by Lisa Mason
Nance hooks her arm through Susan’s and takes her to the new crowd of caterpillar-eyed girls. “This is Starbright, my best friend in the whole world. She is one of the smartest chicks I know. Plus, she’s an Artist.” Nance adds doubtfully, “You do still draw, don’t you, Starbright?”
“On the sidewalk along Oak Street,” Susan says proudly, pleased Nance remembers her silly sketches with Prismacolor pencils knickknacked from Mr. G’s art supply store. “Plus I drew the Isis in the Mystic Eye.”
“The big chick on the wall of the witch shop?” one of the caterpillar-eyed girls exclaims. “That is so far out!”
“That’s my Starbright,” Nance says authoritatively. “She’s always been brilliant. Plus, her family’s rich.”
Suddenly everyone is looking at Susan, including Stan the Man.
Rich. Nance knows very well Susan’s family isn’t rich. Susan’s family is disgustingly middle-class. Over the years, Susan has told Nance all about Daddy, the way he moans over the bills, doles out allowances to Susan and her mother, groans over how much gas his Cadillac guzzles. Her family certainly isn’t rich compared to their new neighbors. Susan feels ashamed at how poor she is. She longs for the old neighborhood, where girlfriends like Nance didn’t put her down for being a lowly dentist’s daughter.
For a weird moment though—one of those over-under-sideways-down insights she keeps stumbling on during the Summer of Love—Susan suddenly sees herself through society’s eyes. Her father is a professional with his own practice, while Nance’s stepfather works in some office doing who knows what for someone else who yells in his face. Susan’s parents left the cookie-cutter developments of Euclid Heights for the tree-lined avenues of Shaker Heights, only slightly less prefab, perhaps, but enormously more prestigious.
How easy for Susan to be self-denigrating, to put down her father’s hard-won victories from the other side of privilege. Her forced separation from Nance stings anew. Yet, right or wrong, she can suddenly see why. Her father is ambitious. His ambition extends to his daughter. By comparison—and who doesn’t compare?—Nance’s stepfather is not as successful as Susan’s father. And his lack of success extends to his daughter.
Gross. But she can see why.
No wonder she and Nance wanted to run away as fast as they could. What do their fathers have to do with them?
They drift away from the caterpillar-eyed girls, Nance’s arm crooked around Susan’s neck in a hammerlock reminiscent of Professor Zoom’s. They sit together on the grass fronting Fell Street.
“When did you get here?”
“In time for the Celebration of the Summer Solstice. Got your postcard.”
“My parents looking for me?”
“Oh, sure. They came to our new house.” Whoops. That’s a sore spot, that Susan moved away to a new house. “I didn’t tell them anything, Penny Lane,” she says in a rush, “I swear.”
“You didn’t tell them where I went?” Suddenly, Nance isn’t smiling. Her face grows somber. Susan sees lines etched in Nance’s forehead, lines she never noticed before.
“I didn’t talk to them, actually. You know Daddy. He kind of kept me away from them.”
“I knew I could depend on you.” She sucks in her breath. “So you got that dumb postcard, huh?”
“Sure! Oh, I loved it! That’s what brought me here.”
“No! Really?”
Susan giggles, confiding like they used to. “I hid it, but Mom found it. She and Daddy got so pissed! Daddy made me burn it. ‘That little tramp, that no-good so-and-so,’” Susan says in a deep voice, mimicking her father. “‘I never want you talking to her again.’ Can you believe it?”
“Your father called me a tramp?”
“And then he said I was stupid when I told him you’re my best friend.”
“Your father called me a no-good so-and-so?” Nance stares off into space the way Cyn does.
“Oh, Penny Lane,” Susan says. “You know what a jerk Daddy is. He’s the one who’s stupid.”
“Yeah.” Nance chews on her thumbnail. She won’t look at Susan.
Susan knows she has done something, said something terribly, irretrievably wrong. But she isn’t sure exactly what. Or how to undo it.
A cop car slides past the corner of Divisadero and Fell Street.
“Where are you crashing?” Nance says, glancing warily about.
“With the lady who owns the Mystic Eye.”
