chauffeur stuck his head out of the window. 'What are you looking
for?'
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'Professor Hora's tortoise,' Momo told him. 'Her name is Cassiopeia,
and she always knows what's going to happen half an hour in advance. She can
make words light up on her shell, too - that's how she tells you what the
future holds in store. I've simply got to find her. Would you help me to
look for her, please?'
'I've no time for jokes,' snarled the chauffeur, and drove on. The
remote-controlled gate opened and closed behind him.
Undaunted, Momo continued the search on'her own. She combed the entire
street, but Cassiopeia was nowhere to be seen.
'Perhaps she's on her way back to the amphitheatre,' thought Momo, so
she slowly retraced her steps, calling the tortoise by name all the way. She
peered into every nook and cranny, every ditch and gutter, but in vain.
Although Momo didn't get back to the amphitheatre till late that night,
she searched it as thoroughly as the darkness would allow. She had nursed a
vague hope that Cassiopeia might, by some miraculous means, have reached
home before her, but she knew in her heart of hearts that the tortoise's
slow rate of progress rendered this impossible.
At long last she crept into bed, really alone for the first time ever.
Once she had given Cassiopeia up for lost, Momo decided to concentrate
on trying to find Beppo. She spent the next few weeks roaming aimlessly
through the city in search of him. No one could give her any clue to his
whereabouts, so her one remaining hope was that they might simply bump into
each other. The vastness of the city made this a forlorn hope. They had as
little chance of meeting as a shipwrecked sailor has that his message in a
bottle will be netted by a fishing boat ten thousand miles from the desert
island where he tossed it into the sea.
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For all that, Momo kept telling herself, she and Beppo might be quite
close to each other. Who could tell how often she had passed some spot where
he had been only an hour, a minute, or even a moment or two before?
Conversely, how often had Beppo crossed a square or rounded a street corner
only minutes or moments after her? Encouraged by this thought, Momo often
waited in the same spot for hours. She had to move on sooner or later,
however, so even that was no insurance against their missing each other by a
hair's breadth.
How useful Cassiopeia would have been! The tortoise could have
signalled 'WAIT!' or 'KEEP GOING!' As it was, Momo never knew what to do for
the best. She was afraid of missing Beppo if she waited, and just as afraid
of missing him if she didn't.
She also kept her eyes open for the children who used to come and play
with her in the old days, but she never saw a single one. She never saw any
children at all, though this was hardly surprising in view of Nine's remark
about their being 'taken care of.
Momo herself was never picked up by a policeman or other adult and
taken off to a child depot, for the wry good reason that she was under
constant surveillance by the men in grey. Not that she knew it, confinement
to a child depot wouldn't have suited their plans for her.
Although she ate at Nino's restaurant every day, she never managed to
say any more to him than she had on the first occasion. He was always in
just as much of a rush and never had the time.
Weeks became months, and still Momo pursued her solitary existence. One
evening, while perched on the balustrade of a bridge, she sighted the small,
bent figure of a man on another bridge in the distance, wielding a broom as
if his life depended on it. Momo shouted and waved, thinking it was Beppo,
but the man didn't stop work for an instant. She ran
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as fast as she could, but by the time she reached the other bridge
there was no one in sight.
'I don't suppose it was him,' she told herself consolingly. "No, it
can't have been. I know the way Beppo works.' ' Some days she stayed home at
the amphitheatre on the off-chance that Beppo might look in to see if she
was back. If she was out when he came, he would naturally assume that she
was still away. It tormented her to think that this might .ilready have
happened a week or even a day ago, so she waited - in vain. Eventually she
painted" the words 'I'M BACK' on the wall of her room in big, bold letters,
but hers were the only eyes that ever saw them.
The one thing that never forsook Momo in all this time was her vivid
recollection of Professor Hora, the hour-lilies, and the music. She had only
to shut her eyes and listen to her heart, and she could see the blossoms in
all their radiant splendour and hear the voices singing. And even though the
words and melodies were forever changing, she found she could repeat the
words and sing the melodies as easily as she had on the very first day
Sometimes she spent whole days sitting alone on the steps, talking and
singing to herself with no one there to hear but the trees and the birds and
the time-worn stones.
There are many kinds of solitude, but Momu's was a solitude few people
ever know and even fewer experience with such intensity. She felt as if she
were imprisoned in a vault heaped with priceless treasures - an ever-growing
hoard that threatened to crush the life out of her. There was no way out,
either. The vault was impenetrable and she was far too deeply buried beneath
a mountain of time to attract anyone's attention.
There were even moments when she wished she had never heard the music
or seen the flowers. And yet, had she been offered a choice, nothing in the
world would have induced her to part with her memories of them, not even the
prospect
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of death. Yes, death, for she now discovered that there are treasures
capable of destroying those who have no one to share them with.
Every few days, Momo made the long walk to Guide's house and waited
outside the gate for hours in the hope of seeing him again. By now she was
ready to agree to anything - ready to stay with him and listen to him,
whether or not things became as they once were - but the gate remained
firmly shut.
Only a few months passed in this way, yet Momo had never lived through
such an eternity. No clock or calendar can truly measure time, just as no
words can truly describe the loneliness that afflicted her. Suffice it to
say that if she had succeeded in finding her way back to Professor Нога -and
she tried to again and again - she would have begged him to cut off her
supply of time or let her remain with him at Nowhere House forever more.
But she couldn't find the way without Cassiopeia's help, and
Cassiopeia, whether long since back with Professor Hora or lost and roaming
the big, wide world, had never reappeared.
Instead, something quite different happened.
While wandering through the city one day, Momo ran into Paolo, Franco
and Maria, the girl who always used to carry her little sister Rosa around
with her. All three children had changed so much, she hardly recognized
them. They were dressed in a kind of grey uniform and their faces wore a
strangely stiff and lifeless expression. They barely smiled, even when Momo
hailed them with delight.
'I've been looking for you for so long,' she said breathlessly. 'Will
you come back to the amphitheatre and play with me?'
The three children looked at each other, then shook their heads.
'But you'll come tomorrow, won't you, or the next day?'
Again the trio shook their heads.
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"Oh, do come!' Momo pleaded. 'You always used to in the old days.'
'In the old days, yes,' said Paolo, 'but everything's different now. We
aren't allowed to fritter our time away."
'We never did,' Momo protested.
'It was nice,' Maria said, 'but that's not the point.'
And the three of them hurried on with Momo trotting beside them.
'Where are you off to?' she asked.
'To our play class,' Franco told her. That's where they teach us how to
play.'
Momo looked puzzled. 'Play what?'
'Today we're playing data retrieval,' Franco explained. 'It's a very
useful game, but you have to concentrate like mad.'
'How does it go?'
'We all pretend to be punch cards, and each card carries various bits
of information about us -- age, height, weight and so on. Not our real age,
height and weight, of course, because that would make it too easy. Sometimes
we're just long strings of letters and numerals, like MUX/763/y. Anyway,
then we're shuffled and fed into a card index, and one of us has to pick out
a particular card. He has to ask questions in such a way that all the other
cards are eliminated and only the right one is left. The winner is the
person who does it quickest.'
'Is it fun?' Momo asked, looking rather doubtful.
'That's not the point,' Maria repeated uneasily. 'Anyway, you shouldn't
talk like that.'
'So what is the point?' Momo insisted.
'The point is,' Paolo told her, 'it's useful for the future.'
By this time they had reached a big, grey building. The sign over the
gate said 'CHILD DEPOT'.
'I had so much to tell you,' Momo said.
'Maybe we'll see each other again sometime,' Maria said sadly.
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As they stood there, more children appeared. They streamed in through
the gateway, all looking just the same as Momo's former playmates.
'It was much nicer playing with you,' Franco said suddenly. 'We used to
enjoy thinking up games for ourselves, but our supervisors say they didn't
teach us anything useful.'
'Couldn't you just run away?' Momo hazarded.
The trio shook their heads and glanced around for fear someone might
have overheard.
'I tried it a couple of times at the beginning,' Franco whispered, 'but
it's hopeless. They always catch you again.'
'You shouldn't talk like that,' said Maria. 'After all, we're taken
care of now.'
They all fell silent and stared gloomily into space. At last Momo
summoned up her courage and said, 'Couldn't you take me in with you? I'm so
lonely these days.'
Just then, something extraordinary happened. Before the children could
reply they were whisked into the courtyard of the building like iron filings
attracted by a giant magnet, and the gates clanged shut behind them.
After a minute, when she had recovered from her shock, Momo cautiously
approached the gates intending to knock or ring and beg to be allowed to
join in, no matter what game the children were playing. She had barely taken
a couple of steps, however, when she stopped dead, rooted to the spot with
terror. A man in grey had suddenly materialized between her and the gates.
'Pointless,' he said with a thin-lipped smile, the inevitable cigar
jutting from the corner of his mouth. 'Don't even try it. Letting you in
would be against our interests.'
