And now he was following the man along passages where even a monk was not allowed to go, on pain of death. Sooner or later, there was surely going to be trouble.

  “Sweeper, I really ought to be back at my duties in the kitchens—” he began.

  “Oh, yes. Kitchen duties,” said Lu-Tze. “To teach you the virtues of obedience and hard work, right?”

  “Yes, Sweeper.”

  “Are they working?”

  “Oh . . .yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Well . . .no.”

  “They’re not all they’re cracked up to be, I have to tell you,” said Lu-Tze. “Whereas, my lad, what we have here,” he stepped through an archway, “is an education!”

  It was the biggest room Lobsang had ever seen. Shafts of light speared down from glazed holes in the roof. And below, more than a hundred yards across and tended by senior monks who walked above it on delicate wire walkways . . .

  Lobsang had heard about the Mandala.

  It was as if someone had taken tons of colored sands and thrown them across the floor in a great swirl of colored chaos. But there was order fighting for survival in the chaos, rising and falling and spreading. Millions of randomly tumbling sand grains would nevertheless make a piece of pattern, which would replicate and spread across the circle, rebounding or merging with other patterns and eventually dissolving into the general disorder. It happened again and again, turning the mandala into a silent raging war of color.

  Lu-Tze stepped out onto a frail-looking wood-and-rope bridge.

  “Well?” he said. “What d’you think?”

  Lobsang took a deep breath. He felt that if he fell off the bridge he’d drop into the surging colors and never, ever hit the floor. He blinked and rubbed his forehead.

  “It’s . . .evil,” he said.

  “Really?” said Lu-Tze. “Not many people say that the first time. They use words like ‘wonderful.’”

  “It’s going wrong!”

  “What?”

  Lobsang clutched the rope railing.

  “The patterns—” he began.

  “History repeating,” said Lu-Tze. “They’re always there.”

  “No, they’re—” Lobsang tried to take it all in. There were patterns under the pattern, disguised as part of the chaos. “I mean . . .the other patterns . . .”

  He slumped forward.

  The air was cold, the world was spinning, and the ground rushed up to enfold him.

  And stopped a few inches away.

  The air around him sizzled, as though it was being gently fried.

  “Newgate Ludd?”

  “Lu-Tze?” he said. “The Mandala is . . .”

  But where were the colors, why was the air wet and smelling of the city? . . .and then the ghost memories faded away. As they disappeared, they said: how can we be memories, when we have yet to happen? Surely what you remember is climbing all the way up onto the roof of the Bakers’ Guild and finding that someone had loosened all the capping stones, because that just happened?

  And a last dying memory said, hey, that happened months ago . . .

  “No, we’re not Lu-Tze, mysterious falling kid,” said the voice that had addressed him. “Can you turn around?”

  Newgate managed, with great difficulty, to move his head. It felt as though he was stuck in tar.

  A heavy young man in a grubby yellow robe was sitting on an upturned box a few feet away. He looked a bit like a monk, except for his hair, because his hair looked a bit like an entirely separate organism. To say that it was black and bound up in a ponytail is to miss the opportunity of using the term “elephantine.” It was hair with personality.

  “Mostly my name’s Soto” said the man underneath. “Marco Soto. I won’t bother memorizing yours until we know if you’re going to live or not, eh? So tell me . . .have you ever considered the rewards of the spiritual life?”

  “Right now? Certainly!” said . . .yes, Newgate, he thought, that’s my name, yes? So why do I remember Lobsang? “Er . . .I was thinking about the possibility of taking up a new line of work!”

  “Good career move,” said Soto.

  “Is this some kind of magic?” Newgate tried to move but hung, turning gently, in the air just above the waiting ground.

  “Not exactly. You seem to have shaped time.”

  “Me? How did I do that?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No!”

  “Hah, will you listen to him?” said Soto, as if talking to a genial companion. “There’s probably the spin time of a whole Procrastinator being used up to prevent your little trick causing untold harm to the entire world, and you don’t know how you did it?”

