The Gilded Age

December 5, 1895

The Artists’ Ball





9

Prayers in the Joss House

“Rachael?” Jessie murmurs in the dawn. “My sweet innocent angel, is that you?” She tosses and turns, unable to find comfort in her cashmere bedclothes. Her side aches. Her head aches, too, which never ached before. Everything has become strange these days since Zhu Wong came to live at the boardinghouse.

Why can’t Jessie see things as she wishes they were? Why can’t she receive the gift of a second glass of absinthe? Toss, turn, toss, turn. Everything tossing and turning. Why can’t she see what she wants to, anymore?

It’s no use. She lurches out of bed, goes to her window, throws open the watery glass. The city is waking, milk wagons and vegetable vendors rattling on their rounds. She hears horses neigh, a donkey honk. The ssh-ssh of the street sweepers’ sprinklers and brooms. She gazes out further, to her view of the bay. The fishermen have set out to sea, the last straggling trawlers cutting through the shifting darkness between the graceful shoulders of the Golden Gate. To the east, the bay shimmers and dawn’s glimmer shines from behind the Oakland hills, soon to grace them all with sunlight. She breathes chilly air with the scent of eucalyptus, the stink of the city night blown clean and clear.

Why is her heart so dark on this beautiful dawn?

Sure and it was another lively night at the Parisian Mansion. A trio of the local bulls stopped in for midnight supper and stayed on for drinks and smokes, then for a ride in the saddle. Chong was beaming. His terrapin makes even hardened beat cops randy. “Is my secret spice,” he boasts. Plus, Jessie got herself a new girl, a lovely thing with flaming red-gold hair and such bad teeth she never smiles, though the gentlemen tried to persuade her all night. Good racket. Who knows what’ll boost the charms of a fallen angel? She says she’s seventeen but, without her face paint, she looks like a schoolgirl barely out of diapers.

Schoolgirl. Jessie’s gorge rises. “Rachael?” she calls out. “Is that you?”

The bulls enjoyed her hospitality for free, of course. The law has been leaning on her more and more these days, not to mention the bench. His honor the railbird’s touch for twenty eagles at Ingleside was just the beginning. Mr. Heald regretfully informed her that her monthly civic contribution had increased by as much, and he still had the nerve to ask her to play the skin flute.

These days.

Strange times are a-coming, Madame de Cassin said. Bad luck is a-coming, Jessie feels it as surely as she feels the winter coming. She presses her fingers lightly to her liver pulsing beneath her skin. She needs a dose of Scotch Oats Essence just to lace up the corset, and she’s having Mariah lace her up tighter and tighter. Wasp waists are all the rage in Paris.

She closes the window, latches it. Fiddle-dee-dee. Is the Queen of the Underworld a lady to succumb to vapors and apprehensions? She sure as hell is not.

“Jar me,” she says out loud to no one but herself, “what diamonds shall I wear to the ball tonight fit to knock their eyes out?”

Sure and that’s all it must be, this anxiety, for tonight she’ll attend the annual Artists’ Ball. What the bohemians call their Mardi Gras, a wee bit of cheer in autumn instead in spring like them lively folks down in New Orleans. The ball is always held at the San Francisco Art Association, the beneficiary of the mansion old man Hopkins abandoned high atop Nob Hill. It’s the first bash of the Season after which the holidays begin. Mr. Ned Greenway assigns everyone to preferred lists and lesser lists, upon none of which Jessie Malone ever appears. Mr. Greenway is a fat little snob and a bore. He’s merely a champagne importer, after all, not some touchstone of taste. He ain’t been civil to her since she procured her own supplier of Napa champagne, scoffing at Greenway’s outrageous markup on his imported French. That’s the real dope on why he’s so standoffish. Once she sat down with a blindfold on and compared vintages for herself. Is French champagne better than her Napa bubbly? Not hardly. Not to Jessie.

Nob Hill, Snob Hill. That’s the mocking moniker the maids and butlers and tradefolk call the place when they take their ease south o’ the slot. A jest among sporting gals, too. Snob Hill, rising high to the sky, is a rat’s nest of mansions perched cheek by jowl on a peak too small to fit them all. The city seat of the Social Set, though the Silver Kings, the Sugar Kings, the Railroad Kings, the Sundries and Dry Goods Kings, and all their lovelorn scions think nothing of descending from their gilded perch for an evening’s frolic at a congenial locale like the Parisian Mansion. Imagine--some of them kings of industry are worth ten million dollars while a factory worker earns a buck a day.

Make ‘em pay, darlin’, make ‘em pay.

Sure and the biggest, fanciest rocks she’s got, that’s what the Queen of the Underworld will wear to the Artists’ Ball tonight. Her jet beaded dress with the décolleté that’ll make the roving eyes of them Snob Hill gentlemen pop out of their sockets. A lucky break is the Artists’ Ball, since common folk like her with better diamonds than the diamond dealer’s wife can mix with the Social Set right in front of everyone. No skulking around town after midnight tonight. That’s one of many things Jessie adores about artists. No one is turned away from the Artists’ Ball.

Jessie pulls off her cashmere bed sweater and hears a sigh behind her, an unearthly whisper. She whips around, knocking her elbow against the window pane. “Rachael? Is that you, honey?”

The bedroom is still streaked with shadows but no one is there.

Yet she’s sure she feels it, her long lost angel’s presence. And there! Is that a little slim shape darting into a dark corner of the room?

The boardinghouse has been haunted ever since Madame De Cassin’s séance, that’s what Jessie thinks. She well recalls that awful time when the sitting room went black and white and strange, and a demonic presence descended upon them all. The eminent spiritualist’s cleansing rituals have done little to dispel the evil influence.

If she thought about it, Jessie would have to say nothing has been the same since the Fourth of July half a year ago. There’s Mariah, sneaking off to her meetings every week. And poor Mr. Schultz, who was a good old egg. He drank rotgut one night, got the cramp and blood on the stomach, and was gone in three days. Zhu had a name for it. Pair o’ somethin’. Fatal ulcers from the drink.

Then there’s Zhu herself, such a levelheaded girl despite her talk of being from six hundred years in the future. Sure and Jessie sort of believes her after watching her heal a crack in a man’s skull. Why not six hundred years in the future? Where else would you get a mollie knife? If Mr. Wells says people can travel in time, then one day they probably will. Miracles happen all the time these days. The news from Europe is they think they will cure consumption. They’ll invent a horseless carriage anyone can buy. They’ll fly to the moon! Serious Zhu, the little Amazon, put on her coolie’s rags and showed Jessie how she could toss a man over her shoulder with her bare hands. Wise Zhu, lecturing Jessie about her buttered oysters and champagne, about using a sheep’s intestine, of all things, to keep off the pox.

In this strange half a year, Jessie has developed a soft spot for Zhu. She hasn’t cared this way about anyone in many a long year. So many strange tales the missy has told her on many a dawn. She complains about a red-haired man who sent her here, that she suspects he didn’t tell her the whole truth about her mission. Jessie can sympathize. She could shake a stick at the number of men who have lied to her.

So it makes no damn sense, Zhu falling so hard for Mr. Watkins. Oh, he’s a handsome kid, no doubt about that, the kind who can charm the bloomers off of any dimwitted chit. But Zhu? He probably doesn’t tell her the whole truth, either. And it’s worse than that. He doesn’t just take her for a roll in the hay. Sometimes, when he gets in one of his moods, he lays his hands on her, badgers her. Jessie thinks she’s seen bruises through Zhu’s lace, seen her troubled face. Then afterwards, he’s sweetness and light, he’s so sorry. Men like that are always so sorry.

Hard to watch. Jessie has danced many a cruel waltz like that, years ago.

And Mr. Watkins? There’s another story. How he’s changed since he first charged in through her door, the headstrong ram, all bright-eyed and boozy in his dusty suit and bowler. Now he’s got the cocaine habit, gone gaunt and strange. Jessie liked him better stinking. Now laughing one minute, the Devil the next, and in a blue funk after that. Bloodstained handkerchiefs. Thinking someone is following him, which in fact someone is. Jessie has seen the thugs lurking on the corner, has heard plenty of rumors. Bad business, a bum deal of his father’s.

Sure and he don’t need to be hopped up if he’s got that kind of trouble. Jessie knows all about cocaine, how it numbs tender flesh. She uses the stuff, soaked in lint, as a topical remedy for female troubles, and the dentist applied it to her gum when he pulled her tooth. But she always declines the spoonful of powder Mr. Watkins offers. Why numb yourself and make yourself half-mad to boot? He claims it’s curing his dipsomania but, as far as Jessie can see, he knocks back the sauce as much as before. Maybe more.

