by Tim Powers
“I won’t come in with you,” she said, “if you don’t mind.”
“No,” he said. “I love you, Pat.”
“Loved. I loved you too. That counts. Go.”
He nodded and turned away from her.
Maxwell’s Demon was still hissing on the TV table by the disassembled air conditioner, and he walked to it one step at a time, not looking at the forms that twisted and whispered urgently in the high corners of the room. One seemed to be perceptibly more solid than the rest, but all of them flinched away from him.
He had to blink tears out of his eyes to see the air-hose clearly, and when he did, he noticed a plain on-off toggle switch hanging from wires that were still connected to the air-conditioning unit. He cut the hose and switched off the air conditioner, and the silence that fell then seemed to spill out of the house and across San Francisco and into the sky.
He was alone in the house.
He tried to remember the expanded, timeless perspective he had participated in, but his memory had already simplified it to a three-dimensional picture, with himself floating like a bubble in one particular place.
Which of the … jet trails or arcs or coils was mine? he wondered now. How long is it?
I’ll be better able to guess tomorrow, he thought. At least I know it’s there, forever – and even though I didn’t see which one it was, I know it’s linked to another.
Fifty Cents
James P. Blaylock & Tim Powers
ENCHILADAS, Lyle thought. Sonora style, like you get out here away from the coast.
He listened to the engine of the old blue Fairlane as he sped east down Interstate 10, into the glare of the desert. The engine was shaking perceptibly, missing a stroke—probably a fouled spark plug. But he had spare spark plugs, and tools. He even had a spare starter-motor, alternator and water pump, just in case, in the trunk. The thing about old cars was that you could pretty much keep them going forever if you didn’t outright kill them. That was ironic when you thought about it – newer cars were as fragile as hothouse flowers.
He had rebuilt the Fairlane’s engine a few years back, and had some transmission work done, and there were a couple of weeks when a bad coil had given him fits, but the car had never been towed while he owned it, and it had never left him stranded. With any luck it would be the last vehicle he would ever need. A car wasn’t infinitely fixable, of course, but who cared about the infinite? Time and chance happened to cars just as much as they happened to people, but if you were well-prepared you could get past most of the obstacles, until the last one.
He had filled up the tank in Cabazon, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he got all the way out into Arizona today; there were lots of thrift stores and used bookstores in Arizona.
He’d know the book when he saw it. The Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics, selected by Francis T. Palgrave. Not today, probably, but one day. When it came to finding old books you usually stumbled on them by chance, like so many things out here.
He could see Mount San Gorgonio now in the rearview mirror, becoming more distant with every mile, and within a few minutes he would leave it behind over the horizon and start the long haul into some real desert, out through Coachella and Desert Center and on into Blythe. There was a Mexican restaurant in Quartzsite, he recalled, just twenty minutes into Arizona, that served good enchiladas, and if he held it to sixty miles an hour, which was plenty fast enough for him, he would pull in around noon; and he hadn’t checked the Quartzsite thrift-stores in months. Then he might very well angle on up Parker way for a look, and back home again along Highway 62. He would cross the river twice that way.
The air was clear out in the desert, almost like no air at all, and the sky was a deep cloudless blue. He rolled the window down and let the warm air blow through the car, sluicing out the old smells of map-paper and gun-oil with the timeless scents of hot stone and creosote. He wondered whether you could still buy the old burlap water bags that you strapped to the front bumper. There was something about that water, which always tasted a little like burlap and maybe a little like exhaust, that was better than just about anything.
A big tumbleweed came blowing along the right shoulder of the highway now, and a gust of wind sent it rollicking across in front of the Fairlane. It bounced once before clipping his front fender and rolling straight across the hood, showering the windshield with broken twigs. For a moment he couldn’t see a damned thing, but the highway was empty ahead of him anyway, and he held the car in the lane, and within half a second the windshield was clear again. And then he could.
He saw a roadside phone booth up ahead on the left, still a couple of hundred feet away, and there was a man standing beside it, though there was no car. Put up a phone booth anywhere on earth, Lyle thought, and somebody will need to make a call there.
