Epitaph in Rust

by Tim Powers

  Jesus! She’s probably getting sick in hell right now, to see you guys drinking beer and reciting poetry when her body isn’t yet cold.” He stood up unsteadily. “Well, I’m going to go send a few androids to kingdom come for her. You guys stay here and … make sure the goddamned breweries don’t go out of business.” He turned toward the door.

  “Bob,” said Spencer slowly. “Wait a minute.” He got to his feet. “I—I’m with you.”

  Jeff leaped up and pitched backward over his chair, having got his foot entangled in it. Negri and Spencer helped him up and brushed him off. “Count me in,” he gasped dizzily.

  “Wait here for us,” Spencer said to Thomas. “We ought to be—”

  “Hold it,” Thomas said. “I’m going with you. Who was it,” he asked, carefully enunciating each word, “that bandaged me up last night? Jean. I can’t sit here while you guys go avenge her.”

  “He’s right,” Negri said. “Pennick, you’re not the slob I thought you were.”

  They shook hands all around, drank off the last of the beer, and stumbled out the door into the chilly Los Angeles evening.

  Making a fist to keep his barbed-wire-torn finger from bleeding—will that finger ever get a proper chance to heal? he wondered—Thomas loped across the grass after Spencer, stepping high so as not to trip over anything in the darkness. He saw Spencer’s silhouette disappear behind the wall of a bungalow, and followed him into the deep shadow. Negri and Jeff were already waiting there.

  “Okay,” Negri whispered when Spencer and Thomas had caught their breath, “now listen: the infirmary is to our right, just past the—”

  “Hold it,” Jeff said. “If we’re doing this for Jean, it ain’t right to just blow up some sick ones.”

  Thomas couldn’t see him in the blackness, but raised one eyebrow questioningly. “Oh?”

  “He’s right,” Negri whispered, smothering a hiccup. “We’ve got to take on the barracks.”

  Spencer heaved a sigh. “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay,” Thomas agreed. He did wish he could have some more beer first. Maybe they’d find some in the barracks. “Do androids drink?” he asked.

  “Naw,” answered Negri. “They’ve got snoose. Now pay attention: the barracks, as I recall, is over there, ahead of us and to the left. I think the armory is off to the side, in a shed. We’d better go there first and grab some guns. Follow me and keep low.”

  The four of them scuttled furtively across a little lamplit courtyard and then trotted for a hundred yards in the shadow of another building and halted at its far corner. Negri pointed at a low plywood structure that stood between them and the next long building. A bright light was mounted over a screened window in front, and threw the shadow of the padlock across the door like a diagonal streak of black paint.

  “That’s the armory,” he whispered. “We’ll dash over there, one at a time, and stay on the dark side. Then we’ll pry the screen off a window and Pennick here, being the skinniest, will climb in and hand weapons out to us. After that we’ll move on to the barracks, shoot a dozen or so of the bastards, and climb the far fence and head home. Sound okay?”

  Everyone allowed that it did, Thomas with some reservations. The beer fumes were beginning to leave his head, and he couldn’t remember why coming here had seemed such a good idea.

  “Take it away, Rufe,” Spencer said, patting him on the back, and Thomas sprinted across the open space into the shadow of the shack. One by one the others followed, it was the work of a minute to lever the screen from the window, and a moment later Thomas was hoisted up and supported horizontally in the air by six hands, his head thrust into the window.

  “Can you see anything?” Negri hissed.

  “Nothing clear,” Thomas whispered back over his shoulder. “Listen, though—roll me face up, and let me get my hands up here, and I think I could climb in.” They carefully rotated his tense body until his back was to the ground. He angled both arms in through the narrow window and locked his ringers firmly around a pole that seemed to be firmly moored. “Okay,” he said nervously. “Now when I say go, you shove me in. Gently! I should jackknife through and land upright on the floor.” He gripped the pole even tighter, made sure again that he could picture how this would work, and then gasped, “Go.”

