Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust

by Tim Powers

  Spencer angled his way into the room, a steaming bowl and a bottle clutched in one hand, three glasses in the other, and a folding table wedged under his arm.

  “Jacques,” Gladhand pronounced it jay-queez, “meet the new Touchstone.”

  Spencer set up the table and put the soup, bottle and glasses on it. “By God,” he said, handing Thomas a spoon he’d carried in his pocket, “it’s good to have you aboard.”

  “Thank you,” smiled Thomas, taking the spoon with as formal a bow as he could manage.

  Gladhand leaned forward and poured an inch of the brandy into each glass. “Any business at all today, Spencer?”

  “No. The welfare board was locked and guarded, the permit bureau never opened their gates, the employment office was the same way, and even the breadlines were gone.” He sat down on a box and sipped the cognac. “I’ll try it tomorrow, early. It can’t stay this way for long.”

  “What do you do, Spencer?” Thomas asked, stirring his hot chicken broth to cool it off.

  “I hold places in lines.” Seeing Thomas’ puzzled look, he went on. “Hand-outs, jobs, housing, medicine… you have to wait in long lines for those things nowadays. I have a friend who does clerical work for the police—she’s human, let me add, not an android—and she tells me in advance what’s being given out, and where. I get there early, let the line get to be about three blocks long, and then sell my place to the highest bidder. The people in the tail end of the line know whatever it is will be gone before they get to it, see, so they walk up and down the column, offering to buy places.”

  “Don’t the people around you undersell you sometimes?”

  “Not often. They’re in line because they need whatever’s being given away, see? They can’t afford to lose their places.” He grinned at Thomas over the rim of his glass. “You want to come with me tomorrow? The prices should be goddamn high by then, and if we have two places to sell, we could make enough to buy a fancy dinner somewhere. I’ll even dig up a couple of girls to impress. How’s that sound?”

  Thomas, to his horror, felt his face get hot and realized he was blushing. He covered it by lowering his head and busying himself with his soup. “Sounds good to me,” he muttered. “Fine soup, this.” Until today the only female humans he’d seen had been a handful of haggard old nuns who did the laundry at the monastery, and the prospect of impressing a couple of girls filled him with a kind of excited terror.

  “Good!” Spencer hopped up and Gladhand winced to see the young man toss off his brandy in one gulp. “I’ll amble over to Evelyn’s place, then, and get the scoop on where the lines will be. See you tomorrow, early.”

  Thomas nodded and Spencer was gone.

  Gladhand sat back in his chair with a long sigh. “Stick by Spencer,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “He acts crazy sometimes, but he won’t ditch you and he knows this city better than… he knows it very well.” He carefully pinched out his cigar with two fingers and put it in his shirt pocket. “Don’t go outside by yourself, at least for a while. The police would probably take interest in someone with a gun-shot wound, and there’s plenty worse than the police out there. Wait’ll you know your way around a bit more.” Thomas nodded. “Finish your brandy, now, I haven’t got all night to spend down here.”

  Thomas drained the last trickle of it. “That’s nice,” he breathed when he’d swallowed it.

  “You like that, do you?”

  “Yes sir. Hennessey, isn’t it?”

  Gladhand stared at him. “Yes,” he said. “And how is it that you’ve acquired a taste for Hennessey?”

  “The Merignac monastery had a very well-stocked cellar,” Thomas explained.

  “I see.” Gladhand reached down and picked up his crutches. “Just shove your table over there when you finish,” he said. “That couch you’re sitting on will, I’ve been assured, turn into a bed if you pull this out. Whether it does or not, there are blankets and a pillow here. Try to remember to put the lantern out before you turn in.”

  “Aye aye.”

  “See you tomorrow.” Gladhand levered his body erect, picked up the bottle and clumped out of the room. Thomas listened until he could no longer hear the theatre manager’s progress, and then set to work on the soup.

