"Okay, kid, I'll tell you," I said. "The Company is sending me up to San Francisco on a job. I need afield botanist, and I had my pick of anybody in the area, so I decided on you."

I braced myself for an explosion, because sometimes Mendoza's a little touchy about surprises. But she was silent for a moment, with that bewildered expression again, and I just knew she was accessing her chronometer because she'd forgotten what year this was.

"San Francisco, huh?" she said. "But I went through Yerba Buena a century ago, Joseph. I did a complete survey of all the endemics. Specimens, DNA codes, the works. Believe me, there wasn't anything to interest Dr. Zeus."

"Well, there might be now," I said. "And that's all you need to know until we get there."

She sighed. "So it's like that?"

"It's like that. But, hey, we'll have a great time! There's a lot more up there now than fog and sand dunes."

"I'll say there is," she said grimly. "I just accessed the historical record for October 1850. There's a cholera epidemic going on. There's chronic arson. The streets are half quicksand. You really take me to some swell places, don't you?"

"How long has it been since you ate dinner in a restaurant?" I coaxed. She started to say something sarcastic in reply, looked down at whatever was floating in the bottom of her coffee, and shuddered.

"See? It'll be a nice change of scenery," I told her, as she tossed the dregs over her shoulder. I tossed out my coffee too, in a simpatico gesture. "The Road to Frisco! A fun-filled musical romp! Two wacky cyborgs plus one secret mission equals laughs galore!"

"Oh, shut up," she told me, but rose to strike camp.

It took us longer to get down out of the mountains than I would have liked, because Mendoza insisted on bringing her five potted trees, which were some kind of endangered species, so we had to carry them all the way to the closest Company receiving terminal in Monterey, by which time I was ready to drop the damn things down any convenient cliff. But away they went to some Company botanical garden, and after requisitioning equipment and horses, we finally set off for San Francisco.

I guess if we had been any other two people, we'd have chatted about bygone times as we rode along. It's never safe to drag up old memories with Mendoza, though. We didn't talk much, all the way up El Camino Real, through the forests and across the scrubby hills. It wasn't until we'd left San Jose and were picking our way along the shore of the back bay, all black ooze and oyster shells, that Mendoza looked across at me and said: "We're carrying a lot of lab equipment with us. I wonder why?"

I just shrugged.

"Whatever the Company's sending us after, they want it analyzed on the spot," she said thoughtfully.

"So possibly they're not sure that it's really what they want. But they need to find out."

"Could be."

"And your only field expert is being kept on a need-to-know basis, which means it's something important," she continued. "And they're sending you, even though you're still working undercover in the Church, being Father Rubio or whoever. Aren't you?"

"I am."

"You look even more like Mephistopheles than usual in that robe, did I ever tell you that?

Anyway-why would the Company send a friar into a town full of gold miners, gamblers and prostitutes?" Mendoza speculated. "You'll stick out like a sore thumb. And where does botany fit in?"

"I guess we'll see, huh?"

She glared at me sidelong and grumbled to herself a while, but that was okay. I had her interested in the job, at least. She was losing that thousand-year-stare that worried me so much.

I wasn't worrying about the job at all.

We could smell San Francisco miles before we got there. It wasn't the ordinary mortal aroma of a boomtown without adequate sanitation, even one in the grip of cholera. San Francisco smelled like smoke, with a reek that went right up your nose and drilled into your sinuses. It smelled this way because it had been destroyed by fire four times already, most recently only a month ago, though you wouldn't know it to look at the place. Obscenely expensive real estate where tents and shanties had stood was already filling up with brand-new frame buildings. Hammers pounded day and night along Clay, along Montgomery and Kearney and Washington. All the raw new wood was festooned with red, white and blue bunting, and hastily improvised Stars and Stripes flew everywhere.

California had only just learned it had been admitted to the Union, and was still celebrating.

The bay was black with ships, but those closest to the shore were never going to sea again-their crews had deserted and the ships were already enclosed by wharves, filling in on all sides. Windows and doors had been cut in their hulls as they were converted to shops and taverns.

Way back in the sand hills, poor old Mission Dolores-built of adobe blocks by a people whose world hadn't changed in millennia, on a settlement plan first designed by officials of the Roman Empire-looked down on the crazy new world in wonderment. Mendoza and I stared too, from where we'd reined in our horses near Rincon Hill.

"So this is an American city," said Mendoza.