  They pushed him through, the pole came free in his hands, and he tumbled upside-down over a wheelbarrow and into a rack of shovels. The clatter and clang was appalling, and it took him nearly thirty seconds of thrashing about even to get to his feet. He bounded for the window, and tripped over a bottle of some sort that shattered resoundingly.

  Spencer poked his head in the window. “Weapons, for God’s sake!” he shouted. “Now!” His face disappeared again.

  Thomas flung four shovels through the window and then dove through it himself, rolling as he fell and landing painfully on his shoulder. He leaped up immediately, and was momentarily surprised to see that not one of his companions had fled.

  Spencer thrust one of the shovels into his hands. He saw that lights had gone on in the building ahead, and a half-dozen figures were clustered in the doorway. “All right, hold it right there!” came a call.

  “Run back the way we came,” Spencer snapped, and all four of them did, still carrying their shovels. Bang. A bullet spanged off the concrete a hundred feet to the right. Another broke a window ahead of them and two more whistled through the air. Thomas’ legs pounded on and on, even when each breath seared his lungs and abraded his ribs, and he could see the rainbow glitter of unconsciousness playing around the borders of his vision.

  Androids were designed to run faster than the average man, but they also had a tendency toward sluggishness when suddenly awakened, and none of these considered it worthwhile to leave, unbidden, their warm barracks in order to pursue such bandits as would lay siege to the gardener’s shack. They simply stood in the doorway and emptied a revolver at the fleeing figures.

  Spencer, leading the way, saw the sentry first; the android was loping toward them terrifyingly fast, with its head low and its hand rumbling at the flap of its holster. Thomas saw Spencer leap toward the galloping thing, whirling the shovel over his head like a long battle-axe. The edge of the descending blade cracked into the android’s shoulder, and Spencer and the sentry were both knocked off their feet. Thomas ran toward them with his own shovel held over his head.

  The android leaped up with bestial agility and finally fumbled the pistol out of its holster as Spencer rolled to his feet three yards away, ready to attempt a last charge at the thing. At that moment Thomas’ rush arrived from behind the android—he swung the poised shovel down upon the creature’s skull with every bit of strength the evening had left him, and then tumbled past in an involuntary somersault across the pavement.

  Jesus, no more, he thought as he struggled up on his hands and knees, fighting a strong nausea that gripped his stomach. There was a clank of metal breaking metal, and a sound like a dropped coin. “In here,” somebody hissed, and somebody else hauled Thomas forcibly erect and gave him a shove forward. He tripped through an open door and sprawled full length across the floor beyond. He lay there while the door was shut behind him, trying simultaneously to recover his breath and control his stomach.

  “Old Rufo there … isn’t as tough as he thinks,” someone panted.

  “Go to hell. He … killed that android, didn’t he?” came a gasping whisper from somebody else. “So far tonight he’s the only one who has.”

  Thomas rolled over and sat up. “The spirit,” he pronounced carefully, “is willing, but the flesh is drunk and exhausted.” Negri, Jeff and Spencer, still carrying their shovels, were slumped against the walls of the little room. “Where are we, anyway?”

  “I think this is the service entrance for the infirmary,” Negri answered. He held up his hand suddenly, and thudding footsteps raced past outside the door. “We can’t relax yet. They might notice the busted lock any time. Uhh,” he gasped, standing up, “let’s see where this inner d
oor will take us.”

  It was an aluminum door with rubber insulation around its edges; it wasn’t locked, and swung open at Negri’s first tug. The room within was lit by dim red lights, and smelled of steam and disinfectant. They filed inside, and saw a number of chest-high vats lined up against the wall. Thomas’ dim hope that this might be a winery of some sort evaporated when he peered through the clear plastic cover of one of them.

  “Damn my soul!” he whispered. “There’s a guy in there!”

  The other three joined him and looked down at a smooth human body that was suspended a few inches below the surface of the cloudy liquid in the vat.

  “We’re in an android brewery,” Spencer said. “I didn’t know there was one here.”

  “Who’s this guy look like to you, Spence?” asked Jeff. “He looks familiar to me.”