  The bird-creature kept pulling itself clear, leaving Thomas with the weary, finger-cramping job of reeling it in still another time. He couldn’t remember why he had to catch it, but he knew it was desperately important that he do so, and becoming mote urgent with every passing second. He suspected that the creatures face was changing, but he couldn’t be certain since by the time he pulled the thing near enough to look at, he had invariably forgotten what it had looked like the time before. It was coming closer again, now, unwillingly, tugging harder than ever. Its face was obscured by the thrashing wings, but after a moment they became transparent and blurred away, and Thomas was able to see clearly.

  It was a girl. Her face was white as Jack cheese, and huge, wide as a sail and rippling as if it were under running water. The eyes were empty black holes, and the mouth, which was slowly spreading open, was an infinitely wide window upon a cold universe of vacuum.

  Thomas withdrew convulsively, opened his eyes by sheer rejection of sleep. He was trembling and afraid to move, but aware that he was lying on a couch, and that he’d been dreaming. After a while he remembered where he was, and the musty stale smells, the odor of old dust, ceased to bother him.

  When Spencer shook him awake, the first gray light of dawn was slanting in through ventilation grates set high in the walls.

  “Here’s some clothes,” Spencer said quietly. “Everybody else is still asleep, so don’t knock anything over.”

  Thomas nodded and began groggily struggling into the jeans, flannel shirt and rope-soled shoes. “I smell coffee,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, here.” Spencer handed him a steaming cup and he sipped at it until he could think clearly. “Not bad,” he said.

  “I put a little rum in it. Now come on, the police are going to dispense ration numbers today from Pershing Square. Sequentially, so the early birds get the low numbers.”

  Thomas stood up and finished the warm coffee in one long gulp. “What’s so great about low numbers?”

  “Well, the city has only got so much credit, see.” Spencer fitted a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. “The low numbers are sure to be covered, but a shopkeeper would be real doubtful about accepting a ration ticket if the number was more than, say, five hundred.” He snapped a match alight with his thumbnail, grinned proudly, and waved the flame under the cigarette. “Let’s go,” he said. “The L.A. Greeter comes out in twenty minutes, and this ration number business is going to be on the front page. In half an hour Pershing Square will look like Hell’s courtyard on the Day of Judgment.”

  The stately old Biltmore Hotel stood aloof over the milling herds of people that choked Pershing Square. The midmorning sun had begun to dry the grass, and a lot of people were sitting down, some under little tents made of the blankets they’d been wrapped in when they had arrived, early in the chilly morning.

  The people in the first two hundred feet of the line, on the east side of the square, weren’t sitting, though; they were on their feet and tense, ready to repel the frequent attacks of desperate late-comers. There had, hours earlier, been a few old and crippled people in the front section of the line, but they had long since been forcibly weeded out.

  “I don’t like this,” Spencer muttered to Thomas. “I’m afraid we might just have to duck out of here and go home.”

  “Why?” Thomas was astonished. “We’re numbers fifty-six and -seven, for God’s sake! And we’ve had to fight off people to keep these places.”

  “Shh. That’s just it. They’re trying to take our places instead of buy them. I’m afraid if we offer to sell out we’ll be killed in the… ensuing stampede.” He lit a cigarette, puffed on it once, and flung it to the ground. “Look at that crowd back there. I know they’re going to rush us aga
in.”

  Thomas looked back nervously. Many of the people on the grass were standing now, and looking at the front of the line. “Yeah,” he agreed. “And a lot of them have sticks.”

  A high-pitched screech grated out of the loudspeakers mounted on the stucco walls of the Welfare Dispensation Building, followed by a voice made tinny by amplification: “Ten o’clock news. Ten o’clock news. Although Mayor Pelias has not yet recovered from the stroke he suffered a little more than forty-eight hours ago, his physicians are optimistic about his chances of a full recovery. The search for the would-be assassins who planted bombs in his chambers continues round the clock, and police chief Tabasco is confident that the… malfeasors will be apprehended within twenty-four hours.” The speakers clicked off with a snap that echoed across the square.

  “The guy’s name is Tabasco?” Thomas asked, incredulous.

  “What?” Spencer turned to him impatiently. “Yes. Tabasco. A lot of times they name androids after kinds of food and drink. From the old days, when they tried to breed ’em for food. Shut up, now, this is looking bad.”