Strangest of all is Rachael. Rachael haunting her, entering her thoughts more and more. Not that a day has gone by when Jessie hasn’t thought of her sweet, innocent angel and prayed for her. But her thoughts about Rachael have always been of Rachael’s happiness in the Summerland. Is she content? Does she have friends and sweethearts?

Now all Jessie can think about is this life. The life Rachael had. The life Jessie has. Why Rachael died the way she did.

Why? Why? Why?

A harsh jangle of bells bursts into her ear, and she just about jumps out of her skin. The new telephone in the smoking parlor rings again and she hurries downstairs to answer it. Pacific Bell, that’s what they call the new switchboard, though only those in the know like Miss Jessie Malone are connected. Sure and she’s got connections from the Parisian Mansion and the Morton Alley cribs to the boardinghouse, and to the fire stations, the lower Dupont callbox, and Gumps. The Queen of the Underworld and the chief of police have the best connected lines in town.

So far, wealthy gentlemen like Mr. Heald, his honor the railbird, and the diamond broker have resisted installing telephones in their Snob Hill mansions. No, they would much rather communicate the old-fashioned way, send a handwritten note by messenger boy to the wife saying they’ve been detained on business and won’t be home tonight. Who wants to hear the wife’s voice berating him on a telephone? Who wants to explain when questions are asked, questions that require answering?

Jessie claps the set to her ear, the handpiece to her mouth. “Yeah?”

Garble, garble, garble. “. . . ‘s Bertha, Miss Malone.” That’s the door maid at the Red Rooster, Jessie’s Morton Alley cribs. “New girl showed. . . .” Garble.

“A new girl showed up?” Jessie shouts loud enough to wake up the whole house.

“Yeah,” Bertha shouts. “She says. . . .” Garble.

“I’ll come on down and look her over later.” Suddenly she’s tired at the very prospect of going down to Morton Alley.

“Tong men. . . .says she’s gotta get off the street.”

“Tong men, did you say? She a Chink?”

Garble, garble. “On the lam, she says.”

“All right, all right. I’ll get there as quick as I can.” She claps the handpiece onto the set.

Suddenly she’s wide awake. Kick-in-the-gut awake. Even the Queen of the Underworld would rather not tangle with tong men. But the biz is the biz, and you may find yourself purchasing their merchandise now and then. Too little Chinese tail in this town, Jessie thinks, and Morton Alley is so popular with the sailors. A crib like the Red Rooster could always use more Chinese tail.

“Mother of God, Rachael,” she whispers, “I don’t rightly know if I can tolerate the biz much longer.”

There is one person, and one person only, she needs right now.

Jessie climbs back up the stairs.

* * *

She lets herself into the suite Zhu and Mariah share without knocking. Mariah is banging a pot in their little kitchen, humming, sometimes talking to herself, and the good scent of coffee perfumes the air. Jessie tiptoes across their dark parlor, knocks softly on the door to Zhu’s bedroom.

Her sleepy voice answers, “Yes?”

Jessie hesitates. What if he’s there? She’s never caught them in bed together in all these months. Of all the things she’s seen in her time—lewd things, lascivious things, sometimes depraved things—suddenly Jessie doesn’t want to see her Zhu in bed with Daniel Watkins.

“Who’s there?”

What choice does she have? Who else can she depend on at a quarter to five in the morning? She pushes the bedroom door open.

And sure if it isn’t him, stretched long and lean in the dim golden light of the low-burning lamp next to Zhu’s bed, his dark hair tumbling across the pillow next to her. Zhu sits up, one of her pretty eyes nearly swollen shut, a bruise on her cheek, her lip swollen, too, split and bloody.

“Oh, Rachael,” Jessie blurts out, blinking back tears.

Zhu turns up the lamp. “Jessie? What’s up?”

It’s Zhu, of course, not Rachael, and there is no man lying beside her. Just the crumpled sheets and blankets she kicked off during the fitful night. She leans into the lamplight, dispelling the shadow across one side of her face. Displaying her tilted green eyes, sharp cheekbones, the sleepy curve of her smile.

“Jessie, what’s wrong?”

Faint, she must be faint, everything whirling around. No sleep--she hasn’t slept since the day before yesterday. “Ah, Zhu. That was one hell of a premonition. I do not want to repeat it anytime soon.”

Zhu bounces out of bed and comes to her, helping her sit down. Such strong skinny arms, she can toss a man over her shoulder. So serious gazing at her, her serious Zhu. Never met anyone like her girl from the future. If only it were true.

“A premonition? What do you mean?”

“These days I get strange feelings, missy. I see things like what I just seen right now.”

“What did you see, Jessie?”

“Never you mind. Get dressed, you gotta come with me. I’ve never taken you there before. You’re too good to see such things, and that’s a fact. But I gotta take you there now. A Chink showed up.”

“A Chink?’

“Jabberin’ about tong men. On the lam, she says. If that’s so, she’s probably worth it.” Jessie lurches to her feet, irritated now, and seizes Zhu by the collar of her nightgown. “Get dressed, I say.”

“You mean a Chinese girl,” she says, still slow with sleep.

“Yeah, yeah. Who else can help me with this, Pearls Before Swine?”

“I’ll go.” As if her servant has a choice. Then she says, “Don’t you call her a Chink.”

“Sure and that’s what she is.”

“Do you call me a Chink?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, you’re my Zhu. Is everyone a million years in the future so riled up about what people call things?”

“Sometimes they have been and sometimes they haven’t. Depends on who and where and when. For sure we’ve all been riled up for a long time.”

“All right,” Jessie says. A headache starts throbbing behind her eyes. “Have you got any booze handy?”

“Yeah, actually, I do. Brandy on the night table. Not for me.”

Jessie knows exactly who the brandy is for and helps herself just the same. “Hurry up.”

Zhu throws off her nightgown without a care. Jessie is in the biz of appraising women’s salability, and she watches now, appraising the lean muscles, the long bones, the pale golden skin so unlike any other woman Jessie has ever seen, and she’s seen plenty. Zhu reaches into her wardrobe, swift and sure, pulling on stockings, garters, bloomers, corset, slip, underskirt, bodice, overskirt, jacket, button boots, gloves, hat, veil.

Sure and Jessie bought the kit and caboodle for Zhu herself, all in cerulean blue silk. Pretty. Mistress material for a certain taste. And for a proper gentleman, not the likes of Mr. Watkins.

“Where are we off to in such a rush?”

“Wait.” Jessie flips up the jacket and bodice before Zhu can tuck in and button everything, seizes the strings of Zhu’s corset and laces her tighter. Tighter. She glimpses dappled bruises. Or is it only the dawn light angling across the slim bones of Zhu’s back?

Everything changing and shifting around. Visions and hauntings and premonitions.

“We’re a-goin’ to the dread Morton Alley.”

* * *

Zhu takes her time tucking in her bodice and fastening her jacket after Jessie has laced her up. She’s spent another strange night with Daniel and, though he was loving and gentle, telling wild tales of his Paris days, he’s left as he always leaves—he never spends the night with her—Zhu is more uneasy than ever. He’s deeply into cocaine and drink, yet under Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle, she can’t help him. What he is doing is what he has always done. What he will always do. There’s nothing she can do or say. She can’t interfere with his destiny as a man of the Gilded Age.

Then why does she want so badly to persuade him away from that destiny? Why is she involved with this nineteenth century man at all? She asks Muse that question over and over, receives alphanumerics flickering is her peripheral vision. We believe there is a probability. We believe there is a probability. Of what? she demands. Then the alphanumerics flicker out, and Muse is silent.

Zhu tries her best to calm the terror in her heart. The t-port has gone wrong. What else she can conclude? That’s why the LISA techs shut t-porting down. Too many mistakes. World changing mistakes. Spacetime changing mistakes. The t-port has gone terribly wrong, and she’s on her own in the past.

That a Chinese girl has shown up at Jessie’s Morton Alley cribs sends a shiver of hope into her heart. On the lam from the tongs? Wing Sing? Oh, please, let it be her! Now this is something she’s supposed to do something about for the Gilded Age Project.

Zhu takes her time fastening her button boots, slipping her mollie knife into one boot, while Jessie gulps brandy and fumes. Then she’s ready. They clatter down the stairs and out the door to the street. Jessie’s rockaway and pair are stabled far away in Cow Hollow. No cabs are in sight amid the vendors’ wagons at this early hour. They stand, irresolute, at the stoop of 263 Dupont Avenue while the saloons, bathhouses, and gambling joints across the street eject the last of the deadbeats and freshen things up for new customers seeking relief in the morning.

