Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust

by Tim Powers

  THE FRONT OF THE Bellamy Theatre was dark; the cluster of gargoyles and decorated balconies were homogenous blurs in the huge shadow that was the building. Then a match was struck on a second-floor balcony, and held to the end of a cigar. The flame flared up as the smoker puffed, revealing for a moment the bushy beard, bald head and deep-set eyes of Nathan Gladhand. The match was abruptly whipped out, leaving only the dull red pinpoint of the cigar tip.

  Gladhand looked anxiously up and down the dark, empty expanse of Second Street, and listened carefully as the city hall clock struck six-and-a-half.

  Suddenly someone began singing, a few blocks to the west. No, two people. Incongruously, for it was only October, it was a Christmas carol in which the two slightly hysterical-sounding voices were raised.

  O Little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,

  Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by…

  It’s got to be them, he thought; pretending to be drunk. Or maybe they are drunk. He could see them now—weaving along the nearer sidewalk and leaning on each other—and, further behind them, a tall figure following. The theatre manager reached into his coat pocket and rested his hand on the butt of a shoulder-holstered pistol. As he watched, though, the man following entered a hotel, and the two young men walked the last block and a half alone. When they were directly below, Gladhand leaned over the balcony rail.

  “Spencer! Rufus!” he called quietly. “Is all well?”

  Spencer looked up. “Yes and no, sir.”

  “Come up here and tell me.”

  Two minutes later they sat in canvas chairs on the balcony, sipping gratefully at glasses of cold beer.

  “All right,” Gladhand said. “Tell me. What happened? How did Rufus hurt his hand?”

  “That guy McHugh is dead,” said Spencer. “Four cops and Blaine Albers followed him to the Gallomo, killed him and were going to arrest us. Albers even figured out who Rufus really is. It looked bad, need I say. That old guy St. Coutras, though, tricked the android that was carting us away into setting off a hidden gun which blew Albers right out of the cart. St. Coutras drove like a madman while Rufus leaned out the back and shot all three pursuing androids. The last one shot him in the hand.”

  “How bad is it?”

  Spencer started to speak, stopped, then tried again: “The first finger’s gone completely. Sorry, Rufe. The rest’s okay, though the thumb may be sprained.”

  “Are you left-handed, Rufus?”

  “Well—yes sir.”

  “Ah. That will be difficult. I’m sorry.” He turned to Spencer. “And the guns?”

  “Delivery at eleven P.M. Saturday. No trouble there.”

  “Well, thank God for that, anyway. Rufus, go below and have Alice fix you some food. And don’t think your heroism and self-sacrifice have gone unnoted. Spencer, escort him there, if you would, and then come back here.”

  Spencer led Thomas away, and took him downstairs to the greenroom, where Alice, Pat and Lambert were playing some card game.

  “Alice,” Spencer said, “see what Rufus will have, and get it for him, will you? He’s a casualty.”

  “Jesus, have you been shot again?” Alice exclaimed. “My God. You want some food or something?”

  “Some soup,” Thomas said slowly, “would be nice. Thanks, Alice.” He sat down as Alice scampered away. Pat, he noticed, was looking at him with an expression almost of hostility.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “I got…” He was suddenly very tired, and enunciating each syllable was a real effort. “I got my finger—” he waved his bandaged hand “—shot off in a gunfight with some androids. And then Spencer and I had to sing Christmas carols—” With no warning he found that he was crying. Almost as soon as he noticed it he was able to stop.

  “For God’s sake,” Pat said, standing up, “talk to me when you’ve managed to pull yourself together.” She walked out of the room.

  “Wow,” said Lambert softly. “Anybody ever accuse you of masochism, Rufus?”

  As far as Thomas could recall, this was the first time Lambert had called him by his first name. He grinned weakly. “It’s only these last few days they’d have had any cause to,” he answered.

  “I mean,” Lambert went on, “I’ve pursued some cold ladies in my time, but this girl of yours is a whole new category. Do you always go for girls like that?”

  Thomas shrugged. “She’s the first girl I ever… went for.”

  “Honest?” Lambert shook his head. “God knows where you’ll go from here.”

