The Gilded Age, A Time Travel

The Gilded Age

A Time Travel

Lisa Mason

This is an adaptation of The Golden Nineties, a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2017 by Lisa Mason.

Cover and colophon copyright 2017 by Tom Robinson.

All rights reserved.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bast Books Ebook Edition published September 2011.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Thank you for your readership! Visit the author at her Official Web Site for her books, ebooks, screenplays, stories, interviews, blogs, cute pet pictures, and more. Enjoy!

Table of Contents

Praise for Books by Lisa Mason

Tenets of the Grandmother Principle

Out in Frisco

The Gilded Age

About Lisa Mason

Books by Lisa Mason

Praise for Books by Lisa Mason

The Gilded Age

A New York Times Notable Book

A New York Public Library Recommended Book

A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.

—The New York Times Book Review

Should both leave the reader wanting more and solidify Mason’s position as one of the most interesting writers in science fiction.

—Publishers Weekly

Rollicking. . .Dazzling. . .Mason’s characters are just as endearing as her world.

—Locus Magazine

Graceful prose. . . A complex and satisfying plot.

—Library Journal

Summer of Love

A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year

A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist

Remarkable. . . .a whole array of beautifully portrayed characters along the spectrum from outright heroism to villainy . . . the intellect on display within these psychedelically packaged pages is clear-sighted, witty, and wise.

—Locus Magazine

A fine novel packed with vivid detail, colorful characters, and genuine insight.

—The Washington Post Book World

Captures the moment perfectly and offers a tantalizing glimpse of its wonderful and terrible consequences.

—The San Francisco Chronicle

Brilliantly crafted. . . .An engrossing tale spun round a very clever concept.

—Katharine Kerr, author of Days of Air and Darkness

"Just imagine The Terminator in love beads, set in the Haight-Ashbury ‘hood of 1967."

—Entertainment Weekly

Mason has an astonishing gift. Her characters almost walk off the page. And the story is as significant as anyone could wish. This book will surely be on the prize ballots.

—Analog

A priority purchase.

—Library Journal

One Day in the Life of Alexa

Incorporates lively prose, past/present time jumps, and the consequences of longevity technology. An absorbing read with an appealing narrator and subtly powerful emotional rhythms.

—Goodreads

Five Stars! Like all the truly great scifi writers, what [Lisa Mason] really writes about is you and me and today and what is really important in life. . . . I enjoyed every word.

—Reader Review

Arachne and Cyberweb

Locus Magazine Hardcover Bestsellers

Powerful . . . Entertaining . . . Imaginative.

—People Magazine

In humanity’s daring to enter the cybernetic heaven (and hell) of telespace, Lisa Mason reveals the lineaments of all that is tragic and transcendent in our evolution. Once the journey into this vivid and terrifying future has begun, there is no returning until the infinite has been faced and the last word read.

—David Zindell, Author of Neverness

Cybernetics, robotics, the aftermath of San Francisco’s Big Quake II, urban tribalism—Lisa Mason combines them all with such deftness and grace, they form a living world. Mason spins an entertaining tale . . . She allows Carly’s robotic allies a measure of personality and sophistication beyond the stock role of a chirping R2D2 or a blandly sinister Hal . . . Her characters and their world will stay with you long after you’ve finished this fine book.

—Locus, The Trade Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Lisa Mason stakes out, within the cyberpunk sub-genre, a territory all her own.

—The San Francisco Chronicle

Mason’s endearing characters and their absorbing adventures will hook even the most jaded SF fan.

—Booklist

Arachne is an impressive debut by a writer gifted with inventiveness, wit, and insight. The characters face choices well worth reading about. This is cyberpunk with a heart.

—Nancy Kress, Author of Brain Rose

There is a refreshing amount of energy associated with Lisa Mason’s writing. The good old values are there: fun, excitement, drama—but served up with new and original twists. Lisa Mason is definitely a writer to watch—and to read.

—Paul Preuss, Author of Core

Strange Ladies: 7 Stories

Offers everything you could possibly want, from more traditional science fiction and fantasy tropes to thought-provoking explorations of gender issues and pleasing postmodern humor…This is a must-read collection.

—The San Francisco Review of Books

Lisa Mason might just be the female Philip K. Dick. Like Dick, Mason's stories are far more than just sci-fi tales, they are brimming with insight into human consciousness and the social condition….a sci-fi collection of excellent quality….you won't want to miss it.

—The Book Brothers Review Blog

Fantastic book of short stories….Recommended.

