The news is grim. According to the best reports of Deadend’s smeagols and other eyewitnesses, the Mission Dolores is now home to bonafide aliens who are not above taking serious pot-shots at the natives with guns that shoot lightning bolts.
“Not so much phasers as photon torpedoes,” says a smeagol who calls himself Berk. “‘Course, not exactly torpedoes either, seeing as how they ain't aqua-nautical, but they’re enough to make a person seriously deadjim, or so’s the rumble. Potreros are fleeing like someone stood up and yelled ‘bath!’ I’m telling you, your merlinship, this is serious shit. It’s a pogrom.”
“A what?” asks Cinderblock, whose studies in history were, I suspect, slim-to-none.
“The end of the world as we know it,” says Berk the Smeagol, and I want to rap him upside the head for saying this stuff in front of our watchful and impressionable Majesties.
Berk thinks everything is a pogrom.
“It’s not a pogrom,” I say. “We don’t know what it is yet. So at the moment, it’s just a visitation by-by — ”
“Aliens,” says Creepy Lou, soberly, “in winnebagoes.”
“Armored winnebagoes,” adds my wife. “And some righteous weaponry. Recon says eaves were falling along 16th. If we have to fight these jakes, our best bet is a joint military action.”
“Joint,” repeats His M. “How joint?”
“I recommend we dispatch envoys, Majesty,” I say, picking up the cue, “to all monarchs, elected or otherwise, in the Gam Saan. Whether our response must be military or diplomatic” — here I pause to glance at General Firescape — “remains to be seen. But even diplomatic measures will be best taken in multilateral harmony.”
“Sounds like a friggin' choir!” snorts Squire. “You don’t stand a chance in a billion of getting cooperation out of those bozos. I say we deploy all our knighties and blast ‘em.”
“Oh, right, fish-head,” says Cinderblock most scathingly. “Our measly AKs and handguns against their Trek-tech. In case you hadn’t noticed, the last of our winnebagoes is home to a family of five over on Geary.”
“Yeah! They run a hot-dog stand out the back window,” adds Creepy Lou with enthusiasm. “Great dogth!”
“They got two dozen winnebagoes, Berkowitz,” Cinderblock continues, ignoring Lou. “Plus the jeeps, also armored, and the trucks and the earth-moving equipment. What’re we supposed to do, shoot out their tires?”
“There will be no shooting,” I say, “unless and until we’re sure they’re hostile aliens. They might just be...tourists. Tourists were once wont to travel by winnebago.”
“Were they also wont to carry ray guns?” asks Squire. “I’m with Berk, Majesty. I say we take them out before they take us out.”
“You’re not listening, Squire,” says my wife. “I’m not sure we can take them out. Especially not if there are more where they came from.”
“What’s the news from Treasure Island?” asks His M, to which Deadend replies, “No news, Majesty. Nada peep. No one’s set foot on that Bridge since the aliens crossed over.”
Hismajesty has a peculiar look on his face, which I recognize and don’t much like. He is thinking.
He says, “So far these alien guys have just moved in on the old Mission, right?”
“Yes, Majesty,” I reply.
“And they haven’t set one little alien foot inside the Embarcadero, right?”
“Yes, Majesty. I mean, no, Majesty, no feet.”
“Then, they’re all part of the SEP field, my merlin. It’s Simply Elvis’s Problem. Let him deal with it.”
Squire and his cronies break out in suck-up laughter, and Hismajesty looks pleased with his dispensing of wisdom and waves his hands as if to zhou us out.
“You’re all dismissed. I expect our smeagol corps to keep an eye on things, but don’t offer provocations. We’ll see if old Elvis can sort this out.”
“And if he can’t?”
This comes from my wife, who is surely thinking that our liege has something like egg foo yung between his royal ears.
“Then Elvis is stew meat. Or maybe Elvis comes running to Ours Truly for help. Either way, Elvis is out of the alcaldé business. Who’s to say our new neighbors won’t be better than the old ones? Now, you’re dismissed. Except for my royal merlin,” he adds and my heart skips three beats or so — not enough to kill me.
“First of all,” Hismajesty says when all and sundry have left, and it’s just him and me and Tree, “why didn’t you foresee this alien inroad?”
Truth is, of course, I did, but didn’t know I did. Truth, in this case, is bu hao.
