Thief of Time (Discworld 26)

'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?'