I can’t remember ever seeing Kaymart cry. She is crying now. Bags isn’t, but I can tell he wants to and is just being strong for Kaymart. I think they call that role reversal ‘cause usually it’s the other way around. Bags, he’ll cry over almost anything — an old tree coming down, a new tree coming up. But now, I guess seeing Kaymart weak means he’s got to be strong, so he just is.
“It happened so fast,” Kaymart tells me through her tears. “They were just there with these...these weapons pointed at us, telling us to get out.”
“But why?” asks Firescape. “What’d they want?” She turns to me. “I thought you said they brought all their own food. What’d they want with our Farm?”
“They seemed most interested in the old museums. Especially once they saw how we were using them.” Kaymart manages a weak smile. “I think your Mr. Makepeace was a bit upset with us ‘ignorant squatters’ and our hatchery. Somehow I think he imagined he’d find the old aquarium stocked with exotic species.”
“That was when they tossed us,” grumbled Bags. “Just like that. Damned marauders. Mannerless, uncivilized shits.”
“Now, Bagsie....” Kaymart’s color is finally coming back. “That’s just about what they said about us. I think they took exception to being attacked with pitchforks and spades. At least they let us all go back and take some of our personal belongings.”
“Some, but not all,” says one of their woebegone apprentice Farmers. He is the youngest, a usually scrappy little squirt named Hijack. He kind of reminds me of me when I was that age. “And who’s going take care of the seedlings?”
This sends Bags off on what they call a tangent. “Hijack’s right, you know,” he tells Kaymart. “Who’s gonna feed your damned fish and tend your precious vegetables and monitor your hydroponics experiment? Who’s gonna do all that, old woman? Hm? You tell me. Any of those damned marauders look like botanists to you? Any of ‘em look like give a rat’s hindmost about superior strains of broccoli?”
Now that Kaymart is recovering herself, Bags is edging toward losing his-self. All the little farmhands are looking from one to the other, wide-eyed and teary. I am preparing to say something helpful and merlin-like when Cinderblock makes a grim observation.
“This,” she says, “is gonna severely jink up our food supply.”
It doesn’t take a merlin to do the math — the Farm yields about one-third of our food crops — veggies, fruits and nuts mostly. Except for Kaymart’s experimental strains, all our grains are grown out at the Presidio. I look into Firescape’s eyes and know she’s thinking what I’m thinking.
She puts it into action. “Cinderblock, pack up the Royals and move ‘em out to the Presidio. I’ll draw the Wharfside Guard over to set up a perimeter. If we lose that land, we lose Embar.”
The two of them move like red and black lightning and my heart goes deep-freeze in my chest.
“Be careful!” I shout after my beloved wife.
She pauses at the entrance to the Royal’s private dining salon to grin at me. “Duh!” she says, and sails off, flying a banner of red.
“You know, Del,” says Kaymart, “the Farm itself might not be in much danger. I don’t think Makepeace has any intention of trying to hold the whole thing. He’s only after the treasures, as he calls them, the things with historical significance. In fact, I’m not at all sure he could hold the whole thing, not if he intends to keep dividing his resources. Who knows — they might even lose interest in it once they realize the buildings aren’t full of forgotten artifacts. We might be able to take back the parts that are important to us.”
Bags is nodding. “Maybe we could even swing a deal with that rat’s hiney. Get him to give back whatever we care about so long as we don’t touch what he cares about.”
Kaymart's puts a hand up to stop him. “What is it, dear?”
My face must be doing one of its freeform expressions, ‘cause my eyes are wonky as hell.
“He’s envisioning,” whispers Bags.
I am. And what I am envisioning, among all this talk of treasures and galleries and dealing, is that Master Chen, with his gallery-o-magic is just the sort of individual John Makepeace would love to talk to. My blood thunders around in my head like it got elephant feet because I have the sudden intuition that Master Chen means to sell all that art he’s collecting to the aliens. Now, I’m mad as hell at the thought that some guy with delusions of Immortal-hood has plans to sell off bits of everybody’s history and faith. This makes me want to go down to the Tin Hau and give Master Chen a piece of my mind, but I realize I should save all the best pieces for John Makepeace.
