An Epitaph in Rust

  “Why?” Thomas was astonished. “We’re numbers fifty-six and-seven, for God’s sake! And we’ve had to fight off people 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 looking at 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: “Ten o’clock news. Ten o’clock news. Although Mayor Pelias has not yet recovered from the stroke he suffered a little more than forty-eight 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 continues round the clock, and police chief Tabasco is confident that the … malfeasors will be apprehended within twenty-four 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 they name androids after 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 leisurely toward the front of the line. 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’ 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 hard-flung stones into the ranks of the attackers. Nearly everyone in the square began to run toward the fighting, hoping to be able 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, where they paused.

  “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 that were trotting in formation north on Olive, blocking off the western edge of the square. They all carried rifles at die ready.

  Spencer drew in his breath sharply 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.

  The rattle and pop of gunfire broke out as Spencer was scurrying up a fire-escape ladder mounted on the bank’s alley-side wall. Thomas followed him, taking the rusty rungs as quickly as he could, although his wound was stinging and his lungs felt ready to shut down entirely. If we don’t stop to rest very soon, he thought, 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 bars, 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, and 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 the firing ceased immediately. 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, he kept thinking. 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.

  “Lets go,” he said. He leaned down and shook Thomas’ shoulder. “Let’s go. 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 had really 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 fireworks the monks had shot off on holy days and Easter.

  “Back to the Bellamy,” Spencer answered. “But first let’s go visit Evelyn. I want to find out more about this ration number give-away.”

  “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’ 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 across the street, their collars and skirt-ends flapping in the breeze. “I … don’t know,” he said.

  “Don’t look at them, goddammit!” 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 pawnshops, 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 is 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 here, Main, is the western edge.”

  “What do they graze th—” Thomas began, and then remembered St. Coutras’ 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 things 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?”

  “Christ, no,” Spencer said. His face twitched between 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 b
oth young men were laughing uncontrollably, tears running down their cheeks. A few people walking by on the opposite sidewalk gave them contemptuous glances, clearly supposing them to be drunk.

  “Pull … yourself together … for God’s sake,” giggled Spencer. “The goddamn … 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 got rid 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 the old tan couches that lined three of the walls. The place smelled of old floor wax.

  “Something I can do for you gents?” enquired an officer behind the 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. Jesus, 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 they stepped into the room beyond it, and were confronted by ranks of girls 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 girl 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.

  “Jesus, Spencer,” Evelyn whispered breathlessly. “I was afraid you were killed. Forty armed police were sent out to put down a riot in Pershing Square. Were you there? They just came back 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 eleven Solis on a roast beef sandwich and a cup of watery beer. Evelyn and Spencer had the same, and the three of them 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 that 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 they’d 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.”

  “Jesus,” Evelyn exhaled, and reached 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 have 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 if he still does or not. Haven’t kept in touch.”

  “I know how that 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 door and onto the sidewalk. Thomas started 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.

  “Jesus. 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 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 Theatre, seen by daylight, was a good deal larger than Thomas had imagined last night. Its broad entrance, crowded now with gawking people, took up nearly a third of the two-hundred block of Second Street, and rose upward for three storeys in a grand display of balconies, tile-roofed gables and rust-streaked concrete gargoyles.

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

  She was clearly dead. The left half of her skirt 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 the hell 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 heavy-set 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 crowd began to break up indignantly. “Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens!” he shouted at them.