Day of the Djinn Warriors (27 page)

It was just as well, she reflected, that she would be handing the golden tablet to Nimrod, who spoke a little Chinese and could easily have used djinn power to brush it up a bit.

But when she reached the Most Wonderful Hotel in Xian and was told by Finlay that Nimrod and Groanin had disappeared in pit number one, Philippa despaired. Doubly so when Finlay confessed that John had gone to look for them, in spirit form, and had failed to return.

“Now what are we going to do?” she asked. “What’s the use of having a golden tablet of command if no one understands a single word you say?”

“We could always try to learn some Chinese,” suggested Finlay.

“A language course?” said Philippa. “Why don’t we take a test while we’re at it? This is no time to be going to school, Finlay. Nimrod and John and Groanin are in grave danger.”

“What about a phrase book?” asked Finlay.

“A phrase book?” Philippa sounded doubtful. “This is the golden tablet of command. Not a weekend in Paris.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Well,” Philippa said thoughtfully. “We
could
find someone who speaks English and give them a list of possible commands for them to translate into Chinese.”

“I’ve been here for two days,” said Finlay. “None of the locals speak English. The menus in the restaurants are all in Chinese. I have no idea what I’m eating even while I’m eating it. After you’ve been in China for a while, England begins to seem as far away and as alien as Mars. That’s how they think of us, you know. As aliens. Worse. As foreign devils. Nimrod says that’s what they call us. Nobody here speaks English, Philippa. And why would they bother to learn it when the two billion other people who live in this country don’t speak it, either?”

“Maybe there’s an American embassy or consulate in Xian,” said Philippa. “Someone there could help us.”

“What makes you think they’ll just drop everything to help us?” asked Finlay.

“This,” she said, and showed Finlay the golden tablet of command.

Philippa telephoned the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and discovered that the American vice consul came to Xian just once a week on a Tuesday, which meant they would have to wait almost a week for his return. But the embassy official told them that there was a British vice consul who lived in Xian from Monday to Friday. As soon as Philippa and Finlay had
the British vice consul’s address, they left the hotel and found a taxi driver who understood just enough English to take them there.

The office of the British vice consul was in Xiao Zhai, in the southern part of the city. It was a busy commercial area, and Mr. Blunt, the vice consul, worked in a few dull rooms above the Pu Yi laundry. On the wall behind his desk was a portrait of the Queen by Rolf Harris, and a map of the world with all the former British colonies crossed out. Mr. Blunt was a small man with curly gray hair, small hands, a fluting sort of voice — more like a little old lady than a man — and he regarded the arrival of two children in his office with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm.

“Yes?” he said. “What is it?”

“Are you Mr. Blunt?”

“That’s what it says on my membership card from the Keep Kids out of the Office Society.”

In the face of such astonishing rudeness, Philippa hesitated.

“Well?” he snapped.

“We need your help,” said Philippa. “With some translations into Chinese. We’d like you to look at a list of phrases we’ve prepared, in English, and translate them into Chinese. You do speak Chinese, don’t you?”

“I am fluent in six dialects of Chinese, including Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, and Hakka,” he said stiffly. “Look here, I’m the British vice consul, not some ragamuffin businessman from the Purley Chamber of Commerce.
But neither am I here to help juvenile Americans mangle the language of Confucius and Lao-tzu. I look at your bubble-gum pink faces and I weep for the future. Good day to you both.”

“I’m not American,” said Finlay. “I’m English.”

“Consider yourself ennobled. But since you are English, it is my diplomatic duty to offer you the following consular advice. Buy yourself a phrase book from the nearest
syu guk
. That’s Chinese for ‘bookshop.’ Once again, good day to you both.”

Philippa sighed and delved into her bag to look for the golden tablet of command. “I don’t know why we even bothered trying to be polite about this.”

“Is your understanding of English equal to your ignorance of Chinese?” demanded Mr. Blunt. “I said good day to you both.” He made a rude, brushing gesture with the back of his hand. “Now, shoo.
Go
. I have work to do.”