When I tell Firescape and my liege lord this, however, they are of different minds altogether. Hismajesty has refused to pack himself off to the Summer Palace with his family and has called upon my sweet wife to take the Farm back by brute force. My Majesty, I realize, is fighting mad precisely and exactly because he is scared more spitless than I am. I am uncertain how to take this revelation; should I give myself congrats for superior cajones, or should I lose more spit over the fact that my very King — the supposedly omnipotent and invincible leader of the sovereign nation of Embarcadero — has gone into omnipotent and invincible flight-or-fight mode?
I do not want to fight. I’m no good at fighting. I’m better at talking. Except that, of course, where John Makepeace is concerned, I’m not even so good at that. I think it’s possible that we speak different languages that only sound the same.
Firescape’s battle plan is for a hand-picked force of knighties to go in under cover of pre-dawn dark and take important prisoners. She has studied her tactical manuals carefully; this is the only strategy she envisions working against interlopers with superior firepower and armored winnebagoes.
Against my best advice and abject whining, the plan goes ahead. Hermajesty and the Junior Majesties are moved quickly to the Summer Palace at the Presidio, which is just as quickly put under the added protection of the crack patrols from the Virgin, Wharfside and Union Square. The regular Presidio Guard isn’t that large; corn and rice don’t need all that much policing, ni dong. The next thing I know, they’re all cleaning their guns and getting out their black and gray skulking gear.
I can’t talk to Jade when she’s like this. She’s not even really Jade, now; she’s 120 percent General Firescape and this is the first time she’s planned a raid this big against this strong an enemy. I don’t dare let her see that I’m nervous about her and the little Flannigan on board. So I say some protection incantations before the fact and insist on tagging along to lay down a cover of Chouyan when they go in.
It’s two a.m. when they move into the Farm. Firescape and her troops melt into the bowu that rises from the grass like moist ghosts. They are like ghosts themselves — no one can see them, of that, I’m certain. I can’t see them and I know they’re there. In truth, they probably don’t need my smoke screen, they’re Firescape’s best.
Anyway, they go in while I stand in the woods and make with Chouyan. I don’t know how long I been there, incanting, when I hear this sound like demons singing. I don’t know what singing demons sound like, really, but I imagine it’s like this sound that pierces the brain and vibrates the bone. I see lights shoot up into the trees where the knighties have gone and then there’s gunfire.
I run toward the lights. All I can think of is Jade, and I wish for a split second that this were the age when men were in charge and women were supposed to obey them. Well, okay, so it’s just mythology, I realize, and Jade Berengaria Firescape Flannigan sure as hell wouldn’t have obeyed me even if there’d ever been such an age, but it was one of those panicky “if-onlies” that happen when your adrenaline’s gone rocket.
I don’t get very far before I’m assailed by knighties flying out of the trees, looking wild-eyed and grim. I see Cinderblock and a couple of others I know. And finally, when I’m about adrenalined out, I run headmost into Firescape. She turns me about-face and pushes me into a run and we keep running till we’re out of the woods and back in the streets.
“Que pasa?” I pant, when I can.
“I dunno. I’d swear we were silent. Nobody saw us, I’m sure. There were three winnebagoes, some jeeps and tractors some big floodlights, no guards. I wasn’t worried about the lights, what with the Chouyan and all. We get about five yards from their camp and all hell breaks loose. There’s this sound like, like — ”
“Singing demons?” I insert.
“Yeah, I guess. Like that. So loud, it just about split my head open. Damn, Del! I don’t know what we did wrong. I’d swear no one could hear us or see us or smell us. I don’t know what happened, but they were all over us. People popping out all over the place with those damn guns. I mean, once we lost surprise, well, we didn’t have squat.”
