Diana Wynne Jones - A Tale of Time City

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A Tale of Time City

Diana Wynne Jones

A 3S digital back-up edition v1.0

click for scan notes and proofing history

Contents

Chapter 1: Kidnapped

Chapter 2: Cousin Vivian

Chapter 3: Time City

Chapter 4: Time Ghosts

Chapter 5: Time Lock

Chapter 6: Cousin Marty

Chapter 7: The River Time

Chapter 8: Duration

Chapter 9: Guardian

Chapter 10: Ceremonies

Chapter 11: The Age of Gold

Chapter 12: Android

Chapter 13: The Gnomon

Chapter 14: The Age of Silver

Chapter 15: Evacuees

Chapter 16: The Lead Casket?

Chapter 17: Faber John

A GREENWILLOW BOOK.

HarperTrophy® An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Harper Trophy® is a registered trademark of HarperCollins

Publishers Inc.

A Tale of Time City

in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the

case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America. For information address

HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins

Publishers, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Diana Wynne.

A Tale of Time City.

“Greenwillow Books.”

Summary: In 1939 an eleven-year-old London girl is kidnapped to

Time City, a place existing outside the stream of time and the history

of humanity, where she finds the inhabitants facing their worst hour of

crisis.

ISBN 0-06-029884-7 - ISBN 0-06-447351-1 (pbk.)

[1. Science fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7J684Tal 1987 86-33304

[Fic]

Typography by Karin Paprocki

First Harper Trophy edition, 2001

Visit us on the World Wide Web!

www.harperchildrens.com

IT’S ABOUT TIME

Time City—built far in the future on a patch of space outside

time—holds the formidable task of overseeing history, yet it’s starting

to decay, crumble… What does that say for the future of the world… for

the past… for the present? Two Time City boys, determined to save it

all, think they have the answer in Vivian Smith, a young Twenty

Century girl whom they pluck from a British train station at the start

of World War II. But not only have they broken every rule in the book

by traveling back in time—they have the wrong person! Unable to

return safely, Vivian’s only choice is to help the boys restore Time City.

Otherwise, she’ll be stuck outside time forever!

“A powerful and moving story about children who are,

quite literally, racing through time to save their world.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Absolutely first-rate entertainment!”

—School Library Journal (starred review)

FOR TABITHA AND WILLIAM

A Tale Of Time City

Chapter 1

Kidnapped

^ »

The train journey was horrible. There was a heat wave that

September in 1939, and the railway authorities had fastened all the

windows shut so that none of the children packed onto the train

could fall out. There were several hundred of them, and nearly all

of them screamed when they saw a cow. They were all being sent

away from London from the bombing, and most of them had no idea

where milk came from. Each child carried a square brown gas mask

box. All of them had labels with their names and addresses on

them, and the littlest ones (who cried and wet themselves rather

often) had the labels tied round their necks with string.

Vivian, being one of the bigger ones, had her label tied to the

string bag Mum had found to take the things that refused to fit into

her suitcase. That meant that Vivian did not dare let go of the

string bag. When your surname is Smith, you need to make very

sure everyone knows just which Smith you are. Vivian had

carefully written Cousin Marty’s name and address on the back of

the label, to show that she was not just being sent into the country,

like most of the children, to be taken in by anyone who would have

her. Cousin Marty, after a long delay, had promised to meet the

train and have Vivian to stay with her until the danger of bombs

was over. But Vivian had never met Cousin Marty, and she was

terrified that they would somehow miss each other. So she hung on

to the string bag until its handles were wet with sweat and the

plaited pattern was stamped in red on her hands.

Half of the children never stayed still for a moment. Sometimes

the carriage where Vivian sat filled with small boys in gray shorts,

whose skinny legs were in thick gray socks and whose heads, each

in a gray school cap, seemed too big for their bare, skinny necks.

Sometimes a mob of little girls in dresses too long for them crowded

in from the corridor. All of them screamed. There were always

about three labels saying “Smith” on each fresh crowd. Vivian sat

where she was and worried that Cousin Marty would meet the

wrong Smith, or meet the wrong train, or that she herself would

mistake someone else for Cousin Marty, or get adopted by someone

who thought she had nowhere to go. She was afraid she would get

out at the wrong station or find out that the train had taken her to

Scotland instead of the West of England. Or she would get out, but

Cousin Marty would not be there.

