It looked as if Elio was having another new experience and getting angry. “I have my honour as an android to consider,” he said. “We are not supposed to be fooled by ordinary humans! Let us get out of this hole.” He threw the two halves of the plastic egg down and leapt for the edge of the pit without bothering to turn on his low-weight-function. There was much flabby rending of the stuff that covered the hole. They were dazzled by daylight. “One of you catch hold of my hand,” Elio called down from the glare.
Vivian boosted Sam up the wall of the pit. Elio caught hold of one of Sam’s waving arms and pulled him out with no trouble at all. Vivian and Jonathan turned on their low-weight-functions and Elio pulled them out just as easily. Vivian could hardly see at first. Elio set off across the glaring ground so fast that she had trouble catching him up. As for Jonathan, his eye-function went dark again and he floundered about, trying to turn it off and keep up with the rest of them while he did.
“We’re going wrong,” Sam was puffing, as Vivian came panting up beside Elio. “The mound was over there.”
Vivian could see by then. She looked round the jumble of blue shadows until she saw one she thought she recognised. “No, it’s over there,” she said pointing the opposite way to Sam. “I remember that ditch—oh no, that’s not right! Maybe it was that one.”
They stared round the confusing desert. It all looked the same. Elio cried out, “We are lost! I got turned round in my weakness! I have no memory of the spot at all!” He banged his own head violently with the time control. “I am a failure!”
“You were hurt,” Vivian pointed out.
“What use is an android who cannot function when hurt?” Elio demanded and hit his head again.
Luckily, since they were beginning to find Elio quite alarming, the warrior came up behind them just then, courteously helping Jonathan along. At least, he seemed to be helping Jonathan, but Vivian noticed that whenever he put out his long, glistening hand to help Jonathan over a hummock or across a ditch, that hand did not really touch Jonathan. Yet Jonathan behaved as if someone was firmly supporting his elbow. He kept saying, “Thanks,” and “That’s kind of you,” and “You needn’t!” in the bothered way you do when someone is giving you help you wish you didn’t need.
This made Vivian sure all of a sudden that the warrior really was the Keeper of the Silver. The sunlight flashed gently off his long silver body, making it hard to see whether or not he had the same spread-thin look as the Iron Guardian. He seemed as solid as the Watcher of the Gold. But the silver body was not a mind-suit. His bare, skull-like face was silvery too.
As the two came up, Vivian could see Jonathan was as upset as Elio. “The place is over here,” the Keeper said in his gentle fluting voice. “Come quickly and quietly. The era was very disturbed for some time before that woman arrived. It will certainly have gone critical now. There will be enemies about.”
At this, Elio pulled himself together enough to look carefully round the empty blue sky. Vivian and Sam turned to stare nervously over their shoulders almost every step. Those rafts flew so quietly.
“Who was that woman?” Jonathan burst out as the Keeper urged him along.
“I have no idea,” said the Keeper. “All I know is that she had the aura of time-travel about her, as you four do, and she knew about the Caskets. When she and the child appeared, I therefore greeted them politely, just as I greeted you. I told you I am civilized. My ways are peaceful. But she rudely demanded the Silver Casket. ‘We need it,’ she said, ‘to take possession of Time City.’ Of course I refused. I pointed out that I would be bringing the Casket to Time City shortly in the natural course of things and she might have it then. She laughed. ‘But we want it now,’ she said. ‘We want to be ready when the City is standing still with its defences down.’ And when I refused to let her have it, she took the Iron Casket from under her veiling.”
“I bet she was the thief’s mother,” Sam said.
“Whoever she was, she knew the properties of the Caskets,” the Keeper said sadly. “They respond to the will of the one who holds them. Iron is weaker than my Silver, but she was protected by veiling and she turned her will on me before I was aware. ‘Go and crouch in a hole over there,’ she said, ‘and don’t dare come out until we’ve gone!’ And that I was forced to do. I told you I was hurt in my mind. Here is the mound.”
The mound looked like any of the others, although Vivian thought she recognised the wide blue ditch beyond it for the ditch where the boy had hidden. The Keeper led them swiftly round the other side of it.