  Alice returned with a pot of steaming clam chowder and a tall mug of beer. “I ran into Spencer in the hall,” she said. “He tells me that Gladhand has advanced our opening night to Wednesday the twentieth.”

  “Wow,” said Lambert uneasily. “Less than a week away.”

  “Yeah,” Alice agreed. “Apparently he’s going to step up the pace of the rehearsals, to compensate.”

  “Is that… code or something?” Thomas asked. “Does ‘opening night’ mean the day we spring our coup on city hall?”

  “No, it’s really opening night,” Lambert said. “Gladhand made it clear, didn’t he, that the play is no shuck? Of course, there might be a clue here; he might be planning to mount the attack sooner than he originally meant to, and is moving the opening-night date up so the two won’t interfere with each other. Who knows? He might even be planning to overthrow city hall before the play opens. He’d never let on, in any case.”

  Thomas’ hand hurt, and he had difficulty in getting to sleep. When he finally did drift off he was plagued again with the sky-fishing dream. Again he reeled the resentful flier closer and closer, again saw the great white face, and knew for one awful moment whose it was; then it changed into the face of the stone head beside Thomas’ couch, which in turn became the face he’d glimpsed on the creatures in the vats in the android brewery. He woke at dawn, and lay there for an hour, tired and sick, and disgusted with his own subconscious mind.

  He stood up, finally—and found, when his vision cleared, that he was lying full length on the floor beside his couch.

  “What was that?” came a familiar voice. “Rufus? Are you all right?”

  Thomas got to his knees and shook his head to clear it. “Yeah,” he said clearly. “It’s okay. That you, Pat?” He forced himself to forget the horrible white-cheese face from his dream.

  “Yes.” She was standing beside him now, and helped him to his feet. His hand, he noticed, had bled during the night, and his sheets were spotted with brown.

  “Do you love me, Pat?” he asked dizzily.

  She thought about it. “Yes,” she said finally, “I guess I do.”

  He nodded. “I love you, too,” he said. “Let’s go get some breakfast.”

  “Right,” she said. “Better not waste any time,” she added. “Rehearsal’s at eight.”

  “Eight?” he echoed. “Instead of noon?”

  “As well as noon. Opening night’s been rescheduled. Didn’t you hear?”

  “Oh yeah. I remember now. Wednesday.”

  “Right. Hurry up, now. Everybody’s probably gobbling up our share.”

  When they got to the dining room, though, they found that breakfast had been held up until they arrived. As he and Pat sat down, Spencer and Jeff trooped in with platters of scrambled eggs and sausage and bacon, followed by Skooney, who carried in both hands a huge jug of orange juice. There was the usual babble of conversation, and no mention was made of the events of the previous evening. Thomas noticed, though, that the trace of condescension was gone from people’s voices when they spoke to him now. I’m a full-fledged member at last, he thought. And all it cost me was a finger. He looked around for Negri but didn’t see him.

  He barely managed to swallow a mouthful of egg before having to sneeze violently into his napkin. “Does the damned paper have any idea when this Santa Ana wind will quit?” he asked.

  “Yeah, matter of fact,” Spencer answe
red from across the table. “A big tide, or whatever it’s called, of cold air is sliding south down the San Joaquin Valley, I read. It ought to cancel this heat a bit.”

  “Won’t that cause tornadoes?” Alice asked. “I read somewhere that causes tornadoes.”

  “It might, up around San Gabriel or San Fernando,” Jeff said. “Not here, though.”

  The hall doors were pushed open, and Gladhand propelled his wheelchair into the dining room. “Where’s Negri?” he asked.

  “Haven’t seen him all morning,” Alice answered. Everyone else shrugged or shook their heads in agreement.

  “He might even be buying breakfast somewhere,” Spencer said. “He does, sometimes.”

  “I don’t think he is today,” Gladhand said grimly. “The idiot tacked this note on my door last night. Listen: ‘Sir—the killing of individual androids, while doubtless praiseworthy in its own small-scale fashion, can at best—’ oh hell, I won’t read the whole murky thing. The upshot is—” he looked around helplessly, “—he says he’s gone off to, singlehanded, kill Police Chief Tabasco.”

