Mendoza in Hollywood Read Online Free PDF Page A

a couple of centuries. First they’ll crossbreed with settler’s dogs.Then they’ll crossbreed with wolves that escape from the zoo during a riot—that’s during the dark ages of L.A.—and they’ll get so huge and vicious, they’ll start eating street beggars when the winters are bad.”
    “Jesus.” I shivered, looking up at the sky. It was such an innocent shade of blue.
    “But these little guys we have now are real sweet,” he told me seriously, sipping his own coffee. “Sort of foxy. Nothing to worry about. Not like when I go after a bear.”
    “Bears?”
    “California brown bears, like the one on the flag,” he said. “They’re already on the way out. Last known survivor in California will be shot right here, or actually out there”—he pointed down the canyon—”in 1912. Then they’re extincto. Supposedly. They take some catching!”
    “I can imagine.” I looked into the bottom of my graniteware cup. “Tell me, are we likely to encounter any bears today?”
    “Only if we’re lucky,” Einar said. “Since you have other work to do, I thought we’d keep things simple for now.”
    “Wonderful.”
    After a breakfast of velvety frijoles and steak rolled in tortillas, we saddled up and went to explore. Einar wore fearsome-looking bandoliers and a pair of shotguns, one behind either shoulder, like samurai swords. He showed me a trail that led through the back of the canyon and up a series of switchbacks to the top of the ridge. We followed the rimrock above the foothills, and down below us the plains swept out to the east, where there were big white snowy mountains, and south and west, where beyond the sprawl of adobes that was Los Angeles the land terminated in the blue line of the sea. Paler blue and farther out, lay a floating mountain.
    “Is that an island?” I asked, squinting at it.
    “Catalina,” Einar said. “Location shots for
Mutiny on the Bounty, Treasure Island
, and a couple of versions of
Rain
, to name but a few. And check this out.” He leaned over in his saddle, pointing into a steep valley to our left. “Know what that is, down there? Hollywood Bowl!Imagine a big white half shell right there, with a reflecting pool in front of it, and a fan of seats sweeping up and up, rows and rows of pearly gray wooden benches, and thousands of screaming girls filling the amphitheater. Right down there is where the Beatles will perform. I’ve been up here at night, alone, and I swear to God I can hear them.”
    I stared down, impressed, though all I could see was a wilderness of sagebrush and toyon holly. “That’s when, the 1960s? Only a century off. Where’s the Hollywood sign?”
    “Look across there.” He pointed east, where a red mountain thrust up against the sky like a rippled wall. “Under the crest. It’ll say
Hollywoodland
first, for the real estate park below it, and then when the last four letters fall off, they won’t be replaced. There’ll be two sister signs as well, for a couple of other developments, one down on that lower ridge that’ll say
Bryn Mawr
and one over here that says
Outpost
, but they won’t last long, and nobody will remember they were ever there. Neat, huh?”
    “You certainly know the area,” I said. We urged our horses on, and they continued to pick their way down the trail. “What are you going to do when it finally starts to happen, though? You’re a zoologist. Dr. Z isn’t likely to keep you here once the bears and the coyotes are gone.”
    “I have a double discipline,” he said. “Programmed for zoology
and
cinema. I can stabilize a silver-nitrate print with one hand and do a genetic assay on a musk ox with the other. I’ve been in the field for millennia, though, so all my experience is with animals. Reindeer, caribou, wolves, those guys. The wheels of time roll swift around, though! When this assignment’s up, I’m off to Menlo Park and then on to Melies in France. I’ll be in on film from the beginning. I just hope Dr. Zeus