Squint the Squeamish, however, has other ideas. He isn’t so much mesmerized by Chen as he is scared spitless of him. He makes this funny squeaking sound and dives butt first toward the asphalt. Next thing I know, Squint is in full retreat and I am holding an empty coat. Well, not quite empty. The rattle is in there. I can feel it. Huh. Suddenly, I know something Master Chen doesn’t.
I fold the coat against my chest, praying it won’t rattle. It doesn’t. I gesture at Squint’s fleeing backside. My arm stirs a banner of mist and it licks Chen’s face.
“Rattle's yours,” I say, “if you can catch it.”
Chen’s mouth wriggles like he bit into some bad kim chee, but his eyes are loaded guns. Neither I nor Scrawl nor even Hismajesty got an eyeball half as hairy as this one. This is beyond hairy. It reaches down into my immortal soul and just about sucks it right out.
“Impudent,” he calls me and disappears in a swirl of robes.
And I do mean disappears. It’s like he’s there, then he’s not, and moreover, his ninja is gone with him.
I move over into the yellow light from my scooter and carefully peek into the coat. Through gold-washed bufandong, the horse hair from the rattle is peeking back at me from the top of the long inside pocket.
Neon.
I start yelling for Firescape. I hear an answering yell from up the street toward the Mission. Then I hear footfalls. Lots of footfalls. I guess not all of Firescape’s knighties are ninja-chasing.
After a moment of thought and much grimacing, I slip into Squint’s nasty old reefer coat and turn to wait for the knighties.
With the adrenaline wearing off, I realize how tired I am — almost asleep on my feet. I straddle my Vespa, sucking up cold bufandong, trying to stay wakeful. When this doesn’t do a whole lot, I pull open my amulet bag and snuff up some Doug. Muy better — my eyes almost focus.
I look up, then, and see folks moving toward me through the stringy mist. I am about to wave when it occurs to me that they don’t look right: they are carrying lights and they are too big to be knighties.
My dull senses scramble to sharpen themselves. I fire up the Vespa, wondering if I should just peel out of here, and in the next instant, in the web-weave of scooter headlamps, I see that these big guys are carrying more than lights, they are carrying alien weapons.
I’m outta there. I rev the Vespa and start to move, when one of the aliens fires into the air. A beam of orange light screams through the twisted banners of fog with a sound like the sky is ripping. This gets my immediate attention. I jerk the scooter to a stop and look up to see big old John Makepeace coming toward me, looking like some dingy angel-o-doom. At the end of his beefy arm (the one that’s not holding a laser rifle) is my own beloved wife.
“Jade!” I cry, terrified into uttering her real and secret name. I am answered by a stream of Chinese invective and thank God she is alright.
In short order, we are hustled off the street and into the Mission Dolores compound. All the way there, I am hoping we will be rescued at the last minute by knighties or Hector or even Creepy Lou. When we are safely tucked away in John Makepeace’s winnebago, I am forced to face reality.
“What the hell was all that?” John Makepeace asks me when we are alone in the winnebago with him and Ty and some big guy with a truly nasty set of pectoral muscles.
“All what?” I ask back.
“That guerilla war you staged on our front porch.”
“Pardon me, John,” I say politely, “but the Mission is still in Lord E’s domain and so, technically speaking, is his front porch, not yours.”
“Don’t be flip with me, kid. Is that who you were fighting — Lord E?”
Kid. I forget sometimes that I still look like a kid, though I’m pushing twenty pretty hard. It’s tough to get people to take you seriously when you look like a kid. I wax as sober as I can.
“No,” I say, “we were fighting the Minions of Darkness.”
“The what?”
“We were engaged in battle with the forces of Master Chen. The selfsame demons who have been haunting this very Mission.”
John Makepeace makes a face at me. “You were fighting demons?”
“Well, they’re not really — “ I steal a glance at Ty, whose eyes are as big as walnuts.
