The Gilded Age Part 24

Now he looks her up and down, wondering where in her feminine attire she could have stashed the infernal thing. Her slim, wiry figure suddenly looks out of place in those clothes. It's as if he's never really looked at her before. "And you can cleave a man's skull with that thing as well as heal him?"

"Oh, yeah." She clears her throat. "Certainly."

"Very well, come along. In truth, I could use an ally. We've met Harvey's thugs before, have we not, miss? Just do not interfere in my business, you understand?"

"I'm forbidden to interfere in much of anything," she says, suddenly sad. "Under Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle."

"Ah, the Tenets you keep talking about. But I believe you mean the grandfather clause," he says, proud to show off his knowledge now that he's not stinking. See how the cure encourages his intelligence? "And after all your talk, miss, about social reform and caring about others who haven't got enough to eat."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I've heard the talk from politicians in the Dixie states. The former slaveowners just cannot give up the ghost. They want to use what they call grandfathering to deny the vote to the progeny of former slaves and pack in the uneducated Caucasian vote. Quite a movement. They claim they shall have pa.s.sed amendments to several state const.i.tutions by the turn of the century."

She looks at him askance, rolls her eyes to the side the way she does, then laughs. "Oh, my! Not the grandfather clause. The Grandmother Principle. It's a guideline for t-port projects, rules set out for me by slavemasters you can't possibly know about."

Hah. Daniel detests the notion that she could have masters besides himself. Who, for instance? Jessie Malone? Very well, once he secures more capital, he shall buy whatever term remains on Zhu's contract from the Queen of the Underworld. Perhaps they could leave 263 Dupont Street behind, he and Zhu, find a proper house of their own. Wouldn't Father split his gut over that? His only son, living in sin with a Chinese woman. But clearly she doesn't mean Miss Malone. What masters could she mean?

"I am your only true master," he declares.

"I knew you were going to say that. But you're wrong. I belong to no one. Perhaps not even to myself."

She says all that with such a melancholy look that he takes her hand. "My poor little lunatic. Let's go before I lose my nerve."

Hand in hand they stride toward the waterfront past another parade for el Dia de los Muertos. Roughnecks on horseback, wearing skull masks, toss bottles of tequila, mescal, and beer back and forth amongst themselves, hooting and hollering. The horses roll their eyes, bridles frothing. Daniel escorts Zhu to the ferry building where the San Rafael bobs at the dock, a black and white steamer more modest in size than the Chrysapolis, but possessing more elegant lines.

They stride up the gangplank and board. Two dozen bruisers in tawdry togs crowd the deck, feisty with booze, puffing hand-rolled ciggies stinking of cheap tobacco. Daniel heads for a deserted, wave-spattered spot on the prow, towing Zhu by the hand after him. The cold salt air whips his face and the ripe scent of the sea, of mysterious distant destinations, fills his senses. This isn't supposed to be happening. Her words haunt him. And puzzle him.

"All right, suppose you spell it out exactly what you mean by the Grandmother Principle."

"It's a closely guarded secret." She giggles charmingly. "Or it's supposed to be."

"But you can tell me, my angel. Indeed, you must."

"Well. As I told you and Miss Malone, I'm from the future."

"Six hundred years in the future. You still ought to claim a million years. It's much more believable, on account of Mr. Wells."

"Nevertheless, six hundred years it is. And we only recently got this new technology like you only recently got electricity and telegraph and telephones. In some ways, tachyportation is no more amazing than those technologies. And a good deal less practical, as it turns out. It's more like early s.p.a.ce travel, something that doesn't directly benefit people. A huge financial investment with no immediate return for society at large. Oh, they wanted everyone to think the world would benefit but, really, only the technopolistic plutocracy did. Or perhaps the LISA techs deceived themselves."

"Zhu, my darling," Daniel says. "If you want me to concede that a woman like you actually has a brain, I willingly concede. But I cannot comprehend a word you just said."

She smiles. "Never mind. Just know this-the LISA techs shut down the tachyonic shuttles a few years after I was born. Why? Because t-porting released dangerous pollutants into the timeline."

"Pollutants. Like bad water?"

"Exactly like bad water." She gazes over the waves, searching the bay as though she's looking for something that's supposed to be there and isn't.

He watches her uneasily. That peculiar ache sc.r.a.pes behind his eyes again. So soon? He starts to reach for his vial and spoon the way he reaches for his ciggies. At her sharp glance, he reaches for his ciggies instead and lights up, cupping the match against the wind. She actually helps him, despite her protestations against his smoking.

"Better a coffin nail than the cure?" he jokes.