“Ruby A. Maverick?”
“Yes! She’s really cool.”
“Isn’t that just like you, Starbright. Nothing but the best.”
Nance stands and brushes off her jeans. Stan the Man strides up and circles his arm around Nance’s shoulders. Nance glances up at him with a sensual grin.
Susan turns away, trying to control the trembling of her lip.
Suddenly Chi is there. He helps her to her feet and circles his arm around her shoulder, then embraces her with both arms. Wow!
“Is this your old man?” Nance says. She gives Chi such a lustful glance that Stan frowns, competitive male malice in his eye. Nance wrenches away from Stan’s proprietary embrace.
“This is Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco,” Susan says, savoring the taste of his exotic name.
“Far out, Starbright.” Nance wiggles her hips, blinking up at Chi. She smiles at Susan with approval. “He’s a fine one.”
That Nance, she’s so silly. She’s treating Susan’s man the way the guys on Haight Street treat other guys’ ladies. No wonder people have always thought Nance is crazy. She’s always carried on her very own personal revolution.
The cop car cruises up Baker Street.
They all scatter like criminals. The band’s entourage piles into the van.
“I’ll call you at the Mystic Eye,” Nance shouts out the window as the van pulls away.
“Call me! Call me! Call me, Penny Lane!”
Susan starts to dart into the park again, but Chi catches her, slows her to a walk, and circles his arm around her shoulder. Together they calmly walk down Fell Street, staring straight ahead.
The cop car passes.
Now Susan sees the squat man in the stovepipe hat with his psychedelic reptile friend. They’re walking toward her and Chi, deep in conversation.
The dealers! Stovepipe and the Lizard!
Chi spots them at once.
Neither he nor Ruby ever questioned her about the confrontation in front of the Fillmore Auditorium. She never offered an explanation. It’s too embarrassing.
The dealers look up and see them. Their eyes light with a cold gleam of recognition.
“You know those men,” Chi says, “don’t you.”
“He made me!” Susan cries.
A bus pulls up to a stop ten feet in front of them.
“Got the fare?” Chi says. He’s got a dime and a nickel in his hand.
They run and jump aboard the bus like it’s a getaway car in Bonnie and Clyde. It’s strange and exciting to feel like an outlaw jumping on a bus with Chi.
Except for the hammering of her heart.
11
Sunshine Superman
Chi hustles Starbright down the aisle. The doors flip shut, then flip open again.
Stovepipe and the Lizard climb up the steps as the bus takes off, lurching down Fell Street. The driver detains them while Stovepipe searches his pockets for the fare.
The bus is packed with sleepy-eyed commuters taking up all the seats and standing in the aisle. Chi guides Starbright past them, steering her by her elbow. A grizzled geezer in a shabby raincoat leers at her. “Hippie whore,” the geezer says and spits on the blue velvet jacket Ruby gave her. She whirls, eyes wide, mouth gaping. Chi navigates her around him. “Pig,” he snarls at the geezer. “Hippie scum,” the geezer snarls back.
Chi pulls the bell-cord. The bus careens into the next stop. The back doors flip open. Chi pushes Starbright down the steps, clatters after her, and catches her before she pitches onto the sidewalk.
“God, Ch
i!” she yells.
“Sorry! You okay?” At her nod, he circles his arm around her.
The doors close, and the bus lumbers away. Then stops half a block down. The doors flip open, and Stovepipe and the Lizard stumble out, get their bearings, look up and down the street. The Lizard points at them.
An eastbound bus pulls up to the stop across the street. Chi seizes Starbright’s hand, and they sprint. Chi hears the dealers’ boot heels ringing on the pavement.
“Go, go, go!” He practically tosses her up the steps, dashes up himself.
The bus takes off downtown. Starbright falls against him. He reaches for the handrail and steadies them both. She digs deep in her purse for more dimes, drops them in the change box with trembling hands.
He guides her to a back seat. They’re both breathing hard and shaking when they collapse on the seat. He doesn’t even think to take out a prophylak as he pulls her against his chest.
Damn! Those dealers again! Chi recalls the incident in front of the Fillmore. What did they say to her? Something about dragon’s blood? Seven grand for rat poison? He thought it was a case of mistaken identity. Why are they after her?
