he foreman kept shouting. 'Hurry it up, or we'll never be
through!'
They didn't finish the job till midnight, by which time Beppo's shirt
was clinging to his back. Being older than the rest and not the most robust
of men, he flopped down wearily on an upturned plastic bucket and struggled
to get his breath back.
'Hey, Beppo,' one of his workmates called, 'we're off home now.
Coming?'
'In a minute,' wheezed Beppo. He clasped one hand to his aching chest.
'Feeling all right, old man?' called someone else.
'I'm fine,' Beppo called back. 'Just taking a little breather, that's
all. Don't wait for me.'
'Okay,' said the others, 'good night.' And off they went.
It was quiet when they'd gone, except for an occasional rustle and
squeak from rats scrabbling in the garbage. Beppo pillowed his head on his
folded arms and dozed off.
He didn't know how long he'd been asleep when he was
104
roused by a gust of cold air. One look was enough to jolt him awake in
an instant.
All over the huge mound of garbage stood grey figures attired in smart
grey suits and grey bowler hats, steel-grey briefcases in their hands and
small grey cigars in their mouths. They were gazing fixedly, silently, at
the summit of the mound. There, ensconced on a sort of magistrates' bench,
sat three men identical to the others in every respect.
Beppo was frightened for a moment. He had no business to be there - he
sensed that instinctively - and the prospect of discovery scared him. Very
soon, however, he realized that the army of grey figures had eyes for no one
but the three-man tribunal. Either they had failed to notice him at all, or
they had mistaken him for some discarded object. Whatever the explanation,
he resolved to keep as still as a mouse.
Then the silence was broken by a voice from the judges' bench. 'The
Supreme Court is now in session,' announced the central figure. 'Call Agent
No. BLW/553/c.'
The cry was repeated further down the slope and repeated again some
distance away, like an echo. Threading his way slowly through the crowd and
up the mound of garbage came a man in grey, distinguishable from his fellows
only by the pallor of his face, which was almost white.
At last he reached the tribunal.
'You are Agent No. BLW/553/c?' asked the man in the centre.
'I am.'
'How long have you been employed by the Timesaving Bank?'
'Ever since I came into existence. Your Honour.'
'That goes without saying - kindly spare us such irrelevancies. When
did you come into existence?'
'Eleven years, three months, six days, eight hours, thirty-two minutes
and - at this precise moment - eighteen seconds ago.'
105
Oddly enough, although this exchange was being conducted a long way off
and in low, monotonous voices, Beppo didn't miss a word of it.
'Are you aware,' the man in the centre went on, 'that a substantial
number of children paraded through the streets today with placards and
banners, and that they even entertained the outrageous notion of inviting
the whole city to attend a briefing on our activities?'
'It hadn't escaped me,' replied the agent.
'How do you account for the fact that these children knew about us and
our activities?' the senior inquisitor pursued remorselessly.
'It's a mystery to me. Your Honour,' said the agent. 'If I may venture
a personal observation, however, I would urge the Supreme Court not to take
this incident more seriously than it deserves. It was a piece of childish
nonsense, that's all. I would also urge the court to bear in mind that we
easily managed to scotch the scheduled meeting by leaving people no time to
attend it. Even had we failed to do so, however, I'm confident that everyone
would have dismissed the children's information as a cock-and-bull story. In
my opinion, we would have done better to let the meeting go ahead, because
that would -'
'Defendant!' the judge broke in sharply. 'Do you realize where you
are?'
The agent wilted. 'Yes,' he whispered. 'This is no human court,' the
judge continued. 'You are being tried by your own kind. Lying to us is
futile, you know that perfectly well, so why bother to try?'
'It's - it's an occupational habit,' the agent stammered. 'It is for
this court to decide how seriously to take the children's intentions.
However, I need hardly remind you that children present a greater threat to
our work than anyone or anything else.'
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i know, the agent conceded meekly. 'Children,' declared the judge, 'are
our natural enemies. But for them, mankind would have been completely in our
power long ago. Adults are far easier to turn into timesavers. That's why
one of our most sacred commandments states, "Leave the children till last."
Are you familiar with that commandment, Defendant?'
'Yes indeed, Your Honour,' said the agent, puffing hard at his cigar.