—Reader Review

"I’m quite impressed, not only by the writing, which gleams and sparkles, but also by [Lisa Mason’s] versatility . . . Mason is a wordsmith . . . her modern take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a hilarious gem! [This collection] sparkles, whirls, and fizzes. Mason is clearly a writer to follow!"

—Amazing Stories

Celestial Girl (A Lily Modjeska Mystery)

Passionate Historical Romantic Suspense

5 Stars I really enjoyed the story and would love to read a sequel! I enjoy living in the 21st century, but this book made me want to visit the Victorian era. The characters were brought to life, a delight to read about. The tasteful sex scenes were very racy….Good Job!

—Reader Review

The Garden of Abracadabra

So refreshing! This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.

—Goodreads

"Fun and enjoyable urban fantasy

This is a very entertaining novel—sort of a down-to-earth Harry Potter with a modern adult woman in the lead. Even as Abby has to deal with mundane concerns like college and running the apartment complex she works at, she is surrounded by supernatural elements and mysteries that she is more than capable of taking on. Although this book is just the first in a series, it ties up the first episode while still leaving some story threads for upcoming books. I'm looking forward to finding out more.

—Reader Review

I love the writing style and am hungry for more!

—Goodreads

Tenets of the Grandmother Principle

[Developed for tachyportation projects approved by

the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications]

Tenet One: You cannot kill any of your lineal ancestors prior to his or her historical death.

Tenet Two: You cannot prevent the death of any of your lineal ancestors.

Tenet Three: You cannot affect any person in the past, including aiding, abetting, coercing, deceiving, deterring, killing, or saving him or her (except as authorized by the project directors).

Tenet Four: You cannot affect the world in the past.

Tenet Five: You cannot reveal your identity as a time traveler to any person in the past, including yourself.

Tenet Six: You cannot reveal the future of any person in the past, including yourself.

Tenet Seven: You cannot apply modern technologies to past events or people, except when the result conforms to the Archives and, in that case, you cannot leave evidence of modern technologies in the past.

The CTL Peril: You are capable of dying in the past, including your personal past. If this occurs, the project is transformed from an Open Time Loop (OTL) to a Closed Time Loop (CTL).

You cannot escape a CTL.

Out In Frisco

There is lots of time to burn

Out in Frisco;

Native customs you will learn

Out in Frisco;

In the famous French cafés,

With their naughty little ways,

That’s the place where Cupid plays,

Out in Frisco.

* * *

The red light is contagious

Out in Frisco;

The ladies’ conduct is outrageous

Out in Frisco;

When the bloodred native wine,

Mixes up the clinging vine,

She will call you Baby Mine,

Out in Frisco.

* * *

When you finally cash it in

Out in Frisco;

And you end this life of sin

Out in Frisco;

They will gently toll a bell,

Plant your carcass in a dell,

There’s no need to go to hell,

You’re in Frisco.

* * *

Anonymous

Circa 1895

The Gilded Age

July 4, 1895

Independence Day

1

Fortune Cookies at the Japanese Tea Garden

Out of a tense and arid darkness she steps, her skirts sweeping across the macadam. Her button boot wobbles on the bridge over the brook in the Japanese Tea Garden. Steady, the technician whispers. The shuttle embraces the ancient bridge in a half-moon of silver lattices. The air is susurrous, tinged with menthol, cold. The shuttle hums. High overhead, the dome ripples in a fitful gust. Zhu Wong listens for final instructions. None come. Dread quickens her pulse. She closes her eyes and waits for the moment it takes to cross over.

And then it’s happening—the Event sweeps her across six centuries.

Odd staccato sounds pop in her ears. The Event transforms her into pure energy, suspends her in nothingness, flings her back into her own flesh and blood. And she stands, unsteadily, her button boot poised on the bridge over the brook in the Japanese Tea Garden. A brand-new bridge. The scent of fresh-cut wood fills her senses.

Muse? she whispers to the monitor. Fear stains her tongue. Her skin feels fragile. Her heart batters her ribcage. Her lungs clench. Now she feels the Event just like they said she would. Again, Muse?

I’m here, Z. Wong, the monitor whispers. Muse nestles behind Zhu’s left ear between scalp and skull. We’re here. Muse automatically checks for points of reference. Alphanumerics dance behind her eyelids. Coordinates are confirmed. We’re fine.

But she’s not fine. Tension moves to Zhu’s sinuses, and a soft ache starts to throb.