“Well, Majesty,” I fabricate, “as you yourself so ably noted, the aliens invaded Potrero, not Embarcadero. I do not usually tune myself to Potreran frequencies, nor does the Fabled Tree. I did, as it happens, foresee an influx of some sort, but as it seemed to indicate no injury to our beloved homeland, I said nothing, not wishing to upset my Majesties after such distress in our recent past. The moment I see a clear threat to us and ours, I'll let you know.”
“Good enough. Now, here’s the second thing.” He leans way forward out of his throne and points a regal finger at me. “Get your butt over to the alien encampment and suck up bigtime. Establish diplomatic relations. Initiate trade. They’re here, maybe nothing we can do about that, but we sure as hell can see what’s in it for us. Like I said, we may like these new neighbors better than the old ones. Oh, and while you’re at it, get the skinny on their intent and their force. Any questions?”
“None, your royal sagacity,” I say, and scram.
oOo
We approach the Mission Dolores carefully. Doug is carrying a white flag, which I hope means the same thing to the aliens that it does to us. We appear to be alone, but we are not alone. There are knighties flanking us above, below, and on the ground. The walk to the Mission seems longer than usual. Fear has this weird effect on things — especially time.
Fidgeting, I dig my hands deep into my pockets and run into the Tin Hau note and the thing the old monk gave me. I bring the thing out into the uncertain Potreran daylight and look at it for the first time. It’s made of stone and shaped like one of the little arched niches in the sanctuary of the Mission Dolores. It has a symbol engraved on it, the same symbol that’s on the note in my pocket. On this hunk of smooth stone it doesn’t look at all Chinese, it looks Egyptian. I wish I’d paid more attention in Kaymart’s anthropology class.
Why would an old Chinese monk give me an Egyptian artifact?
Well, that’s a mystery I don’t have time to solve at the moment. I put the thing into my amulet bag and grimace at the sheer audacity of the Tin Hau’s so-called master.
Master Chen, the young monk said, was not a name, but a station. If that’s so, the master’s ego has gone seriously napoleon. Chen, for those who don’t know, means Great and Vast.
It’s weird, too, for the head of a religious order to trick himself out in plum silk. Like the monk said, monks do not wear silk.
Huh. Maybe Master Chen wasn’t a monk. But if that’s so, how’d he come to be the master of a monkish order?
We do not get blasted when we come up to the Mission’s front gate. This is a relief. The alien guards look at us funny and chuckle, but they let us in when I ask to see their leader. They look just like Embarcaderans, but their skin tones are a little more extreme — white and black mostly, with only some in shades of gold and brown. It’s kind of a kick to see alien Hispanics. I wonder if I seem alien to them.
Their clothes look like uniforms, but they’re the drabbest uniforms I’ve ever seen. The guards call another man, a very dark brown man wearing mirrored shades against the swift changes of light, to be our escort. He chuckles at us too, then leads us into the compound.
The Whisperers are still silent, like they been almost since this started. This is scary, ‘cause I been hearing them inside my head for close to ten years now. I hope Doug is having more luck tuning them in than I am. He’s here as sort of an instrument package, like those things tornado chasers dump out in the middle of cornfields. (Not the cornfields here, ni dong. We don’t have tornadoes in Embarcadero, just the occasional earthquake, some wicked winter storms, and the thirty-two known varieties of fog.) Right now, Doug’s every needle is tuned to the metaphysical; he is a Dolores radar.
We are led across the courtyard to one of the winnebagoes. Along the way, I notice much about the alien goings-on. The winnebagoes are parked all about the central courtyard; none are very near the fences or walls even though the aliens have put up a thick, tall chain-link fence where the walls and fence-o-spears are busted.
In the very center of the courtyard is a trailer platform with something on it. I can’t see what the something is, but it’s pretty big. Big as a car, maybe, not as big as the winnebagoes, which, I notice, are armored, like Firescape said, and have satellite dishes on top of them. These are for the purpose of catching rumbles out of the air, according to Hoot and the Wiz. We got some dishes here, but none of them work. The satellites won’t talk to them anymore. I gotta assume these do work and wonder what kind of rumbles they catch and from where.
