Thief of Time

then?”
    “It’s not turning?” Panicking, Lobsang tried to reach around to the small of his back, spinning himself in the effort.
    “It looks as though you have a hidden talent,” said Susan, leaning against the wall and grinning.
    “Please! Wind me up again!”
    “All right. You are a—”
    “ That wasn’t very funny the first time!”
    “That’s all right, I don’t have much of a sense of humor.”
    She grabbed his arms as he wrestled with the straps of the spinner.
    “You don’t need it, understand?” she said. “It’s just a dead weight! Trust me! Don’t give in! You’re making your own time. Don’t wonder how.”
    He stared at her in terror.
    “What’s happening?”
    “It’s okay, it’s okay ,” said Susan as patiently as she could. “This sort of thing always comes as a shock. When it happened to me, there wasn’t anyone around, so consider yourself lucky.”
    “What happened to you?”
    “I found out who my grandfather is . And don’t ask. Now, concentrate…where ought you to be?”
    “Uh, uh…” Lobsang looked around. “Uh…over that way, I think.”
    “I wouldn’t dream of asking you how you know,” said Susan. “And it’s away from that mob.”
    She smiled. “Look on the bright side,” she added. “We’re young, we’ve got all the time in the world…” She swung the wrench onto her shoulder. “Let’s go clubbing.”

    If there had been such a thing as time, it would have been a few minutes after Susan and Lobsang left that a small robed figure, about six inches high, strutted into the workshop. It was followed by a raven, which perched on the door and regarded the glowing clock with considerable suspicion.
    “Looks dangerous to me,” he said.
    S QUEAK? said the Death of Rats, advancing on the clock.
    “No, don’t you go trying to be a hero,” said Quoth.
    The rat walked up to the base of the clock, stared up at it with a the-bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall expression, and then whacked it with its scythe.
    Or, at least, tried to. There was a flash as the blade made contact. For a moment the Death of Rats was a ring-shaped, black-and-white blur around the clock, and then it vanished.
    “Told yer,” said the raven, preening his feathers. “I bet you feel like Mister Silly now, right?”

    “…And then I thought, what’s a job that really needs someone with my talents?” said Ronnie. “To me, time is just another direction. And then I thought, everyone wants fresh milk, yes? And everyone wants it delivered early in the morning.”
    “Got to be better than the window cleaning,” said Lu-Tze.
    “I only went into that after they invented windows,” said Ronnie. “It was the gardening before that. More rancid yak butter?”
    “Please,” said Lu-Tze, holding out his cup.
    Lu-Tze was eight hundred years old, and that was why he was having a rest. A hero would have leaped up and rushed out into the silent city and then—
    And there you had it. Then a hero would have had to wonder what to do next. Eight hundred years had taught Lu-Tze that what happens, stays happened. It might stay happened in a different set of dimensions, if you wanted to get technical, but you couldn’t make it unhappen. The clock had struck, and time had stopped. Later, a solution would present itself. In the meantime, a cup of tea and conversation with his serendipitous rescuer might speed that time. After all, Ronnie was not your average milkman.
    Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football.
    “It’s the real stuff you got there, Ronnie,” he said, taking a sip. “The butter we’re getting these days, you wouldn’t grease a cart with it.”
    “It’s the breed,” said Ronnie. “I go and get this from the highland herds six hundred years ago.”
    “Cheers,” said Lu-Tze, raising his cup. “Funny, though. I mean, if you said to people there were originally five horsemen of the Apocalypse, and then one of them left and became a milkman, well, they’d be a bit surprised. They’d wonder about why you…”
    For a moment Ronnie’s eyes blazed silver.
    “Creative differences,” he growled. “The whole ego thing. Some people might say…no, I don’t like to talk about it. I wish them all the luck in the world, of course.”
    “Of course,” said Lu-Tze, keeping his expression opaque.
    “And I’ve watched their careers with great interest.”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Do you know I even got written out of the