Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

Rivas relaxed into the somersault it turned out he was making, and he rolled to his feet several yards beyond the sprawled looseness of the dying boy and watched the skating trash man, well past him now, flail its lawn-mower arms and lean around in a tight, screeching curve that threw up a starlight-glittering spray of glass chips. When it came looping back toward him, working its aluminum-pipe legs to get back some of its lost speed, he waited until it had a lot of momentum and then he feinted to his right and dove to his left.

The thing reached out an arm for him as it rushed past and succeeded in tearing his shirt, but then like an ungainly top it had spun out in a screeching abrasion of metal on glass, and as Rivas turned toward it it toppled and fell, still sliding.

Run up and try to disable it while it's down, he wondered tensely, or run away? Remembering its speed, and his inert companion, he ran toward it.

The thing was making a terrible racket flailing its junk limbs against the splintering glass, but just as he ran up to it, planning to launch a flying kick at one of its knees, it rolled over and wobbled up onto its wide barbecue-grill feet and faced him.

Rivas skidded hastily to a stop and then just stood and caught his breath, cautiously confident that the thing couldn't, from a dead stop, close the three yards between them more quickly than he could leap aside.

He stared at the roughly man-shaped construction. It was at least a foot taller than he was and twice as broad through the chest, but its legs were so ludicrously thin that looking at it was like looking at some biped bug under a magnifying glass.

Then it spoke, and it had the same sort of wind-in-the-rafters voice as the one that had apparently knocked him out this afternoon. «Brother,» it sighed. «Go back to bed. I'll put the bleeder back.»

Rivas remembered the sad bald girl saying she'd soon wind up as one of these, and he had no wish to kill it. He noticed that some of its vacuum cleaner hoses and springs had been torn loose in its fall, and he found himself wishing he knew how to put them back. «Go away,» he said wearily to the thing. «If you try to stop me, one of us will be seriously hurt. I don't think either of us wants that.»

«No,» the construction agreed, «but let this go I can't. I'm . . . obliged . . . to stop you.» Starlight glittered remotely in its glass eyes.

«No, you're not,» said Rivas. «Go to bed yourself. Do you things sleep? This boy was dying where I found him. I'd die if I stayed here. Roentgens and rads, right? Come on now—you know this is a place it'd be healthier to be far away from.»

He could hear a valve release a hiss of compressed air before the thing spoke. «It . . . doesn't matter what I know,» it said. «It doesn't matter what you know. Go . . . back to . . . bed.»

Exhaustion made Rivas willing to argue with the thing; the only other choice, after all, was to fight. «What will happen if I don't? If I continue?»

«I'll . . . (hiss) . . . stop you.»

«Would you kill me?»

». . . Not mean to.»

Rivas looked beyond it, and then risked a glance over his shoulder at the distant wooden buildings down toward the beach. All this crashing around didn't seem to have attracted any attention yet, but someone was bound to notice this unlikely trio out here on the glass before long!

«Okay,» he muttered, slumping. He glanced at its knees and tried to estimate which one had been most weakened in its fall; then he decided, and pivoted and lashed out his left foot in a hard kick. He felt it connect and then he was rolling away over the glass, his shoulder numbed by a blow from one of the thing's arms. He heard a crash behind him.

Scrambling up, he saw that the trash man had fallen over and was stretching its metal arms out toward its broken-off leg, which lay on the plain several yards away. Rivas ran to the leg and kicked it further away—making a noisy clatter—then chased it, crouched, and picked the object up by the knee with his good hand.

The thing was scrapingly hunching toward him, hissing, and he stood still until it was within range and then swung his metal club, banging away the claw hand that was reaching for him, and a moment later, backhanded, he took a solid whack at the bucket head; but even as the club rebounded and Rivas started to hop back, the thing's other arm darted out and caught his ankle. Rivas sat down heav-ily.

The trash man was pulling him toward itself, ripping his trouser leg and his skin, and its batted-away other hand was swinging back, clanking as it opened and closed, and the trash man was whisper-screeching, over and over, « Please . . . please . . . »

The thing was suddenly too close for Rivas to swing his club, but he did parry the incoming hand with it. Its other hand moved up to his knee, and for a moment he believed it intended to even the score by ripping his leg off at the knee; its grip was like bolt cutters, and Rivas panted through clenched teeth as he tried not to scream.

The other metal hand closed on his knee too, and the trash man pulled him so close that Rivas could stare right into the glass-chip eyes. «Please . . . please . . .» the thing was still saying.

He could see wires or tubes under the edge of its chin, and so he raised his club with one hand—the bucket head tilted back to see how the blow would fall—and with his other hand he snatched at the wires and yanked as hard as he could. They tore out and the thing went limp.

Rivas lay there and he stared into the glass eyes while he got his breath back, and he thought he saw intelligence in the two bits of glass, a mind still in there, helpless now but staring out at him in grieved reproach.

Finally he tried to stand up, but the metal hands were still clamped onto his knee. He swore, trying not to imagine another trash man skating in from the horizon right now, and with panicky haste he wrenched at them. He managed to open one hand—it looked as if it had originally been a waffle iron—but the other, some sort of stout caliper, he had to break off at the wrist. For a while he tried vainly to work it off over his knee, but then he remembered that the bald girl had said that trustees only had to wear one leg iron. A token of captivity, in effect. Perhaps this metal band might be mistaken for that. Worth a try, he thought; and one would push such a thing up high enough for it to grip, so as not to have it rattling around one's ankle all day.

He stood up at last, the trash man's hand an eccentric decoration for his shredded pants-leg, and wearily plodded to the boy, who of course had slept through the whole thing. He hoisted him up, got him draped over his shoulders again, and resumed his interrupted walk to the beach.

From far behind he heard a faint, rushing hiss, and he spun around so quickly that he nearly fell over, but it was just rain approaching, so he faced south again and kept walking. It became more audible, a multitudinous pattering behind him, and then swept over and past him, hurrying toward the sea, leaving him to follow more slowly in the downpour.

He was careful not to lose his balance where the glass ended, for before it gave way to the sand a dozen yards ahead, it became an obstacle course of rain-slick, broken, tilted shards, a fall on which would certainly cut a person up. He moved slowly over this broken glass section, but his pace didn't pick up much when he'd got past it, for he was in deep loose sand now.

He squinted up from under his wet eyebrows at the flimsy-looking buildings ahead, and he wished he knew what to anticipate here. What had that girl said? The men are sent to the beach settlement, where they make and repair boats. And they have leg irons welded on. Well, fine, he thought. It sounds like tiring work. I hope they all sleep soundly.