  “Yeah,” Negri agreed suddenly. “I’ve … seen that face.”

  Thomas peered at it again, but it didn’t especially look like anyone he’d ever seen. He wandered over to another vat. “Whoever it is,” he said, “he’s over here, too.”

  There were a half-dozen vats in the room, and a quick check revealed that the nearly-completed occupants of all six were cast from the same blueprint.

  “I wish I could remember who it is that they all look like,” Negri said, frowning.

  “Should we kill them?” Jeff asked.

  Spencer looked at him skeptically. “How? This is obviously shatterproof plastic—even with these shovels it’d take five minutes to splinter through one of them. And I don’t see any valves we could fool with. We don’t have time. Come on.”

  They left the room through another metal door, and found themselves in a hallway. It seemed chilly after the steamy heat of the vat room, and Thomas wondered wistfully when—and if—he’d see his theatre-basement bed again. Spencer led them down the hall in the direction that led away from the barracks. The floor was carpeted, and the corridor was dimly lit by electric bulbs that hung in globes of frosted glass. The disinfectant smell was here, too, but rivaled by an odor reminiscent of stables and animal cages.

  The corridor split in a T, and they followed the left-hand branch, which ended, after a hundred feet, at a door whose chicken-wire-reinforced window showed only darkness beyond. “This just may lead outside,” Spencer whispered, holding up crossed fingers as he turned the knob.

  At that moment the door at the far end of the hall was flung open by a gang of gray-uniformed androids who uttered glad shouts and bore down upon the four half-fuddled actors.

  Spencer whipped the door open and leaped through after his three companions, whirling on the other side to lock it by twisting a disk on the knob. The air was stuffy and still, and he realized they were in another room. “Turn on the lights!” he barked. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Thomas’ groping hand found a switch; he flipped it on and the room was abruptly flooded with illumination.

  Sitting up on their blanketless beds, blinking and whimpering at the sudden light, were what appeared to be nine grossly obese naked men. “Lights out!” one of them squeaked, and the rest took up the cry like a flock of parrots: “Lights out! Lights out!”

  “You three hold the door,” Spencer snapped. The androids on the other side were already kicking and pounding on it. “I’ve got an idea.”

  While Thomas, Negri and Jeff tried to pull on the doorknob and duck the splintering glass of the crumpling window, Spencer raced to the door at the far end of the room, which proved to be, as he’d expected, locked. He dragged the nearest bed over to it and lifted one end so that the whimpering occupant was spilled squashily onto the floor in front of the locked door. Then Spencer ran back to his companions, whipping off his shirt.

  The reinforced window-glass had been punched nearly out of its frame, and android hands were reaching through and plucking at the young men’s hair and shirts. “Hurry, Spence!” Thomas gasped.

  Spencer wrapped the head of one of the shovels in his shirt, and then fished a matchbook out of his pocket and struck a match to the fabric. It was slow to take the flame, but after a few door-pounding, glass-splintering seconds it began to flicker alight.

  Spencer turned to the far door, raised the shovel over his shoulder and, running forward, flung the makeshift spear at the bloated android on the floor.

  It arced through the still air, spinning lazily and trailing smoke, and then thudded into the creature’s distended belly. There was a muffled bang, a flash of light and a cloud of acrid smoke, and they heard the door bounce on concrete outside.

  “Let’s go,” Spencer panted; unnecessarily, for the other three had already released their door and were following him at a dead run toward the empty, smoke-clouded doorway, while the remaining occupants of the beds gibbered, “Lights out! Lights out!”

  When Thomas burst out through the doorway, practically on the heels of Negri, the first thing he noticed was the temperature—the night air was hot and dry, blowing from the east. He followed his companions as they ran across the dark lawn, cringing, as he ran, in anticipation of the tearing impact of a bullet in his back.

  “Get moving, Rufus,” Spencer gritted, seizing Thomas by the shoulder and pulling him along. Jeff grabbed his other arm, and Thomas found himself being nearly carried toward the fence.

