City of Time. Eoin McNamee

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