She opens her eyes. Dappled sunlight shocks her. An azure sky dazzles. Birds cheer, foliage rustles. Sights seem magnified, sounds amplified as if she’s returned from the dead. The herbal scent of eucalyptus infused with a floral perfume nearly overwhelms her. The tension, the ache turn into full-blown congestion. She sneezes once. Sneezes twice. Her eyes spurt tears.

Bang, bang, bang! Odd staccato sounds? Earsplitting blasts, the stink of gunpowder!

Zhu drops to her knees, evasive action instinctive at the sound, at the stink of gunfire. Her breath rasps in her throat. Her fingers twitch, reaching for the handgun she’d kept strapped beneath her right arm for so many years it was like another limb. Its absence, an amputation.

She fights panic. Damn! No gun, no decent cover. What a sitting duck, perched on the bridge. She blots her eyes on her sleeve, tries to rise. Her feet tangle with the skirts. She stumbles, moving as if hobbled. The ankle-length layers of silk and cotton cushion her knees against abrasion, but not impact. Pain shoots through her kneecaps. There will be bruises.

Stay calm, Z. Wong, Muse whispers. The loud abrupt sounds suggest combustible explosives, not projectiles aimed at you.

What?

It’s the Fourth of July. Independence Day, United States of America.

Zhu crouches, uncomprehending.

"Those are fireworks. San Franciscans always celebrated the Fourth of July in Golden Gate Park. The park was public. Correction. The park is public."

Independence Day. Zhu has never celebrated America’s Independence Day. She’d never been to America at all until she was conscripted for the Gilded Age Project.

This is long before cosmicist interests acquired the parkland and installed the dome. Muse’s whisper calms her. Confirmation coordinates match up like winning lottery numbers.

She glances up, squinting. How well she recalls the milky PermaPlast dome rippling overhead as she stepped in the tachyonic shuttle. How wonderful to see the sky with no dome!

But the dome is old, too, isn’t it, Muse?

In your Now? Oh, yes. The dome has been in place since the 2100s when the stratosphere had thinned so dangerously that undomed lands were ruined by excessive radiation. Z. Wong, Muse says patiently. This is 1895.

1895. Zhu bows her head, awestruck. It’s true. They did it. She has t-ported six hundred years in the past.

Please, Z. Wong, Muse says. You haven’t much time before the rendezvous. Get up. Walk around, stretch your legs.

Zhu frees her skirts, managing not to rip the delicate fabric. How did women ever tolerate such constrictive clothing? Lurching to her feet, she sneezes violently again. Muse, what’s the matter with my sinuses?

Unknown. An allergic response.

I’m not allergic to anything.

Pollen?

No, never.

Muse pauses. Perhaps a response aggravated by the Event. I will analyze. In the meantime, you’ve got a handkerchief. Helpful Muse is becoming impatient. Please, you have less time.

Zhu finds the square of cotton in her leather feedbag purse. Her hands shake. She can’t get over the impression someone was shooting at her as she stepped out of the tachyonic shuttle. She looks around, alert and wary.

The shuttle has been installed at the historic location they call the Japanese Tea Garden in New Golden Gate Preserve. Zhu smiles, secretly glad the shuttle has vanished. She never liked the photon guns aimed like assault weapons. The pretty calcite crystals that did unpretty things. The banks of blinking microbots slaved to vast offsite servers. There was the chronometer, the savage hook-like heads of the imploders. The whole thing militaristic, foreboding.

And the Event?

Thanks to a fiendishly clever technology invented by the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications, the Event instantaneously transformed the matter of her body into pure energy and transmitted that energy faster than the speed of light.

Flinging her from July 4, 2495 to July 4, 1895.

Did the Event actually work? Oh, yeah. She honks into the handkerchief. The hard curving stays of her corset—slender steel strips covered in black satin—dig into her ribs. Quickly, before anyone notices, she stoops and flips up her skirts, examining her knees. No blood leaks through the thick black cotton stockings. Excellent. She starts smoothing back the slip, the skirt, the overskirt, the traveling cloak, all in shades of pale dove gray.

I beg your pardon, miss, may I assist you?

Zhu glances up.

A young man stands, startled, wringing his large mottled hands and staring open-mouthed at her calves. His bright blond muttonchops and clean-shaven chin shape his face into sort of a peculiar square. He’s combed his yellow hair back over his scalp, lets it fall to the shoulders of his black frock coat. A scarlet polka-dot tie throttles his starched wing collar. He’s tilted his porkpie hat at a rakish angle, carelessly unbuttoned his vest in the afternoon heat. Quite the dandy with his bawdy grin and stink of gin. Has his way with the ladies, no doubt.

