Summer of Love, a Time Travel (52 page)

“They
do, but—”

“But
nothing, sonny. Let me tell you what happened in the old days when a woman
couldn’t go to a competent doctor. She went and had an abortion, anyway. I’m
not saying it was right or easy or even moral, but she went and did it, if she thought
she had to. And if something went wrong, if she got a problem called puerperal
sepsis, if she got infected and went into shock, she could die. And if she
didn’t die, if she was so lucky as not to die, she could never have children
again. Not even when she wanted to. Not even when she was ready to. Because
puerperal sepsis makes you sterile
.
”

Ruby
releases him, staggers to the kitchen sink, and turns her back. In a low trembling
voice, she says, “Did me.”

*  
*   *

Susan
presses her face against Ruby’s back between her shoulders and wraps her arms
around Ruby’s waist.

“I’m
sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s
all right, kid,” Ruby says. “I’ve had time to deal with what happened fourteen
years ago. It’s old news in 1967. You know what? I should have had the child.”

Susan
always thought of Ruby as so powerful, so strong. Pressed against her back, she
can hear Ruby’s breath, feel her beating heart. For the first time, Susan
realizes how fragile Ruby is. Vulnerable and mortal.

“God,
Ruby.”

“Hey,
don’t cry.” Ruby turns around and hugs her. “It’s been an amazing summer for
me, too. I’ve learned something from the Summer of Love. Or maybe I’ve just
remembered something I forgot. We’ve all got choices in this life. Like
President Alexander said, we’ve got to make those choices responsibly in a
cocreatorship with God or the Cosmic Mind or Isis or however you wish to refer
to the Universal Intelligence. If we do that, it’s going to be all right. It’s
got
to be all right because we’ve got to carry on.”

But
Chi looks drained. He shakes his head at the scanner, reading and rereading the
data. “Listen to me,” he says.

“No,
we’re not going to listen to you, sonny,” Ruby snaps. “I don’t want to hear any
more.”

He
shakes his head at Susan, pale and drawn. “Susan Bell
has
to be pregnant
before I transmit to 2467. If she isn’t, I’ve failed. The SOL Project has
failed. And I don’t know what will happen to our spacetime
.
After all
we’ve gone through battling the demons, maybe
this
is the secret loop
that destroys everything.” He mopes out to the living room, slumps on the couch.

“Oh,
Chi.” Susan runs to his side and kneels and takes his hands. “I’ll get pregnant
when I’m older. I’ll get pregnant with a man who loves me. Why must I be
pregnant now?”

“Because
Susan Bell will give birth to a child in the spring of 1968.”

“Oh!”
she cries and all her fantasies of motherhood rush back. “I would want a little
girl.”

“You
will
have a little girl.”

“I
would name her Jessica.”

His
eyes widen. “You
will
name her Jessica.”

“I
would want her to have brown eyes and pretty hair. Oh, a little girl!”

He
stares.

Ruby
sits next to him. “Chi, are you telling us you
know
what Susan Bell’s
probable future is supposed to be?”

He
stands and takes down the Rick Griffin posters again. He projects the lavender
field as big as the wall. Bright red alphanumerics say:

“Date:
09-04-1967. You may insert Disc 7 now.”

He
shoves a crystal sliver in his magic ring.

“My
skipmother smuggled these holoid discs into my pocket just before I transmitted
to this Now,” he says. “It was subversive, what she did. The holoids contain
amazing data. Oh, some data I already knew about. Some I’d never seen before.
And some data I wasn’t supposed to know about until the time came. Ariel
prioritized and date-coded everything. Man, was I ticked.”

The
lavender field dissolves and the street signs at the corner of Haight and
Ashbury pop up. In the background, a slim girl in a high-collared shirt talks
with a tall, pale redhead. The girl darts across the street, gaining her place
behind the shoulder of a sandy-haired man. The girl’s hair stirs in the wind,
and she brushes it away from her face. Then she smiles. A radiant smile. An
enigmatic smile. The sandy-haired man says, “I’m Harry Reasoner.”

Susan
screams. She stares at the girl with her face smiling back at her. “Wow! Wow!
Is that me?”

Ruby
laughs. “That’s you, kid.”

“What
other holoids do you have of me?” Susan says to Chi.

“Just
this,” he says quietly.

A
young woman materializes in the lavender field. She is self-possessed and very
serious. Her hair frames her face in a curly bob. A toddler sits on her lap.

Susan
stares. An eerie feeling shivers through her.

The
holoid disappears too soon.

“Susan,
I don’t have any other holoids of you, but my skipmother did include your
complete genealogy on Disc 7,” Chi says. “Know this. You have children. Your
children have children. And those children have children.

Now
another mother and a child appear. The mother stands in profile, watching a
dusky-haired girl dance ballet with consummate grace.

“Your
first daughter has a daughter. One of her great-great-great grandchildren is
named Mary. Mary marries a famous sculptor named Thomas Alexander.”

Susan
is suddenly aware her heart is pounding.

“Then
Susan Bell,” Ruby says slowly, “is the great-great-great grandmother of the
second woman president of the United States.”

“Yes,”
Chi says.

He
whispers to his magic ring. The holoids and the lavender field disappear.

The
living room darkens as the late summer sun flees into the west. A chill hinting
of autumn settles in. Ruby rises and stacks wood in the fireplace.

Susan’s
heart pounds harder.

