Above the Sunset Strip rose the Streamline Moderne gem of silver-gray concrete, steel and glass, detailed with chevrons, fractal ocean waves and Zeppelins ascendant. It stood out against an impossibly blue sky and the whole of the L.A. basin spread out below and beyond. I took a deep breath, and entered the lobby.
A bald linebacker in a shiny suit—it was an offbeat, futuristic cut but still was recognizable as formal menswear—met me at the door. He was the kind of guy who generally has the nickname “Tiny.” I was immediately glad I didn’t have the Time Crystal with me.
“Professor Preston, I recognized you from your photos. I must say...”
“I haven’t aged a day. Thanks.”
“Mr. Johnson has been expecting you. Please come with me,” he said, with a sunny smile and a welcoming sweep of his hand.
I had expected drawn guns and a thorough frisk, but despite his imposing build, the security man was professional and polite as he escorted me through what looked like a metal detector. If that’s what it was, it was not set off by the metal disk in my pocket.
We entered the elevator.
Tiny led me out into the bright and airy penthouse, which had a fantastic 360-degree view of the ochre Hollywood Hills to the north, Downtown L.A. to the east bristling with ultramodern new skyscrapers, and the shining Pacific to the south and west.
The décor and furniture were 1950s-influenced. In one corner stood a rainbow-lit Wurlitzer jukebox, complete with bubbler.
“Mr. Johnson will be here in one hour. In the meantime, he begs that you make yourself completely at home. Can I get you something to eat?”
“No, thanks.”
“A beverage? We have a full bar. Or ice water?”
I’m not putting anything that comes from Ludlo in my mouth, I thought.
“No, I’m good. Thanks.”
Tiny set a sleek silver obelisk near me.
“In case you want some music or video, just ask Alti. That button will summon me if you need anything at all.” Then he got in the elevator and departed.
I debated phoning Ariyl and letting her know it might be more than an hour, but decided to wait.
Then I heard soft laughter and female voices from what I assumed was the kitchen.
Cooks? Maids? Masseuses?
Then one of them addressed me.
“Professor Preston, would you mind coming in here?” asked a breathy voice that I could swear I recognized.
I left the living room, only to bump into a bewitching little blonde in a white bathrobe, whose flowing golden locks partly covered her face, letting one Tahoe-blue eye play peek-a-boo with me. I knew her—and that robe—from her starring role in one of the all-time great Hollywood satires.
“Veronica Lake?” I gasped.
She arched an insouciant eyebrow at me.
“Do I know you, big boy?” she drawled.
“N-no,” I said.
But I knew her. I just didn’t know what she was doing here in this penthouse, 116 years after she’d starred in Sullivan’s Travels.
“Then how do you know me?” she asked.
“You’re an actress. Right?”
“Sure I’m an actress. Want me to do Juliet for you?” she said with dry impudence.
Ludlo had no Time Crystal. There was no way she could be the real Veronica Lake. But the illusion was perfect.
Latex appliances? Plastic surgery?
No. She looked like nothing had ever touched that face. And her voice was a perfect match. And I was about ninety-nine percent sure she was not a robot.
Behind me, I heard a coin drop into a slot. From the jukebox blared aroused saxophones and Little Richard, wailing “The Girl Can’t Help It.” On the wall appeared an impossibly voluptuous shadow, cast from the other room. Jayne Mansfield bustled into the hall, in a tight black dress practically painted on her wasp-waist and spectacular sashaying hips—the illusion completed by her doe-eyed face and flowing ivory locks.
“Hi!” she cooed, the soul of friendliness. “Thirsty?”
She was cradling a pair of milk bottles against her outthrust cleavage—an image, like the song, right out of her most famous film. There wasn’t much room to get by her.
“Excuse me,” I said, stumbling as I slid past her. I stopped at hearing the schwing of a steel blade drawn from its scabbard.
I whirled to see a red-maned beauty in thigh-length boots, V-necked blouse and green doublet unbuttoned down to the Plimsoll line. She brandished her saber in my direction.
“Maureen O’Hara?” I said. Her emerald eyes flashed.
“And who would be asking?” demanded the lady pirate. The costume was from one of her swashbuckling roles—Against All Flags or At Sword’s Point.
