A Tale of Time City. Diana Wynne Jones

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      And after that, Vivian noticed that it was daytime again and woke up. She turned over under a heavy, scratchy coverlet embroidered with lines of thin brown people and smelling of dust, and knew at once where she was. She was in Time City, in the middle of a horrendous mistake. Oddly enough, although this was quite frightening, Vivian found it rather exciting too. She had always wanted to have an adventure, the way people did in films. And here she was having one. She knew it was no dream. She sat up.

      No wonder the bed felt hard. It was made of stone. It had four huge stone pillars like totem poles that held up an embroidered canopy overhead. Beyond in the room, strong sunlight slanted on to Egyptian-type carvings on the stone walls. Vivian knew it was quite late on in the morning. She got out of the bed on to rush mats, where she was surprised to find that she had put on her night clothes before she had gone to sleep. Her suitcase was open on the stone floor and her clothes were scattered all over the room.

      I wonder where the toilet is, and I do hope it’s not invisible! she thought. A stone archway in the wall led to a tiled place. Vivian went through and found, to her relief, that the toilet and washbasin in there looked much like the ones she was used to, even though they were made of stone. But there were no taps, and she could not find out how the toilet flushed.

      “But at least I could see them,” she said to herself, as she hunted for her scattered clothes.

      She was just putting on her second sock – which had somehow got right under the stone bed – and had only her shoes to find, when the stone door grated open and Jonathan came in. He was carrying what looked like half a birdcage with dishes floating in the air beneath it.

      “Oh good!” he said. “You were asleep when I looked in earlier. I brought you some breakfast, so you won’t have to face my parents on an empty stomach.” He was wearing bright green pyjamas today and looking very spruce and confident.

      Vivian had a feeling that he was going to rush her into something else unless she was careful. “You’ll have to tell me a whole lot more,” she said. “Or I can’t face anyone.”

      “Well, you can’t stay hiding here. Elio’s bound to find you,” Jonathan said, putting the birdcage down on a stone table. “What’s your name?”

      “Vivian Smi—” Vivian began, and then remembered that she was Jonathan’s cousin. “Vivian Sarah Lee,” she said. “You thought I’d forget, didn’t you?”

      “I wasn’t sure,” Jonathan said, setting out the dishes from under the birdcage. “Pull up that log over there and start eating. We have to catch my mother before she goes to work.”

      There was no butter-pie, to Vivian’s regret, but there were syrupy pancakes that were almost as good, and fruit juice which Vivian thought was even nicer than tinned pineapple. Up to then, tinned pineapple had been her favourite food. After that were slices of strange crumby bread that you ate with slices of cheese. “Why is everyone called Vivian?” she asked as she ate.

      “The eldest Lee is always called Vivian,” Jonathan said. “After the Time Lady. Her eldest daughter married the first Lee. We descend from Faber John himself. And we’re the oldest family in Time City.”

      He was sitting on the stone bed looking lofty. Vivian could tell he was very proud of being a Lee. “How old is that?” she said.

      “Thousands of years,” said Jonathan. “Nobody knows quite how many.”

      “That’s ridiculous!” said Vivian. “How can anyone think that Faber John and the Time Lady are still around after all that time?”

      “I told you last night,” Jonathan said, “that I’m going by the stories. I think the Scientists have got it wrong – and even they can’t account for the person coming uptime from Four Century to Twenty Century, bringing all the disturbance to history.” He leant forward earnestly. “I know that’s the Time Lady, and I’m sure the stories are right and she’s trying to destroy the City because she hates Faber John. The stories are almost the only history of Time City that we’ve got. The records are terribly hazy. You should hear my tutor swearing about how little we know!” He stood up impatiently. “Are you finished? Shall we go?”

      Vivian was still eating cheese and crumby bread. “No,” she said. “And listen here – I’m not going to be rushed and bullied all the time. You caught me on the hop yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I’m feeble.”

      “I never thought you were feeble!” Jonathan protested. He hung about, standing on one foot and then on the other, until Vivian had put the last slice of cheese into her mouth. Then he rushed to the door. “Ready now?”

      Vivian sighed. “No. I have to put my shoes on. And what about my luggage?”

      Jonathan had forgotten about that. “You’d better bring it with you to show that you’ve travelled,” he said. “That gas mask is a wonderfully realistic touch.”

      “It’s not realistic,” said Vivian. “It’s real.”

      She found her shoes and packed her suitcase yet again, while Jonathan took his grey flannel disguise and hid it in a stone chest. “They’ll be safe there until Sam can sneak them back to Patrol Costumes,” he said. “Oh, and take that label off the string thing. It’ll look pretty funny if I introduce you as V.S. Lee and you’re waving a label saying V. Smith.”

      This was true, but Vivian felt a twinge of alarm as the label went into the stone chest too. It was as if she really had lost her name. How am I going to prove to Cousin Marty that I’m me? she wondered, putting on her school hat and her coat. “Now I am ready,” she said.

      The house was huge, with a sort of lived-in richness to it. The rugs along the passages had an ugly, valuable look, but they had worn places on them. The banisters of the many stairs they went down had been polished so much that the carvings on them had almost worn away. The stairs had dips in the middle from countless years of feet. People were hard at work putting another layer of polish on them. Jonathan took Vivian on a dodging, zig-zag way down, using four different staircases, so that they never met any of these people face to face, and they came at last to the ground floor. Jonathan let out a sigh of relief. “Now we can let people see us,” he said.

      Vivian looked from the coloured marble patterns on the floor to the wide oak stairway, and then to a row of pointed windows – or maybe doors – on the other side. She could see a sloping town square out there with a fountain in the middle. “What is this house?” she said.

      “The Annuate Palace,” said Jonathan. “This way.”

      He took Vivian along the patterned marble floor to where the space stopped being a front hall and turned into a kind of room full of carved empty frames that were probably chairs. Just beyond an archway, a lady was speaking into what was probably a telephone – though it looked rather as if she was gazing into a mirror and speaking into a magnifying glass. “I’ll be along in five minutes,” she said, glancing at Jonathan and Vivian, “and we’ll sort it out then. Something seems to have come up here. ’Bye.” She put the magnifying glass into a slot by the mirror and turned round, staring at Vivian.

      Vivian suddenly felt truly uncomfortable. This lady had the same deeply anxious look that Mum had worn ever since War was declared. And though she looked nothing like Mum, since she had the same folded eyes as Jonathan with the same flicker in front of them, Vivian knew she was a real person with real worries, just like Mum. She might wear yellow and black pyjamas and do her hair in a СКАЧАТЬ