"You got it," she says seriously. "Anyway, the Grandmother Principle states that a t-porter cannot t-port to the past and murder her own lineal ancestor. Her grandmother, for instance. Because if the t-porter could do that, she would not exist in the first place to go back and do the deed."

"I think I see."

"It's what we call a paradox. A time paradox. Well, the Tenets go on from there. All the way down to whether a t-porter like me gets killed in the past and winds up trapped in a Closed Time Loop. A CTL, they call it. If I should die here in this Now, I would always have to be born in my Now, make the t-port, die in the past, and then be born again in the future with no hope of a normal life. No closure, ever. Like a torturous revolving door, I suppose."

"Revolving door?"

"Oh, sorry. That's an invention after your time." She frowns. "No one knows what becoming trapped in a CTL must feel like. Theoretically, a CTL has no beginning and no end, it just is. If that's true, then where or when would your consciousness begin? A t-port project before mine called the Summer of Love Project was undertaken to remedy the nearly fatal pollution caused by an infamous CTL." She shakes her head, the ribbons on her Newport hat streaming in the sea breeze. "Anyway, Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle says I can't get involved with you, Daniel. Not like this."

"Sounds more like your grandmother than your Grandmother Principle. Though I do admit I'm a beast and a cad and a very evil man." He pretends to bite her neck.

She refuses to acknowledge his jest. "I'm not supposed to help you, not supposed to harm you. I didn't t-port here for you, Daniel, I t-ported for Wing Sing." She looks him in the eye. "You must believe me, your so-called cure is worse, much worse, than the rotgut."

"By G.o.d!" He smacks his forehead with the heel of his hand. "There is just no pleasing you, miss."

"Don't worry about pleasing me. Worry about not killing yourself."

"I worry about nothing. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

She still refuses to laugh. "I don't understand what's happening, and Muse can't or won't explain. I'm afraid Muse is defective or malfunctioning. Or worse. Sabotaging me."

"Miss, please." Daniel catches her hands. "Really, this is too much. Only men possess the muse. Only great artists. Women do have not the capacity."

"Don't be such a man of your day, Daniel," she says annoyed and pulls her hands away. "Women have every capacity. Wait till you see the twenty-second century. Hah! The greatest women artists and writers and holoid makers of all time lived then. Magda Mira, the death cult writer, and Kiku Tatsumi, the teles.p.a.ce artist."

"I do believe I shan't live to see the twenty-second century."

"If you keep going like this, Daniel, you sure as h.e.l.l won't live to see the twentieth century."

The San Rafael unceremoniously bangs against the dock, knocking them both off their feet.

Daniel takes Zhu's hand again and they stride down the gangplank onto the dusty sh.o.r.es of Sausalito. It's a homely port-raw streets pocked with potholes, railroad tracks laid in unsightly grooves right up to the ferry docks, a stinking slough thick with bilge. Importers transport apples and lumber down from Was.h.i.+ngton State on these tracks. The waterfront teems with saloons. Daniel smells the reek of booze, hears the guffaws and shouts of brawlers. The two dozen bruisers reel off the steamer, heading for the rowdy district. Painted chits promenade, right at home on these raw streets.

Daniel spies a cheerier sight on the hills-a spectacular Queen Anne mansion and, farther up, a French provincial, and farther up still, something huge and Georgian. Sausalito may be a s.h.i.+pping port and a train terminus, but the burg is also a playground for the rich of San Francisco. The prestigious Pacific Yacht Club is down the sh.o.r.e, and several large and lovely hotels with lyrical names like Casa Madrona and Alta Mira are stationed well away from the riffraff. Many rich gentlemen's mistresses live in those mansions and in those hotels, sequestered from Society's scrutiny.

"By G.o.d, I need a line and a drink," he says and, dropping Zhu's hand, practically sprints into Pete f.a.gan's Saloon. He slaps down a silver bit and orders a shot of whiskey, which the barkeep delivers in an eye-blink. He knocks the whiskey back, goes and sits at a table. He fetches out his vial and his spoon, dips out a snort.

Zhu takes a seat opposite him, ignoring the stares of the other patrons, and watches him snort away. Her eyes are moist. Well, that was Mama's old trick, too. Neither his mother nor Zhu Wong nor any other woman will ever sway him with teary eyes. I've always been good to you, Danny, haven't I? How he tried to please Mama, no matter what. And what good did it do?

"Tears in your eyes," he goads her, sudden anger fevering his blood. Or maybe it's the whiskey. Or the line? "Just like every wh.o.r.e I've ever met. Trying to ruin me."

She refuses to rise to his challenge, but instead peers at him intently. "You change so quickly. I hardly know you from one moment to the next."

"Trying to ruin me. Just like Mama." He regrets the words the minute they escape his lips.