'Why?' Momo asked. She felt as if her limbs were slowly filling with
icy water.
'Because we have other plans for you,' said the man in grey, blowing a
smoke ring that coiled itself around her neck and took a long time to
disperse.
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People were passing by, all in too much of a hurry to give them a
second glance. Momo pointed to the man in grey and tried to call for help,
but no sound escaped her lips.
'Save it,' said the man in grey with a bleak, mirthless laugh. 'You
ought to know us better than that -- you know how powerful we are. No one
can help you, now we've got all your friends. You're at our mercy too, but
we've decided to go easy on you.'
'Why?' Momo managed to get out.
'Because we'd like you to do us a little favour. Be sensible, and you
can do yourself and your friends a lot of good. What do you say?'
'All right,' whispered Momo.
The man in grey gave another thin-lipped smile. 'Then we'll meet at
midnight to talk it over.'
She nodded mutely, but the man in grey had already vanished. All that
marked the spot where he had stood was a wisp of cigar smoke.
He hadn't told her where they were to meet.
SEVENTEEN
The Square
Momo was too scared to go back to the amphitheatre. She felt sure the
man in grey would turn up there for their midnight meeting, and the thought
of being all alone with him in the deserted ruins filled her with terror.
No, she never wished to see him again, neither there nor anywhere else.
Whatever his proposition might be, it boded no 'good' for her and her
friends - that was as plain as a pikestaff. But where could she hide from
him?
A crowded place seemed the best bet. Although no one had taken any
notice before, if the man in grey really tried to harm her and she called
for help, people would surely hear and come to her aid. Besides, she told
herself, she'd be hardei to find in a crowd than on her own.
So Momo spent the rest of the afternoon walking the busiest streets and
squares surrounded by jostling pedestrians. All through the evening and well
into the night she continued to trudge in a big circle that brought her back
to her starting point. Around and around she went, swept along by a
fast-flowing tide of humanity, until she had completed no fewer than three
of these circuits.
After keeping this up for so many hours, her weary feet began to ache.
It grew later and later, but still she walked, half asleep, on and on and on
...
'Just a little rest,' she told herself at last, '-just a teeny little
rest, and then I'll be more on my guard ...'
Parked beside the kerb was a little three-wheeled delivery truck laden
with an assortment of sacks and cartons. Momo
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climbed aboard, found herself a nice, soft sack and leaned her back
against it. She drew up her weary feet and tucked them under her skirt. My,
did that feel good! She heaved a sigh of relief, snuggled up against the
sack and was asleep 'before she knew it.
But she was haunted by the weirdest dreams. In one of them she saw old
Beppo, with his broom held crossways like a balancing pole, teetering along
a tightrope suspended above a dark chasm. 'Where's the other end?' she heard
him call, over and over again. 'I can't see the other end!' And the
tightrope did indeed seem infinitely long - so long that it stretched away
into the darkness in both directions. Momo yearned to help the old man, but
she couldn't even attract his attention; he was too high up and too far
away.
Then she saw Guido, pulling a paper streamer out of his mouth. He
pulled and pulled, but the streamer was endless and unbreakable -- in fact
he was already standing on a big mound of paper. It seemed to Momo that he
was gazing at her imploringly, as if he would suffocate unless she came to
his rescue. She tried to run to him, but her feet became entangled in the
coils of paper, and the more she struggled to free herself the more
entangled she became.
And then she saw the children. They were all as flat as playing cards,
and each card had a pattern of little holes punched in it. Every time the
cards were shuffled they had to sort themselves out and be punched with a
new pattern of holes. The card children were crying bitterly, but all Momo
could hear was a sort of clattering sound as they were shuffled yet again
and fluttered down on top of each other. 'Stop!' she shouted, but her feeble
voice was drowned by the clatter, which grew louder and louder until it
finally woke her up.
It was dark, and for a moment she couldn't think where she was. Then
she remembered climbing aboard the delivery truck and realized that it was
on the move. That was what had woken her - the sound of the engine.
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Momo wiped her cheeks, which were still wet with tears, and wondered
where she could be. The truck had evidently been on the move for some time,
because it was in a different part of the city. At this late hour not a soul
could be seen in the streets, not a light showed anywhere in the tall
buildings that flanked them.
The truck was going quite slowly and Momo, without stopping to think,
jumped out. She began walking in the opposite direction, eager to get back
to the crowded streets that seemed to offer protection from the man in grey.
Then, remembering her nightmares, she came to a halt.
The sound of the engine gradually faded until silence enveloped the
darkened street.
She would stop running away, Momo decided. She had done so in the hope
of saving herself. All this time she had been preoccupied with herself, her
own loneliness and fear, when it was really her friends who were in trouble.
If anyone could save them, she could. Remote as the chances of persuading
the men in grey to release them might be, she must at least try.
Once she reached this conclusion, she felt a mysterious change come
over her. Her feelings of fear and helplessness had reached such a pitch
that they were suddenly transformed into their opposites. Having overcome
them, she felt courageous and self-confident enough to tackle any power on
earth; more precisely, she had ceased to worry about herself.
Now she wanted to meet the man in grey - wanted to at all costs.
'I must go to the amphitheatre at once,' she told herself. 'Perhaps it
still isn't too late, perhaps he'll be waiting for me.'
That, however, was easier said than done. She didn't know where she was
and hadn't the least idea which direction to take, but she started walking
anyway.
On and on she walked through the dark, silent streets.
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Being barefoot, she couldn't even hear her own footsteps. Every time
she turned a corner she hoped to see something that would tell her she was
on the right track, some landmark she recognized, but she never did. She
couldn't ask the way, either, because the only living creature she saw was a
grimy, emaciated dog that was foraging for scraps in a rubbish heap and fled
in panic at her approach.
At last she came to a huge, deserted square. It wasn't a handsome
square with trees or a fountain in the middle, but an empty, featureless
expanse fringed with buildings whose dark shapes stood outlined against the
night sky.
Momo set off across the square. When she reached the middle, a clock
began to chime not far away. It chimed a good many times, so perhaps it was
already midnight. If the man in grey was waiting for her at the
amphitheatre, Momo reflected, she had no chance at all of getting there in
time. He would go away without seeing her, and any chance of saving her
friends would be gone, perhaps for ever.
She chewed her knuckles, wondering what to do. She had absolutely no
idea.
'Here I am!' she called into the darkness, as loud as she I'ould. She
had no real hope that the man in grey would hear her, but she was wrong.
Scarcely had the last chime died away when lights appeared in all the
streets that led to the big, empty square, faint at first but steadily
growing brighter -- drawing nearer. And then Momo realized that they were
the headlights of innumerable cars, all converging on the spot where she
stood. Dazzled by the glare no matter which way she turned, she shielded her
eyes with her hand. So they were coming after all!
But Momo hadn't expected them to come in such strength. For a moment,
all her new-found courage deserted her. Hemmed in and unable to escape, she
shrank as far as she could into her baggy old jacket.
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Then, remembering the hour-lilies and the mighty chorus of voices, she
instantly felt comforted. The strength flowed back into her limbs.
Meanwhile, with their engines purring softly, the cars had continued
their slow advance. At last they stopped, bumper to bumper, in a circle
whose central point was Momo herself.
The men in grey got out. Momo couldn't see how many of them there were
because they remained outside the ring of headlights, but she sensed that
many eyes were on her -unfriendly eyes - and a shiver ran down her spine.
No one spoke for a while, neither Momo nor any of the men in grey. Then
a flat, expressionless voice broke the silence.
'I see,' it said. 'So this is Momo, the girl who thought she could defy
us. Just look at her now, the miserable creature!'
These words were followed by a dry, rattling sound that vaguely
resembled a chorus of mocking laughter.
'Careful!' hissed another grey voice. 'You know how dangerous she can
be. It's no use trying to deceive her.'
Momo pricked up her ears at this.
'Very well,' said the first voice from the darkness beyond the
headlights, 'let's try the truth for a change.'
Another long silence fell. Momo sensed that the men in grey were afraid
to tell the truth - so afraid that it imposed a tremendous strain on them.
She heard what sounded like a gasp of exertion from a thousand throats.
At long last, one of the disembodied voices began to speak. It came
from a different direction, but it was just as flat and expressionless as
the others.
'All right, let's be blunt. You're all on your own, little girl. Your
friends are out of reach, so you've no one to share your time with. We
planned it that way. You see how powerful we are. There's no point in trying
to resist us. What do they amount to, all these lonely hours of yours? A
curse and a burden, nothing more. You're completely cut off from the rest of
mankind.'
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Momo listened and said nothing.
'Sooner or later,' the voice droned on, 'you won't be able to endure it
any longer. Tomorrow, next week, next year -it's all the same to us. We
shall simply bide our time because we know that in due course you'll come
crawling to us and say: I'll do anything, anything at all, as long as you
relieve me of my burden. But perhaps you've already reached that stage? You
only have to say.' Momo shook her head.
