Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust Page 6

  The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked, which Frank thought was careless of the owners. The two adventurers swung it open as quietly as they could. Orcrist motioned Frank to wait while he padded off into the darkness of the museum. Frank waited nervously, only now beginning to realize just how much trouble this night’s enterprise could lead to. Holy saints, he thought with a chill of real fear, if I’m caught they’ll send me back to Barclay! I’ve still got that tattoo on my chest.

  After a few uneasy minutes he heard a thump, then a multiple thud like a bag of logs thrown on a floor. God help us, he thought. What was that?

  “Frank!” Orcrist’s whisper cut the thick silence. “It’s all clear! Carefully, now, go down the aisle on your left!”

  When Frank did as he was told, he found himself in the main room. Paintings hung on every side, and he saw with delight a window opening on a quiet street and a deep, starry sky.

  “Get away from the window, for God’s sake,” whispered Orcrist. Frank turned back to the room to see the older man standing over an unconscious uniformed body. “Come on,” he hissed to Frank. “There are two paintings over here we ought to get.”

  Working in silence, Frank helped Orcrist unframe and roll two mediocre Havreville canvases. Orcrist thrust them inside his coat. “See anything else worth carrying?” he asked.

  Frank was beginning to relax, and he strolled up and down the dim aisles, peering at paintings and statues with a critical eye. Not bad, most of it, he thought, but none of it seems worth the trouble to forge. I’m not even very impressed with those Havrevilles. As he turned to rejoin Orcrist he noticed, with a thrill of recognition, a small portrait hung between two gross seascapes. He stared intently at it, remembering the hot July day on which it had been painted. His father had been very fond of the model, and had frequently sent young Frank out for coffee or paint or simply “fresh air.”

  “Anything?” Orcrist inquired impatiently.

  “No,” whispered Frank in reply. “Let’s clear out.”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE SCHILLING GALLERY, ON which they made an assault four days later, was “not such an easy peach to pluck,” as Orcrist was subsequently to observe to Frank. They failed to locate the drain that Orcrist swore would lead them directly into the gallery’s office, and they had to bash a hole in the tile floor from beneath with an old wooden piling they found in the sewer. The noise was horribly loud, and they weren’t in the gallery five minutes before armed guards were pounding at the doors. Orcrist refused to flee, though, determined to make off with a genuine Monet, which the Schilling had on loan from another planet.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” pleaded Frank, who saw the doors shaking as they were battered by boots and sword hilts on the other side. “One of them may have gone to get a key! We don’t have thirty seconds!”

  “Wait, I found it!” called Orcrist. He carefully took the canvas out of its frame and rolled it. He was sliding it into his pocket when the east door gave way with a rending crack of splintering wood. Four yelling, sword-waving guards raced toward the two thieves.

  Frank leaped sideways, grabbed a life-size bronze statue of a man by the shoulder, and with a wrenching effort pulled it over. It broke on the tiles directly in front of the charging guards, and one of them pitched headlong over the hollow trunk, which was ringing like a great bell from the impact of its fall. Frank snatched up a cracked bronze arm and swung it at another guard’s head—it hit him hard over the eye and he fell without a word.

  “Come on, Frank!” called Orcrist, standing over the jagged hole through which they’d entered. Frank impulsively picked up one of the statue’s ears, which had broken off; then he ran toward Orcrist. The other two guards were also running toward Orcrist from the other side of the room, their rapiers held straight out in front of them. Orcrist’s hand darted under his cape, and then the front of the cape exploded outward in a spray of fire and the two guards were slammed away from him as if they’d been hit by a truck. They lay where they fell, their faces splashed with blood and their uniforms torn up across the front. The harsh smell of gunpowder rasped in Frank’s nose as he leaped down through the hole after Orcrist.

  Twenty minutes later, as they caught their breath in Orcrist’s sitting room after a furtive race through a dozen narrow, low-ceilinged understreet alleys, Frank showed Orcrist the bronze ear he’d stolen.

  “And what do you mean to do with that?” asked Orcrist, painfully flexing his right hand.

