The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (33 page)

“The
only reason you got something to eat today, brother,” Sally shouted back, “is
because we enforced the law ten years ago!
We
restored the atmosphere
and maintained production because we maintained negative population growth by enforcing
the law. You would not have shoes on your feet if we hadn’t enforced the law!”

“Hey,
comrades?” Zhu said. “Can we get out of here?”

“Enforce
the law!” Pat shouted and raised her fist, then glanced at Zhu, sudden fear in
her eyes. She glanced around, understanding their situation. She and Zhu
started backing away from the angry mob advancing on them.

Hsien
slipped through the crowd and was gone. Zhu remembered seeing the back of her
ragged crew cut, and thinking, ridiculously,
Cowardice is the better part of
sanity.

But
Sally Chou was never one to back down from anyone or anything. “We’ve always
had famine in China!” she shouted as Pat yanked on her elbow. “We’ve always had
disease! Always bad air, bad food, bad water! I’m talking three hundred years! Try
three thousand years! We’ve never had enough! In the old days, the communist
redistribution of wealth was a sham. A sham, people! Communism redistributed
wealth from the rulers of the empire to the bureaucrats of another empire.
That’s all! Don’t you get it? We can never have a decent quality of life for
all of us under any form of empire till we the people control ourselves. And
that means controlling our reproduction. Nuturing and teaching our families.
And educating ourselves. Till we bring our population
down.
”

“Fascist!”
the speaker shouted back. “Traitor to the people!”

“Fucking
Daughters of Compassion!” yelled someone in the crowd.

People
started pushing, shoving, throwing punches. Suddenly fists were pummeling Zhu’s
sore guts, and she was flailing with her own fists, her karate moves only as
good as her strength, which was next to nothing. Sally and Pat were screaming,
whistles shrieking, the speaker’s voice fuzzy with feedback.

She
was down on the ground in no time, curled up in a fetal position, her hands
protecting her head, the back of her neck, and not much else. Someone ripped
her jeans down, and she felt a man’s hard body pressing against her butt. The
unmistakable sting of a knife whipped across the backs of her hands before she
vomited in the cold mud and passed out.

They
beat up Sally bad, and Zhu too, seriously bruising but not breaking her ribs.
Thankfully, the man didn’t rape her, after all. She only fully appreciated her
good fortune when she thought about the incident later and nearly vomited again
at the memory of that hard male body pressing against her. Pat was stabbed half
a dozen times. The WBCO transferred emergency funding and the Changchi
medcenter sent her down to Beijing on a whirligig. Zhu heard that Pat died,
then later that she was critical, but pulling through.

The
mood at the compound became unbearable, a volatile mix of acute fear and
red-hot rage. Several comrades quietly moved out. But for those who remained, a
new fervor infected everyone.

Sally
stood up at the front of the mess hall the very next day, fiercely proud with
her face swollen and frightfully black and blue, bandages swathing her head and
shoulders and legs. Arm in a sling, she held her cigarette in that hand,
insisting on twisting her head down and the broken arm up to suck the herbal
smoke in a torturous mime of self-sacrifice. She contaminated the air in the
whole dome with her smoke, but no one seemed to care.

“We
will not be intimidated!” she shouted in a ragged voice.

“We
will not be intimidated!” everyone shouted.

They
posted guards around the compound twenty-four hours a day. Sally managed to
procure fifty assault rifles, no one knew from where or from whom. And in her
feverish struggle to keep the Daughters alive, Sally also managed to procure the
patches. The black patches. This was the point when everything really changed, Zhu
thought later, when the Daughters of Compassion started using the black
patches. They told no one, of course, especially the WBCO.

Zhu
was in the dorm, recuperating. Sally wouldn’t let her stay at the medcenter in
town, she wanted her in the compound under the Daughters’ guard. The medic had used
a mollie knife on Zhu’s cuts, which knit the skin just fine. But bruises still
darkened the wound sites, the swelling was ugly, and she was weak. She lay
huddled on her cot, bruises throbbing, gut gurgling, despair clogging her heart
when Sally strode in and sat beside her.