But his concerned expression closes up like a slamming door when he glimpses Zhu’s pale golden complexion, her black hair and wide cheekbones. Her slanting eyes, the irises gene-tweaked green.

Thank you, sir. Yes, you may. She extends her hand for him to assist her off the bridge. Gray lace mitts cover her palms, wrists, and forearms, leaving her fingertips bare.

He doesn’t take her hand. No, he frowns, turns without another word, and strides away. He glances at her over his shoulder with eyes of ice.

Too bad, Muse, Zhu says to the monitor. She pulls the veil down from the brim of her Newport hat and ties it beneath her chin, shielding her face from the sun. From other prejudiced eyes. I guess he didn’t want to assist a Chinese lady.

You’re not a lady, Z. Wong. The monitor’s tone as cold as the young man’s glance. You’re a fallen woman.

* * *

A fallen woman. She certainly was.

It was June, 2495 when her lawyer barged into the central women’s prison facility at Beijing and roused her out of an exhausted sleep.

A deal? Zhu said warily. What kind of a deal?

I don’t have all the details, but they’re saying they’ll reduce the charges from murder to manslaughter, the lawyer said and shoved a petition in her face. If you do what they want.

"Attempted murder, Zhu reminded her. That would make it attempted manslaughter."

Whatever.

I didn’t mean to do it. She was too tired to read the tiny print. And he’s not dead yet. At least, no one’s told me so. She rubbed her eyes. What do they want?

The lawyer was court-appointed, since Zhu had no money. One of those bleary-eyed, pasty-faced public defenders perennially overworked and underpaid. A heart attack waiting to happen at ninety-three years old with an inflamed neckjack beneath her ragged crew cut. Theoretically the people had equal access to due process, but it didn’t happen much in Socialist-Confucianist China. The lawyer glared at Zhu, distaste curving her mouth.

Attempted murder. The charge would be upgraded to murder if her victim died. Sick at heart, Zhu asked the guards every day after her arrest, Is he alive? No answer. "Tell me! Is he alive or dead?"

It was just plain crazy. It was never supposed to have happened this way. As she lay in the prison cell, sick with forced detox after they took her black patch away, waiting to be charged with attempted murder, she had trouble believing the campaign could have gone so wrong. How could she have done such a thing? How could they? The atrocities. The Night of Broken Blossoms. She was a Daughter of Compassion, dedicated to the Cause. The Daughters of Compassion fought for the future. They weren’t murderers. She wasn’t a murderer.

Or was she?

She had trouble remembering exactly what had happened that night. The door to the room, for instance. Had it opened to the left or to the right? Had there been one sentry or two? Sometimes she remembered a crowd in the room. Other times, only a few people. When had she pulled the handgun from beneath her right arm? And the astonished look on the sentry’s face. Because Zhu had a gun or because she was left-handed?

Memories of that night would flash through her mind, vivid and horrifying. Abruptly grow dim and rearrange themselves. On the morning when the lawyer barged in with the plea deal, Zhu wondered if she was going insane.

What do they want? the lawyer said. Listen up, Wong. They want to send you on a tachyportation.

"A what?"

Yeah. The lawyer rolled her eyes.

They never shut off the lights in the women’s prison. Zhu felt sore all over, dizzy from the interrogation, nauseated and addle-brained with withdrawal from the black patch. Tachyportation? She rolled the unfamiliar word around in her mouth like a spicy poisoned candy.

Somebody there will explain, the lawyer said, taking out a neurobic, popping the bead open, and snorting the fumes. Sighed with relief from the all-purpose anodyne. They’ll ship you to California. San Francisco. Place called the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications. The LISA techs will tell you all about it. Sign here.

Hey, I don’t know, Zhu said.

What do you mean, you don’t know?

I can’t agree to something before I know what’s involved. Zhu had heard strange stories, jacking prisoners into the computer-constructed reality known as telespace for strange experiments. Radical editing, brainwaving, testing new neural apps. Political prisoners like her were especially vulnerable. I’ve got my rights.

Your rights. Be grateful they came to me with this deal. The lawyer flicked the empty neurobic onto the floor. Do you have any idea how bad you and your comrades make the Cause look? She said the Cause in capital letters. Frankly, I don’t give a damn if they jack you into a rehab program and make you compute actuarial margins for twenty years.

Thank you, counselor.

Any idea at all?

