by Lisa Mason
“A condom is like a glove or a sheath that slips over the gentleman’s member and catches his bodily discharge. His person doesn’t touch her and his discharge doesn’t enter her,” Zhu says with nary a blush or a giggle, though all the sporting gals present burst into uproarious laughter. “In your Now, unfortunately, the thing is made of sheep’s intestine.”
“Sheep’s intestine!” Jessie sputters. “If you think any one of my gentlemen is gonna put a sheep’s intestine on his jockey, you’re nutty, missy.”
Daniel can tolerate no more delay. “Mistress, I need to see you.” To Jessie, “Is there a room we may use?”
“Sure and take Li’l Lucy’s room. She ain’t needin’ it no more.”
“Please, Miss Malone,” Li’l Lucy wails and falls on her knees. She crawls to Jessie, reaching up for Jessie’s hands. “Please, please.”
Daniel wants no more of this sordid little drama. He seizes Zhu’s elbow, leading her upstairs. She points out Li’l Lucy’s room, and he practically drags her there. The room is frilly and cheap, reeking of lilac cologne, cigarette smoke, spilt whiskey, and other odors he’d rather not identify. He locks the door.
“What is it?” she snaps. “I was in the middle of business.”
“You were in the middle of the brothel’s business, my angel. I want you now.”
She stares at him, astonished. “Want me for what?’
He shucks off his jacket and vest and drops his trousers, his manly virtue tumescent. By God, he shall spill his precious bodily fluids any moment. “Need you ask?”
She shakes her head. “Well! You never ask me. I come from a Now where there’s precious little romance or tenderness. And since I’ve come to your Now, so help me, I want romance. I want tenderness. And you. You’re such a brute. Such a man of your times.”
“I shall buy you candy and flowers, if that’s what you want,” he growls, advancing on her.
“Candy and flowers.” She gives an exasperated little laugh. “In all this time, it’s always the same. I don’t why I let you get away with it, but I do. It’s like the Gilded Age Project has subverted me. You wait till you’re stinking and then you launch your attack. You never ask me,” she repeats, her tone accusing.
“I’m not stinking now,” he says imperiously.
She regards him curiously, taking her time.
Those slanting green eyes of hers, the bright green irises not at all like Mama’s deep sea eyes. Quite alien, they are. Which suddenly excites him more than he’s ever felt toward her before. Toward any woman. “I need you, my angel.” You never ask me. Well, he’s turning over a new leaf. “And I’m asking you. May I please have the pleasure of your company? You know how much I adore you.”
He’s hoping she will laugh and rip off her jacket, but she doesn’t. No, she sidles toward the door, clearly contemplating escape. “This isn’t supposed to be happening. None of this is supposed to be happening! Muse?” she speaks to her infernal spirit. “What are the probabilities of this happening? Why?”
He can stand it no longer! He has been a gentleman—sort of—and he is definitely not stinking. He seizes her, tears off her jacket and shirtwaist, ripping the silk. She silently struggles—or perhaps she abets him—but he is invincible, he is a god. She is a tiny writhing thing in his hands. He spins her around, seizes the laces of her corset, rips apart the knot, and pulls and pulls as tightly as he can. She gasps in pain.
They want to feel pain. Oh, this is splendid! He can circle her entire waist with his two hands. He whirls her around, presses her down on Li’l Lucy’s bed. She is wide-eyed, distraught with lust, in a trance of sinful ecstasy.
“Please, miss, may I?” He tears down her bloomers, her hands on his. Is she resisting him or assisting him? He doesn’t know or care. “I know you hate it, but you must help me now.”
And he takes her, feeling every sensation as he’s never felt the sensations of the carnal act before. Divine plant of the goddess! Sacrament! He plunges, he rocks, strange-smelling sweat filming his skin. He hears her gasping, feels her moving beneath him. The dreadful moment of sexual transport overcomes him like a seizure, an epilepsy of sensuality, a small death.
He rises off her and falls back on the bed, spent for the moment. How he hates that spent feeling. And her? She leaps up, reaches urgently behind her and tears open the too-tight laces. She gasps again. No matter, he thinks, no matter. She’s a woman. She isn’t supposed to like it.