  “I’m going to run a string through it, and wear it where my right ear used to be. Like an eye patch, you know.”

  “An ear patch.”

  “Exactly,” agreed Frank. “How’s the Monet?”

  Orcrist gingerly pulled the canvas out of his jacket and unrolled it. “No harm done,” he said, examining it. “Monet is a durable painter.”

  “I guess so. Oh, and what the hell was that weapon?” Frank asked in an awed tone.

  “That impressed you, did it? That was a two-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun, barrels sawed down to six inches, and equipped with a pistol grip. I think I broke my hand shooting it. Ruined my cape for sure. We’re lucky I didn’t put the canvas in the line of fire.”

  Frank sighed wearily. “Mr. Orcrist, in honor of our coup tonight, do you suppose a bit of scotch would be out of order?”

  “Not at all, Frank, help yourself.” Frank opened the liquor cabinet. Orcrist sat silently, massaging the wrist and fingers of his right hand.

  “Oh, by the way, Mr. Orcrist…”

  “Yes?”

  “What becomes of the paintings once they’re duplicated here? Do you sell both the original and the copy to collectors?”

  “Uh… no. If I steal one painting and sell two versions of it, the word would eventually get around. I only sell the forgeries.”

  Frank waited vainly for Orcrist to go on. “Well,” he said finally, “what do you do with the originals?”

  Orcrist looked up. “I keep them. I’m a collector myself, you see.”

  During the following week Frank worked on the forgery of the Monet. It was difficult for him to assume the impressionist style, and he tore up two attempts with a palette knife. As the second imperfect copy was being hacked into ragged strips, Orcrist, sitting in his easy chair, looked up from his book.

  “Not making a lot of headway?” he asked.

  “No,” said Frank, trying to keep a rein on his temper. What a cheap waste of good canvas, he thought. Dad never would have behaved this childishly. Where’s my discipline?

  “What you need, Frank, is a bit of recreation. Go spend some of your wages. You know the safe areas of Understreet Munson—go have some beer at Huselor’s, it’s a good place.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. Say, what’s the date?”

  “The tenth of May. Why?”

  “The Doublon Festival is going on in Munson! On the surface, I mean. I haven’t missed it in the last six years! Why don’t I take my wages and spend the evening there?”

  Orcrist frowned doubtfully. “That wouldn’t be a good idea,” he said. “You can’t really afford to be seen topside yet. You’re wanted by the police, you know. Stay underground.”

  “It’ll be all right,” Frank insisted. “I’ll go when it’s dark; and everyone wears masks anyway. You’ve shown me a couple of safe routes to the surface streets, and I’ve been to the Doublon Festival a dozen times, so I won’t get lost. I won’t do anything foolish.”

  “I’ll send a couple of bodyguards with you, anyway.”

  “No, I’d rather be on my own.”

  Orcrist considered it for a minute. “Well, it’s a bad idea, but I won’t stop you.” He stood up and crossed to a desk against the wall. “Be back by one o’clock in the morning or I’ll send some rough friends to bring you back. Here’s ten malories. That ought to buy you a good time.”

  Frank gratefully took the money and turned to get dressed.

  “Wait a minute,” said Orcrist.

  Fr
ank turned around in the doorway. Orcrist was rummaging in another drawer. “Take this, too, in case of a real emergency,” he said, holding a small silver pistol. “It only holds one bullet, but it’s a forty-five. And don’t lose it; the damned thing cost me quite a bit.”

  “I won’t lose it,” said Frank, taking the little gun. It was the first time he’d ever held a gun, and he felt ridiculously over-armed.

  “The safety catch is that button above the trigger. Push it in and the gun will shoot. Leave it where it is for now. And for God’s sake keep it in a secure pocket.”

  “I will,” said Frank. “And thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

  After Frank had left the room, Orcrist rang for Pons. “Pons,” he said, “young Rovzar is determined to go to the Doublon Festival tonight. I could have forbidden it, of course, but I don’t like to operate that way. So I want you to contact Bartlett and… oh, Fallworth, and tell them to follow him and keep an eye on him.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “No, damn it. Wait a minute.” Orcrist scowled. “I guess he’s able to take care of himself. Forget it, Pons.”