Yeah, actually I do, she said, burning with guilt and shame. The lawyer didn’t need to remind her. It was the last thing in the world the Daughters of Compassion wanted to do—harm the Cause. Zhu had dedicated her life to the Cause. It was crazy. Crazy.

But, uh, what’s a tachyportation? she insisted.

Way I understand it, they want to send you six hundred years into the past. The lawyer coughed.

Zhu gaped. "You mean send me . . . physically?"

"Physically. The LISA techs will explain. It is strange, I admit, since the institute doesn’t conduct t-port projects anymore. Too dangerous. You can ask the techs about that, too. I remember, the lawyer muses, when they shut the shuttles down and discontinued t-ports. All very hush-hush. Must have been a couple years after you were born."

"Six hundred . . . years?"

A prickle of excitement, of wonder and anticipation pierced her foggy exhaustion. Why was a t-port dangerous? What was she supposed to do there, six hundred years in the past? A thousand questions tumbled through her mind. A strange sensation coursed through her, and suddenly this conversation seemed familiar. As if she’d heard it before, just exactly like this. As if she’d always sat here, on this seat of shame, and the pasty-faced lawyer had always sneered at her as she was sneering today.

What was that about? Zhu shook her head, trying to clear her mind. A premonition?

Why me? she finally managed to ask.

Dunno, the lawyer admitted, after what you’ve done. But you’re the one they want. I say take the deal. They’re ready to go. They call it The Gilded Age Project.

* * *

Zhu hikes out of the Japanese Tea Garden through a red moon-gate and stands before the shallow bowl of Concert Valley. She’s never seen such a lush landscape. Towering palm trees, aloe veras as high as her waist, glossy dark pines, flowers blooming pink and purple and gold. Everything so fresh and new! After the cracked old domes of Changchi, the barren concrete and unforgiving millet fields where she’s spent her whole life, Zhu marvels at Golden Gate Park, 1895. A wonderland!

Alphanumerics flicker in her peripheral vision. Muse downloads a file from the Archives stored in its memory. The California Midwinter International Exposition was held here in 1894. This is what’s left. Over two million people attended the fair.

Two million? Zhu is cautious after the monitor’s cool rebuke. Is that a lot?

"Oh, yes. The population of San Francisco was—I mean is—is three hundred thousand souls. Biggest city on the West coast. By our standards, a mere neighborhood, right, Z. Wong?"

Zhu has no pat answer for the monitor’s flippant question. The number of people inhabiting any limited space is the biggest, thorniest problem facing her future.

Muse is amiable again, an eager tour guide in the wake of her silence. The two million came from all over the country by train on the transcontinental railroad completed in the 1870s, transforming the Wild West into a desirable destination. The park is the result of John McLaren’s horticultural hand. Nothing but sand dunes here twenty years ago. McLaren discovered that Scotch sea-bent grass holds to the sand in ocean winds long enough to establish a subsoil in which other plants can thrive. Leave it to a Scot. Look lively, Z. Wong. Perhaps we’ll see Boss Gardener.

Oh! Zhu looks around. Could the legendary John McLaren stroll right past her?

The cosmicist owners of New Golden Gate Preserve revere McLaren. His love of ecosystem. His understanding of Nature. His dedication. A smug tone in Muse’s whisper.

How lovely for the cosmicists, Zhu says. "Only the cosmicists and their friends can enjoy this place in my time. Is it right that a public place as beautiful as this has been privatized and withheld from the people?"

The people, Muse says. All twelve billion?

Zhu ventures down a walkway leading into Concert Valley. I thought the cosmicists believe in equal rights according to True Value. At least, that’s the line handed to me at the Luxon Institute of Superluminal Applications.

Equal rights? Muse chuckles. The cosmicists believe in equal sacrifice to the Great Good. Human interests don’t always take precedence over nonhuman interests. The hyperindustrial era and the brown ages taught us that lesson only too painfully. The cosmicists believe in privatizing natural resources when ‘the people’ can’t or won’t properly care for them.

I see, Zhu says. The cosmicists know better?

Well, yes. The brown ages were long before your time, Z. Wong. You have no notion of the devastation. Once the dome went up, no one was permitted into New Golden Gate Preserve. If it makes you feel any better, the cosmicists don’t spend time there, either. Nature has the place all to herself.

The cosmicists. Guess who programmed Muse? Zhu sneezes again, violently, tears welling in her eyes.

That barnyard smell is from horse manure gathered by the street sweepers downtown, Muse says wryly. Boss Gardener has the stuff spread all over the grounds. Keeps the lawns so green.