  A large group of men was walking leisurely toward the front of the line. They all carried sticks, and Thomas remembered the android he’d seen beaten yesterday. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered to Spencer. The other people in line shifted uncertainly and began picking up rocks.

  Spencer nodded tensely. “In a second,” he said. “…now.” He grabbed Thomas’ arm and bolted out of the line, running toward the south side of the square. The men with sticks took that as a signal, and charged; immediately the air was rent by yells and the defenders of the line sent a hail of hard-flung stones into the ranks of the attackers. Nearly everyone in the square began to run toward the fighting, hoping to be able to improve their positions in the churning mob that could no longer be called a line.

  Spencer and Thomas skirted the fighting and managed to dodge and duck their way across the lawn to the sidewalk of Sixth Street, where they paused.

  “This is incredible,” Spencer panted, looking back. “I’ve seen rough lines before, but this…” He shook his head. “There’ll be people killed.”

  “Holy Mother of God,” Thomas muttered, “look at that.” He pointed west, at a troop of police that were trotting in formation north on Olive, blocking off the western edge of the square. They all carried rifles at the ready.

  Spencer drew in his breath sharply between clenched teeth. “We can’t rest yet,” he hissed. “Come on.” He dragged Thomas across Sixth Street, waving and nodding to the carts they held up, and then both of them ducked behind the solid brick shoulder of a bank.

  The rattle and pop of gunfire broke out as Spencer was scurrying up a fire-escape ladder mounted on the bank’s alley-side wall. Thomas followed him, taking the rusty rungs as quickly as he could, although his wound was stinging and his lungs felt ready to shut down entirely. If we don’t stop to rest very soon, he thought, I’m going to pass out.

  To his relief Spencer crawled out onto the lowest of the fire-escape balconies that faced Sixth, and a few moments later both of them lay panting on the close-set bars, watching the chaos in the square.

  The android police had not moved in; they simply stood in an orderly line along the Olive Street sidewalk and fired volley after volley into the rapidly thinning crowd. At first a few people walked toward the police, their hands raised, but they were quickly chopped down by the unflagging spray of bullets, and no one followed their example.

  People clattered past beneath Thomas, shouting with panic and rage, and he could see, to the north, a similar rout surging east on Fifth. In a few minutes the square was emptied, though the receding tide had left dozens of sprawled figures littered across the green lawn. A horn was sounded, and the firing ceased immediately. The fog of white smoke that hung over the western edge of the square began to drift away on the wind.

  “Don’t move until they’re gone,” whispered Spencer. There were tears in his eyes, and he wiped them impatiently on his sleeve. Thomas simply stared between the iron bars of the railing at the square below, trying desperately to explain to himself how and why this had happened. There must be a reason, he kept thinking. There must be.

  The police unhurriedly slung their rifles over their shoulders, regrouped in the empty street and marched away south in a jogging step. When the echoes of their boots on the asphalt had died away, Spencer stood up.

  “Let’s go,” he said. He leaned down and shook Thomas’ shoulder. “Let’s go. We’re already running on luck—we can’t afford to push it by hanging around.”

  Thomas nodded and got to his feet, and they swung back down the ladder to the pavement. Scattered moans and yells from the square told of a few whose wounds were not immediately fatal; and some of the people who had fled were beginning to peer fearfully from behind nearby buildings to be sure the police had really left.

  “Where to?” Thomas asked, looking nervously up and down the sidewalk. His nostrils flared at the acrid smell of gunpowder, which hitherto he’d only associated with fireworks the monks had shot off on holy days and Easter.

  “Back to the Bellamy,” Spencer answered. “But first let’s go visit Evelyn. I want to find out more about this ration number give-away.”

  “I thought you said she works at the police station…?”

  “Yeah, she does. We’ll have lunch with her somewhere. Don’t worry,” he added, seeing Thomas’ worried look, “they’re not going to shoot us just for walking into the station house.”

  “Yeah? Yesterday I’ll bet you wouldn’t have thought they’d shoot us for standing in Pershing Square.”

