by Lisa Mason
“Right.” Chiron clicks on the companion, magnifying her image. Short gray hair still threaded with black, sunlight on a round little face. The surprise of her green eyes. “About seventy years old?”
“Seventy, seventy-one from the DNA workup.”
“So she would have been born in 1896. Can we assume in San Francisco?”
“It’s a reasonable assumption.” The Chief Archivist stands restlessly and paces, limping painfully on the ankle. She sits down again, annoyed. “If the profile is right, she was half Caucasian. Which makes things dicey. A baby of mixed race in 1896 who wound up at Cameron’s place? She’d be pretty rare. You have to understand, the Chinese were strictly segregated in San Francisco then, and Chinese women were very scarce, except for certain brothels employing Chinese slave girls exclusively for a white clientele. You see? That’s got to be the most probable way the baby was conceived.”
“Okay.” Chiron’s head is starting to swim. “Do the Archives support the existence of this baby in 1896?”
“Sort of. Cameron took in a number of Chinese infants, some rescued, some abandoned on her doorstep. No data on where they came from. Most of her foundlings left the home when they turned twenty-one, married, had their own families. But some stayed on with her, kept up the good Cause. Lo Mo was well loved by her girls.”
“All right.” Chiron closes the file with an air of finality, and the blue field snaps off. “Let’s move on to the other child. The child at the illegal birth clinic in Changchi.”
“Yeah, the other child.” The Chief Archivist heaves a huge sigh, breaks open another neurobic. Chiron can see the strain on her face, a sight that sends a chill through his heart. “Well, his mother immigrated to Chihli Province ten years ago. Part of the Motherland Movement. The way American Jews went to live in Israel on kibbutzim in what—the twentieth century?—and some stayed on, becoming Israeli citizens. Same kind of deal, here.”
“The mother is American?”
“From an old San Franciscan family, dating back to the nineteenth century. And yeah, there’s Caucasian blood in the family tree.”
“Which would account for the child’s eyes?”
“Yep. The child’s green eyes are avatistic, as the gene-tweakers say. Crop up every other generation or so.” The Chief Archivist slips another holoid into the viewer. “The mother married a local guy. Bore the kid in ’93. Now she’s way illegally pregnant with number two.”
“Is she going to be okay?” Chiron swallows hard.
“She got roughed up pretty bad by the Daughters of Compassion, but she’s going to be okay. Same for kid number two, who’ll be making her debut in a day or two.”
“And the child, the little boy—is he alive or dead?”
The Chief Archivist gives him a dark look, clicks on the new holoid. The Night of Broken Blossoms received a burst of international attention, especially since the conflict highlighted the thorny problems of the Generation–Skipping Law. A fresh virulent debate between opponents and proponents of the law raged in telespace in every medium.
“This is strictly confidential, got it?”
“Got it.” Chiron leans forward as the holoid pops up.
It’s not the birth clinic, it’s the hospital at Changchi—pale lime-green walls, gray-green linoleum floors, halogen lights casting a green tinge on the grim faces of the staff. A brilliantly lit hall leads up to a door. As Chiron watches, little bright white flashes flicker over the door.
“What the hell is that?”
“Keep watching,” the Chief Archivist says.
From the opposite side of the door dart sharp black flashes like tiny ebony daggers piercing the white. A doctor gingerly takes the door handle and cracks open the door, from the left to the right. Suddenly the doctor is thrown back by some invisible force ramming against her waist. She doubles over in pain, is flung across the hall, and staggers into the arms of her staff. Now all of them tumble back, pushed by the force. The focus goes wild for a moment—shots of the ceiling, of the walls, of the terrified faces whirling by in confusion.
The focus reestablishes on the door. Now the handle is on the right.
“See that?” whispers the Chief Archivist.
“It’s switched!” Chiron says. “Wasn’t the handle on the left?”
“Yeah.”
Before their astonished eyes, the door handle appears and disappears like the illusion of a stage magician, now on the left, now on the right, once even protruding from the middle.
As Chiron watches, the intrepid doctor darts forward and tries again. She manages to seize the handle, kicks open the door.