Boxwood and hydrangea border the walkway she strolls down. The De Young Art Museum stands to her left, the impression of Egyptian antiquity reinforced by two magnificent concrete sphinxes. In fact, the structure and its statuary were cobbled together in the months before the fair. There, the Temple of Music, a sandstone arch in the style of the Italian Renaissance, flanked by Corinthian columns. The medieval castle with unlikely Arabian arabesques is the Administration Building. At the center of the valley stands the Electric Tower, a smaller version of the Eiffel, adorned with international flags. The Bella Vista Café perches on the first mezzanine and a globe crowns the tower’s peak. A life-sized papier-mâché California brown bear balances on the globe like a circus performer, the Bear Flag clutched in its paws. The tower is a tribute to the newfangled energy source and Mr. Edison’s electric light bulb.

Zhu won’t see many electric light bulbs during her t-port. In 1895, San Francisco is mostly moody gas-lit.

She circles back. Tightrope walkers have strung a wire between two trees in front of the Temple of Music, cavort with parasols and chairs. A fellow with a bushy beard and a shiny top hat cracks his whip over a ring of pedestals as two lively hounds leap about, while a forlorn baboon in a yellow satin jacket deigns to perform a wobbly handstand.

A crowd promenades alongside Zhu in Concert Valley. The somber suits of the gentlemen are relieved by the pale pastel colors of the ladies’ sweeping dresses. Despite the heat, everyone wears layer upon layer of clothing, from buttoned-up collars to buttoned-down boots. And hats—everyone wears a hat, even the children. The ladies wear veils and carry parasols, the scalloped edges drooping with lace or velvet fringe.

Zhu gulps. Her daily dress in Changchi? Jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. A sweat-stained padded jacket in winter. These people would think her half-naked. Like most post-domers, she’s always worn Block, the microderm protecting her skin from solar radiation. Her complexion, though golden, is paler than that of these veiled ladies.

Everyone so elegant in their elaborate formal clothes. Zhu sighs, wistful and resentful at the same time.

Yet there. Zhu spies a frail woman in pale blue silk. The veil on her flowered hat barely conceals her battered eye. The pale blue ribbon tied around her chin does not at all conceal the bruise discoloring half her jaw. Her burly husband towers over her, quick anger in his narrow eyes.

And there. A gust blows off a woman’s broad-brimmed hat. Straps at her chin, ears, and forehead hold a translucent face glove. Her eyes, nostrils, and mouth show through the stitched openings. In the sunlight, Zhu sees serious acne beneath the face glove’s gauzy fabric. The woman retrieves her hat, furiously pins it back on.

There, too, a girl so thin, she’s nothing but satin skin over bones. She shuffles behind her sisters, dark circles surrounding her eyes. She delicately coughs, and blood blooms in the handkerchief her mother impatiently thrusts into her fragile hands. Zhu recoils, covers her nose and mouth. Tuberculosis. Very, very contagious.

Outta sight, you friggin’ hoodlum! shouts a portly man in a charcoal cutaway coat as he grapples with a fellow in a bowler and a three-piece suit. Sweat pours down their flushed faces, staining the high starched collars strangling their thick necks.

I’ll take me knuckledusters to ye, the bowler shouts.

Reek of whiskey. The cutaway passes a silver flask to the bowler, who swigs from it and slams the flask back into the cutaway’s chest. Are they roughhousing or about to commence fisticuffs? Their violent conviviality makes her heart race. Men like this go down to Chinatown, set a house on fire just to see the flames. Men like this chase a Chink, string him up from a lamppost just to see him swing.

What an Age. The Gilded Age.

My calculations indicate your rendezvous is fast approaching, Muse reminds her, a little too loudly.

A woman turns and peers at her. Zhu adjusts her veil. That’s all she needs—a disembodied voice hovering over her, and she answering. Muse is perfectly capable of communicating in subaudio so others can’t overhear. Why is the monitor speaking in projection mode? She’ll wind up in Napa Asylum for the Insane if she’s not careful.

The rendezvous! Time to go!

Zhu gathers up her skirts, sprints back to the Japanese Tea Garden. She finds the elegant redwood pagoda, takes a place in the queue. A Japanese woman in a kimono and clogs bows and smiles. Zhu returns the bow. The Japanese woman pours tea, sets the cup on a red lacquered tray.

Only a thousand Japanese live in San Francisco, Muse whispers. The staff is part of the attraction.