Aliens hustle all around, going here and there, carrying stuff, and there are piles of building materials lying about. I almost trip over myself when I see that a scaffold is starting to go up around the church and aliens are moving in and out of the broken doors. I see one guy with what looks like a video shooter. He’s videoing the guys who’re working.
What the hell are they doing?
At the winnebago, our escort pokes his head through the open door and says, “Hey, John. There’s a little guy with a tree here to see you.”
I’m surprised all over again that they speak a dialect I grok, though the accent’s a little oddball.
John proves to be a big guy with a red beard and electric blue eyes. He has unnaturally short hair, like most of the guys I seen since I got here, but his has this well-mannered little queue that dangles down his back like a Chinese patriarch’s. I take this as a badge of leadership, at first, then realize that other guys also wear the little queues.
Huh. Maybe it’s just a fashion statement.
I notice all this as he is standing in the door of his winnebago gawping at me and laughing with his buddy. Then the electric eyes are on me full blast and I realize he is addressing me directly.
“Who — ha — w-who the he-hell are you, little guy?” He glances down at his friend, who is leaning against the side of the winnebago, grinning. “Doesn’t he talk?”
“He was talking just fine a mo’ ago.”
“Apologies,” I say. “I’m Taco Del, merlin to Hismajesty, King of the next-door realm of Embarcadero. This is the Fabled Tree of Destiny,” I introduce Doug.
“The-the wh-what?” John is having trouble controlling his mirth. “What are you, some sort of an environmentalist?”
“I’m a merlin. This is the Tree of Destiny. My channel.”
“Your channel. Aw, and I thought he was a house-warming present.”
I’m on guard immediately, but calm myself when I see that the winnebago has no chimney.
“No, he’s the Tree of Destiny, a sort of cell-phone to the Almighty. God is partial to trees.”
The two aliens exchange glances and my escort says, “Local color, I guess.”
“I’m John Makepeace,” says the red-beard. “What do you want?”
Makepeace. I like it. An auspicious name. I relax a little.
“Hismajesty, King of Embarcadero, wishes to extend to you the hand of friendship, and inquires about your intentions towards the Mission in particular and this territory in general. (Okay, so I fib — I’m the only one who gives a rat’s tuckus about his intentions toward the Mission.) He also wishes to know if there are needful things we might provide to you during your sojourn in our land.”
“Needful things?” repeats John. “Such as?”
“Fresh produce and fish. Fresh water — there’s not much of that in Potrero-Taraval. Info. Guides...?”
“We brought our own food and water; yours would probably kill us. We’ve got all the information we need and we already have guides.” He squats in the doorway so we are nearly eye to eye. “Now, as to our intentions: we’re here to save San Francisco. Or at least to salvage what’s left of it.”
His eyes, which have been boring into mine, take a hike around the courtyard.
“Save it?” I repeat, my mind going to the Peach Pit and from there to the Tin Hau and to the Egyptian thing in my amulet bag. “From what?”
“From disintegration and decay. From rot and ruin. From you.” He pokes a big finger at my chest. “We’re going to put San Francisco back on the map, Taco. We’re going to bring it back to life one cultural treasure at a time.”
I’m confused as hell. “But it’s not dead. Well, sure, here seems a little falling down, ‘cause it is. But this is Potrero. It’s not like this all over the Gam Saan. It’s not like this right over there.” I wave north toward Embar. “Lord E Lordy’s alcaldé here. He’s a bit of a barbarian. Hismajesty’s working at improving that, though, through a strict regime of education and better hygiene.” I ignore the fact that they’re laughing at me again, and plow onward. “You picked a bad place to roost, John. You oughta see the Regency Palace, the Farm, the Wiz.”
“Oh, I’ll see all of San Francisco in due time. I intend to assess it very thoroughly. But right now, this is where we set up camp.” He puts this big hand on my shoulder and talks to me like I’m a little kid. “You see, I’m in the renovation business, Taco. Do you know what renovation means?”
I nod, but he defines it anyway. “It means to make new. That’s what I’m going to do to San Francisco. I’m going to take old run-down places like this and make them new. Then I’m going to make access to them easy and safe, and open them up so that people can come and see them every day.”
“People already see them every day,” I argue.