“Hey, it’s getting light, Jessie, let’s just walk downtown. It’s not too far, right?”

“Oh, missy.” Jessie grimaces, holding her side. “I don’t know if I can.”

Zhu grimaces, too, to see her. Jessie’s got some kind of serious medical problem, that’s what Muse says. But Zhu doesn’t need Muse to tell her what’s obvious. Kidney disease, cirrhosis of the liver, possibly cancer in an advanced stage. But what can Zhu do for the Queen of the Underworld? Jessie Malone is no more a part of the Gilded Age Project than Daniel J. Watkins. Jessie is just a local, an inhabitant of this spacetime. Zhu isn’t supposed to trouble herself about Jessie. Why should she bother?

Well. Because she, Zhu Wong, is a Daughter of Compassion, that’s why. Because she’s a devotee of Kuan Yin, the protector of women. Because if she ever sees Sally Chou again, she can say she didn’t fail the Cause in her day or in Jessie’s day. She digs through her feedbag purse, finds the little bottle marked “Montgomery Ward Quinine Pills,” shakes out a neurobic. She breaks the capsule in front of Jessie’s nose.

“Sniff,” she says. Tenet Three be damned.

“Oh no, I don’t take the cocaine,” Jessie objects. “I keep telling Mr. Watkins.”

“This isn’t cocaine, it’s a neurobic.”

“A neurobic. Like what you gave Mr. Watkins after I picked you two up, brawling with them thugs in the street?”

“Exactly. Sniff! Quickly!”

Jessie sniffs, and her grimace of pain instantly transforms into something more tranquil. She says suspiciously—as well she should—“What is this, missy?”

“Something good from the future. Do you believe me?”

“Sure and why not?”

Zhu smiles. Daniel calls her a lunatic and loses no chance to challenge her whenever she admits her true nature and origin. But Jessie mostly accepts her claims with a trusting forthrightness, the way she trusts Madame De Cassin’s spiritualism. Zhu often wishes she could show more to Jessie, using Muse’s holoid capabilities. Of all people, Jessie would appreciate seeing visions from a spirit. Maybe she would stop drinking champagne for breakfast. But Muse will only issue advice and project spectacular holoids to Donaldina Cameron, not to Jessie or to Daniel. What a shame.

“Don’t dawdle, missy,” Jessie commands in her usual bossy way. “You said walk. Let’s get a move on.”

They stride down Dupont Avenue to Union Square, turn down a short, narrow alley beginning at Stockton and ending at Kearny. The waking downtown streets are softly lit with rosy dawn light, but Morton Alley is brightly lit with a garish false dawn. Red lights shine over every door in flagrant disregard of the new ordinance. Union Square and the surrounding streets are quiet and empty, save for the sleepy-eyed tradesmen with their horses and wagons, but Morton Alley seethes with loud and frenetic humanity.

Alphanumerics flash in Zhu’s peripheral vision as Muse opens a file. “Beyond the time of this Now,” Muse whispers in subaudio, “after the First Great Quake destroys most of the city, Morton Alley will be rebuilt and renamed. There will be jewelry shops and boutiques, art galleries and posh cafés. They’ll call it Maiden Lane and no one will remember the ‘maidens’ you see here now.”

Zhu gapes at a hellish scene. Naked maidens lean out from the casement windows, shouting prices, trilling like creatures in heat, describing in detail certain acts they can be hired to perform, and belittling the anatomy, wealth, and intelligence of the mob of men below their windows. The alley is thronged with drunken men who shout back at the maidens, at the door maids, at the bouncers, at each other. Men stagger from crib to crib, peer in the barred windows at the occupants as though viewing animals in a zoo, shout approval or disapproval, pinch flesh when they can reach it. Two fellows reel by locked in a violent embrace, their faces bloodied by several rounds of fisticuffs.

“Don’t worry,” Jessie shouts in Zhu’s ear, “the bulls won’t bother no one here unless there’s a shooting.”

Unlike the Parisian Mansion, where Jessie’s girls are blond or red-haired and well-endowed, these women are of all different shapes, sizes, and races. Zhu spies every color of humanity here—ivory white, golden yellow, fawn brown, ebony black. She’s oddly reminded of pirates of the high nineteeth-century seas, their captains equal opportunity employers welcoming Oriental, Hispanic, white, and black as long as the crewman is sufficiently qualified with seamanship, swordsmanship, avarice, and bloodthirstiness.

But as she and Jessie press through the crowd and draw nearer to the windows, Zhu sees their faces. Despite their variegated skin colors, hair colors, and eye colors, their features fine or bold, their bodies robust or frail, these women share one thing in common—a look of deep despair behind the bawdy façade. A look born of the cruel grip of degradation. Cast over all of them is the patina of poverty, makeup plastered over the taint of disease.

A bouncer shouts like a carnival barker at the door leading up to a row of cribs called, according to the sign overhead, The Cow Yard. “Ten cents touch a titty, fifteen cents two titties, twenty-five cents plow a Mexican, fifty cents a Chink, Jap, or darkie, seventy-five cents a Frenchie, a dollar for an American beauty, all white meat.”

Jessie seizes Zhu’s elbow, drags her onward. “My cribs is down the block.”

“Damn it, Jessie, how can you keep an establishment in this hellhole?”

“The biz is the biz, why can’t you ever get that straight?”

“But, Jessie.” Zhu calculates. The girls at the Parisian Mansion earn five dollars a gentleman, sometimes more. “How can you clear a profit with a fee structure like that?”

Jessie grins. “Now you’re thinking like a madam. Each of my Morton Alley gals clears eighty, maybe a hundred a night.”

“Eighty, maybe a hundred dollars?”

“Johns. Johns, missy. The Red Rooster has a reputation for the prettiest girls on this alley. A port of call all its own. This way.”

And Zhu thought she’d seen the worst the Gilded Age had in store for women. She hadn’t. Her heart clenches with rage and pity, and her mind immediately turns to liberation, to assistance for these imprisoned ‘maidens’ forced to have sex eighty, maybe a hundred times a day just to earn their keep. Tenet Three be damned, she thinks for the thousandth time. But what can she do, even if she had authorization from the project directors? What can she do?

Jessie leads her to the Red Rooster, also known among the denizens of Morton Alley by the bird’s more common name. The Rooster is housed in a ramshackle commercial building so old and so weathered, Zhu is hard put to call it Stick Victorian. Jessie slaps, shoves, and punches rowdies out of her way, pulling Zhu through the door of her nefarious lair.

“Ber-THA!” Jessie summons the door maid, a black woman of tremendous height and girth. Not only is she brawny from years of hard physical labor, Bertha in her position as the door maid has eaten and drunk heartily. She surveys Zhu with eyes of black ice, a dour mouth.

“She the chit aksin’ where that hunnert went?” Bertha means an unaccountable monthly shortfall Zhu discovered in the Rooster’s books. The door maid takes a cover charge of twenty-five cents from each john before he makes his choice; she takes the balance when he leaves. The bouncer also tabulates the number of johns for every twelve-hour period by logging in each visit to each maiden. The system is meant to keep tabs on the maiden, how much traffic she attracts. Zhu pointed out to Jessie that the system also serves as a cross-check on the door maid and other staffers. Bertha was Zhu’s number one suspect. But door maids as big and mean as Bertha are not that easy to find.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Bertha,” Jessie says now and barges in.

“Why doncha mind yer own business?” Bertha snaps at Zhu, the unmistakable smarm of guilt in her icy eyes.

Before Zhu can protest that she was just doing her job, Jessie ushers her into a hallway awash in red light. From a plain wood plank that functions as a bar, a wiry old man sells shots of whiskey and gin. Zhu notices a stove, a bubbling cauldron of water. Two maids scoop hot water into basins and hurry down the hall, doling out water as each john finishes his business. More men, more barred windows, more cribs, more women leaning out, haranguing whoever stands there gawking at them. A bouncer oversees the mob inside, announcing the fee scale in a loud monotone.

A drunken girl slumps over the ledge of her window. Slovenly blond hair, floppy breasts and arms, bruises dappling her plump neck.