An exuberant Japanese fellow in a blue and white kimono and scarlet headband bustles about behind the counter. I am Mr. Makota, dearie. You try my cookie? He proffers the treat, a wafer folded over like a half shell, fragrant with vanilla. He breaks the cookie open, extracts a slip of paper from the crumbs.

Zhu takes the slip and reads:

THERE IS A PROSPECT OF

A THRILLING TIME AHEAD FOR YOU

The concessionaire laughs at her startled expression. You like my fortune cookie, dearie? I make them for the Fair, number one first, but, oh my! how the Chinese copy me. Every Chinese restaurant in town make fortune cookie. But I am first! He pops a piece of cookie in his mouth. You try? Bake fresh today.

Thank you, Mr. Makota, Zhu says, taking her tea and fortune cookie to a little table at the back of the pagoda. She unties her veil from beneath her chin, discreetly lifts the cup beneath the netted fabric, and sips. Hot sweet tea soothes her throat, calms her sinuses. The swirling, tenuous feeling—what the techs warned her about, a reaction called tachyonic lag—fades away. She smiles, encouraged, breaks apart the cookie, and takes the paper slip.

YOU WILL ALWAYS BE SURROUNDED

BY LOVING FRIENDS

She sees her. The girl she’s supposed to meet.

Crouching behind the table, huddled next to the wall. So silent and still, a bundle of shadows barely breathing, that Zhu hadn’t notice her. A furtive motion, and a skinny little hand darts toward Zhu’s feedbag purse on the floor.

Zhu is quicker. She seizes the girl by her wrist, pulls her out from under the table. The girl is strong, much bigger and older than Zhu expected.

Oy ching, ching, syau-jye! the girl squeals.

Please, please, yourself, miss, Zhu says sternly. She deposits her captive on the opposite chair. Pa liao. Enough of this, settle down. Trying to steal my purse?

I not steal purse, the girl says with haughty authority. Her sulky face is so filmed with grime, Zhu can’t tell if she’s pretty. Her thick black hair unravels from its queue. She wears an apple-green embroidered silk tunic held together with gold satin frogs and green silk trousers. When she lowers her arms to her sides, the sleeves droop below her fingertips, so she looks as if she has no hands. Too bad she doesn’t lower her arms for long because her fingernails are shredded, her knuckles sprinkled with sores. Her straw sandals are threaded with more green silk. Her big bare feet have knobby, filthy toes.

Just the girl Zhu is looking for.

"I not steal purse from fahn quai," she says with a toss of her head.

Fahn quai? Zhu says. You think I’m a white devil? She flings the veil up. Look. Not a white devil.

The girl’s brown eyes widen. Zhu has the same golden skin, the same wide cheekbones as the girl. But the irises in Zhu’s slanting eyes are a brilliant gene-tweaked green.

"Oy. Perplexity clouds her face. Jade Eyes."

I’m Zhu. She smiles at the girl’s wonder. But you may call me Jade Eyes.

"Oy, Jade Eyes, the girl pleads. I not thief. This true. You must believe! From some hidden pocket in her tunic, she takes out a small carved rosewood box, sets it on the table. I have jewels. My mama give me for dowry."

Let me see. Zhu waits impatiently as the girl fumbles with the latch.

The Archivists were right. The Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications was right. Amazing! And after all that random data, after all these centuries. The Archivists didn’t know much about Chinese women in fin de siècle America. The Archivists had traced this girl—or a girl like her. An anonymous Chinese girl in the Japanese Tea Garden on the Fourth of July, 1895.

Excitement rises in Zhu’s throat. The Archivists said she would have jewelry. They said she would have the aurelia.

The Archivists said the aurelia holds the key to the Gilded Age Project. If only Zhu can get her hands on the aurelia, everything—the past and the future—will turn out all right.

The girl lifts the rosewood lid, and Zhu eagerly peers in. There are three bracelets of jade, one of ivory. A pair of filigreed gold earrings. A gold ring with a jade cabochon.

Zhu frowns, stirring the pieces, turning them over. This is it? This is all you’ve got?

All I got? Mama give! This my dowry! The girl’s eyes flash. This jade, this gold.

For the second time since she stepped across the bridge over the brook in the Japanese Tea Garden, Zhu feels a painful jolt of fear.

The girl doesn’t have the aurelia.

* * *

The aurelia, the aurelia. All this fuss over a trifle, a bauble, a piece of decadent jewelry. Why? Did the success of a complex application of arcane high technology really turn on a piece of old gold? Even after the official explanation, Zhu had always been troubled by the aurelia.

