The Gilded Age Part 21

The madam shrugs. Zhu exchanges a look with Cameron, and Cameron tears around the bedroom again, tapping, prying. She finds another secret compartment in the floor of the clothes closet. Officer Andrews breaks the planks open with his ax.

And there, the rosewood box!

"I know that my cousin brought a dowry given to her by her mother in China," Zhu says carefully. "I want to see if Selena has stolen anything, the way she's stolen Wing Sing's innocence."

"Indeed, yes, take a look," says Cameron.

Zhu eagerly flings back the lid.

The aurelia. She will have it.

Glitter of gold, bracelets of jade, earrings and rings. Zhu peers breathlessly. Several new pieces she doesn't recognize-amber beads, a necklace of lapis lazuli, a brooch of freshwater pearls. Please. Zhu doesn't care how or where or when the girl got the aurelia. If a john gave it to her, if she bought it herself at Colonel Andrews's Diamond Palace, if it materialized out of thin air. It doesn't matter. Please make this right. Wing Sing has got to have the aurelia. Wing Sing has got to be the girl Zhu is supposed to rescue so that all of s.p.a.cetime in the future survives.

But the aurelia isn't there. It isn't there.

Cameron beams. "Praise Jesus Christ!"

Officer Andrews hands his ax to Officer Cooke. With a gentleness Zhu didn't think possible, the policeman lifts Wing Sing in his arms.

At Nine Twenty Sacramento Street, Zhu and Cameron escort the trembling girl into a tiny dormitory with twelve cots and on into the bathroom. Miss Olney is waiting with a basin of steaming hot water, a bar of soap stinking of lye, a burlap wash cloth, and rough cotton towels.

"Let us get you clean in the name of the Lord, my dear," Miss Olney says. Her tone implies more than physical dirt.

Wing Sing looks at the homely walls, the sticks of furniture, the bare floors. Her drug-addled eyes widen. The other girls peek at her with their scrubbed faces, disciplined hair, homely cotton clothes. Wing Sing backs away from Miss Olney, hugging her silk around her. Her apple-green silk, the intricate black and yellow embroidery, and gold frogs stand out in this plain place like some glorious pennant of sin.

Olney advances on her, gripping the dripping bar of soap. "Tut, tut, dear. Take off those rags and let me wash you."

"You not touch me, fahn quai." Wing Sing spits at her.

"The girl may have some trouble adjusting," Cameron says calmly to Zhu. "They often do."

Olney seizes a green silk sleeve. "I cannot get you clean, dear, if you won't take off your clothes."

'"Oh ho!" Wing Sing cries. "You not pay, I not take off clothes."

"Really!" Olney says and glares at Zhu.

"Hey, you know where she's been," Zhu says, glaring back.

Wing Sing darts to Zhu, seizes her sleeve. "Please, Jade Eyes, I go home now, okay?'

"You are home, dear," Cameron says, seizing her hand. Wing Sing flings her hand away. "We'll get her busy soon enough, Eleanor. Sewing, do you think? She seems to like clothes." To Zhu, "Do you know if your cousin can sew?"

Zhu shakes her head, worried now. The girl is supposed to live here, stay here, according to the Gilded Age Project. She says harshly, "Wing Sing, take off those dirty clothes and wash that c.r.a.p off your face. You won't need any of that here."

The two Presbyterian women throw startled glances her way. Zhu doesn't care. Maybe brusqueness will work when kindness fails. The madams and the johns push these young women around as a matter of course. The girl isn't accustomed to kindness.

"I not sew! I not sew!" Wing Sing wails. "I have maid. She sew!"

"Get the jewelry box," Cameron says to Olney, and Olney makes a motion to take the box. Wing Sing clutches the box to her chest and backs away, rolling her eyes.

"I don't think you should take her jewelry," Zhu says evenly. "This is her dowry. All the wealth she has from her family."

"Miss Wong, you do not really suppose it is hers?" Cameron snaps.

Zhu turns to Cameron, troubled by her att.i.tude toward her new charge. "This girl and her mother were tricked by a would-be husband, Miss Cameron. I know that for a fact. She's not a thief. Her mother gave her this dowry to facilitate her marriage. Isn't that right, Wing Sing?"

"Yes, yes," she sobs. "Is true."

Cameron exchanges a long look with Zhu, and Zhu can see in Cameron's eyes self-righteousness and ferocity. And also that her soul flies out to this abused girl.

Muse posts a file in Zhu's peripheral vision, alphanumerics dancing as the monitor tabulates the probabilities. The Archives amply support Wing Sing's presence at Nine Twenty Sacramento Street. Or a girl a lot like Wing Sing.

