Summer of Love, a Time Travel Page 10

  Laughing academy? Chi didn’t want to ask.

  “And don’t let the Man rip you on,” his skipmother added, and Brax looked at her, like Not quite, Ariel.

  Chi smiles, thinking of their gentle scholarly disputes.

  But he hadn’t smiled ten days ago, standing in the Portals of the Past, dread beating in his chest.

  The Archives were unclear about so much. “The Man” was the military arm of the civil service—the police, the heat, the fuzz, the pigs. And “the Man” also meant a dealer, especially a pusher, a major criminal trafficker in illegal drugs. Which was a very odd contradiction, Chi thought, if the Archivists were correct. How did people of this Day know which usage someone meant? The Man? Or the Man? Even context might not clarify.

  Chi grits his teeth. He has no intention of being thrown in the laughing academy. Or getting ripped off by the Man. Gentle scholarly disputes and context mean nothing, now that he finds himself smack dab in a Hot Dim Spot in the middle of the Crisis.

  Because the past—his past—is disappearing.

  And the future?

  He shudders to think of the future.

  *

  Chi hikes down Clayton Street, walking the loop. He’s walked the loop every day for the past ten days in the peak of the afternoon. He hikes across Clayton, up Haight, east to Broderick, crosses west to Golden Gate Park, across to and down Stanyan, and back again.

  For ten long days, he’s searched for the girl in the CBS News holoid.

  And watched for demons.

  First stop? The Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic across the street. Another faded Victorian house typical of the neighborhood, the front stairs are packed with people. A queue straggles down the sidewalk.

  Chi checks them out: beaded hipsters, bikers in leather, vacant-eyed teenyboppers, bums on the nod. And children. So many young women, scarcely more than children themselves, with their dirty babies.

  Chi stares at the young mothers with disapproval. They’re not even licensed. President Alexander, who first mandated prequalification of parents and licensing of children, would not be happy to see this. Not happy at all.

  Chi climbs the stairs into the clinic, taking care not to touch anyone. He slides a prophylak from his pocket, folds it over the door handle, opens the door, and drops the prophylak in a waste basket.

  Dropping the prophylak always makes him queasy. What about Tenet Seven of the Grandmother Principle? What about leaving evidence of a modern technology in the past?

  Well. This grade of PermaPlast will decompose into vegetable compounds in twenty years. For now, it looks like nothing more than a wad of petroleum-based plastic wrap. The SOL Project Directors authorized him to dispose of prophylaks, when necessary. Still, Chi has learned his lessons only too well. He retrieves the prophylak, tucks it in his pocket.

  He climbs more stairs inside and confronts a sign:

  Chi has made friends with Dr. Dernberg and Nurse Peggy, Dr. Reddick and Miss Laurel. They’re necessary acquaintances, whom he keeps as distant as possible. For one thing, he has no authorization to affect these people. For another, he’s always embarrassed at the inferior position of women during the Summer of Love, how women are demeaned in so many ways. Chi is as embarrassed as these people would have been appalled to witness the whipping of slaves a century ago.

  Here, it’s Dr. Dernberg and Nurse Peggy. Dr. Reddick and Miss Laurel. The Great Men and the smart girls who do most of the work.

  “Hi, hon,” Miss Laurel says. “Find your cousin yet?” When Chi shakes his head, she says, “Let me see her picture again.”

  Chi pulls out the blurry print downloaded from the CBS News holoid.

  The clinic staff looks him up and down. He’s still something of a curiosity. When he first came in, Dr. Reddick exclaimed over his pallor and slender build. The doctor tried—forcefully—to persuade Chi to submit to a blood test. Chi had refused, resorting to Ruby’s speculation about him. “I’m a hemophiliac,” he said, “don’t worry about me.” His explanation seemed to work, even with these sharp-eyed doctors.

  Still, they stare at him every time he visits.

  “Oh, isn’t she cute!” Miss Laurel exclaims.

  Papa Al and Teddy Bear wander over and peer at the print. Two burly bearded hipsters in their thirties, they serve as volunteer staff. Every time Chi visits the clinic, they’re there. Chi has no idea what they do to pay their rent, when they’re not volunteering. They make his cosmicist giftdays seem like no sacrifice at all.

  Papa Al and Teddy Bear don’t try to slap hands with Chi anymore. He always refuses.

  Touch nothing, touch no one. That’s Chi’s mantra. The clinic crawls with contagion and ailments that don’t exist in his Day: mumps and yellow fever and hepatitis B. Any of a thousand ancient bacteria harmless to these people could kill him.

  “Nope, I haven’t seen her,” says Miss Laurel. “How about you guys?”

  Papa Al peers closer. “Not yet, man.”

  “We’ll let you know, kid,” says Teddy Bear.

  Miss Laurel holds out the print. “Sorry, Chi.”

  When Chi doesn’t take the print, Miss Laurel lays it on her desk. He fumbles in his pocket for another prophylak, wraps that around the print, and tucks the whole package in his jacket pocket. Miss Laurel watches his performance with bemused interest. Lucky for Chi everybody’s a little strange during the Summer of Love.

  Dr. Smith waves to Chi from across the room. He’s sniffling and blotchy-faced today. Founder of the clinic, David Smith is a curly-haired twenty-eight-year-old with a sensitive mouth and sympathetic eyes. “We think it’s measles,” he calls to Chi. “I’ve seen twenty cases today, not counting me. I think we’re working on an epidemic, don’t you, Peg?”

