Thief of Time

glow?”
    “It’s, it’s the crystal ring,” said Jeremy. “It, it—”
    “It spins light,” said Lady LeJean. “And then it makes a hole in the universe.”
    “Really?” said Dr. Hopkins, putting his glasses back on. “What an original idea! Does a cuckoo come out?”
    Tick
    Among the very worst words that can be heard by anyone high in the air, the pair known as “oh-oh” possibly combines the maximum of bowel-knotting terror with the minimum wastage of breath.
    When Lu-Tze uttered them, Lobsang didn’t need a translation. He’d been watching the clouds for some time. They were getting blacker, and thicker, and darker.
    “The handle’s tingling!” shouted Lu-Tze.
    “That’s because there’s a storm right above us!” screamed Lobsang.
    “The sky was as clear as a bell a few minutes ago!”
    Ankh-Morpork was much closer now. Lobsang could make out some of the taller buildings, and see the river snaking across the plain. But the storm was coming up all around the city.
    “I’m going to have to land this thing while I can!” Lu-Tze said. “Hold on…”
    The stick dropped until it was a few feet above the cabbage fields. The plants were a rushing green blur inches below Lobsang’s sandals.
    Lobsang heard another word that, while not the worst you can hear while airborne, is not at all good when it’s said by the person steering.
    “Er…”
    “Do you know how to stop this?” screamed Lobsang.
    “Not in so many words,” shouted Lu-Tze. “Hold on, I’m going to try something…”
    The stick tilted up but kept moving in the same direction. The bristles dipped into the cabbages.
    It took the width of a field to slow down, at the end of a furrow with the smell that only squashed cabbage leaves can yield.
    “How fine can you slice time?” the sweeper said, scrambling over the battered plants.
    “I’m pretty good—” Lobsang began.
    “Get better quick!”
    Lu-Tze faded to blue as he ran toward the city. Lobsang caught him up within a hundred yards but the sweeper was still fading, still slicing time thinner and thinner. The apprentice gritted his teeth and followed, straining every muscle.
    The old man might be a fraud when it came to fighting, but there was no kidding here. The world went from blue to indigo to an inky, unnatural darkness, like the shadow of an eclipse.
    This was deep time. You couldn’t stay there long, he knew. Even if you could tolerate the ghastly chill, there were parts of the body that just weren’t designed for this. Go too far down, too, and you’d die if you came back too quickly…
    He hadn’t seen it, of course, no apprentice had, but there were some quite graphic drawings in the classrooms. A man’s life could become very, very painful if his blood began to move through time faster than his bones. It would also be very short.
    “I can’t…keep this up…” he panted, running after Lu-Tze in the violet gloom.
    “You can,” gasped the sweeper. “You’re fast, right?”
    “I’m not…trained…for this !”
    The city was getting closer.
    “No one gets trained for this!” growled Lu-Tze. “You do it and you find out that you’re good at it!”
    “What happens if you find out you’re no good?” said Lobsang. The going felt easier now. He no longer had the feeling that his skin was trying to drag itself off him.
    “Dead men don’t find things out,” said Lu-Tze. He turned his head to his apprentice and his evil grin was a yellow-toothed curve in the shadows. “Getting the hang of it?” he added.
    “I’m…I’m on top of it…”
    “Right! Then now that we’ve warmed up…”
    To Lobsang’s horror, the sweeper faded further into the dark.
    He called up reserves he knew he didn’t have. He screamed at his liver to keep up, thought that he felt his brain creak, and plunged on.
    The shape of Lu-Tze lightened as Lobsang drew level with him in time.
    “Still here? One last effort, lad!”
    “I can’t!”
    “You bloody well can!”
    Lobsang gulped freezing air and fell onward—
    —where the light was suddenly a calm, pale blue and Lu-Tze was trotting gently between the frozen carts and unmoving people around the city’s gate.
    “See? Nothing to it,” said the sweeper. “Just maintain , that’s all. Nice and steady.”
    It was like balancing on a wire. It was fine if you didn’t think about it.
    “But all the scrolls say you go to blue and violet and into the black and then you hit the Wall,” said Lobsang.
    “Ah,