by Kage Baker
“So here we are,” Lewis said, looking at the little white town, the steep green mountains rising behind it forested with ironwoods. This is where Mendoza was, Joseph, all those years, and we never knew. A beautiful place, isn’t it?
A lot better than it was in the twentieth century, Joseph admitted. I don’t remember all these trees.
The reforestation project has been under way for three centuries now, Lewis said. I read it in the guidebook. And, look, there’s the Hotel Saint Catherine. Remember? Of course, it’s been rebuilt, but the book says it’s an exact restoration. We can go to the bar where you thought you saw her.
I don’t know if I want to do that, Lewis.
Well, I do.
Joseph leaned on the rail and considered Lewis obliquely. He was more than a little concerned about his friend. He had run a surreptitious scan on him and found no malfunction, though Lewis was manufacturing compounds associated with severe stress. Lewis still hadn’t explained why they were making this trip.
You really think we’ll find her, Lewis?
I don’t know. She might be here.
Then I guess it’s worth a look.
That’s what I thought. See that little tower, up on the cliff? It’s a bell carillon. It used to strike the hours; the islanders disabled it when they adopted the slogan Where Time Has Stood Still. You won’t find a public clock anywhere. All the agcars are required by city ordinance to look like early automobiles, and there are never more than fifty allowed on the island at any one time. New buildings have to be as nearly as possible copies of former ones, and there are only two styles permitted: Mission Revival and Victorian.
So . . . it’s perpetually 1923 here?
You could say that. To quote the commercial, “Our island throngs with pleasant ghosts: Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, and other immortals from Hollywood’s Golden Age. When you encounter the costumed actors portraying these celebrities of olden days, feel free to interact with them and ask questions about their lives and films. Each one is a certified historical reenactor capable of providing you with hours of informative conversation.”
Jesus. There’s retro and then there’s retro.
It’s a mecca for reenactors, I understand.
I bet. What is this, Disneyland West?
DisneyCorp doesn’t own any of it. It’s all run by a preservancy, which is run in turn by the Company. They have extensive offices over at the west end.
I’m not surprised the Company’s invested in it. You know how Dr. Zeus is about places that don’t change.
And this certainly doesn’t change, Lewis said as their ferry pulled up to the mole. He turned to contemplate the little front street, and it did indeed look almost exactly as it had during his visits in the 1920s, with the exception of the slightly awkward Model A Fords floating two feet above the quaint old pavement. Yes, and there were a pair of actors portraying Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy parading along, tipping their hats grandly to the tourists and posing for holocards.
Joseph and Lewis went ashore, and spent an interminable thirty minutes in customs. When at last they passed through the turnstile and onto the old promenade that led into town, the hotel jitneys had long since departed, so they had to walk all the way around Crescent Avenue to the opposite side of the bay, dragging their suitcases. It was a picturesque walk, at least. Bright fish flitted in the clear water, and up every steep street that rose from the bay they caught glimpses of old gardens where clouds of bougainvillea in all its colors grew below steep gabled roofs. Beyond them loomed the jade-green mountains of the interior.
There were inviting streetside bars, where of course you couldn’t buy drinks, but you might buy glasses full of ice, and if you poured something you’d brought ashore with you into one such glass, it was nobody’s business but your own. Ice came very dear in Avalon. There were amusement arcades, as there always will be in any seaside town. There were adorable little shops full of wildly overpriced clothes. There were elegant old hotel lobbies and the front porches of little flea-bitten hotels. There were terraced restaurants shaded by olive trees, promising (but only promising) an abundance of dishes they could not legally sell, but could, for a nominal charge, prepare and serve to the determined diner who brought his own ingredients. There were stuccoed arches in the Old Spanish Days style and walls faced with Art Deco—patterned tiles in soft primary colors. There were tidy beds of bright flowers.
It was impossible to believe that twenty-six miles away, across a cold stretch of deep water, lay the walled gray port of San Pedro, full of machines, and beyond its walls the war-blasted urban desolation of Los Angeles. If you looked closely at the horizon, you could see the alert gunships of the Island Guard making sure that Los Angeles stayed where it was, too.