  “No!”

  “Then we will train you. It is a good life, and offers excellent prospects. At least,” Soto added, sniffing, “better than those that confront you now.”

  Newgate strained to turn his head further.

  “Train me in what, exactly?”

  The man sighed. “Still asking questions, kid? Are you coming or not?”

  “How—”

  “Look, I’m offering you the opportunity of a lifetime, do you understand?”

  “Why is it the opportunity of a lifetime, Mr. Soto?”

  “No, you misunderstand me. You, that is Newgate Ludd, are being offered, that is by me, the opportunity of having a lifetime. Which is more than you will have shortly.”

  Newgate hesitated. He was aware of a tingling in his body. In a sense, it was still falling. He didn’t know how he knew this, but the knowledge was as real as the cobbles just below him. If he made the wrong choice, the fall would simply continue. It had been easy so far. The last few inches would be terminally hard.

  “I must admit, I don’t like the way my life is going at the moment,” he said. “It may be advantageous to find a new direction.”

  “Good.” The behaired man pulled something out of his robe. It looked like a folded abacus, but when he opened it up, parts of it vanished with little flashes of light, as if they’d moved somewhere where they could not be seen.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Do you know what kinetic energy is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s what you have far too much of.” Soto’s fingers danced on the beads, sometimes disappearing and reappearing. “I imagine you weigh about a hundred and ten pounds . . .yes?”

  He pocketed the little device and strolled off to a nearby cart. He did something that Newgate couldn’t see, and came back.

  “In a few seconds you will complete your fall,” he said, reaching under him to place something on the ground. “Try to think of it as a new start in life.”

  Newgate fell. He hit the ground. The air flashed purple, and the laden cart across the street jerked a foot into the air and collapsed heavily. One wheel bounced away.

  Soto leaned down and shook Newgate’s unresisting hand.

  “How do you do,” he said. “Any bruises?”

  “It does hurt a bit—” said the shaken Newgate.

  “Maybe you’re a bit heavier than you look. Allow me . . .”

  Soto grabbed Newgate under the shoulders and began to tug him off into the mists.

  “Can I go and—”

  “No.”

  “But the guild—”

  “You don’t exist at the guild.”

  “That’s stupid, I’m in the guild records—”

  “No, you’re not. We’ll see to that.”

  “How? You can’t rewrite history!”

  “Bet you a dollar?”

  “What have I joined?”

  “We’re the most secret society that you can imagine.”

  “Really? Who are you, then?”

  “The Monks of History.”

  “Huh? I’ve never heard of you!”

  “See? That’s how good we are.”

  And that was how good they were.

  And then the time has just flown past.

  And now the present came back.

  * * *

  “Are you all right, lad?”

  Lobsang opened his eyes. His arm felt as though it was being wrenched out of his body.

  He looked up along the length of the arm of Lu-Tze, who was lying flat on the swaying bridge, holding him.

  “What happened?”

  “I think maybe you were overcome with the excitement, lad. Or vertigo, maybe. Just don’t look down.”

  There was a roaring below Lobsang, like a swarm of very angry bees. Automatically, he began to turn his head.

  “I said, don’t look down! Just relax.”

  Lu-Tze got to his feet. He raised Lobsang at arm’s length, as though he was a feather, until the boy’s sandals were over the wood of the bridge. Below, monks were running along the walkways and shouting.

  “Now, keep your eyes shut . . .don’t look down! . . .and I’ll just walk us both to the far side, all right?”

  “I . . .er . . .I remembered . . .back in the city, when Soto found me . . .I remembered . . .” said Lobsang weakly, tottering along behind the monk.

  “Only to be expected,” said Lu-Tze, “in the circumstances.”

  “But . . .but I remember that back then I remembered about being here. You and the Mandala!”

