Epitaph in Rust

by Tim Powers

  He barely managed to swallow a mouthful of egg before having to sneeze violently into his napkin. “Does the damned paper have any idea when this Santa Ana wind will quit?” he asked.

  “Yeah, matter of fact,” Spencer answered from across the table. “A big tide, or whatever it’s called, of cold air is sliding south down the San Joaquin Valley, I read. It ought to cancel this heat a bit.”

  “Won’t that cause tornadoes?” Alice asked. “I read somewhere that causes tornadoes.”

  “It might, up around San Gabriel or San Fernando,” Jeff said. “Not here, though.”

  The hall doors were pushed open, and Gladhand propelled his wheelchair into the dining room. “Where’s Negri?” he asked.

  “Haven’t seen him all morning,” Alice answered. Everyone else shrugged or shook their heads in agreement.

  “He might even be buying breakfast somewhere,” Spencer said. “He does, sometimes.”

  “I don’t think he is today,” Gladhand said grimly. “The idiot tacked this note on my door last night. Listen: ‘Sir—the killing of individual androids, while doubtless praiseworthy in its own small-scale fashion, can at best—’ oh hell, I won’t read the whole murky thing. The upshot is—” he looked around helplessly, “—he says he’s gone off to, singlehanded, kill Police Chief Tabasco.”

  Thomas happened to glance toward Pat as Gladhand finished, and saw her turn pale. He was surprised, and felt a twinge of reflexive jealousy; would she, he wondered, be that concerned if it was me out risking my life? Was she last night, when it was me?

  “Good God,” Spencer said, getting to his feet and flinging down his napkin. “How long’s he been gone?”

  “Possibly as long as … eight hours,” Gladhand said.

  “God help us,” Spencer muttered. “Rufus—no, never mind. Jeff, you and Lambert run to the basement, quick, and drag as many of the bomb and gun crates into the deep cellar as will fit. Hide the rest of them, or camouflage ’em; throw old costumes in on top of the incriminating stuff.” Jeff and Lambert hurried out.

  “Right,” Gladhand said. “If any of you own personal guns, fetch them and give them to Jeff. And then get the hell back here; rehearsal is beginning at eight—that’s … nine minutes from now—as planned. Everybody is to be there, no excuses. Rufus, you’ll read the Orlando part as well as your own.”

  “What’s all this?” spoke up a pig-tailed girl whose name Thomas had never caught. “Can’t we help Negri somehow? He’s risking his life for us.”

  “He’s risking our lives for the sake of his outsize pride,” Gladhand shouted. “You all know my rules about individual, unauthorized sallies against the enemy. And Negri was reminded of them only last week. What if he’s caught? They’ll torture him, or shoot him up with scopolamine or sodium pentothal, and he’ll tell them everything he knows. I’m praying he’s been killed, and that the police are unable to identify him. If they do identify him they’ll be knocking on our front door five minutes later—or, more likely, kicking it down.”

  All the actors pushed away from the table and left the room. “Rufus,” Gladhand said, “go to the lobby and keep an eye out for cops. If none appear in the next five minutes, get on stage for rehearsal.”

  “Aye aye,” Thomas said. He caught Pat’s eye, made a brief, mock-despairing sign-of-the-cross, and sprinted for the lobby.

  “Okay,” Gladhand barked from his front row seat. “Curtain. Scene two.”

  A girl walked out on stage, looked around and shrugged. “I pray thee, Rosalind,” she began, then halted. “Uh, sir?” she said hesitantly, trying to shield her eyes from the glare of the lights. “Rosalind’s—Pat’s not here.”

  “What?” Gladhand roared. “Find kerl I—”

  “Here I am,” Pat said lightly, running down the carpeted center aisle.

  “Where were you?” The theater manager’s voice was ominously low.

  “I was trying to find Jeff, to give him my gun,” she said. “I thought I had plenty of time to make my entrance. I’m sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.”

  Gladhand nodded wearily and scratched his beard, looking like an overtime clerk who notices another figure that must be included in an already complicated equation. “Get on stage,” he said quietly. “Your entrance has only just arrived.”

