A Tale of Time City. Diana Wynne Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Jonathan and Vivian trotted after him, through narrow stone streets, through time-ghosts, and past numbers of strangely dressed tourists.

      “He knows just how to get what he wants,” Jonathan panted irritably.

      That’s the pot calling the kettle black, if I ever heard it! Vivian thought. “How old is he?” she asked.

      “Eight!” Jonathan said, in a short, disgusted puff of breath. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t stuck with him. But he’s the only person anywhere near my age in Time Close.”

      Sam galloped straight to the glass building in Aeon Square and trotted along an arcade of glass pillars until he came to a place where tables were set out. He dived into a chair at a table with a view between two enormous greenish pillars and sat proudly waiting to be served. Vivian sat beside him watching tourists walk through the square and cluster to look at Faber John’s Stone in the middle. More tourists sat at the other tables or went in and out of the rich-looking shops under the arcade. Vivian had never seen so many peculiar clothes and strange hairstyles in her life. She heard strange languages too, jabbering all round her.

      “Time City relies a lot on the tourist trade,” Jonathan said.

      “Where do they all come from?” Vivian asked.

      “All the Fixed Eras,” Sam said, quite cheerful now. “A hundred thousand years of them.”

      “There’s a tour for every ten years of every century, except when there’s a war on,” Jonathan said. “The Time Consuls arrange them. Time Patrol checks everyone who wants to come, but almost anyone can come really.”

      “How much does a tour cost?” Vivian asked. But the waitress arrived to take their orders just then. She was a cheerful young lady in frilly pink pyjamas who clearly knew Sam and Jonathan rather well.

      “Hallo, you two,” she said. “How many butter-pies this morning?”

      “Three, please,” said Jonathan.

      “Only three?” said the waitress. “One point five, then. Numbers?”

      “I’m not allowed a number,” said Sam.

      “I know about you,” the waitress said. “I meant your friends.”

      “I’m paying,” said Jonathan, and recited a string of numbers.

      “Yes, but are you in credit?” said the waitress. “Show.”

      Jonathan pressed one of the buttons on his belt and held his hand out with a row of signs shining on his palm. The waitress looked, nodded, and pressed buttons on the pink matching belt round her pyjamas.

      “I must get Elio to give me more credit,” Jonathan said when the waitress had gone. “I shall go broke paying for everything. Sam’s not allowed any credit. When they gave him his first belt, he took it apart and altered the credit-limit. Then he spent a fortune on butter-pies.”

      “A thousand units in two days,” Sam said happily.

      “How much is a unit?” Vivian asked.

      “Um – about two of your pounds,” said Jonathan.

      Vivian gasped. “Weren’t you sick?”

      “All night,” Sam said cheerfully. “It was worth it. I’m a butter-pie addict.” His face lit up as he saw the waitress coming back. “Here they are! Yummee!”

      While they ate and let the hot part trickle into the cold, Jonathan seemed to feel he had to go on showing Vivian Time City. He pointed to the gleaming white building across the square. Vivian was rather embarrassed to find that the tourists’ heads were turning to look at it too. “There’s Time Patrol, where we were last night,” he said. “And there—” He pointed towards the end of the square and tourist heads in strange hairstyles swung that way as well as Vivian’s. “That building’s Duration, where Sam and I go to school. I expect you’ll be going there with us when half-term’s over.” Then he pointed back along the arcade, and once more all the heads turned where he pointed. “That’s Continuum behind us, where all the students are, with Perpetuum and Whilom Tower beyond that…”

      Vivian was so embarrassed at the way the tourists were listening in that she stopped attending. Instead she thought: Half-term! It’s their half-term and they were bored with nothing to do. That’s why they thought up this adventure with the Time Lady and saving Time City, to make life exciting. I can just hear them whispering СКАЧАТЬ