I’d started to say that they’re ninjas, not demons, and I wonder if it would lying, strictly speaking, if I just sort of leave that out. I have trouble with lies, ni dong, but I’m good at fantasies. Fantasies just roll off my tongue like they don’t even check in with my brain first. I decide demons come up on the fantasy side and that not saying something true is not really the same as saying something untrue. So, I simply don’t visit the issue of whether the ninjas are demons or just brain-dead guys in black outfits.
“Your men have seen them. I heard Gino say so — Ty, too.”
He gives Ty a look. “Yeah, right. What were you really doing?”
I shrug. This turns out to be an error on my part; Squint’s coat (my coat now) rattles.
John Makepeace’s eyes narrow. “What was that? And don’t ask what — you know what.”
“Just my ceremonial rattle,” I reply. “Merlin stuff, ni dong.”
“No, I don’t dong. Show me.”
“Trade secret.”
“Bull shit. Ty, get the rattle.”
Ty starts, blinks and looks at me sheepishly. “Uh, look, John, I...I hate to — “
John Makepeace makes a sound like a crab pot boiling and lunges at me across the table. My dear Jade lunges too — for his throat — but is jerked back from behind by the guy with the pecs.
Me, I get dragged across the table by John Makepeace, while he violates the privacy of my newly acquired coat. He pulls the rattle out and holds it up in the light. It is a sad-looking old thing, really. At least it probably looks pretty sad to these alien dudes. The hair is dull and limp and the paint on the gourd and stick is fading and chipped.
It looks pretty sad to me, too, actually — until I get a whiff of Doug from the amulet bag that John M has mashed in one big paw. It’s like putting on a pair of enchanted glasses. Suddenly, I can see that magic still drips from that old rattle like fiery dew. And I am aware of the pipe, which is digging into my hip, and the vest, which is clinging damply to my skin. There is magic there too, magic I can see and feel; the three things are connected to each other by gleaming phantom threads. I can even see the "loose end" of the absent headdress trailing off into the distance.
I gotta hope that when it comes to native magics, three out of four ain’t bad. Right now, my immediate problem is getting the elusive and much sought-after rattle out of alien hands.
Any hope I have of John Makepeace not knowing how important this stuff is flies out the winnebago window when I see how his eyes have lit up. For a wild moment, I think maybe he sees the magical threads too, but then he says, “Is this authentic?”
It is clear that an actual lie is in order. However, I expect the truth will seem weirder to John Makepeace.
“Yes,” I admit. “This is a genuine artifact of great spiritual import. We were attempting to return it to its rightful owner.”
My beloved Jade rises to the occasion.
“Yeah, right,” she says. “Only my man here believes its rightful owner is a 500 year old Indian wizard.” She makes loco loops around her shell-like ear. “A dead Indian wizard. I guess you could say we run sort of a delivery service for restless spirits.”
John Makepeace frowns. “Is it real?”
Firescape rolls her chocolate-almond eyes and snickers. “About as real as he is,” she says, making eyes at me.
I hold my breath. John Makepeace is clearly not sure what to think. He is looking from the rattle to me and back again. Finally, he looks at Mr. Pecs.
“Go get Professor Hollowell.”
“He’ll be asleep, sir.”
“Then wake him up. I need his professional opinion. If this artifact is real, he’ll thank you for waking him.”
I eye the door. Okay, one down and two to go. I wonder how to get rid of John Makepeace and Ty.
When the lights suddenly go out, I suspect maybe Someone Else has that covered.
“What the hell?” asks John Makepeace.
I recognize this as a rhetorical question. It is answered pretty quickly by shouting from outside. I glance out the window. A ghost moon is spilling milky light through the Mission Dolores’ eternal shabu dong. Other than that, I see nothing.
John Makepeace swears colorfully and feels his way toward the front of the winnebago. The next thing I know, he has done something that brings lights back on. They are dimmer than before, but I can still see that John Makepeace is pretty damn mad. Outside, the shouting gets louder and fuller, and then there are shots — laser guns and AKs both. The door opens and someone sticks his head inside.
“You better come, John. Someone’s messing with the satellite dish.”
John Makepeace moves a lot faster than I imagine he can. He pulls out a hand gun, drops the rattle into the little metal sink across the narrow room, and is gone.
