The Gilded Age Part 32

"But that night you attempted to do so," Muse says. The monitor's voice is cold.

"In support of a law your cosmicists dreamed up."

"Overpopulation of the earth has been the most serious problem facing humanity's survival and global renewal since the brown ages."

"Then why is one little boy's life so important?"

Muse is silent.

"You don't want to say, do you, Muse? What is the value of a human life in a world burdened with twelve billion people? In cosmicist theory, a human being is no more important than an endangered b.u.t.terfly. Who will be my judge and jury?"

Muse is silent.

Zhu studies herself in the watery reflection of the nineteenth century mirror. Is he alive or dead? Well. She'll find out tonight at midnight. The t-port is instantaneous, flinging her from this Now to her Now. There isn't even movement, not really. Tachyportation is a trans.m.u.tation, not a traveling, and there is no duration. A second seems to pa.s.s, but that's subjective. A subjective second and the void.

She shudders when she remembers the void.

She pins the aurelia on the collar of her gray silk dress. The final touch. She stands at the threshold of her little bedroom for the last time, nostalgia already leaking into her heart. I'll never see this place again.

She hurries through Mariah's parlor, into the hall, downstairs.

She knows where to find Wing Sing so she can hand the aurelia over to the girl. Where the most desperate streetwalkers go to ply their trade-the Barbary Coast.

Zhu hears shouts in the foyer, Jessie and Daniel. Now what? She tiptoes to the bottom of the stairs, tries to sneak past them to the kitchen, and out the tradesmen's door. She's got to go! But Daniel fastens his glittering, red-rimmed eyes on her, seizes her wrist, and drags her into their altercation.

"Zhu will stand me for the month, won't you, my angel?"

"Hmph! I'll be d.a.m.ned if you'll take the wage I pay my servant to pay me," Jessie says.

"It's her money after you pay it to her, now isn't it?"

"She and everything she's got belongs to me."

Zhu gazes at Jessie, so like Sally Chou in her proprietary feeling toward her, and so different from any woman she's ever known, including Sally. The sight of her is unsettling. As if reality is shifting, and shifting again. After the glamour of the Artists' Ball, Jessie looks sallow and bloated, her mouth pinched with pain. She won't listen to Zhu about the corset. She won't stop guzzling Scotch Oats Essence and champagne. Muse says Scotch Oats Essence is not only loaded with whiskey but with morphine. Muse says the Queen of the Underworld is one drink away from the grave.

"Let's hear what our Zhu has to say," Daniel says.

"I belong to no one, and I've got to go." Her time in this Now is growing shorter.

"Never mind her, she's in one of her moods," Jessie persists. "Mr. Watkins, I happen to know you got money a-rollin' in from your Chinatown slum, and you sold your Western Addition lot, and you're gettin' the goods on Harvey's Sausalito poolroom."

"The lawyers are breaking my back, and we haven't even gone to court."

"Sure and it's the lawyers, is it? If you want to go shoot your wad on dope, that's your biz. But I'll not be stiffed by the likes of you."

"When I'm stiffing you, madam, you will know it." His sarcasm doesn't help. "I'm telling you, my mistress will tide me over till next month, won't you, Zhu?" He seizes her arm and pulls her into the smoking parlor. "Now, listen, Zhu. I know she gave you a raise. She's paying you a pretty good wage, and all I need is. . . ."

Zhu closes her eyes. She's choking-the air in the parlor is foul with old smoke. His feverish whisper becomes a jumble in her ears, incomprehensible. Why was she ever drawn to this man? How can she account for their mutual attraction, dreadful as it is, except for the vast unseen patterns of pain and atrocity they each have known in their separate lives? That's how the cosmicists think-correlations and correspondences are not random and not merely synchronicity, but indicative of patterns, of the vast underlying energy flows of s.p.a.ce and time. Proof positive of the everpresent force of the Cosmic Mind. Has she ever believed in cosmicist cosmology? Not really. But how else can she account for her and Daniel?

"I just need fifteen more dollars," he's saying. "What do you say?"

