The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (3 page)

Alphanumerics
flicker in her peripheral vision. Muse downloads a file from the Archives
stored in its memory. “The California Midwinter International Exposition was
held here in 1894. This is what’s left. Over two million people attended the
fair.”

“Two
million?” Zhu is cautious after the monitor’s cool rebuke. “Is that a lot?”

“Oh,
yes. The population of San Francisco then—I mean
now
—is three hundred
thousand souls. Biggest city on the West coast. By our standards merely a
neighborhood, right, Z. Wong?”

Zhu
has no pat answer for the monitor’s flippant question. The number of people
inhabiting any limited space is the biggest, thorniest problem facing her future.

Now Muse
is amiable again, an eager tour guide in the wake of her silence. “The two
million came from all over the country by train on the transcontinental
railroad completed in the 1870s, transforming the Wild West into a desirable destination.
The park itself is the result of John McLaren’s horticultural hand. Nothing but
sand dunes here twenty years ago. McLaren discovered that Scotch sea-bent grass
holds to the sand in ocean winds long enough to establish a subsoil in which
other plants can thrive. Leave it to a Scot. Look lively, Z. Wong. Perhaps
we’ll see Boss Gardener himself.”

“Oh!”
Zhu looks around. Could the legendary John McLaren stroll right past her?

“The
cosmicist owners of New Golden Gate Preserve revere McLaren. His love of
ecosystem, his understanding of Nature, his perseverance and dedication.”
There’s a smug tone in Muse’s whisper.

“Ah,
yes, the cosmicists,” Zhu says. “How lovely. Only the cosmicists and their
friends can enjoy this place in
my
time. Is it right that a public place
as beautiful as this has been privatized and withheld from the people?”

“The
people,” Muse says. “All twelve billion of them?”

Zhu
ventures down a walkway leading into Concert Valley. “I thought the cosmicists
believe in equal rights according to True Value. At least, that’s the line
handed to me at the Luxon Institute of Superluminal Applications.”

“Equal
rights?” Muse chuckles. “The cosmicists believe in equal sacrifice to the Great
Good. Human interests don’t always take precedence over nonhuman interests. The
hyperindustrial era and the Brown Ages taught us that lesson only too
painfully. The cosmicists believe in privatizing natural resources when ‘the
people’ can’t or won’t properly care for them.”

“Oh,
I see,” Zhu says. “The cosmicists know better?”

“Well,
yes. The Brown Ages were long before your time, Z. Wong. You have no notion of
the devastation. Once the dome went up, no one was permitted into New Golden Gate
Preserve. If it makes you feel any better, the cosmicists don’t spend time
there, either. Nature has the place all to herself.”

The
cosmicists. Guess who programmed Muse? Zhu sneezes more violently than before,
tears welling in her eyes.

“That
barnyard smell is from horse manure gathered by the street sweepers downtown,”
Muse says wryly. “Boss Gardener has the stuff spread all over the grounds. Keeps
the lawns so green.”

Boxwood
and hydrangea border the walkway she strolls down. Now the De Young Art Museum
stands to her left, the impression of Egyptian antiquity reinforced by two
magnificent concrete sphinxes. In fact, the structure and its statuary were cobbled
together in the months before the fair. There, the Temple of Music, a huge
sandstone arch in the style of the Italian Renaissance, flanked by Corinthian
columns. The medieval castle with unlikely Arabian arabesques is the
Administration Building. At the center of the valley stands the Electric Tower,
a smaller version of the Eiffel, adorned with international flags. The Bella
Vista Café perches on the first mezzanine and a globe crowns the tower’s peak.
A life-sized papier-mache California brown bear balances on the globe like a
circus performer, the Bear Flag clutched in its paws. The tower is a tribute to
the newfangled energy source and Mr. Edison’s electric light bulb.

Zhu
won’t see many electric light bulbs during her t-port. In 1895, San Francisco
is still mostly gas-lit.

She
circles back. Tightrope walkers have strung a wire between two trees in front
of the Temple of Music, cavort with parasols and chairs. A fellow with a bushy
beard and a shiny top hat cracks his whip over a ring of pedestals as two
lively hounds leap about, while a forlorn baboon in a yellow satin jacket
deigns to perform a wobbly handstand.