Our report to our liege is grim. We have wounded now, and are lucky not to have lost anybody. We didn’t lay a scratch on the aliens. The enemy has an early-warning system, which brings us to a renewed respect for the level of techno-magic John Makepeace is packing. We pack the entire royal household off to the Presidio, King and all, and I settle in for some earnest meditating.
Since I have not slept much or well lately, my earnest meditating kind of morphs into some earnest sleeping. Normally, I would say this was an unfortunate evidence of my complete ineptitude as a merlin, but I dream — and it’s a doozy, as Bags would say.
I’m in a smoky place and I think it’s my dream lodge, where I hear the Whisperers. But then, I get that this is the Tin Hau — his place, the Art Gallery. It’s full of incense and stuff and I know there are people here, I can feel them and they make me quiver.
A Voice asks, “What have you brought me?”
It is a snake’s Voice — a Red Dragon’s Voice, hot and slippery. Chen?
There is movement, and a walking bit of darkness comes out of the smoke. It’s face is the face of a certain young monk’s, and the eyes are his eyes. They are as big and black and empty as ever, and they gleam like cold, polished obsidian. Nobody home.
I vaguely see light now, and it seems to me the light is all around whatever the monk has in his hands.
Okay, Taco, says my dream brain, this is important. Pay attention.
The monk puts the lit-up thing on the empty stand in the gallery and I see that it is a folded strip of cloth with beads and bits of shell and feathers.
“This is all?” asks the Red Dragon Voice, sounding peevish.
“All, Master.”
A hand comes out of the smoky darkness and picks up the beaded cloth and I feel as if the cloth is me. I can’t breathe.
“More,” says the Red Dragon Voice, “there must be more. Do not fail me. Shall I demonstrate what will happen if you fail me ...Ho-win?”
This must be his real and secret name, ‘cause the monk lets out this blood-curdling yelp and falls like his invisible puppet master cut his strings. He curls on the floor, his face lifted up into the smoky light. His lips move and he says, “Master, this is all that was found where you sent us.”
“There is more,” says the Red Dragon. “There must be more.”
A swirl of purple robes and I am lifted up again. There is a blur above me and it reflects the smudges of light like a golden moon. I think it must be a face. I don’t feel like looking at it right now though, so I let it be a blur.
The Red Dragon speaks: “Is there more?” it asks, and I fall.
This causes a drastic shift in my POV. I am in my dream lodge again, in the fire and smoke, and the sand is gritty under my butt. On the floor in front of me, I see the beaded shirt, the pipe and the funny stick and ball with its horse-hair wig.
Okay, the shaman stuff again. It takes me a moment to realize that something is missing; the beaded headdress is gone. And I’ve just been shown where it is.
The meaning is clear as bluesky. Chen has somehow gotten hold of this thing and added it to his collection, and the Dolores are understandably upset. After all, it must be their stuff.
I have just come to this obvious conclusion when out of the smoke of the Lodge comes a single word: Diablo. This isn’t spoken, exactly. I mean, it’s really weird, but if I had to put a sense to it, I’d say I smelled the word.
Yeah, I dream-think, if I could sum up Chen in a word, that’d be it. And I sleep, smelling fir.
Sleep isn’t awfully refreshing. I wake up knowing I got my work cut out for me. By the rustling of Doug’s boughs, I gotta go see John Makepeace and try again to reason with the man.
When I head in that direction, Bags tags along.
“As far as the Wiz is all,” he says. “I couldn’t bear to see the homestead and not be able t’go home.”
When we get to the Wiz, I let Doug and me get sucked inside where I sit down to do some researching. I’m real curious to know what it is Chen’s after besides the headdress. The beaded shirt’s an easy savvy — that’s shamanly vestments, like a priest’s robes. The pipe, I get too, I guess. I mean peace pipes and all. But that horse-hair wigged stick, I don’t get.
