Superior Saturday

TWO

LEAF CAME RUNNING back as Arthur ran forward, and the two nearly collided at the door. In recovering, they turned several sleepers around. It took a moment to get them sorted out, with Arthur still trying to hold the phone.

‘What time is it?’ Arthur asked again.

‘Time? I wouldn’t have a clue,’ puffed Leaf. ‘It’s nighttime outside.’

‘Ask Vess, quickly. The army is going to nuke East Area Hospital at 12:01 Saturday morning!’

‘What!?’ shrieked Leaf.

‘I can probably do something,’ said Arthur hastily. ‘I have to check with Doctor Scamandros. Find out how close to East Area we are!’

Leaf turned and ran. Arthur pressed his ear harder against the phone, thinking he heard something. But the only sound was the shuffle of the sleepers as they slowly passed by him. The telephone itself was silent.

‘Come on, come on,’ whispered Arthur anxiously, half into the telephone, half out into the air. He had an idea about something he could do, but he needed to check with Scamandros about exactly how to do it and what could go wrong.

No answer came from the phone, but Leaf came running back.

‘It’s ten minutes to midnight on Friday night!’ she shouted. ‘We’re less than half a mile away from East Area. This even used to be part of the big hospital years ago!’

She skidded to a halt next to Arthur and gulped down several panicked breaths.

‘What are you going to do? We’ve only got ten minutes!’

‘Hello!’ Arthur shouted into the telephone. ‘Hello! I have to speak to Doctor Scamandros now!’

There was no answer. Arthur gripped the phone even tighter, willing it to connect, but that didn’t help.

‘Probably nine minutes, now,’ said Leaf. ‘You’ve got to do something, Arthur!’

Arthur glanced at the crocodile ring very quickly. Leaf saw him look.

‘Maybe Scamandros is wrong about the sorcerous contamination,’ she said. ‘Or the ring doesn’t measure very well.’

‘It’s okay, Leaf,’ said Arthur slowly. ‘I’ve been thinking about all that anyway. You know why the Will chose me to be the Rightful Heir, how it tricked Mister Monday? I was going to die... but getting the First Key saved me-’

‘Sure, I remember,’ said Leaf hastily. ‘Now we’re all going to die unless you do something!’

‘I am going to do something,’ said Arthur. ‘That’s what I’m explaining to you. I’ve worked out that I was going to die anyway, so everything I’ve done – everything I do from now on – is a kind of bonus anyway. Even if I turn into a Denizen, I’ll still be alive and at least I can help other people-’

‘Arthur, I understand!’ Leaf interrupted. ‘Just do something, please! We can talk afterwards!’

‘Okay,’ said Arthur. He dropped the telephone. As it fell, it turned into a shower of tiny motes of light that faded and were gone before they hit the floor.

Arthur took a deep breath, and for a moment marvelled at just how deeply he could breathe now, his asthma gone with his old human self, all earthly frailties being left behind in his transition to a new, immortal form. Then he took the mirror that was the Fifth Key out of his pocket and held it up in front of his face. An intense light shone around it in a fierce corona, but Arthur looked directly at the mirror without difficulty, seeing only the reflection of his own changing face, his more regular nose, his whiter teeth, and his silkier hair.

Leaf shielded her eyes with her arm, and even the sleepwalkers turned their heads away and screwed their eyes shut tighter as they kept shuffling forward.

I really hope this works, thought Arthur. It has to work. Only I wish I could have checked with Dr Scamandros, because I don’t really know what...

Arthur grimaced, banished his fearful inner voice, and focussed on what he wanted the Fifth Key to do. Because it seemed easier and somehow made it sound more like it would happen, he spoke aloud to the Key.

‘Fifth Key of the Architect! I, Arthur Penhaligon, Rightful Heir of the Architect, um... I desire you to shield this city inside a bubble that keeps it separate from Earth, a bubble that will protect the city and keep everyone in it safe from all harm, and... well... that’s it... thanks.’

The mirror flashed and this time Arthur did have to blink. When he opened his eyes, he felt momentarily unsteady on his feet and had to raise his arms like a tightrope-walker to regain his balance. In that instant, he saw that everyone else had stopped moving. Leaf and the line of sleepers were still, as if they had been snap-frozen. Many of the sleepers had one foot slightly off the ground, a position that no one could possibly keep up in normal circumstances.

It was also newly quiet. Arthur couldn’t hear the helicopters or gunfire or any other noise. It was like being in a waxwork museum after closing time, surrounded by posed statues.

Arthur slipped the mirror into his pocket and ran his fingers through his hair – which had grown considerably longer than he cared for, though it somehow stayed out of his face.

‘Leaf?’ he said tentatively, walking over to tap his friend lightly on the shoulder. ‘Leaf? Are you okay?’

