by Tim Powers
Blaine Albers glanced contemptuously down at the clamoring crowd twenty storeys below him and, pushing open the window, flicked the ash of his cigar out at them. “You haven’t answered my question, Lloyd,” he said quietly, turning back to the room.
Across the table an old man sweated and stared hopelessly at the litter of ashtrays and scattered papers. “I can’t tell you,” he whispered.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“No. He’s under a… doctor’s care, and he might—honestly—recover any day. Any hour.”
The four other men in the room shifted impatiently in their seats, and one stubbed out a cigarette.
“Listen,” said Albers, “even if he’d come out of it an hour ago it might have been too late.” He struck his fist on the table. “Aside from the police, we have no army! Had you realized that? Our draft program is impossible to enforce. The few men we get desert the first time you take your eyes off them. We can’t afford mercenaries. What, Lloyd, do you have to suggest?” His voice had risen during this speech to a harsh yell.
“Find…” the old man quavered, “find Brother Thomas.”
“Why? What the hell is the connection between Pelias and this delinquent monk?”
Lloyd sagged. “I can’t tell you.”
Several of the other men sighed and shook their heads grimly.
Albers spoke softly. “Lloyd, I’m sorry to have to say this. Tell me, now, where Pelias is, and what this monk Thomas has to do with the situation; or we’ll question you with the same methods we’d use on any criminal.”
Lloyd was sobbing now. “All right,” he said finally. “You win.” He stood up slowly and crossed to the window. “God help us all,” he said, and quietly rolled over the sill and disappeared.
For a full ten seconds no one spoke; then Albers went to the window and looked out. The section of the crowd directly below was churning about with, perhaps, more energy than it had shown before. Aside from that, the view had not changed.
“That,” he said to the others, “is the second time one of our major-domos has killed himself. His predecessor, Hancock, you know, hanged himself in his bedroom six years ago.”
The others nodded dumbly. “What can we do now,” one asked, “besides grab some ready cash and run for Bakersfield?”
“Idiot,” Albers said. “It’s not time to run yet. Alvarez couldn’t get here before Sunday even if he was already across the Santa Margarita River, and he isn’t.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “But our hold on the city just went out the window. We’ve got no authority at all, now.”
“Maybe we could claim to know where Pelias is hidden?” suggested one of the others.
“No. Tabasco, damn his android eyes, almost certainly does know. He probably knows whatever the secret about this monk is, too.”
“What could that monk have or know that they could want so badly?” wondered the one he’d called an idiot.
“I don’t know,” Albers answered softly. “But I’d say if we want to keep any hand at all in this game, we’d better find him before Tabasco’s police do.” He flung himself into a chair. “We’ll worry about that a little later,” he said. “Right now, show that gun dealer in, Harper.”
Harper stood up and went to the door. “Come in here,” he said when he opened it.
A moment later a tall old man with a white beard and mane strode into the room. He was dressed in sun-faded dungarees, and puffed furiously on a battered corncob pipe. “Look here, boys,” he growled, “if you want to make a deal, then let’s talk. If not, I’ll be on my way. But I’m not going to wait one more—”
“I apologize, Mr. St. Coutras,” Albers said. “It was not our intention to keep you waiting. Sit down, please.”
St. Coutras took a seat and rapped the still-smoking tobacco out of his pipe onto the floor. “All right,” he said. “Do you want the hundred Brownings or not?”
“We do,” Albers said. “We’ve decided we can pay you a hundred solis per rifle.”
“Goddamnit, I said a hundred and fifty. I can’t go below that and make a living.”
“What kind of living do you think you’ll make if Alvarez takes this city?” hissed Harper.
“The same as now,” the old man replied. “Everybody needs guns.”
“He’s right, Harper,” Albers said. “Shut up.” He looked intently at St. Coutras. “Would you take the difference in bonds?”