“Damn you, Daniel,” she says. “When I’m around you, it’s like I’m possessed.”
“Thank you, my angel,” he says ironically and now she does laugh, a little bitterly. The quick heave of his breath subsides, and the fingers of a headache squeeze the backs of his eyes. The supreme brilliance of the cure is beginning to fade.
Fade! He could weep with disappointment. He wants this exultation never to end. He sits up, hands shaking, and retrieves his jacket. Ah, the vials, the clever silver spoon. Trembling and weak, he uncaps a vial, dips the spoon. Unsure of his technique, he awkwardly inserts the spoon into his nostril and inhales as vigorously as he can.
She watches him, openmouthed. No doubt she’s never seen such strange behavior before. Well, tit for tat. She engages in some mighty strange behavior herself.
Ah, the bitter sting in his nose, on his tongue, and the bitter fluid gathering in the back of his throat. And then that sweet bloom of power, the radiance of health.
“Daniel,” she cries, “what in hell are you doing to yourself now?”
“Tut tut, watch your language, miss.” He does not like that prudish expression on her face, doesn’t like it at all. “I went to Dr. Mortimer for the cure.”
“The cure?”
“The cure for dipsomania. I shall be a slave to drink no more.” His eye wanders to Li’l Lucy’s nightstand, to a carafe of whiskey. He takes out the stopper, sniffs. Dreadful booze the whore swills, but he tips the carafe anyway, floating a taste on his tongue, which has suddenly gone quite dry. Ah, just the slightest touch of relief. The divine plant of the Incas is too strong for the evils of rotgut. Still, the effect is very nice, a soothing counterpoint to his jumpy nerves. He puts the carafe down. That’s right. He can put the drink down anytime he wants to. He is cured.
“And what is this cure?” she insists in that tone of hers.
“It is the divine plant of the Incas. Dr. Mortimer says the scientific name for it is cocaine.”
She claps her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God. You can’t. You mustn’t!” She strides up to him, bold as you please, and holds out her hand. “Give me the vial. Give it to me right now.”
“I should say not!”
She tears off the remnants of her shirtwaist, exclaiming over the rough treatment he gave the garment, shifts her eyes to the side, muttering in her strange way to her infernal spirit. “Which is it, Muse? Am I supposed to rescue Wing Sing from the tongs or rescue him from himself? Calculate the probabilities, damn you! Tell me what to do!”
Oh, splendid. She is quite insane, well, he’s already established that. After all her scolding about the drink, the ciggies, the buttery feasts, now she scolds him about his very salvation? It’s too much. Too much.
He splashes water on his face from Li’l Lucy’s wash basin, pulls on his clothes, and heads out the door without saying goodbye as she exclaims over a button he tore off her jacket. The second spoonful of the cure produces somewhat less of an effect than his glorious first taste at Dr. Mortimer’s clinic. Still, it’s a fine feeling, this exuberance. Encouraged, though ever so slightly disappointed, he strides through the parlor, past the little drama he witnessed on his way in, still unconcluded. By God, weeping whores.
Daniel J. Watkins will not linger in a sordid place like the Parisian Mansion. This is a place for the weak among men, the ones who exhaust their precious essence on degraded creatures like Li’l Lucy. He will do no such thing. He heads out, striding vigorously down Market Street, bound for the ferry to Sausalito. Invincible once more, cle
ar-headed and powerful. He knows what he must do. He must confront that bastard Harvey, once and for all.
“Daniel! Daniel!”
Zhu hurries after him. Her face is flushed, the black ribbons of her Newport hat streaming behind her. She wears her mauve silk, his favorite dress, which is most becoming with her golden skin, black hair, and emerald-green eyes. With a sudden pang, he realizes he does adore her. But the realization does not overwhelm him in a maudlin way like when he’s stinking and dwelling on the lack in his life. No indeed, in some peculiar fashion he cannot quite explain, Zhu Wong has changed his life. Changed him irrevocably. Perhaps her entreaties are what inspired him to seek the cure. And his fate—this great fate he felt so powerfully on the Overland train—has subtly altered.
