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Summer of Love, A Time Travel

Lisa Mason

This is an ebook adaptation of Lisa Mason’s bestselling Bantam classic Summer of Love. A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year.

This is a work of fiction. Characters are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously, without any intent to describe their actual conduct.

Copyright 2010 by Lisa Mason.

Cover art and drawings copyright 2010 by Tom Robinson.

All rights reserved.

Permission to reprint material by Allen Cohen and Lenore Kandel is gratefully acknowledged.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bast Books ebook edition published May 2010

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address:

Bast Books

bastbooks@aol.com

Thank you for your readership! Visit me at my Official Web Site for more about my books, ebooks, screenplays, and stories. Enjoy!

Lisa Mason

Table of Contents

Praise for Books by Lisa Mason

Dedication

Contents of Summer of Love, A Time Travel

Tenets of the Grandmother Principle

About Lisa Mason

Books by Lisa Mason

Praise for Books by Lisa Mason

Strange Ladies: 7 Stories

“Offers everything you could possibly want, from more traditional science fiction and fantasy tropes to thought-provoking explorations of gender issues and pleasing postmodern humor…This is a must-read collection.”

—The San Francisco Review of Books

“Lisa Mason might just be the female Phillip K. Dick. Like Dick, Mason's stories are far more than just sci-fi tales, they are brimming with insight into human consciousness and the social condition….a sci-fi collection of excellent quality….you won't want to miss it.”

—The Book Brothers Review Blog

“Fantastic book of short stories….Recommended.”

—Reader Review

Summer of Love, A Time Travel

A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year

A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist

“Remarkable. . . .a whole array of beautifully portrayed characters along the spectrum from outright heroism to villainy. . . .not what you expected of a book with flowers in its hair. . . the intellect on display within these psychedelically packaged pages is clear-sighted, witty, and wise.”

—Locus Magazine

“A fine novel packed with vivid detail, colorful characters, and genuine insight.”

—The Washington Post Book World

“Captures the moment perfectly and offers a tantalizing glimpse of its wonderful and terrible consequences.”

—The San Francisco Chronicle

“Brilliantly crafted. . . .An engrossing tale spun round a very clever concept.”

—Katharine Kerr, author of Days of Air and Darkness

“Just imagine The Terminator in love beads, set in the Haight-Ashbury ‘hood of 1967.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“Mason has an astonishing gift. Her characters almost walk off the page. And the story is as significant as anyone could wish. This book will surely be on the prize ballots.”

—Analog

“A priority purchase.”

—Library Journal

The Gilded Age, A Time Travel

A New York Times Notable Book

A New York Public Library Recommended Book

“A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Should both leave the reader wanting more and solidify Mason’s position as one of the most interesting writers in science fiction.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Rollicking. . .Dazzling. . .Mason’s characters are just as endearing as her world.”

—Locus Magazine

“Graceful prose. . . A complex and satisfying plot.”

—Library Journal

Celestial Girl, The Omnibus Edition (A Lily Modjeska Mystery)

Passionate Historical Romantic Suspense

5 Stars “I really enjoyed the story and would love to read a sequel! I enjoy living in the 21st century, but this book made me want to visit the Victorian era. The characters were brought to life, a delight to read about. The tasteful sex scenes were very racy….Good Job!”

—Reader Review

The Garden of Abracadabra, Volume 1 of the Abracadabra Series

“So refreshing! This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

—Reader Review

“Fun and enjoyable urban fantasy….I want to read more!”

—Reader Review

“I love the writing style and am hungry for more!”

—Reader Review

This is dedicated to people everywhere with truthful vision, loving hearts,

belief in liberty, and joyful lives,

and to Tom, Alana, Luna, Ara, Sita, and all the beautiful cats.

Contents of Summer of Love

June 21, 1967

Celebration of the Summer Solstice

1

She’s Leaving Home

2

Do You Believe in Magic?

3

Somebody to Love

July 1, 1967

Festival of Growing Things

4

Foxy Lady

5

White Rabbit

6

Purple Haze

July 9, 1967

A Dog Day

7

There Is a Mountain

8

Ball and Chain

9

Strawberry Fields Forever

July 27, 1967

Rumors

10

Dedicated to the One I Love

11

Sunshine Superman

12

A Whiter Shade of Pale

August 8, 1967

Inquest for the Ungrateful Dead

13

Are You Experienced?

14

Piece of My Heart

15

Over Under Sideways Down

August 28, 1967

Chocolate George’s Wake

16

Penny Lane

17

Light My Fire

18

With a Little Help from My Friends

September 4, 1967

A New Moon in Virgo

19

Hello Goodbye

20

Brown-Eyed Girl

21

If You’re Going to San Francisco

Tenets of the Grandmother Principle

[Developed for tachyportation projects approved by

the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications]

Tenet One: You cannot kill any of your lineal ancestors prior to his or her historical death.

Tenet Two: You cannot prevent the death of any of your lineal ancestors.

Tenet Three: You cannot affect any person in the past, including aiding, abetting, coercing, deceiving, deterring, killing, or saving him or her (except as authorized by the project directors).

Tenet Four: You cannot affect the world in the past.

Tenet Five: You cannot reveal your identity as a time traveler to any person in the past, including yourself.

Tenet Six: You cannot reveal the future of any person in the past, including yourself.

Tenet Seven: You cannot apply modern technologies to past events or people, except when the result conforms to the Archives and, in that case, you cannot leave evidence of modern technologies in the past.

The CTL Peril: You are capable of dying in the past, including your personal past. If this occurs, the project is transformed from an Open Time Loop (OTL) to a Closed Time Loop (CTL).

You cannot escape a CTL.

June 21, 1967

Celebration

of the

Summer Solstice

1

She’s Leaving Home

Susan Bell clings for dear life to a Ford flatbed truck five years older than she is. Jig-jig-jig up Twin Peaks. High in the hills. Five-thirty A.M. San Francisco slumbering at her toes. Pitch-black beyond feeble streetlights. West wind from the ocean, salt scent of sea dragons. Never smelled anything like it in Cleveland. Wild and free, oh the sea, the sea.

Bone-chill, teeth chattering. Her butt’s really sore, three hours or more on Pan Am flight 153. Now bouncing on the flatbed, she feels frostbit all over. Her eyelids sag with fatigue. It was a frantic all-nighter, her daring escape from the oppression of Shaker Heights, Ohio.

“Beam me up!” cries a skinny girl in a cowboy hat.

“Om mani padme hum,” chants a shaved-bald boy in a long, orange robe.

“Purple haze,” warbles a guy with a big blond ‘fro.

A transistor radio blares, “If you’re going to San Francisco. . . .”

A flag flaps above her, a tie-dyed bed-sheet stapled to a stick. Must be twenty kids jammed onto the flatbed. A scent-fest all their own: patchouli oil, sour sweat, musty second-hand velvet, sexy leather.

Grass? Sharp smoke pinches Susan’s nose. She knows that pinch. Last spring she and Nance caught Nance’s big brother with some. Dave wouldn’t give them a hit, but Nance’s cousin Don turned them on to a joint, which they toked, coughing and choking, to Rubber Soul. It was okay, not great. Same for the music. That stuff about a guy threatening to kill a girl if she sees another guy. Gross. She barely got a buzz, but Mom and Daddy would turn forty shades of pale if they found out.

Susan looks around. Who’s got a joint?

Some kids are making music, ringing cowbells, clinging finger cymbals, warbling on a flute, strumming awkward chords on an acoustic guitar. Someone sick off the starboard bow, Captain Kirk.

Susan clutches the leather purse her parents had given her for Christmas and a blue canvas overnight bag. Teddy bear comforts, familiar and safe. The purse holds a hundred-and-fifty bucks, the overnight bag another hundred-twenty and change. Her under-the-table wages earned after school at Mr. G’s art supply store. Plus the hundred-dollar bill for when Mr. G pressed his hand on her tummy, down low, asking if she’d gotten her first period yet. The worst of it was, she just had.

Wouldn’t Daddy, with his groovy new dentist’s office, flip his lid if he found out a dirty old shopkeeper had felt up his daughter. Well. That was just one more thing Daddy would never find out. He’d make things worse for her than for Mr. G. She would be equally to blame, if not more so. She always was.

The driver of the flatbed truck slammed on the brakes just as she’d stepped off the 6 Parnassus bus running a red-eye down Market Street. He called out, “Hey, you. Chick with the bag. What’s your name?”

Susan shivered, terrified and thrilled. What’s her name? She was ready with the alias Nance had scrawled on the postcard. Clever Nance. When they were little kids, they always wished on the first star of the evening. Like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio.

“I’m Starbright,” she called back.

“Far out,” the driver said. “Climb aboard, Starbright. You’re either on the bus or off the bus.”

On the bus, off the bus? She didn’t understand, but she climbed aboard anyway with an unruly, chortling horde barreling through the dawn like there’s no tomorrow.

“Baby, we’re gonna see the sun rise.”

“Celebrate the Solstice.”

“It’s the start of summer, man.”

Now they crest Twin Peaks, top of the town. The truck sputters off, and the kids all pile out. Bongo drums quicken Susan’s pulse. Plum incense spices the scent of sea dragons. People everywhere; so many! There must be a thousand or more milling in the morning mist.

Susan’s never seen anything like it!

Oh, she and Nance used to sneak away to Coventry Street where the boys slicked down their Beatle bangs and the girls in miniskirts showed off their hot pink tights. Cool for Cleveland.

But these people! Who are they?

People stranger than the space aliens on Star Trek. The Lone Ranger stalks past in a fringed jacket and a Stetson hat. Another man fusses with his jewelry. Not the cuff links, tie tack, and plain gold wedding band Daddy wears. This man—a man!—is bedecked in beads, dangling earrings, silver rings on every finger. A banshee brushes by. No hair-spray for her, no mod-white lipstick. Omigod—and no undergarments, either, beneath her silky sheer dress. Susan lowers her eyes; nipples, a crotch. Other women climb the hill in buckskin shifts or Hindu saris, feathered headdresses, gypsy scarves of red and purple.

Other people stride through the crowd, too. Guys in mod suits balance hulking, long-snouted movie cameras on their shoulders, jot notes on clipboards, whisper into microphones with looping wires plugged into reel-to-reel recorders the size of Susan’s overnight bag.

The fringed and feathered folk ignore the cameramen with regal disdain or pose with extravagant gestures.

An electronic eye whirls into Susan’s face. “We’re from Hollywood, babe,” says a guy with fluffy sideburns from ears to chin. “I’m a producer, we’re making a flick. You wanna take off your top? Come on, let’s see some titties.”

Gross! Susan is stunned. He’s looking at her--at her--like she’s a space alien, too, and she’ll be watching herself on Star Trek reruns on TV tonight. She hides her face with her hand. The enormity of her daring escape strikes her for the first time—what if Mom and Daddy see me on TV?

Her breath catches, and she darts away from the cameras, away from the crowd, seeking refuge in the shadows west of Twin Peaks. When she’s alone at last, she stops, heart thudding, and glances down the hillside.

A girl in a long, black cape stands downslope in the dim dawn light and swirling fog. Over her head she’s drawn a large peaked hood, hiding her face and her hair.

The moment Susan sees her, the girl stirs, turns, and looks up at her. In another heart-thud, Susan sees it’s like looking in a mirror.

Suddenly she’s awake, and there’s no mistake. It’s her. Her own face looks back at her from beneath the hood.

The girl smiles, teeth glinting, but it’s all wrong. Little upside-down triangles glitter beneath her lip. Her eyes glow like red-hot coals, but a freezing breeze blows upslope. Her cape billows, sweeping curves and sharp points like the wings of a bat. A blackness deeper than the receding night forms an aureole around her, as though she stands in the mouth of a cave in the hillside.

But no, not a cave. Gleaming panels surround the girl like the hull of a machine, pulse into view for a moment, then fade away. Weird electricity crackles, black sparks sputter.

The girl with her face holds a rod or a staff in her left hand. She slowly raises it and points the knob on top at Susan.

Bitter cold surrounds Susan. An odd force like invisible fingers pulls at her.

Pulling her forward.

Pulling her down.

Confused, Susan takes a step, and the hillside falls away beneath her feet.

Oh! She scrambles for a foothold, clawing at the dirt. Her purse bangs against her thigh. Through sheer luck, the strap of the overnight bag snags on a sapling tough enough to hold her. She digs in her heels, halting her fall before the hillside angles away to nothing. Scratches, scrabbles up the slope, pure fear propelling her. She hoists herself back onto the ledge.

The girl watches, then steps back into the fog.

And disappears.

God! What was that?

Susan gathers up her purse and bag, and runs, mouth dry and hands shaking.

Upslope, to the dawn side, where people are gathering and chanting and laughing. Pink sunbeams filter through the fog as the solar fireball edges up over the forests on the eastern hills. People shriek and sigh as if they’ve never seen the sun rise before. Cameras click and whir. A firework rocket arcs up, and flares form red and white blossoms of light.

“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare.”

“Oooom.”

“Wheeee!”

“Hey, Charlie,” someone says. “Do it, Charlie.”

A mustachioed man stands before the crowd like a makeshift priest, sporting a necklace of chicken leg bones strung with a carved wood ankh. He beckons toward the sun and proclaims in a voice thick with wonder and joy,

“Let the Summer of Love begin!”

Weather Report

This Summer, the youth of the world are making a holy pilgrimage to our city to affirm and celebrate a new spiritual dawn. The Summer of Love is a family and a seed-bearer.

We carry to you this message:

Our nation’s youth who have given birth to the Haight-Ashbury are but a small part of a worldwide spiritual awakening. Our city has become the momentary focus of this awakening. The reasons for this do not matter. It is a gift from God which we take, nourish, and treasure.

The facts are these: many thousands of young people, our children, our brothers, and our sisters will soon arrive in this city.

They seek meaning.

There will be great celebrations all Summer long, celebrations which affirm the universal values of Love, Peace, and Self-Knowledge.

We call upon the world to help us celebrate the infinite holiness of Life.

“Proclamation of the Council for a Summer of Love”

The San Francisco Oracle, Vol. 1, No. 8 (June, 1967)

“Say hey, Professor Zoom. Check it out. Flower children,” the man says. A brash baritone, a smoker’s throat.

His voice slides into Susan’s uneasy dreams. She’s falling, grasping, trying to hold on. Onto what? Her eyes pop open, then flutter shut against the sunlight. She peeks through purple lashes.

“Seek and ye shall find, Stan the Man,” says Professor Zoom. A somnolent chuckle, a flat affect like Jack Webb on Dragnet. Just the facts, ma’am. “You always do. The roving eye, et cetera. A jug of juice, a wad of bread, and sweet pretty pussy.”

Laughter. Men, not boys.

Voices shout nearby, “Turn on the world!” Susan peeks again. A huge canvas balloon painted like the Earth bounces high against the thin blue sky, landing and rebounding onto people’s outstretched hands.

“Rise and shine, wild things,” says Stan the Man. Mock daddy scold. He notices her stirring, apparently. “Say hey, foxy lady awakes.”

“Sweet pretty pussy in droves and droves.” Professor Zoom drifts away, chuckling like the pull of a saw through wood. Muttering, “Verily, in droves and droves.”

Noon; is it really noon? Must be. The solstice sun rides high in the sky. Susan nestles on the flatbed truck against the girl in the cowboy hat, the shaved-bald boy, and another girl she’s never seen before curled up in a poncho, her face buried in yellow wool. Strangers several baths short of clean. When did she fall asleep? She can’t remember. The other kids snore on, heedless of the flatbed’s rock-hard floor.

Susan sits up, shivering, and checks her purse and overnight bag at once, the inside pockets where she hid her cash. Her spine and ribs ache worse than three summers ago when she and Nance camped out in her backyard and saw a great, glossy raccoon prying the lid off their can of Cheerios.

A great, glossy man bends over the flatbed, backlit by the sun’s glare. A mountain man, chiseled and fierce. His proud chin declines a beard. His creamy suede shirt is unbuttoned to his chest, his jeans slung low on lean hips.

“Well, hello, flower child. The Celebration of the Summer Solstice awaits you.” He sweeps his hand over the meadow as if granting it to her. His gray eyes flicker all over her, sizing her up. His smile is dazzling.

Before she can catch her breath, he turns and strides away.

Foxy lady? Flower child?

Susan climbs off the flatbed, crouches, wipes dust from a bumper, and peers at her reflection distorted in the curve of chrome. Her hair is a fright-wig, her pale face unwashed. She slaps some color in her cheeks, bites her lips. Gross.

She can practically hear her mother clucking her tongue. Even in the best of circumstances, nothing about Susan is ever right. Nothing is ever good enough. That cold disapproval mixed with. . . .what? Some terrible, nameless thing her mother holds against her, no matter how hard she tries.

Where is Nance? She’d signed the postcard, “Penny Lane,” but Susan would know her scrawl anywhere. Where is her best friend, the only person she knows in San Francisco? She figured she would step off the 6 Parnassus bus, and there Nance would be, a Kool dangling from her laughing lip.

Now she doesn’t know where to start.

She stands, fighting despair, near tears.

The mountain man is looking at her from across the field. He grins when he catches her glance and waves grandly, come on! He’s a magnet, a good-luck charm. No boy she’s ever met comes even close. Is he really waving at her? She looks over her shoulder, to the right, to the left. Yes, at her!

The truck is parked at the edge of a broad tree-lined meadow in Golden Gate Park. Small wooden stages, frail against the backdrop of ancient eucalyptus trees, are set up here and there on the unkempt grass. Bands are already playing, the reedy voices and guitar twangs nearly lost in the air. Even the drumbeats are diminished, but Susan knows their sounds, their songs, and all of their names: the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service.

A man in a Mickey Mouse cap perched over his wrinkled forehead leaps about, blowing soap bubbles from an oversized hoop. A boy of perhaps ten, his face painted with blue stars, straddles a girl of perhaps eight, her face painted with pink flowers, and pumps his hips against hers. No one pays them the slightest attention.

Who is young? Who is old?

Susan’s stomach somersaults at the scent of hamburgers grilling. She hasn’t eaten a thing since the Swanson’s TV dinner the maid left after her parents went out last night.

Then something odd shifts at the corner of her eye. A hooded cape? Strange sparks? Over there! In the dappled shade behind the trees. A freezing breeze strikes her face.

Susan whirls, ready to flee.

People are laughing by the barbecue pits. A cook drops a patty of raw meat on the grass, retrieves it, and throws it back on a rusty grill. A reveler offers a paper plate to receive his dirtburger.

But there’s nothing behind the trees. Nothing at all.

* * *

Susan catches up with the mountain man halfway across the meadow. She stands several paces away, suddenly struck with shyness.

He’s speaking with an imperious woman who stands nearly six feet tall. Curly black hair forms a nimbus around her face. Sparkling dark eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips are set in smooth skin the color of coffee with extra cream. Her squash blossom turquoise-and-silver necklace looks groovy with her sweeping dress of turquoise cotton. Nice. If Susan’s mother has taught her anything, it’s how to spot Nice.

“I want my calculating machine,” the woman is saying. She does not speak, she proclaims. “I want it back today.”

“No can do.” Stan beams at her, but his eyes flash with anger. “Got one more shipment coming next week. Got to figure the numbers.”

“No! No more shipments, no more! I won’t cover for you, Stan. Not ever again.”

“Say hey, Ruby A. Maverick.” He drops his smile. “We made a deal. Take the calculating machine, you said. Take it as long as I need it, you said. Well, I need it. And I’m keeping it. You’ll get it back when you get it back.”

“No deal,” Ruby says. “The deal is off.”

“One more shipment. You have my word.”

“Your word.”

Susan shifts the overnight bag to her other hand, embarrassed. Mom and Daddy fight. Always voices behind closed doors. What do they fight about? She’s not sure. Sometimes Susan can’t sleep all night after hearing them argue, sensing their muffled rage.

Stan turns to two other men standing nearby. The first is another god-man, towering and razor-thin in patched jeans and a threadbare workshirt. He’s been-around-town tough, his boyish features dusted with poverty. A fisherman’s cap tilts over his abundant brown curls and a gold-tone earring gleams in his earlobe.

“Help me out here, Gorgon,” Stan says. “You’re a man of many words. Talk some sense into the woman.”

Gorgon shrugs. “Your calculating machine is just private property, Ruby. Ownership of private property is the phony crap upon which this society of greed is based. What’s the big deal?”

“That’s just it, Leo,” Ruby snaps. “He’s using my calculating machine to deal.”

The second man is positively frail in a loose purple shirt and grass-stained jeans two sizes too large for him. Grime cakes his bare feet. His aquiline nose and cheekbones jut from a complexion as pale as Dracula’s. A brass door knocker strung on a leather thong hangs over his sunken chest.

“That’s your reality, Ruby,” the stickman says in that flat affect. Professor Zoom’s eyes are all pupil; Susan can’t even tell their color. “Dealing is in your mind. Dealing is your mind. Deal your mind, Ruby.”

“Go back to Harvard, Harold,” Ruby says. “You’re a full-of-shit philosopher.”

“Don’t call me names,” Professor Zoom says. “Besides, I’m not full of shit. I’m full of Owsley white lightning.”

It’s a sight to see. Amid the laughing, leaping people, Ruby’s anger burns. That feels wrong to Susan. Yet these men are intent on defusing her. That feels wrong, too. It’s confusing.

Suddenly they all notice her, hovering at the edge of their circle.

“Foxy lady!” Stan greets her as if she’s a long-lost friend. He stoops and plants a bold kiss on her mouth. Not the sloppy stuff Bernie MacKenna or Allen Weisberg have tried in the darkness of the Cedar Center Theater. A real kiss, insistent and expert. She is petrified and elated.

She wants. . . .she’s not sure what she wants. She forgets herself for the long moments he takes to kiss her. Forgets her messy hair, her unwashed face. She’s a foxy lady. Mindless, such a smart girl. And numb, except for a spot somewhere north of her thighs. If she had to give it name just now, she might call it her heart.

He scoops her under his arm and sweeps her into the circle, depositing her in their midst. “Meet our newest flower child.”

Ruby glares at her. “Uh-huh. What’s your name, flower child?”

“St-Starbright.”

“Starbright. Let me see, Starbright. You just blew into town from some burb outside Chicago. Right, am I right?”

“C-Cleveland.”

“Daddy’s a vice president. Or, say, a doctor.”

“Dentist,” Susan whispers.

“Ruby’s psychic,” Professor Zoom says. Just the facts, ma’am.

“Speak up, Starbright. A dentist. A real sadist, right? Beats up everybody’s mind at home. Everybody uptight all the time.”

Susan studies the squash blossom necklace. They are uptight all the time. She can’t stand it anymore.

“Eat good.” Ruby circles her. “Maybe a little too good. Got your own li’l bedroom painted purple. Beatles’ posters thumb-tacked to the walls.”

Susan stares. Her bedroom is painted lavender, actually, and her mother yelled at her about the thumbtacks ruining the paint job.

“And you’ve come all the way to the Haight-Ashbury to find your soul ‘cause sure ain’t no soul in Cleveland.”

“I’ve come to find Penny Lane,” she declares.

“Penny. . . .oh, now I see. Another darling daughter from the soulless ‘burbs. Name’s really Joanie or Nancy. And she’s run away to the Haight-Ashbury to find her soul.”

Tears pool in her eyes, and Susan blinks them back.

“Go home, Starbright,” Ruby commands. “Sally or Suzy or whoever you are. Go home to your purple bedroom and three square meals a day. I’d love to sell you a string of beads for triple what they’re worth. Damn right, I would, Leo.” She glares at Gorgon and rubs her thumb across her fingers. “But you and your kind were old news last summer. You hear me, kid? It’s 1967. You are old news.”

“But it’s all new to me!”

“You’re too late. There’s no place for you in the Haight-Ashbury. Cleveland needs you more. Go home.”

“No!” How dare this woman bully her! Susan’s tears dry up. Her stutter steadies. “I’m never going home.”

“Beautiful.” Ruby throws up her hands in exasperation. “Another teenybopper for Stan the Man. That’s just beautiful.” She turns and strides away. “Have a ball,” she calls over her shoulder.

“Bummer, Ruby,” Professor Zoom yells after her.

“She’s got a point about the calculating machine,” Gorgon says to Stan. He takes off after Ruby like a wolf chasing prey.

“Methinks Sir Leo the Gorgon intends to pick up the piece, as it were,” Professor Zoom says to Stan.

Stan wraps his arm around Susan’s shoulders, but he’s staring after Ruby, his expression now a mix of anger and longing. “Yeah. Well. That’s her karma, the bitch.”

“Not bitch, my good Stan. Ruby is a witch.” Professor Zoom takes a corncob pipe from his shirt pocket and lights it with a Bic. “Don’t be attached, my son. Nothing is real. Reality is nothing.”

Stan laughs. “Professor Zoom is a very wise man,” he says to Susan. To Professor Zoom, “I’m not attached. I just never saw a Digger anarchist make it with a hip merchant. Leo Gorgon and Ruby A. Maverick? Maybe they’ll off each other.”

“Life is but a dream and an awakening,” Professor Zoom says. The smoke curling out of his pipe smells like burnt chocolate. “I am content if Ruby offs Leo Gorgon. I am content if Leo offs Ruby A. Maverick. I am content if they off you.”

“Or you?” Stan says.

“Try some white Lebanese pollen.” Professor Zoom hands the pipe to Stan. “If it’s you, bequeath to me the calculating machine. I’m still searching for the Final Expression to my Equation proving that God is a hit of blotter.”

Susan doesn’t understand a word they’re saying. It all sounds so silly. She shivers and leans against Stan’s sturdy warmth. He hugs her back, quick and natural. When did anyone last hug her? Maybe Nance before Susan moved to the new neighborhood a year ago. Body heat, oh the comfort of arms. She snuggles closer, glancing up at his face.

He winks at Professor Zoom as he hands back the pipe.

“Methinks the sweet pretty pussy is very hungry and very, very thirsty,” Professor Zoom says. He gazes at Susan with eyes like tunnels boring into his skull. What happens in there? “Let’s go trip with the Double Barrel Boogie Band.”

Stan says, “Right on.”

* * *

The Double Barrel Boogie Band is setting up.

Susan can hardly believe her eyes. It’s them. It’s really them! On the bass drum, two circles conjoin like a shotgun snout or the symbol of infinity. She and Nance love the Double Barrel. They brought Let’s Boogie Boogie to Cheryl Long’s fourteenth birthday party, took off the Beach Boys, and danced with each other all night.

That’s Paul sitting down at the keyboards. Mickey on drums, Stevie on bass, Rodg the Dodg on lead guitar. The Double Barrel Boogie Band! Wow!

Then something even more amazing happens. Stan the Man hops up onto the stage, just like that. He slaps hands all around. He confers with Rodg the Dodg, barks orders at two scruffy boys connecting wires and setting up equipment. He hops down, strides behind the stage. Three beautiful girls pose there dressed in velvet and lace, whispering and laughing. They stare at Susan through false eyelashes so thick they look like caterpillars.

Susan is shaking so hard, the overnight bag wobbles in her clenched fist. Nance, oh Nance, where are you when I need you?

The band’s set begins. Stan returns to her, wraps his arm around her shoulders. A woman in a see-through blouse calls to him from the crowd. Her breasts bounce as she waves, but Stan smiles only at Susan, his eyes lingering on her breasts nestled inside her jacket, sweater, blouse, and bra.

Deafening chords of “Drop a Double Barrel” assault her eardrums.

Stan shouts in her ear, “How old are you, Starbright?”

She’s ready with that answer. “I’m eighteen.”

He laughs. “So am I.”

Professor Zoom squats at the foot of the stage, ladling juice from a wide-mouthed jug, and handing out paper cups to passersby. “Orange juice? Free orange juice?”

Stan brings her a brimming cup.

Susan takes the cup, annoyed. How stupid does he think she is? He’s not eighteen any more than she is. More like twenty-eight. She can never guess people’s ages between young and ancient but, from his weathered, leathered look up close, he doesn’t seem a whole lot younger than her father.

He is nothing like her father.

She drinks the juice. Yum. She loves orange juice. It tastes a little strange, but she’s parched and she gulps the whole cup. “May I have some more, please?”

“You can have anything you want, Starbright,” Stan says.

Professor Zoom ladles out bright juice, the soupspoon spilling. Bees buzz, free sweets. Yum. Susan toasts a dew-stained boy in blue, a cute college couple all in denim, a fat girl in a gauzy pink gown. She toasts a towering barbarian in a fur hat and a vest that says “Hells Angels” on the back, a dainty fellow in a scarlet wig and a ballerina’s tutu, a black guy in a beret and a leather jacket. Buzz, buzz.

Another cup to Starbright with a smile.

A cup with a smile.

A cup does smile, if you hold it just so. A cup has a mouth. Why shouldn’t it smile?

The band is wailing, the day is sailing, but her throat is getting gulpy. Is she catching something? Maybe the flu?

Then she’s sick, sick, her stomach pitching, rolling around. Stan the Man bends over her, his hand on her throat, and presses his thumb in the soft spot between her collarbones.

Sitting. Suddenly. Rank dandelion smell, mud like dog waste. Monkey hands rest on her thighs. Thighs like sausages, stuffed skin over bones breathing like alien things. The monkey hands are her hands, hands just like the monkey in her biology textbook with electrodes stuck in its poor little skull. She had wept when she saw that monkey. She weeps now. She is a trapped little monkey. She is.

She feels her heart thundering, squeezing blood into her head. Her breath wheezes through her mouth. What about the girl with her face, only it’s all wrong? What if the girl comes now on the wings of a bat, sparks crackling off her fingertips? A rushing noise deafens Susan’s ears. Is she falling off the hillside? Falling for sure, this time?

There are no bats, the man’s voice reassures her. There is no hillside, Starbright.

Another wave of emotion crashes over her.

Sobs tear from her throat. Granma! Granma who loved her, the only one who ever had. Her eyes that had twinkled just for Susan. Granma with tubes up her nose, tubes in her arms, impossibly thin. Her frightened eyes, her fear terrifying. The awful smell, the light too bright. And there was nothing Susan could do. Granma, this cannot be happening to you. Granma, don’t leave me, please, please.

Is she screaming?

She hears singing. People are singing. The stickman in the purple shirt is singing. The barbarian with Hells Angels on his vest is singing. The mountain man, he’s singing. He beams at her, beaming right into her soul. He smiles and smiles and sings and sings like he knows she cannot hear him until she hears him:

First there is a Starbright,

Then there is no Starbright,

Then there is.

Suddenly it’s so. . . .silly! It’s so. . . .funny! The stickman is singing, the barbarian is singing, the mountain man is singing, the beautiful girls are singing. The Double Barrel Boogie Band—it’s really them—they’re singing, “First there is a Starbright, then there is no Starbright, then there is.”

She laughs and laughs. The trees sway to the beat and clap their leaves. Clouds in the sky rearrange themselves into lizards, butterflies, sea dragons. A multicolored checkerboard erupts across the grass and arabesques sprout in the dandelions.

Ecstasy! Everything is connected to her, she to everything, and it is so beautiful. The trees, the clouds, the singing people are so beautiful. She feels so much love for the world, for all these wonderful people, for the Summer of Love that she starts to cry again.

Stan says, “Don’t cry, Starbright. Stop it right now.”

Stop it, yes! Stop it right now. No more pain, no more sadness, no more anger, no more fear. She will celebrate! Celebrate the Solstice! She is bold now, filled with wild abandon. She flails her arms, shakes her hips. She swoops, she dives. She can have anything she wants!

She is laughing, leaping, free.

Dance, Starbright, dance.

* * *

The first star of the evening winks on the east, and night stains the sky. Susan is chilled again, very chilled. A lifetime seems to have passed in this day. She has realized something totally amazing. She tries to remember what it is, exactly, this amazing thing, but she can’t quite put her finger on it. Her thoughts are tumbling, tumbling.

The awesome explosion of consciousness is gone, but the world is still luminous, numinous, streaked with mystery. Afterimages dance in the movements of objects. Professor Zoom hands her his corncob pipe. She takes it, examining the knobby stem curiously. He guides the stem to her lips. She opens her mouth and inhales. What else is there to do?

The night ripples with shapes, with feelings. Nothing is real? Reality is nothing?

Everyone drifts away from the meadow. Kids jam onto flatbed trucks, others crowd into vans or buses bound for Stinson Beach. They want to see the sunset. “Come on, Starbright,” someone calls. “You’re either on the bus or off the bus.”

Yes. You’re on the bus. You’ve been initiated. You’ve seen trees sway to the music, arabesques sprout in the dandelions. You’ve stripped the plastic face off civilization and glimpsed Truth.

But Susan is not on their bus, not this time. She waves bye-bye and watches the kids go. Night lights flash. The world is humming in a different way. The excitement of nocturnal things. Of darkness. Of the hunt.

The bands are breaking down, packing up to go.

Where will she go?

People gather up blankets and picnic baskets and wander off into the dusk. Children grumble sleepily and tug on their mothers’ sleeves. They all have some place to go to sleep.

Where will she sleep?

So many things that were a unity are separating now. With her new awareness, Susan understands this, the constant process of unity and separation. She and Granma, she and Nance, she and Mom and Daddy. So many painful separations. But where are the unities?

How she longs for a new unity.

Plus she’s really, really hungry. Where will she eat?

The city has become a citadel, gleaming with electric jewels. In the dawn before, Susan saw only empty streets, tired shopfronts, trash-strewn sidewalks. Now it’s the Scene. On a Wednesday night in June, people mill around, so many! Bongo drums quicken Susan’s pulse. Plum incense mingles with the stench of car exhaust.

The big city at night makes her so lonely.

Nance, oh Nance, where are you?

* * *

In May, Nance Payne ran away from her home in Euclid Heights. She didn’t have the decency to wait until she graduated from the eighth grade. Since Nance and Susan had been best friends for years before Dr. Bell moved his family to a tonier neighborhood in Shaker Heights, Nance’s mother and stepfather came looking for Susan to see what she knew about it.

Susan’s father turned Nance’s parents away at the front door. “That girl is a bad influence,” Susan heard him telling them as she crouched at the top of the second-story stairs. He was using That Tone. Susan knew he’d been listening in on her conversations with Nance. He was no good at picking up the phone in the den without making a click.

Nance’s parents said something about Susan being the bad influence. Then her father said, “Since we’ve moved, I’ve kept my daughter away from that no-good girl. Susan doesn’t know a thing about where she went.” More words, loud words. God, Daddy! Susan ran to her bedroom, embarrassed, and slammed the door.

Then, a week ago, she collected the mail from the chute at the front door. Her mother was walking in from the garage to the kitchen with grocery bags. She managed to slip the postcard down the front of her jeans. Later, locked behind her bedroom door, she studied it.

The postcard was addressed to “Starbright.” On the front, a Technicolor Golden Gate Bridge stood against a turquoise sea and sky. “Monterey popped! Meet me, meet me, meet me! And be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” She’d signed it, “Haight Is Love, Penny Lane.”

Susan called Pan Am and counted out her secret bank account hidden in the bottom of her toy chest. But it was a fantasy, running away to San Francisco to meet Nance. Only a fantasy, however thrilling. She didn’t decide to go for real until her mother found the postcard in her underwear drawer beneath the Tampax.

They summoned her to the kitchen. It was like going to an inquisition. She began twirling a hank of hair around her finger, biting the split ends, and spitting them out.

“Get me some scissors,” her mother said. “I’m cutting her hair off right now.”

Daddy had That Look. “What the hell is this?” He shook the Golden Gate Bridge in front of her nose.

Bad news. She was grounded for the summer, her telephone privileges were taken away, and she was forbidden to ever speak with Nance again. There was serious doubt about new clothes for the ninth grade. Her mother sat beside her father on the other side of the table, grim satisfaction on her face. Two against one.

She defended herself, defended her friend. “Nance is cool. She never puts me down. She’s like my sister. She’s my best friend!”

“You have new friends at school.”

“No, I don’t. They’re all stuck up.”

Her mother started saying, “You haven’t even tried. . . .” when her father cut in, “You are stupid, Susan. You are wasting your time with that little tramp.”

He said more horrible things, but she didn’t hear them. All she heard was the one word her father had never applied to her before. A violation of the one thing she thought he respected her for. The foundation of the fragile trust she possesses with him—that he knows she’s smart.

Now she’s stupid?

He tore the postcard into scraps, dumped the scraps in an ashtray, and lit them with a match. He ordered Susan to sit and stir the scraps until nothing but ashes was left.

She packed her overnight bag left that night. When Mom and Daddy went out, Susan booked Pan Am flight 153 and called a cab. They would return home from dinner and the theater an hour after she lifted off. She didn’t leave a note.

It felt like the time when she and Nance climbed the old oak tree in Cheryl Long’s front yard. On a dare from Cheryl—who they thought was very stuck up—they leapt off the big branch fifteen feet up. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t hard at all until Susan hit the ground.

* * *

“Starbright,” Stan the Man says. “Got a place to stay?”

If she’s stupid, she may as well be really stupid. Does he guess she’s fourteen? Who cares?

“No, Stan,” she says. “I’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Come with me, flower child.”

He takes her to a three-story Victorian with peeling paint where the Double Barrel Boogie Band and their entourage camp out in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury. The house must be about a thousand years old. A steep stairway angles up from the street to the porch and front door. A crumbling fireplace and scuffed wood floors lend some charm to a living room furnished with hand-me-down chairs and a swayback sofa. The place smells of wood rot, burnt chocolate, and sandalwood incense.

Professor Zoom cuts chunks from a brick of vegetable matter on the coffee table. Grease-lipped beer mugs, rotten apple cores, a kazoo, a brass pipe, and a can of half-eaten SpaghettiOs with the lid bent back decorate the table. The floor is thick with more of the same.

Susan recalls her mother’s precise living room. The curving peach couch with its plastic slipcover she only takes off for company. The white wall-to-wall carpet. Mom would faint dead away at the sight of this pigsty.

The stereo blasts, and people mill around. So many!

One of the caterpillar-eyed girls who stood behind the stage approaches her. Sarah turns out to be a sweet, fine-boned blond with freckles and bloodshot blue eyes beneath her false eyelashes. Sarah leads Susan to the bedroom she shares with Mickey and shows Susan her swirling psychedelic drawings. It’s sad. Sarah is not a very good artist.

Susan can draw. She’s doodled hours away at Mr. G’s art supply store. She takes Sarah’s scarlet chalk and sketches a bold eye with a star for the pupil. Her mother always says her drawings are not proportional, but Susan has to wonder. Her mother is not a very good artist, either.

Sarah says, “That’s beautiful, Starbright. What do you think of this? I want to do my thing, too.” She shows Susan more crude drawings. “Mickey wants me to draw posters for the band, but Stan says no,” she complains. Susan can see why.

Looking at Sarah and her drawings, Susan is reminded of “The Menagerie” on Star Trek. The bleak landscape of Talos IV, and Vina, the human girl deformed and crippled in a starship crash. The Talosians make her whole and beautiful, but her beauty is an illusion. She falls in love with Captain Pike, who was deformed and crippled in a crash, too, and now is strong and handsome—but only on Talos IV. Given a choice to leave or stay in an alien world, Vina prefers her illusion.

To Susan’s luminous, numinous mind, this is another revelation: the saving grace of illusion.

“That’s beautiful, Sarah,” Susan says of the drawings. She means it, too.

* * *

Stan the Man carries her purse and overnight bag in one hand, clasps her hand in the other, and leads her up three stories of stairs.

Paisley blankets and old smoke layer his dark little penthouse pad. Susan’s perceptions ripple and swell. She’s breathing hard from the long climb and aware of not having bathed since yesterday morning. Of a tart sweat gathering in her armpits and filming her skin.

He lights some candles, and they sit on a mattress on the floor. She’s never seen anyone sleeping on a mattress on the floor—especially a grown man—but it looks like fun. Like a pajama party. He eases off her jacket, slipping wool off her shoulders. He pulls her mod ankle boots off her feet and kicks off his own boots.

He pulls her sweater up over her head, the lavender mohair Granma gave her for her twelfth birthday, and tosses it on the floor. She follows the trajectory unhappily. He seizes her chin, ravages her mouth. His kiss, so exciting in the open meadow, is frightening in his lair.

He tears at her blouse, at the buttons she denied Bernie MacKenna and Allen Weisberg. She fights back, clawing at him, clutching herself.

No!

He backs off at once, turns away.

Now she’s worried. Is he angry with her? He props pillows against the wall, leans against them. No, not angry. He’s sad. Melancholy. “I’m not going to hurt you, Starbright,” he says. His face is extraordinary. He shrugs off his creamy suede shirt and beckons to her, kindly and inviting.

She gladly scoots across the mattress and snuggles against him, turning her back to him, though, her arms wrapped over her chest. She’s gravitating to his heat, that’s all. His bare skin is so hot, and she’s so cold, she’s shivering.

Shadows curl and pulse across the room.

Feelings shift. Thoughts drift.

Susan is suddenly aware of his living force beside her. He starts to speak, and she turns to watch him. His eyes are vibrantly alive as he murmurs strange things. “You’re with me, Starbright, but you’re not with me. You’re not with me.” He turns away. He won’t look at her. Still his voice rumbles, a thrilling sound she can almost touch.

She is part of a huge, complex pattern, a curtain woven of space and time. She’s with him, but not with him? How did he know she was thinking about separations and unities? About a new unity she craves?

There is something she must do. Get up and leave the mountain man’s bedroom? This occurs to her, but she dismisses the thought. Anyway, she’s not quite sure how to do it. She cannot get her legs to cooperate and stand. She feels paralyzed. Is paralysis another word for destiny? She almost laughs out loud. God, Susan, she tells herself. You are becoming wise.

Mostly it’s the cold that gets to her. Bone-chill, teeth chattering. Now he turns toward her, opens his arms, and cuddles her. Gently, they slide down onto the mattress. Gently, they lie together. He pulls a blanket over them. Dust tickles her nose.

He surrounds her, a cocoon of comfort. He strokes her hair, crooning softly. Her arms loosen and unwind. It’s unnatural to wrap your arms over your chest. It’s natural to unwrap them. Her shivering eases. It’s natural to hold someone holding you. She unfolds like a flower, be sure to wear some flowers. She drowses. He kisses her forehead lightly, lightly. He kisses her eyelids. His lips slide down the bridge of her nose.

His lips arrive at her mouth. Sleepy, her lips yield to his gentle kiss. She tastes his tongue, flesh and tobacco and white Lebanese pollen. Relaxing, her hand touches his waist. Somehow his jeans have vanished. She feels his flesh, his rigid cock.

Awake, awake, awake!

He’s got her blouse halfway to her elbows before she can fully rouse herself. He undresses her with ease, overcoming the logistics of buttons, zippers, hooks and eyes. Her clothes slide off before she can struggle. Red lights literally flash in her eyes. Every nasty conversation whispered in the girls’ lavatory jabbers in her ears. Her parents’ faces, stern and pasty, rise up like ruined moons.

He suckles her nipples, the left, the right, and she moans in spite of her alarm. But he’s not finished. Now he trails his tongue lower, between her ribs, to her navel, to her tummy, to the place where Mr. G pressed his hand.

She presses her thighs together. What is he doing?

He scoots lower and kisses her left knee, her right knee, planting kisses all over her clenched thighs. He wants to kiss her legs? How silly! She starts to giggle. His tongue feels so hot and wet on her skin, in a while her legs relax.

Suddenly he pushes forward, pushing her thighs apart with his shoulders, wide, wider. He circles her thighs and rests his hands on her hipbones, kissing her tummy again. Then he presses his fingers there, spreading her open. He dips his tongue there. She falls back, gasping at the exquisite sensation. He thrusts his tongue until she bursts with another kind of explosion so powerful her legs shake. She shivers with pleasure so intense, it’s almost painful.

He lunges up, pushing into her, but she’s tight and unyielding. That doesn’t stop him. He rams into her as she yelps in pain, rams again and again, thrusting inside her. He pounds against her until she can’t stand it. Is she screaming? He slaps her face, covers her mouth with his mouth.

Then he shudders, his sweat spattering her. His heat shocks her. Is she crying?

He rolls off her, rolls away. Then rolls back, tickling her ribs, biting her ear, kissing away her tears. “That was groovy, Starbright,” he says and slaps her butt.

She’s astonished. She’s aching deep inside. Blood stains the sheets between her legs. She stares at him as he hops to his feet and finds his clothes. He grins. He laughs. He doesn’t ache deep inside?

He zips up his jeans, pulls on his boots, grabs a fresh shirt, and stalks out. She hears his bootheels clattering downstairs to the party. People laugh and shout. A glass smashes. A woman shrieks. Motorcycles rumble outside on the street. Someone turns up the stereo.

Wild and free, oh take me.

Night shines through the rain-dappled window. Stars wheel in the heavens, forming mysterious patterns. She recognizes Orion the Hunter. She glimpses a bridge made of clouds, a spiral galaxy, a girl dancing in the night sky. And most of all, the first star of the evening, rising bright and high.

“Star light,” she sings softly, “star bright. First star I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might. Have the wish I wish. Tonight.”

What does she wish for?

“I want to be happy,” Susan whispers. “Happy for the first time in my life.”

Then she dresses and goes downstairs to the party, where she boogies until four in the morning.

2

Do You Believe in Magic?

They never prepare you for the shock of the Event.

Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco steps through the Portals of the Past. After the subjective second it takes to cross over, he proceeds, as required by the Summer of Love Project, to check for his points of reference:

The dome;

the carving;

his time of arrival.

But wait, wait. He tries to stand very still as perceptions speed past him in a rush of images, scents, and sounds. Not dizzy like some, nor nauseated, nor faint. He just feels. . . .empty. They say you don’t feel the Event, but they’re wrong. He feels it. The pulse of his essence, the sensation of his physical body translating into pure energy and then transmitting across time faster than the speed of light. Ah!

Chi is shaken to his soul. In the flicker of translation-transmission, everything seems dead. A weight around his neck so vast, he quells the urge to weep.

They say reality is really only One Day. The same everywhere, everywhen.

Wrong, again. For a moment, he wonders if he really is dead.

But he’s not dead, he’s alive, and he’s got work to do. The Summer of Love Project, Chi. Get moving! He starts again slowly, breathing deeply and checking for his points of reference.

First, the dome. The cosmicist dome that’s enclosed New Golden Gate Preserve for nearly two centuries. Check. The dome is gone. Only the darkening twilight hovers above him. The sight of a night sky unshielded by PermaPlast sends a jolt of terror up his spine. Instinctively, he flings his hands over his face. Now he’s dizzy.

Damn it, Chi! This sky is thick and whole, damp with clouds, and untouched by radiation like the sky ought to be.

Like it used to be.

Like it is Now.

Calm down. Breathe slowly.

Next. The carving.

He touches the cool, smooth marble of the Portals of the Past. And with his touch on that ancient stone comes the second shock:

The carving near the bottom of Portal’s left pillar: It’s gone.

He reviews the drill one more time: the dome shouldn’t be there, but the carving should.

The carving, an indecipherable set of glyphs carved on the pillar centuries ago, was discovered only after a massive research effort by the Archivists under the leadership of Chi’s skipfather. The carving proved to be the final piece of the puzzle—or so the Archivists said.

When the evidence supported an Open Time Loop during the Summer of Love, the directors of the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications threw billions of dollars at the project. Never mind that Chi’s skipfather was himself a LISA tech and a project director. Or that Chi’s skipmother owned seventy-one percent of the patent on transmission. If anything, their eminent positions made transmitting their own skipson to a Hot Dim Spot in the middle of the Crisis all the more compelling.

As Chi had stood in the Portals of the Past, waiting to translate-transmit, he’d stooped and pressed his fingers on that cool, smooth marble, learning the shape of the carving by touch, as well as by sight:

What did it mean? Who could say?

Chi knew the theories. The Eye of Horus was a prehistoric charm signifying wisdom, prescience. The heart symbol was even older, depicting not the organ of circulation but the buttocks of a beloved as a lover would see them. And the old-fashioned key? The key was an invention of the first millennium and a powerful symbol. A key unlocked secrets, secured ownership and possession. There were associations with music, translations, maps, codes, and ciphers.

As it turned out, the key could also—at a probability of just over fifty percent--refer to him, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. The fanciful, mythological name he was born with twenty-one years ago. Calliope had chosen it. How Calliope loved fanciful, mythological things. In myths, Chiron was the centaur, half-man, half-horse. Chiron’s symbol was the key.

You are the key, Chi’s skipfather told him.

But why carve those three symbols inside a triangle? Why on a pillar in the Portals of the Past? And who had carved them, long ago?

No one knew. No one could trace the source.

Chi wishes he could disbelieve his eyes. The link to the loop, the last piece of the puzzle, the final bit of evidence that sealed his ticket to a dangerous tachyportation.

The damn carving. It’s gone.

An awful thought strikes him: What if they made a mistake?

Which leads him to his last point of reference. He checks for his time of arrival, peering at his microfusion wristwatch. The watch is guaranteed not to lose more than a second every two millennia, and he’s only t-ported five hundred years. June 21 to June 21, San Francisco 2467 to San Francisco 1967, portals to portals.

It’s supposed to be ten-fifteen in the morning--five centuries, one-hundred-twenty-five days, fifty-three minutes, thirty-nine seconds, and three hundred milliseconds, minus one picosecond to account for superluminal drift.

Instead, it’s nearly half-past ten at night. He’s twelve hours and ten minutes late.

He’s late. He’s fucking late.

Chi’s knees buckle. He slumps on the steps of the Portals of the Past, stunned. The rank green water of Lloyd Lake shimmers, the surface splintering from the dance of night insects. He wishes he could laugh at the pretentious name of this swampy little pond that will, in a hundred years, freeze solid. In two hundred years, seep with radioactive saltwater. In three hundred years, come alive again beneath the dome. In four hundred years, serve as sanctuary for rare fish and birds. And in five hundred years? This swampy little pond will provide the required humidity to facilitate a tachyportation on its shores.

His t-port.

The awful chasm of the centuries yawns before him.

Towering eucalyptus trees rustle in a night breeze. Cattails, vervain, and mint stir on the shoreline. An insomniac duck quacks.

Chi is all alone in the Portals of the Past.

He heaves himself to his feet and mutters gloomily, “Let the Summer of Love Project begin.”

* * *

A woman’s laughter floats across Lloyd Lake from John F. Kennedy Boulevard, a bright chuckle like that of his lass, Bella Venus. Ah, a woman’s laughter. Still the same.

What did Chi expect? People haven’t changed all that much, not really. His neckjack, his neurobics, the aftereffects of the radiation vaccine, even his gene tweaking—these have improved on the original design, certainly, but haven’t made him a new breed of human. The people strolling on the boulevard are modern people like him. They’re neither Neanderthals from the past nor devolts from the future. They may differ in circumstances, but not in fundamentals.

Two women stroll around Lloyd Lake. From their colorful costumes, a Cherokee maiden and an Elizabethan lady. “Hey, man, got a joint?” they call. He steps into the shadows without a word. “Asshole,” they call again.

He resists the urge to advise them to wash out their unmaidenly mouths with soap and swallows his outrage. He didn’t ask for this t-port, he was drafted. His graduate thesis on liver clones—a vital topic!—had to be put on hold. Not to mention he’d just started the affair with Bella Venus. Their families were much excited by their meeting, which could have been arranged, but had been random. The randomness added a keen edge to their lovemaking.

Give it up? Give her up? For how long? Seventy-six days in the past? Hasn’t his family done enough for the Great Good?

Apparently not. He--Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco—is a cosmicist. Heir to a distinguished cosmicist dynasty. To give is best. Live responsibly or die. He’s expected to sacrifice.

Especially in a Crisis.

He glances over his shoulder, but the women are gone. He unsnaps a neurobic bead from his pharmaceutical necklace and pops the bead open, inhaling the metallic-tinged vapor.

His head clears. Better. Better.

Now, then. He may be half a day late, but at least he’s made it in one piece. He wriggles his toes in the Beatle boots, examines his fingers. Mega. Toes and fingers all in place. In the early days, some t-porters lost fingers or ears or found themselves buried hip-high in concrete. When to When isn’t the only calculation. Where to Where counts for a lot, too, and he’s arrived right on target--at the Portals of the Past.

The Portals have stood exactly in the same place for nearly six hundred years. The majestic doorway was all that remained of the Towne mansion after the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906. Retrieved from the ashes and set on the shores of Lloyd Lake, the Portals proved ideal.

Permanence in the face of flux.

Chi looks around.

Right before he transmitted, the tachyonic shuttle surrounded the Portals. Steelyn lattices, calcite crystals, an artillery of photon guns. A thousand imploders arranged in a half-moon. The awesome dish of the chronometer. SOL Project staff scurried around, and his skipfather stood near, whispering final instructions. The Chief Archivist and her three top ferrets checked and rechecked historical sources on their knuckletops.

His skipmother stood near, too, fidgeting, more nervous than usual. Parental anxiety, Chi thought. But then, to his amazement, just before he stepped through the shuttle, she slipped something in his jeans pocket and whispered, “Consider impact before you consider benefit, my son.”

Now all of it, all of them, gone.

* * *

Chi strides up the boulevard through the park. Apprehension knocks in his chest, yielding to anger. Mistakes. He can’t afford mistakes, his or anyone else’s. What if the Archivists haven’t found the right Hot Dim Spot? What if the SOL Project Directors haven’t chosen the right Open Time Loop? Mistakes happen. The Save Betty Project proved just how deadly mistakes could turn out to be.

Chi quickens his pace, apprehension and anger deepening to dread. What if he returns to the Portals of the Past in seventy-six days and the shuttle fails to connect to this Now? What if he can’t translate-transmit? What if he can’t return to the Portals, at all?

Then he’s trapped in Closed Time Loop, that’s what. A CTL, from which there is no escape, never has been an escape, never will be an escape. When does a CTL begin? No one knows. It just happens.

Chi slows, breathing hard against the steady upward slope of the boulevard. He hears chaotic noise in the distance, the rumble of a crowd. He smells a barnyard odor, like what you’d smell passing near a zoo.

Someone shrieks in the night.

Ahead, around the bend, rises the flat roof of the De Young Museum. A large stone sphinx crouches in the darkness.

Adrenaline shoots through Chi’s blood. Could demons be invading here and now? For that is his skipfather’s theory about why the Summer of Love is a Hot Dim Spot. It’s a gateway for demons.

People gather on the boulevard.

Wary, Chi joins them.

A young teen lies writhing on the asphalt. Cropped black hair plasters her tearstained face. A teenage boy tries to hold her, but her frantic, flailing strength nearly overpowers him.

“My heart!” she screams. “Jesus Christ, my heart!”

“What is it?” Chi asks quietly, jumping at the sound of his own voice.

“Her heart, dincha hear?” says the struggling boy. “Some dude in the band wouldn’t look at her, an’ her heart is broke.”

“She’s trippin’ on Serenity, Tranquility, and Peace,” says the boy’s companion, another teen in a bush hat who glances anxiously over his shoulder. He digs a capsule out of his shirt pocket. “Hey, Bobby, get this red down her fuckin’ throat, and let’s split, man.”

“Stop,” Chi starts to say. “Don’t do it. You need to--”

The teen in the bush hat whips around, thrusts his face in Chi’s. He must be all of seventeen, but his face is as gaunt as an old man’s. “Need to do what?” His hard eyes flick over Chi’s hair and clothes.

Chi backs away. Is his costume wrong? “Leave her alone.”

“Yeah? You a narc, man?”

“I’m havin’ a heart attack! Jesus Christ, Bobby, I’m dyin’!”

“You need to be cool,” Chi says. This girl cannot be the one he’s searching for. Her hair is all wrong: too short, too dark. “Just be cool.”

The teen in the bush hat hands the capsule to Bobby, who tries to push it in the girl’s mouth. She clamps her lips shut. Bobby pinches her nostrils. When she gulps for air, he jams in the capsule, forcing her to swallow.

“Jesus, you’re tryin’ to kill me!”

“Shut up, Penny Lane,” Bobby says.

“Somebody help me! Help me, please!”

Bobby slaps Penny Lane’s face. “I said shut up!”

“He. . . .he’s trying to kill me!”

Chi jogs away.

Gossip, Innuendo & All The News That Fits

Psychotomimetic amphetamines are seen in the Haight-Ashbury in June, 1967. Stanley Owsley III, the famed underground LSD chemist, allegedly named STP after Scientifically Treated Petroleum, the popular oil additive, “because it makes your motor run smoother and lubricates your head.” Dealers claim STP produces three days of Serenity, Tranquility and Peace.

Five thousand hits of STP were passed out free during the Celebration of the Summer Solstice in Golden Gate Park. Users experienced, over a period of twenty-four hours, heart palpitations, muscle tremors, hallucinations eighty times more potent than mescaline, acute anxiety, and, in certain cases, paranoid psychosis. Barbiturates typically used to calm a bad LSD trip intensify STP’s adverse symptoms and should be strictly avoided.

Love Needs Care by David E. Smith, M.D. and John Luce

(Little Brown and Co., 1968)

It’s not like Chi to jog away from a lass in distress, but he’s got to get on with the SOL Project. No mistakes. The girl will probably go the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic and receive treatment there in the days following the Celebration of the Summer Solstice. She may be the girl who will be admitted under one of her street names to the Psychiatric Aid and Referral Service and diagnosed as psychotic, but return to the street. Not long after, she will die from a rape-beating in Golden Gate Park. Her alias is recorded in the Archives, but her legal name has long disappeared. She is an a.k.a., then a Jane Doe.

Hair plastered over her face, screaming, “Help me!” So young.

Forget it, Chi. He must find the Axis, that’s all. That’s the sole object of the SOL Project--find her. Only her. What other responsibility does he owe these people? People who started the ruin of the future?

Anyway, you cannot change the past. Everybody knows that. Under Tenet One of the Grandmother Principle, you cannot kill any of your lineal ancestors prior to his or her historical death. And under Tenet Three, he cannot affect any person in the past, including that girl, unless the project directors have authorized him to do so. He cannot aid her, cannot abet her, cannot save her. Or more precisely, he’s not allowed to. Not even if he wanted to.

* * *

Chi strides to the corner of Stanyan Street and takes his first look at the Haight-Ashbury. At eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night, bongo drums thump, laughter shrieks, bells clang, tambourines jangle. Automobiles and motorcycles roar, horns honk. A mob swarms over the sidewalks, into the park, down the Panhandle, on the streets. It’s absolutely appalling. The stench of gasoline and body odor, mixed with sickly sweet incense, nauseates him.

Is this a vision of hell? To the technopolistic plutocracy, this is a paradise, ripe and ready for exploitation.

Down to business. Evidence supports Chi’s probable presence in this Hot Dim Spot. His skipfather traced the Open Time Loop himself.

Oh, fine. What is this evidence? Three pieces of evidence, no more and no less.

First, there’s the carving on the pillar in the Portals of the Past. The key, a reference to Chiron. But the carving is gone. Mega. There goes Chi’s fifty-one percent probability.

Second? There’s an advertisement. A local newspaper at the time called the Berkeley Barb ran personal ads. And there, among guys looking for swinging chicks and chicks looking for swinging times, was an ad placed during the summer of 1967 by someone looking for a guy with long red hair. And, yes, Chi is a guy with long red hair.

At least, he would be a guy with red hair if he hadn’t taken the radiation vaccine and suffered the aftereffects like everyone else his age. He has red hair now—very long red hair—thanks to implants, an unpleasant business to which he submitted most reluctantly. Bella Venus had been understanding, if a bit distant. On reflection, he realizes the red hair is a self-fulfilling time loop. A small time loop, but a loop just the same. Not good.

And third? The third piece of evidence is the CBS News footage that caused such excitement among the Archivists. The footage shows a tall, slim, red-haired person standing in the background of a scene shot on Haight Street sometime during the summer of 1967. The original footage, when discovered, was reconstructed into a holoid.

That’s it. That’s the evidence, all three pieces. Whoop-dee-doo.

His skipfather had said, “You’re the one, Chi.” He had tears in his eyes, but he was sure. His skipmother must not have been so sure. Why else had she slipped contraband in his jeans pocket at the very last moment?

The noise, the stench, the giddy energy, the sheer weirdness of it all overwhelms him. Chi decides to avoid the main drag. Hungry, but he decides against swallowing a nutribead from his nutritional necklace. Drowsy, but he decides against another neurobic bead from his pharma necklace. His supplies are limited. He’s got to make everything last seventy-six days.

Find a place to rest, that’s what he’ll do. He can sleep anywhere quiet, anywhere private. His t-port training included camping on the ground.

He sets out down Oak Street, but people crowd the back alleys, too. Man oh man! He keeps to the shadows, avoids people. The shrewd inspection by the boy in the bush hat unnerved him.

Does he look okay? Does he fit in?

Or does he arouse suspicion. There’s plenty of suspicion in this Day.

His costume was designed by Archival specialists with--so they claimed--scrupulous attention to detail. Beatle boots with absurd pointed toes. Straight-leg Levi’s that have been styled much the same since 1849 to Chi’s day. The pharmaceutical necklace and nutritional necklace will easily pass for love beads. His French flight jacket in a tough brown synthy looks, feels, and smells like real goatskin.

Everything is bacteria-resistant, waterproofed, and dust-proofed. The payload on a t-port has got to be light, so he’ll have to wear the costume for seventy-six days. The Archivists assured him no one will think this unusual. Runaways to the Haight-Ashbury often brought nothing but their ideals and the shirts on their backs.

His jacket pockets are well supplied: Block, a maser, a scanner, a scope, filters, wipes, and a good supply of prophylaks. It’s imperative he avoid the bacteria, pollutants, and viruses of this Day.

His knuckletop is the largest payload and was the object of the fiercest contention. It looks just like a man’s ring of carved silver with a raised bezel. The power in there—wow. No t-porter before Chi had been allowed to take such a modern tool. The temptation to violate Tenet Seven of the Grandmother Principle—which forbids the use of modern technologies in the past--was just too great.

His skipmother insisted over the objections of several directors. My skipson takes the knuckletop, she said, or he doesn’t go.

Now Chi pats his jeans pocket. The moment he touches it, he knows what his skipmother slipped him. He fishes out the stash cube. What’s inside? Tiny crystal slivers he can insert in the knuckletop. Holoid discs.

What’s on the discs? He can’t wait to view them.

Chi breaks into a jog. Where to? Just keep moving. He dodges through the crowd, seeking someplace quiet, someplace private. He sprints down Page, crosses over to Clayton Street.

Suddenly he sees something that stops him in his tracks in the middle of the street. A flatbed truck jammed with kids screeches to a halt. The driver yells and flips him the finger.

Chi doesn’t care. Excitement squeezes his chest as he sprints down the block. There, at the corner, is a three-story Victorian commercial building. The address, 555 Clayton Street. Above a door on the ground floor is the sight that has sent him sprinting. There’s a sign above a shop:

Wow! Like the carving that’s supposed to be on the Portals of the Past!

But not the same. He calms down. The two other symbols are missing. Not the same, at all.

Still, the resemblance is striking. The resemblance is good enough for him.

Chi raises the knuckletop to his lips. “K-T,” he whispers and cups his hand behind the ring. A little field of lavender light pops up halfway between his hand and his face.

He whispers a description of the shop sign.

The knuckletop analyzes his description against the Archival files in its memory and calculates how meaningful the information may be. Bright red alphanumerics flash. Not that meaningful, it turns out, but there is some probability edging up to forty percent.

Some probability is also good enough for him. It’s a sign, a portent, a good omen.

Chi slides a prophylak out of his jacket pocket, shakes it free of its folds. With a gesture he’s practiced hundreds of times, he sweeps the fine PermaPlast over his hand. The prophylak adheres to his palm and fingers, forming a shield against the toxins of the past.

He pulls open the door handle and enters the shop. A flickering blue neon sign informs him the place is called the Mystic Eye.

3

Somebody to Love

Ruby A. Maverick says, Dig It:

The media moan and whine that they don’t understand these crazed folks with their frolics and their TITillations. And since the media don’t understand—and why should they? diatribe and invective make such good copy—it follows that the hip community stands for nothing. Who knows what their principles are, let alone their MORALS?

Yet when the Mayor of San Francisco and the Chief of Police decline to do a THING about the stampede of kids—who were never invited by the hip community, the hip community has nothing to do with the Number One song on the Hit Parade—why, the hip community sets up crash pads in churches and garages and the backs of stores. The hip community cooks food and gives it away. The hip community sets up a free medical clinic and free switchboards and free boxes on the street and free entertainment in the park. The hip community sets up a job co-op and a merchants’ association to employ the poor li’l refugees fleeing AnyTown, U.S.A.

Why, exactly, are the kids fleeing?

WE SHALL SEE.

The hip community does all these things at its own private and lean expense. But GEE it’s strange. HEAVENS, it’s awful puzzling. The media want to know, what do these crazed folks DO? Why, they dance. They sing. They read odd books. They paint odd pictures. They ponder odd philosophies. They run shops and cafes and newspapers.

HOW SHOCKING. They are attempting to create a NEW COMMUNITY.

And after the Man spies on them and pries into their lives and J-Edgar-Hoovers them till it’s not funny, ALL OF A SUDDEN the hip community doesn’t want to hang out with the media anymore. To the Post and Time and Life, the hip community says BUZZ OFF.

And that’s NOT NICE.

So the media want to know—since the hip community stands for nothing—WHY OH WHY are kids from all over America stampeding to join a pack of lawless, immoral, fornicating, stoned, dirty, lazy freaks?

Uh-huh. And you don’t know half the story.

“No, sonny, the Mystic Eye does not sell Zig-Zag,” Ruby tells the scruffy teenybopper. “You want rolling papers, you go around the corner to the Psychedelic Shop.”

She struggles to make change out of a buck from the teenybopper’s purchase of an incense stick for thirty-nine cents. Damn Stan the Man. Holding onto her calculating machine like he once held onto her common sense. Her heart-hostage days. Not anymore. He won’t shuck her, running that game. Won’t get her back in his bed, either.

She keeps one eye on the red-haired dude who charges in the door, the other on the teenybopper whose hands are little too nimble. Twenty minutes till closing on a Wednesday night, another twelve-hour workday for her, and the cash drawer is jammed with loot. The Solstice Celebration brought quite a crowd, not to mention Jimi Hendrix and the Jefferson Airplane are playing the Fillmore. Mercury is transiting Gemini, and the street is jumping.

“No freakin’ Zig-Zag? What kinda hellhole is dis, anyway?” The teenybopper swaggers in front of his hoodlum friends. Is he walking the walk, talking the talk? His bangs straggle in his eyes, he hasn’t washed in a week, and his voice is gravelly from way too many tokes. He thinks he’s cool, rapping trash.

At thirty-five, Ruby is old enough to be his mother and big enough to tan his hide. Bend the little jerk over her knee and whack his butt till he cries.

Leo Gorgon, lounging at the counter, takes in the scene. “Hey, Ruby,” he says in a fake-nice voice.”How come you don’t sell freakin’ Zig-Zag?”

She bestows upon him a withering glance. “This shop, my shop, is the Mystic Eye.” She leans across the counter, lowering herself nose-level to the teenybopper. “We’re into magic, sonny. Real magic.” She expertly palms his quarter, pulls the coin from his ear.

His hoodlum friends stare. Their bloodshot eyes bug out.

“Like, wow!”

“You see that?”

“Aw, hell,” the teenybopper says. Mr. Know-It-All. “So she’s got tha’ power. Lotsa people do. I saw that dude”--he juts his chin at Gorgon--“pull flowers right outta thin air on the corner of Stanyan.”

Gorgon rolls his eyes and snorts. Like, what a shuck, Ruby, moonstoning flower children with parlor tricks. Right. He’s a fakir and she’s a witch. Why should they talk when they could communicate telepathically?

Ruby shrugs. What does this Digger dude want with her? The Diggers have done some good works, sure. They’ve supplied more than their fair share of free food and free clothes. But Gorgon is a wild card. He’s got his own agenda. She’s got spies, and her spies say this rooster’s boosting goods all over town. Breaking and entering, mostly. No one outside the tribes is supposed to know what Gorgon looks like, who or what he really is. It’s part and parcel of the Digger legend playing in his mind. Leo the Gorgon, the man of many heads. Not a real person, stupid. He’s like Robin Hood or Batman or the Joker. A myth.

Right. Ruby trusts the mythical man about as far as she could pick him up and throw him, which wouldn’t be very far ‘cause the dude’s got a good five inches on her and is built lean and mean. And now you know what she wants with him. Why she allows him to situate his fine ass behind her counter and shoot the breeze as if they’re old pals. ‘Cause booster or not, he is one righteous cat, and she hasn’t made it with a man worth a second how-do-you-do since she and Stan called it quits.

Adios, common sense.

The red-haired dude gives her a sharp, questioning glance. They all look too young to Ruby, but at least this one isn’t still sucking his thumb. Does she know him? Uh-uh. He’s got to be brand-new. Tall, slim, pale. Groomed. Rich Kid written all over him. A tourist? With a touching sense of wonder, he looks around her shop as if he’s never seen anything like it.

Across one whole wall are shelves of mason jars filled with leaves and powders and bits of bark. She’s got the only place in town stocking acacia, angelica, black cohosh, cascara sagrada, damiana, dragon’s blood, ginseng, kava kava root, mandrake, periwinkle, quince, Saint-John’s-wort, and witch hazel. The heads clean her out of catnip and parsley every time rumors of a legal high hit the street.

She’s had the savvy to score a Health Department certificate, which she hangs next to her diploma from the Platonic Academy of Herbal Renaissance and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Mills College. But the beat cops still rattle her cage now and then. She’s got a running tab at HALO, the Haight-Ashbury Legal Organization.

That’s one wall. Another wall holds crystal bottles filled with essence oils for astrological signs, all the planets, and twenty saints. She stocks scented candles, herbal bath salts, spice soaps, loofahs and real sponges, plus twelve varieties of incense she imports for a nickel and sells for thirty-nine cents. Seems people can’t get enough sweet smoke these days.

And the Mystic Eye stocks books. Books you can’t find anywhere else: African spells, alchemy, American Indian lore, the dark arts, dreams, hypnosis, the I Ching or Book of Changes, out-of-the-body experiences, past lives, voodoo. Ever since Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters spread the word you can discover psychedelic secrets in certain novels, she can barely keep in stock Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. She herself believes that psychedelic secrets are hidden in the stories of Cordwainer Smith, but that’s her opinion.

These are strange and wondrous days.

In her glass cases are amulets and talismans, Chinese coins for casting the I Ching, ankhs and pentagrams, beads and fetish necklaces, peace signs strung on silver chains. Devotees of the neighborhood band, the Grateful Dead, keep buying out her inventory of skull and skeleton charms.

