Summer of Love, a Time Travel (16 page)

A
guy in fringed jeans strolls by, murmuring, “Grass, hash, acid, speed?”

To
Chi’s right sits an intense young man with chin-length hair as red as his own.
He draws on a clipboard with a Rapidograph pen. Next to the red-haired artist
sits a burly black fellow sketching in colored pencils on a drawing pad. The
intense young artists trade talk. They are both amazingly good and extremely
serious, comparing techniques and tools.

The
girl’s abandoned chalk drawing depicts a bouquet of flowers. In each flower
petal, she’s drawn an eye. The red-haired artist draws a jungle scene around an
eye. His black friend sketches the eye of a breaching whale. A boy to Chi’s left
sells buttons laid out on moth-eaten velvet, and on each button is an eye, rows
and rows of eyes. Eyes in suns, eyes in clouds, eyes on trees, eyes with legs,
eyes with wings. Wings!

And
there! Chi sits up. A film crew wends its way through the crowd, cameras
whirring. Is it CBS with its corporate Eye?

Chi
leaps up and dashes across the street to a shop called Mnasidika. The film crew
climbs into a double-parked van and pulls away. He pauses before Mnasidika’s
window display of hot pink dresses printed with peace signs. The crew is gone.

Now
Chi bumps into tourists. A fortyish guy in a plaid suit coat drags his
scandalized wife down the street. The wife stares, her hand poised at her throat
as if she’s about to choke, while the guy clicks his Kodak camera as fast as he
can. Four military crew cuts weave past, chug-a-lugging bottles of beer. They
hoot at the girl in the see-through dress.

A black
man saunters by in free-box clothes. “Mystery! Hey, Mystery!” another black man
calls to him. They slap hands, glance warily about. “What’s happenin’,
Superspade?” The second man wears a stylish leather jumpsuit and a thicket of
gold chains. The men make an exchange, quick and furtive. A package for a
package.

Now a
barefoot girl in filthy jeans and a ragged T-shirt creeps up Chi. “Spare
change?” she asks. A white-blond runaway, she must weigh all of ninety pounds.
She is nothing like the girl in the CBS News holoid, but Chi gives her his
wages for the day anyway. To hell with Tenet Three.

Chi
pushes through the crowd, searching, searching. Where are you, Axis? He strides
past Wild Colors and the Phoenix, the Blushing Peony and the I/Thou Coffee
House. The Sexual Freedom League leaflets the crowd, along with the Berkeley
Anti-Draft Union and the Metaphysical UFO Convention. Down the block, a party
spills onto the sidewalk from the Double Barrel Boogie Band’s house.

By
the time Chi returns to the Psychedelic Shop, his spot has been taken by a boy
in a yellow dashiki who juggles silver-colored balls. A bearded man strolls
east in a white robe belted at the waist. A bearded man strolls west in a white
robe belted at the waist, plus a wreath of roses set so firmly on his skull,
blood trickles down his forehead. Or maybe it’s makeup. He wears bloodred lipstick,
too.

Another
street vendor crouches beside his display of roach clips, Day-Glo paperclips, other
odds and ends he probably knickknacked from the shops. A hoodie in black
leather pulls his chopper to the curb. The hoodie’s hands are tattooed,
“L-O-V-E” on his left knuckles, “H-A-T-E” on his right. “Hey, Timmy.” The hoodie
kicks the street vendor’s display. “You owe me for that nickel bag, Timmy.”

The street
vendor squawks and crawls across the pavement, chasing his wares. The hoodie
steps on his hand, seizes his hair, jerks his head back. “Gimme some bread.”
The street vendor extracts coins from his jeans pocket and hands them over.

The
hoodie picks through dimes and quarters. “Huh. You still owe me for that nickel
bag, Timmy.” He takes a roach clip, too.

“Why
don’t you leave Timmy alone,” Chi says.

The
hoodie whips out a switchblade.

Chi
steps back, anger pounding in his throat. His hand rests on his maser. The
green beam could slice open the hoodie’s head like a machete through a coconut.
But hoodies aren’t the sort of demons he’s watching out for. Don’t get
involved, Chi. You
can’t
get involved. Right. He’s getting tired of the
Tenets of the Grandmother Principle.

