Salvage and Demolition by Tim Powers

Author:Tim Powers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Tim Powers, time travel, fantasy, rare books

IV

He was breathing hard and squinting around at the familiar shelves and file cabinets, which were still lit by early evening sunlight slanting in through the window. A round section was missing from the carpet, and some pieces of the vanished chair lay in a dished concavity in the exposed floorboards. The nearest bookshelf showed a round patch of pale shaved wood across the shelf edges, and the sewn quires of a book deprived of its spine. That Hemingway is worthless now, he thought automatically, and that was a first-state dust jacket.

There were no fragments of Greenwald’s couch on the floor. Apparently the bounce-back had returned only himself to the present, not any surrounding bits that belonged to the past. He was at least still wearing his clothes.

The telephone was still ringing, and he picked up the receiver. He tried to say Hello, but could only pant into the mouthpiece.

From up the hall came the bong of the doorbell, and from the phone Blanzac heard a man’s voice: “Mr. Blanzac, this is Jesse Welch, we met half an hour ago at the Goldengrove Retirement Community. I noticed on your business card that you’re on my way, and I thought I’d stop by to take a quick look at the Greenwald items.”

“Just a minute,” Blanzac said, “there’s somebody at my front door.”

Welch chuckled. “That’s me. My route home takes me right past your exit, so I thought, Why not visit? Could I have just a few minutes of your time?”

With an unreasoning chill, Blanzac remembered Welch’s question half an hour ago: Did the consignment include any manuscripts that might be Greenwald’s?

“A minute of my time,” echoed Blanzac as he hastily made a decision. “Certainly! I—I just got out of the shower, I’ll be with you as soon as I…throw on some clothes.”

He hung up the phone, picked up the manuscript and the Ace Double paperback and shoved them over the top of a row of Einstein biographies on a high shelf so that they fell down behind the books, out of sight. Then he hurried down the hall to the kitchen and opened the door to the carport on the east side of the house; the kitchen door creaked, so he left it open as he stepped around the front of his white Chevy Blazer and carefully levered open the driver’s side door. He got in and released the parking brake, and then, without closing the door all the way, he started the SUV and immediately shifted it into reverse and accelerated backward down the driveway.

Out in the street, while the vehicle was still rocking violently, he pulled the shift lever into Drive and stomped on the gas pedal; laughing with mingled alarm and embarrassment, he looked in the rear-view mirror and glimpsed someone moving from his front door toward the curb.

He swung left onto Washington Street; the lanes were clear and the sun was behind him now. There was an onramp for the northbound 280 ahead, and if he could

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