The old man considered it for a full minute. “I’ll take a hundred in cash and a hundred in bonds per rifle. That way, you’ll be sure of getting good merchandise from me, since I’ll have a ten-thousand-soli stake on your side of the table. If Alvarez takes the city, he’s sure not going to honor any bonds issued by his predecessors.”
“Good point,” Albers nodded. “Okay. Hastings, draw up the papers. And Harper, you get busy on tracking down that damned runaway monk. Get some details on why he left the monastery. It occurs to me to doubt old Lloyd’s story that the kid stole the season’s wine-money.”
“Runaway monk?” St. Coutras repeated curiously.
Albers frowned. “Yes. He… uh, has some information we need.”
“His name isn’t… Thomas, is it?”
Hastings’ pen halted in mid-air; Harper froze halfway out of his chair. Albers slowly lit another cigar. “Why?” he asked. “Have you met a runaway monk named Thomas?”
“Yeah. A week ago. Last Friday morning. Gave him a ride into town.”
“That’d be our boy, all right,” Albers said.
“Have you seen him since?” Harper asked quickly.
“Nope.”
“Where did you drop him off?” Albers asked.
“The north gate,” St. Coutras answered. “On Western Avenue. Why, what’s he done?”
“We have no idea. But somehow he’s the key to a lot of desperately important questions. Would he remember you?”
“Sure.”
“Kindly?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Good.” Albers took a long, contemplative pull on his cigar. “Do you have an apprentice or partner or somebody, who could bring the guns in without you?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“I want you to stay here and smoke this blasted monk out of whatever hole he’s hiding in. We’re pretty sure he hasn’t left the city, but the police haven’t been able to get any leads on him at all. What we’ll do is check with the monastery and find out what his interests and skills are, and then send you to places where he’s likely to show up. And when you see him, grab him. We’ll give you as many men as you like to help.”
“I’d be working with the police?” St. Coutras asked doubtfully.
“No; as a matter of fact,” Albers said, “you will, practically speaking, be working against the police. We don’t want Tabasco to get hold of the monk.”
“Hmm. This post pays well, of course?”
“Of course. And carries a five-thousand-soli—cash!—bonus if you bring him in.”
“Well, I’ll give it a try,” the old man said. “I’ve done weirder things.”
“Good,” Albers said, with his first smile of the day. “We’ll have a rider to the Merignac monastery and back by three this afternoon, and you’ll be able to start searching before sundown. You’ll—”
“I get a thousand a day to look for him,” St. Coutras remarked.
Albers’ face turned red, but his smile held its ground. “That’s right,” he said levelly. “Where are you staying?”
“At a friend’s place. Never mind where. I’ll come back here at four-thirty. See you later, gents.” He got up, clamped his pipe in his mouth and left the room.
“I don’t like his attitude,” Harper complained. “Are you really going to pay him all that money? I think you promised him more than the city owns.”
“He’ll be paid, all right,” Albers rasped. “We’ll give him a few dozen of his own bullets, in the head.”
Harper grinned and nodded, and was about to speak when a gi
rl leaned in the door. “Police Chief Tabasco is here to see major-domo Lloyd,” she said.
“Send him in,” Albers said. “None of you say anything, hear?” he added to his four companions.
Police Chief Tabasco was tall, with fine blond hair cut in bangs over his surprisingly light blue eyes. His face was pink and unlined. When he stepped into the room he made the five men look scrawny and unhealthy by comparison.
“Where is major-domo Lloyd?” he asked.
“Well,” Albers said thoughtfully, “to tell you the truth, he’s dead.” Harper didn’t interrupt, but clearly wanted to. Tabasco raised his golden eyebrows. “You see,” Albers went on, “he admitted to us that Mayor Pelias is dead, and then immediately regretted betraying that secret, and leaped,” he waved at the open window, “to his death.”
“You’re lying,” Tabasco observed calmly. “Pelias is alive, and Lloyd knew it. He and I looked in on the comatose mayor earlier this morning. You killed Lloyd, correct? Why?”
