Epitaph in Rust

Often there's a whisper that I hear in shadowed streets,

A breath of desperation from the tall, far-seeing clouds

Or gasp of outrage from a manhole cover—something meets

Between the earth and sky, in pain, and if the shifting crowds

Can sense it, their response is only in their frightened eyes.

The very breezes pick their way among the alleyways.

As if afraid of something in the gray December skies,

Or listening to the heartbeat of these hollow latter days.

Ride on, Messiah—there's no place for you behind the wheel.

You've come too late to sell your closing chapters, for our hands.

Have written us an epitaph in rust, on dusty steel.

We're pulled aside and served with debts and overdue demands

By angry, ragged shapes that once were us; and when we pay.

We'll wait in neatly ordered lines to sign our souls away.

—from the unpublished Poems of Rufus Pennick

CHAPTER 1: Brother Thomas

"… but while in the east there rose from the radioactive ashes the empires of Erie, Allegheny and Carolina, the west remained broken up into independent, unorganized city-states."

There was really only one California imperialist in the twenty-second century—Ramo Alvarez of San Diego. Before he was 25 years old, Alvarez had extended his inherited kingdom to include the cities El Cajon, Chula Vista, Tecate and Tijuana… and Frazier Milliken's Journals testify that, as early as 2170, Alvarez was looking covetously north, toward the magnificent Ciudad de Los Angeles.…"

—Alexis O'Hara, The Kingdoms of Post-War America

When the carillon of bells rang out across the valley to herald matin prayers, Brother Thomas struck the rusty lock off the upper door of the monastery's highest tower and swung it open. He stepped cautiously out onto the flat stone blocks of the tower's roof and groped his way through almost total darkness until he touched the crumbling parapet; a cold night wind swept up the valley from the south, and he shivered as he opened his robe to lay down his two bundles.

The solemn voices of the Brothers of St. Merignac at their midnight prayers floated up from below. I hope they're all too sleepy to notice my absence, Brother Thomas thought. God knows I've never been very alert at matins.

He knelt and untied the bundles. The first held two flexible sticks that fitted together to form a long, tapering rod with a heavy cork butt. A series of metal rings, decreasing in size toward the tip, ran along the top side of it. He pulled a fishing reel from his pocket, clamped it onto the rod's grip and carefully drew the line through the rings. Finally he tied a gleaming steel hook onto the end of the line and leaned the rod against the parapet.

The other package contained only two wooden sticks rolled in a diamond-shaped sheet of string-reinforced black paper. Crossing the sticks, Brother Thomas tied them together, flexed them and then stretched the paper over them like a skin, fitting the string perimeter into notches cut in the ends of the sticks.

Not bad, he thought, as he gently punched the fishhook through the front of the kite, looped it around the crossed sticks and drew the barbed point out again. With any luck, my days at the monastery are numbered.

He stood up and peered down over one of the cracked stone merlons; the high chapel windows threw streaks of colored light across the grass of the garden, and the vineyards beyond rustled in the darkness. The very picture of routine calmness, reflected Brother Thomas with satisfaction.

From another pocket he pulled a cheap rhinestone necklace, which he knotted around the hook. Then he lifted the kite, let the wind take it, and slowly played out the fishing line as the kite rose bucking and swinging into the night sky. After he had let out about 50 meters of line he sat under the parapet to avoid the worst of the wind and waited.

Come on, he thought, Bring me a rich one. One with a discerning eye—not too discerning to admire rhinestones, though.

The wind seemed to carry a hint of the smells of the city; a faint, aromatic smoke blended from the chimneys of a hundred restaurants, forges, bathhouses and incinerators. It was infinitely more alluring than the damp-earth, pinesap and incense odors of the monastery.

A faint sound of flapping and chittering was audible above the sighing breeze, and he gripped the rod more tightly. His chest felt hollow and his fingers trembled a little. I hope they're not too noisy, he thought.

Then the rod lunged in his hands and the reel whirred as meters and meters of line were pulled rapidly up into the sky. His lightly pressing thumb felt the spooled line diminishing by the second. He'd better get tired quickly, he thought, or I've lost two dollars worth of 30-pound test.

The line hissed out for an eternal half minute, then paused. Immediately he clicked on the drag. High above, the thing seemed to be circling now, as Brother Thomas stumbled about on top of the dark tower, trying to reel in as steadily as he could. The thing in the sky resisted, but with efforts ever weaker and more spasmodic.

"Damn me! Damn me!" came a shrill cry from above. "What gives? What gives?" Thomas started so violently that he nearly lost his hold on the rod. God in heaven, he thought; they can talk. I wish this one wouldn't.

"Leggo, Jack. Lemme go. It wasn't me, Jack." The flapping, protesting creature was now only a couple of meters over Thomas's head, and the young monk jerked the rod downward to fling the vociferous flier to the stone floor.

"Hooo!" the thing wailed despairingly. "Wooo-hooo!"

"Shut up, dammit!" hissed Thomas. "I'm not going to hurt you!" Thomas grabbed the little bird-man by its spindly legs and awkwardly removed the hook from the thing's webbed hand. Still holding on, Thomas reached into the warm pocket of the bird-man's kangaroo-like pouch and removed a handful of bright, hard objects. "There!" Thomas told it. "That wasn't so bad, eh? Now take off!"

He tossed it into the air, and spreading its wings, it thrashed away into the night, calling back childish insults and obscenities.

Thomas wiped his sweating forehead with his sleeve and listened intently. No apparent commotion—but all this racket must have been heard by someone. He quickly scooped up the loot he'd taken from the flier's pouch and dropped it all into the pocket of his robe. Don't panic, he told himself. Sneak back to your cell, crawl into bed and deny everything.

Nodding at the wisdom of his own advice, he hurried down the narrow, curling tower stairway, his fishing rod and kite in one hand and the fingertips of the other brushing the damp stone wall to keep him clear of the unrailed inner edge. He was panting nervously, and the echoes in the tower were like those of a pack of exhausted dogs taking refuge. God, I'm making enough noise for ten men. I'd better hurry.

He tried to take the steps two at a time; immediately his sandalled feet slipped on the uneven mossy blocks and he rolled painfully down the last 12 steps, skinning his knees and smashing his kite and fishing pole to splinters.

"Damn it!" he muttered when, at the bottom of the stairs, he got his breath back. It had taken him six months of furtive work to make that fishing rod. He was about to rise to his feet and continue his flight when the silence was abruptly broken.

"This blasphemy, Brother Thomas," came a harsh voice, "while deplorable in itself, fades to insignificance before your more serious crime." The owner of the voice slid open the door of a dark lantern he carried, and Thomas found himself looking up into the half-angry, half-sad face of Brother Olaus, the abbot, standing in the open doorway.

Thomas paled. "Brother, please," he said quickly and desperately, "don't hand me over to the police. Give me penances, I'll scrub the sacristy floors for a year, but don't—you can't—let them cut off my hand. Look, the fishing rod broke, I can't do it any more. If you—"

"I'm sorry, Thomas," the abbot said. "There's nothing you or I can do about it now. Our duties are clear. This… this calamity may, I hope, turn out in the end to have been your key to salvation." The abbot looked down at the shivering monk with something like sympathy. "Try to see it in that light. Try—"

Thomas hit him, hard, in the stomach, and the old abbot dropped to the dewy grass like a broken piece of lumber. Thomas opened his hand and let fall a fist-sized piece of the fishing pole.

"Hey!" came a voice across the dark lawn. Running footsteps could be heard from the direction of the chapel, so Thomas turned and hobbled in the opposite direction, toward the vegetable garden and the south wall.

"Stop!" called one of his pursuers. "Stop in the name of God!"

Thomas instinctively slid to a halt. A moment later he was running again, impatiently cursing himself.

He was in among the vegetables now, in total darkness, tripping over tomato vines and putting his feet through watermelons. Chilly mud splashed his legs and clogged his sandals.

A half dozen outraged monks followed him cautiously; they assumed he was a bandit, probably armed, and possibly accompanied by vicious henchmen, so they hung back and contented themselves with shouting admonitory bits of Scripture at him.

Thomas lurched through the last of a row of bean trellises and collided with the rough bricks that formed the wall. He tried to climb it, but gave up when the bricks cracked apart under his fingers. The monks, beginning to doubt his stature as a menace, were throwing rocks at him now with rapidly improving accuracy.

Thomas yelled as a well-flung cobble caught him in the ribs. He couldn't linger there, he realized. Dropping to his hands and knees he scuttled along the base of the wall, searching for one of the drainage pipes that passed through it at irregular intervals. He cut his ringer deeply on a stray bit of broken pottery and blundered through several complicated spider webs, but finally found one of the pipes. Urged to haste by the increasing velocity of rocks tearing into the vegetation all around him, he scrambled headfirst into the narrow, slippery, downward-slanting shaft.

The monks soon found his escape route and were fiercely thrusting a couple of tree branches into the pipe mouth when Brother Olaus limped up and told them to be quiet. "He's gone… you idiots," he gasped. "Back to your cells, now, move. I'll… inform the police in the morning."

Still not certain what had happened, the monks shrugged, put down the branches and trudged back to the main building. Soon the last of the monastery's lights was extinguished, and except for occasional faint sounds like voices and laughter in the sky, the silence was complete.

The air was sharp with pre-dawn chill, and Thomas's nose and throat ached every time he took a breath. His first impulse was to thrash his way through the grapevines to the front gate of the monastery and pound on it until someone let him back in; they would turn him over to the police in the morning, but at least until then he'd be able to sleep and be warm in the piled straw on the floor of the detention cell.

No no, he told himself, trying to muster some confidence, this is adventure. The whole world is laid out and waiting for you if you can just get clear of these damned vines and wait till the sun comes up. After a few moments of indecision he took his own word for it and plodded through the darkness, whimpering softly as the cold penetrated every seam in his robe.

He tried to move steadily south, toward Los Angeles, but thickets and creeks and ravines twisted his course so often that after a while he had no idea which direction he was facing. I may wind up in the Hollywood Reservoir, he thought, or even back at the monastery. I've got to get my bearings.

After frequent collisions with pine branches and trunks, he decided to climb one of the offending trees to look for the lights of Los Angeles to guide him. He peered up at the branches silhouetted against the dim purple sky, trying to judge which tree was bare enough to serve as a ladder and crow's nest. At last he chose a tall one whose limbs appeared solid and evenly spaced.

He climbed quickly, glad to be free of the dew-soaked, clinging underbrush, and soon straddled a comfortable branch 15 meters above the ground. He gazed around intently, trying to focus his tired eyes on the dim, blurry landscape. He could see no lights, but half a mile away a gray streak curved through the forest—the Hollywood Freeway. With the first surge of real confidence he'd felt that night, he decided to follow it south and be in the city by sunrise.

He hopped and swung his way back down the tree, cheerfully imagining the breakfast he would buy with the money he'd taken from the bird man. Bacon for sure, he thought. Scrambled eggs… no, an omelette, by God. And beer. And—

"Take it slow now, son, and keep your hands where we can see 'em," came an odd, quacking voice below Thomas. Startled, he missed the next branch and half-leaped, half-fell to the bed of matted pine needles three meters beneath him.

He scrambled painfully to his feet and then froze when he saw he was surrounded by short, stocky figures. Children? he wondered dizzily.

A match flared briefly in a gnarled hand, and Thomas realized they were dwarves—a bearded, ragged crew, with mean-looking knives thrust into the belts of their leather tunics.

"A monk!" observed the one with the match. "Up in a tree, chatting with God in the middle of the night!" The other dwarves laughed uproariously in falsetto voices and slapped their knees. "Well now," the leader went on, "what we want to know—right, boys?—is if you've got some tobacco. Quick, now, no lies!"

Thomas blinked and gulped. "Tobacco?" he answered automatically. "No. I don't smoke. Sorry."

The dwarves growled and muttered, and a few unsheathed their knives. Thomas glanced around for an escape route, and saw none. "Look," he said desperately, "I'll get some and bring it back. There's some at the monastery—good stuff, cavendish. I'll be back before the sun clears the hills."

Scratching their beards, the dwarves frowned and exchanged shrewd glances. "Ah," piped up the leader again, poking Thomas in the ribs, "but how do we know you'll come back? Eh?" The other dwarves nodded, pleased that their leader had so succinctly expressed the problem.

"Here," Thomas said, trying to sound sure of himself. "Hold my rosary until I return." He untied the long rosary—133 polished wooden beads knotted along a light rope—that encircled his waist, and handed it to the leader. "It's collateral," he explained.

"I thought you said it was a rosary," said the leader.

"It is, dammit," said Thomas with some exasperation. "Collateral means I let you hold it so you know I'll come back."

"Ah!" said the dwarf, nodding wisely. He considered the idea for a moment. "Well, it sounds okay to me. Whoever heard of a monk without his rosary? We've got him over a barrel, eh boys?" His fellows nodded and grinned delightedly. "We'll wait here. You sure you can find your way back?"

"Yeah, I come here all the time," said Thomas, edging away. The sky had lightened during the discussion, and he could see well enough to sprint quickly away as the dwarves huddled around their leader, examining the rosary with great interest.

I've lost my badge of office, Thomas thought. I'm no longer a monk—just a battered young man in a ripped brown robe. The thought frightened him a little, and brought home to him, as nothing else had, the realization that he really had stepped out from under the stern but protective wing of the church. The sun was nearly up, though, and the empty blue vault of the sky promised a warm day. The birds were setting up a racket in the trees as Thomas trotted along a path below them, craning his neck for a glimpse of the freeway.

Finally he burst through a tangle of oleander bushes, showering himself with dew, and saw its concrete bulk rising up out of a stand of junipers, the high white rim already lit by the sun. Thomas recalled reading that it was only locally known as the Hollywood Freeway; to the hardy merchants who drove their donkey-borne cargoes along its ancient track from San Francisco to San Diego, is was known as Route Five. There were even legends that the road stretched farther, north to Canada and south into Mexico.

He climbed a young sapling, edged out along a bending branch, and then dropped onto the surprisingly wide concrete surface of the freeway.

As soon as he stood up he felt leagues removed from the monastery. Worldly, adventurous-looking debris was scattered along the sides of the old highway, and cast long, sharp shadows across the lanes—at one point the charred remains of an overturned cart were fouled in the railing, and donkey skeletons, broken wheels and rusted sections of machinery lay everywhere, as if strewn by some passing giant. He even found a rusty sword, its blade broken off a foot below the bell guard, and carried it with him until he noticed tiny bugs infesting the rotted leather grip.

The heel strap on his left sandal had snapped sometime during his frantic exodus, which now caused him some difficulty in walking. He put up with it for a while and then sat down, annoyed at the delay, to see if it could be tied up. His attempt at repair only served to break the strap off entirely, and he was about to fling the wretched, mud-caked sandal away and proceed barefoot when he remembered seeing a short length of wire among the loot he'd taken from the bird-man a few hours ago. He emptied his pocket… and stared for the first time at the plunder he'd risked his hand and possibly his life for: a cheap ring, several bottle caps, a few gum wrappers, some broken glass, 11 one-soli coins, and the wire.

Oh no, he thought, stunned with disappointment. Buying breakfast will use up nearly my entire haul. I can't afford to stay in Los Angeles even one day.

Fixing the sandal was one step, he told himself. And if he used his wits a young, well-educated man like himself ought to be able to get by in the city.

With a confidence born of naiveté and cheery sunlight, he whistled as he twisted the wire onto his sandal, slipped it on and then continued his southward trek.

He had walked about half a kilometer when a rattling and creaking behind him made him stop and look over his shoulder. A horse-drawn cart was advancing at a leisurely pace, its white-bearded driver waving amiably at Thomas, who waved back and smiled.

"Good morning, brother!" called the driver as he reined in beside Thomas. "It's no trouble, I hope, that's got you on foot?"

"No trouble, no," replied Thomas, brushing the dark hair from his eyes, "but it is slow travel. I'd be much obliged for a ride into Los Angeles."

"Sure, hop aboard. Careful of the box, there; it's black powder." Thomas climbed up onto the driver's bench and sat back comfortably on the passenger side, glad to rest his legs. The bed of the cart was filled with wooden boxes over which a tarpaulin had been roped.

"What's your cargo?" asked Thomas, peering back at the boxes as the cart got under way.

"Guns, lead and powder, brother," answered the old man. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened, and Thomas knew he was grinning even though the bushy white beard hid his mouth. "I know you're a good lad," he added, "but do me the kindness of looking at the backrest you're leaning on."

Thomas stared at the old man, and then sat up and turned around. In the center of the passenger side of the backrest was a metal-rimmed hole big enough to put a thumb into. The wood immediately around it was blackened as if by smoke.