It was a peculiar fact that, despite the solemnity of the occasion, all
present - judges, defendant and spectators -- were smoking incessantly.
'And yet,' the judge retorted, 'we have incontrovertible proof that one
of us - I repeat, one of us -- not only got into conversation with a child
but betrayed us. Do you happen to know who that certain person was?'
Agent No. BLW/553/c wilted still more. 'It was me. Your Honour.'
'And why did you break our most sacred commandment?' 'Because the child
in question has been seriously impeding our work by turning people against
us. I had the interests of the Timesaving Bank at heart. My intentions were
of the best.'
'Your intentions don't concern us,' the judge said icily. 'Results are
all that count here, and the result of your unauthorized action has been to
gain us no time and acquaint a child with some of our most vital secrets. Do
you admit that?'
The agent hung his head. 'I do,' he whispered. 'So you plead guilty?'
'Yes, Your Honour, but I would draw the court's attention to an
extenuating circumstance: I was genuinely bewitched -- lured into betraying
us by the way the child listened to me. I can't explain how it happened, but
I swear that's the way it was.'
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'Your excuses are irrelevant and immaterial. This court takes no
account of extenuating circumstances. The law is quite categorical on this
point and allows of no exceptions. However, we shall certainly devote some
attention to this unusual child. What is its name?'
'Momo, Your Honour.'
'Male or female?'
'She's a girl.'
'Place of residence?'
'The ruined amphitheatre.'
'Very well,' said the judge, who had recorded all these details in his
notebook. 'You may rest assured. Defendant, that this child will never harm
us again - we shall neutralize her by every available means. Let that
thought console you, now that sentence is about to be passed and carried
out.'
The agent began to tremble. 'What is the sentence?' he whispered.
The three judges put their heads together and conferred in an
undertone. Then they nodded, and their spokesman turned to face the prisoner
again.
Agent No. BLW/553/c having pleaded guilty to a charge of high treason,
this court unanimously sentences him to pay the penalty prescribed by law.
He is to be deprived of all time forthwith.'
'Mercy, mercy!' shrieked the agent, but his steel-grey briefcase and
small cigar had already been snatched away by two grey figures standing
beside him.
And then a very strange thing happened. No sooner had the condemned man
lost his cigar than he started to become more and more transparent. His
screams grew fainter, too, as he stood there with his head in his hands,
dissolving into thin air. The last that could be seen of him was a little
flurry of ash eddying in the breeze, but that soon vanished too.
Silently the men in grey dispersed, judges and spectators alike Once
the darkness had swallowed them up, the sole
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reminder ot their presence was a chill, grey wind that swirled around
the dismal and deserted garbage dump.
Beppo continued to sit spellbound on his upturned bucket, staring at
the spot where the condemned man had been standing. He felt as if his limbs
had turned to ice and were only just beginning to thaw. The men in grey
existed; he had seen them for himself.
At about the same time - the distant church clock had already struck
twelve - Momo was still sitting on the steps of the amphitheatre. She was
waiting. For what, she didn't know, but some instinct had dissuaded her from
going to bed.
All of a sudden, something lightly brushed against her bare foot.
Peering hard, for it was very dark, she saw a big tortoise looking up at
her. Its mouth seemed to curve in a mysterious smile, and there was such a
friendly light in its shrewd, black eyes that Momo felt it was about to
speak.
She bent down and tickled it under the chin. 'Who might you be?' she
said softly. 'Nice of you to come and keep me company, Tortoise, even if
nobody else will. What can I do for you?'
Momo wasn't sure whether she'd failed to notice them before, or whether
they'd only just appeared, but she suddenly spotted some letters on the
tortoise's back. They were faintly luminous and seemed to follow the natural
patterns on its shell.
'FOLLOW ME,' she slowly deciphered.
Astonished, she sat up with a jerk. 'Do you mean me?' she asked.
But the tortoise had already set off. After a few steps it paused and
looked back. 'It really does mean me!' Momo said to herself. She got up and
went over to the creature. 'Keep going,' she told it softly, 'I'm right
behind you.'
And step by step she followed the tortoise as it slowly, very slowly,
led her out of the amphitheatre and headed for the city.