Philippa held up the golden tablet in front of her. It glistened under the bright lights of the office, and she felt the power of it in her fingertips as if she had been holding the two terminals of a car battery.

“You will help us,” she said firmly.

Mr. Blunt straightened in his chair and then stood up, as if the Queen had come into the room.

“I will help you,” repeated Mr. Blunt dumbly.

“Impressive,” murmured Finlay.

“You will write out these translations. Just like we asked you to.”

“I will write out the translations. Just like you asked me to.”

“Very
impressive.”

Philippa handed over two sheets of notepaper on which she and Finlay had written almost every command in English they could think of that might come in handy with the warrior devils. Mr. Blunt put on some glasses, picked up his pen, and quickly wrote out the translations. It took him less than ten minutes, after which time he handed them over.

“Was there anything else?” he asked crisply.

Philippa cast her eye over his work and let out a small scream of frustration. “But this is written in Chinese!” she cried.

“Which language did you expect Chinese translations to be written in?” asked Mr. Blunt. “Eskimo, perhaps? Flemish? Klingon? Of course it’s written in Chinese, you nincompoop.”

“Couldn’t you write the phrases out in English, showing the way we might pronounce them?” asked Finlay. “The phone-something spellings.”

“Phonetic,” said Philippa.

“All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones,” said Mr. Blunt. “Mandarin has five. High level, high rising, low falling-rising, high falling, and neutral. Not to mention a great variety of sounds that are seldom used in the English language. For that reason, the way
you
might pronounce these phrases would almost certainly sound quite incomprehensible to a Chinese. Like a dog trying to speak to an archbishop.”

Mr. Blunt picked up a carafe and was about to pour himself a glass of water. But Philippa had had enough of the Englishman’s conceit and decided to teach him a lesson.

“Pour it on your stupid limey head, you horrible little man,” she said.

Mr. Blunt did as he was told, of course, and poured the water onto his head. When he’d finished, he wiped his face and said, “I don’t know why I did that.”

“No offense,” Philippa told Finlay. “About limeys, I mean.”

“None taken.” He shrugged.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll have to take him with us,” said Finlay.

“Him? But he’s a pain in the neck.”

“Maybe so, but he speaks six dialects of Chinese. We have no idea which dialect of Chinese gets spoken in these parts. Least of all by the warrior devils.”

“Good point.”

“Besides,” added Finlay, “I just remembered. We’ll need someone who reads Chinese to speak the Chinese equivalent of ‘open sesame.’”

“Very well. You will come with us, please,” Philippa told Mr. Blunt.

The vice consul did not hesitate. He got his jacket off the back of his chair, his hat off the hat stand, his umbrella from the umbrella stand, and followed the two children through the steamy glass door.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Do you have a car?” asked Finlay.

“Yes.”

“Take us to the terra-cotta warriors,” said Finlay. “Exhibition hall, number one.” “Why should I?”

Philippa shook her head at Finlay. “You’re not holding the golden tablet,” she explained, and repeated the order.

Mr. Blunt glanced at his watch. “But the exhibition will be closed now,” he said.

“All the better,” said Finlay.

“But how will we get in?” asked Philippa.

Finlay showed her the little box with the skeleton key Nimrod had given him for safekeeping. “With this,” he said. “Don’t leave home without one.”

I
don’t like this at all,” said Mr. Blunt as they entered the huge, dark exhibition hall and climbed down into pit one. “I really don’t like this. These warriors are priceless artifacts. If the Chinese caught us in here they’d probably assume we were trying to steal them. The penalty for this kind of theft in China is almost certainly death.”

“That’s enough,” said Philippa, brandishing the golden tablet of command. “It sounds horrible and I don’t want to hear any more about it, Mr. Blunt. Please speak the words written in Chinese on the wall in front of us and then be silent until I specifically tell you that you may start speaking again.”

“You mean these words?” asked Mr. Blunt.
“Kai Shen?”

As soon as he spoke, the hidden door in the wall of the pit slid open to reveal the secret passageway.

