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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
Copyright © 2006 by 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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