Well, as it happens, I learn more than I reckon I will. I learn the pipe is sort of a general ceremonial pipe, not just for peace. It’s like the Taoist-Buddhist monk’s little braziers sort of, or like Chen’s din; it’s where the ceremonial herbs are burned to get the spirits’ attention. And the horse-hair wigged thing, that’s a spirit rattle. The shaman uses it to get the spirits he calls up to focus themselves on what needs done. It’s more than that, too. The Books of Wisdom tell me it’s like a staff of power. Every shamanly, wizardly type got one, from Gandalf to Cinderella’s Fairy Godmom to...well, to me.
This all hits me like a 6.7 on the Richter ‘cause I catch a whiff of the Tree as I’m contemplating. Doug is no mere channel, he’s a talisman and he’s a staff of power and every part of him is a stafflet of power, and it walks in and slaps me upside the head that that dream I just dreamed happened ‘cause I dropped one of those self-same stafflets in the Tin Hau.
I find myself repeating Chen: “An ear, an eye or merely debris.”
I am struck with the wonder of it. Then, I am struck by the intriguing possibilities. With Doug flying our white-flag I head up to the Farm, but John Makepeace is not there. He has returned to his headquarters — the Mission Dolores — to oversee the work there. Fine by me.
It’s late afternoon when I approach the Mission. I’m really surprised to get in this time, but I am welcomed by smiles that say, We’re laughing at you, not with you.
I get it. They think I’m A Character — Local Color, like John Makepeace said before. Okay, I can live with that.
One of the guards takes me to his leader’s winnebago this time. He takes is sweet time about it, too, stopping to talk to folks so they can say funny and insulting stuff at me like I don’t get it.
While this is happening, dropping little ears and eyes about everywhere, which is when I notice that the cover is off the big thing in the courtyard. Hard to miss, for sure — it’s a giant version of the satellite dishes on top of the winnebagoes. It’s black — a matte, light-sucking black — and it’s got shiny chrome stuff on it and it’s tilted up to the sky. It reminds me a lot of the radio dishes the SETI people used to listen for aliens.
Ironic.
My escort leads me to the winnebago of John Makepeace, then makes me wait while he goes off to talk to someone else. While they look at me and chuckle, I note that my Tree is straining toward the vehicle with his little branch tips all aquiver.
I step a little closer to the door and prick up my ears. I hear voices, and if I try real hard I can make out words.
“...cathedral,” someone is saying. “Those onion domes are amazing.”
“Isn’t that...” begins a new voice, then I lose it, then it says, “pretty damn deep. We don’t want to split ourselves up too much.”
“What are you afraid of, Gino?” says a third voice, louder and closer to me. I recognize John Makepeace. “Has this city shown you anything you should be afraid of besides a few stray shadows you can’t account for? We’re okay. We’ve got the satellite rig and the GPS. We’re armed to the teeth. The only problem we’ve got right now is that we’ve got to pick and choose our targets as carefully as we can.”
“Yeah, that and the little spooks,” says Gino. “I’d sure like to know what that’s all about.”
“Overactive imagination,” answers John Makepeace sharp-voiced.
“My guys say not. My guys are sure there’s something there.” There was kind of a funny pause, then Gino says, “I’ve seen them.”
“We’ve been over this and over this, Gino. These spooks of yours aren’t real. They can’t be. If they were real, they’d have tripped the security system...wouldn’t they?”
“You haven’t seen them,” Gino accuses.
“Thank you for making my point for me. Now, can we get back to business?”
There’s another pause, most people’d call it an awkward one. Then a softer voice says, “Where do we go next?” and I realize it’s Ty.
“You guys ever hear of Jack Kerouac?” asks John Makepeace.
There are some noises that could mean ‘no’ or ‘yes.’ I’ve heard of Jack Kerouac. On the Road. Beat generation. Lost boy. Joined at the hip to the Wiz back in the days before Wiz-dom.
