Mendoza in Hollywood (34 page)

“What the hell are those?” he said, wiping his floury hands on a dish towel. “He’s brought back eight pianos? Where’s the olive oil I ordered?”

“Wasn’t room, chief,” Einar called. “When I got to HQ, these guys were waiting for me. Ladies, I mean; they’re eight tule elk does in stasis, and they’ve all been bred. I’ve got some marching orders. They’re supposed to go over Tejon Pass out to Buttonwillow, to be released into the wild. You’re tagged to assist me.”

“Great,” said Porfirio, throwing down the dish towel. “Just what I needed. A trip to beautiful Buttonwillow at this time of year.”

I didn’t envy them. If there was a place more desolate than Los Angeles, Buttonwillow was it; the only possible advantage being that there were almost no mortals there in this era.

Einar shrugged apologetically. “It shouldn’t take us more than a week,” he said. “We have to leave ASAP, though. 0500 hours tomorrow okay with you?”

Porfirio sighed. “That’s life in the service. All right, tomorrow it is; I guess the pass is clear by now. No killer camels this time, huh?” Referring to the legend of deadly dromedaries haunting the mountains.

“That was just a joke, chief. Honest. But look at what else was waiting for me at HQ.” Einar held up a big silver film can.
“Grand Hotel
, 1932! Greta Garbo, two Barrymores, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery. We can have another night of the film festival when we get back, what do you say?”

I filled my bucket again and went trudging off to water the oak trees. How about Walt Disney’s
Fantasia
, I wondered nastily. Weren’t we all sorcerer’s apprentices? Bucket-carrying brooms impossible to kill.

They left next morning in the bleak dark, bundled in their coats on the springboard of the wagon.

“You have plenty of supplies,” Porfirio told Imarte and me. She had got up to see them off. “And there’s most of a pot of fresh coffee on the fire over there. You ladies look after the kid, okay? And no cat rights in my absence, please.”

Imarte and I looked at each other in disdain. “Wouldn’t bother,” I said.

“Don’t give it a moment’s thought,” Imarte agreed.

He looked at us searchingly, his black eyes troubled. “No going out without wearing a loaded sidearm at all times, remember?”

“Hey, man, these are immortal girls,” Einar said. “They can take care of themselves. Ciao, ladies; get your hankies laundered and ready, ‘cause
Grand Hotel
has one of the really great tearjerker endings of all time!”

He gave a crack of his whip, and the wagon rolled away into the gloom, creaking under the weight of its improbable cargo. I hoped they wouldn’t break an axle going over the Grapevine Grade. As
though he had heard my thought—I wasn’t broadcasting—Porfirio turned around in his seat and looked at me. What an uncertain look on his scarred devil’s face. He was wearing it still when they turned onto El Camino Real and vanished from sight.

I stood there a moment longer, shivering in the mists. Then I remembered there was coffee. Imarte was already helping herself to the pot. I hurried to find my mug.

We managed to restrain ourselves from hair pulling and all that fun stuff, mostly because after she filled her mug she disappeared back into her room to continue her studies of the amazing secret-agent valise. Juan Bautista came moping out a while later, and I grilled him some beef for breakfast. He didn’t stick around to talk; very shortly he disappeared up the canyon with half a dozen empty wicker cages, which had to be filled with endangered species. I knew a little of what he was feeling; he’d come to the place we all come to, sooner or later, when the work is all you have, all you can depend on.

So I was alone all day. There weren’t even any passengers dismounting from the stages. It was a lovely, surreal feeling, all that peace and quiet. My ghost, too, left me quite alone. I made a stew of leftover grilled beef for supper, and built up the cookfire to a nice blaze afterward. In the interests of peace and harmony I broadcast a meal call to Imarte, and a moment later she actually emerged from the house.

“You prepared a meal?” she said in surprise.

“I know several recipes,” I said. “Not that one can do a lot without olive oil.”

“Goddess, that’s true,” she said, sounding astonished that we had found a common opinion. She made up for it by picking most of the chilies out of her dish, however, and flicking them into the dark. We sat there awhile in unpleasant silence, before she finally cleared her throat and spoke. “I believe I’ll take the stage north tomorrow,” she said.

“Really?” I asked. Where did she get off, leaving me with the responsibility of running the place? “You cleared it with Porfirio before he left, I suppose?”

“Oh, he knew I had a research trip to make,” she said evasively. I just shrugged and kept eating. After a moment she gave up trying to keep her news to herself. “The contents of that valise contained the most incredible—”

“Is there any supper left?” asked Juan Bautista, appearing from the shadows. He was holding something bundled in his coat. I pretended not to notice as I ladled him a bowl of stew, but Imarte leaned forward and peered, frowning.

“Are you hiding something, child?”

“I’m—it’s just a raven, that’s all,” he said. “She has a broken wing. I thought I could fix it with microsurgery. I seem to be pretty good at that.”

She missed the bitterness of his last remark and sailed right on. “That’s nice. Well, as I was saying, when I examined the contents of the valise—”

Juan Bautista’s eyes widened with excitement. “Are you finally going to tell us what was in it? I’ve been wondering about that. Were there really, like, secret documents?”

“Incredibly secret,” she said, her voice dropping to a dramatic whisper. “Lists of persons to be contacted, with their addresses. Communications from Judah Benjamin and John Bright. Letters of introduction. Documents pertaining to the Order of the Golden Circle. Drafts on the Bank of England, without countersignature, amounts to be filled in at the discretion of the bearer. Two pasteboard tubes filled with golden sovereigns, sealed with stamped wax. Timetables, instructions, and letters in coded phrases.

