Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust Read online

  “Easy, woman,” Beardo said. “The bridge was built for frailer girls.” He grinned up at her. The whites of his eyes were almost brown, and his face, loosely draped over the bones of his skull, was as wrinkled and creased as a long-unchanged bedsheet. His beard was ragged and patchy, as were his clothes.

  “And what would frailer girls be doing on it?” she asked scornfully. Beardo rolled his eyes and made lascivious motions with his hands, implying that there were any number of things frail girls might do on it.

  “You rotten toad,” Morgan snarled, slapping the old man affectionately in the side of the head.

  “We’ve no time for fooling around,” Beardo declared. “Where’s the hooks?”

  Morgan pulled a chain of small grappling hooks from a bag at her belt, and proceeded to tie one of them to the fishing line. She tossed it into the water so that it trailed downstream.

  “Okay now, keep your eyes open on this side, so we’ll know where to swing the line,” Beardo said, facing upstream. “If anything scares you, just call me,” he added sarcastically. A week ago a dead lion had floated by under the bridge—its hide would have made a fine catch, but Morgan, terrified by the glazed feline eyes, had twitched the trailing hook away from it. Beardo had not yet entirely forgiven her for it.

  “Oh, bite a crawdad,” she said.

  They were silent then, staring intently into the lamp-lit water. Beardo and his woman were, in the understreet slang, “working the shores”: scavenging the debris the Leethee brought in from the upper world. Many of the understreet population of Munson made a profitable living at this trade.

  Suddenly Beardo stiffened; something was drifting downstream, something that bumped frequently against the brick walls. “Look sharp, girl,” he whispered. “Sounds like a piece of wood coming along.”

  Presently the thing was dimly visible. “It’s a midget raft! With a guy on it!” whispered Morgan. Beardo poked her with his elbow to shut her up. The raft, which was indeed a notably small one, rocked forward into the light. Morgan gasped when she saw the passenger, for its head appeared to be a cluster of rigid green tentacles.

  “Beelzebub!” she cried.

  The figure sat up on the raft abruptly, making hooting sounds. Morgan screamed. The tiny craft flipped over, dumping its rider into the cold black water.

  Beardo, who had seen the palm frond fall away, and knew that this underground mariner was only a puzzled-looking young man, slithered under the rope bridge-rail and dropped into the water ten feet below. He caught the floundering intruder and pushed him toward the ladder rungs set in the brick wall. The young man caught the rungs and began to haul himself out of the bad-smelling tide. His black hair was down across his face, and he stared up through it with bloodshot eyes. Morgan wailed and scrambled on all fours off of the bridge; she disappeared into one of the tunnel mouths, still wailing.

  The dark-haired youth pulled himself up onto the bridge and sat there shivering. Beardo climbed up right behind and sat down beside him. The old scavenger was smiling and cleaning his hideous fingernails with a long knife.

  “And what might they call you at home, lad?” Beardo queried.

  “What?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Francisco Rovzar. Uh, Frank… what’s yours?” asked the young man.

  “Puddin’ Tame,” answered Beardo gleefully. “Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.” The old man giggled like a manic parrot, slapping his thigh with his free hand.

  “Where is this?” asked Frank. “Am I in Munson?”

  “Oh aye,” nodded Beardo. “Or under it, to be more precise. What port was it you sailed from, sir?”

  “I’ve been drifting east on the Malachi from the Barclay Transport Depot.” Frank wished the old man would put away the knife. He didn’t like the look or smell of the ancient stone watercourse, and he wondered just how far under Munson he was.

  “Barclay, eh? You a jailbird?”

  Frank considered lying, but this old creature didn’t look like he had police connections; and Frank desperately needed friends and food and safe lodging. It’s almost certainly an error to trust this guy, he thought. But the next one I meet could be a lot worse.

  “Yes,” he answered. “That is, I was a prisoner until about eight this morning.”

  “Released you, did they?”

  “No. I escaped.”

  Beardo started to laugh derisively, then noticed Frank’s scrapes and bruises and ruined ear. “You did?” he asked, surprised. “Well, that’s the first time I ever heard of that being done. Anyway, Frank, what I really want to… uh…ascertain, is whether or not you have a family that would be willing to pay an old gentleman like myself for your safe return. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Frank.