TEN
More Haste Less Speed
Old Beppo was pedalling through the darkness on his squeaky bicycle -
pedalling with all his might. The grey judge's words still rang in his ears:
'We shall certainly devote some attention to this unusual child ... You may
rest assured that this child will never harm us again ... We shall
neutralize her by every available means ...'
Momo was in dire peril, of that there could be no doubt. He must go to
her at once, warn her and protect her from the men in grey. He didn't know
how, but he'd find a way. Beppo pedalled even faster, his tuft of white hair
fluttering in the breeze. He still had a long way to go.
The ruined amphitheatre was ablaze with the headlights of a whole fleet
of smart grey cars, which hemmed it in on every side. Dozens of men in grey
were scurrying up and down the grass-grown steps. At last, after peering
into every nook and cranny, they came upon the hole in the wall. Some of
them scrambled through it into Memo's room. They looked under the bed - they
even looked inside the little brick stove. Then they reappeared, patted the
dust from their smart grey suits and shrugged.
'The bird appears to have flown,' said one.
'It's exasperating,' said another. 'Children should be safely tucked up
in bed at this hour, not gallivanting around in the dark.'
'I don't like the look of this,' said a third. 'It's almost as if
someone had tipped her off just in time.'
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'Impossible,' said the first. 'He couldn't have known of our intention
before we knew it ourselves - or could he?'
The three of them eyed each other in dismay.
'If someone really did tip her off,' the third pointed out, 'she'll
have made herself scarce. We'll only be wasting time if we go on looking for
her here.'
'What do you suggest, then?'
'I say we should notify headquarters at once, so they can launch a
full-scale manhunt.'
'The first thing they'll ask us - and quite rightly so - is whether
we've made a thorough search of the immediate neighbourhood.'
'Very well,' said the first speaker, 'let's search the area first, but
if the girl's well clear of it already, we'll be making a big mistake.'
'Nonsense,' snapped his colleague. 'Even if she is, headquarters can
still launch a full-scale manhunt using, every available agent. The girl
won't escape - she doesn't stand a chance. Right, gentlemen, let's get
going. You all know what's at stake.'
Many of the local inhabitants lay awake that night, wondering why so
many cars kept racing past their windows. Even the narrowest side streets
and roughest farm tracks resounded until daybreak with a roar of traffic
more usually heard on major roads. No one could sleep a wink.
All this time, Momo was trudging slowly through the city in the wake of
her new-found friend, the tortoise. The city never slept nowadays, however
late the hour. Interminable streams of people surged through the streets,
jostling and elbowing each other aside. The roads were choked with cars and
big, noisy, overcrowded buses. Neon signs blazed down from every building,
intermittently bathing passers-by in their multicoloured glare.
Momo, who had never seen any of this before, followed
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the tortoise in a kind of wide-eyed, waking dream. They made their way
across broad squares and down brightly lit streets. Cars flashed past them
and pedestrians milled around them, but no one looked twice at the child and
the tortoise.
They never had to get out of anyone's way, either. Nobody bumped into
them, nor did any driver have to brake to avoid them. The tortoise seemed to
know precisely when there would be no car or pedestrian in their path, so
they never had to vary their pace, never had to hurry or to stop and wait.
Momo began to wonder how any two creatures could walk so slowly but travel
so fast.
When Beppo finally reached the amphitheatre, the feeble glow of his
bicycle lamp showed him, even before he dismounted, that the ground around
it was a mass of tyre tracks. He left his bicycle in the grass and ran to
the hole in the wall.
'Momo!' He whispered the name at first, then spoke it aloud. 'Momo!' he
repeated.
No answer.
Beppo swallowed hard, his throat felt so dry. He climbed through the
hole into the pitch-black room, stumbled over something, and wrenched his
ankle. Striking a match with tremulous fingers, he peered in all directions.
The crude little table and chairs were overturned, the blankets and
mattress stripped off the bed. Of Momo herself, there was no sign at all.
Beppo bit his lip to stifle the hoarse sob that racked his chest at the
sight of this desolation. 'My God,' he muttered, 'I'm too late. She's gone -
they've spirited the poor girl away. What shall I do now? What can I do?'
Just then the match began to burn his fingers, so he dropped it and stood
there in the dark.
