Even at full-tilt gallop, we cannot seem to gain on Squint. Block after block, I see his coat-tails flapping at me from just around a corner. I am about to wonder if he’s in really great shape for an old wheeze, or if he’s got some truly serious magic, after all, when he scoots across an intersection three blocks ahead of us under full, if flickering, lamp light.
“Aw jeez,” says Hector, eloquently, and I stop dead in my insignificant tracks.
Squint is riding one of those big ten-speed tricycles the Wharfside knighties sometimes use on patrol, and he is pedaling like crazy.
“That sucks,” Hector sums up, panting. “You got any wheels around here?”
“There’s the Royal Mercedes, but that’s at the Presidio with the Majesties. Besides, I don’t know how to drive it.”
“What do you know how to drive?”
“A Vespa,” I say. “The knighties use them as emergency vehicles.”
“I’d say this qualifies as an emergency, wouldn’t you?”
I would. We head over to the Wharfside Squad House. It does not take much splanifying to shake loose a couple of the little motor scooters. Within minutes, Hector and I are mounted up and purring down the road to the Border. I am fuming, because I got not idea one how far ahead our squinty avenger has fled.
As we cross the new bridge over the Trench on Guerrero, I pray to see Squint, though I do not expect to see him. But when we are half a block from the Mission Dolores, heading into a trailing bufandong, I do see him and he is no longer pedaling away from us. Instead, he is pedaling toward us and he is hollering bloody mayhem.
“What the hell?” asks Hector.
We stop our scooters, blocking the street as much as possible. Squint, seeing us, does not flee in the opposite direction, as I expect, or even try to blow by us. He hollers all the louder and skids to a stop, with the result that his trike heels over and dumps his ass on the broken pavement. He rolls halfway to his feet and scrambles toward us, still hollering.
Finally I catch some words: “Banshees and woggles!” he’s wailing. “Ghoulies an ghosties! Save me! Save me!”
“What’s with that?” asks Hector.
In the next second or so, we find out, ‘cause all of a sudden Guerrero is full of ninjas.
“Aagh! Demons!” shrieks Squint.
An understandable mistake. These guys are black on black; their faces are covered up to the eyes, and their eyes — I jink you not — are glowing a sick shade of green. The effect of this in this grimy, foggy darkness is truly awesome.
“Jeez!” says Hector.
My thoughts, exact.
The ninjas don’t introduce themselves. They just head for poor old Squint, leading me to the obvious conclusion that they know he has the rattle. Accordingly, I leap from my Vespa and catch Squint by the lapels of his ratty old reefer coat.
There is a brawl the like of which I have seen only in old baseball videos. I have never been in one of these brawls, naturally, so I do not know the protocol. I quickly decide to let Hector fend for himself. I wrap my arms firmly around Squint, making like an octopus on an oyster.
I am kicked, chopped and pried at, but I do not give in. I incant octopus spells, thinking only of my oyster’s hairy pearl, which I can feel digging into my chest.
My eyes are closed, so I do not see what causes the sudden stoppage of the aforementioned violence to my person, but I hear it. There is the rattle of Vespas, first of all, and their little engines make this 3-D racket, bouncing off every brick, cobble and concrete slab within 50 yards. Then I hear the engines cut out and the shouts of knighties and the patter of hi-tops on asphalt.
I crack open my eyes. The ninjas are suddenly otherwise engaged. That is, except for two that seem to have been left behind with instructions to try to drag me and my oyster into an alley. I resist and incant, throwing out as deft a Chouyan as I have ever incanted.
The ninjas loosen their grip and utter Chinese swear words and then I hear Hector’s voice shout, “Hey, you guys! Over here!” And they are gone.
I am alone with Squint in a grove of Vespas. I tug at his coat. It rattles.
“Uh-uh,” he says, clutching it closed over his chest. “Mine.”
“Not yours,” I say. “This belongs to the Dolores.”
“Who the hell’s that?” He yanks on the coat, but I am still in squid mode, but this oyster’s goin' nowhere if I can help it.
I give him the hairiest eyeball of which I am capable. “The Haunts of the Mission Dolores,” I tell him. “You heard of ‘em, I’m sure. The disembodied spirits of five thousand dead Ohlone Indians. This — “ I shake the coat, making it rattle. “ — belongs to them, and they want it back...Wilbur.” I produce his name (given to me by a certain faux merlin) with a flourish.
His eyes are big as horse chestnuts and I feel his grip on the coat start to slip.
“You know my real and secret name!”
“And I’m not afraid to use it. By the way, what I know, the Dolores know.” (Could be true and therefore, not technically a lie, but merely wishful thinking.)
