by Tim Powers
“You never feel so good,” Spencer told him as he turned the rig north on Spring Street.
Thomas sat back in his seat and watched the passing pageant of the late afternoon sidewalk. Here a heavy-set man was selling day-glo velvet paintings of nudes; there a young man and his girlfriend sat against a wall, passing back and forth between them a bottle in a paper bag; a dog scampered past, hotly pursued by a gang of kids waving sticks; the city, in short, was relaxing into character again in spite of the undisclosed malady that had struck its mayor.
The golden car attracted its share of attention, and by the time they mounted the buttressed bridge over the Hollywood Freeway they had acquired an escort of young boys who ran alongside and begged for rides. When they got too numerous or insistent Spencer would punch the rubber bulb of a curled brass horn mounted on the side of the car, and the boys would scatter.
North of the freeway Spring was called New High Street; the buildings were older here, and the passersby tended to be Mexican or Oriental. The last street inside the city wall was Alpine, and Spencer pulled the car to a curb half a block short of it. “We’ve arrived,” he told Thomas.
A sign dangling on a chain ten feet over the sidewalk was the place’s only distinguishing feature—its heavy, paneled door and small-paned windows might believably have hidden anything from a barber shop to a used book store. The sign bore a drawing, done in Doré-like detail, of a cratered moon with a mournful mouth and nose, but no eyes; below the picture were the words The Blind Moon of Los Angeles. Spencer opened the door with a courtly bow and his companions filed inside.
The dark interior smelled of musty wood and tobacco smoke. Negri weaved his way around occupied tables to an empty one against the wall, and the four of them sat down. Spencer had just lit a cigarette when a girl sidled up to the table.
“Hiya, Spence,” she said. “A pitcher for ya this evening?”
“That’ll do for a start,” he answered. She made a got-it gesture and wandered off toward the bar. “Well,” Spencer said, turning to Jeff and Negri, “how did you boys spend the day?”
“Who is this guy, anyway?” countered Negri, jerking a thumb at Thomas.
“Rufus Pennick,” Spencer said evenly. “He’s a friend of mine, and of Gladhand’s—and he’s doing Touchstone in the play. And I, for one, don’t care how you spent your goddamned day.”
“No offense meant,” Jeff told Thomas with a placating smile. “It’s just that some people might call what we’ve been doing illegal, and we don’t know you.”
“It’s all right,” Thomas assured him hastily. “I certainly don’t want to… nose in on any secrets of yours.”
“Well, it’s nothing dirty, or anything like that,” flared Negri.
“I didn’t think it was,” protested Thomas.
“Jesus, Negri,” snapped Spencer, “can’t you—”
“I just didn’t like the look on his face. Like he thought we were fruits, or something.”
“I don’t think you’re fruits,” Thomas asserted, wondering what in heaven’s name Negri meant by the term. “I swear.”
“Well,” growled Negri grudgingly, “okay then.”
The beer arrived, and the tension of the moment quickly dissolved as Spencer sluiced the foaming stuff into four glasses the girl had set on the table. They soon had to signal her to bring another pitcher, and by the time the second one was empty they were all taking a more tolerant view of the world. Spencer even smoked his cigarette all the way down, which Thomas had not yet seen him do.
A girl passed through the room after a while, lighting miniature candles that sat in wire cages on the tables. Thomas looked around curiously at the smoke-dimmed pictures, posters and photos that were hung or tacked all over the walls.
“What are all these pictures?” he asked, waving his sloshing beer glass in an all-inclusive circle.
“Oh,” Spencer sighed, leaning back, “posters announcing old art openings, musical revues, plays. There’s a sketch of Ashbless, over the bar, done by Havreville in this very room, sixty years ago. Right over your head is—” he jerked his hand and overturned his glass, splashing beer across the table. “I’m sorry,” he said, whipping napkins out of a metal dispenser and throwing them on the spreading puddle. “I must have had more than I thought. Only cure for that is to have more still.” He waved to the waitress and pointed to their only half-emptied pitcher.
“Dammit, Spence,” laughed Jeff, “wait’ll we finish one before you order another.”