But how? Everything seems to be shifting and changing all around him.
That she clings to this lunacy about being from the distant far future has a certain charm, an insouciance. Yet her lunacy is not the raving of the savagely ill, whom he has seen in Paris, but rather is supported by her quick intelligence, an extraordinary knowledge of things a woman should not rightly know about, and, of course, her clever accoutrements. The mollie knife. Her spirit voice, which he’s beginning to suspect is not a spirit at all, but some scientific invention he hasn’t heard about.
He pauses, permitting her to catch up.
“Where are you going in this state?” she demands.
“To Sausalito. It’s high time Mr. Harvey squared his account with me.”
“You’d better not go while you’re so high.”
“High?”
“Intoxicated.”
“For the last time, I am not intoxicated. I am cured!”
“Cocaine is a powerful narcotic, Daniel. Trust me, you’re intoxicated.” She looks him up and down and sighs. “Don’t go alone, then. I shall accompany you.”
At earlier time, he would have scoffed. Not now. “Ah, but can you fight in those lady’s clothes.”
“I can fight.”
“And you’ve got your mollie knife on your person?”
“Always.”
Now he looks her up and down, wondering where in her feminine attire she could have stashed the infernal thing. Her slim, wiry figure suddenly looks out of place in those clothes. It’s as if he’s never really looked at her before. “And you can cleave a man’s skull with that thing as well as heal him?”
“Oh, yeah.” She clears her throat. “Certainly.”
“Very well, come along. In truth, I could use an ally. We’ve met Harvey’s thugs before, have we not, miss? Just do not interfere in my business, you understand?”
“I’m forbidden to interfere in much of anything,” she says, suddenly sad. “Under Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle.”
“Ah, the Tenets you keep talking about. But I believe you mean the grandfather clause,” he says, proud to show off his knowledge now that he’s not stinking. See how the cure encourages his intelligence? “And after all your talk, miss, about social reform and caring about others who haven’t got enough to eat.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I’ve heard the talk from politicians in the Dixie states. The former slaveowners just cannot give up the ghost. They want to use what they call grandfathering to deny the vote to the progeny of former slaves and pack in the uneducated Caucasian vote. Quite a movement. They claim they shall have passed amendments to several state constitutions by the turn of the century.”
She looks at him askance, rolls her eyes to the side the way she does, then laughs. “Oh, my! Not the grandfather clause. The Grandmother Principle. It’s a guideline for t-port projects, rules set out for me by slavemasters you can’t possibly know about.”
Hah. Daniel detests the notion that she could have masters besides himself. Who, for instance? Jessie Malone? Very well, once he secures more capital, he shall buy whatever term remains on Zhu’s contract from the Queen of the Underworld. Perhaps they could leave 263 Dupont Street behind, he and Zhu, find a proper house of their own. Wouldn’t Father split his gut over that? His only son, living in sin with a Chinese woman. But clearly she doesn’t mean Miss Malone. What masters could she mean?
“I am your only true master,” he declares.
“I knew you were going to say that. But you’re wrong. I belong to no one. Perhaps not even to myself.”
She says all that with such a melancholy look that he takes her hand. “My poor little lunatic. Let’s go before I lose my nerve.”
Hand in hand they stride toward the waterfront past another parade for el Dia de los Muertos. Roughnecks on horseback, wearing skull masks, toss bottles of tequila, mescal, and beer back and forth amongst themselves, hooting and hollering. The horses roll their eyes, bridles frothing. Daniel escorts Zhu to the ferry building where the San Rafael bobs at the dock, a black and white steamer more modest in size than the Chrysapolis, but possessing more elegant lines.
They stride up the gangplank and board. Two dozen bruisers in tawdry togs crowd the deck, feisty with booze, puffing hand-rolled ciggies stinking of cheap tobacco. Daniel heads for a deserted, wave-spattered spot on the prow, towing Zhu by the hand after him. The cold salt air whips his face and the ripe scent of the sea, of mysterious distant destinations, fills his senses. This isn’t supposed to be happening. Her words haunt him. And puzzle him.
“All right, suppose you spell it out exactly what you mean by the Grandmother Principle.”