“Give
me your leg, kiddo.” Sally pulled the bed sheet down.

Zhu
felt a sting behind her right knee next to her contraceptive patch and
slowly—was it possible?—the throbbing eased. Even her gut settled down. She sat
up, twisted her leg, and took a look. There, a patch of silky black fabric adhered
to her skin next to the bright red square of the contraceptive patch.

“Feel
better?” Sally grinned, a cigarette dangling from her lip.

“Yeah!
What is it? What did you do to me?”

“Take
it easy. You don’t know your own weakness. The patch masks it.”

“What’s
the patch?”

“Oh,
it’s just some kind of opiate mixed with some kind of upper. What they call a
speedball. A black patch.”

“Damn
you, Sally.” Zhu had endured her teen years without so much as tasting a beer,
let alone experimenting with the drugs that floated through Changchi. She must
have looked horrified because Sally guffawed till she choked and fanned her
face with her hand.

“Hey,
don’t worry, I can get more.”

“This
is so not a good idea.”

“I
think it’s a
great
idea. They use the black patch for medical treatment,
so it’s okay. The patch releases its stuff over time. Just drizzles that sweet
medication right in. Listen, Zhu,” she said seriously, “between the bug in your
gut and our pals in the square, you’re halfway to nowhere. And I need you up
and running.” She pulled out some hardcopy. “We got info that the Parents hacked
our d-base for our stats on skipcouples and skipkids in the Huo-wu District. We
gotta get to these folks before they do.”

“All
right.” Zhu remembered swinging her legs down from the cot and thinking that a
nutribar might actually taste pretty good right about now.

“We
gotta go down to the schools, talk to the teens, the twennies.” Sally yammered
on, stabbing at the hardcopy with her forefinger. “Plus, we heard they’re
aiding and abetting illegal pregnancies, setting up secret birth clinics, crap
like that.”

“Okay.
All right. I get it.”

But
Zhu had not gotten it. She had no clue then, no premonition at all, that this
was another step down the road to chaos and madness.

No,
she smiled. She felt
much
better with the black patch. She could hardly
feel any pain anymore.

*  
*   *

Now,
in the midst of the Gilded Age Project, Zhu pushes those memories away and strides
toward the invisible walls of Tangrenbu, determined to speak with Donaldina
Cameron.

“Cameron
is a fanatic a lot like you or she will be soon,” Muse whispers archly in her
ear, “only she’s doing
her
work in 1895. With the blessings of the
Presbyterian Church, not the World Birth Control Organization.”

“I’m
so glad she and I are soul mates.”

“Watch
the modernisms,” Muse has the nerve to remind her.

Nine
Twenty Sacramento Street is an imposing red-brick building poised at the crest
of a hill angling steeply up Nob Hill to the west and down to Tangrenbu to the
east. Imposing iron grilles are bolted over the windows. The place looks like a
fortress. Or a prison.

The
stench of Tangrenbu permeates the autumn air, and the bachelors in their denim
sahms
trek silently by. Zhu can feel the pressure of their eyes, their muted anger at
her presence in front of the controversial Presbyterian mission. In her dress of
a Western lady, the veil drawn over her face, and her hair pinned up beneath
her Newport hat, she conceals her race. Someone flings a pebble, which strikes
her shoulder blade. She doesn’t turn around to catch a glimpse of him. Whoever
flung the pebble is long gone. She lifts the door knocker and sends a
resounding
boom
into the rooms behind the massive walnut door.

A young
Chinese woman, her brow knit with worry, cracks the door open and peeks out
over a chain lock attached inside. She whispers, “Who is?”

“My
name is Miss Zhu Wong. I have an appointment with Miss Cameron. She’s expecting
me.”

The
door bangs shut, and locks click. The door reopens, and the young woman hurries
her inside, banging the door shut. She shows Zhu to a plain, straight-backed chair
in a brightly lit, barren hall. Zhu sits and waits, sniffing the astringent
air, the scents of wood polish and lemon soap. She runs her finger along the
arm of the chair. Not a speck of dust.