The
guy in fringed jeans strolls by, murmuring, “Grass, hash, acid, speed?”

An old
man staggers, falls against the House of Richard, and reels over kids squatting
on the sidewalk. He reeks of fortified wine. The kids laugh and push him away.
The old man goes to the curb and empties the contents of his stomach. He
brushes off his shirt, sprawls on the sidewalk, and begins to snore.

More
alcoholics congregate in front of Pacific Liquors and Drugs. Alcohol addiction;
Chi shakes his head. The trait dates from bappir fanciers in prehistoric Persia
to gin-soused telelinkers careening through telespace, causing crashes in their
wake. Standard scans can identify addiction genes and tweaking is widely
available in Chi’s Day. But most people Chi knows tweak only half of their suspect
strands. A glass of good wine is such a pleasure, it seems, even people in his
Day don’t teetotal.

A
shiny red convertible cruises by. A bushy fellow in a cowboy hat navigates, a
beautiful woman in beads by his side. “Look, it’s Stevie,” yells a barefoot
girl sitting on the curb. “It’s Stevie!” She and her friend leap to their feet
and dash after Stevie. The convertible speeds away.

Chi
recalls the fellow’s face from the Archives: the bass player from the Double
Barrel Boogie Band.

Now
a short plump woman sashays arm-in-arm with another woman, toting a pint of
whiskey and encouraging a lively dog leaping all around them. “Hey, Jack,” they
call to the dog. “Here, Jack. Fetch, Jack.”

The
short woman has a worn-out young face bare of makeup, exposing her acne-scarred
skin, but her wide toothy grin gives her a rustic charm. She wears a crushed
velvet top hat over her mane of frizzy brown hair. Suddenly she spots Chi and
saunters up to him.

“There
you go, honey,” she says in a voice like molasses and grit. She digs out a
pencil and a hundred-dollar bill from her purse. She scribbles on the bill and
rips it in two, tucking half in his jeans pocket, the other in hers. “That’s
for being so beautiful. Call me when you want to claim the other half.”

The
woman cackles, and she and her girlfriend saunter on. Chi pries the torn bill
from his pocket. “Janis Joplin” and a phone number are written on it.

The
afternoon is slipping away. Sun slants through the trees. The scent of onions
grilling makes Chi’s mouth water. But he can’t eat the food of this Day. Microorganisms
of the past could kill him: salmonellae, shigellae, cholera, e. coli, staphylococci,
not to mention botulism. So many poisons in this ancient food.

Chi
pops off nutribeads from his nutritional necklace and swallows them. Two
thousand calories will nourish him. Still, his mouth waters at the scent of
grilling onions.

And
there! Another film crew barrels down Cole Street on the back of a flatbed
truck. The truck speeds around the corner before Chi can catch up. Damn it,
anyway.

Thrills.
It’s a thrill a minute in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.

And
dangerous. So many dangers: the Man or the Man. Rustlers, hustlers, bikers,
hoodies. The Axis is a fourteen-year-old girl, all alone. It’s Chi’s duty not
just to find her, but to protect her.

And
there! A slim girl in jeans and a high-collared shirt, her long fair hair
flying, sprints across Haight Street and disappears down Belvedere.

And
there! As if a shadow has lifted up from the concrete and become a solid thing,
a dark figure stalks after her.

A
demon? Is it a demon?

Chi
pushes through the crowd, shoving strangers aside without a prophylak over his
hand.

“Hey!”
people protest.

Where
is she? Where did she go?

“Hey,
you. Snot-nose.” A beat cop brandishing his billy club, all grizzled jowls and
quivering indignation, seizes Chi by the elbow. “Get yer ass outta the street,
snot-nose, or I’ll bust ya for jaywalkin’.”

Chi
points up Belvedere, protesting, “But I just saw my cousin!”

“An’
I just saw the Virgin Mary.” The cop slaps the tip of his billy club in his
beefy palm. “Swear to begeeze, I’d dig bustin’ ya.”

Whatever
you do, son, don’t get busted by the Man.

“Okay,
okay!” Chi leaps on the sidewalk, but the cop comes after him. Chi ducks into
the stream of people walking in the opposite direction, hunkers down on bended
knees. He’s a six-foot-four guy with long red hair, but he manages to fade into
the crowd.