A
crowd promenades alongside Zhu in Concert Valley. The somber suits of the
gentlemen are relieved by the pale pastel colors of the ladies’ sweeping dresses.
Despite the heat, everyone wears layer upon layer of clothing, from buttoned-up
collars to buttoned-down boots. And hats—everyone wears a hat, even the
children. The ladies wear veils and carry parasols, the scalloped edges
drooping with lace or velvet fringe.

Zhu
gulps. Her daily dress in Changchi? Jeans, a T-shirt, and worn-out sneakers, plus
a sweat-stained padded jacket in winter. These people would think her half-naked
if they saw her in her T and jeans. Like most post-domers, she’s always worn
Block, the fine protective microderm protecting her skin from solar radiation.
Her complexion, though golden, is paler than that of these veiled ladies.

Everyone
so elegant in their elaborate formal clothes. Zhu sighs, wistful and resentful
at the same time.

Yet
there. Zhu spies a frail little woman in pale blue silk. The veil on her
flowered hat barely conceals her battered eye. The pale blue ribbon tied around
her chin does not at all conceal the bruise discoloring half her jaw. Her burly
husband towers over her, quick anger in his narrow eyes.

And
there. A gust blows off a woman’s broad-brimmed hat. Straps at her chin, ears,
and forehead hold a translucent face glove. Her eyes, nostrils, and mouth show
through the stitched openings. In the sunlight, Zhu sees serious acne beneath
the face glove’s gauzy fabric. The woman retrieves her hat, furiously pins it
back on.

There,
too, a girl so thin, she’s nothing but satin skin over bird bones. She shuffles
behind her sisters, dark circles surrounding her eyes, her skin pale celadon.
She delicately coughs, and blood blooms in the handkerchief her mother
impatiently thrusts into her fragile hands. Zhu recoils, covers her nose and
mouth. Tuberculosis. Very, very contagious.

“Outta
sight, you friggin’ hoodlum!” shouts a portly man in a charcoal cutaway coat as
he grapples with a fellow in a bowler and a three-piece suit. Sweat pours down
their flushed faces, staining the high starched collars strangling their thick
necks.

“I’ll
take me knuckledusters to ye,” the bowler shouts back.

Zhu
smells the reek of whiskey. The cutaway passes a silver flask to the bowler,
who swigs from it and slams the flask back into the cutaway’s chest. Are they
roughhousing or about to commence fisticuffs? Their violent conviviality makes
her heart race. Men like this go down to Chinatown, set a house on fire just to
see the flames. Men like this chase a Chink, string him up from a lamppost just
to see him swing.

What
an Age. The Gilded Age.

“My
calculations indicate your rendezvous is fast approaching,” Muse reminds her, a
little too loudly.

A
woman turns and peers at her. Zhu adjusts her veil. That’s all she needs--a disembodied
voice hovering over her, and she answering. Muse is perfectly capable of
communicating in subaudio so others can’t overhear. Why is the monitor speaking
in projection mode? She’ll wind up in Napa Asylum for the Insane if she’s not
careful.

The
rendezvous! Time to go!

Zhu
gathers up her skirts, sprints back to the Japanese Tea Garden. She finds the
elegant redwood pagoda, takes a place in the queue. A Japanese woman in a kimono
and clogs bows and smiles. Zhu returns the bow. The Japanese woman pours tea,
sets the cup on a red lacquered tray.

“No
more than a thousand Japanese live in San Francisco,” Muse whispers. “The staff
is part of the attraction.”

An
exuberant Japanese fellow in a blue and white kimono and scarlet headband
bustles about behind the counter. “I am Mr. Makota, dearie. You try my cookie?”
He proffers the treat, a wafer folded over like a half shell, fragrant with
vanilla. He breaks the cookie open, extracts a slip of paper from the crumbs.

Zhu
takes the slip and reads:

THERE
IS A PROSPECT OF A THRILLING TIME AHEAD FOR YOU

The
concessionaire laughs at her startled expression. “You like my fortune cookie,
dearie? I make them for the fair, number one first, but, oh my! how the Chinese
copy me. Every Chinese restaurant in town make fortune cookie now. But I am
first!” He pops a piece of cookie in his mouth. “You try? Bake fresh today.”