"I say you're killing yourself, Daniel. You'll be dead before this year is out."

"I might as well be dead." From his vest pocket he pulls out a clutch of fragile papers, scrawled and blotched with ink. "I missed it. I missed it!"

Zhu sighs. "Missed what?"

"Look. Look at this! The Lumiere brothers, they did it. They figured out how to make pictures move. I should never have left Paris. d.a.m.n Father and his petty troubles! By G.o.d, I am such an idiot."

"Oh, right. You mean the movies."

He aims a sharp glance at her, stabs at the papers in his fist with his forefinger. "Yes! They've invented a machine. They've actually shown moving pictures in a theater. Roch.e.l.le wrote me. 'A train charging down the track straight at you, smokestack spewing like the wrath of G.o.d. Everyone screamed and leapt wild-eyed to their feet.' As if Roch.e.l.le could ever wax so eloquent. She probably got that drunken poet to write this for her."

"Refresh my memory. When did this phenom happen?"

"Refresh! Your memory!" He c.o.c.ks his head at her. "Indeed, oh lady time traveler. After Christmas, she says, at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines." He slaps his palm on his forehead. "How many hours I have wasted at the Grand, sipping rainbow cups."

"And how many hours you've wasted in San Francisco, swilling rotgut, sniffing cocaine, and shooting up morphine."

"Don't go temperance on me." He paces across the smoking parlor, growing more feverish. "Well! The Lumieres are loaded. They threw money at it, there was no contest from the likes of me." He peers at Roch.e.l.le's letter as if the ungainly scrawl will reveal something more, something he overlooked. "Roch.e.l.le writes that their box takes the pictures and projects them, too. By G.o.d, why didn't I think of that?" He whirls on her. "Why didn't you think of that?"

"Me?" Zhu sniffs. "That's not what I do, inventing antiquated machines."

"Oh, indeed. Not so clever after all, are you? Well, of course, you're a woman. As good old Swinburne says, 'The longer the hair, the smaller the brain.'" He stuffs the letter into his pocket, his hands trembling. "I must see their machine. I shall go to Paris at once!"

"Not before you pay me what you owe me, buster," Jessie says, standing on the threshold, tapping her toe.

"Oh, certainly, I'll pay you. Take it out of my hide, madam! That's all you sporting gals ever think about, the filthy lucre."

"And all you fine gentlemen ever do is try to rook us out of it."

Suddenly Zhu can't take it anymore. She can't stand either of them, the tough madam or the arrogant gentleman. Both of them so ignorant and set in their ways. And there's nothing she can do for either of them. Nothing. Without a word, she flees the smoking parlor before Daniel can seize her arm again. She pulls the veil down from the brim of her Newport hat, concealing her face.

"I've got to go!"

"Hurry," Muse whispers.

Zhu sweeps out into the night.

"Jar me, missy," Jessie yells, dashing after her, "where do you think you're going?"

Daniel follows, pleading, "Come with me to Paris, my angel. We'll invent our own moving picture machine, you and I."

"Lose them," Muse commands.

Zhu picks up her skirts, dashes north on Dupont, crosses over at the Monkey Block, and strides up the long incline of Montgomery Street, which looks gentle at first but in fact is slow and cruel, making her breath catch and her legs ache. Four bruisers in fishermen's togs tramping along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street turn the corner when she does. Nymphes du pave stroll past, fluttering their fans or smoothing rouge on their blistered lips. Bawdy songs spill from saloon doors, rowdy shouts and the laughter of oblivion.

The Gilded Age looks gentle at first, too. The polite speech and genteel manners, the lovely long dresses and handsome cutaway suits, the golden glow of gaslight, champagne on ice and terrapin in sweet cream. An age of huge scientific and technological advancement, yet a much slower time before cars and jets, freeways and computers, teles.p.a.ce and t-porting. But the Gilded Age is cruel, Zhu knows that now. The rhetoric of social Darwinism lurks beneath the polite speech, bigotry behind the genteel manners. Crippling corsets bind women's bodies beneath the lovely dresses and, in the dimness of the gaslight, you can barely see the bruises husbands give their wives. Gentlemen eat and drink and smoke themselves into early graves, and a blend of whiskey and morphine is a medicine given children from a bottle with pink cupids on the label.