He checked his rearview mirror and then pressed the brake, eased across the oncoming lane and pulled off onto the shoulder, rolling to a stop just on the far side of the booth.
The man looked like a desert prospector of some kind – grizzled white hair and beard, stained khaki pants and a T-shirt, red suspenders. His pant legs were rolled up, and he had on a pair of work boots that had seen some hard times. He was a big man, tall and heavy, obviously well fed. The wind blew his white hair like streamers of old newspaper caught in a fence.
“Need a lift?” Lyle called through the open window. He switched off the engine, and the desert was dead quiet except for the whisper of wind.
The man peered around the phone booth at him indecisively, clearly puzzled, although it didn’t seem to be Lyle’s question that had him snowed. His whole face showed a deep confusion, like a man who had just waked up in unfamiliar surroundings and hadn’t remembered yet where he was or why he was there.
Nut case, Lyle thought, but all the more reason to give him a lift.
“Nope,” the man said abruptly. “You got a couple of quarters for the phone? Mine don’t work.” He had a voice like a shovel in a gravel pit, but it was airy and a little high, as if there was just a shade of helium in the mix.
“Probably bent,” Lyle said, leaning away to open the glove box. He took out a little leather coin purse and unsnapped it, digging out a couple of quarters and then clicking it shut, tossing it back in and closing the glove box. For a moment he considered digging under the driver’s seat too, but decided that quarters would do.
“Name’s Lyle,” he called to the man as he levered open the door and stepped out onto the packed shoulder sand. “George Lyle.” He trudged up to the booth, holding out the two coins on the palm of his hand.
The man stared back at him, as if names in general meant nothing to him. He didn’t take the quarters. On the other side of the highway a little wind devil spun up out of the desert, whirling toward them across the broad pavement, and as it swept over them Lyle could hear sand grains ping against the metal phone-booth hood.
“You got one of them cellulite phones?” the man asked, oblivious to it. The wind devil whirled away past them and out of existence.
“No, sorry,” Lyle said, repressing a smile. “I don’t know much about that kind of thing.” He waved his open hand. “Try these two quarters on for size, Bub.”
The man took the coins awkwardly, as if he had arthritis. His fingers were cold, Lyle noticed. Imminent heatstroke? It wasn’t a hot day, especially, not for the desert, but it was a good eighty degrees or more and the man must have walked a ways; Lyle couldn’t see a broken-down car anywhere ahead, and he hadn’t passed any in the last hour or so. “You feeling all right?” he asked. The man was standing there looking at the coins, as if he still wasn’t quite sure about something. “I’ll be happy to give you a lift. East or west, doesn’t matter a damn bit. I’m just out … on a scavenger hunt.”
“I got a call to make,” the man said, turning around and feeding the coins into the slot. “I’ve got to talk to my daughter.”
Lyle heard him say this clearly enough, although the man by now seemed to be t
alking to the wind. Slowly he pushed the buttons, hesitating between each. He started to push a button and then abandoned it for another one as if digging the number out of the deep recesses of his mind. He held the receiver tight to his ear finally and stood looking east toward where the Chuckwalla Mountains stood out against the blue like an etching. Above the mountains were five white vapor trails, as if God were fixing to write music in the sky.
Lyle heard the boo-dee-weet of a missed connection.
“Can’t get through yet,” the man muttered, hanging up the phone. He picked the quarters out of the coin-return slot and idly rattled them in his right fist like dice, and then turned away from the telephone and blinked at Lyle, as if he had forgotten that he wasn’t alone. “Thanks for the kindness,” he said awkwardly. “Name’s Swinger Campbell.”
“Glad to meet you,” Lyle said, and held out his hand again, hoping the man would realize he hadn’t given back the two quarters – But Campbell didn’t move to shake his hand, just licked his lips and looked east again.
“I was a good hard-rock silver miner in them days.”
“Well I’m happy to give you a lift. You can tell me your story in the car. That way you won’t get sandblasted by this wind.”