"So you won't let us help you?' the voice pursued coldly. Momo felt an
icy breeze envelop her from all sides at once, but she gritted her teeth and
shook her head again.
'She knows what time is,' whispered another voice.
'That proves she really was with a Certain Person,' the first voice
replied, also in a whisper. Aloud, it asked, 'Do you know Professor Нога?'
Momo nodded.
'You actually paid him a visit?'
She nodded again.
'So you know about the hour-lilies?'
She nodded a third time. Oh yes, how well she knew!
There was another longish silence. When the voice began to speak again,
it came from another direction.
'You love your friends, don't you?'
Another nod.
'And you'd like to set them free?'
Yet another nod.
'You could, if only you would.'
Momo was shivering with cold in every limb. She drew the jacket more
tightly around her.
'It wouldn't take much to save them. You help us and we'll help you.
That's only fair, isn't it?'
The voice was coming from yet another direction. Momo stared intently
at its source.
'The thing is, we'd like to make Professor Hora's
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acquaintance but we don't Know where he lives. All we want is for you
to show us the way. That's right, Momo, listen carefully, so you know we're
being honest with you and mean what we say. In return, we'll give you back
your friends and let you all lead the carefree, happy-go-lucky life you used
to enjoy so much. If that isn't a worthwhile offer, what is?'
Momo opened her mouth for the first time. It was quite an effort to
speak at all, her lips felt so numb.
'What do you want with Professor Hora?' she asked.
'I told you, we want to make his acquaintance,' the voice said sharply,
and the air grew even colder. 'That's all you need to know.'
Momo said nothing, just waited.
'I don't understand you,' said the voice. 'Think of yourself and your
friends. Why worry about Professor Hora? He's old enough to look after
himself. Besides, if he's sensible and cooperates nicely, we won't harm a
hair of his head. If not, we have ways of making him.'
Momo's lips were blue with cold. 'Making him do what?' she asked.
The voice sounded suddenly shrill and strained. 'We're tired of
collecting people's time by the hour, minute and second. We want all of it
right away, and Hora's got to hand it over!'
Horrified, Momo stared into the darkness beyond the ring of headlights.
'What about the people it belongs to?' she asked. 'What will happen to
them?'
'People?' The voice rose to a scream and broke. 'People have been
obsolete for years. They've made the world a place where there's no room
left for their own kind. We shall rule the world!'
By now the cold was so intense that Momo could barely move her lips,
let alone speak.
'Never fear, though, little Momo,' the voice went on, abruptly becoming
gentle and almost coaxing, 'that naturally won't apply to you and your
friends. You'll be the last and
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only people on earth to play games and tell stories. As long as you
stop meddling in our business, we'll leave you in peace. Is it a deal?'
' The voice fell silent. A moment later, it took up the thread from a
different quarter. 'You know we've told you the truth. We'll keep our
promise, you can rely on that. And now, take us to Professor Hora.'
Momo tried to speak, almost fainting with cold. Finally, after several
attempts, she said, 'Even if I could, I wouldn't.'
'What do you mean, if you could?' the* voice said menac-ingly. 'Of
course you can. You paid him a visit, so you must know the way.'
'I'd never find it again,' Momo whispered. 'I've tried. Only Cassiopeia
knows it.'
'Who's Cassiopeia?'
The professor's tortoise.'
'Where is it now?'
Momo, barely conscious, murmured, "She . . . she came back with me, but
... I lost her.'
As if from a long way off, a chorus of agitated voices came to her
ears.
'Issue a general alert!' she heard. 'We've got to find that tortoise.
Check every tortoise you come across. That animal's got to be found at all
costs!'
The voices died away. Silence fell. Momo slowly regained her senses.
She was standing by herself in the middle of the square. Nothing was
stirring but a chill gust of wind that seemed to issue from some great,
empty void: a wind as grey as ashes.
EIGHTEEN
The Pursuit
Momo didn't know how much time had passed. The church clock chimed
occasionally, but she scarcely heard it. Her frozen limbs took ages to thaw
out. She felt numb and incapable of making decisions.
How could she go home to the amphitheatre and climb into bed, now that
there was no hope left for herself and her friends? How could she, when she
knew that things would never come right again? She was worried about
Cassiopeia, too. What if the men in grey found her? She began to reproach
herself bitterly for having mentioned the tortoise at all, but she'd been
too dazed to think straight.
'Anyway,' she reflected, trying to console herself, 'Cassiopeia may
have found her way back to Professor Нога long ago. Yes, I hope she isn't
still looking for me. It would be better for both of us.'
At that moment something nudged her bare foot. Momo gave a start and
looked down.
There was Cassiopeia, as large as life, and she could dimly see some
words on the animal's shell: 'HERE I AM AGAIN,' they said.
Without a second thought, Momo grabbed the tortoise and stuffed it
under her jacket. Then she straightened up and peered in all directions,
fearful that some men in grey might still be lurking in the shadows, but all
was quiet.
Cassiopeia kicked and struggled fiercely in an effort to escape.
Holding her tight, Momo peeped inside the jacket and whispered, 'Please keep
still!'
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'WHY ALL THE FUSS?' demanded Cassiopeia. 'You mustn't be seen!' Momo
hissed. The next words to appear on the tortoise's shell were, 'AREN'T YOU
GLAD?'
'Of course,' Momo said with a catch in her voice. 'Of course I am.
You've no idea!' And she kissed Cassiopeia on the nose, several times in
quick succession.
Cassiopeia responded with two rather pink words. 'STEADY ON,'they read.
Momo smiled. 'Have you been looking for me all this time?' 'OF COURSE.'
'But how did you happen to find me here and now?' 'I KNEW I WOULD,' was
the laconic reply. Had Cassiopeia spent all those weeks looking for her
although she knew she wouldn't find her? If so, she needn't really have
bothered to look at all. This was yet another of Cassiopeia's little
mysteries. They made Memo's head spin if she thought about them too hard,
and besides, this was scarcely the moment to puzzle over such problems.
Momo gave the tortoise a whispered account of what had happened since
last they met. 'What should we do now?' she concluded.
Cassiopeia had been listening attentively. 'GO TO HORA,' she spelled
out.
'Now?' Momo exclaimed, aghast. 'But they're looking for you everywhere.
This is the only place they don't happen to be. Wouldn't it be wiser to stay
here?'
But all the tortoise's shell said was, 'WE'RE GOING ANYWAY.'
'We'll run right into them,' Momo protested. 'WON'T MEET A SOUL,' was
Cassiopeia's response. If Cassiopeia was sure, that settled it. Momo put her
down. Then, remembering their first long, arduous trek, she suddenly felt
too exhausted to repeat it all over again.
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'You go on alone, Cassiopeia,' she said wearily. 'I'm too tired. Go on
alone, and give the professor my love.'
Cassiopeia's shell lit up again. 'IT'S NOT FAR,' Momo was astonished to
read. It dawned on her, as she looked around, that this shabby and
desolate-looking neighbourhood might be the one that led to the district
with the white houses and the strange shadows. If so, she might after all be
able to make it as far as Never Lane and Nowhere House.
'All right,' she said, 'I'll come too, but wouldn't it be quicker if I
carried you?'
'AFRAID NOT,' Cassiopeia replied.
'Why should you insist on crawling there by yourself?' Momo said, but
all she got was the enigmatic reply: 'THE WAY'S INSIDE ME.'
On that note the tortoise set off with Momo following slowly, step by
step.
They had only just disappeared down a side street when the shadows
around the square came to life and the air was filled with a brittle sound
like the snapping of dry twigs: the men in grey were chuckling triumphantly.
Some of their number, who had stayed behind to keep a surreptitious watch on
Momo, had witnessed her reunion with Cassiopeia. The wait had been a long
one, but not even they had dreamed that it would yield such results.
'There they go!' whispered one grey voice. 'Shall we nab them?'
'Of course not,' hissed another. 'Let them carry on.'
'Why?' demanded the first voice. 'Our orders were to capture the
tortoise at all costs.'
'Yes, but why do we want it?'
'So it can lead us to Нога.'
'Precisely, that's just what it's doing now. We won't even have to use
force. It's showing us the way of its own free will - unintentionally.'
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Another dry chuckle went up from the shadows around the square.
'Pass the word at once. Call off the search and instruct all Agents to
join us here. Tell them to exercise the utmost care, though. None of us must
be seen by our two unsuspecting guides or get in their way. They're to be
given free passage wherever they go. And now, gentlemen, let's follow at our
leisure.'
It was hardly surprising, under these circumstances, that Momo and
Cassiopeia failed to encounter a single one of their pursuers. Whichever way
they went, the men in grey melted away in good time and joined the rear of
the evergrowing procession that was silently, cautiously, following in the
fugitives' wake.