  They had reached the beginning of Act Four when the police arrived.

  “Hi!” came a voice from the lobby doors. “You there, you actors! Where’s your boss?”

  Gladhand shifted around in his seat and stared for a moment at the two android policemen who stood in the doorway. “I’m Nathan Gladhand, the manager,” he said. “Skooney! House lights only!”

  The auditorium lights went on and the stage lights dimmed as six policemen filed in and strode down the aisle to where Gladhand sat. The actors gathered curiously at the front of the stage.

  One of the policemen carried a cardboard box, and now pried up the lid. “Did you know this person, sir?” the android asked, lifting out of the box by the curly hair a severed human head.

  Gladhand frowned. “Put it away,” he said in a rasping voice. The android lowered the head back into the box. “Yes, I knew him. That’s Robert Negri, one of my actors.” A low mutter of horror and anger arose from the stage; Thomas’ eyes darted to Pat, but she showed no particular dismay now. “How,” Gladhand asked, “did this happen?”

  “This young man walked into the police station and requested to see Chief Tabasco. When officers asked him to submit to a search, he produced a pistol and menaced them. Two officers were killed before we managed to kill the young man. We brought the body to Chief Tabasco, who, being a connoisseur of the dramatic arts, recognized him as one of the Bellamy Players.”

  “I see,” Gladhand said. “His … girlfriend was killed in the … misunderstanding in Pershing Square on Saturday. Perhaps, in his grief-crazed state, he blamed Chief Tabasco for her death.”

  The android nodded. “That seems most likely,” he agreed. “We must, though, be thorough. Do you have any objections to the notion of us searching your theatre?”

  “Of course not,” Gladhand said. “Would you like a guide?”

  “No.”

  “In that case we will go on with our rehearsal.”

  The officer smiled at him. “Will your actors function well, immediately after a … piece of news such as this?” He held up the box and shook it.

  “Probably not,” Gladhand answered shortly, “but I’d rather have a bad rehearsal than call a halt so they all can brood on it.”

  “Ah. Good point.” The android bowed and led his fellows back up the aisle to the lobby.

  “Okay, goddamnit,” Gladhand snapped. “Onward. Spencer, tell us again about your ‘humorous sadness.’ Skooney! Lights!”

  The rehearsal moved on leadenly and without verve, and by the time they’d finished the police had left, taking Negri’s head with them.

  “Albert says they never even entered the basement, sir,” Spencer said when the troop had gathered in the greenroom. “So I guess we’re okay. We weathered this one:”

  Gladhand looked uncertain. “They made a very cursory search,” he said slowly. “I’ve seen them be far more thorough with far less cause.”

  Spencer shrugged. “It’s hopeless to look for logic in the behavior of androids,” he said.

  “Is it, Spencer?” the theatre manager asked softly. “Is it, entirely?”

  The noon rehearsal left Thomas exhausted and obscurely depressed, and when the actors dispersed at one-thirty he gravitated toward Pat. She was standing by the edge of the stage, intent on wiping her nose after a sneezing fit, and she jumped when Thomas touched her on the shoulder with his uninjured hand.

  “Oh, it’s only you, Rufus,” she said when she’d whirled around. “What do you want?”

  This isn’t quite, Thomas thought, the way I’d expect to be spoken to by a girl who loves me. “Let’s go up to the roof,” he said, trying to keep the dullness he felt out of his voice. “Catch wh
atever cool breeze there may be.”

  She considered it for a moment. “Okay,” she said.

  They walked in silence up the three flights of stairs, and Thomas held the roof door open for her. The daylight was overpowering after the dimness of the stairwell, and Thomas was squinting through watering eyes as he dragged two canvas chairs to the roof coping and he and Pat sat down. The vast, empty blue vault of the sky seemed to Thomas to have been arranged as a contrast to show up his own unimportance, and he saw with relief that the sapphire uniformity of the heavens was flawed by a dirty smudge of rainclouds over the mountains to the north.

