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 round 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 leant 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.
“But I recognised her!” Jonathan said. He wandered uneasily across the office. A sort of darkening to his flickering face told Vivian that he was beginning to suspect that he had been a fool – and he was the sort of boy who would do anything not to look a fool. Vivian knew he would take her straight back to the station and try to forget about her if she could convince him properly.
So she sniffed away what she hoped were the last of her tears and said, “I know it says Vivian Smith on my label, but Smith’s a very common name. And Vivian’s quite common too. Look at Vivien Leigh.”
This misfired a little. Jonathan turned and stared at her. “How do you know her?” he said suspiciously.
“I don’t. I mean – she’s a film star,” Vivian explained.
She could see this meant nothing to Jonathan. He shrugged. “We could go through her luggage,” he suggested to Sam. “That might prove something.”
Vivian would have liked to go and sit on her suitcase and clutch the string bag to her and refuse indignantly, but she said with desperate bravery, “Do what you like. Only you’re to take me back to the station if you don’t find anything.”
“I might,” said Jonathan. Vivian was fairly sure that meant that he would. She tried not to mind too much when Jonathan dragged the suitcase over into a beam of light from the odd-shaped window, where he began briskly unpacking it. Sam attended to the string bag. Vivian spread it out on her knee for him, because that took her mind off Jonathan going into all her new winter underwear, and wished Sam would not breathe so heavily. The first thing Sam found was her sandwiches.
“Can I eat these?” he said.
“No,” said Vivian. “I’m hungry.”
“I’ll give you half,” Sam said, plainly thinking he was being generous.
Jonathan stood up holding Vivian’s new liberty bodice with suspenders attached to hold up her winter stockings. “Whatever do you use this for?” he asked, really puzzled by it.
Vivian’s face went fiery hot. “Put that down!” she said.
“Corsets,” Sam suggested with his mouth full.
There was a sort of buzzing from outside somewhere. Light came on and swiftly grew bright from all the corners of the room. It showed Jonathan standing frozen by the window with the liberty bodice in one hand and Vivian’s best jumper in the other. Vivian saw that the flicker over his eyes hardly showed in bright light, and that the diamonds on his suit were dark purple. Sam was frozen too, with a third sandwich in his hand.
“Someone’s coming!” Jonathan whispered. “They must have heard her yelling.”
“They make regular rounds,” Sam whispered back hoarsely.
“Then why didn’t you tell me? Quick!” Jonathan whispered. He bundled everything back into the suitcase and shoved the lid down. Sam seized the string bag and a handful of Vivian’s skirt with it and dragged. It was clear to Vivian that something frightening was about to happen. She let Sam tow her across the marble floor and round behind the huge carved desk.
“Hide!” he said. “Come on!”
There was a deep hollow inside the half-circle of desk, so that a person’s knees could swivel this way and that to reach the banks of switches. Sam pushed Vivian into it and dived in after her.
Before Vivian had a chance even to sit up properly, Jonathan came scrambling into the space too, dragging the suitcase behind him. Vivian ended up half-lying on her side with a clear view through the space at the bottom of the desk. She could see her last sandwich in its paper lying in the middle of the marble floor, and the heap of Jonathan’s grey flannel suit beside it.
Jonathan saw them too. “Damn!” he whispered, and he was off after them and back again while Vivian was still being shocked to hear him swear. “Don’t make a sound!” he said to her breathlessly. “If they find us, they might even shoot you!”
Vivian looked from his face to Sam’s, not sure if she believed this. They both had that tense look people have in films when gangsters are looking for them with guns. This made everything completely unreal to Vivian, like a film. She reached out and took her last sandwich from Jonathan before Sam’s stretching hand quite got to it. She bit into it. It made her feel better to chew bread she had watched Mum butter and sardines she had helped Mum mash. It told her that real life was still there somewhere.
She was still eating when a door rumbled and the light grew stronger. Two sets of heavy, clacking boots marched into view across the grey-veined white floor. Vivian watched them under the desk, clumping hither and thither, as the people wearing them checked the room. Beside her, she could feel Jonathan beginning to shake and Sam puffing little tiny snorts in an effort to breathe quietly, but she could not believe in any of it and she went on calmly eating her sandwich.
“Seems all right in here,” the owner of one pair of boots said, in a rumbling murmur.
“Funny though,” murmured the other. This one sounded like a woman. “I can smell fish – sardines. Can you smell sardines?”
Vivian stuffed the rest of the sandwich into her mouth and held both hands across it in order not to giggle. Jonathan’s face was white and the lordly look had somehow crumpled away from it entirely. Vivian saw that he had gone from being the Inquisitor