“Now, now, children. No need to fight over this old relic. The Ohlone no longer need it. It belongs, by divine right, to me.”
I know, before it oozes all the way out, who the Voice belongs to. This is himself, the Red Dragon, in the flesh, as they say. I turn and find him standing so near, I almost back up a step. I don’t though, ‘cause that would be a severe breach of merlinly protocol and would give him the psychological advantage.
He is wearing purple robes, long and priestly, and a strange tall hat with tassels and bells that I realize are now singing — incanting, no doubt, on their master’s behalf. This guy is loaded for magical bear, that much is clear as bluesky.
I force my eyes away from his face and find myself looking at the ninja who has appeared next to him. Before my gaze can beat another hasty retreat, I realize that the ninja’s eyes aren’t glowing at all; they’re smudged underneath with some kind of phosphorescent green stuff. It’s not magic, it’s makeup.
This mundane discovery has a weird effect on me. First, hope springs eternal that I am not deadjim; after all, it is a poor wizard of any stripe who must resort to flim-flam to promote abject awe. Second, I am disappointed.
Huh. Go figure.
Of course, it is about this time that I notice something else about the ninja’s eyes. They got that same, black hole stare I’ve seen on other folks who hang with Master Chen. I begin to suspect he’s got himself an entire army of these ninja-golems. Just as I have this horrendous thought, the ninja smiles. Ooga-booga.
I pull myself as upright as I can without letting loose of Squint, and say, “I’m Taco Del, merlin to — “
“Yes, yes. Merlin to Hismajesty, King of Embarcadero. I know who and what you are, little wizard. And I know what you could be.”
Against my will, my eyes are pulled to his face. He smiles. By Vespa light I see that it is not a pleasant smile and that his face is not the face of an old man; it is the face of a dragon, ageless and ancient. His eyes are dragon’s eyes — so black they’re purple, so live, they seem to turn like ferris wheels in his head. They got all the colors in the universe and they got no color at all. They are black holes, sucking up all the light on Guerrero street just the way they’ve sucked all the light and life out of his ninjas and monks.
At this moment, I am convinced that they will suck up all the light in my world if I don’t do something quick.
“I seem to have the advantage, merlin,” he says. “I know you, but you do not know me.”
He leans toward me, dragon-eyes glittering, sucking at my face.
“You’re Master Chen,” I say.
“Ah, but that is not my name, merely one of my titles. That knowledge will do you no good. It seems you have some small magic to command. Were you my ally, I might offer you a kingdom of your own to command. But you have placed yourself in opposition to me. So, you will receive only this riddle: I am unity and I am duality. I am one and I am legion. Before the Flood, I sired a nation; after the Flood, the soul of a nation. Because of me, all spirits cried in agony, as the innermost secrets of nature were revealed by my command. Immortals fear me, for I have quested and sought out the elixir of their wealth — and, behold, I shall seize it.”
He pauses for me to admire his little poem, then says, “In the tradition of riddles, I give you three guesses. I expect it will take you an eternity to discover my name and, while I have that kind of time, you do not. For now, Hearer of Whispers, bow to the inevitable: give me the rattle.”
While my pea brain tries to deal with the fact that he knows about the Whisperers, he makes this strange beckoning gesture. His grotesquely overgrown fingernails catch the light like as if they got diamond dust on, and a banner of mist wraps around his arm and wags its tail in my face.
It hits me that he is trying to spell me and my insides almost freeze up. My eyes are glued to those damn fingernails.
Then, I wonder how he changes his underwear.
This makes me giggle, which sort of jinks up Chen’s spell. Just to make sure it stays jinked, I wonder how he does a couple of other homey things. Then, I prepare to let loose some spells of my own.
Squint the Squeamish, however, has other ideas. He isn’t so much mesmerized by Chen as he is scared spitless of him. He makes this funny squeaking sound and dives butt first toward the asphalt. Next thing I know, Squint is in full retreat and I am holding an empty coat. Well, not quite empty. The rattle is in there. I can feel it. Huh. Suddenly, I know something Master Chen doesn’t.
I fold the coat against my chest, praying it won’t rattle. It doesn’t. I gesture at Squint’s fleeing backside. My arm stirs a banner of mist and it licks Chen’s face.
“Rattle's yours,” I say, “if you can catch it.”
Chen’s mouth wriggles like he bit into some bad kim chee, but his eyes are loaded guns. Neither I nor Scrawl nor even Hismajesty got an eyeball half as hairy as this one. This is beyond hairy. It reaches down into my immortal soul and just about sucks it right out.
“Impudent,” he calls me and disappears in a swirl of robes.
