The year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, psychedelic music, psychedelic drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension, free love, bikers, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of danger. The Summer of Love.
San Francisco is the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.
Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine.
With the help of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, Susan and Chi discover a love that spans five centuries. But can they save the world from demons threatening to destroy all space and time?
A harrowing coming of age. A friendship ending in tragedy. A terrifying far future. A love spanning five centuries. And a gritty portrait of a unique time in American history.
A Philip K. Dick Award finalist. A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year.
Do You Believe in Magic?
They never prepare you for the shock of the Event.
Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco steps through the Portals of the Past. After the subjective second it takes to cross over, he proceeds, as required by the Summer of Love Project, to check for his points of reference:
The dome;
the carving;
his time of arrival.
But wait, wait. He tries to stand very still as perceptions speed past him in a rush of images, scents, and sounds. Not dizzy like some, nor nauseated, nor faint. He just feels. . . .empty. They say you don't feel the Event, but they're wrong. He feels it. The pulse of his essence, the sensation of his physical body translating into pure energy and then transmitting across time faster than the speed of light. Ah!
Chi is shaken to his soul. In the flicker of translation-transmission, everything seems dead. A weight around his neck so vast, he quells the urge to weep.
They say reality is really only One Day. The same everywhere, everywhen.
Wrong, again. For a moment, he wonders if he really is dead.
But he's not dead, he's alive, and he's got work to do. The Summer of Love Project, Chi. Get moving! He starts again slowly, breathing deeply and checking for his points of reference.
First, the dome. The cosmicist dome that's enclosed New Golden Gate Preserve for nearly two centuries. Check. The dome is gone. Only the darkening twilight hovers above him. The sight of a night sky unshielded by PermaPlast sends a jolt of terror up his spine. Instinctively, he flings his hands over his face. Now he's dizzy.
Damn it, Chi! This sky is thick and whole, damp with clouds, and untouched by radiation like the sky ought to be.
Like it used to be.
Like it is Now.
Calm down. Breathe slowly.
Next. The carving.
He touches the cool, smooth marble of the Portals of the Past. And with his touch on that ancient stone comes the second shock:
The carving near the bottom of Portal's left pillar: It's gone.
He reviews the drill one more time: the dome shouldn't be there, but the carving should.
The carving, an indecipherable set of glyphs carved on the pillar centuries ago, was discovered only after a massive research effort by the Archivists under the leadership of Chi's skipfather. The carving proved to be the final piece of the puzzle—or so the Archivists said.
When the evidence supported an Open Time Loop during the Summer of Love, the directors of the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications threw billions of dollars at the project. Never mind that Chi's skipfather was himself a LISA tech and a project director. Or that Chi's skipmother owned seventy-one percent of the patent on transmission. If anything, their eminent positions made transmitting their own skipson to a Hot Dim Spot in the middle of the Crisis all the more compelling.
As Chi had stood in the Portals of the Past, waiting to translate-transmit, he'd stooped and pressed his fingers on that cool, smooth marble, learning the shape of the carving by touch, as well as by sight:
What did it mean? Who could say?
