Tim Powers - Three Days To Never

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

Synopsis:

When 12-year-old Daphne Marrity steals a videotape of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

from her grandmother's house, neither she nor her college-professor father, Frank

Marrity, have any idea that the theft has drawn the attention of both the Israeli Secret

Service and an ancient European organization of occultists — or that within hours

they'll be visited by her long-lost grandfather, who also wants that videotape. And

when Daphne's teddy bear is stolen, and a blind assassin nearly kills her father, and a

phantom begins to speak to her from a switched-off television set, Daphne and her

father find themselves running for their lives through a southern California in which

magic and the undead past are dangers as great as the guns of living assassins.

From ancient prophesies about Israel to the secret lives of Charlie Chaplin and Albert

Einstein, this breathtaking novel throws a suburban father and daughter into the midst

of an ancient supernatural battle.

THREE DAYS TO NEVER

Tim Powers

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

ISBN-13: 978-0-380-97653-9

ISBN-10: 0-380-97653-6

For Chris and Teresa Arena

And with thanks to Assaf Asheri, Mike Baches, John Bierer,

Jim Blaylock, Didi Chanoch, Russell Galen, Patricia Geary,

Tom Gilchrist, Rani Graff, Julia Halperin, John Hertz, Jon

Hodge, Varnum Honey, Pat Hough, Barry Levin, Brian and

Cathy McCaleb, Karen Meisner, Denny Meyer, Eric

Nylund, Aya Shacham, Dave Sandoval, Bill Schafer, Sunila

Sen Gupta, David Silberstein, Kristine Sobrero, Ed Thomas,

Vered Tochterman, Guy Wiener, Hagit Wiener, Naomi

Wiener, Par Winzell, and Mike Yanovich.

Prologue

Sitting on a bank,

Weeping again the King my father's wrack,

This music crept by me upon the waters.

— WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPEST

The ambulance came bobbing out of the Mercy Medical Center parking lot and

swung south on Pine Street, its blue and red lights just winking dots in the bright

noon sunshine and the siren echoing away into the cloudless blue vault of the sky. At

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

East Lake Street the ambulance turned left, avoiding most of the traffic farther south,

where reports of a miraculous angel appearing on somebody's TV set had attracted

hundreds of the spiritual pilgrims who had come to town for this weekend.

At the Everett Memorial Highway the ambulance turned north, and accelerated; in

five minutes it had left the city behind and was ascending the narrow blacktop strip

through cool pine forests, and when the highway curved east the white peaks of

Shasta and Shastina stood up high above the timberline.

Traffic was heavier as the highway switchbacked up the mountain slope —

Volkswagen vans, campers, buses — and the shoulder was dotted with hitchhikers in

jeans and robes and knapsacks.

The red-and-white ambulance weaved between the vehicles on the highway, and it

was able to speed up again when the highway straightened out past the Bunny Flats

campgrounds. Three miles farther on, the parking lot at Panther Meadows was

clogged with cars and vans, but the hospital had radioed ahead and Forest Service

officers had cleared a path to the north end of the lot, where trails led away among

the trees.

In the clearings around the trailhead, people were strolling aimlessly or staring up

into the sky or sitting in meditation circles, and the woods were noisy with ringing

bells and the yells of children; two white-clad paramedics got out of the ambulance

and carried a stretcher through a sea of beards and gray ponytails and pastel robes,

with the tang of patchouli oil spicing the scent of Douglas fir on the chilly breeze —

but they didn't have to hike far, because six people had already made a stretcher of

flannel shirts and cherry branches and had carried the limp body most of the way

back from the high glades of Squaw Meadow; the body was wrapped in an old brown

army blanket and wreathed with Shasta daisies and the white flowers of wild

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

strawberry.

The paramedics lifted the old woman's body onto their aluminum-and-nylon

stretcher, and within minutes the ambulance was accelerating back down the

mountain, but with no siren now.