The room—just an ordinary hospital room with a cot, IV apparatus, a monitor beeping softly—swirls with a grainy gray fog, and the doctor cries out. On the cot lies the child. Now so badly bruised, Chiron can bearly look at his disfigured little face. And then he’s healed as if he’d never been pistol-whipped. And then he’s lying in a pool of coagulated blood, his green eyes wide open, dead. Clearly dead, a flat line on the monitor.
And yet again, the child stirs and cries, blinking up at the monitor. Or laughs, waving his tiny fists, reaching for a toy stuffed panda.
The doctor’s distraught face fills the monitor. “What can we do for him? Please help us! We don’t know what to do!”
“Oh, man,” Chiron says. “It’s a Prime Probability, isn’t it?”
“A Prime Probability that won’t collapse,” says the Chief Archivist, clicking the holoid off. “It just won’t freakin’ collapse, into or out of our timeline. We’re not even sure which way we want the probability to collapse.”
“Hey, I’m sorry I screwed up. But we are talking about a little boy’s life.”
“We are talking about another Crisis.”
“I’m really, really sorry.”
“Yeah, you should be. The LISA techs are calling the child a Quantum Probability.”
“Why won’t it collapse?” Chiron says miserably.
“Well! You know the discredited Schrodinger’s Cat metaphor used to demonstrate the probable nature of reality. A cat is placed in a gas chamber, and is alive and dead at the same time till the experimenter opens the chamber and observes the result.”
“I despise that metaphor.”
“Yeah, well, this Quantum Probability won’t collapse one way or the other because some event connected to that child has become unresolved, uncertain, jeopardized in the past. And there’s only one way that could happen, Chiron. It must be an event connected to tachyportation.”
“But the Institute had never t-ported to that Now!”
“Hah. Not yet.”
Chiron stands and paces across the conference room. “So you’re saying that the fact the companion gave me the aurelia is directly connected to my Summer of Love Project. But what does the aurelia have to do with that little boy?”
“Like Cameron’s companion, the boy is probably a descendant of an old San Franciscan family, Chinese mixed with Caucasian. Cameron’s anonymous companion was Chinese mixed with Caucasian, too, and it’s likely she was born in the late 1890s. The aurelia itself is in the style and workmanship of that period.” The Chief Archivist shrugs. “All we have is a theory. That’s all we ever have when we undertake a t-port project. That’s why we shut t-porting down decades ago. Too risky. Too tricky. Too damn theoretical.”
“And your theory is now?”
The Chief Archivist glares at him. “The little boy has become a Quantum Probability because the birth of his probable ancestor, Cameron’s companion, is in jeopardy. In the past, okay? If that green-eyed woman is never born, she won’t be able to give you the aurelia. Period. And then all bets are off when it comes to our spacetime. Total annihilation? Could be.” The Chief Archivist looks around the conference room so warily that a chill crawls down Chiron’s spine.
“But the aurelia was never a part of my project! I never meant to take it. I certainly never meant to bring it to our Now. I put it in my pocket and forgot all about
it, plain and simple.” He gets on his knees before the Chief Archivist. “It’s just a minor detail. A small mistake. I’m sorry.”
“I accept your apology, but it doesn’t help.”
“Are you suggesting that because I inadvertently took the aurelia to the future, I’ve affected events in a past I know nothing about?”
“I’m suggesting there’s a link,” the Chief Archivist says, “between the Quantum Probability that the little boy has become and you, Chiron. And that link is the anonymous green-eyed Chinese woman and the aurelia. I’m suggesting we don’t know what will happen if the anonymous green-eyed Chinese woman is never born. Is the child her descendant? There’s a probability he is. And if that’s true and she’s never born, that little boy in the hospital room right now? He will die. We’ll all be sorry. His death will be another Generation-Skipping Law tragedy. But it’s more than that. You following me?”
“I’m following.”
“If that woman never gives you the aurelia, your t-port to 1967 will be changed. Everything you worked for will be changed. Your successful return to our Now will be changed. And we don’t know what will happen then. Nothing? A minor detail? A massive hole in the Archives? Or the destruction of all reality as we know it?”