“He was a folk hero,” says John Makepeace, “an iconoclast and an urban poet. Hung out at a place on Columbus called City Lights — a bookstore. I have it on good authority that the place has actually been kept up by the abos as a kind of shrine. It’s a prime target.”
“Prime target? It’s a bookstore.” This is a voice I haven’t heard before.
“It’s a potent historical icon. A monument to a bygone age. In fact, in 1997 it was accorded the status of an historical landmark by the state of California.”
“It’s a pet project, John,” said Gino. “How many tourists are going to come here to see a bookstore? You said it just a mo’ ago: We’ve got to choose our targets carefully. If we don’t, we lose our shirts.”
“I think Gino might be right,” says Ty. “I doubt there are so many history buffs at home that we can afford to waste resources on something like this. Besides, we’d have a real fight on our hands if we tried to take that bookstore. Like you said, the abos think it’s some sort of shrine. I think we’ve got to go for easier targets that are more glitzy.”
There is another silence. “You think so, do you? If the Spanish had felt that way, this place would have stayed a godforsaken swamp.”
“I’m just trying to be practical, John. I think we need to look at what will convince our backers this venture is viable, don’t you agree?”
I never get to hear if John Makepeace agrees because my escort comes back and knocks on the winnebago door.
I’m shaking like a 5.2 temblor. John Makepeace wants the Wiz. I don’t make the mistake of thinking this is the same as Lord E Lordy wanting the Wiz. For one thing, I’m pretty sure John Makepeace can read. So, as I am thinking these deep and tremulous thoughts, I am once again struck silly and mute when the door of the winnebago opens.
“You again?” asks John Makepeace and he smiles at me in what they call an avuncular way, and then glances back into the room. “It’s my little friend with the tree,” he says. “What’s up?” This is to me.
“It’s about the Farm, John Makepeace. I need to talk with you about the Farm.”
“What Farm?”
“The hunk-o-land you swallowed up the other evening — Golden Gate Park. It’s a significant part of our food chain. You might have noticed some of the greens you trampled upon were a bit better organized than is normally the case in nature.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess they were, at that. What about it?”
“We sort of need it back,” I say, lame-o.
“Which is why you tried to attack us last night?”
“Well, not me in particular. My wife, General Firescape, actually, and her knighties. But, yeah, that was the general idea.”
“Sorry...Taco, is it? But I can’t let you have such a valuable piece of property. You wouldn’t know what to do with it, for one thing.”
“We grow food on it.”
“My point, exactly. You have no idea of its real value.”
I am getting a little hostile, at this point, and it comes through in my voice.
“Like hell,” I say. “It may just be property to you, it’s life and death to us. That’s our food. We don’t care about the buildings, except for the fish tanks and the greenhouses. All we really want is the land we got planted — the food crops and the tree farm. You can have the rest.”
I look over John Makepeace’s shoulder and realize other faces are looking at me. One of them is Ty’s and he looks sort of pitying. Pity is not what I want, but I’m willing to settle. John Makepeace don’t strike me as a guy who negotiates.
“Look, Taco, I would say ‘yes,’ but it would just be postponing the inevitable. You’re going to have to move on anyway. The new San Francisco isn’t going to have room in it for transients. I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept that.”
Even I know that transient is just an expensive word for homeless. I shake my head. “There haven’t been transients in Embarcadero since anyone can recall,” I say. “Everyone here has a home. Or did, until you came. If there are homeless people here, John Makepeace, you made ‘em.”
He gives me this long, thoughtful look, while Ty gives him the same, and hope springs eternal. But it gets dashed pretty damn quick.
“Sorry. But I can’t let this city and all its marvels go to waste.”
And that, as they say, is that.