  “Ransom, Frank, ransom. Do you have a rich family?” Before Frank could think of a safe answer, Beardo answered himself. “No, I suppose you don’t. If you did, they would have bought you out of Barclay. Or maybe the whole family got arrested, hmm?”

  Frank shook his head. “No family at all,” he said hopelessly. “My father was all I had, and the Transports shot him yesterday.”

  “Ah!” said Beardo sadly, testing his knife’s edge with a discolored thumb. “I’m afraid that narrows down the possibilities for you, Frank my boy.”

  Do I have the strength to fight old Puddin’ Tame? Frank asked himself. I don’t think I do. Maybe I could get into the water again.

  “Your father and you were thieves, I take it?” Beardo asked, squinting speculatively at Frank’s bared throat.

  “No!” Frank exclaimed, stung now in his much abused pride. “My father is… was Claude M. Rovzar, the best portrait painter on this planet.”

  Beardo blinked. He was inclined to doubt this, but then saw the paint stains on the tagged remains of the youth’s shirt.

  “You’re full of surprises, Frank,” he said. “All right, let’s say you are Rovzar’s son. Why would the Transports shoot Claude Rovzar?”

  “I don’t know. My father was doing a portrait of Duke Topo yesterday. Transport troops invaded the palace. Costa was with them, and he killed the old duke. The Transports grabbed my father and me, and my father resisted. They shot him.”

  “You keep saying they shot him. You don’t mean that literally, do you?”

  “Yes. There was more gunfire that day than I ever heard of, anywhere, in a hundred years. Bombs, even.”

  “Hmm,” grunted Beardo, scratching his furry chin. “There just might be something to all this.” He stood up, setting the bridge swaying. “One thing, anyway,” he said, “you’ve earned a reprieve.” He slapped his knife back into its sheath. “Come with me. We’ll get your wounds cleaned up and feed you. Then you can tell your story to a friend of mine.”

  Beardo picked up his lantern and Frank followed him into one of the tunnels.

  CHAPTER 4

  ALARMINGLY, THE TUNNEL BEARDO and Frank followed led down. The dim, shifty light cast by the old man’s lantern did little to dispel the darkness, and several times Frank heard anonymous scrabbling, splashing and low moans echo out of side corridors. Beardo held his drawn knife in his right hand and tapped it against the damp brick walls as he led Frank along.

  “Why are you doing that?” Frank whispered.

  “It shows any hole-lurkers that we’re armed. Got to let ’em know we mean business.”

  Good God, Frank thought. I wonder what sort of creatures lurk in these holes. In spite of himself, Frank began thinking of tentacles and green, fanged faces under old slouch hats.

  “Good sirs! Good sirs!” came a wheezing voice from the blackness ahead, causing Frank to start violently. “A penny to see a dancing dog?”

  “No,” rasped Beardo, advancing on the voice. “We don’t want to see a dancing dog.”

  Frank peered ahead over Beardo’s shoulder and saw an old person of indeterminate sex, as withered and dark as a dried apple. The figure was slumped against the wall as though it had bee
n thrown there dead, but one upraised skeletal hand held crossed sticks from which dangled a malodorous puppet. Frank looked more closely at it and saw that it was the dried corpse of a dog.

  “Just keep walking,” whispered Beardo to Frank. “I’ve seen this one before.”

  The old puppeteer began to sing, and Frank knew it was a woman. “Tirra lee, tirra lee, dance hound,” she crooned, and jiggled the horrible puppet merrily. Beardo stepped around her, smiling ingratiatingly. Frank followed, also attempting to smile.

  “Beardo, by the stars!” the old woman exclaimed. “You’ll give me some money, now, eh?”

  “Certainly, soon as I get some,” replied the old man, walking on down the tunnel and pulling Frank by the wrist.

  “Soon as you get some? Damn your treacherous eyes!” the woman brayed. She struggled to her feet and stumbled after them for a few paces, flailing Frank’s back with her mummified dog, before sinking exhausted to the flagstones once more. “A penny to see a dancing dog?” she inquired of the darkness.