“Then
Susan Bell,” Ruby says more slowly still and strikes a fireplace match, “is the
great-great-great, and a couple more greats, grandmother of
you.
”

20

Brown-Eyed Girl

With
her pop eyes and slack jaw, the girl Chi knew as Starbright stares at him like
an R. Crumb character out of Zap Comix. He can practically see sweat splotches
and exclamation points leaping from her brow. He can’t tell if she’s furious or
just plain horrified. But he recognizes the feeling of pure shock because it’s
rushing through him, too.

“Why
didn’t you tell me before I fell in love with you?” she demands.

He
stares at his boot toes, speechless.

“Why
didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you
tell
me?”

He
feels like a dupe. What a chump! Consider impact before you consider benefit?
Right. Ariel Herbert’s secret. A woman’s secret. A skipmother’s secret.

“I
swear to you on all I hold sacred, I didn’t know,” he finally manages to
protest. “I never traced my genealogy earlier than Mary Alexander. I had no
reason to!”

All of
spacetime will collapse if Susan Bell dies during the Summer of Love. And all of
spacetime will collapse if Susan Bell isn’t pregnant as of 11:59 P.M. on
September 4, 1967 when Chi is supposed to transmit back to September 4, 2467.
Will he arrive on time? Or twelve hours and ten minutes late? Who gives a damn?

“Why
did you make me love you?” Susan demands. “If you’re my. . . my. . . .”

“Grandson,”
Ruby says in her sweet-as-poison voice.

“I didn’t
know, I swear I really didn’t know!” he says. “I mean, I don’t look anything
like you, do I? After so many generations and five hundred years and gene-tweaking?”

“Go
with me
every
where! Hold my hand!”

“Dig
it, man from Mars,” Ruby says, laughing. “The kid’s in love with you.”

He
glares at Ruby. “What’s so damn funny? I’m in love with her, too.”

“You’ve
got a lot of nerve!” Susan leaps to her feet and stomps around the living room.
“You
played
with me!”

“At
first, I--.” He stops right there. At first he
what?
Played with her?
“At first, I protected you, Susan. I needed to protect you, you know that. Then
it became something more.”

“Simmer
down, Susan,” Ruby says. “I wouldn’t mind listening to you rant and rave at him
for at least another hour. And Chi, I’d love to watch you cringe and grovel and
beg her forgiveness for at least that long. But if what you say is true,” she
points to the spot where he projected the holoids, “and preserving all of spacetime
depends on Susan Bell fulfilling her destiny, then tell me this. What are you
going to do about it?”

“
Me?
”

“Well,
who else, sonny? Unless you want to run down to the street and collar some fine
dude to knock her up.”

“Knock
me up!” Susan cries. “This is so gross, I can’t believe it!” She darts up the
stairs to the sitting room and slams the door.

Chi
waits for the lock to click.

It
clicks.

Then
unclicks.

“You
better hurry, man from Mars.” Ruby saunters to the front window and peers out
into the evening. “Only I don’t see anyone, let alone a man our Starbright
would want to father her child. Why, I haven’t seen the streets this empty
since the night there was supposed to be a riot.”

Chi
looks out, too, and Ruby’s right. The corner of Clayton and Haight is deserted.

Ruby
lights a jasmine candle and hands it to him with a wicked smile. “Listen up,
Chi. You say your skipmother did this subversive thing. She was on to a secret loop
or two, hmm? She didn’t want to freak you out about all that too soon. But she
knows you’re a good cosmicist. You would never ever violate the Tenets unless
there was a really good reason. Right, am I right? So go do your duty, sonny.
Or should I say,” she says, sweet as poison, “grandsonny.”

“But,”
he sputters, blushing, “Susan and me, we’re
related.
”

“You
said so yourself. So many generations. Five hundred years. I think you’ll be
just fine. I think your skipmother would agree. Oh, hey.” Ruby’s face tightens
with alarm. “Under the Generation-Skipping Law, are you allowed to father a
child?”

“Yeah,
I’m a skipchild. I’ve got a deferment.”

“A deferment,
uh-huh.” Ruby darts into the kitchen and returns with Susan’s favorite sherry.
She thrusts the bottle and two cordial glasses in his hands. “Then go defer
your fine ass up those stairs.”

“But
this is impossible!”

“I
know your Tenets say you can’t kill your grandmother. But do any of your damn
Tenets say you can’t make love to your great-great-great-great-grandmother?
Huh, do they? Think about it.”

Chi
thinks about it. The more he thinks about it, the more Ruby smiles. As he
thinks some more about it, Ruby starts to laugh. Soon he’s smiling, too, and
laughing and shaking his head.

“Dig
it, you love each other,” Ruby says. “I call that the Grandmother Principle,
1967-style. Now get upstairs ‘cause she’s waiting for you.”

Gossip, Innuendo
& All The News That Fits

At
midnight September 4, tourist season officially ended and, for most of the
people concerned, so did the Summer of Love.

It
all goes to prove what every veteran Haightian knew all along. Most of the
summer lovers were out for their vacation thrill. They were tourists, plastic
hippies, middle- and upper-middle class straighties who came down to play the
game.

Now
the game is over and most of the kiddies will return to school.

But
one thing happened that no one can dispute. In one way or another, all these
people were turned on. And while they may never see San Francisco again, it’s a
sure bet that somewhere in the world they’ll someday be wearing flowers in their
hair.

“Haightians Thrill to
Spacious Streets”