Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust

by Tim Powers

Gladhand turned on him. “Have you ever observed Pat sniffling and sneezing and wiping her nose? Right, so have I. Tonight she burst in here, panicked by your screaming, and there was brown powder all over her blouse. She wanted to know if I, too, heard the screaming. Deduction: the powder was snoose. Who uses snoose? Besides poor Ben Corwin, I mean?”

  “Androids,” Thomas said reluctantly. “Androids use it.”

  “Pre-cisely. Pat, my boy, is an android—and I should be shot for not figuring it out days ago.”

  Jeff dashed back into the room, panting. “She’s gone, sir. Skooney saw her go out the front door, and Lambert and I looked up and down the street for her—no luck. The androids Rufus said had the place staked out? Not a sign of them. There’s nobody around.”

  “Rufus,” Gladhand rasped, “get a shirt. You’re all three to go out immediately and find Ben Corwin before Pat and her android brothers do. Go! I’ll send some more people out after you to help. It’s a warm night, Rufe—forget the shirt.”

  Lambert and Jeff hoisted Thomas to his feet and the three of them ran down the hall, through the lobby and out into the night.

  They paused on the sidewalk: “Corwin likes to sleep in doorways and on benches,” Jeff said. “Look in places like that. Ask other derelicts, bribe them, rough them up if you have to, but find out if they know where he is. Split up now; I’ll take east. Good luck.”

  Thomas ran south on the Broadway sidewalk, peering into every doorway he passed and receiving horrified stares from other citizens. He spied two hunched figures in the dimness of a barber shop entryway, and he sprinted up to them.

  “Oh Lord,” exclaimed one of them, a frail old man with no teeth, “it’s the Angel of Death.”

  “I’ll let you live,” Thomas panted, “if you tell me where Ben Corwin is.”

  “He moved by here, headin’ south, few hours ago,” said the other squatter, a stout woman in a burlap sack.

  Thomas pounded onward south, shoving people aside in his haste, until he saw, a block ahead, three androids behaving in the same way. They’re on his track, too, he realized; and he admitted to himself now that Gladhand was right—Pat must really be an android. I’m the one who should have caught on, he thought bitterly, I was in love with her.

  He crossed the street and strode on as quickly as he could without drawing the attention of the androids. He was at the Third Street intersection now, and decided to move west. I’ll lose the androids that way, he thought, and who knows? this may be the direction Corwin took.

  This stretch of Third Street was not as well lit as Broadway, and he had to look carefully into each alley and doorway. He passed a number of rough-looking types, and several times expected trouble; but they all seemed fearful of the wild-eyed, gaunt, blood-spattered creature who paused only long enough to ask them if they’d seen Ben Corwin before disappearing once again into the night.

  Twice he had to hide while android police ran past him.

  He followed Third to Flower, which he took north. His legs were trembling, his mouth had a dry, brassy taste and his eyes were having difficulty in focusing. I’m not good for much more of this, he thought. If I don’t find him soon, somebody’s going to have to come find me. He didn’t want to rest, though; he knew there were things in his mind waiting for his attention, things he didn’t want to face.

  Just short of the point where Flower dead-ended against First Street, Thomas glanced into a narrow passageway and saw a stocky figure sitting complacently against the wall. “Excuse me,” Thomas said hoarsely, shambling up to the man, “do you know where I can find Ben Corwin?”

  The old man looked up. “Maybe I do,” he said, “and maybe I don’t. You aren’t the first one to ask me that tonight, neither. A cop was just here.”

  “Oh yeah?” God, they’re quick, Thomas thought.

  “Yeah. I told him nothing. They’re the abominations of Moloch, them cops. Most sinful things in this whole sinful city. I’ll deal with ’em real soon. Would you like a bit of scotch, son? You’re not looking real good.”

  Thomas accepted the proffered bottle gratefully and took a deep sip of the fiery liquor. “I know you,” he said as he handed it back. “You’re the… Lord of Wrath. You gave me scotch to clean my wounds with, a week ago.”

  “Well, damn my eyes,” said the old man wonderingly. “It’s the young monk. What have they done to you now?”