Momo was wearier than she had ever been in her life. There were times
when she thought she would simply sink to the ground and fall asleep at any
moment, but she forced herself to put one foot before the other, and for a
while things went better. If only Cassiopeia wouldn't crawl along at such a
snail's pace, she thought, but it couldn't be helped. She trudged along,
looking neither right nor left, only at her feet and the tortoise.
After an eternity, or so it seemed to Momo, the surface of the street
grew suddenly paler. She wrenched her leaden eyelids open and looked around.
Yes, they had finally reached the district where the light was neither
that of dawn nor dusk, and where all the shadows ran in different
directions. There were the forbidding white houses with the cavernous black
windows, and there was the peculiar, egglike monument on its black stone
plinth.
At the thought that it wouldn't be long before she saw Professor Hora
again. Memo's courage revived. 'Please,' she said to Cassiopeia, 'couldn't
we go a bit faster?'
'MORE HASTE LESS SPEED,' came the reply, and
207
the tortoise crawled on even more slowly than before. Yet Momo noticed,
as she had the first time, that they made better progress that way. It was
as if the street beneath them glided past more quickly the slower they went.
That, of course, was the secret of the district with the snow-white
houses: the slower you went the better progress you made, and the more you
hurried the slower your rate of advance. The men in grey hadn't known that
when they pursued Momo in their cars, which was how she'd escaped them.
But that was the last time. Things were quite different now that they
had no intention of overtaking the girl and the tortoise. Now, because they
were trailing them at exactly the same speed, they had discovered the
secret. Gradually, the streets behind Momo and Cassiopeia became filled with
an army of men in grey. And as the pursuers grew accustomed to the
peculiarities of the district, they went even slower than their quarry, with
the result that they steadily overhauled them. It was like a race in reverse
- a go-slow race.
On and on the strange procession went, further and further into the
dazzling white glow, weaving back and forth through the dream streets until
it came to the corner of Never Lane.
Cassiopeia turned into the lane and crawled towards Nowhere House.
Momo, remembering that she'd failed to make any headway until she turned
around and walked backwards, did the same again.
And that was when her heart stood still.
The time-thieves, like a grey wall on the move, stretched away for as
far as the eye could see, rank upon rank of them filling the entire width of
the street.
Momo cried out in terror, but she couldn't hear her own voice. She
walked backwards down Never Lane, staring wide-eyed at the advancing host of
men in grey.
But then another strange thing happened. As soon as the leaders tried
to enter the lane, they vanished before her very
208
eyes. Their outstretched hands were the first to disappear, then their
legs and bodies, and last of all their faces, which wore a look of surprise
and horror.
But Momo wasn't the only one to have witnessed this phenomenon. It had
also been seen by the men in grey who were following behind. They shrank
back, bracing themselves to resist the pressure of those still advancing in
the rear, and something of a scuffle ensued. Momo saw her pursuers scowl and
shake their fists, but they dared not pursue her any further.
At last she reached Nowhere House. The big bronze door swung open. She
darted inside, raced down the corridor lined with statues, opened the tiny
door at the other end, ducked through it, ran across the great hall to the
little room enclosed by grandfather clocks, threw herself down on the dainty
little sofa, and, not wanting to see or hear anything more, buried her head
under a cushion.
NINETEEN
Under Siege
A genrie voice was speaKing.
Momo emerged by degrees from the depths of a dreamless sleep, feeling
wonderfully rested and refreshed. 'Momo isn't to blame,' she heard the voice
say, 'but you, Cassiopeia - you should have known better.'
Momo opened her eyes. Professor Hora was sitting at the little table in
front of the sofa, looking ruefully down at the tortoise. 'Didn't it occur
to you,' he went on, 'that the men in grey might follow you?'
There wasn't room on Cassiopeia's shell for all she had to say, so she
had to reply in three instalments: 'I CAN ONLY SEE-HALF AN HOUR AHEAD - TOO
LATE BY THEN.'
Professor Hora sighed and shook his head. 'Oh, Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia,
even I find you puzzling sometimes.'
Momo sat up.
'Ah, our guest is awake,' Professor Hora said kindly. 'I hope you're
feeling better?'
'Much better, thank you,' said Momo. 'Please excuse me for falling
asleep on your sofa.'
The professor smiled. 'It's quite all right, you've no need to
apologize. Cassiopeia has already brought me up to date on anything I failed
to see through my omnivision glasses.'
'What are the men in grey doing?' Momo asked anxiously.
Professor Hora produced a big blue handkerchief from his pocket. 'We're
under siege. They have us completely sur-
210
rounded - that's to say, they're as close to Nowhere House as they can
get.'
'But they can't get in, can they?' Momo said. The professor blew his
nose. 'No, they can't. You saw for yourself, they vanish into thin air if
they so much as set foot in Never Lane.'
Momo looked mystified. 'Yes, but I don't know why.' 'It's temporal
suction that does it,' the professor told her. 'Everything has to be done
backwards in Never Lane, as you know, because time runs in reverse around
this house. Normally, time flows into you. The more time you have inside
you, the older you get, but in Never Lane time flows out of you. You grew
younger while you were coming up the lane. Not much younger - only as much
younger as the time you took to get from one end to the other.' 'I didn't
notice anything,' Momo said, still mystified. 'That's because you're a human
being,' the professor said with a smile. 'There's a lot more to human beings
than the rime they carry around inside them, but it's different with the men
in grey. Stolen time is all they consist of, and that disappears in a flash
when they're exposed to temporal suction. It escapes like air from a burst
balloon, the only difference being that a balloon's skin survives. In their
case, there's nothing left at all.'
Momo knit her brow and thought hard. 'Wouldn't it be possible,' she
asked at length, 'to make time run backwards all over the world? Only for a
little while, I mean. It wouldn't matter if people grew a tiny bit younger,
but the time-thieves would be reduced to nothing.'
The professor smiled again. 'A splendid idea, I grant you, but I'm
afraid it wouldn't work. The two currents are in balance, you see. If you
cancelled one, the other would vanish too. Then there'd be no time left . .
.'
He broke off and pushed his omnivision glasses up so that they rested
on his forehead.
211
'On the other hand ...' he murmured. Momo watched him expectantly as he
paced up and down the room a few times, lost in thought, and Cassiopeia
followed him with her wise old eyes. At length he sat down again.
'You've given me an idea,' he said, 'but I couldn't put it into
practice unaided.' He looked down at the tortoise. 'Cassiopeia, my dear, I'd
like your opinion on something. What's the best thing to do when you're
under siege?'
'HAVE BREAKFAST,' came the reply.
'Quite so,' said the professor. 'That's another splendid idea.'
The table was laid in a flash. Whether or not it had been laid all the
time and Momo simply hadn't noticed, everything was in place: the two little
cups, the pot of steaming chocolate, the honey, butter and crusty rolls.
Momo, whose mouth had often watered at the recollection of her first
delicious, golden-hued breakfast at Nowhere House, tucked in at once.
Everything tasted even better than before, if possible, and this time the
professor tucked in heartily too.
'Professor,' Momo said after a while, with her cheeks still bulging,
'they want you to give them all the time that exists. You won't, though,
will you?'
'No, child,' he replied, 'that I'll never do. Time will come to an end
some day, but not until people don't need it any longer. The men in grey
won't get any time from me - not even a split second.'
'But they say they can make you hand it over,' Momo said.
'Before we go into that,' the professor told her, very gravely, 'I'd
like you to look at them for yourself.'
All she saw to begin with was the kaleidoscope of colours and shapes
that had made her so dizzy the first time, but it wasn't long before her
eyes got used to the omnivision lenses. And then the besieging army swam
into focusi
212
The men in grey were drawn up in a long, long line, shoulder to
shoulder, not only across the mouth of Never Lane but all around the
district with the snow-white houses. They formed an unbroken cordon, and the
mid-point of that cordon was Nowhere House.
But then Momo noticed something else - something strange. Her first
thought was that the lenses of the omnivision glasses needed polishing, or
that she hadn't quite grown used to them yet, because the outlkies of the
men in grey looked misty. She soon realized that this blurring had nothing
to do with the lenses or her eyes: the mist was real, and it was rising from
the streets all around, dense and impenetrable in some places, only just
forming in others.
The men in grey were standing absolutely still, all wearing bowlers and
carrying briefcases, and all smoking little grey cigars. But the smoke from
the cigars didn't disperse in the normal way. Here, where the air seemed
made of glass and was never disturbed by a breath of wind, the threads of
smoke clung like cobwebs, creeping along the streets and up the walls of the
snow-white houses, festooning each ledge and cornice and windowsill,
condensing into a noisome, bluish-green fog bank that billowed ever higher
until it encircled Nowhere House like a wall.
Momo took off the glasses and looked at Professor Hora inquiringly.