Muse whispers, "Hurry."

A hand seizes her shoulder, another hand yanks the strap of her feedbag purse. Jessie and Daniel flank her, both of them breathless.

"You gotta stop right now, missy."

"Dear mistress, please."

"What do you want from me?" Zhu cries.

"I don't want nothin'," Jessie declares. "But I do know you're lookin' for Wing Sing. You are, ain't you? Well, I am, too. That chit owes me money, and plenty of it. I bet she owes you, too."

"No."

"Hmph. I know you, Zhu." The madam's hard eyes search her face. "You got mush for a heart. You're gonna give her that fancy gimcrack, ain't you?" She touches her fingertip to the aurelia pinned to Zhu's collar. "You feel lousy about losin' her precious dowry, huh? Well, forget it, missy, it was them tongs. It ain't your fault." Jessie shakes her shoulder. "Don't give them good diamonds to that little wh.o.r.e. She'll only go and blow it in on dope."

"Indeed, miss, give the aurelia to me," Daniel says, "I shall take good care of it." His nagging plea sends shivers down Zhu's spine. Nothing she can do for him.

Jessie slaps his face. "Shut your trap, you dope fiend. You'll only go p.a.w.n it yourself. Now you give that gold to me, Zhu, won't you, darlin'?"

"Hurry," Muse whispers.

And something snaps inside her. Something inside her has already crossed over six centuries. "No! I'm giving the aurelia to Wing Sing. It belongs to her. It's her birthright. And neither of you had better interfere." She shakes loose of them, strides away, then pauses and turns. "You can help me find her, though. That's the last thing you can do for me. Because, you see, I really am leaving your Now tonight. Forever."

She feels a strange pleasure at the look of despair on their faces. Daniel J. Watkins and Jessie Malone, such completely different people and yet sharing the serendipity of meeting her, Zhu Wong, in the Gilded Age.

THERE IS A PROSPECT OF A THRILLING TIME AHEAD FOR YOU.

That was her fortune in the j.a.panese Tea Garden nine months ago. A thrilling time? Or a vast unseen pattern of pain, of atrocity, and everyone-Chiron, the LISA techs, Jessie, Daniel, even Sally Chou-has used her. Exploited her. Tricked her.

She turns up Pacific Street, infuriated, Jessie and Daniel d.o.g.g.i.ng her heels. So do the four bruisers. And so do three shadows stalking out of Tangrenbu. All of them striding into the open zone of the Barbary Coast.

No police, no protection from the freewheeling violence, no segregation of one race from another or of one cla.s.s from another. The Barbary Coast is an infamous sink of sin where robbers and murderers operate freely, degradation is the norm, and the standards of quality one may appreciate in the better parts of the town's nightlife don't apply. Ragtime blares from bawdy bars, seedy bagnios and brothels beckon, the gambling dens and opium dens and shooting ranges never close.

An entrepreneur has set up a grimy little sidewalk show. "A penny a peep. See the live mermaid. Just a penny a peep. See the live mermaid."

Zhu peers around the moth-eaten satin curtain. The live mermaid is only a very dead female monkey, its little teats unevenly enhanced by inept taxidermy. The amputated abdomen has been st.i.tched to a salmon tail. The monstrosity floats in a smeary aquarium reeking of formaldehyde.

Jessie's sallow face turns white at the sight. "You freak!" she screams at the entrepreneur. "You're the G.o.dd.a.m.n freak."

"Ah, go blow, lady," the entrepreneur says.

"It's just a poor little fake, that's all, Jessie," Zhu says, puzzled by her outburst. She takes Jessie's elbow, steers her away.

"Don't you make fun of no mermaids, buster!" Jessie is nearly weeping.

"Miss Malone has a special fondness for mermaids," Daniel says, taking the madam's other arm. "Remember the painting I gave her?"