  “They beat me up and shoved me down a chimney,” Thomas told him. “But if I can find Ben Corwin I’ll be okay.”

  “Son,” said the Lord of Wrath warmly, “you’ve come to the right man. I saw Corwin not twenty minutes gone, and he told me he’s gonna spend the night on the Malk Cigars billboard on Fremont Avenue. That’s two blocks to your left, on First up here. You can’t miss it.”

  Thomas leaned down and shook the old man’s hand. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Anything for a friend,” the man answered. “Hey, if you get in any jams—”

  “I’ll tell them you’re a buddy of mine.”

  “Right.”

  It was a huge painting, lit now only by the moon, of a dark-haired young man puffing with exaggerated relish on an immense cigar. There was a round hole cut in the man’s mouth, and Thomas suspected there had once been a machine behind the billboard to send puffs of smoke out through the hole.

  Thomas stared up at the narrow, railed scaffold that ran along the bottom edge of the billboard. Was there anybody up there? Yes, by God, Thomas thought excitedly—if that isn’t an arm dangling from the far side, I’ll eat my shorts.

  After glancing quickly up and down Fremont Avenue to be sure he was not being observed, Thomas ran across the weedy lot to the huge sign’s base. One of its old wooden legs had an iron ladder bolted to it, and Thomas swarmed up it energetically, his fatigue temporarily forgotten. The eternal warm wind was cool for him, drying the blood and sweat on his chest and face.

  He poked his head over the top of the ladder; at the far end of the scaffold lay a heap of old fabric that would resemble a man only to someone expecting to find a man there. “Ben?” Thomas said, standing up cautiously on the swaying platform. “Hey, Ben, it’s me. Rufus, from the theatre.” He edged his way over to the sprawled figure, bent down and shook the old man by the shoulder. “Wake up, Ben! I need your sandals.”

  The old man didn’t move, so Thomas carefully rolled him over onto his back. The face was black with dried blood, although the old irregular teeth were bared in a beatific smile.

  Oh no, thought Thomas with a chill of disappointment, they’ve beaten me to him. He crouched over the body and pulled the trailing coat away from the dead beggar’s legs—and saw the sandals, his own old sandals, still strapped to the bony, discolored feet. He wrenched the left sandal off, and sat back against the sign with a deep sigh of relief when he saw the mud-crusted wire still twisted onto the brittle leather straps. He carefully untwisted it and held it in his palm. A damned little scrap of metal, he thought—barely fit for repairing sandals—but it contains something that powerful men have killed for.

  He reached into his pocket for a match, but the pocket was empty. So, he found, were the other three. What do I do now, he thought—eat it? I guess I’ll just take it back to Gladhand in my pocket.

  He looked again at old Corwin, and noticed now the dark powder that covered his hands and parts of his face. No mystery about what finished him, Thomas thought grimly.

  He swung back down the ladder to the ground, strode across the dirt to the pavement and began walking south. He put his hands in his pockets and sauntered along causally, trying now to be inconspicuous.

  Three androids were trotting up the sidewalk toward him, their expressionless faces lit at intervals by the streetlamps they passed. Do they know who I am? he wondered, suddenly panicked. My God, I’ve got the wire in my pocket; the most cursory search will reveal it. Why didn’t I just fling it down a sewer when I had the chance? He closed his fist on the wire. If they grab me I’ll at least throw it as far as I can,
he thought.

  He tensed, blinking against the sweat from his forehead, as the three ran the last hundred feet toward him and swiveled their reptilian eyes at him; then they were past, their boots tapping the pavement in unison as they sprinted away to the north.

  Weak with relief, Thomas leaned against the nearest wall and allowed himself to breathe deeply. After a moment he took the wire out of his pocket, looked up and down the deserted street, and then wrapped it in an old bubble gum wrapper from the gutter and shoved it into the space between two bricks in the wall, where the loss of a chunk of mortar had left a small but deep hole.

  Feeling much freer, he resumed his walk back to the Bellamy, careless now of who might notice him. As he turned left from Fremont onto Second, a two-horse wagon rattled out from under the freeway bridge, and rocked away east on Second after a man in the back flung a bundle of papers onto the far sidewalk. Thomas crossed the street to investigate, and found that it was a wired-together stack of fifty copies of the Saturday morning L.A. Greeter.