At least the probabilities look right to Zhu. And that will have to do.

"She may keep the box," Cameron says. "Go on, then, Eleanor. Clean her up."

Zhu follows Cameron out of the bathroom. Cameron shuts the door, leaving Miss Olney to her task.

Wing Sing screams, "I go home now, okay? I go home!"

"I do apologize for any misunderstanding we may have had earlier," Cameron says as she and Zhu sit again in her office, comparing their notes on Wing Sing's successful rescue. A new spirit of camaraderie graces them. They sip cocoa out of exquisite rose-glazed cups, the scent of chocolate perfuming the air. "You are good at rescuing, Miss Wong."

"You're really good, too, Miss Cameron," Zhu says. "You always will be."

"Oh, well, that remains to be seen. But you. You are a strong young woman. You understand them. I confess I'm impressed. We could use you here."

"I confess I wanted to seek a position here."

Surprise flickers in Cameron's eyes. "Why did you not?"

"Something unexpected happened, and everything changed." She couldn't possibly leave Daniel now. He needs her. She smiles a little to herself. Even if he doesn't know it himself yet, he needs her.

Cameron ruefully examines her ravaged fingernails. Perspiration stains the underarms of her plum s.h.i.+rtwaist. Her pompadour is wispy, her skirt less crisp. She unpins the gold brooch at her throat, tosses the dove onto her desk. She takes up a ledger, dips a pen in an inkwell, and commences writing an account of the rescue in precise curling script. "I feel so grateful to Our Father every time we rescue a wretched girl."

"Everyone is grateful to you, Miss Cameron." Zhu can't resist adding, "You enjoy the excitement, don't you?"

Cameron smiles a little. "Perhaps you are right. I only hope our Wing Sing will find happiness here, but I cannot guarantee that."

A p.r.i.c.kle of alarm climbs up Zhu's spine. I cannot guarantee that. But of course she can. She must. "How is Miss Culbertson getting on? Is she feeling better?"

Cameron raises her eyebrows. "Forgive me, Miss Wong, but how do you know about Margaret?"

"Everyone knows about Miss Culbertson. She, ah." Muse helpfully posts a phrase in her peripheral vision. "She's been doing her good works in the city for years."

"Very true." Suddenly Cameron looks gaunt and haggard. And fatigued. She sets down the ledger, the pen, and sips her cocoa. "No, her illness worsens, and I am swiftly a.s.suming more of her duties. It's a pity there's so little time to train a replacement. I have not received many responses to the advertis.e.m.e.nt I placed in our congregation's newspaper."

"Advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"For a new director. A permanent director."

Zhu's alarm deepens. Donaldina Cameron will be the new permanent director. She will manage this mission till the day she dies. The Archives are unequivocal about that. The spartan room suddenly seems gossamer, as if reality trembles. She rubs her eyes. What can she do?

"I a.s.sumed you would be the new permanent director."

"Heavens, no, Miss Wong. I intend to stay on only till the Chinese New Year next February."

"The Chinese New Year?" Zhu swallows hard. That's when she's scheduled to depart from 1895 and return to 2495. "What happens then?"

"Why, I have a fiance." Cameron blushes. "We intend to marry in the spring. Charlie is a wonderful man, G.o.d bless him." She gives a troubled little smile. "Well, you know, he is a man. But I am so looking forward to marrying and having my own home, my own children."

"But you're superb in this position."

"Thank you, Miss Wong, but I could not possibly stay."

"But you have to stay." Zhu wants to say--because you do stay. Because it is your destiny to stay. The Archivists know all about Donaldina Cameron. Her life is thickly doc.u.mented. Her single-mindedness, her faith. Her devotion to this Cause. Zhu's stomach clenches. Will she violate Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle if she tries to influence Cameron? Or will she fulfill the object of the Gilded Age Project by persuading her?

"Help me out here, Muse," she mutters under her breath.

Cameron glances up curiously from her cocoa.

"Surely," Zhu says, her voice rasping in her throat, "you know how the girls need you."

"They need someone, certainly, but they do not need me." She sets her cup down and slumps, bowing her face in her hands. Her shoulders begin to shake. "I have a life, Miss Wong. A life with books and music and flowers. Pretty clothes and jewelry and fine furniture. I want my life back. I want my own house, not this place. Charlie loves me, and we are going to marry, and that is that. That is our plan." She raises her face, her eyes anguished. "Oh, but I hate the brothels! I hate the cribs. I hate what the highbinders do to these innocent girls stolen away from their families and their faraway land. It is more loathsome to me than I can possibly express. My very soul shrinks from it."

"Then, Lo Mo, you must stay."