  His eyes were adjusting to the brightness, and he glanced at Pat, who was staring out over the maze of cobbled streets and gray-shingled roofs that was Los Angeles. God, she’s pretty, he thought helplessly. The black hair fringing around her smooth jawline in the wind, the curve of her tightly-blue-jeaned leg braced against the bricks in front of her. What makes you think, he asked himself contemptuously, that you could possibly have any future with a girl like this? Guys like Negri get these girls.

  Negri didn’t get this one, though, he reminded himself.

  “Awful,” he said, “what happened to Negri.”

  “Oh,” she waved her hand dismissingly, “he was a jerk.” She looked at him and smiled. “You know that.”

  “Yeah,” Thomas admitted.

  “He was just trying to make what you did last night look … smalltime.” She draped her hand with careless affection over his arm. “You guys were really up the creek there for a little while last night, weren’t you? Before you managed to kill Albers and get away. The penalties for outright treason must be considerable.”

  “There was some talk of hanging,” Thomas admitted, “and even of torture. But I think Albers had something else in mind for me personally.”

  “Oh? Like what?”

  “Well—it’s a long story, Pat, and to start it I’ve got to say I lied to you last week, when I told you where I came from.”

  “You’re not really from Berkeley?”

  “No, I grew up not ten miles from here—not twenty, anyway—at the Merignac monastery. I ran away from there last week. And my name isn’t Rufus Pennick. It’s Thomas. Anyway, Spencer tells me the police have been looking for me ever since I entered the city, though neither of us can figure out why. Last night Albers realized I was this escaped monk Thomas that everybody’s after, and he wanted me for that reason—whatever it is—rather than for gun-running.”

  Pat seemed tense, and he patted her hand reassuringly. “But Albers is dead now,” he told her, “and you and Spencer and Gladhand are the only ones that know I’m Thomas. So I’m safe again.”

  “Well, that’s good,” she said. Then she shook her head, and Thomas noticed in her eyes an expression of hopelessness he’d never seen there before. “Oh, but for how long, Rufus? How long will you be safe? And what can conceivably become of us?”

  Thomas put his arm around her shoulders. “It isn’t that bad,” he said softly. “They aren’t omnipotent. And I’ll tell you what’s to become of us—we’ll get married when all this political foolishness is over with.”

  She buried her face in his shoulder and said nothing.

  Thomas stroked her fine hair and stared thoughtfully at the vista of rooftops stretching away as far as he could see to the south. I wonder what would have happened if I’d reached San Pedro, he thought. He tried to picture himself dashing about the deck of a steamer, stripped to the waist and tanned the color of an old penny—but the absence of Pat from the daydream made it unconvincing.

  After a while, four gunshots sounded a few streets away, and Pat jumped. “God, that’s a recurrent sound these days,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Thomas agreed. “And you never find out who was shooting, or being shot at.”

  Pat stood up and stretched. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Some of us girls are going out for ice cream this afternoon.”

  “Ice cream?” Thomas didn’t know what that was.

  “Yeah. I’ll see you later. Rufus,” she said gravely, “I love you. Do you believe that?”

  He looked at her intently. “Yes.”

  “Good. See you later.” She loped to the stairway door and disappeared. Thomas carried his chair away from the edge into the shadow of a beach umbrella, and sat down and went to sleep.

  CHAPTER 9

  Deductions in Room Four

  The rays of the late afternoon sun, slanting under the rim of the umbrella, glared against his eyelids and woke him up. He got to his feet and rubbed his eyes, feeling disoriented and apprehensive.

  The only person in the greenroom, he found when he’d shambled down the stairs, was Gladhand, who was drinking scotch. Thomas dropped himself into one of the chairs.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked.

  “Spencer and Jeff and Lambert are off on a bit of official business,” Gladhand said. “You’re exempt from all that till your hand heals. Most of the girls went off to eat snacks somewhere. I’m sitting here drinking.”

  Thomas nodded. “If it’s all right with you, sir, I think I’ll go have a solitary beer or two at the Blind Moon.”

