Читать книгу City of Time - Eoin McNamee, Eoin McNamee - Страница 7

Dr Diamond woke Owen at seven o’clock. There was no sign of Cati.

“Cati has gone to check on the world. Her ‘morning round’ she calls it,” Dr Diamond said. “You had better get home before your mother misses you.”

“But—” Owen began.

“It’s better if you carry on as normal. Go to school and come back here this evening before dark. We have much to plan.” Owen jumped up. At least he would see his friends again that evening.

He ducked out of the Den into the chill morning air and ran along the riverbank. As he crossed the river on the old tree trunk, he heard someone calling. Cati was standing on top of the ruins of the Workhouse. He waved at her and she waved back, then disappeared from view.

After school, Owen came straight back to the Workhouse without returning home first. Approaching the gaunt ruin, it was hard to believe the building had ever come alive when time was threatened, and that it teemed with people. If you looked closely you could see the outline of the defences along the river, and some of the scars left by exploding ice lances during the battle with Johnston and the Harsh. But otherwise the building was sunk into decay and dereliction.

The wind funnelling down the river valley towards Owen was cold, but it was the kind of cold he didn’t mind, where you pulled your scarf around your neck and looked forward to sitting at a warm fire. Not the terrible cold that the Harsh had used as a weapon, the chill that froze your heart as well as your limbs.

He couldn’t see any sign of Cati or Dr Diamond so he followed the riverbank to the Den. He pulled aside the bushes at the entrance and paused. There was something strange in the air, something different. Not danger, definitely not danger. He moved cautiously forward.

The first thing Owen saw was Cati. She was fast asleep on the battered sofa. He went over to wake her, but before he could do so he spotted something lying on the table. At first he thought it was a cornflower. The Resisters used them as tokens of remembrance and Cati had left one in exactly the same place for him when she had faded back into the shadows of time. But then he realised that it was in fact a cornflower brooch, very old and beautifully made from silver and enamel. He turned it over in his hand.

“Where did you get that?”

Owen turned. Cati was sitting bolt upright, her eyes unnaturally bright. “It was on the table,” he said.

“Give it to me!” She sprang up and snatched it from his hand.

“Take it easy,” Owen said. She was staring down at the brooch and Owen saw tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just saw it lying there. I didn’t mean any harm. Where did it come from anyway?” She didn’t answer. Her hands were trembling.

“Cati?” he said softly.

“I don’t know how it got on the table,” she said, her voice shaking, “but I know where it comes from.”

“Where?”

“My father,” she said. “He was here, Owen! It belonged to my mother. He carried it on a chain around his neck.”

Owen looked at her. His heart was beating so loudly that he thought she could hear it. He had seen what happened to her father, the Sub-Commandant, how he’d been sucked into the Puissance, the maelstrom that had been draining time from the world. He could never have survived.

“He wasn’t killed,” Cati said, as though reading his thoughts. “Just lost in time.”

“For ever,” Owen said. “Remember what he said. He was saying goodbye to you for ever, Cati. You know that.”

“Stop it!” Cati cried. “He left the brooch! He’s not gone. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“I do,” Owen said quietly. “I do know, Cati.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Cati said.

“Don’t be,” said Owen. “I’m glad he is out there somewhere. But we have to think what this means, Cati. Your father wouldn’t have done this for no reason.”

“It wasn’t for no reason,” Cati said. “It was for me.”

“Yes, Cati. But… you know what type of man he was.”

“Kind and loving and…”

“Yes, but he knew his duty too. There is a message here somewhere, Cati. About time. Can I see it?”

Cati handed over the brooch. “Ouch!”

“What is it?”

“The pin stuck into me. It’s all bent.”

They examined the brooch. The pin at the back was badly bent, turned almost at right angles to where it should have been. “I wonder how that happened,” Cati said, sucking at her sore finger.

“I wonder,” Owen said. “Hang on a second…”

The late afternoon light coming through the perspex roof of the Den made dust motes dance above the table. But it was the surface of the table that had caught Owen’s eye. The fresh scratches in the battered wooden top.

“That’s why the pin is bent!” Cati said. “It must have been used to scratch a message.”

They bent over the table together. The scratches were definitely words gouged into the surface. They were hard to read; the wood was splintered and the letters uneven and clumsy.

go to the city of time not enough time… a tempod

“Do you know what it means?” Owen asked.

“No,” Cati frowned. “I’ve never heard of a city of time. And what does he mean by not enough time? Not enough time for what? And what is a tempod?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said, “but he went to a lot of trouble to get the message to us, so it must be important.” He looked at Cati. She was tracing the letters with her finger, a dreamy smile on her face.

They found Dr Diamond in his laboratory, the Skyward. The Skyward was a glass building fixed to the top of a metal column called the Nab. When the Workhouse was fully awake, the Nab opened out like an old-fashioned telescope, becoming a slender column which stood high above the building like a metal lighthouse. But now it was folded away deep under the ground.

Owen had followed Cati through one of the hidden openings to the interior of the Workhouse. This one looked like a badger sett. It opened out into a damp, earthen corridor which led steeply downwards and they stumbled over rocks and tree roots on the way. Small pieces of magno set into the wall cast a dim light, but it wasn’t bright enough to see properly.