He chuckles. “Well, Taco, that’s just a handful of folks who don’t know what kind of treasure they’re sitting on. The people I want to bring here are people who will pay money to see these places, money that will keep them new for all time. These treasures will never get abandoned or forgotten or buried again. Gam Saan, you called it. Do you know what that means?”
“Of course, I know what it means,” I say, getting a little testy under his condescending scrutiny. “It means Golden Mountain.”
“That’s right.” He has the effrontery to look surprised that I know this. “And I’m going to put the gold back into the Golden Mountain. Now, you go tell your king to keep his knights and serfs out of the way of my work crews and everything will be just fine. There were some...problems when we arrived yesterday. I’d like to avoid that. Renovation, young man, is not a spectator sport.”
He rises and panic goes up right alongside.
“But this is a sacred place!” I cry. “There are spirits here — ”
The look he gives me scares the words right back down into my throat. He moves his eyes to the other man and I breathe again and realize that the unease I taste now is not purely mine.
John Makepeace smiles at me, but it is not a real smile, and he is not looking at me, but at the dark brown man. “There are no spirits here or any place else in this city. It’s a heap of decaying buildings populated by indigents.” He laughs, but it’s not a real laugh. “Jesus Lord, what rampant superstition!”
I am comforted that he seems to be on friendly terms with Jesus, but this seems at odds with his disbelief in spirits. I protest: “But they’re here. The Dolores are here. They speak to me.”
“I don’t hear them, do you, Ty?”
The very dark brown man shakes his head and reaches up to adjust his shades. “Nope. Nary a whisper.”
“But that’s just it!” I plead, desperate. “Since you been here, they’re silent. I gotta know why. Please, let me go into the graveyard and try to-to reach them.”
The look passes between them again and Ty glances over his shoulder as if to make sure no one’s dropping.
“Who are these...Dolores?” he asks.
“They’re nothing,” says John Makepeace, as if he knew diddly about the Dolores.
“They’re the spirits of the five thousand Ohlone Indians buried around here. That rock pile over there is their memorial.” I point across the courtyard toward the gardens.
The sun chooses this auspicious moment to breach the clouds. A shaft of light falls onto the garden splashing color everywhere.
“Don’t you know the history of the Mission?” I ask.
This time Ty tries to pass a look to John, but John declines to take it.
“You could come to the Wiz and learn the history,” I suggest.
“I know the history,” says John, then, “Get him out of here, Ty. We have work to do. Can’t spend all day making friendly with the locals.”
The door of the winnebago shuts in my face.
On the way back to the front gate, Ty watches me. At the gate, he says, “What you said about the Indians, is that true?”
I nod forlornly. All I can think about is this big silence in my head. I want to cry.
“Five thousand?”
“The diseases the Spaniards brought and the heavy work and bad food wiped them out. Having the spirit squeezed out of them didn’t help, either. There were survivors, though. Some of them ran away.”
“Yeah, but the ones who didn’t....” He glances back at the Mission church.
His unease tickles my nose.
“Are buried all over the place here,” I finish for him.
“And they talk to you,” he says.
A smile is trying to crawl out onto his face. This man is scared. I can see it, feel it, smell it. I store the knowledge for the future: some aliens are afraid of spirits. Maybe the reverse is also true; maybe some spirits are afraid of aliens.
“Not any more,” I say, turning to go. “Not since you got here.”
Across the street from the Mission, I park Doug and try to think orderly thoughts. I see that Ty is still watching me. He does this for a moment then says something to the guards and hustles off toward John’s winnebago. The sun breaches again just then and turns the walls of the old church white-gold and the broken tile roof almost red.
I think about salvation. John Makepeace and I both want to save the Mission from each other. A paradox. My ancestors wanted to redeem what they thought was a wasted land populated by wasted souls. Another paradox.
I don’t think either needed redemption — the people, or the land — not like that, anyway. Which I think is why my ancestors failed. They didn’t have the say-so over either the souls or the land, but their arrogance made them believe they did and the pay-off was disaster, death and generally bad karma.
The hugeness of this suddenly plops square on my shoulders and I sink down next to Doug in his wagon. I am staggered by the idea that history is repeating on itself and that I am at what they call the crux of the situation. I am also staggered by what I don’t know. I don’t know how much of our Golden Mountain John Makepeace wants, and I don’t know what he’ll do to get it. I don’t know what’ll happen if he wants something that’s important to more than this little Chickpea, and I don’t know if we got the wherewithal to do diddly about it.