  “With pleasure, sir.”

  Frank dressed in the subdued clothes Orcrist had given him, put on his newly-polished bronze ear, and then left the apartment, the gun and the ten malories each occupying a safe inner pocket. He cut across Sheol to a street that was really little more than a tunnel. After following it for three hundred feet, he turned suddenly to the right, into an alcove that could not be seen a yard away. It led into a much narrower, darker tunnel, and Frank proceeded slowly, his hand on his knife. He still didn’t think of the gun as a practical weapon.

  Water swirled around his heels, and he was glad when his groping right hand found the rungs of the ladder he’d been heading for. He climbed up it through a round brick shaft whose sides were slippery with moss and flowing water, and eventually came to the underside of a manhole cover. This he pushed up cautiously, peering about carefully before sliding it aside. He quickly climbed out of the shaft and pushed the manhole cover back into place with his foot.

  He was now on the surface, breathing fresh night air for the first time in almost a month. The stars looked beautifully distant, and he felt almost uneasy to see no roof overhead. The manhole was several blocks away from Kudeau Street, where the Doublon Festival was held, but he could hear the shouts and maniacal music already.

  I’ve been cooped up too long in that little sewer world, he realized. Let’s see how much money I can spend in one night.

  He followed the alley to Pantheon Boulevard and headed east down it toward Kudeau Street. Long before he reached it, he was surrounded by masked dancers, and the curbs were crowded with the crepe-decorated plywood stands of vendors. The music was a crashing, howling thing, yelping out of guitars, slide whistles, trumpets and kazoos, and crowds reeled drunkenly down the streets, swaying unevenly to the chaotic melody. The warm night air smelled of garlic and beer.

  Frank bought a sequined cardboard mask and a cup of cloudy, potent beer from the nearest booth. After putting on the mask and downing the beer at a gulp, he joined the dancing mob. He linked arms with a groaning rummy on his right and a startlingly fat woman on his left, following Pantheon’s tide of revelers as they emptied slowly into the packed expanse of Kudeau Street. The moon was up now, shining full behind the ragged Munson skyline.

  After an hour of dancing and drinking, Frank stumbled over a curb and crossed the sidewalk to lean against a pillar and catch his breath. He was somewhat drunk, but he could see a great difference in the Doublon Festival this year; in past years, when he had come with his father, it had been a festive, fairly formalized celebration of the spring.

  This year it was something else. Screams that began as singing were degenerating into insane shrieks. The dancing had become a huge game of snap-the-whip, and people were being flung spinning from the end of the line with increasing force. People had stopped paying for the beer. Couples were making frantic love in doorways, under the vendors’ booths, even in the street. And over all, from every direction, skirled the maddening noise that could no longer really be called music.

  Time for a decision, Frank told himself. Go home now or stay and take whatever consequences are floating around unclaimed. I need another beer to decide, he compromised, and began elbowing his way toward a beer-seller’s stand.

  Before he reached it he sensed a change in the crowd. People paused, and were craning their necks, peering up and down the street.

  “What is it?” Frank shouted to the man next to him.

  “Costa!” the man answered. “The Duke!”

  Frank looked around but could see nothing because of the crowd. His drunkenness left him, and he felt a cold emptiness in his stomach. Costa! he thought. Here! He ducked into the nearest building, ran up the stairs, and blundered his way out onto a second floor balcony that overlooked the choked street.

  From this vantage point he saw the procession bulling its way through the mob of drunken, torch-waving revelers; he saw the elegant litter being carried at shoulder height and the languid youth who waved from within at the merrymakers. Even from a distance of fifty feet or so he recognized the pale, contemptuous face of Costa, the patricide, the Duke who had had Frank’s father killed.