The red-haired dude takes it all in, starts to touch a porcelain Kuan Yin, then pulls his hand away as if he’s not allowed. He plants himself by the incense burners, a vantage point from which he can see the whole shop. Alarm nicks Ruby’s peace of mind. He stands there, alert, like he’s waiting for something, and surveys the shop with lucid blue eyes.

She can’t figure him out. A big-time booster or a knickknacker looking for kicks? The teenybopper is trouble, but this one? She doesn’t pick up the vibe. He’s a strange one, though. Sort of foreign-looking. Pa is a bigwig at some Euro biz, Ma is a class act dripping with whatever she wants to drip with, and sonny’s got a mind of his own. Accounts for his too-cool couture.

Ruby sighs. Zig-Zag. Uh-huh. It never used to be this way, every punk demanding rolling papers. High school kiddies flaunting roaches on the street like it’s nothing.

She never forgot how the Man shook people down in North Beach. You hear that knock on the door, squint at that flashlight in your face, get slapped around just once—one time is all it takes—and you never ever want to mess with the fuzz again. It is not a moment in the brevity of life to treasure.

Some folks dig danger. Not Ruby. That’s how she’s come to feel about illegal substances. Never ever again. Just isn’t worth it. She’d trash her entire herb collection—which took her five years to acquire—if she needed to. Like when the Drugstore Café changed its name to Drogstore ‘cause the heat wasn’t worth it. Never mind that a mom-and-pop pharmacy selling calamine lotion and Band-Aids stood in the same location on Haight Street fifteen years. Just not worth the hassle. She thanks her lucky stars a crazy colored chick like her has made out so good in a white man’s world circa 1967 San Francisco, U.S.A. Isn’t anything worth more than her life, liberty, and the pursuit of free enterprise.

Ruby smacks the teenybopper’s change in his grimy palm. “No hash pipes, no water pipes, no opium pipes, no chillums, no bongs, no roach clips, no plastic baggies, no spoons, no rollers, no tweezers, no screens. And no Zig-Zag rolling papers. Can I interest you in some jasmine soap?”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the red-haired dude says, “but I just saw him take something.”

Ruby seizes the teenybopper’s wrist and lunges around the counter. The teenybopper twists away and sprints. He and his hoodlum friends clatter out the door.

“Stop him!” Ruby cries.

But the red-haired dude shakes his head and doesn’t budge.

Damn! Ruby dashes after the teenybopper onto the street. He careers into a troop of chanting Krishna devotees with their orange robes, shaved heads, and finger cymbals. Ruby donates two hundred bucks a year to the local ashram. The devotees dance in place, a tangle of arms and robes and bare feet. Ruby catches up to the teenybopper, grabs his wrist but good, and twists his hand back.

“Give it up, you little shit.”

Like a bitty boy, which is what he really is, tears pool in his eyes. He drops a pricey silver skull charm in the palm of her hand.

“So, sonny. You wanted to buy this?”

He shakes his head, eyes cast down.

“Uh-huh. I should turn you in. You want to go to the slam?”

His hoodlum friends are jumping up and down across the street, whooping and catcalling. The teenybopper looks up at her, and she sees how his pals harass him, maybe a big brother bullies him back home or Pa lays a strap on his back.

“Like, I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Don’t get me busted, lady. Please?”

He’s such a sorry kid that a hangnail of mercy scrapes across her heart. They’re pests—pests!—flower children like him. They’re ruining her neighborhood. But they are children, some of them barely out of grade school, their ears glued to transistor radios playing the Number One song on the Hit Parade. The song tells them there’s a New Explanation, and if you’re searching for something, you may find it in San Francisco. They all know the address.

“All right, sonny, scram. Don’t you and your hoodlum friends ever come in my shop again unless you’re there to buy something. You dig?” She lets him go.

He nods and darts away like wild rabbit.

She is hopping mad by the time she returns to her shop, madder now at the red-haired dude for not helping her than with the teenybopper. But when she storms back inside, she sees him standing quietly by the counter. He leans against the wall, his stance anything but casual. He stares at Gorgon, and Gorgon pretends to read the newspaper, his racehorse legs stretched out, his eye on the drawer packed with cash. She left the drawer wide open, chasing after a five-dollar silver charm that cost her fifty cents wholesale.

Ruby’s eyes lock with the young dude’s. He did the righteous thing. But how does this stranger know to distrust Leo Gorgon? And what about the dude? He could have ripped off the drawer, himself. Why is he so good?

“Closing in five,” she calls to the remaining shoppers. Exhaustion drags her down. Too many weird trips today, and it’s only the first day of the Summer of Love. She taps Gorgon on the shoulder. “You, too, Leo. Scram.”

He jumps up, towering over her. Sweet Isis, she’s a soft touch for a tall man. “Hey, Ruby. Don’t be like that.” He slides a finger down her shoulder, toys with her neckline, touching her skin. “Don’t let’s call it a night. Maybe we could go upstairs. I hear you like wine. I like wine, too.”

“Oh, and I got me a fine bottle of Chablis.” A soft touch for a tall man, but her well-developed sense of outrage kicks up. “So what is this? Hey, Ruby, I’d like to go upstairs with you. I’d like to drink your wine. What else would you like to do, Leo?”

He looks puzzled. She might be telling him true or she might be shucking him, but he’s not sure ‘cause she says all this sweet as poison.

“A lot, Ruby. There’s a lot I’d like to do,” he says in a husky voice.

“And there’s a lot we could do. Some fine day.”

His genuine disappointment almost changes her mind.

But, no. It doesn’t feel right. What does Gorgon think? What does he see? That she’s got a brimming cash drawer? That she’s still on a rebound from Stan the Man? An easy mark? An easy lay?

It’s too mixed up, and it’s way too fast. Happens a lot these crazy days. Flash! People meet on the street, fall into bed. Flash! Longtime lovers fall apart. Did people used to be this fast? Even Roi—her beautiful doomed Roi—actually courted her in the good old days after the war. Or is she feeling her thirty-five years?

“Leo, another time.”

Gorgon shuffles out, along with everyone else. She locks the door, dims the lights. And turns.

The red-haired dude stands silently at the back of the shop, with such a strange look in his eye that a needle of alarm angles up her spine. She walks back to the counter, calm as the moon. She should get a gun. She’s been thinking about a sweet little number called a Walther since the spring.

“So, sonny,” she says, tidying up. “Why didn’t you chase after that knickknacker?”

He shrugs. “For one thing, he was dirty.”

“Dirty! That’s a new one.”

“I didn’t want to touch him.” Aloof, disdainful. “And you left your money drawer unattended. I watched it for you.”

“My friend was watching the drawer.”

“He’s not your friend.”

“Oh? What makes you think so?”

“I calculated a positive ID from the Archives.”

“The Archives, uh-huh.” She retrieves her broom from the closet behind the counter. “So, what. You a narc? ‘Cause if you’re a narc, I can tell you right now, I don’t deal. I don’t even sell paraphernalia. I want nothing to do with that scene, understand? I study the ancient ways, that’s all. My herbs are legal substances used for medicinal purposes. You cannot get high on catnip unless you’re a cat.”

“A narc? You mean a police informant?”

“Oh, shit!”

“No, no! I’m not! Please believe me!” He moves a little too close. “You’re not doing anything illegal.”

“You bet your ass.”

“But there is something I’d like to know. Are you sheltering runaways?”

“Sheltering runaways? Sonny, I live alone.”

“Hmm,” he muses. “But there’s a probability you will.”

She brandishes the broom handle. “There’s a probability I can poke your eye out with this thing.” His eyes widen. “Out you go.”

“But--”

She jabs the handle at him. “But nothing. You think I’m gonna let a little shit like you sting me? Get out. Get out of my shop now.”

* * *

Through the peephole in the front door, Ruby watches him go. Halfway across Clayton, he hesitates, returns, and sits on her stoop. Groovy. Better him than a flock of flower children. Either he’s stupid or he likes her for some reason, and that’s stupid. She hits the three deadbolts home, hooks the chain lock. She runs the broom over the floor, but her heart’s not it. Sweet Isis, what a day.

Has she become the target of a sting? Should she trash the herbs tonight or tomorrow morning? She’ll have to call HALO first thing, find out if stocking an herb collection is probable cause for a search warrant. She’s got nothing to hide, but what if they plant something on her premises? Harassment happens. Damn it, anyway.

Ruby tallies and bundles the cash. She takes down the two-by-four, spray-painted-gold Eye of Horus, pulls aside the red velvet curtain, opens the safe, and deposits the bundle. The Mystic Eye has grossed two grand since Sunday, and it’s only Wednesday night.

She thanks her lucky stars she landed the long-term lease on 555 Clayton in the spring of ’62 when rents were rock-bottom. Three thousand square feet at two-hundred-fifty bucks a month for ten years. A commercial space downstairs, a two-level apartment upstairs, a little weedy backyard, and a detached garage in the back. The landlady didn’t care what Ruby did with the place, as long as she wasn’t running a brothel. Mrs. Andretti turned out to be a nice Catholic lady who liked to read the tarot. She and Ruby got along just fine.

From spring of ’62 to fall of ’65, the Mystic Eye broke even, with fun money left over. In fall of ’65, the Mystic Eye started grossing five hundred a month, then a grand. Come fall of ’66, three grand a month.

In spring of ’67, in anticipation of the mass pilgrimage of world youth during the summer, people of the New Community were asked to join the Council for a Summer of Love. The council consisted of hip merchants, hip newspaper publishers, political leaders, and various tribal chiefs, several of whom are known drug dealers like Stan the Man. The council booked campgrounds, planned festivals, and sought donations for free services to be offered to the newcomers.

Leo Gorgon was invited to sit on the council. Gorgon had journeyed from New York City to San Francisco in the winter of ’66 for the New Year’s Eve Bash and has done his Digger thing in town ever since.

But here’s the trouble: Ruby was not invited to sit on the Council for a Summer of Love, even though she’s lived in the San Francisco Bay Area her whole life and owned a hip business in the Haight-Ashbury since 1962.

Why not?

Dig It:

The Council for a Summer of Love invited only men. Like Leo Gorgon, they are all tall, good-looking, and white. They like to party. They’ve been partying with each other since forever. Well, six months feels like forever when you’re wasted from morn till eve.

The boys are pleased with themselves. They publish proclamations. They hold press conferences, which get televised and covered by the papers. They’ve declared that two hundred thousand flower children are about to descend on the Haight-Ashbury.

At first, Ruby was stung by the council’s failure to invite her, which she had trouble understanding till she got it: she’s an uppity bitch. Wait, wait. She’s an uppity colored bitch. Two-hundred-thousand flower children are about to descend on her neighborhood? Far out. She wants five dollars from each and every one of them.

No wonder a Digger like Leo Gorgon is sniffing around her skirts. Who believes his shuck that money is dead?

* * *

Ruby climbs the stairs to her apartment. Two stories of Victorian manse, all for her. Pa would have been so proud to see her success as a grown woman. Ma would have been proud, too, knowing how her hard work at Marinship during the war and the settlement money after her shameful death had provided for her daughter.

She heads for her kitchen, retrieves that fine bottle of Chablis, takes glass and bottle to the living room, and lights a log in the fireplace.

She settles on her comfy couch, and her cats rouse themselves from all over the apartment to join her. There slinks Sita, a tiny seal point queen, and Luna, a blue point princess. Rama, a regal seal point king, perches on the arm of the couch next to Ara, a flame point prince, all amber and ivory. Now Alana, the Angora, bounds onto her lap, a lithe little beauty with golden eyes, silky white fur, and a plumy tail. The cats crowd around, nuzzling her fingers, trilling and purring.

“My babies,” Ruby croons.

The comforts of home tug at Ruby’s heart more powerfully these days than adventures out there, in the world. But, sweet Isis, in the old days, she had herself a time.

North Beach in the late fifties: the Beats ranted and raved, they were a crazy cabal, but they inflicted their neuroses mostly on each other and they read books. They took pride in the intellect, schooled or self-taught. They actually read and wrote poetry. Words, jazz, and ideas turned them on. Oh, the Beats smoked grass and drank peyote-button tea. In her twenties, Ruby tried just about everything there was to try in those days. She regretted nothing. It was part of the exotic philosophies, otherworldly cultures, and experiments on life’s odyssey.

Beat for Ruby meant the quest for freedom.

The junk scene happened then, too, as Ruby well knew. Junk had blown through the underground a long, long time. A few got into it; a few lost their way to it. But the hip in late fifties California generally disdained habits. Habits hung up your freedom. A square gig on Monkey Street or a spike in your valley both boiled down to the same thing: trips that stole your mind and your time and eventually your soul.

By 1962, North Beach was getting too wild and too mean. It got so you couldn’t stage a decent Blabbermouth Night without some drunk taking a swing at a Poet and bringing down the house.

So Ruby and a lot of folks split to the Haight-Ashbury, where the rents were ridiculously low, the air fresh and chilly, the park gorgeous. The neighborhood was strictly lowbrow, on the wide, full lip of the Fillmore, a scary black ghetto. She and her friends set up shops, studios, cafes. They smoked some more grass and drank a whole lot more Papa Cribari Red, in spite of the hangover.

The colony was cool in ’62, private and civilized. No one chased after the media. No one wanted to be pigeonholed, let alone holed up in a prison cell at the Big Q. The colony got behind poetry and art and novels, philosophy and jazz and folk music. People formed makeshift families of all kinds behind closed doors; they cherished their privacy. The scene was really rather Zen.

Ruby called it the personal revolution.

And dope was not some monstrous, all-consuming demonic force. A cultural demigod. A cruel, obsessive commerce. A standard by which folks associated or did not associate with each other.

Ruby, sipping her wine, cuddling her cats around her, wonders: When did it change?

Grandmother Says: Meng (Youthful Folly)

The Image: A spring wells at the foot of the mountain.

The spring escapes stagnation by filling the hollow places in its path.

The Oracle: Youthful folly may succeed, provided truth is sought.

In the time of youth, folly may not be an evil. This is the initial stage of all things. But one must seek experienced teachers and maintain property attitudes. Such attitudes include modesty, receptivity, and perseverance.

Hexagram 4, The I Ching or Book of Changes

Ruby remembers the next new group infiltrating the scene, hot and restless at twenty years old. Junior hipsters, the Beats mocked them. Hippies. They were a new breed of drifter, kids on the road. Teens who shot junk, did time in juvie, ran with biker gangs in New York City, New Orleans, Los Angeles. They slid in and out of the nuthouse. A whole underclass who aspired to much and received little in chicken-in-every-pot America. But these kids were discovering that drifting could be all right. A groove, in fact. Hell, this is America. Rebels built the place.

Hip to the dope underground, riding the bicoastal circuit, cooler than cool, these young hoodies had an entrepreneurial streak that had eluded the Beats. They didn’t just deal to survive, they dealt to thrive. They had ambition. They knew how to hustle. If you did it with wit and style, hustling could be fun and exciting, not to mention lucrative. A beautiful market was opening up. A ripe market, bigger than big. The college scene, the youth scene, the swinging scene.

That’s when it changed, Ruby decides and sips her chablis.

Everyone began to talk about dope. Write about it, joke about it, sing songs about it, recommend it, revel in it, glorify it, find salvation in it. She counted a dozen drug jokes in A Hard Day’s Night. No, not the Beatles, packaged up squeaky-clean for the teenyboppers? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Leary is lecturing about it, Kesey is partying on it, everyone who is anyone is turning on. They say lawyers and doctors and politicians will be turning on one day. Imagine! And all the laws of the land and scary propaganda films couldn’t put that shattered value system together again.

But dope was never the New Explanation. Not to Ruby.

* * *

A breeze kicks up from the ocean. The wind chimes on the deck off her kitchen clang. Ruby sets down her glass, unlocks the kitchen door, and steps outside. The willow and the lemon tree toss about, casting restless shadows across the backyard. She breathes the damp night air, catches sprinkles of rain in the palm of her hand.

The wind chimes are way too loud; she’ll never get to sleep tonight. She reaches for the redwood bench, drags it over to the deck’s edge. She steps up and reaches for the chimes. The breeze kicks up again, and suddenly she’s dizzy. The long day, a sip of wine, the lateness of the hour all conspire to steal her balance. She wavers, unsteady on her feet.

She starts to fall!

She seizes the chimes, which are strung on tiger-tail fishing line. Her foot slips off the bench, scraping her ankle. Jammed together, the chimes make an awful clamor. She dangles from the tiger-tail, testing claims that the line can support up to two hundred pounds. Not that she weighs quite that much, but dripping wet she’s got some heft to her. She catches herself on the railing, swings back. She loses her grip, falls down on the bench. “Damn!” she mutters. Her heart is pounding like a jackhammer. She wipes sweat from her upper lip.

As she sprawls, breathing heavily, she hears a low hiss, and her eye catches on something. A tall, dark figure stands in the backyard just inside the wood-slat fence, arms raised, hands extended, fingers spread. Eerie black sparks flicker around the fingertips.

A burglar, a dealer, a drifter, a narc, a cop, the FBI, the CIA, a murderer? Leo Gorgon? The red-haired dude?

How many people does she have to be afraid of?

What is it?

The wind moans, and shadows swirl like living things. Where eyes ought to be in the figure’s face burn two black holes. She can just make out a snarl of a mouth.

A deep, awful cold rushes up from the yard.

Crazy thoughts tumble through her mind. Has she fallen off the deck, after all, broken her neck, and died, and she doesn’t know it yet? Has her double come to take her soul away?

The figure takes a step toward her.

No! She hasn’t fallen! She’s not dead! She runs inside, bangs the door shut, locks it tight. She slaps the kitchen light off, grabs the phone.

And call who? Cops who want to bust her?

She turns and sees a face--sweet Isis, it’s her face--smashed against the glass of the door. Lips writhe off shattered teeth. An eye drips down a cheek.

She screams.

The face disappears.

* * *

Ruby peers through the front-door peephole of the Mystic Eye. The red-haired dude is still sitting on her stoop, his back propped against the wall, his long legs stretched out before him. Arms folded over his chest, he nods gently, eyes closed, chin drooping in the collar of his jacket.

She cracks open the door with the chain lock still locked.

“Hey, you,” she whispers. “Wake up. Can you hear me, huh?”

He yawns, blinks. His eyes flutter open, shiny from the street lights. Human eyes, not black holes.

“You tell me why you stayed and watched Leo Gorgon and you tell me right now. What do you know about him?”

“I told you,” he says, sitting up and stretching. “I calculated the probabilities. I. . . .” Big yawn, another stretch. “I calculated.”

“Calculate your ass over here.” She slaps the door in frustration. “And don’t give me that probabilities shuck. No one outside of the Haight-Ashbury knows about Leo Gorgon. I’ve never seen you before, sonny. So tell me something good. Convince me.”

He stands, loosening his legs. “Convince you of what?”

“That you’re not the Man, setting me up for a bust ‘cause you don’t like my face.” She grinds her teeth. “Damn it, sonny, I need somebody. To help me now.”

He comes over at once and huddles by the door. “I’m not a narc, I swear. Your sign”—he points up at her blue neon Eye of Horus, which she leaves on all night for good luck—“is a sign.”

“My sign is a sign. I’m glad we cleared that up.”

“Yes! If my calculation is correct, you’re another point of reference. I searched my Archives after you kicked me out. I’ve got a record of a woman, probably a shop owner. A quadroon, dark curly hair, light skin.”

“There’s a record?” Ruby’s adrenaline shoots through the ceiling. “Of me?”

He presses his thumb to his lip. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Sonny, I’m not worrying. I’m panicking.”

“Forget I said it. Believe me, you’re not in any trouble. Please tell me how I can help you. Is something wrong?”

A record of you, a record of you keeps echoing in her ear. Damn if she knows why, but she decides to trust him. His vibe is still all right.

“Someone’s messing around in my backyard. There’s something weird about it. I don’t want to call the cops.”

He bends and deftly picks up a large square of something that looks like plastic sandwich wrap lying on the stoop. He’s been sleeping on sandwich wrap? He shakes it like a stage magician and the plastic wrap vanishes in his hand.

“I’ll go look.”

“Don’t get your head blown off, you hear?”

“How do I get back there?”

“There’s an alley right there, next to the building. The garage is out back. The yard is next to it, but it’s all fenced in and the gate is locked.”

“I’ll manage.”

He strides down the alley before she can tell him to stop. She slams the door shut, hits the deadbolts home, races upstairs to the kitchen, and steps out on the deck.

She watches him down below, pushing the gate open. Beautiful. He picked the lock. She’s not sure which makes her happier: that he’s a narc or a lockpick. He takes something from his jacket pocket and proceeds to creep along her fence, north to south, and back again.

Nothing. The intruder is gone.

“You see anything?” he calls up to her.

“No. He—she—it; it’s gone.”

He stands at the foot of the stairway leading up from the yard to the deck. If she’d fallen, she could have broken her neck. He gazes up at her, his face as pale as a peeled potato.

“Lock the gate,” she says, “and come on up.”

She steps inside and sits warily at her kitchen table.

In a moment, he clatters up the stairs, steps inside, and shuts and locks the door behind him. Polite. A respectful young man, how often do you see that these days? He takes out an astringent-smelling tissue and swabs his fingers, his palms, his knuckles, between and around his fingers, underneath his fingernails, digging at the quick.

“You jimmied the lock.”

“No, no, it was open.”

“I don’t think so.”

He shrugs. “My name is Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco and I need a place to stay.”

Ruby sniffs. Isopropyl alcohol. Is he a needle freak? But folks like that are notoriously nonchalant about personal cleanliness. “I can’t help you with that, sonny. Like I told you, I live alone.”

“But you shelter people. Runaways, and people.”

“No, you’re mistaken. I don’t. I never have. Oh, maybe a friend now and then. Or a lover. But I don’t rent rooms. This isn’t a crash pad. And I don’t take in runaways. Or people.”

“But you will.”

“No, I never will. I’m not into communes. I like my privacy. I need my privacy. I’ve worked long and hard to get a place of my own. So you best be on your way.”

“I won’t disturb you.”

“You got that right, you won’t disturb me. Try the Print Mint. People crash on the floor there. Or Trip Without a Ticket on Cole Street, that’s a Digger pad.” Ruby thinks again. “Try Huckleberry House or Glide Church or All Saints. Or just walk down the street. There’s always a party. Someone will take you in. But you can’t stay here.”

“I’ll pay you rent. I’ll sleep on the floor. I’m used to sleeping on floors.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I hate sleeping on floors.” He pulls a wad of new-looking dollars from his jacket pocket and clumsily hands them to her.

“What are these, marked bills?”

“Straight from the Treasury.” He chuckles. “I’ll work for you. You need someone to watch the shop for knickknackers while you’re busy selling. Isn’t that true?”

Only too true. Knickknackers account for a couple hundred a month flying out the door. But what would he take? She studies him. “Why? Why here? Why me?”

He smiles, and it’s a lovely smile. A Rich Kid smile with perfect, sparkling white teeth. He shrugs. “Let’s just say I like your sign. I like your shop and I like you. You’re different.”

“Uh-huh.” But different is good in Ruby’s world. Different is what she’s set out to achieve. “My pa was half Cherokee and half Irish, and my ma was Haitian black with a splash of Southern cream. I am Ruby A. Maverick, and you may call me Ruby.”

“You’re beautiful, Ruby. And you are going to let me stay.”

“Uh-huh.” She likes flattery as much as anyone, but he’s much too young for her. She’s old enough to be his mother, she thinks for the hundredth time. Oh hell, she’s old enough to be everybody’s mother. Well, not quite. But what will people say on the street?

What will people say. The thought of gossip makes her smile. Let them flap their jaws.

“I must be crazy.”

“You won’t regret it.”

“We shall see.” She shakes her finger at him. “Listen up, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. No dope and no funny stuff in my house or you’re out on your ass. You rip me off, I’ll get you busted, I swear.”

“No dope and no funny stuff and I won’t rip you off.”

“We shall see.” If only she could believe him.

* * *

Ruby takes Chi into her living room with its hardwood floors and Persian and Navajo rugs. She shows off her herb and cactus planters, her teak and rosewood furniture. Her stereo record player and reel-to-reel tape deck are connected to speakers on both private floors. On the white stucco walls she’s mixed Op Art and Mondrian prints with framed psychedelic posters from the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom.

“Oh, I know they’re just posters,” she says. “But one day they’ll disappear.”

Chi stares with that odd sense of wonder. “Yes, they will. They’ll disappear and people will only guess what the real thing once looked like.”

Cool. He appreciates art. That’s a good sign. She finds her glass of wine, offers him some. He declines, also a good sign. Some young dudes can’t handle the booze.

He gingerly sits on the couch, and her cats swarm curiously all around him, sniffing, trilling, rubbing against him the way cats do. A very, very good sign, that her little psychic barometers take so readily to him.

“It’s sad, you know?” she says, settling herself in her rocking chair. “It’s all just a hustle these days. There’s no quest for freedom anymore. Today was the Solstice, the first day of summer. A very high holy day to the ancients. The longest day of the year. And you know what, Chi? I say it’s all a shuck. The Haight-Ashbury has up and died. The love is gone.”

“No! Don’t say that, Ruby. The Haight’s not dead.”

“You don’t know how it used to be. You could walk down the street, and someone, anyone, would come right up and put his arms around you, and he wouldn’t be trying to hustle you. He’d just be there, loving you. He really would. People believed in freedom. Believed in love. There was joy.” She wants to cry or scream, it’s so damn sad.

“Then it’s up to you and me, Ruby, to keep the Summer of Love alive,” Chi declares.

“You can sleep on the couch.” She strides off to find him a pillow, some blankets.

After she settles him in, she climbs upstairs to third floor, taking her glass of Chablis. She washes up, changes into a night gown, then collapses on her big double featherbed, but she’s not alone for long. Her cats nestle around her.

Could it be true? That a guy his age still believes in the New Explanation? The vision she and her friends once believed in and built their lives around, before things got so crazy in 1967?

Is Chi for real?

* * *

Ruby wakes, smiling for a change. There were times, after Stan left, when she didn’t want to face the day. Cold dawns when she lingered under the covers, curled up like a baby.

But not this morning. She is up ‘n’ at ‘em, in spite of the chilly fog. And she realizes: It’s good to have someone in the house. For the first time in a long time, she isn’t all alone.

Ruby wraps herself in an embroidered silk robe and drifts downstairs.

Before she heads for the kitchen to brew coffee, she peeks in at him. His boots are neatly stashed beneath a chair hung with his posh leather jacket. Chi himself lies on the couch beneath the blankets, very still. He smiles. Since Ruby climbed out of bed, the cats have discovered him and taken him over, crouching on his chest, perching on his thighs, grooming each other between his ankles.

“Morning, Chi. Hope you like cats.” Ruby laughs. “They certainly seem to like you.”

“Oh, we like cats,” he says. “Schrodinger’s Cat is a fundamental of probability physics.”

We. His distinction of himself and his people from her is unmistakable. Plus this probability stuff again. She doesn’t like it.

She perches on the rocking chair. “Look here, sonny. Let’s get this straight. Files and records. Things you think you know about me or someone like me. I got hassled by the heat once, but I’ve never been arrested. I’m not somebody famous. So tell me true. What exactly do you mean you’ve got a record of me?”

“Well,” he says slowly, “there are journalists and reporters observing the scene, right?”

“I’ll say.”

“Okay. So someone’s seen your shop and you, and mentioned you in an article that’s preserved in the Archives.”

“Really?” She doesn’t want to feel flattered, but she can feel pleasure rush to her face.

“Really,” he says, smiling. “That’s all.”

“What article? Where, show it to me.”

“I don’t have hardcopy with me. It’s stored electronically.”

“You mean like microfiche in the library?”

“Exactly! I saw the article in the Archives—that’s an electronic library. That’s how I know about the files. And about you.”

He sounds too triumphant, like his lie is working out better than he hoped. He makes it sound so innocent and plausible, Ruby is instantly suspicious. But his explanation will have to do. For now.

“Chiron,” she muses. “That’s the dude with the body of a horse and torso of a man.”

“The centaur, very good. You know mythology?”

“In my business, I know all sorts of things. And you?”

“In my business, I know all sorts of things, too.” But his smile abruptly disappears. He frowns, sits bolt upright. The cats scatter.

He flings back the blankets, pulls up the leg of his jeans. There, on his skin above the edge of expensive-looking socks, are four nasty red splotches.

“Damn those fleas.” Ruby is embarrassed. “They’re impossible to get rid of, especially in summer.”

“Fleas!”

“I’ll get you some calamine lotion.” She dashes to the half-bath off the kitchen, hurries back with the lotion. “I comb the catties every day and bathe them, too, once a month. But that’s California for you. It never freezes, so the fleas never quite go away.”

“Fleas.” He scratches his ankle. “Did you know that neuvo-typhosa is transmitted by fleas interchangeably parasitical on dogs and human beings? Ten million people died in Asia last year.”

“Ten million people!” And she prides herself on keeping up with the news. “No, I didn’t know that. Imagine how the cats feel about it.”

He fusses and fumes, scrambles for his jacket, takes out another of his astringent tissues and scrubs at the flea bites till his skin bleeds. With a motion so swift she has trouble following his hands, he whips off one of his necklaces, detaches a turquoise bead, and reattaches the remaining beads. He crushes the bead between his thumb and forefinger and sprinkles bright turquoise powder on the bites.

She watches, eyebrows raised. “Take it easy, sonny. A couple of flea bites won’t kill you.”

“I don’t know that!” he says with a look approaching panic.

Ruby tries to help, hovering over him, thick pink lotion dripping from her fingertips. His skin is pure white, almost luminous, like he’s lived under a rock his whole life. The calf of his leg swells with masculine muscles, but his skin is as smooth and hairless as the cheek of a baby girl. She can see his veins, pulsing blue.

He waves away her calamine lotion, extracts from another pocket a little clear square. More of his magic plastic wrap? He lays the square over the bites. It adheres, vanishing on his skin. He attends to himself with an air of expertise.

“Sweet Isis,” Ruby mutters. His quick motions and the streetwise medical self-administration are unpleasantly suggestive. “Listen, Chi, tell me true. You’re not a junkie, are you?”

“Of course not.” Offended, he pushes up the sleeve of his shirt and shows her his milk-white arm. No tracks. Nothing but that smooth white skin, completely hairless. Not even the fine down a baby girl’s cheek has.

“A hemophiliac?” she ventures.

“Do I seem unhealthy?”

“I don’t know!” She caps the calamine, suddenly struck with concern. “You’re so. . . .pale.”

“I sunburn easily. I stay away from the beach.”

“Yeah, right, but excuse me, you don’t have any hair.”

“Sure I do.” He tosses back his beautiful long red hair from his milk-white face. Clean-shaven? In the bright morning light, Ruby sees no hint of stubble on his jaw. Not even a whisker. He stays away from the beach? Uh-huh. His masculine face is a mask of alabaster.

“Well, I mean on your body.”

He shrugs, like he won’t answer even if he could. “I like your cats, Ruby, but I can’t risk flea bites. There must something you can do.”

She thinks about it. “I don’t believe in commercial flea collars. They’ve got too many poisons for a little cat. The poisons wouldn’t do you much harm, though, I suppose. I’ve seen kids on the streets, the ones who sleep with their dogs? They strap flea collars around their ankles.”

He frowns. “I’ll pass on flea collars.”

“Myself, I rub my ankles with eucalyptus oil. That keeps the fleas away pretty well.”

“Eucalyptus oil sounds fine. May I try some, please?”

May he try some please. She ties her robe tight against the chill, runs downstairs to the shop, and fetches the oil.

Never saw a man that pale and smooth. Ruby’s seen a lot of odd things in her thirty-five years, but she never saw anyone like Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco.

He’s like a. . . .stranger. A stranger in the very strange land of the Haight-Ashbury. The unexpected glimpse of his smooth manly leg is as startling as if he’d extruded antennae from his ears. What is he? Who is he?

These are strange and wondrous days.

Ruby runs back upstairs, bearing the eucalyptus oil, wondering what on earth she should cook him for breakfast.

July 1, 1967

Festival

of

Growing Things

4

Foxy Lady

Days vanish, and nights last forever. Reality unfolds, an origami of dreams. The tribe takes Susan in, with love. Magic manifests. The party never ends.

She crouches behind the driver’s seat in the Double Barrel van, clutching a map of Marin County in her right hand, the side door handle with her left. The band is playing the Festival of Growing Things at the Mount Tamalpais Outdoor Theater. High atop the Tam, they’ll jam with Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Charlatans, Big Brother, the Fish, everyone who’s anyone except the Dead and the Airplane, who’ve got gigs out of town.

Susan is terrified and thrilled. Over the meadow and through the woods, beam me up, up, up. She’s been tripping with the Double Barrel for what seems like an eternity but, in fact, has been only ten days.

Things are not entirely a groove this Saturday morning. For starters, it’s freezing outside. How did anyone get the idea California is some tropical paradise? She shivers and wipes her nose on the back of her sleeve. Little needles of pain stab her sinuses in the middle of her forehead and behind her eyes. In those ten eternal days, she’s shed some baby fat on a diet of dexies and occasional bowls of brown rice. That’s cool. But her throat is sore, her cheek dappled with an itchy rash. She’s got to pee for the tenth time this morning.

Professor Zoom mans the driver’s seat. Hunched over the steering wheel, he is constantly in motion, finger-combing his hair, fiddling with the radio, kicking at the gas pedal, the clutch, the brakes, slapping the stick shift, thrusting through gears the van may or may not possesses. The engine groans hunnh-hunnh-huh! He cackles in his deadpan way and mutters things like, “Seek new life, new civilizations,” and “Grok it, chief,” and, “Thou who did with pitfall and with gin, beset the road I wander in; thou will not with evil round enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin.”

Wow. Professor Zoom, a wise man? Susan may be only fourteen, but she suspects he’s a raving lunatic.

When they approach a freeway on-ramp or confront an intersection or sometimes merely mosey up a road with no turnoffs on either side, he calls out, “Hey, navigatrix. Which way, navigatrix?” Pretty soon he’s calling her Trixie, and that makes her mad.

“Hey Trixie, hey Trixie.”

“I’m Starbright, Professor Zoom.”

“Which way, Trixie? Wake up, Trixie.”

“Why don’t you slow down, Harold?”

“Don’t call me names.”

“Don’t call me Trixie.”

“Which freakin’ way, Starbright?”

She wins. Five points for Susan.

Professor Zoom is banged on acid, which is no big deal since he drops some cap, barrel, or blotter almost every day. But he’s driving and that, to Susan, is a big deal. Though no one else in the van seems to think so.

The van climbs Route 1, a winding seacliff road. One shoulder is no more than a foot of gravel, beyond which the mountain drops away to a foggy valley far below. The morning is nearly as murky as night, worse really, since they cannot see more than six feet ahead with the headlights on, when there is six feet of straight road. Yet the sun somewhere above suffuses the fog with a hellish glare, dim and bright at the same time, revealing nothing and giving Susan a blinding headache.

Thank God they can’t muster more than thirty miles an hour uphill. She’s been appointed custodian of the map and navigatrix since no one else is fit or willing for the task. Stan the Man and the band pass around joints in the back, and she’s too young to drive the van herself. Too young? Driving was easy, actually, the time Daddy took her out on Christmas Day and let her spin the Cadillac around the May Company parking lot.

But Daddy’s Cad is an automatic, and this funky old van painted with blue clouds has got a stick shift as intimidating as an algebra equation. Susan forms a plan. If Professor Zoom blows a curve and plunges them off the cliff, she’ll pop the side door open and jump out before she tumbles into oblivion.

“Fare thee well, oh world of illusion,” Professor Zoom mutters. It’s not the first time he seems to read her mind when he’s tripping. Does he really possess telepathy when he’s tripping or does he only appear to because he claims to? It’s confusing.

Professor Zoom trips relentlessly. He believes tripping furthers his quest to find the Final Expression to his Equation proving that God is a hit of blotter. On one rare day when he wasn’t tripping, he spoke seriously with Susan about his quest. He told her he saw the whole equation written in the sky one afternoon while he was tripping. But when he came down, he couldn’t remember what he saw. Tears brimmed in his eyes.

So he must trip, trip, trip until he finds the Final Expression. All who trip are on the verge of a New Consciousness, he says. The New Consciousness will save the world from greed, military ambition, exploitation, and all the evil propelling the Earth to the brink of destruction.

Turn on, Starbright, Professor Zoom tells her. Change your life.

* * *

They climb the last switchback to Tam Theater, and Susan sighs with relief. Wow, they made it. How high will Professor Zoom be when they drive back down the mountain? She shudders. Maybe she can persuade someone to show her how to use the stick shift.

The road is jammed with vans adorned with eyes, flowers, hearts, and peace signs, VW bugs, flatbed trucks, a sleek Jaguar in racing green. The Double Barrel van swings around the traffic, smug as royalty. They’re waved through barricades to the stages.

Susan’s life has changed. In the days after the Celebration of the Solstice, a transcendent awareness lingered, more from leaving home than from tripping. Sitting on the stoop of the house, she’s mulled things over.

Her life in Shaker Heights, for starters: what a treadmill fraught with fear, frustration, guilt, and insecurity. Why? Her parents are lapsed Catholics. Daddy says religion is the opiate of the masses. He dispenses opiates in his dental practice when he extracts people’s wisdom teeth. What wisdom is he extracting? Why are her father and mother always so troubled?

What’s the purpose of her parents’ lives? What do they believe in?

They believe in:

Grabbing as much money as possible, no matter what gross thing they have to do to get it.

Paying the bills, but complaining loudly.

Dial Soap with AT-7.

Getting drunk Friday and Saturday nights.

Arguing about everything.

Hassling Susan about everything.

The Vietnam War, because LBJ says we’ve got to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.

What don’t they believe in?

They don’t believe in:

Love.

Magic.

Happiness.

Truth.

Beauty.

Freedom.

Star Trek, which they threaten to turn off whenever they want to punish Susan.

Then there’s school. Susan burns with anger when she thinks about school. She recalls the time when she was eight, coming inside after recess. The sun was shining, the air fresh and sweet, and she was skipping down the hall. Her third grade teacher caught up with her and seized her arm in a grip like the band they wrap around when they’re taking your blood pressure. That teacher forced her not to skip.

Why did the teacher do that?

That teacher was trying to break her spirit.

But why would the teacher try to break her spirit? So she would become someone like her parents and believe in the things they believed in. And not believe in the things they didn’t believe in.

That’s why.

Mulling over life has led Susan to mull over death. She remembers how tripping unleashed her grief, a raw outpouring of horror and sorrow over Granma’s death two years ago. Mom and Daddy took Susan to see her at the hospital. The visit was horrible, the worst thing that ever happened to her. Seeing her sweet, pretty Granma in that bright, garish room, hooked up to tubes. Her little body so frail. Her face sunken and contorted in pain, gazing at Susan, tears streaming, saying, “So beautiful, like an angel.”

Then one afternoon after the hospital visit, Susan returned home from Bexley Park with her new butterfly collecting kit. The saddlebags on her Schwinn were filled with frantic butterflies she’d caught with her net. She was going to chloroform them and pin them on a corkboard, spreading out their wings beneath paper strips. She was parking her bike in the garage and taking out the killing jar when her mother flung open the door.

“Granma died,” her mother said. Then she burst into wild sobs and slammed the door.

Susan sat down on the garage floor. She must have sat there for an hour, but her mother did not reappear. Finally, she opened the saddlebags, intent on freeing the butterflies, but they were all crushed. She took the net and the paper strips, the corkboard and the killing jar, even the saddlebags, and threw everything in a garbage can. Later, Daddy yelled at her. The butterfly collecting kit had cost him twelve bucks.

Susan realizes this now: she is going to die.

Sometimes she cries, lying on Stan the Man’s mattress. She’s going to die; it’s terrifying and strange. One morning, she woke up with the birds. Stan snored beside her, but everything else in the house was quiet. She padded downstairs and went out to sit on the stoop, tears drenching her face. Professor Zoom materialized. He sat beside her without a word, puffing on his corncob pipe with smoke the scent of burnt chocolate. He handed her the pipe. She pretended to take a drag, passed the pipe back.

“Professor Zoom,” she said at last. “I’m sad we have to die.”

“The spirit is eternal.”

“But our bodies, this body.” She pinched the skin on her arm. “It dies. I saw my granma dying. She was in terrible pain. What will I feel? And then, when the body dies, it’s cold. I mean, it rots, right?”

“That’s why I want to be cremated.” Just the facts, ma’am. “Fire is purifying.”

“But I’m afraid. It’s so awful!”

“Oh, it’s not so awful. Think of it this way, Starbright. We live on the Earth, and we kill things. You eat a cow or a carrot, it’s all the same. Everything is alive. So when you die, you give your body back to God. You give a little of what you took. I think that’s fair, don’t you?”

She thought about that and, after a while, the pain in her heart eased. “Yeah.” She dried her tears on her sleeve. They smiled at each other. Maybe Professor Zoom was a wise man. Sometimes. “I think that’s fair, too.”

* * *

Rodge the Dodg, Paul, and Mickey huddle in the back of the van. They’ve long since finished the joints. Now they’re working on some splash. Up to the last minute, they’re also working on three new songs they intend to play, but haven’t practiced yet. Stevie snores, passed out. He rarely gets up before two in the afternoon, so maybe he’s just tired, Susan hopes, and not stoned out of his mind.

The energy at the house has been strange, which hasn’t helped the band’s career. Sarah split, after knickknacking some expensive things. Mickey got wasted, then brought home someone new the next day. She wears a glittery pink boa clipped in her hair, a leather vest over nothing but her olive skin, and jeans slung low. Her stringy biceps are tattooed with a lightning bolt. Lady May, she calls herself, which the guys get mileage out of. “Lady May I?” they say in wheedling voices. Stella and Fawn, the other caterpillar-eyed girls, are freaked.

Now Stan takes over the driver’s seat, ignoring everyone. He especially ignores Susan, which fills her with sadness and a deep, nameless fear. He’s working, she reminds herself, doling out ten thousand caps of LSD into single-serving baggies. He’s decided to call this batch dragon’s blood after--he tells her--an herb in some witch shop. The caps are bright red. Dragon’s blood. It fits.

Suddenly things are happening. Everyone is jumping, piling out of the van.

“Starbright, carry the mikes and tambourines,” Mickey says.

She hops out, too. She is forever carrying the mikes and tambourines, or fetching a wine bottle or a hash pipe, or passing out postcards of album covers. She’s forever clapping her hands and cheering, admiring the men up on the stage. She’s grateful for such a groovy place to stay, of course. They feed her and don’t change her rent, but they do exact a price. She keeps thinking of Sarah’s bloodshot eyes beneath her false eyelashes.

Susan understands Sarah. She wants to do her thing, too. Her mother says her drawings are not proportional, but Professor Zoom and Stan and everyone says her drawings are far out. She went to Mendel’s Art and Stationery Supplies—a store on Haight Street a lot like Mr. G’s but bigger and better—and bought a box of pastel chalks. She drew two posters for the Double Barrel Boogie Band, which Stan took to a graphics guy who knew how to print them up.

Do her thing. She’s discovering it’s tricky doing her thing. While Stan the Man labors over the calculating machine--a big metal monster that goes ka-chunka, ka-chunka-chunka-chunka when he hits the Equals button--she works out the numbers in her head. She says, “Um, Stan, at seventy cents profit per hit, you’ll make seven hundred dollars per thousand. Um, that’s seven thousand dollars per ten thousand. That’s a lot of bread, huh?”

And he gave her a look. What you’d call a dirty look.

Susan has seen that look before. Bernie MacKenna or Allen Weisberg stand at the blackboard, working out equations or diagramming sentences and clowning around, and they are popular, the cool kids at school. But when Susan works out an equation or reads her poems—she doesn’t dare clown around--the girls whisper behind their hands and the boys snicker or stare coldly. Even the teachers give her that look.

She feels like a freak. Like something is wrong with her. Her school counselor told her she is in the ninety-eighth percentile. What does that mean? What good does that do her? The girls, the boys, the teachers, they give her that look. So she stops speaking up, stops challenging the discussion. It’s confusing.

Now she wonders if the spooky girl with her face has something to do with it. The encounter on Twin Peaks haunts her. Was the girl an awful omen? A prophecy she will have to face herself one day and see some terrible truth? She shivers at the memory and glances over her shoulder. Does she see black sparks?

And there it is again: another Summer of Love change. What made her feel like a freak in Shaker Heights gives her credence in the Haight-Ashbury. Credence with none other than Professor Zoom, the resident shaman of the Double Barrel house. When he wants to discuss his quest for the Final Expression, he seeks out Susan. When he wants to discuss whether the U.S. Congress should ban consumer credit cards, he seeks out Susan.

One day last week Professor Zoom found a Sacramento TV station rerunning “This Side of Paradise.” Susan had talked a lot about this Star Trek episode. The Enterprise touches down on Omicron Ceti III and discovers that the colonists are really groovy. Mr. Spock reunites with Leila, a woman who once loved him. Leila turns Mr. Spock on to spores that pop out of pretty pink flowers and smack people in the face. Mr. Spock gets smacked in the face by spores and becomes really groovy, too.

Professor Zoom was impressed. Psychedelic secrets on national TV?

But upon watching again, Susan was horrified. The spores turn the colonists into silly, passive know-nothings who must be rehabilitated to a useful life under the stern guidance of the Federation.

Professor Zoom didn’t buy her interpretation. “Wake up, Starbright. The spores set Mr. Spock free. The spores forced him to give up his intellectual games. I mean, there he is, this uptight, supercilious robot--”

“Mr. Spock is not a robot,” Susan said. “He’s half Vulcan.”

“This uptight half-Vulcan schmuck--”

They went at it like that until people started pouring in, looking for a party. Are the pretty pink flowers opium poppies? Do the spores enlighten the colonists or oppress them? In the climax, Captain Kirk insults Mr. Spock and goads him into a fistfight. The fight releases Mr. Spock from the spell of the spores. Violence restores him to his intellectual uptight self.

“That’s a lousy statement about society and human nature,” Professor Zoom pointed out.

“It’s confusing,” Susan admitted.

“Forget it, Starbright. I really dug the beginning. The spores healed wounds and bestowed physical perfection. Maybe LSD will cure cancer.”

Susan doubts that and, after watching the episode again, she’s sure she’s not mistaken. Star Trek says the love spores from the pretty pink flowers are bad.

* * *

Tam Theater looks like an ancient Greek amphitheater: stone seats slope up from a center stage, everything surrounded by the scenic mountainside and old-growth trees.

Professor Zoom, disinterred from the driver’s seat, takes out his corncob pipe. “Got some Gold,” he calls to the tribe.

This rousts stragglers out of the van. Stella and Fawn crowd around for a toke. Lady May struts up and pushes them aside. Susan says she’s got a sore throat and she’ll pass.

Professor Zoom insists on giving her the first hit. He crooks his arm around her neck, thrusts the pipe in her lips. “Hold the smoke in your lungs as long as you can, Starbright,” he coaches irritably.

Lady May is next, inhaling deeply. “I am so wasted!” she gleefully proclaims. A nipple slips out of her leather vest.

“The ego must die,” Professor Zoom whispers, eying Lady May.

Susan slips away, looking for Stan the Man.

She’s fourteen. She doesn’t want to die.

Changes upon changes upon changes. Her awkward fourteen-year-old body has changed overnight into a woman’s body. In the space of ten days, she’s become a sexual being. Her mother’s constant criticisms—you’re too fat, your hair’s too long, you’re not wearing that!—fade away before Stan the Man’s lustful gaze. They’ve had sex every day--sometimes twice or three times—since the Celebration of the Summer Solstice.

He jumps down from the driver’s seat, lithe as a panther.

“Hi,” she says and lifts her face for his kiss.

He seizes her, wrapping her in his hug, his hands roving over her body, squeezing her breast. He kisses her forehead, nuzzles her ear. He moves to her lips and the motion of his tongue in her mouth suggests what he does between her legs.

“Say hey, Starbright.” He slips a package the size of a suitcase beneath her arm. “I want you to do something for me.”

“What?” She’s still dizzy from his kiss, but an ominous feeling chokes her throat.

Other than the sex, it’s not like things are all that great between her and Stan. She woke one morning to find him rooting around in her overnight bag. He found the hundred-dollar bill from Mr. G. When she asked what he was doing, he demanded to keep the money. Just a loan, he told her. Front money for his new deal. He’d pay her back after the deal went down. When she said no, he got all weird. He said she’d be sleeping in the street if it weren’t for him. She got frightened and silent. Then he came over to the mattress and climbed on top of her.

Afterward, she let him keep the bill. When he was gone, she stuffed the rest of her cash and her library card in the hidey-hole in her purse where the lining was torn. Now she keeps the purse with her always. She even sleeps with it tucked beneath her pillow.

“I want you to deliver the dragon’s blood to my connection.” Stan’s eyes are cold.

“What connection?”

“They’ll be looking for you. Hand it over, that’s all you have to do. You can do that, can’t you, Starbright?”

Yes, she can. She’s struck with guilt, giving him a hard time over the hundred-dollar bill. She’s glad he doesn’t ask her to take money from the connection. If a narc spots her, she’ll be in big trouble. Apparently Stan’s got the money thing covered some other way. Cool.

Sizzling with his kiss and her paranoia, Susan strides over to the face-painting tent like he tells her to and waits. She watches and listens for anyone looking for dragon’s blood. An electric guitar wails over the amps. That’s Rodg the Dodg. The band is starting their set, and she can’t be there!

Half an hour crawls by. Children and their mothers come and go from the face-painting tent. No one pays her any mind. The Double Barrel finishes their first set. One of the songs they were rehearsing in the back of the van turns out better than she feared. She hops from foot to foot, trying to keep warm, furious with Stan. She’s only getting her hundred dollars back, whereas he will clear a year’s worth income, tax-free. Maybe she should get a piece of that. She wonders if she’s got the nerve to ask.

She’s about to call it quits when two men wander by.

A child with a painted clown face bursts into tears, holding up her packet of crushed green bean seeds.

“Didn’t I tell you?” the child’s mother scolds. “Not everyone with long hair is cool.”

Susan looks to see who crushed the child’s seeds. A man brushes past her. That must be him, a guy in a stovepipe hat that says “L-O-V-E” on the crown jammed over straggly black hair. Steely black eyes peer out from an unsmiling Buddha face with a drooping mustache. His partner is a wiry little guy with nut-brown skin etched by hard times and harder living. A yellow Happy Face button is pinned to the lapel of his Hawaiian shirt. His psychedelic getup can’t conceal his reptilian air. She can practically see a lizard’s tongue flick out and snag a fly.

Even on Haight Street, Susan has never encountered men like these. They operate on some level of existence she knows nothing about. Violent and dangerous and mean. They drift into the face-painting tent.

She wants to turn and flee, but then she hears them murmuring, “Dragon’s blood. Got dragon’s blood?”

“Here,” she whispers. “I’ve g-got dragon’s blood.”

Stovepipe is in her face in two seconds. “Got dragon’s blood?”

“Y-yeah.” His eyes are so cold!

“Where’s the dude?”

“Around, I g-guess.”

“Who is he?” the Lizard demands. “What’s his name?”

“Just a guy,” she says, confused. They don’t know who Stan the Man is?

“Give it here,” Stovepipe says.

Susan does. Her hands are trembling.

Stovepipe and the Lizard stalk out of the tent into a grove of trees at the edge of the campgrounds. She sighs with relief, but in a moment they’re back. Stovepipe hands her a smaller package. Then they disappear as quickly as they came.

The package could be filled with newspaper for all she knows. It’s not her fault! Why did Stan make her do this?

She runs back to the Double Barrel stage. The band is well into their second set. It’s the usual circus: fans dancing, bobbing their heads. Beautiful girls posing in exotic costumes. Stan lounges at the edge of the crowd, pointing at something onstage. A white-blond girl, bone-thin in expensive jeans, stands beside him, laughing.

Susan taps his shoulder and hands him Stovepipe’s package.

“Groovy, Starbright,” he says. His eyes are painfully bloodshot. He’s had more than a few hits of Professor Zoom’s Gold. He cups a smoking roach beneath the palm of his hand. “Everything was cool?”

“Sure.” Her pitch for a share of the profits vanishes in thin air.

The girl turns to glance at her. She’s got a long bony face and limbs like twigs. She must be eighteen, the ideal of beauty everyone adores.

“Starbright, this is Marylou,” Stan says. “Her daddy owns half of Mill Valley.”

“I’m Marilyn.” The girl laughs and punches his shoulder. “Isn’t he a pig, Starbright?” Her eyes assess Susan and dismiss her. The difference in their ages isn’t four years, it’s more like four centuries. “Give me some,” she says and pries the roach from his fingers.

“I’ll give you some,” Stan growls in her ear.

Susan wonders if she can stop the trembling of her lip.

* * *

Give me some. Back at the Double Barrel house, this is Marilyn’s big line. She says it over and over. She provokes the guys into screaming laughter. Give me some. Marilyn is so enticing, she even upstages Lady May, who pouts and frets.

Susan huddles on the swaybacked sofa. She’s so sick to her stomach, she’s afraid she’s going to puke all over the floor. Has she got a fever? The neverending party swirls all around her. People pour in the door, laughing, toking, swigging pints of Wild Turkey.

Give me some.

Stella leaps onto the coffee table and begins to dance. She stretches out her arms in a beckoning gesture.

Susan recognizes that gesture. Stella reminds her of Juno, the Transparent Woman.

* * *

Only girls and their mothers were allowed in the auditorium at the Cleveland Health Education Museum. Juno, the Transparent Woman, stood eight feet tall on her dais, her clear plastic arms beckoning. The auditorium dimmed and a don’t-be-afraid voice spoke on the PA system. The Transparent Woman lit up her internal organs. Her heart beat bright purple. Her arteries pulsed neon-red blood, while her veins pulsed cool blue. Her yellow lungs billowed, inhaling and exhaling. Her green stomach showed where food went, her pink bowls showed how waste products came out.

Then the Transparent Woman lit up her reproductive organs. The girls stared in silence as their mothers coughed discreetly. Juno’s ovaries sent tiny turquoise eggs down her graceful fallopian tubes to the uterus, which glowed redder and redder. Red light flowed through the cervix and down the vagina. The voice said the vagina was the birth canal. Like the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal? The birth canal was where the baby came out.

But how did the baby get in? The Transparent Woman turned dark. The man, said the voice, planted his sperm—like seeds—in the woman. The Transparent Woman lit up again. Here is where the man planted his seeds, the voice said. In the birth canal. Juno stood stiffly on her dais, smiling her transparent smile, giving no hint of the task at hand.

“Well, that’s that,” said Susan’s mother as they drove home through the dark. She never spoke about the Transparent Woman again.

Susan’s first period came soon after Juno lit up her reproductive organs. She likes to imagine her uterus glowing redder and redder until red light flows out of her birth canal. For the past year, the red light has flowed as regular as clockwork. Every twenty-two days, exactly, between noon and one o’clock, the red light traces its path.

Well. Susan sure knows how the seeds get planted now. Losing her virginity and sleeping with Stan every night has been as powerful a revelation as her trip. Sex is a lot like tripping. There are people who know and people who don’t.

Sex is also a lot like a drug. In her eighth-grade science class, the teacher told them a story about how goslings raised with a bowling ball became imprinted on it and followed it everywhere as if it were a mother goose. Stan is her sexual bowling ball.

Now she swallows hot tears. Her throat is killing her. Her nipples tingle, she can barely keep food down, and she’s got to pee every half hour. The Transparent Woman, a.k.a. Stella, dances on the coffee table.

Her period is three days late.

* * *

Fawn leaps up on the coffee table and dances with Stella. They proceed to kick everything off, the grease-lipped beer mugs, rotten apple cores, the can of half-eaten SpaghettiOs, their clothes. People drift in and out of the living room, sit on the floor in circles, pass joints around, dance by themselves, roam off to raid the kitchen, or wander away through the halls.

Stan the Man has disappeared.

Susan is feverish, burning up. She’s so exhausted, her bones feel like a Gumby Doll’s. She just wants to sleep despite the fact it’s only late afternoon. Peace and quiet, that’s what she desperately needs. She climbs up the three stairways to her room.

Only it’s not her room. It’s Stan’s room.

The door is closed. Susan hears voices, not just his. Laughter, the chuckle of seduction. She pushes the door, and it swings open. He’s too wasted to have locked it.

She gets an eyeful of Marilyn’s Mill Valley thighs and, between them, Stan the Man.

As she flees down the stairs, Susan wonders if she can stop the trembling in her heart.

5

White Rabbit

Chi perches in the catbird seat for his noon-to-four-thirty shift, daydreaming of imploders, calcite crystals, the awesome dish of the chronometer. Has he really been gone only ten days? It seems like forever since he’s left his future in the past. The catbird seat, which Ruby rigged up, is a chair cushion tied on an amputated chair seat. The seat, in turn, is nailed to the top of a rickety stepladder set in the back of the Mystic Eye. Ruby is boundlessly resourceful, but the tachyonic shuttle it’s not.

Chi folds his arms in the djellaba she gave him, a scarlet-striped robe he pulls over his clothes that covers him, head to toe. He pulls the hood over his head and around his face, allowing a lock of his long red hair to fall across his brow and sunglasses. Ruby gave him the sunglasses, too. Ray-Bans, she calls them, the color candy-apple red.

Thus anonymous, swathed in red, hunching over gargoyle-style, he watches people mill around the shop. Down below, beneath his gaze, shoppers hesitate. Some touch the merchandise reverentially, glance up at him, and replace a mojo bag or a conjuring wand just so. Others can’t conceal the larcenous intent crossing their faces. A boy no more than twelve, in dirty denim and floppy hair like ten thousand other boys passing through the Haight-Ashbury, fingers a brass butterfly strung on a leather thong.

Chi lets loose a booming, “The Mystic Eye Sees All!”

The would-be knickknacker jumps, so badly startled he drops the butterfly and dashes out the door.

Two women smile up at him and whisper to each other, giggling. College students, maybe twenty, in the uniform of Beat intellectuals—black turtlenecks, jeans, and sandals, canvas shoulder bags filled with books by Alan Watts or Marshall McLuhan. The tall slim one is so prime she could compete with Bella Venus, except for her gooey black hair. He pictures her nude. Without her clothes, of course, but even more, without the wild extrusions from her scalp, her furry eyebrows, the fuzz on her forearms where she’s pushed back her sleeves. And without the trauma to her skin: her suntan. He still can’t get over how people so young look as weather-damaged as day-laborers without domes or proper Block. The sight is as disturbing to him as a peg-legged beggar would be to this vivacious girl.

Chi longs to tell her: Stay out of the sun. Even your gentle sun. Would his warning violate Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle? He sighs. He cannot affect any person in the past, except as authorized by the project directors. After the disastrous Save Betty Project, the LISA techs were more adamant than ever about observing the Tenets and the mandate of nonintervention. Still, dermatologists of this Day know all about malignant melanoma. They’re just not telling people.

But it’s tricky. Even if he could tell her, would she believe him? In the pop wisdom of this Day, a suntan is healthy. Glamorous. A suntan is cool.

“The lady looks lovely in the tie-dye scarf,” he calls out in the Voice of Doom. The shopper blushes, pretends to preen in the countertop mirror, and reluctantly unties the scarf from around her neck.

This has got to be the most mind-numbing job he, or any other poor fool, has ever held. He presses his hand over a yawn. Still, sometimes he enjoys the sacrifices of the catbird seat, like a good cosmicist enjoys a giftday.

A giftday: To give is best. Be still, and let the world rest. A giftday is the day when you rise with the sun and fast twenty-four hours, consuming nothing but a water ration. You go nowhere except by your own exertion and even wear-and-tear on shoe soles is frowned upon. You read or write on rationed, recycled paper, meditate on True Value, or work if you can, consuming no resources. Neither candles nor fires in your fireplace are allowed. Reserves in your solar cells must be conserved, along with utility credits you’ve bicycled on a Path. You may talk with friends or sing, but only if you consume no power. You may make love, but only if you don’t conceive. Then you sleep when the sun sets or sit in darkness until you tire. Cosmicists are invited to gift twelve days a year, once a month, but some cosmicists gift more. Chi and Bella Venus gifted forty-eight days between them, just last year. They had lots to do together when the sun set.

Two billion people participate in giftdays, more gifting all the time.

Chi sighs. These hairy, hungry, noisy, greedy, heedless people of 1967 are just plain crazy. But—and this is a Big But—are his conscientious, hairless, rigorous, self-sacrificing people of 2467 a little crazy, too? It’s an outrageous question that keeps him awake at night. A question he would never have thought to ask until he t-ported to the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.

Ruby sets the brass butterfly back on the countertop and gives him the thumbs-up. She loves being in the vanguard. She and Chi have started a trend among hip merchants. All the shops that can afford to are installing watchmen on stepladders.

“Achtung, Beelzebub,” Leo Gorgon says. He clicks his heels and extends his arm in a ramrod salute as he lounges behind the counter with Ruby.

Chi refuses to take the bait. From his vantage point, he can see Gorgon’s hands, too. He’s also seen the autobiographical novel Gorgon will publish in 1973, which the Archives preserve. By his own admission, Gorgon is a thief, stealing goods and food from the community for the Diggers’ Free Store and his own use. Chi frowns. The Free Thieves were a radical cosmicist faction during the desperate depths of the brown ages. The faction claimed that taking property when needed was mandated by the law of necessity. After a long and ugly debate, the cosmicist majority declared that the Free Thieves were not working toward the Great Good and suppressed them.

Good riddance, Chi thinks, to thieves.

Gorgon never loses a chance to express his contempt for Chi. A contempt earned, it seems, because Ruby has befriended Chi, given him shelter and a decent job. And because Chi is helping Ruby turn a profit at the Mystic Eye.

The contempt is mutual.

“Forget him,” Ruby says and winks. “You’re cool, Bub.” She glares at Gorgon, who never sees the sharp looks she aims at the back of his neck. Still, she’s started sleeping with Gorgon, which Chi cannot understand. But Ruby’s affairs are not his business. What women have to go through in these primitive times is not his concern. He can’t get involved.

“You’re the boss, Ruby,” he says for Gorgon’s benefit.

Gorgon dubbed him Beelzebub as an insult, but the kids take to the name and call Chi that or The Bub when he’s perched on the catbird seat. It’s a kick, he has to admit, becoming a minor celebrity on the Scene.

The job also gives him an unexpected benefit. He watches the crowd inside the shop and the crowd out on the street, which he gets an eyeful of through the wide shop windows. He can watch for the Axis.

One day a longhaired girl sat below his feet, glancing up at him from time to time. He paid her no attention though she lingered, attracted by his minor celebrity. He was half-awake at the time, thick-headed with tachyonic lag, when it suddenly occurred to him:

Is she the Axis?

Excitement seized his chest. “Need a break,” he called to Ruby and scrambled down the ladder. But the girl lost her nerve before he could untangle his legs from the hem of the djellaba. She fled, darting out the door and onto the street, disappearing in the crowd, her long hair flying. He cursed his hesitation. He never got a good look at her.

Was she the Axis?

Who knows, Chi thinks with a leaden heart. When the tourists, day-trippers, military personnel on leave from nearby bases, transient criminals, local teenagers, and college students are added to the runaways, pilgrims, immigrants, parents searching for their runaways, law enforcement personnel, and local residents, a million people will pass through the Haight-Ashbury this summer. Ten thousand newcomers on any given day, some who stay, some who leave as quickly as they came.

How is Chi ever going to find her?

Perched high in the catbird seat, he raises the knuckletop to his lips. “K-T,” he whispers and cups the holoid field beneath his palm. The djellaba’s generous cuff conceals the field of lavender light. Chi tucks a crystal sliver in the slot beneath the bezel of the ring. This particular sliver is the first of the contraband holoids his skipmother smuggled into the stash cube.

Bright red alphanumerics appear in the lavender light:

“Date: 07-01-1967. You may insert Disc 1 now.”

“Go, K-T,” he whispers.

A miniature 3D scene pops up in the palm of his hand:

A sandy-haired man in a suit and tie steps off the curb at the corner of Haight Steet and Ashbury. He’s surrounded by teenagers. Over the man’s shoulder, in the upper left corner beneath the street signs, stands a longhaired girl in a high-collared shirt. She is speaking with a tall slim red-haired person. The red-haired person’s face is blurred, little more than pale skin and a long, smooth jaw. The sandy-haired man and the teens walk across the intersection. Their footsteps scuff on the pavement, their bells and necklaces jingle.

The man says, “CBS News, without any flowers in its hair, is in San Francisco because this city has gained the reputation of being the hippie capital of the world.”

From the left background, the girl catches up with the man, darts behind his shoulder, and falls into the rhythm of his step. She looks straight at the camera and nods, as if acknowledging the whole world is watching her. The wind whips her long, pretty hair. She brushes hair away from her face and smiles. A radiant smile. An enigmatic smile, as if she knows the secret to everything.

In the background, someone yells, “Beautiful!”

The sandy-haired man says, “I’m Harry Reasoner.”

The scene disappears. The lavender field hovers in the palm of Chi’s hand. “K-T, off,” he whispers and lowers his hand. Back to work. Ruby gazes up at him, curiosity written all over her face.

Chi can’t get over the way the girl smiles.

“Axis,” he whispers, “where are you?”

They believe she was televised. Televised! The Archivists know when the clip was aired, but when was the footage shot? That data has long since disappeared.

Is the red-haired person him? Chi never thought so. He’s never felt the shock of recognition other t-porters claim after witnessing evidence of their probable presence in the past. The Chief Archivist herself assured him his lack of reaction was only because the human mind perceives time as a forward-moving experience and he, Chi, hasn’t yet experienced this moment in his personal Now.

Chi was never convinced. That the Archivists, especially his skipfather, believed the red-haired person was him annoyed him no end.

No, Chi concludes, the girl who sat at his feet was too short, too brunette, too insecure. She couldn’t possibly be that confident, smiling girl in the CBS News holoid.

She cannot be the Axis.

As for the girl in the holoid, her hair color is hard to tell. Not light, not dark. Long, but not extremely long. She’s taller than most girls, but not towering. Slim, but not emaciated. Lovely, but not exotic. In hip clothing, but not outrageously costumed. Her eyes are two dark ovals in the sun’s glare. Even at the highest magnification, the Archivists never could determine the color of her eyes.

It frustrates Chi beyond bearing. The SOL Project is impossible!

And it gets worse.

The Archivists believe they know what her legal name was, but they also believe the Axis will use a street name in the Haight-Ashbury. Maybe more than one, as so many kids did. Who tracked the thousands of street names these transients used? Who correlated street names to legal names? CBS News never identified the girl or the teens or, for that matter, the red-haired person in the background. Of all the names, street or legal, used by people flocking to the Summer of Love, the Archives contain only a handful.

Worse and worse. The Axis will change her appearance. About this, the Archivists are certain. Well. Sort of certain, up to a seventy-two percent probability. It seems that everyone who journeyed to the Haight-Ashbury this summer changed themselves, however briefly. Self-transformation was a tradition originating in the Summer of Love and echoing down the centuries in the bohemian colonies of spacetime. A tradition emulated by the Vivas, the Hindi Hipsters, the Handcrafters, the Bon Tons.

Chi himself changed his appearance to journey here.

And the Axis—Chi reminds himself—is fourteen years old. An age when a young woman’s looks change under any circumstances.

His first object of the SOL project, then, is to find the girl in the CBS News holoid as soon as possible and verify her legal identity. That’s the only way to establish that the girl in the holoid is who they believe she is.

But, worst of all, even if Chi can find her and can identify her, there’s a probability the girl in the holoid is not the Axis.

The probability the girl in the CBS News holoid is not the Axis was so high that certain staff at the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications disagreed with the project directors that the t-port should target the Summer of Love. “You must remember, it’s a Dim Spot,” his skipfather had argued. “Yes. A Hot Dim Spot,” his skipmother had countered. She was one of the dissenters. “What data remain are unreliable.” His skipfather had to agree, distress tugging at the corners of his mouth.

A million people. And one may be a fourteen-year-old girl. A girl who holds the conservation of all spacetime in her hands.

* * *

Chi’s relief dashes in the door for the four-thirty-to-nine shift. Howie loves the djellaba. He smooths back his hair, pulls the hood around his face, and pulls out a lock of hair to flop across his brow, Bub-style. Chi lets Howie borrow the candy-apple-red Ray-Bans, too. Chi doesn’t need sunglasses out-of-doors; his corneal shields protect his eyes from ultraviolet radiation a hundred times more brutal than what beams down from this gentle sky.

Howie is sixteen, from Kansas City. His parents never fixed his buck teeth. He could never have landed a groovy gig like this—he doesn’t have to cut his hair or anything—if it weren’t for the HIP Job Co-op. Howie is grateful for the dollar an hour Ruby pays him. He pays the crash pad where he’s staying five bucks a month for a spot to lay out his sleeping bag, toilet privileges, and all the brown rice he can eat. Working ten afternoons a month, Howie is rich on four-and-a-half dollars a day.

Chi goes to the cash drawer to collect his. Ruby insists he take the money, even though he said he’d work for free.

“Wages of sin,” Gorgon says, leaning the back of his chair against the wall.

“Sinful why? Because he prevents knickknackers from ripping off my shop?” Ruby says.

“Because you’re payin’ him less than minimum wage.”

“It pays off.”

“For you or for him?”

Chi sighs. How much longer can they last?

“For us both,” Ruby says. “I deduct his wages, he pays no income tax. That’s the best kind of game. We both benefit.”

“Typical capitalist,” Gorgon says. “Scorin’ a profit from the love-shuck boom.”

“I’ve been running my shop since this street was a sleepy little ghetto. When did you blow into town, Leo?”

“Seniority don’t make priority.”

“Sure it does. Anyway, I’m not Standard Oil.”

“A capitalist is a capitalist. Begrudgin’ knickknackers who need a buck more than you.”

“I donate to the Free Clinic. Not to knickknackers.”

“Typical capitalist, hirin’ desperate flower children.”

“Who couldn’t find work otherwise. Who would starve on the street or hook themselves. Listen. I didn’t ask these kids to come here.”

That stops Gorgon for maybe half a minute.

“But you’re scorin’ all this bread!”

Ruby smiles. “You bet your ass. My ma taught me. She said, “Daughter, you do for yourself.”

Chi takes his four dollar bills and two quarters. “Thanks, Ruby.”

Gorgon bangs the chair down on all fours, goes over and stands behind Ruby, wrapping his hands around her shoulders. He always changes his tactics, Chi observes, when he can’t bully her with his political agenda. “Since you’re passing out all this bread, lay a fiver on me.”

“Why should I?” Ruby shoots him one of her looks. “You’re an able-bodied man. Why don’t you work for it?”

“I’ll be glad to work for it.” He kneads the nape of her neck, nuzzles her ear. “Want to know how?”

Ruby flutters her eyes, flexing her neck against his hands. “Tell me.”