“You’ll find me no easy conquest,” she said with a trace of an Irish lilt. She pointed to the wall with a powerful swish of her blade, “but there’s a sword, if you’re man enough to try.”
Three legendary movie stars from a century ago, offering three very different encounters.
What the hell was Ludlo trying to pull?
“Girls,” said the breathy voice behind me, “I saw him first.”
I knew who it was, even before I turned to the bedroom door, and beheld that platinum bob, those hooded eyes, the Technicolor red mouth with the enticing smile.
She undulated up to me, in a white summer dress that hung from behind her neck, suspending her spectacular breasts and clinging to her slim waist and ample derriere. I took a step back and found myself against the jamb. She stopped half an inch from me, her lips a centimeter from mine. She stood there radiating sex, and I couldn’t help but meet her much more than halfway.
“You cannot be Marilyn Monroe,” I insisted.
“Can’t I?” she whispered, confident behind her lowered lids. “You sure?”
“You died a century ago. How could it be you?”
“You ask the silliest questions,” she breathed into my nostrils. Then she kissed me.
Definitely not a robot.
And the kiss went on and on. Her lips were so soft that after a few seconds, I could barely feel them.
What the hell am I doing?
The first woman I ever desired was kissing me passionately. And she was every bit as wonderful as I’d dreamed she would be.
But I can’t do this. Ariyl.
But I wanted Marilyn so much. Then it hit me.
I have something that came from Ludlo in my mouth.
At that point, Marilyn kind of floated over my head, along with the room. Or was I floating over her?
“Hey,” I said with lips I couldn’t feel. Marilyn’s face was all I could see.
“You must have been pretty tuckered out,” commented a familiar voice. Male.
My eyes focused on the ceiling. The light from a sinking sun was painting the penthouse pale gold.
I sat bolt upright in bed. I was naked.
Marilyn was gone.
And Ludlo was standing in the doorway.
I flinched.
The last time I’d seen him, in 1933, Ariyl had just flung turpentine at him. He’d fired his gun at her, the flame causing his own face to ignite.
Not surprisingly, he looked like a man whose head caught fire. I finally looked away.
“Yeah, I get that revulsion thing a lot. The worst part is, I’ve had forty-two skin grafts since 1960. Can you imagine how bad it looked before?”
“Would it help to say I’m sorry?”
He waved it off.
“It wasn’t you who threw that shit at me. Anyway, it’s turpentine over the dam. We haven’t got time to waste on who mutilated who.”
“That’s very mature of you.”
“I’ll give you a minute to get dressed. Meet me in the living room.”
My phone and my bank coin were in my back pockets. No calls. It had been an hour and a half. Ariyl should be safely back in Santa Monica.
I was starting to get feeling back in my lips. It must have been in her lipstick. She must have worn some kind of coating or antidote.
Well, I was dressed. Time to face the music.
Marilyn and Jane Russell were dancing and singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” on the hi-def wall screen. When Ludlo saw me enter he froze them in mid-bump.
“Say, did you want to meet Jane?” asked Ludlo. He clicked off the movie. “Lena Horne is also here, and Rita Hayworth, and France Nuyen. I just have a thing for those mid-twentieth century sex goddesses. They go with the décor.”
A century hadn’t changed Ludlo. He was still an astonishing pig, but there was no point picking a fight with him, so I bit my tongue.
“Oh, but you like the tall gals, don’t you?” Ludlo grinned. “Well, I’ve got a six-footer who’ll knock your socks off.”
“I just got my socks back on. You drugged me.”
“Not me. That was Synthia.”
“I thought she was Marilyn.”
“You’re supposed to.”
“Who is she really?”
“Synthia—with an S. A robot. Isn’t that right, Synthia?”
Marilyn (I mean, Synthia) came to the doorway, looking contrite, but didn’t respond to his question. Apparently knowing it was rhetorical.
“You’re a liar. She’s real,” I said.
“Oh, I know, she felt and smelled and tasted human. But she’s not. She’s a sex-clone. If you know the right people...and have a DNA sample from Monroe, a few years to wait for the accelerated growth, and a hundred million bucks, you can order one up. Of course, mentally, she’s an A.I.” he added. “Just like your cab driver—autonomous software based on the original’s life history and movie dialogue.”
