Chasing the Phoenix (22 page)

“Alas, no.”

Darger sighed and then, turning his back on the river, said, “You have a purposeful air about you. Why did you seek me out?”

“To inform you that White Squall wishes to see us both. She says that it's important. But no more.”

*   *   *

AS THEY
made their way through Crossroads, Surplus was struck by how cheerful its citizens appeared and by contrast how dour were the emperor's soldiers. The city's moods seemed to shift with its smells: from bins of dried fruit and spices in the produce shops to fresh droppings and stale blood in the bird market, from food sizzling over charcoal braziers in the restaurants to barrels of stale cooking oil waiting to be carted away in the alleyways behind them. He and Darger stopped to admire a courtyard that was being decorated with lanterns and flowers. A man climbed down from a ladder to explain, “I am preparing for my mother's eightieth birthday. Family and friends are gathering from a hundred
li
around for the celebration.”

“Doesn't the war preclude such a gathering?”

“Not at all. The Three Gorges armies are not restricting travel—indeed, by guaranteeing the roads are free of bandits, they enable it. They examine all traffic passing through the territory they control to ensure that soldiers and weapons are not being smuggled out of Crossroads, of course. But this is only a minor inconvenience, much the same as the invaders making similar examinations of those entering the city.”

On they went, past tables of black tea, barrels of cured tobacco, bins of garbage, laundry being boiled, spilled beer. They paused outside a tavern where a brawl had broken out between off-duty soldiers and local rowdies. “Such behavior is inevitable during a plague,” observed a lean and ancient street vendor of winemellons. He or she had a face like old horse leather. “No real harm will come of it. Oh, a few teeth and fingers and perhaps an eye or two will be lost. Maybe a leg. But such things can always be grown back.”

Racks of fish drying, river mud, acrid cat trace, sweet buns baking, freshly watered ferns, face powder and perfume, the ruptured-sewer smell of fermenting bean curd. Passing by the door of a brothel, the two were almost knocked down by a pair of drunken young soldiers stumbling out. “Your mothers would be dismayed to see you frequenting such a place,” Darger admonished them.

“Always before, I avoided such dens of vice, for fear of catching a disease,” replied the first young lady. “The reward for which is I am going to contract the disease without experiencing the pleasure beforehand. So I resolved to rectify matters.”

The second made an impudent face. “I am not likely to see my mother again. Therefore I will do as I please. It does not matter what she would think of those things that she will never learn I did with the pretty boys here.”

Pepper, tar, hides curing, cloned zebra flesh burgeoning, hot canvas tents, unguent, heaps of medical waste. In this way, Darger and Surplus passed through Crossroads, gathering information as they went, witnessing the ordinary lives and joys of its citizens and the truculence and fear of its occupiers. It was as if there were two distinct cities, one superimposed over the other.

In due course, they came to a Utopian building, like most of its kind overlarge and underornate, situated by the waterfront beyond the city wall. This, White Squall's sappers had emptied out and mercilessly cleaned. Before Darger and Surplus were allowed to enter, they had to don white lab smocks, gloves, sterile cloth booties that went over their shoes, caps to enclose their hair, and masks covering their noses and mouths. Then a similarly clad guide led them into the interior of the building, where there was a light well capped by enormous panes of glass such as no one had known how to make for centuries. In the center of a luminous circle of light was the bronze shell of the phoenix device, burnished so that it dazzled. Carefully arranged about it were its metal workings, piece by piece, all immaculately clean and, to Surplus's eyes, perfectly enigmatic. Beyond those was a stack of lead bricks, which, according to legend, provided protection against those parts of the device that killed silently, invisibly, and at a distance. Those, assuredly, rested behind it.

A tall, slim figure in a lab smock rose up from where it had been crouching at the foot of the device. “Gentlemen. It was good of you to come.”

“You sent for us and so we are here,” Darger said, with a catch in his voice. Masked though she was, White Squall was strikingly beautiful. Surplus, knowing how enthralled his friend was to beauty, could well imagine his thoughts. “I hope you are well.”