"Uh… what is that?" asked Thomas cautiously, not leaning back.

"The barrel of a gun, son," the driver told him with a dry chuckle. "Throws .50 caliber hollow-point slugs. Take it easy, I won't shoot it. It's just there so we can trust each other."

"Oh." Thomas sat back gingerly. "Have you ever had to use it?" he asked after a while.

"Oh, yeah." The old man spat meditatively. "Going through Agoura last summer, a hitchhiker pulled a knife. Said I was a warmonger and he was going to kill me so kids could play on the beaches, or something like that. It blew him right over Aeolus's head," he finished, nodding at the horse.

The sun had warmed the air and dried Thomas's robe, and the even rocking of the old cart was making him sleepy. Determined to resist it, he sat up straighter and pointed at a marble shrine glittering in the new sunlight on a hill to the left. "What's over there?"

"That's the old Odin Temple," the driver told him. He glanced at Thomas. "You're not from around here?"

"Well, yes," Thomas conceded. No harm in telling him part of it. "I'm from the Merignac monastery, though—I grew up there—so I haven't learned much about the area. They're cloisters, you know."

"Hm," said the old man, nodding. "I knew they made wine and cheese, but I sure never knew they handled oysters." Thomas didn't try to explain. "So what'll you do in L.A.? Work in one of the Broadway missions?"

"No," said Thomas carelessly. "I figure I'll wander down to San Pedro and sign aboard a tramp steamer. See a bit of the world." He'd given his situation some thought, and this seemed the wisest course.

They were well into Hollywood by now, and Thomas could see the crazily leaning roofs of houses sticking up like fantastic hats above the freeway rail. Barking dogs and screaming children could be heard from time to time among the rickety wooden stands by the edge of the freeway. Their occupants sold everything from cool beer and tacos to horseshoes and axle grease. Crows flapped by lazily or huddled in secretive groups along the rail.

"Getting into civilization now," the driver observed. "A tramp steamer, eh? Good job for a young man, if you're tough. I was a deckhand on the Humboldt Queen back in… oh… '47, I guess, when Randall Dowling was wiping out the Carmel pirates. Wild times, I tell you."

Thomas would have liked to hear more, but the old man lapsed into silence. "What brings you and your guns into L.A.?" he asked.

"Oh, I sell 'em to the city government," the driver said. "Mayor Pelias wants every one of his android cops to carry a real firearm, not just the traditional sword-and-stick. He's the gunsmith's patron saint."

"Android cops?" Thomas asked. "What do you mean?"

"They didn't tell you much in that monastery, did they?"

The traffic—bicycles, rickshaws and many horse-drawn carts—had become fairly thick. Suddenly it broke into a disordered rout for the right-hand lane at a series of strident blasts of a horn behind them. Thirty-five meters up the road a mounted merchant attempted to vault his panicky horse right over a slow-moving rickshaw; and a crew of roadside laborers rushed in to clear away the wreckage and moaning bodies and cut the throat of the crippled horse.

"What in hell is going on?" Thomas cried. "Why's everybody moving over?"

"Hear that horn?" the driver asked as he calmly worked his cart in between two beer wagons and set the hand brake. "That means a gas car's coming."

The blaap, blaap, blaap of the horn was very loud now. Because of the tall beer wagon, Thomas could see nothing to the rear, so he kept his eyes on the empty left lane.

All at once it appeared and sped past, and the racket of the horn slowly diminished. Thomas had only a quick glimpse of a big, blue-painted metal body, on thick, rubber wheels, carrying a driver in the front, a passenger in the rear and, in a makeshift chair on the roof, a red-faced man blowing like a maniac into a long brass trumpet. Thomas was extremely impressed.

"God," he said, "What did you say that was? A lascar?"

"Gas car," the driver corrected, amused by Thomas's awe. "That'll be some city official, probably Albers from Toluca Lake. An emergency in town, I guess."

The traffic slowly untangled itself and moved out again, and Thomas sat back thoughtfully. "Tell me about those android cops," he said.

They were passing under the Sunset Boulevard bridge now, and Thomas stared curiously at the beggars calling to passing vehicles and coughing theatrically or waving crippled limbs to excite pity. "A few years ago," the driver said, "Mayor Pelias decided his police force was no good. They were well paid but not very effective, you know? So he started brewing androids and using them on the police force. He caught a lot of criticism for it at the time—androids had been used only for roadwork and construction before that, and everybody said they weren't near smart enough to be cops. But some scientist figured out how to implant a little box they call a padmu in the androids' heads, and it lets 'em think and do things almost as well as a human cop, and more reliably. So pretty soon he converted entirely to android. Saves a whole lot of money, 'cause androids are cheap to produce in quantity, they don't need a salary, and they eat grass like cows." The old man laughed. "You should see them grazing. A field of naked guys on their hands and knees eating grass."

"Wow," Thomas said. He was quiet for the rest of the ride, wondering what sort of world he'd traded the quiet halls and familiar disciplines of the Merignac monastery for.

Just inside the high city wall they pulled over while a customs officer checked the cargo for contraband liquor ("Fusel oil in the Oregon vodka," the officer explained), and Thomas hopped down from the bench and walked around to the driver's side.

"Thanks for the lift. It would have taken me till noon to get here on foot."

"Yeah, it would have," the old man agreed. "What's your name?"

"Thomas."

"Well, Thomas, I'm John St. Coutras." He stuck out his hand, and Thomas stepped up onto the rear brake pedal extending his own hand to St. Coutras. Immediately a deep boom echoed, the cart lurched, the horse neighed and reared and the customs officer dropped his clipboard. A cloud of raspy gray smoke hung in the air, and in the ensuing silence Thomas could hear bits of stone pattering to the pavement on the other side of the courtyard.

"You stepped on the rear brake pedal, I believe," St. Coutras said.

"Uh… yes." They completed the delayed handshake. Smoke, Thomas noticed, rose from the hole in the passenger's backrest. "That's how you shoot it, huh?"

St. Coutras nodded.

"What the hell have you got? A cannon?" brayed the customs man, who had by this time found his voice. "You guys aware that shooting firearms inside the walls is a felony? Hah? I'll—"

"It was an accidental discharge," St. Coutras explained calmly, "which is just a misdemeanor. But here," he said, reaching into his pocket, "let me pay for the wall repair." He handed the officer several coins.

"Well, all right, then," muttered the man, as he shambled back to his little plywood office. "Can't have that sort of thing, you know; I'll let you off with a warning this time…"

"Gee. I'm sorry about that," Thomas said. "I'd pay you back, but—"

"Forget it, Thomas. It's good community relations to give customs men money."

"Oh. Well… thanks again for the ride." Thomas waved and then walked through an archway into the full sunlight of Western Avenue.

CHAPTER 2: A Day in the City

The waiter, after giving Thomas a long, doubtful look, led him down the aisle to a narrow booth at the rear of the restaurant.

"There you are, sir," he said. "Would you care for coffee?"

"Yes," said Thomas, "and a ham and swiss cheese and bell pepper omelette, and sourdough toast, and fried potatoes with onions, and a big glass of very cold beer."

The waiter slowly wrote it all on a pad and then stared at Thomas, plainly dubious about the young man's finances, but intimidated by the monk's robe.

"I can afford it," sniffed Thomas haughtily. He waved the man away.

As soon as the waiter walked off Thomas dipped the first finger of his left hand into his water glass, washing the deep gash he'd sustained the night before. He wiped off the dried blood with his napkin. Looks all right, he decided. It'll leave a scar, but I guess it's clean.

Most of the restaurant's booths were empty, which struck Thomas as an odd state of affairs for breakfast time on such a sunny morning. Slightly apprehensive, he wondered about the quality of the food.

A tiny, leaded-glass window was set in the wall next to his left ear, and he hunched around in his seat to look outside, A congested line of vehicles was moving north on Western—away from the city, Thomas realized. The carts all seemed to be filled with chairs and mattresses, and he saw men pulling several of them, strapped into harnesses meant for horses. A policeman was walking down the line, and the people in the carts pulled sheaves of papers from their pockets and let him examine them. Sometimes he would keep the papers and make the owner move his cart out of the line to return into the city. Remembering that St. Coutras had said all the cops were androids, Thomas tried to look more closely at this one, but the wavy window glass prevented him from seeing anything clearly.

Six young men clutching long sticks strode up the sidewalk. They sprinted the last 30 meters to the policeman and clubbed him to the ground from behind. For a full 20 seconds they crouched above the uniformed body, raining savage, full-arm blows; then they ran away in different directions. Thomas had expected the people in the traffic line to say or do something, but they watched the beating disinterestedly. After a few minutes another policeman appeared and began calmly checking their papers.

Frowning and upset, Thomas turned back to his table. Do androids feel pain? he wondered. The replacement cop didn't seem bothered by his predecessor's fate so why should he be? He had enough problems without worrying about the well-being of some creature who was brewed in a vat.

At that moment his beer arrived, followed closely by the food he'd ordered. Until he took a long drink of the cold beer, he felt a little queasy about eating, but then his hunger returned in force. He wolfed the food and washed it down with another glass of beer.

By the time he finished he had forgotten the unfortunate android and was leaning back, feeling comfortable and debating whether or not to buy a cigar. After a while the waiter appeared.

"What do I owe you?" asked Thomas, reaching into his pocket.

"Forty solis."

Thomas smiled. "No, really."

"Forty solis," the waiter repeated slowly, moving to block Thomas's exit from the booth.

Thomas's smile disappeared. "Forty solis for one breakfast?" he gasped. "Since when? Brother William told me you can get a good dinner for ten."

"Apparently Brother William hasn't been to town for a while," the waiter growled. "The Los Angeles soli has been dropping ever since last summer." He grabbed Thomas by the collar. "Listen, brother—if you are a monk, which I doubt; where's your rosary?— you're lucky we'll take solis at all, since Thursday morning. Most shops are closed, won't take any currency till they see where it stands. Now trot out 40 solis or we'll be using your lousy hide to wash dishes with tonight."

"Oh, all right then!" said Thomas indignantly, pushing aside the waiter's arm. "Here." He reached into his pocket again with his right hand; with his left he picked up his water glass and splashed its contents into the waiter's face. While the man's eyes were closed, Thomas punched him in the stomach and then grabbed his hair to pull his dripping face down hard onto the empty breakfast plate. Crockery flew, and the waiter yelled in pain.

Thomas shoved him aside and dashed up the aisle. The cashier, a blond girl in a frilly apron, stepped into his path but then stepped back when he roared fiercely and waved his arms at her.

His escape looked good until two burly, unshaven men in stained T-shirts and aprons appeared from the kitchen and stood in front of the door. "Grab the bastard!" yelled the furious waiter, who now advanced on Thomas from behind.

"Oh, Lord," moaned Thomas in fright.

Filling a booth at a nearby window was a well-to-do family: an older gentleman, his stocky wife, three children and, under the table, a poodle in a powder blue dog sweater. They all watched Thomas with polite interest, as if he'd just announced that he was going to execute a few juggling tricks for their amusement.

"I'm sorry, I really am," Thomas yelled as he picked up the dog with both hands, raised it over his head and pitched it through the window. Taking a flying leap and setting his sandalled foot firmly in a plate of sausages, he dove head first through the jagged-edged casement. When he rolled to his feet on the glass-strewn sidewalk, he saw the dog huddled against the wall, terrified but apparently saved from injury by the idiotic sweater.

"Your dog's okay!" Thomas yelled back through the window. He felt bad about having done that. The two big men in aprons rounded the corner of the building, one armed with a long fork and the other with a spatula. Thomas turned and ran down the block, jogging sharply right on a street called Sierra Vista and then left into a nameless alley. It led him eventually to another big street, which he followed south, walking briskly now that the vengeful cooks had been left far behind.

Anton Delmotte sipped at his tomato juice and shuddered.

His boss, sitting across the table from him, looked up. "What's wrong with you?" he asked unsympathetically. "Did my breakfast disagree with you?"

"Oh, no, Bob." Delmotte twisted his wrinkled face into an ingratiating smile. "The breakfast was tip-top. As always."

"Yeah," Bob grunted absently, returning his attention to the papers on the table before him. "Better than you deserve."

Delmotte didn't answer. Taking another deep sip of the red juice, he managed to swallow without a grimace. Earlier, in Bob's absence, Delmotte had tiptoed furtively to the liquor cabinet with the glass of tomato juice, hoping to find some vodka or gin to fortify it with; but Bob's returning footsteps had sounded on the stair before he'd found any, and he'd had to make do with peppermint schnapps.

A short, rat-faced man leaned through the rear doorway, his ragged beard and greasy sweatshirt presenting an incongruous contrast with the simple colonial elegance of the dining room. "That kid from Bellflower died during the night," he said. "I said he was sick. We'll be lucky if the rest of 'em don't come down with it."

Bob let a long sigh hiss out between his teeth. "Okay," he said, "Tie him up under the wagon and we'll cut him loose once we're moving. He's not still in with the others, is he?"

"No, boss. I've put him under a couple of boxes out back."

"Good. Get the rest of them in the wagon. We'll be moving out at 11:00." The man nodded and withdrew. Bob turned to Delmotte, who had drained the tomato juice. "You swore that kid was okay," he said. "Not that I should ever take your word for anything."

"Oh, hell, Bob," Delmotte protested nervously. "He looked all right. Good muscles, clear eyes. You'd have sworn yourself that it was just a cold."

Bob glared at him. "Maybe. But you're the one that did swear it. And Alvarez ordered 50, not 49." He stood up and walked to the window, squinting out at the street. "We leave in about two hours. If you haven't found a replacement for the Bellflower kid by then, we're leaving you behind."

"Wha… ?" Delmotte paled. "Leave me behind? I couldn't get out of the city alone, Bob. I'd starve for sure… but you're just pulling my leg, aren't you? Hell, yes. You'd never maroon me, not after all these years. You know as well as—"

"I'm not joking." Bob still stood at the window, looking out. "I wouldn't miss you. All you do these days is drink and throw up." He turned to the old man. "Two hours, Pops. You'd better get busy." He crossed to the table, picked up his papers and left by the rear door.

Trembling wildly, Delmotte tottered to the liquor cabinet and, with a wince, took two deep swigs of the schnapps; then he went into the kitchen and returned with a pot of hot coffee, which he set on the table. A small, cork-stoppered bottle of clear fluid stood on the bookshelf and, fumbling to open it, he emptied the contents into the coffee.

"Recompense," he kept muttering. "A cold, cold recompense."

He scuttled to the window and peered out, and a crazy spark of hope awoke in his rheumy eyes. Returning to the bookcase, he grabbed five volumes at random, and then wrenched open the street door and darted outside.

As he moved deeper into the city, Thomas was increasingly puzzled by the air of unspecified tension hanging over the sunlit streets; most shops were closed; a surprising amount of broken furniture and old crockery littered the gutters; and the few people he saw traveled in groups of at least two, walking quickly and glancing uneasily up and down the boulevard.

It's Friday now, Thomas knew. What happened here Thursday morning?

Another fugitive appeared now—an old man carrying a stack of books dashed out of a doorway up ahead. Poor man, Thomas thought. All alone, fleeing from whatever it is everybody's scared of, trying to hang onto a few treasured books. Even as he watched, the old man stumbled, scattering the books across the sidewalk and into the gutter.

"Let me help you with those," Thomas called, running over to him. He picked up the volumes, brushed them off and handed them back to the old man.

"Thank you, lad, thank you," he wheezed. "A kind soul in this cold metropolis! Come inside and let me give you some coffee."

"No thanks," Thomas said, wondering why the old man smelled so overpoweringly of peppermint. "I have to be in San Pedro by sundown, and it's a long way, I hear."

"True, lad, true! So long that ten minutes of good conversation over a cup of coffee won't matter a bit." He put his arm around Thomas's shoulders and steered him back toward the open door.

"Really," Thomas protested, "it's kind of you to offer, and I'm grateful, but I—"

"All right." Tears stood in the old man's eyes. "Go, then. Leave me to the dusty loneliness from which suicide is the only exit. I… I want you to keep these books. They're all I own in the world, but—"

"Wait a minute," interrupted Thomas, bewildered. "Don't do that. I'll have a cup of coffee with you, how's that? I'll have two."

"Bless your heart, lad."

Delmotte led the ragged young man inside, reflecting, even in this tense moment, how much the lad resembled his long-dead son, Jacob. Jacob would never have let Bob treat me this way.

"Sit down, son," he said as jovially as he could, pulling out a chair that faced the door across the table. "Ah, there's the coffee! Drink up."

Thomas sat down reluctantly. "There's no cups," he pointed out.