  Nurse Peggy glances up from her desk, red-eyed and puffy-faced. “Whew,” she sniffles. “All this bad boy takes is a sneeze. We’ll keep an eye out for your cousin, Chi.”

  Chi clatters back down the stairs, recoiling from people’s faces, their breaths. Such a ripe and ready contagion—measles! All it takes is a sneeze. His skin crawls.

  Two girls sitting on the sidewalk outside the clinic pet a dog crouched between them, pass a joint back and forth, pick at calluses on their bare feet, and pluck potato chips from a bag, licking salt and grease off their fingers.

  Chi’s stomach turns over. Ignorant! Oblivious! Disgusting! He reminds himself: we had to shield ourselves from the sky before the radiation vaccine. We had to shield ourselves because of them. Because of what they and their descendants did to our world.

  Chi studies the people queued up in front of the clinic. No one here remotely resembles the girl in the CBS News holoid.

  Onward.

  To Haight Street, the thumping heart of it all.

  The Archivists classified the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love as an authentic, spontaneous, integrative, interactive social setting instigating random activity outside the private family life of suburban America and focused on scheduled or impromptu celebratory activities calculated to encourage people to get a little crazy.

  In other words, a street scene.

  Chi has studied other authentic street scenes in the Archives. Paris during the Surrealists’ Ball, Rio during Carnival, New Orleans during Mardi Gras, New York City during Renaissance Day, Beijing during People’s Independence Day, the Vivas’ Spring of Life Festival after the brown ages were declared over. Authentic street scenes are romantic to view in holoid, exhilarating to jack into in telespace.

  But the street scene Chi confronts now? In person? It’s a bustling, hustling, babbling, twittering, tinkling, pounding, stinking lunacy. It’s nothing but trouble walking down Haight Street.

  Why are all these people here? What do they want?

  Chi passes a sign spray-painted on a shop wall:

  A cacophony assaults his ears: flutes, whistles, tambourines, bongo drums, voices singing and laughing, bells and finger cymbals chiming, cars honking their horns. A chopper guns its engine
, spewing petroleum fumes. In an upstairs flat, a party rages. Two guys prop stereo speakers on the window sills and blast music into the street.

  Two girls in bikini tops and denim cutoffs step onto the narrow fire escape outside the window and gyrate to the beat. “Turn on,” they shout. “Turn on, tune in, drop out!”

  “I’d walk a mile for a camel!” someone shouts.

  A procession marches past. Four pallbearers carry a coffin draped in black. They wear black gowns and papier-mache masks depicting a dog, a ram, a bear, and a rat. “Hear ye, hear ye, money is dead!” they intone. Three kids in fake beards follow, banging garbage can lids with drumsticks.

  A man trails behind them in a black cap with mouse ears, a black clown’s nose, sunglasses with round black lenses, a black leotard and tights, and a long black cape. In his right hand he carries a wand topped with a skull. In his left, a large brass bell, which he rings in a somber rhythm.

  A flatbed truck jammed with devotees of some religion Chi can’t identify rolls slowly down the street. The devotees chant, beat drums, clang finger cymbals. Two barefoot women dance before the truck as it advances, flinging daisies from baskets they carry. Chi spies a bright spot of blood on a dancer’s bare toe.

  A girl glides by in a dress so sheer Chi can see her nipples and her crotch. A man in leather pants does a double take, whips around, and follows her.

  The mouse magician promenades in the opposite direction.

  Chi cranes his neck. Any television cameras? No, just journalists and photographers today. Too bad.

  He smiles at the astonishing variety of hats and headgear: bowlers, Stetsons, Edwardian top hats, military helmets, Greek fishermen’s caps, a Victorian lady’s bonnet like a bowl of drooping velvet blooms, Moroccan fezzes, a Sioux headdress worthy of a museum, gypsy scarves, headbands of leather or suede, fresh flowers woven into garlands and entwined in all that hair.

  Where else has Chi seen such delight in the wearing of headgear? Among his peers, of course. Bella Venus would adore this. If only she could see the scene for herself!

  And a sadness strikes Chi as he stands in the crowd, searching the faces. A strange sense of longing. A sense of the innocence of this celebration, this God Day, which he knows will pass as swiftly as the summer itself.

  Of course, these times aren’t innocent at all. A wasteful military adventure rages in Southeast Asia that will come to no good end. Ignorance, fear, prejudice, and bigotry abound. Women are abused worldwide. The sex and drug practices in which these people revel will cause problems for years to come, challenging even the most compassionate.

  Still, he finds himself watching this authentic, spontaneous, integrative, interactive social setting outside the private residence with a feeling he can only call sentimental.

  And with frustration. Can he admit it? The festive mood is contagious. He taps his toe to the music. He longs to swig from a wine bottle and yell the slogan from his Now, “Jack up, link in, space out!” He longs to seize a pretty woman and dance in the street.

  No, no, no. He can’t do it.

  A girl drawing in chalk on the sidewalk abandons her art and moves from her spot in front of the Psychedelic Shop. Chi claims the spot. He deftly pulls out and positions a prophylak. His clothes are bacteria-resistant, but he still feels squeamish about sitting on the filthy concrete without protection. He blows on the PermaPlast, trying to hasten the damn thing’s descent, which takes its time floating down. But there are so many strange people doing so many strange things, no one pays him any attention. He gingerly sits and leans against the shop front.

  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.