  “Is it not written in the sacred text, ‘There’s a lot goes on we don’t know about, in my opinion’?” said Lu-Tze.

  “I . . .have not yet come across that one, either, Sweeper,” said Lobsang. He felt cooler air around him, which suggested they had reached the rock tunnel on the far side of the room.

  “Sadly, in the writings they have here you probably won’t,” said Lu-Tze. “Ah . . .you can open your eyes now.”

  They walked on, with Lobsang rubbing his head to take away the strangeness of his thoughts.

  Behind them, the livid swirls in the wheel of color, that had centered on the spot where Lobsang would have fallen, gradually faded and healed.

  * * *

  According to the First Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen and Clodpool reached the green valley between the towering mountains and Wen said: “This is the place. Here there will be a temple dedicated to the folding and unfolding of time. I can see it.”

  “I can’t, master,” said Clodpool.

  Wen said, “It’s over there.” He pointed, and his arm vanished.

  “Ah,” said Clodpool. “Over there.”

  A few cherry blossom petals drifted down onto Wen’s head from one of the trees that grew wild along the streamlets.

  “And this perfect day will last forever,” he said. “The air is crisp, the sun is bright, there is ice in the streams . . .every day in this valley will be this perfect day.”

  “Could get a bit repetitive, master,” said Clodpool.

  “That is because you don’t yet know how to deal with time,” said Wen. “But I will teach you to deal with time as you would deal with a coat, to be worn when necessary and discarded when not.”

  “Will I have to wash it?” said Clodpool.

  Wen gave him a long, slow look.

  “That was either a very complex piece of thinking on your part, Clodpool, or you were just trying to overextend a metaphor in a rather stupid way. Which, do you think, it was?”

  Clodpool looked at his feet. Then he looked at the sky. Then he looked at Wen.

  “I think I am stupid, master.”

  “Good,” said Wen. “It is fortuitous that you are my apprentice at this time, because if I can teach you, Clodpool, I can teach anyone.”

  Clodpool looked relieved, and bowed. “You do me too much honor, master.”

  “And there is a second part to my plan,” said Wen.

  “Ah,” said Clodpool, with an expression that he thought made him look wise, although in reality it made him look like someone remembering a painful bowel movement. “A plan with a second part is always a good plan, master.”

  “Find me sands of all colors and a flat rock. I will show you a way to make the currents of time visible.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “And there is a third part to my plan.”

  “A third part, eh?”

  “I can teach a gifted few to control their time, to slow it and speed it up, and store it and direct it like the water in these streams. But most people will not, I fear, let themselves become able to do this. We have to help them. We will have to build . . .devices that will store and release time to where it is needed, because men cannot progress if they are carried like leaves on a stream. People need to be able to waste time, make time, lose time, and buy time. This will be our major task.”

  Clodpool’s face twisted with the effort of understanding. Then he slowly raised a hand.

  Wen sighed.

  “You’re going to ask what happened to the coat, aren’t you,” he said.

  Clodpool nodded.

  “Forget about the coat, Clodpool. The coat is not important. Just remember that you are the blank paper on which I will write—” Wen held up a hand as Clodpool opened his mouth. “Just another metaphor, just another metaphor. And now, please make some lunch.”

  “Metaphorically or really, master?”

  “Both.”

  A flight of white birds burst out of the trees and wheeled overhead before swooping off across the valley.

  “There will be doves,” said Wen, as Clodpool hurried off to light a fire. “Every day, there will be doves.”

  * * *

  Lu-Tze left the novice in the anteroom. It may have surprised those who disliked him that he took a moment to straighten his robe before he entered the presence of the abbot, but Lu-Tze at least cared for people even if he did not care for rules. He pinched out his cigarette and stuck it behind his ear, too. He had known the abbot for almost six hundred years, and respected him. There weren’t many people Lu-Tze respected. Mostly, they just got tolerated.