The seat is a sheath of vinyl barely covering wire springs. The bus has no brain. A tough old guy with Aztec cheekbones and a toothpick tucked in his lip drives the vehicle by hand, shifting a stick through fretful gears. Chi feels as if his guts are bouncing up his throat. Man!
Starbright snuggles against him like a needy child. Then, rebellious, she struggles free of his unexpected embrace, stands, and forces him to move over so she can take the window seat. She always insists on taking the window seat, and he always lets her have it, even though he wouldn’t mind sitting next to the window himself and getting a good look at this Now. To give is best, he reminds himself. How easy to believe in cosmicist platitudes when everyone else around you does, too.
She peers back down the road with such alarm that he leans over her and looks, too.
Stovepipe and the Lizard are nowhere in sight. Lost them. Who made her? Do what?
She takes a crumpled Kleenex from her purse, dabs the spittle off her jacket, drops the Kleenex on the floor. Then she presses her cheek against the smeary window, in one of her sulky moods.
He lays a hand on her shoulder, trying to pull her back. She presses harder, like a cat moving in the opposite direction of where you want her to go.
“Don’t do that, Starbright,” he scolds. For a twentieth-century person with basic scientific knowledge at her disposal, she cultivates a pathetic indifference toward the elementary rules of cleanliness. Why doesn’t she know better? It bothers the hell out of him.
“Don’t do what?” she demands. “You’re not my daddy, you know.”
Exasperated, he whips out his scope. “See for yourself.” He adjusts the focus—a mere 10x will show enough buggy scum to turn anyone’s stomach—and hands the scope to her.
She examines it curiously, sniffs the metal, and peeks through the wrong end, finally turning the lens toward the window glass. Her open mouth and shocked silence are good enough for him.
“Gross, huh?” he says, using her favorite word. “That window is filthy with bacteria. It can make you sick.”
“You’re sick,” she mumbles and coughs dramatically, but he knows she’s faking. She hands the scope back, surreptitiously brushing her cheek with the back of her hand.
He starts to pull out a wipe for her, then stops. That would be a violation of Tenet Seven of the Grandmother Principle—sharing a modern technology with someone in the past. Since he decided he better get closer to the girl, he finds himself bumping up against the Tenets at every turn. The more deeply he gets involved, the more difficult observing the mandate of nonintervention becomes. It angers him. How easy to spout Tenets of the Grandmother Principle in the comfortable boardroom of the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications.
Between the HIP Switchboard notice to Susan Bell and other runaways in the Barb and Starbright’s growing resemblance to the girl in the CBS News holoid, the probabilities that she is truly the Axis have skyrocketed. They must be better than ninety percent. Sometimes he still walks his loop through the Haight-Ashbury. Sometimes he tries to pick up more of her fingerprints with the scanner. Mostly, though, he stays close to her.
Because she’s the target of a demon. That alone ought to persuade him she’s the one capable of collapsing a Prime Probability out of the timeline except for one other awful fact—Ruby A. Maverick is targeted by a demon, too.
His skipfather’s theory is not only correct, but more correct than he bargained for. Do other people for whom the data are disappearing in this Hot Dim Spot have demonic doubles in the Other Now? Who else? They say a million people will pass through the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. Are demons targeting other people, too?
Well. He can’t guard Starbright and Ruby both. He consulted K-T. The knuckletop calculated that Ruby’s ability to survive is significantly greater than the girl’s. Besides, the Axis—the one whom the Archivists first identified as capable of collapsing the timeline—is a longhaired girl. Starbright, it is.
He’s gone everywhere with her. He took her back to the Fillmore and to the Avalon Ballroom, too. They go to concerts: the Butterfield Blues Band, Country Joe and the Fish, the Yardbirds. The music is deafening. He likes to stand at the foot of the stage, tapping his toe, while Starbright happily dances by herself. Her dancing is dramatic, all gesticulating arms, undulating hips, bobbing head. He can just see Bella Venus’s eyes widen. You went to the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom? It’s like saying you attended the first Surrealists’ Ball in Paris, 1925.
