Fitz sauntered up Powell Street this was definitely a sauntering kind of street and joined the less-than-a-crowd of potential buyers hovering around the tables in Union Square. He wandered around the tables for a few minutes, fiddling with plastic bags of herbs or knitted pouches.
An old woman was selling snake kites. Fitz watched a man buy one for his little girl. Was that a real snake, wriggling on the end of the string as it floated up into the sky, trailing along behind her in the breeze? What was normal here, and what wasn"t?
That had to be her, third table from the end, behind the display of hand-wrought Celtic jewellery. She had a windswept ma.s.s of black hair with just a touch of grey.
26.Play it cool. Tilted fedora, hands in pockets, full gumshoe-stroke-mysterious-stranger routine. Make her think you know something she doesn"t, when it"s really the other way around.
"Kyra Skye?"
"Yeah?"
"Fort. Fitzwilliam Fort. I was referred to you by a mutual friend." She smiled, the corners of her eyes a web of wrinkles. "What are you looking for? I"ve got a special on these pewter triskeles."
"I need something less tangible," said Fitz. "Your expertise in matters of the ethereal."
"I see," said Kyra. She looked him up and down. "Well, I can certainly help you there, Mr Fort." She stood up and grabbed a spare chair from behind her table.
Fitz slouched into it. "So is it true you can read minds?"
Kyra"s smile broadened. She reached across the table, and pressed her palm against his forehead. The skin was cool. She was wearing a matching pair of chunky silver rings, one on each hand.
Fitz wondered what the h.e.l.l she was doing, but it wouldn"t look right to ask.
He closed his eyes. They sat like that for a minute, until he opened one eye to peek at her.
Kyra took her hand away. "You have to talk yourself into it, don"t you?"
"I"m sorry?"
"Here"s the world-famous private eye on the case, sauntering nonchalantly down the street. . . "
Ouch. Caught red-handed. He pulled off the fedora and scratched his scalp.
"Well, it worked for Snoopy." He started to get up.
But Kyra was grinning. "What can I do for you?"
Fitz pulled his chair closer to the table. "I need information," he said sincerely.
"About what"s happening to the city. I really was told that you were the person to ask."
The conversation paused for a minute or two while a young girl rummaged through the jewellery, reaching around Fitz. Finally she wandered off again.
"All right, then." Kyra could be as serious as he was. "If you want a crash course in what"s going on, come over to my place tomorrow night."
She picked up his notebook and scribbled an address in it. "People are dropping in and out all the time. You can have dinner with us. It"s got to be at night the ley lines are at their most powerful then."
"Ley lines?"
27 "I"ll show you a chart, tell you all about it. Now scat you"re scaring off my customers." She shooed him out of the seat.
Fitz glanced back at her. "You can"t really read minds, can you?"
"Do you think I"d let you in my apartment if I didn"t know something about you?" said Kyra, deadpan.
Riiight. "Something else I"ve always wondered."
"Yeah?"
"If Snoopy was just pretending to be a World War One flying ace all those times, how come his doghouse kept getting shot full of holes?"
"Psychokinesis. See you around, Fitz."
Outweirded, Fitz tipped his hat to her and wandered off, wondering if the women of the future liked younger men.
The little boy was waiting for him on the steps of his hotel, just opposite the cable-car turntable.
The kid had been hanging around in the doorway all week, turning up at odd hours, bending Fitz"s ear with little-kid reports of the weird things happening in the city. He"d been the first one to tell him about the Sat.u.r.day Dragon; he"d brought him a sandal from one of the nomads. He was actually one of Fitz"s better sources of information. Maybe kids were just more receptive to this stuff.
At first, Fitz had thought he belonged to the street juggler; there was something out of place about him, something Fitz couldn"t put his finger on. He looked ordinary enough, really, skinny arms sticking out of a black T-shirt, jeans, running shoes without socks. Nothing you could point to and say, hey, you"re just doing that for effect.
"Hey, Fitz," said the boy.
"Hey. Seen anything for me?"
The kid"s dark face opened up, showing a grin like shark"s teeth. "Just the usual."
He held something out to Fitz, something long and thin, dark and shiny. Fitz reached out for it, but the boy s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand away, teasing.
"Looks like a feather," said Fitz, as the boy traced lines in the air with it.
"It is a feather," said the boy. "A dragon feather."
It looked oily, rough, like a scale pulled out of shape. "Where"d you get it?"
"Here and there," said the boy. "There and here." He held it out again. Fitz hesitated. "Go on. There are plenty more where that one came from."
28.Up in the little brown hotel room, the message light on the phone was blinking.
After wrestling with a bunch of boop-beep-boop b.u.t.tons, Fitz was rewarded with the Doctor"s voice. "Everything"s going according to plan," said the message, "approximately. I"ve found Sam, and we"ll be arriving in San Francisco at about eight a.m. tomorrow morning, your time. The Sam I"ve found is very, um. . . "
"What?" said Fitz.
"Oops, that was the boarding call."
"Gaah!"
"See you soon."
Fitz put the phone down.
For just a moment he let his whole body slump face first against the wall where he stood. The fedora fell to the floor, unnoticed.
OK, now don"t think about it too much. Keep on sliding down the surface of what you"re doing, get that report together for the Doctor, don"t worry about how it"s going to feel tomorrow. It"ll be just like meeting an old friend who you"ve never seen before.
He sat cross-legged on the bed and started staring at the notes in his notebook.