Chiron shakes his head, disgusted. With t-porting. With the Archivists. Mostly with himself. “Oh, fine. When do I go?”
“We don’t want to send you, pal. We need to send someone who can get close to the companion’s mother. Close enough to protect her and her baby to be. Close enough to impress her with the importance of keeping the aurelia in the family. We need a woman. Sit down and stop looming over me, thank you very much.” The Chief Archivist rubs her ankle. “We need a Chinese woman.”
“Okay.” Chiron considers all the Chinese cosmicist technicians he knows. “Li Chut would be excellent. She’s very disciplined. And willing to take risks.”
“I thought of Li,” the Chief Archivist says. “And I agree, she would be a fine choice. But we wanted to find that vital connection, a link to the data.”
“What about the boy’s mother?”
“Another good choice, but she’s due to deliver her second child any day now.”
Chiron paces across the conference room, thinking. “Is there any other woman of our Now sufficiently connected with that little boy? Another ancestor of the family, maybe, however distant?”
“There is, but we don’t exactly know if she’s an ancestor.” The Chief Archivist smiles for the first time that afternoon. “We do know she’s got a neckjack, so we can install a monitor, throw in some Archives, subaudio, voice projection, and holoid capability through her optic nerve. And she’s gene-tweaked so we won’t have to worry about bacteria, virulent viruses, and food poisoning like we had to worry about with you, kiddo.”
The Chief Archivist punches Chiron’s shoulder. In a friendly way.
“Tell me she’s Chinese.”
“Yep, you got it. A skipchild. No skipfamily, but that’s another story.”
“All right.” Chiron smiles, too, though he doesn’t feel like smiling about the Quantum Probability. He really doesn’t feel like smiling about the little boy—is he dead or alive? “Who is this mystery woman?”
“Get this, she’s a Daughter of Compassion. A real fanatic, strung out on a black patch. But not to worry. Once we clean her up, she’ll be as strong as an ox. Knows karate, can handle a gun, wow can she handle it. I think we can work with her, I really do. She’s not stupid.”
“A Daughter of Compassion,” Chiron says. “Wait a minute. Those are the crazies who raided the illegal birth clinic in Changchi.”
“Yep. As a matter of fact, she’s the woman who attempted to murder the little boy.”
Chiron’s jaw drops. “And you want to t-port the woman who set off the Quantum Probability?”
“Sure,” the Chief Archivist says. “She’s got green eyes.”
February 22, 1896
Tong Yan Sun Neen
12
Gung Hay Fat Choy
Clash of cymbals, brass on brass, and the high thin wail of a moon fiddle, an odd sound like some creature in heat keening. Bang, bang, bang! Zhu runs to her bedroom window. Those are fireworks, of course. Was it really only nine months ago when she last heard fireworks? Oh, marvelous, that means the parade is approaching. The parade for the New Year—Chinese New Year—wends its way down Dupont Street below her window. Quite a hustle-bustle. What a sight! She’s seen New Year’s parades a dozen times in Changchi, but never like this. Never in the Gilded Age.
Never like this.
The great dragon, Gum Lum, bows and snorts and undulates, the huge puppet carried aloft on poles borne by exuberant bachelors. His massive papier-mache head glitters with gold leaf, red silk streamers, black and yellow spangles, little mirrors reflecting the gaslight like jewels. Gum Lum snaps his hinged jaws at the pearl of everlasting life, a large paper lantern carried by three laughing boys. The Eight Immortals stalk by on stilts, twice as tall as a man. Acrobats turn handsprings, flipping over, leaping high. Shaggy lions, also called fu dogs—puppets manned by two fellows, one working the head, one the tail—roar at the children lining the street and scratch at imaginary fleas. Then the Monkey himself makes his royal appearance, cavorting and leaping as the crowd roars with delight. For this, 1896, is the Year of the Monkey.
The Year of the Trickster.
Zhu has mixed feelings about the clever Trickster. The Monkey with his quick intelligence often outwits the gods themselves.