They all stood and stared miserably. A hole had been hacked in the white side of the mound. In deep bluish shadow inside the hole there was a square space beautifully lined with shiny, feathery stuff. In the middle of the feathery stuff was a large egg-shaped hollow, quite empty. Another wad of the feathery stuff was blowing around the side of the mound where the thieves had thrown it. The Silver Keeper sadly picked the wad up and floated it between his hands back into the hole. “They have taken the Casket,” he said.
“The green rats!” said Sam. “I found that Casket for them with the metal detector!”
“They were waiting for us to find it for them!” Jonathan said bitterly. “It’s all my fault for telling Leon Hardy so much!”
At that, Elio had another burst of despair. “I have been most horribly unintelligent!” he cried out. “I am like a goose, given a china egg to sit upon! I deserve to be recycled!”
Vivian looked at the tall Silver Keeper drooping desolately beside her. “I’m sorry,” she said. She knew she had made the worst mistake of all when she let the boy decoy her away from the mound. He had been waiting in the ditch, listening for the right moment to show himself.
“There is no further use for me,” the Keeper said.
Sam was angry, and being the kind of boy he was, he expressed his anger in a perfect roar. “I WANT TO GET BACK AT THEM!” he bellowed.
“Oh, hush!” Elio said distractedly. “That could fetch mind-warriors.”
But it already had. The booming echoes of Sam’s voice were mixed almost at once with the thud and crunch of boots. Warriors in filmy mind-suits sprang out of trenches on two sides of them. More came leaping across the top of the mound. Before the echoes of Sam’s roar had finished rolling out across the glaring plain, the warriors had them surrounded. Shiny boots covered with film trampled the ground on all sides and things that were certainly guns pointed at them.
“This is it,” one of the warriors said. “We’ve got the disturbance all right. Take them in.”
Elio looked round and saw there were too many warriors to fight. He put his hands in the air.
“That’s right. That’s sensible,” a warrior said in a woman’s voice. “Hands in the air, all of you.”
The filmy warriors closed in. Vivian’s upheld arms were seized. She lost sight of the others as she was hustled towards one of the trenches. But she had three separate glimpses of warriors grabbing for the Silver Keeper, and then grabbing again, and each time the Silver Keeper, in his untouchable way, went sliding out from between the grabbing hands.
“Something queer about that one!” Vivian heard a warrior say breathlessly as she was hurried along among a mass of filmy bodies. “Can’t keep hold of it—have to let it go!”
“It seems to be coming along anyway,” another warrior said. “Don’t take your eyes off it.”
Something was queer, Vivian thought, being dragged headlong towards a trench. Something queer about those boots. I’ve seen something like those boots before! Then the boots jumped with her into the trench and she had a moment of sheer terror when the trench was suddenly not there any more.
15
EVACUEES
Vivian’s feet and the boots around her landed with a clang on metal floor. She was pulled briskly forward on to a floor which was a hard greyish-white, into light that was much easier on the eyes than the glare of the Age of Silver. The floor seemed to be marble and it was shaking. But she
could not see much more because her eyes were burning and watering from the brightness of the Baltic Plain. Mostly she noticed the warmth. Sweat broke out on her, and then she started to shiver, as if her body had only just noticed how cold it had been.
“Expedition Three reporting back from Sixty-four Century Baltic, sir,” said one of the mind-suited people ahead of her. “We found the disturbance. I’m afraid you’re not going to like this, sir.”
A hand expertly twitched at the film over Vivian’s face. She blinked hard as her suit there ripped away. The blurry place around her cleared into the great front hall of Time Patrol Building. There were the stone stairs softly rumbling up and down. There was the circular kiosk in the middle, with a curving row of busy time-booths beyond. There was an identical curve of shiny booths behind her too, and a row of men and women dressed in Golden Age armour were filing into one over to the left. Through the great glass doors, she could see Aeon Square and a rank of brightly robed people carrying banners. Evidently there was a ceremony going on, in what looked like early morning light. And, as if that was not enough to make Vivian’s heart go thumping down into her stomach, Mr. Donegal was standing in front of her, looking very grim indeed.
