Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett [88]
Lu-Tze was smoking nervously. When it got a few inches away from his body, the smoke went rigid in the air.
“Are you sure you can’t feel where it is?” he snapped.
“It’s all around us, Sweeper. We’re so close, it…it’s like trying to see the woods when you’re standing under the trees!”
“Well, this is the Street of Cunning Artificers and that’s the Guild of Clockmakers over there,” said Lu-Tze. “I don’t dare go inside if it’s this close, not until we’re certain.”
“Could it be the wizards at the University?”
“Wizards aren’t mad enough to try it!”
“You’re going to try and race the lightning?”
“It’s doable, if we start from here in the valley. Lightning ain’t as quick as people think.”
“Are we waiting to see a little pointy bit of lightning coming out of a cloud?”
“Hah! Kids today, where do they get their education? The first stroke is from the ground to the air, lad. That makes a nice hole in the air for the main lightning to come down. Look for the glow. We’ve got to be giving the road plenty of sandal by the time it reaches the clouds. You holding up okay?”
“I could go on like this all day,” said Lobsang.
“Don’t try it.” Lu-Tze scanned the sky again. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s just a storm. Sooner or later you get—”
He stopped. One look at Lobsang’s face was enough.
“O-kay,” said the sweeper slowly. “Just give me a direction. Just point if you can’t speak.”
Lobsang dropped to his knees, hands rising to his head.
“I don’t know…don’t know…”
Silvery light rose over the city, a few streets away. Lu-Tze grabbed the boy’s elbow.
“Come on, lad. On your feet. Faster than lightning, eh? Okay?”
“Yeah…yeah, okay…”
“You can do it, right?”
Lobsang blinked. He could see the glass house again, stretching away as a pale outline overlaid onto the city.
“Clock,” he said thickly.
“Run, boy, run!” shouted Lu-Tze. “And don’t stop for anything.”
Lobsang plunged forward and found it hard. Time moved aside for him, sluggishly at first, as his legs pumped; with every step he pushed himself faster and faster, the landscape changing colors again as the world slowed even further.
There was another stitch in time, the sweeper had said. Another valley, even closer to the null point. Insofar as he could think at all, Lobsang hoped he reached it soon. His body felt as though it would fly apart; he could feel his bones creaking.
The glow ahead was halfway to the iron-heavy clouds now, but he’d reached a crossroads and he could see it rising from a house halfway down the street.
He turned to look for the sweeper, and saw the man yards behind him, mouth open, a statue falling forward.
Lobsang turned, concentrated, let time speed up.
He reached Lu-Tze and caught him before he hit the ground. There was blood coming from the old man’s ears.
“I can’t do it, lad,” the sweeper mumbled. “Get on! Get on!”
“I can do it! It’s like running downhill!”
“Not for me it ain’t!”
“I can’t just leave you here like this!”
“Save us from heroes! Get that bloody clock!”
Lobsang hesitated. The downstroke was already emerging from the clouds, a drifting, glowing spike.
He ran. The lightning was falling toward a shop, a few buildings away. He could see a big clock hanging over its window.
He pushed against the flow of time ever further, and it yielded. But the lightning had reached the iron pole atop the building.
The window was closer than the door. He lowered his head and jumped through it, the glass shattering around him and then freezing in midair, clocks pinwheeling off the display and stopping as if caught in invisible amber.
There was another door ahead of him. He grabbed the knob and pulled, feeling the terrible resistance of a slab of wood urged to move at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.
It was barely open a few inches when he saw, beyond, the slow ooze of lightning down the rod and into the heart of the big clock.
The clock struck one.
Time stopped.
Ti—
Mr. Soak, the dairyman, was washing bottles at the sink when the air dimmed and the water solidified.
He