  He can’t see me in the shadow of the awning here, Frank thought. Even if he could, I’m masked. Instinctively he drew his coat tighter about his chest to cover his damning tattoo, and his fingers brushed the lump under the fabric that covered the gun. Suddenly and completely, he knew what he had to do. The shot wouldn’t be difficult at this range, and a forty-five-calibre bullet ought to do the job.

  Trembling, he took the gun out of his pocket and pushed off the safety catch. The procession had drawn even with him in the street. Costa was as close now as he would ever be. Stepping back, Frank raised the gun. I can’t, he thought. There must be twenty guards down there. Some of them have guns, and I’ve only got one bullet. I’d never get away through this crowd. I can’t.

  He stood there, shaking, with the gun pointed at Costa’s face. The procession was slowly moving past. In another few seconds he’ll be out of my line of sight, Frank thought.

  There was a commotion in the crowd below, and a man ran at the litter and jumped up onto its running board. Frank saw a brief gleam of moonlight on a knife blade. Four quick gunshots broke the continuity of the crazy music, and the man with the knife stumbled to the ground. His weapon fell on the paving stones. He walked lurchingly back toward the crowd, and Frank could see the blood on his shirt. Two more shots cracked, and the man fell sideways onto the street.

  Costa leaned out of the litter and waved to show that he was unhurt. The guards cheered, but the crowd almost booed him. An ugly tension was building; Costa and his attendants left quickly.

  Frank replaced the gun in his pocket, feeling sick. He returned to Orcrist’s underground apartment, stopping twice along the route to throw up.

  The next morning he gave Orcrist back his gun and told him about the abortive assassination attempt by the man with the knife.

  “I heard about it,” Orcrist said. “I knew the man slightly.”

  “It was a crazy thing to do,” Frank declared.

  “Yes, it was. Did you hear that Costa has abolished the Doublon Festival? He said it’s a ‘free-for-all crime fest,’ to use his words. It won’t even finish out the week, as it normally would.”

  “It was pretty wild last night. I’ve been to it a dozen times and it was never nearly as bad as it was last night.”

  “That’s because times were prosperous under old Duke Topo. Times are very bad now and getting worse; that’s why the festival was such a madhouse. People figured it was their last chance to enjoy themselves, and they’d do it or know the reason why.”

  “Times aren’t that bad, are they?”

  “I don’t know, Frank. They seem to be. The Transport is a bankrupt organization, but determined not to admit it. The interplanetary shipping lines ar
e collapsing. The Transport seems to have decided to make Octavio its home planet, and so Costa, having sold out to them, is taxing the guts out of the people to support it. The end isn’t in sight—and we haven’t even hit bottom yet.”

  CHAPTER 7

  TWO MONTHS LATER ORCRIST once again had occasion to quote Aurelius to Frank.

  “You see, Frank,” he explained, “when a man proves himself capable, he is likely to be given more tasks. You began as simply an art forger, you’ll recall, and then also took on the duties of a quality art procurer.”

  “Am I about to take on someone else’s duties? Did you lose another cousin?” Frank’s bronze ear gleamed in the lamplight.

  “What a horrible thing to say, Frank. But yes, as a matter of fact, I was thinking of broadening your functions, giving you some experience in another field—now that my art collectors are so tax-strangled and the museums so heavily guarded and our night runs are becoming so few and far between.”

  “My new field being…?”

  “Well, I entertain quite a bit, you know. Pons handles the details quite well, but the kitchen is a chaos. Kitchen boys come and go like sailors in a brothel, and now my chief cook has walked out. So I thought that, in the free time between our night runs and your painting, you might help Pons out with the dinners, cooking and washing up, and all.”

  Frank swallowed the indignant anger that Orcrist’s suggestion raised in him. Take it easy, he thought. Orcrist’s employment is all that stands between you and the lean life of a fugitive. He’s fed you and taken care of you, and it isn’t his fault that the new government has made affluence an archaic word. Orcrist works as hard as you do (harder, probably), and risks his neck as well as your own on the night raids.

  “What do you say?” asked Orcrist, and Frank suddenly realized that the older man was, to his own surprise, embarrassed to be making the request.