Ruby calls the knuckletop his magic ring but, to Chi, this is magic. Data that disappeared exist again! Because he is here to observe, remember, enter names and faces and events in the Archives again. A shiver needled up his spine. He is preserving reality!
The SOL Project—never less than vital—takes on whole new levels of meaning. Consider impact before you consider benefit, my son, his skipmother told him. What is his impact? He makes an impact merely by being here. His impact is.
For instance:
Two days ago he took Starbright downtown to the “Joint Show,” an opening for psychedelic poster artists at the Moore Gallery. Everyone who was anyone was there: Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin. Pacific Heights socialites showed up in their diamonds and paisley satin bellbottoms. Starbright showed up with her drawing pad filled with pastel sketches. She told Chi she wanted to show her work to Rick Griffin, her favorite artist, and ask if he had any pointers. But she couldn’t get even close. A photographer stepped up just was she was opening her drawing pad and said, “Clear the chicks out of here.” He commenced snapping photos of the men.
She cried on the way back to Clayton Street.
Chi hadn’t been happy about it, either. “Did you see any women artists at that show? How about women journalists writing for the Barb or the Oracle? Any women shop owners besides Ruby? Have you noticed how special she is? How the other hip merchants are always putting her down, even though she’s got the most successful shop on the block? What about women lawyers or women doctors? Where are the women political leaders? You know, the hip rhetoric talks all about equality of the brothers, but I don’t see much equality for the sisters. Oh, I see women’s pretty bodies and pretty faces. I see hipsters and hoodies and bikers hassling you and Cyn. But I don’t see women’s minds. I don’t see women’s works.”
Was he violating Tenet Three, which prohibits a t-porter from affecting any person in the past except as authorized by the project directors? He’s supposed to protect her, not raise her consciousness. At the time, though, he didn’t give a damn about Tenet Three.
“But you can change all that, Starbright,” he told her. “It’s going to take someone like you.”
He didn’t know if he’d comforted her or not, but she stopped crying and brooded the rest of the way home.
Now they ride the
bus to the end of the line, leaving Stovepipe and the Lizard far behind. At least for now. The sun burns off the morning fog and, with the sunlight, she’s suddenly in a better mood.
“Penny Lane, Chi! I found her! I finally found her!”
He can’t help but smile. As much as she annoys him at times, she surprises him, too. Starbright has her charms. Look at how she makes him smile. How long has it been since he’s smiled after t-porting to this Now?
“Is Penny Lane from Ohio, too?” he asks casually.
She frowns and ignores his question. Not a good move, but always worth a try even if it is a sticking point between them. She is Starbright. She is Here. She is Now. Why does he need to know anything more? If she’s surprised by his tricky questions, she never once slips up. She allows no chance remark to betray her.
There is, of course, a probability that her frown means Starbright isn’t the Axis, after all. Chi doesn’t want to think about that.
“She’s balling Stan the Man, don’t you think?” she rattles on. “Doesn’t it seem like it? I’m not jealous or anything, but I don’t like that. Penny Lane is smart, but she might not know about him, what he’s really like. I didn’t know what he was really like. Do you think I should tell her? I feel weird about it, but I love her. I don’t want to see her get hurt.”
Chi shrugs. He can’t think about Penny Lane. “Starbright, how do those dealers know you?”
She sighs. “Stan made me deliver a shipment of acid. Well, he said it was acid. Those dealers, they were the connection. They didn’t even know who he was. God, I was really stupid.” Her face falls.
“You weren’t stupid. He manipulated you.”
“He did! He really did! Plus, he stole a hundred dollars from me to make the deal.” She looks away. “I mean, I lent it to him. He’s supposed to pay me back.” Her lip trembles.
Guilt needles him. Is he manipulating Starbright, too? She’s tough about some things, but otherwise she’s so open, so eager to please. What a gap between a teenage girl and a twenty-one-year-old man. Yet Chi and his peers consider themselves infants at twenty-one. They’ve got a hundred years ahead of them, maybe more. They try not to get too old too fast. Yet as fast as this girl wants to grow up, she’s still so young and vulnerable.