At
last a plump Scotch woman strides down the hall, her graying hair pulled back
in a tidy bun, a pince-nez perched on her prominent nose. She too scowls with
worry. “Good day, Miss Wong. I am Eleanor Olney.”

“Good
day. Pardon me, Miss Olney, but I’m not the bill collector. Why does everyone
look so frightened?”

“We
had to dispose of a stick of dynamite this morning. On our stoop, it was.”

“Who
would put dynamite on your stoop?”

“The
highbinders, Miss Wong!” she exclaims. “The tongs are quite displeased with our
temporary director. She’s thrown the slavers into quite a whirl.”

“I
see.” A peculiar shadow ripples at the far end of the hall, and Zhu looks
warily around. Muse posts a string of statistics about the tongs in her
peripheral vision. When she looks back, Miss Olney has tucked her pince-nez in
her skirt pocket. Or has she? Zhu stares at the woman’s face, glimpsing no marks
on her nose. Those telltale indentions you usually see when a habitual wearer
of glasses takes them off.

Oh,
no. No! Is it happening again? Little changes, little ripples of reality right
in front of her eyes. What do they mean? Fear crawls down her spine.

Miss
Olney’s watery pale blue eyes regard her suspiciously. “This way, Miss Wong. Lo
Mo will see you now.”

“Lo
Mo?”

“Lo
Mo means The Mother. With Miss Culbertson on leave, that’s what the girls have
started calling her. Though her family calls her Dolly, and her closest friends
call her Donald. You,” she says sternly, “may call her Miss Cameron.’

Zhu
strides down the hushed hall, her button boots clattering on the immaculate plank
wood floors. After Jessie’s excesses, she finds this place almost too austere,
decorated only with a few sticks of furniture and scrupulously clean.
Whitewashed walls are relieved by a couple of tiny paintings parsimoniously
doled out—a blond Jesus, his blue eyes gazing up to heaven, surrounded by blond
children. A smiling Mary in a hooded robe, coddling lambs and doves in her arms.
From a distant room, girls’ voices dutifully recite, “A B C D E F G.”

Two
little girls kneel with brushes and pails of soapy water and meticulously scrub
the floor. An open door reveals girls seated at tables, busily sewing dresses
and shirts, bolts of fabric heaped all around them. Steam and the scent of
starch stream from another door where older girls bend over washtubs and piles
of laundry. At the end of the hall, girls sit around a huge table heaped with
silverware, tea sets, and tea trays, jars of polish and rags stained black.
Their low conversation falls silent as Zhu walks by, and they glance at her
with their dark eyes. Zhu can’t tell if the girls are fearful or merely curious,
but a peculiar tension grips them.

The
girls are all Chinese, of course. Wards of the home.

Miss
Olney shows Zhu to an office, then strides away.

Donaldina
Cameron sits imperiously behind a large rosewood desk with the implements of
business precisely arranged before her—pen and inkwell, stationery,
leather-bound ledgers, an elegant Underwood typewriter. Zhu knows she is only
twenty-five, but her chestnut hair caught up in a pompadour is broadly streaked
with white, making her appear much older. Her complexion is ashen, her
expression harried. Still, she’s a lovely woman, Zhu thinks. Scotch, with broad
bold brows, large expressive eyes, prominent cheekbones, a sensuous mouth. She
wears a billowing black voile skirt and a plum shirtwaist with leg-o’-mutton
sleeves hand-folded in tiny pleats.

At
her throat gleams an Art Nouveau brooch. With a start, Zhu peers more closely,
but the curves of gold are the wings of a dove. Not the aurelia, but expensive.
The sort of clothes and jewelry a fine lady would wear. Which seems out of
place, unexpected even, in this spartan fortress. A Chinese girl brings in a
polished silver tray and serves tea in cups of celadon-glazed porcelain.

“A
gift for you, Miss Cameron,” Zhu says deferentially and lays the Bible on her
desk.

Miss
Cameron looks her up and down coldly. “Miss Wong. You look like a proper young
lady. Is it true you are employed by that scourge, Jessie Malone?”