The Gilded Age Part 19

"I don't lie," Zhu says. "That's one thing I never do, Daniel."

The waiter knocks and brings in another trolley with covered dishes, sh.e.l.l crackers, long-stemmed forks, bowls of melted b.u.t.ter. He whips the covers off the dishes, revealing steaming scarlet crabs and lovely slender frog's legs drowning in a pool of white sauce.

Jessie a.s.sembles a plate for Daniel, hoping to appease him. Drink ought to cheer a man, not make him violent and mean, though so often that is the result. "Now, Mr. Watkins. Our Zhu did a wonderful thing tonight. She saved a man's life."

"We don't know what the h.e.l.l she did. Perhaps Duncan Ross will wind up a lunatic with blood on his brain." He pours himself another round. "If the mollie knife is real, where can I purchase one?"

"You can't," Zhu says with a wistful smile and pushes her gla.s.s away.

"What about the Montgomery Ward catalog?" Jessie says, taking another tiny sip. The walls of the suite soften into lovely pink clouds, and she notices a moth swirling and circling in the glow of the gaslight. Like a little angel it is, a tiny woman with golden wings. She jolts with alarm. Champagne never makes her see visions! "Montgomery Ward's got everything."

"I've never seen a mollie knife in the Montgomery Ward catalog," Daniel says. "Or in Sears, Roebuck."

"Not even Sears, Roebuck stocks a mollie knife," Zhu says with a laugh.

"Then where did you steal yours?" he demands.

"See here, Daniel," Zhu says, flushing, her words spilling out in a rush. "I don't lie and I don't steal. The Luxon Inst.i.tute for Superluminal Applications gave me the knife for the Gilded Age Project. I am a Daughter of Compa.s.sion, and I've had just about enough of both of you today. Columbus Day, red wine, and man's conquest." She glares back at him. "You should be grateful I agreed to t-port to this s.p.a.cetime."

"s.p.a.cetime," Daniel says. "You said that word before. What the devil do you mean?"

"Why, all of s.p.a.ce and time, which are a whole. One doesn't exist without the other."

"You see, Miss Malone?" Daniel says to her, smirking. "You women are all confused. There is s.p.a.ce. Then there is time. The one has nothing to do with the other."

"Each is the other, Daniel," Zhu insists. "There is only One Day that exists always."

"Yet you keep talking about 'our Now' and 'your Now,'" Daniel points out.

"That's right," Jessie chimes in. "She mentioned 'her Now' to me, too."

Zhu sighs. "They told me I'm not supposed to do that, either."

Jessie loves a good spoof, but the sip of absinthe and all this strange talk are spinning her head around. Still, she saw the mollie knife work with her own eyes. And what about that little voice, that spirit she hears talking to Zhu? "All right, then, why did you agree to. . . .t-port to our Now?" She laughs at herself. How quickly she picks up trade talk. "To this s.p.a.cetime?"

Zhu sighs again. "I'm not so sure myself, anymore."

"Oh, come now, miss," Daniel says. "You were doing so well. Surely you can dream something up."

Zhu turns to him angrily. "The girl I'm supposed to rescue is in jeopardy. More jeopardy than anyone knew. I must get her to the safety of the mission. I must." She takes off her fedora and her spectacles, runs her hand over her brow, smoothing back stray hair. "Look. It's like this. I'm not supposed to reveal my true ident.i.ty under Tenet Five of the Grandmother Principle."

"Ah," Jessie says with a wink at Daniel. "And what is your true ident.i.ty?"

"I'm Zhu Wong, all right, but I'm from 2495," she answers somberly.

"Are you sure?" Jessie teases. "You're not from, say, a million years in the future like the girl in Mr. Wells's Time Machine?"

"Miss Malone, I'm not making this up. I'm really from six hundred years in your future. So is the mollie knife, if you must know."

"Well, that's settled," Jessie says, cracking open a crab claw and picking out the delicate meat. "You'll have to wait a wee while to purchase your mollie knife, Mr. Watkins."

But Daniel is more taken with the chit's story than he ought to be. "How," he says, furrowing his brow, "can you really be from six hundred years in the future? The future doesn't exist yet."

"But it does," she says. "Look, I'm no expert on this. But, as I understand it, s.p.a.cetime isn't a line, it's a whole. For every moment in the past, there is a future. The future always is, just as the past always is. Then it gets more complicated." She sips water right out of the carafe. "What cosmicist theory has always suggested, and what the technology of t-porting has proven, is that reality doesn't always exist the same. That the probable nature of reality on the quantum level applies to everything. So that each moment has probabilities that collapse into or out of the timeline."

"That's quite a tall tale," Daniel says. But his smirk has vanished.

