Seconds later there was no choice; the Pacific swirled over their heads. At first it was murky, as mud clouded their view. Then the silt settled, and they had their first look at the sunken city.
Tony whistled appreciatively. The lost buildings of Wilshire Boulevard stretched off in a double row in the distance. Some lay crumpled and broken; others still stood, waterlogged but strong.
The green path carried them past a wall covered in amateurish murals, the bright paints faded. To both sides now, a wide empty stretch of seabottom, smooth, gently rolling, with sunken trees growing in clumps, and a seaweed forest anchored among them . . . the Los Angeles Country Club? Beyond, a gas station, pumps standing like ancient sentries, a disintegrating hand-lettered sign
CLOSED
NO GAS TILL 7:00 AM TUESDAY
The small Mediterranean type said, “These are not props. They were taken with a camera. I have been skin diving here.”
As the green path carried them down, they saw taller and taller buildings sunk deeper in the muck. Where towering structures had crashed into ruin there were shapeless chunks of cement piled into heaps stories high, barnacled and covered with flora. Fish cruised among the shadows. Some nosed up to the airbreathing intruders and wiggled in dance for them.
Acacia pointed. “Look, Tony, we’re coming up on that building.” It was a single-story shop nestled between a crumbled restaurant and a parking lot filled with rusted hulks. The path carried them through its doors, and Gwen grabbed Acacia’s hand.
“Look. It isn’t even rusted.” The sculpture was beautiful, wrought from scrap steel and copper, and sealed in a block of lucite. It was one of the few things in the room that hadn’t been ruined.
The building had been an art gallery. Now, paintings peeled from their frames and fluttered weakly in the curent. Carved wood had swollen and rotted. A pair of simple kinetic sculptures were clotted with mud and sand.
The narrator continued. “Fully half of the multiple-story structures in California collapsed, including many of the ‘earthquake-proof’ buildings. The shoreline moved inland an average of three miles, and water damage added hundreds of millions to the total score.”
The green path was taking them out of the art gallery, looping back into the street.
Acacia shook her head soberly, lost in thought. “What must it have been like on that day?” she murmured. “I can’t even imagine.” Tony held her hand and was silent.
Once people had walked these streets. Once there had been life, and noise, and flowers growing, and the raucous blare of cars vying for road space. Once, California had been a political leader, a trend-setter, with a tremendous influx of tourists and prospective residents. But that was before the Great Quake, the catastrophe that broke California’s back, sent her industry and citizenry scampering for cover.
But for Cowles Industries, and a few other large companies that believed in the promise of the Golden State, California would still be pulling itself out of the greatest disaster in American history. The tranquil Pacific covered the worst of the old scars . . . but they were looking under the bandage now.
Beneath a crumbled block of stone sprawled a shattered skeleton, long since picked clean. Eyes in the skull seemed to flick toward them. Acacia’s hand clamped hard on Tony’s arm, and she felt him jump, before she saw that a crab’s claws were waving within the skull’s eye sockets.
Now bones were everywhere. Impassively, the recorded voice went on. “Despite extensive salvage operations, the mass of lost equipment and personal possessions remains buried beneath the waves
A woman whispered fearfully to her husband. “Charley, something’s happening.”
“She’s right, you know,” said Ollie. “We’re seeing more bones than before. A lot more. And something else . . . there isn’t so much mud and barnacles on these old cars.
Gwen almost stepped off the green path, trying to get close enough to check for herself. “I don’t know, Ollie. . .”
Now he was getting excited. “Look, there are more scavengers, too.” This was readily apparent. Fish darted into heaps of rubble more frequently now. A pair of small sharks cruised through the area.
They passed another skeleton, but, disturbingly, not all of the clothing had been torn away, and there were strands of meat on the bones. Tiny fish fought over them, clustering like carrion crows.
A pleasure launch had smashed through the window of a jewelry store, and it was surrounded by a mass of wriggling fish. There were no barnacles on it at all.
