The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (59 page)

Muse
searched the Archives. “Poor water quality, massive problems with dysentery in
the nineteenth century. Must be why morphine therapy is so popular in this Day.”

“You’re
not helping, Muse. What should I
do?
” Zhu wailed as her lover and the
father of her child lay writhing on a cot. She hoisted him up every quarter of
an hour and took him to the water closet down the hall where fluid gushed out
of him again and again.

“Go
get some paregoric,” Muse advised. “The Snake Pharmacy carries it. But don’t
let him get his hands on it, it’s got a bit of opium.” And, “You may try a
neurobic, Z. Wong.”

The
paregoric helped. The neurobic did him no good at all.

When
he finally fell into a fitful sleep, she sat up wakeful, watchful, and
considered the specter of the CTL looming all around her. Unstable,
destabilizing, an unnatural consequence of tachyportation. She watched for
those subtle changes in reality that appeared right before her eyes, proof that
the CTL was affecting the timeline in ways no one could predict. And what about
Zhu herself? She’s become conscious within her own CTL. Will she eternally
become conscious to face this hell, die, be reborn in the future, and return to
the past to face her death again and again, without end? Or maybe, because a
CTL is unstable, will she be the one to die on the night of Tong Yan Sun Neen
in Kelly’s Saloon? Will she know it, the next time, that she’s going to die?

Her
throat aches and that’s a fact. But then, she’s picked up some kind of fever
bug that her gene-tweaking can’t protect her from.

“He
needs nourishment through the blood,” Muse whispered, suddenly helpful and kind.
“His digestive system isn’t working. He needs sugar, salts, fluids. Especially
fluids. And a general nontoxic anodyne and restorative.”

“Are
you talking about aspirin?” Zhu said, sitting up.

“Safe
synthetic aspirin is a decade away, but you can purchase powdered willow bark
at one of the better pharmacies.” Muse chuckles. “You knew that, Z. Wong,
didn’t you? That’s what aspirin is. Willow bark.”

The
Snake Pharmacy did indeed stock powdered willow bark displayed in the front
window where a rattlesnake coiled lazily around the merchandise. The
rattlesnake is defanged, of course, but serves as an excellent deterrent
against thievery.

Zhu
boiled water, prepared a soup for the blood, rigged rubber tubing with Daniel’s
hypodermic needle, and constructed a crude intravenous apparatus. She cleaned
the needle with isopropyl alcohol—also a chemical well in supply at the Snake
Pharmacy.

She
worked the mollie knife up Daniel’s nostrils till the ruptured cartilage of his
tortured septum healed. She ran the mollie knife up and down his arms where
abscesses festered, and slowly the needle wounds healed.

Still
he flailed on the cot, crying and groaning.

“Hush,”
Zhu whispered. “You’re so much better now, Daniel. Hush.”

“Go
get him cigarettes,” Muse advised. “They won’t kill him, not for a couple of
decades, anyway. Go on.”

Zhu
ran to the Devil’s Acre Saloon on Tehama Street, fetched cigarettes.

Now
she unlocks the three deadbolts—
click, click, click
—and steps into their
room.

Daniel
lies quietly on the cot where she left him, smoking.

“You
look better.”

He
stares at the smoke spiraling up to the ceiling as if that image is like his
spirit leaving his flesh.

“Eat
something?”

The
bowl of millet soup is cold, untouched.

“Drink
something?”

Only
half the orange juice is gone.

“Good.”
She swallows her disappointment and checks his pulse, touches his forehead,
examines the insides of his arms.

He
offers his limbs to her lifelessly.

“Daniel?”

He
raises his eyes, dark pools whose depths are denied her. Have been denied her
during these long, gray days, Something is broken inside him, and she doesn’t
know how to mend it. The mollie knife can’t touch it, and neither can her love.

She
sinks down onto the scuffed wood floor, sitting cross-legged, and begins to
weep. For Wing Sing, for Daniel, for the little green-eyed boy she nearly beat
to death six centuries in the future. She hasn’t wept in years, not since
summer camp when someone flew a lavender kite shaped like a fish and the sight reminded
her so much of her faithless skipparents, she fled to her sleeping bag and sobbed
herself to sleep.