But the biggest I-don’t-know is this: I don’t know how many people there are where John Makepeace came from. I gotta believe there’re lots — thousands, millions, maybe.
I remember that the population of the City before The Getting Out was in the hundreds of thousands. I try to imagine thousands of people coming back to Embarcadero, even just to gander, with all their stuff — cars, trucks, winnebagoes — and my little mind tilts bigtime.
What will we do among those hundreds of thousands? Where will we go? What will become of the world we built?
I decide I have to ask John Makepeace these questions. I also decide I am spitting mad. John Makepeace’s people had this Golden Mountain — this Gam Saan Francisco — and left it to rot. We stopped the rot and put the broken bits back together. Okay, so maybe our glue is lo-tech, but it works. Everybody in Embarcadero got a place to call home and food to eat and folks to check up on them. What happens to all that if the aliens take over the world? I think I already know the answer ‘cause I’ve read it in the Books of History.
I got this horrible feeling we’re doing a sort of historical instant replay. They say a year is a day in the sight of God. If that’s so, then He’s just seen this. I know He can’t want to see it again. Somehow, we gotta make things different this time.
I feel a soft, firry something touch my ear.
“What d’you think, Doug?” I ask. A quick breeze stirs and Doug’s limbs flutter wildly in a sort of conifer war dance.
I get up and pull the Radio Flyer out of sight of the Mission. The guards watch us go, laughing.
This is gonna be one strange war.
oOo
Firescape meets me at the corner of Church and 18th. Cinderblock is with.
“What were you doing, sitting there like that?” Firescape asks. “Incanting?”
“Meditating on salvation and symmetry,” I say. “We’re off to Lord E’s.”
We are, and pronto. Lubejob meets us and escorts us in, asking all sorts of questions about my visit to the alien camp. I don’t tell much.
Lord E is in rare form. In fact, I haven’t seen him in such manic spirits since the Great Embarrassment. This is not the humbler, more sober Elvis I have come to know and tolerate, this is a smug Elvis, an I-know-something-you-don’t Elvis, a possibly on-heavy-pharmaceuticals Elvis (though where he could’ve gotten heavy pharmaceuticals, I sure couldn’t say.)
He side-steps all talk of unified efforts and executive summit meetings. When I remind him that so far the aliens have only invaded his turf and how much he stands to gain from a strong alliance, he giggles like a three year old and casts sideways looks at his new merlin, a shadowy personage who affects a cloak and cowl, an old monk’s get-up.
All during the audience, he speaks only when spoken to, and then in monotone monosyllables. It occurs to me to wonder if this jake has gone napoleon — or Rasputin, as the case may be — and if he’s responsible for Lord E’s new smugness.
Not liking any of this much, we take our leave. Elvis makes us pick our own way out of his palace — a diplomatic slap in the face. We are making our way silently down a long hallway that seems to be heading streetward when I sense my two-knightie escort tighten up.
A nanosecond later someone calls out, “Merlin!”
I stop and turn. Firescape and Cinderblock already have their weapons aimed at the heart of the Alcaldé’s new merlin. He stands atop a flight of stairs to an upper hallway, sunlight cascading all over his cowled shoulders. This has a stunning effect in that it makes him hard to look at, so I don’t try very hard, just sort of look in his general direction.
“You want?” I ask.
He makes a funny little gesture with his hand as if pushing something aside.
“Don’t matter,” he says. “Watch yer back.”
“‘Cause why?”
“‘Cause th’ Alcaldé’s got his own agenda, besides being a ditz. It’s not the same as yours. You know Lord E, he don’t change.”
“He was changing,” I say accusingly. “He was finding out how much he didn’t know. The first step to learning. The first step to wisdom.”
The merlin shakes his cowled head. “Damn, but you’re a naive little shit. You can throw all the learning you want at old Elvis. The only stuff that sticks to him is what he can use in the next five seconds.”
He sticks his hands into his sleeves, monk-like. “Watch yer back,” he says again and turns to go.
“Hey!” calls Firescape before I can twitch. “Why’re you giving us advice? You’re th’ Alcaldé’s man.”
“I’m nobody’s man, General. I’m my man.”