  Thomas happened to glance toward Pat as Gladhand finished, and saw her turn pale. He was surprised, and felt a twinge of reflexive jealousy; would she, he wondered, be that concerned if it was me out risking my life? Was she last night, when it was me?

  “Good God,” Spencer said, getting to his feet and flinging down his napkin. “How long’s he been gone?”

  “Possibly as long as… eight hours,” Gladhand said.

  “God help us,” Spencer muttered. “Rufus—no, never mind. Jeff, you and Lambert run to the basement, quick, and drag as many of the bomb and gun crates into the deep cellar as will fit. Hide the rest of them, or camouflage ’em; throw old costumes in on top of the incriminating stuff.” Jeff and Lambert hurried out.

  “Right,” Gladhand said. “If any of you own personal guns, fetch them and give them to Jeff. And then get the hell back here; rehearsal is beginning at eight—that’s… nine minutes from now—as planned. Everybody is to be there, no excuses. Rufus, you’ll read the Orlando part as well as your own.”

  “What’s all this?” spoke up a pig-tailed girl whose name Thomas had never caught. “Can’t we help Negri somehow? He’s risking his life for us.”

  “He’s risking our lives for the sake of his outsize pride,” Gladhand shouted. “You all know my rules about individual, unauthorized sallies against the enemy. And Negri was reminded of them only last week. What if he’s caught? They’ll torture him, or shoot him up with scopolamine or sodium pentothal, and he’ll tell them everything he knows. I’m praying he’s been killed, and that the police are unable to identify him. If they do identify him they’ll be knocking on our front door five minutes later—or, more likely, kicking it down.”

  All the actors pushed away from the table and left the room. “Rufus,” Gladhand said, “go to the lobby and keep an eye out for cops. If none appear in the next five minutes, get on stage for rehearsal.”

  “Aye aye,” Thomas said. He caught Pat’s eye, made a brief, mock-despairing sign-of-the-cross, and sprinted for the lobby.

  “Okay,” Gladhand barked from his front row seat. “Curtain. Scene two.”

  A girl walked out on stage, looked around and shrugged. “I pray thee, Rosalind,” she began, then halted. “Uh, sir?” she said hesitantly, trying to shield her eyes from the glare of the lights. “Rosalind’s—Pat’s not here.”

  “What?” Gladhand roared. “Find her! I—”

  “Here I am,” Pat said lightly, running down the carpeted center aisle.

  “Where were you?” The theater manager’s voice was ominously low.

  “I was trying to find Jeff, to give him my gun,” she said. “I thought I had plenty of time to make my entrance. I’m sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.”

  Gladhand nodded wearily and scratched his beard, looking like an overtime clerk who notices another figure that must be included in an already complicated equation. “Get on stage,” he said quietly. “Your entrance has only just arrived.”

  They had reached the beginning of Act Four when the police arrived.

  “Hi!” came a voice from the lobby doors. “You there, you actors! Where’s your boss?”

  Gladhand shifted around in his seat and stared for a moment at the two android policemen who stood in the doorway. “I’m Nathan Gladhand, the manager,” he said. “Skooney! House lights only!”

  The auditorium lights went on and the stage lights dimmed as six policemen filed in and strode down the aisle to where Gladhand sat. The actors gathered curiously at the front of the stage.

  One of the policemen carried a cardboard box, and now pried up the lid. “Did you know this person, sir?” the android asked, lifting out of the box by the curly hair a severed human head.

  Gladhand frowned. “Put it away,” he said in a rasping voice. The android lowered the head back into the box. “Yes, I knew him. That’s Robert Negri, one of my actors.” A low mutter of horror and anger arose from the stage; Thomas’ eyes darted to Pat, but she showed no particular dismay now. “How,” Gladhand asked, “did this happen?”

  “This young man walked into the police station and requested to see Chief Tabasco. When officers asked him to submit to a search, he produced a pistol and menaced them. Two officers were killed before we managed to kill the young man. We brought the body to Chief Tabasco, who, being a connoisseur of the dramatic arts, recognized him as one of the Bellamy Players.”

  “I see,” Gladhand said. “His… girlfriend was killed in the… misunderstanding in Pershing Square on Saturday. Perhaps, in his grief-crazed state, he blamed Chief Tabasco for her death.”

