Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust

by Tim Powers

  “Here we are,” smiled one of the nurses, looking a little haggard herself. “Number twelve.”

  They steered Gladhand’s wheelchair through the doorway into the narrow but cheerfully painted room. Sitting up in the bed by the window was Thomas. His left arm was bandaged and trussed in a sling.

  “Have you smoked a cigar in your office yet?” Thomas asked.

  “No, but that’s on the agenda. How are you?”

  “I give up, how am I?”

  Gladhand grimaced and wobbled one hand in the air in an it-could-be-worse gesture. “The nerves of your left hand are dead, cut by a sword you apparently parried with the inside of your elbow. The nerves may grow back—I think I read about that happening somewhere—but until they do, your left hand is paralyzed.”

  Thomas nodded dully. “Well, that’s…” He could think of no appropriate way to finish the sentence.

  “That’s the bad news, my boy.” Gladhand said. “The good news is this: I have selected you to be the new major-domo of this weary old city of the angels. You can help us prepare for Alvarez. I was going to appoint Gaudete, but he chopped himself in half with that incredibly foolish cannon trick.”

  “What exactly happened there?”

  “Only one of his cannons went off, so instead of sending the chain flying at the androids, it whipped like a rotary weed-cutter and ripped all the men standing nearby to bits.”

  “I see. Where’d the frogs come from?”

  Gladhand chuckled. “Apparently there were tornadoes over the Ravenna swamps when the Santa Ana winds collided with the cold current from up north. The twisters sucked up the frogs—it seems there were an incredible number of them this year—and the storm’s wind-currents carried them here. It scared the devil out of the androids.” Gladhand searched his pockets fruitlessly for a cigar. “Oh well. I’ll send out for some. That was a full-scale retreat that came charging at you—and that’s doubtless how you survived; they were more interested in getting the hell away than in killing you, though you did singlehandedly manage to kill ten of them before this sword-cut distracted you. Our guns were pounding them to dust out front, but it was the frogs that broke their spirit. Androids fear what they can’t understand.”

  “Well, that’s silly of them,” Thomas said dryly. “What have you got there?”

  Gladhand happily stripped the strings and paper off the object, and held it up.

  It was a head, and after the first few seconds of shock Thomas recognized it. “That’s who the stone head in the theatre basement was of,” he said.

  “Well… they’re both copies of the same original, let’s say. Actually,” he said, peering at the thing, “our bombs a week ago don’t seem to have done all that much harm; just a crushed-in section here in the back… and a few evidences of surgery where they were trying to fix the PADMU. And now he’ll never get his memory bank back.” Gladhand set the head unceremoniously on the floor.

  “Later today I’ll show you your office,” Gladhand continued. “I’ll think you’ll be impressed. There’s a mahogany desk so big you could sublet half of it as an apartment. It has a well-stocked bar, a walk-in humidor in case you should ever take up smoking, a hand-carved—”

  “I get the picture,” interrupted Thomas with a smile.

  “Yeah, just bide your time here for a few days, and then L.A. will embark on a whole new era, with you and me at the tiller and helm.” Gladhand nodded to the nurse, who promptly took hold of the handles of the wheelchair. “I’ll see you later,” he said. “Right now I have about a million things to do, and the first one is get some cigars. Nurse, if you’ll be so good as to propel me out.”

  “Mr. Gladhand,” Thomas said. “You’ve forgotten your head.”

  “Oh yes! Thank you. I want to hang it somewhere appropriate; maybe I’ll put it on the shoulders of old Johnny Bush-head.”

  The mayor picked up the head, rewrapped it, and waved as the nurse wheeled him out of the room.

  Thomas lay back down in the bed and shut his eyes. Nurses were constantly hurrying by in the hall, asking each other in clipped tones about sulfa drugs, doctors, blood counts and leg splints, but Thomas was soon asleep.

  In a dream he stood again on the high Merignac tower, clutching his broken fishing pole, and watched helplessly as the girl-faced bird creature dwindled to a distant speck in the vast sky.

  A visitor arrived late in the afternoon. Thomas awoke with a start when she nudged his leg.

  “Wha…?” he muttered, blinking. “Oh. Hi, Skooney.”

  “Hi, Rufus.” She sat down on the bed. “I hear you’ve been getting into trouble again.”

  “Yeah, that’s the facts of the case, all right. This left hand, what’s left of it, is paralyzed.”

  “Gladhand says he doesn’t see why that should prevent you from playing Touchstone.”

  Thomas blinked. “You mean he still intends to do the play?”

  “Oh sure. He’s planning on making it grander than ever now. Even thinking of blocking off some boulevard and performing it outdoors.”

  Thomas nodded vaguely, and after a moment pounded his good fist into the mattress. “This is hard to say, Skooney, but… I’ve got to say it. I’m not going to do the play. Wait a minute, let me finish. I’m not taking the major-domo post, either. I’m…” He shrugged. “I’m leaving the city.”