His
hand squeezes her shoulder, stronger than she thought possible. “Don’t cry, my
angel.” These are his first coherent words since the night of Tong Yan Sun
Neen. His face, when she looks up, is vibrant again, his eyes clear.

She
wipes the tears from her eyes with the ball of her thumb, leaps to her feet.
She wants to scold him, shout at him. It’s all she can do to calm down after this
miracle. “I’m no angel.” She helps him back into bed, and he pulls her down
onto the cot beside him, cradling her in the shelter of his arm.

“Of
course you are. Who else but an angel would save the life of a sinner like me?”
He reaches for his ciggie, draws down hard.

She
swallows her complaint. Tobacco may actually be alleviating his dysentery. “You’re
not a sinner.” A painful shudder she can only call joy squeezes her chest. And
then she can’t help herself. “But you
still
smoke too damn much.” She
finds her Patent Dust Protector, pulls the mask over her face.

“Now
what you doing?”

“I’m
pregnant. I don’t want to breathe your smoke.”

“Oh,
a little smoke won’t hurt you.”

She
sits up, infuriated. “Your second-hand smoke can hurt me real bad. And it most
certainly will harm the baby. Our baby.”

He
stubs the cigarette out at once, heaves a sigh. “And you know all this because
you’re from some fiendishly brilliant time in the future?”

“Well,
yeah!”

He pulls
her down beside him again. “All right. Still, a sinner I am, condemned to hell.
A failure like Father. I’ve got no head for business, I admit it. And, well,
the drink and the dope got the best of me.” He plants a tender kiss on her
forehead. “I would surely be dead if it weren’t for you.”

They
lie together for a while in silence, and then she says, “You haven’t done so
badly with your father’s business. He left you with a mess in San Francisco.
And you went in good faith to a man advertising himself as a doctor who
prescribed cocaine as a health therapy. For dipsomania! It’s crazy!”

“I
most certainly have been a little crazy myself, miss.” Now he shifts on the
cot, turning toward her, his eyes urgent, filled with emotion. “I do
apologize.”

“Listen,
Daniel. You’ve made some wrong decisions. It happens. But now you’ve got to
start making right ones. I mean, look at your mother.”

The
minute she says that word, she regrets it, because his face twists with sudden sharp
anger.

“Ah,
my mother. Such a fine lady. An angel of purity and a whore. Do you know that
when I went to London and Paris, I never wanted to see her face again? I was furious
when Father summoned me home to watch her die. So beautiful, as always, her
deep sea eyes beseeching me.”

“Deep
sea eyes?”

“Not
emerald-green, like yours, my angel. Sea-green. And her question, always her
question, even on her deathbed. ‘Danny, haven’t I been good to you? Haven’t I
always been good?’ And I would always give the same answer. ‘Yes, Mama. Of course,
Mama.’ By God!”

Zhu
pulls the dust protector off, shakes her hair loose of the strap. “Wait a
minute. I thought you understood why she took a lover. That your father beat
her, aborted her baby. I thought you understood about her addiction. I thought
you were angry with your father, not her.”

“Oh,
certainly, I cannot abide my father’s self-righteousness, the morality he
preaches, the sin he decries, all the while he was an adulterer and a bully. He
ought to go to prison for what he’s done. She suffered too much.” He rubs his forehead,
remembering. “But she? Quite the expert she became on booze and narcotics. When
I was an unruly child, when I ran about too much or shouted too much or simply
annoyed her, she knew just what dosage of soothing syrup to spoon-feed me. ‘Time
for your medicine, Danny,’ she’d say. ‘Am I not good to you?’”

“She
gave you alcohol and morphine to sedate you when you were a kid?”

Daniel
lurches up off the bed and unsteadily onto his feet, pacing around the tiny
room. But he’s up! He’s moving! His pale face is flushed with anger, his eyes
alive. “Ah-ha! Have we just put two and two together, you and I?” He paces past
the bed, plants a kiss on her forehead. “My lovely lunatic. I suppose you could
say I have been a dope fiend all my life, and that is the terrible truth.” He
lights another ciggie, forgetting her warning about second-hand smoke. “By God,
I could use a drink.”