The recorded narrator had noticed nothing. It blathered on: “Despite, or perhaps due to, the grotesqueries found in these waters, they are a favorite location for scuba divers and single-subs. . .” But nobody was listening. An undercurrent of startled wonder ran through the group, as stones began to shift apparently of their own accord.
“Look!” someone screamed, the scream followed by other fearful, delighted outbursts. A skeletal hand probed out from under a stone, pushed it off with a swirl of suddenly muddied waters. The skeleton stood up, teeth grinning from a skull half-covered with peeling skin, and bent over, dusting the silt off its bones.
“Over there!”
Two waterlogged corpses floundered from within a shattered bank, looked around as if orienting themselves, and began lumbering toward the green path. They passed a flooded dance hall where death had come in mid-Hustle, and there were additional laughing shrieks as the disco dead boogied to life.
The water swarmed with scavengers of all sizes, and now full-sized sharks were making their appearance. A shark attacked one of the walking dead. The green-faced zombie still had meat on its bones. It flailed away ineffectually as the carnivore ripped off an arm.
Now, all around them, the water was clouded dark with blood where fish and animated corpse battled. Here, a dozen “dead” struggled with a shark, finally tore it apart and devoured it. There, half a dozen sharks made a thrashing sphere around one of the zombies.
There was much good-natured shivering in the line, but it was infused with laughter—until the beefy redhead stepped off the strip. There was a shiny metallic object half-buried in the sand, and she was stretching out to reach it. Somehow she overbalanced and took that one step.
Immediately, a flashing dark shape swooped, and a shark had her by the leg. Her face distorted horribly as a scream ripped out of her throat. The shark tried to carry her away, but now a zombie had her by the other leg. It pulled, its face lit by a hungry grin. There was a short Tug-of-war, and the redhead lost.
“I’m gonna be sick,” Ollie moaned. He looked at Gwen’s smile and was alarmed. “My God, you really are sick!” She nodded happily.
It was near chaos. No one else stepped off the strip, but zombies and sharks darted toward the group, again and again. They were getting in each other’s way.
Another scream from the rear as a teenaged boy threw himself flat. A great shark skimmed just over him. The boy huddled, afraid to get up. The walking dead were converging on the green strip . . . and when Ollie looked down, the green glow had faded almost to the color of the mud. He chose not to mention it to Gwen. The others saw nothing but sharks and zombies converging, reaching for them.
There was a sudden rumbling, and the ground began to shake.
“Earthquake!” Tony yelled. Then his long jaw hung slack with amazement.
Because the buildings were tumbling back together. As they watched, sand and rock retreated from the streets, and tumbled masonry rose in the water to reform their structure.
A golden double-arch rose tall again, and a fistful of noughts sprinkled themselves across a sign enumerating customers, or sales, or the number of hamburgers that could be extracted from an adult steer.
Zombies were sucked backward through the water, into office buildings and stores and cars and buses. Bubbles rose from beneath the hoods of cars waiting patiently for a traffic light to change. Fully clothed pedestrians stood ready to enter crosswalks.
Then the water receded, and fo
r a moment they saw Los Angeles of the ’eighties, suddenly alive and thriving, filled with noise and movement. They were shadow figures in a world momentarily more real than their own. A bus roared past the group, and Tony choked on a powerful, unfamiliar, somehow frightening smell.
The narrator’s forgotten voice had been droning on. “Now we come to the end of our journey to a lost world. We at Dream Park hope that it has been as entertaining for You as it has been for us. And now—” The lost world began to fade, and the green path flared bright as it flowed into a dark corridor. Lights came up, and when the narrator finished speaking it was in the neutral voice of the Computer. “Enjoy the rest of your stay. Oh. . . is anybody missing?”
“The redhead,” Acacia murmured. “Who came with the, ah, the lady who got eaten by the shark?” She sounded only half serious, but there was an answering murmur of inquiry. Gwen tugged at her sleeve.
“Nobody came with her, Acacia. She was a hologram.
Tony elbowed her in the ribs. “Cass, she wasn’t there till the trip started. I noticed.” He grinned at her. “Faked out again, huh?”