Making his way outside as fast as his twisted ankle would allow, he
hobbled over to his bicycle, struggled back into the
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saddle and pedalled off again. 'Guido must help,' he kept repeating, '-
he must! Pray heaven I can find him!'
He knew that Guido planned to earn some extra money by spending Sunday
nights in the storeroom of a car breaker's junkyard. Serviceable parts had
been disappearing of late, and it was Guide's job to see that this pilfering
ceased.
When Beppo ran him to ground in a shed beside the junkyard and hammered
on the door with his fist, Guido at first mistook him for a would-be stealer
of spare parts and kept mum. Then, recognizing the old man's voice, he
unlocked the door.
'What's the matter?' he grumbled.
'It's Momo,' Beppo told him breathlessly. She's in danger.'
'What are you talking about?' asked Guido, flopping down on his camp
bed. 'Momo? Why, what's happened to her?'
'I don't know, exactly,' Beppo panted, 'but it doesn't look good.'
And he told Guido all he'd seen, from the trial on the garbage dump, to
the tyre tracks around the amphitheatre, to Memo's ransacked and deserted
room. He took quite a while to get it all out, of course, because not even
the concern and anxiety he felt for Momo could make him speak any faster
than he usually did.
'I knew it all along,' he concluded. 'I knew it would end in disaster.
Well, now they've taken their revenge - they've kidnapped her. We've got to
help her, Guido, but how. How?'
The blood had slowly drained from Guide's cheeks while Beppo was
speaking. He felt as if the ground had given way beneath him. Till now, he'd
regarded the whole affair as a splendid game and taken it neither more or
less seriously than he took any game or story. Now, for the first time ever,
a story had escaped his control. It had taken on a life of its own, and all
the imagination in the world would be insufficient to halt it. He felt numb.
'You know, Beppo,' he said after a while, 'Momo may
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simply have gone for a walk. She does that occasionally - like the time
she went roaming around the countryside for three whole days and nights. We
may be worrying for no good reason.'
'What about the tyre tracks?' Beppo demanded angrily. 'What about the
state of her room?'
Guido refused to be drawn. 'Suppose they really did come looking for
her,' he said. 'Who's to say they found her? Perhaps she'd gone by the time
they got there. Why else would they have searched the place and turned it
upside down?'
'But what if they did find her?' Beppo shouted. 'What then?' He gripped
his young friend by the lapels and shook him. 'Don't be a fool, Guido. The
men in grey are real, I tell you. We've got to do something, and fast!'
'Steady on,' Guido said soothingly, startled by the old man's
vehemence. 'Of course we'll do something, but not before we've thought it
over carefully. After all, we don't even know where to look for her.'
Beppo released him. 'I'm going to the police,' he announced.
'You can't do that!' Guido protested with a look of horror. 'Have some
sense, Beppo. Suppose they found her. Don't you know what they'd do with her
- don't you know where waifs and strays end up? They'd stick her in a home
with bars over the windows. You wouldn't want that, would you?'
'No,' Beppo muttered helplessly, 'of course not. But what if she's
really in trouble?'
'What if she isn't?' Guido argued. 'What if she's only gone for a bit
of a ramble and you set the police on her? I wouldn't like to be in your
shoes then. She might never want to see you again.'
Beppo subsided on to a chair and buried his face in his hands. 'I just
don't know what to do,' he groaned, 'I just don't know.'
'Well,' said Guido, 'I vote we wait till tomorrow or the day
114
after before we do anything at all. If she still isn't back, okay,
we'll go to the police. My guess is, everything will have sorted itself out
long before then, and the three of us will be laughing at the whole silly
business.'
'You think so?' muttered Beppo, suddenly overcome with fatigue. The
day's excitements had been a bit too much for a man of his age.
'Of course,' Guido assured him. He eased Beppo's boots off and wrapped
his sprained ankle in a damp cloth, then helped him on to the camp bed.
'Don't worry,' he said softly, 'everything's going to be fine.'
But Beppo was already asleep. Sighing, Guido stretched out on the floor
with his jacket under his head in place of a pillow. Sleep eluded him,
though. He couldn't stop thinking about the men in grey, all night long, and
for the first time in his happy-go-lucky life he felt frightened.