“That’s right,” added Philippa. “Not another word unless I say so.”

They walked into the passageway and the door slid silently shut behind them. After a while, Finlay said, “What’s that noise?”

“It sounds like birds,” said Philippa. “Millions of birds.”

Inside the jade pyramid everything was very modern and high-tech. A thin layer of mercury covered the floor, reflecting people and objects like a giant mirror: some complicated electrical machinery, Iblis and his son Rudyard operating it, several dozen warrior devils who lined the walls like suits of armor in a medieval castle, and, chained to a wall, Groanin/John and Nimrod. Opposite them was a thick, triangular glass wall, like a giant fish tank. Instead of fish, this particular tank, which took up most of the space in the pyramid, contained the spirits of millions of children compressed, one on top of the other, like so many sardines. Moving like a fluid, and giving off a silvery-bluish light, they looked visibly electric, like a sky that was chock-full of lightning. From time to time, small, ghostly human faces would appear next to the glass, mouthing some silent entreaty — for the room was soundproofed — and this was as amusing to Iblis and his son Rudyard as it was alarming to Groanin/John and Nimrod.

Iblis was in his element and took great pleasure in describing all of the details of his operation and the workings of his infernal machinery to his two/three prisoners. He did this
because he knew how much distress it caused them, and his appetite for torture was undiminished despite having already tortured Groanin/John with another quaesitor. Groanin/John had little choice but to tell him everything he/they knew about Philippa and the golden tablet of command.

As a result, Iblis was also feeling quite relaxed. He felt certain that Philippa would never solve the mystery in the painting. He himself had no clue how XI + I could ever have equaled X and, in his arrogance, Iblis did not think a mere child could have solved something he could not solve himself. He was satisfied Philippa would never find the golden tablet of command in time to stop him from carrying out his plan.

While Iblis preened himself in front of his prisoners, Rudyard Teer kept an eye on the instrumentation panel in front of him. Both men continued to wear their jade suits of armor that rendered them immune to Nimrod’s djinn power.

“Critical mass in eight minutes,” Rudyard told his father.

“Capital,” said Iblis. “In less than eight minutes,” Iblis told Nimrod, “the energy in that tank will cause the pyramid to invert. And, all over the world, fate and luck will also turn upside down. I can hardly wait to see the results. Whatever that’s wished for will achieve its opposite result.” Iblis chuckled his insane laugh. “For the rest of time, humankind will look like the face of some pathetic kid on Christmas
morning when you’ve handed him a nicely wrapped package that turns out to be empty.”

This was an image that seemed to delight Rudyard, who laughed like a drain. He and Iblis then executed a high five, which wasn’t easy because of the heavy jade suits they were wearing.

“Does it really give you pleasure, Iblis?” asked Nimrod. “To do evil for the sake of doing evil?”

Iblis looked surprised at the question. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

“Seven minutes and counting,” said Rudyard Teer.

“Just in case you were thinking of how you might turn things around, so to speak,” said Iblis. “How you might turn the pyramid the right way up again. You can’t. What I’m doing here is quite irreversible. For one thing, humans like your butler, Mr. Groanin, would have to start wishing the very opposite of what they really wanted. Which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is quite impossible. After all, it’s hard enough to get humans to know what they really want, let alone the very opposite.

“And, for another thing, you’d never be able to harness as much life-force energy as I have done with the spirits of all these kids. No, Nimrod, once this pyramid is inverted, that’s it for the world.” He laughed. “I mean, forget breaking a mirror and seven years of bad luck. This is like seven billion years of bad luck ahead of us. Marvelous!”

“Wonderful,” said Rudyard.

“Very clever,” said Nimrod. “I have to admit, yours was a complex but ingenious plan. Loaning terra-cotta warriors you had commandeered for your own purposes to the world’s major museums. Tell me, Iblis, the devil warrior at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Is it still there?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because it absorbed my friend Mr. Rakshasas.”