Not that she was happy with most of what happened after the lawyer sprang her loose from the women’s prison facility and sent her in restraints with two copbots on a transcontinental EM-Trans to San Francisco.

I’m just a country gal, she joked as the copbots hustled her down high-speed escalators to the underground tubes. The copbots didn’t answer. Either someone took out their voice chips or issued a gag order. Zhu had heard of the EM-Trans, but she’d never seen or ridden on one. The mag-lev train looked like a gigantic black bullet, each end a streamlined wedge. The vehicle levitated over a narrow ribbon of track by the force of electro-magnetism The EM-Trans reached speeds of over a thousand miles an hour in tubes cut through the global curvature. The ride lasted the morning, the trek up to the surface another hour.

And—San Francisco!

Zhu had heard that Hong Kong surpasses San Francisco in management of the coastal encroachment that threatened seaside cities two hundred years ago. That Tokyo surpasses San Francisco in modernity. New York City in sheer upward thrust.

But Zhu had never seen Hong Kong or Tokyo or New York City. She glimpsed San Francisco’s entertainment districts glittering along the offshore dikes, the containment canals, the iceberg barriers, the gardens planted over ancient traffic corridors, the magnificent cosmicist dome over New Golden Gate Preserve, the central megalopolis, the private domed estates of the wealthy, the spectacular skyscrapers literally touching the clouds.

Wonderful! And intimidating.

How isolated Zhu had been her whole life. How provincial. The countryside around Changchi where she and the Daughters of Compassion had focused their campaign was burdened with crumbling concrete, polluting ground traffic, the daily detritus of way too many people. But San Francisco, this megalopolis of five million, had managed to hide away everything ugly. China was prostrate, sprawling and horizontal, only too plain to see. San Francisco was dizzyingly vertical, its gleaming surfaces concealing modern arcana.

If San Francisco was intimidating, the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications was formidable. Once topside, the copbots escorted her to the waterfront. From there she boarded a catamaran that sped her to a silver monolith rising up out of the north bay waters. Zhu had heard about hydroplexes—marine-based skyscrapers modeled on the ancient oil drilling platforms that had bobbed offshore in the days when the technopolistic plutocracy held a stranglehold on a world economy fueled by petroleum. South Honshu was mostly hydroplexes. South Cork, too.

Zhu had heard about them. She stepped into a hydroplex, feeling every inch the country bumpkin, especially in her prison jumpsuit. The hydroplex perched high above a polished gridwork into which the catamaran navigated and docked. If the meticulously groomed denizens of this modern platinum palace were troubled by the ceaseless rocking and swaying caused by bay tides, they gave no sign but hurried silently through hushed corridors on what surely must have been urgent business.

Gah. Bay tides. Rocking and swaying. Uff! Zhu felt as if she was about to spill her guts.

When the red-haired man stepped out to greet her, she was spilling her guts. Or at least, the spare contents of her stomach. I . . . long ride . . . detox maybe, she muttered and, to her embarrassment, keeled over. How could she explain the vertigo that seized her at that moment?

When she woke, she felt a little better, but her head was woozy. Her stomach sour. She opened her eyes and found herself lying on a chrome-and-leather divan in a room swathed in a gauzy pale fabric like the inside of a cloud.

The red-haired man sat watching her.

He gestured to a viewer perched in a corner like a predatory bird. We’re holoiding the instructions I’m giving you today. The file, called Zhu.doc, is thirty-five GB and will go in your monitor’s Archive, so you’ll be able to view it anytime you need to. He gave her a Classic Coke, which tasted delicious and settled her stomach. I’m the one who offered your lawyer the deal. He fell silent, watching her as if she were a specimen in a petri dish.

She should have been flattered that a man of his stature took any notice of her at all. She should have been grateful, should have been cordial, should have been eager to please.

But she didn’t feel flattered or grateful or cordial or eager to please. Instead, sharp resentment gripped her chest. She’d instantly disliked the red-haired man. Puzzled at her unruly emotions, then felt guilty. There was no rational reason for disliking him.

He’d done nothing to her. She’d never met him before.

But there it was and wouldn’t go away. Resentment, even anger. As if she knew something bad about him, but couldn’t say what. Had she met him before? But where? She swallowed her confusion, silently scolding herself. She wasn’t wearing the black patch for the first time in months, that was all. Her customary state of sullen discontent had simply reasserted itself.

He sat in a leather-and-chrome chair and steepled his fingertips. I am Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco.

China’s people had a thousand