The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (64 page)

Zhu
pats Daniel’s hand. “If your father decides to invest in the moving picture business,
he won’t regret it.”

Jessie
and Daniel both lean forward, hanging on her words. Do they believe she knows a
thing or two about the future, after all? Would they take investment advice from
H. G. Wells? Or has Zhu proven a higher degree of reliability? The thought makes
her smile.

She
hears the famished cries of gulls descending on buttered popcorn scattered on
the rocks by tourists, and Donaldina Cameron sweeps into the restaurant with
Eleanor Olney and a bevy of her girls. The girls, neatly dressed in gray cotton
smocks, their black hair and black eyes shining, smile with wonder and delight.
They seldom see such luxury, plus a view of the ocean. Nine Twenty Sacramento
Street depends on charity, after all, and the mission doesn’t have a lot of
money. Nine Twenty Sacramento Street will never have a lot of money—Zhu knows
that from the Archives—but Donaldina Cameron will manage, survive, and even
thrive for all the ninety-eight years of her life. She will never waver from
her Cause again.

“Here
you go, Miss Holy,” Jessie says with all due sarcasm. “The gentleman has got
another kid for you. Try her on for size.”

Daniel
holds out Hope.

And Cameron
takes the baby from Daniel’s arms while her girls eagerly crowd around her.
Cameron’s stern Scotch face is transformed, radiant with love. Despite the
streak of white hair and her austere appearance, Donaldina Cameron is not yet
thirty. She’s younger than Zhu.

“Ah,
another one of my daughters,” Cameron murmurs, “that’s what she is.”

“Your
daughters?” Jessie snorts.

“All
these girls are my daughters,” Cameron says as the girls cluster around their
Lo Mo. She gazes at the baby. “Sweet heavens, she is beautiful. Those green
eyes.”

Jessie
rolls her eyes at Daniel. “Shall we go outside on the terrace, Mr. Watkins? I
need some fresh air. Sure and I do believe she’s about to kidnap another kid
right out of her father’s own arms.”

Daniel
rises, takes Jessie’s elbow. “I do believe I need a smoke in the open air.”
They stroll out onto the deck.

“Donaldina
Cameron?” Muse whispers, the monitor’s voice hovering above Cameron and Hope.

“Good
heavens, is that your guardian angel again, Miss Wong?” Cameron whispers.

“I
guess so,” Zhu says. Good old Muse, up to its tricks.

“This
is your Cause,” Muse says in a high, clear voice. “And your Cause, Z. Wong.”

Muse
downloads the file,
Zhu.doc.

Alphanumerics
strobe, and the directory flashes across her peripheral vision. Forty GB, damn!
A trickle of dread spills down Zhu’s spine. Is another reality manifesting
before her eyes?

Her
left eye is scratchy and, in less than a second, Muse downloads the file
through her optic nerve, and projects the holoid. The luminous blue field pops
up in a corner of the dining room.

The
little girls and Miss Olney stare, goggle-eyed, but Cameron watches calmly,
rocking Hope in her arms.

The
scene in Golden Gate Park unfolds—the young man with the painted face, the barefoot
girl. The anonymous Chinese woman pushing the wheelchair, an elderly Cameron
smiling at the park, at the people, at Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. Cameron waves
to him, reaches up to her collar, unpins the aurelia, and hands it to her
companion. And the elderly anonymous green-eyed Chinese woman walks across the
grass and gives it to Chiron.

Now Zhu
unpins the aurelia from her collar and cups the brooch in the palm of her hand.
The tiny golden woman with jeweled butterfly wings poises there, as if ready to
fly away.

The
holoid shifts, the park fades, and Chiron sits before them in the room like a
cloud, gazing steadily at his unseen audience.

Is
he alive or dead?

“He’s
alive,” Chiron says.

Zhu’s
heart begins to hammer, her breath catches. “Muse, what’s going on?”

“The
new file appeared spontaneously in my directory, Z. Wong,” Muse says. “I have
no explanation.”

“The
little green-eyed boy is alive,” Chiron says in the holoid. “The Night of
Broken Blossoms is over. The Prime Probability has collapsed into the timeline.
The boy was a Quantum Probability, Zhu the one who tipped those probabilities,
like spinning a coin on its rim. The Gilded Age Project has always been about
Zhu, not about some trinket. Zhu has closed one Closed Time Loop and stabilized
another. The past affects the future, but the future also affects the past. We
have witnessed, and we have made it so.

“Is
the boy related to Zhu?” Chiron continues. “Is she his great-great-grandmother?

“Well,
he has green eyes. His lineage is from old San Francisco. Is he a descendant of
Zhu’s daughter? I wish I knew for sure, but I don’t. I’m sorry. That
information is lost to the Archives.

“Come
back to us, Zhu. You are not the woman I will meet in Golden Gate Park, of that
I am sure. You belong here, in your Now. Come back. You’ve got work to do.
You’ve got the Cause, and now you’ve also got a family. A family of your own.
The little boy probably is your great-great-grandson. We cosmicists are
chastened. You’ve shown us that the great principle of the Cosmic Mind is love.
You were never destined to murder your own grandson.

“Now
listen carefully. We’ve installed a tachyonic shuttle at Point Lobos, on the
rocks below the old site of the Cliff House. Yes, the rocks are still there.
And I promise you, it’s the last tachyonic shuttle we will ever use.”

The
holoid vanishes. The luminous blue field hovers before them for a moment,
shrinks to a point of blue light, and disappears.

“But
how can I leave my baby?” Zhu whispers. “How can I leave Daniel?”

“You
already have,” Muse says. “Hurry.”

Donaldina
Cameron takes the aurelia from Zhu’s hand. “I’ll keep her safe her whole life
and I’ll keep this for her. For the young man with red hair in the park. I
won’t forget. I know exactly what to do.”

Out
on the deck, Jessie laughs at some joke Daniel has told.

Cameron
takes Zhu’s hand. “Do you want to say goodbye to them?”

Zhu
shakes her head, and bows to kiss Hope’s perfect little forehead. The baby
reaches up, giggling, and touches her cheek.

“Then
hurry,” Cameron says.

Zhu turns and walks away, taking the stairs. She steps
out of the Cliff House into a cold sea breeze. Life follows birth, death
follows life. The past affects the future, that is the natural order of the Universe.
Yet in the One Day that is reality, sometimes the future creates the past and
life follows death. Zhu climbs down the rocks, searching for the portal that
will take her home.

About Lisa Mason

A graduate
of the University of Michigan School of Literature, the Sciences, and the Arts,
and the University of Michigan Law School,
Lisa Mason
is the author of eight 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 renowned artist and jeweler Tom
Robinson. Visit her on the web at
Lisa
Mason’s Official Website
,
follow her
Official Blog
, or e-mail her at
[email protected]
.

THE
GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Volume 1 of the Abracadabra Series
, Mason’s urban fantasy, is on
Nook
and
on
Kindle
. A print
edition is planned for late 2013. Also available in affordable installments as
THE
GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA TRILOGY
on
Kindle
,
Book 1: Life’s Journey
,
Book 2: In Dark Woods
, and
Book 3, The Right Road
, and
on
Nook,
Book
1: Life’s Journey
,
Book 2: In Dark
Woods
, and
Book 3: The Right
Road
.

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 and torn
between three men, 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. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

The Bantam
classic is back!
SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL
(a Philip K. Dick Award
Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) is on
Nook
and on
Kindle
.

Nineteen
five-star Amazon 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?