That’s odd, Thomas thought. I could almost swear he spilled that beer intentionally. What had he started to say when he did it? Oh yes: right over your head is—. Whatever he was going to say, he apparently thought better of it. Thomas waited for a few minutes, and then turned as casually as he could and looked over his shoulder.
Framed on the wall behind him was a photograph of a young couple in outlandish clothes embracing passionately. Even on his brief acquaintance, Thomas recognized them—the man was Robert Negri and the woman was Jean, whose body he and Spencer had carried into a storeroom that afternoon. The photo’s caption was, She Stoops to Conquer; Gladhand, Bellamy Theatre.
Thomas quickly turned back to the table and, had a long sip of beer, but when he raised his eyes Negri was scowling at him.
“That was taken last year,” the dark-haired actor said. He drained his glass and refilled it sloppily. “I was in love with her.”
“Oh, come on, Bob,” said Jeff. “We all were.”
The new pitcher arrived, and Spencer began loudly reciting “The Face on the Barroom Floor” in an attempt to change the subject. When he’d rendered all the parts he knew, Thomas let go with “Gunga Din,” punctuating the ballad by pounding his fist on the wet table-top. There was scattered applause from the other tables when he finished, but Negri still stared moodily down at his hands.
“When we finish this one, let’s head back,” Spencer said. “This must be the fifth or sixth—”
“No,” said Negri, looking up with an odd light in his eyes. “It’s too early to head back.”
“Oh?” asked Spencer cautiously. “What do you think we ought to do?”
“What Jeff and I were doing this afternoon,” Negri said. “Blowing up blimps.”
“Oh, Jesus,” muttered Spencer.
“We were just doing it for laughs then, from the top of the fence,” Negri went on. “We didn’t know they’d killed her. Now we’ve got a reason to do it.”
“Somebody fill me in,” Thomas said. “‘Blowing up blimps’ means…?”
“Well,” said Spencer wearily, “androids, as you know, are plant-eaters. And sometimes they swell up with methane gas, same as sheep do. They look just like balloons—or like they’re about to give birth to a small house. The healthy cops take ’em to the infirmary when they begin to look like that, and a doctor pokes ’em with a long needle and lets all the gas out. Then after a couple of days they’re all right again.”
“Right,” agreed Negri almost cheerfully. “And what we do is climb the fence and shoot flaming arrows into the swelled-up ones.”
“You’re kidding,” said Thomas flatly.
“No sir. You hit them right, and spark all that gas, and they just go up like bombs.”
“And that’s what you want to do tonight?” Thomas asked.
“Yeah.” Negri sucked at his beer, “I don’t happen to think it’s right that a girl like Jean should get killed by a bunch of androids and not be avenged. Goofus here,” he said, pointing at Thomas, “didn’t know her, so I can’t expect him to give one measly damn about her murder. And maybe you two don’t happen to remember what she was like—how she was when you were in trouble, or depressed. Maybe you think it’s best that she be forgotten as quickly as possible. She’d like that, huh? Oh sure. She was never a fighter or anything when she was alive, was she? Nothing like that. Jesus! She’s probably getting sick in hell right now, to see you guys drinking beer and reciting poetry when her body isn’t yet cold.�
� He stood up unsteadily. “Well, I’m going to go send a few androids to kingdom come for her. You guys stay here and… make sure the goddamned breweries don’t go out of business.” He turned toward the door.
“Bob,” said Spencer slowly. “Wait a minute.” He got to his feet. “I—I’m with you.”
Jeff leaped up and pitched backward over his chair, having got his foot entangled in it. Negri and Spencer helped him up and brushed him off. “Count me in,” he gasped dizzily.
“Wait here for us,” Spencer said to Thomas. “We ought to be—”
“Hold it,” Thomas said. “I’m going with you. Who was it,” he asked, carefully enunciating each word, “that bandaged me up last night? Jean. I can’t sit here while you guys go avenge her.”
“He’s right,” Negri said. “Pennick, you’re not the slob I thought you were.”
They shook hands all around, drank off the last of the beer, and stumbled out the door into the chilly Los Angeles evening.