  Skooney bit her lip. “Why?”

  He waved his hand uncertainly. “I haven’t done well here. No, I haven’t. I’ve lost my hand, my best friend, and the girl I was in love with. The city has a bad taste for me.”

  Skooney shifted uncomfortably. “I,” she began, “I thought maybe you and I had some sort of possibility.”

  “So did I, Skooney. But I’ve lost something here.”

  “You think you’ll find it somewhere else.”

  “No. But I don’t want to stay here with its grave. I believe I’ll continue my interrupted trip to San Pedro. Sign aboard a tramp steamer, like I intended to from the start.”

  “What do you know about that kind of life?”

  “Nothing. That’s what it has going for it.”

  “Oh. Well,” said Skooney, standing up, “that leaves me with nothing to say. Does Gladhand—Pelias—know?”

  “No. I only made up my mind a little while ago.”

  “You want me to tell him?”

  “Yeah, why don’t—no, I guess I’d better.”

  Skooney lingered in the doorway. “When are you going to leave?”

  “The doctors say they’ll release me in two days. That’s Tuesday. I guess I’ll go then.”

  “You’re… absolutely set on doing this?”

  Thomas stared down at his bandaged and slung arm. “Yes,” he said. When he looked up a moment later, Skooney was gone.

  Gladhand visited Thomas three more times, though Skooney stayed away. Tuesday afternoon, when the doctors said he could go, Thomas found Jeff waiting for him in front of the hospital.

  “Hi, Jeff,” said Thomas, pleased to see someone he knew.

  “Afternoon, Rufus. I’ve got the car parked around the corner. What would you say to a bit of beer at the old Blind Moon?”

  Thomas smiled, erasing some of the weary lines around his eyes. “By God, that’s the best idea I’ve heard since the last time we went there. And I’ll pay; Gladhand gave me a lot of money this morning.”

  “I won’t argue, then.”

  The streets were crowded, and it was at least half an hour before they arrived at the Blind Moon. To Thomas’ relief, Jeff didn’t try to talk him out of leaving the city. Instead, they discussed the relative merits of domestic and imported wines, the dangers inherent in the use of chain-shot, and the rain of frogs whose dried, raisin-like corpses could still be seen strewn like bizarre seeds in the empty lots and back alleys of the city.

  They emptied their eighth pitcher of beer and called for a ninth. As a waitress passed through the fast-dimming room lighting the candles, Thomas noticed the ghosts at the other tables
. There was Spencer, his red hair hanging down over his eyes, laughing as he told some long, involved joke. Negri sat nearby, pretending not to listen, or at least not to be amused. Gardener Jenkins nodded politely to Thomas as he poured bourbon into his beer glass, and Ben Corwin, standing outside on the pavement, pressed his nose against one of the windowpanes, wondering who’d stand an old man to a drink.

  “Let’s… drink to these ghosts, Jeff,” Thomas said, swaying in his chair as he waved his beer glass at them.

  “Right,” agreed Jeff, topping off both glasses. “Here’s to you ghosts!” he said.

  “Save us a chair and a glass,” Thomas added, and then the two young men drained their glasses in one long, slow draft.

  Thomas left Los Angeles early the next morning, by the Harbor Freeway gate. His horse was energetic in the morning chill, and he let it gallop. Thomas wore new boots and a good leather jacket, and a sword on one side of his belt balanced the .45 automatic on the other.

  His left hand he kept in his jacket pocket for convenience.

  The freeway was uncrowded at this hour—there were only a few milk wagons and private carts for him to pass—and he was slowed only occasionally when he’d have to wait in line to cross one of the narrow bridges that spanned washed-out gaps in the old highroad. By ten o’clock he’d reached the intersection of the 91 Freeway, and here he reined in his horse and paused.

  The travelers that passed him may have been puzzled to see the grim-faced young man sitting his horse so motionless by the side of the road; but there couldn’t have been many, for after a few minutes he gave a nearly mirthless laugh and, wheeling his horse, galloped away east on the 91 Freeway, away from the sea, toward Needles.

  About the Author

  Tim Powers is the author of fourteen novels, including The Anubis Gates, Declare, Hide Me Among the Graves, and On Stranger Tides, which was adapted for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie of the same title. His novels have twice won the Philip K. Dick Award and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and three times won Locus Awards. Powers lives with his wife, Serena, in San Bernardino, California.

  Serena Powers

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Tim Powers

  The Skies Discrowned © 1976 by Tim Powers

  Republished in slightly different form as Forsake the Sky by Tor Books, 1986

  Epitaph in Rust © 1976 by Tim Powers

  Republished in corrected form, in a limited edition, as An Epitaph in Rust by NESFA Press, 1989

  Cover design by Jason Gabbert

  978-1-4804-3401-1

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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