“First, I’ll score a bottle of that wine you dig,” he says. “And then. This is how I work.” He whispers in her ear.

She chuckles and smiles her bedroom smile. Damn if she doesn’t hand him a five-dollar bill.

Gorgon winks at Chi.

Chi shakes his head. In his autobiographical novel, Leo Gorgon will assassinate the character of an exotic hip merchant. He will cast her as an evil, manipulating, stupid, greedy whore. Chi feels his face heat up.

Gorgon laughs, taking his reaction the wrong way.

There are so many things Chi wishes he could tell Ruby. Ah, but Tenet Three, Tenet Three. And what about Tenet Six? He cannot reveal Ruby’s future to her. How the exotic hip merchant will sue Leo Gorgon for implying she prostituted herself, and she’ll win in court. But by then Gorgon will have a heroin habit in him, and he’ll be judgment-proof.

It’s too depressing. Chi tucks the money in his jeans pocket and strides out of the Mystic Eye.

All he can say—all he’s allowed to say—is, “See you later, Ruby.”

* * *

“Whatever you do, son,” his skipfather said, “don’t get busted by the Man.”

“The Man?” Chi said.

That was Brax, showing off. During Chi’s training for the t-port, his skipparents learned sixties’ slang with a childlike glee and practiced on him every chance they got.

“They’ll try to roll you. They’ll be looking for your shit.” Tears misted Brax’s eyes. He knew very well he might never see Chi again after they t-ported his skipson over five centuries. The realization had made him emotional. Chi privately wondered if Brax was having a midlife crisis. He was pushing ninety-six. “They’ll freak out over your neckjack. If they throw you in the laughing academy, there’s nothing we can do on this side.”

Laughing academy? Chi didn’t want to ask.

“And don’t let the Man rip you on,” his skipmother added, and Brax looked at her, like Not quite, Ariel.

Chi smiles, thinking of their gentle scholarly disputes.

But he hadn’t smiled ten days ago, standing in the Portals of the Past, dread beating in his chest.

The Archives were unclear about so much. “The Man” was the military arm of the civil service—the police, the heat, the fuzz, the pigs. And “the Man” also meant a dealer, especially a pusher, a major criminal trafficker in illegal drugs. Which was a very odd contradiction, Chi thought, if the Archivists were correct. How did people of this Day know which usage someone meant? The Man? Or the Man? Even context might not clarify.

Chi grits his teeth. He has no intention of being thrown in the laughing academy. Or getting ripped off by the Man. Gentle scholarly disputes and context mean nothing, now that he finds himself smack dab in a Hot Dim Spot in the middle of the Crisis.

Because the past—his past—is disappearing.

And the future?

He shudders to think of the future.

* * *

Chi hikes down Clayton Street, walking the loop. He’s walked the loop every day for the past ten days in the peak of the afternoon. He hikes across Clayton, up Haight, east to Broderick, crosses west to Golden Gate Park, across to and down Stanyan, and back again.

For ten long days, he’s searched for the girl in the CBS News holoid.

And watched for demons.

First stop? The Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic across the street. Another faded Victorian house typical of the neighborhood, the front stairs are packed with people. A queue straggles down the sidewalk.

Chi checks them out: beaded hipsters, bikers in leather, vacant-eyed teenyboppers, bums on the nod. And children. So many young women, scarcely more than children themselves, with their dirty babies.

Chi stares at the young mothers with disapproval. They’re not even licensed. President Alexander, who first mandated prequalification of parents and licensing of children, would not be happy to see this. Not happy at all.

Chi climbs the stairs into the clinic, taking care not to touch anyone. He slides a prophylak from his pocket, folds it over the door handle, opens the door, and drops the prophylak in a waste basket.

Dropping the prophylak always makes him queasy. What about Tenet Seven of the Grandmother Principle? What about leaving evidence of a modern technology in the past?

Well. This grade of PermaPlast will decompose into vegetable compounds in twenty years. For now, it looks like nothing more than a wad of petroleum-based plastic wrap. The SOL Project Directors authorized him to dispose of prophylaks, when necessary. Still, Chi has learned his lessons only too well. He retrieves the prophylak, tucks it in his pocket.

He climbs more stairs inside and confronts a sign:

Chi has made friends with Dr. Dernberg and Nurse Peggy, Dr. Reddick and Miss Laurel. They’re necessary acquaintances, whom he keeps as distant as possible. For one thing, he has no authorization to affect these people. For another, he’s always embarrassed at the inferior position of women during the Summer of Love, how women are demeaned in so many ways. Chi is as embarrassed as these people would have been appalled to witness the whipping of slaves a century ago.

Here, it’s Dr. Dernberg and Nurse Peggy. Dr. Reddick and Miss Laurel. The Great Men and the smart girls who do most of the work.

“Hi, hon,” Miss Laurel says. “Find your cousin yet?” When Chi shakes his head, she says, “Let me see her picture again.”

Chi pulls out the blurry print downloaded from the CBS News holoid.

The clinic staff looks him up and down. He’s still something of a curiosity. When he first came in, Dr. Reddick exclaimed over his pallor and slender build. The doctor tried—forcefully—to persuade Chi to submit to a blood test. Chi had refused, resorting to Ruby’s speculation about him. “I’m a hemophiliac,” he said, “don’t worry about me.” His explanation seemed to work, even with these sharp-eyed doctors.

Still, they stare at him every time he visits.

“Oh, isn’t she cute!” Miss Laurel exclaims.

Papa Al and Teddy Bear wander over and peer at the print. Two burly bearded hipsters in their thirties, they serve as volunteer staff. Every time Chi visits the clinic, they’re there. Chi has no idea what they do to pay their rent, when they’re not volunteering. They make his cosmicist giftdays seem like no sacrifice at all.

Papa Al and Teddy Bear don’t try to slap hands with Chi anymore. He always refuses.

Touch nothing, touch no one. That’s Chi’s mantra. The clinic crawls with contagion and ailments that don’t exist in his Day: mumps and yellow fever and hepatitis B. Any of a thousand ancient bacteria harmless to these people could kill him.

“Nope, I haven’t seen her,” says Miss Laurel. “How about you guys?”

Papa Al peers closer. “Not yet, man.”

“We’ll let you know, kid,” says Teddy Bear.

Miss Laurel holds out the print. “Sorry, Chi.”

When Chi doesn’t take the print, Miss Laurel lays it on her desk. He fumbles in his pocket for another prophylak, wraps that around the print, and tucks the whole package in his jacket pocket. Miss Laurel watches his performance with bemused interest. Lucky for Chi everybody’s a little strange during the Summer of Love.

Dr. Smith waves to Chi from across the room. He’s sniffling and blotchy-faced today. Founder of the clinic, David Smith is a curly-haired twenty-eight-year-old with a sensitive mouth and sympathetic eyes. “We think it’s measles,” he calls to Chi. “I’ve seen twenty cases today, not counting me. I think we’re working on an epidemic, don’t you, Peg?”

Nurse Peggy glances up from her desk, red-eyed and puffy-faced. “Whew,” she sniffles. “All this bad boy takes is a sneeze. We’ll keep an eye out for your cousin, Chi.”

Chi clatters back down the stairs, recoiling from people’s faces, their breaths. Such a ripe and ready contagion—measles! All it takes is a sneeze. His skin crawls.

Two girls sitting on the sidewalk outside the clinic pet a dog crouched between them, pass a joint back and forth, pick at calluses on their bare feet, and pluck potato chips from a bag, licking salt and grease off their fingers.

Chi’s stomach turns over. Ignorant! Oblivious! Disgusting! He reminds himself: we had to shield ourselves from the sky before the radiation vaccine. We had to shield ourselves because of them. Because of what they and their descendants did to our world.

Chi studies the people queued up in front of the clinic. No one here remotely resembles the girl in the CBS News holoid.

Onward.

To Haight Street, the thumping heart of it all.

The Archivists classified the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love as an authentic, spontaneous, integrative, interactive social setting instigating random activity outside the private family life of suburban America and focused on scheduled or impromptu celebratory activities calculated to encourage people to get a little crazy.

In other words, a street scene.

Chi has studied other authentic street scenes in the Archives. Paris during the Surrealists’ Ball, Rio during Carnival, New Orleans during Mardi Gras, New York City during Renaissance Day, Beijing during People’s Independence Day, the Vivas’ Spring of Life Festival after the brown ages were declared over. Authentic street scenes are romantic to view in holoid, exhilarating to jack into in telespace.

But the street scene Chi confronts now? In person? It’s a bustling, hustling, babbling, twittering, tinkling, pounding, stinking lunacy. It’s nothing but trouble walking down Haight Street.

Why are all these people here? What do they want?

Chi passes a sign spray-painted on a shop wall:

A cacophony assaults his ears: flutes, whistles, tambourines, bongo drums, voices singing and laughing, bells and finger cymbals chiming, cars honking their horns. A chopper guns its engine, spewing petroleum fumes. In an upstairs flat, a party rages. Two guys prop stereo speakers on the window sills and blast music into the street.

Two girls in bikini tops and denim cutoffs step onto the narrow fire escape outside the window and gyrate to the beat. “Turn on,” they shout. “Turn on, tune in, drop out!”

“I’d walk a mile for a camel!” someone shouts.

A procession marches past. Four pallbearers carry a coffin draped in black. They wear black gowns and papier-mache masks depicting a dog, a ram, a bear, and a rat. “Hear ye, hear ye, money is dead!” they intone. Three kids in fake beards follow, banging garbage can lids with drumsticks.

A man trails behind them in a black cap with mouse ears, a black clown’s nose, sunglasses with round black lenses, a black leotard and tights, and a long black cape. In his right hand he carries a wand topped with a skull. In his left, a large brass bell, which he rings in a somber rhythm.

A flatbed truck jammed with devotees of some religion Chi can’t identify rolls slowly down the street. The devotees chant, beat drums, clang finger cymbals. Two barefoot women dance before the truck as it advances, flinging daisies from baskets they carry. Chi spies a bright spot of blood on a dancer’s bare toe.

A girl glides by in a dress so sheer Chi can see her nipples and her crotch. A man in leather pants does a double take, whips around, and follows her.

The mouse magician promenades in the opposite direction.

Chi cranes his neck. Any television cameras? No, just journalists and photographers today. Too bad.

He smiles at the astonishing variety of hats and head-gear: bowlers, Stetsons, Edwardian top hats, military helmets, Greek fishermen’s caps, a Victorian lady’s bonnet like a bowl of drooping velvet blooms, Moroccan fezzes, a Sioux headdress worthy of a museum, gypsy scarves, headbands of leather or suede, fresh flowers woven into garlands and entwined in all that hair.

Where else has Chi seen such delight in the wearing of headgear? Among his peers, of course. Bella Venus would adore this. If only she could see the scene for herself!

And a sadness strikes Chi as he stands in the crowd, searching the faces. A strange sense of longing. A sense of the innocence of this celebration, this God Day, which he knows will pass as swiftly as the summer itself.

Of course, these times aren’t innocent at all. A wasteful military adventure rages in Southeast Asia that will come to no good end. Ignorance, fear, prejudice, and bigotry abound. Women are abused worldwide. The sex and drug practices in which these people revel will cause problems for years to come, challenging even the most compassionate.

Still, he finds himself watching this authentic, spontaneous, integrative, interactive social setting outside the private residence with a feeling he can only call sentimental.

And with frustration. Can he admit it? The festive mood is contagious. He taps his toe to the music. He longs to swig from a wine bottle and yell the slogan from his Now, “Jack up, link in, space out!” He longs to seize a pretty woman and dance in the street.

No, no, no. He can’t do it.

A girl drawing in chalk on the sidewalk abandons her art and moves from her spot in front of the Psychedelic Shop. Chi claims the spot. He deftly pulls out and positions a prophylak. His clothes are bacteria-resistant, but he still feels squeamish about sitting on the filthy concrete without protection. He blows on the PermaPlast, trying to hasten the damn thing’s descent, which takes its time floating down. But there are so many strange people doing so many strange things, no one pays him any attention. He gingerly sits and leans against the shop front.

A guy in fringed jeans strolls by, murmuring, “Grass, hash, acid, speed?”

To Chi’s right sits an intense young man with chin-length hair as red as his own. He draws on a clipboard with a Rapidograph pen. Next to the red-haired artist sits a burly black fellow sketching in colored pencils on a drawing pad. The intense young artists trade talk. They are both amazingly good and extremely serious, comparing techniques and tools.

The girl’s abandoned chalk drawing depicts a bouquet of flowers. In each flower petal, she’s drawn an eye. The red-haired artist draws a jungle scene around an eye. His black friend sketches the eye of a breaching whale. A boy to Chi’s left sells buttons laid out on moth-eaten velvet, and on each button is an eye, rows and rows of eyes. Eyes in suns, eyes in clouds, eyes on trees, eyes with legs, eyes with wings. Wings!

And there! Chi sits up. A film crew wends its way through the crowd, cameras whirring. Is it CBS with its corporate Eye?

Chi leaps up and dashes across the street to a shop called Mnasidika. The film crew climbs into a double-parked van and pulls away. He pauses before Mnasidika’s window display of hot pink dresses printed with peace signs. The crew is gone.

Now Chi bumps into tourists. A fortyish guy in a plaid suit coat drags his scandalized wife down the street. The wife stares, her hand poised at her throat as if she’s about to choke, while the guy clicks his Kodak camera as fast as he can. Four military crew cuts weave past, chug-a-lugging bottles of beer. They hoot at the girl in the see-through dress.

A black man saunters by in free-box clothes. “Mystery! Hey, Mystery!” another black man calls to him. They slap hands, glance warily about. “What’s happenin’, Superspade?” The second man wears a stylish leather jumpsuit and a thicket of gold chains. The men make an exchange, quick and furtive. A package for a package.

Now a barefoot girl in filthy jeans and a ragged T-shirt creeps up Chi. “Spare change?” she asks. A white-blond runaway, she must weigh all of ninety pounds. She is nothing like the girl in the CBS News holoid, but Chi gives her his wages for the day anyway. To hell with Tenet Three.

Chi pushes through the crowd, searching, searching. Where are you, Axis? He strides past Wild Colors and the Phoenix, the Blushing Peony and the I/Thou Coffee House. The Sexual Freedom League leaflets the crowd, along with the Berkeley Anti-Draft Union and the Metaphysical UFO Convention. Down the block, a party spills onto the sidewalk from the Double Barrel Boogie Band’s house.

By the time Chi returns to the Psychedelic Shop, his spot has been taken by a boy in a yellow dashiki who juggles silver-colored balls. A bearded man strolls east in a white robe belted at the waist. A bearded man strolls west in a white robe belted at the waist, plus a wreath of roses set so firmly on his skull, blood trickles down his forehead. Or maybe it’s makeup. He wears bloodred lipstick, too.

Another street vendor crouches beside his display of roach clips, Day-Glo paperclips, other odds and ends he probably knickknacked from the shops. A hoodie in black leather pulls his chopper to the curb. The hoodie’s hands are tattooed, “L-O-V-E” on his left knuckles, “H-A-T-E” on his right. “Hey, Timmy.” The hoodie kicks the street vendor’s display. “You owe me for that nickel bag, Timmy.”

The street vendor squawks and crawls across the pavement, chasing his wares. The hoodie steps on his hand, seizes his hair, jerks his head back. “Gimme some bread.” The street vendor extracts coins from his jeans pocket and hands them over.

The hoodie picks through dimes and quarters. “Huh. You still owe me for that nickel bag, Timmy.” He takes a roach clip, too.

“Why don’t you leave Timmy alone,” Chi says.

The hoodie whips out a switchblade.

Chi steps back, anger pounding in his throat. His hand rests on his maser. The green beam could slice open the hoodie’s head like a machete through a coconut. But hoodies aren’t the sort of demons he’s watching out for. Don’t get involved, Chi. You can’t get involved. Right. He’s getting tired of the Tenets of the Grandmother Principle.

The guy in fringed jeans strolls by, murmuring, “Grass, hash, acid, speed?”

An old man staggers, falls against the House of Richard, and reels over kids squatting on the sidewalk. He reeks of fortified wine. The kids laugh and push him away. The old man goes to the curb and empties the contents of his stomach. He brushes off his shirt, sprawls on the sidewalk, and begins to snore.

More alcoholics congregate in front of Pacific Liquors and Drugs. Alcohol addiction; Chi shakes his head. The trait dates from bappir fanciers in prehistoric Persia to gin-soused telelinkers careening through telespace, causing crashes in their wake. Standard scans can identify addiction genes and tweaking is widely available in Chi’s Day. But most people Chi knows tweak only half of their suspect strands. A glass of good wine is such a pleasure, it seems, even people in his Day don’t teetotal.

A shiny red convertible cruises by. A bushy fellow in a cowboy hat navigates, a beautiful woman in beads by his side. “Look, it’s Stevie,” yells a barefoot girl sitting on the curb. “It’s Stevie!” She and her friend leap to their feet and dash after Stevie. The convertible speeds away.

Chi recalls the fellow’s face from the Archives: the bass player from the Double Barrel Boogie Band.

Now a short plump woman sashays arm-in-arm with another woman, toting a pint of whiskey and encouraging a lively dog leaping all around them. “Hey, Jack,” they call to the dog. “Here, Jack. Fetch, Jack.”

The short woman has a worn-out young face bare of makeup, exposing her acne-scarred skin, but her wide toothy grin gives her a rustic charm. She wears a crushed velvet top hat over her mane of frizzy brown hair. Suddenly she spots Chi and saunters up to him.

“There you go, honey,” she says in a voice like molasses and grit. She digs out a pencil and a hundred-dollar bill from her purse. She scribbles on the bill and rips it in two, tucking half in his jeans pocket, the other in hers. “That’s for being so beautiful. Call me when you want to claim the other half.”

The woman cackles, and she and her girlfriend saunter on. Chi pries the torn bill from his pocket. “Janis Joplin” and a phone number are written on it.

The afternoon is slipping away. Sun slants through the trees. The scent of onions grilling makes Chi’s mouth water. But he can’t eat the food of this Day. Microorganisms of the past could kill him: salmonellae, shigellae, cholera, e. coli, staphylococci, not to mention botulism. So many poisons in this ancient food.

Chi pops off nutribeads from his nutritional necklace and swallows them. Two thousand calories will nourish him. Still, his mouth waters at the scent of grilling onions.

And there! Another film crew barrels down Cole Street on the back of a flatbed truck. The truck speeds around the corner before Chi can catch up. Damn it, anyway.

Thrills. It’s a thrill a minute in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.

And dangerous. So many dangers: the Man or the Man. Rustlers, hustlers, bikers, hoodies. The Axis is a fourteen-year-old girl, all alone. It’s Chi’s duty not just to find her, but to protect her.

And there! A slim girl in jeans and a high-collared shirt, her long fair hair flying, sprints across Haight Street and disappears down Belvedere.

And there! As if a shadow has lifted up from the concrete and become a solid thing, a dark figure stalks after her.

A demon? Is it a demon?

Chi pushes through the crowd, shoving strangers aside without a prophylak over his hand.

“Hey!” people protest.

Where is she? Where did she go?

“Hey, you. Snot-nose.” A beat cop brandishing his billy club, all grizzled jowls and quivering indignation, seizes Chi by the elbow. “Get yer ass outta the street, snot-nose, or I’ll bust ya for jaywalkin’.”

Chi points up Belvedere, protesting, “But I just saw my cousin!”

“An’ I just saw the Virgin Mary.” The cop slaps the tip of his billy club in his beefy palm. “Swear to begeeze, I’d dig bustin’ ya.”

Whatever you do, son, don’t get busted by the Man.

“Okay, okay!” Chi leaps on the sidewalk, but the cop comes after him. Chi ducks into the stream of people walking in the opposite direction, hunkers down on bended knees. He’s a six-foot-four guy with long red hair, but he manages to fade into the crowd.

Will he ever find the girl he’s searching for? Find her in time? His easy defeat by a hoodie, then a beat cop disgusts him.

For aside from all the dangers lurking in the Haight-Ashbury of 1967, demons threaten the Summer of Love. That’s what his skipfather believes. Demons: what Chi’s people call Devolved Entities Manifested from the Other Now.

Demons that seek the girl who is the Axis.

Demons that want the Axis dead.

6

Purple Haze

Susan sits on the stoop of the Double Barrel house, staring at ants scurrying up and down the stairs. The neverending party rocks on as she studies them, precise little creatures fulfilling their purpose in life. They swarm all over the kitchen. No one puts out ant poison or worries much about them. Why kill an ant?

Around the corner, the Haight-Ashbury scurries.

“They’re just like those ants, all these damn people,” the woman says. The tall, exotic woman who cut her down in Golden Gate Park. Only this time the woman wears scarlet velvet, and Susan knows a thing or two. To Susan’s surprise, Ruby A. Maverick sits next to her on the stoop.

“The ants have more nobility and purpose,” Susan mumbles, attempting a reply Professor Zoom-style. How much more misery can she take in one day? Ruby humiliated her once. What’s she here for? To do it again? She can feel Ruby’s eyes burning holes through her shame.

“The ants have more nobility and purpose,” Ruby echoes. “That’s not bad for a teenybopper.” Her voice rings with that haughty tone. “Find your little girlfriend?”

Susan shakes her head. “No, I haven’t found Penny Lane.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“I’m Starbright. And you’re Ruby Maverick. How come I can remember your name, but you can’t remember mine?”

Ruby snorts. “Get off your high horse, kid. I meet a lot of people in my shop. Got a real name?”

High horse, oh really. “That is my real name. No one’s turning me in to the Man, so you can forget it. I’m not telling anyone anything, including you.”

“Uh-huh.” Ruby shakes her head. “Listen, Starbright. I acted like a pig last time we spoke. I admit it, right, all right? So. . . .I’m sorry.”

Susan shrugs.

“You accepting my apology?”

“Why should I?” Susan looks up at her. Ruby isn’t smiling. She looks as intimidating as ever, a bold, proud woman with a cloud of black hair out to there. But those fiery eyes, staring out at the street, then back at Susan, then out again, are unmistakably friendly. The eyes twinkle, beaming at her.

Suddenly Susan isn’t so intimidated.

“You have to understand,” Ruby says, “this is my turf. I’ve lived here for years. This hippie thing, all you kids. The journalists and the film crews. The cops and the crazies. All the dope, all the dealing. It’s turned into one big drag. Oh, hell.” She throws up her hands. “I can’t explain it.”

“No, you explained it just fine,” Susan says. “I understand. At least, I’m trying to. The Summer of Love is the most amazing thing that ever happened to me.” Which is true. Or true enough.

“Uh-huh,” Ruby says, but her tone isn’t sarcastic.

They sit in silence, watching the boisterous crowd and the busy ants.

“How’s Stan?” Ruby finally says.

“He just did this big acid deal at the Festival of Growing Things.” The story sort of tumbles out of Susan’s mouth, but she’s too embarrassed to tell Ruby about the hundred-dollar bill Stan took from her. Or what he demanded she do. “Ten thousand hits. His profit is a year’s worth of income. He used your calculating machine to figure it out, but I figured it out in my head. Stan can’t figure anything out after he smokes white Lebanese pollen.”

“Sweet Isis.” Ruby gives her an inscrutable look. “He inside?”

“He. . . .he’s upstairs with some chick he picked up at the festival.” Susan stares at the ants until her eyes tear.

Ruby sighs. “Stan’s not like he used to be either, kid. We’ve all changed.”

“The chick is really beautiful,” Susan adds. As if that explains everything.

“Chick?” Professor Zoom strolls out and sits on the stoop. He dropped a hit of dragon’s blood on top of the white lightning he dropped this morning. He practically glows in the oncoming twilight. “This isn’t a farm. Where’s a chick?”

“Shut up, Harold,” Ruby says. “Starbright and me, we’re rapping.”

“Chiiiick, chick-chick-chick,” Professor Zoom says in a falsetto. He chuckles in his deadpan way. “He-ere chickie-chickie-chickie.” He presses his thumbs together and flaps his fingers like wings in Susan’s face.

She recoils. “Chick. Like a stupid little bird.”

“Like prey,” Ruby says, nodding. “Wolves go after them.”

Professor Zoom starts to chant, “Chick, bird, broad, bimbo, gash, pussy.” He laughs, getting into it. “Witch-bitch. Chick-chick-chick.”

“God!” Susan stares at Ruby, openmouthed.

Ruby stares back. Their eyes connect.

“Dig it,” Ruby says. “Once ‘chick’ was Beat talk. But I guess ‘chick’ isn’t very hip anymore. Let’s you and me not use that word.”

“Okay,” Susan says. And it’s another revelation, a Summer of Love revelation. “What shall I call you?”

“Call me Ruby,” she says and formally shakes Susan’s hand. “Come on, Starbright. We’ve got work to do.”

They stand and stride into the house. Someone has plugged in an amp and picks out screeching notes on a guitar. Fawn is still stripping on the coffee table. She’s taking her time, down to her panties and cowboy boots as the guys hoot.

“Know where Stan keeps my calculating machine?” Ruby shouts in Susan’s ear.

“I sure do. In his room, on the desk by the door.”

“Think you can help me go get it?”

“Sure. My overnight bag with all my stuff is up there, too. I think I want to go get that.”

“I think you should.”

“But, Ruby, they’re up there.”

“Don’t worry. You help me, I’ll help you.”

They steal up the stairs to the third floor. Susan cannot believe her nerve, but Ruby closes her hand around the doorknob and silently opens the door. Marilyn from Mill Valley moans in loud, long sobs. Ruby puts her fingers to her lips, Ssh! She hands her shoulder bag to Susan and creeps inside. Susan holds the door ajar, turning her eyes away. Ruby creeps out, cradling the calculating machine in her arms. She sets it down on the floor with a thump and creeps in again.

“Aaah! Aaah! Aaah!” Marilyn screams.

Ruby hurries out with Susan’s overnight bag, and Susan eases the door shut.

“Who’s there?” Stan calls out in a slurred voice.

They steal down the stairs and out of the house. Made it, they made it! Aaah! Aaah! Aaah! they mock. Susan slaps hands with Ruby, flushed and laughing.

“Damn, this thing must weigh thirty pounds.” Ruby grunts, resting the calculating machine on the stoop.

“What monster dost thou cradle in thy arms, oh witch?” says Professor Zoom, his irises almost black from his dilated pupils.

“Go back to Harvard, Harold,” Ruby says.

“Don’t call me names,” he says.

But Susan can’t help it. Her laughter vanishes. Tears well in her eyes before she can stop them.

“Hey, flower child,” Ruby says. “He’s not worth it.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“Kid, you don’t know. Stan and me, we once had a life. At least, I thought we did.”

“Oh, Ruby, I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

“Find somebody better. We all do. You will, too.”

“I’m pregnant.”

Susan’s cheeks burn. She clutches her purse and overnight bag. Teddy bear comforts. But there is no more comfort in childish things.

Stan dashes out the door in barely zipped-up jeans, towing Marilyn, dazed and naked, on his arm. “Say hey! I’m not through with that!”

“Yeah, you are through with that,” Ruby says. “Let’s go, Starbright,” she says to Susan. “You come along with me.”

* * *

Ruby hoists the calculating machine in both arms and hikes as fast as she can down the quiet way on Page Street. The machine is heavy, but not nearly as heavy as the sharp repentance in her heart. Regret is the worst because there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t change the past.

The kid trails three steps behind, dragging her feet and her overnight bag, her eyes glued to the ground. Ruby can’t catch the kid’s glance, let alone flash the sympathetic smile waiting on her lips.

Chick-chick-chick. She should’ve belted Harold in the chops. Those stoned Harvard drop-out dudes, they’re the worst.

Up the block, Haight Street is crammed with the Saturday night crowd. Stragglers returning from the Festival of Growing Things. Folks heading to the Fillmore where Eric Burdon and the Animals, Chuck Berry, and the Steve Miller Blues Band are playing. Hustlers and hunters, bikers and dealers, tourists and college kids, heads and hangers-on grooving for free on the street scene, which can be as entertaining as a paid-for engagement.

Regret. Ruby recalls Golden Gate Park only too well, how she lashed out at the kid. A lamb thrown to the wolf with the most bodacious appetite in the neighborhood for Little Miss Red Riding Hoods.

Ruby could have been cool, if her head had been on straight. She could have guided the kid to the Print Mint or Huckleberry House. Hell, Ruby could have put her up on the couch. She took in Chi, and he’s worked out fine. Now the couch is taken. So where else? She’s got lots of space in her house. What about in her heart?

Sometimes flower children fresh off the bus have a friend and a friendly place to stay. Sometimes they don’t. Now look at the trouble she’s in. Who knows what dope Professor Zoom turned her on to. She’s lucky to be as coherent as she seems. She might have the clap and not know it. These kids from the burbs are unbelievably naïve. And Stan. The man has gone too far this time. Getting a kid pregnant. That’s statutory rape. Does he know?

Pregnant. Ruby doesn’t doubt it. She got pregnant once, not a whole lot older than the kid, no less miserable, and under circumstances equally unsavory. “Never again,” she mutters to the evening sky. “Never ever again.”

She sighs and grips the calculating machine tighter. Just goes to show you. She wouldn’t have acted so stupid if she didn’t still feel so lousy about Stan. She feels ill, a knot of sickness heavy in her gut.

Because there was a time when he wasn’t like this. And that time, their loving time together, is all mixed up with her longing for the way things were before the crazy Summer of Love.

For the time when Ruby was happy.

* * *

She’d been juicing it up at Vesuvio’s in North Beach. Jazz was blowing, and the ’60 edition of Beatitude had just hit the bookstores. She and Bob Kaufman were whooping it up in the John Wilkes Booth on the mezzanine. Her poem “Hot Bitch” had got published in the collection, and there were rumors the Heat was going to bust City Lights for peddling pornography. After studying Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay at Mills College, Ruby felt positively wicked. She was still dumb enough to be proud of a line like, “Her nipples burn, hot bitch.” And so on. Bob had been kind.

In strolled this fine young dude, tall and rangy as a racehorse, in boots and jeans and a leather jacket. He wore his hair cropped, his face clean-shaven. Vain about the chin and the cheekbones, well, why not? He went by the name of Harry Orr, which made a sophomoric joke or a lousy come-on. Harry. . . .or? He toasted her literary success—and disappeared.

He was working the bicoastal thing, which should have been a tip-off he’d turn out no good. Working the underground: dope and stolen cars, broken paroles and broken hearts. Still, when he showed up on the Beach a year later, he hadn’t lost his illusion of purity.

Ruby was turning thirty, an intense age filled with fate and magic. She could have had anyone she wanted. When the Beats lusted after spades, they dug the Haitian in her. When the hipsters lusted after Native Americans, they dug the Cherokee in her. When the suits lusted after Southern cream, they dug the belle in her. She was one fine babe, and she knew it.

He was now known as Stan the Man, possibly on the lam. Their paths crossed again at Vesuvio’s. This time he went home with her to her view apartment on Vallejo Street.

When Ruby split to the Haight-Ashbury in ’62, Stan went with her. Ma had died of lung cancer, though she’d never smoked, and Ruby made a stink about working conditions at Marinship with the wartime shipyard’s successor, a rich construction company. The construction company settled for fifteen grand. Ruby sprang Ma’s savings and pension out of probate and opened the Mystic Eye with ten thousand in cash.

Get your own, Daughter, Ma always said. Ruby did. The shop was her dream after a lifetime fascination with herbs and the ancient ways.

Stan grew his hair long—sweet Isis, he was beautiful—and helped her set up 555 Clayton Street. He built the shelves and display cases by hand. Ruby hoped he’d pursue his carpentry and woodworking talents. He moved in with her upstairs and stayed true for nearly four years.

It was no secret how women panted after him, even the squares in their spit curls and girdles. He and Ruby joked about it: Harry or Stan?

But could they last?

In those days? The Pill and rock ‘n’ roll and bikinis and James Bond movies unleashed an avalanche of pent-up female lust. Cigarette ads urged women to let loose. Booze ads showcased gorgeous dames lapping bright drinks from tall glasses. Tampon ads insisted nothing should hold a woman back from doing whatever she wanted to do. Even the ads for Dial soap with AT-7 showed a girl in the shower, her pursed lips ready for fellatio, soapsuds ejaculated all over her face.

There was no stopping the media assault of freewheeling sexuality in those days.

Grandmother Says: Kaou (Temptation)

The Image: A hot wind arises under heaven, disrupting the world and its rulers.

The Oracle: The maiden is bold. The man delights in her and does not recognize her power. He is seduced, then finds he cannot control her.

Hexagram 44, The I Ching or Book of Changes

to fuck with love

to fuck with all the heat and wild of fuck

the fever of your mouth devouring my secrets and my alibis

leaving me pure burned into oblivion

nipple to nipple we touched

and were transfixed

by a flow of energy

beyond anything I have ever known

we TOUCHED!

the energy indescribable

almost unendurable

the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon transcended

the circle momentarily complete

the balance of forces perfect

I kiss your shoulder and it reeks of lust

the lust of erotic angels fucking the stars

and shouting their insatiable joy over heaven

the lust of comets colliding in celestial hysteria

SCREAMING DELIGHT over the universe

we lie together, our bodies wet and burning

and we WEEP we WEEP we WEEP the incredible tears

that saints and holy men shed in the presence

of their incandescent gods

we are transmuting

we are as soft and warm and trembling

as a new gold butterfly

at night sometimes I see our bodies glow

“To Fuck with Love” by Lenore Kandel

Underground Press, 1964

Who married? Why marry? No one married anymore. Who was faithful? Why stay faithful? What did faithful mean, anyway? Nothing. Or at least, not very much.

Ruby should have known he could not possibly have stayed true. Or legit. Instead of the occasional pot score, Stan turned into a cottage industry. Late-night calls came weekly, daily. He spent more and more time on the street. He traveled to Mexico three times. One night Ruby was confronted outside her shop by a stringy woman who demanded to see Stan. Her paranoia shot through the roof. She owned a legitimate business. She was working on a pretty cool life.

Stan moved out when he landed the gig as manager of the Double Barrel Boogie Band. Never was cut out to be the settle-down type, Ruby consoled herself. Four years together? Those four years were gone.

Now he’s got everything he wants: a bountiful supply of connections and easy girls. In the time since they broke up, Stan got himself a suntan and a singular reputation. He’s become a joke, a caricature of himself. And Ruby? She got herself a silver ’66 Mercedes Benz and a fifty-grand-a-year business. She’s become a respected hip merchant.

Is that justice? Oh, yeah.

But Stan still has the power to make her crazy.

Why does she keep falling for bad dudes like Stan the Man and Leo Gorgon? Sometimes she thinks that Roi, her beautiful lost doomed Roi, for all his failure, had more nobility and purpose. Right on, Starbright.

Ruby grits her teeth as she turns the corner at Clayton. The kid turns the corner, too, looks down the block and looks up at Ruby. And Ruby sees in the kid’s eyes her self-doubt and pain and fear. It’s like falling down a well, falling into the past. Her past. Was she really that vulnerable once? How can young women bear it?

Shifting the calculating machine in her arms, Ruby comes to a decision. She will not turn Starbright over to Huckleberry House or All Saints’. She’s heard of rip-offs at the crash pads, folks turning in runaways to the fuzz for sixteen bucks a head. Bounty hunters lurk everywhere during the Summer of Love.

The kid can stay in the sitting room off her bedroom on the third floor. Chi can continue crashing on the living room couch. Ruby doesn’t understand Chi, but one thing she knows for sure. He’s an aloof and sober young man who observes her house rules and mostly ignores girls. He won’t bother Starbright.

What vice cop could pin an infraction on her?

She intends to advise the kid to contact her parents, of course, and go home. That’s the right thing to do. Presumably. But only if the kid wants to go. If she hasn’t burned her bridges. If she’s not getting beat up at home or worse. So many ifs. Ruby can imagine them all.

But to shelter another kid, a real live runaway this time, and pregnant? Sweet Isis, she tells herself, don’t turn this into a trend. She feels good about it, but not that good. She is not the custodian of the disaffected youth of America flocking to the Summer of Love.

And with a small shock, Ruby remembers: I don’t take in runaways.

But you will, Chi said. You will shelter people. Runaways, and people.

Oh, yeah? Just where did he see a description of her? What article, where? He didn’t show it to her, now did he? Electronically stored. Right. If the article is on microfiche in the library, she should be able to look it up herself. What journalist could have possibly written about her sheltering runaways if she hasn’t done it yet?

Who is Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco? And who is watching Ruby A. Maverick?

* * *

It’s a Scene.

Ruby spies a mob sitting in a circle on the sidewalk in front of the Mystic Eye. On the shop’s door is the sign she left before her trek to the Double Barrel house.

The mob consists of half a dozen young dudes, plus a girl. The girl’s face is shaped like a frog: a narrow wrinkled forehead, round eyes, a thick wide jaw, a thin-lipped mouth. She’s painted flower petals around her eyes. It doesn’t help, poor thing.

The frog girl is thrilled to be sitting with so many young dudes. It’s not clear who she’s with, if anyone. But the frog girl is cool. She doesn’t have to be with anyone.

One dude balances a skull on his knee. Not a pendant or a button, but the real thing, bony eye sockets and grinning molars, minus the lower jawbone. Another dude’s got two large eyes with long curly lashes painted in kohl on his cheeks. His real eyes are rimmed in kohl, too. Then there’s the usual dude in a headband, a dude in a military cap, and an older dude with a graying beard and hair halfway down his back.

A jug of dago red is making the rounds, plus a huge bong billowing like a smokestack.

Ruby swoops down on them, breathing fire. She deposits the calculating machine on her stoop.

“Okay, boppers. Break it up and move it on ‘cause you’re not gonna trip at my door.”

She may as well be speaking in tongues, because no one bats an eye. They are so far into their game, they neither see nor hear her but continue to laugh and jive and pass around jug and bong.

Ruby stands at the edge of their circle, tapping her toe. “Listen up! I want to open my shop.”

What the dudes do notice is Starbright sidling up. She’s got to lose a week’s worth of grime, the white lipstick, which doesn’t suit her at all, and her attitude of abject depression. Still, she’s got a lovely face and a pretty young body and wavy fair hair, however unkempt. Her overnight bag is a red flag: Runaway. Which means she won’t sass, won’t ask much, and won’t put up a fight. In other words—to these hard young dudes roaming around the Haight-Ashbury—an easy lay. Beautiful.

They do what young dudes do in the presence of young female flesh. Their shoulders square up. Their voices louden. Their gestures broaden and swoop. They start hassling each other, pushing and punching. The headband sitting next to the dude with the skull gets an ash flicked in his face. “Hey, man!” Sweat pops out of unwashed armpits, the stink of male competition.

Ruby sees a flash of red hair, and suddenly Chi is there. To her surprise, he notices Starbright. He practically cranes his neck. Ruby knows Chi well enough to know he’d walk away from a scene like this, disgust on his alabaster face. But no, he sits. He doesn’t even whip out a square of his weird plastic wrap to sit on. Talk about distracted.

Ruby glances at Starbright. The kid’s so miserable, she doesn’t even notice the stir she’s causing.

Here we go, Ruby thinks, watching the young dudes rev up. The usual Haight-Ashbury shuck and jive.

“Where there’s dope,” says the dude with the skull, passing the bong to the headband, “there’s hope.”

“Dope gets you through times of no money,” opines the headband, passing to the guy with the eyes, “better ‘n’ money gets you through times of no dope.”

“Reality is a crutch for people who haven’t got the courage to drop acid,” says the guy with the eyes, passing to Chi.

“LSD is a psychotomimetic,” says Chi.

“Say what?” says the guy with the eyes.

“A mimicker of madness.” Chi doesn’t take a hit and passes the bong to the military cap.

Starbright’s eyes widen.

“No foolin’,” Ruby mutters.

“Oh. Yeah,” says the guy with eyes. “I knew that.”

“I usually trip once a week,” brags the military cap. “If I went two weeks without acid, I’d grow so much ego, I’d blow to pieces.”

The military cap passes the bong to the frog girl. She tokes and says nothing. Girls like her in these circles seldom do. The frog girl passes the bong to the elderbeard.

“I trip,” says the elderbeard, not to be outdone, “every two or three days. Then I wait a day to do body work.”

“What sort of body work?” asks Chi.

“You know. Sleep. Eat.” The elderbeard passes to the dude with the skull.

“Acid,” says the dude with the skull, “raises your powers of integration so that everything is important.”

“LSD,” says Chi, “lowers your powers of discrimination so that everything seems important.”

“Huh?” says the guy with the eyes.

“Hey, man, how come you’re not smokin’?” says the military cap.

Everyone turns toward Chi. Suddenly tension is thicker than the smoke.

Chi hesitates, then says, “I went to the Clinic this afternoon. Dr. Smith tells me there’s an epidemic of measles in the neighborhood.”

“Oh, wow,” says the guy with the eyes. “Measles, man.”

Everyone in the circle coughs, and Ruby is struck with concern. Chi is some kind of neat freak. He’s obsessed with germs like no one she’s ever known. He’s got measles?

“The health of the body is merely a matter of the mind,” says the elderbeard, handing a tiny foil packet to Chi. “Take this. Owsley white lightning. It’ll do wonders for your measles, brother.”

“That’s okay,” says Chi.

“Take it,” says the elderbeard.

“Yeah, take it,” says the military cap.

“We want to see you take it, man,” says the headband.

The frog girl turns and stares. Her greasepaint flower petals shine.

Chi unfolds the foil packet. He sticks out his tongue for all to see and places the tab of acid on the tip of it.

The dudes relax. The circle is restored.

Chi coughs gently. Ruby watches him palm the tab. He does a fair job of it, too, and slips the tab in his jacket pocket.

Ruby finds herself breathing a sigh of relief.

Now the young dudes are at it again.

”When I’m tripping, I see through solid rock,” says the headband, taking the bong. “I read minds.”

“I practice magic,” says the elderbeard, on a roll. “It’s easy ‘cause I was a magician apprenticed to Merlin in 1467. I made it with Morgan le Fay.”

“Wow, you’re an incarnation?” says the guy with the eyes.

“No, brother, I’m five hundred years old,” says the elderbeard. “I’m living backward in time.”

“Me, I’m reincarnated,” declares the headband. “I was a Navajo chief.”

“Shoot, everybody’s been a Navajo chief,” says the elderbeard.

“I’m from Egypt,” claims the military cap. “I built the freakin’ pyramids. In my past life, I was, like, Ramses the King. And she”--he stares at Starbright—“was my queen. Come on over, Nefer-titty. Sit beside me.”

Starbright turns scarlet. She hovers behind Ruby, but the pressure of their bloodshot eyes is too much. She shuffles over, sets down her overnight bag, and sits on the sidewalk between the military cap and Chi.

Chi smiles at her. She totally ignores him. He jerks back, rebuffed. His shoulders square up. His voice loudens. His gestures broaden and swoop.

Uh-oh, Ruby thinks.

“Hell with Egypt,” says the guy with the eyes. “I’m from Mars.” He produces a sheaf of spidery drawings and proudly displays them. “These are our machines. I’ve come to Earth to give Martian technology to you Earthlings. How do you like our machines?” he says to Chi.

“There’s no advanced life native to Mars,” Chi replies. “No life at all, except for some insignificant bacteria we discovered centuries ago.”

“You callin’ me a liar?” says the guy with the eyes.

“There wasn’t any life on Mars,” Chi says with haughty authority, “until we terraformed the planet and made the place habitable for humanity.”

“Terrify the planet?” says the elderbeard. “That’s what we’re trying to do in the Haight-Ashbury, brother. Terrify the planet.”

The circle laughs warily. Not everyone gets the joke.

“And we couldn’t terraform Mars,” Chi continues, “until we could finance such a massive public project with a positive cash flow. It took a hundred years of savings and investment just to fund the first year of the project. Financing Mars terraformation was a long-term commitment, requiring long-term discipline. The government lacked the willpower, the people lacked the means. It was up to us cosmicists to get the job done. We brought life to Mars.”

Chi glances at Ruby, and she stares back, befuddled. What the devil is he talking about?

“Dig this,” says the guy with the eyes. “He sounds like a freakin’ accountant. I’m a man from Mars.”

“I’m not an accountant. I’m a tachyporter.”

“A tacky-poor-what?”

“My personal Now exists in your future.”

“I think you’re a narc, man,” says the headband.

“And I think you’re dirty.”

Chi slips something from his jacket pocket, flicks it. An orange beam shoots from the tip of a metal tube the size of a Bic pen. Chi aims the beam at the sidewalk in the middle of the circle and twists his hand, tracing a shape. A puff of pulverized concrete rises from the beam’s path. He flicks the pen-thing again, then tucks it in his pocket. Dust lingers and there, carved in the concrete, maybe half an inch deep, is a shape:

Ruby cannot believe her eyes. She knows a thing or two about stage magic. She barges through the circle and crouches, touching the sidewalk. She doesn’t even think twice about the wisdom of this till her forefinger informs her the concrete is still hot.

“What the hell?” she says to Chi.

He shrugs, triumphant and apprehensive at the same time.

The frog girl and the circle stare at the carved heart, openmouthed.

The elderbeard starts to cackle, “Man oh man oh man.”

Then Ruby sees something else she cannot believe. Chi—the aloof Beelzebub in his high tower—whips out something else from his jacket pocket, reaches over, and--while everyone’s eyes are riveted on his trick in the concrete--presses that something against Starbright’s chest between her breasts.

“Hey!” She recoils, startled. Her eyes widen again. “Ouch!”

She slaps his shoulder, pushes him away. He’s holding a small dark oblong stone.

The circle looks up from the carved heart, slowly taking interest in Starbright’s little struggle. Chi pockets the stone. His face is solemn, intense, faintly ashamed.

“What is your name, man?” says the guy with the eyes.

“Where are you from?” says the headband.

Chi’s got them all so rattled that when a patrol car turns the corner and prowls down the block, the young dudes stagger to their feet. Two cops hop out, hips thick with holstered revolvers.

“Party’s over,” Ruby commands. “All of you, scram.”

At Ruby’s nod, Chi hustles Starbright around to the alley.

Ruby hoists the calculating machine, unlocks her door, and heaves the machine inside. She tosses her CLOSED sign inside, too, steps in, and locks the door but good.

She stands in semidarkness, peering out the peephole, heart thumping. The cops disperse the dopers. Far out. Ruby waits one beat, two. Are they coming after her? Charge her with instigating a public nuisance? Or is this the night to raid her herb collection and plant a joint on her premises?

But the cops hang around a minute or two, exchanging a few laughs, climb in their car, and take off.

Damn! It’s a Saturday night and the street is still packed with paying customers. But paranoia drains her dry. She doesn’t know how much more she can take. She shuts the shop, triple-locks the front door, and dashes upstairs to her apartment.

Chi and the kid stand on the deck outside the kitchen door. Starbright is nearly as pale as he is. She furtively checks him out. He stares at her from just about every angle.

“But what’s your real name?” he’s saying in a wheedling voice.

“That is my real name,” the kid snaps, eyes flashing.

Uh-huh. Now, Ruby has seen Chi glance at the ladies now and then. And she has no idea what the young dude does with his time outside of the Mystic Eye. But this is the first time she’s seen him stir his royal self over a female person. A pretty child, yes, but what’s going on? There’s something odd about the gleam in his eye.

Ruby steps out on the deck and lets him have it. “What do you mean by pulling a stunt like that in front of my shop?”

“I’m sorry,” he says and looks it.

“You bet your ass you’re sorry, sonny. What if the city charges me to replace the sidewalk you ruined?”

“I didn’t ruin the damn sidewalk, Ruby.”

“None of your smart-mouth.” She shakes her finger at him, tosses Starbright’s overnight bag in the kitchen, and slams the door. “You’re gonna help me,” she says to him and climbs down the stairs. “You too, kid.”

Ruby leads them to the garage, heaves open the double doors, pulls the chain to the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Her Mercedes Benz is parked there, plus boxes of inventory and an eight-armed brass statue of Kali she’s not sure what to do with. She picks her way through the boxes to the storeroom. She surveys a lawn-mower with rusty blades. A ten-inch black-and-white TV. A Hula Hoop. She keeps forgetting to dump the box of peyote buttons from Morris Orchards in Laredo, Texas that Stan bought through mail order in ’63. Ah, there’s that old mattress.

Ruby slides her hand through the loop on the left side. Chi takes the right. Starbright navigates from behind. Ruby has never seen such a worried look on a flower child’s face but, then, ten days is a long stretch for any girl to do time at the Double Barrel house. They struggle with the unwieldy mattress.

“You help us carry this upstairs,” Ruby tells Chi, “then you collect your things and get out.”

They stand beneath the bare bulb swinging on its chain.

Chi looks up, startled. “Ah, come on, Ruby.”

“Come on, nothing.”

“What did I do? I thought you liked me.”

“You got it, sonny. Liked. Past tense.” Her hand slips, tearing three fingernails below the quick.

“But why? What’s wrong?” Chi steadies his side. “I’m here to help you. Haven’t I helped you?”

His face looks so pained, she almost relents. Almost. She is Ruby A. Maverick and she tolerates no nonsense.

“Measles? You got measles? You know how bad measles are? I’ve got a young woman here who is. . . .” Who is pregnant, she starts to say, but shuts up when she sees Starbright’s horrified face. “A young woman who doesn’t need to get sick, and neither do I. Do you have any idea how contagious measles is?”

“I don’t have measles, Ruby,” Chi says patiently like she’s being dense, which makes her even madder. “I would probably die from measles.”

“Then you lied?”

“I didn’t lie, I implied.” He tugs at the mattress. “They were trying to force me to ingest illegal drugs.”

Ruby softens. “Yeah. Well. You’d better go to the clinic tomorrow and get treated. Don’t you go spreading measles around here.”

“Ruby,” he says, less patiently. “I don’t have measles.”

“He attacked me,” Starbright speaks up. Her voice is shrill. “With that black stone-thing. He stabbed me.” She rubs her breastbone.

Chi starts to laugh, then stops himself. “I didn’t stab you, Starbright. The scanner’s got a small probe, that’s all. The probe is a hundred times finer than a sewing needle. You felt a little prick, that’s all. Isn’t that true?”

“You stabbed me.” Starbright glares at him with such venom, Ruby revises her opinion of the kid. Not such a little lamb, after all.

He turns to Ruby. “I’m complying with your house rules, aren’t I?”

Of course he is. But her stubbornness and paranoia won’t let it go. “You sat down with those dudes. Maybe you didn’t partake, but you passed the bong. Tell me true, once and for all, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. Are you a narc? Did you come to the Haight-Ashbury to collect evidence?”

“Oh, I did come to collect evidence.”

“A nonparticipant witness, isn’t that what they call it?” Ruby says in her sweet-as-poison voice.

“Actually, that’s a fair description.”

“Damn it, Chi!”

Starbright drops the back of the mattress, poised to flee.

Ruby gestures to her, cool it. Call her a fool, but suddenly she’s worried about the kid. “You stay put, Starbright.”

“I am not a narc!” Chi declares. “I have no wish to harm you! Or Starbright! I swear it! I swear it on anything you want me to swear on.”

“Swear it on your mother’s grave, and we’ll never mention it again.”

An unexpected look of sharp sadness crosses his face. A look that shoots right into Ruby’s heart and strikes bull’s-eye.

“Oh, I can do that,” Chi says. “I swear it on my mother’s grave.”

* * *

They set up a makeshift bedroom in the sitting room on the third floor. At first the kid is unsure, then she joins in Ruby’s enthusiastic rearrangement of the furniture, Chi’s tasteful placement of the Persian carpets and potted plants. Soon they’ve got a cozy little nest all for Starbright with a door that closes and locks, a sloping skylight, a private bath two steps away, and sheets. Clean sheets. The kid’s face begins to shine. She shrugs out of her jacket and carefully hangs it on the hook on the the door.

Chi beams as if he’s responsible for this minor miracle. “I’ll just go now,” he says, slipping quickly out and clattering down the first three stairs, “and let you lasses rest.”

“Not so fast, sonny,” Ruby calls to him. “You’re packing some kind of weapon. Aren’t you. Well, aren’t you?”

He stops and slowly climbs back up.

“I, for one, will rest a whole lot easier when you tell us what your magic show was all about. Carving up my sidewalk with that. . . .thingie.”

“This?” He pulls out the Bic pen.

Ruby and Starbright both duck.

“It’s just a maser,” Chi says mildly. He points to tiny graphics along one side. “Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. This tool is cool. It’s got quite a range.” The maser is striped with bands of color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Each stripe is subdivided into tiny measurements like the divisions on a ruler.

“Pretty,” Ruby says. “Is it Japanese?”

“Yes, it is,” he says with a laugh. “You set the beam you want like this.” He slides a tiny black pointer up and down the tube’s length along the colored stripes, clicking the pointer at various divisions. “Red is good for really tiny jobs. Microorganisms, bacteria, and such. The beam destroys the target, but doesn’t affect anything else.” He points to the orange and yellow bands. “These are higher intensities. I can cut various materials, cauterize a wound, perform surgery, if I need to. Concrete is pretty soft, so I carved the sidewalk on the orange setting. The serious fire-power is here.” He points to the green and blue bands, taking care not to move the pointer. “And I’ve got a frequency that doesn’t apply normal physics—the purple beam. The purple beam is an antimatter emission similar to the energy we employ in the tachyonic shuttle.”

Ruby is nodding, following along with the logic of his rap, but now she’s stymied. “I don’t get it.”

“Neither do we, not completely,” he says darkly. “I’ve come equipped with an active purple beam only if I need to defeat antimatter. I hope I never need to use it.” He tucks the maser back in his pocket. “Under Tenet Seven of the Grandmother Principle, I’m only allowed to use the maser under strict necessity. I’m not allowed to go masering up your world with a modern tool.” That faintly ashamed look. “Guess I messed up tonight.”

“Antimatter, uh-huh.” Ruby is nonplussed. But he’s so earnest. So convincing! An awful thought strikes her: is Chi insane? Still, she saw him carve concrete with her own eyes. Suddenly her head is spinning. “The royal we again. Who’s we?”

“He said he’s from the future,” Starbright chimes in, looking Chi up and down. “Or Mars. I can’t tell which.”

“Guess I told everyone.” He brushes back his beautiful red hair and blushes. Charming, to see this young dude blush, his pale face as fine and chiseled as a movie actor’s. “They were too drunk and stoned to take me seriously, though, weren’t they?” His contrite look competes with a smirk of triumph. Won that competition, brother.

“But I’m not drunk or stoned,” Ruby says. “And I recall you used a weird word for what you are.”

“I’m a tachyporter. I’m on a t-port, and now I’ve blown the hell out of Tenet Five. I’m not supposed to reveal I’m a t-porter.” As if that explains everything. He paces around the room. “Ah, the Summer of Love. It’s getting to me, you know? I’m not allowed to get involved. But I am involved. Only ten days, and I am involved. Sometimes I give my wages to a sad little runaway.” He faces them. “Well. I’m not authorized to reveal my identity, but now you know, and it’s all true. My Now is in your future.”

These are strange and wondrous days. These are also paranoid days when your lover turns out to be a dealer and his best friend turns out to be a narc and the best friend’s lady turns state’s evidence, and you wind up in the slam.

“You’ve got a more interesting rap than the average head,” Ruby says. “But you can’t fool me. My ma weaned me on Superhero comics and Lord of the Rings.”

“I’m not making this up,” Chi says.

“Uh-huh. You say you’re from our future. What you mean is, you’re just a time traveler. Right, am I right?”

“I’m not just a time traveler,” he says, annoyed. “I’m a t-porter. Developing tachyportation cost us a fortune. And it isn’t exactly traveling, like going from one place to another. All of spacetime is One Day. With our superluminal application, I transmit from my Now to your Now. A When to a When.”

Chi glances around the room with such tangible anxiety that alarm needles up Ruby’s spine. She glances around, too.

“The good news is everything hasn’t disappeared just because I’ve told you this,” Chi says, his voice thick with relief.

Starbright’s jaw just about reaches her collarbones.

“Cool,” Ruby says. Teach these kids a thing or two. “So. Whereabouts in the future are you from, sonny?”

“Oh, I’m from here. San Francisco.” He still looks worried, like she might find out something she isn’t supposed to know. “Sausalito, actually.”

“Then we’re next-door neighbors,” Ruby says. “I grew up in Marin City.”

“Sausalito, 2467, Ruby. The When-to-When is five centuries, one hundred twenty-five days, fifty-three minutes, thirty-nine seconds, and three hundred milliseconds, minus one picosecond, which accounts for superluminal drift.”

“Minus one picosecond,” Ruby says. “Is that B.C. or A.D. or A.C. or D.C.?”

“You don’t believe me?” Chi says, widening his eyes.

“Sonny, we may be psychedelicized in the Haight-Ashbury, but we’re also science-fictionalized. Ken Kesey claims his group-mind experience is Childhood’s End. Timothy Leary believes we’re mutating our genes into starseeds. There’s a house in the Haight called The Shire. This has all happened since 1962. Our lives have become a fantasy, and fantasy is becoming life.” She laughs, a little ruefully. “These are strange and wondrous days.”

“Yeah,” Starbright says. “Look at the guy with the eyes. He said he was from Mars, too.”

“I never said I was from Mars,” Chi says.

“So where’s your time machine?” Starbright demands. “Like in The Time Machine. You can’t fool me, either. I saw the movie with Penny Lane when we were kids. And, oh, the time machine was the prettiest thing, like a gold and leather sleigh with a stick shift and everything.” She blushes. “I haven’t learned how to drive a stick shift.”

“Um,” Chi says, “I haven’t got a time machine.”

Ruby says, “Why am I not surprised.”

“The tachyonic shuttle doesn’t work that way,” he says hastily. “The shuttle exists only in my Now, not in yours. We install the shuttle at a site that’s been stable for a long time.”

“And then what happens?” Ruby says with a wink at Starbright, playing along.

“I step through the shuttle and arrive in your Now. On a certain day in your Now, I’ll step back and arrive in my Now. When the shuttle engages this spacetime, I’ll transmit. It’s not easy—it’s hellish, actually--but now that I’ve done it once, I’m confident I can do it again.” He grimaces. “Fairly confident.”

“Uh-huh.” An eerie feeling creeps over Ruby as she sits in the half-lit room, jiving with this strange young beautiful man. But she doesn’t want to surrender to the feeling, doesn’t want to let her mind spin off in some half-comprehended revelation. She’s got work to do! She’s got a pregnant runaway under her roof, plus a. . . .t-porter? She doesn’t want her whole life changed just this minute. “Why aren’t you supposed to reveal your identity? I mean, aside from getting your butt thrown in the laughing academy?”

“Laughing academy?”

“That’s tired old Beat talk for the nuthouse.” When he still furrows his brow, she adds, “A lunatic asylum.”

“Ah.” Chi nods as if he’s just learned something he’s always wanted to learn. “I’m not supposed to reveal my identity because the Tenets of the Grandmother Principle all turn around the mandate of nonintervention to preserve the timeline and conserve spacetime.”

“Oh! Well, of course. Silly me,” Ruby says.

Starbright speaks up in a trembling voice. “What is this Grandmother Principle?”

“That’s the fundamental principle of t-porting,” Chi says. “Under Tenet One, for example, you can’t murder your own grandmother. If you could, you wouldn’t exist in the first place to go do the deed.”

“I can dig it,” Ruby says. “If you allowed for that kind of anarchy, reality would be mighty strange. The world as we know it could all disappear. Right, am I right?”

Chi looks around the room with that sharp apprehension.

Ruby’s skin crawls.

“But why would anyone go and murder her granma?” Starbright says.

Ruby turns to find the kid is crying.

“Well, you wouldn’t,” Chi tells her gently. “It’s just a Tenet developed for t-port projects, that’s all. A thought experiment, you see? It’s just a way of thinking.”

“I think it’s a terrible way of thinking,” Starbright sniffs. “My granma was the only one who ever loved me. I could never go and kill my granma. Never. Not for anything.”

“The kid’s got a point,” Ruby says. “The way you think about things shapes the way your reality is. All this talk about killing someone’s grandmother. It’s not very cool, man from Mars.”

Chi stares at her and Starbright, aghast. “I don’t want to kill anyone! I don’t want to hurt a flea,” he says, scratching his ankle.

Uh-huh. And they all say goodnight.

The Haight-Ashbury is mobbed with Navajo chiefs, Merlin’s magicians, Egyptian pharaohs, guys with four eyes, men from Mars.

And time travelers. The Summer of Love has got plenty of time travelers.

July 9, 1967

A Dog Day

7

There is a Mountain

Life is sacred; Susan’s life is sacred. Children are the godhead manifest; she is the godhead manifest. Freedom means nothing left to lose? At fourteen, she’s got plenty to lose, and she’s got to get free.

That doesn’t mean—no thanks to Ruby--she feels good about it.

“I’m eighteen,” Susan lies to the law clerk in the waiting room outside the hip lawyer’s office. The lie comes no easier. The lie has not helped Susan one bit. She’s not even sure why she keeps telling it, except that she scored a fake ID saying she’s eighteen, though the photo doesn’t look much like her. She’s so paranoid about coming to the hip lawyer’s office--despite the fact he is, by definition, cool--she doesn’t want to show the fake ID to the law clerk. He doesn’t ask to see it.

The law clerk, a rabbinical guy with a ragged beard and sleepy eyes, peers at her through steel-rim spectacles. He aims a long-suffering look at Ruby.

Ruby shrugs and stares out the window at the fog-shrouded morning. Her face is set in stone. She crosses her arms over her chest, taps her toe.

Next to NAME, the law clerk scribbles, “Starbrite.” Next to AGE, he scribbles, “TEEN.” “Even if that’s so,” he says, shifting the clipboard to his other knee, “and frankly, I find that hard to believe, miss, but even if that’s so, you’re still a minor at eighteen. So even if you meet the other requirements under Section 25951, it’s likely you’ll need your parents’ consent to get a legal abortion.”

At fourteen, Susan has read Rilke auf deutsch and mastered intermediate algebra. She can identify the bones in the human ear and would have won her debate against the Vietnam War if the Poli Sci teacher hadn’t been a hawk. So this scene in the hip lawyer’s office is too weird. This is her body. Doesn’t her body belong to her? If she hasn’t got a right to say what happens to her body, who does? Isn’t she supposed to be free in the United States of America? Why does Section 25951 say she’s not free?

“Kid,” Ruby whispers urgently. “You don’t have to do this. Your folks will help you out. I’m sure they will.”

“No.” Susan is very sure about that. Mom and Daddy won’t help her out. They never have.

“You’re talking about a human life,” Ruby persists.

“Right,” Susan says. Her life.

God, her head is fuzzy. Her stomach lurches. She recalls the butter-making demonstration when she was in third grade. The teacher sloshed the milk around inside a milk churn until greasy gobs floated up. She feels just like that milk churn. She takes out a Tums and crunches it in her teeth. Every morning she goes through a whole roll. Sometimes two.

Ruby agreed to sneak out of the house and take her to the hip lawyer’s office so as not to disturb Chi, asleep on the living room couch. Ruby is cool. She knows Susan doesn’t want Chi to know she got knocked up. It’s too embarrassing.

“Have you gone to Planned Parenthood?” the law clerk asks, cupping his hand over a yawn.

“Yeah, they gave me the test.” As if there was any doubt in Susan’s mind.

Three Gypsy Jokers are whooping it up with the hip lawyer in his office. “So I sez to him I’ll get mine up, officer, if you get yours up. Haw haw haw.” The trio is here for legal advice about a midnight bust. Another groovy Saturday night, apparently. The Gypsy Jokers are accompanied by Dirty David, a member of the Double Barrel Boogie Band entourage. Dirty David is a small, gaunt man with a headful of curls he preens obsessively. When Susan first walked in, Dirty David ignored her as if he’d never seen her before.

Now Susan catches him giving her the up-and-down--what’re you doing here?--written all over his face.

“What does Section 25951 say if she claims rape?” Ruby asks the law clerk.

“She’ll need to swear out an affidavit attesting to the facts of the alleged rape, and the D.A. um would need to find probable cause that the man she names is the perpetrator and that a rape occurred. If the D.A. doesn’t find probable cause, the committee can’t approve the abortion.”

“Wait, wait,” Ruby says. “You mean she hasn’t pressed criminal charges, but she has to prove this probable cause business according to a criminal standard in order to get medical treatment?”

Susan smiles. She loves seeing Ruby go at it.

The law clerk is unimpressed. “An unapproved abortion is not medical treatment, ma’am. An unapproved abortion is a crime in California.”

“Look here, sonny,” Ruby says. “I revere life. I happen to believe that Starbright should have the baby, even after what happened to her, and put the child up for adoption. I also happen to believe that abortion is a moral decision, not a criminal action.”

“That’s the law, ma’am.”

“What will they do if I get an illegal abortion?” Susan asks. “Throw me in jail?”

The law clerk ignores her. “Now, even if the D.A. finds probable cause, it’s been our experience—and I admit, we don’t have much experience—that the committee may still require parental consent before an abortion is approved for a minor.”

“The committee,” Susan says. “What is the committee?”

The law clerk takes off his spectacles and rubs his eyes. “The committee consists of three licensed physicians on the medical staff of an accredited hospital. They must agree unanimously. The committee must find either a substantial risk that continuance of the pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or um mental health of the mother or that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. We’ve um been through the rape angle. I don’t suppose,” the law clerk says gloomily, “there’s an incest angle?”

“No incest angle,” Susan whispers.

She shakes her head. She doesn’t want to claim rape. She doesn’t want to face Stan the Man—whom she hasn’t seen since the afternoon after the Festival of Growing Things—and accuse him of rape. She just doesn’t want to have his baby. She just wants this nightmare to be over.

Ruby pulls herself up all her nearly six feet. “What does that mean: ‘grave impairment of mental health’?”

The law clerk fumbles with the clipboard. He doesn’t like Susan or Ruby. Susan isn’t intimidating like Ruby, just pathetic. He doesn’t want to think about any of this. He would much rather try to beat a drug bust. “Impairment of mental health means the infliction of mental illness to the extent that the woman is dangerous to herself or the person or property of others or is in need of supervision or restraint. As a result of the pregnancy. The um would-be pregnancy. You know what I mean.”

“Dangerous to property?” Ruby says.

“That’s what the statute says.”

The Gypsy Jokers clatter out of the hip lawyer’s office into the waiting room.

“We’ll shove this up their ass, no sweat,” the hip lawyer says.

“How come you don’t know more about this law and how we can get the kid a safe and legal abortion?” Ruby says.

“The statute just passed,” the law clerk says. “California has one of the most progressive therapeutic abortion laws in the United States, ma’am.”

“No, I’ll tell you why,” Ruby says. “You don’t want to go up against the committee, either.”

“You want my advice, you should get parental consent,” the law clerk says to Susan. “Can’t you get parental consent?”

“I couldn’t get parental consent to talk to my best friend on the phone,” Susan says.

“We’ll plead illegal search and seizure,” the hip lawyer tells the Gypsy Jokers.

“We was holdin’ five thousand hits,” a Joker admits.

“Piece of cake,” the hip lawyer says.

The Gypsy Jokers slap hands with the lawyer. Two of them stick out and lick each other’s tongues. “I’m having a seizure!” says the third, rolling his pupils back in his eye sockets and making claws of his hands. He seizes Susan, plunging his mouth on her mouth.

Susan goes limp. Don’t struggle with a biker’s kiss, flower child. She’s learned that on the street. You struggle, he may haul off and break your nose. The Gypsy Joker tastes of beer and bile and pot smoke.

Ruby waits until he’s through. Then she seizes Susan’s elbow. “Let’s get out of here, kid.”

* * *

“Are you sure?” Ruby asks her for the hundredth time as they walk back to Clayton Street.

“I’m sure,” Susan says for the hundredth time. The chilly morning air refreshes her after the horrid hip lawyer’s office.

“You don’t want to tell Stan?”

“No way.”

“Tell me true, Starbright,” Ruby says, furrowing her brow. “You can’t be more than sixteen. Right, am I right?”

Susan nods. How did Chi put it? She’s not lying, she’s implying.

Sometimes Susan imagines having the baby. A little girl with big brown eyes like hers. She’d name her Jessica. Jessica would be beautiful and brilliant, of course. Susan understands—she will never forget—what it’s like to be a child. She knows so many things she could teach Jessica. Important things, like love and sex and death, happiness and sadness. Finding your true self in life. Finding meaning. She’d be a good mom. She’d be fifteen when Jessica is born.

Mostly, though, Susan has the nightmare, and her fantasies about Jessica vanish. In the nightmare, the baby grows and grows, pushing past Susan’s bowels, sliding around her stomach. The baby reaches up through her throat. Its tiny wrist wiggles out of her mouth like a serpent. Its hand slaps against her tongue, making her gag. The baby’s hand seizes her teeth. Its fingers are surprisingly strong.

Then she wakes, heaving for breath. Her teeth are always sore, and she is always sick to her stomach. Sick to her heart. What would Mom and Daddy do? They’d banish her from her lavender bedroom in Shaker Heights, that’s what. They’d send her away to live in shame in one of those shabby boarding houses for unwed mothers. She’d have to drop out of high school, never have a chance to go to college.

Susan cannot have this baby. She doesn’t have a husband or even a man who loves her. She’s desperate to finish high school. She was hoping to finish college before she had a baby. She needs to figure out what she wants to do with her life. She was hoping to have some time to enjoy the world, too. Travel, see new places, meet new people. She has only begun to taste the excitement of life.

She wishes it hadn’t happened like this. She wishes Stan the Man loved her, that he was someone else and she was someone else, in another space and time. In another lifetime. Everyone talks about it in the Haight-Ashbury: other lifetimes, other worlds. In another world, she is ten years older, in love with the father of her child, and pregnant on purpose.

But she is not in that world now.

She’s sorry she had sex with Stan. Ah, forget it. She’s not sorry she had sex with him. She’s sorry she’s pregnant.

“You really really sure?” Ruby asks her for the thousandth time.

“I’m really really sure,” she tells Ruby for the thousandth time.

“Absolutely positively?”

“Absolutely positively.”

“Because you don’t have to do this. It’s a human life we’re talking about. Your dentist daddy won’t turn his back on you.”

“You don’t know Daddy.”

Ruby sighs. “Don’t you come crying to me later.”

“I won’t come crying.”

“Don’t you tell me you regret it, and why didn’t I warn you. You remember I’m telling you this.”

“I’ll remember, Ruby,” Susan says.

Ruby quietly backs out the Mercedes, and Susan closes the garage doors. She glances up at the apartment. Chi is probably still conked out on the couch. He often sleeps until noon. He says he’s got a touch of tachyonic lag, something like jet lag. Chi says all kinds of strange things.

Ruby whisks the Mercedes across the Golden Gate Bridge. Fog cascades over the scarlet towers, thick and eerie. Ruby flicks on the dims. She’s a superb driver, but Susan is edgy. Ruby’s face is as grim as granite.