I was glad I hadn’t had anything to eat. I felt ill.
“Is that legal?” was all I could think to ask.
Ludlo gave a merry laugh.
“Lots of things aren’t legal for the schmuck on the street, David. But I’m a trillionaire. Laws don’t apply to us. You know that.”
I looked over at Synthia. I shuddered.
“You look disgusted, David. And here I was, trying to be the perfect host. Tiny told me you wouldn’t even have a glass of water. Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you to be yourself. That’s why I didn’t drink your water.”
“Well, you found another way to wet your whistle. Didn’t you?”
“And you found another way to frisk me.” I said. Synthia couldn’t meet my eyes. “No Time Crystal, though, was there?”
“I had to try,” he shrugged.
“Can we stop playing around now, and talk about the asteroid?”
Synthia looked at me, puzzled. She didn’t know?
“Just one little matter we need to clear up first. I knew you’d arrive today, Preston—because when I woke up, you had changed the winner of the 2016 election. What were you thinking?”
“That was an accident. We can—”
“Forget it. You’d be amazed how little it matters. The world is doomed either way. We need to change something a lot further back than 2016, in order to set things right.”
“How far back?”
“Three hundred and forty years. Tell me, Preston, did you ever hear of John King, the boy pirate?”
Mom had told me the tale when I was little.
“Yeah. He joined up with Blackbeard when he was nine or something?”
“Not...” began Ludlo. Then he looked out over the Angeleno cityscape and laughed smugly. “That’s right, David. He joined Blackbeard the Pirate.”
“And he was lost at sea.”
“In a violent nor’easter off Cape Cod, along with ol’ Blackbeard...” Ludlo couldn’t help a ghoulish laugh here, “...and 143 of his crew. Every man except a Miskito Indian helmsman named John Julian and Thomas Davis, a kidnapped carpenter.”
“I see you’ve studied this era more than I have.”
“I admire pirates.”
“There’s a shock. So, what about John King?”
“He didn’t die. At least, not in the history I have lived through. I saved him,” said Ludlo.
“Really? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I know, right? But...the kid was about to drown, and on an impulse, I saved him.”
“Knowing you, you had an angle,” I said.
Synthia/Marilyn cringed visibly at my presumption.
Ludlo turned to me. It was hard to read the expression on his face, since it wasn’t much like a face anymore.
“Don’t push your luck, Preston.”
True, that wouldn’t be wise. Half-blind, aging and disfigured, he still could cripple or kill me with one blow. He had considerable reason to do so.
But if I knew one thing about Ludlo, it was that I had to keep him off balance. If he sensed weakness, I’d be dead. So I waited.
“You’re not entirely wrong,” he conceded. “I needed a new heir. I hadn’t had one for eight decades, since my numbskull son in Amsterdam lost my entire fortune.”
“How’d he do that? Gambling?”
“Yes. On flowers.”
I knew it was unwise, but I couldn’t help laughing.
“The great House of Octavius, ruined by the tulip craze?”
“The Semper Augustus variety, to be precise. Candy-striped red and white—in 1637, the Dutch had never seen a bloom so spectacular. The price of one bulb could buy a large farm. But mortgaging my estate to corner the market on what turned out to be posies with a plant virus...well, that kind of stupidity I don’t forgive. By the time I returned from my voyage the market had crashed and I was broke. I had just enough left to lay a wreath of tulips on Junior’s coffin.”
I wasn’t laughing anymore. I wondered how many of Ludlo’s adopted heirs ever lived long enough to play the role of Octavius, Senior.
“Long story short, eighty years later I was aboard Blackbeard’s ship the night it went down, stealing a treasure I knew history would not miss. But this punk kid in the captain’s cabin has the balls to pull a knife on me and threaten to gut me if I touched a single piece of eight.”
From somewhere in those mangled lips, Ludlo laughed at the memory.
“I like him already,” I replied. “What did you saving his life have to do with an asteroid on a collision course with Earth?”
“I saved him...then he rejected me.”
“No.”
“Yes. Right there on the beach, I promised John he would share my fortune, and all he had to do was cut off his two fingers like mine. Know what he did? He cursed me, the little bastard! Called me a diseased, thieving hypocrite, and told me I could go to blazes.”