Finally Owen saw the outlines of the Nab, the brass body going downwards into a dark aperture in the ground. Above it were the glass walls of the Skyward, lit from within.

They had to climb a rickety wooden ladder to get to the door. When the Nab stood high above the Workhouse the top revolved so you had to wait for the inner and outer doors to line up, but now the doors were already open. Cati and Owen stepped inside.

There was something familiar and comforting about the interior of the Skyward. Much of Dr Diamond’s equipment was made from objects he had found and recycled. There was the old fridge that produced temperatures so low that it took things weeks to defrost. There was the old aeroplane seat. There was the vacuum cleaner with mysterious pipes flowing into it. There was a submarine periscope hanging from the ceiling which you could use to see backwards or forwards in time. There were smells of strange chemicals and varnish and hot solder, and a delicious smell of baking. Dr Diamond was an excellent cook and Owen knew there must be a cake in the little oven.

The middle of the room was taken up by a big clock with five faces. Dr Diamond was standing in front of it with a notebook, a frown on his face. Owen remembered that the clocks all moved at different speeds. Now though, three of the clocks weren’t moving at all. Of the two remaining clock faces, one was moving slowly and steadily, while the hands of the other one were spinning round at immense speed.

Dr Diamond scribbled furiously in the notebook, then sucked the end of his pencil.

“Dr Diamond!” Cati burst out. “We got a message from the Sub-Commandant!”

The scientist wheeled around to look at them. Owen was uncomfortably aware of how penetrating the gaze from those kindly blue eyes could be. “That is impossible—”

“It’s not impossible!” Cati exclaimed. “It happened!”

“If you let me finish,” Dr Diamond said patiently, “it is impossible, but there are other impossible things happening. Look at the clocks.”

Owen peered at the clocks. He always felt a little stupid in the Skyward. Dr Diamond had said that there were at least five different kinds of time and that was why there were five clocks, but he didn’t really understand it.

“The clocks are slowing down,” Dr Diamond said, “and that should be impossible. And now a message from my old friend the Sub-Commandant. What does he say, Cati?”

Cati told the doctor how they had found the message scratched on the table and showed him the cornflower brooch.

“Yes, of course,” Dr Diamond said softly. “Your mother used to wear it. She looked very beautiful.”

“Did she?” Cati said.

“Yes.” Dr Diamond ruffled Cati’s hair fondly.

Owen had never thought about Cati having a mother before. He wondered where she was and what had happened to her. But now was not the time to ask. He told Dr Diamond what had been scratched in the table.

“City of Time?” Dr Diamond said sharply. “Are you sure it said City of Time? Those words exactly?”

“Yes.”

Dr Diamond got up and began to pace up and down. “City of Time and not enough time,” he repeated to himself. “Obviously, he didn’t have enough strength to spell out exactly what he meant. It is a long time since I heard the City mentioned. And I wonder why we need a tempod? Wait here…”

The scientist turned away and, with bewildering speed, disappeared through the door at the back of the Skyward which led into his private quarters.

“What do we do now?” Owen said, staring after him.

“Don’t know,” Cati said. “It feels late. Are you going home?”

“No.”

Cati sniffed the air. “You know what?”

“What?”

“You think Dr Diamond would mind if we checked the cake?”

“Just in case it burns?”

“Just in case it burns.”

Across the fields someone else had noticed it was getting late. Mary White’s little thatched shop was just down the road from Owen’s house. Mary was a good friend and neighbour to Owen and his mother. Often, when Owen did not have enough money for groceries, Mary had given him food, saying he could pay later. She was much older than anyone suspected, and much wiser, and could see things that others couldn’t.

She had stood behind the counter of her shop all day and now she locked the door, turned out the lights and went into the parlour behind the counter. It had been a long day and Mary moved slowly, but there was something that must be done. Something that could not wait.

A grandfather clock stood in the corner of the parlour. Mary opened the glass door below the clock face. A brass pendulum hung there, apparently unmoving. But if you looked deep into the case you could see that it was in fact swinging, making a tiny motion, almost a tremble. Not quite still, but almost.

All year, Mary had watched the pendulum get slower and slower. She stood there for a long time looking at it. Looking beyond it, for if you gazed closely, you could see that there was no back to the case; instead, there was a velvet blackness studded with pinpricks of light. It was like looking into deep space, the blackness going on for ever and ever, as though the grandfather clock contained all of eternity.

Mary closed the glass door gently and locked it, removing the long, thin key. She went to the mirror on the wall beside the door and twisted a length of her grey hair around her fingers, using the key to fix it in position. It looked like an ornate hairpin, perfectly hidden.

She bolted the back door, took her coat from the peg and went out through the front of the shop. As she reached down to unlock the shop door she looked through the glass panel. She stopped and the hand that held the door key trembled. She quickly relocked the door. It was dark outside, but she recognised the lorry that was parked on the other side of the road. The battered and filthy scrap lorry that went up and down the road every day. The lorry driven by Johnston, the Resisters’ mortal enemy.

Mary slipped back into the parlour and sat down heavily on the sofa. She had no idea that things were so bad. Never before would Johnston have had the nerve to post a guard on her front door. Without thinking, her hand went to the little key that she had concealed in her hair. There was something she had to do, something she had promised herself she would do a long time ago. Mary hoped it wasn’t too late.