Delmotte sagged. "What? Oh, yes. You couldn't drink it right out of the… ? I suppose not. Wait there, I'll fetch a cup." He entered the kitchen, stopping first at the liquor cabinet to lower the level of the schnapps by another inch. "Medicine," he explained.

As soon as the old man was out of the room, Thomas lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed the dark liquid within. It had a sharp, sweet smell.

Delmotte reappeared, proudly waving a cup. "Here you are, Jacob," he said.

"Thomas. Thomas is my name."

Delmotte wasn't listening. He poured coffee into the cup and hummed softly to himself. "There you are," he said, pushing the cup toward Thomas.

"I don't want any." Thomas tensed his weary legs for a dash out the door.

"You'll drink it, though, won't you? You've always been my obedient son—not like Bob."

That does it. He leaped up and bolted around the table toward the door; but the old man, with surprisingly quick reflexes, sprang from his chair as Thomas rushed past and seized him around the waist.

"Bob!" Delmotte shrilled. "I got one, I got one!"

Thoroughly terrified now, Thomas drove his elbow into the old man's face. Delmotte dropped to the floor and Thomas ran outside and pelted off down the street.

After a moment Bob stepped out onto the sidewalk, his mouth twisted with impatience and exasperation as he raised a pistol to eye level.

The bullet tore across Thomas's right side before he heard the shot, and sheer astonishment made him lose his footing and fall to his hands and knees on the pavement. The second shot, with a sound like a muted bell, punched a hole in a pawnbroker's sign over his head.

"Help, I'm being murdered!" he yelled as he scuttled up the sidewalk on all fours. Another bullet zipped past his ear, as he slipped around the corner. He scrambled to his feet, breathed deeply for a few seconds and then trotted away down another street that stretched south.

After a block or two he felt blood trickling down his side under his robe. I suppose I can't afford to bleed to death on the way, he thought impatiently. He ducked into an alley, stepped modestly behind a stack of cabbage crates and, lifting the skirts of his robe, tore away the already tattered hem.

The wound was about six centimeters long. It was not deep, though it seemed willing to bleed indefinitely. Thomas held a wad of fabric against the gash and then tied the threadbare brown strips of hem across his middle so that they pressed on the makeshift bandage. The cloth blotted black with blood fairly quickly, but it seemed quickly enough to indicate a damaged artery.

His bandage in place, he slumped against the brick wall behind him and heaved a long sigh. When his eyes refocused, he saw a boy about ten years old glowering down at him from an open second-floor window.

"Uh, hello there," Thomas said.

The child frowned deeply.

"Say," Thomas went on, "can you tell me what happened yesterday? Why is everybody so frightened?"

"They blew up Mayor Pelias," the boy answered after a pause. "Twice, early in the morning. It woke me up."

"He's dead, then?"

"No." The boy stepped away from the window.

Thomas considered and then dismissed the idea of calling him back. He made sure his robe was as neat as possible before stepping onto the sidewalk again to resume his journey. He was on Western again, he noted, and a number of signs agreed that Wilshire was at the intersection up ahead. He wondered how close he was to San Pedro and wished he had brought a map.

Thomas strode on with a firm jaw and lots of determination, but after half an hour or so his feet began to drag. His forehead, despite the hot sun and his heavy robe, was dry, and a powerful nausea rose in his abdomen. The glare on the buildings and sidewalks made his eyes water, so he squinted to cut down the reflection. Sunstroke, he thought dizzily—or maybe it's fever, infection from my bullet wound. I've got to rest, get out of this sun.

At the next cross-street, he turned right onto Pico, noticing a closed stagecoach station only two buildings away. Its door was recessed a good three meters from the sidewalk, and he looked forward to sitting down and resting in the shaded hall—maybe he could even take a short nap.

Thomas turned into the cool hall, and was halfway to the locked door when he saw the man already sitting there.

"Oh. Hi," Thomas said, halting. In the sudden dimness he was unable to see the man clearly.

"Howdy, son," came a mellow voice. "Sit down, make yourself at home. The shade's here for everybody."

"Thanks." Thomas leaned back and slid down the wall into a sitting position.

"What brings you out of doors?" the man inquired. A paper bag rustled and Thomas heard swallowing. "Like a bit of scotch?"

"No, thanks," Thomas replied. "I'm a stranger in town. Just passing through, as they say. What happened to the mayor, anyway?"

"He's had a stroke, the story is, after two bombs bounced him out of bed yesterday morning, one ten minutes after the other. I think he's dead, and they don't want to let on. They figure the city would really go to the dogs if it got out that he'd kicked off."

"Would it?" Thomas asked drowsily. "Go to the dogs, I mean."

"Yeah, probably," the man said. "The people would try to wipe out the androids, and the androids'd fight back, and then San Diego or Carmel would send an army against L.A. while none of us were paying attention." He sucked the scotch. "I don't know. Who cares? I don't care. Do you care?"

"Not me," Thomas said agreeably. "I don't care."

"Right! Have some scotch."

"No… well, okay, maybe I will." The man handed him the bottle and Thomas opened his robe and poured some of the liquor on his stiffening bandage. It felt wonderfully cold on his feverish skin, and smelled so invigorating that he gulped a mouthful of it.

He handed it back to his companion. "Thanks."

"How'd you get cut?"

"I was shot at," Thomas told him. "Some crazy old man tried to serve me poisoned coffee, and when I ran, he shot at me. Three times."

"I'll take care of him," the man said with a reassuring nod.

"You will?" asked Thomas curiously.

"Sure. I think I'll take care of the whole damn city. I've had my eye on 'em for a long time. Sin everywhere you look. Dope, whores, murderers—do you know what I saw the other day?"

"What?"

"A screwdriver. There were these two girls in the plastic handle. Photographs, you know? They had black bathing suits on, but when you turn the screwdriver upside down the bathing suits slide off, and the girls are naked. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about."

"Oh, yeah." Thomas nodded and eyed his companion uncertainly. The man was big, with a puffy, ruddy face, and eyes hidden between thick eyebrows and sagging pouches.

"You're just passing through, you say?" he asked.

Thomas nodded. "Well, I'll hold off till tomorrow night before I unleash them old seven angels of doom, okay?"

"Okay. Much obliged." It'd be wise to leave now, Thomas decided and rose to his feet.

"Taking off so soon?"

" 'Fraid I have to," Thomas said.

"Okay. Listen, if you get in any jams, tell 'em the Lord of Wrath is a buddy of yours."

"Will do." He waved and walked back out to the sidewalk. He hoped San Pedro Harbor wasn't too much farther. He doubted he would ever become used to this city life.

The sun was well on its way down the afternoon side of the sky when Thomas crossed Park View Street and found himself in MacArthur Park. He had been walking all day, and his wound was throbbing; so when he flopped on one of the wooden benches, he began considering the feasibility of spending the night right there. The tall buildings around the park were softly lit by the golden light, their eastern sides and inset windows shadowed in pale blue. Very pretty, he thought—but I feel the evening chill coming on. I'll need newspapers to stuff inside my robe for warmth.

An armed street vendor was pushing a cart along Sixth Street. "Get yer red hot mantras right here, folks. Can't meditate without a mantra of your own. We got 'em, you want 'em."

"Hey!" Thomas called. The merchant stopped and looked up the grassy hill to Thomas's bench. "Can you eat those things? Mantras?" It had occurred to him that it might be some sort of Mexican food.

The street vendor simply stared at Thomas for a few seconds and then moved on, repeating his monotonous sales pitch. Oh well, Thomas reasoned, he probably couldn't have afforded one, anyhow.

He had sat back on the bench, trying to muster the energy to get up and look for newspapers when he became aware of muffled laughter behind him. It was the first sign of mirth he'd heard since parting ways with St. Coutras that morning, and he turned around curiously.

A young man of roughly his own age—possibly a year or two younger—was leaning on a tree trunk close behind him. He was dressed in brown corduroy pants and coat, with leather boots, and his unruly hair was as red as a new brick. When he saw Thomas had seen him, he gave up on trying to conceal his laughter and fairly howled with it. Thomas stared at him, beginning to get annoyed.

"Oh-h," gasped the red-haired one finally. "So you're going to eat a mantra, hey? With proverb jelly and a side order of gregorian chant, no doubt."

"It's not food, I take it," said Thomas stiffly.

"Hell, no." The young man walked over and put one foot up on the bench. "It's a chant that you say over and over in your mind when you're meditating. Like… one-two-three-four-who-are-we-for, or Barney-Google-with-the-great-big-googly-eyes."

"Oh." Thomas tried not to look chagrined.

"Where are you going, anyway? I've been following you ever since Beverly. A young monk with no rosary, soaked in blood and reeking of whiskey—an unusual sight, even these days. I'm Spencer, by the way."

"I'm Thomas." They shook hands, and Thomas found that his anger had evaporated. "I'm trying to get to San Pedro," he explained. "How much farther is it?"

"Easily 30 kilometers," Spencer said. "Maybe more. Catch the Harbor Freeway about eight blocks east of here and then go south till you fall into the ocean. What's in San Pedro?"

"I'm going to sign aboard a tramp steamer," Thomas replied, a little defensively.

"Oh. Where are you going to spend the night? On this bench?"

"I was thinking of it."

Spencer stared at him and then burst out laughing again. "You're lucky I came by, brother," he said. "I don't even want to hint at what'd happen to you if you slept here. This isn't like sleeping in the orchard out back of the chapel, you know." He sat down beside Thomas and lit a cigarette with an unnecessary flourish. "They give you any education at your monastery?" he asked after puffing on it for a few moments.

"Yeah, in some things."

"Ever hear of Shakespeare? William H. Shakespeare?"

"Sure."

"Ah. Well, the Bellamy Theater, over on Second Street, is putting on As You Like It, which this Shakespeare wrote. I'm in it, one of the actors, and I could find you a place to sleep at the theater. We all sleep there."

"That'd be great," said Thomas eagerly. It was already getting cold, and the prospect of sleeping on a bench was quickly losing its charm.

"Come on, then," Spencer said, hopping to his feet and flinging away the cigarette. "If we move fast we can get there in time to grab some food."

Thomas needed no further encouragement.

The few shopkeepers who had opened their doors were locking up. The evening wind tossed bits of paper along the sidewalks and carried, from time to time, the sound of sporadic gunfire from distant streets. Thomas thrust his hands into his pockets and shivered.

"You're broke, aren't you?" Spencer asked. "Uh… have no money, that is."

"Well, I've got 11 solis, but that's it. Yeah, I'm 'broke' all right."

"Were you robbed?"

"No, that's all I came with."

"What? You—"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Thomas interrupted. "It's not quite as stupid as it sounds. I didn't plan on doing it this way."

"How did you plan on doing it? And just what are you doing, anyway?" Spencer lit another cigarette. He let it hang on his lower lip and then squinted through the smoke.

"Running away from the Merignac monastery, up in the hills," Thomas answered. "I was an orphan, you see, so the monastery kindly indentured me to work for them until I turned 25—which is four years from now—in exchange for room and board and education."

"And you're making a… premature exit."

Thomas nodded.

"And you grabbed the collection basket one morning, jumped over the wall, and then discovered there were only 11 solis in it."

Thomas laughed ruefully. "That's almost right," he admitted. "I made a kite and a fishing pole, and last night I went sky-fishing. Those bird-men make their nests up at the high end of the valley, you know, and the monastery lies right in their flight path. I've heard they grab bright, glittery objects like coins and jewelry and carry 'em home in their pouches to decorate their nests; so I figured if I caught about ten of them, over a period of a month, say, I'd have enough money to fund my escape."

"Did you know… do you know what they do to sky-fishers?"

"Yeah. They cut your good hand off. Seems a little extreme to me."

"Well, sure All the penalties are extreme. But the government claims those bird-men are tax collectors, see." Spencer shrugged. "Originally they were the result of one of old Strogoff's experiments, years ago. A few escaped from Strogoff's lab, and just multiplied like the devil's own rabbits. Hell of a nuisance, they were—grabbing everything from loose change to false teeth to wedding rings—and they're just clever enough to be hard to kill. So finally the government gave up trying to stop them and told everybody that they were official tax collectors. The government set up big nets by the Hollywood Bowl, and now they catch the thieving fliers, empty their pouches, give 'em a little food and then send them on their way. It's a city monopoly. Any time you catch one yourself, it's the same as holding up a tax collector at gunpoint."

"Oh." Thomas thought about it. "Then I really was robbing from the collection basket."

Spencer snapped his fingers, sending his cigarette flying at a rat who had poked his nose timidly from behind a collapsed and abandoned couch; he missed, but the shower of sparks sent the rat ducking back into the shadows. "And all you got out of it was 11 solis."

"That's right," Thomas said. "I was caught by the abbot the first time I did it. Did you know those bird-men can talk? And yell? So I had to punch the abbot and take off immediately."

Wonderingly, Spencer shook his head. "You're lucky to have got this far. Sky-fishing, punching old priests—and how did you get so bloody?"

"I was shot—relax, I don't think it's serious; just plowed up the skin—by a madman. And I've been having adventures all day. I was chased by gangs, some guy gave me wrong directions for San Pedro, so I was walking north on Vermont for an hour, and—"

"I get the picture," Spencer interrupted. "Well, the Bellamy Theater is just around this corner. We can find you some hot soup, a clean bed and a solid roof to sleep under." He clapped Thomas on the shoulder. "Relax, brother," he said. "Your troubles are over."

They picked their way for a few meters down a cobbled alley that reeked of Chinese food ("Restaurant next door," Spencer explained) and then climbed a swaying wooden stairway that brought them to a narrow balcony overlooking the alley. Two ruptured, rain-faded easy chairs and a mummified plant in a pot gave evidence of some long-ago attempt to render the balcony habitable, but the only occupants at present were two surly cats.

"This way," said Spencer, leading Thomas around the chairs to a plywood door set in the brick wall. He knocked on it in a three-two sequence.

"Who is it, for Pete's sake?" came an annoyed female voice. "The door ain't locked."

Spencer pulled open the door. "It's supposed to be locked," he complained. "Gladhand said you're supposed to open it only when somebody gives the secret knock."

Thomas followed Spencer inside and found himself in a red-carpeted, lamp-lit hallway. There stood a short, dark-haired girl wearing a brown tunic and leotards.

She stared at Spencer for a moment and then, with exaggerated caution, leaned out the doorway, peered up and down the length of the balcony, pulled the door closed and bolted it securely. "Don't we have a dresser or something we could lean against it?" she asked innocently.

"Save your cuteness for somebody else, will you, Alice?" said Spencer. "Now sober up, I want you to meet someone. Thomas, this tawdry baggage is Alice Faber. Alice, this is Thomas, a friend of mine. He needs a place to sleep tonight."

"Good Heavens!" Alice exclaimed, looking at Thomas for the first time. "He's all bloody! You're all bloody! Did somebody knife you?"

"No," said Thomas, embarrassed. "I… uh, was shot at. There was this old guy with an armload of books, and—"

"We'll have to get you cleaned up," she interrupted, taking him by the arm. "I won't do it, but Jean will. I get sick if I see blood. Really. Jean!"

"I'll see you later." Spencer said. "When the girls are through with you, there's somebody you must talk to."

"Okay," Thomas replied as he allowed Alice to guide him down a tightly curving stairway to another, wider hallway.

"She's probably in the greenroom," Alice said. "Hey, Jean!"

"Yeah?" came a lazy call.

"Come out here and clean up this young man who's been shot! He'll bleed to death right here if you don't move fast."

"I'm not bleeding," protested Thomas.

A tall, thin girl emerged from a doorway. Her tired, sarcastic expression became alert when she saw Thomas swaying in the hall, leaning on Alice's arm and looking pale and exhausted in his ragged, blood-streaked robe.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Thomas said. "The bullet just creased me, really…"

The sudden shift to the inside warmth from the chilly air had made him dizzy, and he wasn't sure what he was saying. Jean was standing in front of him now, he noticed, and had apparently asked him a question. Probably asked me my name, he thought; he was still trying to pronounce "Thomas" when her face slid away above him and the back of his head struck the floor.

CHAPTER 3: The Misunderstanding in Pershing Square

"Well now, Spencer. What's this I hear about you taking in a stray monk? What if—" The voice became softer. "Oh, is that him?"

"Yes sir," came a whisper. "I figured he might be your Touchstone."

"Well, let's not jump the gun here. Let's see… he looks okay, I guess. Is he smart?"

"He's read Shakespeare. And he's completely adrift— has some crazy idea of going to San Pedro and becoming a sailor."