Deflated, I take my Tree and slink away across the compound. I find myself drawn to John Makepeace’s big old talisman. I am staring it at, trying to fight down the despair I’m feeling and wishing I could get into the old church without being noticed when I hear someone calling me. It turns out to be Ty and he still has that kind of funny pitying look on his face. There’s something else there, too — a little uneasiness, maybe, or shame.
“Hey, Taco,” he says, then. ”Should I call you ‘Taco’ or ‘Del?’”
I take a calculated risk. He doesn’t understand the power of names, I’m pretty sure. “Call me Del.”
“Hey, Del, I’m awfully sorry about all that. About John, I mean. He can be pretty abrasive when he’s got his mind set on something.”
“Not to mention greedy,” I add, and feel guilty right off. “Sorry.”
Ty tilts his head sideways and scrunches up his face. “Well, I don’t know that a person ought to be sorry for speaking the truth. John is...ambitious.”
“This is a big kingdom,” I say. “The Gam Saan’s even bigger. We could get used to sharing it, but he wants to grab everything and push us out. That’s not good, Ty. This is our home. We stayed when everybody else left. We have lives here.”
His brow wrinkles. “No, I don’t suppose it is ‘good,’ at that.”
“The Spirits don’t like it,” I say baldly.
He smiles, but it’s a twitchy little thing, just a weak tugging of the corners of his mouth.
“You really believe in your spirits, don’t you?” His voice tries to sound pitying, and a little superior, but misses by about that much.
I give back a very direct look. “The Spirits are real, Ty. They speak to me.”
Oh boy, I think, now I sound like one of those old movie Indians.
Ty glances at John Makepeace’s winnebago, then sits against the platform under the satellite dish and opens his mouth.
“What’s the dish for?” I ask, before he can say anything.
“Huh?” He jerks his eyes up to the thing. “The-the satellite dish? It, uh, talks to the other satellite dishes. What I mean is, I can talk to anybody else who’s got one. It’s, um, like, um — ”
“It’s a communication device,” I supply. “Let’s you phone home, huh?”
He looks surprised that the dumb transient “abo” would know something like that.
“Yeah. Yeah, right.”
While I give myself a mental kick for my cynicism, he says, “Can I ask you something?”
I nod. “Sure. Anything.”
“We’ve heard all kinds of stories — legends, I guess you’d call them — about the lost cities.”
“They aren’t lost, Ty. They were abandoned.”
Ty looks blank for a second. “Yeah, well. Anyway, there’s a shitload of legends about these places — especially San Francisco. It’s the quakes mostly. You learn about them in school and, well, I guess that’s just a matter of geology, but they’ve got sort of a legendary quality to them. The World Series Quake especially.”
I nod. “The Loma Prieta,” I say. “A’s and Giants.”
He gives me that surprised look again, which is followed by a shifty glance around, like as if he doesn’t want anybody to hear what he’s going to say next. He leans towards me, his arms crossed over his chest.
“But it’s not just the quakes. There are other things too. Like Crips and Bloods.”
“Like what?”
“You know, street gangs. Those women with guns...are those Crips and Bloods?”
“Those are knighties. They protect the realm. We got gangs here, but they mostly have tire irons and old baseball bats.” I shrug. “Some knives. The Jade Dragon gang runs a food co-op over in Embar. I’ve never heard of Crips and Bloods, Ty. What do they do?”
“Well, the legends say they’re like vampires or zombies or something — you know, undead, immortal. And invincible. They’re involved in this eternal warfare, tearing the cities apart and sucking up innocent children. And Tongs,” he adds, and I think there must be a whole flood of legends in Ty’s head. “There are stories about Chinese Tongs that own the city and run things behind the scenes. They sort of let the street gangs have their little wars because it suits them to keep the undead occupied.”
I have to admire Ty’s vivid imagination. “We got Tongs,” I admit, “but they’re not gangs. More like...community service organizations.”
“No shit.”
“No shit, Ty. They do all kinds of philanthropic stuff Mostly keep the hospitals running, although they provide pre-schools, too, and organize the big market in the Sang Yee Gah.”