'Have you seen enough?' he asked. 'Then let me have the glasses back.'
He put them on again. 'You asked if the men in grey could make me do
something against my will,' he went on. 'Well, they can't get at me
personally, as you know, but they could subject the world to an evil far
worse than any they've inflicted on it so far. That's how they hope to force
my hand.'
Momo was appalled. 'What could be worse than stealing people's time?'
she asked. 'I allot people their share of time,' the professor explained.
213
'The men in grey can't stop that. They can't intercept the time I
distribute, but they can poison it.'
'They can poison it?' Могло repeated, more appalled still.
The professor nodded. 'Yes, with the smoke from their cigars. Have you
ever seen one without his little grey cigar? Of course not, because without
it he couldn't exist.'
'What kind of cigars are they?' Momo asked.
'You remember where the hour-lilies were growing?' Professor Hora said.
'I told you then that everyone has a place like that, because everyone has a
heart. If people allow the men in grey to gain a foothold there, more and
more of their hour-lilies get stolen. But hour-lilies plucked from a
person's heart can't die, because they've never really withered. They can't
live, either, because they've been parted from their rightful owner. They
strive with every fibre of their being to return to the person they belong
to.'
Momo was listening with bated breath.
'If you think I know everything, Momo, you're wrong. Some evils are
wrapped in mystery. I've no idea where the men in grey keep their stolen
hour-lilies. I only know that they preserve the blossoms by freezing them
till they're as hard as glass goblets. Somewhere deep underground there must
be a gigantic cold store.'
Memo's cheeks began to burn with indignation.
'And that's where the men in grey draw their supplies from. They pull
off the hour-lilies' petals, let them wither till they're dried up and grey,
and roll their little cigars out of them. The petals still contain remnants
of life, even then, but living time is harmful to the men in grey, so they
light the cigars and smoke them. Only when time has been converted into
smoke is it well and truly dead. That's what keeps the men in grey "alive":
dead human time.'
Momo had risen to her feet. 'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'to think of all those
poor flowers, all that dead time . ..'
'Yes, the wall they're erecting around this house is built of
214
ucad time. There's still enough open sky above for me to send people
their time in good condition, but once that pall of smoke closes over our
heads, every hour I send them will be contaminated with the time-thieves'
poison. When they absorb it, it'll make them ill.'
Momo stared at the professor uncomprehendingly. 'What kind of illness
is it?' she asked in a low voice.
'A fatal illness, though you scarcely notice it at first. One day, you
don't feel like doing anything. -Nothing interests you, everything bores
you. Far from wearing off, your boredom persists and gets worse, day by day
and week by week. You feel more and more bad-tempered, more and more empty
inside, more and more dissatisfied with yourself and the world in general.
Then even that feeling wears off, and you don't feel anything any more. You
become completely indifferent to what goes on around you. Joy and sorrow,
anger and excitement are things of the past. You forget how to laugh and cry
- you're cold inside and incapable of loving anything or anyone. Once you
reach that stage, the disease is incurable. There's no going back. You
bustle around with a blank, grey face, just like the men in grey themselves
-indeed, you've joined their ranks. The disease has a name. It's called
deadly tedium.'
Momo shivered. 'You mean,' she said, 'unless you hand over all the time
there is, they'll turn people into creatures like themselves?'
'Yes,' the professor replied. 'That's how they hope to bully me into
it.' He rose and turned away. 'I've waited till now for people to get rid of
those pests. They could have done so -after all, it was they who brought
them into existence in the lirst place - but I can't wait any longer. I must
do something, ind I can't do it on my own.' He looked Momo in the eye.
'Will you help me?' 'Yes,' she whispered. 'If you do, you'll be running an
incalculable risk. It will be
215
up to you wnerncr me wona oegins to live again or stands stili for ever
and a day. Are you really prepared to take that risk?'
'Yes', Momo repeated, and this time her voice was firm.
'In that case,' said the professor, 'listen carefully to what I'm going
to tell you, because you'll be all on your own. I won't be able to help you,
nor will anyone else.'
Momo nodded, gazing at him intently.
'I must begin by telling you that I never sleep,' he said. 'If I dozed
off, time would stand still and the world would come to a stop. If there
were no more time, the men in grey would have none left to steal. They could
continue to exist for a while by using up their vast reserves, but once
those had gone they would dissolve into thin air.'
'Then the answer's simple, surely?' said Momo.
'Not as simple as it sounds, I'm afraid, or I wouldn't need your help.
The trouble is, if there were no more time I couldn't wake up again, and the
world would continue to stand still for all eternity. It does, however, lie
within my power to give you - and you alone - an hour-lily. Only one, of
course, because only one ever blooms at a time. So, if time stopped all over
the world, you would still have one hour's grace.'
'Then I could wake you,' said Momo.
The professor shook his head. 'That would achieve nothing, because the
men in grey have far too much time in reserve. They would consume very
little of it in an hour, so they'd still be there when the hour was up. No,
Momo, the problem is a great deal harder than that. As soon as the men in
grey notice that time has stopped - and it won't take them long, because
their supply of cigars will be interrupted -they'll lift the siege and head
for their secret store. You must follow them and prevent them from reaching
it. When their cigars are finished, they'll be finished too. But then comes
what may well turn out to be the hardest part of all. Once the last of the
time-thieves has vanished, you must release every stolen minute, because
only when people get their time back
216
win i wane up and the world come to life again. And all this you'll
have to do within the space of a single hour.'
Momo hadn't reckoned with such a host of difficulties and dangers. She
stared at him helplessly.
'Will you try all the same?' the professor asked. 'It's our only
chance.'
Momo couldn't bring herself to speak, she found the prospect so
daunting. At that moment, Cassiopeia's shell lit up. 'I'LL COME TOO,' it
signalled.
Unlikely as it seemed that the tortoise could be of help, the words
conjured up a tiny ray of hope. Momo felt heartened at the thought of not
being entirely alone. Although there were no rational grounds for such a
feeling, it did at least enable her to make up her mind. 'I'll try,' she
said resolutely.
Professor Нога gave her a long look and started to smile. 'Many things
will prove easier than you think. You've heard the music of the stars. You
mustn't feel frightened.' He turned to the tortoise. 'So you want to go too,
do you?'
'OF COURSE,' Cassiopeia spelled out. Then, 'SOMEONE HAS TO LOOK AFTER
HER.' The professor and Momo smiled at each other. 'Will she get an
hour-lily too?' Momo asked. 'She doesn't need one,' the professor replied,
gently tickling the tortoise's neck. 'Cassiopeia is a creature from beyond
the frontiers of time. She carries her own little supply of time inside her.
She could go on crawling across the face of the earth even if everything
else stood still for ever.'
'Good,' said Momo, suddenly eager to get on with the job. 'What happens
next?'
'Now,' said the professor, 'we say goodbye.' Momo felt a lump in her
throat. 'Won't we ever see each other again?' she asked softly. 'Of course
we will,' he told her, 'and until that day comes,
217
every hour of your life will bring you my love. We'll always be
friends, won't we?'
Momo nodded.
'I'm going now,' the professor went on, 'but you mustn't follow me or
ask where I'm going. My sleep is no ordinary sleep, and I'd sooner you
weren't there. One last thing: as soon as I'm gone, you must open both
doors, the little one with my name on it and the big bronze one that leads
into Never Lane. Once time has stopped, everything will stand still and no
power on earth will be able to budge those doors. Have you understood and
memorized all I've told you?'
'Yes,' said Momo, 'but how shall I know when time has stopped?'
'You'll know, never fear.'
They both stood up. Professor Hora gently stroked Momo's tousled mop of
hair. 'Goodbye, Momo,' he said, 'and thank you for listening so carefully.'
'I'm going to tell everyone about you,' she replied, 'when it's all
over.'
From one moment to the next. Professor Hora looked as old as he had
when he carried her into the golden dome - as old as an ancient tree or
primeval crag.
Turning away, he walked swiftly out of the little room whose walls
consisted of grandfather clocks. Momo heard his footsteps fade until they
were indistinguishable from the ticking of the countless clocks around her.
Their incessant whirring and ticking and chiming seemed to have swallowed
him up.
Momo took Cassiopeia in her arms and held her tight. Her great
adventure had begun. There could be no turning back.
TWENTY
Pursuing the Pursuers
Momo's first step was to open the little door with Professor Hora's
name on it. Then she sped along the corridor lined with statues and opened
the big bronze front door. She had to exert all her strength because it was
so heavy.
That done, she ran back to the great hall and waited, with Cassiopeia
in her arms, to see what would happen.
She didn't have to wait long. There was a sudden jolt, but it didn't
actually shake the ground. It was a timequake, so to speak, not an
earthquake. No words could describe the sensation, which was accompanied by
a sound such as no human ear had ever heard before: a sigh that seemed to
issue from the depths of the ages. And then it was over.