"Hmm!" An odd, slow bumping-and-sliding sound was repeated several times. "Hand me my cigars, would you, Spencer? Thanks." There was the scratch and hiss of a match being struck.

The sharp smell of tobacco fumes finally pulled Thomas into complete wakefulness. He opened his eyes to find himself face-to-face with a great stone head that rested on a shelf a few centimeters away. It was larger than life, and although the forehead and part of the thick, wavy hair were chipped, and the nose was entirely broken off, Thomas could see that it was a fine piece of craftsmanship. The shelves above and below the head were cluttered with bundles of colored paper, a stack of cardboard swords with tinfoil-wrapped blades, a number of grotesque wooden masks, and piles and piles of crumpled, glitterly cloth.

"Oh hell. I'd have done just what you did, Spencer. Of course with our luck we'll no sooner get St. Francis here really good in the role than Klein will reappear."

"Don't be pessimistic."

"I have to be, I'm the manager." Thomas heard the ponderous bump-and-slide again. "Has he eaten anything within the last couple of days? He looks like one of the old Nevada atrocity posters."

Thomas sat up slowly, scratching his head. "You did say something about soup," he reminded Spencer.

Next to Spencer stood a bearded bald-headed man with a thick cigar clamped between his teeth. The burly man was propped up awkwardly on a pair of crutches, and Thomas recognized the source of the bump-and-slide sound.

"Spencer told me your name," the man said, "but I've forgotten it. Francis? Rufus?"

"Thomas," supplied both young men at once.

"Oh yes, that's right." He poled his bulk laboriously across the room and thrust his hand toward Thomas. "I'm Nathan Gladhand."

Thomas shook the muscular paw, and Gladhand lowered himself into a wicker chair. "Jean said you'd be unconscious until morning," he said, laying the crutches on the floor beside him.

"It was the mention of food that snapped me out of it," Thomas said, hoping that wasn't too broad a hint.

"Get him some soup, will you Spencer? And bring a bottle of cognac and three glasses." Spencer darted out of the room.

"Where are we?" asked Thomas, peering around at the high-ceilinged chamber. A flickering lantern nearby illuminated endless piles of poles, plywood and boxes.

"In the theater basement," Gladhand said. "You can sleep here. Listen," he added, fixing Thomas with a direct stare, "I don't mind helping a distressed traveler—I've been one myself, often enough—but I won't keep freeloaders." He held up his hand to silence Thomas's protests. "What I'm trying to say is—you're welcome to stay as long as you like."

"That's what you were trying to say?"

"Let me finish, will you? What I mean is, you can work here."

"Oh. Doing what?"

"That depends. Spencer says you've read Shakespeare. Who else have you read?"

"Oh… Byron, Kipling, Baudelaire, Ashbless…"

"You go for poetry, eh?"

"Yes sir. I, uh… hope to publish some poems of my own, sometime."

"Of course you do." A tarnished brass woman stood with upraised arms beside Gladhand's chair, and he tapped his cigar ash onto her head. "Spencer may have mentioned that I'm putting on As You Like It here. We're supposed to open two weeks from now, and the guy who was playing Touchstone left the day before yesterday. Just walked out."

"You want me to play Touchstone," Thomas said.

"Right. Not that I'd even consider you, of course, if experienced actors were available." He blew smoke toward the ceiling. "Which they aren't. You'll receive no salary, but you'll get room and board, which is not something to snap your fingers at these days."

Thomas shrugged, and noticed for the first time that he was wearing a long woolen bathrobe. "I'll do it," he said. "Where are my clothes, by the way?"

"Your robe we burned. The sandals we gave to an old Olive Street beggar named Ben Corwin. We'll give you new clothes, don't worry about it."

Spencer angled his way into the room, a steaming bowl and a bottle clutched in one hand, three glasses in the other, and a folding table wedged under his arm.

"Jacques" Gladhand pronounced it jay-queez— "meet the new Touchstone."

Spencer set up the table and placed the soup, bottle and glasses on it. "By God," he said, handing Thomas a spoon he'd carried in his pocket, "it's good to have you aboard."

"Thank you," smiled Thomas, taking the spoon with as formal a bow as he could manage.

Gladhand leaned forward and poured an inch of the brandy into each glass. "Any business at all today, Spencer?"

"No. The welfare board was locked and guarded, the permit bureau never opened its gates, same with the employment office, and even the breadlines were gone." He sat on a box and sipped the cognac. "I'll try it tomorrow, early. It can't stay this way for long."

"What do you do, Spencer?" Thomas asked, stirring his hot chicken broth to cool it.

"I hold places in lines." Seeing Thomas's puzzled look, he continued. "Handouts, jobs, housing, medicine… you have to wait in long lines for those things nowadays. I have a friend who does clerical work for the police—she's human, let me add, not an android— and she tells me in advance what's being given out, and where. I get there early, wait until the line is about three blocks long, and then sell my place to the highest bidder. The people at the tail end of the line know that whatever is being given out will be gone before they get to it, see, so they walk up and down the column, offering to buy places."

"Don't the people around you undersell you sometimes?"

"Not often, They're in line because they need whatever's being given away, see? They can't afford to lose their places." He grinned at Thomas over the rim of his glass. "You want to come with me tomorrow? The prices should be damn high by then, and if we have two places to sell, we could make enough to buy a fancy dinner somewhere. I'll even dig up a couple of girls to impress. How's that sound?"

To his horror, Thomas felt his face grow hot and realized he was blushing. He covered it by lowering his head and busying himself with his soup. "Sounds good to me," he muttered. "Fine soup, this." Until today the only female humans he'd seen had been a handful of haggard old nuns who did the laundry at the monastery. The prospect of impressing a couple of girls filled him with a kind of excited terror.

"Good!" Spencer hopped up and Gladhand winced to see the young man toss off his brandy in one gulp. "I'll amble over to Evelyn's place then and get the scoop on where the lines will be. See you tomorrow, early."

Thomas nodded and Spencer was gone.

Gladhand sat back in his chair with a long sigh. "Stick by Spencer," he said after a thoughtful pause. "He acts crazy sometimes, but he won't ditch you and he knows this city better than… he knows it very well." He carefully pinched out his cigar with two fingers and put it in his shirt pocket. "Don't go outside by yourself, at least for a while. The police would probably take an interest in someone with a gunshot wound, and there's plenty worse than the police out there. Wait'll you know your way around a bit more." Thomas nodded. "Finish your brandy, now, I don't have all night to spend down here."

Thomas drained the last trickle. "That's nice," he breathed after he'd swallowed it.

"You like that, do you?"

"Yes sir. Hennessey, isn't it?"

Gladhand stared at him. "Yes," he said. "And how is it that you've acquired a taste for Hennessey?"

"The Merignac monastery had a very well-stocked cellar," Thomas explained.

"I see." Gladhand reached down to pick up his crutches. "Just shove your table over there when you finish," he said. "That couch you're sitting on will, I've been assured, turn into a bed if you pull this handle. Whether it does or not, there are blankets and a pillow here. And try to remember to put out the lantern before you turn in."

"Aye aye."

"See you tomorrow." Gladhand levered his body erect, picked up the bottle and clumped out of the room. Thomas listened until he could no longer hear the theater manager's progress, then set to work on the soup.

The bird creature kept pulling itself clear, leaving Thomas with the weary, finger-cramping job of reeling it in still another time. He couldn't remember why he had to catch it, but he knew it was desperately important and becoming more urgent with every passing second. He suspected that the creature's face was changing, but he couldn't be certain since by the time he pulled the thing near enough to look at, he had invariably forgotten what it looked like the time before. It was coming closer again, now, unwillingly, tugging harder than ever. Its face was obscured by the thrashing wings, but after a moment they became transparent and blurred away, and Thomas was able to see clearly.

It was a girl. Her face was as white as Jack cheese and huge, wide as a sail and rippling as if it were under running water. The eyes were empty black holes, and the mouth, which was slowly spreading open, was an infinitely wide window upon a cold universe of vacuum.

Thomas withdrew convulsively, opening his eyes by sheer rejection of sleep. He was trembling and afraid to move, but aware that he was lying on a couch and had been dreaming. After a while he remembered where he was, and the musty smells, the odor of old dust, ceased to bother him. He slept again.

When Spencer shook him awake, the first gray light of dawn was slanting in through ventilation grates set high in the walls.

"Here's some clothes," Spencer said quietly. "Everybody else is still asleep, so don't knock anything over."

Thomas nodded and began groggily to struggle into the jeans, flannel shirt and rope-soled shoes. "I smell coffee," he whispered.

"Yeah, here." Spencer handed him a steaming cup, which he sipped at until he could think clearly. "Not bad," he said.

"I put a little rum in it. Now come on, the police are going to dispense ration numbers today across from Pershing Square. Sequentially, so the early birds get the low numbers."

Thomas stood up and finished the warm coffee in one long gulp. "What's so great about low numbers?"

"Well, the city has only so much credit, see." Spencer fitted a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. "The low numbers are sure to be covered, but a shopkeeper would be real doubtful about accepting a ration ticket if the number was more than, say, 500." He snapped a match alight with his thumbnail, grinned proudly, and waved the flame under the cigarette. "Let's go," he said. "The L.A. Greeter comes out in 20 minutes, and this ration number business is going to be on the front page. In half an hour Pershing Square will look like hell's courtyard on Judgment Day."

The stately old Biltmore Hotel stood aloof over the milling crowds that choked Pershing Square. The mid-morning sun had begun to dry the grass, and many people were sitting, some under little tents made of the blankets they'd been wrapped in when they had arrived, early in the chilly morning.

The people in the first third of the line—on the east side of the square, weren't sitting though; they were on their feet and tense, ready to repel the frequent attacks of desperate latecomers. There had, hours earlier, been a few old and crippled people in the front section of the line, but they had long since been forced out.

"I don't like this," Spencer muttered to Thomas. "I'm afraid we might just have to duck out of here and go home."

"Why?" Thomas was astonished. "We're numbers 56 and 57, for God's sake! And we've had to fight people off to keep these places."

"Shh. That's just it. They're trying to take our places instead of buy them. I'm afraid if we offer to sell out we'll be killed in the… ensuing stampede." He lit a cigarette, puffed on it once, and flung it to the ground. "Look at that crowd back there. I know they're going to rush us again."

Thomas looked back nervously. Many of the people on the grass were standing now, and eyeing the front of the line. "Yeah," he agreed. "And a lot of them have sticks."

A high-pitched screech grated out of the loudspeakers mounted on the stucco walls of the Welfare Dispensation Building, followed by a voice made tinny by amplification: "Midmorning news. Although Mayor Pelias has not yet recovered from the stroke he suffered a little more than 48 hours ago, his physicians are optimistic about his chances of a full recovery. The search for the would-be assassins who planted bombs in his chambers is continuing around the clock, and police chief Tabasco is confident that the… malfeasants will be apprehended within 24 hours." The speakers clicked off with a snap that echoed across the square.

"The guy's name is Tabasco?" Thomas asked, incredulous.

"What?" Spencer turned to him impatiently. "Yes. Tabasco. A lot of times androids are named after different kinds of food and drink. From the old days, when they tried to breed 'em for food. Shut up, now, this is looking bad."

A large group of men was walking toward the front of the line in a leisurely fashion. They all carried sticks, and Thomas remembered the android he'd seen beaten yesterday. "Let's get out of here," he whispered to Spencer. The other people in line shifted uncertainly and began picking up rocks.

Spencer nodded tensely. "In a second," he said. "… now." He grabbed Thomas's arm and bolted out of the line, running toward the south side of the square. The men with sticks took that as a signal and charged; immediately the air was rent by yells and the defenders of the line sent a hail of rocks into the ranks of the attackers. Nearly everyone in the square began to run toward the fighting, hoping to improve their positions in the churning mob that could no longer be called a line.

Spencer and Thomas skirted the fighting and managed to dodge and duck their way across the lawn to the sidewalk of Sixth Street. They paused, out of breath.

"This is incredible," Spencer panted, looking back. "I've seen rough lines before, but this…"He shook his head. "There'll be people killed."

"Holy Mother of God," Thomas muttered. "Look at that." He pointed west at a troop of police trotting in formation north on Olive, blocking off the western edge of the square. They all carried rifles at the ready.

Spencer drew in his breath between clenched teeth. "We can't rest yet," he hissed. "Come on." He dragged Thomas across Sixth Street, waving and nodding to the carts they held up, and then both of them ducked behind the solid brick shoulder of a bank into an alley.

The rattle and pop of gunfire broke out as Spencer was scurrying up a fire-escape ladder mounted on the bank's wall. Thomas followed, taking the rusty rungs as quickly as he could, though his wound was stinging and his lungs felt ready to shut down entirely. If we don't stop to rest very soon, I'm going to pass out.

To his relief Spencer crawled out onto the lowest of the fire-escape balconies that faced Sixth, and a few moments later both of them lay panting on the close-set rails, watching the chaos in the square.

The android police had not moved in; they simply stood in an orderly line along the Olive Street sidewalk and fired volley after volley into the rapidly thinning crowd. At first a few people walked toward the police, their hands raised, but they were quickly chopped down by the unflagging spray of bullets. No one followed their example.

People clattered past beneath Thomas, shouting with panic and rage, and he could see, to the north, a similar rout surging east on Fifth, In a few minutes the square was emptied, though the receding tide had left dozens of sprawled figures littered across the green lawn. A horn was sounded, and immediately the firing ceased. The fog of white smoke that hung over the western edge of the square began to drift away on the wind.

"Don't move until they're gone," whispered Spencer. There were tears in his eyes, and he wiped them impatiently on his sleeve. Thomas simply stared between the iron bars of the railing at the square below, trying desperately to explain to himself how and why this had happened. There must be a reason. There must be.

The police unhurriedly slung their rifles over their shoulders, regrouped in the empty street and marched away south in a jogging step. When the echoes of their boots on the asphalt had died away, Spencer stood up.

"Let's go," he said. He leaned down and shook Thomas's shoulder. "Let's get out of here. We're already running on luck—we can't afford to push it by hanging around."

Thomas nodded and got to his feet, and they swung back down the ladder to the pavement. Scattered moans and yells from the square told of a few whose wounds were not immediately fatal; and some of the people who had fled were beginning to peer fearfully from behind nearby buildings to be sure the police really had left.

"Where to?" Thomas asked, looking nervously up and down the sidewalk. His nostrils flared at the acrid smell of gunpowder, which hitherto he'd only associated with the fireworks the monks had shot off on holy days.

"Back to the Bellamy," Spencer answered. "But first let's visit Evelyn. I want to find out more about this ration number giveaway."

"I thought you said she works at the police station?"

"Yeah, she does. We'll have lunch with her somewhere. Don't worry," he added, seeing Thomas's worried look, "they're not going to shoot us just for walking into the station house."

"Yeah? Yesterday I'll bet you wouldn't have thought they'd shoot us for standing in Pershing Square."

"Well, that's true. But twice in one day would be too outrageous. Come on—aren't you getting hungry?"

Thomas glanced at the bodies lying on the grass on the other side of the street, their collars and skirt ends flapping in the breeze. "I… don't know," he said.

"Don't look at them, dammit!" Spencer rasped. "You know what happened, so don't keep looking at it. Now let's go!"

Thomas nodded. "Sure," he said. "Sorry."

They had been walking for several blocks with pawn-shops, vegetable stands and bars to their right and a high, sturdy wooden fence to their left. Bright new barbed wire glittered along the top of it.

"What's behind this, anyway?" asked Thomas quietly, jerking his thumb toward the fence.

"Grazing land," Spencer answered. "Extends east to San Pedro Street, north to Olympic and south to Pico. And this street here, Main, is the western edge."

"What grazes th—" Thomas began, and then remembered St. Coutras's words of the day before. "Not… police?" he whispered.

Spencer nodded.

Thomas tried to imagine hundreds of policemen, stark naked, cropping grass on their hands and knees. Do they wear their caps, he wondered. Now that would be a truly weird sight—the sort of thing nightmares are made of.

"Do they wear their…" Thomas suddenly choked on suppressed laughter.

"What?"

"Their… hats!" Thomas gasped, and whispered, "Do they wear their hats when they're grazing?"

"Hell, no," Spencer said. His face twitched with impatience and amusement.

"It'd be a… hell of a spectacle," Thomas said carefully. "A million naked guys in policemen's hats, eating grass." Spencer snickered in spite of himself. "The city could sell tickets, repair its credit. People would love it." He did an imitation of a citizen loving it.

In a moment both young men were laughing uncontrollably, tears running down their cheeks. A few people walking by on the opposite sidewalk cast them contemptuous glances, clearly supposing them to be drunk.