  “Sounds like a valid course. Here.” He reached into a pocket and handed Thomas a ten-soli bill.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “The girls took that ridiculous car, but I believe you’ll find at least one horse out back.”

  Thomas left the building by the rear entrance, and did indeed find a horse in one of the stalls—a sturdy creature of indeterminate breed that winked at him when he patted its nose. He saddled the beast with only moderate difficulty, mounted it, led it out of the back lot and rode slowly east on Second for a block and then turned left onto Spring. The horse seemed as lazy as Thomas, and clopped along at an easy pace.

  Only a few people were out, sitting against buildings or slouching along the old sidewalks. The slightly cooler wind of evening carried smells of frying meat and spicy sauces, and Thomas realized most citizens were inside having dinner. As a matter of fact, he told himself, a bowl of chili at the Blind Moon might be a good thing.

  Soon after he crossed the bridge over the freeway, the city wall loomed ahead; and in its long shadow, dwarfed between two neighboring structures, stood the little building that was the Blind Moon of Los Angeles. Its narrow windows were already casting streaks of light across the darkening pavement as Thomas tied his horse to the post out front.

  He pushed open the swinging door and crossed directly to the bar. “A pitcher of draft beer, please, and a bowl of chili,” he said to the girl who was washing glasses.

  “Coming right up, sport,” she said. “Where you sitting?”

  “Uh, back there,” Thomas pointed to a table against the wall, then crossed to it and sat down. On the wall across from him was the photograph of Negri and Jean. They’re both dead now, he thought. In less than a week that picture has become very old.

  “Cheer up, pal,” the barmaid said, walking up to his table. “Your beer and chili have arrived.”

  I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any for cheering up, he thought. “Thank you.”

  He gulped the beer, holding his breath, until his throat stung, and then set the glass down and let the alcohol relax him. God, I’m tired, he thought. When do they call time-out for rest around here?

  He refilled his glass—awkwardly, for he used his left hand. When he’d filled it, someone sat down across from him and held forward an empty glass. “You owe me one,” came a hoarse voice.

  Thomas looked up, and smiled in recognition, “Uh, Jenkins, right? The scholar from Berkeley.”

  “That’s right,” the old man whispered with a jerky nod. “Listen, I’ve got to leave town.”

  “Oh? That’s not as easy as it used to be, I hear,” Thomas remarked as he filled the man’s glass. “Why are you leaving? You finish your research?”

  “You could say so.” Jenkins grinned mirthlessly and reached into an inner pocket of his coat. �
��You know Spencer, don’t you? Of course. I talked his girlfriend into getting me a copy of the key to the city archives.”

  Thomas looked at him with more respect. “Let nobody deny you’re a true scholar, Jenkins,” he said. “Did you find this …” he racked his memory, “… Strogoff letter you wanted?”

  The old man looked near to tears. “I did. Here,” he said, pulling an envelope out of his coat. “Hold it for me. It’s too big for me to … it’s just too big for me. I’ve got to get out of the city, and then I’ll send you an address to which you can mail it. I’ll pay you well for helping me, of course.”

  Thomas turned it over; a new seal held the flap closed. “You’ve read it,” he said.

  “Yes. I wish I hadn’t. Don’t you read it, please. Just hold it for me.

  Will you give me your word that you’ll do as I say? I’ll pay you five hundred solis for mailing it to me unopened.”

  Thomas considered it. “Okay,” he said finally, “I give you my word.” Five hundred solis is five hundred solis, he reflected.

  “As an actor and friend of Spencer’s?”

  “As those things, yes.”

  Jenkins clasped Thomas’ shoulder. “God bless you, boy,” he said. “I was afraid I’d have to try and leave the city with it on me; and if they’d found it at the gate, well—” he blinked. “God bless you. I’ll dedicate the book to you.”

  “Thanks.” Thomas watched, half mystified and half amused, as the old man stood up, wiped his wet eyes with a coat-tail and scurried toward the front door. Poor old bastard, Thomas thought. All upset over a letter some philosopher wrote ten years ago. And look, he never even touched his beer! Thomas poured it back into the pitcher as the door swung shut after the old scholar.