Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust

by Tim Powers

  Thomas hit him, hard, in the stomach, and the old abbot dropped to the dewy grass like a broken piece of lumber. Thomas opened his hand and let fall a fist-sized piece of the fishing pole.

  “Hey!” came a voice across the dark lawn. Running footsteps could be heard from the direction of the chapel, so Thomas turned and hobbled in the opposite direction, toward the vegetable garden and the south wall.

  “Stop!” called one of his pursuers. “Stop in the name of God!”

  Thomas instinctively slid to a halt. A moment later he was running again, cursing himself impatiently.

  He was in among the vegetables now, in total darkness, tripping over tomato vines and putting his feet through watermelons. Chilly mud splashed his legs and clogged his sandals.

  A half dozen outraged monks followed him cautiously; they assumed he was a bandit, probably armed, and possibly accompanied by vicious henchmen, so they hung back and contented themselves with shouting admonitory bits of Scripture at him.

  Thomas lurched through the last of a row of bean-trellises and collided with the rough bricks of the wall. He tried to climb it, but gave up when the bricks cracked apart under his fingers. The monks, beginning to doubt his stature as a menace, were throwing rocks at him now with rapidly improving accuracy.

  Thomas yelled as a well-flung cobble caught him in the ribs. I can’t linger here, he realized. He got down on his hands and knees and scuttled along the base of the wall, searching for one of the drainage pipes that passed through it at irregular intervals. He cut his finger deeply on a stray bit of broken pottery and blundered through several complicated spider webs, but found one of the pipes and, urged to haste by the thrown rocks that were tearing into the vegetation all around him, scrambled head first into the narrow, slippery, downward-slanting shaft.

  The monks soon found his escape-route and were fiercely thrusting a couple of tree branches into the pipe mouth when Brother Olaus limped up and told them to be quiet. “He’s gone… you idiots,” he gasped. “Back to your cells, now, move. I’ll… inform the police in the morning.”

  Still not certain what had happened, the monks shrugged, laid down the branches and trudged back to the main building. Soon the last of the monastery’s lights was put out and the silence was, except for occasional faint sounds like voices and laughter in the sky, complete.

  The air was sharp with pre-dawn chilliness, and Thomas’ nose and throat ached every time he took a breath. His first impulse was to thrash his way through the grapevines to the front gate of the monastery and pound on it until someone let him back in; they would turn him over to the police in the morning, but at least he’d be able to sleep warm until then in the piled straw on the floor of the detention cell.

  No, no, he told himself, trying to muster some confidence—this is adventure. The whole world is laid out and waiting for you if you can just get clear of these damned trees and wait till the sun comes up. After a few moments of indecision he took his own word for it and plodded away through the darkness, whimpering softly as the cold penetrated every seam in his robe.

  He tried to move steadily south, toward Los Angeles, but thickets and creeks and ravines twisted his course so frequently that after a while he had no idea which direction he was facing. I may wind up in the Hollywood Reservoir, he thought, or even back at the monastery. I’ve got to get my bearings.

  He had been colliding frequently with pine branches and trunks, and now decided to climb one of the trees and look for the lights of Los Angeles to guide him. He peered up at the branches silhouetted against the dim purple sky, trying to judge which tree was bare enough to serve well as a ladder and crow’s nest, and chose a tall one whose limbs seemed to be solid and evenly spaced.

  He went up it quickly, glad to be free of the dew-soaked, clinging underbrush, and was soon straddling a comfortable branch fifty feet above the ground. He peered around intently, trying to get his tired eyes to focus on the dim, blurry landscape. He could see no lights, but half a mile away a gray streak curved through the forest. The Hollywood Freeway, he thought, with the first surge of real confidence he’d felt that night; I’ll follow it south and be in the city by sunrise.

  He hopped and swung his way back down the tree, thinking cheerfully of the breakfast he would buy with the money he’d taken from the bird-man. Bacon for sure, he thought. Scrambled eggs—no, an omelette, by God. And beer. And—

  “Take it slow now, son, and keep your hands where we can see ’em,” came an odd, quacking voice below Thomas, startling him so that he missed the next branch and half-leaped, half-fell to the bed of matted pine needles ten feet below him.