Making a fist to keep his barbed-wire-torn finger from bleeding—will that finger ever get a proper chance to heal? he wondered—Thomas loped across the grass after Spencer, stepping high so as not to trip over anything in the darkness. He saw Spencer’s silhouette disappear behind the wall of a bungalow, and followed him into the deep shadow. Negri and Jeff were already waiting there.
“Okay,” Negri whispered when Spencer and Thomas had caught their breath, “now listen: the infirmary is to our right, just past the—”
“Hold it,” Jeff said. “If we’re doing this for Jean, it ain’t right to just blow up some sick ones.”
Thomas couldn’t see him in the blackness, but raised one eyebrow questioningly. “Oh?”
“He’s right,” Negri whispered, smothering a hiccup. “We’ve got to take on the barracks.”
Spencer heaved a sigh. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay,” Thomas agreed. He did wish he could have some more beer first. Maybe they’d find some in the barracks. “Do androids drink?” he asked.
“Naw,” answered Negri. “They’ve got snoose. Now pay attention: the barracks, as I recall, is over there, ahead of us and to the left. I think the armory is off to the side, in a shed. We’d better go there first and grab some guns. Follow me and keep low.”
The four of them scuttled furtively across a little lamplit courtyard and then trotted for a hundred yards in the shadow of another building and halted at its far corner. Negri pointed at a low plywood structure that stood between them and the next long building. A bright light was mounted over a screened window in front, and threw the shadow of the padlock across the door like a diagonal streak of black paint.
“That’s the armory,” he whispered. “We’ll dash over there, one at a time, and stay on the dark side. Then we’ll pry the screen off a window and Pennick here, being the skinniest, will climb in and hand weapons out to us. After that we’ll move on to the barracks, shoot a dozen or so of the bastards, and climb the far fence and head home. Sound okay?”
Everyone allowed that it did, Thomas with some reservations. The beer fumes were beginning to leave his head, and he couldn’t remember why coming here had seemed such a good idea.
“Take it away, Rufe,” Spencer said, patting him on the back, and Thomas sprinted across the open space into the shadow of the shack. One by one the others followed, it was the work of a minute to lever the screen from the window, and a moment later Thomas was hoisted up and supported horizontally in the air by six hands, his head thrust into the window.
“Can you see anything?” Negri hissed.
“Nothing clear,” Thomas whispered back over his shoulder. “Listen, though—roll me face up, and let me get my hands up here, and I think I could climb in.” They carefully rotated his tense body until his back was to the ground. He angled both arms in through the narrow window and locked his fingers firmly around a pole that seemed to be firmly moored. “Okay,” he said nervously. “Now when I say go, you shove me in. Gently! I should jackknife through and land upright on the floor.” He gripped the pole even tighter, made sure again that he could picture how this would work, and then gasped, “Go.”
They pushed him through, the pole came free in his hands, and he tumbled upside-down over a wheelbarrow and into a rack of shovels. The clatter and clang was appalling, and it took him nearly thirty seconds of thrashing about even to get to his feet. He bounded for the window, and tripped over a bottle of some sort that shattered resoundingly.
Spencer poked his head in the window. “Weapons, for God’s sake!” he shouted. “Now!” His face disappeared again.
Thomas flung four shovels through the window and then dove through it himself, rolling as he fell and landing painfully on his shoulder. He leaped up immediately, and was momentarily surprised to see that not one of his companions had fled.
Spencer thrust one of the shovels into his hands. He saw that lights had gone on in the building ahead, and a half-dozen figures were clustered in the doorway. “All right, hold it right there!” came a call.
“Run back the way we came,” Spencer snapped, and all four of them did, still carrying their shovels. Bang. A bullet spanged off the concrete a hundred feet to the right. Another broke a window ahead of them and two more whistled through the air. Thomas’ legs pounded on and on, even when each breath seared his lungs and abraded his ribs, and he could see the rainbow glitter of unconsciousness playing around the borders of his vision.