“Thank
you, Mr. Makota,” Zhu says, taking her tea and fortune cookie to a little table
at the back of the pagoda. She unties her veil from beneath her chin,
discreetly lifts the cup beneath the netted fabric, and sips. Hot sweet tea soothes
her throat, calms her sinuses. The swirling, tenuous feeling—what the techs
warned her about, a reaction called tachyonic lag—fades away. She smiles,
encouraged, breaks apart the cookie, and takes the paper slip:

YOU
WILL ALWAYS BE SURROUNDED BY LOVING FRIENDS

Then
she sees her. The girl she’s supposed to meet. There she
is.

Crouching
behind the table, huddled next to the wall. So still and silent, a bundle of
shadows barely breathing, that Zhu didn’t notice her at first. A furtive
motion, and a skinny little hand darts toward Zhu’s feedbag purse on the floor.

Zhu
is quicker. She seizes the girl by her wrist, grabs the other flailing arm, and
pulls her out from under the table. The girl is strong, much bigger and older
than Zhu expected.

“Oy
ching, ching, syau-jye!”
the girl squeals.

“Please,
please, yourself, miss,” Zhu says sternly. She deposits her captive on the
opposite chair.
“Pa liao.”
Enough of this, settle down. “Trying to steal
my purse, are you?”

“I
not steal purse,” the girl says with haughty authority. Her sulky face is so
filmed with grime, Zhu can’t tell if she’s pretty. Her thick black hair unravels
from its queue. She wears an apple-green embroidered silk tunic held together
with gold satin frogs and green silk trousers. When she lowers her arms to her
sides, the sleeves droop below her fingertips, so she looks as if she has no
hands. Too bad she doesn’t lower her arms for long because her fingernails are
shredded, her knuckles sprinkled with sores. Her straw sandals are threaded
with more green silk, but her big bare feet have knobby, filthy toes.

Just
the girl Zhu is looking for.

“I
not steal purse from
fahn quai,
” she says with a toss of her head.

“
Fahn
quai?”
Zhu says. “You think I’m a white devil?” She flings the veil up.
“Look. Not a white devil.”

The
girl’s eyes widen. Zhu has the same golden skin, the same wide cheekbones as
the girl. But the irises in Zhu’s slanting eyes are a brilliant gene-tweaked
green.

“
Oy.
”
Perplexity clouds the girl’s black eyes. “Jade Eyes.”

“I’m
Zhu.” She smiles at the girl’s wonder. “But you may call me Jade Eyes.”

“
Oy,
Jade Eyes,” the girl pleads. “I not thief. This true. You must believe! Look.”
From some hidden pocket in her tunic, she takes out a small carved rosewood
box, sets it on the table. “I have jewels. My mama give me for dowry.”

“Let
me see.” Zhu waits impatiently as the girl fumbles with the latch.

Amazing!
So the Archivists were right, after all. The Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications
was right. Wow! And after all that random data, after all these centuries. So
much the Archivists didn’t know about Chinese women in fin de siècle America. Still,
the Archivists had actually traced this girl—or a girl like her. An anonymous
Chinese girl in the Japanese Tea Garden on the Fourth of July, 1895.

Well,
all right! Excitement rises in Zhu’s throat. The Archivists also said she would
have jewelry. They said she would have the aurelia.

The
aurelia—what is it? A peculiar Art Nouveau brooch made of gold and diamond
chips and colored glass as bright as gemstones. The Archivists said the aurelia
holds the key to the Gilded Age Project. If only Zhu can get her hands on the
aurelia, then everything—the past and the future—will turn out all right.

The
girl lifts the rosewood lid, and Zhu peers in eagerly. There are three
bracelets of jade, one of ivory. A pair of fillgreed gold earrings. A gold ring
with a nice jade cabochon.

Zhu
frowns, stirring the pieces, turning them over. “This is it? This is all you’ve
got?”

“All
I got? Mama give! This my dowry!” The girl’s eyes flash. “This jade, this gold.”

Damn.
For the second time since she stepped across the bridge over the brook in the
Japanese Tea Garden, Zhu feels a painful jolt of fear.

The
girl doesn’t have the aurelia.