the end of my toes now.” He said to Vivian, “It was just a little tiny split for most of my life, but it started to grow about a month ago. I measure it every day on my way to school.”

“The City’s breaking up,” Sam announced in a booming, gloomy voice. “I need comforting. I need a Forty-two Century butter-pie.”

“Later,” said Jonathan and strode away across the square. “I want to show V.S. the time-ghosts in Secular Square.”

Sam stamped angrily and defiantly on the crack, which caused one of his shoelaces to trail again as he followed them.

Secular Square was behind Aeon Square and much smaller. It was crowded with stalls under red and white awnings, where people were buying and selling everything from fruit and meat to tourist trinkets. At first sight, there were hundreds of people there. Then Vivian’s flesh began to creep as she realised that half the people were walking through the other half. Music was playing merrily somewhere. Everyone was chattering and buying things, and nobody seemed in the least bothered that half the throng were ghosts who chattered and laughed without making a sound and paid for ghostly apples with unreal money. There was even a ghostly stall piled with ghostly oranges and tomatoes. It overlapped a real stall, but nobody seemed to mind. That stall was the only ghostly thing Vivian dared walk through.

“How do you tell?” she asked despairingly, as Jonathan and Sam walked through a crowd of laughing girls who looked as real as anyone else. “They all look quite solid to me!”

“You’ll get to know,” Jonathan said. “It’s obvious really.”

“But I can’t go bumping into everyone until I do!” Vivian protested. She kept carefully behind Jonathan and Sam while she tried to see just what it was about the people they walked through. After a while, she noticed that the people they didn’t walk through were all the ones who were wearing the same kind of pyjama-suits as their own. Got it! Vivian thought. Pyjamas are present-day fashion! She pointed excitedly to a group of people in gauzy dresses gathered round a trinket stall. “I know! Those are time-ghosts.”

Jonathan and Sam looked. “Tourists,” said Sam.

“From Eighty-seven Century,” said Jonathan.

As they said it, a gauze-robed girl bought a real white bag with TIME CITY on it in gold letters, and paid with a real silvery strip of money. Vivian felt a fool. A time-ghost in a pink striped crinoline walked through her and she had suddenly had enough.

“This is giving me the pip!” she said. “Go somewhere else or I shall scream!”

“Let’s get butter-pies,” said Sam.

“Later,” said Jonathan. He led the way down a winding lane called Day Alley, explaining to Vivian, “I wanted you to see how old Time City is. There are ghosts in the market wearing clothes that must go back hundreds of years.”

“I’m miserable,” Sam proclaimed, plodding behind with his shoelace flapping. “Nobody ever gives me butter-pies when I need them.”

“Shut up,” said Jonathan. “Stop whingeing.” This conversation happened so often after that that Vivian felt it ought to qualify as a time-ghost. Meanwhile they saw a round place with a golden dome called The Years, and then went over a bridge that was made of china, like a teacup, and painted with flowers in a way that reminded Vivian of a teacup even more. But the paint was worn and scratched and the bridge was chipped in places. It led to a park called Long Hours, where they saw the famous Pendulum Gardens.

Vivian found them fascinating, but Sam stood glumly watching fountains fling water high against the sky and little islands of rock carrying daffodils, tulips and irises slowly circle about in the spray.

“There’s only nineteen islands left,” he said. “Two more have come down.”

“How is it done?” Vivian asked. “How do the flowers stay up?”

“Nobody knows,” said Jonathan. “They say Faber John invented it. It’s one of the oldest things in the City.”

“That’s why it’s falling apart,” Sam said dismally.

“Oh, do stop being so depressing!” Jonathan snapped at him.

“I can’t,” sighed Sam. “I’m in my wet-week mood. You weren’t hit before breakfast.”

Jonathan sighed too. “Let’s go and have butter-pies,” he said.

Sam’s face lit up. His whole body changed. “Whoopee! Charge!” he shouted and led the way back to Aeon Square at a gallop.