Neither Joseph nor Lewis looked. They were too intent on the long, long walk to the Hotel Saint Catherine, in neighboring Descanso Bay. At the neck of the rocky peninsula that divided the two bays, Joseph stopped and stared up in awe at the Casino, which sat square on the middle of the peninsula, towering above them like a twelve-story cake.
“That wasn’t here in 1923,” he gasped. “I’d remember something that size.”
“No, indeed,” Lewis told him. “The guidebook says it was completed in 1929. No one has any idea why it’s called the Casino; all it contains is an early-twentieth-century cinema downstairs and the world-famous Avalon Ballroom upstairs. And there are the murals in the lobby arcade by our old friend Beckman. Remember him?”
“I was posted on the Humashup mission with Beckman,” said Joseph, staring fixedly at the murals, which featured an undersea garden motif. A narrow-faced mermaid looked askance at him, hair curling behind her like wet fire. “You know what this looks like? Right before we went to Humashup, Mendoza and I! The New Year’s ball. Remember the big tent that Houbert put up? It looked like this.”
“You’re right,” said Lewis. “Dear God. That was the last evening I ever spent with Mendoza. Is this an omen, do you suppose?”
Watch your mouth.
You know, I think I’m beginning to fail to give a damn what the Company hears or doesn’t hear anymore.
Lewis, for Christ’s sake, the Company owns this place. What’s wrong with you?
I don’t know, Joseph. I want to find her, that’s all. Lewis didn’t add, And him, though he might have. For months the images from his dream had been with him waking and sleeping. He had secretly begun to entertain the possibility that perhaps Edward hadn’t really died, and that even now in one of these old gardens the lovers might be embracing . . . All that beauty and strength, warm if unattainable.
He sighed and took the pull handle of his baggage again, and so did Joseph, and they set off along the graceful promenade into Descanso Bay like two old children trundling wagons after themselves.
The Hotel Saint Catherine rose at the end of the promenade in all her restored glory, early-twentieth-century Moderne at its stately best. She consisted of a white central building flanked by two white wings, embracing a green lawn that went down to the sea. The grounds were shaded by tropical trees; the little strip of shingle beach was clean and inviting. Even more inviting was the hotel bar on the beach, roofed with palm fronds in best South Seas tradition, where a white-jacketed attendant stood on duty shaking a silver canister vigorously. Joseph and Lewis groaned like sea lions and trundled straight for him.
It turned out he was only mixing soy-milk smoothies, but that was enough of an excuse to stop. They collapsed into chairs, gulping their drinks gratefully. You have to be pretty damned hot and thirsty to enjoy a soy-milk smoothie, but they were, so it was okay.
This might be a good time to tell me what we’re doing here, said Joseph, looking out at the square-rigged cruise ships that moved gracefully into Avalon Bay.
I made a discovery, Lewis said. In my research. I have a hunch—actually more than a hunch—that we might find something important on this island.
Such as?
Information about
what really happened to Edward.
Joseph controlled his temper carefully. We came all this way to find out something about Mendoza’s dead British secret agent boyfriend. Okay.
It’s more than that, Joseph. I can’t go into a lot of detail, but . . . you remember when I told you the British were hunting for something mysterious here? I’ve turned up a clue as to its whereabouts. Lewis’s knuckles were white as he held his glass.
Joseph reached out and took it away from him before it shattered. Aren’t you forgetting something? If there’s anything valuable hidden on this island, the Company will have taken possession of it long ago.
Not if it’s never been found. And I have reason to believe it hasn’t been.
Okay, Lewis, we’ll look for it, whatever it is. Do you have any idea where it is?
We need to go over to the windward side of the island. There are hiking trails, aren’t there? We could go hiking.
We could go hiking. Joseph swirled the starchy mess in the bottom of his glass and decided not to order another round. Lewis, how have you been since Eurobase One?
How have I been? Well, not exactly at my best, but the damage to my hand self-repaired perfectly. I’ve been a little jittery, I’ll admit.