  Usually, the sweeper got on with people in inverse proportion to their local importance, and the reverse was true. The senior monks . . .well, there could be no such thing as bad thoughts among people so enlightened, but it is true that the sight of Lu-Tze ambling insolently through the temple did tarnish a few karmas. To a certain type of thinker the sweeper was a personal insult, with his lack of any formal education or official status, and his silly little Way, and his incredible successes. So it was surprising that the abbot liked him, because never had there been an inhabitant of the valley so unlike the sweeper, so learned, so impractical, and so frail. But then, surprise is the nature of the universe.

  Lu-Tze nodded to the minor acolytes who opened the big varnished doors.

  “How is His Reverence today?” he said.

  “The teeth are still giving him trouble, Lu-Tze, but he is maintaining continuity and has just taken his first steps in a very satisfactory manner.”

  “Yes, I thought I heard the gongs.”

  The group of monks clustered in the center of the room stepped aside as Lu-Tze approached the playpen. It was, unfortunately, necessary. The abbot had never mastered the arts of circular aging. He had, therefore, been forced to achieve longevity in a more traditional way, via serial reincarnation.

  “Ah, Sweeper,” he burbled, awkwardly tossing aside a yellow ball and brightening up. “And how are the mountains? Wanna bikkit wanna bikkit!”

  “I’m definitely getting vulcanism, Reverend One. It’s very encouraging.”

  “And you are in persistent good health?” said the abbot, while his pudgy little hand banged a wooden giraffe against the bars.

  “Yes, Your Reverence. It’s good to see you up and about again.”

  “Only for a few steps so far, alas bikkit bikkit wanna bikkit. Unfortunately, young bodies have a mind of their own BIKKIT!”

  “You sent me a message, Your Reverence? It said ‘Put this one to the test.’”

  “And what did you think of our want bikkit want bikkit want bikkit NOW young Lobsang Ludd?” An acolyte hurried forward with a plate of rusks. “Would you care for a rusk, by the way?” the abbot added. “Mmmn nicey bikkit!”

  “No, Reverend One, I have already eaten,” said the sweeper.

  “Ludd is a puzzle, is he not? His tutors have nicey bikkit mmm mmm bikkit told me he is very talented but somehow not all there. But you had never met him and don’t know his history and so mmm bikkit I would value your uninfluenced observations mmm BIKKIT.”

  “He is beyond fast,” said Lu-Tze. “I think he may begin to react to things before they happen.”

  “How can anyone tell that? Want teddy want teddy wanna wanna TEDDY!”

  “I put him in front of the Machine of Erratic Balls in the senior dojo and he was moving toward the right hole fractionally before the ball came out.”

  “Some kind of gurgle telepathy, then?”

  “If a simple machine has a mind of its own, I think we’re in really big trouble,” said Lu-Tze. He took a deep breath. “And in the Hall of the Mandala he saw the patterns in the chaos.”

  “You let a neophyte see the Mandala?” said chief acolyte Rinpo, horrified.

  “If you want to see if someone can swim, push him in the river,” said Lu-Tze, shrugging. “What other way is there?”

  “But to look at it without the proper training—”

  “He saw the patterns,” said Lu-Tze. “And reacted to the Mandala.” He did not add: and the Mandala reacted to him. He wanted to think about that. When you look into the abyss, it’s not supposed to wave back.

  “It was teddyteddyteddywahwah strictly forbidden, even so,” said the abbot. Clumsily, he fumbled among the toys on his mat and picked up a large wooden brick with a jolly blue elephant printed on it and hurled it awkwardly at Rinpo. “Sometimes you presume too much, Sweeper lookit ’lefant!”

  There was some applause from the acolytes at the prowess in animal recognition.

  “He saw the patterns. He knows what is happening. He just doesn’t know what he knows,” said Lu-Tze doggedly. “And within a few seconds of meeting me he stole a small object of value, and I’m still wondering how he did it. Can he really be as fast as that without training? Who is this boy?”