  Thomas thoughtfully untied the baling-wire from around the papers and broke off a three-inch length by bending it rapidly back and forth. He put it in his pocket, took a copy of the paper and resumed his eastward course.

  Second Street passed beneath a number of concrete-buttressed bridges between Flower and Broadway, and out of the darkness beneath one of them came a voice.

  “Don’t jump around, Rufus,” it said wearily. “I’ve got a .357 Magnum aimed at your belly.”

  Thomas stopped. “You don’t have to call me Rufus anymore, Pat,” he said.

  “I’ve got used to it,” she answered, stepping forward so that her face was dimly dry-brushed in moonlight. “You’re heading back toward the Bellamy,” she observed. “You’ve got the wire?”

  “Yes,” Thomas said. “Are you ready to kill me for it?”

  “I’d truly rather not,” she said, after a pause. “But yes, I’m ready to do that.”

  “I seem to remember you saying you loved me. I guess you can’t hold an android to a statement like that, though.”

  She sighed. “There is such a thing as generic loyalty, Rufus. Give me the wire and stop talking.”

  He took the bit of baling wire out of his pocket and stepped forward. “Hold out your hand,” he said. She did, and he slowly twisted the wire around her third finger. “With this memory bank I thee wed.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” she snapped, pulling her hand away. Incredibly, there seemed to be tears in her voice. “Don’t be species-chauvinistic. You think we’re no more capable of feeling emotions than a… jack-in-the-box, don’t you? Don’t move, I’m not kidding about this gun. Listen, the police have had suspicions about Gladhand’s troupe for weeks; I was sent to audition so that I could keep an eye on things. I… damn it, Rufus, I fell in love with you before Gladhand told me about the underground activities—so I never reported them. The police still don’t know the Bellamy Theatre is the headquarters of the resistance underground. But then you told me you were this Thomas fugitive, and that was too much. To have kept quiet about that would have been to betray my whole species. And they wouldn’t have killed you, anyway—it was essential that they take you alive, so they could find out where you put… this.” She raised her hand.

  “Well,” Thomas said, “you’ve got it now.”

  “Yes. Goodbye, Rufus. I… I’m going to give up police work. I’m just not cut out for it.”

  “You do all right.”

  “I don’t like the work, though. As soon as I can get out of this city I’m going to go live in Needles.”

  “Needles? Why Needles?”

  “Why not Needles?” She turned away and disappeared silently into the shadows.

  A wagon was parked in front of the Bellamy Theatre, and Gladhand, sitting on the driver’s bench, made impatient hurry-up gestures when he saw Thomas approaching.

  “We’re leaving,” the theatre manager said. “Pat must have told them about our operations here, so I’ve moved everybody—”

  “She didn’t tell them,” Thomas interrupted. “I just saw her, and she said she never told them about it—only about me being the celebrated monk. She was in love with me, see.”

  Gladhand paused. “When did you see her?”

  “Not five minutes ago.”

  Jeff and Lambert came out of the theatre and hopped up onto the wagon. “Hi, Rufus,” Lambert said. “You didn’t find Corwin, did you?”

  “Yes,” Thomas said. “I took the wire and hid it, since I didn’t have a match. And I took a piece of wire from a bundle of newspapers—” he waved his newspaper, “—and gave it to Pat. She thinks it’s the real thing.”

  They all stared at him for a moment, and then Gladhand laughed softly. “All, it seems, is not lost,” he said. “They probably won’t find out for… oh, an hour or so that the wire Pat has is a fake.” He turned to Jeff and Lambert. “We’ve got time to take the heavy stuff after all. Load this cart and the old car out back. Rufus will help. Get moving, now, this can only be a temporary extension.”

  Thomas followed the two young men downstairs into the theatre basement. “All these crates,” Jeff said, pointing to a low wall of wooden boxes. “I think we can each carry one.”

  Thomas swung one up onto his shoulder and winced at its weight. “What… are these?” he gasped.