Back in the clearing up on Squaw Meadow, the people who had not carried the

stretcher were dismembering a swastika-shaped framework of gold wire, having to

bend it repeatedly to break it, since none of them was carrying a pocketknife.

ACT ONE

I'll Drown My Book

I have done nothing but in care of thee,

Of thee my dear one, thee my daughter,

who Art ignorant of what thou art, not

knowing Of whence I am…

— WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPEST

One

"It doesn't look burned."

"No," said her father, squinting and shading his eyes with his hand. They had paused

halfway across the weedy backyard.

"Are you sure she said 'shed'?"

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

"Yes — 'I've burned down the Kaleidoscope Shed,' she told me."

Daphne Marrity sat down on a patch of grass and straightened her skirt, peering at the

crooked old gray structure that was visible now under the shadow of the shaggy

avocado tree. It would probably burn up pretty fast, if anybody was to try to burn it.

The shingled roof was patchy, sagging in the middle, and the two dusty wood-framed

windows on either side of the closed door seemed to be falling out of the clapboard

wall; it probably leaked badly in the rain.

Daphne had heard that her father and aunt had sometimes sneaked out here to play in

the shed when they were children, though they weren't allowed to. The door was so

low that Daphne herself might have to stoop to get through, and she was not a

particularly tall twelve-year-old.

It was probably when they were too young to go to school, she thought. Or else it's

because I was born in 1975, and kids are taller now than they were back then.

"The tree would have burned up too," she noted.

"You're going to get red ants all over you. She might have dreamed it. I don't think it

was a, a joke." Her father glanced around, frowning, clearly irritated. He was

sweating, even with his jacket folded over his arm.

"Gold under the bricks," Daphne reminded him.

"And she dreamed that too. I wonder where she is." There had been no answer to his

knock on the front door of the house, but when they had walked around the corner

and pushed open the backyard gate they had seen that the old green Rambler station

wagon was in the carport, in the yellow shade of the corrugated fiberglass roof.

Daphne crossed her legs on the grass and squinted up at him against the sun's glare.

"Why did she call it the Kaleidosope Shed?"

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

"It—" He laughed. "We all called it that. I don't know."

He had stepped on what he'd been about to say. She sighed and looked toward the

shed again. "Let's go in it and pull up some bricks. I can watch out for spiders," she

added.

Her father shook his head. "I can see from here that it's padlocked. We shouldn't even

be hanging around back here when Grammar's not home." Grammar was the family

name for the old lady, and it had not made Daphne like her any better.

"We had to, to see if she really did burn it down like she said. Now we should see if"

— she thought quickly — "if she passed out in there from gasoline fumes. Maybe she

meant, 'I'm about to burn it down.'"

"How could she have padlocked it from the outside?"

"Maybe she's passed out behind the shed. She did call you about the shed, and she

doesn't answer the door, and her car is here."

"Oh…" He squinted and began to shake his head, so she went on quickly.

"'Screw your courage to the sticking place,'" she said. "Maybe there really is gold

under the bricks. Didn't she have a lot of money?"

He smiled distractedly. "'And we'll not fail.' She did get some money in '55, I've

heard."

"How old was she then?" Daphne got to her feet, brushing down the back of her skirt.

"About fifty-five, I guess. She's probably about eighty-seven now. Any money she's

got is in the bank."

"Not in the bank — she's a hippie, isn't she?" Even now, at twelve, Daphne was still

somewhat afraid of her chain-smoking great-grandmother, with her white hair, her

grinding German accent, and her wrinkly old cheeks always wet with the artificial

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

tears she bought in little bottles at Thrifty. Daphne had never been allowed in the old

woman's backyard, and this was the first time she'd ever been farther out than the

back porch. "Or a witch," she added.

Daphne took her father's hand as a tentative prelude to starting toward the shed.

"She isn't a witch," he said, laughing. "And she isn't a hippie either. She's too old to

have been a hippie."

"She went to Woodstock. You never went to Woodstock."

"She probably just went to sell her necklaces."