Mum had packed some sandwiches in the string bag, but none of

the other evacuees seemed to have any food. Vivian did not quite

like to eat when she was the only one, and there were too many

children for her to share with. Nor did she dare take off her school

coat and hat for fear they got lost. The floor of the train was soon

littered with lost coats and caps— and some labels—and there was

even a lost squashed gas mask.

So Vivian sat and sweltered and worried. By the time the train

chuffed its crowded hot fighting screaming crying laughing way

into a station at last, it was early evening, and Vivian had thought

of every single thing that could possibly go wrong except the one

that actually did.

The name of the station was painted out to confuse the enemy,

but porters undid the doors, letting in gusts of cool air and shouting

in deep country voices, “All get out here! The train stops here!”

The screaming stopped. All the children were stunned to find

they had arrived in a real new place. Hesitantly at first, then

crowding one another’s heels, they scrambled down.

Vivian was among the last to get off. Her suitcase stuck in the

strings of the luggage rack, and she had to climb on the seat to get

it down. With her gas mask giving her square, jumbling bangs and

her hands full of suitcase and string bag, she went down onto the

platform with a flump, shivering in the cool air. It was all strange.

She could see yellow fields beyond the station buildings. The wind

smelled of cow dung and chaff.

There was a long, muddled crowd of adults up at the other end of

the platform. The porters and some people with official armbands

were trying to line the children up in front of them and get them

shared out to foster homes. Vivian heard shouts of “Mrs. Miller, you

can take two. One for you, Mr. Parker. Oh, you’re brother and

sister, are you? Mr. Parker, can you take two?”

I’d better not get mixed up in that, Vivian thought. That was one

worry she could avoid. She hung back in the middle of the platform,

hoping Cousin Marty would realize. But none of the waiting crowd

looked at her. “I’m not having all the dirty ones!” someone was

saying, and this seemed to be taking everyone’s attention. “Give me

two clean and I’ll take two dirty to make four. Otherwise I’m

leaving.”

Vivian began to suspect that her worry about Cousin Marty’s not

being there was going to be the right one. She pressed her mouth

against her teeth in order not to cry—or not to cry yet.

A hand reached round Vivian and spread out the label on the

string bag. “Ah!” said someone. “Vivian Smith!”

Vivian whirled round. She found herself facing a lordly-looking

dark boy in glasses. He was taller than she was and old enough to

wear long trousers, which meant he must be at least a year older

than she was. He smiled at her, which made his eyes under his

glasses fold in a funny way along the eyelids. “Vivian Smith,” he

said, “you may not realize this, but I am your long-lost cousin.”

Well, Vivian thought, I suppose Marty is a boy’s name. “Are you

sure?” she said. “Cousin Marty?”

“No, my name’s Jonathan Walker,” said the boy. “Jonathan Lee

Walker.”

The way he put in that “Lee” made it clear he was very proud of

it for some reason. But Vivian knew there was something peculiar

about this boy, something not as it should be that she could not pin

down, and she was far too worried to wonder about his name. “It’s a

mistake!” she said frantically. “I was supposed to meet Cousin

Marty!”

“Cousin Marty’s waiting outside,” Jonathan Lee Walker said

soothingly. “Let me take your bag.” He put out his hand. Vivian

snatched the string bag out of his way, and he picked up her

suitcase from the platform instead and marched away with it across

the station.

Vivian hurried after him, with her gas mask banging at her back,

to rescue her suitcase. He strode straight to the waiting room and

opened the door. “Where are you going?” Vivian panted.

“Shortcut, my dear V.S.,” he said, holding the door open with a

soothing smile.

“Give me my suitcase!” Vivian said, grabbing for it. Now she was

sure he was a robber. But as soon as she was through the door,

Jonathan Lee Walker went galloping noisily across the bare boards

of the little room toward the blank back wall.

“Bring us back, Sam!” he shouted, so that the room rang. Vivian

decided he was mad and grabbed for her suitcase again. And

suddenly everything turned silvery.

“Where is this?” Vivian said. They were crowding each other in a

narrow silvery space like a very smooth telephone booth. Vivian

turned desperately to get out again and knocked a piece of what

seemed to be the telephone off the wall. Jonathan whirled around

like lightning and slammed the piece back. Vivian felt her gas mask

dig into him and hoped it hurt. There was nothing but a bare

silvery wall behind her.