Simultaneously, the innumerable clocks stopped ticking, whirring and
chiming. Pendulums came to a sudden halt and stayed put at odd angles. The
silence that fell was more profound than any that had ever reigned before.
Time itself was standing still.
As for Momo, she became aware that she was clasping the stem of an
hour-lily of exceptional size and beauty. She hadn't felt anyone put it into
her hand. It simply appeared, as if it had always been there.
Gingerly, Momo took a step. Sure enough, she could move as easily as
ever. The remains of breakfast were still on the table. She sat down on one
of the little armchairs, but the seat was as hard as marble and didn't yield
an inch. There was a mouthful of chocolate left in her cup, but the cup
219
wouldn't move either. She tried dipping her fingers in the dregs, but
they were as hard as butterscotch. So was the honey, and even the crumbs
were stuck fast to the plates. Now that time had stopped, everything else
was immovable too.
Cassiopeia had started to fidget. Looking down, Momo saw some words on
her shell. 'YOU'RE WASTING TIME!' she read.
Heavens alive, so she was! Momo pulled herself together. She hurried
through the forest of clocks to the little door, squeezed through it and ran
along the passage to the front door. She peered out, then darted back in
panic. Her heart began to thump furiously. Far from running away, the
time-thieves were streaming towards her up Never Lane. They could do that,
of course, now time had ceased to flow in reverse there, but she hadn't
allowed for the possibility.
She raced back to the great hall and, still clutching Cassiopeia, hid
behind a massive grandfather clock. 'That's a good start,' she muttered
ruefully.
Then she heard the men in grey come marching along the corridor. They
squeezed through the little door, one after another, until a whole crowd of
them had assembled inside.
'So this is our new headquarters,' said one, surveying the vast room.
'Very impressive.'
'That girl let us in,' said another grey voice. 'I distinctly saw her
open the door, the sensible child. I wonder how she managed to get around
the old man.'
'If you ask me,' said a third voice, 'the old man's knuckled under. If
time has stopped flowing in Never Lane, it can only mean he switched it off
himself. In other words, he knows he's beaten. Where is he, the old
mischief-maker? Let's finish him off!'
The men in grey were looking around when one of them had a sudden
thought. His voice sounded even greyer, if possible, than the rest.
'Something's wrong, gentlemen,' he
220
said. 'The clocks - look at the clocks! Every one of them has stopped,
even this hourglass here.'
. 'I suppose he must have stopped them,' another voice said
uncertainly.
'You can't stop an hourglass,' the first man in grey retorted. 'See for
yourselves, gentlemen - the sand's suspended in mid-air and the hourglass
itself won't budge! What does it mean?'
He was still speaking when footsteps came pounding along the corridor
and yet another man in grey squeezed through the little door, gesticulating
wildly. 'We've just had word from our agents in the city,' he announced.
'Their cars have stopped, and so has everything else - the world's at a
standstill. There isn't a microsecond of time to be had anywhere. Our
supplies have been cut off. Time has ceased to exist. Hora has switched it
off!'
There was a deathly hush. Then someone said, 'What do you mean,
switched it off? What'll become of us when we've finished the cigars we're
smoking?'
'What'll become of us?' shouted someone else. 'You know that perfectly
well. This is disastrous, gentlemen!'
They all began to shout at once. 'Hora's planning to destroy us!' - 'We
must lift the siege at once!' - 'We must try to reach the time store!' -
'Without our cars? We'll never make it in time!' - 'My cigar won't last me
more than twenty-seven minutes!' - 'Mine will last me forty-eight!' - 'Give
it to me, then!' - 'Are you crazy? It's every man for himself!'
There was a concerted rush for the little door. From her hiding place,
Momo saw panic-stricken grey figures trying to squeeze through it, jostling,
scuffling and swapping punches in a desperate attempt to save their grey
lives. The rush became a violent melee as they knocked each other's hats
off, wrestled with each other, snatched the cigars from each other's mouths.
And whenever they lost their cigars, they seemed to lose every ounce of
strength as well. They stood
221
there with their arms outstretched and a plaintive, terrified
expression on their faces, growing more and more transparent until they
finally vanished. Nothing remained of them, not even their hats.
In the end, only three men in grey were left. They ducked through the
little door, one after the other, and scuttled off down the passage.
Momo, with Cassiopeia under one arm and her free hand tightly clutching
the hour-lily, ran after them. All now depended on her keeping them in
sight.
She saw, when she emerged from the front door, that they had already
reached the mouth of Never Lane. More smoke-wreathed men in grey were
standing there, talking and gesticulating excitedly. As soon as they caught
sight of the three fugitives from Nowhere House, they started running too.
Others joined in the stampede, and soon the whole army had taken to its
heels. 'More haste less speed' no longer applied, of course, now that time
was at a standstill. An endless column of grey figures streamed towards the
city through the strange, dreamlike district with its snow-white houses and
oddly assorted shadows, past the monument resembling an egg, until it came
to the grey, shabby tenements inhabited by people who lived on the edge of
time. Here too, though, everything was still and silent.
What followed was a chase in reverse - a chase in which countless grey
figures were pursued through the city, at a discreet distance behind the
last of the stragglers, by a girl with a flower in her hand and a tortoise
under her arm.
But how strange the city looked now! Long lines of cars choked the
streets with the fumes from their exhausts solidified, and behind each wheel
sat a motionless driver, one hand frozen on horn or gear lever. Momo even
caught sight of one driver who had been immobilized while glaring at his
neigh-
222
hour and meamngtully tapping his forehead. Cyclists were poised at road
junctions with their arms extended, signalling right or left, and the people
thronging the pavements resembled waxwork figures.
Traffic policemen stood at crossroads, whistles in their mouths, caught
in the act of waving the traffic on. A flock of pigeons hovered motionless
above a square, and high overhead, as though painted on the sky, was an
equally motionless aeroplane. The water in the fountains might have been
ice, leaves falling from trees were suspended in mid-air, and one little
dog, which was cocking its leg against a lamp-post, looked as if it had been
stuffed that way.
Lifeless as a photograph, the city rang to the hurrying footsteps of
the men in grey. Momo followed them cautiously, fearful of being spotted,
but she needn't have worried. Their headlong flight was proving so arduous
and exhausting that they had ceased to notice anything any more.
Unaccustomed to running so far and so fast, they panted and gasped for
breath, grimly clenching their teeth on the little grey cigars that kept
them in existence. More than one of them let his cigar fall while running
and vanished into thin air before he could retrieve it.
But their companions in misfortune represented an even greater threat.
Such was the desperation of those whose own cigars were almost finished that
many of them snatched the butts from their neighbours' mouths, so their
numbers slowly but steadily dwindled.
Those who still had a small store of cigars in their briefcases were
careful to conceal them from the others, because the have-nots kept hurling
themselves at the haves and trying to wrest their precious possessions from
them. Scores of struggling figures engaged in ferocious tussles, scrabbling
and clawing with such wild abandon that most of the coveted cigars spilled
on to the road and were trampled underfoot.
223
The men in grey had become so frightened of extinction that they
completely lost their heads.
There was something else that caused them increasing difficulty the
further into town they got. The streets were so crowded at many points that
it was all they could do to thread their way through the forest of
motionless pedestrians. Momo, being small and thin, had an easier time of
it, but even she had to watch her step. You could hurt yourself badly on a
feather suspended in mid-air if you ran into it by mistake.
On and on they went, and Momo still had no idea how much further it was
to the time store. She peered anxiously at her hour-lily, but it had only
just come into full flower. There was no need to worry yet.
Then something happened that temporarily drove every other thought from
her mind. Glancing down a side street, she caught sight of Beppo!
'Beppo!' she called, beside herself with joy, as she ran towards him.
'I've been looking for you everywhere. Where have you been all this time?
Why did you never come to see me? Oh, Beppo, dearest Beppo!'
Still ck'tching Cassiopeia, she flung her free arm around his neck --
and promptly bounced off, because he might have been made of cast iron. It
was such a painful collision that tears sprang to her eyes. She stepped
back, sobbing, and gazed at him.
The little old man looked more bent-backed than ever. His kindly face
was thin and gaunt and very pale, and his chin was frosted with white
stubble because he so seldom found the time to shave nowadays. Incessant
sweeping had worn away his broom until the bristles were little longer than
his beard. There he stood, as motionless as everyone and everything else,
staring down at the dirty street through his steel-rimmed spectacles.
Momo had found him at last, but only now, when she couldn't get him to
notice her and it might be the very last
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time she saw him. If things went wrong, old Beppo would continue to
stand there forever more.
Cassiopeia started fidgeting again. 'KEEP GOING!' she spelled out.
Momo dashed back to the main street and stopped dead. There were no men
in grey to be seen! She ran on a little way, but it was no use, she'd lost
track of them. She halted again, wondering what to do, and looked
inquiringly at Cassiopeia.