Ruby is not an easy person to live with. Not that she’s mean. Susan just hasn’t figured out exactly what Ruby believes in, though she’s constantly proclaiming about all kinds of things. She flies into a rage if you wonder whether a tincture of hemlock could actually cure cancer, but she laughs at spaghetti sauce spilled on a carpet--an offense that would have Susan’s mother shitting bricks. Ruby calls television the devil box. She never watches it, even though she owns one. But when Susan asked if she could draw a mural of the goddess Isis on a wall of the Mystic Eye, Ruby just said, “Put the ankh in her left hand and the sistrum in her right, you hear me?” With a squirmy memory of her baby hands slapped beet-red after she’d doodled on Mom’s dining room wall with a crayon, Susan drew a six-foot-tall goddess in pastels right on Ruby’s whitewashed plaster. And Ruby pronounced it good.

After Susan’s time at the Double Barrel house, what’s really weird is that Ruby permits no grass or acid in her house. No dope, period. As far as Susan can tell, Chi abides by the house rules. Susan tries to abide, too, but it’s hard after the neverending party. She doesn’t miss grass or acid, but dexies are hard to give up. That wide-awake clarity, plus she lost weight without even trying. One night, when Professor Zoom was really wasted, he laid a whole bottle of Dexedrine on Susan. Now she’s gone through half of it. Sometimes she’s tempted to score more, but she doesn’t want Ruby to kick her out, and she has to be careful with her dwindling cash. How is she ever going to get her hundred dollars back from Stan?

“I’ll tell you this, kid,” Ruby said one night, pouring herself a glass of wine. “Drugs is drugs, and that’s that. I had a cousin. He was beautiful, and I loved him dearly. But Roi became a junkie. He was a handsome young man in the prime of his life.”

“Everyone in the Haight-Ashbury is against junk, Ruby.”

“Are they? I’m not so sure. I see a lot folks taking that speed crap, and speed is just as bad as junk. Maybe worse.”

Susan cringed. But Ruby meant crystal meth, stuff freaks shot up. Not her little green-and-white dexies.

“I know about drugs, kid,” Ruby said. “I’ve known about drugs since you were knee-high to a grasshopper. I drank peyote-button tea when you were still peeing your pants. Made me sick as a dog.”

“I never peed my pants.”

God! Ruby loves to mess with Susan’s head. Susan is often left with more questions than answers.

When things get bad, though—like at the hip lawyer’s office—Ruby is a rock. She is. . . . Susan struggles for what to call it. Well, she’s like Nance, only she’s practically as old as Susan’s mother. Ruby is. . . .a friend. She stands up for Susan against the whole world. Susan can’t remember the last time Mom and Daddy stood up for her against the whole world. No, her mother and father always seem to stand against her. Two against one. Her parents, Susan realizes, do not act like friends.

* * *

“This is it, kid.” Ruby pulls into the landscaped parking lot of a medical building in San Rafael. “You ready?”

“I’m ready.”

But as Susan walks into the general practitioner’s sunny office, she shivers with fear, though she’s boiling hot in the sweater she wore to ward off San Francisco’s chill.

Church bells toll. Midmorning worship services are commencing in the suburban hills of Marin County. Neighborhoods a lot like hers in Shaker Heights, only with palm trees amid the oaks and the maples.

The general practitioner gazes at a framed photograph on his desk. The photograph shows three children seated in an opulent rose garden. The children hold pets in their laps, kittens and puppies. The youngest, a brown-haired toddler, cuddles a white rabbit nearly as big as she is.

“Yes, I’m still a rose gardener,” he says to Ruby. “I’ve been pruning roses since 1953.”

Susan senses tension between them, some kind of double meaning to his words. After living with Mom and Daddy, she’s got antennae for covert emotions, like a termite seeking wood rot. She looks at Ruby for help, but Ruby is remote.

“A public service, that’s how you think of your work, Doc Clyde,” Ruby says. “Right, am I right? For which you get very well paid.”

“My technique has improved. But you must know that, or you wouldn’t have brought this girl.”

“Uh-huh. Haven’t killed anyone lately?”

“I never killed anyone, Ruby. You know that. Well. Except for the rosebuds.”

“Glad to hear it because Starbright is depending on you this morning.”

Doc Clyde glances at Susan. “You’ve had the HCG test?” He checks her out in two seconds, then looks away. She’s got the clear impression she’s keeping him from something. He’s a lot like Daddy—she’s always keeping him from something more important. Doc Clyde looks a little older than her father, a bland squashy man with salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back, probably covering up a bald spot beneath the Brylcreem. A prosperous potbelly swells out of his modest frame.

Susan’s shiver of fear deepens. She looks at Ruby. HCG?

Ruby snaps, “The Planned Parenthood test. Of course she got it.”

“You still keeping cats?” he says to Ruby.

Huh? Susan thinks. She glances, puzzled, at Ruby.

“Yeah, I’ve got five,” Ruby says warily.

“Ah, five cats. My kids love cats.” Doc Clyde says to Susan, “How about you, miss? You like little animals?”

“Oh, I love animals!” Susan says. “Animals are high spiritual beings. I celebrate the infinite holiness of life.”

“Is that so, is that so?” he murmurs. “Then what do you suppose is growing inside you, miss? A crystal? A flower? A vegetable?”

Susan blushes fiercely. His condescending smile and his fancy sunny office and his family photographs infuriate her. “I know what it is, doctor. It’s a fertilized egg. Like what you buy at the grocery store and fry up for your big fat breakfast.”

“It’s a baby, miss,” he says.

“You’re a fine one to lecture her, Doc Clyde,” Ruby says. For the first time this morning, her eyes connect with Susan’s, and Susan sees a coiled-up darkness inside Ruby.

“I’m merely making sure she knows what she’s doing,” he replies mildly.

“Uh-huh. Dig it: she’s decided the circumstances aren’t right for her to have this child. Isn’t that all you need to know?”

“That’s all I need to know.” He gazes at the photograph, wipes a speck of dust from the toddler’s face. “HCG means human chorionic gonadotropin, miss. It’s a hormone essential for enriching the endometrium so that the fetus is nourished from the mother. Production of HCG begins right after implantation of the egg. When they do the HCG test, they take your urine sample and inject it into the abdomens of laboratory animals. Female rabbits, to be exact. They kill the rabbits after two days and examine their ovaries. If HCG is present in your urine, the rabbits’ ovaries will have hemorrhaged. They take each rabbit by her ears and twist her little neck. Snap! Rabbits don’t have very strong necks, you know. They killed three rabbits just for you and your pregnancy test. Do you have any idea, miss, how many female rabbits are killed for pregnancy tests? Pregnancies that are terminated?”

Susan swallows a Tums. Tears spill her eyes.

“What’s your price, Doc Clyde?” Ruby says in her sweet-as-poison voice.

“Five hundred bucks for a D and C.”

“After that bedtime story, make it two hundred.”

“Three.”

“Forget it.”

“Two fifty.”

Ruby explodes. “Go to hell, you bastard! I hope you crawl with guilt. I hope you can’t sleep at night and lose all your hair and get raging ulcers. You owe me, man.”

Susan stares, horrified. What on earth is Ruby talking about?

“What do you want, Ruby?” Doc Clyde says.

“I don’t need anything from you, not anymore, but this girl does, and her fate is in your hands. So this one is gonna be on you. And you better do the job right this time.”

Ruby storms out of the sunny office. Susan sees her through the picture window, stalking around the parking lot, pulling leaves off trees, kicking at the gravel.

Church bells toll.

Doc Clyde pulls out a fresh file folder. “Okay. So. You’re not pregnant, are you, miss? No, don’t answer that. We both know you’re not pregnant, you’ve just got a menstrual problem. You’re over twenty-one? No, don’t answer that. Don’t tell me your name. I don’t want to know anything about you.”

“My daddy is a dentist,” Susan whispers. She isn’t sure why she blurts that out but, when she dares to glance at him again, she knows exactly why.

His face is purple, stricken with compunction. “Are you allergic to penicillin?” he asks gruffly. “Good. Go in there, take off your clothes. Put on the hospital gown. I’m just a rose gardener, miss. I’ve been pruning roses since 1953.”

* * *

Because the pregnancy is so early, Susan only has to have a menstrual extraction. A sipping of her uterus without cervical dilation or anesthesia. A slipping-out of the uterine lining and the troublesome egg.

It hurts when Doc Clyde withdraws the suction from the syringe. A short, sharp pain, but not a whole lot worse than a bad cramp. Afterward, she doesn’t bleed much. She gets up on her feet. Doc Clyde tells her to come back in three weeks for a checkup.

Susan has no intention of coming back in three weeks. She never wants to see Doc Clyde again.

As Ruby drives them back over the bridge, a tear slides from Susan’s eye.

“You okay, kid?” Ruby is brusque. It’s amazing what she’s just done for Susan. They’ve known each other for maybe a week. “He did the job, and no funny stuff?”

“I’m sorry.” Another tear.

Ruby guns the Mercedes between two VW vans spattered with flowers and peace signs. “Damn it, Starbright, you told me you were sure.”

“I’m sorry,” Susan says, “about the female rabbits. And the egg.”

* * *

It’s past noon by the time Susan and Ruby return to the Mystic Eye. Haight Street is just beginning to stir. After another groovy Saturday night, the Sunday crowd wakes late.

Ruby’s cats saunter into the kitchen to greet them, tiny lions and lionesses hungry for their lunch. Ruby spoils them shamelessly. She feeds them roast turkey and roast lamb, cottage cheese and cheddar cheese, brown rice and sweet corn seasoned with alfalfa.

The Summer of Love is like that, Susan observes. Topsy-turvy. A fellow who calls himself Red walks an Irish setter named Man. A Beat friend of Ruby’s named Feather carries Penelope P. Parrot on her shoulder. A tattooed girl known only as Tangerine wraps a python she calls Sir Galahad around her neck. And a boy who looks too young for the street even to Susan sits shivering, shirtless, next to a fat piebald guinea pig known to everyone as God. God reclines in a laundry basket lined with threadbare towels. The boy nibbles on the tips of carrots God leaves behind.

Ruby fusses over her cats so much, sometimes Susan gets jealous. When did Mom and Daddy fuss over her like that? And when did Mom and Daddy realize she’s gone for good? Have they reconstructed their memory of Nance’s postcard from the ashes and concluded she’s fled to San Francisco? Will they hire someone to come looking for her? That would be like Daddy.

Susan is always looking over her shoulder. Looking for the Man, for the girl with her face, for anyone following her. It’s her very own personal paranoia, added to the paranoia infecting the Haight-Ashbury, shrouding the Summer of Love like the fog.

Ruby dishes out homemade cat food. She seems more wound up after the ordeal with Doc Clyde than Susan. Ruby takes a Sonoma sherry from her pantry and bangs the bottle down on her kitchen counter.

Susan aches deep inside, but she feels dreamy. No more Section 25951. No more law clerks. No more nightmares. No more Stan the Man. She’s free. She drifts to the kitchen window overlooking Ruby’s backyard.

And spies Chi. He’s bending over the garden he’s digging for Ruby. He says dirt is clean, unlike doorknobs and bongs passed around. He says a lot of strange things, the five-hundred-year-old man from Mars. Oh, excuse me. He’s really only twenty-one. Susan likes to shuck him. “So what town on Mars are you from?” she asks. “Are you living forward or backward in time?” He hates that. He sulks.

Susan has seen and heard so many strange things in the Haight-Ashbury, she doesn’t believe Chi’s t-porter rap for one second. So he’s got a maser. So what. Ruby says they’ll probably be selling masers at Macy’s next year. It’s just some Japanese high-tech thingie that hasn’t hit American stores yet. And so he’s got a stone-thing that pricked her when he pressed it to her chest. The so-called scanner is like one of those jokes you buy in a magic shop, a whoopee cushion that farts or a joy buzzer that goes bzt when you shake someone’s hand. He doesn’t have a time machine, not even a tricorder like the crew on Star Trek.

In the yard below, he’s taken off his shirt, which is weird because he’s usually such a prude, shirt cuffs and collar buttoned up tight. The oddity makes her pause and watch. The skin on his lean, muscular back shines like wet ivory. Rainbows practically ripple off him. He’s a tall, slim, pearlescent man under the sun. Strange and beautiful. Almost alien.

As if he senses her watching him, he suddenly looks up. His face opens up in a big smile, and he waves.

Maybe Susan has been unfair to Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. He’s never been mean or crude or pushy. She’s been so sick with her pregnancy, she’s barely spoken two civil words to him. After her crazy time at the Double Barrel house, she’s slept whole days away in her little room.

Chi is beautiful. From some rich European family, that’s Ruby’s theory. People who own property in Sausalito. Susan blinks, dispelling the rainbows. She waves back.

The thing is, he’s always watching her.

Every time she turns around, she finds his eyes but there’s nothing especially flattering about his surveillance. He watches her like you would watch a fly crawling up a wall. She finds it annoying, sometimes distressing. He sneaks past her room at night. He watches her washing Ruby’s dishes in the kitchen. He follows her when she goes out to the Scene. He’s always asking her dumb questions like he thinks she wants to tell him the story of her life.

Susan doesn’t want to tell him the story of her life. If she could, she would reinvent the story of her life.

Could Chi be a detective sent by Daddy?

* * *

Ruby phones downstairs, checking up on business. “How’s the drawer doing, Morgana?” she says. Susan thinks it’s amazing how Ruby runs her own store. Susan’s mother doesn’t do much of anything. Her mother is like a servant to her father.

Susan turns away from the kitchen window and climbs the stairs to the sitting room on the third floor. She loves her little room. The skylight lets in the sunset and the first star of the evening, to which she sings the Star Bright song every night. She’s talked Ruby into letting her take the funky old black-and-white TV from the storeroom in the garage. She and Ruby, they’ve got a deal. Ruby must never hear voices on the devil box when she’s trying to sleep, and Susan is only allowed to watch Star Trek, Time Tunnel, The Twilight Zone, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Susan is startled by a knock on the door. Ruby pokes in her head. She’s got that bottle of sherry and two cordial glasses. “I got this out just for you, Starbright. Want a nip? It might help.”

They sit down on the mattress on the floor.

“Okay.” Susan has never tasted sherry, but she takes the cordial glass and sips. The sip rockets to her head, but in a nice way. Not at all like grass or acid. A peaceful sort of way.

“Got any pain?” Ruby asks.

“A little here.” Susan rubs her tummy. “A lot in here.” She rubs her heart.

“Forget Doc Clyde’s bedtime story. I hear they’re working on a new pregnancy test that’s faster and better and doesn’t rely on killing female rabbits. I can’t believe he told you that.” She gulps her glass, pours another.

Susan takes another sip for courage. “Ruby, what did you mean? About Doc Clyde owing you?”

Ruby drains her second glass and sighs. “Oh hell, kid. I knew Doc Clyde when he didn’t have the potbelly and all those kids. We’re talking fourteen years ago. Mediocre GP, fresh out of med school, greedy and stupid. He had this cousin, a nice Beat lady. Black sheep of the family, right? She hung around North Beach when I lived there, and she put out the word he did D and Cs. Mostly he did okay, but a couple of times, in the early days, he screwed up. Screwed up bad. I mean, he never gave a damn, he just did it for the money. Things got ugly.” Ruby pours herself a third glass. “I can’t forgive him for that.”

“Oh, Ruby, I’m sorry.” But Susan still isn’t sure what she means.

“He’s okay now. Clyde’s the only local I know who’s a real doctor and will do minors. Otherwise, a girl like you would have to go to Switzerland or Brazil.” Ruby reaches over, tucks a stray lock of hair behind Susan’s ear. “I would never have taken you to him if I didn’t believe he could get the job done. You believe me, don’t you?”

“Of course. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did for me. So I want to do something for you. I can get a Sacramento station that reruns Star Trek in the afternoon. Will you watch an episode with me? Just this once? You’ll have fun.”

Ruby looks doubtful, but she says, “Okay.”

Susan crawls across the mattress, turns on the TV.

The episode is “Mudd’s Women,” in which a con man, Harry Mudd, wants to trade three stunning women--Eve, Ruth, and Magda--to Rigel XII miners in exchange for dilithium crystals. The miners are crude and rough-looking. They are not exactly prizes. Why would these women settle for these men? It turns out the women have a dark secret. They keep popping a pill called the Venus drug, which is highly illegal and instantly turns them from hideous crones into stunning women.

“I’ll be damned,” Ruby muses. “Pimps on Star Trek. I had no idea.”

But Susan is appalled. She cannot believe she ever watched the episode in her parents’ den and went to bed without a second thought.

“Oh, Ruby,” she cries, “I want a Venus drug.”

“What?”

“I could never look like Eve or Ruth or Magda. Or Twiggy. I could never get my thighs that thin if I took dexies for a whole year.”

“Why would you want to look like Twiggy?”

“Doesn’t everyone? Isn’t she the ideal of beauty everyone adores?”

Ruby guffaws. “You girls from the burbs are from another planet! In the first place, they pile so much makeup on that girl, she doesn’t really look like Twiggy. And her legs? You want to know what Twiggy looks like to me? A junkie. Or a speed freak. Or both. You want to look like a junkie speed freak?”

“I’d do anything to look like that.” Sadness spills from Susan’s heart. Why does she feel like she’s not good enough, no matter how hard she tries? “I’d take the Venus drug in a second. I don’t care if it’s illegal. Maybe Stan would have loved me.”

Ruby slaps the TV off as the trailer music is playing. She slides next to Susan, reaches over, and kneads her shoulders. “Listen to me, Starbright. Stan loves no one. And you’re wrong about the Venus drug. In the end, Eve realizes she’s beautiful without it. She really is beautiful. The Venus drug is an illusion. Think about it. Right, am I right?”

Susan thinks about it. “But Captain Kirk still doesn’t love Eve. He flies off without her.”

“Oh, Captain Kirk is a swinger. He will never ever settle down.”

“Captain Kirk is not a swinger. He’s dedicated to the Enterprise.”

“That’s what all those space-age swingers say. I’ve heard that before. Warping around galaxies, bumping into ladies on exotic planets. Lovin’ ‘em and leavin’ ‘em. Uh-huh.”

“God.” Susan thinks about that. Captain Kirk—like Stan the Man? No, no, no. Captain Kirk is a hero. He’s the captain.

“And so are you, Starbright. You really are beautiful.”

“My mother thinks I’m ugly. She made me eat nothing but hard-boiled eggs ‘cause she said my breasts were getting too fat.”

Ruby shifts again, sitting on the mattress in front of her. She gives Susan the up-and-down. “Do you think your breasts are getting too fat?”

“Don’t you? I ate nothing but dexies for ten days, and they still wouldn’t go away.”

“You have very nice breasts. Talk to any woman who’s flat-chested, and I bet she would love to have your breasts. I bet Twiggy would kill to have breasts as nice as yours.”

“My mother looks at them like they’re ugly.”

“Uh-huh. What else about you is ugly?”

“My hair. My mother hates my hair. She’s always threatening to cut it off. It’s not white-blond and it’s not straight, like in Life magazine.”

Ruby strokes Susan’s hair. “Starbright’s hair is golden-brown like wheat or wet sand or new-baked bread. And wavy, with little curls like those high fine clouds they call mare’s tails or the curlicue leaves on Queen Anne’s lace. Why would you think your hair is ugly, little one?”

“Oh, Ruby,” Susan whispers. Her heart swells, in a good way now.

Ruby slides Susan’s overnight bag over and digs inside. “Let’s have a look. Uh-oh. White lipstick. White eye shadow. You want to look like a vampire and a junkie speed freak?”

“It’s mod,” Susan says, depressed. The tubes and cakes look like ground-up termites or chalk sludge.

“You have rose-colored lips and big dark eyes. Throw it out! Out, out, out!”

They take turns tossing white lipstick and hair straightener across the room into the wastebasket. “Out, out, out! Throw it out!”

Ruby brushes back Susan’s hair. “You’re beautiful, Starbright. Don’t let anybody tell you different.”

Overcome, Susan flings her arms around Ruby and hugs her. “Oh, Ruby, I love you.”

Ruby hugs her back, then gently pushes Susan away. She smiles, but a sadness haunts her eyes.

Susan is still laughing. This is fun! Ruby is wonderful. Ruby’s so beautiful. She never wants to stop laughing and hugging her. Body heat, oh the comfort of arms. “You’re my best friend in the whole world,” Susan cries. “Nobody’s ever been so good to me, except maybe Penny Lane. But that was when we were little kids.”

Ruby heaves herself to her feet, walks unsteadily across the mattress, and sits on the floor, propping her back against the wall.

Susan stops laughing. She’s not sure what just happened. Not sure how to read Ruby’s face. “Ruby? Is something wrong? Did I say something wrong?”

Ruby pours herself another glass of sherry and shakes her head. “Nothing’s wrong, kid. Everything’s fine. You’re just fine.”

“I do love you, Ruby. You’re the best!”

“I’m the best, and don’t I know it.” But her smile is wistful.

They sit in the sun a while, sipping sherry.

“Listen, Starbright, you want to know a secret? Beauty is a fine thing. A beautiful woman is a joy to behold. But don’t go looking for your beauty in magazines or on that damn devil box. And remember this. Beauty isn’t everything. You got to get on with the important business of running your life. Before anything else, you got to use your brain. Doesn’t your school in the burbs ever tell you that?”

Susan shakes her head. She thinks of Bernie MacKenna and Allen Weisberg. Has either of them ever cried before a mirror? Does everyone try to make them feel worthless? They would probably think she’s stupid, feeling worthless because she doesn’t look like Mudd’s women or Twiggy.

The Summer of Love is like that. Things that seemed stupid become important, and important things become stupid.

“My school doesn’t tell me anything except that I’m in the ninety-eighth percentile. I just feel weird, so I shut up. What I think isn’t important. I’m just a girl.”

Ruby sucks in her breath. That dangerous coiled-up look pops into her eyes. “Stop it, Starbright!” she practically yells. “You are important!”

Shock ripples down Susan’s back.

Ruby springs to her feet and paces. “Doesn’t your pa tell you these things?”

“He’s always yelling at me. Nothing I do is ever right. And it’s always my fault.”

“What about your ma?”

“I told you. She looks at me. Like I’m all wrong.”

Ruby looks at her. Not with cold, disapproving scrutiny. Not like her mother, at all. “Kid, I’ll tell you another secret. Something no one will ever tell you. Not your pa, not your school, not your friends. You know what I think about your ma? It’s the green-eyed monster. Your mother is jealous of you.”

Susan stares, a familiar anxiety chilling her heart. “Jealous! But why?”

“Well.” Ruby thinks. “When a woman has a child, she gets a lot of attention. She’s the star of the show. And the child is her possession. Look at what I’ve made, look at what I’ve done. But you’re not your ma’s little dress-up doll anymore. You’re your own person. You’re a young woman now and you’re the star of the show. You got things to do. Maybe your ma’s having trouble accepting that. She’s got to bow out.”

“But why does she put me down all the time?”

“Because you’re young. Just because you’re young.” Ruby winks. “And smart. And beautiful.”

Susan nods. Does this finally make sense? That terrible, nameless thing her mother holds against her? That cold disapproval she never could place?

The sherry wears off. A dull ache throbs in her belly.

“Ruby,” Susan says, “it hurts.”

8

Ball and Chain

Like a ghost tapping on his shoulder, an impulse strikes him. Chi turns in time to see the girl at the kitchen window. At last! They’re back at last! He waves, overcome with relief. She hesitates, then waves, too. He flings the shovel down, shakes sweat from his face, brushes dirt from his hands on his jeans. He dashes up the stairs to the kitchen.

But they’re gone again. He hears Ruby’s voice upstairs, Starbright murmuring. A laugh. Other voices. The television? Impossible. Ruby never watches TV. Then soaring music, a reedy soprano. It’s the opening tune to the program Starbright loves. She and Ruby are watching Star Trek?

He calms the pounding in his chest. Damn them, stealing out before he woke. But she’s safe. The girl is safely tucked away upstairs.

He wonders for the hundredth time: is Starbright the girl in the CBS News holoid? There is some resemblance, but the match isn’t perfect. Her hair, her face don’t look right. She’s heavier than the girl in the holoid. Her style of clothing, even her posture--not even close. Since the footage was filmed sometime before the program aired on August 22, any discrepancy in such a short time frame can’t easily be dismissed. It’s like an optical illusion. The more closely he studies her, the less sure he becomes.

If she is the Axis, he must verify her identity and document her authenticity as soon as possible. Verification ought to be easy, but it hasn’t turned out that way. One evening, he crept up behind her while she was dreamily washing dishes in the kitchen, clapped his hands as loud as he could, and shouted, “Hey! Susan!”

She dropped a plate and shouted, “Criminy!” She threw a handful of soapsuds in his face. “God, Chi! Don’t scare me like that!”

“You are Susan, right?”

She didn’t bat an eye. “I’m Starbright.”

Who knew she would flat-out refuse to tell him her real name? Starbright. Man! A typical juvenile street name. Completely untraceable, as the Archivists had discovered.

Ruby is no help. “Who is Starbright?” He could get away with asking the question twice before Ruby gave him a suspicious look. “Who wants to know?” was her first answer. “Reach me down that jar of kava kava,” was her second. “How about that accent,” he tried again. “She says her vowels like she’s got a tongue depressor in her mouth.” That made Ruby laugh, at least. “Is she from the Midwest? Like Ohio, some place like that?” “She’s from the moon, sonny.” He doesn’t press her. Ruby distrusts him enough. He doesn’t want to give her any reason to evict him.

As for the girl, she’s positively compulsive. With single-minded vigilance, she keeps her purse by her side, sleeps with it, takes it into the bathroom with her and locks the door. “Why is Starbright so paranoid about her purse?” he asked Ruby. “Maybe somebody ripped her off,” Ruby snapped. “Once bit, twice shy.”

Plus, she locks her overnight bag in the sitting room. One morning, he easily picked the lock, searched the bag, and found only a poorly made fake ID that gave her name as “Barbara Nelson,” her age as eighteen, her residence as Berkeley. Starbright cannot possibly be eighteen, and the blurry photo looks less like her than the girl in the holoid. He tried the scanner out on the doorknob, picked up half a fingerprint. Then the door banged downstairs and Chi raced out, barely escaping down the stairs before Ruby stalked into the living room. “Seen a ghost, man from Mars?” she asked. Suspicious again. Just what he doesn’t need.

Later, Chi displayed the scanner’s smudged half-print next to the crisp, inked fingerprints of the Axis recorded in the Archives. The knuckletop couldn’t compute a positive ID. Neither could Chi, comparing the whorls of black against the gray smudges suspended in the lavender light.

It makes him want to smash the knuckletop against the wall. Makes him want to smash his hand through the wall.

Watch her. Track her. That’s the best Chi can do. And that has been far from easy. This morning, for instance. Where did they go? As for Starbright, she’s a girl. She spends hours in the upstairs bathroom with the door locked. She ignores him as if he’s offended her. She’s sensitive about his surveillance, no matter how casual he tries to be. “What are you looking at?” she demands. “Are you following me?” Exactly. He’s not much happier about it than she is.

Chi keeps searching the Haight-Ashbury for a better match. But until he finds and verifies the Axis herself, K-T has advised him that he must, at a minimum, guarantee this girl’s safety until midnight, September 4, 1967.

At midnight, September 4, 1967, the Hot Dim Spot will close. From jumpy errata and widespread holes, the probabilities collapse into a timeline documented with data as thick and rich as butter-cream. After midnight, September 4, 1967, there is clear evidence that a young woman whom the Archivists identified positively as the Axis was living with her parents in Shaker Heights, Ohio. The Axis registered for the ninth grade at 9:30 A.M., EST, on September 8, 1967. She celebrated her fifteenth birthday on December 5, 1967 with a gala dinner for twenty at Stouffer’s Restaurant that got written up in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Her father gave her a laboratory-grade microscope, her mother a necklace of amethyst beads. The father wrote a check; the mother charged it to the May Company.

But where did the Axis spend the summer? The Archives contained no clue. No incidents of note took place in Shaker Heights that summer. The Axis made no mark. Minors didn’t carry scannable IDs, have retinal links to a family database, get fitted with telelinks. Minors her age didn’t carry a driver’s license since they weren’t allowed to drive until the age of sixteen. Minors didn’t possess their own credits in 1967. The Axis didn’t acquire her own Visa card until 1978.

When it comes to the Axis, the Summer of Love is a classic Dim Spot. Chi sighs. How Hot? Impossible to say. When the Archivists finally targeted her, too much data had disappeared.

After all the frustration, Chi has discovered one prime piece of evidence that compels him to watch and protect Starbright, whoever she turns out to be. He got an excellent scan as they sat on the sidewalk in front of the Mystic Eye. The one time he got close enough to press the scanner against Starbright’s chest, he obtained a full probe. She’s got a sound heart, good lungs, other functions fine. And that distinctive double blip echoing out of her womb. Starbright is pregnant.

When Chi analyzed the results later that night, he almost shouted for joy. Yes!

For if spacetime is to be preserved, the timeline to be conserved, and the future survives the Summer of Love, the Axis will be pregnant when she registers for the ninth grade. Her parents will be compelled to submit this fact to the school administration. In the spring of 1968, the Axis will deliver a healthy, six-pound, five-ounce, brown-eyed daughter. The Axis will name her Jessica.

If Starbright is the Axis, then Starbright must be well and truly pregnant when Chi transmits from September 4, 1967 to September 4, 2467.

And she is, Chi rejoices. She is.

* * *

Chi clatters back down the stairs to the garden, seizes the shovel, and thrusts the blade in the rocky soil. Physical toil works off some of his frustration. Cabbages go here, carrots there, lettuce and onions in alternate rows. Chi has always found gardening a fine meditation, though he’s only worked his family’s gardens and orchards beneath their private dome. Not under the open sky. Not like this. It’s taken some getting used to.

A pair of butterflies called painted ladies flutter around a purple thistle. These people consider thistles weeds but, in his Now, thistles are prized medicinal plants.

“You’re not cultivating the yard?” he chastised Ruby.

“Don’t get back-to-the-land with me, sonny,” Ruby huffed. “I’m running my store. I haven’t got time.”

“What a resource,” he persisted. “What a waste.”

When he woke the next morning, Chi found a long-handled shovel, a bag of live earth, and seed packets on the floor beside the couch. Ruby has all sorts of ways of expressing herself.

Now he flings away rocky soil. Cucumbers will work, tomatoes, too. He’s not sure what trouble Ruby will have with slugs and rabbits, but she won’t have to worry about deer in the middle of San Francisco, 1967. Deer wandered here a century ago, and deer will wander here centuries from now, but not this summer. In two decades, what people believed would become the greenhouse age will begin with a scorching summer. But in three decades, the world will experience the coldest weather in seventy-five years. The technopolistic plutocracy will manipulate the law based on faulty science and outright fraud. Golden Gate Park will wither in a prolonged killing cold spell. The Haight-Ashbury and the Avenues will burn to the ground in the catastrophic fire of 2129 because water mains fail, badly outdated after the bankrupt government can’t finance retrofitting. In three centuries, one of the first cosmicist domes will be erected over this entire area. Cosmicists will privately fund the dome and refuse public admission to New Golden Gate Preserve.

One day, after the brown ages have passed, trees will bud in this yard again. Flowers will bloom and birds will cheer. Raccoons and rabbits will wander fearlessly because no one except cosmicist caretakers will be allowed inside the dome. Painted ladies will flutter around purple thistles. White-tailed deer will nibble at grass along the curbs of a long-vanished Haight Street and around the pillars of the Portals of the Past.

That’s when deer will come to this yard again. Only then.

Chi leans on the shovel, his head spinning.

How does he know all this? After a frustrating week of testing the contraband holoids, Chi finally found another crystal sliver he could access. Bright red alphanumerics popped into the lavender field:

“Date: 07-07-1967. You may insert Disc 2 now.”

“Go, K-T,” Chi said and, in the dead of night while everyone slept, he boggled his mind over the future of this neighborhood. At midnight, in the sidebar, the alphanumerics flashed again:

“Date: 07-08-1967. You may insert Disc 3 now.”

He got a good look at history, and not the usual drill. Oh, every child knew the world’s history for the past two and half millennia. Prehistory, the ancient civilizations, the rise of Christianity, European exploration, and so on. The rise of the United States of America, the military-industrial complex. The precipitous rise of the technopolistic plutocracy. The emergence of devolts—an entire mutant population descended from drug addicts. The First Atomic War, the Second Atomic War. The brown ages, the world population crisis. A telelinker could jack into telespace and crunch humanity’s history in thirty minutes.

But Chi’s never seen the files on Discs 2 and 3. He’s never witnessed the far changes that flow from the Haight-Ashbury in such intimate detail. He’s never seen the human faces.

Why did Chi’s skipmother slip him the contraband discs?

At first Chi was grateful, intrigued. But his gratitude turned sour when he realized she’d prioritized and date-coded the holoids, dribbling access to him like a game of hide-and-seek. What does his skipmother know? What secret is she keeping from everyone? Including him? Especially him?

Chi’s sourness turned to anger after he viewed Discs 2 and 3. The scheming cosmicist. “Consider impact before you consider benefit, my son,” she said. The cosmicist mandate of nonintervention resonates with new meaning. After viewing the holoids, Chi is struck by powerful feelings: rage, despair, sorrow. No one ever showed him their faces.

And loneliness. How he longs to share his awful knowledge with someone. He can’t even talk to K-T.

Who’s the ghost? These people who will die centuries before he was born? Or him?

He jabs at the rocky soil with the shovel. He’s got one consolation, anyway. Two consolations. Sort of.

First, spacetime didn’t blow up in his face after he violated several Tenets of the Grandmother Principle. The LISA techs never did say, exactly, what happened when you violated a Tenet.

And second, Ruby and Starbright don’t believe him. Strangely, their disbelief bothers the hell out of him. It offends his pride, challenges his self-worth. Back off, Chi. Don’t be an idiot like he was, showing off his maser. But there it is and won’t go away. He resents them for not believing him.

“Say, brother.” The voice intrudes, jolting Chi just as he’s tamping down a seed in a fresh patch of live earth. “Workin’ on Ruby’s farm?”

Chi knows that hateful voice only too well. He stands and blots his sweaty forehead on the back of his forearm. “What do you want, Leo?”

“I want to destroy this inhuman, parasitical capitalist system, brother.”

Leo Gorgon leans up against the fence, grinning. He watches Chi with interest. As usual, Gorgon’s interest is calculating and sly. Chi has watched Gorgon with interest, too. Gorgon is one of those people during the Summer of Love who is more alert, intelligent, and streetwise—not to mention fifteen years older—than the kids mobbing the Haight-Ashbury. He and his posse are stage-trained actors. He performs decent sleight-of-hand. Gorgon turns his edge to his advantage, turns it like you sharpen a blade.

Gorgon has his rap. The ideology of failure, he calls it. Money is dead. It’s free because it’s yours. Chi has seen destitute teenage runaways gathering around Gorgon, listening raptly to his rap.

“So,” Gorgon says, “workin’ for the bitch-goddess of love?”

“Working for the joy of it.”

“She payin’ ya?”

“Work is its own reward. To give is best.”

Gorgon laughs. “You’re a Digger, brother.”

“I’d like to be.”

“At least till you tire of the adventure of poverty an’ run back home to your rich daddy’s house, eh?”

Chi thrusts the shovel.

“Where’s Miss Ruby?”

“Upstairs, watching Star Trek with Starbright.”

“Is she, now.” Gorgon taps out a cigarette, plays it through his fingers. “Say listen, Bub.”

“My name is Chiron, Leo.” Chi leans on the shovel.

“Yeah. ‘To give is best,’ Bub. Why, I call that a moral imperative. Y’know, Bub, I got me a truck out front, an’ she’s got a flat tire.” He glances up at the deck. He’s subtle, but not subtle enough. “I happen to know Miss Ruby has got herself a jack in that storeroom in her garage. Yeah. You wanna go fetch it for me, Bub?”

Chi flings down the shovel, strolls over to the fence. He pointedly follows Gorgon’s glance up to the deck and the unlocked kitchen door. An easy mark. From upstairs with the TV on, Ruby would never hear someone letting himself in. She would never hear someone rummaging through her apartment for things to knickknack.

“Why don’t you ring the front bell and ask her if you can borrow it?”

Gorgon gets it. He laughs and slaps his knee. “I’m shuckin’ you, man. Just shuckin’ you. Ain’t no flat tire. Oh, but I got me a truck out front. She’s parked at the curb, just waitin’ for a strappin’ young dude like you to take her out for a spin. Pick up some chick, do your thing. Why should you work on this beautiful day?”

“Someone’s got to work.”

“Nah. No, you don’t, brother.”

“If I don’t,” Chi says, “who will?”

“Man, this is the Great Society,” Gorgon says. “This society is rollin’ in the dough. It’s a Society of Surplus. If you don’t want to work, you shouldn’t have to. Especially not for a capitalist like Ruby Maverick. Whaddaya say?”

He dangles the ignition key.

Chi takes the key. “I say the Society of Surplus is a shuck. A shuck now, and a shuck later.”

“What tha’ hell?”

“You’ll watch the Society of Surplus vanish before your very eyes.” Chi palms the key, plucks Gorgon’s unlit cigarette from his lip, and palms that, too. “In three decades, people will wonder how anyone could have ever talked about a Society of Surplus. And the worst of it is, the rich will get much richer, the poor much poorer. Oh, in centuries society will have plenty again. In centuries, people who call themselves cosmicists because they believe in the Cosmic Mind will finally be wise enough to know that a surplus is not a surplus, but a hard-earned gift not to be squandered.”

Gorgon turns scarlet. “Gimme my key, you lyin’ punk.”

Chi produces the key from Gorgon’s left ear, the cigarette from his right.

“Asshole!” Gorgon stomps down the driveway to his truck.

Chi picks up the shovel again, thrusts the blade. Clang. He unearths a rock the size of his boot. He’s not working for free. He’s receiving Ruby’s charity, good will, and the benefits of her bounty from her hard work.

No, Chi never thought much of the Free-Thieves. He doesn’t think much of Leo Gorgon. And the t-port has been no adventure in poverty, but a harrowing nightmare from which he cannot wake.

Yes, Chi is the heir to a cosmicist dynasty and a domed estate in Sausalito. He has never been poor. And he knows from the Archives that Leo Gorgon was, and is, and will be. In seven years, Gorgon will die in a New York City subway from a heroin overdose.

And there is nothing Chi can do.

The painted ladies rise from the thistle and flutter away.

* * *

Chi lets himself in the kitchen, locks the door behind him, and stalks into the living room. Leo Gorgon always sets his teeth on edge. He still hears them murmuring upstairs. The third floor is their domain, their little queendom. He starts to climb the stairs, then stops. He hears them laughing. Throwing things? Then murmurs as thick as jasmine incense.

Women. What are they all about?

Strategy, Chi. He needs a better strategy.

He wishes he could take Starbright away and lock her up somewhere. Someplace safe. A cabin in Mendocino, say. Lock her up for two months and escort her to the airport on September 4. That would keep her out of trouble and protect her and her fetus from disease, the strange drugs and stranger people lurking around the Haight-Ashbury. Protect her and her fetus from demons.

It would make things so simple, so neat. He could return to the Scene and keep looking for a closer match. If Starbright turns out not to be the Axis, all he’d have is an angry pregnant teenager and a kidnapping rap he can step across five centuries to beat.

Ah, temptation.

But no, that won’t work, and forget about Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle. He can’t do it because then Starbright could not possibly be the transcendent smiling girl in the CBS News holoid, now could she?

All right. He can’t lock her up. But he can’t let her roam free.

Think strategy, Chi. Try some tenderness? Try to be nice? His surveillance approach has gotten him exactly nowhere. She doesn’t even tell him when she’s going out. Should he make a pass? Try to woo her? He thinks of Bella Venus. Her glistening skull, her perfect nude skin. Bella Venus smells so fresh and sweet, Chi gets hard just thinking about her.

He could woo Starbright, but it wouldn’t be anything real. He wouldn’t seduce her. He certainly wouldn’t pretend to love her. Nothing like that. It would be a strategy, just a strategy to lure the girl a little closer so she’ll be easier to protect. He’s sure he can do it. All the lasses at college adore him.

After all, it’s the Summer of Love. Everyone’s in love.

Chi strides to the half-bath off the kitchen and surveys himself in the mirror with new eyes. The nutribeads supply him with his required calories but he’s grown bone-thin on nothing but nutribeads and a hit of neurobics when he can’t stand the empty throbbing in his gut. His cheeks look gaunt, his stomach sunken between prominent ribs. Rock ‘n’ roll bones. Mega. But he could tweak it up a bit.

He’s sweaty from the yard work. That’s no way to woo a girl. He wraps a filter over the water faucet and fills the washbasin. He sets the maser on red, runs the beam through the filtered water. Now he takes out his scope, scoops a sample in the palm of his hand, and peers. Not too bad. No too many wriggling tails, anyway. He rubs a cleanser tab in his hands and works up a lather. He washes his face and hands and arms, rinses, and shakes himself dry like a dog shaking off water. Then he presses a new patch of Block on his chest.

That weird familiar tingling scurries over his skin like a million ants as the Block reactivates the microderm. He makes a decent part down his scalp and combs the hair implants with a bit more care. He takes the toothbrush Ruby left him and combs the eyebrow implants. Better. He takes a vial of East Indian musk from the bathroom cabinet, dabs essence oil on his wrists. Live dangerously.

Chi strides out to the living room and paces, waiting for them to come downstairs. Still murmuring upstairs. Chi plunks his butt on the couch and riffles through the books and magazines and newspapers Ruby’s strewn all over her coffee table, including the latest edition of the Berkeley Barb.

On one of the days before Starbright came to stay, Chi took a stack of Berkeley Barbs to sell around the city. How extraordinary to hold the fresh paper, smell the ink. He was as thrilled as if he held a roll of papyrus with hieroglyphs proclaiming daily news about King Tut. He hopped aboard a cable car and took a jaw-jolting ride down to the wharf. A longhaired gnomish guy with silver rings on every finger struck up a wistful conversation in a flat, brassy accent. By the end of the ride, the gnomish guy--who said his name was “Hawwass”--was calling Chi “hansum” and blinking up at him with dazed, dark eyes.

Now he takes out a prophylak, punches his fingers into it, and picks up the Barb. Mega. If the payload could take the mass, he’d love to transmit a Barb with him back to the future. A gift for his skipfather.

Chi leafs through the inky pages and spies an item he’s never seen before. Data that didn’t survive, information lost to the Archives. A box in the lower left corner reads:

PLEASE CALL—NO STRINGS: The parents of the following have contacted the HIP Switchboard instead of going to the police. If you want to pick up on vibrations from your parents, we have more information. We will not contact your parents unless you give the OK:

Joan Gallagher, Shelly Ballinger, Beatrice Clare, Vicky Martin, Sally May Kearney, Louise Thompson, Cathie McKerrick, Patty Lee Corbin, Ann Thrift, Donna Wells, Joni Dawson, Terry Miller, Susan Bell, Carlos Piera, Timmy Meyers, Allen Weisberg.

Susan Bell.

Chi tears through the rest of the Barb. And there—there!—in the middle of the Classified Ads, he finds what he’s looking for:

GUY WITH LONG RED HAIR who was selling BARBS and rode Powell St. cable car. Contact Harris, 14 Charles St., N.Y.C. I love you, handsome.

Shock ripples up his spine.

The Axis really is here.

And then, So am I.

* * *

He clatters up the stairs to the sitting room, knocks on the door, and barges in before they can answer.

Ruby is tossing out clothes from her closet in her bedroom. A silky shirt with a high collar, a cotton sarong in purple and red, a long blue velvet dress. “Don’t wear these much anymore, either,” she says to Starbright. “Take your pick.” Two cats bat at the fringe of an embroidered shawl. Three other cats lounge on Ruby’s bed, gold and blue eyes blinking lazily.

“Where did you go?” Chi demands.

“Out. This was always too short on me.” Ruby holds up a violet suede skirt. “Should fit you just fine.”

“You shouldn’t go out without telling me, Starbright,” he says.

“Get a load of him,” Ruby says.

Half-buttoned into a paisley dress, Starbright turns and glares. “I can go anywhere I want to without telling you, Chi.”

He stares.

No white lipstick. No white stuff around her eyes. No blue eyeliner. Instead, her cheeks are flushed, her lips stained plum. Her eyes are two dark ovals smudged with kohl. Her hair is brushed out in long, tawny curls. The dress nips her waist, the long skirt sweeps over her hips. She looks as if she’s shed a layer of flesh.

“What have you done to yourself?” he says, turning the probabilities around in his head.

She shrugs and finishes buttoning the dress.

“What do you think, Chi?” Ruby says.

He hesitates. At school, he’d come back with a quip. The narcissism of these wasteful people. Obsessed with the latest fashion while their world goes down a toxic sewer. White lips, plum lips, straight hair, curly hair—who gives a damn? But his retort is stifled by a sudden image of Bella Venus, her dazzling body paint.

“Starbright has become beautiful,” Ruby laughs. “Right, am I right?”

There is a new camaraderie between these females that makes his uneasy. Not because women are close, which is common among Bella Venus and her friends. No, because they’re excluding him from something, and he cannot begin to guess what.

“Do you have a new name, too?” he asks.

“I’m Starbright,” she says with a toss of her head.

“You want to go out with us, man from Mars?” Ruby says. “We’re going to go have some fun.”

Chi starts to smile. Is it just his hope or has Starbright--in a morning--become a closer match to the girl in the CBS News holoid? Is it possible? After all, he’s in a Hot Dim Spot.

“What’s the occasion?” he asks.

Ruby says,”Today is Goddess Day. Celebrate!”

* * *

There is no dissuading Ruby, so they all step out. At least Ruby invited him. Otherwise, he’d have to figure out how to follow them. Ruby makes him wear a wide–brimmed gaucho hat. An irony, that, since mass-produced beef has been illegal for over a century.

They catch the 24 Divisadero bus northbound to Geary Boulevard and stroll four blocks to a handsome old auditorium called the Fillmore. A bluesman, Bo Diddley, whom Ruby wants to see, and a psychedelic band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, whom Starbright wants to see, are playing a double bill. Chi has never heard of either of them. Two obscure notes lost to the Archives.

They take a place at the back of a colorful queue.

A swarthy little short-haired man bangs out of a side door. In a white button-down shirt, he looks like someone’s square uncle. He carries a broom and begins sweeping the sidewalk. He sweeps from the start of the queue to the end, sending litter and dust flying into the gutter. He glances up from time to time, forming silent words. If Chi had to guess, the square uncle is counting how many people there are. No one pays him any attention. He’s just the janitor.

“That’s Bill Graham,” Ruby whispers to Starbright.

“Grass, hash, acid, speed?” a guy in a yellow poncho murmurs.

Suddenly two men push past Chi, shove Ruby out of the way, and seize Starbright’s elbows. A squat man in a stovepipe hat and a tough, skinny guy in purple tie-dye, his eyes darting like a reptile watching for insects.

“This is the chick,” the Lizard says.

“Hey!” Starbright cries.

Chi tries to elbow around them, but Stovepipe’s got shoulders like a football player.

“You owe us big-time, you stupid chick,” Stovepipe says.

“Buzz off, scuzz,” Ruby says, but her eyes are wide, her lips pale.

“You shut up,” the Lizard says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Starbright cries.

“Dealin’ rat poison as dragon’s blood,” Stovepipe says. “Seven grand for rat poison. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Chi says, his hand on his maser. “This girl isn’t a dealer.”

“It’s the Man!” Ruby cries.

A black-and-white police car, top light spinning, speeds up to the curb.

Stovepipe and the Lizard vanish in the crowd.

A rusty van with a burned-out tail light slows in front of the police car, pulls over to the curb. The cop climbs wearily out of his car. The van’s driver hops out, too, a stringbean in a fringed jacket and feathered hat who jogs over to meet the cop, dropping baggies in the gutter. “Afternoon, officer,” he says with a dazzling smile. “What’s the hassle?”

“Could we come back another time?” Starbright says. Her face is drained of color. Her teeth are chattering.

“You bet,” Ruby says. “Another time.”

Chi takes Starbright’s hand. Her fingers are freezing. He closes his hand around hers. He doesn’t even use a prophylak.

* * *

The Haight is packed when they disembark from the Divisadero bus. Chi has never seen the street this crazy. Tourists gawk, point cameras, lean on their car horns. Crew-cut military guys catcall “I love you” and leer at Hell’s Angels, who show them what a leer really looks like. Black-leather hoodies lounge on their choppers. Teenyboppers sit in lotus positions three deep on the sidewalk. The mouse magician promenades, clanging his bell.

Locals run up to the cars with bits of broken mirror and turn the mirrors toward the tourists so they’re looking at their own reflections. Other locals stroll in front of cars with Brownie cameras, snapping photos of the occupants. Still others leap on car bumpers, rocking the cars from side to side, or jump onto car hoods and sprint across them.

Chi walks between Ruby and Starbright, his arms around them. He doesn’t like this. The mood borders on hysteria. “We should get out of here.”

But the two of them are enjoying the show.

Ruby leans across him and says to the girl, “Well, you did it, kid, but I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

“What do you mean, Ruby?” Chi says, alarmed. “What did Starbright go through?”

Starbright only nods and glances around. “Hey, maybe I’ll see Penny Lane.”

Half a block up, a pail is thrust from a second-story window. Red paint splatters down. The crowd roars. People start to push and shove.

Chi stands with Starbright and Ruby on the curb in front of the Psychedelic Shop, waiting for the light to change. A Day-Glo van and two battered junkers stop dead in the middle of the intersection. Westbound, eastbound, north and south, traffic is gridlocked. Car horns blare. People cheer and boo.

A police car pulls onto the sidewalk, scattering people.

“The cops is comin’!” someone yells.

“Get off the street,” a police officer says through his loudspeaker. “Get off the street. Now. Move onto the sidewalk. Now.”

Suddenly sirens drown out every sound. Twenty black-and-white patrol cars materialize from every direction, skidding up onto the sidewalks, going the wrong way down alleys and lanes, jostling around the gridlock. Four paddy wagons follow. Police in full riot gear leap out. There must be fifty of them, swinging billy clubs.

A dog is barking.

Someone throws a bottle. The glass smashes on the concrete, spraying shards on a woman in a fringed dress. She screams.

“Get off the street. Now.”

Chi drags Ruby and Starbright back from the curb. They wrestle against the crowd, until their backs press against the Psychedelic Shop.

A girl in a long, black cape steps out of the crowd. She nudges next to Ruby, her face and her hair hidden by a peaked hood.

Whistles shriek. People scream. A cop smashes a man on the side of his head. The man falls to his knees, blood staining his yellow hair.

“Police brutality!” someone yells. “Get the cops! Get the cops!”

The dog barks frantically.

A woman screams, “Revolution! Revolution!”

Three policemen charge through the wall of people toward Chi, Ruby, and Starbright, swinging their clubs.

A young man flees before the police, cringing and stumbling. The barking dog leaps beside him. The young man’s got a leash wrapped around his hand. He stumbles again, and the leash tangles around his ankles. The dog, a black-and-white-sheepdog, snarls as a policeman batters the young man’s head and shoulders with his club.

Now a tall woman in rags steps out of the crowd. A ‘fro of writhing gray curls crowns her head. A gray veil hangs over her face. The gray beggar presses herself against the shopfront next to Starbright.

Chi watches, eyes wide. What the hell is happening?

A cop seizes the young man’s head in an armlock, while another smashes his billy club across his kidneys. The young man drops the leash, and his dog leaps at the second cop, protecting his master. A third cop raises his arms straight up and slams his billy club on the dog’s head.

Chi hears a crack.

The dog shrieks.

Starbright screams.

The policeman slams the club again. The dog drops to the sidewalk. The policeman bashes the club across the dog’s face again and again, smashing the animal’s eyes and skull. Blood pours through the dog’s fur.

A woman screams, “Revolution! Revolution! Kill the cops! Kill the cops!”

The dog-killer turns. He sprints after the screaming woman, swinging his club. She runs, but the crowd blocks her. He aims for her face. “Kill the cops!” she screams. Crack. The club connects with her jaw and teeth. The dog-killer swings again. Crack. Blood streams from her mouth. She sobs. The dog-killer jerks her arms behind her back and hustles her into a paddy wagon.

The gray beggar turns toward Starbright. All Chi can see through the veil is two burning eyes. But no, not burning. How can darkness burn? A darkness like the light is being sucked into a vacuum. Darkness throbbing with a terrible force.

Starbright clutches his arm, tears streaming. Suddenly she sees the girl in the black cape standing next to Ruby.

“It’s the girl with my face!” she screams.

The black hood parts for an instant, and Chi glimpses her. Starbright? The same girl—but not the same girl. Fragments of the girl’s face shift in dizzying grimaces. The eyes burn like lit coals.

The gray beggar groans, a sound like a rusty door hinge. With great effort, she extends her swaddled arm before Chi and freezing cold bludgeons his chest. The girl in the black cape brandishes a staff that writhes like a living thing. The girl lifts the staff as if it weighs a thousand tons and struggles to swing it toward Starbright.

For a moment, Chi can’t move. The sheer force of the demons’ antimatter feels as if he’s falling from a great height.

Ah, but the antimatter is struggling, too!

The three cops feverishly push the crowd back against the Psychedelic Shop. The dog-killer is flushed and glittery-eyed. He charges toward the three of them.

Chi yanks out his maser. He flicks to blue, runs the beam in front of the gray beggar. A faint blue line like a crack in glass glows for an instant. The beggar falls back. Chi flicks to green, bears the beam down. The tip of the girl’s staff bows to the ground.

He shouldn’t, but he flicks to yellow and aims at the dog-killer’s chest. The dog-killer staggers back, as through tackled by an invisible halfback. The chest of his uniform bursts into shreds. He roars with pain and rage.

The crowd screams, “Revolution! Revolution! Kill the cops!”

The dog-killer lurches to his feet. Two police charge at everyone in front of the Psychedelic Shop.

“Go, go, go!” Chi lunges, pulling Starbright and Ruby with him. He punches people out of their way, loses his gaucho hat. They shove through the crowd, heading to Clayton Street.

Suddenly, in front of them, the girl in the black cape steps out of a telephone pole. Fingers trailing, she extracts herself from the dark wood. Black sparks crackle all around her.

The gray beggar kneels beside a fire hydrant. She tugs at her rags, pulling them from the hydrant’s metal rim. She turns her veiled face to and fro like a radar dish seeking out a target. Seeking out them.

“Come on, come on, come on!” Chi shouts.

They run.

Blood stains Chi’s boot.

9

Strawberry Fields Forever

Ruby stops dead in her tracks, seizing Chi by the elbow. He whirls back, dragging Starbright with him.

“What are you doing?” she shouts. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the house,” he says, panting. He struggles with her, pulling her down the sidewalk. “We’ve got to get inside!”

She brakes her heels. “And let those women, those. . . .ghouls, see us? Find out where we live?”

“They won’t see us. They don’t need to see us.”

“You’re crazy!”

“It doesn’t matter, Ruby!”

“You bet your ass it matters! We’ve got to scatter, throw them off our tracks!”

“Listen to me!” The young dude is full of fire, flushed scarlet. She’s never seen him so wound up, but somehow he isn’t panicked like she is. “The Prime Probability has collapsed.” He glances all around him, at her, then long and hard at the kid. “The timeline is preserved. Spacetime, conserved. But we need to get off the street. If we’re not in any more danger, reality will remain stable. The demons can’t come through from the Other Now until there’s a hole.”

This makes no sense whatsoever. Still, she sees a demented logic to his words. “Are you sure?”

Then he does something so bizarre, he freaks her out almost as much as the ghouls. What did he call them? The demons. He untangles his hand from Starbright’s, raises his right fist to his lips, and whispers, “Katie.” For a horrifying moment, she thinks he’s speaking into a microphone in his ring, contacting some confederate hidden nearby. Like he’s a spy, a spy from the Man, come to infiltrate the hip community just like she feared.

Then he raises his left hand, cupping his palm behind the ring. A little field of lavender light winks on. It isn’t a surface, like looking at a television screen, but an object the size and shape of a pulp magazine made entirely of light. The little field floats in midair!

He whispers, “Katie, calc oh seven, oh nine, sixty-seven,” and tiny red numbers and letters dance in the light. He catches her astonished look and pivots a quarter-turn. Though the field of light seemed bigger than his hand, now she can’t see it at all.

A beat, and he says, “I’m sure.”

Ruby hadn’t believed Chi’s street-corner lunacy about being from the future, but she forgave him his wild imagination. She believes in imagination, the wilder, the better. And now? Now she believes he’s from somewhere, and it isn’t a hop and a skip down the road from Marin City.

“The demons are gone,” he says. “Look around for yourself.”

She looks around, and he’s right. Or at least they no longer crouch at the corner of Clayton and Haight, those weird sisters, those hags of doom, spewing mortal terror in their path. For that’s what she felt, standing next to the girl in the black cape: arctic air and an intimation she was about to die. They’ve vanished, sure as a C-note on a bad bet.

“You in one piece, kid?’ she asks.

Starbright nods. Her face is streaked with tears, but she’s no longer weeping. She is taut with anger and urgency. Any trace of the darling daughter from the burbs is gone for good. “They attacked us,” she says in a strangled voice. “They killed an innocent living being.”

They. She doesn’t mean the demons.

“We’ve got to get inside,” Chi insists. “Out of danger.”

Ruby is shaking. She never shook before, not one time. Not when the fuzz stuck a flashlight in her face in the doorway of her North Beach pad. Not when Roi went on the yen. Not even when she witnessed Doc Clyde and his rose gardening fourteen years ago.

Blood on Haight Street, right in front of her eyes. How can anyone hold onto a New Explanation when the street is choked with hate and garbage and blood? A dog beaten to death while he’s out for a walk with his master in his own neighborhood. It’s too much.

Before she can figure out what to do, Leo Gorgon darts out of the alley beside 555 Clayton. He takes her by her shoulders. Dark circles shadow his eyes. “Ruby. You were seen in front of the Psych Shop, man. The pigs.” He catches his breath, exchanging a poisonous look with Chi. “The pigs are lookin’ for you.”

“We didn’t do anything!” Starbright says.

“They’re lookin’ for witnesses,” Gorgon says. “They’ll take you downtown, detain you all night. Try to get a statement on record that’ll disqualify you later in court. A cover-their-ass gig. You want to go to the cop shop, Starbright? How about you, Beelzebub?”

“She can’t go,” Chi says. “I would if I could, but I can’t, either.”

“Got somethin’ to hide?” Gorgon says.

“Don’t we all,” Chi spits back.

“I’ll go,” Ruby says, though dread clenches her chest, making it hard to breathe. She’s no hero. She’s done everything in her power to avoid run-ins with the police, steered clear of politics and radical entanglements, not to mention illegal substances. But she won’t stand for an atrocity like this, coming down at her own doorstep. “I’ll call my lawyer at HALO, and I’ll go.”

“Don’t do it, Ruby,” Gorgon says. “The cops don’t want a brutality rap. It’s bad press. They mean business.” He hustles all three of them to the stoop of the Mystic Eye. “Anyway, why should you? We’ve had enough of this harassment. The Chief of Police has been on the people’s ass for goin’ on two years. Right?”

“That’s right,” Ruby says.

“The Summer of Love is gonna change all that. Ruby, everyone’s talkin’ on the street. We’re gonna get a legal action committee together an’ go after the heat. That mouthpiece over on Franklin Street says he wants the gig. Me an’ Cowboy made the scene right after you left. We saw the blood, an’ we heard the story, but the dog was gone. Everyone was freakin’ out, an’ nobody saw who took the corpse. The dog’s owner got arrested for incitin’ to riot. They cuffed him an’ took him away in a paddy wagon. So we want you fresh as the morning dew. Don’t hassle with me on this one, Ruby. No statements to the Man until we get our act together, all right?”

She nods.

“Let’s split town for the night. Even you, Bub.” Gorgon’s vicious look again, but Chi nods. “People say they’re sweepin’ the streets for all of us. Pigs are claimin’ me an’ Cowboy set up that scene.”

“Did you set up that scene?” Ruby says.

“No way,” he says. She meets Gorgon’s eyes and sees, for a rare moment, sorrow in him. “That was some mighty bad theater.” For all his shucks and disingenuous ways, she believes him. “Can you take three riders in that kraut car of yours?” he says. “My truck’s got a flat.” Sure enough, Gorgon’s rickety flatbed, parked down the block, tilts toward the curb.

“You bet,” Ruby says. “I gassed her up this morning.”

“Let’s get outta here.”

The summer sun sinks into the treetops, one of those gusty amber twilights that seems to take forever. The new moon buds into an arc as slim as a cat’s claw. They walk cautiously through the shadowy alley back to the garage. Chi and Gorgon pull the garage doors open.

“You stay here,” Ruby tells the men. “Starbright, come with me. We’ll collect some provisions and be right back.”

“Bring me a pint of Jim Beam, if you’ve got it,” Gorgon calls to her.

She and the kid go to the back gate, find it swinging open.

“Sweet Isis,” Ruby groans. “Now what?”

Heart knocking, she climbs the back stairs, the kid trailing after. But the kitchen door is locked up tight. They go inside. Nothing amiss. Upstairs on her bed, the Siamese cats are curled up in a mound of gray and brown fur. The white cats perch on the windowsill, enjoying the stirring dusk. Ruby rechecks all the windows and doors, leaves plenty of fresh water and cat kibbles. No Jim Beam, but she’s got a fifth of Wild Turkey in the pantry.

Her stomach is rumbling. None of them has had dinner. She packs a picnic basket with sourdough bread, sharp cheddar, apples, a couple of carob bars. She thinks again, packs a bottle of Napa burgundy, plus a jar of Salvatore Espresso, the only instant coffee worthy of human consumption and drinkable black. Paper cups, paper napkins, plastic utensils, a Swiss Army knife with a corkscrew, and that should do it. She goes to the half-bath, retrieves blankets and pillows, a canvas bag. She finds an Irish sweater in the coat closet for her, a hand-loomed shawl for Starbright.

Ah, Starbright.

What a tangled, bittersweet surprise, her sudden feelings toward the kid. What is this fierce rush of tenderness? What do you do when someone tells you she loves you and hugs you?

It’s the Summer of Love. You hug her back.

Starbright bustles about in the kitchen, packing bedding and clothes in the canvas bag. Suddenly she notices something. “Ruby, look at this!” She stoops, picks up a scrap of paper from the floor, pushed under the door apparently, and hands it to her.

A crude scrawl:

SHUCKING THE REVOLUTION WE WILL NOT TOLERATE

PEOPLE (HIP OR STRAIGHT) TRANSFORMING OUR TRIP INTO CASH

BE ADVISED

Ruby exhales sharply. “Some revolution.”

“You’re not hurting anyone, Ruby,” Starbright cries. “You’re offering things and ideas people can’t find anywhere else. The Mystic Eye is wonderful. I love the Mystic Eye. Who would do this?”

“Kid, there are crazy tribes in the Haight-Ashbury these days. You’ve seen that for yourself. The Diggers, the dealers, the acid mystics, the cultists, the musicians, the politicos, the Panthers, the Krishna devotees, the anarchists, the speed freaks, the hip elite, the hoodies, the bikers, even the flower children. They’ve all got their own agenda. No wonder the Man can get away with beating us up on the street. Or maybe this is from the Man. Who knows.”

“Revolution. That’s the second time I’ve heard that word today.”

“Uh-huh. You know what we used to say in the old days? We used to say the revolution is in your mind. First and foremost, above everything else, you’ve got to open your mind in new ways. The personal revolution, that’s what we called it. And it had nothing to do with threatening other people or telling them what to do.”

“Are they trying to scare us?”

“You scared?”

“Yeah!”

“Then their love letter worked, didn’t it. Let’s you and me not be scared anymore. Come on.”

Ruby carefully relocks the kitchen door, and they climb down the stairs. In the twilight, Ruby can see that someone has uprooted part of Chi’’s garden, two rows of his careful plantings ravaged like an open grave. Who would do this? She recalls the strange intruder in her yard weeks ago. The gray beggar woman? Was it her, then? Is it her, now?

Ruby shudders. She closes and locks the gate.

Her bitter nostalgia about the way things used to be, her paranoia about the Man, her resentment at being excluded from the Council for a Summer of Love--all of it, all of it boils up in her like an herbal brew. A strange brew with a sting of nettle. Boils up and clarifies till she can extract an essence of where she stands today.

A New Explanation, yes. There is a New Explanation, somewhere. In the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love? She never thought so. But these are strange and wondrous days and they’ve become a catalyst. The New Explanation still hovers, a half-glimpsed mirage above a street stained with blood.

The two men wait silently beside the dark garage.

“Where to, Leo?” Ruby says.

“How ‘bout Morning Star Ranch?” Gorgon says. “I could use some fresh country air. I know people there. We can hide out for the night.”

“We’re gone,” Ruby says.

* * *

Gorgon knocks back two fingers of Wild Turkey before they’ve crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and slumps in the front seat, snoring. Starbright huddles against Chi in the back seat. He circles his arm around her shoulders, takes her hand.

Ruby speeds through the dark, northbound. She knows the way. She drove to Morning Star Ranch in May to see a sculptor friend who’d retreated there to finish his latest masterpiece: a man of car-chrome with a red garden hose dangling between his shiny legs, clutching a woman of hammered steel. The drive takes a good hour.

After the first volley of Gorgon’s snores, she says, “Tell me true, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. What were those women? You used another one of your words that doesn’t quite mean what I think it means.” She shivers. “You called them demons.”

Silence, and the thrumming of the wheels. At last Chi says, “Yes, it’s an acronym. Devolved Entities Manifested from the Other Now. We call them demons.”

“Devolved entities, uh-huh. You want to tell us about it?”

And the elegant lad tells his strange tale.

* * *

One day last spring, Chi says, he and his skipparents were visiting his skipcousin’s new penthouse condominium at Cloud View Maze. She was throwing a housewarming party. Cloud View Maze was a self-sufficient mega-complex perched high atop the Oakland hills--a breathtaking minicity of residences, business and commercial spaces, swimming pools, tennis courts, clubs, and restaurants with its own security force, fire department, recycling enforcers, sex police, fishponds, vegetable gardens, fruit arbors, and a bicycle Path.

Sky-seeding was kicking in. Atmospheric thickening had abated, allowing the sun’s warming rays to heat our precious blue planet away from the brink of another ice age. Radiation levels from the Second Atomic War were finally dropping and the radiation vaccine had worked. In a grand ceremony, dubbed “Let the Sun Shine In,” people took their shields down and installed picture windows.

On a clear day, without the shields, they could see icy peaks of the Sierras from his skipcousin’s roof deck. And it was a clear day. Mega and prime.

Telespace was up and running. Guests at the party could jack in on his skipcousin’s workstation if they felt like a recreational link or had business to attend to. The pro linkers queued up, itching for a hit of telespace. Jack up, link in, space out. Cool, tool. You could practically hear the hum of vast inner space teeming with intelligence.

There hadn’t been much to celebrate in so long. Mars terraformation was on time and under budget. Reduction of world population statistics were encouraging. T-port projects were going well at the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications. The LISA techs were enthusiastic. A telespace pundit christened these days the New Renaissance.

Chi and his family and friends were celebrating. Everyone was popping neurobics and drinking aged wine. A feast of fresh food was laid out. Chi’s skipmother had brought a dozen trout from the family pond. Chi’s skipcousin was showing off the first harvest from her roof garden. There she was, as proud as a new skipparent, with her microcorn and cherry tomatoes. And flowers. Everyone there was a cosmicist. Her orchids sent them into ecstasies. Someone began projecting holopoetry.

Far below, people were strolling in and out of the Oak-Fran megalopolis through meadows planted over ancient traffic corridors and across the Bay Bridge Mall. EM-Trans trains hummed deep underground. The skyways were thick with jetcopters, air shuttles, whirligigs. Ferries docked and departed and streamed across the sparkling blue bay. From his skipcousin’s roofdeck, Chi could see the massive dome over New Golden Gate Preserve.

Then two things happened so fast, it seemed as if they happened at the same time:

Telespace crashed, and--

A cloud blew in from the western horizon.

“A crash!” someone yelled. “Telespace is down! Everything!”

The telelinker at the workstation slumped, unconscious. The pro linkers crowded around. What? Telespace is down? Unheard of! So much intelligence was linked at any moment, a worldwide system failure was a disaster. A catastrophe! Unheard of!

A freak accident? Sabotage?

Or a Prime Probability, collapsing out of the timeline.

With all the alarm at his skipcousin’s workstation, Chi scarcely noticed the cloud. At least, he thought it was a cloud. Suddenly a scorching wind blasted his face. Charcoal plumes billowed up and filled the sky. An acid storm? A meteor crashing?

Chi didn’t know what to think!

The wind began to howl. He could see that the cloud wasn’t a rain cloud at all, but smoke. A thunderhead of thick, black smoke swirling with ashes.

Was the sky on fire?

The sun was a bloodred disc behind the burning cloud. Chi heard a sound in the wind, the scrabbling, scratching noise of a billion bits of rubble blasting out of the awful cloud.

Out of the south, a lightning bolt cut across the sky. Then, like an afterimage, another bolt cut from the north. Only the bolt was pure black! A jagged ebony blade slashed heaven’s dome.

The sky split open.

And Chi saw the Other Now. He saw his city, and he saw his people--in another universe.

The megalopolis crouched beneath a yellow sky, swirling with smoke and ashes. The city lay in ruins, with no sign of repair. Gouts of flame flared here and there. Bridges hung slack, decks swaybacked and cracked. The bay was dead and still, gleaming like a fly’s wing with poisonous sludge. A firestorm raged on the very hills Chi was perched upon. A glacier had carved away huge chunks of the waterfront, and sea water lapped against the curbs of downtown streets. Masses of tiny vehicles slid through the water, wheels spraying toxic foam onto the sidewalks.

Flocks of dead birds lay decaying in the brown weeds of parks and malls. Fish rotted amid raw sewage and tangles of plastic on the beaches. No dome protected what would have been New Golden Gate Preserve. Where the preserve should have stood was a naked salt plain, a radiation desert punctuated by twisted tree trunks. The Portals of the Past stood like gaping teeth in the carcass of wasted land.

And people. People swarmed everywhere. People stacked into crumbling buildings, people huddled in sickness and squalor, people lying before flashing holoids in a mass stupor. Devolts ran wild through the streets. Along a military perimeter, tanks rolled up before a horde of ragtag troops and disgorged globes of Melt. Inside the barbed-wire of a prison, people writhed, impaled on posts. Bound and hooded prisoners were brought to gallows and summarily hanged.