Ty watches him go, then turns his head back to look at me and Firescape. We stare at each other in silence for a moment, then he says, “So, this is your wife?”
I glance at Firescape and nod. “Her name is Jade.”
Said wife jumps and her mouth pops open, but she doesn’t drill me for my indiscretion. She knows I am only trying to show Ty that we trust him, and therefore, he can trust us.
“You...you’re having a baby, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. In a while.” Firescape pats her little belly, pretty obvious in spandies.
He nods, looks at the floor, looks out the window, looks at us, then exits the winnebago without another word, leaving the door hanging wide open.
Needless to say, I suppose, we are outta there in no appreciable time. I snag the rattle as we flee, then I Chouyan like I have never Chouyaned before. We hit the ground under the winnebago and take refuge behind a wheel. We are not alone long. In about two shakes of a Doug bough, Cinderblock is hunkered down next to us.
“Thought he’d never get out of there,” she whispers. “Let’s zhou.”
We follow her into the graveyard, creeping low to the ground, bellying under winnebagoes to avoid flying feet, lightning bolts, and bullets.
I do not breathe until we are safely in the graveyard. And when we are in the graveyard, close to the Ohlone, close to Pedro, I feel the tug and tingle of the Ohlone spirits. I can’t begin to tell you what I’d give for just a little bit of time to talk to them — to him. But there is no time. We gotta go. Already Cinderblock is heading for the rabbit hole.
Just before we drop into the hole, I hear a vast sigh from the very ground beneath my feet. Good, it says, and I feel a rush of something big and warm fill up my insides. I smile into the thick darkness. So far, so good.
Cinderblock lets out a series of cutting whistles, which I know means, “objective achieved,” or words to that effect, then we are down the hole.
We recon in the intersection of 16th and Mission, where a handful of knighties await us with the scooters.
“What next?” pants Firescape when we have stopped scurrying, and are sitting astride our little metal steeds.
I have never seen her so short of breath.
“Next,” I say, “I go to the Mountain.”
“You mean we,” says my wife. "We go to the Mountain.”
I lower my voice. “Jade,” I say, “you’re going to be a mother.”
“And you’re going to be a father.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Oh, yeah. And this means you should go alone? Duh. I’m going with you, Taquito. No arguments.”
“Yeah, me too,” says Creepy Lou. He has appeared out of nowhere, bouncing like a channel buoy. “No argumenth.”
“Anybody else?” This is a rhetorical question, ni dong. Facetious, even, but Cinderblock takes it seriously.
“Me,” she says, pulling her Vespa around in front of us.
This time, it is Firescape who objects. “Sorry, Lieutenant. Somebody gotta take care of the Majesties and keep track of the aliens.”
Cinderblock leans close in and whispers, “Jade, I’m not jinkin' — you need me.”
“Yeah, here.” Firescape puts her hand over Cinderblock’s and says, muy seriouso, “Lieutenant Guinevere Fred Cinderblock, I, Jade Berengaria Flannigan Firescape, hereby award to you a field commission to the rank of Colonel, effective as of right this moment, as God and Taco and Creepy Lou are my witnesses. Now, you get your fanny back down to the Mission and find out what John Makepeace is doing.”
“I’ll tell you what he’s doin',” says a new voice from out of the fog.
Around us, knighties shift into defensive position. I hear safeties clicking off.
“It’s okay!” I yell, but softly, ni dong. “He’s a friend.”
Hector emerges on cue from the bufando, which is no longer dong. He saunters up to us and repeats, with great and merlinly aplomb, “I’ll tell you what John Makepeace is doin'. He’s cadging for spare parts.”
He pulls his hands out of his monkish sleeves and holds them out to us.
Firescape flicks on the headlamp of her scooter. The yellow light falls on a wad of metal and plastic and wire with silicon chips dangling here and there.
“What the hell’s that stuff?”
“This,” Hector tells us, “is the guts of a genuine alien satellite relay. I got curious about what makes that sort of machinery tick and, well...this is what makes it tick. If ET wants to phone home now, he’s gonna have to send smoke signals.”