“I don’t know what you lot thought you were doing,” he said, looking from her, to Elio, to Jonathan, and on to Sam. “You realise you’ve broken half the laws there are and sent history into convulsions, do you? It won’t be only a hiding this time!” he said to Sam. Sam stared at his father out of red-rimmed runny eyes and plainly could not think of a word to say. Mr. Donegal turned to Elio. “I’m not only surprised at you,” he said. “I’m astonished, Elio! I thought you had more sense than the rest of Time City put together, and now here you are gadding about in an Unstable Era and leading a parcel of children astray with you.”
Elio’s eyes were red from the Baltic glare too. He was pale with his despair. “I beg your forgiveness,” he said stiffly. “We had evidence that thieves were stealing the City’s polarities and we were trying to prevent them. We failed. This is the reason for the convulsions in history. Two polarities are now missing.”
Mr. Donegal did not believe a word of this. “Then why didn’t you report it to Time Patrol?” he said over his shoulder as he turned to Jonathan. “As for you, Jonathan,” he said, “I don’t know what your father’s going to say to you! Do you know you’ve been missing since yesterday afternoon? Jenny and Ramona have been worried sick!”
“No I didn’t know!” Jonathan said, blinking under his eye-flicker. His eyes were not as red as Sam’s or Elio’s, which made him look much calmer than he really was. “If we have been missing, then it’s Time Patrol’s fault. Your people brought us back to now. If they’d left us alone, we’d have been back yesterday.”
“That’s enough!” Mr. Donegal said. “You don’t stand there and cheek me, son, not after all the trouble you’ve caused!” He turned to one of the Patrollers who had brought them back. “Go and tell the Sempitern we’ve found them,” he said. To the rest of the squad he said, “You two take this lot over by the kiosk out of the way. Make sure they don’t stir a foot until I’ve time to deal with them. All the rest of you get out of mind-suits and into Thirty-eight Century gas-coats. We’ve six Observers stuck in a war in Paris then.” He turned and glared at Elio. “I’m having to recall every single Observer because of you! I hope Chronologue orders you all shot!” With that, he swung away and went off towards the moving stairs at a rolling run.
“Come along,” said a Patroller next to Vivian. She and Elio were pushed through the busy crowd to the kiosk. Jonathan and Sam were brought there by another Patroller. The others, in a great clatter of boots, raced off towards the back of the building.
Ow! Vivian thought. We are in trouble! She watched the shiny mind-suit of the Patroller who had been sent to tell the Sempitern. He was forcing his way among other Patrollers in every imaginable kind of costume and he was almost at the door. Vivian just could not think what Sempitern Walker was going to say. And I’ve caused Jenny such worry, and now she’s going to find out I’m not even her niece! she thought.
As the mind-suited messenger reached the glass door, it wafted open in front of him. The messenger dodged. A long-legged figure in a floppy hat pranced past him into the building.
“Not again!” said one of the Patrollers guarding them. “That thing’s been in and out of here half the night.”
“And all this morning,” said the other Patroller. “It’s only some student’s idea of a joke. Take no notice.”
The two of them turned their backs and watched Elio sternly. Vivian, Sam, and Jonathan watched the Iron Guardian. He was prancing questingly this way and that among people who were all firmly ignoring him, until he suddenly halted and seemed to listen. A huge smile spread on his face and he bounded unerringly for a clear space near the doors. The Silver Keeper appeared there out of nowhere. The two flung their arms round one another. Then they stepped back and stared at one another. The Iron Guardian shook his head sadly. The Silver Keeper, even more sadly, shook his. And both of them slowly faded out of sight, leaving two long thin eye-blots in the space near the door.
“Poor things,” said Vivian. “Neither of them knows what to do.”
“They aren’t the only ones,” said Jonathan.
Outside, the ceremony was still going on. It was clear that Sempitern Walker was not going to arrive until it was over. There was no sign of Mr. Donegal either. They stood for some time, deserted and guilty, with the two Patrollers looming beside them, watching time-locks open and shut almost continuously and listening to the operators in the kiosk handle emergency after emergency.