"I know," Zhu says miserably. "The fact that I'm here in your Now is constantly affecting what happens. What happens in the past affects the future and, ever since tachyportation got invented in the future, the future also affects the past."

Daniel is shaking his head, but suddenly Jessie stops teasing. Something in Zhu's words strikes a chord in her heart. "I do believe I see what you mean, missy. It's like when you remember something, and then you learn something new about what happened or you feel something new, understand something new about it, and suddenly the memory ain't the same anymore. It's as if the whole world, the whole past, has changed because of what you thought of today."

Zhu gazes at her. "I'll remember you said that, Miss Malone."

"Like me and Rachael," Jessie rambles on. "My sweet innocent Rachael, long ago." Sorrow wells in her heart, and she dabs at the tears welling in her eyes. "I thought she was wicked, but now I understand she was just young. Young and innocent." No more of the Green Fairy for the Queen of the Underworld. She checks her pocket watch. Lordy! It's after midnight. She's got to make her appearance at the Parisian Mansion. "If only I could see things as I wish they were."

"I think I'm starting to see things as they are not," Daniel says.

Zhu frowns. "Me, too."

November 2, 1895.

El Dia de los Muertos.

7.

Nine Twenty Sacramento Street.

Death struts the streets with a grin and a swagger, a striped serape thrown rakishly over his shoulder. Death tips his sombrero and hands out little skulls of crystallized sugar to squealing children at the curb who jostle for a better view of the parade.

Zhu wends her way through the crowd at the corner of Montgomery and Market. Clad in her gray silk dress and Newport hat, she clutches a leather-bound Bible. A gift for Donaldina Cameron. Best to have something in her hand for her first appointment with the new temporary director of Nine Twenty Sacramento Street, the Presbyterian mission and home for orphaned Chinese girls, a.k.a. abducted slave girls.

She reminds herself she was supposed to have gone to the mission, asked for a job, and stayed there for the duration of the Gilded Age Project. She was supposed to have taken Wing Sing there. But neither of them is there now. Why not? Were the hatchet men she and the girl confronted that first day an unknown probability that collapsed this reality out of the timeline? That's just great. Now how can she steer the project back on course?

She has no idea, but a visit to Miss Cameron is definitely in order.

"El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead," Muse whispers in her ear. "In America we observe Halloween. The Catholic Church calls the following day All Souls' Day, while the aboriginal people of Mexico observed El Dia de los Muertos. Death and life intertwined in the native Mexicans' cosmology. Death was neither revered nor feared. Not completely understood, of course, but experienced. Celebrated."

"And in your cosmology? Have the cosmicists attained this peace of mind?"

"No philosophy or religion will give you peace of mind if you don't find it within yourself, Z. Wong."

Death laughs, robust and antic.

"Well, yeah," she says, annoyed at Muse's plat.i.tudes. "What's the value of life, then?" Anxiety closes cold fingers over her heart. She's hatched a plan, but will Cameron cooperate? "The cosmicists speak of the Great Good according to True Value. Does a cosmicist deem the death of a child to be the same as-say-the destruction of a b.u.t.terfly? Suppose it's a rare b.u.t.terfly and the child is one of twelve billion people. Is the aurelia's destruction more important?"

She catches herself. The aurelia? She didn't mean to say that, did she?

"All this talk of death and destruction is not healthy for you, Z. Wong," Muse says. "Are you melancholy again? You must try to fight off this depression."

Muse solicitous, cajoling. When has Muse ever been cajoling? Capricious Artificial Intelligence-there's an oxymoron. Even with ambiguity tolerance, AI is never capricious. Or it's not supposed to be. Muse has been astringent, cantankerous, goading, informative, puzzling, even cruel. But Muse has never been respectful of her feelings. Has she really been depressed?

When? She's lost all track of time.

"And get on with the Gilded Age Project." That's more like Muse.

"I am getting on with it." She quells her annoyance with a full-blasted sneeze. After four months of agony unabated by the antihistamine in her pharmaceutical supplies, Muse formulated a decongestant that she can mix up out of the stuff the LISA techs supplied her with, plus a touch of fresh powdered nettle. The nettle really does the trick. She went out and bought fresh nettle and a mortar and pestle at the Snake Pharmacy along with a Polyopticon Wonder Camera for Daniel and a Patent Dust Protector for herself-a little nickel-plated gas mask that costs a pricey ninety cents. "I'm on my way to see Donaldina Cameron right now. With a Bible."

Since the Archivists' plan for Zhu to seek employment at the home got derailed by her rescue from the hatchet men by Jessie Malone, Zhu's efforts to contact the mission's director have met with resistance. The mission has put her off for weeks. Her respectful requests for an audience were turned down rather less respectfully. Muse consulted the Archives and discovered that the director-an old warhorse named Miss Margaret Culbertson-suffers from ill health, and that Donaldina Cameron has a.s.sumed new responsibilities as the temporary director. And Cameron has finally granted her an audience.