"Right," Zhu says, also remembering Jessie's tantalizing hints about her and Rachael, how they swam like mermaids at Lily Lake. She'll never hear Rachael's story, she thinks with a pang. Not now.

The broken streets are slippery with filth, the gutters ripe with raw sewage and rank mud. Sailors throng the streets and saloons, emaciated sunburned fellows with terrible teeth and tattoos, sick with drink or scurvy, hapless victims of the great shipping companies that press them into the hard labor of crewing transoceanic ships.

"Watch out for that Muldoon," Jessie says in Zhu's ear, pointing out a man pa.s.sing by, a weasel in a cheap scarlet cutaway. "He's a d.a.m.n crimp." Muldoon yammers at a gang of drunks like a tobacco auctioneer pitching a bid on a bale. A gold earring flashes against his swarthy neck. "A slaver for them clipper ships, he is. Kidnaps them stinkin' fools right off these streets."

Daniel circles around Jessie and slings his arm around Zhu's shoulders, grinning down at her. Zhu smiles back, her lips trembling. Daniel. He looks so young and innocent in the gaslight, his dark hair spilling over his high starched collar, his pale skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. His eyes glisten as if slick with tears, and the premonition strikes her a second time, strikes her hard. He's going to die.

They stride by an establishment, the Lively Flea, and Zhu runs to the swinging doors, peeks in. Is Wing Sing here? Where is she? As Zhu searches the crowd, she glimpses a row of stages, the acts performed there. A brown-skinned woman, naked except for a mask, lies at the hooves of a stud pony. On the next stage, another masked woman grapples with a huge dog, the beast's tongue lolling. An ivory-skinned woman tangles her limbs with a man the color of onyx, and on the next stage a white woman tangles with a brown woman. There's a woman and a bull calf, a woman and another dog, a woman embracing what looks like the corpse of a man contorted in rigor mortis.

Men guffaw or stare, transfixed. Zhu turns away from the lurid spectacle, stunned and horrified. Someone lurches toward her, and she backs away, fingers pressed to her throat. She darts out into the street, but Daniel and Jessie are nowhere in sight. She dashes down toward the wharves where the surf sprays saloons situated on docks built out over the water.

Alphanumerics strobe in her peripheral vision.

"Heads up, Z. Wong," Muse whispers.

And there she is, tottering painfully along the waterfront.

Wing Sing.

Zhu would know her moon face anywhere, her delicate cheekbones, her tall slim figure in apple-green silk, only a slight swell in her belly to show that she's pregnant. Zhu can see her bound feet from here, wrapped in white binding, strapped into peculiar little shoes the size of a child's shoe. A green satin bandeau binds her forehead, her thick black braid swings down her back. She leans on the shoulder of a blond woman. Li'l Lucy? No, the blond is much too thin. Wing Sing and her companion duck into a Stick commercial building cantilevered precariously over the shifting waves-Kelly's Saloon & The Eye-Wink Ballroom.

Suddenly Jessie's hand grips her elbow like a vise. "Let's don't go in here, missy."

"Why not?"

"Nothing but trouble in Kelly's."

"But I need to see Wing Sing. It's urgent."

"Yes, indeed, let's go in." Daniel sweeps past them, opening the swinging doors. "I need a nip. Just a tiny one, of course. I don't need the drink when I've got the Inca's gift."

But Jessie balks, her face taut with tension.

"Do not tell me the Queen of the underworld is shy tonight," Daniel says. He impatiently holds the doors open for them.

"I got a bad strange feeling," Jessie says. "A premonition. Missy, please. Let's wait for the chit to come out."

Zhu glances at the grandfather's clock behind Kelly's bar. Nine minutes after eleven. She has less than an hour to return downtown, catch the cable car up California Street, and find the intersection at Mason. Find the tachyonic shuttle. She can't miss her rendezvous, not this one.

"Jessie, I can't wait."

"In a hurry?"

"Yes! I told you. I'm leaving tonight."

"Leaving for where?" Daniel demands. "I thought you were coming with me to Paris."