“Oh, hell,” Albers said, sitting down. “Okay, I guess Pelias is alive. No, we didn’t kill Lloyd. I threatened him with torture if he wouldn’t spill a few secrets, and he dove out the window. Look, Tabasco, if we’re going to govern this city, there are several things we’ve got to know. First, where is—”
“You’re not going to govern this city.”
“Oh? Who is, then? Pelias? Lloyd? Alvarez? You?”
“Why not me?” Tabasco asked quietly.
Albers leaned forward. “Are you getting delusions of humanity? Listen, the people of this city would rather have a trained dog for mayor than a damned grass-eating, vat-bred android. Don’t you know that? You creatures are just barely put up with as policemen. If—”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” Tabasco said, a little heatedly. “But I would remind you that I control—absolutely—the only armed force available to Los Angeles, whereas you have nothing, not even—”
“I’ve got Thomas,” Albers said.
“Who?”
“Thomas. The monk from Merignac. I have him.”
“You’re lying again,” Tabasco said, but his eyes were lit with desperate hope.
“Believe that, if you like,” said Albers carelessly. “I’ve got him, anyway. And I don’t need you.”
“I knew you were lying,” Tabasco said, the hope leaving his eyes. “If you really had him you’d know how much you do need me. And you’d know better than to sneer at androids. I want all five of you out of the city by sundown tomorrow. I’ll instruct my officers to shoot any of you on sight after that. Do you understand?”
“Why, you filthy—we’re the—you can’t tell the city council to—”
“I’ll assume you do understand. Goodbye, gentlemen. May we never meet again.”
Peter McHugh put down his coffee cup and newspaper and stood when he heard booted feet pounding up the stairs.
“That you, John?” he called, his hand hovering over a .38 calibre revolver lying on the wicker table beside him.
“Yes,” came the answer, a moment before John St. Coutras burst into the room.
“Up and saddle the horses,” the old man barked. “If we move quick we can get out of this doomed city with no trouble.”
“What? Wait a minute. What happened at city hall? You didn’t hit anybody, did you?”
“No. But I got Albers to agree to so many crazy payments that I know he means to kill me. Hell, he even offered me a thousand a day to look for some monk. If we can get outside the city walls within the next hour, we—”
“Hold it. Listen to me. I got another offer for the guns. A hundred and fifty apiece.”
St. Coutras halted. “You did? From who?”
“I don’t know his name. We’ve been dealing through an intermediary, a red-haired kid named Spencer. But the offer’s genuine, I’m convinced. We’ll deliver the crates through the sewers, from north of the wall.”
St. Coutras ran his fingers through his beard ruminatively. “This is a hundred and fifty cash we’re talking about?” he asked in a more quiet tone of voice.
“Nothing but. The kid wanted to give me five thousand down, right there. Had it in a knapsack. I told him I’d have to see you before I could take it.”
“Well,” The old man sank into a chair. “Is there any more of that coffee?”
“Coming up, boss.”
Thomas looked critically at the final couplet of his sonnet while he chewed on the back end of his pen; after a few re-readings of the poem he decided it would do, and slid the paper into the box he’d appropriated for his personal belongings. The first eight lines of it he’d written the night before, in a bleak mood brought to a head by eight consecutive cups of black coffee and three stout maduro cigars, and enough of the mood had carried over to the morning for him to write the last six lines immediately upon awakening.
He had stood up, stretched, and was pulling on his pants when a loud crack sounded from the floor above him. Splinters and dust whirled down through one of the beams of morning sunlight.
He bounded upstairs to the stage, where he found Gladhand and five villainous-looking men staring at a small, ragged hole in the polished wood of the stage. Smoke was still spiraling up from it.
“What the hell,” Thomas said, unable to come up with anything better, but feeling that he ought to say something.
“Oh, good morning, Rufus,” Gladhand said. “Nothing to be concerned about, that explosion. Just a special-effect device we’re testing.”