"Now, wait. I thought you loved your mother and pitied her because she was always in pain. A good woman like her."

"What a fine example of womanhood. Yes, she would have ruined me, too. She was always stinking after taking that blasted Montgomery Ward iron tonic. Probably why she allowed herself to be beguiled by common men. No wonder Father beat her. Now I understand. She was just a wh.o.r.e, after all her airs of being a fine lady." He grins at her stunned expression. "Don't look so startled, miss. She even got herself in the family way with another man and carried his b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Wow, you mean you've got a sibling?" she asks, her eyes sparkling with greedy interest. Women always have such an avidity for sordid family matters. "Brother or sister?"

"Carried, I said." He lurches to his feet. "Time to find Mr. Harvey."

He strides out of f.a.gan's, his blood simmering as he stalks down Water Street. Between the snort and the shot, he's ready to face the Devil himself. He reaches in his pocket, grips the Remington. Where is that lousy son of a b.i.t.c.h Harvey?

And there, a commercial building emblazoned with the hateful name-Harvey's. Pioneer architecture, all straight lines and weathered wood, the plainness relieved only by a row of craftsman's gingerbread along the eaves with several scrolls knocked out like rotten teeth. Why on earth did Father ever extend credit to this hooligan on this piece of c.r.a.p? Blood pounds in Daniel's ears as he climbs the front stairs, Zhu hurrying behind him, and confronts a haze of tobacco smoke, the stink of cheap booze, and pandemonium.

A boy bounds past him and brushes him aside, nearly knocking Zhu off her feet. "Say, now!" Daniel cries, but the boy clatters down the stairs and sprints down Water Street. Inside, men are yelling, flushed and gesticulating, striding back and forth across the barroom, or gathered around a long table at which croupiers sit in s.h.i.+rtsleeves and vests, taking coins, scribbling notations in their green leather ledgers. A wizened little operator sits at the end of the table, bending over a telegraph set. Next to him a burly red-haired fellow with muttonchops like great flaming wings on his face announces the latest news from the telegraph operator in a voice that manages to soar over the din.

"Aaaand this just in! At Saratoga in the sixth, Saratoga in the sixth, it's Diamond Jim Boy, Diamond Jim Boy at the finish line, gentlemen! Just a moment. Her Majesty's Aristo to show, aaaand Baggage Smasher to place!"

Men shout and scramble to the croupier's table. Others groan and punch their neighbors, seize their beards, or stare stoically into their whiskeys.

"Say, mister, what's a fine gentleman like you doing in a joint like this?" says a sardonic voice. "That's awfully game of you." Daniel turns and confronts the handsome, rough-looking kid with his dark hair curling over his collar and his big hands. No soiled fisherman's togs for Jack London this time. He wears the rumpled tweedy jacket and trousers of a college man, a disheveled collar and tie. He spies Zhu, and his eyes widen. He tips back the shot in his hand. "Awfully game of you, too, sister."

"Mr. Jack London," Daniel says, "may I present Miss Zhu Wong."

"Charmed, Miss Wong." Jack London's smirk hints at the crude thoughts he must surely entertain. To Daniel, "Never figured you for the broad-minded type, mister. My congratulations."

"Miss Wong is an employee," Daniel says stiffly.

"Of Miss Jessie Malone," Zhu finishes for him.

"Really, now." Jack London raises his eyebrows. "You're a sporting gal, then?"

"h.e.l.l, no, I'm the bookkeeper."

"You don't say. Rest a.s.sured, Miss Wong, when the revolution comes to America, all we wage slaves will cast off our chains of bondage."

"Which revolution do you mean, Mr. London? The Internet revolution? The ebook revolution? The teles.p.a.ce revolution?"

"Huh? Why, the communist revolution with blood and guns to back it up," Jack London declares, "though I don't suppose you'd know a thing about that."

Daniel watches in amazement as his mistress laughs derisively and shakes her head. "Oh, the Chinese people will engage in just such a revolution, though in time they'll wind up with a rich and powerful elite and the oppressed poor stratified anew, just like in the bad old days. As for the United States of America, the revolution you speak of, Mr. London, will never come to pa.s.s. Though there will be times when your people will exchange their personal freedom, free enterprise, mobility, and independence for a semblance of security amid an ever-s.h.i.+fting rhetoric of crisis and an ever-expanding government. Fortunately for Americans, your free democracy is so resilent, your people will take back their power from that ever-greedy government bureaucracy again and again."

"You must forgive my little lunatic," Daniel says to Jack London.

But Jack London throws his head back and laughs. "She's a genius. And much too good for you, mister. Let me have her."

To Daniel's continuing amazement, Zhu smiles. "What is this place, Mr. London?"