“Li’l Lucy!” Zhu cries and hurries over. Columns of figures in a ledger, that’s all the Red Rooster had been to Zhu. Not anymore. She peers in at the crib, a cubicle not much larger than a clothes closet. Against the back wall is a cot covered with a slick red cloth, a washbasin for the hot water, and a bottle of carbolic acid for douching. A framed placard on the wall over the cot reads “Li’l Lucy” romantically rendered in daisies.

“’Lo, Miss Zhu.” Li’l Lucy grips the window with both hands, holding herself up. The ledge is padded with more of the slick red cloth. “Like my workshop?”

Zhu runs a finger over the cloth. “Oilcloth?”

“Yeah, on the cot, too. The johns don’t never take their clothes off or their boots. Them’s the rules. So the mud an’ all? I can wipe it right off. See?” Li’l Lucy demonstrates with a stained rag she pulls out from under the cot.

Jessie looms behind Zhu and shoulders past her. “You’re jagged again, Li’l Lucy.” She seizes Li’l Lucy’s face, turns her chin back and forth. “You’re smokin’ hop, too, ain’t ya?”

“No, Miss Malone, I would never. . . .”

“Yeah, you are, I can see it in your eyes.”

Li’l Lucy’s blue eyes are all dark pupil, the flesh around them dark, too, and mottled as if she has two black eyes. Zhu swallows hard, then glimpses blood dappled down Li’l Lucy’s arm. “Jessie, what’s this? She’s got blood on her arm.”

Jessie waves a maid over. To Li’l Lucy, “The creep come in here again?”

Li’l Lucy nods. Jessie lets the maid into the crib with a key from the outside, and the maid wipes Li’l Lucy down with hot water and a rag.

“’s okay, Miss Zhu,” Li’l Lucy says, smiling at Zhu’s look of horror. “Some gentleman always come here with a chicken, a live chicken. He likes to cut its head off after he spouts hisself off and spray the blood all around. He’s what we call a creep.”

“Let’s go, missy.” Jessie takes Zhu’s arm and drags her down the hall.

“You take care of yourself, Li’l Lucy,” Zhu calls to her, feeling helpless and outraged.

Li’l Lucy has two years left on her contract. “Oh, I ain’t long for this world, Miss Zhu. Don’t you worry about me, ‘s okay.”

“How can you do this to her?” Zhu shouts at Jessie. “She was your girl at the Mansion.”

“The biz is the biz. She got the pox, you know that.” Jessie swipes a shot of gin from a maid’s tray, knocks it back. “Where’s the new girl?”

“Number forty-two,” the maid says, scurrying away, fear of the Queen of the Underworld plain on her face. “She got her boyfriend with her.”

“Does she, now.” Jessie storms to the crib, Zhu following reluctantly. She doesn’t want to stay in this hellish place one minute longer. Jessie unlocks the door and strides inside, Zhu dogging her heels.

The new girl turns. Round face, golden skin, her cheekbones deeper. Her dark eyes rimmed in red, her black hair unraveling from its queue. The apple-green silk is crinkled, the embroidery unraveling, too, the fabric ruined by a scrubbing in hot water and soap. Her hands are raw, the knuckles red, perhaps skinned by a washboard or a brush. She wears the same straw sandals over big knobby toes, her feet bare.

“Wing Sing!” Zhu cries. The girl’s feet are as big and broad as paddles. But is it really her? “Wing Sing, what are you doing here?”

“’Lo, Jade Eyes.” No longer the compliant parlor girl in her mask of makeup, she’s got a sharp edge to her now, a hard glint in her young eyes.

“Say, you know this chit?” Jessie takes the girl’s face in her hand like she took Li’l Lucy’s, turns it this way and that. Pries open her mouth, peers into her eyes. Pokes a finger in her ribs, pinches her breasts, her thighs.

Panic rises in Zhu’s throat. “Wing Sing, you’re supposed to be staying at the home.”

A tough young sailor with white blond hair lounges over by the crib’s window. He turns, looks Zhu up and down. He’s a handsome boy with bright green eyes and a deep sunburn. Wing Sing says to Zhu, “This my boyfriend, Rusty, from Selena’s.” To him, “This my friend Jade Eyes. See why I love your eyes, honey?”

“You. Scram,” Jessie says to the sailor. He shrugs, blows Wing Sing a kiss, and slouches out.

“Bye bye, Rusty honey,” Wing Sing calls to him.

“Fed you pretty good at the home, did they, them Bible thumpers?” Jessie knows exactly what Zhu is talking about, apparently, and she’s smiling. Calculating, calculating. Zhu can practically see the numbers dancing through her head. Fifty cents a john? Maybe seventy-five?

“Damn it, Wing Sing,” Zhu says, a sick feeling in her gut. This is not supposed to be happening, not supposed to happen. “You better tell me why you’re not staying at Miss Cameron’s.”

“She make me wash, she make me sew, she make me scrub floor,” Wing Sing says with supreme contempt. “She make me serve her tea at her fine table.”

“Where were you workin’ before them Bible thumpers rescued you, kid?” Jessie asks, her eyes sparkling with avarice.

“At Selena’s on Terrific Street,” Wing Sing says. “I not go back there. Chee Song Tong kill me for sure.” She glares at Zhu, accusation burning in her eyes. Then she leans close and whispers, “I carry Rusty’s child.”

“You’re pregnant?” Zhu whispers back, horrified all over again. What about her prenatal care? What about her diet? What about a hundred johns a day? Then she realizes—of course, Wing Sing is pregnant. She’s supposed to be pregnant. Green-eyed father, green-eyed daughter. The elderly green-eyed Chinese woman pushing Donaldina Cameron’s wheelchair in Golden Gate Park, circa 1967. Wing Sing’s daughter? Is it her?

Well, it sure can’t be me, Zhu reassures herself, also for the thousandth time. Trying to deny the dread beating in her heart ever since she viewed that holoid.

Jessie glances back and forth between them, a knowing look rising in her eyes. “Sure and I’ll take you in, kid. The rent is five bucks a day, your draw is ten percent, and tips are all yours.” To Zhu, “Told ya I was fair.”

“I want new dress,” Wing Sing says imperiously. “New undergarments, new stockings, new jewelry.”

Jessie picks at the frayed embroidery on her tunic. “Sure and them Bible thumpers ruined your duds, all right. I’ll have Miss Wong draw you up a contract today. And Miss Wong?” Rubbing it in. “Maybe you could lend the kid one of your dresses till she can buy her own. You look like you’re the same size. Give her that old gray rag of yours, you’ve worn it too much, anyhow.”

Zhu could strangle Jessie. “Wing Sing, I’m begging you, don’t stay here. She can’t make you stay until you’re under contract.” Not supposed to happen, not supposed to happen like this. “You’ve got to go back to Miss Cameron’s home. You’ve got to. Think of the child.”

“I not go back there, Jade Eyes. I not wash, I not sew, I not scrub floor.” She spits on the floor of the crib. Her face is so cold, Zhu wants to weep. Where is the scruffy waif she found in the Japanese Tea Garden? “I not serve fahn quai.”

The crowd begins to twitter down the hall.

“Where is she?” calls out an aristocratic female voice. “I just know my girl is here, Mr. Andrews, and I shall find her, if we have to tear this abomination down, board by board.” Crash of glass, the clatter of a washbasin and a maid’s tray. Screams, laughter, a roar of manly curses. “Out of my way, you filthy sinner.”

Donaldina Cameron stands at the door to the crib, all crisp gray cotton and scowling rage, the policeman Andrews behind her, his ax in hand. She raises her eyebrows at Zhu. “So, Miss Wong? A distant cousin, is she?” She circles around Wing Sing, who glares back at Cameron. Zhu cringes. Cameron doesn’t need to articulate her accusation of treachery and deceit. Zhu knows exactly what she must think.

Jessie is mightily amused. “You wanna go back with the Bible thumper, kid?” she says with heavy sarcasm.

“I not go,” declares Wing Sing.

“Sure and I guess that’s that, Bible thumper. She ain’t your girl no more, she’s mine.”

Cameron turns her full fury on Zhu. “And I thought you were just the bookkeeper. I thought you were a decent, educated young woman. How can you let her take this girl to work in this den of sin?”

Zhu sputters, humiliated. “It’s not my fault,” is all she can whisper lamely.

Jessie chimes in, “I hear you got your girls workin’, too, Bible thumper.”

“Yes, working,” Cameron says, bristling. “Work, real work. We teach our girls to love God and to work. To work hard at fruitful tasks, clean tasks. Idle hands and idle heads lead to the path of wickedness. Good work is the way these young souls can be saved from the heathen deviltry that enslaves them.”