In front of Jonathan the smooth silvery surface slid away

sideways. A small boy with longish, nearly red hair looked

anxiously in at them. When he saw Vivian, his face relaxed into a

fierce grin with two large teeth in it. “You got her!” he said, and he

took what may have been an earphone out of his left ear. It was not

much bigger than a pea, but it had a silvery wire connecting it to

the side of the silver booth, so Vivian supposed it was an earphone.

“This works,” he said, coiling the wire into one rather plump hand.

“I heard you easily.”

“And I got her, Sam! ” Jonathan answered jubilantly, stepping

out of the silver booth. “I recognized her and I got her, right from

under their noses!”

“Great!” said the small boy. He said to Vivian, “And now we’re

going to torture you until you tell us what we want to know!”

Vivian stood in the booth, clutching her string bag, staring at him

with a mixture of dislike and amazement. Sam was the sort of

small boy Mum called “rough”—the kind with a loud voice and

heavy shoes whose shoelaces were always undone. Her eyes went to

his shoes—such shoes!—puffy white footgear with red dots. Sure

enough, one of the red and white ties of those shoes was trailing on

the marble floor. Above that Sam seemed to be wearing pajamas.

That was the only way Vivian could describe his baggy allover suit

with its one red stripe from his right shoulder to his left ankle. The

red clashed with his hair, to Vivian’s mind, and she had never seen

a boy so much in need of a haircut.

“I told you, Sam,” Jonathan said, dumping Vivian’s suitcase on a

low table Vivian could dimly see behind Sam, “that it’s no good

thinking of torture. She probably knows enough to torture us

instead. We’re going to try gentle persuasion. Do please come out of

the booth, V.S., and take a seat while I get out of this disguise.”

Vivian took another look at the blank shiny back wall of the

booth. Since there seemed no way out that way, she went forward.

Sam backed away from her, looking just a mite scared, and that

made her feel better, until the door of the booth slid shut behind

her with a quiet hushing sound and cut out most of the light in the

room beyond. It seemed to be night out there, which was probably

what had given her the idea that Sam was running around in

pajamas. What dim light there was came from some kind of

streetlight shining through a peculiar-shaped window, but there

was enough of it for Vivian to see she was in some kind of

ultramodern office. There was a vast half circle of desk at the far

end, surrounded by things that reminded Vivian of a telephone

exchange. But the odd thing was that the desk, instead of being of

steel or chromium, as she would have expected a modern desk to

be, was made of beautifully carved wood that looked very old and

gave off silky reflections in the low bluish light. Vivian looked at it

doubtfully as she sat in an odd-shaped chair near the booth. And

she nearly leaped straight up again when the chair moved around

her, settling into the same shape that she was.

But Jonathan started tearing off his clothes then, right in front of

her. Vivian sat stiffly in the form-fitting chair, wondering if she

was mad, or if Jonathan was, or if she ought to look away, or what.

He flung off his gray flannel jacket first. Then he undid his striped

tie and threw that down. Then—Vivian’s face turned half away

sideways—he climbed out of his long gray flannel trousers. But it

was all right. Underneath, Jonathan was wearing the same kind of

suit as Sam, except that his had dark-colored diamonds down the

legs and sleeves.

“Great Time!” he said as he dropped the trousers on top of the

jacket. “These clothes are vile! They prickle me even through my

suit. How do Twenty Century people bear it? Or these?” He plucked

his glasses off his nose and pressed a knob on the belt that went

round his suit. A flicker sprang into being across his eyes, shifting

queerly in the blue light. The fold in his eyelids was much plainer to

see like that. Vivian saw that Sam had the same fold. “A sight

function is so much simpler,” Jonathan said. He pulled the striped

school cap off his head and let about a foot of plaited hair tumble

out of it across his shoulder. “That’s better! ” he said as he hurled

the cap down, too, and rubbed his neck under the pigtail to loosen

the tight hair there.

Vivian stared. Never had she seen a boy with such long hair! In

fact, she had a vague notion that boys were born with their hair

short back and sides and that only girls had hair that grew long.