"As weapons, I bet," Daphne said, recalling the clunky talismans. The old woman

had given Daphne one on her seventh birthday, a stone thing on a necklace chain, and

before the day was out, Daphne had nearly given herself a concussion with it,

swinging it around; when her favorite cat had died six months later, she had buried

the object with the cat.

She tried to project the thought to him: let's check out the shed.

"Hippies didn't have weapons. Okay, I'll look around in back of the shed."

He began walking forward, leading the way and holding her hand, stepping carefully

through the dry grass and high green weeds. His brown leather Top-Siders ground

creosote smells out of the bristly green stalks.

"Watch where you put your feet," he said over his shoulder, "she's got all kinds of old

crap out here."

"Old crap," Daphne echoed.

"Car-engine parts, broken air conditioners, suits of medieval armor I wouldn't be

surprised. I should carry you, your legs are going to get all scratched."

"Even skinny I'm too heavy now. You'd get apoplexy."

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

"I could carry two girls your size, one under each arm."

They had stepped in under the shade of the tree limbs, and her father handed her his

brown corduroy jacket.

He shook his head as if at the silliness of all this, then waded through the rank

greenery to the corner of the shed and disappeared around it. She could hear him

brushing against the shed's far wall, and cussing, and knocking boards over.

Daphne had folded his jacket and tucked it under her left arm, and now she walked

up to the shed door and reached out with her right hand, took hold of the brown

padlock, and pulled. The whole rusted hasp and lock came away from the wood in

one stiff piece.

A few moments later her father appeared from around the far corner, red faced and

sweating. His white shirt was streaked with dust and cobwebs.

"Well, she's not back there," he said, brushing dead leaves out of his hair. "I don't

think she's been out here in months. Years. Let's get out of here."

Daphne held out the rusted hasp and padlock for him to see, then dropped it and

brushed her fingers on her pink blouse.

"I didn't tear the wood," she said. "The screws were just sitting in the holes."

"Good lord, Daph," said her father, "nobody's going to mind."

"I know, but I mean the thing was just hung there, in the holes-somebody else pulled

it out, and then hung it backup." She wrinkled her nose. "And I smell gasoline."

"You do not."

"Honest, I do." They both knew her sense of smell was better than his.

"You just want to look in there for gold."

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Three Days To Never by Tim Powers

But he sighed and tugged on the purple glass doorknob, and the door creaked open,

sliding easily over the dead grass.

"Probably she keeps whisky out here," Daphne said, a little nervously. "Sneaks out at

night to drink it." Her father said her uncle Bennett kept a bottle of whisky in his

garage, and that's why he kept all his business files out there.

"She doesn't drink whisky," her father said absently, crouching to peer inside. "I wish

we had a flashlight — somebody's pulled up half the floor." He leaned back and

exhaled. "And I smell gasoline too."

Daphne bent down and looked past her father's elbow into the dimness. A roughly

four-foot-square cement slab was leaned up against the shelves on the left-side wall,

and seemed to be responsible for that wall's outward tilt; and a square patch of bare

black dirt at the foot of the slab seemed to indicate where it had been pried up. The

rest of the floor was pale bricks.

The floor was clear except for a scattering of cigarette butts and a pair of tire-soled

sandals lying on the bricks.

The gasoline reek was strong enough to mask whatever moldy smells the place might

ordinarily have; and Daphne could see a red-and-yellow metal gasoline can on a

wooden shelf against the back wall.

Her father ducked inside and took hold of the handle on top of the can and lifted it.

She could hear swishing inside the can as he stepped past her, and it seemed to be

heavy as he carried it outside. She noticed that there was no cap on it. No wonder the

place reeks, she thought.

There was a nearly opaque window in the back wall, and Daphne stepped in across

the bricks and stood on tiptoe to twist the latch on its frame; the latch snapped off,

but when she pushed on the window the entire thing fell outside, frame and all,

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Tim Powers - Three Days To Never

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