“That is good news,” said Iblis. “Sadly, however, I won’t be able to find him and torture him myself. That would take too long. The warrior sent to the Metropolitan Museum in New York is now back here in Xian. One of eighty thousand at my command. It would take forever to find him now, mixed up with all the rest.” He chuckled cruelly. “I mean, have you ever tried counting to ninety billion?”

“Stealing jade, flushing out the spirit world, using poor Dybbuk to focus all of human attention on one event to create a Negentropy,” said Nimrod. “Ingenious and quite the most obscene thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“Thank you, Nimrod. I take that as a great compliment from someone like you.”

“But your own son,” said Nimrod. “Your own son.” He nodded at Rudyard. “Oh, I don’t mean this booby here. I mean Dybbuk. Don’t you feel the least bit of regret for having used your own flesh and blood so ruthlessly?”

“Six minutes and counting,” said Rudyard, ignoring Nimrod’s insult. “The spirit level has reached maximum power, Dad. Final countdown sequence initiated.”

“A little, yes,” admitted Iblis. “The boy was not without talent. But then again he was not without a conscience, either, and no Ifrit that’s worthy of the name could ever have much use for one of those.”

“The boy
was
not without talent,” repeated John. “You used the past tense, Iblis. Is Dybbuk all right?”

“He’ll live,” said Iblis. “If you can call it living.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Nothing,” said Iblis. “I didn’t have to. He did it to himself. Through his profligate overuse of djinn power in the performance of cheap tricks, sleight of hand, and cabaret-style illusions, the power has deserted the boy
forever
. Quite simply, he exhausted all of his power trying to be the great magician. As if that was a proper ambition for a djinn of his talents. I’m afraid now he’s no better than some miserable mundane.”

“Five minutes and counting.”

“You mean that he won’t be able to grant three wishes, transubstantiate, or make something disappear ever again?” asked John.

Iblis shrugged carelessly and then nodded.

“What a terrible thing to do to your own son,” said Nimrod. “Your
youngest
son. To lose his power. It is the greatest tragedy that can affect any djinn, but especially tragic when it affects a young one.”

“Do stop going on about him being my own son,” said Iblis. “You’re being a bore, Nimrod.”

“Is there something else we can call him?” asked Nimrod.

“Does it matter?”

“I think it might matter to you,” observed Nimrod. “Sons are important to us djinn. Even, dare I say, to the Ifrit.”

“All right, all right,” snarled Iblis. “I’m sorry for what happened to the boy. Are you satisfied? It wasn’t something I expected to happen. He must have been using a lot more power to do those tricks than I imagined. But it can’t be helped.”

“And what about his career as an entertainer?” asked Groanin. “As Jonathan Tarot?”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” said Iblis. “After what happened to all those stupid kids, he’s finished as an entertainer. In the ears of half the people in the world, the name of Jonathan Tarot is now mud. You should see what the newspapers have been writing about him.”

“Poor Dybbuk,” whispered John.

“To use your own son like that, Iblis,” said Nimrod. “What a crime that was.”

“He’s still alive, isn’t he?” snarled Iblis.

“Three minutes and counting.”

“Perhaps that’s the greatest of your crimes,” said Nimrod, who was trying to needle Iblis into making some kind of mistake. A mistake he might yet take advantage of. “To use your own son like that.”

“You think that’s a crime?” yelled Iblis. “Believe me, Marid, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Iblis took hold of a lever.
“In less than three minutes, when I throw this lever, every one of those little life-force energies I’ve got stored up in here will be used up forever. And won’t their mommies and daddies be sad? Millions of them. Now that’s a crime, mate!”

“Two minutes and counting.”

“Think about what you’re doing, Iblis,” said Nimrod. “If everything is about to start going your way,
forever
, where will be the pleasure in defeating me? There won’t be any. Even if their wishes remain unfulfilled, people still need to be able to wish for good things to happen to them in the future,
just to make life interesting
. And it’s the same for you. Don’t you understand, Iblis? It’s the hope of things, good or evil, that makes life interesting. That makes it worth living.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Iblis scornfully.