  The android nodded. “That seems most likely,” he agreed. “We must, though, be thorough. Do you have any objections to the notion of us searching your theatre?”

  “Of course not,” Gladhand said. “Would you like a guide?”

  “No.”

  “In that case we will go on with our rehearsal.”

  The officer smiled at him. “Will your actors function well, immediately after a… piece of news such as this?” He held up the box and shook it.

  “Probably not,” Gladhand answered shortly, “but I’d rather have a bad rehearsal than call a halt so they all can brood on it.”

  “Ah. Good point.” The android bowed and led his fellows back up the aisle to the lobby.

  “Okay, goddamnit,” Gladhand snapped. “Onward. Spencer, tell us again about your ‘humorous sadness.’ Skooney! Lights!”

  The rehearsal moved on leadenly and without verve, and by the time they’d finished the police had left, taking Negri’s head with them.

  “Albert says they never even entered the basement, sir,” Spencer said when the troop had gathered in the greenroom. “So I guess we’re okay. We weathered this one.”

  Gladhand looked uncertain. “They made a very cursory search,” he said slowly. “I’ve seen them be far more thorough with far less cause.”

  Spencer shrugged. “It’s hopeless to look for logic in the behavior of androids,” he said.

  “Is it, Spencer?” the theatre manager asked softly. “Is it, entirely?”

  The noon rehearsal left Thomas exhausted and obscurely depressed, and when the actors dispersed at one-thirty he gravitated toward Pat. She was standing by the edge of the stage, intent on wiping her nose after a sneezing fit, and she jumped when Thomas touched her on the shoulder with his uninjured hand.

  “Oh, it’s only you, Rufus,” she said when she’d whirled around. “What do you want?”

  This isn’t quite, Thomas thought, the way I’d expect to be spoken to by a girl who loves me. “Let’s go up to the roof,” he said, trying to keep the dullness he felt out of his voice. “Catch whatever cool breeze there may be.”

  She considered it for a moment. “Okay,” she said.

  They walked in silence up the three flights of stairs, and Thomas held the roof door open for her. The daylight was overpowering after the dimn
ess of the stairwell, and Thomas was squinting through watering eyes as he dragged two canvas chairs to the roof coping and he and Pat sat down. The vast, empty blue vault of the sky seemed to Thomas to have been arranged as a contrast to show up his own unimportance, and he saw with relief that the sapphire uniformity of the heavens was flawed by a dirty smudge of rainclouds over the mountains to the north.

  His eyes were adjusting to the brightness, and he glanced at Pat, who was staring out over the maze of cobbled streets and gray-shingled roofs that was Los Angeles. God, she’s pretty, he thought helplessly. The black hair fringing around her smooth jawline in the wind, the curve of her tightly-blue-jeaned leg braced against the bricks in front of her. What makes you think, he asked himself contemptuously, that you could possibly have any future with a girl like this? Guys like Negri get these girls.

  Negri didn’t get this one, though, he reminded himself.

  “Awful,” he said, “what happened to Negri.”

  “Oh,” she waved her hand dismissingly, “he was a jerk.” She looked at him and smiled. “You know that.”

  “Yeah,” Thomas admitted.

  “He was just trying to make what you did last night look… small-time.” She draped her hand with careless affection over his arm. “You guys were really up the creek there for a little while last night, weren’t you? Before you managed to kill Albers and get away. The penalties for outright treason must be considerable.”

  “There was some talk of hanging,” Thomas admitted, “and even of torture. But I think Albers had something else in mind for me personally.”

  “Oh? Like what?”

  “Well—it’s a long story, Pat, and to start it I’ve got to say I lied to you last week, when I told you where I came from.”

  “You’re not really from Berkeley?”

  “No, I grew up not ten miles from here—not twenty, anyway—at the Merignac monastery. I ran away from there last week. And my name isn’t Rufus Pennick. It’s Thomas. Anyway, Spencer tells me the police have been looking for me ever since I entered the city, though neither of us can figure out why. Last night Albers realized I was this escaped monk Thomas that everybody’s after, and he wanted me for that reason—whatever it is—rather than for gun-running.”