The great medcenters slid people into bioscan tubes. But instead of performing medical treatment, scalpels slit open brains, eyes, stomachs. Robotic fingers pulled the incisions wide open and inserted probes, secreted chemicals, pressed sparking wires into human flesh.

The holoids the people lay before flashed images of the devolts, the tanks and the troops, the impaled and the hanged, the vivisected. Cunning images so real, the watchers couldn’t tell the difference between what was artificial and the reality howling at their doorstep. And in their confusion and their transfixion, the people could not rise.

“I saw ruin and waste and violence. Chaos and misery worse than all the suffering humanity has endured in throughout history,” Chi says. “Then the sky closed. And the Vision was gone.”

They speed up the northbound highway in silence.

“But,” Ruby says, “it was just a vision?”

“No,” Chi says. “It was real.”

Telespace got up and running in sixty seconds. The telelinker came to, dizzy and sick. She lost the data she’d been working on, along with her lunch, but her telelink remained intact. The sheer size and scale of data lost in that sixty seconds was unknown.

The hole in the sky collapsed, leaving charred debris and radioactive waste kilometers wide. The debris floated for weeks over the site where the hole was observed. They sent out jetcopters with nets to retrieve the waste. Tricky stuff. They found antimatter embedded in the scar across the sky.

“The Vision of the Other Now corresponded with the Crash, you see,” Chi says, his voice thick with dread. “Corresponded with the most massive disruption of data ever observed. And I witnessed it with my own eyes.”

The Archivists set to work, attempting to restore those missing sixty seconds. The Chief Archivist ordered a complete review, especially of the Dim Spots her ferrets were already studying as potential t-port sites.

That’s when they identified Hot Dim Spots. When they discovered that the data was disappearing. And reality? Did that mean reality was disappearing, too?

The Chief Archivist declared a Crisis. She declared that some Event had torn a hole in spacetime, allowing the Other Now to invade.

But what? What was the Event?

Strange coincidences began to occur. Telelinkers who’d been jacked in during the Crash fell suddenly ill or suffered freak accidents. The linker who’d used Chi’s skipcousin’s workstation plunged in front of an EM-Trans train two days later and was killed instantly. A hundred witnesses saw a mysterious ripple at her side. Tunnel cameras recorded a shadow, standing suddenly on the track, before the linker was sucked to her death.

“Demons?” Ruby says. She swings the Mercedes west onto Gravenstein Highway, heading for Sebastopol. “Devolved Entities Manifested from the Other Now? You’re telling us another reality is trying to invade this one?”

“Yes. A terrible reality,” Chi says. “A Hell. Starbright, in front of the Psychedelic Shop, you said, ‘It’s the girl with my face.’ Have you seen the demon before?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “On Twin Peaks, the morning I arrived in San Francisco. I almost fell down a cliff.”

“And I nearly fell down my back stairs the night I saw the intruder in my backyard,” Ruby says.

Chi nods bleakly. “Then my skipfather’s theory is correct. Demons can invade whenever a Prime Probability could collapse out of this timeline.”

“Tell it to me straight without your weird words, man from Mars,” Ruby says. “What does that mean?”

“When there’s a chance something will happen that could change all of reality as we know it, the Other Now can invade our timeline.” Chi rubs his eyes. “I can’t say when that will be.”

“But we’ve got nothing to do with the Other Now,” Ruby protests. Fear needles up her spine. “We’ve got nothing to do with your telespace or the Archives or your medcenters.”

“But all those things are in your future,” Chi says with grim satisfaction. “Demons can especially invade a Hot Dim Spot. And that’s what the Summer of Love is: a Hot Dim Spot.”

“But what do the demons want with us?” Starbright says.

Chi says, “They want to destroy you.”

* * *

Chi says a lot of things before Leo Gorgon wakes and Ruby takes the turnoff to Morning Star Ranch. His tone is bitter, contemptuous.

“You people,” Chi says. “Live for today. Don’t give a damn about tomorrow. So many simple things you people take for granted will be gone.”

Even if Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco is a pathological liar, Ruby thinks, sweet Isis, even if he is, there is some kind of truth in his monstrous lies. She is stunned to her core.

As though awakened by the quiet, Gorgon stretches and belches. “Hey.” He reaches over and kneads her neck. “What’s happenin’, baby?”

Ruby pulls onto the gravel drive. “We’re here.”

Grandmother Says: K’an (The Abyss)

The Image: A river flows through a deep ravine. The river does not shrink from passing through places of danger, through canyons or over waterfalls.

The Oracle: Confronting danger brings success, provided one views the situation with clarity and sincerity.

In the time of danger and difficulty, one must not tarry, but proceed forward with awareness and courage. Danger must be analyzed objectively, so that one does not become confused or act foolishly. Caution: the swimmer who attempts to rescue the drowning person may also drown.

Hexagram 29, The I Ching or Book of Changes

Ruby eases the Mercedes up to the barricade that says, “Park Here,” and slowly drives down the dusty gravel lot. She knows about other country communes: Drop City in Colorado, Strawberry Fields in L.A., the Illustrated Farm in Mendocino, Gorda in Big Sur. Morning Star Ranch is the closest country commune to the Haight-Ashbury. The Diggers have posted signs in Ruby’s shop, giving directions and a map.

Everyone knows how to get to Morning Star Ranch. Everyone knows anyone can go and stay there. It’s free.

Night closes over the countryside. A couple of street lamps smudge the parking lot with light. Moths whirl and dart in the dimness.

A squat black woman in a stained pantsuit staggers up to the Mercedes and peers in at Ruby. “Hey sister, hey sister.” Her breath reeks of fortified wine. “Got any spare change for Bad Annie, sister?”

“Here you go, sister,” Ruby says, handing her a quarter. “You take care of yourself, Bad Annie.”

People swarm around the Mercedes: a suburban runaway with a starving face, a bearded man in free-box clothing, a fellow with dirty blond bangs hanging over his eyes, two black men in tattered suit coats. They plead, palms held out. “Spare change? Got any spare change?”

“No,” Ruby says, waving them away. “No!”

“Beat it,” Gorgon says.

Bad Annie guffaws and lets loose a stream of obscenities. The starving runaway turns and vomits spittle on the gravel. The free-box man wanders away. The blond bangs hacks with a racking cough. The two black men weave across the lot to a bumper-stickered van pulling up.

Ruby parks in the shadows on the far side. In the city, darkness hides thieves. Here, out on the land, darkness may be her friend.

They all pile out of the car. Starbright slings the canvas bag with their bedding over her shoulder. She hands the picnic basket to Chi. Ruby locks the Mercedes. This is the second time tonight she’s turned a key with a sense of dread.

The four of them creep across the lot.

“I’m goin’ up to the big house,” Gorgon says and sprints away. “See if I can find Rainbow.”

Isn’t that just like Gorgon, Ruby thinks. Abandoning her. She seizes Starbright with her left hand, Chi with her right. The kid and the young dude cling to her as if she knows what the hell she’s doing. They climb a steep ridge and down to a small house. Pitched tents, lean-tos, and teepees surround the house. Pinwheels whirl in the breeze. Homemade flags flap along with laundry on clothes lines. Odd constructions of wood and feathers adorn roofs and lopsided gables. Sandalwood incense makes Ruby sneeze, in spite of the chilly country air.

They find a square of paved stones. People lounge about on the square, some seated in lotus positions. Ruby finds a sheltered spot on the edge where she can get her bearings.

A bushy-haired swain approaches them. “Hi, I’m Marcus Aurelius. I’m from the Bronx, my ma kicked me out an’ I got adopted by some junkies on the Lower East Side. I shot shit when I was twelve. I love to boost, don’t you? I went to juvie for a while an’ fifty hotel rooms later I’m in Frisco strung out on horse, playin’ beatnik. Then I dropped LSD, it’s like an atom bomb goin’ off in your head, innit? Ka-BOOM. I’m droppin’ acid every day till I become God, aren’t you? Hi, I’m Marcus Aurelius.”

“Are you hungry?” says a suntanned woman with a long, gray braid. A silver ring pierces her left nostril. “I’m afraid dinner’s over for tonight. But if you go up to the big house, you might find some leftovers.”

“We brought our own food,” Ruby says.

The braided woman nods, vastly relieved. “We’ve only got twenty folks workin’ the gardens. But on weekends? We feed, like, two hundred people.”

A barefoot girl in a ragged shift sidles up to Starbright. “Watch out, chick.” She speaks through the corner of her mouth, as if her face is half-paralyzed. Her jaw looks askew. “Two bikers beat me up and banged me the first night I got here.”

“Didn’t anyone help you?” Chi asks.

“Oh, sure,” the barefoot girl says. “Some people took me to the hospital, and the doctor gave me a shot.”

“Didn’t anyone call the police?” Starbright exclaims.

People turn at the sound of “police.” Their faces twist with anger and fear, hatred and paranoia.

“Shit, no!” the barefoot girl says.

“We would never go to the pigs,” says the bushy-haired swain. “We would never, we would never, we would never ever go.”

“We can’t go to the police,” the braided woman say sadly. “They would bust us.”

Bang bang bang!

Gunshots shatter the night.

No one pays any attention.

Starbright squeezes her hand so tightly, Ruby has to shake loose of her grip and take her hand again.

“Let’s go see if they’ve got any fresh vegetables left over,” she says.

They climb the next ridge to the big house and head for the kitchen. They step inside and a stench of wood rot and dog waste assaults Ruby. Enough dirty dishes for an army lie stacked everywhere. In the half-light, things crawl through the kitchen sink.

Chi looks so unhappy, Ruby wonders if he’ll yank out one of his plastic wraps and plaster it over his face. She wishes he’d give her one, too.

They venture into a spacious dining room. A patriarch presides at a huge dining table as they walk in. His dark eyes glisten over a beak of a nose. His bushy black beard is threaded with gray.

Ruby has never seen the patriarch before, but another dude standing before the table she knows only too well. A biker troublemaker with voodoo eyes who calls himself Crypt, he’s flanked by half a dozen other bikers, all of them sweaty and bleary-eyed, in leathers and colors, dangling whiskey bottles in their fingers. Crypt sways on his feet, holding himself steady by a grip on the table’s edge.

Four men in hip regalia stand on the other side of the table. “These SOBs drink and make trouble for everybody,” says a man in beads. His eyes are bloodshot, he reeks of pot, and he sways on his feet, too. “Their heads are going nowhere, man. We want them off the ranch.”

“Lew,” Crypt says, restraining one of his comrades who’s ready to take a swing at Mr. Beads. “Listen to this shit, man. We’re the people, man. You always said you would never kick the people out, Lew. Now ain’t that true?”

The patriarch rubs his brow and grimaces. He looks as if he’s about to weep. “That’s true, Crypt. I can’t turn the people away,” he says to Mr. Beads. “I just can’t.”

“They’re the reason we’ve been served with a cease-and-desist order, Lew,” says Mr. Beads.

“Like the heat is all our fault,” Crypt says. “The pigs is just after honky runaways, man.”

“We’re tryin’ to create a New Community here!” Mr. Beads shouts. “You’re all screwed up. Go back to Fresno.”

“Go back to New Jersey,” Crypt says and guffaws.

“No, no, no,” the patriarch says. “This isn’t about one man’s way or another man’s way. I can’t say one or another is wrong. There are no judges here. You’re all my guests. You’re all my brothers. I can’t turn anyone away from Morning Star Ranch.”

The patriarch rises from his chair, shaking his head. At the door, he turns to Ruby. “Please excuse me, milady. I’m tired.”

“Throw them both out,” Ruby advises him.

His dark eyes are troubled. “I’m just a musician. I bought the ranch so I could write my music in peace.”

The patriarch wanders away to some private room.

“This isn’t over, brother,” spits Mr. Beads.

Crypt grins. “No, it ain’t. One night, I’m gonna off you, brother.” He punches his fist in his palm in front of Mr. Beads’ face. He and his comrades swig from their bottles and stagger from the room.

“Let’s get out of here.” Ruby leads Starbright and Chi out of the big house. “I don’t know who these losers are. They weren’t here when I came up in May. The people who came to live on the land must be out back, somewhere.”

They hike in near darkness lit only by an occasional lamp. The waning moon is no help. A pond here, a pine tree there, and Ruby recognizes the path winding through the woods into the back acres where her sculptor friend pitched his tent for solitude.

Bang bang bang shatters the night.

Ruby stumbles over a log, steps on something squishy smelling of mold. Starbright and Chi follow, holding hands. Chi takes the canvas bag from the kid’s shoulder, slings it over his. It’s about time, Ruby thinks.

At last they come to a clearing and a neat circle of teepees around a flickering campfire. A freckled woman with a grim face and disheveled chestnut hair steps out of a teepee, brandishing a shotgun. A chocolate-brown puppy bounds out after her, tail wagging furiously. After the puppy, Leo Gorgon steps out, zipping up his jeans.

Uh-huh, Ruby thinks with a pang. Why oh why does she keep falling for bad dudes like him?

“It’s cool, Rainbow,” Gorgon says to the freckled woman, laying his hand on the shotgun’s barrel. “This is Ruby and Starbright and Chiron. They’re cool.”

“Is Stewart here?” Ruby asks.

“Stewart left last week,” Rainbow says. “Left his sculptures, too.”

Sure enough, in the campfire light, Ruby glimpses the car-chrome man clutching his hammered-steel lover. The red hose between his legs is limp. Stewart had wanted to install the sculpture someplace with good plumbing. There’s no good plumbing here. No plumbing at all.

Now more people duck out of the teepees. Men with hair to their waists and beards trailing down their chests. A woman with a baby suckling her breast. Other women in long dresses or jeans. Some of them carry shotguns, too.

They crouch around the campfire. Rainbow adds kindling, building the flames. “Raisin, come here, Raisin.” The puppy frolics, bounding from person to person for a pat on the head or a kiss on the snout. Rainbow hangs a huge iron pot on a tripod over the fire, bangs on a lid.

Ruby passes around her bottle of Napa burgundy. No one drinks except a guy with Einstein hair who shares with her. She passes around the food she brought. Everything is divided up and devoured before she and Starbright can get their share. She and the kid watch wistfully. Ruby is very hungry. The kid must be, too. Chi watches, impassive.

The teepee people eat ravenously. They are all painfully thin, a patina of grime on their faces and hands, their clothes as fragile as the wings of the moths circling the campfire.

Rainbow rises and takes the lid off the iron pot. Steam rises from a fragrant bubbling stew. She dishes hot stew into wood bowls, giving the first servings to Ruby, Starbright, and Chi. The stew is mostly brown rice, with a few diced onions, carrots, and zucchini. Ruby wishes there was more salt and a lot more spice, but the stew is fresh and good. Just about anything would taste good now.

Chi sets his bowl on the grass for Raisin. The puppy practically inhales the stew, snuffling and sneezing.

“We had to send Filly and Pink to the hospital,” Rainbow says. “Hepatitis. Guess we messed up, digging the latrine ditch so close to the campfire. We dug a new outhouse downwind, fifty feet out. Plus, I got a lid for the pot to keep out the flies.”

“Duh,” Chi whispers, and Ruby elbows him in the ribs.

A man brings out a guitar, begins to strum. The tart herbal scent of marijuana blows over the campfire. People rise to their feet and dance in the shadows. A woman sits next to Ruby and Starbright, takes out a piece of white cotton onto which she’s embroidered a peacock. She’s sewn human eyes on every green and blue feather.

Starbright smiles, but she’s watchful, silent, glancing over her shoulder now and then, eyes wide. Raisin snuggles in her lap, but she’s too tired to give the puppy much attention.

Chi is inscrutable, but he cocks his head, too, listening.

Gunshots? More gunshots?

The teepee people’s paranoia is contagious, as paranoia usually is. Ruby hauls herself to her feet. “We’d best be going.” Better to find a roadside rest stop and sleep in the car. The vibrations here are too weird.

“No, let’s stay a while,” Gorgon says. He can’t take his bloodshot eyes off Rainbow.

“You stay, Leo.” Ruby retrieves the canvas bag and the empty picnic basket. “Find your own way home. We’re gone.”

Rainbow comes and wraps her arms around Ruby, planting a kiss on her cheek. “Thank you for bringing food and wine and your good energy.” Her eyes are bottomless, filled with sorrow. “It was beautiful of you to visit us. We have so little good energy here anymore.”

Ruby nods. “You all take care of yourselves, you hear?”

“We’ve got a garden out back, behind the teepees.” Rainbow retrieves a flickering kerosene lamp. “I’d love to show you. The cabbages are beautiful.”

In the lamplight beneath the waning moon, Ruby and Starbright and Chi follow Rainbow out behind the teepees to see the garden.

And Rainbow is right. The cabbages are beautiful.

July 27, 1967

Rumors

10

Dedicated to the One I Love

Susan lounges with Cyn on the grass in the Panhandle, keeping an eye out for cop cars. She takes a mauve chalk from her box of pastels and draws two eyes on the sidewalk. The police have been busting sidewalk chalk artists on the charge of defacing public property, not to mention sweeping hip girls off the street on suspicion of being runaways. It’s strange and exciting to feel like an outlaw, drawing chalk pictures on the sidewalk.

“Did you hear about the concentration camps?” Susan says.

Cyn, the ninety-pound white-blond runaway, shakes her head.

“They say it’s happening in Tule Lake and Tuscon and Oklahoma City. The FBI and the Defense Department are doing it. I heard this building contractor went to a priest for confession. He was all in a panic. He confessed they hired his company to refurbish World War Two detention centers. They’ll be able to detain up to forty thousand people. Anti-war protesters and anyone cool. We’ll all be arrested if there’s a National Security Emergency this summer.”

“I believe it.” Cyn is from Texas. She’s got a whispery drawl and ends nearly every sentence as if she’s asking a question even when she isn’t. She gazes at Susan’s artwork with her palms lying open on her fragile knees. Cyn never looks anyone in the eye, not even Susan.

Susan loves to draw eyes though she well remembers when she also was afraid to look in people’s eyes. Eyes seemed too personal, too revealing. The meekest checkout clerk at the grocery store used to scare her. It didn’t help that her mother never, ever looks her in the eye. It was Daddy who knocked her aversion to eyes out of her one day. He was yelling about something or other, his face in her face. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, young lady,” is what her father said. And that’s when she learned how to look someone in the eye and not let him see her soul.

She draws her trademark star-pupils and abundant lashes. Twiggy eyes. Goddess eyes. Ideal eyes. This is dedicated to the One Eye Love. Groovy! Oh, little I, who peeks at me, what do U see? Over the Summer of Love, Susan has developed a new view of eyes.

Morning commuters in their business suits and big-finned cars stream downtown. The sky is the color of a mourning dove’s wing, the air chilly and damp. Susan feels good lounging on the grass, drawing on the sidewalk. How good it is to wonder about things. She never got to wonder in school, she was always so busy memorizing. She feels free, even though she owns no more than an overnight bag and less than fifty dollars, not counting the hundred bucks Stan the Man still owes her. She feels freer than the commuters hurrying off to their jobs where someone will probably yell in their faces about something or other.

“I heard the Vietcong got cannons hidden in North Beach,” Cyn says.

Susan laughs. “I don’t think that’s true. I mean, people can barely hide a nickel bag from the Man, let alone cannons in North Beach.”

“I heard the Vietcong’s gonna bomb Union Square.”

“I heard the CIA is putting rat poison in acid,” Susan says. “They want to kill the heads.” She squirms, thinking of Stovepipe’s accusation.

“I heard the CIA killed President Kennedy.”

“Well, there you go. If they can kill President Kennedy, they sure can kill the heads, if they’ve got a mind to.”

Cyn nods. “I heard bikers have taken over Morning Star Ranch and are bangin’ the chicks.”

“Now, that is true.”

Susan leans over her drawing, a bit sore in her belly. She woke with cramps and a rush of dampness. For the first time in her life, she’s happy to get her period.

Chi sits apart from them, leaning up against a tree trunk, his long legs stretched out. He smiles warmly when she glances his way. Susan thinks this is very enlightened of him, letting her do what she wants, rap with people, but always being there. His eyebrows and lashes are as strawberry-red as his hair. She’s never seen anyone with facial hair so perfectly matched to the hair on his head. Yet the rest of his face is as smooth as an eggshell. She feels funky and crude beside him. He’s so perfect.

She doesn’t mind Mr. True-Blue Eyes watching her anymore. For one thing, he’s started being cool. Always helpful. More than friendly. But he doesn’t put the make on her, which makes him easy to be around. And also makes her wonder. Doesn’t he think she’s pretty? She finds herself taking his hand before he takes hers, letting him look down her blouse, bumping into him accidentally. It’s really stupid, but there you go. She’s never spent so much time around a guy who’s so. . . .good.

Chi is forever muttering to himself and gazing at the palm of his hand. She’s seen the lavender light. So has Ruby. Ruby says Chi may be a spy, after all, like in Goldfinger, which she and Nance saw when they snuck in the back door at the Cedar Center Theater and which devastated them both. Nance painted her whole hand with gold enamel and was starting in on her arm when her skin began to itch and she got an awful rash. Susan isn’t sure what Chi’s mission could possibly be. What in the Haight-Ashbury would attract the likes of James Bond? Well. Aside from half-naked girls. Chi tries to peek at the lavender light when he thinks she’s not looking, but then he becomes so absorbed, only an idiot wouldn’t notice.

When she asked him about his ring and why he keeps whispering to it, he stalled at first, then told her the ring is a computer and a calculator. Typical Chi shuck. Susan knows computers are as big as a whole room. And calculators? Ruby’s calculating machine is as bulky as a sack of potatoes and just about as heavy. He says he’s calculating the probabilities, searching for a Prime Probability. He reminds her of Professor Zoom, searching for his Final Expression. Only Chi’s Prime Probability has nothing to do with God. It has everything to do with demons.

The girl with her face. A Devolved Entity Manifested from the Other Now? A demon? A demon that wants to kill her? It’s like the rumors of concentration camps. It’s so weird she can’t believe it, and so plausible she can’t afford to disbelieve it.

But what can she do about it?

“Don’t die,” Chi tells her grimly. “Be ready, always. You’ve got to survive, Starbright. Survive the Summer of Love.”

Cool. But it isn’t cops-and-robbers, a tangible thing she can stab with a knife or shoot with a gun. The demons are pollutants, Chi tells her, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Poison blowing in the wind.

Don’t die. Survive. Be ready, always. It’s terrifying and exhausting. Anyway, she is going to die someday. That’s one thing she’s come to understand and accept over the Summer of Love. But how can she be ready, always? Ready how? Ready for what?

“What is the demon trying to do when it comes near me?” she asked.

“Didn’t it pull you toward the edge of the cliff?”

“Yes, it did,” she said slowly.

“And didn’t it try to push you toward the dog-killer in front of the Psychedelic Shop?”

“Yes!”

“It’s trying to touch you.”

More Chi shuck. He’s weird about touching and not touching. He never touches anyone or anything if he can help it, not without punching his hand through one of those weird plastic wraps he calls a prophylak. She’s so used to him flailing his hand around, she hardly notices anymore. He’s a lot like the stoner mystics on Haight Street, Chi and his hand thing. When he touches her, he’s usually got a prophylak on. She gets a kick out of seizing his bare hand and watching him squirm.

“What will happen if the demon touches me?”

“The demon is antimatter,” he said. As if that explained everything.

“So?”

“Well! The demon is your double in the Other Now. If the demon touches you, it’ll trigger matter-antimatter annihilation and destroy spacetime as we know it. Destroy our timeline. Not to mention you and me.”

God! This revelation both frightened and angered her, like the time she first found out about the atomic bomb. She didn’t make the atomic bomb. She didn’t ask to be chased by a demon.

“What should I do if the demon gets close?” she said, panicking.

“I’ll counter its energy with the maser. The blue and green beams deflected the demons’ movements in front of the Psychedelic Shop. But if the demon gets close enough to touch you, I’ll use the purple beam. I hope I don’t need to use it but believe me, I won’t think twice.”

“What will the purple beam do?” As if she knows what he’s talking about.

“Theoretically, the purple beam will force the demon back into its own reality. Don’t worry about it, Starbright.”

Theoretically? Don’t worry about it? His tone was as ominous as when her parents talked about the arms race and the balance of terror. She shut up about the purple beam.

“Why me?” she asked at last. The question has haunted her since the night they drove up to Morning Star Ranch.

“Because you’re important,” he simply said. “In your Now. And in mine.”

That was cool. Ruby said the same thing. But Chi didn’t mean it the way Ruby did. In her Now and in his? But everyone’s important somehow, aren’t they? The question keeps haunting her. Why me?

It’s hard to know what to believe.

Like the rumors on this foggy morning.

There’s a rumor that STP really is Serenity, Tranquility, and Peace and the Establishment media is just making up scare stories saying STP will drive you crazy.

There’s a rumor that brushing your teeth with clover prevents cavities, but no one has figured out how to get the grass stains off.

There’s a rumor that the corpse of the dog beaten to death in front of the Psychedelic Shop was dematerialized by space aliens. There could be some truth to this, since the legal action committee that was supposed to challenge police brutality has dematerialized, too.

There’s a rumor that the Swedish have invented a pill that gives a woman a morning-after abortion but the FDA won’t let the pill into the United States.

There are rumors that black people are rioting in the Bronx, Harlem, Miami, Toledo, Memphis, and Cairo, Illinois. There are rumors that the police are going to use the riots to kill thousands of black people in the ghettos.

The riots in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan are not rumors, they are real. Stokely Carmichael says the black people are going to fight to the death.

Charlie, with his necklace of chicken leg bones and carved wood ankh, strolls up to Susan and Cyn. “The Haight-Ashbury’s gonna burn tonight, baby. Get off the street by ten.”

Cowboy, Leo Gorgon’s pal, jogs by and drops a Communication Company mimeograph into Susan’s lap. The mimeograph feels thick, as if the paper has fur, and stinks of chemicals.

Susan reads:

BROTHERS: AN IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR YOUR SAFETY AND SURVIVAL

Sorry to bring you down, but this is about the riots our black brothers have planned for the city tonight. There isn’t much hope they won’t occur.

We can expect vast looting, which means that people will be treating all stores as free stores. Some people will be setting fires, usually after a store has been emptied. Police and later National Guard and federal troops will come into all riot areas by the thousands, armed with rifles, machine guns, and tanks. Curfew means if they see you, they will bust you, and if you run, they will shoot you.

There’s more, but Susan doesn’t have the heart to read it. She tosses the mimeograph on the grass. Chi picks it up and tucks it in his pocket.

“Uh-oh, here comes the Baptist,” says Cyn. She chews her thumbnail, gnawing a strip of nail free from one side, seizing the strip in her teeth, and pulling it across her thumb. Cyn’s fingertips are a bloody mess.

Susan can’t watch. She wishes she could slap Cyn, but she doesn’t know her well enough. Cyn is moody. One minute she’ll be talking to you like a normal person, then the next she’s staring off into space or yelling, getting tearful and angry about something but you’re not sure what. Cyn would be really beautiful if she weren’t so dirty and down-and-out. News photographers are forever stealing snapshots of her white-blond hair, angelic face, big dark eyes. Susan doesn’t think Cyn will make it back to Texas, but that’s okay. Cyn says her mom is crazy.

Four black dudes in leather jackets and bandannas tied around enormous ‘fros stroll up Oak Street. The Baptist spots Cyn, waves his comrades over. Chi leaps to his feet, frowning, but they leave Susan alone, acknowledging his claim to her. They surround Cyn.

“C’mere, li’l bitch,” the Baptist says. His hands twitch, suggesting the violence in them. The Baptist forces Cyn behind a tree and shoves her to her knees.

Susan draws a woman’s face on the sidewalk to go with the eyes. The three dudes stand around the tree, tense and watchful. She wishes Chi would do something to help Cyn, but he just stands there, guarding her. She hears the Baptist’s zipper. There’s nothing she can do.

The Baptist struts from behind the tree, grinning and zipping up his jeans. He and his comrades laugh and saunter away.

Cyn crawls out onto the grass on her hands and knees. She retches and wipes her mouth on the back of her frail hand.

A cop car turns the corner at Cole Street.

Cyn rises. In one swift feral motion, she’s gone.

The cop car speeds across Oak Street, sliding over to the curb where Susan sits.

“Chi!” she cries.

He grabs her box of pastels and her purse, seizes her elbow, and hauls her to her feet.

They dart behind the trees and dash through the park. Whatever you do, flower child, don’t get busted by the Man.

* * *

Susan sees the van on the other side of the Panhandle. The funky Volkswagen van painted with blue clouds. Before she can take off with Chi into the park again, the man’s voice reaches out and hooks her.

“Seek new life, new civilizations.” Just the facts, ma’am, and a chuckle like the pull of a saw through wood. “Trixie, hey Trixie, which way, Trixie?”

“My name is Starbright, Harold.”

“Don’t call me names.”

“Don’t call me Trixie.”

“Where the hell have you been keeping yourself, Starbright?”

Professor Zoom crooks his elbow around her neck and gives her a nutcracker hug. His eyes are shiny for a moment. He’s painted circles of black, blue, yellow, and red around each eye like an archery target. His lank hair extrudes in a deranged halo. If it’s possible for him to be thinner, he is. Instead of baggy, grass-stained jeans, he wears tight hip-huggers with flaring bell-bottoms that emphasize his spidery thighs.

“Hey, Professor Zoom.” She plants a peck on his sunken cheek. He is, after all, the first person who ever sensibly discussed death with her. “You look wild. I’ve missed you.”

“Emotions are the lowest form of consciousness. Beware the lurching lunatic, the churning robot gone berserk.”

Susan leans out of his hug and studies him. “Did you find the Final Expression to your Equation? Does God equal a hit of blotter?”

He looks away, wistful. “Alas, anon, I need fuel to stoke the fires of genius. And the cupboard is bare. We endure difficult times.” He looks at her keenly. “There’s a serious shortage of acid these days, in case you haven’t noticed. I’m dropping yellow flats, blue dots, that speed crap. Even psychedelic dreams. Man, that’s desperation.”

“What are psychedelic dreams?”

“Mostly smack, sweet pretty pussy.” His keen look hardens. “Got any acid?”

“No, I don’t trip anymore. And don’t call me a pussy, Professor Zoom.” Susan cranes her neck at the van. She doesn’t see Stella or Fawn. A new crowd of caterpillar-eyed girls poses around the van. They look tougher, dirtier, meaner than the old crowd, tending more toward leather and chains than velvet and lace.

“Say hey, Professor Zoom. Check it out. My foxy lady. It is my foxy lady, isn’t it? My little flower child.”

The mountain man, oh Stan.

“You’re looking real fine.” He reaches for her, bends to kiss her.

She flinches away, like any sensible person should from the edge of a sharp knife.

He stands there, looking her up and down in his teasing way. If he’s troubled by her recoil, he gives no sign. But he doesn’t try to reach for her again. He doesn’t try to kiss her.

She’s relieved and wounded at the same time. It’s really stupid, but she wishes he would try to kiss her, anyway.

Kid, she can just hear Ruby say, don’t you take crap from anyone. She pulls herself up tall the way Ruby does when she means business.

“I need to get my hundred dollars back, Stan,” she says, looking straight into his eyes. Exercising her new view of eyes over the eyes that once mesmerized her.

“Flower child, I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean the hundred dollars I lent you for the dragon’s blood deal.”

He doesn’t respond to that. Instead he says, “Dirty David said he saw you at that shyster’s office. He said you were asking about some kind of legal aid. Is that true, Starbright?” His eyes shine with concern. Or maybe paranoia.

She wavers before his misdirection, but not for long. “The hundred-dollar bill you took from me. Did you know that Stovepipe and the Lizard are looking for you? They told me the dragon’s blood was no good. They told me it was rat poison. They want their seven grand back, Stan.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” He doesn’t waver, either. His eyes grow hard, his tone harder. “Or are you turning state’s evidence on me?”

She’s appalled. He won’t even listen. All he cares about is his trip.

“I told them I don’t have any seven grand, but you do,” she persists, refusing to back down. “Me, I just want my hundred dollars.”

Chi stands to the side like he usually does. But when Susan walks away and Stan starts to follow, Chi steps in his path. Not in a biker-bully way, but he steps deliberately, sternly, proclaiming with an unsmiling face that Stan is not to follow her. Chi may be skinnier than Stan, but he’s taller. And younger. Much younger. Scowling, Stan stops.

Susan catches her breath. Chi, the five-hundred-year-old wonder, guarding her path!

She sprints to the Double Barrel van and peers in the open back door. Chi steps up behind her, peering in, too.

Lady May sits hunched and cross-legged in the van. The glittery pink boa she clips in her hair flashes in the thin light. She wears the same leather vest over nothing but her skin and jeans. Stringy cords of muscle entwine the bones of her bare arms. A leather band is wound around her left arm below her lightning bolt tattoo. She grips one end in her teeth, the other in her right fist. She pulls the band so tightly, Susan can see the leather cut into the spare flesh of Lady May’s arm.

A girl sits in front of Lady May with her back turned to Susan. Dark spiky hair cut as short as a boy’s, she also sits cross-legged, her thighs jutting out like delicate wings. She wears a halter top tied over her bony spine. She is doing something, fiddling with something, that Lady May watches with ravenous eyes. The van reeks of struck matches, white Lebanese pollen, and plum incense.

Lady May looks up and sees Susan and Chi at the door. “Sst!” Bending over, her bare waist rail-thin, hissing and glittery-eyed with her wild mop of hair, Lady May reminds Susan of a snake. Like in Rudyard Kipling’s “Riki-Tiki-Tavi.” A rainbow-scaled cobra with her hood spread, ready to strike.

The dark-haired girl takes whatever she’s got in her hands, calmly slides it under the blanket beside her, and blows out the match. She half-turns, and Susan sees her profile, her lips pursed over the trail of smoke. The curve of her cheek, her unmistakable pert nose.

“Penny Lane!” Susan shrieks.

Nance Payne hops out of the van.

“Starbright!” she screams.

She flings her arms around Susan. They hug, jump up and down, dance, rock back and forth, pull each other’s hair, pound each other’s shoulders. Susan smooches Nance’s cheek. Nance plants a kiss right on Susan’s mouth.

Nance, oh Nance!

Nance the elf at seven on her bike with training wheels and red-white-and-blue streamers for the Fourth of July. Bell and Payne, they landed in the back of the first and third rows, cribbed answers and passed notes back and forth declaring their love. Nance the daredevil at eight, stealing Milk Duds when they went to see The Time Machine at the Cedar Center Theater. Nance the explorer at nine, digging a tunnel through the snowdrift that a plow left behind, wiggling through like a fearless mole. Nance the madcap at eleven, climbing the old oak tree in Cheryl Long’s front yard, the first to jump from the big branch fifteen feet up, laughing when she broke her ankle and Susan had to half-carry her home. Nance the rebel at thirteen, showing up at Cheryl’s birthday party dressed all in black, Let’s Boogie Boogie tucked under her arm. Nance the hip chick, cajoling a joint out of her cousin Don. And Nance the whirling dervish in Daddy’s recreation room, twirling and bobbing to Rubber Soul blasting on the stereo, shimmying her skinny hips like a belly dancer.

“Star light, star bright,” Susan sings, “first star I see tonight--”

“Wish I may, wish I might,” Nance sings, “have the wish I wish--”

“Toooo-night,” they sing together.

Like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio. They scream and shriek and laugh and hug again.

“You grew your hair, Starbright,” Nance says.

“You cut your hair, Penny Lane,” Susan says.

Nance wipes tears off Susan’s cheeks.

And then she winks.

Susan knows exactly what the wink means. It means they do not blow each other’s cover, even now, standing in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, two thousand miles and two thousand lifetimes away from Cleveland. Without hesitation, they use the street names Nance chose for them. They’re playing the game, just like they always have.

Susan sees how proud Nance is that she’s playing the game. Like the time they took the Rapid Transit downtown. They’d just seen A Hard Day’s Night and drifted into a long, loud conversation in thick British accents that were completely phony. Pretty soon they’d fooled a proper old lady in the next seat. Stewdents abroohd, ohff to discovah Amudica. They charmed that sweet lady into taking them to high tea at Stouffer’s Restaurant where the desserts are so good. And not once did they blow each other’s cover. They screamed about it for weeks. “Nawncee.” “Yes, Suzahnah.” “May I have anothah crrrumpet?” “Of cawse, my dahling.”

Oh, dig it, it was so cool, pretending to be someone else with a different life. An exciting life in a faraway place. Since they were little kids wishing on the first star of the evening, they both understood this: the most exciting game in life is to reinvent yourself.

“Like wow,” Nance says, checking her out. A blush of pleasure blooms in Susan’s cheeks. “You look groovy, sweetheart.” She pronounces it shweethaut. “Get-ting rah-thah slim, ahn’t we?”

“Gosh, Penny Lane,” Susan says. “You’re Twiggier than ever.”

It’s true. Nance has always had a tight athletic body, though she gorged on burgers and ice cream. Never once did Nance ridicule Susan for developing breasts and hips. Nance sided with her when Susan’s mother forced her on the hard-boiled egg diet. Nance has always stood up for Susan against the whole world.

Nance hooks her arm through Susan’s and takes her to the new crowd of caterpillar-eyed girls. “This is Starbright, my best friend in the whole world. She is one of the smartest chicks I know. Plus, she’s an Artist.” Nance adds doubtfully, “You do still draw, don’t you, Starbright?”

“On the sidewalk along Oak Street,” Susan says proudly, pleased Nance remembers her silly sketches with Prismacolor pencils knickknacked from Mr. G’s art supply store. “Plus I drew the Isis in the Mystic Eye.”

“The big chick on the wall of the witch shop?” one of the caterpillar-eyed girls exclaims. “That is so far out!”

“That’s my Starbright,” Nance says authoritatively. “She’s always been brilliant. Plus, her family’s rich.”

Suddenly everyone is looking at Susan, including Stan the Man.

Rich. Nance knows very well Susan’s family isn’t rich. Susan’s family is disgustingly middle-class. Over the years, Susan has told Nance all about Daddy, the way he moans over the bills, doles out allowances to Susan and her mother, groans over how much gas his Cadillac guzzles. Her family certainly isn’t rich compared to their new neighbors. Susan feels ashamed at how poor she is. She longs for the old neighborhood, where girlfriends like Nance didn’t put her down for being a lowly dentist’s daughter.

For a weird moment though—one of those over-under-sideways-down insights she keeps stumbling on during the Summer of Love—Susan suddenly sees herself through society’s eyes. Her father is a professional with his own practice, while Nance’s stepfather works in some office doing who knows what for someone else who yells in his face. Susan’s parents left the cookie-cutter developments of Euclid Heights for the tree-lined avenues of Shaker Heights, only slightly less prefab, perhaps, but enormously more prestigious.

How easy for Susan to be self-denigrating, to put down her father’s hard-won victories from the other side of privilege. Her forced separation from Nance stings anew. Yet, right or wrong, she can suddenly see why. Her father is ambitious. His ambition extends to his daughter. By comparison—and who doesn’t compare?—Nance’s stepfather is not as successful as Susan’s father. And his lack of success extends to his daughter.

Gross. But she can see why.

No wonder she and Nance wanted to run away as fast as they could. What do their fathers have to do with them?

They drift away from the caterpillar-eyed girls, Nance’s arm crooked around Susan’s neck in a hammerlock reminiscent of Professor Zoom’s. They sit together on the grass fronting Fell Street.

“When did you get here?”

“In time for the Celebration of the Summer Solstice. Got your postcard.”

“My parents looking for me?”

“Oh, sure. They came to our new house.” Whoops. That’s a sore spot, that Susan moved away to a new house. “I didn’t tell them anything, Penny Lane,” she says in a rush, “I swear.”

“You didn’t tell them where I went?” Suddenly, Nance isn’t smiling. Her face grows somber. Susan sees lines etched in Nance’s forehead, lines she never noticed before.

“I didn’t talk to them, actually. You know Daddy. He kind of kept me away from them.”

“I knew I could depend on you.” She sucks in her breath. “So you got that dumb postcard, huh?”

“Sure! Oh, I loved it! That’s what brought me here.”

“No! Really?”

Susan giggles, confiding like they used to. “I hid it, but Mom found it. She and Daddy got so pissed! Daddy made me burn it. ‘That little tramp, that no-good so-and-so,’” Susan says in a deep voice, mimicking her father. “‘I never want you talking to her again.’ Can you believe it?”

“Your father called me a tramp?”

“And then he said I was stupid when I told him you’re my best friend.”

“Your father called me a no-good so-and-so?” Nance stares off into space the way Cyn does.

“Oh, Penny Lane,” Susan says. “You know what a jerk Daddy is. He’s the one who’s stupid.”

“Yeah.” Nance chews on her thumbnail. She won’t look at Susan.

Susan knows she has done something, said something terribly, irretrievably wrong. But she isn’t sure exactly what. Or how to undo it.

A cop car slides past the corner of Divisadero and Fell Street.

“Where are you crashing?” Nance says, glancing warily about.

“With the lady who owns the Mystic Eye.”

“Ruby A. Maverick?”

“Yes! She’s really cool.”

“Isn’t that just like you, Starbright. Nothing but the best.”

Nance stands and brushes off her jeans. Stan the Man strides up and circles his arm around Nance’s shoulders. Nance glances up at him with a sensual grin.

Susan turns away, trying to control the trembling of her lip.

Suddenly Chi is there. He helps her to her feet and circles his arm around her shoulder, then embraces her with both arms. Wow!

“Is this your old man?” Nance says. She gives Chi such a lustful glance that Stan frowns, competitive male malice in his eye. Nance wrenches away from Stan’s proprietary embrace.

“This is Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco,” Susan says, savoring the taste of his exotic name.

“Far out, Starbright.” Nance wiggles her hips, blinking up at Chi. She smiles at Susan with approval. “He’s a fine one.”

That Nance, she’s so silly. She’s treating Susan’s man the way the guys on Haight Street treat other guys’ ladies. No wonder people have always thought Nance is crazy. She’s always carried on her very own personal revolution.

The cop car cruises up Baker Street.

They all scatter like criminals. The band’s entourage piles into the van.

“I’ll call you at the Mystic Eye,” Nance shouts out the window as the van pulls away.

“Call me! Call me! Call me, Penny Lane!”

Susan starts to dart into the park again, but Chi catches her, slows her to a walk, and circles his arm around her shoulder. Together they calmly walk down Fell Street, staring straight ahead.

The cop car passes.

Now Susan sees the squat man in the stovepipe hat with his psychedelic reptile friend. They’re walking toward her and Chi, deep in conversation.

The dealers! Stovepipe and the Lizard!

Chi spots them at once.

Neither he nor Ruby ever questioned her about the confrontation in front of the Fillmore Auditorium. She never offered an explanation. It’s too embarrassing.

The dealers look up and see them. Their eyes light with a cold gleam of recognition.

“You know those men,” Chi says, “don’t you.”

“He made me!” Susan cries.

A bus pulls up to a stop ten feet in front of them.

“Got the fare?” Chi says. He’s got a dime and a nickel in his hand.

They run and jump aboard the bus like it’s a getaway car in Bonnie and Clyde. It’s strange and exciting to feel like an outlaw jumping on a bus with Chi.

Except for the hammering of her heart.

11

Sunshine Superman

Chi hustles Starbright down the aisle. The doors flip shut, then flip open again.

Stovepipe and the Lizard climb up the steps as the bus takes off, lurching down Fell Street. The driver detains them while Stovepipe searches his pockets for the fare.

The bus is packed with sleepy-eyed commuters taking up all the seats and standing in the aisle. Chi guides Starbright past them, steering her by her elbow. A grizzled geezer in a shabby raincoat leers at her. “Hippie whore,” the geezer says and spits on the blue velvet jacket Ruby gave her. She whirls, eyes wide, mouth gaping. Chi navigates her around him. “Pig,” he snarls at the geezer. “Hippie scum,” the geezer snarls back.

Chi pulls the bell-cord. The bus careens into the next stop. The back doors flip open. Chi pushes Starbright down the steps, clatters after her, and catches her before she pitches onto the sidewalk.

“God, Chi!” she yells.

“Sorry! You okay?” At her nod, he circles his arm around her.

The doors close, and the bus lumbers away. Then stops half a block down. The doors flip open, and Stovepipe and the Lizard stumble out, get their bearings, look up and down the street. The Lizard points at them.

An eastbound bus pulls up to the stop across the street. Chi seizes Starbright’s hand, and they sprint. Chi hears the dealers’ boot heels ringing on the pavement.

“Go, go, go!” He practically tosses her up the steps, dashes up himself.

The bus takes off downtown. Starbright falls against him. He reaches for the handrail and steadies them both. She digs deep in her purse for more dimes, drops them in the change box with trembling hands.

He guides her to a back seat. They’re both breathing hard and shaking when they collapse on the seat. He doesn’t even think to take out a prophylak as he pulls her against his chest.

Damn! Those dealers again! Chi recalls the incident in front of the Fillmore. What did they say to her? Something about dragon’s blood? Seven grand for rat poison? He thought it was a case of mistaken identity. Why are they after her?

The seat is a sheath of vinyl barely covering wire springs. The bus has no brain. A tough old guy with Aztec cheekbones and a toothpick tucked in his lip drives the vehicle by hand, shifting a stick through fretful gears. Chi feels as if his guts are bouncing up his throat. Man!

Starbright snuggles against him like a needy child. Then, rebellious, she struggles free of his unexpected embrace, stands, and forces him to move over so she can take the window seat. She always insists on taking the window seat, and he always lets her have it, even though he wouldn’t mind sitting next to the window himself and getting a good look at this Now. To give is best, he reminds himself. How easy to believe in cosmicist platitudes when everyone else around you does, too.

She peers back down the road with such alarm that he leans over her and looks, too.

Stovepipe and the Lizard are nowhere in sight. Lost them. Who made her? Do what?

She takes a crumpled Kleenex from her purse, dabs the spittle off her jacket, drops the Kleenex on the floor. Then she presses her cheek against the smeary window, in one of her sulky moods.

He lays a hand on her shoulder, trying to pull her back. She presses harder, like a cat moving in the opposite direction of where you want her to go.

“Don’t do that, Starbright,” he scolds. For a twentieth-century person with basic scientific knowledge at her disposal, she cultivates a pathetic indifference toward the elementary rules of cleanliness. Why doesn’t she know better? It bothers the hell out of him.

“Don’t do what?” she demands. “You’re not my daddy, you know.”

Exasperated, he whips out his scope. “See for yourself.” He adjusts the focus—a mere 10x will show enough buggy scum to turn anyone’s stomach—and hands the scope to her.

She examines it curiously, sniffs the metal, and peeks through the wrong end, finally turning the lens toward the window glass. Her open mouth and shocked silence are good enough for him.

“Gross, huh?” he says, using her favorite word. “That window is filthy with bacteria. It can make you sick.”

“You’re sick,” she mumbles and coughs dramatically, but he knows she’s faking. She hands the scope back, surreptitiously brushing her cheek with the back of her hand.

He starts to pull out a wipe for her, then stops. That would be a violation of Tenet Seven of the Grandmother Principle—sharing a modern technology with someone in the past. Since he decided he better get closer to the girl, he finds himself bumping up against the Tenets at every turn. The more deeply he gets involved, the more difficult observing the mandate of nonintervention becomes. It angers him. How easy to spout Tenets of the Grandmother Principle in the comfortable boardroom of the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications.

Between the HIP Switchboard notice to Susan Bell and other runaways in the Barb and Starbright’s growing resemblance to the girl in the CBS News holoid, the probabilities that she is truly the Axis have skyrocketed. They must be better than ninety percent. Sometimes he still walks his loop through the Haight-Ashbury. Sometimes he tries to pick up more of her fingerprints with the scanner. Mostly, though, he stays close to her.

Because she’s the target of a demon. That alone ought to persuade him she’s the one capable of collapsing a Prime Probability out of the timeline except for one other awful fact--Ruby A. Maverick is targeted by a demon, too.

His skipfather’s theory is not only correct, but more correct than he bargained for. Do other people for whom the data are disappearing in this Hot Dim Spot have demonic doubles in the Other Now? Who else? They say a million people will pass through the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. Are demons targeting other people, too?

Well. He can’t guard Starbright and Ruby both. He consulted K-T. The knuckletop calculated that Ruby’s ability to survive is significantly greater than the girl’s. Besides, the Axis—the one whom the Archivists first identified as capable of collapsing the timeline—is a longhaired girl. Starbright, it is.

He’s gone everywhere with her. He took her back to the Fillmore and to the Avalon Ballroom, too. They go to concerts: the Butterfield Blues Band, Country Joe and the Fish, the Yardbirds. The music is deafening. He likes to stand at the foot of the stage, tapping his toe, while Starbright happily dances by herself. Her dancing is dramatic, all gesticulating arms, undulating hips, bobbing head. He can just see Bella Venus’s eyes widen. You went to the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom? It’s like saying you attended the first Surrealists’ Ball in Paris, 1925.

Ruby calls the knuckletop his magic ring but, to Chi, this is magic. Data that disappeared exist again! Because he is here to observe, remember, enter names and faces and events in the Archives again. A shiver needled up his spine. He is preserving reality!

The SOL Project—never less than vital—takes on whole new levels of meaning. Consider impact before you consider benefit, my son, his skipmother told him. What is his impact? He makes an impact merely by being here. His impact is.

For instance:

Two days ago he took Starbright downtown to the “Joint Show,” an opening for psychedelic poster artists at the Moore Gallery. Everyone who was anyone was there: Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin. Pacific Heights socialites showed up in their diamonds and paisley satin bellbottoms. Starbright showed up with her drawing pad filled with pastel sketches. She told Chi she wanted to show her work to Rick Griffin, her favorite artist, and ask if he had any pointers. But she couldn’t get even close. A photographer stepped up just was she was opening her drawing pad and said, “Clear the chicks out of here.” He commenced snapping photos of the men.

She cried on the way back to Clayton Street.

Chi hadn’t been happy about it, either. “Did you see any women artists at that show? How about women journalists writing for the Barb or the Oracle? Any women shop owners besides Ruby? Have you noticed how special she is? How the other hip merchants are always putting her down, even though she’s got the most successful shop on the block? What about women lawyers or women doctors? Where are the women political leaders? You know, the hip rhetoric talks all about equality of the brothers, but I don’t see much equality for the sisters. Oh, I see women’s pretty bodies and pretty faces. I see hipsters and hoodies and bikers hassling you and Cyn. But I don’t see women’s minds. I don’t see women’s works.”

Was he violating Tenet Three, which prohibits a t-porter from affecting any person in the past except as authorized by the project directors? He’s supposed to protect her, not raise her consciousness. At the time, though, he didn’t give a damn about Tenet Three.

“But you can change all that, Starbright,” he told her. “It’s going to take someone like you.”

He didn’t know if he’d comforted her or not, but she stopped crying and brooded the rest of the way home.

Now they ride the bus to the end of the line, leaving Stovepipe and the Lizard far behind. At least for now. The sun burns off the morning fog and, with the sunlight, she’s suddenly in a better mood.

“Penny Lane, Chi! I found her! I finally found her!”

He can’t help but smile. As much as she annoys him at times, she surprises him, too. Starbright has her charms. Look at how she makes him smile. How long has it been since he’s smiled after t-porting to this Now?

“Is Penny Lane from Ohio, too?” he asks casually.

She frowns and ignores his question. Not a good move, but always worth a try even if it is a sticking point between them. She is Starbright. She is Here. She is Now. Why does he need to know anything more? If she’s surprised by his tricky questions, she never once slips up. She allows no chance remark to betray her.

There is, of course, a probability that her frown means Starbright isn’t the Axis, after all. Chi doesn’t want to think about that.

“She’s balling Stan the Man, don’t you think?” she rattles on. “Doesn’t it seem like it? I’m not jealous or anything, but I don’t like that. Penny Lane is smart, but she might not know about him, what he’s really like. I didn’t know what he was really like. Do you think I should tell her? I feel weird about it, but I love her. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

Chi shrugs. He can’t think about Penny Lane. “Starbright, how do those dealers know you?”

She sighs. “Stan made me deliver a shipment of acid. Well, he said it was acid. Those dealers, they were the connection. They didn’t even know who he was. God, I was really stupid.” Her face falls.

“You weren’t stupid. He manipulated you.”

“He did! He really did! Plus, he stole a hundred dollars from me to make the deal.” She looks away. “I mean, I lent it to him. He’s supposed to pay me back.” Her lip trembles.

Guilt needles him. Is he manipulating Starbright, too? She’s tough about some things, but otherwise she’s so open, so eager to please. What a gap between a teenage girl and a twenty-one-year-old man. Yet Chi and his peers consider themselves infants at twenty-one. They’ve got a hundred years ahead of them, maybe more. They try not to get too old too fast. Yet as fast as this girl wants to grow up, she’s still so young and vulnerable.

He takes the Communication Company mimeograph from his jacket pocket and reads:

The riot may last as long as a week. Your problems during this state of war in the streets include not getting killed or stomped, having enough food, getting somewhere else alive if your house burns down, and not getting arrested by the pigs.

This riot may be a rumor, but the riots in Detroit are front-page news.

Chi doesn’t like it. Black hoodies assaulting defenseless little Cyn? Big-time dealers who believe Starbright is part of a burn? And a race riot in the Haight-Ashbury? Violence is contrary to everything hip people like Ruby believe in.

He doesn’t need to calculate those probabilities.

“Let’s not go back to the Scene if those dealers are hanging around the Haight today,” he says. “Okay?”

“Okay!”

Chi takes Starbright’s hand, and they catch the next bus across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito.

* * *

The Sausalito shoreline astonishes Chi. Bridgeway is a tiny overland avenue with ground traffic, not the gondola-filled canal protected by a breakwall on one side, luxury piers and clubs and casinos on the other. Blue–gray water laps low on chaotic chunks of slate. Greenish-red rock crabs crawl along the waterfront as thickly as the tourists. The wind is sweet and salty. The sky, azure. No domes dot the hillside.

He and Starbright sit together on a flat gray boulder at the waterfront and gaze at the city skyline across the Bay.

He searches the hills behind him, sees only a few cottages, pink and blue and yellow. The hillside high above Bridgeway where the domes of his family’s estate will stand one day is a patch of windswept sage. Victorian mansions once stood on these hills at the turn of the twentieth century. Domed estates will stand here centuries later. But in 1967, Sausalito is like a young girl with flowers in her hair.

He catches her studying him. “I’ve never known anyone named Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco,” she says, sipping her paper cup of Coke. “Is that your street name or do you have a real name?”

He laughs at her sly mockery of the questions he’s always asking her. “That’s my real name.”

“Does it mean something?”

“It does. Chiron is a huge asteroid orbiting between Saturn and Uranus way, way out there. May be a terraforming project some century. The asteroid is named for a centaur, a half-man, half-horse, in ancient Greek myths. Chiron the centaur was a teacher, and his symbol was a key.”

“A key?” She eyes him suspiciously.

He thinks over his sixties slang for a minute. “Not a kilo of grass. Like this.” He takes out his house key to 555 Clayton and scratches a line on the boulder.

“Oh, that kind of key.” She takes out her house key, too, and scratches one of her strange eyes with a star for a pupil. “Hey, let me borrow your maser.”

“Nope.”

“Please?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Bet I can carve with it. Please, please, please?”

“Can’t do it, Starbright. It’s against the Tenets.”

“You and your Tenets. I saw you carve a heart in the sidewalk in front of everybody. Let me carve this rock. Only you and I will see.”

“I can’t let you touch my tool.”

“Your tool,” she teases. “Fine. You hold it, and I’ll guide your hand.”

He cannot believe he’s doing this, but he takes out the maser. She places her hand over his and, after a few experimental doodles, like a dancer leading the couple in a waltz, she draws:

“Wow!” she says when they’re done. “You really can carve with this thing!”

“Put your hand on mine,” he says, not to be outdone. She does. Now he leads. Next to her flower, he draws:

She shrieks with laughter. A fellow on a sailboat anchored offshore looks up from swabbing his deck. Chi pockets the maser.

“You make me crazy, Starbright. That’s a serious Tenet Seven violation.”

“Oh, so what.”

“So what? What if I disappeared and your hair turned green after that little stunt? Hmm?”

“Is reality that easy to change just ‘cause we carved some silly pictures on a rock?”

In her uncanny naïve way, she’s hit upon one of the Big Questions, like a child asking what happens when we die. He has no answer. The LISA techs have no answer. “Sometimes probabilities collapse into the timeline,” he says unhappily. “Sometimes they don’t.”

She nods, obviously skeptical, and tips her cup, swallowing a mouthful of ice cubes. “You’re always asking me questions. What about you, Chi? Who are you, really?”

He shrugs. Damn the Summer of Love Project. He didn’t ask for this.

“See, you don’t want to tell, either,” she teases some more.

For a moment, he shakes with rage. For a moment, he wants to let her have it. Berate her about what her people and the people after her will do to the Earth, do to the future.

No, Chi, he tells himself. Don’t rage at Starbright. Not her.

She crunches her ice cubes, watching him with open curiosity. He cringes. He can practically see her tooth enamel cracking and chipping. She doesn’t have a resiliency tweak, let alone mouth swathe.

“I’m just a student,” he says at last.

“Really?”

“Yep. Just like you. Well, a little ahead of you. I was about to conduct my graduate thesis on liver clones, with a pro-link application, before I got drafted for the SOL Project.”

“The SOL Project?”

“For the Summer of Love.”

He sighs. How distant his Day seems now. Sometimes he wonders if he’ll ever leave the past. As of today, July 27, 1967, the probability of his successful transmission to 2467 is no more than sixty-six percent.

“What does that mean, ‘pro link’? Like golf, or something? You’re Arnold Palmer from Mars?”

He laughs. “Pro-link means I’m professionally jacked for telelink. My experiments with liver clones are conducted in telespace, not on animals.”

“What is telespace, anyway?”

Telespace, he tells her, is a four-dimensional, computer-generated reality, the aggregated correlation of twenty billion minds worldwide. You enter telespace by jacking in your telelink—equipment and programming installed in early childhood.

“Installed?” she says warily.

Oh, hell. He resents that she doesn’t believe him. Here goes, Chi. He sweeps aside the long red hair implants, takes off the synskin patch at the base of his skull, pulls down his jacket and shirt, and--in broad daylight--shows her his neckjack.

“God,” she whispers, staring at the aperture, the cortical wiring rippling up his spine into his neck and diving into his skull. He knows what it looks like--a fine webwork of excellent hardware.

“Go ahead,” he says. “You can touch me.”

She does. “What’s it like?”

“Telespace? It’s prime, the mega thing. A rush of amber burning through your being. You are the amber. You’re real, more real than out-of-link could ever be. You can access huge archetypal memories, if you want to. You can go Macro, and see the whole universe. Or you can go Micro, and see the whole universe.” He laughs, giddy. “And it happens so fast, Starbright. Man, you zoom! You work at speeds and in ways you never thought possible. Jack up, link in, space out!”

She squints at him, crunching her ice. “Sounds like tune in, turn on, drop out. Sounds like LSD.”

He’s taken aback. “That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it really does.” She flips her hair back, surprised at his annoyance. “I’ve tripped, you know.”

“Starbright, I’m talking about telespace!”

“That’s cool.” She stretches her pretty legs over the boulder, lobs a stone into the sea. She gives him a sidelong glance. “So what else are you not telling me? Do you have a girlfriend somewhere in the future?”

A lass, somewhen. The very thought of Bella Venus disturbs him. “I have a girlfriend, yes. Bella Venus. For the first star of the evening.”

“The first star of the evening! That’s me, too! My name means the first star of the evening.” She wraps a lock of hair around her finger, bites the split ends, spits them out. “What’s she like?”

“Exquisite,” is the word that leaps to his lips. A tall lass, nearly as tall as him. Reed-slender with graceful bones, her jack on the left side of her swan neck, her skin the color of polished white-gold. They met on a bicycle Path. Both jacked for pro-link, they put their mega minds and prime hardware to a delicious use.

Free-link.

“Bella Venus was the one who discovered we could tinker with our neckjacks and connect directly. Forget access codes and monitors and surveillance. We discovered the private side of link.” He chuckles. “Free-link. It’s illegal.”

Starbright frowns, but Chi’s so caught up in the recollection of free-linking with Bella Venus that he pays her little attention.

“Can you get busted doing that?” she says.

“Oh, yeah. Using unauthorized private telespace outside of the system? That’s first-degree link abuse.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“Because it’s so exquisite! We could have connected with just about anything, but we went straight to lovemaking. Link to link, Starbright. Mind to mind. Fantasy to fantasy. I know exactly when and where she wants me to touch her, and she loops her pleasure directly into mine. We can overlay illusions or, even better, surrender physical reality to pure simulation. She can become anything for me, and I for her.”

Starbright blushes scarlet. “Why would you want to surrender physical reality to simulation?”

“For the ecstasy!” He smiles at her blush and pats her hand. “Maybe one day you’ll understand.”

“No, I understand right now. I’m not a virgin, you know.”

“I know,” he says. Careful, Chi. Their relationship is fragile enough.

“What color is her hair?” Starbright persists. As if this is really important to her.

“Um. She has no hair.”

“What?”

“She’s bald, like me.”

“You’re not bald!”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

In 2446--the year of his birth, Chi says--fifteen million children died in California alone of the dreadful collection of symptoms known as radiation syndrome. Not just among devolts, exdomers, day laborers, the poor, and the middle classes. Upper-class children attending schools and camps under public domes fell ill, too. And children of the rich who lived under private domes, who had always been protected, who ate vegetables grown in private gardens and fish raised in private ponds and drank filtered water? They fell ill. No one could shield their babies from the aftermath of the Atomic Wars. Certain toxins combined with radiation caused massive cellular breakdown, leading to inevitable excruciating death.

“The technopolistic plutocracy ignored the problem for decades,” Chi says. “Everyone was caught up in the world population crisis. But the plutocracy couldn’t ignore the problem when their children died.”

She nods, somberly crunching her ice.

“Look, we were pushing hard for negative growth,” Chi says. “But, even so, the next generation had to live. I remember how my skipmother monitored everything I ate or drank or touched or was exposed to. And I remember when the rad-vacc was announced. I was five years old. Anyone could get the vaccine, free.”

Chi unbuttons his cuff, rolls up his shirtsleeve. He pulls the leg of his jeans up over the ankle of his Beatle boot. He shows her his arm, his leg. She runs her fingertips over his smooth, hairless skin. He remembers Ruby’s astonished look. Starbright’s face is hard to read.

“This was the side effect, you see,” he says. “Especially in children under ten. The dose had to be stronger, more intensive at skin-level. Well, we all went bald, top to bottom.”

“I’m sorry,” Starbright whispers.

He pulls down his jeans leg, rolls down his shirt cuff. “Don’t be. It was a miracle. The rad-vacc saved billions of lives. And freed us from the domes.”

“Then what’s this?” She touches his long, red hair.

“Implants. Oh, we could get implants. Just like you and your friends in the Haight-Ashbury could get haircuts. We choose not to, just like you choose not to cut your hair. Me and my friends, we’re the cool tools who go nude. Dig it, Starbright, bald is beautiful.”

She stares at him, openmouthed, disbelieving.

“Bald is mega,” he declares. “When we think something is cool? We say, ‘It’s nude.’ There’s nothing like pure skin to make you pay attention to every muscle, every curve, every pore.”

“Then you. . . .walk around naked?”

“No, no. We like hats and scarves and jewelry. Head-painting was prime just before I left. Bella Venus paints her entire skull, works the designs down her forehead, all around her eyes and cheeks, to her neck. You should see her chrysanthemum design. It’s amazing.”

He’s struck another nerve, unwittingly. Starbright frowns again.

“Would Bella Venus like my drawings?” she says shyly.

“Sure she would.”

“Do you?”

He hesitates. “Your drawings are very good, Starbright. But, sometimes, well, they’re a bit disproportional.”

“That’s just what my mother says!”

He grits his teeth. Not the right answer. “Your drawings are full of imagination. That’s the most important thing. As for the rest, you can learn techniques. And human anatomy. You could go to art school.”

“You like bald women,” she whispers. Then, “You don’t mind my hair?”

“I’m getting used to it.”

Not the right answer, at all. She snuffles, wiping her nose under the guise of pushing back a stray curl.

“What I mean is,” he says, struggling to find the right words. “What I mean is, your hair is fine, Starbright.”

Still not the right answer. She turns her back to him.

Women! Do they ever change? I want you to want me, but I’m not sure if I want you. He longs to tell her not to worry about him. She has her whole life ahead of her. A life without him.

What will her life be like? He has some idea.

Last night he searched through the contraband holoids, testing for access over and over, while he raged at his skipmother and wondered why she decided to torture him like this. He tested the crystal slivers until after midnight when the tiny red message he’d been searching for popped up in the lavender field:

“07-27-1967. You may insert Disc 4 now.”

He reaches over and strokes Starbright’s hair, recalling what he witnessed.

You have lovely hair, Starbright. But if you truly are the Axis and you survive the Summer of Love, one day you’ll trim your long, soft curls. Over many, many days you’ll change in ways you cannot know now, but your gentle heart and your tears will stay with you. After the child you’re carrying now is born, you will win the National Merit Scholarship Award and, at long last, the Archives will contain another, older image of you. You will discover an affinity for science. After your years at university and medical school, you will still draw romantic pictures of goddesses. After a first marriage and a difficult divorce, a challenging second marriage and another daughter and a son, you will cry at the sight of someone suffering or a kitten playing with a string. If you’re the Axis, they’ll think you’re eccentric when you lobby against the use of animals in medical experiments. You will not return to San Francisco except to visit your first daughter, who will attend a university there. After twenty years of watching people suffer and die, you will cry at age fifty-five when your life’s work, the DNA mutation experiment, fails. Seven years later, when your first daughter wins the Nobel Prize for a cancer cure, and she thanks you, up there on the podium in front of all those people, for the inspiration you always gave her, you will cry to a standing ovation.

If you’re the Axis, Starbright. If you’re truly the Axis.

Gulls wheel and cry in the sky above.

That’s what Chi longs to tell her. You have lovely hair and a pretty young body and a fine intelligence. And beautiful big brown eyes. But never lose your gentle heart, Starbright. That’s your most precious gift.

But he can’t say any of this. If Starbright is just another longhaired girl who ran away to the Haight-Ashbury for the Summer of Love, the life of Axis will mean nothing to her.

He strokes her hair. He’s never felt such a profound ache in his heart. And then, in a flash, he realizes that if Starbright is the Axis, he doesn’t need to tell her anything. She will fulfill her destiny as surely as the sun rises.

She will fulfill her destiny, that is, if she and the daughter she carries survive this Hot Dim Spot.

He is struck with overwhelming tenderness for this lush, pouting girl with tears in her eyes. This girl who will play such an important role in history one day. He takes her hand, kisses her fingertips. She looks up, startled. Another tear spills. He kisses that, too, and wraps his arms around her. He catches his breath for a moment, then slowly takes in the furry scent of her hair, the sweet saltiness of her body. He relaxes and allows the scent of her, the feel of her to drift into him.

She is as elusive as the gulls wheeling above, as dreams or whispered words or the half-remembered memories of childhood.

12

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Ruby is ready for the riot before nightfall. She packs most of the Mystic Eye’s inventory in three dozen cardboard boxes. She and Morgana lug the boxes out back and stack them in the garage. Ruby wrenches the doors shut and padlocks them. Come eight-thirty, as clouds blow in from the ocean and dusk spreads out from the east, the two women sit on the stoop, sipping apple juice and fanning themselves, soaked in sweat and paranoia.

“‘To smash something is the ghetto’s chronic need.’ James Baldwin wrote that in Notes of a Native Son. He was talking about the Harlem riot in August ’43,” Ruby says. “I was greener than a flower child then.”

“The Haight-Ashbury isn’t a ghetto,” Morgana says.

“Sure, it is. The Hashberry is the Love Ghetto.”

They laugh, but the sound rings hollow.

A flatbed truck rolls by, packed with Persian carpets, brass water pipes, black lights the size of baseball bats. The grim driver waves. Some hip merchants are moving their best goods out of the neighborhood entirely until the rumors blow over or the riot has run its course, whichever comes first. The Print Mint has sent out the word that anyone who has no place to sleep can get off the street tonight and crash in the shop. Maybe a horde of sleeping kids will amount to fire insurance, Ruby thinks. Or maybe not.

A haystack of plywood planks lies at her feet. She intends to board up her front windows before darkness falls. The windows would cost her five hundred bucks apiece to replace, not to mention the damage if people break in and trash the place. All her beautiful handcrafted shelves and counters. Five years’ worth of work.

H. Rap Brown says violence is as American as cherry pie. What if they start fires, like in Watts in ’65? Or Detroit last week? That’s not cherry pie. That’s burnt crust, inedible and ruined.

She doesn’t want to think about it. Just take care of business. She’s got her bankbooks and business records, her favorite photograph albums and psychedelic posters, the jewelry her mother left her, and the cats’ five pet carriers waiting by the kitchen door. What else can she take in the Mercedes if they set 555 Clayton on fire? Not much. Take only the most important things.

Ruby wipes her brow with a handkerchief, flings down the sopping cloth. She hates this! She picks up a slim volume she chose from her inventory, Anna Riva’s Secrets of Magical Seals. She pores through the pages, searching for some practical magic. The book depicts all manner of symbols, Solomon’s Seals, signs of the Goetia, and voodoo veves.

She finds something promising. Veves are decorative designs that incorporate shapes and images symbolizing supernatural forces. Voodooists draw these designs to call up those supernatural forces and put them to work. Far out. Ruby finds the veve for Legba, the protector of doorways, a guardian against thieves. Yes! She takes a scarlet chalk Starbright left behind and draws the veve on the sidewalk in front of the Mystic Eye:

Is that any good? Where the hell is Starbright? She needs an artist.

“We’re doing an invocation at the house tonight,” Morgana says. “We’re calling up Bune. He’s one of the Goetia who protects doorways and property. We considered sacrificing a dove, but everyone voted against it. We decided we shouldn’t kill an innocent being to invoke power. I’m going to stab my finger, instead.” She says this as matter-of-factly as if she’s told Ruby they’re baking banana bread tonight.

Morgana is a formidable woman with a mane of inky curls and a moonish Celtic face. She’s a witch, of course. She lives in the House of Magick, a women’s commune on Baker Street. Strange things go on there, that’s the rumor. Everyone loves a good rumor, preferably with sex. So many rumors are floating around these days, the weirder, the better.

But the women at the House of Magick don’t seem so strange to Ruby. Morgana works the drawer some afternoons at the Mystic Eye. So does Bettina. Maria-Fortuna reads the tarot in the back of the shop on Thursdays. Ishbette casts astrological charts on Fridays. They buy candles and incense, exotic jewelry, Indian saris in saffron and teal. They are all scrupulously honest. Ruby gives them a huge discount.

