Summer of Love, a Time Travel (46 page)

“What
pig?” Chi says.

“Some
private investigator sent by her parents. What a drag. Freaked us out.” Nance flicks
her graceful hand at Lady May, gesturing with irritation for the pack of Kools
lying on the mattress. “Isn’t that just like Starbright. Mom and Daddy want her
back home so bad, they’re paying for it.” Nance lights a Kool, tossing the
match in an overflowing ashtray. “Isn’t that sweet? Why, that’s so sweet, I
forgot to puke.”

Susan’s
heart isn’t just thundering, it’s exploding. “Listen to me, Penny Lane. Your
mom and your stepfather came to my parents’ house. They wanted to know where
you’d gone. They were worried! They cared!”

“But
you didn’t tell them, did you, sweetheart.”

“No,
I didn’t. I thought that was the right thing to do. I thought that was what you
wanted. But they were looking for you. They were, and you can go back home.”
Susan pulls out the money Stan gave her. “Go home, Nance. You can work things
out. I’ll help you, I swear. I’ll never let you down again. Please, Nance. You
don’t need this.”

“Nance?
Who’s Nance? You still don’t get it, do you, Starbright?” She snorts. Professor
Zoom starts to weep again. Lady May looks as if she’s about to weep, too. But
Nance is hard and glittering. “I
called
Handy Andy and my mom. I called
them.
I
called them.”

Susan
shakes her head at Chi. Nance is over-amping. She’s making no sense.

Chi
glances behind him, alarmed. Boot heels are clattering up the stairs to the
third floor.

“I
thought you were the smart one, Starbright,” Nance says, her voice ragged with
sorrow. “They told me they have no daughter.”

She
is an elf, a daredevil, a rebel, a whirling dervish. She is a junkie, a needle
freak, a speed freak. She is a child leaping from the old oak tree, shouting,
“I want to die!”

The
Summer of Love did not corrupt this child.

You
did, Mr. and Mrs. Payne.

Stovepipe
and the Lizard burst into the room.

“God!”
Susan cries. Chi pulls her to her feet.

“You
Stan the Man?” Stovepipe shouts. He seizes Professor Zoom by his flimsy hair, yanks
him to his feet “We want our freakin’ bread, and we want it
now!
”

“I’m
Zoom!” Professor Zoom cries. “Stan’s with the band. He’s over in the park!”

The
Lizard kicks at discarded kits and plastic baggies, ashtrays and candles.
Crystal meth billows in the air, worthless dust.

“Stan
ain’t here, so knock it off, man!” Lady May cries. She hoists herself to her
feet and totters across the room.

The
Lizard flashes his switchblade.

Lady
May screams. “He cut me!” She brandishes the bright gash across her forearm.
“He
cut
me!”

Susan
swings her handbag at the Lizard, connecting with his shoulder. He spins,
lunges at her.

Chi plants
his bootheel in the Lizard’s crotch and kicks him away. He seizes her, hustles
her out. She tries to twist away, but he won’t let go. She forgot how strong he
is when he means to be. He forces her down the stairs and out the front door to
the street gray with drizzle.

A
window on the third floor suddenly flares with light. Glass shatters.

Nance
thrusts her head out. “Starbright! Theyre kicking over the candles! Fire! Fire!
There’s a fire!”

Stovepipe
seizes Nance’s shoulder, yanks her inside.

Susan
hears her scream.

“Fire!”
Susan takes up the cry. Neighbors rush to their windows. “Fire, there’s a fire!
And a guy’s assaulting a girl! Call the cops!”

Black
smoke pours out the window. Susan glimpses leaping flames.

She
tries to climb the front stairs but Chi grips her shoulders, restraining her.

“Chi,”
she cries, “she was my best friend!”

“I
can’t let you go in there, Starbright.” His face is anguished, but unrelenting.
“It’s too dangerous!”

“Then
you go! Help her!”

He
shakes his head. “I can’t leave you.”

“I’ll
wait right here, I promise. Wait no matter what. You’ve got to go, get her out
of there. Please! Please! I’m begging you!”

“All
right.” He clatters up the stairs and darts inside as firetrucks speed up in a
blaze of lights and wailing sirens. Cop cars careen down the block.