“Oh, I see.” Jessie takes another shot of gin from the tray a trembling maid has brought in and knocks it back. “I hear your holy home looks like one o’ them—what do they call it, Miss Wong?—a sweatshop. All them little orphan girls a-scrubbin’ and a-polishin’ and a-sewin’ and a-washin’. Why, I hear them Snob Hill mansions send down their dirty silver and clothes to you. Ain’t that so, missy?” She claps Wing Sing on the shoulder. “Just like a sweatshop in Tangrenbu.”

“I not polish silver,” Wing Sing says.

“This is outrageous,” Cameron says, flushing deeply. “We depend on charity, you hussy. Charity often promised, seldom delivered, and stingily paid. So, yes, we must generate revenue to pay for the home. We manage the girls’ earnings for their education and upkeep.”

“For your upkeep, too, eh?” Jessie says, plucking at Cameron’s pristine leg o’ mutton sleeve.

Cameron pulls away. “I am paid twenty-five dollars a month, plus room and board, madam. Truly, I do not know how much longer I can continue.” She aims a significant glance at Zhu. “Yet continue I do. I devote myself to this thankless task for the sake of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who died for us so that we may be blessed with life everlasting.”

“You believe in Jesus, kid?” Jessie asks Wing Sing.

“Jesus nice man,” the girl answers. “I like Jesus. But I honor the Lady of my people.”

“And who is that?’

“Kuan Yin.”

Zhu gasps. “You honor Kuan Yin?”

“Oh, yes! She see all, hear all. You honor the Lady, too, Jade Eyes?”

“Of course. She is the Goddess of Compassion. I am a Daughter of Compassion.”

Wing Sing claps her hands, delighted. “Compassion.” She tries out the word. “Maybe Kuan Yin bless me one day. I pray some more.”

“You be strong, Wing Sing, and Kuan Yin will surely bless you.”

Zhu catches Cameron listening, openmouthed, but Jessie is grinning, triumphant. “There, you see, Bible thumper?” she says. “They got their own religion, their own culture. What makes you think yours is better?”

“‘Tis a religion and a culture that allows a little girl to be bought and sold, Miss Malone,” Cameron says. “’Tis a religion and a culture that allows a girl’s master to burn her with candle wax, beat her, starve her, and force her into drudgery. And then, when she comes of age, ‘tis a religion and a culture that allows her to be sold again to a crib in Tangrenbu or to this accursed place where she will prostitute herself till she’s dead at seventeen from disease, opium addiction, or sheer despair. So, yes, I say Christianity is the true Way and this Kuan Yin of theirs is heathen deviltry.”

“Oh no, Kuan Yin doesn’t condone the exploitation of women, Miss Cameron,” Zhu says. “Kuan Yin is a protector of women. She offers sanctuary. . . .”

“This is all swell,” Jessie butts in. “One day we can all sit down to high tea and chat about whose god is better than whose. But, really, Miss Cameron, do you really think this fine society of ours is any better when it comes to treatin’ women? Stick your fine face out that door and tell me it is.”

The color drains from Cameron’s face and she presses her lips together. She doesn’t need to stick her face out the door. The clamor of drunken men outside assessing the maidens in their cribs, bargaining with the bouncer, bragging of their exploits is only too clear.

“You got yourself a family, don’t you, Miss Cameron?” Jessie’s eyes sparkle with a fury Zhu has witnessed only once or twice. “And a fiancé, ain’t that right? But think about this. What if your folks died when you was a kid, and you got nothin’? What are you gonna do, huh? Go work in a sweatshop for a dollar a day and the rent on a crummy room is seven a week? Work in a factory and lose your hand to some machine? Take in piecework? Beg on the street? You know what them fancy jewelry shops downtown pay their shopgirls? Do you know how many girls come to me because they can’t make enough dough to live on working in a factory or in a fancy jewelry shop? You think this fine society of ours don’t wink at the buying and selling of female flesh?”

“The likes of you exist despite our best efforts to stamp you out like the vermin you are,” Cameron declares.

“Yeah?” Jessie squares off with Cameron, and the two women look as if they’re about to come to blows. Zhu steps between them, her pulse pounding in her throat. “The likes of me, Bible thumper, gives them poor girls a chance. If they groom themselves up like I teach ‘em and stay shrewd and keep clean, they earn better pay than in a goddamn sweatshop, a nicer life than in a factory. My parlor gives ‘em a taste of a fine life they’d never know otherwise.”

“This is hardly a parlor,” Cameron snaps.

“Ah, hell, Bible thumper,” Jessie spits back. “Wing Sing, here, can earn more in one day even in this lousy crib than she could earn in a fancy jewelry store. She can eat. She’s not walking the streets. Who knows? She might even marry some fine young sailor who adores her and gives her a life when he comes a-sailin’ home.”

“You are a scourge upon our society,” Cameron shoots back.

“I’m the Queen of the Underworld, and don’t you forget it.”

“You will perish. The drink or the drugs or the sickness or some hooligan will do you in.”

Jessie seizes Cameron’s collar at the throat, tearing at Cameron’s Art Nouveau gold brooch. “What in hell do you know about hooligans?”

“Jessie!” Zhu grabs her, pulls her away. Jessie is practically throttling Miss Cameron.

“What do you know?” Jessie sobs. “My Rachael knew, but you? Miss Holier-Than-Thou, you don’t know a stinkin’ thing about hooligans.”

“Come on, Jessie,” Zhu pleads, prying her away from Cameron. She’s heard Jessie mention Rachael many times. There’s a story in there, a story Zhu has yet to hear. But now is not the time. Zhu pulls Jessie into the hallway, summons a maid, and hands her another shot of gin. “Calm down,” she whispers while the Queen of the Underworld pulls out a hankie and dries her eyes.

Then Zhu goes back inside Wing Sing’s crib.

Donaldina Cameron and the cop stand over the girl, who stares back at them defiantly.

“Very well,” Cameron is saying. “America is a free country and I will not force you to go with me if you will not go.”

“Please go with her, Wing Sing,” Zhu says, but she knows in her heart the girl won’t. Never supposed to happen this way. What now? Will Zhu become unborn and disappear? If the past changes, the future changes, too, in unknowable, unthinkable ways. Zhu waits to disappear—snuff, she’s gone, never born—but nothing happens.

Nothing she can see, anyway.

Cameron looks at her, those large expressive eyes avid with curiosity. “So. You did not persuade her to leave us?”

“Certainly not.”

“It is inevitable that we shall lose some,” Cameron says to Andrews, who stands impassively with his ax. To Wing Sing, “I must warn you, my girl, you will burn in hell.”

“So I burn,” Wing Sing says, shrugging. “I have silk sahm; you ruin silk sahm. I have jade and gold; you take jade and gold. Maybe you burn in hell, too, fahn quai.”

Zhu expects Cameron to gasp in outrage at the girl’s blasphemy, but she only nods. Is it true? Did Cameron take Wing Sing’s little dowry box that was supposed to have contained the aurelia? The box that keeps surfacing like a marked card?

“Why did you take her jewelry, Miss Cameron?” Zhu demands. “I told you I happen to know her mother gave it to her.”

“I beg your pardon, but I did not take her jewelry. Selena came to the home the day after the rescue. She had a warrant for Wing Sing’s arrest. All quite legal. She claimed the girl stole the jewelry from her.”

“But she didn’t, I tell you!”

“And I believe you. I believe Wing Sing. But the madam demanded that the girl hand over the jewelry or face arrest. I would have had no choice but to surrender her to the police. Before you know it, the highbinders would have bailed her out or Selena would have gone to the jail and dropped charges. Either way, the highbinders would have seized custody of her again. They would have taken her to another parlor, perhaps even to another city, and we would never find her again. It’s a common tactic of these people. Miss Culbertson lost many girls that way.”

Zhu heaves a huge sigh. “So you handed the dowry box over to Selena?”

“Of course. I am truly sorry, but I assumed it was better to give up some trinkets than to lose this young soul.”

Zhu takes Wing Sing’s shoulders. “There, you see? Miss Cameron didn’t steal your jewelry. You might as well say Selena did. I’m going over to Terrific Street right now and fetching it back. If I do, will you think about going back to the home with Miss Cameron?”

“I not scrub floor,” Wing Sing says, pouting.

“Perhaps Miss Cameron could find something else more uplifting for you to do. Isn’t that right, Miss Cameron?” She doesn’t hide the sarcasm in her voice, and Cameron curtly nods. “Remember what I told you before, Wing Sing. You’ll never find a husband and wear your dowry if you stay in a place like this. Even Rusty won’t tolerate you staying here for very long.”