The Timesaving Bank had launched a full-scale manhunt. Every agent in
the city was instructed by headquarters to drop everything else and
concentrate on finding the girl known as Momo.
Every street teemed with grey figures. They lay in wait on rooftops and
lurked in sewers, staked out the airport and railway stations, kept an
unobtrusive watch on buses and trams -- in short, they were everywhere at
once.
But they still didn't find the girl known as Momo.
'I say, Tortoise,' said Momo, as the pair of them made their way across
a darkened courtyard. 'Aren't you going to tell me where you're taking me?'
Some letters took shape on the tortoise's shell. 'DON'T Â ESCAPED,'
they read.
'I'm not,' said Momo, when she'd deciphered them, though she said it
more to boost her courage than anything else. Truth to tell, she did feel
rather apprehensive. The tortoise's
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route was becoming steadily more tortuous and erratic. It had already
taken them across parks, over bridges and through subways, into buildings
and along corridors - even, once or twice, through cellars.
Had Momo known that she was being hunted by a whole army of men in
grey, she would probably have felt uneasier still, but she didn't, so she
followed the tortoise patiently, step by step, as it continued to meander
along.
It was lucky she did. Just as the creature had previously threaded its
way through traffic, so it now seemed to know exactly where and when their
pursuers would appear. There were times when the men in grey reached a spot
only moments after they themselves had passed it, but hunters and hunted
never actually bumped into each other.
'It's a good thing I've learned to read so well,' Momo remarked
casually, 'isn't it?'
Instantly, the tortoise's shell flashed a warning: 'SSSH!'
Momo couldn't understand the reason for this injunction, but she obeyed
it. Then she saw three dim, grey shapes flit past a few feet away.
They had now reached a part of the city where each building looked
drabber and shabbier than the last. Towering tenements with peeling walls
flanked streets pitted with potholes full of stagnant water. The whole
neighbourhood was dark and deserted.
At long last, word reached the headquarters of the Time-saving Bank
that Momo had been sighted.
'Excellent,' said the duty officer. 'Have you taken her into custody?'
'No, she disappeared before we could nab her - she seemed to vanish
from the face of the earth. We've lost track of her again.'
'How did it happen?'
'If only we knew! There's something fishy going on.'
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'Where was she when you sighted her?'
'That's the odd thing. She was in a part of the city completely unknown
to us.'
'There's no such place,' said the duty officer.
'There must be. It seems to be - how shall I put it? - right on the
very edge of time, and the girl was heading that way.'
'What?' yelped the duty officer. 'After her again! You've got to catch
her before she gets there - at all costs, is that clear?'
'Understood, sir,' came the ashen-voiced answer.
Momo might almost have imagined that day was breaking, except that the
strange glow appeared so suddenly -- just as they turned a corner, to be
exact. It wasn't dark any more, nor was it light, nor did the glow resemble
the half-light of dawn or dusk. It was a radiance that outlined every object
with unnatural crispness and clarity, yet it seemed to come from nowhere -
or rather, from everywhere at once. The long, black shadows cast by
everything, even the tiniest pebble, ran in all directions as if the tree
over there were lit from the left, the building over there from the right,
the monument over there from dead ahead.
The monument, if that was what it was, looked weird enough in itself.
It consisted of a big square block of black stone surmounted by a gigantic
white egg, nothing more.
The houses, too, were unlike any Momo had ever seen, with dazzling
white walls and windows cloaked in shadows so dark and dense that it was
impossible to tell whether anyone lived inside. Somehow, though, Momo sensed
that these houses hadn't been built for people to live in, but for some
mysterious and quite different purpose.
The streets were completely empty, not only of people but of dogs and
cats and birds and cars. Not a movement or breath of wind disturbed the
utter stillness. The whole district might have been encased in glass.
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although the tortoise was plodding along more slowly than ever, Momo
again found herself marvelling at their rate of progress.
Beyond the borders of this strange part of town, where it was still
night-time, three smart grey limousines came racing down the potholed street
with headlights blazing. Each was manned by several agents, and one of them,
who was in the leading car, caught sight of Momo just as she turned into the
street with the white houses and the unearthly glow coming from it.
