The Geomancer's Compass (13 page)

Speaking of which…

I
blinked. An avatar materialized from the steam to the right of my visual field and hovered there for an instant. I recognized it immediately. It was The Grandfather. The Grandfather! What was he doing here? “Brian,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Do you see something?”

“What do you mean?”

“Over there, to the right. Do you see an avatar?”

“No. Wait.” He leaned forward. “Yeah, I do. That thing with the glowing green globe. Isn't it part of the …?”

“No. At least, I don't think it is.”

The avatar floated toward us, passing through Madison and the group of tourists as though they were holograms, and came to a stop a couple of feet away, where it hovered, stooped
and featureless. “
Ni hao
, Miranda, Brian,” it said. Then, in English, “Hello, children.”

“
Ni hao
,” Brian replied in a whisper. “Excuse me, but do we know you? You look familiar somehow.”

“Brian! Can't you tell? It's The Grandfather.” Because it was an absolutely brilliant evocation of him – hats off to whoever the animator was.

“The Grandfather?” Brian stared for a moment. “You're right. Of course it is, only … isn't he dead?”

“Of course he's dead. We were both at his funeral. He's stuck between realms.”

“Stuck between what?”

“It's a long story.”

“What? You've seen him before? And you didn't tell me?”

“It was a virtual encounter,” I whispered. “I wasn't sure it was real. I'm not sure
this
is real.” I turned to the avatar. “What are you doing here? Can anybody else see you?”

“I've come to show you two something, and no, nobody but you and Brian can see me. And they can't hear me, either, but they can hear you, so keep your voices down.”

“How did you manage to infiltrate this program?”

“
Shhh
.” It held a finger in front of where its mouth would be. “Listen and learn.”

“These men worked from twelve to sixteen hours a day,” Madison was saying. “What's more, their eating and living quarters were next to the laundry. That meant that some of
them spent weeks underground, without getting to the surface to see the sunshine.”

“Ouch,” said Brian. “They were like … the lowest of the low, outcasts or something.”

“Now, now, Brian,” cautioned The Grandfather. “Wash houses were the foundation of the Chinese economy in North America. You could start one up with almost no money or education. Since most white men felt washing clothes was beneath their dignity, they provided people who had just arrived from China with a rare opportunity.”

Madison crossed the room. “Let's look at their living conditions.” She opened a second door and gestured for the group to follow. We tromped through a room in which CGI coolies cooked and ate their humble meals, and then entered another narrower room lined with extremely uncomfortable-looking bunk beds. Brian, The Grandfather, and I took up the rear, hanging back a little from the main group so that we could talk quietly. After a burlap factory and, a short tunnel away, stairs leading to a Chinese restaurant (“Wong's Restaurant,” murmured The Grandfather, “where my poor brother worked.”), we returned to the first tunnel and followed it about two city blocks before stopping at another door.

“Ah,” said the avatar. Its tone was wistful. “Here we are, at last.”

“What do you mean?” Brian asked.

“My old stomping grounds.”

“Right now we are directly under River Street,” explained Madison. “Chinatown was on the south side of River Street, and Moose Jaw's red-light district was on its north side – gambling dens, drinking joints, and cheap hotels. In other words, this was the
bad
part of town. What we're about to see is an opium den.”

“Your old stomping grounds were an
opium den
?” Brian whispered.

Madison opened the door and the group crowded into a low-ceilinged, brick-walled room. The only furnishings were a table bearing a selection of water pipes, and three mattresses on which CGI figures dressed in white blouses and white pajama-style bottoms lay outstretched. “The Chinese brought with them from the old country a fondness for two vices that caused them a great deal of grief in the New World,” Madison said. “Gambling and opium. This association with drugs and gaming, along with Chinatown's location in the middle of the red-light district, contributed to the negative stereotype people already had of the typical Chinese male as a gambler, drug addict, and white slave trader.” A glance in our direction. “To give the impression that he was fighting crime and to satisfy the white citizenry of Moose Jaw, Chief Alfred Humes made frequent raids on business establishments in Chinatown.”

“Hey!” I poked Brian. “Alfred Humes again.”

“Hush,” cautioned The Grandfather. “Here comes the good part.”

“Where we are standing now was an actual opium den, run by a local Chinese entrepreneur who used to import opium from Hong Kong, boil it and can it, and sell it to the United States – before it became illegal.”

“You?” I asked the avatar. “Is she talking about you?”

“Of course.”

“Wait a minute! You were a drug dealer?” asked Brian.

The avatar bristled. “An entrepreneur. And it was legal back then. Opiates were prescribed for all sorts of illnesses: asthma, appendicitis, coughs, nerves, epilepsy, and diarrhea.
Ai ya
. Babies were given a form of opium to help them sleep. If I remember correctly, both of you could have used a good dose now and again.”

“Above us is the oldest Chinese business in Canada, the Azure Dragon Tea and Herb Sanatorium,” Madison added.

“Hey, that's us!” whispered Brian.

“The family who owned it moved to Vancouver about the time of the Great War, and went on to found one of the largest Chinese import and export companies in Canada, but they've never sold the property or made any changes to it since that time. And do you know why?” Madison paused. Her expression was serious, her eyes were wide. “Because it's
haunted
.”

“Check this out,” said the avatar.

Wisps of fog began to collect into a looming shape – part Casper, part Jacob Marley's ghost from
A Christmas Carol
– with
bulging eyes, a contorted face, and an elongated mouth frozen in a scream. “
WOOOOO
,” it wailed.

