Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust

by Tim Powers

  “You stepped on the rear brake pedal, I believe,” St. Coutras said.

  “Uh… yes.” They completed the delayed handshake. Smoke, Thomas noticed, was dribbling upward from the hole in the passenger’s back-rest. “That’s how you shoot it, huh?”

  St. Coutras nodded.

  “What the hell have you got? A cannon?” brayed the Customs man, who had by this time found his voice. “You bastards aware that shooting firearms inside the walls is a felony? Hah? Jesus, I’ll—”

  “It was an accidental discharge,” St. Coutras explained calmly, “which is just a misdemeanor. But here,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “let me pay for the wall repair.” He handed the officer several coins.

  “Well, all right, then,” the man muttered, shambling back to his little plywood office. “Can’t have that sort of thing, you know; I’ll let you off with a warning this time…”

  “Gee, I’m sorry about that,” Thomas said. “I’d pay you back, but—”

  “Forget it, Thomas. It’s good community relations to give Customs men money.”

  “Oh. Well… thanks again for the ride.” Thomas waved, and then walked through an arch out of the shadowed courtyard into the full sunlight of Western Avenue.

  CHAPTER 2

  A Day in the City

  THE WAITER, AFTER GIVING Thomas a long, doubtful look, led him down the aisle to a narrow booth at the back of the restaurant.

  “There you are, sir,” he said. “Would you care for coffee?”

  “Yes,” Thomas said, “and a ham and swiss cheese and bell pepper omelette, and sourdough toast, and fried potatoes with onions, and a big glass of very cold beer.”

  The waiter slowly wrote it all down on a pad and then stared at Thomas, plainly doubtful about the young man’s finances, but intimidated by the monk’s robe.

  “I can afford it,” said Thomas haughtily. He waved the man away.

  As soon as the waiter walked off Thomas dipped into his water glass the first finger of his left hand, which he had gashed deeply the night before. He wiped the dried blood off with his napkin. Looks all right, he decided. It’ll leave a scar, but I guess it’s clean.

  Most of the restaurant’s booths were empty, which struck Thomas as an odd state of affairs at roughly eight o’clock in the morning on such a nice day. I hope there’s nothing wrong with the food, he thought.

  A tiny, leaded-glass window was set in the wall next to his left ear, and he hunched around in his seat to be able to see outside. There was a congested line of vehicles moving north on Western; out of the city, Thomas realized. The carts all seemed to be filled with chairs and mattresses, and he saw men pulling several of them, strapped into harnesses that were meant for horses. A policeman was walking down the line, and the people in the carts were pulling sheaves of papers from their pockets and letting him look at them. Sometimes he would keep the papers and make some person move his cart out of the line and return into the city. Thomas remembered that St. Coutras had said all the cops were androids, and he tried to look more closely at this one, but the wavy window glass prevented him from seeing anything clearly,

  Six young men were walking rapidly up the Western sidewalk, holding long sticks. They sprinted the last hundred feet to the policeman and clubbed him to the ground from behind. For a full twenty seconds they crouched above the uniformed body, raining savage, full-arm blows; then they ran away in different directions. Thomas had expected the people in the traffic line to say or do something, but they had just watched the beating disinterestedly. After a few minutes another policeman appeared and began calmly checking their papers.

  Thomas turned back to his table, frowning and upset. Do androids feel pain? he wondered. The replacement cop didn’t seem bothered by his predecessor’s fate, Thomas thought—why should I be? Haven’t I got enough problems without having to worry about the well-being of some creature that was brewed in a vat?

  At that moment his beer arrived, followed closely by the food he’d ordered. He felt a little queasy about eating until he took a long sip of the cold beer, and then his hunger returned in force. He wolfed the food and washed it down with another glass of beer.

  When he finished he had forgotten the unfortunate android and was leaning back, feeling comfortable and wondering whether or not to buy a cigar. After a while the waiter appeared.

  “What do I owe you?” asked Thomas, reaching into his pocket.

  “Forty solis.”

  Thomas smiled. “No, really.”

  “Forty solis,” the waiter repeated slowly, moving to block Thomas’ exit from the booth.

  Thomas’ smile disappeared. “Forty solis for one breakfast?” he gasped. “Since when? Brother William told me you can get a good dinner for ten.”