The girl frowns, but Zhu can see that she’s listening, considering Zhu’s plea. “Okay, Jade Eyes. You get my dowry back, maybe I go.” Fiercely to Cameron, “But I not wait tables.”

Zhu turns to Cameron. “If she agrees to go, I’m begging you to take her back.”

“Of course. I am a Christian.” Cameron sweeps out of the crib, Andrews trailing behind her like a bodyguard. “Good luck, Miss Wong.”

Zhu steps out, too, and finds Jessie standing just outside the door, another shot of gin in her hand. “I heard every damn thing.”

“Then you know I’m not drawing up a contract till I get Wing Sing’s dowry from Selena and the girl decides what she wants to do.”

“Why does this kid mean so much to you, missy?”

“Because I can’t go home again till she does, too.”

* * *

Zhu strides up Montgomery to Terrific Street. The morning sun sears her skin. The Block’s fine microderm will protect her from sunburn, won’t it? It’s supposed to. Still, Zhu feels as if she’s burning up. She slides her cuff up her arm, stops dead in her tracks. Her hand and wrist exposed below the cuff are browned, much darker than the skin covered by cloth.

“Muse,” she whispers, “why is my skin tanning?”

Flicker of alphanumerics in her peripheral vision. “Your skin is not tanning, Z. Wong,” Muse whispers.

“Excuse me, yes, it is. Does my Block need replacing?”

“I show no indication that your Block needs replacing. I show no indication that your skin is tanning.”

“I can see it with my own eyes!” Careful. A passing milkman swivels his head at her.

“Must be an illusion,” Muse whispers, the bland synthetic voice in subaudio mode. “You’re tired.”

“That doesn’t help me, Muse. You’re supposed to help me. You’re supposed to guide me through the Gilded Age Project, and you’re not. Why is that?”

“You’re very tired,” Muse says.

No kidding, she’s very tired, spending half the night with Daniel, then rousted out of bed at dawn by Jessie. She leans against a streetlight, suddenly feeling ill. Bile rises in her throat, and her pulse pounds in her stomach beneath the corset. Her clothes feel too tight. Lend the gray silk dress to Wing Sing, she’s your size. No, she’s not. Zhu is not the same size as Wing Sing. She’s not the same size she was months ago, not anymore. She’s been piling on fat from all the rich food Jessie feeds her. Some mornings she aches from the gluttony.

One morning, as Zhu retched in the water closet, Mariah asked casually, “You in the family way, Miss Zhu?”

“Certainly not,” she snapped. But she fled to her bedroom and checked the contraceptive patch behind her right knee. The patch was still bright red. Meaning it was still effective, though of course she never planned on having an affair during the Gilded Age Project. The contraceptive patch blocks her menstrual cycle completely. She’s had no menses at all. She still has no menses. But Mariah’s question and her bulging belly sent a chill through her. She couldn’t possibly be pregnant. She didn’t eat a bite that day, pleading dyspepsia, and the next day she felt much better, trimmed by fasting, restored.

“Muse,” she whispers now, “why are you tormenting me like this?”

“I am here to advise you, Z. Wong, and to monitor the progress of your project.”

“Then advise me about my attempt to regain the girl’s dowry from Selena.”

“Proceed at once!” Muse urges. “Hurry!”

Oh, excellent. Hurry. Muse is defective, malfunctioning. Someone has sabotaged the Gilded Age Project, sabotaged her. But why? She’ll file a full report when she returns to her Now. She’s got six months behind her and three months to go till the Chinese New Year when she’s scheduled to step through the shuttle and return to her Now. She’s still got time to take Wing Sing back to Nine Twenty Sacramento Street. Time to convince her to stay, time to settle her in. Time to have a word with Miss Cameron about what she’s got a right to require of the girl, especially now that Wing Sing is pregnant. Time. Nine months of time, altogether, that’s the duration of the Project. Nine months, as long as it takes to bring a child to term.

As she strides up Montgomery, realization punches her in her swollen stomach. Nine months. A coincidence? Or some plan of the Archivists, a plan hidden from her? She wasn’t supposed to connect with a man like this. She wasn’t supposed to fall in love. In love? Is she in love with Daniel J. Watkins?

No, she can’t be. He’s the quintessential Victorian man, with his arrogance and ignorance about women. He’s a monster with his cocaine and alcohol habits, his mental and physical abuse of her. He’s the kind of man women will rebel against throughout the twentieth century, first by winning the women’s vote, then by claiming women’s equality in the workplace, in the universities, in the bedroom. And the struggle won’t end in the twentieth century. Zhu has witnessed herself how long the struggle goes on and on.

“Daniel’s going to die,” she whispers to Muse, her heart heavy with longing, “and I can’t save him. But I want to. Call me a crazy idealist, but I want to.”

“Everyone dies,” Muse whispers back.

Zhu trudges uphill to Terrific Street, steeling herself.

* * *

The red light is burning brightly at Selena’s, the front door flung open, music blaring. The parlor is crowded with white men. From the conversation Zhu overhears, a convention of distillery owners from Philadelphia are visiting the Napa wineries and touring the San Francisco restaurants. Today, the gentlemen are sampling Chinese. Selena is only too happy to accommodate their tastes.

Zhu slips through the party. Selena’s girls lounge about in silk slips, their satin robes flung open, their theatrical white makeup creating Kabuki masks of their faces. Should she take advantage of this huge diversion, break into Selena’s room, rummage around? But the madam has probably placed the rosewood box in her safe, and the safe will surely be well hidden. Better to confront the madam, get it over with.

“Hey, Selena,” Zhu says, tapping the madam on her shoulder. “I’ve come for Wing Sing’s dowry box.”

The madam whirls around indignantly, abandoning a sprightly conversation with a pock-faced gentleman. “Get out my house, you.”

“Not till you give me the girl’s jewelry. You’ve got no right to it, and you know it.”

“No right! You got no right to steal our girl. Chee Song Tong pay gold for her. Mr. Gong!” she yells. “Mr. Gong, look who here. You don’t got to go look for her. She come to you.”

Hatchet men stroll out of the kitchen, flush with drink, their fingers oily from fried wontons, each with a moll hanging on his arm. The eyepatch wipes his hands on his companion’s satin robe and shoves her away. The fat man throws the rest of his drink down his throat, the wiry fellow gobbles his wonton.

They surround Zhu.

She tenses, positioning her hands, crouching, summoning her strength. Yeah. Forget the skirts and corset and button boots, she can fight anyone anytime, anywhere. The hatchet men haven’t seen her in action, now have they? Not yet.

The eyepatch thrusts his face at her, running his eagle eye over her cerulean dress. “Pretty girl. And I thought you a good girl, Jade Eyes. You say you want to talk of family with little sister-friend, not go to fahn quai. Not help fahn quai steal our girl. Then you come back here, looking for her gold? This not good, Jade Eyes. What can we do about this?”

“I say put her to work,” Selena says. “Girl for girl. That fair.”

“No, Mr. Chee want blood payment,” the eyepatch says. He reaches into his jacket, takes out a long, curved knife. A butterfly knife. “We teach the people of Tan not to steal from Chee Song Tong.”

The fat man and the wiry fellow grin, as if killing Zhu would be more gratifying than turning her out. Go figure nineteenth century men.

“Blood payment?” Selena shouts. “Fools! Not enough pretty Chinese tail in this town. I pay much gold for her myself, girl for girl. I get one on Jessie Malone.”

Zhu finds herself silently thanking the despicable madam as the hatchet men circle around her, considering their possibilities. The eyepatch is as cold as ice. Any trace of a friendly connection between them has long since vanished.

But they’re drunk, Zhu sober, and she seizes a spittoon, dashes the foul contents on the eyepatch, his fellow gangsters, and Selena. People start screaming, and the house maids and the bartender block the front door, the cook blocks the kitchen door. Zhu dashes up the stairs. Think! What did Cameron say before the raid and rescue of Wing Sing?

“Muse,” she whispers, “didn’t Cameron say there’s a trapdoor?”

“Southeast bedroom,” Muse whispers. “Goes to the roof. Narrow gap between the rooftops. Fire escape goes down from the next roof over. A butcher shop. Go, go, go!”

She dashes up the second flight of stairs, clatters down the hall. Dead end! She races down the other way, finds a third flight of stairs to a half story tucked around the corner. She finds the southeast bedroom, the door unlocked, dashes in, and locks the door behind her.