“How did you know how to — “ I start to ask, but stop, because I am a mental sneeze away from realizing something truly portentous. My mouth is hanging open and my face is doing something muy silly, I’m sure, ‘cause Lord E’s ex-merlin laughs and says, “It’s just another kind of radio, Chickpea.”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling like the knee-weak, foolish (but really grateful) recipient of a legit miracle. “And you were always good with radios.”
Hoot/Hector laughs at me. “What took you?”
I thought you were dead, sounds awfully rude, so I don’t say this.
“You’ve changed,” I mutter.
“You haven’t.”
“Shit,” I say. “You damn well better be back for good. You disappear again, and I'll — “ I can’t finish.
He laughs again and throws his arms around me. I reciprocate. The satellite junk digs into my back. Like I care.
“What’s with you two?” my wife wants to know. “Del, who is this guy, really?”
“I told you about Hoot,” I grunt from inside Hoot’s bear hug. “This is the very dude.”
In the stark light, Firescape’s eyes are huge. “You said he was dead.”
“I thought he was.”
Hoot chuckles. “Me too. On any number of occasions.”
“Yeah, well, I’m really happy for you boys, but we gotta get this magical stuff to the Mountain before Chen or Makepeace or some other collector of antiques makes a move on us.” Firescape kills her headlamp. “We gotta zhou, Del.”
I know she’s right, but having just found Hoot again, I surely hate to take a chance on losing him. We quickly determine that four of us will go to the Mountain together — Hoot, Creepy Lou, Firescape and me. A half-dozen knighties will come along to watch our back trail while Cinderblock personally guards Doug and the Majesties.
As we push our Vespas to the Border in preparation for mounting up and zhouing, there is something I just gotta know from Hoot.
“Your name really Hector?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says. “After some jake on my mother’s side of the family. She always called me Heck.”
I ponder this. The possibilities for puns, jokes and generally cruel word-play are endless.
“Damn,” I say.
“You're not kiddin',” he says. “Don’
t spread it around, though.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” I promise, and we roll our Vespas in silence for a while.
“To the Wiz?” asks Firescape.
“No time.” I already know we will be followed, and it’s not John Makepeace or other aliens I worry about.
“Don’t you need a map?”
“I have a map,” I say, “in my head.”
And it’s true. I have stared at photos and maps and elevations of the Mountain over the last weeks until I think I could walk there in my sleep. Which, as I think of it, is just about what I’m going to do.
There is one big, fat, glaring problem with my map. That is that the neat little lines run through a whole lot of Big Unknown, the first major chunk of which lies smack in the middle of the Bay Bridge.
Treasure Island.
Twenty-first: Treasure Island
You ever heard of the Loch Ness Monster? The Flying Dutchman? The Bermuda Triangle? Well, the Bay Bridge is sort of all those things rolled into one. I can’t even begin to tell you what it feels like when we drive our little Vespas out onto it. Fog and some sort of mossy-looking stuff hang on it like party festoons and its big towers just seem to go up into nothing. Then there’s the matter of all that salt water a mere 200 feet below. I’m pretty sure we all keep that in mind as we dodge pits and holes and loose pieces of roadway.
The weirdest thing is that in the stiff breeze that’s blowing, the whole damn thing vibrates. The slower we go, the more we feel this and the more we hear the moaning the wind makes as it tangles itself in the big metal cables that connect all the towers together. Needless to say, we go faster, so as not to hear or feel or see much of anything.
I am reminded of scarecrows and tin men and cowardly lions — most especially of cowardly lions. What amazes me most is the way the folks behind me just follow me right on out there like as if there’s no friggin' big deal about any of this. I wonder if they got any idea how scared I am. I sure hope not.
The smeagols at the bridgehead have assured us that there has been no activity whatsoever on the Bridge itself. Last check by binoculars showed some lights among the trees on the Island, but that was all. Now, the whole span is locked in a wu that is muy dong and it’s beginning to rain.
Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny Page 24