But Nimrod could see he had the evil djinn’s attention now. “All these years you’ve been a djinn, Iblis, and still you don’t understand. It’s like my friend Mr. Rakshasas used to say: ‘A wish is a dish that’s a lot like a fish — once you’ve eaten it, you can hardly throw it back.’ Sometimes it’s not good to get exactly what you want. Sometimes the hope or expectation of something is better than the reality. Be careful what you wish for. That’s true for evil as much as it’s true for good.”

“One minute and counting,” said Rudyard. “Don’t listen to him, Dad. He sounds like some awful self-help book.”

“I’m not listening,” insisted Iblis. “Your philosophy, Nimrod, is not without merit, I’ll grant you. But it does not command my respect. It’s too woolly. Too vague. Too wishy-washy. Only pure evil commands my respect.”

“Then perhaps this will command your respect,” said a voice. “But if not your respect, then perhaps your obedience.”

“Thank goodness for that,” said Groanin. “I say, thank goodness for that. The cavalry’s here at last.”

In the doorway of the operations room in the jade pyramid stood Philippa, and in her hands was the golden tablet of command. Beside her stood Finlay McCreeby and Mr. Blunt, the British vice consul.

“You think you can thwart my plans with that bauble?” sneered Iblis. “Well, your golden tablet won’t work on us. That’s why we’re wearing these jade suits of armor.” He turned to the warrior devils and shouted several commands in Chinese which set them in motion again.

“Saat taa mun!”
he shouted.
“Caan can taa mun! Wai taa mun!”

The warriors advanced on the newly arrived trio with menacing intent.

“Listen to me, Philippa,” shouted Nimrod. “Forget Iblis and Rudyard. Because of their jade suits, they can’t harm you. Djinn power won’t travel through jade. Nor will the power of the golden tablet. It will only work on the warrior devils. The Chinese words to turn the
Dong Xi
against their Ifrit masters are —”

“Silence him!” shouted Iblis, and straightaway one of the warrior devils put a big terra-cotta hand over Nimrod’s mouth.

Coolly, Philippa took hold of Mr. Blunt’s hand, so that the power of the golden tablet would enter his body, too.
“Tell the warriors to stop,” she told the vice consul. “Tell them to obey me. Tell them in Chinese, or we’ll all be killed.”

But to her surprise and alarm Mr. Blunt remained silent.

“Thirty seconds and counting,” shouted Rudyard.

Philippa repeated the command but still, Mr. Blunt looked blankly at her and said nothing.

“Why doesn’t he obey me?”

The warrior devils moved slowly toward Philippa and Mr. Blunt like zombies, but by now they were only a few feet away.

“Your last command to Mr. Blunt,” said Finlay. “That must be interfering with your new command. It’s the only possible explanation.”

Philippa racked her brains. “I said not another word unless I say SO!” Philippa shouted the last word in triumph as she guessed that until she uttered it, Mr. Blunt would continue to remain silent.

Mr. Blunt blinked several times, as if waking up. “What’s that?” he said.

A second before Philippa found herself grabbed painfully by two of the terra-cotta warriors, she shouted a series of commands for Mr. Blunt to translate into Chinese. “Tell the
Dong Xi
to obey!”

“Dong Xi! Teng ting ting,”
said Mr. Blunt in faultless Chinese.

“Tell them to stop!”

“Zi,”
shouted Mr. Blunt.
“Zi!”

“Twenty seconds and counting,” said Rudyard Teer.

The warrior devils stopped in their tracks.

From inside Mr. Groanin, John shouted out to his twin sister. “Philippa, you have to stop Iblis from pulling that lever. Millions of children’s lives are depending on it.”

“Ten seconds and counting!”

“Mr. Blunt,” yelled Philippa, “tell the warrior devils to arrest those two men in the jade suits of armor. At all costs, they must be stopped, do you hear? Don’t let him pull that lever!”

Mr. Blunt was simultaneously translating what Philippa was saying. His Chinese was as fluent and fluting and elegant as his English. And as soon as the first words were out of his fastidious little mouth, the warrior devils released him and Philippa and turned slowly, on their former masters.