  “Brother William hasn’t been to town for a while, apparently,” the waiter growled. “The Los Angeles soli has been dropping ever since last summer.” He grabbed Thomas by the collar. “Listen, brother—if you are a monk, which I doubt; where’s your rosary?—you’re lucky we’ll take solis at all, after Thursday morning. Most shops are closed, won’t take any currency till they see where it stands. Now trot out forty solis or we’ll be using your lousy hide to wash dishes with tonight.”

  “Oh, all right then!” Thomas said indignantly, pushing the waiter’s arm away. “Here.” He reached into his pocket again with his right hand, and with his left picked up his water glass and splashed its contents into the waiter’s face. While the man’s eyes were closed Thomas punched him in the stomach and then grabbed him by the hair and pulled his dripping face down hard onto his breakfast plate. Bits of egg flew, and the waiter yelled in pain.

  Thomas shoved him aside and dashed up the aisle. The cashier, a blond girl in a frilly apron, stepped into his path but then stepped back again when he roared fiercely and waved his arms at her.

  His escape looked good until two burly, unshaven men in stained T-shirts and aprons appeared from the kitchen and stood in front of the door. “Grab the bastard!” yelled the waiter, who, blood running down his chin, now advanced on Thomas from behind.

  “Oh, Jesus,” moaned Thomas in fright.

  A well-to-do family filled a booth by a window nearby; there was an older gentleman, his stocky wife, three children and, under the table, a poodle in a powder-blue dog sweater. They all watched Thomas with polite interest, as if he’d just announced that he was going to do a few juggling tricks.

  “I’m sorry, I really am,” Thomas yelled, and picked up their dog with both hands, raised it over his head and pitched it through the window. Taking a flying leap and setting his sandaled foot firmly in a plate of sausages on their table, he dove head-first through the jagged-edged casement. When he rolled to his feet on the glass-strewn sidewalk outside he saw the dog huddled against the wall, terrified but apparently saved from injury by the idiotic sweater.

  “Your dog’s okay!” Thomas yelled back through the window. He felt bad about having done that. The two big men in aprons rounded the corner of the building, one armed with a long fork and the other with a spatula. Thomas turned and ran down the block, jogging sharply right on a street called Sierra Vista and then left into a nameless alley. It led him eventually to another big street, and he followed it south, only walking briskly now that the vengeful cooks had been left far behind.

  Anton Delmotte sipped at his tomato juice and shuddered.

  His boss, sitting across the table from him, looked up. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked unsympathetically. “Did my breakfast disagree with you?”

  “Oh, no, Bob.” Delmotte twisted his wrinkled face into an ingratiating smile. “The breakfast was tip-top. As always.”

  “Yeah,” Bob grunted absently, returning his attention to the papers before him on the table. “Better than you deserve.”

  Delmotte didn’t answer. He took another deep sip of the red juice and managed to swallow it with no change of expression. When Bob left the room a few minutes before, Delmotte had tiptoed furtively to the
liquor cabinet with the glass of tomato juice, hoping to find some vodka or gin to fortify it with. Bob’s returning footsteps had sounded on the stair before he’d found any, though, and he’d had to make do with peppermint schnapps.

  A short, rat-faced man now leaned in the rear door, his ragged beard and greasy sweatshirt presenting an incongruous contrast with the simple colonial elegance of the dining room. “That kid from Bellflower died during the night,” he said. “I said he was sick. We’ll be lucky if the rest of ’em don’t come down with it.”

  Bob let a long sigh hiss out between his teeth. “Okay,” he said. “Tie him up under the wagon and we’ll cut him loose once we get moving. He’s not still in with the others, is he?”

  “No, boss. I’ve got him under a couple of boxes out back.”

  “Good. Get the rest of them in the wagon. We’ll be moving out at eleven.” The man nodded and withdrew. Bob turned to Delmotte, who had drained the tomato juice. “You swore that kid was okay,” he said. “Not that I should ever take your word for anything.”

  “Oh, hell, Bob,” Delmotte protested nervously. “He looked all right. Good muscles, clear eyes. You’d have sworn yourself that it was just a cold.”