Muse is excited. "This is a breakthrough for the Gilded Age Project, Z. Wong. You must convince Cameron of your plan to rescue the girl."

"Now that I know where Wing Sing is, I'll sure as h.e.l.l try." But Zhu is troubled. "You still can't find any trace of me in the files on Cameron?"

"Don't worry," Muse says. "Cameron dealt with hundreds of Chinese women, most of whom remained anonymous and are lost to the Archives."

"Anonymous. That's what I am, all right." She swallows her resentment. Chiron made that clear from the start. Chinese women of this Now are anonymous. But she still doesn't like the fact that Muse can't trace her in the Archives. No sign of her. No sign, at all. If she's here, well, she should be there, somewhere in the historical record.

Zhu slogs through the crowd. The Mexican community of the Bay Area-from the Latin Quarter in North Beach to south o' the slot to San Jose-has turned out for the grand parade downtown. Hors.e.m.e.n with ringing spurs rear and wheel their steeds. Bands blare with their own unique bra.s.sy sound. Guitars strum and maracas clatter. Ole! People promenade in costumes and papier-mache masks depicting skulls. Some costumes are sly caricatures-a rich lady in a stole of chicken feathers and a tiara of cardboard, her skull made glamorous with salacious lipstick and eye paint. A priest piously bearing enormous candelabra comprised of skulls, gaudy flowers dangling from his grinning teeth. A rowdy soldier in full dress uniform dangling red and green skulls from the brim of his cap, his bandoliers, his jacket sleeves, and a cardboard rifle. A morose barefooted peasant, a patch slung over one hollow eye socket of his skull mask, his braided mustache swooping over his jawbone. A hound trots beside him, its clipped black fur painted with a canine skeleton in bright white and green.

No one escapes Death.

People guffaw and point at each new mockery. But Zhu can't laugh. "What does it all mean?" she asks a boy on the sidelines. A gangling teenager, all long limbs and a narrow swarthy face, he pops candy skulls into his mouth and whoops.

"Well, senorita, you're going to die sooner than you want to, so why cry about it, eh?"

Now Death presents Zhu with a bouquet of pink paper flowers. Why cry? How sensible. This parade and its celebrants mocking death are psychologically healthy. She hands the flowers to the boy and tries to smile, but her mouth refuses. Sooner than you want to. As soon as you are born, you know you will die. And the other way around? As soon as you die, you know you will be born? But that's reincarnation, a superst.i.tion strangely persistent even in Zhu's Now, though modern science has never proven any truth to it. One of those primitive beliefs that refuses to die, stubborn and irrational.

Or is that what happens if you're trapped in a Closed Time Loop? Like the infamous Betty in Chiron's Now. Betty whose rescue polluted all of s.p.a.cetime. Betty who died, knowing she would be born, knowing she would return to the day of her death and die again-in the past.

Zhu's heart fills with a chill, and the boy hands the flowers to a girl, then darts away with his friends. These people will never see the ma.s.sive death modern people will witness--world wars, holocausts, genocides, cancer epidemics, plagues like herpes complex three and nuevo tuberculosis, ecopoisonings, and the dreadful radiation syndrome. So many new forms of ma.s.sive death.

"They know nothing of death," Zhu whispers, watching the parade caper past.

"Of course they do," Muse whispers sardonically. "People of this Now die in their twenties of tuberculosis; there's no cure. They die of cholera, dysentery, influenza, plague, syphilis, typhoid fever, yellow fever. And yes, of cancer. Women die in childbirth. That's why a woman's average life expectancy in this Now is thirty years old."

"Fair enough. But they revere life, despite el Dia de los Muertos. They believe that life-the creation of life, the preservation of life-is humanity's highest value. Can we of our Now say the same, Muse?'

Muse is silent.

Zhu didn't know if she could say the same in 2495 when spring came to Changchi, and the Daughters of Compa.s.sion geared up for another campaign. The World Birth Control Organization had conducted a new lottery under the Generation-Skipping Law. The lottery was random, as always, but critics claimed a disproportionate number of couples in Chihli Province had been chosen to skip. Protesters staged demonstrations, filed complaints in the World Court. Someone firebombed the local office of the WBCO. The ranks of the Society for the Rights of Parents swelled.

Zhu had always loved the spring. It was the time to take off her sour, padded winter jacket, get out from beneath the domes, and bask beneath a new sky under the sun. Cool breezes rippled the feathery leaves of wheat sprouting in the undomed plots. Agriworkers bowed over the land, spreading compost, planting rice, millet, and peas by hand.