Still having nightmares?
Yes, but now at least I know what’s causing them. No more buried memories.
No other signs of the little freaks?
None at all, thank God, though I still expect them at every turn.
They have to be long gone. Anybody with a technology that might put the Company’s operation at risk isn’t going to get to keep it. You know the way Dr. Zeus defends its interests. Nothing Joseph was saying seemed to be registering with Lewis, so he leaned forward and looked into Lewis’s eyes.
Lewis looked back at him. I don’t think the little men are out of the picture, Joseph.
All right. Look . . . if they ever come after you again, and you can’t get in touch with me? Try to contact the North African Section Head, Suleyman. Look up any chapter house of the Compassionates of Allah and leave him a message. It might not do you any good, but who knows? It’s always a good idea to jump out of the way of the rooks and the bishops when the game gets hot.
Are we nothing more than pawns, then?
That’s all we are, Lewis. Doesn’t mean we can’t have a nice vacation, though. Come on, let’s go check in. Joseph took up the handle of his carryall.
If you say so. Lewis followed Joseph up the long sloping lawn of the hotel. The wind rolled in over the sea, rustled in the palm fronds that shaded the little bar, went on up across the green lawn, and in through the terrace windows of the restaurant.
The interior of the hotel was all early-twentieth-century charm, spiced up by murals of a certain naughtiness celebrating the first golden era of bootlegging, among other things. The staff were all in twentieth-century costume, too, like a revival cast of The Cocoanuts: desk clerks in stiff wing collars and black tailcoats, bellboys in scarlet tunics and pillbox hats. They probably delighted the largely reenactor clientele. Joseph and Lewis, who really had been there during the 1920s, felt disoriented.
After Joseph hung up his shirts and secured his room, he came out to look for Lewis. Sending a faint inquiring signal, he was answered from the hotel’s first floor. He hurried down the grand staircase and saw Lewis at the edge of the lobby, peering into the hotel restaurant. He had a sudden mental image of Lewis being wafted out through the terrace door like a blown cobweb. The image quickened his pace as he crossed the lobby and caught Lewis by the arm.
“You want to eat? Let’s go into town. There’s supposed to be a great dinner buffet at the Metropole. Come on, I’ll call us a cab.”
Was it here? Were Edward and Mendoza in here? Lewis asked.
Hell, how should I remember? Anyway it’s all wrong. The colors are wrong. And it was early afternoon. That bar’s in the wrong place, too. The restorers must have been working from a picture off a reversed negative, it’s all mirror image—
You must have been right over there. And they must have been sitting at that table over there, by the terrace doors, to slip away so quickly. Lewis’s eyes were haunted, intense with what he was seeing. Joseph scowled, trying not to look into the room.
Will you come on? I’m starving, and I don’t want to eat here.
Why? Lewis turned to him. You’re afraid you’ll see them again, aren’t you?
No. But it gives me the creeps, Lewis. Let’s go, please.
Lewis sighed and allowed Joseph to drag him away.
They floated back to town in one of the Model A agcars, piloted by a costumed driver who was doing his best to speak the American of the period, faithfully reproduced from old films.
“Say! Are you guys having a swell time?”
“Yes, thank you,” Lewis said.
“Gee, that’s swell.” The driver peered at them in the mirror. “Come over here for relaxation, huh? I know a lot of places that deliver the goods, but plenty, if you know what I mean.”
“Actually, we were thinking of hiking,” Lewis said. “Are there many hiking trails over here?”
“I’ll say. Why, people hike up to the old Wrigley place all the time, and what a view, folks, what a view! And how!”
Do I sound like that? Joseph asked, gritting his teeth in silent mortification.
Of course not, Lewis assured him. Not all the time, at least. “Yes, I bet that’s a great view. What about the interior, though? Are there any trails that go over to the windward side of the island?”
“Say, what would you want to go there for? That ain’t no fun, chum, there’s nothing over there but what belongs to the preservancy. No booze, no dames, and no trespassing.” The cabbie shook his head emphatically as he pulled up to the taxi island in front of the Metro-pole Hotel. “You want a hot tip? Try the old Pilgrim Club up the street. Plenty of action for a couple of guys like you, believe me. But if you run out of steam, just give me a call.” He half turned and presented them with a printed card, grinning. “Ask for Johnny.”
