Thief of Time

it yielded reluctantly to his hand. It felt like velvet, and it was. He’d rolled under one of the display cabinets.
    There was a vibration in the small of his back. He reached around gingerly, and realized that the portable Procrastinator was revolving in its cage.
    So…
    How did it go, now? He was living on borrowed time. He’d got maybe an hour, perhaps a lot less. But he could slice it, so…
    …no. Something told him that trying that would be a really terminal idea with time stored in a device made by Qu. The mere thought made him feel that his skin was inches from a universe full of razor blades.
    So…one hour, perhaps a lot less. But you could rewind a spinner, right?
    No. The handle was at the back. You could rewind someone else’s spinner. Thank you, Qu, and your experimental models.
    Could you take it off, then? No. The harness was part of it. Without it, different parts of your body would be traveling at different speeds. The effect would probably be rather like freezing a human body solid, and then pushing it down a flight of stone stairs.
    Open the box with the crowbar that you will find inside…
    There was a green-blue glow through the crack in the door. He took a step toward it, and heard the spinner suddenly pick up speed. That meant it was shedding more time, and that was bad when you had an hour, perhaps a lot less.
    He took a step away from the door and the Procrastinator settled back into its routine clicking.
    So…
    Lu-Tze was out in the street and he had a spinner and that should have cut in automatically, too. In this timeless world, he was going to be the only person who could turn a handle.
    The glass that he had broken in his leap through the window had opened around the hole like a great sparkling flower. He reached out to touch a piece. It moved as though alive, cut his finger, and then dropped toward the ground, stopping only when it fell out of the field around his body.
    Don’t touch people, Lu-Tze had said. Don’t touch arrows. Don’t touch things that were moving, that was the rule. But the glass—
    —but the glass, in normal time, had been flying through the air. It’d still have that energy, wouldn’t it?
    He eased himself carefully around the glass, and opened the front door of the shop. The wood moved very slowly, fighting against the enormous speed.
    Lu-Tze was not in the street. But there was something new, hovering in the air just a few inches above the ground right where the old man had been. It had not been there before.
    Someone with their own portable time had been here, and had dropped this, and had moved on before it reached the ground.
    It was a small glass jar, colored blue by temporal effects. Now…how much energy could it have? Lobsang cupped his hand and gingerly brought it underneath and up, and there was a tingle and a sudden feeling of weight as the spinner’s field claimed it.
    Now its true colors came back. The jar was a milky pink or, rather, clear glass that looked pink because of the contents. The paper lid was covered with badly printed pictures of unbelievably flawless strawberries, surrounding some ornate lettering which read: R ONALD S OAK , H YGENIC D AIRYMAN . S TRAWBERRY Y OGURT “F RESH A S T HE M ORNING D EW .”
    Soak? He knew the name! The man had delivered milk to the Guild! Good fresh milk, too, not the watery, green-tinted stuff the other dairies supplied. Very reliable, everyone said. But, reliable or not, he was just a milkman…allright, just a very good milkman…andif time had stopped, then why—
    Lobsang looked around desperately. The people and carts that thronged the street were still there. No one had moved. No one could move.
    But something was running along the gutter. It looked like a rat in a black robe, running along on its hind legs. It looked up at Lobsang, and he saw that it had a skull rather than a head. As skulls went, it was quite a cheerful one.
    The word SQUEAK manifested itself inside his brain without bothering to go via his ears. Then the rat hopped onto the pavement and scampered down an alley.
    Lobsang followed it.
    A moment later someone behind him grabbed him by the neck. He went to break the lock, and realized how much he’d relied on slicing when he was fought. Besides, the person behind him had a very strong grip indeed.
    “I just want to make sure you don’t do anything silly,” it said. It was a female voice. “What is this thing on your back?”
    “Who are—”
    “The protocol in