Thief of Time

ES.
    “Where to?”
    E VERYWHERE, I THINK. I N THE MEANTIME, YOU WILL NEED THIS.
    Death handed her a lifetimer.
    It was one of the special ones, slightly bigger than normal. She took it reluctantly. It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.
    “You know I don’t like doing the…the whole scythe thing,” she said. “It’s not—hey, this is really heavy!”
    H E IS L U- T ZE, A HISTORY MONK. E IGHT HUNDRED YEARS OLD. H E HAS AN APPRENTICE. I HAVE LEARNED THIS. B UT I CANNOT FEEL HIM, I CANNOT SENSE HIM. H E IS THE O NE. B INKY WILL TAKE YOU TO THE MONK, YOU WILL FIND THE CHILD.
    “And then what?”
    I SUSPECT HE WILL NEED SOMEONE. W HEN YOU HAVE FOUND HIM, LET BINKY GO. I SHALL NEED HIM.
    Susan’s lips moved as a memory collided with a thought.
    “To ride out?” she said. “Are you really talking about the Apocalypse ? Are you serious ? No one believes in that sort of thing anymore!”
    I DO.
    Susan’s jaw dropped. “You’re really going to do that? Knowing everything you know?”
    Death patted Binky on the muzzle.
    Y ES, he said.
    Susan gave her grandfather a sideways look.
    “Hold on, there’s a trick, isn’t there…you’re planning something and you’re not even going to tell me, right? You’re not really going to just wait for the world to end and celebrate it, are you?”
    W E WILL RIDE OUT.
    “No!”
    Y OU WILL NOT TELL THE RIVERS NOT TO FLOW . Y OU WILL NOT TELL THE SUN NOT TO SHINE . Y OU WILL NOT TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO.
    “But it’s so—” Susan’s expression changed, and Death flinched. “I thought you cared !”
    T AKE THIS ALSO.
    Without wanting to, Susan took a smaller lifetimer from her grandfather.
    S HE MAY TALK TO YOU.
    “And who is this ?”
    T HE MIDWIFE, said Death. N OW…FIND THE SON.
    He faded.
    Susan looked down at the lifetimer in her hands. He’s done it to you again, she screamed at herself. You don’t have to do this and you can put this thing down and you can go back to the classroom and you can be normal again and you just know that you won’t, and so does he—
    S QUEAK?
    The Death of Rats was sitting between Binky’s ears, grasping a lock of the white mane with the general impression of someone anxious to be going. Susan raised a hand to slap him off, and then stopped herself. Instead, she pushed the heavy lifetimer into the rat’s paws.
    “Make yourself useful,” she said, grasping the reins and mounting up. “Why do I do this?”
    S QUEAK.
    “I have not got a nice nature!”
    Tick
    There was not, surprisingly, a great deal of blood. The head rolled into the snow, and the body slowly toppled forward.
    “Now you killed —” Lobsang began.
    “Just a second,” said Lu-Tze. “Any moment now…”
    The headless body vanished. The kneeling yeti turned his head to Lu-Tze, blinked, and said, “That stung a biit.”
    “Sorry.”
    Lu-Tze turned to Lobsang. “Now, hold on to that memory!” he commanded. “It’ll try to vanish, but you’ve had training. You’ve got to go on remembering that you saw something which now did not happen , understand? Remember that time’s a lot less unbending than people think, if you get your head right! Just a little lesson! Seeing is believing!”
    “How did it do that?”
    “Good question. They can save their life up to a certain point and go back to it if they get killed,” said Lu-Tze. “ How it’s done…well, the abbot spent the best part of a decade working that one out. Not that anyone else can understand it. There’s a lot of quantum involved.” He took a pull of his permanent foul cigarette. “Gotta be good working-out, if no one else can understand it.” *
    “How is der abboott dese daays?” said the yeti, getting to its feet again and picking up the pilgrims.
    “Teething.”
    “Ah. Reincarnation’s alwaays a problem,” said the yeti, falling into its long, ground-eating lope.
    “Teeth are the worst, he says. Always coming or going.”
    “How fast are we going?” said Lobsang.
    The yeti’s stride was more like a continuous series of leaps from one foot to the other; there was so much spring in the long legs that each landing was a mere faint rocking sensation. It was almost restful.
    “I reckon we’re doing thirty miles an hour or so, clock time,” said Lu-Tze. “Get some rest. We’ll be above Copperhead in the morning. It’s all downhill from there.”
    “Coming back from the dead…” Lobsang