"Pull…yourself together…for God's sake," giggled Spencer. "The damn police station is just around this corner, on Pico." They straightened up and did their best to assume solemn expressions. Thomas was surprised to find that he felt much more cheerful and confident than he had five minutes ago—the laughter, childish though it had been, had rid him of the dry, metallic taste of tension in his mouth.

They rounded the corner and pushed through two swinging doors below a weather-beaten sign that read LOS ANGELES CENTRAL POLICE STATION. Maps and indecipherable documents were tacked up on the walls of the waiting room, above the backs of old tan couches lining three of the walls. The place smelled of old floor wax.

"Something I can do for you gents?" inquired an officer behind a counter that stretched across the fourth wall. Thomas looked at him curiously—the officer's face was placid and unlined, with a somewhat low forehead and a wide jaw.

"Uh, no thanks," replied Spencer. "We just want to see someone in the bookkeeping section."

"Evelyn Sandoe?" the policeman asked, with a little V of a smile.

Spencer nodded, his face reddening.

"Ah, young love!" pronounced the officer, turning away.

Spencer made a rude gesture at his back. "Come on," he said to Thomas and led the way down a hall lit by genuine electric bulbs.

"He was an android?" Thomas whispered.

"Sure. I hate the way they… fake human feelings." Spencer shuddered. "I wish they didn't build them to look like people. What's wrong with, I don't know, horses, maybe, or monkeys. It's just too creepy when they talk and smile."

They passed a number of doors. Spencer finally opened one, and when they stepped into the room beyond it, they were confronted by ranks of young women at gray metal desks, sorting, stamping and filing papers. Thomas followed Spencer down an aisle and stopped beside him at the desk of a pretty, curly-haired woman in a brown sweater.

"Hullo, Evelyn," Spencer said to her. "My friend and I were wondering if you'd care to join us for lunch."

She looked up, startled, and then spoke with a casualness that Thomas felt was not genuine. "Spencer! I didn't expect you. Lunch?" She glanced at the wall clock. "Okay. Doris, I'm clocking out. Cover for me for ten minutes, will you?"

Evelyn stood up and took Spencer's arm, and the three of them left the building by a side stairway. They walked quickly down Pico away from the police station.

"I was afraid you were killed, Spencer," Evelyn whispered breathlessly. "Forty armed police were sent out to put down a riot in Pershing Square. Were you there? They just returned a little while ago, and they said they had to open fire on the crowd."

"That's what they did, all right," Spencer said. "Yeah, we were there. This is my friend Thomas, by the way. Thomas, Evelyn." They nodded to each other. "There's a few things I want to find out about all this. Let's stop somewhere. Are there any restaurants open?"

"I hear Pennick's is," Evelyn said.

"Pennick's it is, then."

Pennick's was a cafeteria a few blocks away; Thomas spent ten of his 11 solis on a roast beef sandwich and a cup of watery beer. Evelyn and Spencer bought the same, and the three took a table in the back corner.

"So what happened?" Evelyn asked as soon as Spencer had taken a sip of beer.

"We were in a good position in line," Spencer said, "but it was a spooky line. The people behind tried to take our places. It began to look like we'd have to risk losing teeth to keep our positions, and we didn't really want ration numbers anyway, so we ducked out just as the fight started. Then all these cops arrived and just started pouring bullets into the square."

"They claimed they gave everyone a chance to leave peaceably," Evelyn told him.

"I didn't hear anything like that," Spencer said. "In fact, we saw them shoot down a lot of people who were trying to give themselves up." He had another pull at the beer. "The thing that worries me is this: the police showed up—what would you say?—about ten seconds after the first rock was thrown, and they started shooting no later than five seconds after that. They were trotting up Olive, with their rifles at the ready, while everything was still more or less peaceful."

"Yeah?" said Evelyn slowly.

"Yeah. I think they were going to shoot up the crowd in any case. The fact that a fight happened to be going on just gave them a better excuse than any they might have planned on."

"What would they want to do that for?" Evelyn asked skeptically. "That sounds paranoid to me."

"I don't know why they would," Spencer said, "but that's how it looked."

Thomas nodded. "I'd have to agree," he said. "It looked like that's what they'd planned to do from the start."

"Whew," Evelyn exhaled, reaching for her glass. "Well, to answer your soon-to-be-asked question: no—I haven't heard or seen anything that'd support your suspicion. Maybe their padmus all shorted out at once, and they've all gone crazy; the other big news today was—"

"Padmus?" Thomas interrupted.

"Priority and decision-making units," Spencer explained. "What was the other news?" he asked Evelyn.

"Oh, some monk who ran off from the Merignac monastery. There are more murders and robberies and arson going on lately than we can even file, and what are they wasting all their time on? Chasing a monk."

Thomas drained his beer in one gulp and wiped his mouth with a trembling hand.

"That is odd," Spencer agreed. "Why are they so hot to get him?"

"I don't know. I just know they're all looking for him. His name's Thomas, as I recall, and they're looking for him around MacArthur Park. Somebody thinks he saw him there."

"Maybe they are all going crazy," Spencer said. "Be careful at the damn station house." He stood up, wrapping his sandwich in a napkin and sliding it into his coat pocket. "We gotta go, Ev. I'll see you tonight." He leaned over and kissed her.

"Okay," she said. She waved at Thomas. "I'm sorry. What was your name again?"

"Rufus Pennick," he blurted automatically.

"Huh! Any relation to this place?"

That's where I got the name from, Thomas realized with some panic. "Uh, yes," he said quickly. "My great-uncle used to own it, I believe. I don't know whether he still does or not. Haven't kept in touch."

"I know how it is," Evelyn nodded. "I haven't seen my family in two years. Good meeting you. Later, Spence."

The two young men stepped out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk. Thomas was about to speak, and then noticed that Spencer was shaking with suppressed laughter.

"What in hell is so funny?" he demanded testily.

Spencer coughed and straightened his face. "Nothin', Rufe," he drawled.

"Yeah? Well I'd like to see what you could come up with on the spur of the moment."

"Ladies and gentlemen, Rufus Pennick—of the restaurant-baron Pennicks, you know," said Spencer in a ridiculous British accent.

"Will you stop? The L.A. police are devoting their lives to catching me, and you're kidding around."

Spencer sobered. "You're right. What have you done, anyway? They wouldn't go to this much trouble for a… cannibalistic child molester who spent his weekends blowing up old ladies with a shotgun."

"I don't know. I told you I was sky-fishing. And I punched Brother Olaus—maybe he died? I can't really picture that from just one sock in the belly, though. And I ran out of a restaurant yesterday morning without paying for breakfast… oh, and I threw a poodle through a window." He grinned. "Those are are my sins, father."

"Go to hell, my son. This doesn't figure, though. None of that stuff would be enough to get 'em really interested, even if old Brother Olaf did die. Especially these days, with Pelias in a coma and riots in the streets." He scratched his jaw. "I wonder what it is they think you've done."

The Bellamy Theater, seen by daylight, was a good deal larger than Thomas had imagined the night before. Its broad entrance, crowded now with gawking people, took up nearly a third of the 200 block of Second Street, and rose upward for three stories in a grand display of balconies, tile-roofed gables and rust-streaked concrete gargoyles.

Seeing the knot of people around the entrance, Spencer quickened his pace. "What now?" he muttered. The crowd parted for two purposeful-looking young men and a moment later Thomas saw, lying on the pavement, the body of the girl who had cleaned and bandaged his wound the night before.

She was obviously dead. The left half of her shirt was drenched in blood and her head lolled at an unnatural angle. Someone had straightened her limbs, but her eyes remained open and, Thomas thought, puzzled-looking.

"What happened?" Spencer asked sharply.

Gladhand rolled forward in a wheelchair. "She was in Pershing Square," he said, "when the police opened fire on the crowd. This gentleman"—he nodded toward a heavyset man in overalls—"brought her back here."

"She was alive when I found her," the man said humbly. "She told me to take her here. Only she died in the back of my cart."

"Who are all these people?" Spencer asked, waving at the rest of the crowd. They grinned in embarrassment and shuffled their feet.

"Spectators," Gladhand said.

Spencer shoved one of them in the arm. "Get out of here, you bastards," he spat.

"See here," began one. "You can't—"

"I can break your teeth, slug. Get out of here!" The indignant crowd began to break up. "Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens!" he shouted at them.

"Thank you, Spencer," said Gladhand. "That's what I was trying to convey when you arrived." The theater manager was speaking calmly, but he was pale and breathing rapidly. "Come in, sir, and have some brandy with us," he said to the man in overalls.

"Uh, okay," he said. "Here, I'll carry her inside for you." He bent down and picked up Jean, one arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders. Spencer led him inside and helped him lower the body onto a vinyl-covered couch.

Thomas followed, pushing Gladhand's wheelchair. "Thank you, Thomas," said Gladhand.

"Rufus," Spencer corrected.

"Now wait a minute," Gladhand protested. "Last night you—"

Spencer winked at him and shook his head; the theater manager shrugged. "Thank you, Rufus."

"I'll get brandy," Spencer offered and bounded up a carpeted stairway.

The man in overalls sat down on a wooden chair and nervously rubbed his hands together. "I'm Tom Straddle," he said. "I grow stuff."

"I'm Nathan Gladhand, and this," with a wave at Thomas, "is apparently Rufus."

Straddle's head bobbed twice. "I come along after the cops was gone," he said. "They was lots of people dead on the grass, but she was on the sidewalk, and movin'. So I picked her up and she said take her to the Bellimy Theater, so I did."

Spencer returned with the brandy and glasses, and Gladhand poured. When everyone had a glass, he raised his. "To Jean," he said gravely.

Thomas repeated it and took a long sip.

"You two didn't see her there?" Gladhand asked Spencer.

"No," he answered awkwardly. "It was a huge crowd. She told me she was going to paint the Arden set all day today."

"Yes, that's what I thought, too."

"Them cops must have gone crazy," Straddle put in. "Shootin' all them people."

"Yes," said Gladhand. "Well I see you've finished your brandy, Mr. Straddle, so I suppose we shouldn't keep you any longer. Thank you again for bringing her back here. Let me—sir, I insist—give you something for going out of your way to help us."

Straddle accepted a handful of coins and shambled out.

"Deal with the, uh… remains, will you?" Gladhand said, waving vaguely at the couch. His voice was, with evident effort, quite calm.

"Sure," Spencer answered quickly. He and Thomas lifted the body and carried it through the inner doors and down the center aisle to a narrow storeroom under the stage. They returned silently to the lobby, wiped off the couch with a number of paper towels, and sat down.

"What happened at Pershing Square, Spencer?" Gladhand asked thoughtfully.

Spencer detailed the events of the morning and shared with the manager his guess that the police had intended from the beginning to fire on the crowd.

"It certainly is inexplicable," Gladhand observed when he'd finished. "You'd think Tabasco would keep his androids quiet now, with old Joe Pelias in whatever kind of comatose state he's in. Ever since Hancock killed himself six years ago, Pelias has been the main champion of the androids. Why are they running amok the first time he's not there to defend them?"

"They liked him?" Thomas asked.

"Oh, I suppose so, if androids like anybody," Gladhand said.

"Well," said Thomas slowly, "maybe it's revenge." No one spoke for a moment, then Spencer muttered, "Now there's a thought."

"Rehearsal is canceled for tonight, Spencer," Gladhand said briskly. "Post a notice where everyone will see it, will you? And Rufus, you can tell me what became of a young man named Thomas, who, as I recall, slept here last night."

CHAPTER 4: A Night at the Blind Moon

Later the same afternoon, Thomas was slouched comfortably in one of the sprung easy chairs on the balcony facing the alley. He was leafing through his script of As You Like It, lazily underlining the Touchstone speeches, and from time to time sipping at a glass of cold vin rosé that stood on a table within easy reach.

After a while he became aware of a voice from the alley below, getting nearer and louder. Soon he decided the unseen person was trying to render a song, and he listened for the words. "Bringing in the sheep, bringing in the sheep," a cracked, aged voice rasped. "We all come re-yoz-cing bringing in the sheep."

When clumping labored steps sounded on the stairs to the balcony, Thomas laid the script aside and stood. "Who is that?" he asked.

A crazy-eyed, ragged-bearded face, shadowed beneath a cardboard hat, poked up above the top step and squinted suspiciously at Thomas. "Who," it countered, "is that?"

"I'm, uh, Rufus Pennick. I'm an actor here. Now—"

"Oh, that's all right, then." The old man grinned reassuringly and lurched up the remaining stairs to the balcony. "I'm Ben Corwin," he said, extending a stained, clawlike hand, which Thomas shook briefly. Ben Corwin, Thomas thought; where have I heard that name?

The old man slumped into the other chair. After a moment he spied the glass of wine and drained it in one gulp. "Ah, good, good, good," he sighed. He fished a little metal box out of his pocket and flipped open its lid. "Snoose?" he asked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, would you like a bit of snoose?"

Thomas peered distastefully at the iridescent brown powder in the box. "No, thanks."

"Suit yourself." Corwin put down the box and then lifted his feet in his hands and rested them on the wobbling table. He was wearing battered sandals, and Thomas noticed, on the left one, a bit of wire where the heel-strap should have been. My old sandals! This is the beggar they gave them to. Corwin picked up the snuffbox and took a liberal pinch of the brown dust, spread it on the back of his hand, and then inhaled it vigorously, giving both nostrils a turn.

"Ahhh," he sighed, sagging in the chair. His head lolled back and his jaw dropped open; a snoring noise issued from his mouth. Thomas tried to resume marking his script, but found that the balcony had, for the moment, been robbed of its charm. He went inside.

Wandering downstairs to the greenroom, he found Spencer knotting a plaid scarf about his throat. "Rufus!" Spencer said. "I was looking for you. Me and a couple of the guys are going over to the Blind Moon to have a few beers. Come on along." His cheeriness had a quality of suppressed hysteria about it.

Thomas considered the invitation, then nodded. "Okay," he said. "What's snoose? Snuff?"

Spencer glanced at him sharply. "Why? You haven't bought any, have you?"

"No. There's a gentleman on the balcony, though, whom it has rendered unconscious."

"Ben Corwin? Sure. He takes it all the time. The stuff was invented by androids, and they're the most common users. It's real bad business—a mixture of snuff, opium and finely ground glass."

"Glass? Why glass, for God's sake?" Thomas shuddered, remembering the gusto with which Corwin had inhaled the stuff.

"It makes tiny cuts in the skin so the opium goes right into the bloodstream. Trouble is, the glass does too. It does incredible damage to the body, they say— blindness, insanity, heart trouble, even varicose veins. Snoose fans never live long." He shook his head. "Most people just jam it up under their lip, but old Ben snorts it. Someday he's going to blow his nose and find his brain in his hankie."

"He didn't look like that would upset him a whole lot."

Spencer grinned. "Yeah, it probably wouldn't." He pulled a black knitted cap over his red hair. "Get your coat and come on," he said.

In the lobby two young men were waiting for them. "Rufus, meet a couple of fellow thespians. This," Spencer said, indicating an amiable-looking youth with lanky blond hair, "is Jeff Kyler, and that one"—a dark, short man in burgundy-colored pants—"is Robert Negri. Jeff, Robert… Rufus Pennick."

Thomas said hello to them and detected, he thought, a trace of reserve in their answering nods. They didn't seem too pleased to see him. Oh well, he said to himself. I'm a green newcomer, an intruder thrust into the intimacies of their craft. I'd probably be a little standoffish too, if I was in their place.

"Shall we walk or drive?" Jeff asked.

"Too many maniacs running around loose lately," Negri growled. "Let's drive."

"Right," Spencer agreed. "I'll bring the car around front." He ducked down a hallway.

Thomas remembered the machine that had rocketed past him on the Hollywood Freeway the day before. "A gas car?" he asked, following the other two out of the building.

"The body of one," Jeff said. "It's a derelict we found in the hills one day. Spencer put wooden wheels on it and took out the old motor. We all painted it and cleaned it up, and now it's the neatest little wagon you ever saw."

Thomas nodded, tried but failed to think of something to say, and nodded again. "You, uh, heard about the business in Pershing Square this morning?" he asked.

"Never discuss your casualties," Negri snapped.

"It's too soon to talk about her," Jeff explained more kindly.

"Ah," Thomas said softly, trying not to look disconcerted. A close-mouthed crew, these actors. The clopping of a horse's hooves on pavement broke the awkward silence, and then the car rounded the corner onto Second from Broadway and pulled up to the curb.

"Hop in, gentlemen," Spencer called from the driver's seat.

