Summer of Love, a Time Travel (48 page)

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
some
one’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.