"Manifest Destiny in action," I agreed, watching her. Mendoza had never liked being around mortals much. How was she going to handle a modern city, after a century and a half of wilderness? But she just set her mouth and urged her horse forward, and I was proud of her.

For all the stink of disaster, the place was alive. People were out and running about, doing business.

There were hotels and taverns; there were groceries and bakeries and candy stores. Lightermen worked the water between those ships that hadn't yet been absorbed into the city, bringing in men bound for the gold fields or crates of goods for the merchants. I heard six languages spoken before we'd crossed Clay Street. Anything could be bought or sold here, including a meal prepared by a Parisian chef. The air hummed with hunger, and enthusiasm, and a kind of rapacious innocence.

I grinned. America looked like fun.

We found a hotel on the big central wharf, and unloaded our baggage into two narrow rooms whose windows looked into the rigging of a landlocked ship. Mendoza stared around at the bare plank walls.

"This is Oregon spruce," she announced. "You can still smell the forest! I'll bet this was alive and growing a month ago."

"Probably," I agreed, rummaging in my trunk. I found what I was looking for and unrolled it to see how it had survived the trip.

"What's that?"

"A subterfuge." I held the drawing up. "A beautiful gift for his Holiness the Pope! The artist's conception, anyway."

"A huge ugly crucifix?" Mendoza looked pained.

"And a matching rosary, baby. All to be specially crafted out of gold and (this is the important part) gold-bearing quartz from sunny California, U.S.A., so the Holy Father will know he's got faithful fans out here!"

"That's disgusting. Are you serious?"

"Of course I'm not serious, but we don't want the mortals to know that," I said, rolling up the drawing and sticking it in a carpetbag full of money. "You stay here and set up the lab, okay? I've got to go find some jewelers."

There were a lot of jewelers in San Francisco. Successful guys coming back from the Sacramento sometimes liked to commemorate their luck by having gold nuggets set in watch fobs, or stickpins, or brooches for sweethearts back east. Gold-bearing quartz, cut and polished, was also popular, and much classier looking.

Hiram Gainsborg, on the corner of Ohio and Broadway, had some of what I needed; so did Joseph Schwartz at Harrison and Broadway, although J. C. Russ on the corner of Harrison and Sixth had more.

But I also paid a visit to Baldwin & Co. on Clay at the Plaza, and to J. H. Bradford on Kearney, and just to play it safe I went over to Dupont and Clay to see the firm of Moffat & Co., Assayers and Bankers.

So I was one pooped little friar, carrying one big heavy carpetbag, by the time I trudged back to ourhotel as evening shadows descended. I'd been followed for three blocks by a Sydney ex-convict, whose intent was robbery and possible murder; but I managed to ditch him by ducking into a saloon, exiting out the back and across the deck of the land-locked Niantic, and cutting through another saloon where I paused just long enough to order an oyster loaf and a pail of steam beer.

I'd lost him for good by the time I thumped on Mendoza's door with the carpetbag.

"Hey, honeybunch, I got dinner!"

She opened the door right away, jittery as hell. "Don't shout, for God's sake!"

"Sorry." I went in and set down the carpetbag gratefully. "I don't think the mortals are sleeping yet.

It's early."

"There are three of them on this floor, and seventeen downstairs," she said, wringing her hands. "It's been a while since I've been around so many of them. I'd forgotten how loud their hearts are, Joseph. I can hear them beating."

"Aw, you'll get used to it in no time," I said. I held up the takeout. "Look! Oyster loaf and beer!"

She looked impatient, and then her eyes widened as she caught the scent of the fresh-baked sourdough loaf and the butter and the garlic and the little fried oysters...

"Oh, gosh," she said weakly.

So we had another nice companionable moment, sitting at the table where she'd set up the testing equipment, drinking from opposite sides of the beer pail. I lit a lamp and pulled the different paper-wrapped parcels from my carpetbag, one by one.

"What're those?" Mendoza inquired with her mouth full.

"Samples of gold-bearing quartz," I explained. "From six different places. I wrote the name of each place on the package in pencil, see? And your job is to test each sample. You're going to look for a blue-green lichen growing in the crevices with the gold."

She swallowed and shook her head, blank-faced.

"You need a microbiologist for this kind of job, Joseph, surely. Plants that primitive aren't my strong suit."

"The closest microbiologist was in Seattle," I explained. "And Agrippanilla's a pain to work with.

Besides, you can handle this! Remember the Black Elysium grape? The mutant saccharomyces or whatever it was? You won yourself a field commendation on that one. This'll be easy!"