“It is only natural that I should be,” she said in a level voice. “Since I was a girl, I've had two dreams. One, held in common with most of my gender, was to have a handsome prince fall in love with me. Thanks to you, that has been achieved. You have my gratitude. The other and greater dream was to bring the brilliant machines of the past back to life. Thanks to the patronage of the Hidden Emperor, I have done that as well. Here before you is my masterpiece. When it is done, I can die fulfilled.”

“Surely that won't be necessary,” Darger began.

But Surplus interrupted him. “You told me the phoenix device was nonfunctional.”

“That's true. But it can be restored. See what splendid condition it is in. The Utopians really knew how to build weapons to last. Oh some of the wiring has to be torn out and redone. But my crew will have no trouble with that. The only real difficulty I see is this.” White Squall picked up a canister. “It contains tritium gas, which, as I'm sure you know, has a half-life of twelve point three years and is used to help achieve thermonuclear fusion. Even when the device was new, it had to be replaced periodically. Today, it is quite inert. This initially seemed to present a problem, but my people—”

Darger held up a hand. “Stop. I understand everything you say, one word at a time. But as for the meaning of those words in combination…”

“Such knowledge was commonplace among the Utopians,” White Squall said, “among whom you claim to have arisen. I find it odd you would not know it. If indeed you are as you say you are.”

“Like the Ancient Master of Deductive Reasoning, I consider the brain to be a room which one may stock as one chooses. A fool takes in all the furniture he can lay his hands on, and when he needs a specific item, cannot find it among the clutter. A sage, however, lays in only those tools he needs for his work, but in great number and perfectly ordered. Matters of strategy are of vital importance to me. But whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun about the earth is a matter of perfect indifference, so I do not bother to acquire this information.”

“To return to the subject at hand,” Surplus said, “it sounds like you are close to making the emperor's Phoenix Bride functional.”

“We are doing well.”

“Is that why you summoned us? To witness your achievement?”

“Oh, no,” White Squall said. “I simply assumed you would be interested. You were summoned here because the Hidden Emperor wishes to speak with you. He is in the next room.”

*   *   *

SINCE THE
plague began, nobody had seen the Hidden Emperor save for his personal servants, and, so far as Surplus knew, nobody had been summoned into his presence. It was widely speculated that he spent his time closeted with his bride to be (of whom all had heard and only a select few knew the truth about) in Yellow Crane Tower. But, as always, the actual location of the emperor was the most guarded secret in all his domain.

Yet by simply passing through a doorway, Surplus and Darger found themselves alone with the Hidden Emperor.

The room was small and tastefully decorated with furnishings that might equally easily be contemporary or several thousand years old. The red and black lacquered panels on the walls were painted in gold with alternating phoenixes and dragons, representing virtue and imperial authority. The emperor wore his usual scarves and dark glasses. He turned down an oil lamp and placed the book he was reading on a side table.

“You may remove your lab smocks and protective gear,” the Hidden Emperor said, unwrapping his scarves. He placed his glasses atop them. “They are required for the ancient purification rituals associated with the phoenix device, but not here.” He gestured at a pair of chairs. “Sit. We are all friends.” He laughed. “Oh, if you could see your expressions!”

They both sat, Surplus with the caution befitting an officer of middling rank, and Darger with the unconcern of a sage. “Why have you summoned us, Majesty?” the latter asked.

“I know your secret,” the Hidden Emperor said with a shrewd grin. “You are not immortals, as you claim to be.”

A cold chill ran up Surplus's spine. “Sir?” he said. Darger, staying in character, showed none of the emotion he must surely be feeling.

“You are gods. Oh, minor ones, admittedly! But gods nevertheless. Would lesser beings be sent to help me gain the Dragon Throne? Of course not. It was particularly clever of you, Dog Warrior, to announce yourself as a god in the marketplace in Brocade and then confess to being a mere revenant of Utopian technology when presented to me. Anybody else would have been fooled by your subterfuge. But I see through all ruses and disguises, no matter how convoluted.”

“Your penetration is, as always, acute.” Darger made of his forefingers a steeple and touched them to his lips. “But we cannot comment on such matters. There are strictures placed upon us by powers even greater than we.”

“Let us talk of less perilous matters,” Surplus said. “Such as the Phoenix Bride.”

