Thief of Time

life in the other hemisphere where they say the ice floes are lined with crunchy penguins, and then wham— tragedy loomed in the shape of thousands of tons of unaccountably floating iron and an exciting soundtrack…
    …you’d want to know the whole story.
    And this one starts with desks.
    This is the desk of a professional. It is clear that their job is their life. There are…human touches, but they are the human touches that strict usage allows in a chilly world of duty and routine.
    Mostly they’re on the only piece of real color in this picture of blacks and grays. It’s a coffee mug. Someone somewhere wanted to make it a jolly mug. It bears a rather unconvincing picture of a teddy bear, and the legend “To The World’s Greatest Grandad,” and the slight change in the style of lettering on the word “Grandad” makes it clear that this has come from one of those stalls that have hundreds of mugs like these, declaring that they’re for the world’s greatest Grandad/Dad/Mum/Granny/Uncle/Aunt/Blank. Only someone whose life contains very little else, one feels, would treasure a piece of gimcrackery like this.
    It currently holds tea, with a slice of lemon.
    The bleak desktop also contains a paper knife in the shape of a scythe, and a number of hourglasses.
    Death picks up the mug in a skeletal hand……and took a sip, pausing only to look again at the wording he’d seen thousands of times before, and then put it down.
    V ERY WELL , he said, in tones of funeral bells. S HOW ME.
    The last item on the desktop was a mechanical contrivance. “Contrivance” was exactly the right kind of word for it. Most of it was two discs. One was horizontal, and contained a circlet of very small squares of what would prove to be carpet. The other was set vertically, and had a large number of arms, each one of which held a very small slice of buttered toast. Each slice was set so that it could spin freely as the turning of the wheel brought it down toward the carpet disc.
    I BELIEVE I AM BEGINNING TO GET THE IDEA, said Death.
    The small figure by the machine saluted smartly and beamed, if a rat skull could beam. It pulled a pair of goggles over its eye sockets, hitched up its robe, and clambered into the machine.
    Death was never quite sure why he allowed the Death of Rats to have an independent existence. After all, being Death meant being the Death of everything , including rodents of all descriptions. But perhaps everyone needs a tiny part of themselves that can, metaphorically, be allowed to run naked in the rain, * to think the unthinkable thoughts, to hide in corners and spy on the world, to do the forbidden but enjoyable deeds.
    Slowly, the Death of Rats pushed the treadles. The wheels began to spin.
    “Exciting, eh?” said a hoarse voice by Death’s ear. It belonged to Quoth, the raven, who had attached himself to the household as the Death of Rats’ personal transport and crony. He was, he always said, only in it for the eyeballs.
    The carpets began to turn. The tiny toasties slapped down, sometimes with a buttery squelch, sometimes without. Quoth watched carefully, in case any eyeballs were involved.
    Death saw that some time and effort had been spent devising a mechanism to rebutter each returning slice. An even more complex one measured the number of buttered carpets.
    After a couple of complete turns the lever of the buttered carpet ratio device had moved to 60 percent, and the wheels stopped.
    W ELL? said Death. T HIS PROVES NOTHING. I F YOU DID IT AGAIN, IT COULD WELL BE THAT—
    The Death of Rats shifted a gear lever, and began to pedal again.
    S QUEAK , it commanded. Death obediently leaned closer.
    This time the needle went only as high as 40 percent.
    Death leaned closer still.
    The eight pieces of toast that had been buttered this time were, in their entirety, the pieces that had been missed first time around.
    Spidery cogwheels whirred in the machine. A sign emerged, rather shakily, on springs, with an effect that was the visual equivalent of the word “boing.”
    A moment later two sparklers spluttered fitfully into life and sizzled away on either side of the word MALIGNITY .
    Death nodded. It was just as he’d suspected.
    He crossed his study, the Death of Rats scampering ahead of him, and reached a full-length mirror. It was dark, like the bottom of a well. There was a pattern of skulls and bones around the frame, for the sake of appearances; Death could not look himself in the skull in a