There, in the ceiling, a pull and a trapdoor like the entrance to an attic. That’s it! Zhu slides a chair over, climbs up on the rickety seat. The chair wobbles with her frantic action, sending her skirts swaying. Damn these skirts! Careful, don’t break your neck! She gives the pull a good yank and the trapdoor flips open, revealing blue skies above. A cast-iron stepladder gracefully telescopes out and down. Bootheels pound down the hall outside the bedroom. She scrambles up the stepladder onto the roof, pulls the ladder up behind her, slams the trapdoor shut. In a corner of the rooftop, she spies a barrel half-filled and no doubt heavy with dried-up tar. She half-scoots, half-rolls the barrel over the trapdoor, tearing a seam in her armhole.

Then, her heels sinking into the warm tar, she ventures to the roof’s edge. There’s a gap, all right, maybe two feet, between the house and the butcher’s shop. That’s supposed to be narrow? Oh, man! Her head swirls with vertigo to look down. She pulls off her button boots, tosses them over, lifts and gathers her skirts, and works up a good run, pure fear propelling her. Help me, Kuan Yin. She leaps, her skirts billowing, and tumbles onto the next roof, blunting the impact of her landing with a practiced roll of her hips.

She leaps to her feet, untangling the skirts from her knees. The stink of offal and blood from the butcher’s shop nearly makes her retch. She pulls on her button boots, finds the fire escape. Breath ragged in her throat, heartbeat pounding in her chest, she climbs down as quickly and quietly as she can. A butcher leans out of a window as she passes by, his hands smeared with blood and gobbets of flesh, his knife dripping.

She drops down into an alley half a block from Broadway, which bustles with traffic. The cries of the ragpickers rise over the clatter of fine carriages.

“Take Broadway to Stockton,” Muse whispers in subaudio, “go through Tangrenbu. Hurry.”

Tangrenbu is the last place she wants to go, but she follows Muse’s instructions, slowing to a walk as the invisible barrier of Chinatown rises before her like a tangible thing. She’s reasonably safe in her Western dress, her lungs heaving against the corset’s constriction. Anonymous slim men in denim sahms crowd the street, their fedoras pulled low, their faces averted.

Zhu presses herself against a shop wall, glances down the block. The hatchet men are milling around on the sidewalk outside Selena’s. The eyepatch spots her the moment she ventures across Pacific Avenue and hurries down Stockton. Well, of course. Who else in Tangrenbu would be dressed in cerulean silk? What she’d give right now for her denim sahm and fedora! She pushes men aside as the hatchet men pound down the block, scattering a basket of bok choy, kicking over a cage of clucking chickens.

“Turn left,” Muse whispers, alphanumerics flickering in her peripheral vision. “Down that alley, turn right. Go in there.”

Elaborate gingerbread, a curving roof, gilt balconies—it’s the joss house she passed by before. Zhu ducks inside, kicks off her button boots.

“Joss house,” Muse whispers, “means god house. From the Portuguese ‘deos.’ Corrupted to ‘joss.’”

“Gosh, I always wanted to know that.”

“Of course you did.”

The joss house is smoky from burning incense and lit by a few flickering candles, but she’s still too visible. Beneath the dress and underskirt, her slip, corset, and bloomers are white. She rips the cerulean dress off in front of the astonished priest, popping buttons, and wads the silk into a bundle. She tears off her hat and veil, and approaches the shrine. If the other worshippers notice her, they give no sign but serenely continue their meditations. She finds a place in their midst, bows her head, calms her beating heart, and sits cross-legged, smoothing her slip around her. You can bet no lady of this time would ever sit like this. But what will the eyepatch notice in the smoky dimness?

The hatchet men stride in, their Western boots a clattering contrast to the silence of Tangrenbu’s sandals and slippers. Zhu huddles next to a wizened old man and instinctively, perhaps missing his wife or his daughter back in China, the old man pats her shoulder. She takes his arm, slings it across her shoulders, and huddles closer. The hush, the darkness, the flickering candlelight, the incense, and especially the large gilt deity reclining on the shrine piled high with gifts from the pious—all these subdue the eyepatch and his companions. Or maybe it’s the tug of tradition. They glance around, jostle a worshipper, and quickly leave.

A hand on her arm, and Zhu cries out. The priest gently asks her something, but she can’t understand his lilting words. A dialect she’s not familiar with. She finds a coin in her feedbag purse, hands it to him. He nods and smiles.

She catches her breath, looks around. Paper flowers spill from the ceiling to the floor in long, sumptuous strands. Silk tassels, gold silk flags, loops of multicolored beads bedeck the shrine. The altarpiece is a huge slab of mottled green marble. Bronze bowls with the look of antiquity hold smoldering cones of incense.

She smiles at the wizened old man, whose face is now shiny with tears. She crawls toward the shrine in supplication. Thick yellow candles mounted in massive brass candlesticks send forth their scent and soft golden light. Hundreds of slim sticks of incense arranged like smoking fans flank the shrine. Supplicants have heaped fresh fruit, left steaming teas in cloisonné teapots. There is a tray with a whole roasted pig, clay-pot chickens, bowls of rice. The scents of food and tea mingle with the incense, the candle smoke.

The priest takes a strip of parchment scrawled with calligraphy, burns it in a brass bowl, scoops the ashes into a bowl of water, and sucks the water into his mouth. He seizes a brass bell and, clanging the bell loudly, sprays ashy water from his mouth onto the floor as he whirls like a dervish.

The worshipers murmur in approval. “Cast demons out. Cast demons out.”

Zhu crawls closer to the shrine, peering up at the impressive gilt deity. With a start, she recognizes Her—Kuan Yin.

Here in this joss house in San Francisco, in 1895?

Of course. She is the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the goddess of mercy. She who sacrifices that others may live. The virgin, the mother, the destroyer. A teacher of secrets. Kuan Yin has been worshipped by the people of Tan for five thousand years.

Astonished, Zhu crawls closer still, slipping among the worshippers. More fruit, trays of plum candies, more fans of incense sending steams of wavering smoke into the close air. Candlelight flickers on gold coins scattered in offering. There are cabochons of jade, lozenges of lapis lazuli, carved coral, strands of pearls. Kuan Yin gazes serenely down at Her glittering bounty.

And there amid the incense and the candles, among the coins and the clay-pot chickens, lies the aurelia.

A Premonition is Just a Memory

Zhu picks the bauble up and holds it for the first time—the aurelia.

The aurelia is surprisingly heavy for something so delicate. Must be on account of the solid gold. The diamonds glimmer. The tiny tinted panes project spots of multicolored light onto the palm of her hand like miniature stained glass windows. The aurelia. Of course. Zhu would know it anywhere. The aurelia. It feels alien in her hand, the gold hot from proximity to the candles, the burning incense. So hot it feels as if it will brand her, burn a cross-shaped stigmata into her palm.

Then suddenly the aurelia feels so familiar, the way a ring you always wear feels familiar on your hand. A wedding ring, perhaps, so familiar. Or terrible, a ring from a marriage gone wrong. So familiar, too.

Like a premonition.

A premonition of disaster, of pain. Of unforgivable loss. Suddenly the Art Nouveau brooch, this meaningless bauble--an insect wrought in gold with an anonymous woman caught at its center—fills Zhu with such unreasonable fear that she kneels and whirls and glances around the joss house.

The hatchet men. Have they returned for a second look? Did they see her the first time, after all? Adrenaline soars through her blood. There they are! They’re at the door, they’ve found her just like she feared, found her at last. They’re pulling out their knives.

She scrambles away on her knees, cringing before the eyepatch’s knife.

And then there’s nothing.

Nothing in the semidarkness except the priest spewing ashy water from his mouth on the ground and three men standing at the entrance. Three old Chinese men in denim sahms. They bow, slip off their sandals, drift in, sit. Zhu has never seen them before.

She crawls away from the shrine, praying that no one saw her take the offering. The worshipers only sit, their heads bowed, their eyes closed, or gaze raptly at Kuan Yin. No one notices her transgression. She finds a smoky corner and huddles there, cross-legged, cradling the aurelia while sparkles of shock pop up and down her spine.

Who in Tangrenbu could have possessed an Art Nouveau gold brooch? Only fancy shops on Market Street carry such a thing, not the shops in Tangrenbu.

The aurelia, at last.

Like a long-long friend.

Or like a piece of plutonium tossed into her lap, radioactive and deadly.