Day Zero Minus Two Let"s face it, folks, these days San Francisco"s biggest industry is San Francisco. We"ve got eccentricity down to a fine polish neatly packaged, like Jefferson Airplane on a reunion tour playing "White Rabbit" for the six thousandth freakin" time. We"re a franchise, just trying to keep the formula going. It"s d.a.m.n hard to find the corners of the city where the real creativity is hiding any more, among all the remixes and remakes and repet.i.tions.
But they"re still there. Round that corner is a band that doesn"t sound like anyone else at all. Down that bas.e.m.e.nt cafe are people who really do their own thing, not just the prescribed alternative thing. The possibilities are still there.
And if you look up, you might even spot a dragon overhead.
Eldin Sanchez, Interesting Times Interesting Times, 7 November 2002
Chapter Three.
Second String.
"Good morning, everyone. We"ll be landing in San Francisco in about an hour"s time."
Sam unstuck her eyelids. "There is is a G.o.d," she mumbled. a G.o.d," she mumbled.
"Looks like a cool but sunny day for our arrival, with a high around fifty-three degrees. I"ll be talking to you again shortly before landing."
Sam blinked down at the Doctor. He was leaning on her, his soft chestnut hair curling on her shoulder. She could just hear his gentle snoring over the unending growl of the engines. She was going to shrug him off when she decided she didn"t mind all that much.
It felt as though someone had been chewing on her head. The constant noise of engines and air conditioning had kept her from nodding off for more than a few minutes in the last twelve hours.
The Doctor had been even worse, swapping his window seat for her aisle seat and then back again, leaping up to get little paper cups of water or magazines, or standing hunched at the back door, staring out of the window. It had been annoying at first, then perversely amusing, but as his pent-up energy got more and more out of control it began to get scary. He just couldn"t stand being cooped up in one place for so long.
He told her about the other Sam, all their adventures together on different planets, or at different times in history. He told her about Fitz Kreiner, his other travelling companion, who came from 1963 and was half German on his father"s side. Fitz was "doing some research" in San Francisco while the Doctor went to London to collect her.
He told her about being President Elect of the High Council of Time Lords, Keeper of the Legacy of Ra.s.silon, Defender of the Laws of Time, and Protector of Galloway. Or something.
"A thousand years. . . " she"d said. "You must be so over over everything." everything."
He"d shrugged, and managed a fleeting smile. "I think I"ve just got over being over things."
31.They were bringing the breakfasts around now. The flight attendant smiled when she saw the sleeping Doctor. Sam smiled back, taking his plastic container and wedging it next to hers on the little fold-down tray.
She"d wanted to know why they were stuck on this plane instead of travelling in his time machine, but he"d kept changing the subject when she tried to ask him about it. The same thing happened when she"d tried to ask how he"d got her a pa.s.sport so quickly. Or how he"d persuaded Dave to give her time off work.
But he wasn"t trying to con her. She was sure about that now. He believed every word of what he was saying. She kept remembering that moment at the bus stop, that absolute cold certainty for just one moment when she"d believed every word of it too.
Fifteen minutes to go. The Doctor was fidgeting in his seat, looking about ready to run screaming up and down the aisles.
Here and there, little wisps of cloud were hanging above the landscape. The Golden Gate Bridge was a huge stripe of red across all that blue and green. A thought occurred to Sam. She said, "Why isn"t it "
" "Golden Gate" is the name of that bit of water," said the Doctor, fiddling with the strap on his belt.
"Oh," said Sam. She glanced back out of the window. She was already sounding like a dumb tourist, asking stupid questions.
"There"s no such thing," muttered the Doctor.
"As what?"
"As a stupid question," he said.
The plane was dropping steadily. The water underneath them was starting to roll past faster and faster Something huge and black shot past the window, blocking out the sun.
The plane turned, hard, so that she could see the ground through the windows opposite. The engine roar leapt up as the plane dragged itself back up into the sky, throwing Sam back into her seat.
"What is it?" shouted Sam. "What"s happening?"
The Doctor put a finger on her lips. "Shh," he said. "Everything"s all right now."
The plane was already levelling, the engines quietening. She could hear the frightened chatter of the other pa.s.sengers, all around them.
"Near miss," said the Doctor.
"We nearly hit another plane?"
32."Something like that," he said. He stared past her, through the window.
Sam shut her eyes, clasping her hands together. They were shaking. She was certain that, for just a moment, she"d seen a yellow eye looking into the cabin.
She opened her eyes. The Doctor grinned at her. "Welcome to San Francisco."
The airport minibus pulled up outside the hotel. Sam unfolded herself, almost banging her head on the low ceiling. She felt as crumpled as her shirt and denim jacket.
The Doctor helped her down from the minibus and hefted her bags. She realised, for the first time, that he wasn"t carrying any.
She looked blearily around the foyer while the Doctor did stuff at the checkin counter. A narrow carpeted staircase, an old-fashioned cage lift, a table with free herbal teas. A skinny guy was sitting on an overstuffed sofa, reading the paper.
"Two rooms," she told the Doctor.
"Of course," he said, a little surprised.
Sam unzipped her money belt just a little and pushed her thumb inside. The voucher for her return ticket was still safely there, next to her pa.s.sport. She could leave any time she wanted.
The guy on the sofa was watching them, she suddenly realised. Just wide grey eyes, appearing in the slit between the San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Chronicle and the black hat. and the black hat.