“Just wait till tonight, Tony, my love,” Acacia said sweetly. “It’s all set up with the Park. You’ll swear I’m there in the room with you. . .”
Chapter Three
THE LORE MASTER
Griffin heard the laughter as soon as he got out of the elevator. He peeked around the corner carefully. One never knew what might be prowling the fifth floor of the R & D building.
There didn’t seem to be anything ominous lurking about, just an open door to Skip O’Brien’s psych lab. Silence, then another gale of mirth. Alex walked softly across the hall and poked his head in.
A group of Psych Research assistants sat and stood clustered around a hologram of a seven year old boy chasing after a loping white rabbit.
“Stop!” the boy panted.
The rabbit pulled an oversized pocket watch from somewhere in its fur. Its whiskers twitched nervously. “Oh, dear, oh dear! I shall be too late!” It bounced along a tunnel into the darkness.
Griffin smiled, then laughed aloud. Synthesizer assisted or not, the white rabbit spoke with Skip O’Brien’s voice and ran with Skip’s bouncy walk.
The rabbit disappeared from the field. The boy was gone a moment later. One of the techs diddled a switch, and the image cut to the boy falling through the air.
Alex walked around the group to the transmission booth. By the slanted observation window he found Melinda O’Brien.
Alex tapped her shoulder. “Looks like he’s having fun.”
The frown lines that had creased the corners of her mouth shallowed as she turned to him. “He always does, doesn’t he, Alex?” She raised a cheek for him to kiss.
Melinda smelled like perfumed powder, as always. She was handsome in an angular way. She should wear her hair down, Alex thought, to soften the lines of her face. He’d never dared tell her that.
“It’s good for him, Melinda. It’s fun to watch, too.”
She smiled for him and turned back to watch her husband.
In the field, an awkward white rabbit tumbled through space, mugging ferociously. In the transmission booth, Skip waved his arms and thrashed in mock panic. The computer-generated rabbit animation cloaked him, following his body movements for reference.
Suddenly Skip looked straight at them and grinned. He hopped out of the booth and said, “Just be a minute. Let me grab my coat.”
The other Psych personnel gave him a rousing round of applause, and Skip took a quick bow. He buttoned his jacket over his modest paunch, and slicked back a thatch of unruly blond hair. The hair was a good transplant that had cut ten years off Skip’s appearance. “Let’s go,” Skip said cheerfully, and led the way.
“What was that about, Skip?”
O’Brien had reached the elevator doors. “Oh, yeah, that.” He laughed. “We’re going to rework the Gravity Whip.”
The doors opened, and Skip turned to Alex. “Where to?”
“Gavagan’s?”
Skip raised an eyebrow to Melinda, who nodded quickly. Skip punched the Gavagan’s code into the selector. The door closed. A gentle sway told them they were moving.
“Why redo the Whip? It’s still pulling ’em in.”
“Because it is there. Alex, the Gravity Whip is almost twelve years old. We can do a lot better now.”
Melinda was genuinely curious. “That had something to do with your rabbit act?”
There was a clicking sound as their elevator cage switched rails. It began sliding sideways.
“Absolutely. We’re going to rework the Whip for total Environment. Redesign the cars, add opticals, sound, texture. We’ve got a dozen scripts waiting for the special effects programs. Think of an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where the customer really falls down the rabbit hole, or a space trip where your gravity goes out at selected moments. Picture yourself as James Bond in that skydiving sequence in ’Moonraker’—”
“Sounds good.”
“—trying to steal a parachute before you hit ground! It gets better, too. We’re working on ways to stretch that thirty seconds of free-fall time, psychologically.”
He got a blank stare from Alex, and Melinda gave a wise, tired sigh.
“Psychological time perception is extremely flexible. Just to start, there’s anticipatory time, time spent waiting for something to occur. There’s experiential time, the apparent duration of involvement in a given set of events, and there’s reminiscent time, or ‘recalled time’ which is different from the other two due to the ‘storage key’ phenomenon.