She had always loved the spring--but not that spring.

That spring started out with bad omens and, even in 2495, people believed in omens. With the first thaw, wild dogs roamed out of the mountains, harried the agriworkers, and attacked a seven-year-old girl walking alone at dusk from school to her family's apartment, half devouring her right on the street. Then a hailstorm ripped through the province, damaging four of the big public domes and thousands of residential units and vehicles. When the hailstones melted, they released methane. The air smelled like an open sewer. The undomed fields of rice, millet, and peas faced ruin.

The Daughters of Compa.s.sion faced ruin, too. A saboteur dumped excrement in the compound's water recycler and, before anyone realized their water was contaminated, everyone had contracted dysentery. Always thin, Zhu dropped twelve pounds. She was still weak, wobbly-kneed, and running a fever when she, Sally Chou, Hsien, and Pat Greenberg trudged through Changchi's civic center, a muddy square of cracked concrete.

"Door to door," Sally was saying. "That's how we've got to contact them. WBCO will supply us with the names and addresses of the skipcouples. We'll connect, drop off the literature, schedule an appointment with the women after they've looked everything over."

"We should meet with the husbands, too," said Pat, "not just the wives. We've got to get the men involved."

"Sure, if the men will agree," Sally said. "In my experience, that won't happen."

"Don't you think we need to forge a new experience? You're just reinforcing outmoded att.i.tudes if you make only the women responsible for observing the law." Pat was another American expatriate who'd come to Changchi looking for her daughter, an exchange student who had fallen in love with a local and had never returned to New York. Pat was bra.s.sy and bossy and had the typical expat's att.i.tude-more radical than the radical and a know-it-all. She argued with Sally night and day, but then everyone had been puking their guts out for weeks. They all felt like h.e.l.l.

"I say stick with the plan," Sally said.

"But I think we're alienating-" Pat said.

Zhu couldn't take it anymore. Her head throbbed, a metallic taste rose in her throat, and her gut gurgled. "Could you both please just shut up?" She looked up from the mud, her vision preternaturally clear. "Oh, no," she added, some instinct kicking her in the b.u.t.t.

A surly crowd had gathered in the square. The Society for the Rights of Parents had set up a tiny stage and a podium, with a sound system patched to a utility pole. A speaker in a suit and tie paced back and forth.

"The Generation-Skipping Law flies in the face of values held dear to humanity for all time!" said the speaker. "The law robs us of our heritage, robs us of our tradition, robs us of our families, robs of us of our future!"

"We won't have a future if we don't enforce the law!" Sally shouted. "We won't have enough water, enough food, enough living s.p.a.ce. You think that s.h.i.t-smelling hail was bad? How would you like it if the air smelled like that all the time? How would you like it if the water tasted like that all the time?"

"d.a.m.n it, Sally, shut up," Zhu muttered, but for once Pat was clapping Sally on the back.

The crowd began to grumble and boo. Heads snapped around, hard eyes stared. A gang in Parents' armbands stalked from the edge of the stage to the edge of the square.

"Oh man, here we go," Zhu whispered, wrapping her arms around her ribs. Her teeth began to chatter.

"You believe that overpopulation propaganda?" the speaker bellowed. "It's disinformation, people. A hoax! A sham! When we have more people, we have more brainpower, more muscle power. We can overcome problems of supply, overcome pollution. We always have, and we always will!"

"The only reason you got something to eat today, brother," Sally shouted back, "is because we enforced the law ten years ago! We restored the atmosphere and maintained production because we maintained negative population growth by enforcing the law. You would not have shoes on your feet if we hadn't enforced the law!"

"Hey, comrades?" Zhu said. "Can we get out of here?"

"Enforce the law!" Pat shouted and raised her fist, then glanced at Zhu, sudden fear in her eyes. She glanced around, understanding their situation. She and Zhu started backing away from the angry mob advancing on them.

Hsien slipped through the crowd and was gone. Zhu remembered seeing the back of her ragged crew cut, and thinking, ridiculously, Cowardice is the better part of sanity.

But Sally Chou was never one to back down from anyone or anything. "We've always had famine in China!" she shouted as Pat yanked on her elbow. "We've always had disease! Always bad air, bad food, bad water! I'm talking three hundred years! Try three thousand years! We've never had enough! In the old days, the communist redistribution of wealth was a sham. A sham, people! Communism redistributed wealth from the rulers of the empire to the bureaucrats of another empire. That's all! Don't you get it? We can never have a decent quality of life for all of us under any form of empire till we the people control ourselves. And that means controlling our reproduction. Nuturing and teaching our families. And educating ourselves. Till we bring our population down."

"Fascist!" the speaker shouted back. "Traitor to the people!"