When they reached the corner, however, something quite incomprehensible
happened: the convoy came to a sudden stop. The drivers stepped on their
accelerators. Engines roared and wheels spun, but the cars themselves
refused to budge. They might have been on a conveyor belt travelling at
exactly the same speed but in the opposite direction, and the more they
accelerated the faster it went. By the time the men in grey grasped the
truth, Momo was almost out of sight. Cursing, they jumped out and tried to
overtake her on foot. They sprinted hard, grimacing with rage and exertion,
but much the same thing happened. When they were finally compelled to give
up, they had covered a mere ten yards. Meanwhile, Momo had disappeared among
the snow-white houses and was nowhere to be seen.
'That's that,' said one of the men in grey. 'It's no use, we'll never
catch her now.'
'Why were we rooted to the spot?' demanded another. 'I just don't
understand it.'
'Neither do I,' said the first. 'The only question is, will they take
that into our favour when we come back empty-handed?'
'You mean they may put us on trial?'
'Well, they certainly won't give us a pat on the back.'
All the agents looked downcast. Perching on the wings and
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bumpers of their grey limousines, they brooded on the price of failure.
There was no point in hurrying, not now.
Far, far away by this time, somewhere in the maze of deserted,
snow-white streets and squares, Momo continued to follow the tortoise.
Despite their leisurely progress, or because of it, the streets and
buildings seemed to flash past in a white blur. The tortoise turned yet
another corner and Momo, following close behind, stopped" short in
amazement. The street ahead of them was unlike all the rest.
It was really more of an alleyway than a street. The close-packed
buildings on either side were a mass of little turrets, gables and
balconies. They resembled dainty glass palaces which, after lying on the sea
bed since time out of mind, had suddenly risen to the surface. Draped in
seaweed and encrusted with barnacles and coral, they shimmered gently with
all the iridescent, rainbow hues of mother-of-pearl.
The narrow street ended in a house detached from all the others and
standing at right angles to them. Its big bronze front door was richly
decorated with ornamental figures.
Momo glanced up at the street sign immediately above her. It was a slab
of white marble and on it, in gold lettering, were the words 'NEVER LANE'.
Although she had taken only a second or two to look at the sign and
read it, the tortoise was already far ahead and had almost reached the house
at the end of the lane.
'Wait for me. Tortoise!' she called, but for some strange reason she
couldn't hear her own voice.
The tortoise seemed to have heard, though, because it paused and looked
around. Momo tried to follow, but no sooner had she set off down Never Lane
than a curious sensation gripped her. She felt as if she were toiling
upstream against a mighty torrent or battling with an inaudible tempest that
threatened to blow her backwards. Bent
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almost double, she braced her body against the mysterious force,
hauling herself along hand over hand or crawling on all fours.
She could just make out the little figure of the tortoise waiting
patiently at the end of the lane. 'I'm getting nowhere!' she called at last.
'Help me, can't you?'
Slowly the tortoise retraced its steps. When it came to a halt in front
of her, its shell bore the following advice:
'WALK BACKWARDS.'
Momo tried it. She turned around and walked backwards, and all at once
she was progressing up the lane with the utmost ease. At the same time,
something most peculiar happened to her. While walking backwards, she was
also thinking, breathing and feeling backwards - living backwards, in fact.
At length she bumped into something solid. Turning, she found she was
standing outside the last house of all, the one that stood at right angles
to the rest. She gave a little start because, seen at this range, the ornate
bronze door looked enormous.
'I wonder if I'll ever get it open,' she thought, but at that moment
the massive door swung open by itself.
She paused again, distracted by the sight of another sign above the
door. This one, which was supported by the figure of a unicorn carved in
ivory, read: 'NOWHERE HOUSE'.
Because she was still rather slow at reading, the door had begun to
close again by the time she'd finished. She slipped hurriedly inside, and it
shut behind her with a sound like muffled thunder.
Momo found herself in a long, lofty passage flanked at regular
intervals by marble statues whose apparent function was to support the
ceiling. There was no sign here of the mysterious current that prevailed
outside in the lane. Momo followed the tortoise as it waddled ahead of her
down the
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long corridor. At the far end it stopped outside a little door
just big enough for Momo to duck through.
•WE'RE THERE,' the tortoise's shell announced. There was a little sign
on the door. Kneeling down so that
it was on a level with her nose, Momo read the inscription.