“More special effects?” For four days now Gladhand had been consulting furtive men—“technicians,” he called them—and buying dozens of sturdy, heavy wooden boxes that he stored carefully in the basement. He’d explained, in answer to Thomas’ questions, that the boxes contained the wherewithal for various spectacular special effects he intended to use during the scene in the play in which the god Hymen appears.
Gladhand now nodded vaguely. “Oh, yes. I’ve decided to have a few miracles and apparitions and such things take place when Duke Frederick gets converted by the holy man in the wilderness.”
“But that’s only referred to. How will—”
“I’ve written in a new scene so as to have it take place on stage. Plot’s too rickety otherwise. Look, I’m pretty busy right now, but I want to talk to you later. Meet me… on the alley balcony right after the noon rehearsal, okay?”
“Okay.”
Thomas wandered to the dining room and wheedled a late breakfast of coffee and sweet rolls from Alice, who had already begun to put everything away. He sat down at one of the long tables and gulped the oily coffee. After she’d rinsed out the pots and wiped down the counters, Alice sat down beside him with her own cup of coffee.
“You’re a late sleeper these days,” she remarked, looking through her purse for a cigarette. “How are you and Pat getting along these days?”
“Horrible.”
“Oh, you had a little fight? Well, don’t worry, it—”
“We didn’t have a fight,” Thomas said. “We never have fights. We just have… bafflements. Each of us is certain the other’s lost his or her mind.”
“Well, maybe you two just aren’t meant for each other.”
“Yeah,” Thomas admitted, trying not to gag as he sipped at the coffee. “Logically speaking, that’s true. But when we do get along—and we do, sometimes—it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Which is most common? Getting along or not getting along?”
“Oh, not. By a long shot.”
Alice shook her head with mock pity. “De course ob de true luhv nebbah did run smoooth,” she leered in some badly-imitated dialect, as she picked up the two empty cups and walked bizarrely into the kitchen.
Thomas stared after her and then slowly got to his feet and went below to put his shoes on.
Ten minutes later he was sitting in the greenroom, going over his lines with the girl Skooney, who obligingly read all the other parts. After a while Pat came in and sat down, an
d Thomas regarded her warily out of the corner of his eye, trying to get a clue to her current mood.
“You’re not paying a hundred percent attention to this,” Skooney said.
“Oh, I think I’ve got it down pretty well already. Thanks, Skooney.”
“Anytime,” the girl said, getting up to leave.
“Morning, Pat,” he said when Skooney was gone.
“Hi, Rufus,” she answered with a friendly smile. Aha, Thomas thought; she’s in good spirits. And in the morning! Absolutely unprecedented. The feeling that had spawned his sonnet began to evaporate.
“Hey, noon rehearsal in five minutes,” Lambert called, walking through the hall.
Thomas inwardly cursed the interruption; but then reflected, after Pat had blown him a kiss and darted out of the room, that the rehearsal call had probably saved him from unwittingly puncturing her good mood. Anything, it seemed, could cast her into heavy depressions or smoldering anger—a kiss at the wrong time, the lack of a kiss at the right time, a careless sentence, a carefully considered opinion—and her good cheer was always slow to return.
It’s too bad she’s the first girl I ever really knew, Thomas thought. I have no way of knowing whether all girls are this way or if she’s unique. I wonder if every guy heaves an instinctive sigh of relief when he’s kissed his girl goodnight, and the door is shut, and he can go relax by himself?
The noon rehearsal went quickly. Gladhand wasn’t watching as closely as he usually did; his corrections were infrequent and brief, and he had the actors skip over two scenes that he didn’t feel needed any work. The theatre manager seemed preoccupied, and kept staring into space and running his fingers through his thick black beard.
By one-thirty everyone was wandering offstage and deciding whether to eat in the theatre or at a restaurant somewhere, and Skooney was switching off her treasured lights.
Ben Corwin was sitting on the balcony when Thomas got there. The old man’s moustache, beard and shirt were dusted with brown powder, and he was sneezing and sniffling so hard that he could only wave and blink his wet eyes at Thomas by way of greeting.