  Bob stared at him. “Maybe. But you’re the one that did swear it. And Alvarez ordered fifty, not forty-nine.” He stood up and walked to the window, squinting out at the street. “We leave in about two hours. If you haven’t found a replacement for the Bellflower kid by then, we’re leaving you behind.”

  “Wha…?” Delmotte turned pale. “Leave me behind? You—I couldn’t get out of the city alone, Bob. I’d starve for sure… but you’re just pulling my leg, aren’t you? Hell, yes. You’d never maroon me, not after all these years. You know as well as—”

  “I’m not joking.” Bob still stood at the window, looking out. “I wouldn’t miss you. All you do these days is drink and throw up.” He turned to the old man. “Two hours, Pops. You’d better get busy.” He crossed to the table, picked up his papers and left by the rear door.

  Delmotte, trembling wildly, tottered to the liquor cabinet and, wincing, took two deep swigs of the schnapps; then he went into the kitchen and returned with a pot of hot coffee, which he set on the table. A small, cork-stoppered bottle of clear fluid stood on the bookshelf and he fumbled it open and emptied it into the coffee.

  “Recompense,” he kept muttering. “A cold, cold recompense.”

  He scuttled to the window and peered out, and a crazy spark of hope woke in his rheumy eyes. Back to the bookcase he went, grabbed five volumes at random, and then wrenched open the street door and darted outside.

  As he’d moved deeper into the city, Thomas had been increasingly puzzled by the air of unspecified tension that he felt hanging over the sunlit streets; most shops were closed, a surprising amount of broken furniture and old crockery littered the gutters, and the few people he saw moved in groups of at least two, walking fast and glancing uneasily up and down the boulevard.

  It’s Friday now, Thomas thought. What was it that happened Thursday morning?

  Another fugitive appeared now—an old man, dashing out of a doorway up ahead with a stack of books. Poor man, Thomas thought. All alone, fleeing from whatever it is that everybody’s scared of, trying to hang onto a few treasured books. Even as he watched, the old man stumbled, scattering the books across the sidewalk and into the gutter.

  “Let me help you with those,” Thomas said, running over to him. He picked up the volumes, brushed them off and handed them back to the old man.

  “Thank you, lad, thank you.” he wheezed. “A kind soul in this cold metropolis. Come inside and let me give you some coffee.”

  “No, thanks,” Thomas said, wondering why the old man smelled so overpoweringly of peppermint. “I’ve got to be in San Pedro by sundown, and it’s a long way, I hear.”

  “True, lad, true! So long that ten minutes of good conversation over a cup of coffee won’t matter a bit.” He put his arm around Thomas’ shoulders and turned him toward the open door.

  “Really,” Thomas protested. “It’s kind of you to offer, and I’m grateful, but I—”

  “All right.” Tears stood in the old man’s eyes. “Go, then. Leave me to the dusty loneliness from which suicide is the only exit. I… I want you to keep these books. They’re all I own in the world, but—”

  “Wait a minute,” Thomas said, bewildered. “Don’t do that. I’ll have a cup of coffee with you, how’s that? I’ll have two.”

  “Bless your heart, lad.”

  Delmotte led the ragged young man inside, reflecting, even in this tense moment, how much the lad resembled his long-dead son, Jacob. Jacob would never have let Bob treat me this way, he thought.

  “Sit down, son,” he said as jovially as he could, pulling out a chair that faced the door across the table. “Ah, there’s the coffee. Drink up.”

  Thomas sat down reluctantly. “There’s no cups,” he pointed out.

  Delmotte sagged. “What? Oh, yes. You couldn’t drink it right out of the…? I suppose not. Wait there, I’ll fetch a cup.” He went into the kitchen, stopping first at the liquor cabinet to lower the level of the schnapps another inch. “Medicine,” he explained.

  As soon as the old man was gone, Thomas lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed the dark liquid within. It had a sharp, sweet smell.

  Delmotte reappeared, waving a cup proudly. “Here you are, Jacob,” he said.

  “Thomas. Thomas is my name.”

  Delmotte wasn’t listening. He was pouring coffee into the cup and humming softly to himself. “There you are,” he said, pushing the cup toward Thomas.