  “Bombs,” Jeff told him. “And ammunition for a couple of cannons Gladhand’s got hidden somewhere. We took all the guns in the first load, when we evacuated everybody, and we figured we’d have to leave all this behind.” He pointed to a length of gray twine that ran from under the crates across the floor and up the stairs. “We were going to blow it all up when we left. It almost made poor old Gladhand cry, to think of losing the Bellamy Theatre.”

  When they were each hunched under a box they stumbled and cursed their way upstairs, and after twenty minutes and five weary loads they’d filled the wagon.

  “Okay,” Gladhand said. “I’ll move out. You guys fill the car and follow. Are they all going to fit?”

  Jeff brushed sweat-damp hair out of his face. “Yeah,” he said. “They’ll all fit.”

  “Okay. You know the way—see you in about an hour. Go, horse.” He flicked the reins and the wagon lurched into motion.

  When they had nearly filled the car and were about to shoulder the final boxes, Thomas went to take a last look at his old couch-bed. “I feel like I’ve lived here for a long time,” he remarked to Lambert. “The first night I—where’s that head? The big stone head that used to be on this shelf?”

  “Gladhand took it along in the first load,” Jeff said, “when we moved everybody out. Come on, now, grab a box and let’s get out of here.”

  They hauled the last crates upstairs, down the hall, out the back door and across the dark courtyard to the car. They dumped them in the trunk and slammed the rusty lid.

  “Okay, hop in,” Jeff said, closing the driver’s door and whistling to the horse. “Wait a minute—what’s that?” he pointed ahead.

  “It’s… a TV antenna with a shirt tied onto it,” Lambert said.

  “Well, get it out of the way.” When Lambert had flung the thing aside and got back into the car, Jeff snapped the reins and angled the car out of the alley onto Broadway. Thomas sat back in his seat and closed his eyes, enjoying the cooling flow of air across his face.

  When the car slewed messily to a halt, the wheels roaring dully on gravel, Thomas stared curiously at the building they’d arrived at; it was long and low, with the corrugated metal under-roof exposed in patches from which the old decorative shingles had fallen away. Plywood flats were nailed up over every window. A tall metal sign perched precariously on the roof, but it had at one time and another been painted with so many businesses’ names that nothing was legible on it.

  “What is this attractive place?” Thomas asked.

  “It was a pizza parlor not too long ago,” Jeff told him. “Gladhand bought it a year ago, apparently, as a hidey-hole.�
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  “Gladhand certainly seems to have money,” Thomas observed.

  “That’s true,” Jeff agreed. “He must be independently wealthy—he sure didn’t get a lot of money from the Bellamy box-office.” He guided the dubious horse around the southern end of the old structure and soon the car was hidden from anyone who might pass by on the road. As he got out of the car Thomas noticed the cart Gladhand had left in parked a dozen feet away.

  Gladhand was perched on a chair in the dining hall when they entered. The troupe of actors, about twenty in all, were sprawled about on the tables and benches: most of them were asleep, pillowed on bundles of spare clothing, but a few were sitting up and smoking or talking quietly.

  “We could use some help getting this stuff in here,” Jeff said.

  “Right,” the theatre manager said. “Skooney, wake up Terry and Mike.”

  In a moment they were joined by two big, sleepy young men Thomas had never seen, and with their help the car was unloaded in one trip.

  “We’ll have a council of war in the morning,” Gladhand said when the crates had been stowed with the stacks of others that were already in the kitchen. “You guys have some bourbon—over there—and get some sleep.”

  “Is there a bathroom?” Thomas asked. “I could do with a shower.”

  “There’s a bathroom, but no tub or shower. See what you can do with some wet paper towels.”

  Thomas followed Gladhand’s pointing finger and found a dark little room with a sink in it. There weren’t any paper towels, but there were short curtains in the window, and he tore one of these down, soaked it in cold water and wiped most of the soot and dried blood off himself. He wiped the dust off the mirror while he was at it, but the room was too dim for him to see what he looked like. Probably just as well, he decided.

  He shambled back into the dining hall and, after filling a paper cup with bourbon, sat down heavily beside Skooney.

  “Hello, Rufus,” she said quietly. “I hear you’ve had a rough day.”

  He took a long pull at the whiskey. “True,” he said. “Rough.”

  “Why don’t you get some sleep?”