  Hard footsteps pounded on the lawn behind them, but the four of them had reached the fence now, and helped each other scramble and fall over it several seconds before the androids arrived and began shooting their pistols through the boards.

  “Give yourselves up,” the androids called calmly as their bullets hammered at the splintering boards of the fence. “Give yourselves up.” When they had emptied their revolvers, one of them climbed onto another’s shoulders and peered through the strands of barbed wire at the empty stretch of Main Street beyond. A few lights had gone on in nearby buildings, but no one came outside to investigate the shooting. The android looked up and down the street, peered at the sidewalk below, and sniffed curiously at the hot night wind as if hoping to catch the fugitives’ scent.

  “They’re gone,” he said finally. He leaped down and they holstered their guns and plodded back across the grass toward the buildings.

  On the other side of the street four figures darted out of a shadowed drugstore doorway and fled silently away.

  “Hey,” Thomas said drowsily. “This isn’t the Bellamy Theatre.”

  “You don’t miss a lot, do you?” growled Negri. “We’re back at the Blind Moon.”

  “Why? Aren’t we ever going to get to sleep?”

  “We’ve got to establish our alibi,” Spencer explained as they turned into the alley that led to the bar’s rear door. “We’ve got to give people the idea that we’ve been here all evening.”

  “Evening?” Thomas protested. “It must be nearly dawn.”

  “It’s only a quarter to ten,” Jeff said. “I saw the city hall clock about five minutes ago.”

  “Jesus.” Thomas shook his head in dull wonder and followed Spencer into the rear of the kitchen. It was empty except for a teenage boy who stood at the sinks, languidly running a wet rag over dishes and dropping them into the water.

  “What were you doing out there, Spence?” the boy asked.

  “Getting a bit of fresh air, we were,” Spencer told him. The four of them filed past and stepped through the kitchen door into the crowded, noisy, smoke-layered public room. They managed to find a table, near the door, and sat down with relaxed sighs.

  Spencer immediately bounded to his feet. “My God,” he gasped. “I was supposed to meet Evelyn at nine under Bush-head. I’ll see you later. Or tomorrow.” He opened the door and sprinted away down the sidewalk.

  “Bush-head?” Thomas echoed as the door banged shut.

  “It’s a statue of Mayor Pelias down by the mission church,” Jeff said. “About three years ago, when he began to get really unpopular, somebody looped a rope around the statue’s head and tried to pull it down. All that happened was
the head broke off. A year or so later—ah, the beer already! Thank you, miss—a year or so later somebody wired a big tumbleweed onto the neck-post; so everybody calls it Johnny Bush-head.”

  “Huh.” Thomas poured himself a beer and sipped it thoughtfully.

  “Want to throw some darts?” Negri asked Jeff. Jeff nodded and they stood up and moved away, taking the pitcher with them. Thomas idly traced designs in the dampness on his glass.

  A minute or so later, a paunchy old man with wisps of gray hair trailing across his shiny, mottled scalp sat down across from Thomas. “All right if I join you?” he asked hesitantly.

  He was carrying a glass and a new pitcher of beer, so there was some sincerity in Thomas’ voice when he said, “Certainly, certainly.”

  “Thank you. Here, let me fill your glass.”

  “Much obliged.”

  “Not at all.” He leaned back and set the pitcher down. “You’re a friend of Spencer’s?” Thomas nodded. “A fine lad, he is,” the old man went on. “Are you an actor too?”

  “Yes,” Thomas answered.

  “I’ll have to make it over to see the play. One of Shakespeare’s best, I’ve always thought.”

  Thomas looked at him. “Really? I much prefer … oh, Lear, or Macbeth, or: Julius Caesar. ”

  The old man blinked. “An educated man, I perceive! Allow me to introduce myself. I am Gardener Jenkins.” He cocked a hopeful eyebrow at Thomas, then lowered it when Thomas showed no recognition of the name. “I was—still am, in a way—a professor of philosophy at the University at Berkeley.”

  “Oh,” said Thomas politely. “What brings you so far south?”