“ ‘Storage key?’ ” Alex saw Skip marshalling a response, and realized his mistake. Too late; Skip was off’ and running.
“Do you know about Sperling’s eight second law? You always remember an eclipse lasting eight seconds. It’s because eclipse watchers spend the whole time watching one thing. If you want your memory to store more than that you have to keep looking around. What we’re doing with the Gravity Whip experience—”
Gavagan’s was a quiet restaurant. Its walls were sponges for sound. It was decorated like a twentieth century British pub, right down to the dart board on the wall and the lukewarm beer at the bar. The jukebox in the corner didn’t play music, but a dollar coin bought fifteen minutes of fancy storytelling from holograms. of Mark, Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Jorkins, Brigadier Ffellowes . . . Alex Griffin spent a lot of time here.
Skip had finally wound down, and sat back in his chair listening to a ghostly Harry Purvis tell of finding a nugget of U-235 in his mailbox.
Gary Tegner, the ever-cheerful manager of Gavagan’s, floated their food to them personally. “Fish and chips?” Alex and Melinda both raised fingers. Skip had a Clarkeburger and fries. “Good to see you folks. Melinda, isn’t it?” He set out tankards of ale for the two men and a soft drink for Melinda.
She nodded. “It’s been a while. Christmas of ’49? Staff party
Tegner gave his deep-bellied chuckle. He had considerable belly to bounce it around in. “How could I ever forget that party?” He nudged Skip. “You nuts in R & D. When eight tiny Santas pulled that sleigh through my window, I thought I’d bust a gut.”
Alex remembered. “Me too. And the reindeer with the whip?”
Tegner retreated from the table, wiping his eyes as he chortled. Skip wolfed down a third of his hamburger, then, “What’s happening with you, Alex?”
“Same old thing, buddy.” Then he remembered. “No, I take that back. We had some vandalism over in CMC.”
“I heard about that. Rice, wasn’t it? Anything taken?”
“Apparently not. It shook him up, though.”
“That fits his profile. He’s the nervous type.”
“Hey, don’t tell me that, buddy. You should have said something before you recommended him to me!”
“Alex, a hired guard should be the nervous type. Anyway, I’m a sucker for puppies and lost children.”
Alex caught Melinda’s wistful glance. �
��Hey, genius, when are you going to have some kids of your own? Then you can test—” Skip’s lips thinned out, and so did Melinda’s, and Alex knew he was on thin ice. “—on the other hand, I was wondering if you brought the L-5 plans. Ahem.”
Skip jabbed lightly at Griffin’s hand with a fork. “It’s not too bad. Old territory. I don’t feel my professional life has room for kiddies yet.”
Melinda seemed to draw into herself, and her voice was tiny. “—And I want them.” She nibbled at her fish. “I really do understand Skip’s point, but I was raised thinking a woman should have children.”
“Were your parents very religious, then?”
“Who wasn’t, after the Quake?” Her answer was simple, and true. The Mormons, the Vincent de Paul Society, and Hadassah had been among the first to bring massive aid into California. The religious environment had filtered all through California society and California politics. For several decades California had been another word for conservatism.
Skip squeezed her hand. “ I couldn’t get the L-5 plans, Alex.”
“Problems?”
“You’ll love this. Security problems. It would be the first privately owned space colony, and there are a stack of international treaties to search through. Public support would help, and we’re getting it from everywhere but California.”
Alex drained the last of his ale and set the mug down with a clank. “I suppose you’ve heard all about this mess, Melinda?”
“Just what Skip brings home with him, and that isn’t much.”
“It’s like this, then. California has been firmly on its feet for more than a decade now. A few Southern Cal politicos think that this would be a good time to strip away some of Cowles Industries’ tax advantages. See, we’re just another business to them now. They think they don’t need us any more. Besides, a tax break always looks good to the voters till they see what they’re giving up.” Alex’s anger was eating through the calm, and he lowered his voice. “So we’ve got to walk soft. We can hold onto what we’ve got, maybe, but expansion is going to be difficult. We’re just too high-profile, too easy a target.”
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