Thief of Time

bedside table by the clocks. He blew out the candle. He went to sleep. He dreamed.
    The glass clock ticked. It stood in the middle of the workshop’s wooden floor, giving off a silvery light. Jeremy walked around it, or perhaps it spun gently around him.
    It was taller than a man. Within the transparent case red and blue lights twinkled like stars. The air smelled of acid.
    Now his point of view dived into the thing, the crystalline thing, plunging down through the layers of glass and quartz. They rose past him, their smoothness becoming walls hundreds of miles high, and still he fell between slabs that were becoming rough, grainy …
    … full of holes. The blue and red lights were here too, pouring past him.
    And only now was there sound. It came from the darkness ahead, a slow beat that was ridiculously familiar, a heartbeat magnified a million times …
    …tchum…tchum…… each beat slower than mountains and bigger than worlds, dark and blood-red. He heard a few beats and then his fall slowed, stopped, and he began to soar back up through the sleeting light until a brightness ahead became a room.
    He had to remember all this! It was all so clear, once you saw it! So simple! So easy! He could see every part, how they interlocked, how they were made …
    And now it began to fade.
    Of course, it was only a dream. He told himself that and was comforted by it. But he had gone to some lengths with this one, he had to admit. For example, there was a mug of tea steaming on the nearby workbench, and the sound of voices on the other side of the door …
    There was a knocking at the door. Jeremy wondered if the dream would end when the door was opened, and then the door disappeared and the knocking went on. It was coming from downstairs.
    The time was 6:47. Jeremy glanced at the alarm clocks to make sure they were right, then pulled his dressing gown around him and hurried downstairs. He opened the front door a crack. There was no one there.
    “Nah, dahn ’ere, mister.”
    Someone lower down was a dwarf.
    “Name of Clockson?” it said.
    “Yes…?”
    A clipboard was thrust through the gap.
    “Sign ’ere, where it says ‘Sign ’Ere.’ Thank you. Okay, lads…”
    Behind him, a couple of trolls tipped up a handcart. A large wooden crate crashed onto the cobbles.
    “What is this?” said Jeremy.
    “Express package,” said the dwarf, taking the clipboard. “Come all the way from Uberwald. Must’ve cost someone a packet. Look at all them seals and stickers on it.”
    “Can’t you bring it in—” Jeremy began, but the cart was already moving off, with the merry jingle and tinkle of fragile items.
    It started to rain. Jeremy peered at the label on the crate. It was certainly addressed to him, in a neat round hand, and just above it was the seal with the double-headed bat of Uberwald. There was no other marking anywhere except, near the bottom, the words:.
    Then the crate started to swear. It was muffled, and in a foreign language, but all swearing has a certain international content.
    “Er…hello?” said Jeremy.
    The crate rocked and landed on one of the long sides, with extra cursing. There was some thumping from inside, some louder swearing, and the crate teetered upright again with the alleged top the right way up.
    A piece of board slid aside and a crowbar dropped out and onto the street with a clang. The voice that had lately been swearing said, “If you would be tho good?”
    Jeremy inserted the bar into a likely looking crack, and pulled.
    The crate sprang apart. He dropped the bar. There was a…a creature inside.
    “I don’t know,” it said, pulling bits of packing material off itself, “eight bloody dayth with no problemth, and thothe idiotth get it wrong on the doorthtep.” It nodded at Jeremy. “Good morning, thur. I thuppothe you are Mithter Jeremy?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “My name ith Igor, thur. My credentialth, thur.”
    A hand like an industrial accident held together with stitches thrust a sheaf of papers toward Jeremy. He recoiled instinctively, and then felt embarrassed and took them.
    “I think there has been a mistake,” he said.
    “No, no mithtake,” said Igor, pulling a carpetbag out of the ruins of the crate. “You need an athithtant. And when it cometh to athithtanth, you cannot go wrong with an Igor. Everyone knowth that. Could we go in out of the rain, thur? It maketh my kneeth rutht.”
    “But I don’t need an assist—” Jeremy began, but that was wrong,