“Gung hay fat choy!” Zhu calls from her window. “Happy New Year!”
A dark sorrow lies beneath the festive air. Zhu senses it, darkness tumbling in her heart.
A premonition is just a memory.
A memory of what? A memory of the future?
It is done.
Tonight’s the night when her t-port ends. Muse recites her instructions.
“California and Mason Streets,” she says. “Right, I got it. Of course I know the spot. Of course I know that’s where my rendezvous is to be.”
Muse scoffs, “How do you know?”
“You told me before.”
Alphanumerics jitter in her peripheral vision. “No, I never told you, Z. Wong.”
“Of course you did. The private ecostructure over Nobhill Park. The luxury hotels. Will the LISA techs arrange a room for me at the Grande Dome when I return?”
“Oh, I doubt it. Back to jail for you, Z. Wong. You’ll be charged and stand trial within the week.”
Grief and anger strike her like a blow. Everything she’s done for the Gilded Age Project, everything she’s sacrificed. Does it all amount to nothing? She argues with Muse. She always argues with Muse. They argue like an old married couple whose love is long gone.
“I’ve been used,” she declares. That’s why she resented Chiron. Why she hated him, feared him. She knew right from the start. She’s been used by the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications as a mere courier for an enigma whirling in a CTL. A pawn to patch up the mistake made by one of their elite. The CTL is an artifact of tachyportation, unstable, destabilizing all of spacetime. The aurelia is more important than Wing Sing or Wing Sing’s daughter or Zhu or whoever the anonymous green-eyed Chinese woman is who hands the aurelia to Chiron in Golden Gate Park in the summer of 1967.
She goes to the wardrobe, riffles through the clothes hangers. The gray silk dress, of course. The cosmicists love symbolic gestures. She will return as she went, in the gray silk dress. From jail to jail, from this When to that When, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. She sorts through her fragrant silk dresses. So pretty. The cerulean blue, the mauve.
“Muse, where is my gray dress?”
“You gave it to Wing Sing. You took the dress down to Morton Alley, as Jessie suggested. The girl is just your size. What used to be your size. Remember?”
“I did no such thing,” Zhu snaps. “She escaped from the cribs by the time I got there.”
“But I’m telling
you, you did. Anyway, you can hardly fit into that dress now, Z. Wong.” Muse is prim. “Considering your condition.”
Her condition. Zhu goes and stands before the watery glass of her mirror, studies her swollen breasts, her swollen belly. Even the tightly laced corset can’t conceal her bulges. Shock reverberates through her blood.
“What condition? I’ve just grown fat. All that rich food and drink Jessie serves.”
“For pity’s sake, stop denying it, Z. Wong,” Muse says. “You’ve indulged yourself in an ill-starred relationship with a questionable young man and now you’re pregnant.”
“Indulge! I love Daniel!”
“You lust for him, nothing more.”
“He adores me and I… .” What does she feel for Daniel? “I want to help him. I want to save him.”
“Nevertheless, now you’re pregnant. Go put on those other clothes.”
“What other clothes?”
“The clothes you bought yesterday.”
Zhu dashes to the wardrobe, the wood planks squeaking beneath her feet. The new boarder in the suite below hers bangs on his ceiling with a broom handle, and an odd buoyant feeling rises in her lungs like the first rush of a black patch. Or like a breath of fresh air.
There, hanging in the wardrobe, is a sahm of apple-green silk. A lovely tunic and trousers, a green silk bandeau. At the bottom of the wardrobe, green-threaded sandals with platforms of straw.
“That’s better, Z. Wong.” Muse is solicitous. “The sahm will conceal your condition. Much more comfortable for you, too. It’s Chinese New Year. Gung hay fat choy.”
“Gung hay fat choy to you too, Muse.” Zhu unlaces and flings the corset away, and slips on the sahm, which fits her perfectly in spite of her burgeoning pregnancy. She finds the aurelia on her dressing table, pins the brooch on her collar.
She stands at the threshold of her bedroom for the last time. Nostalgia leaks into her heart. I’ll never see this place again. She knows this is true. A premonition is just a memory of the future.