Thomas gaped at the vehicle. It had a streamlined, albeit dented here and there, metal body, painted gold. A burly old horse was harnessed to the front bumper, and the reins extended from his bit to Spencer's hands through the space where a windshield must once have been. The wheels were sturdy oaken disks rimmed with battered bands of iron.

"Quit gawking and get in," Spencer said. Thomas climbed in beside him, the other two in the back. The seats were transplanted theater chairs, upholstered in red velvet, with cast iron flourishes for arms.

"An impressive vehicle," commented Thomas.

"Hell yes," Spencer said, snapping the reins. "If you like, I'll let you have a try behind the wheel."

"Behind the wheel?"

"The steering wheel. This ring here. That's how cars were meant to be steered, see, by turning it. Behind the wheel means, you know, in the driver's seat."

"Oh," said Thomas. "Sure. I'd like to, sometime."

"Not today, huh, Spencer?" Negri pleaded. "I don't feel so good, and I sure don't need any extra shaking up."

"You never feel so good," Spencer told him as he turned the rig north onto Spring Street.

Thomas sat back in his seat to watch the passing pageant on the late afternoon sidewalk. Here a heavyset man was selling dayglow 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 begging for rides. When they became 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 Street was called New High Street; the buildings were older here, and the passersby tended to be Mexican or Oriental. The last street within the city wall was Alpine, and Spencer pulled the car to a curb. "We've arrived," he told Thomas.

A sign dangling on a chain three meters above the sidewalk was the only distinguishing feature of the place—its heavy, paneled door and small-paned windows might conceivably 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 damned 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.

"Hey, Negri," snapped Spencer, "can't you—"

"I just didn't like the look on his face. Like he thought we were junkies, or something."

"I don't think you're junkies," Thomas assured him, 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, something Thomas had not yet seen him do.

After a while a girl passed through the room, 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," sighed Spencer, 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, 60 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. He could almost swear Spencer spilled that beer intentionally. What had he started to say when he did it? Oh yes: Right over your head is—Whatever he had been about to say, he apparently thought better of it. Thomas waited for a few minutes, and then turned as casually as he could to look over his shoulder.

Framed on the wall behind him was a photograph of a young couple in outlandish clothes embracing passionately. Despite his brief acquaintance, Thomas recognized them: the man was Robert Negri and the woman was Jean. The photo's caption was: She Stoops to Conquer—Gladhand, Bellamy Theater.

Thomas quickly turned back to the table and took 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 sloppily refilled it. "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 tabletop. 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, no," muttered Spencer.

"We were just doing it for laughs then, from the top of the fence," Negri continued. "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 in the right spot 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's probably getting sick in hell right now, to see you guys drinking beer and reciting poetry when her body isn't even cold yet." 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 damned 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 attempted to leap up but instead pitched over backward in his chair, his foot having become entangled in its rungs. 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, his voice thick with drink.

"Pennick, you are not the slob I thought you were." They shook hands all around, gulped the last of the beer, and stumbled out the door into the chilly Los Angeles evening.

Making a fist to prevent 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, then trotted for about 100 meters 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, mounted over a screened window in front, 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," said Spencer, 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 can 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 jacknife 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 30 seconds of thrashing about to even stand. 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 noticed that lights had been turned 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 30 meters to the right. Another broke a window ahead of them and two more whistled through the air. Thomas's legs pounded on and on, even though every 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 their warm barracks in order to pursue such bandits as would lay siege to the gardener's shack. They simply stood in the doorway while one of their number emptied a revolver at the fleeing figures.

Spencer, leading the way, saw the sentry first; the android was loping toward them terrifyingly fast, its head low and its hand fumbling at the flap of its holster. Thomas saw Spencer leap at the galloping thing, whirling the shovel over his head like a long battle-ax. The edge of the descending blade cracked onto 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 jumped up with bestial agility and finally fumbled the pistol out of its holster as Spencer rolled to his feet three meters away, ready for a last charge at the thing. At that moment Thomas's 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 to him, and then tumbled past in an involuntary somersault across the pavement.

No more, he thought as he struggled to his hands and knees, fighting a strong nausea that gripped his stomach. He heard a clank of metal breaking metal, and a sound like a dropped coin. "In here," somebody hissed, as somebody else hauled Thomas forcibly erect and shoved him forward. He tripped through an open doorway and sprawled full-length across the floor. 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 in his defense. "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 of the infirmary," Negri answered. He held up his hand suddenly, and thudding footsteps could be heard racing past outside the door. "We can't relax yet. They might notice the busted lock any time. Uhh," he groaned, standing up, "let's see where this inner door takes us."

It was an aluminum door with rubber insulation around its edges; unlocked, it swung open at Negri's first tug. The room beyond 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's 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 suspended a few centimeters 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 resemble anyone he'd ever seen. He wandered over to another vat. "Whoever it is," he said, "he's over here, too."

The room held a half-dozen vats, 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 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 felt chilly after the steamy heat of the vat room, and Thomas wondered wistfully when—and if—he'd see his theater-basement bed again. Spencer led them down the hall in the opposite direction of the barracks. The floor was carpeted, and the corridor was dimly lit by electric bulbs hanging in globes of frosted glass. The disinfectant smell was here, too, but rivalled 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 35 meters, at a door whose chicken-wire-reinforced window revealed only darkness beyond. "This just may lead outside," Spencer whispered, holding up crossed fingers as he turned the knob.

At that moment the door at the far end of the hall was flung open by a gang of gray-uniformed androids who uttered glad shouts as they bore down upon the four half-fuddled actors.

Spencer whipped open the door and bounded after his three companions, whirling on the other side to lock it by twisting a disk on the knob. The air was stuffy and still, and he realized they were in another room. "Turn on the lights!" he barked. "We have to get out of here."

Thomas's groping hand found a switch; he flipped it on and the room was abruptly flooded with illumination.

Sitting up in their blanketless beds, blinking and whimpering at the sudden light, were what appeared to be nine grossly obese naked men. "Lights out!" one of them squeaked, and the rest took up the cry like a flock of parrots: "Lights out! Lights out!"

"You three hold the door," Spencer snapped. The androids on the other side were already kicking and pounding on it. "I've got an idea."

While Thomas, Negri and Jeff tried to pull on the doorknob and duck the splintering glass of the crumpling window, Spencer raced to the door at the far end of the room, which proved to be, as he'd expected, locked. He dragged the nearest bed over to it and lifted one end so that the whimpering occupant was dumped onto the floor in front of the locked door. Then Spencer ran back to his companions, whipping off his shirt.

The reinforced window-glass had been punched almost out of its frame, and android hands were reaching through and plucking at the young men's hair and shirts. "Hurry, Spence!" Thomas gasped.

Spencer wrapped the head of one of the shovels in his shirt, and then fished a matchbook out of his pocket and struck a match to the fabric. It was slow to take the flame, but after a few door-pounding, glass-splintering seconds it began to flicker alight.

Spencer headed for the far door again, raised the shovel over his shoulder and, charging forward, flung the makeshift spear at the bloated android on the floor.

It arced through the still air, spinning lazily and trailing smoke, and then thudded into the creature's distended belly. There was a muffled bang, a flash of light and a cloud of acrid smoke, and they heard the door bounce on concrete outside.

"Let's go," Spencer panted; unnecessarily, for the other three had already released their door and were following him at a dead run toward the empty, smoke-clouded doorway, while the remaining occupants of the beds gibbered, "Lights out! Lights out!"

When Thomas burst out through the doorway, practically on the heels of Negri, the first thing he noticed was the temperature—-the night air was hot and dry, blowing from the east. He followed his companions as they raced across the dark lawn, cringing as he ran, in anticipation of the tearing impact of a bullet in his back.

"Get moving, Rufus," Spencer gritted, seizing Thomas by the shoulder and pulling him along. Jeff grabbed his other arm, and Thomas found himself nearly being carried toward the fence.

Hard footsteps pounded on the lawn behind them, but the four had reached the fence now and were helping each other scramble and fall over it several seconds before the androids arrived and began shooting their pistols through the boards.

"Give yourselves up," the androids called calmly as their bullets hammered at the splintering boards of the fence. "Give yourselves up." When they had emptied their revolvers, one of them climbed onto another's shoulders and peered through the strands of barbed wire at the empty stretch of Main Street beyond. A few lights had gone on in nearby buildings, but no one came outside to investigate the shooting. The android looked up and down the street, peered at the sidewalk below, and sniffed curiously at the hot night wind as if hoping to catch the fugitives' scent.

"They're gone," he said finally. He leaped down, and holstering their guns, they plodded back across the grass to the buildings.

On the other side of the street four figures darted out of a shadowed drugstore doorway and silently fled.

"Hey," Thomas said drowsily. "This isn't the Bellamy Theater."

"You don't miss a lot, do you?" growled Negri. "We're back at the Blind Moon."

"Why? Aren't we ever going to get to sleep?"

"We've got to establish our alibi," Spencer explained as they turned into the alley leading to the bar's rear door. "We have to give people the idea that we've been here all evening."

"Evening?" Thomas protested. "It must be nearly dawn."

"It's only a quarter to ten," Jeff said. "I saw the city hall clock about five minutes ago."

Thomas shook his head in dull wonder and followed Spencer into the rear of the kitchen. Except for a teenage boy who stood at the sinks languidly running a wet rag over dishes and dropping them into the water, it was empty.

"What were you doing out there, Spence?" the boy asked.

"Just getting a bit of fresh air," Spencer told him. The four of them filed past and stepped through the kitchen door into the crowded, noisy, smoke-layered public room. They managed to find a table near the door, and sat down with relaxed sighs.

Spencer immediately bounded to his feet. "Whoops," he gasped. "I was supposed to meet Evelyn at nine under Bush-head. I'll see you later. Or tomorrow." He opened the door and sprinted away down the sidewalk.

"Bush-head?" Thomas echoed as the door banged shut.

"It's a statue of Mayor Pelias down by the mission church," Jeff said. "About three years ago, when he began to get really unpopular, somebody looped a rope around the statue's head and tried to pull it down. All that happened was the head broke off. A year or so later—ah, the beer already! Thank you, miss—a year or so later somebody wired a big tumbleweed onto the neck-post; so everybody calls it Johnny Bush-head."

"Huh." Thomas poured himself a beer and sipped it thoughtfully.

"Want to throw some darts?" Negri asked Jeff. Jeff nodded and they stood up and moved away, taking the pitcher with them. Thomas idly traced designs in the dampness on his glass.

A minute or so later, a paunchy old man with wisps of gray hair trailing across his shiny, mottled scalp sat down opposite Thomas.

"All right if I join you?" he asked hesitantly.

He was carrying a glass and a new pitcher of beer, so Thomas's voice had some sincerity when he said, "Certainly, certainly."

"Thank you. Here, let me fill your glass."

"Much obliged."

"Not at all." He set the pitcher down and leaned back. "You're a friend of Spencer's?" Thomas nodded. "A fine lad, he is," the old man went on. "Are you an actor too?"

"Yes," Thomas answered.

"I'll have to manage to see the play. As You Like It, isn't it? One of Shakespeare's best, I've always thought."

Thomas looked at him. "Really? I much prefer… oh, Lear, or Macbeth or Julius Caesar."

The old man blinked. "An educated man, I perceive! Allow me to introduce myself. I am Gardener Jenkins." He cocked a hopeful eyebrow at Thomas, then lowered it when Thomas displayed no recognition. "I was—still am, in a way—a professor of philosophy at the University of Berkeley."

"Oh," said Thomas politely. "What brings you so far south?"

Jenkins pulled a pint bottle of bourbon out of his pocket, uncorked it and topped off his glass of beer with the dark brown whiskey. He sipped it and nodded with satisfaction. "What? Oh, yes. I'm at work on a… very big project, you see, research that couldn't be done at Berkeley." He chuckled ruefully. "And it couldn't be done here, either, I discovered."

Thomas looked more closely at him, noticing for the first time the puffy face and broken-veined skin of the long-time alcoholic. "Oh?" he said, curious about the scholarly old rummy.

"Indeed. Have you ever heard of J. Heinemann Strogoff?"

"Wait a minute," Thomas said. "Strogoff. Yeah. He was a scientist—right?—he did a lot of genetic research and died about ten years ago. I read a pamphlet about him. Loki Ascendant, it was called."

"Good God, son, where did you see a copy of that! I thought mine was the last extant copy outside of those in a few monastic libraries."

"My grandfather had one," Thomas said quickly. "Lost now, I'm certain. Anyway, it said a lot of horrible things about Strogoff."

"Well, sure. It was published by the Church, and the clergy was very hostile toward Strogoff's work."

"What was his work, exactly? The pamphlet talked about… 'soulless constructs,' I recall…"

"He was a biologist and a philosopher. His evaluation of Locke is still considered the definitive one. But what he's famous for, and what set the Church against him, was his work with artificial and mutated species. The tax birds, the forest dwarves, the sewer singers, even the androids—all the weird, semi-rational creatures you find in and around the southern California city-states—were developed by Strogoff and his successors." He took a deep drink of his fortified beer.

A fight at the bar momentarily distracted Thomas. This place certainly isn't restful; but I doubt if I could find my way alone back to the Bellamy. Maybe I'll go sleep in the car, though.

He turned back to his companion. "So how has the study of Strogoff brought you here?" And to this, he added to himself.

"I was—am—editing the Collected Letters of J. Heinemann Strogoff." He rolled the title off with evident relish. "I'm nearly finished, too." Jenkins frowned deeply. "Two days before he died, Strogoff wrote a letter to Louis Hancock, who was then the majordomo of Los Angeles. I found part of the carbon of that letter—just a torn-off piece—in the Berkeley collection of Strogoffs papers. It… it seemed, from what sense I could make of it, that Strogoff was threatening Hancock. And pleading with him, too, at the same time. Anyhow, I figured the complete letter definitely belonged in my book; it was probably the last letter he ever wrote, for one thing." Thomas refilled his glass from Jenkins's pitcher and shook his head when the old man invitingly raised the whiskey bottle. "So," continued Jenkins, "I came to L.A. four years ago. Figured I'd look up Hancock and talk him into letting me make a copy of the complete letter. Hah! Hancock was two years dead when I got here. Killed himself. And his papers were locked in the city archives, where they still, I suppose, are."

"Won't they let you see them?" Thomas asked.

"No. Who knows why—clerks just think that way, I guess. I've made dozens of requests, phrased dozens of different ways. The university even wrote to Pelias, asking him to give access. No dice."

"And you've just stayed on."

Jenkins nodded. "That's right. After a while those bastards at the university terminated my contract. And me with tenure! So I stayed. Money ran out and I found a job on the Greeter. I'll head back up to Berkeley sometime, pick up my stuff and publish the book somewhere else. But… there's no hurry." The level of his drink had lowered, and he refilled it with the bourbon. "No hurry," he repeated vacantly.

Thomas nodded doubtfully. "I'll see you later," he said, getting laboriously to his feet.

"Yeah, take it easy," Jenkins said with a wave.

Thomas looked around at the crowd, but failed to see Jeff or Negri. He walked outside, located the car, and curled up in one of the back seats. The warm eastern wind that was sifting fine dust over the dark streets had kept the car from becoming chilly, and Thomas sank immediately into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER 5: The Girl at the Far End of the Row

As soon as he awoke, Thomas knew he was sick. His nose was completely plugged, his mouth was dry from having breathed through it all night, his throat hurt when he swallowed, and he had a small, tight headache under his left ear.

I'm in my bed at least. He forced his eyes open and found himself staring at the stone head on the shelf. "Good morning," he croaked at it.

Once he stood up he felt a little better. He slid into his shirt and pants and padded barefoot to the greenroom. Spencer was there, talking to half a dozen people Thomas didn't know.

"Well, look what shambled out of the swamp," Spencer grinned. "Mornin', Rufe."

"G'morning." Thomas slumped into a chair.

"You sound awful," spoke up a pretty, auburn-haired woman. "Got a cold?" Thomas considered the idea, then nodded. "It's this Santa Ana wind," she said. "Comes in from the desert."

"Gang, this is Rufus," Spencer said. "Rufe, I won't run through everybody's names, because you wouldn't remember them anyhow. This is the guy," he remarked to the others, "who split the skull of the android that was about to put a bullet into me."

They nodded and looked at Thomas more respectfully. The auburn-haired woman crossed the room and sat on the arm of his chair. "Would you like some breakfast?" she inquired.

"Uh… coffee," Thomas said. "Thank you. Hot, with sugar."

"You just sit there and rest, hon. I'll bring it." She scurried out of the room.

"Well, Rufus," said a tall, hearty-voiced young man with short-cropped hair, "I understand you are, to a certain extent, one of us." A couple of the others shot sharp looks at him.

