When were Gladhand's bombs detonated? Thursday morning, very early. One ten minutes after the other.
And when, Thomas asked himself excitedly, was I sky-fishing? Late the following night.
What was it Spencer had said the police suspected Thomas found in the bird-man's pouch? An android's memory bank.
Thomas began to perceive a pattern.
He postulated that when the first bomb damaged the Pelias-android's head, technicians immediately went to work repairing the padmu or whatever. The second bomb might have blown the windows out while the android's head was disassembled like an old alarm clock. Could a roving bird-man have flown in through the broken window, snatched up the memory bank (doubtless a bright, glittery object) and flown back out into the predawn before anyone could stop it? There must have been something desperately important in that memory bank, some vital knowledge. What would the government do?
After checking the bird-men taken in the city nets the next night, they'd find out if anyone was sky-fishing that night.
Thomas realized he had pieced the comedy of errors together. The only problem was that he hadn't happened to find an android memory bank in the damned creature's pouch. The police, Albers, everybody, were wasting their time.
Maybe, though, he could bluff them by pretending to have found it… ?
One thing was certain—Thomas had to get back to the Bellamy Theater and pass this information to Gladhand.
After blowing out the lamp, he left room four and descended the outside stairs to the ground. The Santa Ana wind was still sighing through the city, and over the gentle moan came the voice of a woman singing "Bill Bailey." Thomas made his way to the street and read a signpost at the corner. He was on Frank Court, and there was Fourth Street. Visualizing the Bellamy stakeout, he tried to plot a course that might take him past the guards.
Up on the roof of the four-story Castello Bank on Beverly Boulevard, Thomas painfully flexed his nine fingers and brushed flakes of rust off on his shirt. Stepping away from the fire escape, he padded across the moonlit roof to the southern side and looked longingly across the four meter gap to the Bellamy Theater, its dark massiveness relieved here and there by the, yellow glow from a window. The alley directly below was shrouded in total darkness—but as he peered cautiously over the edge he could imagine the android sentries that crouched, watchful and patient, in those deep shadows.
He gently broke off a bit of brick from the bank's roof and flung it down the alley to his left, in the direction of the theater's stables. A few moments later it clicked against pavement—and several sets of quick footsteps converged on the spot. There were a few muttered words and then silence once again.
Thomas pulled his head back and worried for a while. Maybe, he thought crazily, he could break a lock, descend into the bank and find a rope and a few gallons of gasoline. Then he'd just pour the gasoline down on those blasted cops, fling a match (which he'd also have to find) after the gasoline, and then swing across to the Bellamy roof on the rope.
Sure, he nodded bitterly, and the other policemen would burst into the theater and drag me out. No, lad; this calls for something more subtle.
Thomas sat down, resting his back against an antenna that dated from the lost days of television. The sky was a glittering, infinite gallery of stars, dominated but not overwhelmed by the crescent moon overhead. Thomas noticed the dark ramparts of the storm clouds to the north had swollen considerably. He raised his maimed hand and was chilled to see how ragged and temporal it looked against the eternal stars in the cathedral of the sky. Afraid the light would shine through the flesh, as if it were just an accumulation of cobwebs, he didn't want to cover the moon with his hand.
Objects were moving, flying high in the air. The bird men, the half-wit tax collectors, were winging their way north, back up Laurel Canyon to their nests; carrying in their pouches whatever trash they'd found attractive that day.
That's the solution, by God, Thomas thought, leaping to his feet. I'll fly across to the Bellamy roof. Put my life in the hands of the god of winds. He set about rocking the tall antenna loose from its moorings, and after a few minutes a bolt snapped and the pole was leaning on him. He tore it free from a section of tar-paper that had been tacked around its base, and then laid it down and began unbuttoning his shirt.
I'll just stretch my shirt over the horizontal prongs of the antenna, and then grip the pole and leap off the wall—the roof of the theater is one story below me, and I'll silently glide across onto it. Or else I'll fall, and drink the cold claret of hell tonight with Spencer, Jean, Gardener Jenkins and poor Robert Negri.
When he'd knotted the shirt securely across the metal rods, he strode bravely to the edge of the roof, stepped up onto the coping, raised the antenna over his head— and paused. He wondered what would happen if he fell but didn't die? It was only four stories, after all; he could wind up in some hideous interrogation chamber with two shattered legs.
With a snarl of impatience and despair, he whirled in a circle on the coping bricks and flung his antenna glider away from him. It crashed into the alley below in the same area his pebble had landed in, and this time the footsteps that went to investigate were not quiet.
Suddenly Thomas realized he'd created a diversion. Now was his chance, if there'd ever be one.
Scarcely stopping to think, he jumped back down onto the bank roof, loped halfway across it, then turned around; he took a deep breath and ran for the edge of the roof, digging in with his toes to muster every possible bit of speed. At the last moment he leaped with one leg, kicked off from the coping with the other, and hurled himself through the warm night air.
With a wrenching jolt, he hit the edge of the Bellamy roof and managed to crook his skinned fingers over the top just in time to prevent himself from falling. His lungs were void of air, and the muscles that could have drawn some in were in shock. Blood poured from Thomas's nose and ran in an annoying trickle down his neck.
Hop up, lad! screamed the small section of his mind that was still working. He knew he should swing up over the parapet before one of the androids glanced up, but a weaker part of his mind urged him to give up, simply let go and make the suicidal plunge to the ground. He tried to release his grip, but his body resisted his mind's decision and clung more tightly.
As tears mixed with the blood on his face, Thomas realized he couldn't rest even now. Slowly he pulled himself up, swung one leaden leg over the coping, and dropped heavily onto the surface of the Bellamy roof.
"A big antenna with a shirt on it," echoed a voice from below. "Nobody around."
"I don't like it. Trot up that fire escape and take a look around the theater roof."
"Okay, sir."
Thomas now heard footsteps clanging rapidly up a fire escape. This isn't fair, he thought. He'd never noticed a fire escape on this side of the building. Rolling to his feet, he limped to the stairway door.
It was locked. And the banging footsteps were much higher, and mounting fast.
The deck, he felt, was stacked against him. The android would be up over the edge of the roof in less than ten seconds. Thomas had to do something decisive, fast.
A wide-mouthed brick chimney poked its squat height out of the roof only a few steps away. He crossed to it and peered desperately into its inky depths. Then he heard, much clearer now, the android's boots rattling the bolts of the last length of ladder—and extending his arms in front of himself, Thomas dove headfirst into the chimney shaft, trying to slow his fall by pressing his legs outward against the walls.
His arms buckled under him when his fists cracked against a metal plate three meters below; the whole weight of his body pressed his head into his throbbing shoulder, and the blood from his nose now threatened to choke him.