'PROFESSOR SECUNDUS MINUTUS HORA', it
said.
She drew a deep breath and boldly lifted the latch. As soon as the
little door opened, her ears were assailed by a melodious chorus of tinkling
and chiming and ticking and humming and whirring. She followed the tortoise
inside, and the larch clicked into place behind them.
ELEVEN
The Conference
Innumerable figures were scurrying around the headquarters of the
Timesaving Bank, a grey-lit labyrinth of passages and corridors, passing on
the latest news in agitated whispers:
every member of the directional board had been summoned to attend an
extraordinary general meeting.
Some surmised that this portended a dire emergency, others that new and
untapped sources of time had been discovered.
The directors were already closeted in the boardroom. They sat side by
side at a conference table so long that it seemed to go on for ever, each
with his steel-grey briefcase and small grey cigar. They had removed their
bowler hats for the occasion, and every last one of them had a bald head as
grey as the rest of him. Their mood, if such bloodless creatures could be
said to have feelings at all, was universally dejected.
The chairman rose from his place at the head of the long table. The hum
of conversation died away, and two interminable rows of grey faces turned
towards him.
'Gentlemen,' he began, 'the situation is grave. I feel bound to
acquaint you at once with the unpalatable but inescapable facts of the
matter.
'Every available agent was assigned to hunt down the girl named Momo.
This operation lasted a total of six hours, thirteen minutes and eight
seconds. While engaged on it, all the said agents were inevitably compelled
to neglect the true purpose of their existence, namely, time-gathering. To
this loss of revenue must be added the time expended during the
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manhunt by our agents themselves. Accurate computations disclose that
the sum of these two debit entries amounts to three billion, seven hundred
and thirty-eight million, two hundred and fifty-nine thousand, one hundred
and fourteen seconds.
'That, gentlemen, is more than a whole human lifetime. I need hardly
tell you what such a deficit means to us.'
Here he pointed dramatically to a huge steel door, bristling with
combination locks and safety devices, set in the wall at the far end of the
boardroom.
'Our reserves of time are not inexhaustible, gentlemen,' he pursued in
a louder voice. 'If the manhunt had paid off, well and good. As it is, we
wasted time to no purpose. The girl eluded us.
'There must be no repetition of this disastrous affair. I shall
strongly oppose any more such time-consuming operations from now on. Time
must be saved, not squandered. I would therefore urge you to frame your
future plans accordingly. That is all I have to say, gentlemen. Thank you
for your attention.'
He sat down, blowing out a dense cloud of smoke. Agitated whispers ran
the length of the boardroom.
Then, at the other end of the table, a second speaker rose to his feet.
Every head turned in his direction.
'Gentlemen,' he said, 'we all have the interests of the Timesaving Bank
at heart. However, I find it quite unnecessary for us to view this affair
with alarm, still less to regard it as a catastrophe. Nothing could be
further from the truth. We all know that our reserves of time are so immense
that our position would not be endangered, even by a loss many times greater
than the one we have just sustained. What is a human lifetime, after all? By
our standards, a mere pinprick.
'I fully agree with our chairman that there must be no repetition of
this incident. On the other hand, nothing like it
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has ever happened betore, and the chances of its happening again are
very remote.
'The chairman was right to reproach us for allowing the girl to escape.
On the other hand, our sole purpose was to render her harmless, and that we
have successfully done. The creature has disappeared - she has fled beyond
the borders of time. We are rid of her, in other words. Personally, I feel
we have every reason to congratulate ourselves.'
The second speaker sat down with a complacent smile. The smattering of
applause that greeted his remarks was cut short when a third speaker rose,
this time from a seat halfway along the great table.
'I shall be brief,' he said sourly. 'In my opinion, the last speaker's
soothing words were thoroughly irresponsible. This Ìîãëî is no ordinary
child. We all know she possesses powers capable of presenting a serious
threat to us and our activities. The fact that no such incident has ever
occurred before is no guarantee that it won't occur again. We must remain on
our guard. We must not rest content until the child is in our power, because
only then can we be sure she will never harm us again. Having managed to
leave the realm of time, she may re-enter it at any moment -- and she will,
you mark my words!'
