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 on the table and showed him the cornflower brooch.
“Yes, of course,” Dr Diamond said softly. “Your mother used to wear it. She looked very beautiful.”
“Did she?” Cati said.
“Yes.” Dr Diamond ruffled Cati’s hair fondly.
Owen had never thought about Cati having a mother before. He wondered where she was and what had happened to her. But now was not the time to ask. He told Dr Diamond what had been scratched in the table.
“City of Time?” Dr Diamond said sharply. “Are you sure it said City of Time? Those words exactly?”
“Yes.”
Dr Diamond got up and began to pace up and down. “City of Time and not enough time,” he repeated to himself. “Obviously, he didn’t have enough strength to spell out exactly what he meant. It is a long time since I heard the City mentioned. And I wonder why we need a tempod? Wait here…”
The scientist turned away and, with bewildering speed, disappeared through the door at the back of the Skyward which led into his private quarters.
“What do we do now?” Owen said, staring after him.
“Don’t know,” Cati said. “It feels late. Are you going home?”
“No.”
Cati sniffed the air. “You know what?”
“What?”
“You think Dr Diamond would mind if we checked the cake?”
“Just in case it burns?”
“Just in case it burns.”
Across the fields someone else had noticed it was getting late. Mary White’s little thatched shop was just down the road from Owen’s house. Mary was a good friend and neighbour to Owen and his mother. Often, when Owen did not have enough money for groceries, Mary had given him food, saying he could pay later. She was much older than anyone suspected, and much wiser, and could see things that others couldn’t.
She had stood behind the counter of her shop all day and now she locked the door, turned out the lights and went into the parlour behind the counter. It had been a long day and Mary moved slowly, but there was something that must be done. Something that could not wait.
A grandfather clock stood in the corner of the parlour. Mary opened the glass door below the clock face. A brass pendulum hung there, apparently unmoving. But if you looked deep into the case you could see that it was in fact swinging, making a tiny motion, almost a tremble. Not quite still, but almost.
All year, Mary had watched the pendulum get slower and slower. She stood there for a long time looking at it. Looking beyond it, for if you gazed closely, you could see that there was no back to the case; instead, there was a velvet blackness studded with pinpricks of light. It was like looking into deep space, the blackness going on for ever and ever, as though the grandfather clock contained all of eternity.
Mary closed the glass door gently and locked it, removing the long, thin key. She went to the mirror on the wall beside the door and twisted a length of her grey hair around her fingers, using the key to fix it in position. It looked like an ornate hairpin, perfectly hidden.
She bolted the back door, took her coat from the peg and went out through the front of the shop. As she reached down to unlock the shop door she looked through the glass panel. She stopped and the hand that held the door key trembled. She quickly relocked the door. It was dark outside, but she recognised the lorry that was parked on the other side of the road. The battered and filthy scrap lorry that went up and down the road every day. The lorry driven by Johnston, the Resisters’ mortal enemy.
Mary slipped back into the parlour and sat down heavily on the sofa. She had no idea that things were so bad. Never before would Johnston have had the nerve to post a guard on her front door. Without thinking, her hand went to the little key that she had concealed in her hair. There was something she had to do, something she had promised herself she would do a long time ago. Mary hoped it wasn’t too late.