And I do mean disappears. It’s like he’s there, then he’s not, and moreover, his ninja is gone with him.
I move over into the yellow light from my scooter and carefully peek into the coat. Through gold-washed bufandong, the horse hair from the rattle is peeking back at me from the top of the long inside pocket.
Neon.
I start yelling for Firescape. I hear an answering yell from up the street toward the Mission. Then I hear footfalls. Lots of footfalls. I guess not all of Firescape’s knighties are ninja-chasing.
After a moment of thought and much grimacing, I slip into Squint’s nasty old reefer coat and turn to wait for the knighties.
With the adrenaline wearing off, I realize how tired I am — almost asleep on my feet. I straddle my Vespa, sucking up cold bufandong, trying to stay wakeful. When this doesn’t do a whole lot, I pull open my amulet bag and snuff up some Doug. Muy better — my eyes almost focus.
I look up, then, and see folks moving toward me through the stringy mist. I am about to wave when it occurs to me that they don’t look right: they are carrying lights and they are too big to be knighties.
My dull senses scramble to sharpen themselves. I fire up the Vespa, wondering if I should just peel out of here, and in the next instant, in the web-weave of scooter headlamps, I see that these big guys are carrying more than lights, they are carrying alien weapons.
I’m outta there. I rev the Vespa and start to move, when one of the aliens fires into the air. A beam of orange light screams through the twisted banners of fog with a sound like the sky is ripping. This gets my immediate attention. I jerk the scooter to a stop and look up to see big old John Makepeace coming toward me, looking like some dingy angel-o-doom. At the end of his beefy arm (the one that’s not holding a laser rifle) is my own beloved wife.
“Jade!” I cry, terrified into uttering her real and secret name. I am answered by a stream of Chinese invective and thank God she is alright.
In short order, we are hustled off the street and into the Mission Dolores compound. All the way there, I am hoping we will be rescued at the last minute by knighties or Hector or even Creepy Lou. When we are safely tucked away in John Makepeace’s winnebago, I am forced to face reality.
“What the hell was all that?” John Makepeace asks me when we are alone in the winnebago with him and Ty and some big guy with a truly nasty set of pectoral muscles.
“All what?” I ask back.
“That guerilla war you staged on our front porch.”
“Pardon me, John,” I say politely, “but the Mission is still in Lord E’s domain and so, technically speaking, is his front porch, not yours.”
“Don’t be flip with me, kid. Is that who you were fighting — Lord E?”
Kid. I forget sometimes that I still look like a kid, though I’m pushing twenty pretty hard. It’s tough to get people to take you seriously when you look like a kid. I wax as sober as I can.
“No,” I say, “we were fighting the Minions of Darkness.”
“The what?”
“We were engaged in battle with the forces of Master Chen. The selfsame demons who have been haunting this very Mission.”
John Makepeace makes a face at me. “You were fighting demons?”
“Well, they’re not really — “ I steal a glance at Ty, whose eyes are as big as walnuts.
I’d started to say that they’re ninjas, not demons, and I wonder if it would lying, strictly speaking, if I just sort of leave that out. I have trouble with lies, ni dong, but I’m good at fantasies. Fantasies just roll off my tongue like they don’t even check in with my brain first. I decide demons come up on the fantasy side and that not saying something true is not really the same as saying something untrue. So, I simply don’t visit the issue of whether the ninjas are demons or just brain-dead guys in black outfits.
“Your men have seen them. I heard Gino say so — Ty, too.”
He gives Ty a look. “Yeah, right. What were you really doing?”
I shrug. This turns out to be an error on my part; Squint’s coat (my coat now) rattles.
John Makepeace’s eyes narrow. “What was that? And don’t ask what — you know what.”
“Just my ceremonial rattle,” I reply. “Merlin stuff, ni dong.”
“No, I don’t dong. Show me.”
“Trade secret.”
“Bull shit. Ty, get the rattle.”
Ty starts, blinks and looks at me sheepishly. “Uh, look, John, I...I hate to — “
John Makepeace makes a sound like a crab pot boiling and lunges at me across the table. My dear Jade lunges too — for his throat — but is jerked back from behind by the guy with the pecs.
Me, I get dragged across the table by John Makepeace, while he violates the privacy of my newly acquired coat. He pulls the rattle out and holds it up in the light. It is a sad-looking old thing, really. At least it probably looks pretty sad to these alien dudes. The hair is dull and limp and the paint on the gourd and stick is fading and chipped.