  “I don’t want any.” Thomas tensed his weary legs for a dash out the door.

  “You’ll drink it, though, won’t you? You’ve always been my obedient son—not like Bob.”

  That does it, Thomas thought. He leaped up and bolted around the table toward the door; but the old man, with surprisingly quick reflexes, sprang from his chair as Thomas rushed past and seized him around the waist.

  “Bob!” Delmotte shrilled. “I got one, I got one!”

  Thoroughly terrified now, Thomas drove his elbow into the old man’s face. Delmotte dropped to the floor and Thomas ran outside and pelted off down the street.

  After a moment Bob stepped out onto the sidewalk, his mouth twisted with impatience and exasperation as he raised a pistol to eye level.

  The bullet tore across Thomas’ right side before he heard the shot, and sheer astonishment made him lose his footing and fall to his hands and knees on the pavement. The second shot, with a sound like a muted bell, punched a hole in a pawnbroker’s sign over his head.

  “Help, I’m being murdered!” he yelled as he scuttled up the sidewalk on all fours, like a dog. Another bullet zipped past his ear, and then he was around the corner. He got to his feet, breathed deeply for a few seconds and then trotted away down another street that stretched south.

  After a block or two he noticed that blood was trickling down his side under his robe and being absorbed by his loincloth. I suppose I can’t afford to bleed to death on the way, he thought impatiently. He ducked into an alley, stepped modestly behind a stack of cabbage crates and, lifting the skirts of his robe, tore away the already tattered hem.

  The wound was about two and a half inches long. It was not deep, though it seemed willing to bleed on indefinitely. Thomas held a wad of fabric against the gash and then tied the threadbare brown hem-strips across his middle so that they pressed on the makeshift bandage. The cloth blotted black with blood fairly quickly, but not so quickly as to indicate a torn vein or artery.

  His bandage in place, he slumped against the brick wall at his back and heaved a long sigh. When he focused his eyes again, he saw a boy of about ten years glowering down at him from an open second-floor window.

  “Uh, hello there,” Thomas said.

  The child frowned deeply.

  “Say,” Thomas went on, “can you tell me what happened yesterday? Why is everyb
ody so frightened?”

  “They blew up Mayor Pelias,” the boy answered after a pause. “Twice, early in the morning. It woke me up.”

  “He’s dead, then?”

  “No.” The boy stepped away from the window.

  Thomas considered and then dismissed the idea of calling him back. He made sure his robe was as neat as possible, and then stepped out onto the sidewalk again and resumed his journey. He was on Western again, he noted, and a number of signs agreed that Wilshire was the big street that lay half a block ahead. I wonder how close San Pedro is now, he thought. I wish I’d brought a map.

  He strode on with a firm jaw and lots of determination, but after half an hour of walking he slowed. His forehead, despite the hot sun and his heavy robe, was dry, and a powerful nausea was opening its hand in his abdomen. The glare on the buildings and sidewalks made his eyes water, and squinting helped only a little. Sunstroke, he thought dizzily—or maybe it’s fever, infection from my bullet-wound. I’ve got to rest, get out of this sun.

  Pico was the next cross-street, and he turned right, noticing a closed stagecoach station only two buildings away. Its door was recessed a good fifteen feet from the sidewalk, and he looked forward to sitting down and resting in the shaded hall—maybe I’ll even take a short nap, he thought.

  Thomas turned into the cool hall, and was halfway to the locked door at the end when he saw the man already sitting there.

  “Oh. Hi,” Thomas said, halting. In the sudden dimness he was unable to see the man clearly.

  “Howdy, son,” came a mellow voice. “Sit down, make yourself at home. The shade’s here for everybody.”

  “Thanks.” Thomas leaned back and slid down the wall into a sitting position.

  “What brings you out of doors?” the man enquired. A paper bag rustled and Thomas heard swallowing. “Like a bit of scotch?”

  “No, thanks,” Thomas said. “I’m a stranger in town. Just passing through, as they say. What has happened to the mayor, anyway?”

  “He’s had a stroke, the story is, after two bombs bounced him out of bed yesterday morning, one ten minutes after the other. I think he’s dead, and they don’t want to let on. They figure the city would really go to the dogs if it got out that he’d kicked off.”