Leaf didn’t move. Arthur looked at her face. Her eyes were open but her pupils didn’t move when he waved his finger back and forth. He couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.

Arthur felt a sudden panic rise in him.

I’ve killed them, he thought. I was trying to save them, but I killed them...

He touched Leaf on the shoulder again, and though a faint nimbus of red light sprang up around his fingers, she still didn’t move or react in any way.

Arthur stepped back and looked around. There was a faint red glow around each of the sleepers too, and when he walked over and touched them, this light also grew momentarily brighter. Arthur didn’t know what the glow meant, but he found it slightly comforting, as it suggested some sorcerous effect was active and he hadn’t just killed everyone.

But I don’t even know if I have protected us from the nukes, Arthur thought. What time is it?

He turned and ran down the hall, through the next two wards, and out into the lobby. From there it took him a minute to find the office and a clock. It had stopped at exactly 11:57, the second hand quivering on the twelve. The clock also had a faint red sheen, and there were ghostly scarlet shadows behind the second and hour hands.

Arthur ran outside. The front doors slammed shut behind him with a sound all too like the trump of doom. He slid to a halt just before he fell down the wheelchair ramp, because everywhere he looked was tinted red. It was like looking at the world through red sunglasses on an overcast day, because the night sky had been replaced by a solid red that was buzzing and shifting and hard to look at, like a traffic light viewed far too close.

‘I guess I’ve done something,’ Arthur said to himself. ‘I just don’t know exactly what...’

He walked a little farther, out into the car park. Something caught his eye, up in the sky, a small silhouette. He peered at it for a few seconds before he worked out that it was a helicopter gunship. But it wasn’t moving. It was like a model stuck on a piece of wire in a diorama, just hanging there in the red-washed sky.

Stuck in a moment of time.

That’s why everyone is frozen in place, Arthur thought. I’ve stopped time... that’s how the Key is keeping everyone in the city safe...

If time was only frozen or slowed inside a bubble around the city, it could start again, or be started again by some other power. Which meant that the nuclear strike on East Area Hospital would still happen. He hadn’t saved the city from the attack. He’d just postponed it...

‘If it isn’t one thing, it’s another,’ whispered Arthur. He looked along the empty street, all strange and red-hued, and wondered if he should run over to his home and see if his family was all right. Maybe he could carry them down into the cellar... but if he did that, he might be wasting time better spent learning how to protect everyone else. He couldn’t carry everyone in danger to safety.

He’d gained a breathing space for the city, and he could extend it by going back to the House. If he left now, he should be able to return to almost exactly the same time, even if he spent days or even weeks in the House.

Should is not the same as definitely, thought Arthur grimly. I wish I understood the time relativities better. I wish I knew more about how to use the Keys. I wish I’d never, ever got involved in all –

Arthur stopped himself.

‘If I wasn’t involved, I’d be dead,’ he said aloud. ‘I just have to get on with it.’

Getting on with it, Arthur thought, included facing up to things. He held his hand up close to his face and looked at the crocodile ring. Even in the weird red light, he could see it clearly. The diamond eyes of the crocodile looked baleful, as dark as dried black blood rather than their usual pink. The ten marked sections of its body, each inscribed with a Roman numeral, recorded the degree of sorcerous contamination in his blood and bone. If more than six sections had turned from silver to gold, Arthur would be permanently tainted with sorcery and irretrievably destined to become a Denizen.

Arthur slowly turned the ring around, to see how far the gold transformation had progressed, counting in his head. One, two, three, four, five... he knew it had gone that far already. He turned the ring again, and saw the gold had completely filled the fifth segment, and had flooded over, almost completely across the sixth segment.

I am... I am going to be a Denizen.

Arthur took a deep, shuddering breath and looked again, but there was no change in the ring. It was six parts gold. He was sixty per cent immortal.

‘No turning back now,’ said Arthur to the red world around him. ‘Time to get back to work.’

He looked away from the ring and lowered his hand. Bending his head for a moment, he drew out the Fifth Key from his pocket and raised it high. According to Dame Primus, the mirror of Lady Friday could take him to anywhere he had previously seen within the House, if there was a reflective surface there.

Arthur pictured the throne room in the Lower House, the big audience chamber where he had met with Dame Primus and everyone before he was drafted into the Army of the Architect. It was the place he could most easily visualise in Monday’s Dayroom, because it didn’t have much detail and was so over the top in decoration – including floors of reflective marble.

‘Fifth Key, take me to the throne room in Monday’s Dayroom.’

The Fifth Key shivered in Arthur’s hand and a beam of white light sprang from it, banishing the red. The light formed a perfect, upright rectangle, exactly like a door.

Arthur walked into the rectangle of light and disappeared from his own city, from his Earth, perhaps never to return.