“I may adopt this kid.”
“Then he slashed me with his knife!”
“Whoa! And you didn’t kill him?”
Ludlo nodded.
“Must be getting soft in my old age. When he saw my wound heal, you should’ve seen his face. He turned white and called me Lucifer. I said, ‘You’re goddamned right, and you’d best find the fastest ship and hide in the farthest place on earth, because the next time I see your ungrateful ass, I’ll drag you straight to Hell!’”
“And then?”
“I forgot all about him. Until ten months ago, when the Stheno mission failed.”
“Let me guess: Stheno is the asteroid that’s going to hit this planet on January sixth, 2059.”
Ludlo registered surprise. Synthia looked horrified.
“I was in Australia the day it hit,” I explained.
“You never cease to amaze me, Preston.”
“Just tell me what the hell happened.”
“Stheno’s orbit was atypical for an NEA. The PDCO—the office that tracks these things—barely found it in time. It takes seven minutes for the Earth to move one planetary diameter—Stheno would cross our orbit literally at the last minute of Earth’s passage. But they estimated even this glancing blow could kill ten million people.
“If we could delay its arrival by fifty-eight seconds, it would miss Earth completely. To avoid mass panic, the governments of the world developed a top-secret mission to Stheno.
“Aaron King, Octavius Corp’s top asteroid-mining engineer, was on that mission, which left Earth in 2051.
“Only problem was, at the end of the five-year flight, Aaron murdered the rest of the crew, and then set off the nuclear bombs that were supposed to divert Stheno...but he deliberately did it on the trailing end of the asteroid. He didn’t slow it down, he sped it up by about three minutes. He turned a lethal glancing impact into an extinction-level bullseye.”
“And there isn’t time to get another mission to Stheno?”
Ludlo shrugged.
“They fired every missile they had, hoping to slow it down again, but no one thinks it’ll be enough. Every week in the news, you hear about another member of the science team killing him or herself.”
“So it’s hopeless?”
“Not for us, David. You see, a few days ago, the NSA discovered Aaron King’s journal: He had heard God’s call, telling him to bring about the End of Days. Care to guess who Aaron’s ten-times-great-grandfather was?”
“John King, boy pirate?”
“Got it on the first try.”
“What do I win?”
Ludlo reached in his pocket and flipped a heavy gold coin to me. I caught it and appraised the mint-condition, hand-stamped coin, dated 1708.
“A doubloon. Nice.”
“A quadruple doubloon. Made of Inca gold, from Peru. Worth a hundred thousand dollars to a collector. I recommend you sell it soon, before the news about Stheno leaks out. After that it won’t be worth a plugged nickel.”
“You’re sure this boy was Aaron’s direct ancestor?”
“I’ve had ten months to check his genealogy. Apparently I put the fear of God into young John King. He spent his life at sea, obsessively reading the Book of Revelation. He became a father late in life. His only child Samuel was among the first thieves transported to Australia.
“Samuel escaped the penal colony and became a rancher in southwestern Queensland. And there, the Kings’ dynasty festered in isolation for two centuries of religious mania and misery and inbreeding. You couldn’t have picked a dead-end family with less effect on the outside world.
“But then the ranch failed in a drought, forcing the last of the line, Jeremiah King, to emigrate to rural Texas in 2020. He was every bit the fanatic that his forebears were, and he raised his son Aaron to be one, too. But unlike the other Kings, Aaron was a genius at astrophysics. That’s why Octavius Corp hired him to supervise our asteroid mines.”
“Good job vetting your employees. So, what’s your next move? No doubt you bought yourself a seat on the space ark.”
“There’s no ark. Where the hell would it go? The Moon and Mars colonies aren’t self-sufficient. They’ll just take longer to die than the people on Earth. And as for those rumored nuclear-powered underground shelters...I have no desire to subsist for generations among bureaucrats and soldiers and their families, under military discipline, living like a bunch of Morlocks off hydroponic food, waiting for the ice age to end.”
“And that’s assuming they’d let you in.” I mocked him in a high-pitched voice: “‘Aren’t you Octavius Johnson? Didn’t you hire the guy who ended the world?’”