Ruby doesn’t care what they do in the privacy of the House of Magick. It’s uncool to indulge in rumors.

Just take one look at her. How’s that for a lifestyle, taking in a foreign young dude and a teenage runaway?

What about her unexpected tender feelings toward Starbright? The kid is like a kitten climbing up on her lap for a scratch under the chin, but it’s more than that. Ruby looks in the mirror and asks herself why. She’s usually in touch with her feelings, but now she’s got no easy answer.

“Bune, Bune. Which seal is that?” Ruby consults Anna Riva again. Seals are employed in magical ceremonies to summon the Goetia, spirits of the infernal realms. Ruby studies the seal and reads aloud, “Bune is the twenty-sixth Spirit who appears, when summoned, in the form of a Dragon with three heads, that of a Dog, a Gryphon, and a Man.”

“That’s the one,” says Morgana. “We figure if we can appease Bune, he’ll stop the riot.”

“Worth a try.”

The seal is mighty strange:

Ruby sighs. She’s too tired to draw that. “Thanks, Morgana. You’ve done enough. Better go home and lock your doors.”

“I will,” Morgana says and squeezes her shoulder. “Listen, Ruby, I feel everything will be all right. Venus is in Virgo. That’s a peaceful place to be.”

“Yes, but the moon is in Aries,” Ruby snaps. “That means violence in the subconscious mind of the world.”

“Maybe so.” Morgana hurries away before Ruby can apologize for being so blunt.

She lays down Secrets of Magical Seals and hauls herself to her feet. She bends her aching back to the haystack of plywood planks, reaches for her hammer. She bites on a couple of nails, picks up a plank. Damn, she’s tired. Forget it, Ruby, get that hammer pounding.

Violence isn’t in the moon. Violence is here, in only too human form, on the streets of San Francisco during the Summer of Love.

Chi’s bizarre logic resonates in her memory. Danger summons Devolved Entities Manifested from the Other Now, opens a hole in reality through which they can invade. Will demons also stalk the streets tonight?

Where is Starbright? Ruby is worried sick.

* * *

Leo Gorgon pulls his ragtag truck into the driveway, hops out. Chi hops out the other side and offers his hand to the kid to help her down. Like a gentleman should, Ruby sniffs. But the kid indignantly waves him away and climbs down on her own, spurning his gallantry. She shoots him a belligerent look. She’s flushed with sunburn. And something else?

“Look who I picked up hitchhikin’ on Market Street,” Gorgon says.

“We were not hitchhiking,” Starbright says.

“We were waiting for the bus,” Chi says.

“And where did we go today?” Ruby says.

“Sausalito,” they say in unison. But the kid glares at Chi. What’s that about?

“Uh-huh.” Ruby pounds the last nail in the last plank. “You’re just in time for dinner.”

“Nice work, Ruby.” Gorgon juts his chin at the boarded-up windows. “Say, I got me a hole that needs fixin’. Why don’t you swing my way?”

“I’ll swing your way,” Ruby says and swipes the hammer at his head, only half in jest. Since Morning Star Ranch, Gorgon doesn’t come around like he used to. When he does stop by for an afternoon in bed, his harangues against hip merchants have gotten nastier. He’s actually started calling her a whore—and he doesn’t mean because she’s balling him.

He seizes her hand, takes the hammer away, and hurls it on the sidewalk. The hammer crashes headfirst, gouging out the center of Chi’s carved heart.

“Damn you, Leo,” she says. But she lets him kiss her, rough and exciting. He smells of sex and patchouli oil.

She pulls away. She never wears that scent.

“Ready for the revolution?” Gorgon grins and hands her a Communication Company mimeograph.

Ruby reads:

Within the black people’s mind, they will be fighting a revolution. If you hamper them in any way, you will be their enemy. During the riot, the only help they want from you is your gun.

“You write this, Leo?” she asks, sweet as poison.

He nods proudly. “Me an’ Cowboy musta passed out a thousand.”

“Cowboy gave me one this morning,” Starbright says.

“Got all this on good authority, did you?” Ruby says to Leo.

“Well.” He hesitates. “It’s what we heard, anyway.”

“Do you have any notion what you’re doing?” She finds herself shouting. “You are starting rumors!”

“But it’s true! The Fillmore’s gonna blow tonight.”

“Says who? Who asked you?”

“Wow,” Starbright says, staring at the veve on the sidewalk. “What is that?”

Before Ruby can tell her about Legba and voodoo veves, Papa Al, the burly hipster who volunteers at the Free Clinic, comes tearing around the corner of Haight and Clayton. They all turn and stare as Papa Al clatters up the clinic’s stairs, bursts in the door and bursts back out with four scruffy boys in tow. One boy wears a cast on his wrist.

“We need more troops!” Papa Al shouts, hustling the boys before him. The boys scatter in every direction, footsteps ringing in the empty street. “Go get me more troops!”

“What’s happening, Papa Al?” Ruby calls to him.

“I seen dozens of spades, man! Hundreds of spades with shoppin’ bags full a’ knives!”

“Knives! Where?”

“Comin’ from the Fillmore, man! Comin’ here!”

Dr. David Smith races down the stairs. “Papa Al,” he says reasonably, “those kids are my patients.”

“We need more troops,” Papa Al shouts.

“You think people will get hurt?” Dr. Smith glances anxiously around.

“I guarantee it. An’ I’m gonna be the dude doin’ some of the hurtin’.” Papa Al yanks a thirty-eight caliber revolver out of his waistband with one hand, a Colt forty-five with the other.

He pushes past Dr. Smith and sprints up the stairs again, waving the guns. In a flash, he’s out, dragging two young men. Each wields a fire ax. Papa Al positions them at each side of the door where they stand, wide-eyed and tense, axes held high like Roman guards in a B movie.

Papa Al takes a stand halfway up the stairs, brandishing his guns.

Now Teddy Bear, Papa Al’s sidekick, races around the corner.

“I seen carloads of spades with machine guns!” he yells. “They’re comin’ at us!”

Ruby retrieves her hammer and the last of the planks, and hurries inside the shop. Starbright, Chi, and Gorgon follow. Ruby triple-locks the front door and hammers two planks, crisscrossed, on the inside. She peers through her peephole.

The street is so dark and silent and empty, Ruby finds herself missing the carnival crowd she used to curse.

Grandmother Says: Lu (Treading On The Tail Of The Tiger)

The Image: The sky above, the lake below. This is the placement of the elements. When vapor lifts from the lake, however, it rises to the sky and makes rain.

The tiger has a temper when he is hungry.

The Oracle: One who is humble seeking advancement among the powerful is permitted to rise when the principle of placement of the elements is observed. Advance through the accomplishment of worthy goals, righting of injustices, strength, quality, and perseverance.

Beware, however, if the lake rises above the sky. Beware if the tiger turns to bite.

Hexagram 10, The I Ching or Book of Changes

Dig it:

The underground is buzzing with rumors, only some of which Ruby knows are true. At the International Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in London, Stokely Carmichael announced that color is a state of mind. If black people choose to act like whitey, he said, they should be shot like any whitey.

Rumor has it that Jimi Hendrix’s father is black and his mother is full-blooded Cherokee. Jimi told reporters, “I don’t feel black. I just feel the music.”

Would Stokely Carmichael shoot Jimi Hendrix? Ruby wonders. Would Stokely Carmichael shoot her?

The Black Panthers are exciting and handsome in their berets, leather jackets, and bandoliers of bullets crisscrossed over their strapping chests. They excite the white revolutionary boys. The latest fashion statement on Haight Street is berets, leather jackets, and bandoliers of bullets crisscrossed over strapping chests.

Who is telling all these young men to finish school, become doctors and lawyers, set up businesses, run for political office? Study history? Build up their community, not tear things down? Martin Luther King. That’s it.

Gorgon strides out the kitchen door and clatters down the stairs. He says he’s pulling his truck all the way up Ruby’s driveway, getting off the street. Starbright huddles on the couch in the living room, surrounded by the cats, and anxiously studies the Communication Company mimeograph.

“Confusing, isn’t it?” Ruby says.

The kid nods.

Ruby sits next to her. “Don’t be confused. This riot thing? This talk of shooting whitey, and the revolutionary boys running around, all excited by the prospect of a street fight? The whole damn thing is a shuck. My pa was half Cherokee and half Irish, and my ma was Haitian black with a splash of Southern cream. I am Ruby A. Maverick, and I’m telling you, it’s a shuck.”

But Starbright’s big brown eyes brim with fear. Fear and confusion.

Ruby pats her hand. “This is just the sort of stupidity that the personal revolution would not abide. Violence and aggression are Establishment games. The revolutionaries will tell you love is weak, but they’re wrong. Isn’t that true, man from Mars?” Ruby says to Chi. “Things will be different in the future. Violence and aggression won’t make it anymore. We’ll achieve a society based on merit and opportunity. People will be recognized for their intelligence and talent, hard work and good will. For their hearts. For love, whether you’re black, white, green, or tangerine. Right, am I right, Chi?”

“Sometimes,” Chi says quietly. “Sometimes not.”

Gorgon clatters up the back stairs, hauling a tin of gasoline.

“Where do you think you’re going with that?” Ruby demands.

Gorgon says nothing. He roots around in the trash can under the kitchen counter, pulls out four empty wine bottles. “Your love shuck is crap.”

“Maybe and maybe not. Violence is definitely crap.”

He goes to the half-bath, pulls a pillowcase from her linen closet, and rips it into strips. “You can’t change nothin’ without tearin’ it down.”

“Leo!” Ruby screams, scattering the cats.

But he’s gone. Out the kitchen door and clattering up the fire escape to the roof.

Ruby dashes after him, Chi and the kid close behind.

The Aries moon is a scythe in the sky. From the roof, Ruby can see Papa Al and Teddy Bear huddled on the stairs of the Free Clinic. Terrified patients in pajamas cluster at the door. The two Roman guards lean their axes on the stoop, but their stance is tense.

“What’s goin’ on, man?” Gorgon calls down to them, leaning over the gutter and gingerbread trim. He’s filling empty bottles with gasoline, stuffing strips of pillowcase in the necks. He spills a box of matches on the rooftop.

“We called Chocolate George,” Teddy Bear yells up. “The Hells Angels say they’re comin’ over to kick some ass, man!”

Ruby takes Starbright’s hand and protectively presses her away from the edge of the roof.

A shimmer of ebony deeper than the night sky ripples across the rooftop. The gutter begins to rattle, as if an earthquake is striking.

“Chi,” Ruby calls in a ragged whisper. He crouches by her side at once. “What’s happening? The energy is getting strange, can’t you see it?”

“Yes.” He whispers, “Katie,” to his magic ring and cups the lavender light in the palm of his hand. The light flickers eerily in the darkness. “Ruby,” he finally says. “I’ve calculated three times. There’s no record of a race riot in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.”

“What do you mean? What are you saying?”

He whispers, “Katie, off,” and the lavender light disappears. “The riot is a probability, but not a Prime Probability. It doesn’t have to happen. You and me and Starbright, we’re observing. We can make a difference.”

Ruby stares at him, his face impossibly pale and baby-smooth. He used to look so innocent to her. Not anymore. Not so innocent and not so familiar. Who are you, she thinks for the thousandth time. What are you, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco? In a white-rabbit flip of reality, it occurs to her that the elegant lad really is a t-porter from 2467. This suddenly makes more sense to her than what is happening on Haight Street tonight.

It doesn’t have to happen.

She nods, then stalks across the roof to Gorgon and his four Molotov cocktails arranged before him in a semicircle.

A huge, hollow-eyed skull presses out of the whole wall of the house across the street, then disappears. Waves throb through the wall as if the old stucco is made of liquid.

Ruby hears Starbright gasp behind her, glances back. Chi circles his arms around the kid. She struggles away, but he won’t let her go. Good.

“Leo,” Ruby says, but she can’t catch his eye. He stares down at the street. “Who you gonna fire-bomb, huh? Your black brothers? Isn’t that what you revolutionary boys call them?”

“No,” he says, stroking the neck of a bottle. “These are for the pigs.”

“The pigs, uh-huh. What good does that do your black brothers if you fire-bomb the police? What good does it do for them?”

He refuses to look at her, but he’s breathing hard. “You capitalist pig, with your witch crap an’ your love shuck.” He spits. “What do you know about the revolution?”

She seizes his elbow. “I know this, sonny. I know it isn’t your revolution.”

He still won’t look at her.

“You’re not the one who will get hurt by this!”

He turns and looks at her, at last.

“You accuse me of selling out. You call me an opportunist. But that’s exactly what you are, Leo. No, you don’t care about money. Money isn’t kicks for you. The revolution is kicks for you.”

His eyes flash fire and madness. A gust sweeps across the rooftop, scattering gravel.

“Just kicks, damn you!”

With an inarticulate yell, Gorgon plucks the rags out of the bottles and smashes the bottles on the rooftop. He clatters down the stairs, leaving the stink of gasoline behind. Black glass shimmers in the Aries moonlight.

* * *

Gorgon’s truck is gone by the time Ruby, Chi, and the kid climb down the fire escape to the deck. She lets everyone in the kitchen door.

It’s over. Sweet Isis, her time with him is over just as strangely as it began. It’s not likely she’ll ever see Gorgon again but, if she does, he’ll be just some dude she knew during the Summer of Love. They will pass by on the street like strangers.

But she still has to wait out this dreadful night. What to do?

“You know what?” she says. “I’m hungry. Ravenous, in fact.” Best thing she can think of to settle that sharp, empty feeling of another lover leaving her is chilled wine and hot food. She uncorks a crisp chenin blanc at once. “You kids eat today?”

“You know I can’t eat, Ruby,” Chi reminds her. One day, when she remarked how much shorter it looked, he showed her his nutritional necklace and confessed he actually eats the beads—nutribeads, he calls them—which she thought was hilarious. He sternly lectured her about contamination in the food of this Now that a t-porter like himself cannot expose himself to. Right. He’s so gaunt, she can practically see what he’ll look like dead. He doesn’t sound very convinced now himself.

“I can’t eat, either, Ruby,” Starbright says, poking at her ribs through her blouse. Since the abortion, the kid has become nearly as thin as the magazine models she studies so intently. Ruby well remembers that age, filled with raging ambition and self-doubt.

She shrugs. “Suit yourself. I’m cooking. You two watch the street. Tell me if anything is happening out there.”

Ruby has been so busy getting ready for the riot, she hasn’t had time to go to the market. And all those dire warnings about stocking up on food for a state of siege. She’s got nothing in her cupboard but bits and scraps.

She slices six heels of bread--whole wheat, rye, five-grain—lengthwise and slathers the bread-fingers with safflower butter. She sprinkles on garlic powder and sets them under a low broiler.

What else has she got? A dozen eggs, thank Isis. She cracks them all into a bowl, beats until they’re frothy with parsley, black pepper, sea salt, and oregano. She stirs in the dollop of salsa she’s got left over, thick and hot with cayenne and an exotic herb called cilantro. She takes out her two cast-iron skillets. Ma always said cook in iron ‘cause it’s good for the blood.

She coats the first skillet with olive oil, turns the burner on low. She dices baby carrots from Chi’s garden, a red onion, two wilted scallions, a tomato, a tiny zucchini, garlic-packed mushrooms from a jar. Half a red bell pepper that’s seen better days, but it’s good. She peels the last lonely garlic clove. An Aries moon is good for cutting, but watch your fingers.

She tosses the vegetables in the first skillet, turns up the heat. Juice pops. The scents of frying onions and garlic toast fill the kitchen.

She plunks a chunk of safflower butter in the second skillet and drizzles that with chili-sesame oil. Yum. When the butter foams, she scoops in the egg-salsa mixture. Meanwhile the vegetables are reducing. She adds more garlic, more garlic, more garlic. When the eggs are nearly cooked, she folds in the vegetables.

What other leftovers has she got? She sprinkles the last of the grated Parmesan, which soaks up vegetable juices like a sponge. A cube of cheddar, another of Gruyere, a finger of Swiss. She dices pieces of cheeses. Salvador Dali said Jesus is cheese. In you go, Jesus. She covers the skillet, turns the burner off.

She removes the pan of toast-fingers and turns the broiler on high. She takes off the lid and places the skillet under the broiler for exactly fifty-three seconds, no more and no less.

Cheese bubbles and the herbs release their scents.

And, lo! Chi and the kid are hovering around the kitchen. The cats hover, too, trilling and purring. Cats always know good food.

“Here we go,” Ruby says, taking out the skillet. “A little bit of everything. I hereby christen this dish my Summer of Love Spicy Eggs. I’m glad no one wants to eat. More for me.”

Eleven o’clock. Everything quiet. Clayton deserted.

Morgana phones. “The S Squad is sweeping the streets tonight.” The S Squad is the city’s special police force, operating for the express purpose of closing hippie gathering spots in the Haight-Ashbury. “A big bust at 615 Cole.” A friend of Morgana’s placed her one permitted phone call to the House of Magick. “”It’s all just suspicion. The Man’s got nothing but a flushing toilet.”

Hippie gathering spots? Suspicion? Ruby pours herself another glass of chenin blanc and works out their story. Chi is the son of a friend of Ruby’s deceased mother who lives in Paris, and Starbright is Chi’s cousin from New York. They turn the music and the lights down low and devour Ruby’s Summer of Love Spicy Eggs and garlic toast.

It’s the first time Ruby has seen Chi eat food. He packs it away, like a skinny six-foot-four twenty-one-year-old ought to. Nutribeads, right. That’s better, she thinks, pleased at his ecstatic expression over her leftovers. The kid wolfs hers down, too. “Wow,” she keeps saying. “It’s not Swanson’s frozen Salisbury steak.”

She leaves Chi and the kid to their feast and goes to the living room window, anxiously peering out. Papa Al, Teddy Bear, and the cluster of patients still stand guard at the clinic door. But now they lounge on the stairs, toking, passing a bottle around. A patrol car glides down Haight. The Hells Angels haven’t shown up, for which Ruby breathes a relieved sigh. She likes the barbarian with the fur hat, Chocolate George. He’s got a righteous reputation and actually drinks chocolate milk, instead of beer. But as for the rest? She dreads the sight of hogs and colors. The Angels are notorious for hating blacks, Jews, women, anyone else not white, the police, other bikers, and each other. They are not the kind of folks you want partying at your doorstep.

Ruby wanders back into the living room, where the kid curls up on the couch and Chi sprawls on a chair.

“I can’t believe I ate that.” Chi rubs his washboard stomach and sips the wine Ruby insisted he try. “I think I’m getting heartburn.”

“Heartburn? You get heartburn?” Starbright says. There it is, again, the kid’s belligerence. Why? Chi has never excited more than a tolerant smile from her or an eye-roll at his crazy stories. What is this anger?

“Yes, Starbright, I’ve got a stomach just like you.”

“Oh, but I thought you were so superior. Different than us.”

Ruby sits in her rocking chair, settling Alana the Angora and Luna the bluepoint on her lap. Sita the sealpoint balances on her knee. Her boy cats, Ara and Rama, crouch at her feet. The cats didn’t care for spicy eggs but they eagerly devoured bits of cheese. Ruby feels good, considering, except for this tension between Chi and the kid. “Different how?”

Chi shakes his head at Starbright, a warning in his eyes. But the kid won’t stop.

“Oh, he’s different, Ruby. He showed me this afternoon. Didn’t you, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco?”

He gives her a pleading look.

“Oh, yeah. He’s got this thing like an electric plug, only it’s really, really tiny and it’s right in the back of his head. Gross! And he’s got a girlfriend.” To Chi, “Why didn’t you tell me you had a girlfriend before you started following me around?” To Ruby, “He’s got this girlfriend who walks around naked all the time, and she’s got a plug in her head, too. He says they plug their brains into telelink—isn’t that what you call it, Chi? They link into a place that a computer creates called telespace.”

“Plug your brain into a computer?” Ruby says. “I love science fiction, but what kind of nightmare is that?”

“The hardware enters at the base of the skull, yes,” Chi says. “The wetware interfaces with the arachnoidal membrane over the brain, then connects inside at various lobes.”

“That sounds awful!”

“It’s not awful,” Chi says, flushing. “Telespace is a miracle. It was a quantum leap. You could compare telelink to when people first mastered electricity, manufactured light bulbs, and lit the night. Or first understood bacteria, how microscopic organisms can kill, and how to fight them. Or developed the internal combustion engine, invented automobiles and airplanes and rockets. Or discovered the silicon chip. Ruby, in a decade, your calculating machine will be a laughable antique.”

“Not so fast, sonny,” Ruby says, sitting up. “I have fought for my calculating machine.”

“Telespace, and our ability to telelink, has made possible the mastery of data so vast and so fast, you can’t conceive of it. Telespace enabled access to ten thousand years of Archives. Enabled us to develop tachyportation and terraformation.” He sits back with his glass of wine, haughty and arrogant. “You cannot possibly realize.”

“When I first got to the Haight-Ashbury,” Starbright says, matching his tone, “I realized all kinds of things about life. My life, the way it was before the Summer of Love. My parents. Sex and death. School. And friendship. And love. You know what I flashed on when I tripped that one time, Ruby?”

“What’s that, kid?”

“I flashed on a photograph in my biology textbook of a monkey used in a sleep experiment. They put handcuffs on it so it couldn’t fight back or move and they stuck electrodes into its poor little skull and connected wires to a computer that monitored its brain waves. Some kids in my class thought it was funny, but I didn’t think it was funny at all. That’s what I thought of when I touched your neck, Chi,” she says to him. “When you told me you and your girlfriend plug your neckjacks into a computer. You’re no better than that poor little helpless monkey.”

He sputters. “That’s ridiculous! That’s reactionary! Telespace frees us!”

Starbright goes and sits at Ruby’s feet, rearranging Ara and Rama around her knees. She hooks her elbow over Ruby’s knee. “The monkey died.”

Chi shakes his head, pours another glass of wine. “Everything dies.”

Ruby reaches down and tangles her fingers in Starbright’s hair. The kid is on to something.

“You keep talking about the cosmicists, Chi,” Ruby says. “How are far out they are. Do cosmicists link into this telespace thing, too?”

“Of course. I’m a cosmicist.”

“Uh-huh. And what does it mean to be a cosmicist?”

“We believe in the Cosmic Mind. In the cocreatorship of reality by humanity and the Universal Intelligence. We believe in assuming responsibility for each individual’s actions because each action affects all of spacetime. To give is best. Live responsibly or die.”

“You also keep hinting about how rich you are.”

“My family and I have been living responsibly.”

“Why, that’s a principle of the hip community, too. Free yourself from media propaganda and the consumer culture.”

That stops him for a minute. “Well. The cosmicists have been able to launch major projects, like the Mars terraformation, by conserving funds and investing them over decades. Over centuries,” he says. “President Alexander outlawed deficit spending in the United States in 2093 and worked for decades after that to establish an economy based on True Value.”

“But you’re privileged,” Ruby persists. She recalls the killing looks he and Leo Gorgon have exchanged. “Fish ponds in the Sausalito hills? Domed estates? Hmm?”

“Not all cosmicists are rich,” he says, but his tone is defensive. “But all cosmicists have restructured their values from what you know. They’ve learned the honest and genuine desire to serve the world. They’ve put aside self-interest, greed, and corruption. They believe in opportunities and hard work. And they’ve taught their children these new values, too.”

“I see. But I don’t hear you saying you and your family gave up your fortune for your honest and genuine desire to serve the world.”

He’s silent.

“Well, did you?”

Chi sighs. “No, and why should we? Life by definition is greedy, hungry, self-indulgent. Life isn’t self-sacrificing. Death is the only true sacrifice.” He sighs again. “No, we have no intention of giving away our family fortune. Yes, we expect a return on our investments.” He stands and paces. “Cut me some slack, Ruby. You own the Mystic Eye. You—of all people I’ve met during the Summer of Love—believe in success. I’ve heard you argue many times with Leo Gorgon about incentive and free enterprise. And the future will prove you right, Ruby. The choice to succeed is right.”

“You offered me a choice on the roof. I could have picked up one of Gorgon’s Molotov cocktails and flung it to the street with my own hand.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I could have.”

“But you didn’t and, as of the moment you didn’t, you never could have. Don’t you see? That probability collapsed into the timeline, not out. Our spacetime is conserved.”

“Wait, wait. What you’re saying is you t-porters allow that the past may not be what you thought it was? That the timeline you keep talking about is some kind of process? A set of probabilities?”

Starbright’s mouth falls open.

Ruby astounds even herself. “Right, am I right?”

Chi smiles, but his eyes are icy. “We could never have developed tachyonic transmission without allowing for some continuous cocreatorship between humanity and the Cosmic Mind. Bits of probability are always collapsing into the timeline. Cosmicist philosophy embraces that notion.”

“I don’t believe it!” Ruby cries and claps her hands. The cats look up, blink, then return to their cat-naps. She lowers her voice. “I can’t do this, no, no, no, I can’t do that. The Grandmother Principle is gonna getcha.”

“The mandate of nonintervention and the Tenets have a sound purpose,” Chi says quickly. “If a probability collapses out of the timeline, we’re all in big trouble. That’s why the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications invested so much research and money into the Summer of Love Project. To conserve the timeline during this Hot Dim Spot.”

“I still don’t get it,” Starbright says. “How can reality be probable?”

“Well, in quantum physics,” Chi says, “reality is always a set of probabilities. The theory goes back to Schrodinger’s Cat.”

“You mentioned that once before,” Ruby says, stroking Luna’s silky blue-gray fur. The bluepoint purrs and gazes up with liquid sapphire eyes. “Whose cat was that?”

“Schrodinger’s. Twentieth-century physics. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is from your Now, not mine. The notion is that at every moment reality is manifesting, it also branches off into probabilities. We as observers participate in the process. That’s why it’s so hard for the Archivists to reduce Hot Dim Spots to a single narrative.”

“But what does that have to do with a kitty-cat?” Starbright says, scratching Ara’s chin. Ara yawns prettily.

“Um, it was an experiment. A thought experiment.” Chi gulps wine. “See, a cat is placed in a box. A device inside the box releases a lethal gas that will kill the cat. No one knows if the gas has been released or not, or if the cat is dead or not, until they open the box. Until someone looks, the cat is alive and dead at the same time.”

Ruby sits bolt upright. Starbright pulls Ara and Rama into her lap.

“What?” Ruby says in her sweet-as-poison voice.

“I didn’t make it up!” The cats stare at Chi, blue and gold eyes blazing. “A physicist, Edwin Schrodinger, proposed the thought experiment in 1935.”

“Nineteen thirty-five, uh-huh. And what nationality was Edwin Schrodinger?”

Chi rubs his forehead. “He was Austrian.”

“Achtung! Sehr gut, Beelzebub!”

“It’s horrible, I know,” Chi says miserably. “I never thought much about the way thought experiments were expressed until I met the two of you. All Schrodinger’s Cat does is demonstrate how spacetime exists as a set of probabilities that can be mutually exclusive until we observe a probability collapsing into the timeline. That’s all.”

“No, you’re talking about a gas chamber,” Ruby says. “A real experiment some Nazi scientist designed making a gas chamber. Right, am I right, Herr Chiron?”

“It’s just a metaphor. I always thought it was just a metaphor. Our techs use it to this Day.”

“A metaphor,” Starbright says. “Well, according to Professor Zoom, I’m a pussy. Put me in the box. Let’s wait for the gas. Am I alive? Am I dead? What a groovy thought experiment to demonstrate the probable nature of reality.”

“I’m sorry,” Chi whispers.

“You bet your ass you and all your kind in the future are sorry.” Ruby stands, scattering the cats. “If you remember one thing to tell your people, you remember I told you this, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. I told you before and I’ll tell you again. Dig it: the way you think about things shapes the way your reality is.”

“I will remember,” he declares, eyes flashing.

“Liberate Schrodinger’s Cat!” Starbright cries and raises her fist.

Chi raises his fist, too. “Liberate Schrodinger’s Cat!”

The tiny Angora with golden eyes and plumy white fur arches her back and mews. Alana is hungry again.

* * *

Ruby goes down to the shop, checks her locks, peers out the peephole. Still nothing but Papa Al and Teddy Bear and a posse of longhaired boys. Everyone’s toking and drinking and whooping it up. It’s good to see laughing people out there. Let them whoop. For the first time in her life, Ruby shivers when she thinks about the future.

So peaceful and quiet. When was the last time the street was so quiet at midnight? She hates this, being barricaded in her own place. She finds the hammer, pulls out the nails, takes down the plywood planks. She unlocks her door and steps outside. The air is fresh, tinged with sage incense.

Then suddenly it’s happening.

A flatbed truck careens around the corner of Clayton and Haight, a gang of twenty crammed in back. A truckful of shouting people!

Sweet Isis! Do they have shopping bags filled with knives? Machine guns?

They shout at her, “Peace and love! Peace and love, sister!”

They’re throwing things off the truck.

Bricks, stones, Molotov cocktails?

They’re throwing flowers onto the street. A long-stemmed carnation lands at Ruby’s feet.

August 8, 1967

Inquest

for the

Ungrateful Dead

13

Are You Experienced?

Susan sees the headlines all along Hayes Street as she hurries to meet Nance at the Blue Unicorn Café. You can’t miss them, in every newspaper box:

HIPPIE DRUG MURDERS

SYNDICATE MOVES IN

But when she slides into the seat across from them, she finds that Nance and Professor Zoom are unimpressed.

“If you’ve ever lived in the Village,” Professor Zoom says, studying cream swirling in his coffee, “you’re just seeing the Village all over again. It’s the same old shit. I, for one, am vastly displeased. I mean, I split New York to eighty-six all that.”

“I thought you went to Harvard,” Susan says. “Isn’t that in Massachusetts?”

“Massachusetts, New York,” he says with a withering glance. “It’s all the same old shit.” He actually looks at her for the first time since she sat down. He moves and speaks as if he’s in slow motion, suspended in some remote inner place, even more self-absorbed than he used to be. Three-quarters comatose, instead of half. Before she can wrest a glimmer of reaction, his eyes flick back to his coffee cup, staring as though the chipped ceramic is an artifact of fantastic complexity, the swirls of cream spelling out some oracle.

Susan knows what the headlines are about. Five days ago, John Kent Carter, also known as Jacob King or Shob Carter, was found in an apartment furnished with nothing but a mattress on the floor. The mewing of a cat trapped inside brought a neighbor. The apartment’s walls were splattered with psychedelic rainbows and his blood. Shob had been stabbed twelve times. His right arm was gone, cleanly severed above the elbow. Shob had been known to handcuff the briefcase in which he kept his cash to his right wrist. Earlier that week, his girlfriend had helped him count out three thousand dollars in small bills. The police found no briefcase in the apartment. Shob called himself an unemployed flutist, but everyone knew he dealt LSD.

Two days ago, William Edward Thomas, also known as Superspade, was found zipped into a sleeping bag snagged on the cliff below Point Reyes Lighthouse. He had been shot in the back of the head. The corpse was three days old. Superspade had been known to carry fifty thousand dollars in cash. Some said Superspade dealt acid, some said he only dealt grass. Some said Superspade and Shob had made a deal. Everyone says each had been approached by the Syndicate and ordered to get organized or get dead.

“Starbright’s never lived in the Village,” Nance says, inhaling her third Kool as though she desperately requires mentholated smoke for proper respiration. “Have you, sweetheart?”

“No, I haven’t, Penny Lane,” Susan says. “And neither have you.”

“Starbright has never even been to New York, or anywhere, really.”

“I have so been to New York. On the way to France for Christmas.”

“On the way to France for Christmas.” Nance widens her eyes, drops her jaw. “You mean Daddy finally took you along?”

Susan studies her coffee cup.

“Daddy jetting you around doesn’t count,” Nance proclaims. “You’ve never been anywhere on your own, sweetheart.”

This is one of Nance’s new affectations, calling everyone sweetheart with her strange pronunciation shweethaut. She speaks in a phony accent, accompanied by a cunning wink. She’s bleached her shocking crew cut ivory-white. She gesticulates, fluttering her hands. She looks as if she’s been dipped in lacquer and turned hard and shiny.

Susan sighs. What did she expect? That they could be best friends again? Take things up the way they were before Susan’s father forced their separation? Or, if not exactly the same, then a new friendship, more daring and fun now that they’re both so much older and on their own.

She’s chased after Nance for nearly two weeks, never finding her at the Double Barrel house or, if there, too spaced out to come to the phone. Yes, she’s had expectations. She expected the old spark, the excitement of their first meeting on the Panhandle. Or at least a warm nostalgia, like looking at family photographs together.

Abandon expectations, oh ye who run away to the Haight-Ashbury. Nothing is real, reality is nothing.

She hadn’t expected to see Professor Zoom with Nance this morning, either. Nor had she expected his bleached white hair, kohl-lined eyes, and pancake makeup. He and Nance look weird, even by Haight-Ashbury standards. Like vampires. Or ghouls. Professor Zoom’s ice-cold aloofness adds another undercurrent of tension between her and Nance.

She hates this. Everything is wrong. She doesn’t want things between her and Nance to be wrong anymore. Try, Susan. “Wow,” she says, “it’s scary about Shob and Superspade, huh?”

Nance shrugs, squeezes her lips in a sardonic little smile, and raises her eyebrows at Professor Zoom, excluding Susan. Nance, the drama queen. With fingers as fragile as fish bones, she offers him her Kool. “Starbright scares easily. Don’t you, Starbright?” she says in that awful phony voice.

The big news this morning, and the reason for the lurid headlines, is that Eddy Morris, also known as Shank, was arrested outside Sebastopol. Shank is a well-known Haightian with a predilection for speed and acid. The police pulled him over as he exceeded the speed limit on his way to Morning Star Ranch in a black ’62 Volkswagen bug belonging to Shob. The police discovered a right arm wrapped in a bloody pillowcase in the bug’s back seat. In a fit of squeamishness, the newspapers don’t want to say the arm belonged to Shob. Shank didn’t want to say, either. He told the arresting officer, “I’m very, very hazy about that arm.”

“Shank was involved in a burn,” Professor Zoom says, taking the Kool and studying the smoke eddying from its tip. “That’s the way it is, sweet pretty pussies. When a burn comes down, shit comes down.”

Susan shivers and sips her coffee. She never drank coffee in the morning before. Coffee was her parents’ prerogative. Now she can’t imagine how she ever woke up without it. She feels as if she’s been half-awake her whole life. As if her former reality was like watching herself on TV.

This is real. This is as real as it gets. She knew Superspade. A tall, handsome black dude, he lived two doors down on Clayton with a series of pretty young white women. Susan always thought Superspade had style with his leather jumpsuit and his button, “Faster Than a Speeding Mind.” And she knew Shob. He was always hanging out on Haight or at the Avalon Ballroom. A pixie-faced guy, sweetly aging at twenty-five with his handlebar mustache and receding hairline, his button said, “America is Going to Pot.”

She shouldn’t feel sad Shob and Superspade are dead. Shob and Superspade were bad. They were drug dealers. But, she thinks, recalling her Econ class, people want to buy pot and speed and acid. They’re screaming for it. There is—what did her teacher call it?—a consumer demand. Shob and Superspade were supplying that demand. You could say they were capitalists. Entrepreneurs. Their products are illegal, of course, and with good reason. But isn’t entrepreneurialism the American way?

Or the Syndicate’s way.

Susan doesn’t know. It’s like everyone has been infected by the virus from the planet Psi 2000. The virus releases people’s deepest repressions. Last night, Susan watched the Star Trek rerun of “The Naked Time” with growing horror. The virus makes people act as if they were shooting crystal meth, the dope easiest to score these days. Mr. Spock weeps over his mother, Nurse Chapel wants to sleep with Mr. Spock, and crewman Tormolen dies of despair. And Mr. Sulu—sweet Mr. Sulu with his flat, pockmarked cheeks—threatens everyone with a fencing foil! It reminds her so much of the mood in the Haight-Ashbury that she turns the TV off before Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Scotty prevent the ship from being sucked into Psi 2000. She knows they save the Enterprise. They always do.

The question is, can this starship be saved?

She doesn’t have to take this bad theater from Nance and Professor Zoom. She scrapes back her chair and stands. “I think you’re right, Professor Zoom. I think Shank was involved in a burn. Did you know Stan the Man was involved in a burn? The dragon’s blood wasn’t acid, it was rat poison. He burned Stovepipe and the Lizard for seven grand. You knew that, didn’t you? Plus, he still owes me a hundred bucks for my time and trouble.”

Nance stares at her, wide-eyed. No drama queen this time.

“You tell Stan I want my hundred bucks, Professor Zoom. You know what I heard? I heard when a burn comes down, shit comes down. Now, where did I hear that?” She slings the woven handbag Ruby gave her over the shoulder of her high-collared shirt.

Nance grins with that sly appreciation Susan used to love. For a moment, her eyes twinkle at Susan, a look that gives her courage.

“Dig it, Harold. You take care of it for me,” Susan says. “And how many times do I have to tell you? Do not to call me a pussy.”

Professor Zoom scrapes back his chair. He’s gone.

“Far out, Starbright,” Nance says. “You have passed the acid test.” She pats the chair. “Don’t go. Not just yet.”

Susan sits. Try. Try.

“Stan really burned some dealers?” Nance says.

She nods. In all the crazy times she had with Professor Zoom, they never shared a smoke with such intimacy. She swigs her coffee, burning her tongue. “So. You balling him, too?”

Nance cackles. “Sweetheart, who am I not balling?”

Weather Report

The blues life is a mystique. And the blues-life mystique is that if you want to do anything, you have to lose your arm. You have to pay a lot of dues, to live full out, if the cost is in dues. The only people who can do it are oppressed, the hard-kick seekers who lay down the patterns of extreme beauty for this civilization. They’re people who got burned for who they are and what they did. Do you understand what that means? People who get burned for who they are, are oppressed beyond recourse. To be oppressed beyond recourse is the blues life.

Interview with Peter Berg

Voices of the Love Generation, by Leonard Wolf

(Little Brown and Company, 1968)

Susan loves the Blue Unicorn. It’s one of her favorite cafés. You can curl up on the swayback sofa with a friend, use the chessboards and sewing kits, read the books and magazines lying around. There’s no jukebox like in Bob’s Big Boy. Instead, there’s a funky old off-tune piano anyone can play, and people do, mostly badly but sometimes pretty well. The owner is a grizzled old Beatnik who believes coffee is the supreme drug of enlightenment and has a soft spot for hippie chicks. Susan always pays for one cup, and he always gives her two free refills.

Nance sits down with her second cup and says, “Guess what? I panhandled George Harrison yesterday.”

“You mean—George Harrison?”

“Yeah! We were hanging out on Hippie Hill passing doo around. The Pied Piper was playing his guitar. This dude strolled up, wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and flowered bell-bottoms and a button that said, “I’m the Head of My Community.” He walked up to the Piper and said, “Can I borrow your guitar, man?” The Piper said sure, and the dude riffed into ‘Norwegian Wood.’ Pretty soon everyone’s screaming, ‘It’s George Harrison! It’s George Harrison!’”

“Wow! No shuck?”

“No shuck.” Nance lights another Kool. “I would have balled him in a second, but his bucktooth wife was tagging along. Is she ugly or what? So I panhandled him, instead.”

Susan finishes her coffee, goes to the counter, returns with a refill. She turns over a newspaper lying on the next table. Sure enough, beneath “Hippie Drug Murders” is a photograph of George Harrison in heart-shaped glasses.

Nance ball George Harrison? Susan is offended. George Harrison’s wife is one of the skinny, white-blond models in Life and Seventeen. She is the ideal of beauty everyone adores. What makes Nance, a girl from Euclid Heights with a freaky crew cut, think George Harrison would ever want to ball her?

“Is Marilyn still around?” It’s a mean question, and Susan knows it.

“Who’s Marilyn?”

“That girl from Mill Valley. Stan the Man was balling her.”

“I don’t know any Marilyn. I never met any Marilyn.”

Uh-huh, as Ruby would say. Susan studies her. “Penny Lane, Stan’s not someone you can depend on, you know.”

“Sweetheart, I haven’t depended on anyone since 1960. I mean, Stan, say hey, he’s good in bed and he’s always got good dope, but I’m not hung up on him or anything like that. Who has time for hang-ups? It’s freakin’ neverending party at the house. So many cool people. And music, always music.” She punches Susan’s shoulder. “Well, you know. Zoom tells me you lived there a while.”

“Yeah, I did.” Zoom. Count on Nance to dub Harold ‘Zoom.’

Susan can’t help it. A pang of envy strikes her. The neverending party where you don’t have to give a damn about the Syndicate or the Vietnam War or whether spades from the Fillmore are going to burn your house down or some guy you thought you maybe were falling in love with is plugging in with his electric lady friend back home in the future. It felt good not to give a damn.

And she threw it all away, her connection to the Double Barrel house, to the neverending party. For what? Her chaste little room, her chaste little crush on Ruby? Ruby, forbidding her to watch TV unless there’s a science fiction program on. Switching off the TV when she walks into Susan’s room to talk. What kind of Nazi is she, anyway? And Chi. There’s a freak. To think she was starting to fall for him before he talked about Bella Venus. Her painted head. Balling while they link. Gross! Oh, he still tries to act cool. He still follows her around like a lost puppy. But she stays away from him now as best she can.

So what about the demon. Be ready, always? She’s ready. Let the demon come. Let the demon try and touch her. She doesn’t trust Chi’s ability to stave off the demon any more than she trusts the government’s ability to stave off a nuclear war. Survive? Far out. She’s surviving.

“But are you in love with Stan the Man?” Susan persists.

“Sweetheart, I love everybody.”

“You don’t care if he balls other girls?”

“Love isn’t the possession of someone’s body. Anyway, love is crap.”

“Love is the highest, holiest consciousness we can attain.”

Nance howls with laughter, tears spurting from her eyes. Other patrons in the café turn and stare.

Susan looks away. Does she know this person?

In a while, Nance calms down. “Are you in love with that red-haired dude?” she asks sardonically.

“Not anymore.”

“There, you see? Can I have him if you’re done with him?” Nance digs in her ratty handbag, takes out an eyeliner pencil and a compact, and starts to fix her makeup.

Susan can’t finish her coffee. She pushes the cup away.

“So how’s tricks at the Mystic Eye?” Nance grips the cap of the eyeliner in her teeth. “I heard Ruby Maverick is down on dope.”

“That’s true.”

“So you’re not smoking or tripping or anything?”

“I’m done with that scene.”

“What a square.” Nance snaps the compact shut. “Still, I’d like to meet her.”

“Meet Ruby?”

“Yeah.” The shrug. “I’d like to rap with her about the trip that came down on her.”

“The trip?”

“Yeah, her cousin was a junkie.”

“I know. She told me.”

“Then you must know how he raped her. He was going cold turkey, that’s what Stan the Man says. And the cousin, he raped Ruby. She was like twenty.”

The shock is like touching a frayed electrical wire. Speechless, Susan fiddles with her coffee cup.

“That’s how junk is, you know?” Nance says. Fake-cool of the new expert on the street. “When you come down from junk, you go crazy and wild. Crystal meth is just the opposite. When you come down from crystal, you just want to lie down and die. Anyway, I’d like to talk to her about it. Compare notes.” Nance giggles. “Remember how we used to trade crib notes at the back of class?”

Susan nods. What on earth is Nance talking about? The question hovers like a storm cloud, dark and foreboding, before she works up the nerve to ask. “Compare notes about what?”

Nance rolls her eyes and tokes her Kool. “About my stepfather. Stepfather, huh. I mean, Handy Andy, my new daddy-o. You know.”

“Know what?”

“For goodness sakes, Starbright. He started doing me when I was seven. Mom went out, God knows where, and he came into my bedroom. He gave me a little kiss goodnight, and then another little kiss goodnight, and then his hands were in my PJs, and then he did me. He’s been doing me on and off ever since. Oh, he slaps poor ol’ Dave around, but Handy Andy saves the very best for me, sweetheart. I mean, that’s why I had to leave.”

“Oh, Penny Lane,” Susan whispers.

“I thought you knew.”

“You never told me. You never said a word.”

Nance rubbing her crotch on the nub of her bicycle seat. Nance making angels in the snow, pumping her slim little pelvis up and down. Nance leaping from the old oak tree in Cheryl Long’s front yard, shouting, “I want to die! I want to die!” Nance dancing in the recreation room in front of Susan’s father, smiling at him as she moved her hips like a belly dancer. Daddy had frowned. Susan thought he was unfair. She still does.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart. Really, I thought you knew. That Starbright, she’s the smart one.” Nance scoots her chair next to Susan’s, circles her arm around Susan’s shoulders. “Poor Starbright,” she croons. “Daddy called her stupid for being best friends with that tramp, that no-good so-and-so. But Starbright knows very well Daddy knows she’s not stupid. And that Starbright, she is so sensitive. Mom and Daddy fight sometimes, but they’re not divorced, they would never do that. I mean, what would the neighbors think? Mom’s not very nice sometimes, but Starbright will get new clothes for the ninth grade, won’t she?”

“Stop it,” Susan says, recoiling.

“Oh, and Granma died. She loved Starbright more than anyone, but she died, anyway, and Starbright was sad. And Daddy? He works so hard, he doesn’t have time for Starbright except to yell at her and take her to France for Christmas, poor thing.”

“I said stop it, Penny Lane.”

“That’s what I said, too!” Nance mimes surprise. “When Handy Andy came to my bedroom? I said, Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.” She rocks with that awful laughter.

“I’ve got to go.” Susan stands, ready to bolt this time.

“Hey, I’m shucking you. Don’t you know when you’re being shucked? Wait, wait. Please?”

“No.” Her voice clogs in her throat. “I’ve got to be somewhere.”

“Hey, what a reunion.” Tearful eyes, a trembling lip. “Don’t you love me anymore, Starbright?” Dramatic Nance.

Susan has no answer.

“Look, I’ve got a joint,” Nance says brightly. She opens her ratty handbag and shows Susan the fat, hand-rolled cigarette tucked inside. She switches instantly to a flirty look. “Come smoke a joint with me, sweetheart? For old times’ sake?”

* * *

No pot-smoking is allowed in the Blue Unicorn Café, so Susan and Nance take the joint to the ladies’ room. They crowd into a narrow stall.

Susan stares down at the toilet bowl. The place is clean, but the porcelain is ancient, stained tobacco brown. Someone has tossed in several cigarette butts. Hot pink lipstick stains the filters. The side of the stall is covered with graffiti.

Nance tucks the joint in her mouth, pulls it over her tongue and through her lips, dampening the paper. She lights it, drags deep, and hands it to Susan.

Susan takes the joint. She’s never liked grass. She tokes, but exhales the smoke right away. As usual, the grass stings her eyes and her throat.

She hands the joint back, but Nance holds up her hand and commands, “Take another hit. Hold it in your lungs, for Pete’s sake.”

“That’s okay.” She presses the joint into Nance’s fingers. “I’m, like, allergic or something.”

Just that hit instantly slides through her consciousness, rearranging things. Righteous shit, as Professor Zoom would say. Suddenly she feels claustrophobic and paranoid in the stall. She doesn’t want to be here. The graffiti swirls. She doesn’t want to look at Nance, this bristling gaunt stranger who, with her white crew cut and lined forehead, looks much older than her fourteen years.

Nance shrugs and finishes the joint herself. With a sly smile, she blows smoke in Susan’s face. “You’re mad at me, huh.”

The words resonate and tangle, spinning off implications. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, don’t be.”

“I’m not mad at you, Penny Lane.”

“You’re the only person in the whole world I don’t want mad at me, Starbright.”

Susan wants to weep at the sorrow in her voice. Nance Payne, the pretty little dark-haired girl from Euclid Heights. The edge of mockery in her voice suggests that Susan has betrayed her, too, along with the rest of the world.

Nance unzips her jeans. “Gotta pee. All that coffee.”

Susan reaches for the bolt on the stall door, but Nance says, “It’s okay. You can stay.”

She pulls down her jeans. She wears no panties. Her thighs look like those pictures you see of starving people in Asia. She sits on the seat, tinkles, and stands. She turns around deliberately, pulling up her jeans, and Susan flinches at the dark scarlet rash starting at the middle of her thighs, dappling her pelvis to her waist.

For a moment, still reeling from that awful hit, Susan doubts her eyes. A hallucination? A trick of the light?

Nance grins at her astonishment. “Gross, huh? Don’t worry. It’s just a dose of the clap.”

“You’ve got to go to the Free Clinic! Get some medicine!”

“Oh, it looks worse than it is. Anyway, they’re too wasted to notice. They usually want to do it in the dark.”

“They? Who’s they?”

“The tricks, sweetheart, the tricks. The guys who want to do it for money.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about survival. Don’t give me that look. I never had a gig at Mr. G’s art supply store. I had no bread when I split. I just had to get away from Handy Andy, okay? How did you get to San Francisco? Did you fly? Pan Am or United? Not me. I hitchhiked, baby, inch by inch, mile by mile.” She smiles her heartbreaking smile. “It was an experience. Are you experienced?” She hums the riff from the Jimi Hendrix tune.

Susan knocks the bolt back, stumbles out of the stall. She runs to the sink, turns the knob for hot water, and watches rivulets swirling in the basin. The faucet is smudged with greasy fingerprints. Same for the plunger on the soap dispenser.

A sudden recollection of the smeary bus window assaults her the way recollections do when she’s stoned. How well she recalls peering through Chi’s scope. How Chi scolded her. Oh, Chi!

She pulls down a paper towel, wraps the towel over the plunger, and squirts a ton of soap into her palm. She scrubs her hands, turning soap and hot water around and around the way Chi uses his freaky wipes. She goes to turn off the water and stares again at the greasy knob. The smudges remind her of the rash on Nance’s thighs. She can practically see bacteria swarming all over the chrome.

And it strikes her--in one of those Summer of Love lightning flashes--that’s what Chi has been carping about. About doorknobs and bongs passed around. His clean thing. His prophylaks and wipes. He’s talking about disease.

And survival? Oh, yeah.

Suddenly she gets it. She pulls down another paper towel, uses that to turn the water knob off, and takes another towel to dry her hands. The thought of touching anything in the ladies’ room with her bare hands nearly makes her ill.

Nance bangs out of the stall. “You ever want to party with me, sweetheart, you let me know. There’s plenty of bread to be scored during the Summer of Love. I’d love to turn you on.”

“That’s not my scene,” Susan says bluntly. Who in the Haight-Ashbury can argue with that?

“Sure,” Nance says, splashing water on her hands. “I understand. I mean, why should you party with a no-good so-and-so? You don’t need to turn tricks, right? You’ve got plenty of money.”

“Penny Lane, I’m down to my last dollar. Stan the Man owes me the hundred bucks he stole from me for the dragon’s blood deal.”

“That’s really true?”

“Yes, it’s true.”

They stare at each other in the mirror over the sink.

“Tell you what.” Nance bends and pulls something out of her boot. A twenty-dollar bill. “I was saving this for a bag of doo, but I’m giving it to you.”

“No, that’s okay,” Susan says. “It’s not your responsibility.”

“My postcard brought you here. It is my responsibility.” Nance savors the word. She cocks her head at Susan as if she’s just discovered a new way to mock her.

“Penny Lane, no. Keep your money. Forget it.”

Nance’s eyes darken. She juts out her chin. “Don’t tell me to forget it. Don’t tell me I’m not responsible.”

Everything has twisted around again. Does Nance need to feel that Susan is in her debt? This strikes Susan as absolutely fair. She is in Nance’s debt. “You’re right. If it weren’t for you, Penny Lane, I wouldn’t be here at all.”

“Plus, I named you, sweetheart.”

“You did, you really did! You named me as surely as my parents once named me.”

Nance is triumphant. “I’ll get that hundred bucks for you, Starbright. I’ll get it somehow, I swear.”

Susan’s hands are reasonably clean, but now she’s got to touch the smeary door handle to get out of here. She wraps another paper towel around her hand the way Chi would wrap a prophylak.

Nance dogs her heels. “If Ruby Maverick ever kicks you out, and you need a place to stay, you come to me.” Nance seizes her shoulders and kisses her on the mouth. “You were the one thing I could care about all those years. I love you, Starbright. I’ve always loved you.”

“I love you, too.” And it’s true. Susan has always loved Nance like a sister. A weird feeling rises in her throat. As she plunges through the door, she turns back for a moment.

Hollow cheeks, hollow eyes, spare white hair, and the skinny body of a waif. Nance is a puzzle. An optical illusion of the heart. Is she a pretty young girl gazing in a mirror or a monstrous crone with death on her face?

Which are you, Nance? Which are you?

14

Piece of My Heart

Chi stalks down Haight Street, searching for her. People are buzzing about the news of the hippie murders, but that’s nothing compared to the darkness in his heart.

Some smart strategy, Chi. He thought he could play with a young girl’s heart. Starbright. So easy to win. So easy to lose.

He doesn’t give a damn about the arrest of Shank, who is a loudmouthed freak, always wasted and on the make. As for the Syndicate moving in, what do these people expect? Peace and love? Anytime there’s illegal bread to be scored--lots of it--mobsters will make the scene, sooner or later.

That’s why President Alexander decriminalized illegal drugs in 2093 and instituted the registration system, regulating the ingestion of everything from nicotine to heroin. The system took decades to become fully operational and was legally challenged during the brown ages more than once. But tax revenues in the first year financed the start-up of education and detox programs that went hand-in-hand with registration. Plenty of anti-big-government protesters objected but the good news was an effective lockdown of the borders and an end to the drug cartels freed up lots of funding to benefit American citizens and private enterprise.

Reallocation of resources from an inefficient and often corrupt criminal justice sector to the private civil sector, from black market economies to legitimate capitalist business accountable to reasonable regulation proved so successful, Chi finds it hard to believe American policy was so shortsighted for so long. In the centuries following, comicists always supported President Alexander’s vision.

He jogs all the way to Stanyan where a dozen people sprawled on the grass pass around a gallon jug of Papa Cribari, joints, and paper plates of greasy fried fish and chips. He turns right and jogs to Oak Street, starts a sweep down the Panhandle.

Of course Chi has always supported President Alexander’s vision. He’s a survivor of the world’s tragedies of the past half-millennium. A student of history with twenty-twenty hindsight. One of the superior few who finally understands how to live lightly on the Earth. If humanity cocreates reality with the Cosmic Mind, then humanity must live responsibly or die.

Yet two women of this ancient day who know nothing of these things have managed to undermine the Grandmother Principle and then—as if that isn’t enough—the theory of probability physics that’s the very foundation of t-porting. The very reason t-porting works, even if no one completely understands why. No one completely understands gravity or electromagnetism, either. But they work.

The Grandmother Principle and Schrodinger’s Cat. Are these ugly symptoms of a moral disease corrupting the very root of t-porting?

At first, Chi was furious with Ruby. She deliberately set out to sway him from the path he was required to follow. The policy under which he was expected to live for a mere seventy-six days. She laughed at his nutribeads, then tempted him with her food and wine. With the scent of frying onions and garlic toast, she broke his will. And then—when he was prime, heavy with food and slow with contentment—she broke his belief. The way you think about things shapes the way your reality is.

What does that make the Archivists, the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications, his skipparents, him? Virtual murderers of grandmothers? Theoretical Nazis conducting some terrible experiment with a gas chamber?

But it’s absurd, emotional, irrational. Scientists down the ages have toasted these chestnuts. Whoever questioned their form, their expression? Murder your own grandmother; it’s just a thought experiment. Is the cat alive or dead; it’s just a metaphor.

Chi is a shattered man. Starbright’s tears and Ruby’s anger make sense to him, however badly he wants to rationalize their reactions away.

He feels dizzy, disoriented. Another bout of tachyonic lag? He feels like that song about warm San Francisco nights—which are actually quite chilly—about how walls move and minds do, too. On the night of the riot that never happened, he saw shadows ripple across the rooftop. He saw a skull bulge out of the solid wall of a house. A wall moved.

His questions of only a week ago now take on a deeply ominous tone. Starbright has a demon double from the Other Now. Ruby does, too. And someone else in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love has a demon double. Someone else has the power to collapse the timeline. But who?

Suddenly Chi feels confused about the object of the SOL Project. He stops at the corner of Cole and cups his hand around the knuckletop. “K-T,” he whispers, hungry for probabilities. The knucketop spews out alphanumerics that make no sense. Be ready, always. Watch for Prime Probabilities. Watch for demons. Of course, of course.

Why does K-T’s readout leave him so uneasy?

As the days have drifted into August, the Summer of Love parties on. Young runaways arrive every day. The Doors, the Young Rascals, Buffalo Springfield play the Fillmore. The Diggers have started handing out free food in the Panhandle again after a hiatus of six months. Leo Gorgon is so busy with the effort, he doesn’t come around the Mystic Eye anymore. Or maybe his confrontation with Ruby on the rooftop broke apart whatever fragile relationship they had. Chi isn’t sure, but he’s very glad Gorgon is gone.

The hysterical gaiety of the Scene fails to enchant him. The costumes and dazed smiles are a gaudy mask concealing a sick face. The mouse magician is insane.

Yet he witnesses the core community fighting back. Since Shob’s murder, five hundred people gather at sunset every night in front of the Psychedelic Shop. They march from Haight Street to Hippie Hill, chanting, ringing bells, clanging cymbals, tooting flutes, strumming guitars. They carry a silk-screened banner of a scarlet phoenix rising from a bonfire. They call themselves The Flame, dedicated to preserving the spirit of the Haight-Ashbury.

Chi followed The Flame into Golden Gate Park and strode down John F. Kennedy Drive to the Portals of the Past. In the twilight, he examined the marble pillar with despair and disbelief. The glyph--that tenuous piece of evidence that’s supposed to prove he was here. There’s no glyph. No glyph, at all.

And there’s no peace at 555 Clayton. Starbright avoids him. She goes out to the Scene on her own. And Ruby? Ruby has turned cold since the night of the riot that never happened and his revelation about Schrodinger’s Cat. Chi was always the aloof one. Now she withholds herself from him. She shoos her precious cats upstairs to sleep with her instead of allowing them to drape themselves all over him on the couch. He wakes shivering in the night without those furry, purry heating pads. He’s started feeding them, refilling their water bowls, changing their litter box, even combing them for fleas in a silent apology.

Ruby doesn’t notice, or if she does, she doesn’t let on. He never realized how much strength he took from her smile. How much he took her ready generosity for granted. She doesn’t evict him from 555 Clayton but, in a thousand small ways, she’s evicted him from her heart. One night, very late, after viewing Discs 2 and 3 again, he found himself near tears. And all his anger at how Ruby tempted him, all his outrage at how she shattered his belief, dissolve into a desire to appease her.

And win Starbright back. He can’t go on if he can’t win Starbright’s heart again. He misses her trusting eyes, her wise innocence, her teasing, her hair. Yes, her beautiful long hair.

How can he prove he’s not some monster from the future with a jack in his neck? How can he prove his sincerity? Prove all of cosmicism’s sincerity? His violation of the Tenets pale next to this moral imperative: Starbright and Ruby have to believe in the future he’s transmitted across five centuries to conserve. They have to.

How can he make things right?

Chi jogs east down Oak Street along the south side of the Panhandle. Across from the corner of Clayton, little Cyn sits on the grass under the eucalyptus trees with yet another young black dude. Chi’s never seen him before, handsome in his beret and leather jacket. To Chi’s relief, he tenderly holds Cyn’s hand and gazes, rapt, at her angelic face.

“We saw her crossin’ the Panhandle an hour ago,” Cyn tells Chi.

Damn! She’s making him crazy. He can’t go on like this, searching for her through the throng just when he’s finally found her. He slows his pace as he approaches the corner of Ashbury.

And there! Crossing the block from the Panhandle, a flash of golden-brown hair in the wind. Her bobbing head, the way she’s started striding down the street with such confidence. He would know her walk anywhere.

He sprints after her. She spots him and takes off, heading south on Ashbury, flying down the block, her boot soles flipping up behind her knees. The speed of her flight shocks him. She sprints across Page Street without looking.

He chases after her, his breath tearing in his chest. He dodges oncoming traffic, nearly colliding with a flower-spattered van. The driver leans on his horn, flips him the bird.

He catches up with her at the corner of Haight and Ashbury where the Tuesday afternoon crowd slows them both down. He seizes her wrist.

“Damn it, Starbright,” he says, panting. “This isn’t a game!”

“Yes, it is,” she says. “You’re nothing but games, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. I don’t know what the demons want. I don’t know what you want. Except that you’re all using me for some game.”

“No! I don’t believe in using anyone, least of all you. Cosmicists don’t believe--”

“Oh, you and your cosmicists! You and your awful thought experiments! You’re using me. You’re using Ruby. You tell me I’m important and everything depends on me. And then you treat me like I’m. . . .just some girl.”

He takes her shoulders, she tries to twist away, but he won’t let her go. “I’m the one who’s being used in a game, Starbright. You and Ruby, you’ve taught me things I didn’t want to know. But. . . .” He searches for the right words. The right words are so important to her. “I’m glad I know what I’ve learned from you and Ruby. It does make a difference. We do make a difference. In your Now. And in mine.”

She looks away, frowning.

“You are important. That’s true, it’s not a game. And I swear I won’t let any harm come to you.”

“Because you’d look bad in front of your cosmicist friends.”

“Because I love you.”

She’s trembling, but she doesn’t try to dart away.

He takes out a wipe, blots sweat from her forehead, smoothes her hair around her face with his fingers. “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. That’s you, and only you. The first star of the evening. Starbright.”

She tosses her head and squints up at him. “You are so full of it, Chi.” But she’s grinning.

He could shout for joy. How long since he’s seen her smile?

The crowd jostles all around them, but he doesn’t notice. Someone bumps into him, a very tall, very slim, mannish woman with strawberry-blond hair and ivory skin. That famous Irish fashion model? She taps Starbright on the shoulder and says in a broque, “I say, love. Could you show me where the Psychedelic Shop is at?”

“Down the block,” Starbright says, turning to point. Suddenly, she sees something over her shoulder. She whirls. “Look! Look!”

She darts across the intersection. The Irish lass follows, striding with her to the other side of the street.

Chi jogs after both of them. Damn it, Starbright, he starts to shout, can’t you stand still for one minute? But the words stall in his throat.

He sees a knot of teenagers crossing the intersection. He sees the backs of their heads, all that sun-spangled hair blowing in the wind. He sees the cameramen walking ahead of the crowd, the producer gesturing, the sound boom and a microphone: CBS News.

Chi darts across the street, pursuing the teens. There, in the center of it all, walks a sandy-haired man, his distinguished profile clean-shaven. Starbright squeezes into the crowd behind the man’s shoulder. Her hair lifts in the breeze. They march across the intersection, posing beneath the street signs of Haight and Ashbury.

As Chi catches up, he sees the man glance at the teens walking behind him and say, “. . . .the hippie capital of the world.”

Chi cannot see Starbright’s face, only a sliver of her profile. She stands behind the sandy-haired man, tall and slim and cocky in her high-collared shirt. She nods at the camera, a quick bob, that’s all. Chi can see only a corner of her haunting smile. The cameraman beams at her, the producer nods back. The sound man is having a bit of trouble with the microphone.

It all looks so different from behind the scenes!

Chi is so ecstatic—one hundred percent! one hundred percent! one hundred percent!—that he exclaims in a voice thick with wonder and joy, “Beautiful!”

The sandy-haired man says, “I’m Harry Reasoner.”

Transcendence:

When space and time slow and hover, a convergence of light and consciousness. When the One Day shows its face behind the veil of illusion.

And you knew it. You knew it!

But then the moment flees, and you have only the memory.

Because you never did know. We only know time as a forward-moving experience.

You only know after time has passed.

She is jumping up and down, shouting, “Wow! Wow! Am I going to be on TV?”

Chi grins. “You’re going to be on TV, my love.”

“Wow! Did I look all right? Did my hair look all right?”

“You look beautiful. Your hair is beautiful.”

She prances down the street, laughing, skipping, jumping.

No, Chi never was the tall, pale, red-haired person in the background. But he did say—he has always said—“Beautiful!”

He has always run after her.

He has always taken her hand.

15

Over Under Sideways Down

When Ruby goes downtown to the San Francisco Gun Exchange to buy herself a pistol, she sees four Haightians she knows there. Why is she not surprised? The hippie drug murders--all those sordid details! in her morning newspaper!--not to mention all the break-ins and burglaries in the neighborhood have freaked out everyone awake enough to pay attention and take matters into their own hands.

The gun exchange boggles her mind. Weapons on racks are stockpiled from the floor to the twenty-foot ceiling. There are semiautomatics of every description and combat automatics, too. Hunting knives in leather cases, aristocratic fencing swords, curved sabers fit for barbarian marauders. A hard-bitten clientele slouches at the counters like regulars at a local bar, chatting, smoking Chesterfields, checking it out.

A pock-faced white dude hands her a vest-pocket Walther, watches her turn the pistol around in her hands, and says, with a gap-toothed leer, “You one a’ them Black Panther broads? Whaddaya want this piece for?”

She aims her best glare at him. “Gonna off me some stool pigeons, what do you think?”

She hefts the pistol. James Bond carries a Beretta. Stan the Man always fancied himself a hip James Bond. He took her to see Goldfinger three times, but maybe that was on account of Pussy Galore. Ruby cannot tolerate James Bond, who is more of a bumbling idiot than the publicity machine would have you believe. Well, what do you expect of a booze-soaked womanizer?

A Beretta may be good enough for James Bond, but a Walther is better for Ruby A. Maverick. The pistol is heavy, a dead weight. The high-polish blue finish and checkered grip look kind of classy. Almost makes her feel all right about buying a gun.

She goes to cashier, and damn if she doesn’t see Luther and his latest lady, Peter, and Jerry lined up in the queue. She doesn’t know Luther’s lady, a voluptuous girl with runaway eyes who gawks at the wares as if a rifle is about to hop down and blast her all by itself. The three dudes Ruby knows only too well.

Two are hip merchants of recent vintage, the third a speed dealer with a hog shop for cover. Ruby doesn’t say hello. Neither do they. They each pay their bill and hurry out.

But the neighborly pull overcomes this odd shyness. As Ruby leaves the gun exchange, she finds the quartet lingering outside on the sidewalk.

“Shob and Superspade got everybody spooked,” Peter says out of the corner of his mouth to no one in particular. With his Stetson, muttonchops, and pointy-toed boots, he’s a cosmic cowboy with a habit of staring at the clouds whenever he’s supposed to be carrying on a normal conversation with a human being.

“The Syndicate thing freaks me out,” Luther says.

“Screw the Syndicate like my shop my shop my shop got ripped off last night, man,” Jerry says. “Last night.” Jerry is a wiry little dude in a sleeveless shirt showing off the screaming eagles tattooed on his knotty biceps. “Like the second time this week, ‘n the third time in a month, ‘n the pigs don’t give a shit give a shit. Wasn’t no Syndicate did that, man. Was some freakin’ little speed speed speed freak over-ampin’, man, over-ampin’.”

“You ought to know, Jere,” Ruby says.

“Don’t see how you can bitch about that, Jere,” Luther drawls. “Karmic compensation, y’know.” Luther is one of the good ol’ boys invited to sit on the Council for a Summer of Love. He’s got the guru trip bad, wearing all white from his beaded suede headband to his ivory leather boots.

Uh-huh, Ruby thinks, holy animal skins. But she keeps her opinion to herself.

“Karmic compensation nothin’,” Jerry says. “I deal it, I ain’t payin’ payin’ payin’ for it, too, man. Ain’t gonna tolerate, ain’t gonna put up with no more rip-offs.” Jerry pulls a cheap, mean-looking revolver from his paper bag and spins the barrel, demonstrating his intent. “How about you, Ruby?”

She shows them her Walther.

Luther whistles. “You always got fine taste, Ruby.”

“Why, thank you, Luther,” she says, sweet as poison. She’s heard through the grapevine all the scorn Luther heaps on her behind her back. Uppity bitch. Wait, wait. Uppity colored bitch. He’s always been jealous of her financial acumen. Then again, Luther tokes up most of his profits and, guru that he is, turns on his friends as well--friends being defined as whoever is cool in the tribal echelons of the Haight-Ashbury and whoever he’s balling. He’s never got much bread left over for small matters like his employees’ salaries or the quality of his inventory, let alone donations to the Free Clinic. “Anybody looks cross-eyed at me, sonny,” Ruby tells him, “blam blam blam!”

They all laugh, but the sound rings untrue, like the clapper in the cracked bell of liberty. It’s the Summer of Love, and graffiti is stenciled in red paint on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of America on Haight Street:

And hip people who celebrate the infinite holiness of life are buying guns.

Dig it:

You want to know why the Establishment media is so pleased with all this bad news? Why they salivate over each and every gory detail and parade scary headlines about the pathetic murders of two dope dealers who don’t amount to a hill of beans while thousands of young men are dying in Vietnam?

Because this kind of news means the hip community is as bad as the Establishment always said. It means the New Explanation is as corrupt as the rest of the morally bankrupt world, maybe more so, due to false pretenses. The personal revolution can assert no valid ideals, provide no guidance to the disaffected youth of America, offer no alternatives. The hip community has failed. They have failed.

Fog rolls in, casting a cold gray shroud over the street. Luther is a bigot and a misogynist, Luther’s lady is a silly fool, Jerry is a speed freak and a pusher, and Peter is just plain weird. Ruby doesn’t like any of them. She owes them nothing.

She says, “Want a ride?”

Luther’s lady dips into her handbag, pulls out an abalone shell, and offers it to Ruby with a shy smile. Luther takes off his beaded suede headband and hands it over. Jerry slips her a plastic baggie with a couple of amphetamine tabs, which she promptly dumps in the gutter. Peter actually looks at her and says, “Gee, thanks, Ruby,” and she notices for the first time Peter is cross-eyed.

They all pile in her Mercedes, and Ruby takes them home.

Grandmother Says: Ku (Decay)

The Image: The wind blows low on the mountain. When the wind blows low, it is thrown back and spoils the vegetation. But if the wind rises, it dispels the despoliation.

The Oracle: Work on what has decayed brings supreme success.

It furthers one to undertake great tasks, but great tasks take time and patience.

What has been spoiled through the fault of humanity may be made good again through humanity’s work. Corruption occurs not due to immutable fate, but by the abuse of human freedom, indifference, and inertia. Ascertain the causes of corruption; thus begin again with deliberation. Ascertain whether the new way brings renewal; thus examine your path after you have embarked upon it.

Hexagram 18, The I Ching or Book of Changes

Broken glass. Shards scattered on the deck, a hole in the window. That’s what Ruby sees first. The kitchen door cracked open like a wound.

Her heart clenches. Every superstition she’s ever held about having a gun leaps to mind—if you own one, you’ll attract bad energy and sure as hell you’ll wind up having to use it—instantly proving their truth. She draws the Walther, hands shaking so hard she couldn’t hit the side of a barn. She swings the door open, cursing the squeak she never got around to oiling, and creeps inside.

