to an ornate wardrobe, which, when opened, proved to be a passenger elevator. Once you entered it, it dropped with unnerving speed thirty stories to a short length of tunnel tiled in gold enamel. At the end ofthe tunnel was a first-rate Company cocktail lounge, beyond which was a Company transport terminal, also tiled in gold enamel.
“There’s miles of tunnel, running all the way to the undersea base in the Catalina Channel,” Einar told me over a couple of margaritas. “And one long tunnel runs out to the Mojave base under the sand.”
“Nice.” I bit into my wedge of lime. “But what’s with the lizard motif?” I waved a hand at the decor. There were lizard patterns on everything, woven into the carpet, tooled into the booth leather, printed on the cocktail napkins.
“Joke,” he said. “In 1934, this guy will claim that an old Indian told him about a highly advanced race of lizard people who retreated underground following a global catastrophe in 3000 B.C.E. They built a city in the shape of a giant lizard and a maze of gold-filled tunnels right here under Los Angeles, supposedly, using magic chemicals that melted through bedrock. Rooms crammed with gold and sacred tablets, all kinds of weird shit. So anyway, this guy claims he’s found out where the gold chambers are, using an invention he calls the Radio X-Ray, and he actually gets permission from the city authorities to drill. Tells them he’s located a treasure room a thousand feet down. He only goes about three hundred fifty feet before the shaft starts to collapse. Tells the city he’s putting the dig on hold until he can solve the technical problems, which he expects to do in no time. Then he vanishes. Drops out of sight. Never heard from again. Obviously the lizard people got him.”
“Obviously.”
“It gets weirder. This’ll be in 1934, right? But by 1931 the Company will have abandoned this base and filled in the tunnels. Earthquake in Long Beach the next year, remember? By the time the guy claims to detect the tunnels,
they won’t be there anymore
. Last call at the old Lizard Bar was months beforehand. Nuts, huh?”
“Nuts. Unless maybe the man is an undiagnosed remote viewer.”
“Could be.” Einar tilted his glass. “Want another cocktail?”
A FTER THAT VISIT I was content to stay close to Hollywood, venturing out to collect specimens when Einar’s schedule allowed him to go with me. No more argument on my part that I didn’t need an escort. Hot lead seemed to be the language of social encounter down there, and I felt squeamish about becoming fluent in it, though I dutifully practiced hyperfunction with a Navy pistol.
We were by no means so isolated as I had thought. We got mail; we got magazines. We subscribed to the
Los Angeles Estrella/Star
, to a couple of back-east papers so we could follow the Civil War news, and Porfirio had a subscription to
Punch
, of all things. I read it for the humor, though the British slant on the war was strange. They played both sides of the diplomatic fence with a prissy hypocrisy that I took to be Victorian. I wasn’t impressed. I had known the brilliant savages of the Tudor period firsthand, and, though I’d never thought I’d say it, I preferred them to their smug descendants.
Yes, we really had our window onto the world, despite the lack of radio for the local Company news—no reception back in our canyon, because those granite hills kept the feeble broadcast out. And we made our own nightlife; we even had movies. Not holos, you understand, movies.
I woke from uneasy dreams one bright morning to find a card stuck in my boots. Yawning, I examined it, sitting on the edge of mycot. It was cream-colored pasteboard, inscribed by hand in purple ink, with nice calligraphy, and it told me that I was invited to the Cahuenga Pass Film Festival, which was to take place tonight at 2000 hours sharp. This evening’s featured film: Hollywood’s first premiere of the director’s cut of
Greed
,
“There’s miles of tunnel, running all the way to the undersea base in the Catalina Channel,” Einar told me over a couple of margaritas. “And one long tunnel runs out to the Mojave base under the sand.”
“Nice.” I bit into my wedge of lime. “But what’s with the lizard motif?” I waved a hand at the decor. There were lizard patterns on everything, woven into the carpet, tooled into the booth leather, printed on the cocktail napkins.
“Joke,” he said. “In 1934, this guy will claim that an old Indian told him about a highly advanced race of lizard people who retreated underground following a global catastrophe in 3000 B.C.E. They built a city in the shape of a giant lizard and a maze of gold-filled tunnels right here under Los Angeles, supposedly, using magic chemicals that melted through bedrock. Rooms crammed with gold and sacred tablets, all kinds of weird shit. So anyway, this guy claims he’s found out where the gold chambers are, using an invention he calls the Radio X-Ray, and he actually gets permission from the city authorities to drill. Tells them he’s located a treasure room a thousand feet down. He only goes about three hundred fifty feet before the shaft starts to collapse. Tells the city he’s putting the dig on hold until he can solve the technical problems, which he expects to do in no time. Then he vanishes. Drops out of sight. Never heard from again. Obviously the lizard people got him.”
“Obviously.”
“It gets weirder. This’ll be in 1934, right? But by 1931 the Company will have abandoned this base and filled in the tunnels. Earthquake in Long Beach the next year, remember? By the time the guy claims to detect the tunnels,
they won’t be there anymore
. Last call at the old Lizard Bar was months beforehand. Nuts, huh?”
“Nuts. Unless maybe the man is an undiagnosed remote viewer.”
“Could be.” Einar tilted his glass. “Want another cocktail?”
A FTER THAT VISIT I was content to stay close to Hollywood, venturing out to collect specimens when Einar’s schedule allowed him to go with me. No more argument on my part that I didn’t need an escort. Hot lead seemed to be the language of social encounter down there, and I felt squeamish about becoming fluent in it, though I dutifully practiced hyperfunction with a Navy pistol.
We were by no means so isolated as I had thought. We got mail; we got magazines. We subscribed to the
Los Angeles Estrella/Star
, to a couple of back-east papers so we could follow the Civil War news, and Porfirio had a subscription to
Punch
, of all things. I read it for the humor, though the British slant on the war was strange. They played both sides of the diplomatic fence with a prissy hypocrisy that I took to be Victorian. I wasn’t impressed. I had known the brilliant savages of the Tudor period firsthand, and, though I’d never thought I’d say it, I preferred them to their smug descendants.
Yes, we really had our window onto the world, despite the lack of radio for the local Company news—no reception back in our canyon, because those granite hills kept the feeble broadcast out. And we made our own nightlife; we even had movies. Not holos, you understand, movies.
I woke from uneasy dreams one bright morning to find a card stuck in my boots. Yawning, I examined it, sitting on the edge of mycot. It was cream-colored pasteboard, inscribed by hand in purple ink, with nice calligraphy, and it told me that I was invited to the Cahuenga Pass Film Festival, which was to take place tonight at 2000 hours sharp. This evening’s featured film: Hollywood’s first premiere of the director’s cut of
Greed
,
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