“You saw my fiancée? Is she not beautiful?”

“I forget if it was the Mathematician of Alexandria who said that geometry is beauty laid bare or the Father of Relativity who made this claim for physics,” Darger said. “She is, in either case, ravishing.”

“Tell us how you came to be aware of her existence,” Surplus suggested. Knowing that no man engaged to what he considers a great beauty is loath to discuss her.

“When I was a child, I dreamed of fire,” the Hidden Emperor said. “Smooth and liquid as flowing water, violent as the earthquake that shakes the mountain, driving all before it like a mighty wind. Sometimes I would evade my minders and go out into the fields and set the crops aflame. There are not many vices a prince cannot get away with. Setting fields on fire is one of them. So I had to be sly and evasive, and it was only rarely and with great subterfuge that I could slip away from my guardians and achieve the freedom to engage in my desires. Oh, but it was worth all the difficulties I underwent. The fire moves like quicksilver, hesitates, then rushes onward, tracing lines and sigils in the dry plants, and in one's elated state it is possible to read some fraction of their meaning. Fire exalts the spirit. The dross of physical matter is transformed into light and heat and its smoke rises gently into the heavens. Have you ever seen a barn fire? Amazing! Particularly after harvest, when the barn is stuffed to the gills with hay. It goes up like a bomb and its flames touch the sky. You can hear it crackling a mile away.

“From the country I moved my ambitions to the buildings of Brocade. That was even more difficult, for city people are always on the watch for conflagration and the fire brigades come swiftly to douse the smallest outbreak. Once, however, I was able to torch a warehouse stuffed with leather goods, bales of cotton, barrels of grain alcohol. It burned all night and lit up half the city. The sky was overcast and flickered red. There were explosions and showers of sparks. Oh, but it was glorious. Though, admittedly, the stench was great.

“Afterward, I dreamed of it again and again.

“It was only when I came of age that I understood that fire was a metaphor for lust. Then, of course, I ceased my arsons in much the same spirit in which the respectable man, upon attaining adulthood, abandons the brothels and sexual adventures of adolescence and seeks out a virtuous woman to become his wife.

“We desire most what is unattainable. When I realized that my destiny was to conquer and rule, I set aside all thought of fire—for what firestorm, however glorious, however mighty, can truly be worthy of an emperor? Only one—that of the phoenix devices which the Utopians built for fighting their most glorious wars. And though those devices might yet exist, I knew they were hidden deep in the earth and that no living man knew how to make them operative.

“But then a miracle happened.”

“White Squall wrote her treatise on resurrecting ancient weapons,” Surplus said.

“Yes! Immediately, I sent out my best operatives to kidnap and bring her before me. She spoke most eloquently. I questioned her in great detail. Her answers were straightforward. She said the task would be expensive and time-consuming. She did not play down its difficulty. In return, I gave her money, time, and patience. Now, only a room away, she is proving herself the most valuable of my servants. In a day or three or possibly five, the Phoenix Bride will be ready to blossom into such a fire as has not been seen in this world for years beyond knowing. When she does, I will be with her, and my substance will be transformed into light and heat and my smoke will rise up into the heavens, intermingled with hers. Just as I dreamed as a child.”

“A moving tale,” Darger said, when it was clear that the Hidden Emperor had finished speaking. “But why do you share it with us?”

The Hidden Emperor leaned forward. “Though all men fear to give the emperor bad news, I have ways of learning it nonetheless. I know about the trick that Ceo Shrewd Fox played upon you, and how quickly the joyous plague spreads among my army. There are certain of my advisors who say that a week from now I will not even have an army at all. So you must tell me. You are gods and the ways of gods are unfathomable to mortals. Will you allow me to conquer China? Will I ride in triumph through the city we now call North, known in ancient times as Beijing? Or is it the will of heaven that I die here, in Crossroads? I would prefer to consummate my marriage with the Phoenix Bride in North, after having sat upon the Dragon Throne. But if destiny requires it, we can be wed here. It would be a lesser triumph than the one I had planned. But I am a philosopher. So long as I rise up into the skies to be reborn in alchemical fire, it will suffice.”