“Ten-oh-two morning, Time Patrol here,” said the lady operator nearest to Vivian. “I have you located, Observer, in AD 79. Volcano in violent eruption above Pompeii. Use breathing apparatus and insulated clothing, Observer, and I’ll get someone to you as soon as possible.”
Almost at the same time, the man next to her was saying, “Yes, I locate you, Observer. Year Ninety-eight-ninety-two. Woman crossing forest with child in Sixty Century clothing. Can you hold the bandits off long enough to make a further report? This could be serious. No? Then I’ll reroute the squad in Ninety-three to come to your aid right away.”
Meanwhile Patrollers streamed down the stairs wearing wetsuits, kilts, loose robes, ponchos, trousers with hoops in the legs, in brief shorts or in so many clothes they could hardly be seen, and in a hundred other costumes. They hurried to time-booths, went in, and seemed to come back the next second looking tired out, helping other people in the same kind of clothes. Some of the people they helped were in a bad way. They were muddy, their clothes were torn, some had a wild look, and others were bleeding. A man in hooped trousers was streaming blood from a cut on his head. These people were handed over to a medical squad waiting to take care of them, while the Patrollers joined a draggled line of costumed figures going up the ascending half of the stone stairs.
“They really are recalling all the Observers,” Sam said, watching the man with the bleeding head being helped on to a floating stretcher.
“Dug in beside the French rocket station,” the lady in the kiosk was now saying, “Patrol is on its way, Observer. Use ultra-violet flares to identify yourself.”
“Have you a cell to yourself in the prison?” asked an operator on the other side of her.
“Unforeseen revolution in Canada,” said another. “Control yourself, Observer. Someone can still get to you even if the time-booth in Montreal is being bombed.”
“Ship on fire attacked by Dutch aircraft,” said another voice.
“Posing as a refugee,” said the nearest man. “That should enable you to get through the Icelandic battle line, Observer, and someone will meet you outside Tübingen.”
“Patrol Medical now thinks the plague is being carried by horses,” said someone further off, and her voice was drowned by a nearer one saying loudly, “Yes, Observer, but all history has gone critical. If the riots have not yet r
eached Cardiff, you will have to wait an hour or so.”
Elio hung his head wretchedly. “This is all my fault,” he said, “for allowing that woman to dupe me.”
“It’s my fault just as much,” said Jonathan. “I messed things up twice in Twenty Century. If only I could go back and put things right!”
“I wish you could too,” Vivian said. “I might have a chance of going home then.”
They stood for a while in silence except for Sam’s breathing, listening to the Patrollers in the kiosk dealing with a rescue team attacked by germ bombs in Forty-two Century, a flood in Eighty Century Africa, wars in every era, and an Observer trapped on a hijacked spaceship in 12648. This Observer caught the attention of the two Patrollers guarding them. He or she was obviously a friend of theirs. Both of them put their elbows on the ledge of the kiosk to listen to what the lady inside was saying.
“It’s not so easy to get a team into space,” one said.
“Too right,” said the other. “Kim Yo may be stuck there.”
Sam’s eyes swivelled towards them. When he realised they were not paying attention to him, he whispered breathily to Jonathan, “We could put it right. If we went back to that station, we can catch the thief when he goes up to that warty woman. Then we could bring him back here and show my dad.”
“You know, we could!” Vivian whispered.
Elio ripped back the mind-suit from his hand and slipped the egg-control into Jonathan’s. “This works in a modern time-lock,” he murmured. “Get into one that is open and use it, while I make a diversion.”
“You come too, V.S.,” Jonathan whispered. “It’ll take two to hold him.”
“And ME!” Sam said, in such a fierce breathy whisper that both Patrollers turned round to look at him. “I’m hungry too,” Sam said hastily.
They were not quite fooled. “Too bad, son,” one of them said, and neither of them turned back to the kiosk. Everyone stood helplessly. Jonathan tried to hold the egg-control out of sight beside his leg.