A man bends over her turntable in the living room, plucking plugs from the wall socket. On the floor, by his feet, lies the disconnected amplifier, plus one of her speakers.

“I’ve got a gun. So you can stop what you’re doing right now, sonny, and turn around, nice and slow.”

He turns around. Gorgon’s face is a mask, deadpan, dead. A scrap of paper falls from his hand to the floor.

“Leo!” She stares. She knows that look, grim purpose chiseled in crystallized flesh. She glances at his arms, but his shirtsleeves go to his wrists. She can’t see his tracks. Doesn’t matter. She knows. And it’s terrible, like a death and a grieving. Not Gorgon, she thinks. Not Gorgon and junk.

Uh-huh, Gorgon.

She pulls herself up all her nearly six feet. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Leo?”

“I’m liberatin’ your stereo for the revolution.”

“What revolution?”

He shrugs. “You can only be free if you live outside the private property premise of this lousy country. If you participate in that, you change nothin’.”

“What are you changing by stealing my stereo?”

He shrugs again. “The love shuck changes nothin’. We must destroy the United States of America.”

“My pa died for the United States of America. He was half Cherokee.”

“He died for nothin’. He was a stupid redskin who died for a shuck.”

“Don’t you dare call my pa stupid!”

“You understand nothin’ of the dialectics of liberation. You’re one of the oppressors.”

“Oppressor, uh-huh. I got me a business, sonny. Thanks to my ma and my pa and working hard, I got my own little piece of free enterprise. I don’t call that oppression. I call that success.”

“Oh, you got yours,” he says sardonically. “You got yours, Ruby A. Maverick.”

Without taking her eyes off him, she stoops and retrieves the scrap of paper.

SHUCKING THE REVOLUTION

YOU WILL PAY, CAPITALIST PIG

BE ADVISED

“You!” Her head suddenly throbs in syncopation with the pounding of her heart. “Taking me to bed, and messing with my head. Why?”

“Why? Because you are. You are a capitalist pig, with your kraut car an’ your metaphysics shuck an’ your bank account.”

“I’m putting up a runaway and a tourist in my home for free. I’m feeding people. I donate to the Free Clinic. I—”

“Screw your charity. You’re not changin’ things with your charity. You say you’re not Standard Oil, but you’re wrong. I’ve seen your trip with my own eyes, that’s why. You’re no different, that’s why. When the revolution comes, I’ll be after you with a gun.” He grins. “You’ll be the first one I off.”

She’s speechless for one of the rare moments in her life. She thinks of Chi and his self-righteous cosmicists with their domes and gardens, their sky-seeding and telespace. Their anger at the past.

Do the Leo Gorgons of the world tear down the United States of America in 1967? By 2467?

No. Somewhere, in between all these polarities, there has got to be a New Explanation. Will the comicists arrive at it? Maybe, maybe not. But at least they’re still searching, after five hundred years.

She shakes with fury. “Right now, I got the gun, and your revolution is a shuck, Leo Gorgon. Get out of my house and never come back.”

He eyes the gun, eyes her. Can he take it away? Will he try? But no, he’s got the shakes. Sweat beads on his forehead. From his habit, not fear of her and her gun.

He goes, banging the kitchen door.

She runs after him, locks the door up tight. She returns to her ravaged living room. Her cats slink out of the twilight shadows where they’ve been hiding and wrap themselves around her ankles, mewing in distress.

She sits heavily on the couch and raises the Walther. So strange to see her hand gripping this alien scrap of metal, knuckles taut. The blue finish gleams. Only then does she realize she never loaded the magazine. The gun is empty, a husk, without a means to its end.

* * *

Capitalist pig. After her with a gun. After their afternoons in her sun-dappled bed. Broken glass, broken door. A door she opened to him freely with her own hand.

Her sense of violation is so complete that another door opens to another room. A room she’s shut in a past she’s locked away. T-porting in her memory, images of ancient light flash faster than a heartbeat.

He stands before her, big as life. Long dead.

Roi.

Her skinny girl-arm was frail next to his when they pushed back their sleeves and compared. She’d envied his skin--like chocolate or coffee or blackjack toffee. Good things, fragrant and rich.

But Roi had laughed at her, slapped her fingers away. Already bitter at age nine, he was far wiser than she could know at six. “You practically white, girl. You got no nose.” He’d tweaked it, provoking her giggle. “You an angel, Ruby. You blessed.”

But she didn’t see her blessing when Pa was killed at Pearl Harbor in ’41, and Ma went to work at Marinship, burying her grief in the great battleships like the asbestos she installed in their inner works. Ruby came home from school to canned peas and potted meat left out for her supper ‘cause Ma was working, always working beneath the pall of dread cast over everyone by the war.

Ruby remembers waiting for Ma to finish her shift late one Saturday afternoon. You couldn’t call it playing. She huddled outside the door of a ship’s engine room with a Superman comic book and a teddy bear and tried to understand the ache in her heart. Why Pa wasn’t ever coming home. Why Ma sat up with a whiskey bottle when she did come home, her face slack, her eyes blurred.

Ruby remembers that engine room as clear as day. She peeked through a window in that door. And it was snowing in the room! Like in Nanook of the North or The Gold Rush. There stood her mother and her coworkers, four women of color, trim and purposeful in their white overalls, bandanas wrapped around their hair, their lipsticked mouths like ripe fruit. They were haughty toward other Marinship workers. Asbestos installation was a plum job compared to welding or riveting, clean and easy on the bones. Her mother and her coworkers were quick and efficient, deft with their hands. They pushed the slabs of asbestos up, panting with exertion, mouths open while they worked, catching white flakes on their tongues like children gobbling a fresh snowfall.

Roi’s mother took her brother’s death as hard as Ma, maybe harder. When the notice came he was gone, Aunt Clarice took to steady drink. She spiraled down a well of despair and never came back up. Clarice and Roi lived in Hunter’s Point, another black ghetto like Marin City spawned by the war and its temporary industries, its greed for cheap labor. Marin City was nothing like Hunter’s Point, though, another of Ruby’s advantages Cousin Roi came to hold against her. Worse than the Fillmore or East Oakland, Hunter’s Point fell idle at the end of the war. If you could, you got out. If you couldn’t, you got down.

You blessed, Roi had told her. In time, Ruby came to see it.

Ma did well at Marinship. She learned how to tell her coworkers what the boss wanted them to do. When the shipyard shut down, she was offered office work at the construction company that had run the yard. Ma took shorthand at night, learned how to use a Dictaphone, bought a black ’47 Ford, and commuted to the gleaming corporate skyscraper in the city. She bought Ruby new fashions every school year and saved up money for her college.

Aunt Clarice and Cousin Roi moved from a modest house in Hunter’s Point to a modest apartment, to a lousy apartment, to a dive.

Ruby grew up fast as the daughter of a working single mother in the late forties. She suffered acute shame for not having a father. Everyone had a father. Children borrowed much of who they were from their fathers. The doctor’s daughter was bossy and vain, the office clerk’s son meek and obedient. “You be you, Ruby,” Ma told her when she came home from school in tears. But, at the time, that hadn’t been good enough. “All right,” Ma said. “Your pa was a hero. You’re the daughter of a hero.”

Graduating Tamalpais High with honors, Ruby was accepted by Mills College, a prestigious women’s school in Oakland. Ma took a lover, Mr. Ben, a bearded bohemian who lived in Berkeley and talked about a spiritual philosophy called Zen. Dig it: Ruby was blessed.

But Cousin Roi was not blessed. Ma didn’t approve of Clarice and her dissolute ways. Years went by, and Ruby didn’t see that side of the family. Roi grew up wild and mean. When she was in her freshman year, reading James Joyce and Galaxy and listening to Mr. Ben and his hip-bop talk, Roi was out of school. Way out. Doing the junkie scene with a gangster lean.

She was nineteen when she saw him again. A Fourth of July family picnic at Lake Merritt was a halfhearted affair, tense with unspoken accusations and stored-up grief. From the start, Ma was clucking her tongue. It shocked Ruby to see how dark Roi had become—not his skin. Anger and meanness came off him like a cold wind.

Yet his darkness and his danger seduced her. In a blinding knife-stroke, she fell for him hard.

They secretly rendezvoused in San Francisco, since Ma forbade her to see him. He was sardonic, with an edge of wit. He squired her into tinselly downtown bars that checked his ID, but not hers. He was cool, carved in ebony. In their first days together, he kept a leash on his habit and boasted of his control. In their next days together, he began to call horse she, talked all the time about her. Like she was a fickle woman tugging at his heart, not a life-destroying drug.

Ruby turned twenty, a haughty and imperious age. She read Satre at school, Beat poetry and If at home, and followed news accounts of the civil rights movement in the South. She fell in with the Berkeley crowd, the North Beach crowd. She grew tired of tinselly downtown bars.

One night, she attained an enlightenment. Cousin Roi was beyond changing, and so was she. She could never tolerate the gangster life, let alone surrender to junk. She confessed to Ma, who told her in no uncertain terms to break it off. She hadn’t really rebelled, just disagreed. She didn’t disagree anymore.

The day Ruby broke it off, Roi was on the yen. Grim purpose chiseled in crystallized flesh. That deadpan look, already dead. Wanting her. Needing her. Do anything for her. In his room in Hunter’s Point, he got crazy. Bad-crazy. Incest never crossed Ruby’s mind. Only how much she’d once wanted him, and he’d refused to touch her, his pretty cousin. And how much she now wanted to leave his room and never come back. He was rough, but that wasn’t so bad. What she hated most was that he was too damn late.

Ruby shuts this t-port down, slowing the recalled light and shadows to the rhythm of her heart. Slow it down, sweet Isis, shut it down.

Roi died two days later. They found him on the third day. His death was banal. An OD in an alley with a pin of bad horse behind his knee.

In the end, it wasn’t so bad that they were first cousins, forbidden to each other. It was bad he’d fallen to junk, but, grieving over the life he’d had to live, she found herself forgiving that, too. No, what was bad—really bad—was that she was pregnant. What was worse, it was 1953, and she went to Doc Clyde for an afternoon of rose gardening.

“Ah, Roi,” she whispers, guilt so sharp it still carves her heart. Twilight shadows merge with the night. “Does anyone ever really change anyone?”

She decided she could not have Roi’s baby. Not another child without a father. Not the child of a father who was never a hero. Not the child of an incestuous rape.

These are strange and wondrous days, Ruby sniffs. Her daughter would have been fourteen years old during the Summer of Love.

* * *

She is sitting in the dark when Chi and Starbright clatter in and flick on the lights. They are arguing about something, whether the broadcast will run tonight or sometime later, which makes no sense. The youngsters have been estranged for over a week, but now they move together with an easy grace. Peace restored, apparently. Starbright cautious, Chi eager. Their reconciliation makes Ruby feel instantly better.

“Oh, Ruby!” Starbright cries. “Are you all right?”

The scattered stereo equipment. The look on her face. Ruby slips the Walther in her jacket pocket.

Starbright drops to her feet and hugs Ruby’s knees, nestling her head on Ruby’s lap.

Ruby cherishes the gesture, but it is too charged with meaning and too confusing. Is she yearning for her lost daughter?

Gently pushing the kid away, she comes to a decision. She doesn’t have to answer that question right now. It’s the Summer of Love. It’s all right to wonder who you are. She smiles at Starbright’s puzzled look and brushes a lock of hair behind the kid’s ear. “I’m all right. I’m fine.” She waves at the equipment on the floor. “Leo Gorgon paid us a visit. Something about liberating my stereo for the revolution. He’s gone for good.”

“I’ll take care of it, Ruby,” Chi says. He shrugs off his jacket and sets about restoring the equipment on her shelves.

Starbright snuggles up to Ruby’s feet again, and takes Alana and Luna in her lap. The cats purr and preen. Stubborn girl, just like Ruby used to be. All right, then. Ruby lets her stay.

Chi finishes reconnecting everything and sits in the rocking chair, watching Ruby, the kid, and the cats. Face downcast, he heaves a great sigh. They haven’t sat here together, family-like, for some time.

He says, “Ruby, listen.”

“Oh, no,” she says. “I don’t want to listen to you anymore. I don’t want to hear about all the terrible mistakes we’re making.”

The elegant lad squirms in his Beatle boots. “But, Ruby.”

“Don’t you ‘but Ruby’ me. I don’t want to hear about how selfish we are. We’re wasteful, we’re stupid, we’re violent. I don’t think you’ve got an exclusive on how screwed up everyone and everything is in 1967.”

“Please, listen,” Chi says. “I’m trying to make this right.”

“No, no, you’re right to be angry at us, man from Mars. I would be, in your pretty boots. Everything poisoned. Ice ages, brown ages. I don’t blame you, Chi, really I don’t. I envy your superior point-of-view. I envy your genius. I envy that you can look at us with five hundred years of perspective and know we’re worse than we could have ever imagined.”

“No! Don’t envy me,” Chi says. “You’re the ones who’ve shown me how little we know. We need you. I need you. I need you to believe in the future. To believe in us, the people of the future.”

“You’re mad at us,” Starbright whispers. “You hate us.”

“We don’t hate you. And we can claim no more genius than what you possess. Listen,” he says painfully. “We’ve made mistakes, too. We made a terrible mistake. It was called the Save Betty Project.”

* * *

It was 2466, and a robust woman of sixty-four in the prime of her youth named J. Betty Turner was deeply involved in t-port projects for the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications. She helped develop the Tenets of the Grandmother Principle. She was a key adviser to the Chief Archivist.

Chi sighs. “Betty was a great lass. She loved hummingbirds, funded restoration of twenty premillennium species in a habitat at New Golden Gate Preserve. I loved her. Everyone did. She had this laugh.”

Since Betty had started on the ground floor of t-porting, she felt she had a right to try the ride out for herself. She had a right, and she had a reason. An old sorrow, a secret that haunted her.

When Betty was a girl of fourteen—a spoiled cosmicist child, she was the first to admit—she was given a whirligig, and she’d had an accident.

She’d been flying downtown in a proper skyway. But she was barely old enough to qualify as a pilot and giddy with her new toy. A sudden gust tilted the whirligig, she didn’t know how to stabilize the thing, and her blades struck an old devolt woman in the chest, mortally wounding her.

If only she’d pulled up in time. If only she’d flown in a different skyway. If only the woman had stepped back from the curb by half a stride at that precise moment, Betty wouldn’t have killed her.

But none of those probabilities happened. She killed a woman. The accident haunted and depressed her for fifty years.

Betty asked to t-port to the day of the accident. At last, she’d have a chance to make things right. If changing one small sad moment didn’t affect the timeline, why couldn’t Betty go and save the woman’s life? Pull her back from the curb, out of harm’s way?

The Archivists set to work. The accident had occurred only fifty years before, but the Archives were surprisingly dim. So many devolts had wandered around downtown those days and died of disease or exposure. The woman had carried no identification. Police had whisked her body off to the morgue as one of many Jane Does. No one claimed her, no one mourned her, no one sued Betty’s family for wrongful death.

Nothing of any consequence had happened, except to Betty’s heart and soul. If she couldn’t dispel the guilt of fifty years, then at least she could find peace of mind for her next seventy.

Betty wanted to do it. She needed to do it. So the LISA techs set up a tachyonic shuttle at Ghirardelli Square, and Betty transmitted. The t-port was to last only seven hours in the past. Plenty of time for Betty to hike downtown, pull the devolt away from her youthful blades, and hike back to the t-shuttle. She took nutribeads, full identification, prophylaks, and wipes.

Seven hours later, the LISA techs waited for J. Betty Turner at Ghirardelli Square. The Chief Archivist and her ferrets stood with their knuckletops around the photon guns, the half-moon of imploders. The awesome dish of the chronometer hummed softly. They stood, whispering and waiting, delighted they’d done the right thing. They’d used a powerful new technology for a harmless purpose. A humane and beautiful purpose.

But Betty did not step back.

“We perceive time as a forward-moving experience,” Chi says. “A successful t-port works because it’s an OTL. An Open Time Loop.”

He whispers “Katie” to his magic ring. The field of lavender light pops up in the palm of his hand. This time, instead of concealing the field, Chi turns his hand so Ruby and the kid can see the light plainly.

A drawing made of glowing red lines floats in the light:

“An OTL,” Chi says, “works with the timeline because the t-porter keeps moving forward, according to normal perception.”

“What about memory?” Ruby asks.

“Memory preserves information so you can move forward.”

“What about a transcendental moment? Cosmic consciousness? What Aldous Huxley describes in Doors of Perception?”

“That’s not normal consciousness. If you only perceived time with cosmic consciousness, you’d see your whole life all at once, you couldn’t function, and reality wouldn’t matter.”

“Reality is nothing,” Starbright says, nodding.

Ruby slaps her shoulder. “Since when?”

“That’s what Professor Zoom says.”

Chi whispers to the ring again. “Because we normally perceive time as a forward-moving experience, the great danger, the terrible danger, for a t-porter is death in the past.”

Now the glowing red lines rearrange themselves:

“This,” Chi whispers, “is a CTL. A Closed Time Loop. When a t-porter is caught in a CTL, she is born in her personal Now, transmits to the past, dies, is born in her personal Now, transmits to the past, dies.” Chi rubs his forehead. “And so on and so on. Forever.”

The LISA techs realized Betty had been caught in a CTL the moment she failed to step through the t-shuttle. The Chief Archivist was horrified. She fired her number one ferret, promoted number two, and sent him and a staff of fifty to recheck the data.

They discovered that the day of the accident had been violent. Several armed robberies with aggravated assault were reported along Montgomery Street that afternoon. The old woman who young Betty thought was a devolt could have been anyone.

A t-porter, for instance, roughed up and stripped of her identification. Disoriented, maybe. Disfigured from a beating.

Her.

“She was caught, you see, in the worst kind of CTL. A CTL within her personal past,” Chi says. “This is what Betty went through.”

“Katie, off,” he whispers and snaps his hand shut. The lavender field disappears.

“So she killed herself,” Ruby whispers, “and she had to keep killing herself, living out the guilt, and going back to die, over and over.”

Chi nods. “The Save Betty Project won instant support. Everyone agreed—Betty herself would have agreed—that they couldn’t change the fact of her death. What they could change was when. They could save Betty from the CTL by bringing her through the shuttle to die in her personal Now.”

“And then it would be over?” Starbright says.

“It would be over. Oh, the LISA techs were careful.” Chi stands and paces across the living room. “They sent a t-porter to the day of the accident. He stole her body from the ambulance, carried her back to Ghirardelli Square, and transmitted her before she died. She looked like an old devolt by then. But she died in her Now. She died in peace, never to return to that awful past. The Chief Archivist cried for weeks.”

He falls silent.

“Then you did the righteous thing,” Ruby says gently. “How was that a mistake?”

Chi takes a breath. “No one knows how a CTL forms. A CTL has no beginning and no end and lasts forever. It pollutes the timeline. Theoretically, there is no escape. But we helped Betty escape. We broke the CTL. And the moment we broke it, the Prime Probability of when Betty died collapsed out of the timeline. The Archivists traced the Crisis to that Event—when Betty died. We tore a hole in spacetime.”

“Tore a hole,” Ruby says, appalled.

“We brought the Crisis on ourselves,” Chi says miserably. “And we brought the Crisis on you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean to.”

Ruby ought to feel vindicated, but she doesn’t. She ought to say “I told you so,” but she doesn’t. She stands and gives Chi a great big hug. Starbright throws her arms around them both.

“I forgive you, man from Mars,” Ruby says. “And I forgive you future people, but on one condition.”

“What’s that?” His look of relief clouds.

“You’ve got to forgive us, too. It’s a two-way street, this reality game, isn’t that what you’ve said? We perceive time as forward-moving, but that is an illusion. Not the true nature of reality. Right, am I right?”

“Yes,” he says warily. “Now is always Now. The One Day always Is.”

“The One Day, uh-huh. Then when you transmit back to your Now, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, you tell everyone over there we need their forgiveness as much as you need ours.”

He nods gravely, and he and Starbright exchange a look. A longing look, filled with uncertainty.

Ruby doesn’t know what to make of that, but she laughs. “Well, don’t look so blue, you two. This is beautiful. Today is Cosmic Mind Day! Let’s celebrate. Kid, go get us our favorite sherry.”

Starbright dashes to the kitchen, but pops in again much too soon, her eyes wide and frightened.

Two shadows follow her. Ruby sits up, Chi does, too, and she sees the gleam of the switchblade before she sees their ugly mugs.

“Kitchen door,” Starbright whispers. “Jimmied open.”

Stovepipe flicks his gaze around Ruby’s living room. “Some pad. So this is how you blew our seven grand.”

A quick dart, and the Lizard wraps his arm around Starbright’s waist, dangling the switchblade in front of her face. “You got lots of friends on the scene, Ruby Maverick. They know where you live.”

“Maser’s in my pocket,” Chi says casually to Ruby. His jacket lies crumpled across the room by the stereo shelves where he left it.

“You shut up,” the Lizard says to Chi.

“Starbright is not a dealer,” Ruby says. “We are not dealers.”

“When he says shut up, shut up,” Stovepipe snaps.

“She was just a runner,” Chi says to Stovepipe. “She had nothing to do with the deal.”

Ruby stares at Chi, astonished, then at Starbright, horrified. “You did pass dope to these morons?”

The kid nods, terrified but resolute. “Stan used me,” she tells Stovepipe. “He ripped me off for bread, too.”

“That’s right,” Chi says. Sweat pops out of his brow. “Stan’s the one you want, man. I’ve been after him for weeks. You think you’re ticked off.”

Stovepipe trades looks with the Lizard. The Lizard jerks the edge of the switchblade against the kid’s throat. She whimpers.

Pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

“That’s right, Stan the Man is the one you want,” Ruby says coolly. She slowly gets to her feet, calculating how long it will take Chi to retrieve his jacket. “Don’t you know who Stan is? He’s the manager of the Double Barrel Boogie Band. You know their house? Stan’s always got plenty of dope and cash around there. You want your money and your revenge, you go on over to the Double Barrel house.”

Stovepipe nods, but the Lizard is having none of it. “I don’t dig this, man. They gotta be taught a lesson. Them and their friends. Nobody screws with us.”

“Haw,” Stovepipe chuckles.

The Lizard presses the blade. Starbright closes her eyes.

Ruby swings the Walther from one pocket, the magazine from the other pocket. In one stroke, she clips in the magazine the way the gun dealer showed her, and aims at the Lizard’s face.

“Let her go, sonny, or I’ll blow your ugly head off.”

“Haw, haw,” Stovepipe guffaws. “She’s a love shucker, man. She won’t shoot,” he says to the Lizard. “Go ahead, teach the stupid chick a lesson.”

Ruby fires.

The bullet grazes the Lizard’s ear, which sprays blood all over his shoulder. He makes no sound, but drops the switchblade and claps his hand to the side of his head.

Ruby suddenly understands the graffiti stenciled on the sidewalk. A bullet shot in the air comes down somewhere. You better believe it.

Chi scrambles across the living room for his jacket, the maser.

Stovepipe scoops up the switchblade, seizes the Lizard by his elbow, and hustles them both out the kitchen door.

Ruby chases after them.

They clatter down the back stairs, disappearing into the night. Police sirens wail, and bongo drums beat.

A woman is shouting, “It’s hard, it’s hard, it’s so damn hard!”

Chi comes and helps her back inside and bolts the door shut.

The damp night makes her throat sore. But will Ruby ever stop shouting?

August 28, 1967

Chocolate George’s Wake

16

Penny Lane

Badger and the Bear clink cans of Coors and chugalug beer in one great swallow. Foam streams from their mouths, drenching their beards and dappling their denim vests that say Hells Angels on the back. Badger tosses his can over his shoulder. The Bear crushes his in his fist. They each reach for another from the tub of ice at the back of the funeral parlor, pop the tops with a church key, and guzzle.

Susan claps her hands and cheers. Chi folds his arms over his chest and scowls. She loves it when he gets hassled by funky old 1967. She threads her hand through the crook of his arm and finds his hand. He wears no prophylak, ha!

“We’ve got to go to Chocolate George’s wake,” she whispers as they stand at the back of the Daphne Funeral Home behind a hundred Hells Angels in full colors and their old ladies in ratted hairdos. “We’re talking about political solidarity.”

After the private funeral service for Charles George Hendricks, Jr., also known as Chocolate George, there will be a wake at Lindley Meadow. The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Double Barrel Boogie Band are playing. It will be a scene. The last big scene of the Summer of Love.

Susan got an invite to Chocolate’s funeral on account of her chalk drawing at the corner of Haight and Shrader. She’d been practicing hands after Chi bought her Gray’s Anatomy and was finally getting them right, thumb and all, when she heard the news. She went down to the spot where Chocolate died and drew a portrait as best as she could recall him--his dark eyes, his fur hat. She drew him astride a horse with wings, one hand holding the reins, the other extended in a peace sign. As an afterthought, she drew motorcycle wheels where horse’s hooves would be, which wound up looking kind of weird. Hairy Harry, one of Chocolate’s best brothers, saw her squatting on the sidewalk, putting the finishing touches on her masterpiece.

The day after, Sonny Barger, president of the California chapter, rumbled by on his hog as she and Chi strolled in the park. He threw an invite at her and sped away.

“Political solidarity, my ass,” Chi whispers back. He’s so tall, the Angels don’t try to bully him and, anyway, they all know he’s Susan’s old man. But his hand is ice-cold in hers. “That’s revolutionary-for-the-weekend shuck, Starbright, and you know it. Don’t get radical with me.”

He glares at the barbarian horde. Isn’t that just like Chi, uptight about the least little thing, though a shiver needles down her spine, too. The air seems thicker around a hundred Hells Angels. They bend the light, like demons of this Now. They are ripe with funk, boasting great unkempt beards and an inimitable attitude.

At the front of the funeral parlor, Chocolate George lies in state, white as wax, as noble in his final repose as a Cossack prince. His fur hat covers his shattered skull where he hit the pavement after colliding with a tourist’s Ford sedan at one in the morning. Quarts of his namesake and favorite beverage—chocolate milk—line the coffin. His wife sits in the front pew, her bowed head covered by a black lace mantilla. His seven children—Chocolate had seven kids!—sit behind a screen that shields them from the rest of the rowdy congregation.

“Revolutionary shuck,” she scolds Chi. “You sound just like Ruby.”

“It’s not political solidarity. It’s a party. A Hells Angels party. We don’t have to go. I don’t think we should. You want to run into Stovepipe and the Lizard? That’s just the sort of scene they’d make.”

“But Chi, Parks and Recreation is trying to ban free music in the park. We should go show our support. The ban is an attack on the Haight-Ashbury. On our right to be free.” It’s strange and exciting to feel like an outlaw for wanting to dance in the park.

“Your right to be free,” he says sarcastically. “What about the interests of the people who live by the park? What about the noise? Trespassers trampling and littering their lawns? See, every time you talk about your freedom, you have to consider the next person’s freedom.” His voice is growing so loud, an Angel lady standing next to them in her leather bra, jeans, and cowboy boots shoots him a poisonous look. He lowers his voice. “There’s got to be a balance. The cosmicists—”

“Chi, it’s the last free concert of the Summer of Love. I want to hear the Dead. I want to hear Big Brother. I even want to hear the Double Barrel Boogie Band. I haven’t heard them play in ages. Besides, Penny Lane might be there. I really need to see her.”

Since their meeting at the Blue Unicorn Café, Nance has avoided her. Her promise to get the rest of Susan’s money from Stan, forgotten. Susan doesn’t care whether Nance gets her money. She cares about the way things have turned out. Nance was the reason she ran away to the Haight-Ashbury. Nance was the spark. The inspiration. And she’s seen her friend only twice during the Summer of Love.

Just one more time. If she could see Nance just one more time, maybe she could make something right out of the bad feeling between them.

Chi refuses to meet her pleading eyes.

“Be that way,” she says, pouting. She kicks at the hem of the long, black velvet dress she bought at Mnasidika with her last twenty bucks. The twenty bucks, she realizes with a twinge of guilt, that Nance gave her at the Blue Unicorn. “I’ll go by myself. I’m not afraid.”

But she knows her threat is empty. She goes nowhere without Chi by her side. He won’t let her, not until the Hot Dim Spot closes and no more Prime Probabilities can collapse. He says the Dim Spot will close any day now. But until it does, she’s in constant danger. The nearer they approach the closing, the more dangerous things become.

Susan finally feels the truth of it. Chi’s paranoia is contagious. He even stands outside the bathroom while she bathes. “You okay?” he says through the door from time to time. “Why don’t you come in and see for yourself?” she calls from the shower. Naughty. But he’s so respectful, she can’t help but tease him. He even curls up on blankets outside her room while she sleeps. Ruby raises her eyebrows, but says nothing.

Susan is convinced: reality could shake loose at any moment. A hole in spacetime, caused by a t-port gone wrong in the future, could let in the Other Now. And that demon? It’s coming for her.

But what about the night Stovepipe and the Lizard broke into Ruby’s kitchen and held a switchblade to her throat? Why didn’t the demon manifest then?

“Ruby had a gun,” Chi said, not meeting her eyes. Meaning he’s trying to sound as if he knows the answer, but he’s really not sure. “We know from the Archives a lot of local people were buying guns because of the murders of Shob and Superspade, rising burglaries, general apprehension. So Ruby was part of a macro trend. Probability physics supports the notion that Prime Probabilities are reduced in the presence of a macro.”

“He held a knife to my throat! I felt the blade!”

“Yes, but because of the macro, the event didn’t generate enough uncertainty to attract your demon. Even though the Lizard seemed threatening.”

“Seemed threatening! I was terrified!”

He took her hand and kissed it. “Let me tell you a story. One day I went to a track to see a podbot race. A field of twelve bots, really beautiful craftwork. There was a titanium sphere with two dozen hoofs sticking out in every direction. A one-legged hopper with a foot like a giant duck. A couple of quadpods, one styled like a unicorn, the other a chimera. The sun shone through the dome. And they were off! The sphere and the unicorn raced neck and neck. Something like neck and neck. But just before the finish line, a flagpole on the railing cast a shadow across the track. The sphere leapt over that shadow! Its perceptuals thought the shadow was real. It leapt and it stumbled and it lost by a nose. Something like a nose. I’ll never forget that. It leapt over a shadow, and it lost the race.” He shook his head. “Lost me a bundle, too.”

Susan got angry. “A switchblade at my jugular vein is not a shadow, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco!”

“But in this timeline, it was, Starbright. It was just like that shadow.”

What is just a shadow, Susan wonders now, and what will really slit your throat?

Sonny Barger strides to the front of the funeral parlor and stands beside the coffin. He gestures for silence. “See, I’m gonna rap about the future. The outlaw of a fat society, man, is the dude of the future.”

“Tell it, Sonny!”

“What they call the rugged individualist is the cat who is our next hero. Dig Caesar. Dig Napoleon. Dig Alexander the Great.”

“Great balls o’ fire!”

“Those cats were outlaws,” Barger says. “They, like, took over and ruled the world, man.”

“Right,” Chi whispers. “A scheming politician, a voracious general, and a brutal conqueror.”

“Ssh!” Susan and the Angel lady hiss at him in unison.

“So wherever you are now, brother George,” Barger says, “ramble on, man. Ramble on.”

“Chocolate was cool,” Susan whispers to Chi. “He never hurt anyone. I heard he volunteered at the Recreation Center for the Handicapped.”

“Volunteered twelve years,” the Angel lady snaps. “He loved them little kids. He’d trash anyone who laid a hand on ‘em.”

Sonny Barger bends over the coffin and kisses Chocolate George’s cheek. Then, with scattered grumbling and nervous giggling, grim mouths and hard eyes, the Angels and their ladies file past the coffin. Some touch or kiss the corpse and lay more things inside the coffin. When Susan files past to pay her last respects, she sees joints and tabs and pints of Wild Turkey, flowers, a switchblade and a pair of brass knuckles. How she remembers the barbarian in the fur hat that first day of the Summer of Love who sang to her, “First there is a Starbright.” She tucks her tribute in the coffin: a Hershey’s milk-chocolate kiss.

* * *

The mile-long phalanx of Harley-Davidson motorcycles follows the hearse out to Cypress Lawn Memorial Park. There they bury Chocolate George with a priest and everything, then parade back to San Francisco. With a growling racket, the hogs wind up and down Dolores Street past ancient palm trees and frightened senoras peeking through their curtains of Spanish lace.

Susan sits on Chi’s lap in the front seat of the Diggers’ green truck. Gorgon’s pal Cowboy is driving. The flatbed is filled with shaved ice and what looks like a million cans of beer. By the time they arrive at Golden Gate Park, a thousand people are milling around the gentle hills of Lindley Meadow.

One hill has been staked out by Hells Angels, Gypsy Jokers, Vagabonds, Nomads, Cossacks, Satan’s Slaves, and Misfits. On another hill linger hip folk in their own version of colors, toking, tripping, tooting flutes, ringing cow bells. The Diggers and other tribal chiefs hold court there: Charlie, the Hun, A.J., Slim Jim, and Luther.

Chi helps her down from the truck and takes her hand.

Badger and the Bear seize fists of ice from the flatbed and pelt each other with snowballs. Gypsy Jokers join the fracas. Beer is shaken and spewed from cans, punches thrown. Two cops stop and step out of their patrol car, but keep their distance, surveying the scene through their sunglasses. The tension is as thick as the herbal smoke wafting down from Hippie Hill.

The Grateful Dead ride in like royalty atop an Avis rental truck. Big Brother rolls up. And there, the blue clouds of the Double Barrel van. An electric guitar shrieks, drums roll, a cymbal crashes, trailing off in a sound like waves on a beach. The snowball fight abruptly ends. People start to dance.

Excitement prickles Susan’s spine. She’s filled with that sense of magic and destiny she’s felt only in the Haight-Ashbury. The last free concert of the Summer of Love. Despite the death and ugliness of the past month, the Scene manifests this afternoon in all its gorgeous lunatic glory. A fitting tribute for Chocolate George, who they say manned the corral for lost children at the first Human Be-In. That was Chocolate’s myth. A kick-ass rebel who drank chocolate milk. The outlaw who cared about kids.

“Chocolate’s death is like the soul of the Haight-Ashbury dying,” she tells Chi.

He nods absently and warily looks around, his hand tucked in his pocket where he keeps the maser. She sighs. There’s no point in telling him to take it easy and dig it. She breaks away from his grasp and wanders over to the bands. She’s standing steps away from where she stood two months ago. Two months ago? It feels like five hundred years ago.

“Say hey, foxy lady. Foxy in black today.” Oh Stan, the mountain man.

But now Susan knows he’s older than Ruby. He’s just a hip Don Juan whose sleight of hand isn’t very good once you’ve seen through his tricks. What’s wrong with him, anyway? Is he addicted to teenage girls?

“Where’s Penny Lane?”

“Don’t I get a hello?”

Big Brother turns microphones on. With a throaty wail, Janis Joplin launches into “Didn’t He Ramble.”

“I need to see her.” She peeks through the open doors into the back of the Double Barrel van.

Stan blocks her view. “Well, well. The flower child is a child no more.”

No one is inside the van. “Do you know where she is?”

“A child no more, and with child no more.” He seizes her by the waist and, in an astonishing imitation of that other dirty old man, Mr. G in his art supply store, presses his palm on her belly, down low. “That’s what you were doing when Dirty David saw you at the shyster’s office, isn’t it.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I had to make sure you weren’t turning state’s evidence on me. So I turned Larry on. Clerking in a law office is such a drag. You had an abortion, didn’t you.”

She twists away. “It’s not your business.”

He seizes her wrist. “Yeah, it is my business. You were carrying my child, weren’t you, Starbright?” She refuses to answer, but she can’t hide her face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why should I? It was my decision.”

“But I would have wanted to share in that decision.”

“Oh? You want children?”

“I never did before, but I might have changed my mind.”

“You would have married me and supported me and the baby while I finished high school?” Susan takes a deep breath. “You would have loved me?”

“I don’t know about any of those things. But I feel this sense of. . . .” His eyes turn misty. “This sense of sadness. Like here was a life we created together. With joy. In celebration. And that life, that human being, never had a chance to happen.”

“I don’t want to hear this! You rip me off for a hundred dollars. You deceive me.”

“You’ve deceived me.”

“You break my heart, and then you cry—cry—over something you wouldn’t have given a damn about!”

A tear lingers at the corner of his eye. “That baby was a part of me, too.”

She turns and runs, crashing headlong into Chi hurrying toward her.

Chi catches her hands. “Starbright! What happened? Are you all right?”

Stan strides up behind her. “She’ll be all right,” he says to Chi. He shoves crumpled twenty-dollar bills in her hands. “Here’s your bread, Starbright, plus some extra.”

“Forget it. I don’t want your money.”

“Take it.” Stan’s voice is harsh. “Your girlfriend, Penny Lane, or whatever she’s calling herself these days, is at the house with Professor Zoom. I don’t think she wants to see you.” He wipes the tear from his eye and touches her cheek with his wet fingertip. “Say hey, flower child. Be cool.”

Stan stalks away.

“Bye bye, Chocolate, bye bye,” Janis wails up on the Big Brother stage. “Bye bye, Chocolate, bye bye.”

* * *

The sense of magic and destiny flees. The last concert of the Summer of Love is forever marred. Susan blots Stan’s tear from her cheek and tells Chi she wants to go, which pleases him enormously. They hike through the park to Haight Street. Twilight casts a chill and an ominous feeling.

“Chi, I’ve got to find Penny Lane,” Susan says and turns up the block before he can protest. She’s avoided this street for two months. It’s strange to see the Double Barrel house again. A gray drizzle slants down. The block is deserted. Their footsteps echo up the front stairs.

The house is trashed worse than before. Instead of a noisy throng of laughing, cavorting people, the living room is deserted, eerily silent but for the erratic tick-tock of a junkyard clock. The scent of stale incense and pot smoke can’t conceal a stench like rotten meat.

Susan gags.

Chi covers his mouth and nose. “Something’s dead in here.”

Suddenly Dirty David bursts out of a back room, waving a sawed-off shotgun. He is shaking so badly, the barrel swings around. “Who’s there?” he calls out in hoarse voice.

“Dirty David,” Susan cries. “It’s just me and my guy.”

Dirty David earned his nickname due to his taste for pornography, not his personal hygiene, but now his meticulous mod clothes are ragged and stained with grime and what looks like dried blood. He was always a fine-featured, delicate man. Now he looks emaciated, his eyes underscored with dark circles. He narrows those eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

“It’s me, Starbright, Dirty David. Don’t you remember me? And this is Chi. Don’t worry, he’s cool.”

Dirty David stares, a glimmer of recognition flickering. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“Dirty David, I’ve got to see Penny Lane.”

“There’s no Penny Lane here.” A spasm courses through him.

“Let’s go,” Chi whispers.

“No! I’ve got to find her!” She turns back to the twitching man. “You know, my friend from back East. Short dark hair, dark eyes, skinny. Actually, her hair was white the last time I saw her. Stan the Man told me she’s here with Professor Zoom.”

“Oh, you mean Crinky. They’re upstairs. They’re all upstairs.” He squints at them. “Got any reds or yellow jackets? I’m dyin’ here.”

Chi pops a blue bead off one of his necklaces, holds it up between his thumb and forefinger. “Break it in half like this, see? And sniff.” He tosses the bead on the coffee table.

Dirty David scrambles for it. He seizes the bead with trembling hands, breaks and sniffs it. “Ooh,” he groans and collapses on the floor, spilling the shotgun, which fires with a soul-splitting bang. Plaster flies off the wall.

Susan ducks. God!

Chi takes out a prophylak, retrieves the gun, and stashes it behind the swaybacked sofa. “It’s just a knockerblocker,” he says to her questioning glance. “It won’t harm him.”

“Oh, wow. Isn’t that against one of your Tenets?”

“Yeah, but he’ll calm down and get some rest. He won’t remember a thing, except that it was good shit and where can he get some more.”

“Right. We always want to know where we can get some more.”

He shoots her a grin. “Human nature strikes again.” He edges his boot toe against the husk of the bead on the floor. “Vegetable plastic. It’ll decompose in five years. In this pigsty, no one will notice.”

“Gosh, you’re becoming a revolutionary, Chi.”

“Thanks to you, my first star of the evening.”

They hurry up the stairs. Deep silence on the second floor. Clothes and sleeping bags are strewn all over. That ominous feeling deepens. They climb cautiously to the third floor.

“Hey,” Susan calls out. “P-Penny Lane? Are you here? Where are you?”

A door bursts open, and a skull with a pink boa clipped to its hair peers out.

Susan jumps. “God! L-Lady May?”

Lady May stares with burning, uncomprehending eyes.

“It’s St-Starbright. This is my guy, Chi. You met him on the Panhandle, remember? We’re cool, okay? We’re cool. Lady May, where’s my friend? Where’s Penny Lane?”

Like a phantom receding into ghostly realms, Lady May slips back in the room.

A pounding rises in Susan’s head. She’s finding it hard to swallow. She touches her forefinger to the door and pushes.

The door swings open.

They’re sprawled on a mattress on the littered floor. Lady May wearily lowers herself next to Nance. They wear nothing but bikini briefs, including Professor Zoom. The flickering light comes from all the candles. Candles everywhere, on the floor, on the windowsill, all over the top of a battered chest of drawers.

In the smoky candlelight, they look like corpses. Refugees from life. The room is stifling, the air thick with the stench of molten wax, struck matches, Kool Menthols, rancid sweat. And a strange decay.

“Well, if it isn’t Trixie,” Professor Zoom drawls. “Hey Trixie, hey Trixie. Which way, Trixie?”

Chi whips out a handful of prophylaks and carefully arranges a seat for Susan on the floor, then another for himself. He doesn’t bother concealing his movements or the plastic wraps floating down.

Nance watches with cavernous eyes. Then she bursts into a cackle. “What the hell?”

“Protection,” Chi says grimly, staring back at her. He takes Susan’s hand, helping her to sit, then seats himself.

Nance laughs again, but a throb steals into her cold mirth.

Susan is struck dumb. She doesn’t know where to begin. She sees the glint of glass, the gleam of steel. Hypodermic syringes lie everywhere, scattered everywhere. At last she says to Professor Zoom, “Which way, Harold? You’re going nowhere. You and Penny Lane and Lady May, you’ve got to get out of here.”

“There’s no way out, Trixie.” He picks up a kit lying on the floor next to the mattress. “No exit, and I don’t mean Sartre.”

White powder everywhere. Bags of it. Piles of it.

Susan says to Nance, “Penny Lane, what are you doing to yourself?”

“Drop that Penny Lane crap, Starbright.” She sings to the Beatles’ tune, “Crystal meth is up my nose and up my ass.” She cackles again, an awful sound. “My name is Crinky, sweetheart.”

“I don’t like Crinky. It’s stupid.”

“Oh, and Starbright knows what’s stupid,” Nance says to Lady May. “That Starbright, she’s the smart one.”

“What does ‘Crinky’ mean?” Susan asks angrily.

“Splash, grease, meth, crystal, speed, crank,” Professor Zoom intones. “Splash, speed, crank, crink. Crink, Trixie.” He dangles a hypodermic needle in his fingers. “Crank is crink. Crinky loves crank. You dig?”

Susan’s heart thunders so hard in her chest, she wonders if she’s having a cardiac arrest.

With slow deliberation, Nance takes the needle, leans into the candlelight. She extends her rail-thin arm. Needle punctures tatter her skin. An abscess the size of a walnut bulges from the inner aspect of her elbow. No, the arm’s no good. She stretches out her bony leg. A blood vessel is visible from her knee to her crotch, tattooed dark in her skin. She plunges the works behind her ankle. A little shriek pops from her lips. Then she grins at Susan, gleaming and demonic.

“You’ve got septicemia, Penny Lane,” Chi says matter-of-factly. “Blood poisoning. If you don’t go to a hospital right away, you’re going to die.”

“Oh, no,” Nance says like a child disappointed by a birthday gift.

“Baby, we’re all gonna die,” Lady May says reasonably.

Nance smiles slyly. “Look at how Starbright is freaked out.”

“No.” Susan shakes her head. “I’m not freaked out.”

“Then come on over, sweetheart.” Nance offers the works. “I’d love to turn you on.”

Professor Zoom blurts out, “Alackaday and anon, Trixie! I have found the Final Expression to my Equation. Not in the clouds. Not in the stars. I have found the Final Expression here, right here in this room. Do you want to know what the Final Expression is?”

“Tell me,” Susan says and reaches for Chi’s hand.

“LSD is a hoax, that’s the Final Expression. There is no Illumination. No New Consciousness. There is no God! Only the Great Rotor Motor, grinding, grinding, grinding your soul away. The Great Rotor Motor.” He bursts into tears. “No one will be saved.”

Lady May pries the kit from Nance’s fingers, rigs it up, and tenderly fixes Professor Zoom in the back of his thigh.

“Shut up, Zoom,” Nance says him. To Susan, “Man, he’s really lost it. Sweetheart, we saw you on TV. Last week, wasn’t it?” She tussles playfully with Lady May for the needle.

Susan trades looks with Chi. “You did?”

“Well, yeah. The CBS News Special. Man, that Harry Reasoner is so square. He doesn’t know the first thing about the Haight.” Nance aims one of her mock surprise looks. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see it.”

“I don’t watch TV so much anymore.”

Nance sniggers. “Listen to this. Starbright doesn’t shoot shit, doesn’t smoke doo, doesn’t watch TV. I bet she doesn’t ball anymore, either.”

“Neither do we, little love of my valley,” says Professor Zoom. “We just jack off the spike.”

Nance ignores him. “We figured it was the CBS News Special that brought that pig rooting around in here. Looking for you, Starbright.”

“What pig?” Chi says.

“Some private investigator sent by her parents. What a drag. Freaked us out.” Nance flicks her graceful hand at Lady May, gesturing with irritation for the pack of Kools lying on the mattress. “Isn’t that just like Starbright. Mom and Daddy want her back home so bad, they’re paying for it.” Nance lights a Kool, tossing the match in an overflowing ashtray. “Isn’t that sweet? Why, that’s so sweet, I forgot to puke.”

Susan’s heart isn’t just thundering, it’s exploding. “Listen to me, Penny Lane. Your mom and your stepfather came to my parents’ house. They wanted to know where you’d gone. They were worried! They cared!”

“But you didn’t tell them, did you, sweetheart.”

“No, I didn’t. I thought that was the right thing to do. I thought that was what you wanted. But they were looking for you. They were, and you can go back home.” Susan pulls out the money Stan gave her. “Go home, Nance. You can work things out. I’ll help you, I swear. I’ll never let you down again. Please, Nance. You don’t need this.”

“Nance? Who’s Nance? You still don’t get it, do you, Starbright?” She snorts. Professor Zoom starts to weep again. Lady May looks as if she’s about to weep, too. But Nance is hard and glittering. “I called Handy Andy and my mom. I called them. I called them.”

Susan shakes her head at Chi. Nance is over-amping. She’s making no sense.

Chi glances behind him, alarmed. Boot heels are clattering up the stairs to the third floor.

“I thought you were the smart one, Starbright,” Nance says, her voice ragged with sorrow. “They told me they have no daughter.”

She is an elf, a daredevil, a rebel, a whirling dervish.

She is a junkie, a needle freak, a speed freak.

She is a child leaping from the old oak tree, shouting, “I want to die!”

The Summer of Love did not corrupt this child.

You did, Mr. and Mrs. Payne.

Stovepipe and the Lizard burst into the room.

“God!” Susan cries. Chi pulls her to her feet.

“You Stan the Man?” Stovepipe shouts. He seizes Professor Zoom by his flimsy hair, yanks him to his feet “We want our freakin’ bread, and we want it now!”

“I’m Zoom!” Professor Zoom cries. “Stan’s with the band. He’s over in the park!”

The Lizard kicks at discarded kits and plastic baggies, ashtrays and candles. Crystal meth billows in the air, worthless dust.

“Stan ain’t here, so knock it off, man!” Lady May cries. She hoists herself to her feet and totters across the room.

The Lizard flashes his switchblade.

Lady May screams. “He cut me!” She brandishes the bright gash across her forearm. “He cut me!”

Susan swings her handbag at the Lizard, connecting with his shoulder. He spins, lunges at her.

Chi plants his bootheel in the Lizard’s crotch and kicks him away. He seizes her, hustles her out. She tries to twist away, but he won’t let go. She forgot how strong he is when he means to be. He forces her down the stairs and out the front door to the street gray with drizzle.

A window on the third floor suddenly flares with light. Glass shatters.

Nance thrusts her head out. “Starbright! Theyre kicking over the candles! Fire! Fire! There’s a fire!”

Stovepipe seizes Nance’s shoulder, yanks her inside.

Susan hears her scream.

“Fire!” Susan takes up the cry. Neighbors rush to their windows. “Fire, there’s a fire! And a guy’s assaulting a girl! Call the cops!”

Black smoke pours out the window. Susan glimpses leaping flames.

She tries to climb the front stairs but Chi grips her shoulders, restraining her.

“Chi,” she cries, “she was my best friend!”

“I can’t let you go in there, Starbright.” His face is anguished, but unrelenting. “It’s too dangerous!”

“Then you go! Help her!”

He shakes his head. “I can’t leave you.”

“I’ll wait right here, I promise. Wait no matter what. You’ve got to go, get her out of there. Please! Please! I’m begging you!”

“All right.” He clatters up the stairs and darts inside as firetrucks speed up in a blaze of lights and wailing sirens. Cop cars careen down the block.

A crowd gathers. Cyn walks up, arm in arm with a handsome young black dude in a beret and a leather jacket. There’s the dude with the skull and the guy with the eyes and the elderbeard. The crowd swells. Smoke thickens the air. Susan chokes, cupping her hand to her nose and mouth. Ashes spark, bits of fire whirling in the rain.

The green Digger truck pulls up. Susan spies Leo Gorgon’s sharp profile. Hells Angels rumble up on their hogs, cutting through the crowd. Firemen dash up and down the stairs, hoisting hoses inside. A ladder angles up, and firemen aim hoses in the third floor windows. Police are barking, “Get back! Get back!” More sirens wail as flames burst through the roof of the Double Barrel house in an evil, flaring crown.

A tall, slim man with long red hair and a brown leather jacket steps out of the crowd and gazes up at the awful spectacle.

“Chi!” Susan cries and pushes past people, rushing to him. How did he get out of there so quickly? She’s as glad to see him as she’s scared for Nance. “Oh, Chi, where is she? Did you get her out?”

The man turns toward her, his hair swinging like ropes of raw skin. She recoils from his bitter cold. His pale face is alive, crawling with fleshy bits and pieces that wriggle like maggots. His eyes are two burning pools of sapphire flames.

It’s a demon! A demon of Chi!

God, she’s sick!

Stomach churning, she presses her fingers to her throat and stumbles away. She backs into the crowd, groping, confused. She staggers into the arms of the gray beggar woman. The beggar embraces her, clutching her to a moist breast stinking of rot. Susan strikes out with her fists. It’s like punching the scum at the bottom of a pond.

But she breaks free. The demon can’t hold her!

“Yes!” she shouts. Demons that aren’t her double can’t hold her! Can’t kill her with their touch!

A icy wind stinking of sulfur strikes her. She whirls and stares eye to eye at the girl with her face. The demon looms a handsbreadth away.

Susan struggles against the force pulling her closer.

Black, they’re both in black, she and the demon, black rippling all around them. The demon’s face shifts, splintering into a thousand leers and scowls. Susan’s head spins. No one should ever have to see such dreadful expressions on your own face. The demon raises her hand, extending the knob of her staff.

The force seizes her, tears at her.

Susan ducks. Duck and cover! Isn’t that what they tell you to do if someone drops an atomic bomb on your house? Ducking, she breaks loose of the terrible force.

She runs, she runs, she runs.

17

Light My Fire

Inferno! The room is engulfed by the time Chi sprints back upstairs. Sheets of flame leap from the walls, and black smoke billows. The Vision of the Other Now rears up in his memory, the stench of forests burning and charred flesh. Dread beats in his chest. Heat bludgeons his face. His eyes sting and tear. He coughs and chokes. An awful crackling and popping deafens his ears.

Damn! This is a wood-frame house, maybe fifty years old, with a shake-shingled roof. No smoke detector, no miniframe monitor, no sprinklers autohooked to a local reservoir. He can’t believe it. These people live in a tinderbox!

Chi pulls out a filter, clamps the square of SemiPerm over his nose and mouth. The filter instantly adheres to his skin, leaving his hands free. He inhales lightly, experimenting. Sooty and thick, but he can breathe as long as the fire doesn’t eat up all the oxygen.

The skinny fellow Starbright calls Professor Zoom sprawls at the top of the stairs, a naked bundle of bones, holding his throat, hacking, tears streaming down his face.

“Starbright’s friend!” Chi shouts. “Did she get out? Where is she?”

Professor Zoom clamps his hands to his scalp and claws at his limp hair, digs at his cheeks. He’s got crank bugs, a shivering of nerves and muscles under the skin creating the sensation of crawling insects. It’s a common symptom, Chi knows, of heavy methamphetamine abuse. Zoom’s fingernails draw blood.

Chi shakes the man’s shoulder, but he claws at himself and moans.

Chi dashes to the door. Flames dart at him like living things, devouring and ruthless. He can’t see a thing. He jerks back, pulls out his scope, peers through the macro end, clicks on the infrared lens. Nothing.

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing this!

He realizes with another part of his mind—how well the LISA techs have indoctrinated him—that this is a violation of Tenet Three. Starbright’s love for Penny Lane cannot matter. He cannot—should not—try to save her. He’s a t-porter, and Penny Lane is on her own.

And he’s left Starbright on her own, down on the street.

Get out of here, Chi!

He shakes off a queasy feeling. For a moment, in the terrible heat, he feels as if insects are crawling just beneath his skin. His very own crank bugs. Disgusted and confused, he brushes his hand over his face, dislodging the filter. He chokes and stumbles back to the stairs.

“Did she get out?” he shouts again, seizing Professor Zoom’s wrist. “Is Penny Lane okay?”

“The bed,” Professor Zoom says, staring helplessly up at him. “The bed, oh my God.”

“The people who were with you,” Chi shouts. “Answer me! Where are they?”

“The dealers, they cut Lady May. They cut Crinky. Then they split.” Professor Zoom’s eyes glaze with horror. “And then the bed just. . . .lit up! I heard her scream. Dear God, I never heard her scream before, do you understand me? I heard her scream.”

“Let’s go.”

Chi slings the fellow’s arm over his shoulders and drags him downstairs. Firemen race inside. A young man in ambulance whites takes Professor Zoom from Chi and leads him outside. Chi finds Dirty David snoring peacefully on the floor and hands him over to another ambulance attendant.

A fireman yells at him, “Sir, get out of here now!”

Chi clatters down the stairs. Police cars with their lights spinning, fire engines frantic with activity jam the street. News reporters with photographers in tow, film crews with booms and microphones jostle closer for a better view. Cops brandish billy clubs, shoving both media people and sightseers back from the house.

The usual Haight Street crowd has gathered, robed, feathered, beaded, spangled, and very stoned. Some people gape at the fire with tearful, horrified eyes. The mouse magician solemnly rings his brass bell and shakes his skull-topped wand as if his invocation will stop the conflagration. Others giggle and stare, mouths dropped open in a “Wow!” And there—a couple of greasy hoodies—and there—street spades in free box rags—snake through the crowd, hands darting into jacket pockets, seizing handbags. A hoodie seizes a woman’s woven pouch. She screams, “Stop, thief!” but no one pays her any heed. Hells Angels and Gypsy Jokers straddle growling hogs, their ladies splayed behind them.

And at the corner where the front stairs meet the sidewalk, where she promised to wait, wait no matter what, there is no one.

Starbright is gone.

Chi pushes through the crowd, panic clenching his throat. “Have you seen Starbright? I’ve got to find her, have you seen her?”

The grizzled Beatnik who owns the Blue Unicorn Café pats his shoulder, saying, “No, man, I haven’t seen her.” A guy in a white robe and a crown of thorns says, “Bugger off, I’m God.” Some people stare blankly as if they’ve never seen him before, though he’s seen their faces nearly every day during the Summer of Love. Dr. David Smith strides by in his white clinic coat, toting his doctor’s bag.

Chi knows these faces, he thinks with a pang, but he knows nothing of who these people really are. Where did they come from, where will they go? What do they believe in? Is he any closer to the truth of the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love? What special insight can he contribute to the Archives? Billions of dollars invested in the SOL Project, and he still knows nothing?

But that was never the object of the project: to understand. The object was to protect the Axis, preserve the timeline, and conserve spacetime as everyone knows it. Rage swells in his heart. Billions of dollars to preserve the timeline, and nothing more. Under Tenet Three, he’s not even allowed to save a wounded girl from a burning house.

The way you think about things shapes the way your reality is. For people like Starbright and Ruby A. Maverick, the Summer of Love has meant shaking up reality as they knew it. Rejecting conformity, prejudice, the way things are supposed to be according to someone else. Thinking for themselves. Shaping reality their way, a new and better way.

How dare the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications transmit him across five hundred years to preserve their notion of the timeline? The LISA techs, the Archivists, the smug cosmicists consider themselves the vanguard of civilization. They believe in the changes they’ve made.

But they haven’t changed enough. They haven’t even begun their personal revolution.That is the truth he’s learned from Starbright and Ruby. That is the special insight he can contribute.

The crowd thickens. Tourists gawk and aim cameras. They don’t give a damn about the burning house or the people inside.

“Why don’t you move on?” Chi shouts. “Get out of here and let the fire department do its work.”

A guy with a crew cut catcalls, “Dirty hippie,” and throws a fake punch at him.

Chi throws a real punch back, connecting with the guy’s square jaw. “I said move on, you son of a bitch.”

The crew cut’s buddies leap on Chi. Punches pummel his shoulders, his ribs. The crew cut slams payback into Chi’s jaw.

He tastes blood. He plants his knuckles in an eye, crunches a nose. It feels good! He swings wildly, all his rage and frustration finding targets at the end of his fists.

Half a dozen Hells Angels materialize in a wall of hulking denim and clanking chains.

“Heads up, man,” the Bear says mildly. Up close, the Bear’s face is deeply sun-wrinkled. He must be pushing forty. Chi spots an Air Force patch on the Bear’s jacket. “Korea, ’52.” The Bear plucks the crew cut from Chi’s grasp and shoves him at Badger, who pins back the arms of the luckless guy. The Bear aims his fist. “Nobody hassles Starbright’s old man.”

Chi catches sight of a silver Mercedes inching down the block. “Chi!” Ruby leans out the window. “Have you lost your marbles? Where’s Starbright?”

He ducks away from the fight, buzzing with adrenaline. He sprints to Ruby’s car, tears open the door, and hops inside, panting and bloody.

“Uh-huh, lost your marbles.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe my eyes. The man from Mars, rumbling with the Angels. How’s your magic ring?”

“Oh no!” He examines the knuckletop. Blood spatters the bezel. “K-T.” A beep, and the holoid field pops into his palm. He grins sheepishly. “Guess I lost my head.”

“Guess you did.” Ruby glances at him inscrutably. “Stan the Man stopped by the Mystic Eye. I don’t know what the kid said to him, but he’s splitting town. He said it’s ‘cause of her. Me, I think Stovepipe and the Lizard have got his number.” She clucks her tongue. “Stan did one thing right, though. He told me you and Starbright went looking for her girlfriend at the Double Barrel house. I guess he didn’t have to do that.” She sighs and leans out of the window again. “So what happened? Where is she?”

“Not in the house,” he says miserably. “That’s for sure.”

“You don’t sound glad.” She peers out again. “Sweet Isis! I haven’t seen a fire like that in twenty years.” Her ferocious eyes grow alarmed. “Where is she, Chi?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“She begged me to help Penny Lane. She promised to wait for me. Wait, no matter what. But by the time I got out, she was gone.”

“I thought you told us these are the last days before the Hot Dim Spot closes.”

“Yeah.” He hangs his head. “The fire. I’m sure it’s a Prime Probability.”

“Then why the hell did you leave her?”

“I messed up, okay? It all happened so fast!”

His anger heats up another hundred degrees, along with a bad, bad feeling as if an unseen force is pushing him. He can almost feel probabilities collapsing like evil dominos, toppling in a direction he can’t control, heading into a dark destiny.

“Ruby, help me! We’ve got to find her.”

“We will.” Ruby steers the car through the crowd. “Someone must have seen her.”

The crowd grows thicker still. Fights break out here and there. Hells Angels and Satan’s Slaves push and jostle. Is a riot brewing?

Chi spots Cyn with the handsome black dude in his beret and leather jacket. “Cyn!” He motions them over. Despite the young man’s militant demeanor, Chi sees how he holds Cyn, his arm protective around her frail shoulders. Her fearful look isn’t inspired by him, but by the fire and the rowdy crowd.

“Have you seen Starbright?” Chi asks, relieved again for little Cyn.

She nods, points. “We saw her runnin’ down Haight to the park, Chi.”

Cyn’s man leans into Chi’s window. “Brother, a lady in the park at night with nothin’ but her and the hoodies? She in big trouble.”

“She was runnin’ like crazy,” Cyn says. “Like there was somethin’ chasin’ her? Only we didn’t see nobody.”

“Anybody mess with my lady,” Cyn’s man says, “I’ll off him. Brother, you better go find her.”

Chi searches the shadows as Ruby speeds down Kezar Drive into Golden Gate Park. Stragglers from Chocolate George’s wake stalk through the twilight. Bikers joyride their choppers down every lane, hooting with drunken laughter. Trees toss in the breeze and eerie shapes ripple across the grass. Silver rain slants down through the streetlights’ glow.

The park is alive, shivering. The ground swells and lurches. Branches whip against the wind, defying it. Darkness slithers with serpentine shapes that coil, then dissolve, and coil again.

Chi is sick to his soul. He’s tried so hard. He’s stayed by her side nearly every moment this summer, even when he was unsure of her identity. He’s done his duty. His cosmicist duty. He’s gone beyond his duty. Way beyond. He’s fallen in love.

And now she’s gone. Impossibly gone like a coin in one of Ruby’s sleight-of-hand tricks.

Ruby brakes the Mercedes, tires squealing, and pulls over to the curb. “Get out! We’ll never find her this way.”

Ruby brandishes her Walther.

Chi grips his maser.

They leap out of the car and dart down a path twisting into the park. They confront a fork in the path, take the left turnoff, and run. Lindley Meadow, the Sharon Building, the Carousel. Five miles of parkland stretches from here to Ocean Beach, a maze of trails sprawling in every direction.

“Damn it!” Sweat pours down Chi’s face, though he’s shivering from the cold. “We won’t find her this way, either.”

Ruby stops and bends over at the waist, heaving for breath. “No foolin’. I’m no athlete, sonny. We better go to the fuzz, get some help.”

“You go. I’ll keep looking. I’m the one who blew it.”

Ruby takes his shoulders. “Listen to me, Chi. This is no time for your guilt trip, all right? You can’t search the whole park all by yourself. We need the police.”

“You think they’ll help us?”

“We’ve got to try! It’s the best we can do. Get an APB out on her or something. She once told me her pa is a dentist. We’ll tell them she’s the daughter of some bigwig back East.”

“I heard her parents hired a private investigator. That might help, too.”

“Cool. I can deal with the heat if you can. We can’t find her alone.” She sweeps her arms at the vast trees, the dark lawns, the maze of trails. “It’s just too big!”

They jog back toward Kezar Drive, take the fork toward Alvord Lake Bridge. They stride through a stonework tunnel built to look like a cave with rough rock walls, stalactites hanging from the roof, stalagmites jutting from the cobblestone path.

Then there they are, at the end of the tunnel.

Six hoodies. Not Hells Angels or Gypsy Jokers. Just cheap hoodies, puny and anonymous, ticked off at the world and raring to pick on someone not their size.

Her.

Starbright crouches at the center of their circle, her eyes and mouth dark pools of terror. A hoodie has torn down the neckline of her dress. Her bare shoulder gleams in the lamplight.

Without hesitation or a word of warning, Ruby lifts the Walther and fires. Her bullet ricochets off the boot toes of the hoodie swinging a switchblade at the girl. He yelps, flings his blade into the duck pond at the end of the tunnel, and lopes away.

“Hey, Ruby!” Chi shouts, drawing his maser. He shoots a green beam, showering sparks across the cobblestones. “I thought you believed in peace and love. Shouldn’t you wait until you can see the whites of their eyes?”

“If I can see his face, sonny,” she yells, “I can shoot him between the eyes!”

The other hoodies scatter. Two sprint toward Haight Street. Three charge at Chi and Ruby, staring wild-eyed at his maser and her gun, and sprint past them into the dark, bootheels echoing.

Chi leaps to Starbright’s side. “You promised to wait for me.” He flings his arms around her, crushing her to his chest. “I’m not going to lose you again!”

Ruby joins them. She pulls up Starbright’s torn bodice, then tucks the Walther in her shoulder bag. “Let’s get out of here.”

They start up the hill toward Stanyan Street.

But the tunnel walls rumble and sway. A sound swells like the long, low roar of a night tide. The stalactites quiver. Bits of rock break loose and crash. The roar grows louder. The ground shakes like the start of an earthquake. Fissures shoot through the tunnel walls. The walls crack apart and collapse in heaps of rubble. Overhead, the eucalyptus trees sway and groan, raining leaves and broken branches all around them.

The girl in the black cape stands before Chi, her staff planted before her in both hands. For a moment, she looks exactly like Starbright in her long black dress, the smooth young face of a pretty girl with dark eyes and long, tawny hair. Then a hole yawns open in the middle of her forehead and a net of cracks fans out. The face shatters, flesh bursting apart as if she’s exploded from within. A bloody skull stares at him, exposed eyeballs held in bony sockets by spiderwebs crawling with black widows.

“Get behind me!” Chi shouts at Starbright.

Now the gray beggar woman stands before Starbright, her ‘fro and features a ghastly caricature of Ruby. Her hair slithers, snakes hissing at the end of each curl. The beggar stinks of decay. Wind peels her rags away until she’s naked, a mass of raw sores and exposed bones. The demon howls. Strange internal organs pulse beneath her ribs, a throbbing heart tinged green like rotten meat. A skeleton dripping with putrefaction looms before Starbright.

Chi thumbs the maser to purple, the antimatter beam.

“Leave us!” he shouts and aims.

But he can’t shoot. A paralysis grips him.

Now an entity appears before Ruby. An entity Chi has never seen before: a tall, slim man with long red hair and dead-white skin, sapphire flames leaping from his eyes.

Him!

The question that’s haunted him all summer strikes him like a blow. Who else in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love disappeared into the Hot Dim Spot?

Him. He is here. He has always been here.

The demon grins. Each of his teeth is a tiny face like Chi’s, and each face grins, revealing more teeth, more faces. Faces form in his cheeks and forehead, in the swinging raw ropes of his hair. No rotting limbs, no putrid entrails. Just him, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, over and over and over. He’s never really seen himself. His awful face. His awful power.

Chi feels wasted, plucked out of himself, flung across an abyss.

The dark park disappears, and a wind sucks him and Starbright and Ruby through a yawning aperture. Gleaming panels surround them like the hull of a machine. Black sparks spit and crackle.

The machine flings them out onto a gray plain.

Ashen clouds roil around them. A storm thunders and lightning flashes, but the sun burns above, a sickly yellow. A stench fills Chi’s nose and mouth, the fetor of sulfur, rotting flesh, forest fires.

Chi staggers in the storm’s blast and seizes Starbright with one hand, Ruby with the other. The wind whips Starbright off her feet, levitating her above him. Ruby drops below him as if the ground can’t hold her. He’s nearly ripped in two between them, but he holds on. He holds on! He is the Axis, the center refusing to let go.

Red seeps from the horizon until the sky boils with blood.

Black lightning knifes the sky, and Chi perches atop a needle of rock, gripping Starbright and Ruby.

A dreadful valley burns far below them. A man writhes on a plate while hyenas tear out his stomach, devouring him alive. Chimeras lope after ragged children. Gargoyles ravage a screaming woman. Vultures touch down on gut-strewn fields, flesh dangling from dripping beaks. A masked robot operates a guillotine, hacking off the heads of handcuffed prisoners, the stained blade rising and falling every twenty seconds exactly.

The three demons surround them, snarling and hissing.

The Starbright demon swings her staff at Chi. He ducks, punches the demon’s staff away. He raises the maser, the pointer on purple.

But Starbright seizes his wrist.

“No!” she cries. “Chi, don’t!”

The needle of rock begins to shake, pitching crazily back and forth.

He tries to aim, but Starbright wrestles with him. With sudden strength, she turns the maser toward her stomach.

“Stop it!” he shouts, bewildered. “This is the only way! This is what I was sent here for!”

“Don’t do it, Chi!”

Ruby seizes his other wrist and, for a terrifying moment, he’s convinced they are demons, and everything, everything has been a monstrous hoax.

“Why are you stopping me?” he yells, anguished.

“You told us your people don’t really know what the purple beam does,” Starbright shouts in his ear.

“It counteracts antimatter. We’re surrounded by antimatter! It’s the only way we can get out of here!”

“But do you know for sure? You’ve told me over and over you don’t know exactly what’ll happen if you use the purple beam.”

She’s right. They’re not just in contact with the Other Now. They’re trapped inside the Other Now.

“It’s all we’ve got to defend ourselves with!”

“But, Chi, what if you destroy everything?”

They shake and tilt, struggling for a foothold on the needle of rock.

“Listen to her, Chi,” Ruby shouts. “Scientists thought there was a chance they could have set the sky on fire when they dropped the atomic bomb. A chance they could have destroyed the whole world along with Hiroshima.”

“But they dropped the bomb, anyway,” Chi says. “They took that chance.”

“Yeah, and the world was real lucky,” Ruby persists. “Are you going to take that chance now with a weapon a billion times more powerful?”

The Starbright demon strikes his kneecaps with her staff. Chi reels.

“Don’t do it, Chi,” Starbright pleads. “Look at your cosmicists. They thought they were doing the right thing by saving Betty. But they didn’t. They didn’t.” Tears stream down her face. “Don’t use the purple beam, Chi. I’ll die if I have to.”

“You can’t die, Starbright! I can’t let you die!”

Who else possesses the power to collapse the Prime Probability?

Him. He does.

“What can we do?”

“You said the touch of my demon can kill me,” Starbright says. “But I touched Ruby’s demon. I touched your demon. And their touch didn’t kill me! Chi, listen! They didn’t kill me!”

“Then join hands!” Chi commands. “Starbright, take Ruby’s hand. Ruby, give me yours.”

The three of them stand back-to-back, each gripping the other’s hand, facing the demons and the Other Now.