  Beardo’s home was an abandoned section of a spiral stairwell, left over from God-knew-what derelict subway system. The old man hung his lantern on a wall peg and touched a match to three kerosene lamps; the comparatively bright light enabled Frank to see the place in some detail. The shaft was roughly twenty-five feet from stone floor to boarded-up roof, and the ascending iron stairs circled the shaft twice before disappearing beyond the boards of the ceiling. Stacks of books, chipped statues, rusted ironmongery and clothes lined the outer edges of the stairs, with the other half, near the wall, left clear for ascending and descending. In the middle of the floor was a sunken tub in whose murky waters several large toads sported.

  “Well, Frankie lad, what think you of the old homestead, eh?” asked Beardo, unscrewing the lid of a coffee jar.

  Even in his cold, wet state, Frank could see that Beardo fairly radiated the homeowner’s pride, so he answered tactfully. “It’s beautiful, Mr. Tame. A regular palace. I didn’t know underground homes were so… roomy.”

  “Hardly any of them are, Frank. This is one of the finest dwellings, I believe, in all of Munson Understreet. Oh, and my name is Beardo, Beardo Jackson; that Puddin’ Tame business was a joke.” The old man put a pan of water over a gas flame, and then turned to Frank, “Well now, off with those old rags and hop in the tub.”

  “The tub? But… there’s frogs in the tub.”

  “Toads. They thrive on the warm water. No poisonous frogs in my home. Hop in.”

  Come on, Frank told himself. This tub is the least of your worries. He undraped the tatters of cloth from his shivering body and lowered himself gingerly into the tub, which actually was warm. He splashed around for a while with the toads and then crawled out, feeling, to his surprise, considerably better for the bath. The old man dressed and bandaged Frank’s bullet-torn right ear.

  Beardo had selected clothes to replace his ruined ones and had not spared the finery. Frank donned a pair of purple silk trousers, red leather shoes, and a black shirt with pearl buttons. Over all went a white quilted smoking jacket with tassels and embroidered dragons.

  “How do I look?” Frank asked.

  “Like a prince. Come on, down this coffee and we’ll be off to visit Mr. Orcrist.”

  Sam Orcrist liked to think of himself as a ruler-in-the-shadows, a confidant of kings, a prompter behind the scenes. He was privy to the secrets of almost everyone, and his unstable fortune was spread about in hundreds of obscure and fabulous investments. Pages in the Ducal Palace left reports for him in certain unused sewer grates; ladies at court passed on to him incriminating letters through waiters and footmen; and children, above and below the streets, were sent by his agents on all sorts of furtive tracking-and-finding missions.

  Orcrist entertained often, but selectively. The doors of his understreet apartment were closed to some of the most influential citizens on the planet, and warmly open to a few of the most unsavory.

  “Mr. Beardo Jackson and a young man wish to see you, sir,” said Orcrist’s doorman, standing beside the chair in which Orcrist sat reading a book of Keats.

  “Well, don’t leave them standing out there for the footpads, Pons. Show them in.” He closed his book and took a bottle and three glasses out of a cabinet. He was pouring the liquor when Beardo and Frank entered.

  “Beardo!” he said. “Good to see you again. What have you been doing to throw Morgan into a hysterical fright?”

  “Good evening, Sam,” Beardo replied. “Poor old Morgan mistook my young friend here for an archfiend.”

  “I see. Who is your young friend?”

  “He’s Frank Rovzar, the son of Claude Rovzar the painter. And he has an interesting and timely story to tell you. Frank, sit down and tell Sam what happened yesterday.”

  Comfortable in his new clothes and warmed by Orcrist’s brandy, Frank told him about the rebellion at the palace and the deaths of his father and Duke Topo.

  “Holy smokes,” said Orcrist when Frank finished. “And you’re sure it was Transport troops that took the palace?”

  “Yes,” Frank answered. “Led by Prince Costa.”

  “I wondered why there’s been no news from the palace in the last twenty-four hours. They’re certainly keeping the lid on this.” He stood up. “Pons!”

  “Yes sir?” answered the doorman.