Mendoza looked pleased, but did her best to conceal it. "I'll bet your mission budget just wouldn't stretch to shipping qualified personnel down here, eh? That's the Company. Okay; I'll get started right after dinner."

"You can wait until morning," I said.

"Naah." She had a gulp of the beer. "Sleep is for sissies."

So after we ate I retired, and far into the hours of the night I could still see lamplight shining from her room, bright stripes through the plank wall every time I turned over. I knew why she was working so late.

It's not hard to sleep in a house full of mortals, if you tune out the sounds they make. Sometimes, though, just on the edge of sleep, you find yourself listening for one heartbeat that ought to be there, and it isn't. Then you wake up with a start, and remember things you don't want to remember.

I opened my eyes and sunlight smacked me in the face, glittering off the bay through my open door.

Mendoza was sitting on the edge of my bed, sipping from her canteen. I grunted, grimaced and sat unsteadily.

"Coffee," I croaked. She looked smug and held up her canteen.

"There's a saloon on the corner. The nice mortal sold me a whole pot of coffee for five dollars. Want some?"

"Sure." I held out my hand. "So...you didn't mind going down to the saloon by yourself? There are some nasty mortals in this town, kid."

"The famous Sydney Ducks? Yes, I'm aware of that." She was quietly gleeful about something. "I've lived in the Ventana for years, Joseph, dodging mountain lions! Individual nasty mortals don't frighten meanymore. Go ahead, try the coffee."

I sipped it cautiously. It was great. We may have been in America (famous for lousy coffee) now, but San Francisco was already San Francisco.

Mendoza cleared her throat and said, "I found your blue-green lichen. It was growing on the sample from Hiram Gainsborg's. The stuff looks like Stilton cheese. What is it, Joseph?"

"Something the Company wants," I said, gulping down half the coffee.

"I'll bet it does," she said, giving me that sidelong look again. "I've been sitting here, watching you drool and snore, amusing myself by accessing scientific journals on bioremediant research. Your lichen's a toxiphage, Joseph. It's perfectly happy feeding on arsenic and antimony compounds found in conjunction with gold. It breaks them down. I suspect that it could make a lot of money for anyone in the business of cleaning up industrial pollution."

"That's a really good guess, Mendoza," I said, handing back the coffee and swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I found my sandals and pulled them on.

"Isn't it?" She watched me grubbing around in my trunk for my shaving kit. "Yes, for God's sake, shave. You look like one of Torquemada's henchmen, with those blue jowls. So Dr. Zeus is doing something altruistic! In its usual corporate-profit way, of course. I don't understand why this has to be classified, but I'm impressed."

"Uh-huh." I swabbed soap on my face.

"You seem to be in an awful hurry."

"Do I?" I scraped whiskers from my cheek.

"I wonder what you're in a hurry to do?" Mendoza said. "Probably hotfoot it back to Hiram Gainsborg's, to see if he has any more of what he sold you."

"Maybe, baby."

"Can I go along?"

"Nope."

"I'm not sitting in my room all day, watching lichen grow in petri dishes," she said. "Is it okay if I go sightseeing?"

I looked at her in the mirror, disconcerted. "Sweetheart, this is a rough town. Those guys from Australia are devils, and some of the Yankees-"

"I pity the mortal who approaches me with criminal intent," she said, smiling in a chilly kind of way.

"I'll just ride out to the Golden Gate. How can I get into trouble? Ghirardelli's won't be there for another two years, right?"

I walked Mendoza down to the stable anyway, and saw her safely off before hotfooting it over to Hiram Gainsborg's, as she suspected.

Mr. Gainsborg kept a loaded rifle behind his shop counter. I came in through his door so fast he had the rifle out and trained on me pronto, before he saw it was me.

"Apologies, Father Rubio," he said, lowering the barrel. "Back again, are you? You're in some hurry, sir." He had a white chin beard, wore a waistcoat of red and white striped silk, and gave me the disconcerting feeling I was talking to Uncle Sam.

"I was pursued by importuning persons of low moral fiber," I said.

"That a fact?" Mr. Gainsborg pursed his lips. "Well, what about that quartz you bought yesterday?

Your brother friars think it'll do?"

"Yes, my son, they found it suitable," I said. "In fact, the color and quality are so magnificent, so superior to any other we have seen, that we all agreed only you were worthy of this important commission for the Holy Father." I laid the drawing of the crucifix down on his counter. He smiled.