He sat down. The other directors winced and bowed their heads in
silence.
'Gentlemen,' said a fourth speaker, who was sitting across the table
from the third, 'pardon me for being blunt, but we're dodging the issue. We
must face the fact that an alien power has been meddling in our business.
After carefully examining every aspect of the situation, I find that the
odds against any creature crossing the borders of time, alive and unaided,
are precisely forty-two million to one In other words, it's a near
impossibility.'
Another buzz of agitation ran around the boardroom. 'Everything
suggests,' the fourth speaker continued, when
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the murmurs had subsided, 'that someone helped the girl to elude us.
You all know who I mean. The person in question titles himself Professor
Íîãà.'
At the sound of this name, most of the men in grey flinched as if they
had been struck. Others jumped to their feet, shouting and gesticulating.
The fourth speaker raised his arms for silence. 'Gentlemen, gentlemen,'
he cried, 'a little self-control, if you please! I'm well aware that any
mention of that name is - well, not quite proper. I utter it with extreme
reluctance, I assure you, but we mustn't blind ourselves to the facts. If
the girl received assistance from - from the Aforesaid, he must have had his
reasons, and those reasons cannot be other than detrimental to us. In short,
gentlemen, we must allow for the possibility that the Aforesaid may not only
send the girl back but arm her against us in some way. She will then be a
mortal danger to us. We must therefore be prepared not merely to sacrifice
another human lifetime or lifetimes. No, gentlemen, in the last resort we
must stake everything we possess - I repeat, everything! - because, if the
worst happens, thrift could spell our destruction. I think you know what I'm
getting at.'
The directors' agitation mounted, and they all started talking at once.
A fifth speaker jumped on to his chair and waved his arms wildly.
'Quiet!' he bellowed. 'It's all very well for the last speaker to hint
at a host of dire possibilities, but he obviously doesn't know how to deal
with them himself. He says we must be prepared for any sacrifice: well and
good. We must stop at nothing: well and good. We mustn't stint our
resources: well and good. But these are just empty words. Let him tell us
what practical steps to take. None of us knows how the Aforesaid will arm
the girl against us. We shall be confronted by a wholly unknown danger:
that's the problem we have to solve!' The boardroom was in uproar now. Some
of the directors.
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shouted incoherently, others drummed on the table with their fists,
others buried their heads in their hands. All were overcome with panic. A
sixth speaker strove hard to make himself heard above the din.
'Gentlemen, please!' he kept repeating in a soothing voice until peace
was finally restored. 'I implore you to take a calm and commonsense view of
this matter. Even assuming that the girl comes back from the Aforesaid, and
even assuming that he arms her against us in some way, there will be
absolutely no need for us to do battle with her ourselves. We aren't
particularly well equipped for such a confrontation, as the lamentable fate
of our late employee. Agent No. BLW/553/c, has so amply demonstrated. But
that won't be necessary. We have human accomplices in plenty, gentlemen.
Provided we make discreet and skilful use of them, we shall be able to
dispose of the girl Momo and the threat she represents without ever having
to intervene in person. Such a method of procedure would, I feel sure, be
not only economical but safe and highly effective.'
A sigh of relief went up from the assembled throng. The directors found
this a sensible suggestion and would probably have adopted it on the spot
had not the floor been claimed by someone seated near the head of the table.
'Gentlemen,' he began, 'we keep debating how best to get rid of the
girl Momo. Our motive -- let's be honest -- is fear, but fear is a bad
counsellor. I feel we're missing a golden opportunity - a unique
opportunity. There's a saying: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Well, why
shouldn't we persuade the girl to join MS? Why not get her on our side?'
'Hear, hear!' cried a number of voices. 'Go on!'
'It seems clear,' the seventh speaker continued, 'that this child has
found her way to the Aforesaid. In other words, she got there via the route
that has eluded us for so long. If she can find it again, as she probably
can, with ease, she can lead
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us there. We shall then be able to deal with the Aforesaid in our own
way - very speedily, too, I feel sure.
'Once that is done, we need no longer toil at gathering time by the
hour, minute and second - no, gentlemen, because we shall have captured
mankind's whole store of time at a stroke, and possessing the whole of time
means wielding absolute power. Just think, gentlemen: we shall have attained
our