to very old. Outside, they were in a narrow lane of crooked little stone houses. There was a round blue light fixed to one of the houses in the distance, which showed that the lane was cobbled, with a gutter down the middle. The air was fresh and cool. It made Vivian feel rather heady and giddy.
Sam and Jonathan plunged down towards the dark end of the lane. The cobbles dug into the underside of Vivian’s feet as she trotted after them. There was a thick old archway there, black as night underneath, and after that they came into a blue-lit courtyard, where they went scuttling towards a building like a church.
“No, it’s always left unlocked,” Jonathan whispered to Sam, as he bounded up the steps to the church-place, with his pigtail flying. “And I left both doors to the Annuate unfastened just in case.” Sure enough, the mighty door clicked and swung smoothly to let them in.
Quite a small church! Vivian thought in surprise. But it didn’t smell like a church!
It smelt warmer and more dusty than a church. It was harder to see than any place she had been in so far, because the blue street lighting came in through high-up coloured windows. Bars of misty blue-green light showed up leather-covered seats not quite like pews, and a splotch of dark violet light rested on a throne-thing at one end with some kind of glittering canopy above it. A slant of orange-blue on a wall gave Vivian a glimpse of one of the most beautiful paintings she had ever seen.
“That’s Faber John’s Seat,” Jonathan whispered, pointing to the throne as he led the way down an aisle. “This is the Chronologue, where the Time Council meets.”
“We unlocked a door and listened to them,” Sam said.
“That’s how we heard about the crisis and the plans to intercept you – I mean the real V.S.,” Jonathan explained.
They moved to the right and Vivian found herself facing a shining thing misted with more violet light, that seemed to crown the end of a row of seats. It was like a winged sun and it seemed to be studded with jewels.
“The Sempiternal Ensign,” Jonathan whispered. “Solid gold. That’s the Kohinoor diamond in the left wing and the Star of Africa’s in the right.” He gave the thing a fond pat as they passed it.
This was too much for Vivian. I must be dreaming! she decided. I know both those diamonds are somewhere else.
“Given to Time City by the Icelandic Emperor in Seventy-two Century,” Jonathan added as he undid a small heavy door. But Vivian felt too dreamlike to attend. She went dreamily down a long dark passage, through a door that creaked horribly and out into a place like a stately home, where they hurried up what seemed endless dark wooden stairs. This dream keeps getting things wrong! Vivian thought, as her legs began to ache. There ought to be a lift or a moving stair at least! She did not start thinking properly until she found herself sitting in another peculiar chair in a large room where all the furniture seemed to be empty frames, like a playground full of climbing-frames. Jonathan put a light on and leant against the door. “Phew!” he said. “Safe so far. Now we have to think hard.”
“I can’t think,” said Sam. “I’m hungry. She is too. She told me.”
“My automat’s on the blink again,” Jonathan said. “What do you want if I can get it to work?”
“Forty-two Century butter-pie,” Sam said, as if it was obvious.
Jonathan went to a thing on the wall facing Vivian which she supposed must be a musical instrument. It had keys like a piano and pipes like a church-organ and it was decorated all over with gilt twiddles and garlands, which were a little worn and peeling, as if the instrument had seen better days. Jonathan pounded at the white keys. When nothing happened, he banged at the organ-pipes. The thing began to chuff and grunt and to shake a little, at which Jonathan kicked it fiercely lower down. Finally, he took up what seemed to be an ordinary school ruler and pried at a long flap under the pipes.
“Well, it’s done the butter-pies,” he said, peering inside. “But the Twenty Century function seems to have broken. There’s no pizza and no bubble-gum. Do you mind food from other centuries?” he asked Vivian rather anxiously.
Vivian had never heard of pizza, though she thought it sounded Italian and not like the English food she was used to at all. She was past being surprised at anything by this time. “I could eat a dinosaur!” she said frankly.
“You almost have to,” Jonathan said, carrying an armful of little white flowerpots over to the empty frame beside Vivian’s chair. He dumped them into the air above it, and they stayed there, standing on nothing. “Butter-pie,” Jonathan said, handing a pot with a stick poking out of it to Sam. “Otherwise it’s done you algae soup, malty soy, two carob cornpones and fish noodles.”
Sam pulled the stick out of his pot with a yellow nubbly ice cream on the end of it. “Yummee!” he cried and bit into it like an ogre.
“Er – which is which?” Vivian asked, looking at the strange marks on the other pots. “I can’t read these words.”
“Sorry,” Jonathan said. “Those are Universal Symbols from Thirty-nine Century.” He sorted out the pots for her and took a butter-pie for himself. The pots, Vivian found, were sort of stuck to the air. She had to give a little pull to get them loose. She discovered that you peeled back the lid, and if you needed a spoon or a fork, the lid shrivelled itself into a spoon or fork shape. Algae soup was not at all pleasant, like salty pond water. But malty soy was nice if you dipped the cornpone in it. The fish noodles were—
“I’d rather eat Dad’s fishing bait,” Vivian said, putting that pot quickly down.
“I’ll get you a butter-pie,” Jonathan said.
“And another one for me,” Sam put in.
The church-organ received another banging, two more kicks and a punch in the delivery-flap and Vivian and Sam received a pot with a stick each. Jonathan threw the empty pots into a frame beside the organ, where they vanished.
“Now we must talk,” he said, while Vivian dubiously lifted the nubbly lump out of its pot. “We’ve all broken the law and we daren’t be caught. It would have been all right if V.S. was really V.S. but she isn’t, so we’ve got to think how to hide her.”
Vivian was getting very tired of being called V.S. She would have objected if she had not at that moment bitten into the butter-pie. Wonderful tastes filled her mouth, everything buttery and creamy she had ever tasted, with just a hint of toffee, and twenty other even better tastes she had never met before, all of it icy cold. It was so marvellous that she simply said quietly, “You owe me an explanation. What were you trying to do?”
“Save Time City of course,” Sam said juicily out of the middle of his butter-pie. “We listened to the Chronologue. That’s how we knew where you’d be.”
“There’s a passage between the Chronologue and here,” Jonathan explained. “But it’s been chained up ever since my father was elected Sempitern and I got curious about it. So Sam shorted it out for me and – anyway, we found it led to the Chronologue and, if we opened the door a crack, we could hear what they were all talking about. They were debating the crisis—”
“Only I couldn’t understand a word,” Sam said, as if this was rather clever of him. “It wasn’t like the stories.”
“It wasn’t!” Jonathan said feelingly. “It was all