  “Get up to the land office fast, and sell all my holdings in the Goriot Valley. Don’t start a run on it, but be willing to take a loss. And for God’s sake get there before the office closes. Go!” Pons dashed from the room. “Don’t come back until I no longer own one square foot of farmland!” Orcrist called after him.

  He strode to the table and drummed his fingers on its polished surface. “How old is this news, Beardo?” he asked.

  “I pulled Frank out of the water less than an hour ago.”

  “Excellent. To show my gratitude for your prompt action, Beardo, I insist that Mr. Rovzar and yourself consent to be my guests for dinner. You’ll sleep here, of course; I’ll have Pons show you your rooms when he returns.”

  Frank was beginning to feel dizzy, and doubtful of his own perceptions. Whatever response he had expected Orcrist to have to his story, this had not been it.

  “What’s the connection,” Frank asked, “between a rebellion at the palace and farmland in the Goriot Valley?”

  Orcrist smiled, not unkindly. “I’m sorry if I seem callous about all this,” he said. “I’m an investor, you see. About ten years ago Duke Topo, in an attempt to make Octavio an autonomous—that is, self-sufficient—planet, planted and irrigated the entire length of the Goriot Valley. That way we didn’t have to import produce. It was a flourishing undertaking, and I am at this moment the owner of much of that farmland. But if the Transport has taken control of us, I don’t want any part of that damned valley. The Transport doesn’t approve of independent planets, and I don’t see a bright future for agriculture on Octavio.” He tossed off the last of his drink. “And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few other little matters to take care of.”

  With a stately bow, Orcrist left the room. Beardo crossed to the table and refilled his glass. “A real gentleman!” he smiled, luxuriously sniffing his brandy.

  “He certainly is,” agreed Frank, to whom, right now, the word “dinner” was like a loved one’s name. “It was nice of him to ask us to stay the night here,” he added, wondering where he would have slept in Beardo’s odd dwelling.

  “Ah, well that wasn’t so much good manners as caution, you see,” Beardo said. “Any time someone brings him really hot news he insists that they remain here until the news isn’t hot anymore. He doesn’t want us telling your story to anyone else.” The old fellow sipped the brandy and pulled out his pipe. “And his hospitality, Frankie, is such that no one has ever been known to object to the temporary captivity.”

  The dinner, which was served an hour later in Orcrist’s high-ceilinged dining room, was lavish. A dozen stuffed game hens were piled on a platter in
the center of the table, and salads, baked potatoes, toast, cold meats and steaming sauces flanked them. Carafes of chilled wines, red and white, stood next to the roasted hens; Frank was amazed to find out that the whole production was intended only for himself, Beardo, Orcrist, and one other house-bound guest.

  “Frank Rovzar, Beardo Jackson, this is George Tyler,” said Orcrist as the four of them sat down at the table. “George, Frank and Beardo.”

  Frank looked across a dish of mustard sauce at George Tyler. He looks like he drinks more than he ought to, Frank thought, though he’s still too young for it to really show. Oblivious to Frank’s scrutiny, Tyler brushed a lock of blond hair out of his face and speared himself a baked potato.

  “I must request, friends, that you do not discuss the respective businesses that have brought you here,” said Orcrist. “Not that any of it would provide suitable dinner conversation anyway.”

  He took a long sip of Chianti, holding it in his mouth to warm it and taste it before he swallowed. “Not bad,” he decided. “You and Frank should get along well, George,” he said. “You have the artistic temperament in common. Frank is a painter, and George,” he added, turning to Frank, “is a poet.” The two young men smiled at each other embarrassedly.

  “To hell with the talk, I say,” put in Beardo, gnawing a greasy hen from whose open abdomen pearl onions cascaded onto his plate. “Mother of God!” he exclaimed, observing the phenomenon.

  The dinner progressed with considerable gusto, and by ten o’clock most of the wine and food had disappeared. Frank was feeling powerfully sleepy, though the others seemed to be just blooming, and Beardo had begun singing vulgar songs.

  Tyler tossed a clean-picked bone onto his plate. “Not bad fare, Sam,” he said. “Nearly as good as what they used to serve at the palace.”

  “At the palace?” inquired Frank politely.