“Broke a ton of rock and drank a quart of whiskey every day. It was our way of life.”
“I’ll bet it was,” Lyle said.
“We had a claim up in the Panamints, me and Wino Larsen and Shave-and-Lotion MacDuff.” He laughed a little now. “By God we were as hard as the rocks we busted, and that’s the damned truth. I’ll have to owe you that fifty cents.”
“I’ll put it on the tab,” Lyle said. Oh well, he thought, less than a dollar at least. “Whyn’t you get in the car, Swinger? Take a load off. I’ll run you up to Desert Center or wherever else. Hell, I’ve got nothing better to do than give a man a lift. We can hash it over in the car.”
But Swinger Campbell had started walking away, not down the highway, but straight out into the desert, and within seconds he was in among the Joshua trees and greasewood, his form rippling in the heat haze rising from the desert sand and rock. Lyle stood for a moment watching him, undecided, but then wearily set out after him. He couldn’t just let the man walk to his death, for God’s sake.
The ground was fairly hard, but was rocky, and he had to pick his way. And a hundred feet from the highway there was a dry wash, where the sand was softer, and it slowed him down even more. The wind gusted around him, and he turned away, shielding his face from blowing sand, and when he straightened up again he saw that Campbell was already a surprising distance ahead, farther than seemed possible. Lyle turned to look back toward the car. He hadn’t come more than a hundred feet, and already Campbell seemed to have covered three or four times that distance.
“Swinger!” Lyle shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth, but either Campbell didn’t hear or he didn’t care. The heat haze was obviously distorting things, because all Lyle could see now were Campbell’s black boots rising and falling and the crossed red lines of his suspenders. Then he disappeared from sight altogether, hidden for a moment by a big Joshua tree. He reappeared momentarily, then disappeared again.
There was no way Lyle was going to catch him. Apparently Swinger hadn’t been kidding about being as hard as the rocks he busted, because he was moving like a damned coyote. Lyle trudged back to the phone booth and the car; he could at least call the Highway Patrol and tell them to send someone out with some kind of off-road vehicle …
Of course Swinger Campbell might not be crazy, or sick either. He might have a shack a few miles out there, and this could well be the closest phone. There were plenty of shacks out in the desert, scattered across the hundreds of miles, mostly cinderblock cubes with aluminum patios hung on the side for a little shade. Now and then you’d see one with an old broken-down windmill alongside.
There was no sign of Campbell at all now, nor of any shack, either, just unending desert. Lyle opened the Fairlane’s passenger-side door and fetched two more quarters out of the purse in the glove box, but when he walked back to the pay phone and lifted the receiver, he could hear nothing.
Campbell at least got sounds out of it, Lyle thought, and dutifully dropped his two quarters into the slot. He heard them clank somewhere inside the box, but still no sound came from the receiver. He might as well be holding a rock to his ear. And when he worked the coin-return lever, nothing appeared in the slot. He hung the receiver back on its hook and made himself walk away from it without getting angry.
Lyle climbed into the parked Fairlane, started up the engine, and waited as two cars sped past, going like there was no tomorrow. Then he crossed back over into the eastbound lane and pushed it up to sixty again.
Restore some random guidance to the day, he thought ten minutes later when he saw the hitchhiker. Like with the book he was after: a directed search finds nothing. He swung the wheel to the right and pulled to a stop so close that the young man in the denim jacket just had to lean forward and take hold of the door handle. Again there was no parked car in sight. A day for lost souls.
The boy appeared to be in his early twenties, and he fumbled a pack of Camel non-filters out of his shirt pocket as soon as he had sat down and pulled the door closed. “You, uh, got a light?” he said in a high, nasal voice. He seemed to be wary of Lyle – but that was only sensible, being picked up by a stranger.
“Cigarette lighter on the dash,” Lyle said over his shoulder as he looked behind and accelerated back onto the pavement.
The cigarette pack wavered in the pale hands. “I, uh – guess I’ve quit. You want one?”