“Several letters of a most incriminating nature between a person named Greathouse and several Canadian nationals, to say nothing of some
very
interesting overtures from the Prime Minister to Benito Juarez.” She leaned forward after an impressive pause. “Last but certainly not least, letters referring to some technological discovery, made in a place designated only by code. All written in a lovely violet ink, chosen undoubtedly not for its color but for the remarkable
chemical properties that enable it to vanish without a trace when exposed to water.”

“Wow,” said Juan Bautista. “All you’d have to do is dip a page in water to get rid of the evidence? I guess he really
was
an English spy.”

“A conspirator, I think,” Imarte said judiciously. “Not spy material, or he’d have been back for the valise by now. But thanks to some cross-referencing of available data, I now have important information about just who these conspirators are. I found an invaluable text entitled ‘The Great Diamond Hoax.’ It purports to be a firsthand narrative, by one Asbury Harpending, of the true circumstances of what will be known as the Chapman Piracy Case, which I gather is the name the San Francisco papers will give my pet conspiracy when it resoundingly fails.”

“You mean, they’ll be caught?” I asked, glancing over at the little black thing in Juan Bautista’s coat, which had stirred feebly.

“In a matter of hours,” Imarte said. “If only I’d found Harpending’s narrative sooner. It would appear that quite shortly our dear Mr. Rubery and his Secessionist friends will be cooling their heels in prison, thanks to some astonishing errors of judgment. My theory is that their bungling will be due to the loss of the vital information in the valise. Of course the plot fails, but somehow the British will manage to cover their involvement completely. I must know how! You can see this is important, I trust? It’s absolutely necessary that the Company have a qualified observer on the scene. One of the most concerted covert efforts by a foreign power to overthrow an American government in this century, and somehow it will be made to seem nothing more than a boyish prank, a footnote in a minor chapter in history.”

“I certainly won’t stop you,” I said. “Go, by all means. Have a grand time. And bring us back a loaf of sourdough bread.” A little more flip than the occasion called for, particularly as I thought her obsession sounded kind of interesting for once; but she always brought out my worst side.

She narrowed her eyes at me. A chilly silence fell. It was finally broken by Juan Bautista, who said, “I was wondering . . .”

“What?” I turned my attention back to him.

“Did the Company ever try the immortality process on animals?”

“There are stories,” I said. “It almost works, but not quite. Animals can be made smarter, or nearly immortal, but not all the way and not as smart as us. I know for a fact it was done with one of the higher primates, but the program never went further than the prototype.”

“So you could make an animal as smart as a mortal human?”

“Sure you could,” I said. “But why would anyone want to? Mortals are unhappy enough with the brains they have. Why inflict self-awareness on an animal?”

He didn’t answer. Shortly after that, he went to bed, carefully cradling the little black thing in his bundled coat. Imarte flounced off too, doubtless to pack her bag for her trip to San Francisco. I stayed up a while, looking at the stars. I could hear Juan Bautista playing his guitar in his room. It was the first time he’d touched it in days.

M
ARCH
15,1863. A day to remember, señors.

I woke early and was quite happy grinding coffee beans, grilling beef. I thought to myself that perhaps there was a future for me in the food service industry, if the Company had no further use for me as a botanist. Juan Bautista ate hurriedly and vanished into the brown wilderness, so I was the only one there to see Imarte off when she came out to meet the stagecoach, bag in hand. She was all tarted up again, hair curled and ink stains scrubbed away, corseted for action.

“I’m on my way,” she said. “It’s unlikely I’ll return before the end of the month. Convey my apologies to Porfirio, but I’m certain he’ll understand why this was necessary when I have a chance to explain it to him.”

“Fine with me,” I said. “Aren’t you taking the secret valise, though?”

“No, of course not!” She shifted her bag to her other hand and leaned close to lower her voice, though we were the only living souls for a good six kilometers around. “That material is far too incriminating to carry abroad. I rather imagine some sort of effort will be made to recover it, so I’ve left it in plain sight in my room. Should any suspicious-looking persons call, let them take it. I’ve made a detailed copy of everything.”

“We’re not going to be visited by angry Union Army troops or police, are we?” I asked.

“A ridiculous idea. At this particular point in time my conspirators are blissfully unaware of any trouble brewing for them, and my research indicates that the attention of the law will be focused entirely on their activities in San Francisco. The fact that the conspirators also had a cabal in Los Angeles seems to have disappeared in the Historical Event Shadow,” she said, glancing at her chronophase. “We’re perfectly safe. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a stagecoach to catch.”

I watched her go sashaying down the trail, scarlet ribbons and curls bouncing, Immortal Babylon insatiably after a good time. The fact that her pleasure derived from history rather than from pretty boys made it no less delicious. A deeper and more subtle pleasure, no doubt. If there really are gods and goddesses, this must be how they amuse themselves, not with the pettiness of individual men but with the sins of nations, the follies of kings.

So I had the inn to myself. I wandered into the storeroom and poked through Porfirio’s groceries. I found a cake of Theobromos and made off with the whole thing, luxuriating in a sense of selfishness. But wait, there was more: six months of back issues of
Punch
I’d never got around to reading, and nobody to complain about the way I folded them. I dug them out from under Porfirio’s bed and settled in the kitchen, putting my feet up on a chair. Should I make myself another pot of coffee? Should I eat all the Theobromos now or save half for later? Maybe I’d eat a whole cone of piloncillo sugar too. Oh, the sins I could indulge in with nobody to see.