Thief of Time

man came in.
    What was strange about the face, Lobsang thought afterward, was how unmemorable it was. He’d never seen a face so lacking in anything to mention. It had a nose and mouth and eyes, and they were all quite flawless, but somehow they didn’t make up a face . They were just parts that made no proper whole. If they became anything at all it was the face of a statue, good-looking but without anything looking out of it.
    Slowly, like someone who had to think about his muscles, the man turned to look at Lobsang.
    Lobsang felt himself bunch up to slice time. The spinner groaned a warning on his back.
    “That’s about enough, I think,” said Susan, stepping forward. The man was spun around. An elbow was jabbed into his stomach and then the palm of her hand caught him so hard under his chin that he was lifted off the floor and slammed against the wall.
    As he fell, Susan hit him on the head with a wrench.
    “We might as well be going,” she said, as if she’d just shuffled some paper that had been untidy. “Nothing more for us here.”
    “You killed him!”
    “Certainly. He’s not a human being. I have…a sense about these things. It’s sort of inherited. Besides, go and pick up the hose. Go on.”
    Since she was still holding the wrench, Lobsang did so. Or tried to do so. The coil she’d flung into the corner was knotted and tangled like rubber spaghetti.
    “Malignancy, my grandfather calls it,” said Susan. “The local hostility of things toward nonthings always increases when there’s an Auditor about. They can’t help it. The hosepipe test is very reliable in the field, according to a rat I know.”
    Rat, thought Lobsang, but said: “What’s an Auditor?”
    “And they have no sense of color. They don’t understand it. Look how he’s dressed. Gray suit, gray shirt, gray shoes, gray cravat, gray everything .”
    “Er…er…perhaps it was just someone trying to be very cool?”
    “You think so? No loss there, then,” said Susan. “Anyway, you’re wrong. Watch.”
    The body was disintegrating. It was a fast and quite ungory process, a sort of dry evaporation. It simply became floating dust, which expanded away and vanished. But the last few handfuls formed, just for a few seconds, a familiar shape. That, too, vanished, with the merest whisper of a scream.
    “That was a dhlang !” he said. “An evil spirit! The peasants down in the valleys hang up charms against them! But I thought they were just a superstition!”
    “No, they’re a substition,” said Susan. “I mean they’re real, but hardly anyone really believes in them. Mostly everyone believes in things that aren’t real. Something very strange is going on. These things are all over the place, and they’ve got bodies. That’s not right. We’ve got to find the person who built the clock—”
    “And, er, what are you , Miss Susan?”
    “Me? I’m…a schoolteacher.”
    She followed his gaze to the wrench that she still held in her hand, and shrugged.
    “It can get pretty rough at break time, can it?” said Lobsang.

    There was an overpowering smell of milk.
    Lu-Tze sat bolt upright.
    It was a large room, and he had been placed on a slab in the middle of it. By the feel of the surface, it was sheeted with metal. There were churns stacked along the wall, and big metal bowls ranged beside a sink the size of a bath.
    Under the milk smell were many others—disinfectant, well-scrubbed wood, and a distant odor of horses.
    Footsteps approached. Lu-Tze lay back hurriedly, and shut his eyes.
    He heard someone enter the room. They were whistling under their breath, and they had to be a man, because no woman in Lu-Tze’s long experience had ever whistled in that warbling, hissing way. The whistling approached the slab, stayed still for a moment, then turned away and headed for the sink. It was replaced by the sound of a pump handle being operated.
    Lu-Tze half-opened one eye.
    The man standing at the sink was quite short, so that the standard-issue blue-and-white striped apron he wore almost reached the floor. He appeared to be washing bottles.
    Lu-Tze swung his legs off the slab, moving with a stealthiness that made the typical ninja sound like a brass band, and let his sandals gently touch the floor.
    “Feeling better?” said the man, without turning his head.
    “Oh, er, yes. Fine,” said Lu-Tze.
    “I thought, here’s a little bald monk sort of a fellow,” said the man, holding a bottle up to the light to inspect