“Swell,” muttered Joseph, tipping him.
The dinner buffet at the Metropole was swell indeed. It seemed that under Catalina’s unique interpretation of vegan laws, seafood qualified as a vegetable. Of course, nothing actually looked like what it was—no staring fish eyes or other recognizable parts, that would have been too much for twenty-third-century sensibilities; everything had been chopped/flaked/formed into nice anonymous shapes and baked or steamed healthily—but there was no mistaking it for soy protein.
Having dined well, Joseph and Lewis opted to forgo the delights of the Pilgrim Club and strolled instead along Crescent Avenue, looking at the shops. This year there were a lot of bright silk garments on display, as there was currently a movement to ban silk on behalf of the silkworms and nobody knew how long supplies would last. In one window was a peach-colored silk dress. Lewis paused before it a long moment, long enough for Joseph to start clearing his throat and shuffling his feet.
It was growing dusk, the blue hour when solid things take on a certain transparency and phantoms become palpable. The olive trees on the promenade began to sparkle with little shifting lights. The shop interior was only half lit, and the reflection of the figures passing in the street created the illusion of busy throngs inside the window, a whole world silent on the other side of the glass. Suddenly there was a face above the classic neckline of the peach silk dress, an enigmatic smile, and Lewis muttered an exclamation and turned swiftly.
You thought you saw her? Joseph asked. Lewis, she isn’t here.
You can’t know that.
Why would the Company assign anybody to this place? There’s nothing to save here. It’s all reconstructions of other things, other times.
Only the town. The interior is all forests. Look, look up here. Lewis hurried to the next building, the brightly lit visitors’ center. The walls were faced with interactive exhibits displaying the island’s natural history, its unique endemic flora and f
auna. In the middle of the room, however, was a dais, and rising from it was a perfect model of the island in holo, just as it would look seen from the air on a bright summer day at noon.
Lewis paused on his way to the reforestation exhibit, struck by the perfection of the model. He walked around it slowly.
“Wow,” Joseph said. “Godzilla’s-eye view, huh?” He looked down at the little square grid of toy houses, the toy canister of the Casino on its platform of rock.
Lewis did not reply. He had stopped at the southern windward face of the island. Here it dropped away abruptly in high steep cliffs above the sea, a palisaded wall of rock, unassailable from below. There were caves visible. It was directly behind Avalon, perhaps eleven kilometers away in a straight line.
Joseph, I think I’ve found what I’m looking for.
That’d be nice. Joseph walked around to his vantage point. He frowned. Nasty cliffs. We don’t have to climb those, do we?
I don’t think so. But see the caves above them? We need to investigate there.
I see. And I forgot to pack hiking boots.
Joseph, we have to look!
Okay, we’ll look. Joseph peered down at a tiny incongruity in the green wilderness, a stone tower and sweeping battlements embracing a garden. It was about midway between the town and the palisades. “Hey, check this out. This is supposed to be the Wrigley Monument, Library, and Botanical Garden. You want to go see this library tomorrow? It’s supposed to be the big collection. Most of what they salvaged from the Library of Congress wound up here.”
“Great idea,” Lewis said, coming around the holo to see. “Oh, yes, we must visit that. I wonder if there’s an admission fee?” It’s right on the way. We can scout out the road tomorrow.
Joseph and Lewis walked out again into the evening and strolled back to the Hotel Saint Catherine. It was warm, with a sky full of stars now that the last glow of sunset had faded, and from every terrace and balcony came music, and the determined laughter of mortals enjoying lost pleasures. As they passed the old Encanto, a man came reeling drunkenly out into the street toward them, the very image of a South Seas derelict in stained tropical whites and a battered hat. They braced themselves as he accosted them; but he turned out to be merely an actor re-creating Charles Laughton’s performance in The Beachcomber. They tipped him, and he went away.