It looks pretty sad to me, too, actually — until I get a whiff of Doug from the amulet bag that John M has mashed in one big paw. It’s like putting on a pair of enchanted glasses. Suddenly, I can see that magic still drips from that old rattle like fiery dew. And I am aware of the pipe, which is digging into my hip, and the vest, which is clinging damply to my skin. There is magic there too, magic I can see and feel; the three things are connected to each other by gleaming phantom threads. I can even see the "loose end" of the absent headdress trailing off into the distance.
I gotta hope that when it comes to native magics, three out of four ain’t bad. Right now, my immediate problem is getting the elusive and much sought-after rattle out of alien hands.
Any hope I have of John Makepeace not knowing how important this stuff is flies out the winnebago window when I see how his eyes have lit up. For a wild moment, I think maybe he sees the magical threads too, but then he says, “Is this authentic?”
It is clear that an actual lie is in order. However, I expect the truth will seem weirder to John Makepeace.
“Yes,” I admit. “This is a genuine artifact of great spiritual import. We were attempting to return it to its rightful owner.”
My beloved Jade rises to the occasion.
“Yeah, right,” she says. “Only my man here believes its rightful owner is a 500 year old Indian wizard.” She makes loco loops around her shell-like ear. “A dead Indian wizard. I guess you could say we run sort of a delivery service for restless spirits.”
John Makepeace frowns. “Is it real?”
Firescape rolls her chocolate-almond eyes and snickers. “About as real as he is,” she says, making eyes at me.
I hold my breath. John Makepeace is clearly not sure what to think. He is looking from the rattle to me and back again. Finally, he looks at Mr. Pecs.
“Go get Professor Hollowell.”
“He’ll be asleep, sir.”
“Then wake him up. I need his professional opinion. If this artifact is real, he’ll thank you for waking him.”
Pecs nods and leaves.
I eye the door. Okay, one down and two to go. I wonder how to get rid of John Makepeace and Ty.
When the lights suddenly go out, I suspect maybe Someone Else has that covered.
“What the hell?” asks John Makepeace.
I recognize this as a rhetorical question. It is answered pretty quickly by shouting from outside. I glance out the window. A ghost moon is spilling milky light through the Mission Dolores’ eternal shabu dong. Other than that, I see nothing.
John Makepeace swears colorfully and feels his way toward the front of the winnebago. The next thing I know, he has done something that brings lights back on. They are dimmer than before, but I can still see that John Makepeace is pretty damn mad. Outside, the shouting gets louder and fuller, and then there are shots — laser guns and AKs both. The door opens and someone sticks his head inside.
“You better come, John. Someone’s messing with the satellite dish.”
John Makepeace moves a lot faster than I imagine he can. He pulls out a hand gun, drops the rattle into the little metal sink across the narrow room, and is gone.
Ty watches him go, then turns his head back to look at me and Firescape. We stare at each other in silence for a moment, then he says, “So, this is your wife?”
I glance at Firescape and nod. “Her name is Jade.”
Said wife jumps and her mouth pops open, but she doesn’t drill me for my indiscretion. She knows I am only trying to show Ty that we trust him, and therefore, he can trust us.
“You...you’re having a baby, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. In a while.” Firescape pats her little belly, pretty obvious in spandies.
He nods, looks at the floor, looks out the window, looks at us, then exits the winnebago without another word, leaving the door hanging wide open.
Needless to say, I suppose, we are outta there in no appreciable time. I snag the rattle as we flee, then I Chouyan like I have never Chouyaned before. We hit the ground under the winnebago and take refuge behind a wheel. We are not alone long. In about two shakes of a Doug bough, Cinderblock is hunkered down next to us.
“Thought he’d never get out of there,” she whispers. “Let’s zhou.”
We follow her into the graveyard, creeping low to the ground, bellying under winnebagoes to avoid flying feet, lightning bolts, and bullets.
I do not breathe until we are safely in the graveyard. And when we are in the graveyard, close to the Ohlone, close to Pedro, I feel the tug and tingle of the Ohlone spirits. I can’t begin to tell you what I’d give for just a little bit of time to talk to them — to him. But there is no time. We gotta go. Already Cinderblock is heading for the rabbit hole.
Just before we drop into the hole, I hear a vast sigh from the very ground beneath my feet. Good, it says, and I feel a rush of something big and warm fill up my insides. I smile into the thick darkness. So far, so good.
Cinderblock lets out a series of cutting whistles, which I know means, “objective achieved,” or words to that effect, then we are down the hole.
We recon in the intersection of 16th and Mission, where a handful of knighties await us with the scooters.
“What next?” pants Firescape when we have stopped scurrying, and are sitting astride our little metal steeds.
I have never seen her so short of breath.
“Next,” I say, “I go to the Mountain.”
“You mean we,” says my wife. "We go to the Mountain.”