Now Ty is ogling at me. “Hospitals? You got hospitals?”
“How else could we meet the medical needs of our community?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Okay, how about the sewers?”
“Uh,” I say. “They work, mostly.”
“But what about alligators? I’ve heard there are alligators in the sewers. Giant ones that feed on refuse. John says that’s all bunkum, of course. I imagine he’s right about that.”
I think for a moment about saying that, of course, there are giant alligators in the sewers, in the church gardens and in the crypt under the church, but that kind of lie is pretty easy to debunkify.
“No alligators,” I say.
“Nah. I didn’t really think there would be. I suppose the dread diseases and plagues are all legends too, and the mutated animals and all.”
Right about now, I’m staring at him like he’s sprouted a horn between his eyeballs. Alligators, okay, that I can see. I mean, I read about how those kinds of stories got started in New York — urban legends, they’re called — but mutated animals? Whoa.
“What kind of diseases?” I ask.
“Plague-type things, I guess. None of us were too sure about that, I think. We sort of expected we might find corpses in the streets. Even John. After the mass exodus out of here, well, we weren’t sure what might have happened to the people that got left behind.”
I reflect that the people who got left behind did just fine, thank you, and that the only corpses in the streets were the ones these guys put there. Ty seems like such a nice dude, I hate to remind myself that he was part of that. But I do.
“We have diseases,” I say, nodding and looking muy thoughtful. “And plagues. Especially in the heat. Embarcadero is better about that than most of the kingdoms and Potrero is worse. They have awful sanitation problems here. I wouldn’t drink the water.”
“We noticed.” His nose wrinkles. “We noticed how much cleaner it was over on your side of that trench.” He pauses, looking at me real intent. “You have quite a culture over there, don’t you?”
I nod, straight-faced, sober as can be. “Yes, Ty, we do.”
He shakes his head and says nothing.
“Hey, Ty, fog’s coming.”
This comes to us from one of the workmen bustling hither and yon.
Ty looks around. Indeed, the fog has come up since we started talking. It’s a shabu, which I think is the Mission’s pet variety of fog. I say as much.
“Shabu?” Ty repeats.
“Gauze. Usually, it’s a shabu dong — Moving Gauze. But today it’s just gauze.”
Ty chuckles. “You got names for your fog?”
“Of course. When you got so much of something and it comes in so many different varieties, you gotta name it just so you can talk about it intelligently. There are thirty-two known varieties of fog in the Gam Saan. Some are quite localized. For example, you only see a real wu planchar dong on the Presidio. That’s a truly heavy moving fog — oppressive.”
“Uh-huh,” he says, but seems distracted.
“What’s the matter, Ty?” I entertain the idea that the fog is making him nervous, but that seems...well, silly. If these jakes are afraid of fog they couldn’t have come to a worse place.
“Damn fog. Gives everybody jitters.”
If I understand "jitters" right, he’s just said fog makes ‘em nervous. Well, you could knock me over with a pine cone.
“Ty,” I say patiently, “fog is a fact of life here. It’s inescapable.”
“It’s not just the fog. It’s this place...and the fog. And ...and maybe something else.”
Every hair on me stands up and says "howdy."
“The Spirits,” I say nodding and trying hard to look sage.
“Hell, no. Hallucinations is more like it.”
I shrug and shake my head.
He scoots a little closer to me. “Sometimes, around dusk or at night or when the fog comes up like this, some of the guys... well, they’ve seen things. Little...somethings...slipping in and out of the fog and the dark, around the buildings. You wouldn’t ...you wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”
“No, Ty, I wouldn’t. Um, what sort of somethings...if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Little, dark, darting figures.”
“Like the shadows of big cats?” I ask.
He makes a funny noise. “I-I suppose so. Why?”