'KEEP GOING,' the tortoise signaled again, then:
YOU'LL FIND THEM.'
If Cassiopeia knew in advance that she would find the time-thieves, she
would find them whichever way she went. Any direction was bound to be the
right one, so she simply ran on, turning left or right as the fancy took
her.
She had now reached the housing development on the city's northern
outskirts, where the buildings were as alike as peas in a pod and the
streets ran dead straight from horizon to horizon. On and on she ran, but
the sheer sameness of the buildings and streets soon made her feel as if she
were running on the spot and getting nowhere. The housing development was a
veritable maze, but a maze that deceived one by its regularity and
uniformity.
Momo had almost lost hope when she caught sight of a man in grey
disappearing around a corner. He was limping ..long with his suit in tatters
and his bowler hat and briefcase gone, mouth grimly pursed around the
smouldering butt of a little grey cigar.
She followed him along a street flanked by endless rows of houses until
they came to a gap. The big rectangular site where the missing house should
have stood was boarded up, and set in the fence was a gate. The gate was a
little ajar, and the last grey straggler squeezed quickly through it.
There was a notice above the gate. Momo paused to read it.
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DANGER!
KEEP OUT!
NO UNAUTHORIZED
PERSONS ADMITTED
TWENTY-ONE
An End and a Beginning
Momo took several seconds to decipher the longer words on the
noticeboard, and by the time she slipped through the gate the last of the
men in grey had disappeared.
In front of her yawned a gigantic pit, eighty or ninety feet deep, with
bulldozers and excavators around it. Several trucks had stopped mid way down
the ramp that led to the bottom of the pit and construction workers were
standing motionless all over the place, frozen in a variety of positions.
Where to now? There was no sign of the man in the grey and no clue as
to where he might have gone. Cassiopeia seemed equally at a loss. Her shell
did not light up.
Momo made her way down the ramp to the bottom of the pit and looked
around. Suddenly she saw a familiar face. It was Salvatore, the bricklayer
who had painted the pretty flower picture on the wall of her room. He was as
motionless as all the rest, but something about his pose made Momo think
twice. He was cupping his mouth as though calling to someone and pointing to
the rim of a huge pipe jutting from the ground beside him, almost as if
drawing Memo's attention to it.
Momo wasted no time. Taking this as a good omen, she hurried over to
the pipe and climbed inside. She lost her footing almost at once, because
the pipe sloped downwards at a steep angle, twisting and turning so sharply
that she slithered back and forth like a child on a helter-skelter. She
could see and hear almost nothing as she hurtled ever deeper into the
ground, sometimes sliding on her bottom, sometimes
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rolling head over heels, but never letting go of the tortoise and the
hour-lily.
The deeper she went, the colder it became. She began to wonder how she
would ever get out again, but before she could give the problem any real
thought the pipe abruptly ended in an underground passage. It wasn't as dark
here. The tunnel was bathed in a grey twilight that seemed to ooze from its
very walls. Momo scrambled up and ran on. Her bare feet made no sound, but
she could hear footsteps ahead of her. Guessing that they belonged to the
men in grey, she allowed herself to be guided by them. To judge by the
innumerable passages leading off her own in all directions, she was in a
maze of tunnels that ran the full extent of the housing development.
Then she heard a babble of voices. Having traced the hubbub to its
source, she cautiously peeped around the corner.
She found herself looking at a room as vast as the conference table
that ran down the middle of it, and at this table, in two long rows, sat the
surviving men in grey. Momo almost felt sorry for them, they looked so
woebegone. Their suits were torn, their bald grey heads cut and bruised, and
their faces convulsed with fear, but their cigars were still smouldering.
Embedded in the wall at the far end of the room, Momo saw a huge steel
door. The door was ajar, and an icy draught was streaming from whatever lay
beyond. Although Momo knew it would do little good, she burrowed down and
tucked her bare feet under her skirt.
A man in grey was presiding at the head of the conference table, just
in front of the strong-room door. 'We must economize,' Momo heard him say.
'Our reserves must be carefully husbanded. After all, we don't know how long
they'll have to last us.'
'There's only a handful of us left,' cried someone. 'They'll last us
for years.'
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'The sooner we start economizing,' the chairman went on imperturbably,
'the longer we'll hold out. I don't have to tell you, gentlemen, what I mean
by economizing. It will be quite sufficient if only some of us survive this
disaster. Let's face facts. As things stand now, there are far too many of
us. Common sense dictates that our ranks be drastically thinned. May I ask
you to call out numbers in turn?'
When the men in grey had called out numbers, all round the table, the
chairman produced a coin from his pocket. 'I shall now toss up,' he said.
'Heads mean the even numbers survive, tails the odd numbers.' He flipped the
coin and caught it.
'Heads,' he announced. 'Even numbers may remain seated, odd numbers are
requested to dissolve forthwith.'
The losers emitted a dull groan, but none of them demurred. As soon as
the winners had relieved them of their cigars, they vanished into thin air.
The chairman's voice broke the hush. 'And now, gentlemen, kindly do the
same again.'
The same gruesome procedure was followed a second time, then a third
and a fourth, until only half a dozen men in grey remained. They sat at the
head of the conference table, three a side, and glared at each other in icy
silence.
Momo, who had watched these developments with horrified fascination,
noticed that the temperature rose appreciably every time another batch of
losers disappeared. Compared to what it had been before, the cold was quite
tolerable.
'Six,' remarked one of the survivors, 'is an unlucky number.'
'That's enough,' said another. 'There's no point in reducing our
numbers still further. If six of us can't survive this disaster, neither
will three.'
'Not necessarily,' said someone else, 'but we can always review the
situation if the need arises - later, I mean.'
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No one spoke for a while. Then another survivor said, 'Lucky for us the
door to the time store was open when disaster struck. If it had been shut at
the crucial moment, no power on earth could open it now. We'd be absolutely
sunk.'
'You're not entirely right, I'm afraid,' replied another. 'Because the
door is open, cold is escaping from the refrigeration plant. The hour-lilies
will slowly thaw out, and you all know what'll happen then. We won't be able
to prevent them from returning to their original owners.'
'You mean,' said yet another, 'that our own coldness won't be
sufficient to keep them deep-frozen?'
'There are only six of us, unfortunately,' said the second speaker.
'You can calculate our freezing capability for yourself. Personally, I feel
it was rather rash to cut down our numbers so drastically. It hasn't paid
off.'
'We had to opt for one course of action or the other,' snapped the
first speaker, 'and we did, so that's that.'
Another silence fell.
'In other words,' said someone, 'we may have to sit here for years on
end, twiddling our thumbs and gawping at each other. I find that a dismal
prospect, I must confess.'
Momo racked her brains. There was certainly no point in her sitting
there and waiting any longer. When the men in grey were gone, the
hour-lilies would thaw out by themselves, but the men in grey still existed
and would continue to exist unless she did something about it. But what
could she do, given that the door to the cold store was open and the
time-thieves could help themselves to fresh supplies of cigars whenever they
wanted?
At that moment, Cassiopeia nudged her in the ribs. Momo looked down and
saw a message on her shell. 'SHUT THF. DOOR,' she read.
'I can't,' she whispered back. 'I'd never move it.'
'USE THE FLOWER,' Cassiopeia replied.
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'You mean I could move it if I touched it with the hour-lily?'
whispered Momo.
'YES, AND YOU WILL,' the tortoise spelled out.
If Cassiopeia knew this in advance, it had to be true. Momo carefully
put the tortoise down. Then she took the hour-lily, which was wilting by now
and had lost most of its petals, and stowed it inside her jacket.
Going down on all fours, she sneaked unseen beneath the conference
table and crawled to the far end. By the time she was on a level with the
time-thieves' six pairs of legs, her heart was pounding fit to burst.
Very, very gingerly, she took out the hour-lily and, gripping the stem
between her teeth, crawled on. Still unobserved by the men in grey, she
reached the open door, touched it with the hour-lily and simultaneously gave
it a push. The well-oiled hinges didn't make a sound. The door swung
silently to, then shut with a mighty clang that went echoing around the
conference chamber and reverberated from the walls of the innumerable
underground passages.
Momo jumped to her feet. The men in grey, who hadn't the remotest idea
that anyone but themselves was exempt from the universal standstill, sat
rooted to their chairs in horror, staring at her.
Without a second thought, she dashed past them and sprinted back to the
exit. The men in grey recovered from their shock and raced after her.
'It's that frightful little girl!' she heard one of them shout. 'It's
Momo!'
'Impossible!' yelled another. 'The creature's moving!' 'She's got an
hour-lily!' bellowed a third. Is that how she moved the door?' asked a
fourth. The fifth smote his brow. 'Then we could have moved it ourselves.
We've got plenty of hour-lilies.'
'We did have, you mean!' screamed the sixth. 'Only one
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thing can save us now that the door's shut. If we don't get hold of
that flower of hers, we're done for!'