I lower my voice. “Jade,” I say, “you’re going to be a mother.”
“And you’re going to be a father.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Oh, yeah. And this means you should go alone? Duh. I’m going with you, Taquito. No arguments.”
“Yeah, me too,” says Creepy Lou. He has appeared out of nowhere, bouncing like a channel buoy. “No argumenth.”
“Anybody else?” This is a rhetorical question, ni dong. Facetious, even, but Cinderblock takes it seriously.
“Me,” she says, pulling her Vespa around in front of us.
This time, it is Firescape who objects. “Sorry, Lieutenant. Somebody gotta take care of the Majesties and keep track of the aliens.”
Cinderblock leans close in and whispers, “Jade, I’m not jinkin' — you need me.”
“Yeah, here.” Firescape puts her hand over Cinderblock’s and says, muy seriouso, “Lieutenant Guinevere Fred Cinderblock, I, Jade Berengaria Flannigan Firescape, hereby award to you a field commission to the rank of Colonel, effective as of right this moment, as God and Taco and Creepy Lou are my witnesses. Now, you get your fanny back down to the Mission and find out what John Makepeace is doing.”
“I’ll tell you what he’s doin',” says a new voice from out of the fog.
Around us, knighties shift into defensive position. I hear safeties clicking off.
“It’s okay!” I yell, but softly, ni dong. “He’s a friend.”
Hector emerges on cue from the bufando, which is no longer dong. He saunters up to us and repeats, with great and merlinly aplomb, “I’ll tell you what John Makepeace is doin'. He’s cadging for spare parts.”
He pulls his hands out of his monkish sleeves and holds them out to us.
Firescape flicks on the headlamp of her scooter. The yellow light falls on a wad of metal and plastic and wire with silicon chips dangling here and there.
“What the hell’s that stuff?”
“This,” Hector tells us, “is the guts of a genuine alien satellite relay. I got curious about what makes that sort of machinery tick and, well...this is what makes it tick. If ET wants to phone home now, he’s gonna have to send smoke signals.”
“How did you know how to — “ I start to ask, but stop, because I am a mental sneeze away from realizing something truly portentous. My mouth is hanging open and my face is doing something muy silly, I’m sure, ‘cause Lord E’s ex-merlin laughs and says, “It’s just another kind of radio, Chickpea.”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling like the knee-weak, foolish (but really grateful) recipient of a legit miracle. “And you were always good with radios.”
Hoot/Hector laughs at me. “What took you?”
I thought you were dead, sounds awfully rude, so I don’t say this.
“You’ve changed,” I mutter.
“You haven’t.”
“Shit,” I say. “You damn well better be back for good. You disappear again, and I'll — “ I can’t finish.
He laughs again and throws his arms around me. I reciprocate. The satellite junk digs into my back. Like I care.
“What’s with you two?” my wife wants to know. “Del, who is this guy, really?”
“I told you about Hoot,” I grunt from inside Hoot’s bear hug. “This is the very dude.”
In the stark light, Firescape’s eyes are huge. “You said he was dead.”
“I thought he was.”
Hoot chuckles. “Me too. On any number of occasions.”
“Yeah, well, I’m really happy for you boys, but we gotta get this magical stuff to the Mountain before Chen or Makepeace or some other collector of antiques makes a move on us.” Firescape kills her headlamp. “We gotta zhou, Del.”
I know she’s right, but having just found Hoot again, I surely hate to take a chance on losing him. We quickly determine that four of us will go to the Mountain together — Hoot, Creepy Lou, Firescape and me. A half-dozen knighties will come along to watch our back trail while Cinderblock personally guards Doug and the Majesties.
As we push our Vespas to the Border in preparation for mounting up and zhouing, there is something I just gotta know from Hoot.
“Your name really Hector?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says. “After some jake on my mother’s side of the family. She always called me Heck.”
I ponder this. The possibilities for puns, jokes and generally cruel word-play are endless.
“Damn,” I say.
“You're not kiddin',” he says. “Don’t spread it around, though.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” I promise, and we roll our Vespas in silence for a while.
“To the Wiz?” asks Firescape.
“No time.” I already know we will be followed, and it’s not John Makepeace or other aliens I worry about.
“Don’t you need a map?”
“I have a map,” I say, “in my head.”
And it’s true. I have stared at photos and maps and elevations of the Mountain over the last weeks until I think I could walk there in my sleep. Which, as I think of it, is just about what I’m going to do.
There is one big, fat, glaring problem with my map. That is that the neat little lines run through a whole lot of Big Unknown, the first major chunk of which lies smack in the middle of the Bay Bridge.
Treasure Island.