A
crowd gathers. Cyn walks up, arm in arm with a handsome young black dude in a
beret and a leather jacket. There’s the dude with the skull and the guy with
the eyes and the elderbeard. The crowd swells. Smoke thickens the air. Susan
chokes, cupping her hand to her nose and mouth. Ashes spark, bits of fire whirling
in the rain.

The
green Digger truck pulls up. Susan spies Leo Gorgon’s sharp profile. Hells
Angels rumble up on their hogs, cutting through the crowd. Firemen dash up and
down the stairs, hoisting hoses inside. A ladder angles up, and firemen aim
hoses in the third floor windows. Police are barking, “Get back! Get back!”
More sirens wail as flames burst through the roof of the Double Barrel house in
an evil, flaring crown.

A
tall, slim man with long red hair and a brown leather jacket steps out of the
crowd and gazes up at the awful spectacle.

“Chi!”
Susan cries and pushes past people, rushing to him. How did he get out of there
so quickly? She’s as glad to see him as she’s scared for Nance. “Oh, Chi, where
is she? Did you get her out?”

The
man turns toward her, his hair swinging like ropes of raw skin. She recoils
from his bitter cold. His pale face is alive, crawling with fleshy bits and
pieces that wriggle like maggots. His eyes are two burning pools of sapphire
flames.

It’s
a demon! A demon of Chi!

God,
she’s sick!

Stomach
churning, she presses her fingers to her throat and stumbles away. She backs
into the crowd, groping, confused. She staggers into the arms of the gray
beggar woman. The beggar embraces her, clutching her to a moist breast stinking
of rot. Susan strikes out with her fists. It’s like punching the scum at the
bottom of a pond.

But
she breaks free. The demon can’t hold her!

“Yes!”
she shouts. Demons that aren’t
her
double can’t hold her! Can’t kill her
with their touch!

A icy
wind stinking of sulfur strikes her. She whirls and stares eye to eye at the
girl with her face. The demon looms a handsbreadth away.

Susan
struggles against the force pulling her closer.

Black,
they’re both in black, she and the demon, black rippling all around them. The
demon’s face shifts, splintering into a thousand leers and scowls. Susan’s head
spins. No one should ever have to see such dreadful expressions on your own
face. The demon raises her hand, extending the knob of her staff.

The
force seizes her, tears at her.

Susan
ducks. Duck and cover! Isn’t that what they tell you to do if someone drops an atomic
bomb on your house? Ducking, she breaks loose of the terrible force.

She
runs, she runs, she runs.

17

Light My Fire

Inferno!
The room is engulfed by the time Chi sprints back upstairs. Sheets of flame
leap from the walls, and black smoke billows. The Vision of the Other Now rears
up in his memory, the stench of forests burning and charred flesh. Dread beats
in his chest. Heat bludgeons his face. His eyes sting and tear. He coughs and
chokes. An awful crackling and popping deafens his ears.

Damn!
This is a wood-frame house, maybe fifty years old, with a shake-shingled roof. No
smoke detector, no miniframe monitor, no sprinklers autohooked to a local
reservoir. He can’t believe it. These people live in a tinderbox!

Chi
pulls out a filter, clamps the square of SemiPerm over his nose and mouth. The
filter instantly adheres to his skin, leaving his hands free. He inhales
lightly, experimenting. Sooty and thick, but he can breathe as long as the fire
doesn’t eat up all the oxygen.

The
skinny fellow Starbright calls Professor Zoom sprawls at the top of the stairs,
a naked bundle of bones, holding his throat, hacking, tears streaming down his
face.

“Starbright’s
friend!” Chi shouts. “Did she get out? Where is she?”

Professor
Zoom clamps his hands to his scalp and claws at his limp hair, digs at his
cheeks. He’s got crank bugs, a shivering of nerves and muscles under the skin
creating the sensation of crawling insects. It’s a common symptom, Chi knows,
of heavy methamphetamine abuse. Zoom’s fingernails draw blood.

Chi
shakes the man’s shoulder, but he claws at himself and moans.