“But
you can’t have one, Daniel.”

“I
know. But I could certainly use some fresh air. I’m stifling in this dive.”

“Look,”
Zhu says, sitting up and peering out the window. “The sun has come out.”

*  
*   *

She
needs to change her shirtwaist and skirt after her damp morning outing, he
needs to change out of his nightclothes, so they tenderly help each other
dress. Daniel is still weak and pale and much too thin, but he looks wonderful
after Zhu buttons him into the three-piece gabardine suit that Jessie brought
over from Dupont Street. Zhu is eager to try on the new maternity dress Jessie
brought her. Jessie also brought an undergarment called an abdominal corset
constructed expressly to slim the profile of a pregnant woman. Zhu takes one
look at the contraption, cups her hand to her belly, and says, “I’d rather look
fat.”

Daniel
examines the abdominal corset with an avid look.

“No
way, mister.”

Zhu
is nervous as they stroll downstairs, his arm around her shoulders, her arm
around his waist. The stink of whiskey and beer is nearly overwhelming when
they get down to the street.

“Daniel,”
she says warningly.

He
glances hungrily at the celebrants, who have taken the sudden sunshine as a
portent that must be toasted with renewed vigor. Cries ring out, “Gah! A
rainbow, sir! I do believe I see ‘un!” Guffaws and shouts, “Have another shot
o’ the Irish, mate!” Daniel licks his lips, loosens his collar. Despite the
chilly spring air, sweat trickles down his temple.

Zhu takes
him by his shoulders and shakes him. “Daniel, you wanted to make moving
pictures. You wanted to be the first. Well, you’re not the first, but you can still
make moving pictures. Plenty of moving pictures. But you’ll never fulfill your
dream if you drink yourself to death by the time you’re twenty-two.”

A
gentleman staggers into them, raising his shot glass. “To your health, boy!”

“Daniel,
are you listening?”

“Why
the devil did you bring me out here? It’s an orgy!”

“You
said you wanted fresh air.”

“This
air is hardly fresh.”

“Take
him to Woodward’s Gardens,” Muse whispers just over their heads. “There you’ll
find some fresh air.”

Daniel
grins, disbelief and wonder warring in his face. “My dear lovely lunatic. Still
the voices? And all along I thought it was the drink and the dope and my
imagination.”

“That’s
not a hallucination,” Zhu says, “that’s my guardian angel. Right, Muse?”

“I
am indeed her guardian angel,” the monitor says, sounding pleased with the
charade. “Not that she deserves me.”

*  
*   *

They
take the steam train to Mission and Fourteenth where Woodward’s Gardens
stretches over several city blocks from Thirteenth Street to Fifteenth, Mission
to Valencia. Zhu claps her hands with delight at the grand entrance, the
snapping flags, banks of ivy spilling over the wrought iron fence, colorful
posters announcing events and attractions. She and Daniel enter a lush
labyrinth, stroll along meandering paths amid little lakes and tumbling streams,
admire sculptures, fountains, and monuments, visit the glass-paned conservatory
with its tropical flowers and trees, tour the art museum where Virgil Williams,
founder of the School of Design, has hung a new exhibition. The former
residence of Mr. Woodward, who made his fortune during the Gold Rush with a
hotel called What Cheer House, now shelters a natural history museum. Zhu is
amazed by the zoological garden, which boasts small but nicely appointed cages
and yards for curious lamas, shy deer, shouting peacocks, twittering South
American birds with wings of emerald, ruby, and gold. California sea lions
cavort and beg for raw fish at the seal pond.

“I’ve
never seen anything like it,” she exclaims. “It’s like some trillionaire’s
private preserve under a dome. I’m amazed the public is allowed in.”

“Of
course the public is allowed in,” Daniel says. “Why wouldn’t they be?” He gives
her a skeptical glance. “Are you telling me that six hundred years in the
future people won’t have amusement parks anymore? How very dull!”