Meanwhile, Momo had already disappeared into the maze of tunnels. The
men in grey knew their way around better, of course, but she just managed to
elude them by zigzagging to and fro.
Cassiopeia played her own special pan in this chase. Although she could
only crawl, she always knew in advance where Momo's pursuers would go next,
so she got there in good time and stationed herself in their path. The men
in grey tripped over her and went sprawling, and the ones behind tripped
over them and went sprawling too, with the result that she more than once
saved Momo from almost certain capture. Although she herself was often sent
hurtling against walls by flying feet, nothing could deter her from
continuing to do what she knew in advance she would do.
As the chase proceeded, several of the pursuing men in grey became so
maddened by their craving for the hour-lily that they dropped their cigars
and vanished into thin air, one after the other. In the end, only two were
left.
Momo doubled back and took refuge in the conference chamber. The two
surviving time-thieves chased her around the table but failed to catch her,
so they split up and ran in opposite directions. Momo was trapped at last.
She cowered in a corner and gazed at her pursuers in terror with the
hour-lily clasped to her chest. All but three of its shimmering petals had
withered and fallen.
The foremost man in grey was just about to snatch the flower when the
other one yanked him away.
'No,' he shrieked, 'that flower's mine! Mine, I tell you!'
They grappled with each other, and in the ensuing scrimmage the first
man knocked the second man's cigar out of his mouth. With a weird groan, the
second man spun around, went transparent and vanished.
The last of the men in grey advanced on Momo with a
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minuscule cigar butt smouldering in the corner of his mouth.
'Give it here!' he gasped, but as he did so the butt fell out of his
mouth and rolled away under the table. He flung himself to the ground and
groped for it, but it eluded his outstretched fingers. Turning his ashen
face towards Momo, he struggled into a sitting position and raised one
trembling hand.
'Please,' he whispered faintly, 'please, dear child, give me the
flower.'
Momo, still cowering in her corner, couldn't get a word out. She
clasped the flower still tighter and shook her head.
The last of the men in grey nodded slowly. 'I'm glad,' he murmured.
'I'm glad ... it's all ... over ...' Then he vanished, too.
Momo was staring dazedly at the place where he had been when Cassiopeia
crawled into view. 'YOU'LL OPEN THE DOOR,' her shell announced.
Momo went over to the door, touched it with her hour-lily, which had
only one last petal left, and opened it wide.
The time store was cold no longer, now that the last of the
time-thieves had gone. Momo marvelled at the contents of the huge vault.
Innumerable hour-lilies were arrayed on its endless shelves like crystal
goblets, no two alike and each more beautiful than the other. Hundreds of
thousands, indeed, millions of hours were stored here, all of them stolen
from people's lives.
The temperature steadily rose until the vault was as hot as a
greenhouse. Just as the last petal of Momo's hour-lily fluttered to the
ground, all the other flowers left their shelves in clouds and swirled
around her head. It was like a warm spring storm, bur a storm made up of
time released from captivity.
As if in a dream, Momo looked around and saw Cassiopeia on the ground
beside her. The glowing letters on her shell read: 'FLY HOME, MOMO, FLY
HOME!' That was the last Momo ever saw of Cassiopeia, because
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the tempest of flowers rose to an indescribable pitch. And as it gained
strength, so Momo was lifted off her feet and borne away like a flower
herself, along the dark passages, out into the open air and high above the
city. Soaring over the roofs in a cloud of flowers that grew bigger every
moment, she was wafted up and down and around and around like someone
performing a triumphal dance to glorious music.
Then the cloud of flowers drifted slowly, lazily down and landed like
snowflakes on the frozen face of the earth. And, like snowflakes, they
gently dissolved and became invisible as they returned to their true home in
the hearts of mankind.
In that same moment, time began again and everything awoke to new life.
The cars drove on, the traffic police blew their whistles, the pigeons
continued circling, and the little dog made a puddle against the lamp-post.
Nobody noticed that time had stood still for an hour, because nothing had
moved in the interval. It was all over in the twinkling of an eye.
Nothing had moved - no, but something had changed. All of a sudden,
people found they had plenty of time to spare. They were delighted,
naturally, but they never realized that it was their own time that had
miraculously been restored to them.
When Momo came to her senses again, she found herself back in the side
street where she had last seen Beppo. Sure enough, there he was, leaning on
his broom with his back to her, gazing ruminatively into the distance as he
used to in the old days. He wasn't in a hurry any more, and for some unknown
reason he felt brighter and more hopeful.
'I wonder,' he thought. 'Maybe I've already saved the hundred thousand
hours I need to ransom Momo.'
At that moment, someone tugged at his jacket and he turned to see Momo
smiling up at him as large as life.
There are no words to describe the joy of that reunion.
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Beppo and Momo laughed and cried by turns, and they both kept talking
at once - talking all kinds of nonsense, too, as people do when they're
dazed with delight. They hugged each other again and again, and passers-by
paused to share in their happiness, their tears and laughter, because they
all had plenty of time to spare.
At long last, Beppo shouldered his broom - he took the rest of the day
off, of course - and the two of them strolled arm in arm through the city to
the old amphitheatre, still talking nineteen to the dozen.
It was a long time since the city had witnessed such scenes. Children
played in the middle of the street, getting in the way of cars whose drivers
not only watched and waited, smiling broadly, but sometimes got out and
joined in their games. People stood around chatting with the friendliness of
those who take a genuine interest in their neighbours' welfare. Other
people, on their way to work, had time to stop and admire the flowers in a
window-box or feed the birds. Doctors, too, had time to devote themselves
properly to their patients, and workers of all kinds did their jobs with
pride and loving care, now that they were no longer expected to turn out as
much work as possible in the shortest possible time. They could take as much
time as they needed and wanted, because from now on there was enough time
for everyone.
Many people never discovered whom they had to thank for all this, just
as they never knew what had actually happened during the hour that passed in
a flash. Few of them would have believed the story anyway.
The only ones that knew and believed it were Memo's friends. By the
time Momo and Beppo reached the amphitheatre, they were all there waiting:
Guido, Paolo, Massimo, Franco, Maria and her little sister Rosa, Claudio and
a host of other children, Nino the innkeeper and his plump wife Liliana and
their baby, Salvatore the bricklayer, and all of Memo's regular visitors in
days gone by.
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The celebration that followed, which was as merry and joyous as only
Momo's friends could have made it, went on till the stars came out. And when
all the cheers and hugs and handshakes and excited chatter had subsided,
everyone sat down on the grass-grown steps.
A great hush fell as Momo stepped out into the middle of the arena. She
thought of the music of the stars and the hour-lilies, and then, in a sweet,
pure voice, she began to sing.
Meanwhile, in Nowhere House, the return of time had roused Professor
Нога from his first sleep ever. Still very pale, he looked as if he had just
recovered from a serious illness, but his eyes sparkled and there was a
smile on his lips as he watched Momo and her friends through his omnivision
glasses.
Then he felt something touch his foot. Taking off his glasses, he
looked down and saw Cassiopeia sitting there.
'Cassiopeia,' he said, tickling her affectionately under the chin, 'the
two of you did a fine job. I couldn't watch you, for once, so you must tell
me all about it.'
'LATER,' the tortoise signalled. Then she sneezed.
The professor looked concerned. 'You haven't caught cold, have you?'
'YOU BET I HAVE!' replied Cassiopeia.
'You must have gone too close to the men in grey,' said the professor.
'I expect you're very tired, too. We can talk later. Better go off and have
a good sleep first.'
'THANKS,' came the answer.
Cassiopeia limped off and picked herself a nice, dark, quiet corner.
She tucked her head and legs in, and very slowly, in letters visible only to
those who have read this story, her shell spelled out two words:
THE END
AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT
Many of my readers may have questions they'd like to ask. If so, I'm
afraid I can't help them. The fact is, I wrote this story down from memory,
just as it was told me. I never met Momo or any of her friends, nor do I
know what became of them or how they are today. As for the city where they
lived, I can only guess which one it was. The most I can tell you is this.
One night in a train, while I was on a long journey (as I still am), I
found myself sitting opposite a remarkable fellow passenger -- remarkable in
that I found it quite impossible to tell his age. At first I put him down as
an old man, but I soon saw that I must have been mistaken, because he
suddenly seemed very young - though that impression, too, soon proved to be
false.
At any rate, it was he who told me the story during our long night's
journey together.
Neither of us spoke for some moments after he had finished. Then my
mysterious acquaintance made a remark which I feel bound to put on record.
'I've described all these events,' he said, 'as if they'd already happened.
I might just as well have described them as if they still lay in the future.
To me, there's very little difference.'
He must have left the train at the next station, because I noticed
after a while that I was alone.
I've never bumped into him again, unfortunately. If by any chance I do,
though, I shall have plenty of questions to ask him myself.