“Muse,” she whispers feverishly. Sweat trickles down her temple. “What is happening to me? What is happening to reality?” Never supposed to happen this way. “This isn’t the way the Gilded Age Project is supposed to go, and you know it. I’m just the chaperon for an anonymous Chinese girl. She was supposed to have the aurelia, not me. Not me.”

Shivering with fear, her teeth chattering. It had seemed so real for a moment, that the hatchet men had stepped back inside searching for her, wielding knives.

Muse is silent. Only the priest’s chanting monotone, men sighing and murmuring in the dark.

“Damn you, Muse. You better tell me what’s going on.”

Alphanumerics pulse in her peripheral vision, and Muse displays the directory of her Archive, chooses a file.

Muse://Archives/Zhu.doc.

Thirty-six GB and eight hundred KB.

“No. No! There must be some mistake. There’s almost six hundred more KB!”

Muse accesses the file effortlessly, downloads the holoid into her optic nerve.

A tiny holoid field like a baseball made of blue light springs up in front of her face, and she sees the room swathed like a cloud, herself in the prison uniform, and Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco.

“Then why,” she says in the holoid, “after all the technological breakthroughs, the expenditure of resources, did you stop t-port projects?” Her tone is wary, deferent, almost timid.

She remembers now how terrified she was. The red-haired man had filled her with nameless dread. The deal her lawyer had struck stunk of cooptation, payoffs, illicit DNA experiments to be performed on political prisoners who had no one to defend them. Strange experiments. To be performed on her.

In the holoid Chiron says, “That’s confidential.” A drink in his hand, something clear and sparkling in a crystal glass.

Zhu blinks. Chiron had a drink? She doesn’t remember him having a drink.

“I have a right to know,” she says in the holoid. “My lawyer said you’d explain.”

Tinkle of ice in his glass. “Remember I told you about the Save Betty Project?”

“The t-port project that polluted all of spacetime, permitting another reality to intrude into our reality.”

“That’s right. There were those in the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications who believed they could control the pollution.” Chiron sighs. “Ariel Herbert and others in control of the majority interests of the Institute persuaded the dissenters to back down. And they shut tachyportation down. Shut down the most exciting technological breakthrough since the silicon chip. And the Save Betty Project? Well. Maybe the disaster was overplayed. Betty died in her personal past. I’m guessing she knew she was going to die.”

“Betty had,” Zhu says in the holoid, “a premonition.”

Chiron nods. “You could say that a premonition is just a memory. A memory of the future.” He sips his drink. “But Betty didn’t die in the past. We sent a t-porter and brought her back into her own timeline. Into her personal Now. And then she died when she was supposed to. We were sure we’d fixed things. And the Summer of Love Project? The girl in 1967 was supposed to be pregnant, and then she aborted her fetus, and then she became pregnant again by another man, and then she did have her child. A daughter who changed the course of history.”

“So I’m right,” Zhu whispers in the holoid, “you did do more than cocreate reality with the Cosmic Mind.”

In the holoid, Chiron inclines his head. “Tachyportation itself has become a part of reality.” He swirls his drink. “So how does t-porting function if all reality is a process between the observer and the observed? If a multitude of probabilities are constantly collapsing into or out of the timeline? And the t-porter herself is another probability? Her observation of and participation in reality must become a part of the process, right?”

“I guess so,” Zhu says in the holoid.

“Cosmicist philosophers could no longer deny the effect. In the aftermath of the Save Betty Project and the Summer of Love Project, our philosophers set out three theories of the true nature of reality—superdeterminism, the multiverse theory, and the resiliency principle. You following me?”

“Uh, maybe,” Zhu says in the holoid.

But now, in 1895, Zhu listens and watches, breathless and with full attention. Her hammering heart tells her that her very life is on the line. On the timeline.

“Superdeterminism,” Chiron says, “posits that everything already is the way it is in the the perpetuity that is spacetime. What we perceive as doubts, hesitations, shifts of position, accidents, happenstance, time paradoxes, even t-porting itself—all of that is a random blip and all our acts of free will are an illusion. Everything is and always has been from the very existence of time, and no one and nothing can change anything.”

“That’s pretty extreme,” Zhu says in the holoid.

And she thinks now, in 1895, how can that be? When reality is shifting all around her?

“Yeah, it’s a pretty oppressive theory,” Chiron says in the holoid. “Then there’s the multiverse theory, pretty much the opposite, suggesting that reality is a set of probabilities constantly collapsing in and out of the timeline, creating whole new universes all along the way. T-porting is especially dangerous, if that’s true, because our technology may cause a probability to collapse out of the timeline we’re living in, a probablility that wasn’t supposed to exist.”

“Huh,” Zhu says in the holoid. “That sounds like anarchy.”

“Yes,” Chiron says in the holoid. “You, Zhu, ought to know a lot about anarchy.”

“And the resiliency principle?” Zhu whispers now, resentment toward Chiron burning in her as the joss house priest burns another strip of parchment, mixes the ashes in a bowl of water. She and the Daughters of Compassion were enforcing the law, not creating anarchy. But maybe that wasn’t what he was alluding to. And that sudden thought chills her to the bone.

In the holoid, Chiron sets down his drink. “Under the resiliency principle, anything goes. And everything stays just the way we want it to. We witness and we make it so. We can change the details, and it doesn’t really matter so long as the end result holds true. All’s well that ends well. Tachyportation is freely permitted because our technology is part and parcel of reality itself. The past creates the future, and the future also creates the past. I must confess, Zhu, I am unhappy with that notion.”

“Why?” Her voice in the far future, in this holoid, sounds so wispy to her now.

“Because t-porting is not in the natural order of reality,” Chiron snaps in the holoid. “It’s a technology created by us. T-porting creates probabilities that would never have existed, except for our technology. That was what the Save Betty Project unleashed! That’s what the Summer of Love Project tried to fix. But did we fix it? I don’t know! You get it now?”

More worshipers enter the joss house. “I get it,” Zhu whispers, glancing down at the aurelia lying in her hand. “You’ve created new realities, or at least you think you may have. And that’s why you’re using me.”

In the holoid Chiron stands, agitated. “Who is to say what reality will be? Who is to govern all of spacetime? Who is to make the creative decisions that change everything? Do you think there are powers who want to? Oh, yeah.”

“And you?” Zhu says in the holoid. “You’re one of them, right? A cosmicist.”

“Oh, Zhu,” Chiron says in the holoid. “Even cosmicists are not willing to assume that responsibility. We’ve already proven to ourselves just how wrong we could be even when our best intentions were beyond reproach.” He sits, looking exhausted. “No one could assume such responsibility. Oh, and it’s more than that. We did not want to tempt ourselves. No one with intentions less altruistic than the cosmicists could be allowed to know what terrible power we had at our command. So we shut the shuttles down. We vowed never to use tachyportation again.”

“But you have,” Zhu whispers in the joss house. She knows he can’t hear her, but she says it, anyway. “You’ve used t-porting again with me.”

Suddenly—and of all the strangeness of the session, this was the strangest thing of all—Chiron searches his pockets. Like an old-timey magician pulling a dove from his sleeve, he produces something shiny and commands her, “Look at this.”

The aurelia.

“A golden butterfly,” Chiron says in the holoid.

Zhu’s breath catches. The aurelia--the wings, the woman--hovers before her in the holoid. And now, in this moment, the aurelia--the gold, the diamonds--lies heavily in the palm of her hand.

In the holoid Chiron says, “The aurelia is a symbol, you see. In Chinese mythology, the butterfly has two meanings. Dual meanings.”

“Dual meanings?” she says in the holoid.

“Dual meanings,” she whispers now. “Like just about everything in the Gilded Age has a duality. A light side and a dark side.”

“The first meaning is beautiful,” Chiron says. “The butterfly is the Chinese symbol of love. Not platonic love, not the love of a parent for a child, or a sibling for a sibling, not the love of friends. The love between a man and a woman. Between lovers. Imagine two golden butterflies, entwined with each other over new spring flowers.”

“You mean sex,” she says in the holoid.

“Daniel,” she whispers now, dizzy from the incense smoke.

In the holoid, Chiron smiles. “The second meaning is darker, though not unconnected to the first. The butterfly also symbolizes everlasting life. Survival of the family through reproduction. Survival of the soul through love.”

“You mean death,” she says in the holoid.

“Daniel,” she whispers again now.

“I mean survival,” Chiron says. “She will have it.”

The holoid shrinks to a luminous pinpoint and disappears.

She will have it.

Zhu crouches in the joss house, clutching the aurelia, as the priest spews ashy water from his mouth, casting demons out.