“Let’s touch them,” Starbright shouts. “Let’s touch them together!”

The Chi demon snaps at him like a rabid beast. Chi can hear the demon’s teeth click, sending shivers of nausea through him.

The Starbright demon beats him with her staff, raining blows on his head. Wetness pours down his forehead.

The Ruby demon rakes her fingernails across his face. Razor edges cut deep in his cheek.

Together, he and Starbright and Ruby hold out their entwined fingers. No demon can touch only the one for which it is the killing double.

They are intermingled.

Mixed and blended.

They stand united.

“Let’s sing!” Starbright says in a quavering voice. In a thin soprano, she yodels, “All you need is love.”

Ruby wails, “All you need is love.”

Chi bellows, “All you need is love.”

18

With a Little Help from My Friends

With her hand gripped in Chi’s, Ruby thrusts their clenched hands in the bloody skull’s gaping maw. Touch the Starbright demon? Hell, no! If she’s about to die, she’s taking the demon out with her. She punches a force field, burning and freezing at the same time. She screams and shuts her eyes, unwilling to watch her hand burn into a blackened stump.

The demon howls, staggers back.

Now she and Starbright thrust their clenched hands in the Chi demon’s nose, shattering the composite of tiny faces. The demon bursts into a million winged pieces that fly all around them, snapping and biting.

Behind her, Chi and the kid punch their clenched hands at her own demon, smashing the throbbing green heart, splattering putrefaction.

“Don’t stop,” Chi yells.

“Keep singing,” Starbright shouts.

Ruby punches with all her strength and sings till her throat aches.

The bloodstained sky turns black, the ghastly howling dies, and Ruby stands back-to-back and hand-in-hand with Chi and the kid beneath Alford Lake Bridge, wailing “All You Need Is Love” like her life depends on it. Moths flap around the fake stalactites.

A buzzing feeling chases over Ruby’s skin as if she’s just strolled through a wall of electricity. She shivers, reluctant to look down at herself for fear her flesh will split and fall from her bones, piece by bloody piece. Her mouth tastes metallic. Her stomach turns somersaults. Only the knuckle-crunching grip of the youngsters’ hands in hers gives her a clue that this is real.

She’s alive. She’s here.

How long did they stand on that needle of rock, gazing down at the Other Now? Five hundred years? Or only a moment?

“Sweet Isis,” she moans. She shakes her hands loose from theirs and leans up against the tunnel wall. “Not even when I drank peyote-button tea have I ever seen what I just saw.” She sneezes. “You know what? I’m too old for this.”

“Cosmic Mind,” Chi mutters. “Was that a secret loop?”

“What secret loop?” Ruby gasps. “Now what, man from Mars?”

Starbright kneels on the cobblestones, clasping her stomach.

“A secret loop no one could have foreseen,” Chi says. “That I was lured here by the demons. To this moment. To this Prime Probability. To the three of us standing here, on this day.”

“But why, Chi?” Starbright says.

“To trick me into using the purple beam and collapsing the Prime Probability out of the timeline. To destroy our spacetime, instead of conserving it. My sweet Starbright, bless your gentle heart, you were right.” He groans and grips his forehead. Then he goes to her, lifts her to her feet. “You were so right.”

“Good thing someone’s got a head on her shoulders,” Ruby says.

Hells Angels amble down from Stanyan Street. Their boots tramp on the pavement. Their chains clank. They trade talk in low growls. The stink of male sweat and booze and pot smoke surrounds them.

Their bleary eyes gleam as they approach Ruby, Starbright, and Chi in the dimly lit tunnel. They grin, five gap-toothed leers guaranteed to make anyone’s heart beat faster.

Ruby draws her Walther. She’s had quite enough gunfire for one night, but she lifts her weapon anyway.

Chi whips the maser from his jacket pocket, clicks the beam to green.

“Hairy Harry,” the kid calls out in a high, clear voice. “Hey, it’s me. It’s Starbright.”

“Cool it,” Hairy Harry growls to his comrades, eyeing Ruby’s pistol and holding up his hands.

“We don’t want any hassle, Hairy Harry,” Ruby says, aiming for his gut.

“We don’t neither,” he says. “We ain’t hasslin’ the chick who drew Chocolate. We just wanna take a piss in the woods.”

The Angels ramble on, a herd of clanking, shuffling, growling beasts.

Grandmother Says: Ta Ch’u (Integrity)

The Image: Heaven within the mountain. The dragon hides in his glen. An accumulation of pebbles results in a mountain. But the treasures within are the most precious.

The Oracle: Even great and difficult undertakings succeed when one approaches them with integrity. The study of great deeds and principles of the past strengthens and elevates character. One should strive to apply the great principles of the past to the future.

Hexagram 26, The I Ching or Book of Changes

They find Ruby’s Mercedes on Kezar Drive, pile in, and head back to Haight Street. The crowd has thinned, but the stench of burnt things thickens the air. Ruby cups her hand to her nose and mouth. Man! What a smell. Water inky with ashes pools on the sidewalk and on the street.

An ambulance parks in front of the smoldering ruins of the Double Barrel house. The doors are open, and a harsh light illuminates the back of it. Ruby can see two bodies covered head to toe with sheets lying on stretchers. Ambulance attendants swarm all over the place, but they’re in no hurry to take the bodies away.

Professor Zoom leans against the doors, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

Starbright leaps out of the car. “Professor Zoom!”

Ruby sets the parking brake, opens her door, and steps out, leaning over the car roof. She’s had quite enough of Harold.

Starbright takes Professor Zoom’s hands, but he stares at her, limp and uncomprehending. “Is Penny Lane okay? Crinky, Professor Zoom?” She shouts in his face as if he’s deaf, which he does a fair job of miming. “Is Crinky okay?”

Chi jumps out after her as Professor Zoom slowly shakes his head. “Crinky has gone to God, Starbright.” He glares at Chi. “Didn’t he tell you?”

The kid screams, drops his hands, and peers in the ambulance. Her face twists with horror. She turns to Chi, purple with fury. “You didn’t even try!” She pounces on him, punching and slapping. “Oh, I hate you! I hate you!”

“My love, I did try,” Chi protests, shielding his face from her blows. He catches one flailing wrist, then the other.

“I don’t believe you!”

“All right. I can’t lie to you, Starbright. I thought about Tenet Three. Yes, I thought about it. I have to.”

“Tenet Three,” she says, disgusted. “You’re worse than my father who treated her like she was bad. Worse than her stepfather who raped her. You let her die!”

Professor Zoom pats her shoulder. “No, no, Starbright. He did try. He ran up the stairs. He ran into the room. But he was too late. The room was gone. She was gone. Truly, verily, she was already gone.”

Starbright shakes her head, unconvinced.

“I was there,” Professor Zoom says. “I saw. I could have pulled Crinky out of that room.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“You know,” he says with a perplexed look, “I just didn’t think of it.”

The kid jumps into the car and buries her face in her hands. Chi climbs in after her and wraps his arms around her, cradling her, whispering to her.

“Harold,” Ruby says, studying him over the car roof. “Get out of the Haight-Ashbury. This place is no good for you anymore. Go back to Harvard. Finish your damn philosophy degree.”

“You know what, Ruby?” He chuckles like the pull of a saw through bone. “I never did go to Harvard. I dropped out of high school, man. The closest I ever got to Harvard was hitchhiking through Boston, trying to score some dope.”

* * *

Ruby’s cats climb all over Starbright as she sits sobbing, cross-legged on the couch. Alana rests her paws on Starbright’s chest and licks tears off her cheeks. Luna purrs and preens her soft snout on Starbright’s knee. Sita settles herself beside Starbright’s knee, while Rama and Ara perch somberly on the back of the couch, two sapphire-eyed sentinels.

Ruby doesn’t know what to say. No, wrong. There are a thousand and one things she could say, and none of them seem right. How she felt when they told her about Pa at Pearl Harbor. The day they found Roi in an alley. When Ma told her she had lung cancer, though she’d never smoked. Ma died at age fifty—fifteen short years from how old Ruby is now--and her death drove Ruby all the way to a lawyer’s office and to the library, where she discovered a University of Michigan study, which came to the disturbing conclusion that breathing asbestos particles could give you lung cancer.

Yet after the grave was dug and the settlement check deposited in her bank account, Ruby couldn’t shake the feeling of unfinished business. Unrighted wrongs.

That engine room, as clear as day. Maybe that was the worst part of losing her mother. That Ruby should have told Ma to get out of that engine room.

Chi sits beside Starbright. He takes her hand. Ruby cannot read his stricken face.

“It’s all my fault,” the kid says between sobs. “If only I wasn’t so selfish, I could have done something for Penny Lane. I could have saved her.”

“Now you listen to me, Starbright,” Ruby says. The kid told her all about what went down at the Blue Unicorn. “You got nothing to do with what happened tonight. You were kids and you loved each other once. But that little girl you loved was lost to you a long time ago.”

The kid shakes her head. “I want to die, too.”

“You’re not going to die, Starbright,” Chi says, “not for a long time.” He raises his hand to his lips and whispers, “Katie.” A beep, and he fiddles with his magic ring, whispering dates and times. The field of lavender light pops up between his face and his palm, like it always does. The sight of him in his perfect jeans and beads and Beatle boots with a piece of light dancing in his hand is damn near as strange as anything Ruby has ever seen.

And then it doesn’t seem so strange, after all. It seems like old times.

Chi smiles. “It’s over. K-T has computed there are no more Prime Probabilities, at least not tonight. We’re in the clear.”

“Why should I care?” Starbright sniffs.

Chi’s eyes widen. He sighs and shakes his head. “Starbright,” he says gently. “I tried to rescue Penny Lane. I did try. Her death is a terrible thing, I know. But her death—how can I say this?—her death doesn’t affect the timeline.”

“Yes, it does.” Starbright wipes tears from her cheeks. Her face hardens with anger. “Her death affects the timeline because her death affects me.”

Chi aims a look of appeal at Ruby.

She shrugs. “Kid’s got a point.”

“Why should I care about your spacetime?” Starbright says. “Because I’m important somehow? Why? Just because I survive the Summer of Love preserves your whole future?”

“My love, it’s your future, too,” he says.

“So you say,” Ruby says.

Chi studies them both with an inscrutable look. Then he stands. “All right. Consider impact before you consider benefit? Maybe this will make an impact for the good.”

He carefully takes down Ruby’s prized Rick Griffin posters, exposing her white stucco living room wall.

“Now what’s he up to?” Ruby mutters to the kid, taking Chi’s place beside her and wrapping her arm around the kid’s shoulders.

“This,” Chi says, aiming his magic ring at the wall, “is a holoid field.”

The field of lavender light, which has always been the size of a pulp magazine every time Ruby glimpses it, appears in the middle of the room. It’s as big as the whole wall! A bright red message pops into the field:

“Date: 08-28-1967. You may insert Disc 5 now.”

“Sweet Isis.” Ruby gets to her feet, walks in front of the holoid field, next to it, behind it. The field is three feet in depth and floats a foot off the floor. She walks through the space between the field and the wall and her distorted shadow ripples through the light like on a movie screen when someone walks in front of the projector. The letters and numbers are three-dimensional, as bright as rubies, and as large as her leg from her knee to her ankle. She can see every angle, every glowing edge.

“And this,” Chi says, “is a holoid.”

He takes a tiny cube from his pocket, opens the lid, and plucks out a crystal sliver. He tucks the sliver in a slot in the bezel of his ring. “Let me show you a bit of the future. Our future. Yours and mine.”

A tall, slim woman materializes in the middle of the lavender light. She’s clad in elegant, precise clothes. Her hair falls in dusky waves to her shoulders. Her distinctive face is grave. Her hands gesture gracefully, sending sparkles from the gemstone rings on her fingers. She appears to be Ruby’s age, but her bearing and demeanor seem far older. Her eyes search the foreground, glinting with the force of her personality.

Ruby leans back into the couch. Starbright huddles against her.

The woman hovers a foot off the floor in the middle of Ruby’s living room, gazing straight at them.

“Hello,” Ruby whispers, just in case she can hear them.

Chi sits beside Starbright and circles his arm around her shoulders, gazing raptly at the holoid.

“My fellow Americans,” the woman says in a thrilling contralto. “As we celebrate the close of the first century of the twenty-first millennium, and embark upon the third century of our great nation, we face more difficult challenges than we have ever faced before. We must meet those challenges with solutions. Not easy solutions, but difficult ones. Solutions aimed toward relieving our present suffering, surely, but also aimed toward our heirs and the destiny of our precious blue planet. Not merely the shortsighted quick fixes of previous administrations who sought power and personal aggrandizement at the expense of the future and abused the power of the media to propagandize their faulty policies. We need long-term solutions. Solutions that will work for us now and for tomorrow.

“We must accept the responsibility of the cocreatorship of our world with the Cosmic Mind, the Universal Intelligence that has graced us with this small blue globe. I believe in the Great Good of the Cosmic Mind, my friends, my neighbors, and my colleagues. I believe we must devote our lives and our work, each and every one of us, during each and every day, to the furtherance of the Great Good.

“I can’t define for you what the Great Good is. But I can tell you what I believe. I believe the Great Good is love. Kindness, joy, and creativity. A celebration of people’s self-worth and of society’s worth. Of inventiveness, ingenuity, and industriousness. The Great Good must serve our fellow Americans and serve our great country, this unique bastion of liberty in all the world and in all of history.

“But we must consider our impact on the world, my worthy opponent says. My fellow Americans, we have considered our impact. No country in all of history has extended generosity to the world the way we have. What do we do when the whole planet suffers? When misguided science serving political zealots and secretly cynical self-interests have brought about this unexpected climate change? When the lust for power and domination and the failure to sanction rogue regimes have brought about the First Atomic War? What can we do? We fight back.

“During the rebellion that formed our great nation, when our ancestors fought against government tyranny, a colony—later our sister state of New Hampshire—had a motto. A rallying cry. That cry was ‘Live Free or Die.’ As we plunge into the fourth century of the millennium, we must rally to a new cry. I propose that we must ‘Live Responsibly or Die.’”

Applause fills the living room, and the woman vanishes.

“It’s a campaign speech!” Starbright whispers.

“You’re right,” Ruby whispers back. “Who is she?” she asks Chi.

“That’s Mary Alexander, the second woman president of the United States. She won the election in 2092,” he says in a tone matching his rapt gaze. “President Alexander is generally credited as the founder of cosmicism. She was the first person to gain enormous political power who articulated cosmicist fundamentals. From these fundamentals stemmed a massive shift in values, especially during the 2200s during the brown ages. People broke away from consumer passivity to awareness of impact in their daily lives. To give is best, that’s what we say.”

“Not these days, sonny,” Ruby says.

“Well. It took nearly three hundred years after President Alexander gave her speech for cosmicist philosophy to catch on.” Chi shrugs. “That’s how long a shift in humanity’s values usually takes. Took that long for Christianity to break away from the brutality of early paganism.”

“So she never saw people practice cosmicism in her Day?” Ruby says.

“Only in a limited way.”

“How sad!” Starbright says.

Now Mary Alexander appears in the holoid again, flickering briefly. Her careworn face is deeply lined. Her silver hair falls in waves to her shoulders, but her shoulders stoop. “I have had great joys in my life and great disappointments, too, my children.” Her voice quavers. “I am still fearful for our great nation and fearful for our Earth. You must carry on the Good in all ways, great and small. Be new. Always come forth into Being.”

“This is Mary a month before she died. A farewell message. She was ninety-seven,” Chi says. “She survived three assassination attempts.” He says proudly, “President Alexander was my great-great-great-, and a couple more greats, grandmother.”

Ruby whistles.

Starbright stares at him.

Chi plucks another sliver from his cube, thrusts it in his magic ring.

The lavender field flickers. Bright red alphanumerics appear.

“Date: 08-28-1967. You may insert Disc 6 now.”

Now another woman springs into the field, so full of life Ruby finds it hard to believe she’s not real. She’s a fanciful version of President Alexander. Her waist-length hair is dyed every color of the rainbow, her costume a riot of beads, bells, flowers, and flowing silk ribbons. She sits in a lotus position in the middle of a round mattress fitted in a bed frame made of tiny strips of different colored wood. The bed is poised on a gigantic carved tree branch. The quilt is stitched and pieced to resemble the leaves and twigs and bits of down inside a bird’s nest.

“Everybody needs a nest, don’t you think so, babies?” she says. “Hi! I’m Pearl Alexander, and this here is a gen-u-ine one-of-a-kind handmade sculpture-bed crafted by me and twenty-five other folks in my company, Back to the Hands. See, we’re committed to a return of True Value in the arts and crafts. We reject the mass production thing. We reject the travesties of so-called modern art like that so-called artist cranking out a thousand paintings with dead butterflies glued all over ‘em.”

“Dead butterflies?” Starbright exclaims. “I threw out my butterfly collecting kit when Granma died!”

“People say we’re living in a postindustrial society,” Pearl Alexander continues, “but we’re not. We’re living in a hyperindustrial society that devalues individual talent and skill. My colleagues and I reject the products of the hyperindustrial technopolistic plutocracy. We want craft back, even if craft costs a bit more ‘cause a talented human being actually made it. We believe craft connects you to the Cosmic Mind, to your fellow human beings, and to beauty. Dig it, babies.”

Pearl Alexander vanishes.

“She’s hip!” Ruby says.

“Oh, I wish I could meet her,” Starbright says. “I wish I could show her my drawings.”

Chi laughs. “Pearl was the artist of the family, that’s for sure. It’s like having M.C. Escher as your uncle. Pearl was gene-tweaked, so she lived well past a hundred. She devoted her whole life to arts and crafts.”

Now a series of tall, slim men stride through the lavender field.

“Let’s party,” Ruby mutters.

“That’s Jason Behrens, a geneticist whose combined therapy techniques pioneered the radiation vaccine,” Chi says, pointing. “That’s Thomas Alexander, a mathematician who predicted a global population of fifteen billion years before the census-takers could prove it.

“That’s Mars Herbert, who married Calliope Alexander in 2246.” A lovely, strawberry-haired woman materializes in the field hand-in-hand with a tall, slim man. “Mars was a world-modeler who co-invented telespace. He and Calliope started the practice of giftdays.”

And as the night drifts into dawn, Chi shows Ruby and Starbright wonders of the future, great and small. The domes shielding people during the worst of the radiation. The glittering megalopolises. The EM-Trans, magnetic trains traveling through tunnels at a thousand miles an hour. Gene-tweaking. The medcenters. Telespace. Tachyportation. Terraformation of Mars. Bicycle Paths that generate electricity from a bicyclist’s physical exercise and beam utility credits to her private account.

Many, many wonders.

And things people decided not to do. When damage to the atmosphere was the worst they’d seen, some scientists wanted to blast the sky with lasers or pump toxic chemicals into the air with the hope that the chemicals would recombine with radioactive molecules and neutralize them. Guided by cosmicism, people decided to do nothing. They hid beneath their domes and invented Block while the Earth healed.

“Sky-seeding does work,” Chi says. “The radiation vaccine does work. Telespace does work. T-portation does work.”

“Most of the time,” Ruby says.

Chi gives her a wry grin. “Most of the time. In ways great and small, the future does work. We’ve survived.”

Birds begin their early morning ecstasies. Ruby’s cats stir, wander to the kitchen, and gather around the fridge, singing for their breakfast. Starbright snores against Chi’s shoulder.

He whispers to his magic ring, “Katie, off.” The lavender field shrinks to a pinpoint and vanishes.

Ruby yawns and stretches. “That was your family album. Right, am I right?”

He glances at her with bleary eyes. “Parts of it.” The elegant lad looks the worse for wear after his rumble alongside Hells Angels, not to mention his rumble with the demons.

“Cool.” As Ruby watches, the scratches on his cheek heal. The bruises on his forehead and jaw fade. His split lip mends. Gene-tweaking, uh-huh. “What an amazing family. So talented and brilliant and fortunate.”

“We’ve suffered, too. We’ve all suffered to save the Earth.”

“But you’re not a devolt or a day-laborer on the street.”

“No, I’m not. I probably wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“So this future you’ve shown us is selective, isn’t it?”

“Everything is selective.” He laughs dryly. “You’re a tough nut, Ruby A. Maverick. Mary Alexander would like you.”

Ruby laughs, pleased in spite of herself. “You showed us all that because you wanted to give us hope. You wanted to give the kid hope.”

Starbright’s sleeping face is stained with tears of grief.

“Did I?”

“I hope so,” Ruby says.

“And you?”

“Man from Mars, I abandoned hope a thousand lifetimes ago.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She shrugs. Not enough of a cheerleader for him? Oh, well.

He gently rearranges Starbright on the couch, then abruptly stands. He strides to the kitchen, pulls out his maser, and aims at the cats, all her beautiful beloved hungry cats gathered around the fridge. He fires before she can stop him or scream.

Red light strikes them, bathing the kitchen in a scarlet glow.

Now Ruby screams. “What are you doing?”

Starbright flinches in her sleep, crying out, “Nance? Nance?”

“These damn fleas are driving me crazy.” Chi scratches his ankle. “Don’t worry, it’s only the micro beam. Oh, I’ll catch hell for using a modern technology to affect the past. But you know what? I don’t give a damn.” He aims the maser at his ankles, shoots the red beam all over his socks.

“You little shit!” Ruby yells.

Alana flops on her butt and scratches her chin. Black specks fly out of her plumy white fur. Luna does her calisthenics, a clawed hind paw deftly raised to her shoulder. She scratches, and fleas fall out dead.

Ruby roars with laughter, waking up the neighborhood.

Chi looks around. “Guess I didn’t blow up all of spacetime this time, either.” He pockets the maser. “Dig it, Ruby. The future will liberate Schrodinger’s Cat!”

September 4, 1967

A New Moon in Virgo

19

Hello Goodbye

Susan wakes to rain pattering on the roof. The skylight is as gray as her mood. Chi told her last night, as they cuddled on Ruby’s couch, that the Hot Dim Spot will close for good at midnight tonight. He doesn’t come out and say so, but she knows what that means. His blue eyes got bluer. It means he’s got to leave. Leave her.

She’s got to leave, too. Ninth grade starts next week. But how can she go? How can she leave the Haight-Ashbury and return to her square parents and her horrid school?

Why oh why does the Summer of Love have to end?

She shivers. It’s cold inside her little room. Cold outside in the rainy morning. And even colder in her heart.

In another two months, Shaker Heights will be freezing.

She twirls a lock of her hair, bites the split ends, and spits them out, a bad habit she hasn’t indulged in for two whole months. Twirl, bite, spit. She thinks of Cyn’s ragged fingernails. What used to be Cyn’s ragged fingernails.

Three days ago, Cyn married the handsome young black man, who turns out to be the son of a prosperous saloonkeeper in Oakland. Eli’s father told Eli to lose the Black Panther crap and put on a bartender’s apron, if he’s got a child on the way. Eli does. Cyn is pregnant and all grown up at sixteen. She’s grown out her fingernails, long and strong, and polished them pink. That was the first thing Susan noticed when she admired Cyn’s wedding ring as they sat on the grass of the Panhandle for the last time.

“Dr. Smith over at the clinic?” Cyn said. “He gave me some pills, good pills, supposed to help me with my moods? I feel better all ready.”

Susan twists another lock of her hair. She’s got to go back to high school. Twirl, bite, spit.

The private investigator tracked her down at 555 Clayton Street the day after Nance died. He questioned her for nearly an hour. The PI turns out to be the dude in the military cap. Susan promised him she’d contact her parents herself if he didn’t turn her over to the police.

“Groovy,” the PI said. “I always thought you were a foxy lady.”

Nance’s body was so badly burned that the coroner had to match her dental records at twelve years old—her stepfather hadn’t sent her to the dentist for two years—to the jawbone left in the charred corpse. Susan heard that the stepfather declined to collect the remains of his stepdaughter. She also heard that Nance’s mom took Nance’s brother Dave and moved in with her aunt.

Professor Zoom walked out of the psychiatric ward at San Francisco General, never to be seen or heard from again. Stan the Man split town the night of the fire, destination unknown. The Double Barrel Boogie Band failed to return to the wreckage of their house when authorities discovered a fake name had been signed on the lease and the rent was six months overdue.

Papa Al was identified in the Berkeley Barb as a speed pusher recruiting young dealers at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. Oh, that’s how he paid his rent. Teddy Bear split to Mexico. Dr. David Smith struggles on at the clinic, with more patients than ever and a lot less money.

Leo Gorgon returned to New York City, along with his heroin habit. Hairy Harry and the Hells Angels took their hogs out for a spin to Florida. Stovepipe was found in Richmond behind the Pony Saloon, his wrists and ankles bound and four bullets in the back of his head. Susan sees the Lizard’s ugly mug on the Wanted bulletin board at the post office.

The mouse magician parades forlornly down Haight Street, ringing his bell and waving his skull-topped wand. But only on Saturdays.

The woman Susan knew only as Lady May could not be identified at all. The burned remains of whoever Lady May was were placed in a box and filed in the public morgue under the name Jane Doe.

Susan packs her overnight bag, wondering how on earth she’s going to get home. She’s got exactly two dollars and forty-six cents left.

Late morning slips into lunchtime. Susan wanders down to the kitchen. Chi lounges at the table while Ruby prepares food at her cutting board. He doesn’t have to pack. He came with nothing but the clothes on his back, which look and smell as fresh as the day she first met him.

“I’m becoming a grup,” Susan complains, sliding into a kitchen chair.

“A grup?” Ruby says.

“Yeah. Like in ‘Miri,’ on Star Trek. All the flower children who came to the Haight-Ashbury, we’re like the three-hundred-year-old children living on Miri’s planet. Now that we’ve got to go home, it’s like losing our childhood. Losing the innocence of the Haight-Ashbury.”

“Innocence.” Ruby dices scallions, zucchini, and Roma tomatoes fresh from the garden. “I can think of a lot of words for the Haight-Ashbury, kid, but innocence isn’t one of them.”

“But it is, Ruby. And when we return to the soulless suburbs, we’re all going to turn into grups and contract some terrible disease that will rot us into madness and death, just exactly like the children who come of age on Miri’s planet.”

“Starbright,” Ruby says, “life is not one big Star Trek metaphor.”

“Yes, it is,” Susan says gloomily. “It is to me.”

Ruby is more cheerful than usual. Is she glad they’re finally going to leave her in peace? She drizzles olive oil in her iron skillet, tosses in the vegetables, and heaps on garlic and herbs.

“I don’t think Starbright is becoming a grup quite yet, do you, Chi?”

Chi gives her a wink and a marvelous smile, but he’s preoccupied, fiddling with his magic ring.

“Madness and death,” Susan says. “Madness and death.”

Chi projects the lavender field into the palm of his hand, whispering Katie this and Katie that. Seen this small, the holoid field strikes Susan as ordinary as an old boot. He looks troubled, though everything seems to be as stupidly right as it should be.

“You talk to that thing more than you talk to me.”

“When are you going to call your parents?” he says.

“God.”

“You promised.”

“I know, but—“

“But nothing.”

“I’m. . . .I’m scared! I don’t know what to say!”

“Try ‘hi,’” Ruby says, spooning sautéed vegetables over angel hair noodles.

“You don’t know my father.”

“That’s right, I don’t.” Ruby slides steaming bowls across the table to her and Chi and sits down with a bowl of her own. “But you do, kid. And you’re lucky you do.”

“Lucky! How am I lucky?”

“You’ve got a father,” Ruby says, sipping red wine. “You know him. You’ll probably know him many more years to come.” At Susan’s puzzled look, Ruby adds, “My pa died at Pearl Harbor. A war hero, huh. He was my daddy, and nobody else could compare. I was nine when he died. Sometimes I wonder what he’d think about things. Ma working so hard at Marinship. Getting the cancer. Me and my shop. What I’ve made of my life.”

She glances out the window and shrugs, and Susan sees for the first time how that particular movement of Ruby’s shoulder is like rolling off a weight that keeps rolling back on.

“I’ve missed my pa my whole life. So you call your father,” she says, blinking back the slickness in her eyes, “and be glad you’ve got him, no matter what a pain in the ass you think he is at this point in your life. Right, am I right, Chi? You going home to your pa?”

“No,” he says curtly. “I never knew my father, at all. Or my mother.”

Susan and Ruby stare at him, openmouthed.

“You’re an orphan, Chi?” Susan says. “You never told me that.”

“Oh, I’ve got skipparents. Abraxis and Ariel Herbert.”

“But. . . .you must know who your parents were!”

“Of course I do. Mars Herbert and Calliope Alexander. She of the strawberry hair.” He tosses back his own strawberry hair and laughs in his mirthless way. “Calliope chose my name. How she loved fanciful, mythological things.”

“But”--Susan recollects the holoids he showed her and Ruby--“wasn’t Mars one of the inventors of telespace? Didn’t you say he and Calliope married in 2246?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re from 2467! You’re only twenty-one!”

And he gives her such a haunted, sorrowful look, Susan pushes her bowl of food away and folds her hands, listening.

* * *

The world population had reached twelve billion, Chi says. In spite of unexpected global changes and the First and Second Atomic Wars, in spite of radiation sickness and pandemics, fifteen billion people inhabited the Earth. Even the wealthy hiding beneath their private domes couldn’t escape the impact of fifteen billion people on our small blue planet.

The strain was evident everywhere: water shortages, food shortages, energy shortages. Five thousand wars, if you added gang wars and local revolutions to international disputes. Pollution and diseases resistant to medicine when medicine could be had. People had been talking about a population crisis for centuries. Back in the 2100s, Mary Alexander expressed her concern and founded the World Birth Limits Organization. But birth limits movements back then were voluntary. No nation in the world, except Communist China, enforced a population limits policy.

That was then.

“I believe in the infinite holiness of life,” Ruby says.

Which makes Susan squirm. Ruby knows very well what she did this summer.

“So do we,” Chi says and sighs. “See, population growth is exponential. It’s like the pond with its lily pads that double their numbers each time they grow. By the time the pond is half covered, it’s too late.”

“Because when the pond is half covered, and the lily pads double again, then the pond is completely covered?” Susan says.

“That’s right, my Starbright,” Chi says.

“Smart girl,” Ruby says.

Among practicing cosmicists, Chi continues, voluntary childlessness was the right choice. But when, in 2250, Calliope Alexander-Herbert proposed mandating childlessness before the World Birth Limits Organization, she met with outraged resistance, even among cosmicists.

“Who wanted to forfeit the right to pass on their genes to another generation?” Chi says. “Who wanted to forfeit the possibility of producing another genius or a saint? Who wanted to be left without an heir?”

When the world population exceeded fifteen billion, enforced childlessness became the only way. But everyone had to compromise on the heirs issue.

“The World Birth Limits Organization convened an international meeting,” Chi continues. “After three terrorist attacks and two assassination attempts, the WBLO passed the Generation-Skipping Law. The plan was this. Randomly chosen couples from all over the world would have their genetic material—sperm and eggs—harvested and frozen by cryopreservation, a technique well mastered by that time. From their harvest, the couple could choose and create their child. Skipparents would be arranged for the child, typically from future family members. After a statutory period passed, the child would be birthed in a lab or by implantation in the skipmother’s womb.”

And then another random pool of couples throughout the world were chosen to skip a generation.

“The goal was to reduce our numbers to six billion, which was the last time people had a reasonable quality of life,” Chi says, with another sigh.

“So Calliope and Mars were chosen?” Susan says. “Your mom and dad had to skip?”

“Oh, no,” Chi tells her. “They were good cosmicists. They volunteered. You know,” he says, “sometimes I feel like I know them from the holoids they left me. And don’t get me wrong, I love my skipparents, and they love me. But sometimes I feel this sadness. Like I’ve lost something I can never get back.”

“You never met your parents at all?” Susan says.

“They died,” Chi says, “a hundred years before I was born.”

“Hi,” Susan says into the telephone. Silence, a sputter of static. Her hand shakes so hard, the mouthpiece bumps against her teeth. “It’s me.”

A long deep sigh. A snuffle. Noises knocking around in the background. Her mother’s voice. Then the clatter of someone picking up the phone in the den. A second breath, a second breathlessness.

“Hi, it’s you,” her father says. “Do you have any idea what you have put us through, young lady?”

God! Her heart pounds in her throat. She braces herself.

“Where are you now?” her mother asks shrilly.

A nervous giggle spills from Susan’s mouth. “I’m, ah, well, I’m in San Francisco. It’s really far out, you should see it, ha ha ha.”

“Any idea at all?”

“Are you all right, dear?”

“I’m okay, Mom. I know you’re pissed at me, but—”

“Pissed. Pissed. Pissed is not the word, young lady.”

“Susan, don’t you use that kind of language with your father.”

“Gloria, I think you better—”

“Or when you’re talking—”

“Get off the phone, Gloria, and let me handle—”

“Just because she’s calling doesn’t mean. . . .Susan, just because you’re calling doesn’t mean--”

“Let me handle this, goddamn it, Gloria!”

Susan almost laughs out loud at her parents’ tangling voices. Then she’s infuriated. She hasn’t seen them or spoken to them in over two months.

“This is so typical. You haven’t changed one bit, but I have. I’ve changed, and I can’t stand the way you hassle over every stupid thing. That’s the reason I left. Why can’t you just talk to me?”

Shocked silence.

She hears a click. Her mother has hung up the phone.

“If you can’t talk to me, Dad, I’m going to hang up, okay?”

Her father sighs. “Don’t hang up, Susan.”

“Then stop it!”

He sighs again, a bone-weary sigh. “You’re starting school next week. I want you back here right now.”

“Sorry, I ran out of money. I can’t afford a plane ticket. Guess I’ll have to hitchhike.”

“I’ll buy the ticket. It’ll be waiting for you at the airport.”

“What if I don’t want to come back?”

“You don’t want to come home?”

“I don’t know. Why should I?”

A pause, another snuffle. It suddenly occurs to her that her father is crying. “Because we love you, Susan.”

“You do?”

Now she is crying, and this makes her mad, because she swore she wouldn’t, no matter what. She wipes her cheek on the back of her hand. Ruby looks up from across the kitchen table and tosses her a paper napkin.

“Of course we do. You know we do.”

“Maybe I don’t know. Dad, Nance died. She burned to death.”

“We know. We heard from her mother.” More silence, muffled sighs. “So I’m not Daddy anymore?”

“I’m not a little girl anymore.”

He thinks that over. “Tell you what,” her father says. “Your mother and I are going to get on a plane and meet you in San Francisco tonight.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes. Yes, I think we do. We can talk on the flight home.”

He takes down Ruby’s number, hangs up, and calls Susan back. They’re flying out on Pan Am flight 524, to arrive thirty minutes after midnight. He wants to pick her up wherever she’s staying, but Susan chickens out on that. She asks Ruby if she’ll drive her to airport. Ruby nods.

“We saw you on TV,” her father says. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

“Oh, everyone here thinks ‘The Hippie Temptation’ was a shuck. Harry Reasoner doesn’t know the first thing about the Haight-Ashbury.”

“Your mother thinks you’ve gotten too thin.”

“She would.”

He clears his throat. “Susan, you didn’t. . . .you wouldn’t. . . .did you, um. Did you take that LSD drug they’re talking about?”

That LSD drug? Which LSD drug? Owsley white lightning or purple double barrels or dragon’s blood? She doesn’t know which LSD drug he means.

“No,” Susan implies, not lying. Her father’s sigh of relief makes the implication worthwhile. “Listen, Dad. Don’t ever call me stupid again.”

“I know you’re not stupid, Susan. You’re in the ninety-eighth percentile. You’re one of the smartest kids in your school.”

“Because the Summer of Love hasn’t been stupid, Dad,” she persists. “This has been the most amazing summer I’ve ever had in my life.”

* * *

Susan hangs up the phone to find Chi staring at her, his troubled look darker. He takes the oblong stone-thing from his jacket pocket and gingerly lays it on the kitchen table. He gazes into her eyes so intently, she fidgets with the last of her lunch. Ruby whisks the bowls away.

“Starbright,” he says, “Katie tells me I need to verify your identity. Will you please place the fingers of your right hand on my scanner?”

“Okay.” She does. Thumb, too.

“Left hand?”

She does the same.

“Starbright,” he says, his voice husky. “Will you please tell me your true and legal name?”

“I’m Susan Bell.”

“How old are you, Susan?”

“I’m. . . .going on fifteen.” She blushes at Ruby’s look of surprise. “I’m fourteen, okay?”

“Mega.” Chi heaves a sigh. “That’s prime. Now, one last thing. I’m going to press the scanner on your chest, right here. You’ll feel a little prick like before, okay?”

He tenderly presses the stone to her breastbone. She feels that prick again, like the poke of a tiny needle.

“Oh, no!” Chi leaps to his feet, knocking over the kitchen chair.

Susan screams.

The cats scatter.

Ruby drops the bowls.

“No, no, no!” He shakes the scanner, rereading it again and again. “This can’t be!”

He lunges for her. She ducks behind the table. He lunges again. He seizes her, pressing the scanner to her chest.

Ruby tears him away from her. “Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco! Have you gone off your rocker?”

He collapses in a chair. He stares at Susan with haunted eyes. “You’re not pregnant.”

Susan and Ruby trade glances, astonished and wary.

“Well, of course I’m not pregnant,” she says indignantly. “Why should I be?”

“But you were. You were in July, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”

Susan burns scarlet. “Y-yes, but it was Stan the Man’s. I couldn’t have it. I didn’t want it and I couldn’t have it, and that’s that!”

“It?” he says. “It?”

“This is none of your business, man from Mars,” Ruby snaps.

“It is my business. Susan, tell me what happened.”

“I—I—I got an abortion.”

“Dig it, Chi,” Ruby says. “It’s very simple. She’s fourteen years old. It’s not likely the drug-dealing SOB who statutorily raped her would have given a damn. She was less than two weeks pregnant. She didn’t want to identify herself and anyway the new law is crap. So I took her to a doctor who does D and Cs, all right? We talked it over first, so she was sure she was making the right decision, and why the hell do you care?”

“She can’t have had an abortion!”

Susan watches, confused, as Ruby seizes Chi by his shirt collar.

“Yes—she—can,” Ruby says. “She can, and she did. I thought you just got through telling us your sex police enforce birth limits in the future.”

“They do, but—”

“But nothing, sonny. Let me tell you what happened in the old days when a woman couldn’t go to a competent doctor. She went and had an abortion, anyway. I’m not saying it was right or easy or even moral, but she went and did it, if she thought she had to. And if something went wrong, if she got a problem called puerperal sepsis, if she got infected and went into shock, she could die. And if she didn’t die, if she was so lucky as not to die, she could never have children again. Not even when she wanted to. Not even when she was ready to. Because puerperal sepsis makes you sterile.”

Ruby releases him, staggers to the kitchen sink, and turns her back. In a low trembling voice, she says, “Did me.”

* * *

Susan presses her face against Ruby’s back between her shoulders and wraps her arms around Ruby’s waist.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right, kid,” Ruby says. “I’ve had time to deal with what happened fourteen years ago. It’s old news in 1967. You know what? I should have had the child.”

Susan always thought of Ruby as so powerful, so strong. Pressed against her back, she can hear Ruby’s breath, feel her beating heart. For the first time, Susan realizes how fragile Ruby is. Vulnerable and mortal.

“God, Ruby.”

“Hey, don’t cry.” Ruby turns around and hugs her. “It’s been an amazing summer for me, too. I’ve learned something from the Summer of Love. Or maybe I’ve just remembered something I forgot. We’ve all got choices in this life. Like President Alexander said, we’ve got to make those choices responsibly in a cocreatorship with God or the Cosmic Mind or Isis or however you wish to refer to the Universal Intelligence. If we do that, it’s going to be all right. It’s got to be all right because we’ve got to carry on.”

But Chi looks drained. He shakes his head at the scanner, reading and rereading the data. “Listen to me,” he says.

“No, we’re not going to listen to you, sonny,” Ruby snaps. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

He shakes his head at Susan, pale and drawn. “Susan Bell has to be pregnant before I transmit to 2467. If she isn’t, I’ve failed. The SOL Project has failed. And I don’t know what will happen to our spacetime. After all we’ve gone through battling the demons, maybe this is the secret loop that destroys everything.” He mopes out to the living room, slumps on the couch.

“Oh, Chi.” Susan runs to his side and kneels and takes his hands. “I’ll get pregnant when I’m older. I’ll get pregnant with a man who loves me. Why must I be pregnant now?”

“Because Susan Bell will give birth to a child in the spring of 1968.”

“Oh!” she cries and all her fantasies of motherhood rush back. “I would want a little girl.”

“You will have a little girl.”

“I would name her Jessica.”

His eyes widen. “You will name her Jessica.”

“I would want her to have brown eyes and pretty hair. Oh, a little girl!”

He stares.

Ruby sits next to him. “Chi, are you telling us you know what Susan Bell’s probable future is supposed to be?”

He stands and takes down the Rick Griffin posters again. He projects the lavender field as big as the wall. Bright red alphanumerics say:

“Date: 09-04-1967. You may insert Disc 7 now.”

He shoves a crystal sliver in his magic ring.

“My skipmother smuggled these holoid discs into my pocket just before I transmitted to this Now,” he says. “It was subversive, what she did. The holoids contain amazing data. Oh, some data I already knew about. Some I’d never seen before. And some data I wasn’t supposed to know about until the time came. Ariel prioritized and date-coded everything. Man, was I ticked.”

The lavender field dissolves and the street signs at the corner of Haight and Ashbury pop up. In the background, a slim girl in a high-collared shirt talks with a tall, pale redhead. The girl darts across the street, gaining her place behind the shoulder of a sandy-haired man. The girl’s hair stirs in the wind, and she brushes it away from her face. Then she smiles. A radiant smile. An enigmatic smile. The sandy-haired man says, “I’m Harry Reasoner.”

Susan screams. She stares at the girl with her face smiling back at her. “Wow! Wow! Is that me?”

Ruby laughs. “That’s you, kid.”

“What other holoids do you have of me?” Susan says to Chi.

“Just this,” he says quietly.

A young woman materializes in the lavender field. She is self-possessed and very serious. Her hair frames her face in a curly bob. A toddler sits on her lap.

Susan stares. An eerie feeling shivers through her.

The holoid disappears too soon.

“Susan, I don’t have any other holoids of you, but my skipmother did include your complete genealogy on Disc 7,” Chi says. “Know this. You have children. Your children have children. And those children have children.

Now another mother and a child appear. The mother stands in profile, watching a dusky-haired girl dance ballet with consummate grace.

“Your first daughter has a daughter. One of her great-great-great grandchildren is named Mary. Mary marries a famous sculptor named Thomas Alexander.”

Susan is suddenly aware her heart is pounding.

“Then Susan Bell,” Ruby says slowly, “is the great-great-great grandmother of the second woman president of the United States.”

“Yes,” Chi says.

He whispers to his magic ring. The holoids and the lavender field disappear.

The living room darkens as the late summer sun flees into the west. A chill hinting of autumn settles in. Ruby rises and stacks wood in the fireplace.

Susan’s heart pounds harder.

“Then Susan Bell,” Ruby says more slowly still and strikes a fireplace match, “is the great-great-great, and a couple more greats, grandmother of you.”

20

Brown-Eyed Girl

With her pop eyes and slack jaw, the girl Chi knew as Starbright stares at him like an R. Crumb character out of Zap Comix. He can practically see sweat splotches and exclamation points leaping from her brow. He can’t tell if she’s furious or just plain horrified. But he recognizes the feeling of pure shock because it’s rushing through him, too.

“Why didn’t you tell me before I fell in love with you?” she demands.

He stares at his boot toes, speechless.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

He feels like a dupe. What a chump! Consider impact before you consider benefit? Right. Ariel Herbert’s secret. A woman’s secret. A skipmother’s secret.

“I swear to you on all I hold sacred, I didn’t know,” he finally manages to protest. “I never traced my genealogy earlier than Mary Alexander. I had no reason to!”

All of spacetime will collapse if Susan Bell dies during the Summer of Love. And all of spacetime will collapse if Susan Bell isn’t pregnant as of 11:59 P.M. on September 4, 1967 when Chi is supposed to transmit back to September 4, 2467. Will he arrive on time? Or twelve hours and ten minutes late? Who gives a damn?

“Why did you make me love you?” Susan demands. “If you’re my. . . my. . . .”

“Grandson,” Ruby says in her sweet-as-poison voice.

“I didn’t know, I swear I really didn’t know!” he says. “I mean, I don’t look anything like you, do I? After so many generations and five hundred years and gene-tweaking?”

“Go with me everywhere! Hold my hand!”

“Dig it, man from Mars,” Ruby says, laughing. “The kid’s in love with you.”

He glares at Ruby. “What’s so damn funny? I’m in love with her, too.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve!” Susan leaps to her feet and stomps around the living room. “You played with me!”

“At first, I--.” He stops right there. At first he what? Played with her? “At first, I protected you, Susan. I needed to protect you, you know that. Then it became something more.”

“Simmer down, Susan,” Ruby says. “I wouldn’t mind listening to you rant and rave at him for at least another hour. And Chi, I’d love to watch you cringe and grovel and beg her forgiveness for at least that long. But if what you say is true,” she points to the spot where he projected the holoids, “and preserving all of spacetime depends on Susan Bell fulfilling her destiny, then tell me this. What are you going to do about it?”

“Me?”

“Well, who else, sonny? Unless you want to run down to the street and collar some fine dude to knock her up.”

“Knock me up!” Susan cries. “This is so gross, I can’t believe it!” She darts up the stairs to the sitting room and slams the door.

Chi waits for the lock to click.

It clicks.

Then unclicks.

“You better hurry, man from Mars.” Ruby saunters to the front window and peers out into the evening. “Only I don’t see anyone, let alone a man our Starbright would want to father her child. Why, I haven’t seen the streets this empty since the night there was supposed to be a riot.”

Chi looks out, too, and Ruby’s right. The corner of Clayton and Haight is deserted.

Ruby lights a jasmine candle and hands it to him with a wicked smile. “Listen up, Chi. You say your skipmother did this subversive thing. She was on to a secret loop or two, hmm? She didn’t want to freak you out about all that too soon. But she knows you’re a good cosmicist. You would never ever violate the Tenets unless there was a really good reason. Right, am I right? So go do your duty, sonny. Or should I say,” she says, sweet as poison, “grandsonny.”

“But,” he sputters, blushing, “Susan and me, we’re related.”

“You said so yourself. So many generations. Five hundred years. I think you’ll be just fine. I think your skipmother would agree. Oh, hey.” Ruby’s face tightens with alarm. “Under the Generation-Skipping Law, are you allowed to father a child?”

“Yeah, I’m a skipchild. I’ve got a deferment.”

“A deferment, uh-huh.” Ruby darts into the kitchen and returns with Susan’s favorite sherry. She thrusts the bottle and two cordial glasses in his hands. “Then go defer your fine ass up those stairs.”

“But this is impossible!”

“I know your Tenets say you can’t kill your grandmother. But do any of your damn Tenets say you can’t make love to your great-great-great-great-grandmother? Huh, do they? Think about it.”

Chi thinks about it. The more he thinks about it, the more Ruby smiles. As he thinks some more about it, Ruby starts to laugh. Soon he’s smiling, too, and laughing and shaking his head.

“Dig it, you love each other,” Ruby says. “I call that the Grandmother Principle, 1967-style. Now get upstairs ‘cause she’s waiting for you.”

Gossip, Innuendo & All The News That Fits

At midnight September 4, tourist season officially ended and, for most of the people concerned, so did the Summer of Love.

It all goes to prove what every veteran Haightian knew all along. Most of the summer lovers were out for their vacation thrill. They were tourists, plastic hippies, middle- and upper-middle class straighties who came down to play the game.

Now the game is over and most of the kiddies will return to school.

But one thing happened that no one can dispute. In one way or another, all these people were turned on. And while they may never see San Francisco again, it’s a sure bet that somewhere in the world they’ll someday be wearing flowers in their hair.

“Haightians Thrill to Spacious Streets”

Berkeley Barb, Vol. 5. Issue 109 (Sept. 15-21, 1967)

Her hair is everywhere.

Spilling from her scalp. On her eyebrows and eyelashes. In her armpits, a sprinkling on her forearms and calves. The down between her thighs.

Chi hasn’t seen a nude female in months. He’s never seen a nude female other than girls who took the radiation vaccine and became nuder than nude.

That hair. All that hair.

If she notices his distress, she’s not dismayed. She giggles, hiding her face beneath the sheet, regaining her composure, then peeking out at him again, bursting into another peal of laughter.

“What?” he demands.

“Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.”

He follows her gaze. He’s never felt ashamed of his perfect nude body before. He turns beet-red all over.

“They didn’t give you any hair.” She points, just in case he doesn’t get it. “Down there.”

He can feel the blood pounding in his face and neck, staining his chest. “Well, they could have. It would just have been implants, like my scalp and brows and eyelashes.”

“Then why didn’t they? Why didn’t they give you hair there?”

He waves his hands in exasperation. “I don’t know! I wasn’t supposed to get naked in front of anyone. Not like this.”

“You mean the LISA techs transmitted you five hundred years to the Summer of Love and you weren’t supposed to ball anyone?”

“Well of course not! That would’ve been a violation of Tenet. . . . Oh, never mind.”

“Well, now’s your big, big chance,” she teases. “Only you can’t use a prophylak, right?”

He peers at her. She lies with a shoulder, a breast, a thigh beneath the sheets. The rest of her, golden in the candlelight.

Despite the urgency of his duty that seems inescapable, he wonders if he can do it. He sits on the edge of the mattress, turning away from her.

She’s giggling again, her big brown eyes glancing up at him beneath the fringes of her lashes. “You mean you haven’t gotten laid in over two months?” she says in mock horror.

He feels her fingers tracing up his spine. “I haven’t exactly seen you getting it on.”

“Not lately, but I got more than you-ooh,” she says in a singsong.

She kneels behind him, pressing her breasts against his shoulderblades. The fur between her legs tickles his spine. She threads her arms around his neck, leans her cheek against his ear, and swings her long, tawny hair across his chest.

“Oh, come on. I’m not a virgin, you know,” she whispers. “I love you, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco.”

Now he turns to her at once. At once. “And I love you. I will love you forever, my Starbright.”

she is a delicious odor unfouled by smoke

she is a shell in clear water

she is a turtle with omens on her back

she is the twin-tailed siren singing to the sailor

she is joy, a mouth and a tongue

she is sweet and salty

she is a cat prowling free in the twilight

she is the peach of a thousand years unspoiled by poison

she is the pearl in the oyster’s cleft

she is as bright as the first star of the evening

THEY TOUCH!

she closes a loop across space and time

that night. . sometimes. . he sees their bodies glow

21

If You’re Going to San Francisco

Ruby checks the time. Sweet Isis, it’s after ten-thirty. If she recalls Chi’s wild story correctly, he’s got to get to the tachyonic shuttle in Golden Gate Park before midnight. She clatters up the stairs to the third floor. Everything is sweetly silent inside the sitting room. She hesitates, then knocks on the door.

“Come in,” they call in unison.

They’ve folded up the blankets and sheets and leaned the mattress against the wall. They’ve rearranged the coffee table and chairs and rolled back the rug. Susan zips up her overnight bag. Chi zips up his jeans. They’re just two kids from the burbs, getting ready to go back to school. Right. Susan is decked out in gypsy finery that will be envy of her high school pals in Shaker Heights.

“Well?” Ruby stands, tapping her toe like a babysitter asking if her charges have brushed their teeth.

Chi whips out the oblong stone and presses it against Susan’s chest.

“The double blip!” he says triumphantly. “The scanner shows the double blip!”

“Uh-huh, the double blip,” Ruby says.

“I’m pregnant,” Susan says. And she glows.

“Congratulations,” Ruby says. “We better get going.”

“No, I’m not stepping back through the shuttle, Ruby,” Chi says, his face set with determination. He takes Susan in his arms. “I’m staying in this Now. I’m staying with you, my love. I can’t leave you and our child.”

“Oh, Chi, you can’t,” Susan says. “You’d be trapped in a CTL. I can’t let you do that.”

“I don’t care.”

“You have to care. You told us CTLs pollute the timeline.”

“She’s right, Chi,” Ruby says. “You could cause another Hot Dim Spot. Maybe another Crisis.”

He sighs raggedly. “But what about you, my love?”

“I’ll survive. You showed me. And you know what? Every year for the rest of my life, when this day comes around again, I’ll think of you.”

“You will?” he says, wistful.

“Yes,” she says. “I’ll think—that bastard.”

She peals with laughter. Ruby starts to cackle. Chi is stony-faced, then he grins and chuckles, too.

And Ruby knows it’s going to be all right. It’s got to be.

* * *

The Portals of the Past look ghostly at this hour. Antebellum pillars set in a classic portico, the marble is luminous beneath the streetlights. Not a framework for some stupendous contraption from the distant future. More like a doorway into antiquity. Or into other worlds?

Ruby isn’t sure. The Portals are hauntingly beautiful.

They all climb out of the Mercedes. Chi strides around Lloyd Lake to the Portals. Susan hurries after him.

Ruby glances at her wristwatch, lagging behind. A quarter to midnight. Something inside her is unwilling to witness Chi’s unmasking before Susan’s trusting eyes. For, of course, there is nothing inside the Portals of the Past. They look exactly as they always do. An artifact from the past.

Chi stands, gazing at the Portals. Susan runs to him and hugs him, clinging to him.

“And I said I’d never lose you again,” he says.

“We’ll always have the Summer of Love.”

Then she cries in triumph, holds up his maser, and dashes off with it. The kid’s knickknacked the maser from his pocket!

“Susan!” Chi shouts. “Damn it, Susan.”

She runs to the Portals, drops to a crouch on the steps. The kid flicks the maser on orange and, with swift sure movements, she aims the beam at the base of the left pillar.

Alarmed, Ruby hurries after Chi. She sees the shaft of orange light twirling in the darkness. She and Chi stumble up at the same time. He’s breathing heavily, as if someone has punched him in the gut.

“Chi?” Ruby says.

He waves her away.

Susan jumps up and shows them the graffiti she’s carved on the pillar:

“What does it mean?” Ruby says.

“It means I,” Susan traces the eye, “love,” she traces the heart, “Chiron,” she traces the key. “I love Chi.” She tucks the maser in his jacket pocket. “You like it?”

Chi kisses her, his face wet with tears.

Then he dashes up the stairs and steps through the Portals of the Past. For a second—a split second—Ruby glimpses glowing people, and blinking blue and green lights, and a tall, slim woman stretching out her arms to embrace him. Her bald head is as shiny as an ivory billiard ball.

Chi disappears. It all disappears.

Susan whispers, “Oh, wow.”

Ruby whispers, “You little shit.”

Dig it: the Haight-Ashbury was mobbed with Navajo chiefs, Merlin’s magicians, Egyptian pharaohs, guys with four eyes, men from Mars. And time travelers. These were strange and wondrous days, with plenty of time travelers. The Summer of Love was psychedelicized and science-fictionalized, but I did not believe you, Ruby thinks. Not in my heart of hearts, not in the back of my mind, not even after all your gadgets and light shows and the most frightful hallucinations I ever saw in my life. I did not totally believe you, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco.

Do now.

Grandmother Says: T’ai (Peace)

The Image: Heaven and Earth unite. Small things fade, and great things develop. Peace and blessings upon all living things.

The Oracle: To unite in deep harmony brings a time of universal flowering and prosperity.

When the strong lift up the weak, and the powerful smile upon the meek, the universe rejoices in peace. The infinite is revealed in the points of the compass, eternity in the cycle of the seasons.

Hexagram 11, The I Ching or Book of Changes

What I missed in your account was input from the parents who lived through that time, barely able to comprehend the social changes that were disrupting their safe middle-class lives, trying to stay in control and let go at the same time, fighting the terror of not knowing what was going on.

Some of us made it. We remained friends with our kids and adopted some of the better changes for our own. Some of us didn’t. We lost our kids to beads, drugs, and squalor. Some of them left and never came back. Some left and came back burned out and weird. Some parents lost each other as well as their kids. Whom do you blame for failures and disappointments too painful to bear?

When the Summer of Love was over, we had new ways of feeling, dressing, speaking, eating, praying, dancing, marrying (or not), childbearing, child raising, growing old, even dying. All the old rules were irrelevant, the new ones uncertain.

It was the Summer of Love for some, the Summer of Discontent for others.

“Letters,” Image Magazine

San Francisco Examiner (Aug. 23, 1987)

Ruby drives Susan to San Francisco Airport. They drive in silence as thick and heavy as the incoming fog. The kid cries a little. Ruby tunes the radio to KMPX-FM. “If You’re Going to San Francisco” warbles on. She slaps the radio off.

They park, unload Susan’s overnight bag from the back seat, and drift into the airport. Oh, man. Bright fluorescent lights, garish carpets, ugly plastic stuff. A pair of Krishna devotees with shaved-bald heads and orange robes are panhandling the tourists.

The squares are staring at Ruby and Susan with cold, uncomprehending eyes. Ruby knows how to handle this scene, but the kid is cringing, losing her nerve. She hasn’t been in society this polite in quite a while. And now she’s going to see her parents for the first time in months? This will not do.

“Stop,” Ruby commands.

They duck out of the stream of pedestrian traffic. Ruby takes out the vial of East Indian musk she always carries, dabs two drops under each of Susan’s ears, two drops under her own. The kid starts to giggle. That’s better. In the bottom of her purse, Ruby finds the beaded suede headband Luther gave her. Very pretty. She ties it around Susan’s forehead, threads it through her golden-brown curls.

“You’re beautiful, Starbright.”

And it’s true.

“I love you, Ruby.”

“Then you be strong for me.”

They stroll through the airport, two wild-haired, perfumed women. Their exotic skirts rustle. Their bracelets clink. Their beads sway over lacy blouses of silk and cotton.

They arrive at the gate. The plane her parents took is already there.

He’s a handsome man, the kid’s father, tall with a bit of a belly that goes with his prosperity. The hair and eyes and nose he gave to his daughter. His mouth trembles despite his effort to quell it, and that instantly wins Ruby over.

He strides to the kid and seizes her in a great big hug. “Sweetie pie! Oh, sweetie pie!” And he bursts into tears, right there in the middle of the airport.

“Hi, Daddy,” Susan says.

The mother hovers beside her husband and her daughter. A plucked and dyed dame with deep frown lines, she’s got the flabby, stooped shoulders of an old woman, though she can’t be more than forty. She joins their reunion, pecks the cheek of her daughter, but she can’t restrain her cold disapproval even now—look at her clothes, look at her hair.

This mother, Ruby thinks, will have to learn a thing or two from her daughter.

“I want to be a doctor, Daddy,” Susan says.

“Well! That’s fine,” he says, nonplussed.

“I don’t want to be a nurse. I don’t want to be a dental assistant. I want to study bacteria and be a doctor.”

The parents exchange an uncertain look, and Ruby sees that the daughter as the troublesome child was the glue keeping their fractured marriage intact. And her defection has revealed deep rifts between them. Will the daughter’s return restore the reality they knew before? Not likely.

“Also, I’m pregnant,” Susan says. “I want to have the baby. I want to keep her and raise her myself. You can’t change my mind, so don’t try, okay?”

“Who?” her father says.

“The father is gone. We love each other, but I’ll never see him again. So I don’t want to talk about that, either.”

They are speechless, these square parents from Shaker Heights. This is not what they expected of their runaway to the Haight-Ashbury. And everything they expected, and then some.

The father checks out his daughter’s costume, then checks out Ruby. His eyes flick up and down. The corner of his mouth twitches. Yeah, his daughter is beautiful. And yeah, Ruby is beautiful.

Catching his glance, Ruby raises her hand, extends two fingers in a peace sign, and says, “The Summer of Love did not compel America’s children. America’s children compelled the Summer of Love.”

Ruby kisses Susan’s forehead, then turns and walks away. In her heart she knows she will never see the kid again.

She will close the Mystic Eye and leave the Haight-Ashbury behind. Get out of town, somewhere like Santa Cruz or Bodega Bay where the air is fresher. Where it’s easier to believe in a New Explanation. She’s started over before. She can damn well start over again.

And she has business to attend to besides her own. The future survives because she, and the women of the world, take care of themselves. Take control of their own destinies. Take responsibility for their children.

Dawn glows in the east. The future is hard for the world. But we have a future. We survive.

She feels it as she pulls onto 101 northbound, the forward-moving future plunging beside her like a trusted companion. Yet the arrow of time is an illusion, Ruby knows that now. Day and night do not move forward, they spin, like the Earth. The hours meted out by the clock are tools for human survival, boundaries and categories, not reality. Dates and years measure the pace of a person’s life, mark initiations and graduations, but they are not the woman or the man. In truth, there is but One Day, always new, always coming forth into Being.

About Lisa Mason

Lisa Mason is the author of ten novels, including Summer of Love (Bantam), a San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book and Philip K. Dick Award finalist, and The Golden Nineties (Bantam), a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book.

Mason published her first story, “Arachne,” in Omni and has since published short fiction in magazines and anthologies worldwide, including Omni, Full Spectrum, Universe, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Unique, Transcendental Tales, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Immortal Unicorn, Tales of the Impossible, Desire Burn, Fantastic Alice, The Shimmering Door, Hayakawa Science Fiction Magazine, Unter Die Haut, and others. Her stories have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

Lisa Mason lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband, the artist and jeweler Tom Robinson. Visit her at Lisa Mason’s Official Website, follow her Official Blog, and follow her on her Facebook Author Page, on her Facebook Profile Page, on LinkedIn, on Twitter at @lisaSmason, and at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

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Books by Lisa Mason

“Offers everything you could possibly want, from more traditional science fiction and fantasy tropes to thought-provoking explorations of gender issues and pleasing postmodern humor…This is a must-read collection.”

—San Francisco Review of Books

“Lisa Mason might just be the female Phillip K. Dick. Like Dick, Mason's stories are far more than just sci-fi tales, they are brimming with insight into human consciousness and the social condition….a sci-fi collection of excellent quality….you won't want to miss it.”

—The Book Brothers Review Blog

“Fantastic book of short stories….Recommended.”

—Reader Review

Passionate Historical Romantic Suspense

Lily is not quite a typical woman in Toledo, Ohio, 1896. She may be repressed and dependent on her husband, but she supports the vote for women and has a mind of her own. But when Johnny Pentland is found dead at a notorious brothel, Lily discovers her husband is not the man she thought he was.

Pursued by Pentland’s enemies, Lily embarks on a journey that will take her across the country to San Francisco and across the ocean to Imperial China as she unravels a web of murder and corruption reaching from the opium dens of Chinatown to the mansions of Nob Hill.

Her journey becomes one of the heart when she crosses paths with Jackson Tremaine, a debonair, worldly-wise physician. Lily and Jackson begin a conflicted, passionate relationship as they encounter the mysterious Celestial Girl and her dangerous entourage.

5 Stars Great Read

“I really enjoyed the story and would love to read a sequel! I enjoy living in the 21st century, but this book made me want to visit the Victorian era. The characters were brought to life, a delight to read about. The tasteful sex scenes were very racy….Good Job!”

Celestial Girl, The Omnibus Edition (A Lily Modjeska Mystery) includes all four books.

Or try the miniseries in three installments:

Celestial Girl, Book 1: The Heartland (A Lily Modjeska Mystery). Lily flees Toledo on the Overland train. She must share a seat with Jackson Tremaine and befriends the Celestial Girl, the daughter of a Chinese dignitary. But appearances are not what they seem.

Celestial Girl, Book 2: Jewel of the Golden West (A Lily Modjeska Mystery. Lily and Jackson arrive in San Francisco and discover the murder of an immigration official connected with the Celestial Girl. She and Jackson are compelled into a dangerous murder investigation. As they begin a passionate affair, a contract for murder is taken out on Lily’s life.

Celestial Girl, Book 3: The Celestial Kingdom (A Lily Modjeska Mystery). Lily and Tremaine journey to Imperial China, confronting soldiers of the Boxer Revolution and brutal slavers. Lily discovers secrets vital to the identity of the Celestial Girl. In Celestial Girl, Book 4: Terminus (A Lily Modjeska Mystery). Lily and Jackson return to San Francisco and solve the tragic mystery of the Celestial Girl. Both books are on the same volume.

Urban Fantasy

At her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious, magical apartment building on campus. She discovers that her tenants are witches, shapeshifters, vampires, and wizards and each apartment is a fairyland or hell.

On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. One of the victims is a man she picked up hitchhiking the day before. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between Humanity and the Demonic Realms, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.

“So refreshing! The Garden of Abracadabra is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

—Reader Review

“Fun and enjoyable urban fantasy….I want to read more!”

—Reader Review

“I love the writing style and am hungry for more!”

—Reader Review

The Garden of Abracadabra, Volume 1 of the Abracadabra Series, is also available in three affordable installments.

In Book 1: Life’s Journey, Abby arrives in Berkeley, filled with hope and promise, hoping to land a new job and start magic college, when she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene.

In Book 2: In Dark Woods, Abby is drawn into a dangerous murder investigation and torn between three men, Daniel Stern, her ex-fiance, Jack Kovac, an enigmatic FBI agent, and Prince Alastor, a potent supernatural man who lives in the penthouse and may be a suspect.

In Book 3: The Right Road, Abby uncovers ancient supernatural secrets behind the murders and faces dangers and challenges ahead.

A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book

Twenty five-star reviews

“Summer of Love is an important American literary contribution.”

“This book was so true to life that I felt like I was there. I recommend it to anyone.”

“More than a great science-fiction, a great novel as well.”

The year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, psychedelic music, psychedelic drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension, free love, bikers, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of danger. The Summer of Love.

San Francisco is the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.

Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine.

With the help of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, Susan and Chi discover a love that spans five centuries. But can they save the world from demons threatening to destroy all space and time?

New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book

The year is 1895 and immigrants the world over are flocking to California on the transcontinental railroad and on transoceanic steamships. The Zoetrope demonstrates the persistence of vision, patent medicines addict children to morphine, and women are rallying for the vote. In San Francisco, saloons are the booming business, followed by brothels, and the Barbary Coast is a dangerous sink of iniquity. Atop Telegraph Hill bloody jousting tournaments are held and in Chinatown the tongs deal in opium, murder-for-hire, and slave girls.

Zhu Wong, a prisoner in twenty-fifth century China, is given a choice--stand trial for murder or go on a risky time-travel project to the San Francisco of 1895 to rescue a slave girl and take her to safety. Charmed by the city’s opulent glamour, Zhu will discover the city’s darkest secrets. A fervent population control activist in a world of twelve billion people, she will become an indentured servant to the city’s most notorious madam. Fiercely disciplined, she will fall desperately in love with the troubled self-destructive heir to a fading fortune.

And when the careful plans of the Gilded Age Project start unraveling, Zhu will discover that her choices not only affect the future but mean the difference between her own life or death.

“A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.” The New York Times Book Review

“The Net” Meets “Conspiracy Theory” with Earthquakes

Shaken, a sexy short thriller, is an ebook adaptation of “Deus Ex Machina” published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales (Donning Press), and translated and republished worldwide.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death.

A List of Sources follows this short novel.

The Story That Sold To The Movies

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

Tomorrow’s Child began as a medical documentary, got published as a lead story in Omni Magazine, and finally sold outright to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development.

The ebook includes Lisa Mason’s 30-day blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story from inspiration to movie deal.

Contemporary Literary Fantasy

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder.

As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her.

Hummers was published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Literary Fantasy

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art.

But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by Lisa Mason’s favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

An Afterword describing the lives of Carrington and Varo and a List of Sources are included in the ebook.

The Sixty-third Anniversary of Hysteria was published in Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, and Neal Stephenson.

Historical Fantasy

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his controlling father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Uncle Brady, Professor Flint’s trusted assistant and business manager and Danny’s best friend, cannot stay in the same hotel as them—Uncle Brady is African-American. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame.

When a mysterious beautiful lady comes to them for help, Danny and his father will confront the ethical dilemma between spiritualist séances and faked séances performed by stage magicians like them.

He will learn to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt, learn the secret of Uncle Brady’s identity, and assume his place at center stage as a talented magician in his own right with the help of the beautiful lady.

Every Mystery Unexplained was published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), which also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson.

Historical Fantasy

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea.

One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai. Kwai Yin is a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her?

Five Stars A beautiful novella!

“The characters in this little book jumped off the page and you really cared what happened to them. It is a rare talent that can do that so well! This was a compelling tale of a girl sold into slavery as her culture allowed. I found myself hooked from the very first page as I followed her through the twists and turns of her life. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a character-based story with a touch of magic and fantasy to it!”

Daughter of the Tao was published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner.

“Knocked Up” meets “E. T.”

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent.

Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A Sci Fi Comedy, Lisa Mason’s screenplay for a producer looking for the next “Galaxy Quest” or “Men in Black” is now a novella.

5 Stars A very clever humorous novella!

“I found myself very involved with the characters and wholeheartedly cheering them on! I would highly recommend this 82-page funny novella to anyone who enjoys a well-written book with excellent character development in unusually subtle ways. I am looking forward to reading more of her works as I'm sure you will be, too!”

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856--1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

A List of Sources is included in the ebook.

TESLA, A Worthy of His Time, A Screenplay was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer.

Memoir About Writing and Inspiration

My Charlotte: Patty’s Story is a short, sweet memoir about a life in a garden and one writer’s first inspiration. The ebook includes Mason’s first story, Arachne, which was published by Omni Magazine worldwide, by Hayakawa in Japan, and by Replik in Sweden.

Reading Charlotte’s Web, the classic children’s book, inspired Mason to write her own novels at the age of eight. Her quest to discover the meaning of the spider led her to Jungian psychology, myths, and symbols. The classic myth of Arachne became the subtext of her first story, Arachne, published in Omni. Mason’s first two early cyberpunk novels followed, Arachne and Cyberweb, published by William Morrow and Avon Books. Lisa Mason is presently working on an adaptation of those books as The Quester Trilogy.

Passionate Paranormal Romance

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life again—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering sensuous love and dazzling beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

But Jenna cannot stay in Eon’s magical world for long--she’ll die. And Eon cannot stay in Jenna’s ordinary world—he’s a god. They can only meet for a measured time through the Gateway Tree.

When Jenna discovers that Becker Construction plans to destroy the Arbor and build an office-condo complex on the site, she becomes the leader of an environmentalist movement to save the Arbor. But Becker Construction will stop at nothing and Jenna is swept up in a struggle in which her love for Eon and her life are at stake.

Suzanna Moore is the pen name of a widely published author of fantasy and science fiction.

If you enjoy a title, please “Like” it, add stars, write a review, blog it, post it, and share the word with your family and friends.

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Thank you for your readership!

Table of Contents

Praise for Books by Lisa Mason

Contents of Summer of Love, A Time Travel

Tenets of the Grandmother Principle

About Lisa Mason