  He scrambled painfully to his feet, and then froze when he saw he was surrounded by short, stocky figures. Children? he wondered dizzily.

  A match flared alight in the gnarled hand of one of them, and Thomas saw that they were dwarves—a bearded, ragged crew, with mean-looking knives thrust into the belts of their leather tunics.

  “A monk!” observed the one with the match. “Up in a tree, chatting with God in the middle of the night!” The other dwarves laughed uproariously in falsetto voices and slapped their knees. “Well now,” the leader went on, “what we want to know—right, boys?—is whether you’ve got some tobacco. Quick, now, no lies!”

  Thomas blinked and gulped. “Tobacco?” he answered automatically. “No. I don’t smoke. Sorry.”

  The dwarves growled and muttered, and a few unsheathed their knives. Thomas looked around for an escape route, and saw none. “Look,” he said desperately, “I’ll get some and bring it back. There’s some at the monastery—good stuff, Cavendish. I’ll be back before the sun clears the hills.”

  The dwarves frowned, scratched their beards and exchanged shrewd glances. “Ah,” piped up the leader again, poking Thomas in the ribs, “but how do we know you’ll come back? Eh?” The other dwarves nodded, pleased that their leader had so succinctly expressed the problem.

  “Here,” Thomas said, trying to seem sure of himself. “Hold my rosary until I get back.” He untied the long rosary—a hundred and thirty-three polished wooden beads knotted along a light rope—that encircled his waist, and handed it to the leader. “It’s collateral,” he explained.

  “I thought you said it was a rosary,” the leader said.

  “It is, dammit,” said Thomas with some exasperation. “Collateral means I let you hold it so you know I’ll come back.”

  “Ah!” said the dwarf, nodding wisely. He considered the idea for a moment. “Well, it sounds okay to me. Whoever heard of a monk without his rosary? We’ve got him over a barrel, eh, boys?” His fellows nodded and grinned delightedly. “We’ll wait here. You sure you can find your way back?”

  “Yeah, I come here all the time,” said Thomas, edging away. The sky had lightened during the discussion, and he could see well enough to sprint away quickly as the dwarves huddled around their leader, examining the rosary with great interest.

  I’ve lost my badge of office, Thomas thought. I’m no longer a monk—just a battered young man in a ripped-up brown robe. The thought scared him a little, and brought home to him, as nothing else had done, the realization that he really had stepped out from under the stern but protective wing of the church. The sun was nearly up, though, and the empty blue vault of the sky promised a warm day. The birds were setting up a racket in the trees as Thomas trotted along a path below them, craning his neck for a glimpse of the freeway.

  Finally he burst through a tangle of oleander bushes, showering himself with dew, and saw its concrete bulk rising up out of a stand of junipers, the high white rim already lit by the sun. Thomas recalled reading that it was called the Hollywood Freeway only locally, and was known as Route Five to the hardy merchants who drove their donkey-borne cargoes along its ancient track from San Francisco to San Diego. There were even legends that it stretched further, north to Canada and south into Mexico.

  He climbed a young sapling, edged out along a bending branch, and then dropped onto the surpris
ingly wide concrete surface of the freeway.

  As soon as he stood up he felt leagues removed from the monastery. Worldly, adventurous-looking debris was scattered along the edge of the old highroad, and cast long, sharp shadows across the lanes—the charred remains of an overturned cart were fouled in the railing at one point, and donkey skeletons, broken wheels and rusted sections of machinery lay everywhere, as if strewn, Thomas thought, by some passing giant. He even found a rusty sword, its blade broken off a foot above the bell guard, and carried it with him until he noticed tiny bugs infesting the rotted leather grip.

  The heel strap on his left sandal had snapped sometime during his frantic exodus, and he was having difficulty now in walking. He put up with it for a while and then sat down, annoyed at the delay, to see if it could be tied up or something. His repair attempt only served to break the strap off entirely, and he was about to fling the wretched, mud-caked sandal away, and proceed barefoot, when he remembered seeing a three-inch length of wire among the loot he’d taken from the bird-man a few hours ago. He emptied his pocket—and stared for the first time at the plunder he’d risked his hands and possibly his life for: a cheap ring, several bottle caps, a few gum wrappers, some broken glass, eleven one-soli coins, and the wire.