“It’s a closely guarded secret.” She giggles charmingly. “Or it’s supposed to be.”
“But you can tell me, my angel. Indeed, you must.”
“Well. As I told you and Miss Malone, I’m from the future.”
“Six hundred years in the future. You still ought to claim a million years. It’s much more believable, on account of Mr. Wells.”
“Nevertheless, six hundred years it is. And we only recently got this new technology like you only recently got electricity and telegraph and telephones. In some ways, tachyportation is no more amazing than those technologies. And a good deal less practical, as it turns out. It’s more like early space travel, something that doesn’t directly benefit people. A huge financial investment with no immediate return for society at large. Oh, they wanted everyone to think the world would benefit but, really, only the technopolistic plutocracy did. Or perhaps the LISA techs deceived themselves.”
“Zhu, my darling,” Daniel says. “If you want me to concede that a woman like you actually has a brain, I willingly concede. But I cannot comprehend a word you just said.”
She smiles. “Never mind. Just know this—the LISA techs shut down the tachyonic shuttles a few years after I was born. Why? Because t-porting released dangerous pollutants into the timeline.”
“Pollutants. Like bad water?”
“Exactly like bad water.” She gazes over the waves, searching the bay as though she’s looking for something that’s supposed to be there and isn’t.
He watches her uneasily. That peculiar ache scrapes behind his eyes again. So soon? He starts to reach for his vial and spoon the way he reaches for his ciggies. At her sharp glance, he reaches for his ciggies instead and lights up, cupping the match against the wind. She actually helps him, despite her protestations against his smoking.
“Better a coffin nail than the cure?” he jokes.
“You got it,” she says seriously. “Anyway, the Grandmother Principle states that a t-porter cannot t-port to the past and murder her own lineal ancestor. Her grandmother, for instance. Because if the t-porter could do that, she would not exist in the first place to go back and do the deed.”
“I think I see.”
“It’s what we call a paradox. A time paradox. Well, the Tenets go on from there. All the way down to whether a t-porter like me gets killed in the past and winds up trapped in a Closed Time Loop. A CTL, they call it. If I should die here in this Now, I would always have to be born in my Now, make the t-port, die in the past, and then be born again in the future
with no hope of a normal life. No closure, ever. Like a torturous revolving door, I suppose.”
“Revolving door?”
“Oh, sorry. That’s an invention after your time.” She frowns. “No one knows what becoming trapped in a CTL must feel like. Theoretically, a CTL has no beginning and no end, it just is. If that’s true, then where or when would your consciousness begin? A t-port project before mine called the Summer of Love Project was undertaken to remedy the nearly fatal pollution caused by an infamous CTL.” She shakes her head, the ribbons on her Newport hat streaming in the sea breeze. “Anyway, Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle says I can’t get involved with you, Daniel. Not like this.”
“Sounds more like your grandmother than your Grandmother Principle. Though I do admit I’m a beast and a cad and a very evil man.” He pretends to bite her neck.
She refuses to acknowledge his jest. “I’m not supposed to help you, not supposed to harm you. I didn’t t-port here for you, Daniel, I t-ported for Wing Sing.” She looks him in the eye. “You must believe me, your so-called cure is worse, much worse, than the rotgut.”
“By God!” He smacks his forehead with the heel of his hand. “There is just no pleasing you, miss.”
“Don’t worry about pleasing me. Worry about not killing yourself.”
“I worry about nothing. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
She still refuses to laugh. “I don’t understand what’s happening, and Muse can’t or won’t explain. I’m afraid Muse is defective or malfunctioning. Or worse. Sabotaging me.”
“Miss, please.” Daniel catches her hands. “Really, this is too much. Only men possess the muse. Only great artists. Women do have not the capacity.”
“Don’t be such a man of your day, Daniel,” she says annoyed and pulls her hands away. “Women have every capacity. Wait till you see the twenty-second century. Hah! The greatest women artists and writers and holoid makers of all time lived then. Magda Mira, the death cult writer, and Kiku Tatsumi, the telespace artist.”
“I do believe I shan’t live to see the twenty-second century.”