But Jonathan had twice as much hair as she had. Perhaps he was

Chinese and she had been spirited away to the Orient. But Sam

was not Chinese. Whoever heard of a red-haired Chinaman?

“Who are you?” she said. “Where is this?”

Jonathan turned to her, looking very lordly and solemn— and not

particularly Chinese. “We are Jonathan Lee Walker and Samuel

Lee Donegal,” he said. “We’re both Lees. My father is the

thousandth Sempitern. The Sempitern is the head of Time Council

in Chronologue, in case you didn’t have those in your day. And

Sam’s father is chief of Time Patrol. We feel this qualifies us to talk

to you. Welcome back. You have just come through Sam’s father’s

private time lock, and you are now once more in Time City.”

A mistake has happened, Vivian thought miserably. And it

seemed to be a mistake ten thousand times wilder than any of the

mistakes she had imagined on the train. She pressed her lips

together. I will not cry! she told herself. “I don’t understand a word

you’re saying. What do you mean, Welcome back? Where is Time

City?”

“Come, come now, V.S.” Jonathan leaned one hand on the back of

the peculiar chair, in the way Inquisitors did in the kinds of film

Mum preferred Vivian not to see. “Time City is unique. It is built on

a small patch of time and space that exists outside time and

history. You know all about Time City, V.S.”

“No, I don’t,” said Vivian.

“Yes, you do. Your husband built the city,” Jonathan said, with

his flicker-covered folded eyes staring eerily into Vivian’s. “We want

you to tell us how to wake Faber John, V.S. Or if he isn’t sleeping

under the city, tell us how to find him.”

“I haven’t got a husband!” Vivian said. “Oh, this is mad!”

Sam, who was breathing noisily and rustily on the other side of

Vivian, said, “She looks awfully stupid. Do you think she had her

brain damaged in the Mind Wars?”

Vivian sighed and looked rather desperately around the strange

dark office. Was it really outside time? Or were they both mad?

Both of them seemed to have it fixed in their heads that she was

some other Vivian Smith. So how was she going to convince them

that she was not?

“Her brain’s all right,” Jonathan said confidently. “She’s just

acting stupid so we’ll think we’ve made a mistake.” He leaned over

Vivian again. “See here, V.S.,” he said persuasively. “We’re not

asking for ourselves. It’s for Time City. This patch of time and

space here is almost worn out. The city is going to crumble away

unless you tell us how to find Faber John so that he can renew the

city. Or if you hate him too much, you could tell us where the

polarities are and how to renew those. That isn’t too much to ask, is

it, V.S.?”

“Don’t keep calling me Vee-Ess!” Vivian almost shrieked. “I’m

not—”

“Yes, you are, V.S.,” said Jonathan. “You were spotted coming up

the First Unstable Era in a wave of chronons. We heard

Chronologue discussing it. We know you are. So how do we wake

Faber John, V.S.?”

“I don’t know!” Vivian screamed at him. “I don’t know who you

think I am, but I’m not her! I don’t know you and you don’t know

me! I was being evacuated from London to stay with Cousin Marty

because of the War, and you can just take me back! You’re a

kidnapper!” Tears came streaming down her face. She scrabbled to

get her handkerchief out of the string bag. “And so are you!” she

added to Sam.

Sam leaned forward and breathily inspected her face. “She’s

crying. She means it. You got the wrong one by mistake.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Jonathan said scornfully. But when Vivian

found her handkerchief and looked at him with her face mostly

hidden in it, she could tell he was beginning to have doubts.

Vivian did her best to strengthen those doubts. “I’ve never ever

heard of Faber John, or Time City either,” she said, trying to stop

herself sobbing. “And you can see I’m too young to have a husband.

I won’t be twelve until just after Christmas. We’re not in the

Middle Ages, you know.”

Sam nodded knowingly. “She is. She’s just an ordinary Twenty

Century native,” he pronounced.

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ATaleofTimeCityDianaWynneJonesA3Sdigitalback-upeditionv1.0clickforscannotesandproofinghistoryContentsChapter1:KidnappedChapter2:CousinVivianChapter3:TimeCityChapter4:TimeGhostsChapter5:TimeLockChapter6:CousinMartyChapter7:TheRiverTimeChapter8:DurationChapter9:GuardianChapter10:CeremoniesChapter11:Th...

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