Thief of Time

snapping wasn’t essential, but time stopped.
    At least, stopped for everyone but Miss Susan.
    And the rat on the mantelpiece.
    Which was, in fact, the skeleton of a rat, although this was not preventing it from trying to steal Madam Frout’s jar of boiled sweets for Good Children.
    Susan strode over and grasped the collar of the tiny robe.
    S QUEAK? said the Death of Rats.
    “I thought it was you!” snapped Susan. “How dare you come here again! I thought you’d got the message the other day. And don’t think I didn’t see you when you turned up to collect Henry the Hamster last month! Do you know how hard it is to teach geography when you can see someone kicking the poo out of a treadmill?”
    The rat sniggered: S NH. S NH. S NH.
    “And you’re eating a sweet! Put it in the bin right now!”
    Susan dropped the rat onto the desk in front of the temporally frozen Madam Frout, and paused.
    She’d always tried to be good about this sort of thing, but sometimes you just had to acknowledge who you were. So she pulled open the bottom drawer to check the level in the bottle which was Madam’s shield and comforter in the wonderful world that was education, and was pleased to see that the old girl was going a bit easier on the stuff these days. Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.
    She also spent a little while going through Madam’s private papers, and this has to be said about Susan: it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong about this, although she’d quite understand that it was probably wrong if you weren’t Susan Sto Helit, of course. The papers were in quite a good safe that would have occupied a competent thief for at least twenty minutes. The fact that the door swung open at her touch suggested that special rules applied here.
    No door was closed to Miss Susan. It ran in the family. Some genetics are passed on via the soul.
    When she’d brought herself up to date on the school’s affairs, mostly to indicate to the rat that she wasn’t just someone who could be summoned at a moment’s notice, she stood up.
    “All right,” she said. “You’re just going to pester me, aren’t you,” she said wearily. “Forever and ever and ever.”
    The Death of Rats looked at her with its skull on one side.
    S QUEAK , it said winsomely.
    “Well, yes, I like him,” she said. “In a way. But, I mean, you know, it’s not right. Why does he need me ? He’s Death! He’s not exactly powerless! I’m just human!”
    The rat squeaked again, jumped down onto the floor, and ran through the closed door. It reappeared for a moment, and beckoned to her…
    “Oh, all right,” said Susan to herself. “Make that mostly human.”
    Tick
    And who is this Lu-Tze?
    Sooner or later every novice had to ask this rather complex question. Sometimes it would be years before they found out that the little man who swept their floors, and uncomplainingly carted away the contents of the dormitory cesspit, and occasionally came out with outlandish foreign sayings was the legendary hero they’d been told they would meet one day. And then, when they’d confronted him, the brightest of them confronted themselves.
    Mostly sweepers came from the villages in the valley. They were part of the staff of the monastery but they had no status. They did all the tedious, unregarded jobs. They were…figures in the background, pruning the cherry trees, washing the floors, cleaning out the carp pools, and always sweeping. They had no names. That is, a thoughtful novice would understand that the sweepers must have names, some form by which they were known to other sweepers, but within the temple grounds at least they had no names, only instructions. No one knew where they went at night. They were just sweepers. But so was Lu-Tze.
    One day a group of senior novices, for mischief, kicked over the little shrine that Lu-Tze kept beside his sleeping mat.
    Next morning, no sweepers turned up for work. They stayed in their huts, with the doors barred. After making inquiries, the abbot, who at that time was fifty years old again, summoned the three novices to his room. There were three brooms leaning against the wall. He spoke as follows:
    “You know that the dreadful Battle of Five Cities did not happen because the messenger got there in time?”
    They did. You learned this early in your studies. And they bowed nervously,