“Latin,” said Sam. “Measure the crack. Go on.”
“In a second,” said Jonathan. He explained to Vivian, “They say Faber John put this stone here when he founded the City. The words mean that Faber John founded the City to last the Four Ages. My tutor raves at the way they’ve let it get trodden away. He thinks it should say why the City was made and whereabouts the polarities are out in history. The stories say that when Faber John’s Stone breaks up, the City will break up too. All right,” he said to Sam, who was bouncing impatiently about.
Jonathan put his foot, in a green strappy sandal, carefully along the crack, with his green heel wedged into the corner. “It’s grown quite a bit,” he said. “It’s nearly to the end of my toes now.” He said to Vivian, “It was just a little tiny split for most of my life, but it started to grow about a month ago. I measure it every day on my way to school.”
“The City’s breaking up,” Sam announced in a booming, gloomy voice. “I need comforting. I need a Forty-two Century butter-pie.”
“Later,” said Jonathan and strode away across the square. “I want to show V.S. the time-ghosts in Secular Square.”
Sam stamped angrily and defiantly on the crack, which caused one of his shoelaces to trail again as he followed them.
Secular Square was behind Aeon Square and much smaller. It was crowded with stalls under red and white awnings, where people were buying and selling everything from fruit and meat to tourist trinkets. At first sight, there were hundreds of people there. Then Vivian’s flesh began to creep as she realised that half the people were walking through the other half. Music was playing merrily somewhere. Everyone was chattering and buying things, and nobody seemed in the least bothered that half the throng were ghosts who chattered and laughed without making a sound and paid for ghostly apples with unreal money. There was even a ghostly stall piled with ghostly oranges and tomatoes. It overlapped a real stall, but nobody seemed to mind. That stall was the only ghostly thing Vivian dared walk through.
“How do you tell?” she asked despairingly, as Jonathan and Sam walked through a crowd of laughing girls who looked as real as anyone else. “They all look quite solid to me!”
“You’ll get to know,” Jonathan said. “It’s obvious really.”
“But I can’t go bumping into everyone until I do!” Vivian protested. She kept carefully behind Jonathan and Sam while she tried to see just what it was about the people they walked through. After a while, she noticed that the people they didn’t walk through were all the ones who were wearing the same kind of pyjama-suits as their own. Got it! Vivian thought. Pyjamas are present-day fashion! She pointed excitedly to a group of people in gauzy dresses gathered round a trinket stall. “I know! Those are time-ghosts.”
Jonathan and Sam looked. “Tourists,” said Sam.
“From Eighty-seven Century,” said Jonathan.
As they said it, a gauze-robed girl bought a real white bag with TIME CITY on it in gold letters, and paid with a real silvery strip of money. Vivian felt a fool. A time-ghost in a pink striped crinoline walked through her and she had suddenly had enough.
“This is giving me the pip!” she said. “Go somewhere else or I shall scream!”
“Let’s get butter-pies,” said Sam.
“Later,” said Jonathan. He led the way down a winding lane called Day Alley, explaining to Vivian, “I wanted you to see how old Time City is. There are ghosts in the market wearing clothes that must go back hundreds of years.”
“I’m miserable,” Sam proclaimed, plodding behind with his shoelace flapping. “Nobody ever gives me butter-pies when I need them.”
“Shut up,” said Jonathan. “Stop whingeing.” This conversation happened so often after that that Vivian felt it ought to qualify as a time-ghost. Meanwhile they saw a round place with a golden dome called The Years, and then went over a bridge that was made of china, like a teacup, and painted with flowers in a way that reminded Vivian of a teacup even more. But the paint was worn and scratched and the bridge was chipped in places. It led to a park called Long Hours, where they saw the famous Pendulum Gardens.
Vivian found them fascinating, but Sam stood glumly watching fountains fling water high against the sky and little islands of rock carrying daffodils, tulips and irises slowly circle about in the spray.
“There’s only nineteen islands left,” he said. “Two more have come down.”
“How is it done?” Vivian asked. “How do the flowers stay up?”
“Nobody knows,” said Jonathan. “They say Faber John invented it. It’s one of the oldest things in the City.”
“That’s why it’s falling apart,” Sam said dismally.
“Oh, do stop being so depressing!” Jonathan snapped at him.
“I can’t,” sighed Sam. “I’m in my wet-week mood. You weren’t hit before breakfast.”
Jonathan sighed too. “Let’s go and have butter-pies,” he said.
Sam’s face lit up. His whole body changed. “Whoopee! Charge!” he shouted and led the way back to Aeon Square at a gallop.
Jonathan and Vivian trotted after him, through narrow stone streets, through time-ghosts, and past numbers of strangely dressed tourists.
“He knows just how to get what he wants,” Jonathan panted irritably.
That’s the pot calling the kettle black, if I ever heard it! Vivian thought. “How old is he?” she asked.
“Eight!” Jonathan said, in a short, disgusted puff of breath. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t stuck with him. But he’s the only person anywhere near my age in Time Close.”
Sam galloped straight to the glass building in Aeon Square and trotted along an arcade of glass pillars until he came to a place where tables were set out. He dived into a chair at a table with a view between two enormous greenish pillars and sat proudly waiting to be served. Vivian sat beside him watching tourists walk through the square and cluster to look at Faber John’s Stone in the middle. More tourists sat at the other tables or went in and out of the rich-looking shops under the arcade. Vivian had never seen so many peculiar clothes and strange hairstyles in her life. She heard strange languages too, jabbering all round her.
“Time City relies a lot on the tourist trade,” Jonathan said.
“Where do they all come from?” Vivian asked.
“All the Fixed Eras,” Sam said, quite cheerful now. “A hundred thousand years of them.”
“There’s a tour for every ten years of every century, except when there’s a war on,” Jonathan said. “The Time Consuls arrange them. Time Patrol checks everyone who wants to come, but almost anyone can come really.”
“How much does a tour cost?” Vivian asked. But the waitress arrived to take their orders just then. She was a cheerful young lady in frilly pink pyjamas who clearly knew Sam and Jonathan rather well.
“Hallo, you two,” she said. “How many butter-pies this morning?”
“Three, please,” said Jonathan.
“Only three?” said the waitress. “One point five, then. Numbers?”
“I’m not allowed a number,” said Sam.
“I know about you,” the waitress said. “I meant your friends.”
“I’m paying,” said Jonathan, and recited a string of numbers.
“Yes, but are you in credit?” said the waitress. “Show.”
Jonathan