  “Well, that’s true. But twice in one day would be too outrageous. Come on—aren’t you getting hungry?”

  Thomas glanced at the bodies lying on the grass across the street, their collars and skirt-ends flapping in the breeze. “I… don’t know,” he said.

  “Don’t look at them, goddammit!” Spencer rasped. “You know what happened, so don’t keep looking at it. Now let’s go.”

  Thomas nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Sorry.”

  They had been walking for several blocks with pawnshops, vegetable stands and bars to their right and a high, sturdy wooden fence to their left. Bright new barbed wire glittered along the top of it.

  “What is this, anyway?” asked Thomas quietly, jerking his thumb toward the fence.

  “Grazing land,” Spencer answered. “Extends east to San Pedro Street, north to Olympic and south to Pico. And this here, Main, is the western edge.”

  “What do they graze th—” Thomas began, and then remembered St. Coutras’ words of the day before. “Not…police?” he whispered.

  Spencer nodded.

  Thomas tried to imagine hundreds of policemen, stark naked, cropping grass on their hands and knees. Do they wear their caps? he wondered. Now that would be a truly weird sight—the sort of things nightmares are made of.

  “Do they wear their—” Thomas suddenly choked on suppressed laughter.

  “What?”

  “Their…hats!” Thomas gasped, and whispered, “Do they wear their hats when they’re grazing?”

  “Christ, no,” Spencer said. His face twitched between impatience and amusement.

  “It’d be a… hell of a spectacle,” Thomas said carefully. “A million naked guys in policemen’s hats, eating grass.” Spencer snickered in spite of himself. “The city could sell tickets, repair its credit. People would love it.” He did an imitation of a citizen loving it.

  In a moment both young men were laughing uncontrollably, tears running down their cheeks. A few people walking by on the opposite sidewalk gave them contemptuous glances, clearly supposing them to be drunk.

  “Pull… yourself together… for God’s sake,” giggled Spencer. “The goddamn… police station is just around this corner, on Pico.” They straightened up and did their best to assume solemn expressions. Thomas was surprised to find that he felt much more cheerful and confident than he had five minutes a
go—the laughter, childish though it had been, had got rid of the dry, metallic taste of tension in his mouth.

  They rounded the corner and pushed through two swinging doors below a weather-beaten sign that read LOS ANGELES CENTRAL POLICE STATION. Maps and indecipherable documents were tacked up on the walls of the waiting room above the backs of the old tan couches that lined three of the walls. The place smelled of old floor wax.

  “Something I can do for you gents?” enquired an officer behind the counter that stretched across the fourth wall. Thomas looked at him curiously—the officer’s face was placid and unlined, with a somewhat low forehead and a wide jaw.

  “Uh, no thanks,” replied Spencer. “We just want to see someone in the bookkeeping section.”

  “Evelyn Sandoe?” the policeman asked, with a little V of a smile.

  Spencer nodded, his face reddening.

  “Ah, young love!” pronounced the officer, turning away.

  Spencer made a rude gesture at his back. “Come on,” he said to Thomas, and led the way down a hall lit by genuine electric bulbs.

  “He was an android?” Thomas whispered.

  “Sure. Jesus, I hate the way they… fake human feelings.” Spencer shuddered. “I wish they didn’t build them to look like people. What’s wrong with, I don’t know, horses, maybe, or monkeys. It’s just too creepy when they talk and smile.”

  They passed a number of doors. Spencer finally opened one, and they stepped into the room beyond it, and were confronted by ranks of girls at gray metal desks, sorting, stamping and filing papers. Thomas followed Spencer down an aisle and stopped beside him at the desk of a pretty, curly-haired girl in a brown sweater.

  “Hullo, Evelyn,” Spencer said to her. “My friend and I were wondering if you’d care to join us for lunch.”

  She looked up, startled, and then spoke with a casualness that Thomas felt was not genuine. “Spencer! I didn’t expect you. Lunch?” She glanced at the wall clock. “Okay. Doris, I’m clocking out. Cover for me for ten minutes, will you?”