Unable to sleep, he got up finally and looked out the window into the backyard. There was no wind, and the eastern hills were tinted with dawn light. The trail wound upward toward the ridge, empty of rushing shadows. He picked up his pants and shirt from the chair and located his slip-on deck shoes under the edge of the bed. It was too good a morning to sleep in. He’d let Lorna do that. What he would do was clean the pool, then spackle up the pool-house door and get a coat of paint on it. It was suddenly vital to restore order out of the windblown chaos of the last few days. At nine, whatever he was doing, he’d put it all down and cook her breakfast—pancakes with canned corn in them, coffee and juice, maybe fry up some bacon. That was her favorite.
He stepped out into the morning, smelling the cool, oak-scented air off the hills, filling his lungs with it, letting it chase out the ghosts and the cobwebs. Taking the pool net off its hooks, he went to work, skimming dead leaves from the still surface of the water.
21
“IT WAS A CASE OF SOMETHING CALLED HYPO-VALIMIC shock,” Ackroyd said, coming in from the kitchen with a pitcher of lemonade. “That’s what Dr. Stone said. He took one of the pellets out of her spleen. The man’s a day-and-night genius. He drives an automobile with a wooden frame that’s apparently being eaten by termites. Sounds like organ pipes when it gets up to speed.” He set the pitcher down on the table and then picked up two espresso-sized teacups from on top of one of the bookcases, carrying them over to where Bobby and David arranged ranks of tin soldiers on the floor. “These might work as some kind of vehicle,” he said.
“Maybe for the general’s bathtub,” Peter said helpfully.
“The general doesn’t take baths,” Bobby said. “He takes showers. These are alien spacecraft.” He set a plastic alien in each of the cups so that they looked out over the rims.
“I think these kinds of ships are called ‘nosers,’ ” David said. “They set their own course by radio signal, and you put money into them to make them go. I read about them in a book.”
“They only accept gold,” Bobby said. “This mountain is a gold mine, and the aliens want to rob it in order to have enough money to get home again.”
One of the Navajo rugs lay bunched up on the floor, contoured like a wind-eroded mountain. Soldiers aimed rifles over the parapets of gullies and trenches; others lay hidden in the shadows of shallow caves. A company of foot soldiers marched along a high-road that descended toward a village built of playing cards, some of the structures three tiers high. The fireplace bellows lay aimed at the village, two more aliens standing on the wooden handle.
“When we get the soldiers hidden in the village,” David said, “the aliens turn on the hurricane mechanism.”
The door opened and Beth came in, carrying a basket full of feathery-looking weeds. “Anise, nettle tops, watercress, spearmint, and black walnuts,” she announced, holding the basket out. “If we can find a hammer, Peter, maybe you could crack the walnuts.”
“Hammer’s hanging in the front closet,” Mr. Ackroyd said. “I’ll mix up a vinaigrette and put the muffins in the oven.”
“What are we going to eat?” Bobby asked, looking at the stuff in the basket. “How about pizza or something? Peter can drive out and get it.”
“Cheeseburgers!” David said.
Peter looked up hopefully, but Beth was already shaking her head.
“I’ve got sandwich makings,” Mr. Ackroyd said from the kitchen. “How about toasted cheese?”
“Sure.” Bobby turned back to the aliens, getting them set to work the bellows, and David very carefully stood a soldier inside the second-story doorway of a card house.
Across the road the sun shone through the canopy of alder leaves over the creek, illuminating the willows and wild figs and sparkling on the moving water. A cluster of roses bowed in front of the window, dropping snowy petals onto the front porch in a wind that blew softly from the west now, heralding a change of weather. And away off to the north, above the sunlit ridge, scattered white clouds drifted up the afternoon sky.
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For Viki, John and Daniel
And this time,
For the Duncan Family,
Sydnee, Kelsi, Hope, Mark, Pam, and Scott
(and Jake)
10,000 videotapes
900 ducks
8 bottles of Bachelor Bitter
4 pounds of bratwurst
2 canoes
1 barbecue
a carpet of snow on Thanksgiving morning
no earthquakes
Also by James P. Blaylock
The Elfin Series
The Elfin Ship
The Disappearing Dwarf
The Stone Giant
Langdon St Ives
Homunculus*
Lord Kelvin’s Machine*
Other Novels
The Digging Leviathan
Land Of Dreams
The Last Coin
The Paper Grail
The Magic Spectnoindentes
Night Relics
All The Bells On Earth
Winter Tides
The Rainy Season
Knights Of The Cornerstone
Collections
Thirteen Phantasms
In For A Penny
Metamorphosis
* not available as SF Gateway eBooks
James P. Blaylock (1950 - )
James Paul Blaylock was born in Long Beach, California, in 1950, and attended California State University, where he received an MA. He was befriended and mentored by Philip K. Dick, along with his contemporaries K.W. Jeter and Tim Powers, and is regarded – along with Powers and Jeter – as one of the founding fathers of the steampunk movement. Winner of two World Fantasy Awards and a Philip K. Dick Award, he is currently director of the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County High School of the Arts, where Tim Powers is Writer in Residence.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © James P. Blaylock 1994
All rights reserved.
The right of James Blaylock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11765 5
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
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