  Good God, he thought, stunned with disappointment; buying breakfast will use up nearly my entire haul. I can’t afford to stay in Los Angeles even one day. What can I possibly do?

  Well, fix the sandal, for one thing, he told himself. And then use your wits. A young, well-educated man like yourself ought to be able to get by in the city. Did you see how I handled those dwarves?

  With a confidence born of naiveté and the cheery sunlight, he whistled as he twisted the wire onto his sandal, slipped it on, and then continued his southward trek.

  He had walked about half a mile when a rattling and creaking behind him made him stop and look back. A horse-drawn cart was coming along at a leisurely pace, and its white-bearded driver waved amiably to Thomas, who waved back and smiled.

  “Good morning, brother!” called the driver when he reined in beside Thomas. “It’s no trouble, I hope, that’s got you on foot?”

  “No trouble, no,” said Thomas, brushing the dark hair out of his eyes, “but it is slow travel. I’d be much obliged for a ride into Los Angeles.”

  “Sure, hop aboard. Careful of the box, there, it’s black powder.” Thomas climbed up onto the driver’s bench and sat back comfortably on the passenger’s side, glad to rest his legs. The bed of the cart was filled with wooden boxes over which a tarpaulin had been roped.

  “What’s your cargo?” asked Thomas, peering back at the boxes as the cart got under way.

  “Guns, lead and powder, brother,” replied the old man. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened, and Thomas knew he was grinning even though the bushy white beard hid his mouth. “I know you’re a good lad,” he added, “but do me the kindness of looking at the back-rest you’re leaning on.”

  Thomas stared at the old man, and then sat up and turned around. In the center of the passenger’s side of the back-rest was a metal-rimmed hole big enough to put his thumb into. The wood immediately around it was blackened as if by smoke.

  “Uh… what is that?” asked Thomas cautiously, not leaning back.

  “The barrel of a gun, son,” the driver told him with a dry chuckle. “Throws .50 calibre hollow-point slugs. Take it easy, I won’t shoot it. It’s just there so we can trust each other.”

  “Oh.” Thomas sat back gingerly. “Have you ever had to use it?” he asked after a while.

  “Oh, yeah.” The old man spat meditatively. “Going through Agoura last summer, a hitchhiker pulled a knife and said I was a war-monger and he was going to kill me so kids could play on the beaches, or something like that. It blew him right over Aeolus’ head,” he said, nodding at the horse.

  The sun had warmed the air and dried Thomas’ robe, and the even rocking of the old cart was making him sleepy. He was determined to resist it, though, and sat up straighter. “What’s that over there?” he asked, pointing at a marble shrine glittering in the new sunlight on a hill to the left.

  “That’s the old Odin Temple,” the driver told him. He glanced at Thomas. “You’re not from around here?”

  “Well, yes,” Thomas said. No harm in telling him part of it, he thought. “I’m from the Merignac monastery, though—I grew up there—so I haven’t learned much about the area. They’re cloisters, you know.”

  “Hm,” said the old man, nodding. “I knew they made wine and cheese, but I sure never knew they handled oysters.” Thomas didn’t try to explain. “So what’ll you do in L.A.? Work in one of Broadway missions?”

  “No,” said Thomas carelessly. “I figure I’ll wander down to San Pedro and sign aboard a tramp steamer. See a bit of the world.” He’d given his situation some thought, and this seemed the wisest course.

  They were well into Hollywood by now, and Thomas could see the crazily leaning roofs of houses sticking up like fantastic hats above the freeway rail. Barking dogs and screaming children could be heard from time to time, and rickety wooden stands had been set up along the edge of the freeway, selling everything from cool beer and tacos to horseshoes and axle-grease. Crows flapped lazily by or huddled in secretive groups along the rail.