“C’mon, you’re making it sound worse than it is,” yawned Ludlo. “Anyway, now you understand why I’ve been waiting for you to show up.”
“I know exactly why.”
“David, you disappoint me. You think I’m still thirsting for revenge? At this point, with the whole world facing annihilation? I’ve taken you into my confidence and told you what has to be done.”
“Yes, you have. So I’m free to go now?”
“What is your rush? Don’t you see, David? We’re on the same side this time.”
“I doubt it.”
“Different motives, I grant you. You want to save nine billion lives...I want to save mine. And I don’t want to wear this Halloween face till I die. As you pointed out last time we met, I need N-Tec back. It won’t happen with an asteroid strike. Restoring history means that that boy must die.”
“Or I could always kill one of his scuzzy descendants.”
“Too risky. It’d still be altered history, which always produces unintended consequences. And besides, you wouldn’t do it.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“No. Because you’re soft that way. Killing a perfect stranger would be murder in your eyes.”
“So is letting a nine-year-old boy drown.”
Ludlo’s eyes narrowed, and he dropped the mocking tone.
“Not when he was supposed to drown that night. That’s just letting history take its course.”
“Good point. Well, you’ve told me what I need to know. I’ll be leaving now.”
Synthia/Marilyn suddenly ran up and clung to my arm.
“Oh, please, David—take me with you!”
“I-I can’t do that,” I stammered.
“Then just get me out of here! Just to the street, that’s all I ask!”
My God, I thought, I bet she’s never been outside this building.
“Why, Synthia!” purred Ludlo mockingly. “Can it be you no longer find me attractive?”
She couldn’t look him in the face.
“Please,” she begged, “you have no idea how cruel he is!”
“Actually, I have a fair notion.”
Synthia cowered behind me. I couldn’t protect her from Ludlo if it came to violence. But how could I turn down someone pleading in tears? Synthia might be an A.I., but she had just passed my own personal Turing Test: I believed that she was genuinely terrified of Ludlo.
“I’ll get you downstairs. After that, I can’t help you.” She squeezed my arm, grateful.
“Fine. One of the other girls can take your place on Mondays,” Ludlo said. “I wouldn’t dream of depriving David of your fictional charms.”
“Let’s go,” I said, pulling her toward the elevator. I jabbed the button, but there was no sound from the mechanism.
Ludlo was pressing a button on his desk.
“Uh, before you two lovebirds depart, where is my darling Ariyl?”
“Somewhere you can’t get at her.”
A tiny voice buzzed from a clear plastic bud tucked into Ludlo’s ear. He gave a ruined smile.
“Liar. I know where she is now. She’s in a cab right out front.”
“No, she’s not. I saw her leave!”
“I forgot to mention, David, that there’s a warrant out on you for tax evasion, and Ariyl’s still wanted for that biker bar riot back in 2018. Alti, show the feed from the Purple Cab,” said Ludlo.
A floating screen near the wall lit up in such perfect def, for a second I thought Ariyl was in the room with us. But then behind her, I recognized our hologram-Ernest Borgnine, and behind him, a view of the Sunset Tower entrance, all in amazing deep focus. This was video from a cam inside the taxi.
Red and blue flashing lights from just off camera told me there was a cop car blocking the cab. On the sidewalk between the building and the car stood two L.A. Sheriff’s deputies in full riot gear, aiming guns at Ariyl. The cab door rose.
“Out of the car! Hands up! Down on the ground! Do it!” they bellowed.
Ariyl put up her hands as she got out of the cab.
“Sorry, kid,” the digital driver growled right at me from the screen. “I hadda drop a dime on you two. I’m a licensed A.I. And keeping people like Mr. Johnson happy is what I do.”
I now realized that Ernest had skillfully engaged with us to determine who we were looking for. His mention of the burned face was bait. And I’d bit on it, hard.
I shook my head at Ludlo.
“You really put the Borg in Borgnine.”
Ernie cracked up. An A.I. with a sense of humor.
Ludlo gave a polite chuckle.
The next second he grabbed my jacket lapel with one hand and with his other put an automatic pistol close enough to my right eyeball to check me for glaucoma.
“I forget, Dave—is this your favorite eye?”