"Miss Wong, this here is a poolroom," Jack London says. "No, there's no pool table. The technical definition is an establishment for organizing a betting pool, hence, a poolroom." He smirks and offers her his arm. "Buy you a drink?" She slips her hand around his elbow, and he escorts her through the frantic crowd, Daniel trailing after them. "See that guy over there working the telegraph? Picks up race results from tracks all over the country. And those guys?"-pointing at the rows of tables, the money changing hands-"they make book. And those guys"--he jerks his thumb at the crowded bar--"make sure the chumps stay good and loaded, all the better to separate them from their hard-earned scratch."

"What a racket," Zhu observes tartly.

"You said it, sister." Jack London grins at her so wickedly, the green-eyed monster of jealousy stirs in Daniel's heart. "San Francisco and Oakland outlawed poolrooms in '94. Too corrupt, they said. Fleecing the working stiffs out of their dough, they said. But the board of trustees of the fair burg of Sausalito were persuaded-persuaded generously-that the sport of kings, a shot of rye, and marvelous view of the bay go hand-in-hand." He winks at Daniel and juts his chin at something behind Daniel's shoulder. "Why, here's the esteemed proprietor of this fine establishment. Say, Mr. Harvey, I'm placing ten eagles on Argle-Bargle to win in the fourth at Pimlico. What do you think?"

Daniel whirls and confronts the scourge.

Harvey is a tidy little gent with small hands and pared fingernails. His mother may have once loved him for his pleasant nose and mouth, well-shaped cheeks and forehead. But no one loves him now for his dead-white skin of a habitue of late nights. His black hair curves in a great, greasy roll cascading from the dead-white forehead and falling down his scrawny neck. A black beard spreads over his weak chest like a fur bib. Worse of all are his eyes-huge, bulging things mismatched and strangely shaped, dark bags of flesh beneath them and gla.s.sy staring pupils within them, the right wandering toward the left.

"So yer the f.u.c.kin' son," Harvey says in acidic whine.

Zhu drops Jack London's arm and hurries to Daniel's side.

"Say, Harvey," Jack London says. "This gentleman is square with me."

But Harvey hears nothing, not even that Argle-Bargle has just won at Pimlico. "Heard you had a pretty face," he says and pushes Zhu aside, shoving his ugly mug up to Daniel's. In his little right hand gleams a Bowie knife, a long evil thing made for killing and skinning, the cutting edge of which he presses against Daniel's throat. "This here poolroom's mine, Watkins. Your rich daddy ain't got a thing to do with it. f.u.c.kin' go back to Saint Louis. We don't want your kind around here."

Before Daniel can attempt to whip out his Remington and plug the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the gut, Jack London's big hand closes around Harvey's. A gang of hard-faced men steps up behind Harvey, fists clenched.

"Say, now, Harvey," Jack London says in a genial tone. "I'm telling you, Mr. Watkins is a pal of mine and Joaquin Miller. What's your gripe?"

"He means to take my property away from me, that's my f.u.c.kin' gripe."

"Now why would he do that?" Jack London says, his hand still over the grip of the Bowie knife.

Daniel stands very quietly, thanking Jack London with his eyes. Zhu's hand on his arm a steadying influence. Thank G.o.d for friends. If he escapes Harvey's with his person intact, perhaps he'll go to church again, make a donation. And stand Jack London for a drink.

"His daddy loaned me money to buy my land and my digs, only I ain't sendin' no gold back to no Saint Louis," Harvey says.

"Is it a legal debt?" Jack London wants to know.

"Did I sign f.u.c.kin' papers, you mean?"

"That's what I mean."

"h.e.l.lya. How else do ya think I set this place up?"

"You don't say." Jack London mulls that over. "Has Mr. Watkins cheated you in any way?"

Harvey snorts. "No rube from Saint Louis gonna cheat me."

"Then you should repay the debt like you agreed to."

Everyone in the poolroom stops and stares.

"What if the f.u.c.kin' train gets robbed and the f.u.c.kin' gold don't get there? What if his daddy don't credit me proper?" Harvey makes a show of being reasonable, but he's no actor, and it doesn't work with Jack London. That deranged gleam returns to his popping strange eyes. "Anyhow, it's my establishment, ain't his. I puts in the sweat every G.o.dd.a.m.n day, and I takes the losses. So I takes the gains, when they come."

"Harvey, old son," Jack London says, "I fear you're going to have to repay Mr. Watkins his legal due."

"Says who?" Harvey presses the knife blade tighter against Daniel's throat.

"Says me. That's the way the system works, at least till the revolution comes," Jack London says, pulling the knife and Harvey's hand away. Daniel is relieved to see that London is superbly strong. As strong as Daniel used to be before the drink debilitated him.