“Sure, thanks.” Lyle took the pack with his right hand and tapped one out against the wheel, then put the pack down on the seat and pushed the lighter button in. A moment later it popped back out again, and he pulled the lighter out and held the tiny red coils to the end of the cigarette.
“You’re welcome, Mr. Lyle.”
Lyle made himself keep his eyes on the road. Probably this kid did electrical work, and had been to his store in Fontana. “All right,” said Lyle around his newly lit cigarette, “you know my name – so who are you?”
The young man didn’t answer for several seconds, not until Lyle finally turned to squint at him. Then he said, “I’m you. From the future.”
Lyle exhaled one syllable of surprised laughter. “Oh – oh, right? The future? You don’t look anything like me. What do you do, get new bodies in the future?”
The young man shifted uneasily on the seat, and the shoulders of his worn denim jacket heaved in a shrug. “Sometimes.” He kept brushing his lanky brown hair back to touch his forehead, gingerly, as if he’d been stung there.
Beyond the dusty windshield the Mojave Desert spread out to either side of the highway. Lyle reflected that this was pretty much the sort of thing he hoped for, in his long receptive drives – random input, rolling dice. “Okay, if you’re me, what was my favorite restaurant back when I lived in Tucson?”
“I don’t remember a lot of old stuff.”
“I’d think you’d remember the camarones.”
“Don Juan’s. It was called Don Juan’s.”
“No. La Perlita. Was that gonna be your next guess?”
“Yes.” There was an edge of defiance in the nasal voice. “You’ve got a gun under your seat. It’s a .38 Special, Smith and Wesson, loaded with Hydra-Shok hollow-points.” He turned to look squarely at Lyle for the first time. The wind through the open window was blowing his hair around his narrow face. “You’ve never been to Tucson.”
Lyle’s heart was thumping in his suddenly cold chest, but he forced a laugh. “I sold that gun. All I carry under the seat now is a Thomas Brothers map book – see?” He leaned forward over the steering wheel to reach under the seat with his left hand, and when he sat back again he was holding the .38 pointed across his lap at his companion. His right arm was straight, holding the wheel at the top. “I’m gonna pull over, sonny, and you’re going to step out of the ca
r.”
Had this kid glimpsed the gun when he’d climbed in? – but he wouldn’t have been able to tell what it was loaded with. He must somehow have seen the car before, searched it while Lyle had been in some store or diner or swap-meet; and he could have learned Lyle’s name then, from the registration in the glove box.
The young man giggled nervously. “You can’t kill me now.”
“Nobody’s killing anybody. I just don’t want your company.”
“Sometimes you can’t choose, Mr. Lyle.” He shrugged, holding his hands up as if to imply that there was nothing he could do about anything. “Look, I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I won’t bother you again.”
Roadside gravel was popping and grinding under the car’s tires now, and the brakes were squealing. Dust obscured the view behind. No buildings or signs broke up the stony landscape that stretched away to remote mountains in the south, and the road ahead was as empty as the sky. This was as desolate a spot as the place where Lyle had picked him up. The young man opened the door and leaned forward, ready to step out.
“What is your name, by the way?” Lyle said, still pointing the revolver at him as the Fairlane rocked to a halt.
The young man paused, one foot on the dirt outside. “I told you,” he said, staring out at the desert. “Albert Erlich. I won’t see you again. I’m sorry for all the hassle. I hope you’re all right. I was … desperate, as I recall.” He looked back over his shoulder at Lyle and grinned, miserably. “Well, you take the high road and I’ll take the low road, right?”
“How did you know about the gun?”
Albert Erlich stepped down and closed the door. Through the open window he said, “I’ve seen it before.” He exhaled and stepped away from the car to look back the way they’d come, his hands shoved in the pockets of his denim jacket now. “A couple of times.”
Lyle considered asking him when this had been, but he knew the answer would just be more nonsense.
“Goodbye, Albert,” he said instead, and when Albert had closed the door Lyle drove along the shoulder for dozen feet or so, raising dust, even though he couldn’t get back into the lane until a bus had roared on past him, just because he suddenly wanted very badly to get away from Albert Erlich.