Jonathan was saying. “Then there’s Millennium at the end of—”
“I need another butter-pie,” Sam interrupted.
Jonathan pressed another stud in his belt. A clock-face appeared on the back of his hand. It said a quarter to twelve.
“No time,” he said. “We’ve got to show V.S. the Endless ghost.”
“After that then,” said Sam.
“No,” said Jonathan. “It’s my last credit.”
“You count tomato pips!” Sam said disgustedly as they got up to go.
“How does your belt work?” Vivian asked. “It seems like magic to me!”
She soon wished she had not asked. There were now crowds of tourists in the square. Jonathan said, “Energe functions,” and dived vigorously this way and that among the people, shooting bits of explanation over his shoulder. Vivian followed as best she could, trying to understand, although almost the only parts of it she grasped were words like and and the. “And mine’s made in Hundred-and-two Century so it’s got a low-weight function,” Jonathan said. “Look.” He pressed another stud and took off from beside Vivian in a long, floating leap. He landed, and at once took off in another, and another, floating this way and that among the groups of people.
“He’s gone silly!” Sam said disgustedly. “Come on.”
They dodged among the people, trying to keep Jonathan’s green swooping figure and flying pigtail in sight. It took them between buildings beyond the glass arcade. Vivian had a glimpse of the twin domes Jonathan must have been talking about on one side and, on the other, a most extraordinary place like a lopsided honeycomb that seemed to have stairs zig-zagging dizzily all over it. Then they were at a grand flight of steps. Jonathan’s green figure was bounding down them like a crazy kangaroo. They saw him bound right across the broad crowded road below, where he dropped straight down at the top of a leap and landed with a bump, looking a little cross.
“Good. It’s run down. He’ll have to wait for it to recharge,” said Sam. They ran across the road, where Jonathan was leaning against a stone wall. Below and beyond the wall was open countryside, with a river winding through it. Jonathan was watching a barge unloading at a wharf a long way below.
“The River Time,” he said to Vivian, just as if nothing had happened and she and Sam were not hot and out of breath with trying to keep up. “This road is the Avenue of the Four Ages and it leads to Endless Hill. Look.”
A bit like the Mall, Vivian thought, or perhaps the Embankment, what with the river on one side. And Jonathan is a maddening boy! Worse than Sam!
There were arches over the Avenue made of lacy metalwork, and in some way these arches were made to fly long streamers of light, like flags or scarves, in rainbow colours. It looked very festive, since it was full of crowds and clots of people all hastening towards the hill at the end. There the Avenue led into flights of steps up the round green hill, to the tower at the top. The tower looked old. Very, very old, Vivian thought, and dark, although she could see sky through the windows in it.
“That tower’s called the Gnomon,” said Jonathan. “It has Faber John’s clock in it that only strikes once a day, at midday.”
They began to follow the rest of the people towards Endless Hill, but, before they had gone very far a tremendous bell began to toll. BONG. It buzzed the lacy arches and set the streamers of light fluttering. “Bother! Midday already!” Jonathan said and started to run. They were still quite a way from the hill when the second stroke came. BONG. Again the streamers of light wavered. Arms in the crowd pointed. There came murmurs of “There it is!” from all sides.
Vivian saw a person in green clothes, distantly, on the lowest flight of steps up the hill. He was trying to climb them. He seemed in an awful hurry – she could feel that from here – and he ran and scrambled furiously. But something seemed to be stopping him. BONG! rang the great clock. The man in green staggered and pushed himself upwards. BONG. Vivian could feel the effort it took the man. He was lifting his feet as if they were in lead boots. BONG. He was trying to pull himself up by the balustrade and that was not working either.
“Is it very hard to climb those steps?” she whispered. BONG.
“No. You can run up them,” said Jonathan. “But he’s a time-ghost. A once-ghost. He tries to get up the stairs every day at twelve. Watch.”
BONG, went the clock while Jonathan was speaking. With every stroke, the man in green seemed to find it more difficult to climb. But he did not give up. He laboured upward while the clock struck seven, eight and nine. By the tenth stroke, he was on his hands and knees, crawling. He seemed quite exhausted and he still had two turns of the steps to go before he reached the tower. As he crawled doggedly up the next-to-last flight, Vivian found she was holding her breath. BONG.
Come on, come on! she said inside her head. It seemed the most important thing in the world that the man should reach the top.
And he did not do it. BONG came the twelfth stroke and the green crawling figure was simply not there any more. “O – oh!” said Vivian, and the crowd all round her said “O – oh!” too, in a long groan. “What a pity! What was he doing?” Vivian said.
“Nobody knows. He hasn’t done it yet,” Jonathan said. “He’s a once-ghost, you see, and those happen when whatever they’re doing is so important or so emotional that they leave a mark like the habit-ghosts.”
“What? From the future?” said Vivian.
“Yes, but it isn’t really the future here,” Jonathan explained. “I told you how Time City uses the same small piece of time over and over again. Past and future go round and round, so they’re almost the same thing. What did you think of the Endless ghost?” he asked her eagerly. “Did he mean anything to you?”
The only thing Vivian could think of was Robin Hood because of the green clothes. “No,” she said. “Should he?”
Jonathan looked a little disappointed. “Well, a fresh mind from an Unstable Era,” he said. “You might have had a new idea. Let’s have lunch before the tourists fill all the cafés.”
“Butter-pies. You promised,” said Sam.
“I said No,” said Jonathan. “Ordinary food. It’s cheaper.”
“Slant-eyed meanie!” Sam muttered. But he took care to say it when Jonathan was pushing through the crowd some way ahead.
They went up steps between the houses. These steps were called The Decades and there were ten steps between every landing, until they were quite high up near the golden dome of The Years. There was a place to buy food at the top, with a slant of lawn to eat it on, under an old grey tower. They had sweet buns with meat in them, sitting in the sun, which was warm, but not too warm. I’m enjoying this! Vivian thought. I feel like a tourist on holiday! While they ate, Jonathan and Sam told her about other once-ghosts. There was a man who dived daily into the River Time, trying to rescue a drowning girl; the Time Patroller who got shot in the hall of Millennium; and the girl who was a Lee, and therefore a long-ago ancestress of Sam’s and Jonathan’s, who threw her engagement-ring angrily into the fountain in Century Place every day at sunset.
“She was awfully embarrassed about it later,” Jonathan said, getting up. “She nearly left Time City, but she couldn’t