Everyone laughed except the little boy from Brandon, who hid behind his mother's knees, suddenly subdued.

“Preposterous!” The avatar chuckled, rocking back and forth on its heels the way The Grandfather had in life. “Of course, the real ghost is scarier. Much scarier.”

“Ghost?” Brian asked. “What ghost?”

“Qianfu's, of course.”

I gulped. Suddenly the cheesy ghost effect didn't seem quite so funny. “Qianfu's ghost is … upstairs?”

“Of course it's upstairs. That's why we haven't been able to sell the property. You heard the tour guide. We tried.”

“You mean, the ghost is real?” I asked.

“Of course it's real. If it wasn't real, we wouldn't have a problem.”

“I don't understand,” whispered Brian. “Why don't we just ask the ghost where he left old Fu Manchu's bones?”

“Old
Fu Manchu
?” The avatar's tone turned icy.

“Yeah,” said Brian. “You know. Your brother.”

“His
name
is Qianfu.” Then, “You are familiar with the concept of ‘yellow peril,' are you not?”

Brian looked abashed. “Yeah. Well, sort of.”

“Let me refresh your memory,” said the avatar crisply. “There was a time not all that long ago when white people felt very threatened by the influx of Chinese coming into
North America. We were the ‘yellow peril' – dirty, immoral, and villainous, a threat to their jobs, their standard of living, and their women.”

“I know that.”

“And who was the stereotypical villain most often associated with the so-called yellow peril?”

Brian looked a little sheepish. “Fu Manchu?”

“Exactly,” replied the avatar. “Fu Manchu. The men who murdered my brother believed that they were ridding the world of a villain – of, in effect, a Fu Manchu. The perpetuation of this myth, of this heinous lie and the racism it led to, was as responsible for his death as the men who shed his blood and the men who protected those men against prosecution and so flagrantly disrespected his remains. My brother was no villain, great-grandson. He was an innocent man, guilty of no greater crime than love. Do not ever refer to him again as ‘Fu Manchu.' ”

Throughout this exchange, I remained stuck on the idea that there was a ghost upstairs. I tugged at Brian's vest. “So you're buying this – that there's an actual ghost involved?”

“Randi,” Brian replied in a hushed voice, “think about it. I just got reamed for racist comments by the avatar of my dead great-great-grandfather, so I'd say yes, for the moment at least, I'm buying that there's a ghost.”

“I will need to see you both at the store at, say, five o'clock,” the avatar announced.

“At the store?” I repeated.

“I need to determine whether I can connect better with the ghost as a virtual entity than I was able to as flesh and blood,” the avatar explained. “Remember that I exist in cyberspace only. Unless a provision is made for virtual reality, I can't go anywhere. That means that, in order to get into the store, I will require your assistance. I also have to determine whether Qianfu is too far gone, whether there remains to him anything human that may be reasoned with or appealed to … or whether he is pure monster.”

As suddenly as it had appeared, the avatar vanished. It was as though it had been switched off, like a light.

“Are you two coming?” This from Madison, who was standing at the door.

We were alone in the opium den. The rest of the group was heading down the tunnel, back toward the surface; we could hear sounds of conversation and laughter as they moved farther away from us. “Believe me, you don't want to hang around here long,” Madison said. She glanced around her, then shivered. “The truth is, this building actually
is
haunted.”

“What do you mean?” Brian asked, as we followed her through the door and down the narrow tunnel.

“That's why the family hasn't sold,” she explained. “They tried to for years and years, but every time a real estate agent went to show the property, the ghost materialized and scared the prospective buyers away.” We started up the stairs. “I'm
not a superstitious person but, I tell you, some of the sounds that come out of that place … people say it's the wind, but it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. You might want to turn your I-spex off now. Let your eyes adjust.”

“Oh, right.” I powered off.

And there it was – that heart-stopping jolt. My mental powers tumbled headlong into a swirling void. I fought rising panic:
Hold on. Hold on. Almost there. Almost grounded
. Then there was a click and there we were, back in the lobby, back in this version of the real world.

“Wow,” breathed Brian. “No matter how often I do that, it never ceases to freak me out.”

Madison hesitated, then said, “I hope that wasn't too upsetting for you guys. You know. Seeing how the Chinese had to live back then. It was bad, really bad.”

We stared at her, dazed.

“Anyway …” she added, looking a little embarrassed, “have a great rest of your day in Moose Jaw.”

Not bloody likely, I thought.

“Yeah, you too,” Brian managed. “Thanks.”

“Bye!” And she was gone. Not like The Grandfather – she went through the door.

Brian glanced around. “Where'd he go? The Grandfather, that is.”

“I don't know.” I thought for a moment, remembering the first time I had encountered him in the virtual tour of the
lo p'an
. “I think the only way we can access him is in a virtual environment. I think he's … like,
hosted
maybe … on the
feng shui
network.”

“Wow.” He shook his head. He looked stunned, at a loss for words for once. “That's crazy.”

“I know,” I said. “It's all really crazy. What time is it?”

Brian consulted his watch. “Four-fifteen.”

“We've got forty-five minutes before we're supposed to meet The Grandfather,” I calculated. “I've got to think. Sort this out. Do you want to get some Guarana Fizz? I think I'm in serious need of carbonization. I'm in serious need of something.”

“Me too,” said Brian. His eyes lit up. “Pie.”