"Yes," answered Thomas, too tired to care whether or not the man's sentence held sarcasm.

"Say," put in a woman across the room. "How's Pelias? Does anyone know?"

Several people shrugged. "Somebody told me," said Thomas, "that he's probably dead, and the government's afraid to admit it."

"That may be," nodded the short-haired man. "Hell, it's been three days now since the, uh, resistance guerrillas detonated those two bombs in his house. The administrators may well be holding a corpse and stalling for time."

"I never permit political talk in the greenroom, Lambert, as you know," said Gladhand, who had propelled his wheelchair through the doorway. "In our line of work it's an unaffordable luxury." He glanced around at the group. "And speaking of our line of work, everybody had better remember to be at the noon rehearsal today. We'll have two newcomers— Rufus here, and hopefully someone to play Rosalind." Everyone shifted uncomfortably. Jean must have been doing Rosalind, Thomas realized. "Where's Alice?" the manager went on. "Not here? Well, when she shows, have her finish nailing up the Arden set. Rufus, why don't you come along with me. I'll pick the new actress and then explain everything to both of you at once."

The woman returned with Thomas's coffee; he thanked her and then followed Gladhand down the corridor, taking cautious sips of the hot brew.

"I sent a boy to the L.A. Greeter office last night," Gladhand. said over his shoulder. "Had him put an ad in this morning's paper. 'Actress wanted, for the part of Rosalind in As You Like It. Apply at the Bellamy Theater, 10:00 h.' With the city in its current uproar, I have no idea what kind of response it'll draw. Might be nobody, might be every female north of Pico."

They entered a side hallway that led between two heavy curtains and eventually out onto the stage. The house lamps were lit and three broad, scrimmed spots illuminated the stage. Jeff stood in the central aisle, near the lobby doors.

"Have we got any, Jeff?" Gladhand called.

"Yes sir, a good dozen."

"Trot 'em in." The theater manager turned to Thomas. "By the way, uh, Rufus, I want to have it established that no further escapades like last night's will take place. Spencer told me about it. I can see your motivations, but nothing like that must ever recur. I've already spoken to him and Robert and Jeff. I hope I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir," said Thomas, embarrassed. "It won't recur."

"Good lad! Now look sharp, I may want your advice on these young ladies."

A gaggle of women entered and walked uncertainly down the aisle. "If you'll all just sit down in the front row, ladies, we'll commence," Gladhand said loudly. The women filed along the row and found seats.

Thomas regarded them curiously. Several were obviously too fat, and a couple looked too old to him, though he admittedly had no idea what could or could not be accomplished with makeup. That skinny little one there might do, he thought, or—then he noticed the girl at the far end of the row.

She had a round face, with black bangs cut off in a line just above her heavy-lidded eyes. She didn't chat with the others, but simply watched Gladhand and Thomas with an air of wary amusement. She wore a gray sweater over a pale blue blouse with a folded-over collar.

"The first thing," said Gladhand, wheeling to the edge of the stage, "that I should make clear is the fact that I pay no salaries. My actors live on the premises and receive room, board and clothing by way of payment."

"How's that going to feed my kids?" queried a broad-shouldered woman in a hat.

"Ma'am, I'm afraid it will not. The position I offer is suitable only for an unattached person with no pressing responsibilities."

The woman in the hat and several others stood up, picked their way out of the row and strode impatiently up the aisle. One paused at the door to make a rude gesture. Six remained sitting, and a couple of these looked doubtful. The expression, though, of the girl at the far end had not changed.

"Well," said Gladhand, "now that we're weeded down to a manageable number, tell me about yourselves. You first." He pointed at the heavily made-up woman who sat nearest the aisle.

She stood up. "Well, sir, I feel a… creative urge within me that demands expression in the theater, treading the boards. I have too vast a soul, you see, to keep it to myself. In a manner of speaking, I am Life. To me—"

"Please," interrupted Gladhand firmly. "That's enough."

"Enough for what?" she asked.

"Enough for me," he replied irritably. "Get out of here."

She left indignantly, with sotto voce observations to the effect that certain people were crippled in more ways than one. So long, Life, Thomas thought.

The self-descriptions of the next few women were very subdued, and Thomas soon stopped listening and stared at the girl in the gray sweater. After a while he became aware that she was staring back at him, and he blushed and looked away.

"And yourself, miss?" Gladhand said politely, turning finally to her.

She rose. "I saw your ad in the Greeter," she said, and shrugged. "I've never acted before, so I haven't developed any prejudices or bad habits. I have read the play, at least. And I have no previous jobs or commitments to prevent my starting immediately."

Gladhand nodded and wheeled himself back to the middle of the stage. He beckoned to Thomas, who hurried over to him. "What do you think, Rufus?" the theater manager asked solemnly.

"Good Lord, sir," Thomas answered under his breath. "Take the one in the gray sweater. She's…" He hesitated.

"Yes?" pursued Gladhand with a half-mocking smile. "She's what?"

"She's probably the best actress among them," finished Thomas defensively.

"Nonsense. That one I ordered out was probably the best actress." He threw up one hand in a surrendering gesture. "But… I must have people I can work with. Okay. I'll take her."

"Sir? Why didn't you have an audition for Touchstone's part?"

"I didn't have to. You dropped in at the right moment and seemed adequate." Gladhand rolled forward. "The truth is," he whispered over his shoulder, "I hate auditions. I never really know how to handle them."

He was at the edge of the stage again. "Ladies, it will not be necessary to do readings. I have made my choice. The ones not chosen may pick up free tickets to the performance from the young man by the door there. And the part of Rosalind, I've decided, goes to you." He pointed to Thomas's choice. The others stood up and shambled out.

The woman in the gray sweater stepped to the stage and, resting one hand lightly on the edge, vaulted gracefully up onto it. Thomas noted that she was wearing faded black corduroy pants. She was somewhat short, and her figure was full but certainly not plump.

Somehow Gladhand managed to bow in his wheelchair. "I am Nathan Gladhand, and this is Rufus Pennick," he said. "You are… ?"

"Cleopatra Pearl," she said.

"Cleopatra Pearl," Gladhand repeated gloomily.

"My mother thought it sounded sharp," the girl said apologetically. "I can't help it. Call me Pat."

Gladhand brightened. "Pat it is. Well Pat, like yourself, Rufus here is a newcomer to our company, so I'll explain our rules and customs to both of you at once." He plucked a cigar out of his pocket and struck a match on the arm of the wheelchair. "First, know your lines. I realize you two haven't had a chance to yet, but starting tomorrow I will expect every actor to have his or her lines down pat, so we can spend our time on movement and inflection and things like that. Second: what I say is law. You may make suggestions from time to time, but you may never persist in disagreement. Third: nothing is beneath an actor's dignity. Everybody builds sets, hangs lights, paints backdrops, goes next door to fetch chop suey and eggrolls. Let's see, what am I on, fourth? Fourth: there are no fights within my troupe. In the event of a fight, both parties are expelled, no matter who it might be." He pinched out the cigar and replaced it in his pocket. "And there's no smoking in the auditorium. That's all the rules I can think of for now. If any more occur to me I'll let you know. We have a rehearsal in about an hour; you two needn't participate yet, but you should watch. I'll see both of you later. Rufus, show her around."

"Aye, aye." Thomas led Pat away into the wings while Gladhand wheeled himself away in the opposite direction. "Actually," Thomas confessed to her, "I don't really know my way around the place yet. I've only—"

"You've got a cold, haven't you?" she interrupted.

"What? Oh, yes. Haven't been taking care of myself these past couple of days. Anyway, I can show you the greenroom—it's painted yellow, by the way; I guess it used to be green. So far, that's the only landmark I know."

"What did you do before you came here, Rufus? Where did you live?"

"I—" He couldn't tell her he was a ward of the local cloistered monastery, he realized. She'd recoil. And he had ditched that identity anyway. "I was a student at Berkeley. I was expelled, though, for punching the dean one night, so I signed aboard a tramp steamer and came to Los Angeles. Oh," he added, "and I'm a poet in my spare time." That much, at least, was true.

"A poet?" she echoed, her voice a blend of doubt and awe, as if he'd claimed that he'd been brought up by wolves.

"Well, yes," Thomas said, a little disconcerted. "A few sonnets and things. I haven't been published yet."

They walked on in silence to the greenroom. "This is where everybody seems to congregate," he told her, though the only one there at present was Negri, who was combing his hair in front of a mirror. "Bob," Thomas said, "this is Pat Pearl. Pat, Bob Negri. Pat is taking the Rosalind part."

Negri turned around and gave the girl a prolonged scrutiny. "Well, hello," he said with a slow smile.

"I'll show you the rest of the place, Pat," said Thomas quickly, taking her arm.

"That's all right, Rufus," she said. "We can explore later. Right now I'd better get my things out of my cart. It's parked out back and somebody's likely to grab them."

"I could help you carry them in," Thomas pointed out.

"No, it's only one bag. I'll be okay." She waved and strode away down the hall.

"Now there's a piece," commented Negri. "I wouldn't kick her out of bed."

Thomas looked at him sharply. "Damn, Negri, you sure adapt quickly."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Give it some thought."

Angry, Thomas left the room and walked out to the lobby. Bright sunlight glittered on the asphalt of Second Street outside the windows, and Thomas stepped out for some fresh air.

Spencer was slouched against the wall, smoking a cigarette. "You've got no shoes on, Rufe," he observed.

"You're right." Thomas leaned on the wall, too. "I don't like Negri."

Spencer squinted through the tobacco smoke. "I hear the new girl's real pretty," he said.

"True." Thomas relaxed and looked idly up and down the street. "Say did you ever find Evelyn last night?"

"Yeah. Finally convinced her that I hadn't intentionally stood her up. Lied like a bastard, too. I couldn't tell her the truth."

"I suppose not Gladhand wasn't real pleased about last night, was he?"

Spencer grinned. "Oh, he didn't really mind so much. When he's fatherly-stern you know he's not genuinely upset. He just doesn't want his people to get killed running off to act on drunken inspirations."

"Oh." A beer trunk rattled by, pursued by a gang of little boys. The city seemed to be about its usual business. "How's Pelias?" Thomas asked. "Have you heard?"

"Yeah. The official word is—give up?—he's still in a coma."

"I didn't know you could be in a coma this long."

"Oh, sure. Three days isn't the world record. I think he's alive," Spencer said, "because Lloyd, the major-domo, hasn't named a successor, and he hasn't tried to take the office himself, either. I'm sure he'd have done one or the other if Pelias was dead." Spencer pointed over the rooftops at a trailing plume of smoke that stood out sharply against the blue sky. "Roughly Alameda and Third Street, I'd guess. And I heard exchanges of gunfire three times this morning, in the south. Somebody'd better take charge pretty soon."

Thomas nodded helplessly. "Uh… will there be a funeral or something for Jean?" he asked.

"No. Not for us, anyway. She has some folks in Glendale, and Gladhand had her body sent there."

For a while neither of them spoke, and finally Thomas turned to reenter the theater. "You heard right," he said. "The new girl is real pretty."

CHAPTER 6: The Dark-Rum Queen

Two seats over from Thomas, Gladhand puffed on a cigar and regarded the stage activity through narrowed eyes. The short-haired man, Lambert, whom Thomas had met earlier in the greenroom, stood with Alice in the foreground; behind them were a young man and woman Thomas didn't know and, holding a script, Pat Pearl.

They'd begun rehearsing the fifth scene of act three. Phebe, played by Alice, was unsympathetically explaining to Lambert's Silvius that she wished he'd stop bothering her with his wooing.

"That's good," called Gladhand. "Just the right amount of impatience. Silvius, try to look anguished, will you? Dumb, sure, but anguished too. All right, now, Rosalind, walk over to Phebe."

Pat stepped forward, and Thomas envied her air of self-possession. Gladhand had decided that his two new players ought to at least walk through their parts, reading from scripts, and Thomas feared that he'd bungle even that. Uneasily he remembered the panic that had always assailed him when, as a boy, he'd been called on to serve Mass.

Rosalind was now advising Phebe at length to take Silvius at his word. "Sell when you can; you are not for all markets," she told her finally. It was a long speech, but Pat read it well and with conviction.

"Not bad," said Gladhand.

The scene progressed, and it developed that Phebe had now fallen in love with Rosalind, who was to be, in the actual performance, disguised as a man. Needlessly complicated, Thomas thought. And it just wasn't credible that Rosalind's disguise could be as convincing as the plot demanded.

"Hold it, Rosalind," Gladhand interrupted. "Do that last line again, but look at Phebe when you say it. You were looking out here at us."

Pat nodded and repeated the line, this time her eyes directed at Phebe: "I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine."

"That's more like it," the theater manager nodded.

At five o'clock they had run through the scene several times—with Pat looking at her script only once or twice the last time—and had begun work on the first scene of act four. Thomas, sitting with his feet on the back of the seat in front of him, was relieved to hear the five distant notes of the city-hall clock.

"That's plenty for today," Gladhand said, struggling up onto his crutches. "I'm feeling more optimistic about the damned play now than I have in a week. I think you're all beginning to relax."

Most of the lights were extinguished, and the actors broke up into groups and wandered offstage. Thomas tried to intercept Pat, but she was talking and laughing with Alice and didn't see him. Jeff was sliding the plywood flats back into the wings, and Thomas waved to him. "Jeff!" he called. "How does one get dinner around here?"

"One follows the east hall"—Jeff pointed—"all the way to the back. There's a dining room."

"Much obliged."

Thomas followed the stragglers down the hall and wound up sitting at a long wooden table, wedged between Lambert and the woman who'd brought him coffee this morning. Pat, he noticed with a hollow, despairing sensation, was sitting next to Negri, who was performing some trick with his fork and spoon for her amusement.

"You're Rufus?" the woman by Thomas's side asked.

"That's right."

"I'm Skooney," she said. "Here, have some of this stew. Greg, pass the pitcher, Rufus didn't get any beer."

"Thank you," Thomas said automatically, his attention focused on Pat and Negri.

"I'm the gaffer," Skooney explained.

Reluctantly Thomas turned to her. "The what?" He had thought gaffers worked on fishing boats.

"I'm in charge of the lights. Did you know we've got some real electric lights? Gladhand set up a generator out back. There are only two other theaters in the whole L.A. area that have electric lights."

"Well," said Thomas, "I'm glad I'm starting out at the top." He took a deep drink of beer and set to work on the stew, still casting occasional furtive glances down the table.

A little later Spencer wandered through the room and leaned over Thomas's shoulder. "Meet me on the roof when you're finished," he whispered, filling a spare glass with beer. Thomas nodded and Spencer, after exchanging a few rudely humorous insults with Alice, left the room.

Beneath the high, cold splendor of the stars, the winking yellow lights of Los Angeles appeared friendly and protective, like a night-light in a child's bedroom. From the streets below, there echoed from time to time the rattle of a passing cart, or the long-drawn-out call of a mother summoning her children.

Spencer flicked his cigarette out over the street when he heard footsteps on the stairs.

"Is that you, Rufus?"

"Yeah. What a view." The Santa Ana wind was still sighing its warm breath from the east, and Thomas removed his co?t.

"Listen, I was talking to Evelyn today, and I asked her if they'd caught this escaped monk, Thomas."

"What did she say?" Thomas had the sinking feeling of one who's been reminded of a lingering disease.

"She says they're looking for him day and night. They're not even looking for the guys who bombed Pelias as hard as they're looking for you. No charges have been mentioned, though." Spencer lit another cigarette. "Are you sure you haven't forgotten something? Something you saw or heard, maybe?"

Thomas shook his head helplessly. "There's some mistake," he said. "Maybe some other monk named Thomas ran off from some other monastery on the same day I did."

Spencer inhaled deeply on his cigarette, then let the smoke hiss out between his teeth. "They said the Merignac, remember?"

A deep, window-rattling boom shook the roof, and part of a building several blocks away collapsed into the street. Flames began licking up from the rubble.

"The rent on that place just went down, I believe," Spencer said.

Thomas could see, silhouetted by the mounting flames, people appearing on the surrounding roofs, waving their arms and dashing about aimlessly.

"What was that building?" Thomas asked, leaning on the coping and staring at the conflagration.

"Oh, a city office bombed by radicals," Spencer answered, "or a radicals' den bombed by city officers. I just hope the fire doesn't spread too far. Do you hear any bells?"

Thomas listened. "No."

"Neither do I. The fire trucks aren't out yet. If they appear within the next couple of minutes, we'll know it was some administrator's house or office. If it was a troublesome citizen's house they probably won't get there before dawn."

They watched without speaking. Five minutes later they'd been silently joined by five other members of the troupe, but no fire trucks had put in an appearance at the scene of the fire.