Chi
dashes to the door. Flames dart at him like living things, devouring and
ruthless. He can’t see a thing. He jerks back, pulls out his scope, peers
through the macro end, clicks on the infrared lens. Nothing.

He
shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing this!

He
realizes with another part of his mind—how well the LISA techs have
indoctrinated him—that this is a violation of Tenet Three. Starbright’s love
for Penny Lane cannot matter. He cannot—should not—try to save her. He’s a
t-porter, and Penny Lane is on her own.

And
he’s left Starbright on her own, down on the street.

Get
out of here, Chi!

He
shakes off a queasy feeling. For a moment, in the terrible heat, he feels as if
insects are crawling just beneath his skin. His very own crank bugs. Disgusted
and confused, he brushes his hand over his face, dislodging the filter. He
chokes and stumbles back to the stairs.

“Did
she get out?” he shouts again, seizing Professor Zoom’s wrist. “Is Penny Lane
okay?”

“The
bed,” Professor Zoom says, staring helplessly up at him. “The bed, oh my God.”

“The
people who were with you,” Chi shouts. “Answer me! Where are they?”

“The
dealers, they cut Lady May. They cut Crinky. Then they split.” Professor Zoom’s
eyes glaze with horror. “And then the bed just. . . .lit up! I heard her scream.
Dear God, I never heard her scream before, do you understand me? I heard her
scream.”

“Let’s
go.”

Chi
slings the fellow’s arm over his shoulders and drags him downstairs. Firemen
race inside. A young man in ambulance whites takes Professor Zoom from Chi and
leads him outside. Chi finds Dirty David snoring peacefully on the floor and
hands him over to another ambulance attendant.

A
fireman yells at him, “Sir, get out of here
now!
”

Chi
clatters down the stairs. Police cars with their lights spinning, fire engines
frantic with activity jam the street. News reporters with photographers in tow,
film crews with booms and microphones jostle closer for a better view. Cops brandish
billy clubs, shoving both media people and sightseers back from the house.

The
usual Haight Street crowd has gathered, robed, feathered, beaded, spangled, and
very stoned. Some people gape at the fire with tearful, horrified eyes. The
mouse magician solemnly rings his brass bell and shakes his skull-topped wand
as if his invocation will stop the conflagration. Others giggle and stare,
mouths dropped open in a “Wow!” And there—a couple of greasy hoodies—and there—street
spades in free box rags—snake through the crowd, hands darting into jacket
pockets, seizing handbags. A hoodie seizes a woman’s woven pouch. She screams,
“Stop, thief!” but no one pays her any heed. Hells Angels and Gypsy Jokers
straddle growling hogs, their ladies splayed behind them.

And
at the corner where the front stairs meet the sidewalk, where she promised to
wait, wait no matter what, there is no one.

Starbright
is gone.

Chi
pushes through the crowd, panic clenching his throat. “Have you seen
Starbright? I’ve got to find her, have you seen her?”

The grizzled
Beatnik who owns the Blue Unicorn Café pats his shoulder, saying, “No, man, I
haven’t seen her.” A guy in a white robe and a crown of thorns says, “Bugger
off, I’m God.” Some people stare blankly as if they’ve never seen him before,
though he’s seen their faces nearly every day during the Summer of Love. Dr.
David Smith strides by in his white clinic coat, toting his doctor’s bag.

Chi
knows these faces, he thinks with a pang, but he knows nothing of who these
people really are. Where did they come from, where will they go? What
do
they believe in? Is he any closer to the truth of the Haight-Ashbury during the
Summer of Love? What special insight can he contribute to the Archives?
Billions of dollars invested in the SOL Project, and he still knows nothing?

But
that was never the object of the project: to understand. The object was to
protect the Axis, preserve the timeline, and conserve spacetime as everyone
knows it. Rage swells in his heart. Billions of dollars to preserve the
timeline, and nothing more. Under Tenet Three, he’s not even allowed to save a wounded
girl from a burning house.

The
way you think about things shapes the way your reality is.
For
people like Starbright and Ruby A. Maverick, the Summer of Love has meant
shaking up reality as they knew it. Rejecting conformity, prejudice, the way
things are supposed to be according to someone else. Thinking for themselves. Shaping
reality their way, a new and better way.