“Then you got an agenda, too,” my wife persists. “Care to share it with us?”
He’s moving away from us down the upper hall, but pauses.
“You been east of the Mission on 16th?”
“No,” Firescape answers.
“Go home that way,” he says and disappears.
Accordingly, once we find our way out of Lord E’s palace, we angle east on our way back into Embar. Firescape and Cinderblock are joined by a handful of other knighties. At least all I see is a handful. They’re from all different neighborhoods and wearing diverse uniforms. The two in yellow are from the Richmond, one is in the green of the Presidio Guard, another in Tenderloin teal, a couple more in the black and burgundy of Russian Hill’s crack troops.
They are wary as we bypass the Mission a block away and make our way up to Guerrero where we turn north again and head up toward 16th. They suspect a trap of some sort, given that a Potreran merlin has sent us here.
There’s no trap. What there is, is a war zone. On Guerrero, before we even reach 16th, buildings are blasted, eaves fallen, walls caved in or out. Charred spots pock what’s left standing.
“Shit,” breathes Cinderblock, “This must be where the aliens came through.”
Once we turn onto 16th, it gets worse — smashed houses and storefronts, scorched masonry, debris everywhere. I am wondering how far up John Makepeace’s backtrail this sort of thing goes, when I hear Firescape cry out.
I stop, realizing that every knightie around me has frozen. When they unfreeze they dash toward where Firescape stands near a blasted out pile of rubble that was once someone’s front steps. I dash too, though Doug slows me a bit, because now I can see that there is more than rubble here. There is a body.
I draw close against my will, and find there are two bodies, both horribly broken. One is a woman — or was — in her twenties or thirties maybe. The other is a little boy — about four, I guess. They lie close together, almost embracing, the woman’s body partly covering the boy’s. Mother and son, I think. Even broken and torn there’s a strong resemblance.
One of Doug’s boughs brushes my neck and I see it in a flash: the street, a battle zone, Potreros pelting the invading vehicles from sidewalk and rooftop with bricks and bottles. An occasional shot is fired from a handgun. The little boy and his mother are in the street. They have frozen there, terrified by the other-worldly vehicles moving toward them. A rock strikes one of the winnebagoes’ satellite dishes and the invaders begin to shoot back.
The mother and son flee, the mother trying to shield her little boy from the stuff flying around. They head for this building, where they live, where they will be safe, but they’ve waited too long to move. An alien weapon strikes the staircase as they step onto it and shatters it and them beyond repair.
The vision passes, and I stand in the broken street weeping.
Firescape’s hand falls gently on my shoulder.
“They left together,” she says, and I see that she is crying too, thinking of Flannigans as yet unborn.
There is a silence in which I can hear the distant sounds of renovation from the Mission to the west. Then Cinderblock says, “We should bury them.”
“All of them?”
This comes from one of the Tenderloin knighties. Her eyes are turned ahead, up the block.
There are over a dozen more — fourteen, to be exact — mostly men and boys, but not all. In the end, we use the rubble to make neat cairns over them and mark them with strips torn from the bright scarves and headbands of our knightie escort, which has inexplicably grown.
As we work, I think again about history. I guess we’re not repeating it exactly, after all; at first, the monks smiled and held out gifts. The dying didn’t come until later. I give a moment’s thought to Treasure Island. There was a whole kingdom there, once. I wonder what’s left after the aliens came through. Maybe there hasn’t been anybody scoping the Bridge at that end ‘cause there’s no one left to do the scoping — or at least, no one who cares to try.
We head home, gray as the day. After a while, my mouth just sort of runs off without me, and I talk to Firescape about salvation and the symmetry of history. She listens and doesn’t say a lot, just looks sort of grim and sad. Cinderblock looks angry and doesn’t say anything at all.
“Tell me something, Del,” my wife says, when I have run down a little. “When you were up at the Tin Hau, chasing your mysterious message man...how’d Creepy Lou know about the Whisperers?”
Whatever I might’ve expected her to ask, it wasn’t that. I’m caught off guard both by the question and the answer.
“I dunno. I never told him.... You’re sure he — ”
“He called the Mission ‘Whisperville.’ I just wondered how he knew.”
And now, so do I. I silently thank Jade Berengaria Firescape for giving me something besides death to think about.