Ninjas! I’m thinking and try not to let my face do anything stupid. I wonder if Chen is scopin’ out the aliens as a possible market for his — I mean our relics and magics. But back to the problem at hand: I contemplate going off about mutant animals, but say, “Doesn’t sound like spirits. They’re more foglike.”
Ty laughs. It’s shallow laughter that doesn’t get all the way up to his eyes.
“Yeah. Thanks, Del. Now, I think maybe you should get out of here. Things tend to clamp down a little more when the visibility’s poor.”
“I was wondering,” I say, “if maybe you could let me go into the church. Just for a minute or two.”
“To talk to your spirits?”
“Yeah. It’s been a while, you know and, uh....”
He’s shaking his head. “Sorry, Del. I’d like to, really, but John would have my head on a plate if I let you in there. You might disturb something.”
I might disturb something? Yeah, right.
I leave, but not without looking back a whole bunch of times at the church and asking myself what Chen’s ninjas want there. I don’t much like the answer I’m imagining.
Out in the street, I take advantage of the shabu to disappear and double back. I feel this soul-deep need to talk to my Whisperers. The silence in my head is like hunger.
I come back around to the place where, in another time, I entered the Dolores for the first time. There is a chain-link fence over the hole we used. Security system. Now I understand why Firescape’s guerrilla attack failed. These guys got double-o-seven stuff. Which leads me to wonder how it is Chen’s ninjas, who I am certain are causing the alien hallucinations, are getting in and out.
I twitch to investigate this, but I can’t leave Doug alone out here. I hunker down beside him in the thickening shabu. His boughs wave and quiver. I don’t wonder, considering what we just heard.
“I’m lost, O Tree,” I say, rubbing his needles between my fingers. I inhale the perfume. “What I need is a miracle.”
“What you need,” says a voice from the shabu, “is a guide.”
I jump about three feet in the air and come down facing a figure that is little more than a walking lump of fog. I recognize the voice, though. It’s Lord E’s strange, cocky new merlin. I glance at Doug, who has stopped waving and now seems merely watchful.
“And that’d be you?” I ask, trying not to choke on my heart.
“I know how you can get in,” he says. “You interested?”
“Without setting off the alarms?”
“Yeah. Just like those little ninjas.”
I prick up my ears. “You seen ‘em?”
The fog bobs where his head must be. “Seen ‘em go in and out, to and fro.”
“I can’t. I can’t leave my Tree. And I sure as hell can’t take him inside.”
“I’ll take care of him.”
“Yeah, right.” What’s this guy think — I’m a born ditz?
He moves a step toward me, getting a little more solid. I hear the faint creak of leather. Not wearing his merlinly robes today, I guess.
“I mean it. I’ll take care of him for you. Keep him safe and sound and get him back to you when you’re done. Trust me.”
“Why should I?”
“’Cause you need to go in there and you can’t leave him alone. Because I’ll swear, merlin to merlin. ‘Cause I want what you want.”
“Yeah? Which is?”
“To save the Gam Saan.”
“You’re Potreran.”
“I’m from here,” he says, pointing down at the ground under his feet. “Gam Saan.”
“Why don’t you go in there then?”
He laughs and the sound, muffled as it is, tickles my ears. “Because I don’t got magic, Taco Del, and you do. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m not really a merlin. Lord E only thinks I am.”
“Why’re you telling me this?” I ask, suspicious.
“So you’ll know you can trust me. You got a secret on me, merlin. Here’s another one to go with. Something I never told anybody.” He hesitates. “Hector,” he says.
“Hector?” I repeat.
“That’s my name. My real and secret name. It’s yours. You do what you want with it.”
I suddenly realize that I’m smack in the middle of a MOMENT. Doug’s boughs tickle my hand and I know without doubt that I can trust Lord E’s not-merlin because for some reason unbeknownst to me, Doug trusts him. And because he has given me his name.
“Show me, Hector,” I say, and he leads me to the place where the ninjas are getting into the Mission.