"No! I am not Lo Mo. I am not their Mother. Do you not understand? I can barely sleep at night in this place. Food is ashes in my mouth."

"You'll endure, Lo Mo."

"Do not call me that! Why should I give up my future happiness for this?"

And then something outrageous and unexpected happens.

"Because this is your Cause, Donaldina," Muse says in a high, clear voice, projecting its voice into a corner of Cameron's office.

Cameron gasps, clasping her hand to her throat, then stares at Zhu, a mix of awe, suspicion, and a good dose of fear in her eyes. "What is this deviltry that clings to you?"

"I am Zhu Wong's own sweet guardian angel," Muse says. "Not that she deserves me."

"Thanks a bunch," Zhu mutters.

"Fear not, beloved sister," Muse says shamelessly. Talk about violating every Tenet! "Gird up thy strength and plunge ever onward, oh lady of mercy. Your blessed path lies before you. Do not shrink from it."

"My blessed path lies with my husband-to-be and my family," Cameron declares. "As you surely must know, angel, since G.o.d knows all and everything that is to be."

Zhu snorts. Cameron is one tough nut. Zhu doesn't know whether she would have the nerve to argue with a disembodied voice claiming to be a guardian angel if she were from a time before radio and television, never mind computers and teles.p.a.ce. Zhu blinks and her left eye begins to throb. d.a.m.n. She hates when this happens. Muse downloads a file from the Archives through her optic nerve.

"Open your eyes, Z. Wong," Muse commands.

Zhu does, and Muse projects a holoid field into the center of Cameron's office, a blue wall of light hovering above the polished wood floor.

Cameron's cup of cocoa crashes to the floor.

"Don't give her a cardiac arrest, all right?" Zhu mutters.

"Behold what is to be," Muse says, its voice ringing like a little silver bell.

Zhu sits bolt upright. This gets her immediate attention. What is to be?

A pastoral scene appears in the holoid field. Young people saunter across a gra.s.sy field past a well-worn carousel, a gothic stone mansion.

"Why, that's Golden Gate Park," Cameron says. "The carousel and the Sharon Building. We took an outing there only last week to see the brand-new attractions. The girls love the carousel."

Now a young man strolls by in a Prince Albert cutaway and top hat, his hair straggling over his collar. Strangely, he also wears the blue denim trousers of a coolie. He turns, and both Zhu and Cameron gasp. He wears no s.h.i.+rt beneath the cutaway, and his face is painted pink, blue, and green, the bright colors fas.h.i.+oned in the paisley shapes so popular for wallpaper and fabrics during the Gilded Age.

"What in heaven's name has he done to his face?" Cameron whispers.

A young woman runs up to him, and again Zhu and Cameron gasp. She wears a thin cotton T-s.h.i.+rt through which her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s bob alarmingly, a long paisley skirt, and no shoes. Her feet are muddy. Zhu meets Cameron's look-no shoes? No San Franciscan, not even a very small child, walks about with no shoes in the Gilded Age.

More young men and women stroll past. Some appear more disheveled than immigrants after a transoceanic steams.h.i.+p journey. s.h.a.ggy matted hair spills down skinny shoulders. They wear clothes with holes and patches such as only the most dest.i.tute beggars wear in the Gilded Age. Yet there strides a woman in a long scarlet velvet dress and a feathered hat, a man in muttonchops and a straw boater.

Zhu has never seen such a strange sight in her life.

"Behold what is to be," Muse declares again.

Now an elderly Chinese woman, perhaps in her sixties or seventies, pushes a wheelchair across the gra.s.s. She's st.u.r.dy looking, her gray hair still threaded with black, and wearing a padded jacket just like a thousand other Chinese women in San Francisco. In the wheelchair reclines a very elderly woman, slim and fragile, her white hair neatly tucked into a pompadour.

"Dear G.o.d," Cameron says, "is that me?"

Zhu stares. The strong Scotch face, the mouth, the hairstyle. It's Cameron, all right. Now a tall, slim man in jeans and a leather jacket steps into view, his bright red hair tumbling down his back.

"Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco!" It's Zhu's time to shout.

"You know that young man?"

"Yes! It's 1967. Got to be!"

A pretty young woman with light brown hair walks beside him. The lovely couple strolls past Cameron and her escort.

And, as Zhu stares, something really outrageous and totally unexpected happens.

Cameron nods and smiles at Chiron, exchanges a few words, and the elderly Chinese woman turns to stare at him. Zhu clearly sees the gleam of green in her eyes. Her mouth gapes open, and she reaches into her padded jacket. She pulls out a tiny object--something s.h.i.+ny, something gold, winking with diamonds and bits of multicolored gla.s.s.