Will
he ever find the girl he’s searching for? Find her in time? His easy defeat by a
hoodie, then a beat cop disgusts him.

For
aside from all the dangers lurking in the Haight-Ashbury of 1967, demons
threaten the Summer of Love. That’s what his skipfather believes. Demons: what
Chi’s people call Devolved Entities Manifested from the Other Now.

Demons
that seek the girl who is the Axis.

Demons
that want the Axis dead.

6

Purple Haze

Susan
sits on the stoop of the Double Barrel house, staring at ants scurrying up and
down the stairs. The neverending party rocks on as she studies them, precise
little creatures fulfilling their purpose in life. They swarm all over the
kitchen. No one puts out ant poison or worries much about them. Why kill an
ant?

Around
the corner, the Haight-Ashbury scurries.

“They’re
just like those ants, all these damn people,” the woman says. The tall, exotic
woman who cut her down in Golden Gate Park. Only this time the woman wears
scarlet velvet, and Susan knows a thing or two. To Susan’s surprise, Ruby A.
Maverick sits next to her on the stoop.

“The
ants have more nobility and purpose,” Susan mumbles, attempting a reply,
Professor Zoom-style. How much more misery can she take in one day? Ruby humiliated
her once. What’s she here for? To do it again? She can feel Ruby’s eyes burning
holes through her shame.

“The
ants have more nobility and purpose,” Ruby echoes. “That’s not bad for a
teenybopper.” Her voice rings with that haughty tone. “Find your little girlfriend?”

Susan
shakes her head. “No, I haven’t found Penny Lane.”

“What
did you say your name was?”

“I’m
Starbright. And you’re Ruby Maverick. How come I can remember your name, but
you can’t remember mine?”

Ruby
snorts. “Get off your high horse, kid. I meet a lot of people in my shop. Got a
real name?”

High
horse, oh really. “That
is
my real name.
No
one’s turning me in
to the Man, so you can forget it. I’m not telling anyone
anything,
including you.”

“Uh-huh.”
Ruby shakes her head. “Listen, Starbright. I acted like a pig last time we
spoke. I admit it, right, all right? So. . . .I’m sorry.”

Susan
shrugs.

“You
accepting my apology?”

“Why
should I?” Susan looks up at her. Ruby isn’t smiling. She looks as intimidating
as ever, a bold, proud woman with a cloud of black hair out to there. But those
fiery eyes, staring out at the street, then back at Susan, then out again, are
unmistakably friendly. The eyes twinkle, beaming at her.

Suddenly
Susan isn’t so intimidated.

“You
have to understand,” Ruby says, “this is my turf. I’ve lived here for years.
This hippie thing, all you kids. The journalists and the film crews. The cops
and the crazies. All the dope, all the dealing. It’s turned into one big drag. Oh,
hell.” She throws up her hands. “I can’t explain it.”

“No,
you explained it just fine,” Susan says. “I understand. At least, I’m trying
to. The Summer of Love is the most amazing thing that ever happened to me.”
Which is true. Or true enough.

“Uh-huh,”
Ruby says, but her tone isn’t sarcastic.

They
sit in silence, watching the boisterous crowd and the busy ants.

“How’s
Stan?” Ruby finally says.

“He
just did this big acid deal at the Festival of Growing Things.” The story sort
of tumbles out of Susan’s mouth, but she’s too embarrassed to tell Ruby about
the hundred-dollar bill Stan took from her. Or what he demanded she do. “Ten
thousand hits. His profit is a year’s worth of income. He used your calculating
machine to figure it out, but I figured it out in my head. Stan can’t figure
anything out after he smokes white Lebanese pollen.”

“Sweet
Isis.” Ruby gives her an inscrutable look. “He inside?”

“He.
. . .he’s upstairs with some chick he picked up at the festival.” Susan stares at
the ants until her eyes tear.

Ruby
sighs. “Stan’s not like he used to be either, kid. We’ve all changed.”

“The
chick is really beautiful,” Susan adds. As if that explains everything.

“Chick?”
Professor Zoom strolls out and sits on the stoop. He dropped a hit of dragon’s
blood on top of the white lightning he dropped this morning. He practically
glows in the oncoming twilight. “This isn’t a farm. Where’s a chick?”