  “Getting into civilization now,” the driver observed. “A tramp steamer, eh? Good job for a young man, if you’re tough. I was a deck hand on the Humboldt Queen back in—Jesus—forty-seven, I guess, when Randall Dowling was wiping out the Carmel pirates. Wild times, I tell you.”

  Thomas would have liked to hear more, but the old man had lapsed into silence. “What brings you and your guns into L.A.?” he asked.

  “Oh, I sell ’em to the city government,” the driver said. “Mayor Pelias wants every one of his android cops to carry a real firearm, not just the traditional sword-and-stick. He’s the gunsmith’s patron saint.”

  “Android cops?” Thomas asked. “What do you mean?”

  “They didn’t tell you much in that monastery, did they?”

  The traffic—bicycles, rickshaws and many horse-drawn carts—had grown fairly thick, and suddenly broke into a disordered rout for the right-hand lane when someone began blowing strident blasts through a horn somewhere behind them. A hundred feet up the road a mounted merchant attempted to vault his panicky horse right over a slow-moving rickshaw, and a crew of roadside laborers had to rush in and clear away the wreckage and moaning bodies, and cut the throat of the crippled horse.

  “What in hell is going on?” Thomas cried. “Why’s everybody moving over?

  “Hear that horn?” the driver asked as he calmly worked his cart in between two beer wagons and set the hand brake. “That means a gas-car’s coming.”

  The blaap, blaap, blaap of the horn was very loud now. Thomas could see nothing to the rear because of the tall beer truck, and kept his eyes on the empty left lane.

  All at once it had appeared and sped past, and the racket of the horn was slowly diminishing ahead. Thomas had got only a quick glimpse of a big, blue-painted metal body, on thick rubber wheels, carrying a driver in the front, a passenger in the rear and a red-faced man in a makeshift chair on the roof, blowing like a maniac into a long brass trumpet.

  “Holy Mother of God,” said Thomas in an awed voice. “What did you say that was? A lascar?”

  “Gas-car,” the driver corrected, amused to see Thomas so impressed by it. “That’ll be some city official, probably Albers from Toluca Lake. An emergency in town, I guess.”

  Traffic was slowly untangling itself and moving on now, and Thomas sat back thoughtfully. “Tell me about these android cops,” he said.

  “Oh yeah.” They were passing under the Sunset Boulevard bridge now, and Thomas stared curiously at the beggars in its shade who were calling to passing vehicles and coughing theatrically or waving crippled limbs to excite pity. “A few years ago,” the driver said, “Mayor Pelias decided that his police force was no good. He was pa
ying them a lot, but nothing was getting done, you know? So he started brewing androids and using them on the police force. He caught a lot of criticism for it at the time—androids had only been used for roadwork and construction before that, and everybody said they weren’t near smart enough to be cops. But some scientist figured out how to implant a little box they call a PADMU in the androids’ heads, and it lets ’em think and do things almost as well as a human cop, and more reliable. So pretty soon he converted entirely to android. Saves a whole lot of money, ’cause androids are cheap to produce in quantity, and they don’t need a salary, and they eat grass and hay like cows.” The old man laughed. “You should see them grazing. A whole field full of naked guys on their hands and knees, eating grass.”

  “Wow,” Thomas said. He was quiet for the rest of the ride, wondering what sort of world it was for which he’d traded the quiet halls and familiar disciplines of the Merignac monastery.

  Just inside the high city wall they pulled over to let a Customs officer check the cargo for contraband liquor (“Fusel oil in the Oregon vodka,” the officer explained), and Thomas hopped down from the bench and walked around to the driver’s side.

  “Thanks for the lift,” he told him. “It would have taken me till noon to get here on foot.”

  “Yeah, it would have,” the old man agreed. “What’s your name, anyhow?”

  “Thomas.”

  “Well, Thomas, I’m John St. Coutras.” He stuck out his hand, and Thomas stepped up on the rear brake pedal and extended his own hand to St. Coutras. Immediately there was a deep boom, the cart lurched, the horse neighed and reared and the Customs officer dropped his clipboard. A cloud of raspy gray smoke hung in the air, and in the ensuing silence Thomas could hear bits of stone pattering to the pavement on the other side of the courtyard.