Thief of Time

bottle on Jeremy’s shelf wasn’t something the clockmakers kept a very careful eye on. “Well, I shall be going, then. Well done with the crystals. I used to collect butterflies when I was a boy. Wonderful things, hobbies. Give me a killing jar and a net and I was as happy as a little lark.”
    Jeremy still smiled at him. There was something glassy about the smile.
    Dr. Hopkins swallowed the remainder of his tea and put the cup back in the saucer.
    “And now I really must be on my way,” he mumbled. “So much to do. Don’t wish to keep you from your work. Crystals, eh? Wonderful things. So pretty.”
    “Are they?” said Jeremy. He hesitated, as though he was trying to solve a minor problem. “Oh, yes. Patterns of light.”
    “Twinkly,” said Dr. Hopkins.
    Igor was waiting by the street door when Dr. Hopkins reached it. He nodded.
    “Mm…you are sure about the medicine?” he said quietly.
    “Oh yeth, thur. Every day I watch him pour out a thpoonful.”
    “Oh, good. He can be a little, er…sometimes he doesn’t get on well with people.”
    “Yeth, thur?”
    “Very, um, very particular about accuracy…”
    “Yeth, thur.”
    “…which is a good thing, of course. Wonderful thing, accuracy,” said Dr. Hopkins and sniffed. “Up to a point, of course. Well, good day to you.”
    “Good day, thur.”
    When Igor returned to the workshop Jeremy was carefully pouring the blue medicine into a spoon. When the spoon was exactly full, he tipped it into the sink.
    “They check, you know,” he said. “They think I don’t notice.”
    “I’m thure they mean well, thur.”
    “I’m afraid I can’t think so well when I take the medicine,” he said. “In fact I think I’m getting on a lot better without it, don’t you? It slows me down.”
    Igor took refuge in silence. In his experience, many of the world’s greatest discoveries were made by men who would be considered mad by conventional standards. Insanity depended on your point of view, he always said, and if it was the view through your own underpants then everything looked fine.
    But young Master Jeremy was beginning to worry him. He never laughed, and Igor liked a good maniacal laugh. You could trust it.
    Since giving up the medicine Jeremy had not, as Igor had expected, begun to gibber and shout things like “Mad! They said I was mad! But I shall show them all! Ahahahaha!” He’d simply become more—focused.
    Then there was that smile. Igor was not easily frightened, because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to look in a mirror, but he was becoming a little troubled.
    “Now, where were we…” said Jeremy. “Oh, yes…give me a hand here.”
    Together they moved the table aside. Under it, dozens of glass jars hissed.
    “Not enough power,” said Igor. “Altho we have not got the mirrorth right yet, thur.”
    Jeremy pulled the cloth off the device on the workbench. Glass and crystal glittered, and in some cases glittered very strangely. As Jeremy had remarked yesterday, in the clarity that was returning now that he was carefully pouring one spoonful of his medicine down the sink twice a day, some of the angles looked wrong. One crystal had disappeared when he’d locked it into place, but it was clearly still there because he could see the light reflecting off it.
    “And we’ve thtill got too much metal in it, thur,” Igor grumbled. “It wath the thpring that did for the latht one.”
    “We will find a way,” said Jeremy.
    “Homemade lightning ith never ath good ath the real thort,” said Igor.
    “Good enough to test the principle,” said Jeremy.
    “Tetht the printhiple, tetht the printhiple,” muttered Igor. “Thorry, thur, but Igorth do not ‘tetht the printhiple.’ Thtrap it to the bench and put a good thick bolt of lightning, that’th our motto. That’th how you tetht thomething.”
    “You seem ill at ease, Igor.”
    “Well, I’m thorry, thur,” said Igor. “It’th the climate dithagreeing with me. I’m uthed to regular thunderthtormth.”
    “I’ve heard that some people really seem to come alive in thunderstorms,” said Jeremy, carefully adjusting the angle of a crystal.
    “Ah, that wath when I worked for Baron Finklethtein,” said Igor.
    Jeremy stood back. This wasn’t the clock, of course. There was still a lot more work to do (but he could see it in front of him, if he closed his eyes) before they had a clock. This was just an essay, to see if he was on the right lines.
    He was on the right lines.