There was another door ahead of him. He grabbed the knob and pulled, feeling the terrible resistance of a slab of wood urged to move at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.

It was barely open a few inches when he saw, beyond, the slow ooze of lightning run down the rod and into the heart of the big clock.

The clock struck one.

Time stopped.

Ti—

Mr Soak the dairyman was washing bottles at the sink when the air dimmed and the water solidified.

He stared at it for a moment and then, with the manner of a man trying an experiment, held the bottle over the stone floor and let it go.

It remained hanging in the air.

“Dammit,” he said. “Another idiot with a clock, eh?”

What he did then was not usual dairy practice. He walked into the centre of the room and made a few passes in the air with his hands.

The air brightened. The water splashed. The bottle smashed although, when Ronnie turned round and waved a hand at it, the glass slivers ran together again.

Then Ronnie Soak sighed and went into the cream-settling room. Large wide bowls stretched away into the distance and, if Ronnie had ever allowed another to notice this, the distance contained far more distance than is ever found in a normal building.

“Show me,” he said.

The surface of the nearest bowl of milk became a mirror, and then began to show pictures…

Ronnie went back into the dairy, took his peaked cap off its hook by the door, and crossed the courtyard to the stable. The sky overhead was a sullen, unmoving grey as he emerged, leading his horse. The horse was black, glistening with condition, and there was this about it that was odd: it shone as though it was illuminated by a red light. Redness spangled off its shoulders and flanks, even under the greyness.

And even when it was harnessed to the cart it didn't look like any kind of horse that should be hitched to any kind of wagon, but people never noticed this and, again, Ronnie took care to make sure that they didn't.

The cart gleamed with white paint, picked out here and there with a fresh green.

The wording on the side declared, proudly:

Perhaps it was odd that people never asked, “Established when, exactly?” If they ever had, the answer would have had to be quite complicated.

Ronnie opened the gates to the yard and, milk crates rattling, set out into the timeless moment. It was terrible, he thought, the way things conspired against the small businessman.

Lobsang Ludd awoke to a little clicking, spinning sound.

He was in darkness, but 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 razorblades.

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 travelling 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 towards 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 towards 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 dropped this, and had moved on before it reached the ground.

It was a small glass jar, coloured 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 spinners field claimed it.

Now its true colours 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: RONALD SOAK, HYGIENIC DAIRYMAN. STRAWBERRY YOGHURT “FRESH AS THE MORNING DEW.”

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… all right, just a very good milkman… and if 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 these matters,” said the voice, “is that the person with the killer neckgrip asks the questions.”

“Er, it's a Procrastinator. Er, it stores time. Who—”

“Oh dear, there you go again. What is your name?”

“Lobsang. Lobsang Ludd. Look, could you wind me up, please? It's urgent.”

“Certainly. Lobsang Ludd, you are thoughtless and impulsive and deserve to die a stupid and pointless death.”