Androids were designed to run faster than the average man, but they also had a tendency toward sluggishness when suddenly awakened, and none of these considered it worthwhile to leave, unbidden, their warm barracks in order to pursue such bandits as would lay siege to the gardener’s shack. They simply stood in the doorway and emptied a revolver at the fleeing figures.
Spencer, leading the way, saw the sentry first; the android was loping toward them terrifyingly fast, with its head low and its hand fumbling at the flap of its holster. Thomas saw Spencer leap toward the galloping thing, whirling the shovel over his head like a long battle-axe. The edge of the descending blade cracked into the android’s shoulder, and Spencer and the sentry were both knocked off their feet. Thomas ran toward them with his own shovel held over his head.
The android leaped up with bestial agility and finally fumbled the pistol out of its holster as Spencer rolled to his feet three yards away, ready to attempt a last charge at the thing. At that moment Thomas’ rush arrived from behind the android—he swung the poised shovel down upon the creature’s skull with every bit of strength the evening had left him, and then tumbled past in an involuntary somersault across the pavement.
Jesus, no more, he thought as he struggled up on his hands and knees, fighting a strong nausea that gripped his stomach. There was a clank of metal breaking metal, and a sound like a dropped coin. “In here,” somebody hissed, and somebody else hauled Thomas forcibly erect and gave him a shove forward. He tripped through an open door and sprawled full length across the floor beyond. He lay there while the door was shut behind him, trying simultaneously to recover his breath and control his stomach.
“Old Rufo there… isn’t as tough as he thinks,” someone panted.
“Go to hell. He… killed that android, didn’t he?” came a gasping whisper from somebody else. “So far tonight he’s the only one who has.”
Thomas rolled over and sat up. “The spirit,” he pronounced carefully, “is willing, but the flesh is drunk and exhausted.” Negri, Jeff and Spencer, still carrying their shovels, were slumped against the walls of the little room. “Where are we, anyway?”
“I think this is the service entrance for the infirmary,” Negri answered. He held up his hand suddenly, and thudding footsteps raced past outside the door. “We can’t relax yet. They might notice the busted lock any time. Uhh,” he gasped, standing up, “let’s see where this inner door will take us.”
It was an aluminum door with rubber insulation around its edges; it wasn’t locked, and swung open at Negri’s first tug
. The room within was lit by dim red lights, and smelled of steam and disinfectant. They filed inside, and saw a number of chest-high vats lined up against the wall. Thomas’ dim hope that this might be a winery of some sort evaporated when he peered through the clear plastic cover of one of them.
“Damn my soul!” he whispered. “There’s a guy in there!”
The other three joined him and looked down at a smooth human body that was suspended a few inches below the surface of the cloudy liquid in the vat.
“We’re in an android brewery,” Spencer said. “I didn’t know there was one here.”
“Who’s this guy look like to you, Spence?” asked Jeff. “He looks familiar to me.”
“Yeah,” Negri agreed suddenly. “I’ve… seen that face.”
Thomas peered at it again, but it didn’t especially look like anyone he’d ever seen. He wandered over to another vat. “Whoever it is,” he said, “he’s over here, too.”
There were a half-dozen vats in the room, and a quick check revealed that the nearly-completed occupants of all six were cast from the same blueprint.
“I wish I could remember who it is that they all look like,” Negri said, frowning.
“Should we kill them?” Jeff asked.
Spencer looked at him skeptically. “How? This is obviously shatterproof plastic—even with these shovels it’d take five minutes to splinter through one of them. And I don’t see any valves we could fool with. We don’t have time. Come on.”
They left the room through another metal door, and found themselves in a hallway. It seemed chilly after the steamy heat of the vat room, and Thomas wondered wistfully when—and if—he’d see his theatre-basement bed again. Spencer led them down the hall in the direction that led away from the barracks. The floor was carpeted, and the corridor was dimly lit by electric bulbs that hung in globes of frosted glass. The disinfectant smell was here, too, but rivaled by an odor reminiscent of stables and animal cages.
The corridor split in a T, and they followed the left-hand branch, which ended, after a hundred feet, at a door whose chicken-wire-reinforced window showed only darkness beyond. “This just may lead outside,” Spencer whispered, holding up crossed fingers as he turned the knob.