"Maybe we ought to organize a group to go help put it out," someone suggested. "If it spreads to the buildings next to it the whole city'll go up."

"No," said Negri. "They've got it under control. When the roof collapsed it killed most of it. See? The whole thing's darker now. The only stuff burning now is what fell in the street."

"We'll have to read about it in the Greeter tomorrow," Thomas said. "Find out what happened." Everyone laughed, and Thomas realized his statement had been taken as a joke.

"Did you see the damned paper this morning?" Jeff asked him. "You know what the headline was? Pelias has been bombed, you know, and the androids are running amok, right? So here's the headline: all-time HIGH FROG COUNT IN SAN GABRIEL VALLEY."

"They're right on top of things," Thomas observed. The fire really was dimmer now, and the actors moved away from the roof edge.

"You bet," Jeff agreed.

"I read that," Spencer said. "Apparently the summer wasn't as hot as it usually is, so the Ravenna swamps didn't dry up this year. The frogs didn't all die, like they usually do—they just sat around and multiplied all year long, so now the valley's choked with 'em. I was thinking that some enterprising businessman should drive up there and pack a few tons of frogs in ice, and run them down to Downey or Norwalk and sell them for food."

"You're a born wheeler-dealer, Spence," said Alice with a laugh.

Thomas spied Pat still standing by the coping, watching the diminishing fire. He walked over and leaned on the wall next to her. She was sniffling and wiping her nose with a handkerchief.

"You aren't catching my cold, are you?" he asked.

She sneezed. "No," she answered.

"Hey," came a jovial voice, and Negri interposed himself between Thomas and Pat. "Running off with my girl, are you Rufus? Come on, Patsy, I want you to meet some people." He put his arm around her shoulders and led her back toward the rest of the group.

For a moment Thomas stared after them, and then strode angrily toward the stairs.

"Rufus." Thomas stopped. Gladhand had climbed the stairs somehow, crutches and all, and now sat in a wicker chair in the far shadows. "Come here a moment," the theater manager said.

Thomas picked his way through a litter of two-by-fours to the place where Gladhand sat. Another chair stood nearby, and he sank into it. "Weird evening," he said. "With this wind and all."

Gladhand nodded. "Several hundred years ago it was considered a valid defense in a murder trial if you could prove the Santa Ana wind was blowing when the murder was committed. The opinion was that the dry, hot wind made everybody so irritable that any murder was almost automatically excusable. Or so I've heard, anyway."

Thomas pondered it. "There might be something to that," he said.

"No," Gladhand said. "There isn't. Start sanctioning heat-of-anger crimes and you've lost the last hold on the set of conventions we call… society, civilization."

He sat back and pressed the tips of his fingers together. "Some things, Rufus, cannot be avoided. They will happen no matter what efforts you make to prevent them. Once, when I was much younger, I was at a girl's house with some friends. It was about noon, and we were all standing around the piano, singing and drinking lemonade. After a while I glanced down and saw, to my horror, that the fly of my trousers was unbuttoned. I've got to divert their attention, I thought desperately, long enough for me to rectify this potentially embarrassing state of affairs. Thinking quickly, I shouted, 'Hey, will you look at that!' and pointed out the far window. They turned, and I buttoned my fly. But now, I noticed, they were regarding me with… surprise and loathing. Puzzled, I crossed to the window and looked out." Gladhand sighed. "On the front lawn were two dogs engaged in the most primal sort of amorous activity."

The theater manager shrugged. "It was inevitable, I guess, that I would suffer embarrassment that day—and by fighting it, resisting it, I only managed to bring down an even greater embarrassment on myself."

"You mean there's no use in resisting anything?" Thomas asked doubtfully.

"I didn't say that. The trick is, you see, to know which you are: the inevitable consequence or the doomed resistor. Though, as a matter of fact—take my word for it—you can't know until it's too late to change, anyway."

Thomas nodded uncertainly.

"So!" concluded Gladhand briskly, "go rejoin your fellows. It's too hot a night to spend inside."

By the time the moon was high in the heavens most of Gladhand's troupe was on the roof, sitting in deck chairs, propped against chimney pots, or simply sprawled full-length on the tar paper. Lanterns and wine had been brought up from below, and Spencer was striking chords on a guitar.

Thomas noticed approvingly that Negri had downed his sixth glass of wine and was now getting to his feet for a quick trip downstairs.

"I'll be back in a flash, sugar-pie," he told Pat, before lurching away toward the stairs. Thomas casually strode over and sat down where Negri had been.

"Hello, Rufus," Pat said, a little wearily.

"Hi, Pat." A kind of hopeless depression descended on him. I've got nothing to say, he realized. Why are Negri and I bothering this girl anyway? Oh, come on, he protested to himself; all I've done is sit next to her. It isn't me calling her sugar-pie.

"Let's go see if the fire really did go out," Pat suggested, rising to her feet.

"Good idea," Thomas said. They walked out of the uneven ring of lantern light to the rough, time-rounded stones of the coping. The city lay spread out before them, as clear as a toy held at arm's length. The glow of the fire had vanished completely. Distantly came the echoes of three quick gunshots.

"A wild, unholy night," Thomas observed. Pat said nothing. "Where are you from, Pat?" he went on.

She sighed. "Oh, I come from quite a distance, the same as you. I'm the youngest of a very large family, and the smartest, so my parents sent me to the city."

"To make good," Thomas said.

"Or whatever."

"Where the hell?" came an angry shout from behind them. Thomas turned to see Negri striding furiously toward him across the roof. "All right, Pennick," he spat, "you're a little slower than everyone else, so I guess you've got to be told what's what. Listen and save yourself some trouble. Pat is my girl. And no—"

"I'm not your girl," Pat said.

"Shut up," Negri snapped. "I'll decide."

"You'll decide?" Thomas repeated, angry and laughing at the same time. "You heard her, Negri. She isn't interested. What do you plan to do, cut your monogram in her forehead?"

Negri cocked his fist, and it was seized firmly from behind. "You two aren't going to forget the no-fighting rule, are you?" smiled Spencer, releasing Negri's arm.

"Uh, no," Negri admitted. "But I'm challenging this toad to a duel, to decide once and for all whether Pat is my girl or not."

"How can a duel decide that?" Thomas protested. "You mean automatically if I lose—"

"Go ahead, Rufus. Do it," Pat interrupted.

After a tiny pause, Spencer shrugged. "Okay, a duel, then. Jeff, set up the table."

The rest of the actors cleared a circle in the center of the roof and set the lanterns so that the area was well lit. Chairs for spectators were ranged around the perimeter, and Gladhand stumped over and lowered himself into a front-row seat. "This should be instructive," he remarked.

Spencer walked into the circle and raised his hands for silence. "Quiet," he said, "while I explain to Rufus and Pat how our duels work. You'll notice Jeff is setting up a chessboard. What Rufus and Bob are going to do is play a game of chess—the chess pieces, though, will be different-sized glasses. One dueler's glasses will be filled with red wine, the other's with white. When you capture a piece, you must drink it. One loses by passing out or being checkmated."

Jeff had erected the table and two chairs and was now placing glasses in the chessmen's places. The pawns, Thomas noticed, were shot glasses, the bishops and knights fairly capacitous wine glasses, the rooks tumblers, and the queens full-sized beer schooners. The kings were represented by conventional wooden chess pieces, and Jeff held these until the color choice should be made.

"Sit down, gentlemen," Spencer said. "In each of my hands is a cork, one from a Zinfandel, one from a Chablis. Rufus, right or left?"

"Hold it," said Negri. Thomas looked warily across the table at him. "Take the damn wine away. That's for kids. We'll duel with rum, light and dark."

An interested murmur arose from the assembled actors. Clearly this had not been done before. Spencer turned uncertainly to Gladhand, who shrugged and nodded.

"Okay," said Spencer, "Jeff, give the wine to the spectators and dash below for four bottles of rum."

Thomas looked beyond Negri and saw Pat sitting in the first row. She smiled at him. I've got to win this, he thought.

"Bob's been drinking all night," called someone in the crowd. "Rufus is nearly sober. It ain't fair."

Gladhand spoke up: "Rufus has a bad cold, which will doubtless be a handicap equal to Bob's degree of drunkenness. Besides, Bob is the challenger, and is familiar with the strategies of wine-chess."

Jeff clattered back up the stairs with four bottles of rum under his arm. He handed them to Spencer, who uncorked them, held the corks tightly in his fists, and turned to Thomas. Thomas tapped one fist, which opened, revealing the dark cork.

"Rufus is black, Robert white," Spencer said. He filled Thomas's glasses with the dark rum while Jeff filled Negri's with the light. Finally they both stepped back, leaving a daunting array of drinks gleaming in the lamplight on the table. "Your move, Bob," Spencer said.

Negri edged his king's pawn forward two squares. Thomas replied with the same. Abruptly, Negri slid his queen out of the ranks all the way across the board to the rook's fifth place.

Thomas saw the trap immediately; he had last fallen for it before he was ten. Negri hoped Thomas would advance his king's knight's pawn one square in an attempt to drive the enemy queen away. If he did, of course, Negri's queen would leap three spaces to her left, taking Thomas's first-moved pawn and, inevitably with the next move, would dart invulnerably in to capture a rook.

Thomas automatically reached forward to move his knight to his king's bishop's third—and paused. What if he let him have the rook? Thomas could move his queen's knight up to the bishop's third when the pawn was lost, as if threatening Negri's queen; and then when he took the rook, Thomas could hop the knight back down in front of his own king, which would bar the opponent queen from decimating his ranks any further. And it would leave Negri with a tumbler and a shot glass worth of dark rum in him.

Thomas withdrew his hand and looked closely at Negri. How much can he put away? Negri had already consumed a good amount of alcohol this evening; his mouth was beginning to sag, and his eyes weren't focusing perfectly. By God, I'll try it.

Thomas advanced the knight's pawn.

"Hah!" barked Negri as he slid the queen over and tapped the shot glass that represented Thomas's first-moved pawn. He snatched it up and tossed it off, smacking his lips. "Not bad," he announced, setting the glass aside. "I believe I'll have some more."

Thomas obligingly brought his queen's knight forward, allowing Negri's queen to take his king's rook. A mutter of dismay and approval passed over the spectators as Negri drained the rook-glass. "Ahh!" he exclaimed. "How does your queen taste, Pennick? I mean to find out."

Thomas moved his queen's knight to his king's second square. Negri made as if to take Thomas's king's knight, then noticed that it was protected by its twin.

"You can't stop me, Pennick," he jeered and took the rook's pawn instead. He drank it in one gulp, but set the empty shot glass too close to the edge of the table, and it fell when he let go of it.

A few people in the crowd giggled, and he shot a venomous look in their direction. "Go to hell," he barked.

"Take it easy, Robert," Gladhand spoke up. "You know better than to yell at an audience."

Thomas now moved his king's knight to his bishop's third, threatening Negri's queen; she withdrew, and the tension was relaxed for the moment. Thomas had lost two pawns and a rook—but his men were opening out fairly well, and he had his unmolested queen's side to castle into if need and opportunity should arise. And Negri, to Thomas's well-concealed satisfaction, was beginning to look really drunk—frowning at the board in a passion of concentration and pushing the curly hair back from his forehead with rubbery fingers.

A stray gust of the warm wind flickered the lanterns and, for a moment, blew the heavy rum fumes away from Thomas's face. He looked up, caught Pat's eye and winked. She winked back, and suddenly he felt proud and brave, as if facing Negri somewhere at misty dawn, settling the question with sabers.

The game progressed slowly, with Thomas drinking a piece—slowly, and in several swallows—only to avert direct danger or to press a certain advantage. Every few moves he tried to sacrifice a pawn, or an occasional bishop or knight, to increase the watery, fuddled look in Negri's eyes.

"He's trying to get you drunk, Bob!" came a call at one point. Negri's derisive laughter at that sounded genuine, but he glanced furtively at the tally of empty glasses along the sides of the table; and then smirked confidently to see how many more of Thomas's glasses had been emptied than his own.

Despite Thomas's stay-sober strategy, he had to work hard to keep all the threats, protections and potential lines of attack clear in his mind. I've got to mount that checking attack with my bishop and queen, he thought a little dizzily. Could he get his rook into position to back them up, though? Sure, but it'll take… three moves. Could he count on Negri not to put him in check—or interfere with his queen and bishop—for three moves?

He regarded Negri suspiciously. What if he's pretending to be drunker than he really is? I've got to chance it, he thought, and moved his rook.

Negri moved a pawn out of its home row.

Thomas moved his rook the second time.

A bishop full of light rum advanced from Negri's ranks and, threatening Thomas's beer-schooner queen, came to rest on a square protected by a pawn and a knight.

Thomas's heart sank. There went his whole plan. With his queen moved he wouldn't be able to salvage any part of it. Did he do that simply to foul me up, or is there another purpose? He stared carefully at the board—and it was all he could do to stifle a gasp of horror.

Negri's bishop was now in a position to take the pawn protecting Thomas's modest wooden king—and a forgotten white knight stood by to back the move up. He would do that next, Thomas realized. It wouldn't be quite checkmate, but that probably wouldn't be long in following.

The silence was absolute, and Thomas fancied he could hear the sweat running down his neck into his collar.

There was only one slim hope. If it didn't work, all he'd have done was hand Negri the game. And Pat, too, he reminded himself.

He moved his rook the third time.

There were a few gasps and groans from the crowd, and Negri looked both surprised and pleased. "You're drunker than I thought, Pennick," he said slowly. Thomas watched him closely, almost able to read the sluggish thoughts that reeled through the narrow spotlight of Negri's consciousness. He's puzzled, Thomas thought, that I ignored his threat to my queen; and he's wondering whether to take her or pursue his planned attack. Negri looked up sharply, and Thomas crossed his eyes slightly and hiccupped. He had to make Negri think he was drunk—that he didn't even see the threat. Come on, Negri. Take a certain queen instead of an uncertain checkmate.

"I said I'd taste your queen, Pennick," Negri said finally, tapping her with his bishop. Thomas tried to look surprised and dismayed.

The queen was heavy, and Negri lifted her with both hands. He peered dazedly for a moment into the amber depths of the glass, then took a deep breath and brought it to his lips.

Everyone on the roof watched tensely as Negri's adam's apple bobbed up and down and the bottom of the glass slowly rose. The color had drained from his face, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, but still he kept methodically gulping the heady brown liquor. Finally he drained it—flung the empty glass away—shuddered—and slid, unconscious, from his chair to the tar papered floor.

Spencer hopped up and, with an upraised hand, silenced the quick rush of cheers and boos. "Rufus," he said, "you've lost your queen. Do you choose to resign?"

"No," Thomas replied.

"Then since your opponent is unconscious, you are clearly the winner."

There was more cheering and booing and a brief scramble for the remaining glasses on the board. Thomas rose and walked out of the ring of light to gulp some fresh air.

"Rufus."

He turned and saw that Pat had followed him. "Thank you," she said, and kissed him, a little awkwardly. As far as he could recall, it was the first time anyone had ever kissed him, but he was drunk enough not to become flustered.

"You're welcome," he said. "I didn't really do anything, though. Just fed him rum until he passed out."

"No, no," she protested. "I was watching closely. You calculated just how much alcohol you could let him have without losing the game yourself. It was fascinating. What does alcohol do to your brain, anyway?"

"Haven't you ever had any?"

"No. My family was—what's the word?"

"Teetotalers," he supplied and she nodded. "Well," he said, "alcohol, enough of it, wrecks your ability to concentrate. It's like trying to run down a familiar hallway that's suddenly dark and cluttered with a lot of boxes and old bicycles and fishing poles. Or like the first day of a cold, when you're dizzy and light-headed and can't remember the correct answer to 'Good morning.' "

"I hear every drink destroys ten thousand brain cells. Why do… why do people get drunk?"

"Well, not everybody drinks to get drunk. Just a little every now and then is very pleasant. And, hell, the loss of a few thousand brain cells here and there— who counts?"

She stared at him with a total, undisguised lack of comprehension. "I don't understand people," she said. "It's late; I'm going to turn in. See you tomorrow." She turned toward the stairs. "Oh, and thanks again for… rescuing me."

"You're welcome again. Good night."

Now what, he asked himself when she'd disappeared, happened there? She obviously didn't approve of drinking; but she didn't quite disapprove, either— she simply couldn't understand it. Oh well, she seems to like me. After all, I risked a whole truckload of brain cells to save her from being Negri's sugar-pie.

With a shiver of blended surprise, pleasure and apprehension he realized that he was, as the saying goes, falling in love with her.