“Thank you,” replied Corvyn, adding, after the briefest pause, “Are you from Luoyang or Baiyin?”
“Baiyin. I occasionally visit friends in Luoyang.” She paused, then said, “If you’re looking to purchase transportation, you might want to stop near Zhengyi Square. That’s on the southeast side on the way in.”
“Are you going to be on the van then?”
She nodded.
“Then I’d appreciate your pointing it out, because I haven’t been here before.” That was a lie, but telling the truth would have been worse, because it had been so long since he was last in Baiyin that he remembered little, and he didn’t look anywhere close to that old.
“I’ll let you know.” She turned to look out at the meticulously terraced green hillsides that rose to the northeast away from the river road.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
In less than a quarter hour, the van reached the outskirts of Baiyin, where most of the houses were of a dark brown stone with roofs of greenish-gray tiles. The dark stone and the omnipresent greenery imparted a more somber air to Baiyin than to any of the locales Corvyn had thus far visited. But environments eventually take on the coloration of the beliefs they encompass. At the same time, he knew that, sometimes, the environments changed the beliefs, usually when technology was less than impressive or did not change rapidly.
“Zhengyi Square is ahead, just after the curve.”
“Thank you.” Corvyn directed his voice to the van. “If you’d let me off at the square.”
“As you wish, sir,” the van replied.
A few minutes later, the van glided to a stop, and the side door opened.
“Be kind to them … if you can,” said the older woman as Corvyn stepped toward the van door.
Seeing no point in protesting or explaining, Corvyn replied, “That’s always a good idea, if possible.” He smiled pleasantly, then stepped out of the van into air slightly cooler than he anticipated. He thought he smelled a pine-like scent, but that vanished, to be replaced by the faint odor of cooking oil.
The van pulled away, and Corvyn turned his attention to what lay before him. The yellow-green tiled roof of the building in the middle of the square curved up at the ends, as did those of all of the temples in Keifeng and the other towns and cities under the sway of the current Laozi. The fact that the shade of the tiles was not that different from the color of the waters of the Yellow River was scarcely lost on Corvyn. Formal gardens bounded by low stone walls immediately surrounded the temple.
Corvyn sensed neither powers nor principalities and made his way along the stone walk toward the commercial structures farther toward the river. Several people glanced at him briefly, decided that he was a traveler from elsewhere, and continued about their business without breaking stride.
In time, he located what he sought in a building constructed of polished black stone with a set of bronze doors. Brass letters in an antique serif type stood out tastefully against the polished black stone. They read CUSTOM TRANSPORT. Corvyn entered the large open space.
A youngish woman in shimmering dark green trousers and a high-collared matching jacket rose from behind a black table desk and walked toward him. For but an instant, a look of surprise crossed her face.
“Honored sir, how might I be of assistance?”
“I’m new to Baiyin, but I presume that your establishment can formulate custom transportation on very short notice.”
“We can. The time will vary depending on the complexity of the vehicle.”
“If you have a design console, I can provide the template of what I require.”
“You are a designer?”
“Among other expertises … yes.”
“This way, sir.” She guided him to a small space that contained a console and a chair, and little else.
Corvyn seated himself and immediately accessed certain specifications from locations not accessible to others. The sales associate’s eyes widened as she realized what he was doing, and she slipped away, returning shortly with an older woman. Neither spoke as they watched. In less than a quarter hour, Corvyn completed the template and rose from the design console. “That is what I require. You should be able to fabricate it in a day, if not sooner.”
The older woman looked to the display suspended in midair over the console. “Can I access the data?”
“You can access all of it, but it’s currently frozen. If you need to change anything, let me know.”
The older woman nodded and settled before the console. After a few minutes, she turned to Corvyn. “We can have it ready by tomorrow morning.” She projected an accounting. “As you specified, that is the cost, all items included.”
Corvyn scanned the accounting, and the total, slightly more than he’d anticipated, but not by much. “Half now, half when I find it acceptable and take delivery?”
“That is standard practice.”
Corvyn extended the card he recently obtained.
“For this, you’ll need to use a secure access. If you’d follow me, honored sir.”
Corvyn did, noting that the sales associate did not, and found himself in a small chamber shrouded in privacy shields that even he would have had difficulty getting through from outside, and certainly not quickly. He walked to the small console and waited until the older woman entered the immediate amount due. Then he inserted the card, waited until the transfer was complete, and retrieved the card. As was usual, the console did not reveal the source of the funds to those in Custom Transport.
The older woman looked at him. “All our transactions are confidential and will remain so. Especially yours.”
She might as well have spoken the words “most honored unaging one,” but Corvyn didn’t mind being classed as an immortal, because that was less revealing than his true identity. “Thank you. I appreciate that. What time in the morning?”
“Any time after eight.”
After Corvyn departed Custom Transport, his next task was to find an appropriate place to stay until his new electrobike was ready, and after that, to find a clothier who had or who could quickly fabricate some additional raiment for him.
Less than an hour later, he had a spacious room in the Inn of the River’s Happiness. Once he was alone, he accessed the news, routing the request through the hotel’s system, rather than directly to his sub-identity account, although that resulted in additional charges from the hotel. There were several media accounts of the disaster. All of them agreed on the cause—an explosion created by a malfunction in the courier boat’s power system—but no account revealed any speculation on what had caused that malfunction.
What Corvyn found interesting was the responses from the various Houses of the Decalivre to media inquiries, inquiries obviously being made because of the rarity of such an explosion in Heaven.
Brother Paul was among the first to comment, saying, “It might be possible that agents of darkness inadvertently unleashed forces that they could not control, and innocents thereby perished.”
Laozi’s response to the question of why it might have happened within the bounds of the lands of Tao was simple and direct. “We had nothing to do with the unfortunate explosion and are investigating the matter. Initial discoveries suggest that determining the exact chain of events will be difficult, if not impossible.”
Jaweau’s representative declared, “We deplore the violence and the loss of life, and will do our best to support the investigation, as well as continue to support the values of purity and light necessary to strengthen Heaven against those who threaten our hard-won comity.”
The Prophet, Seer, and Revelator offered prayers for the departed and the bereaved, while the chief of the Rabbis’ Council in Yerusalem declared that the destruction of the Blue Dolphin was most likely a terrorist act, and an illogical anachronism from the distant past, a past concealed by inappropriate Poetic pseudo-justifications, and that such aberrations needed to be immediately removed from Heaven—without saying how or just who the
terrorist or terrorists might be. But clearly hinting at the Poetics. The Poetics replied by noting that such acts only occurred whenever logic attempted to surmount faith.
Not surprisingly, Lucian DeNoir offered no comment, but he almost always remained silent. No one from Aethena or Sunyata commented, but Corvyn wouldn’t have expected that from either the Maid or the followers of Siddhartha. He was surprised that no one from Tian or Varanasi had commented.
After mulling over the implications of the responses and lack of such from the assorted hegemons, he visited two clothiers and arranged for various articles of clothing to be delivered to the inn, including a second pair of boots. He decided not to replace the stedora, at least for the present time. He also purchased grooming aids and toiletries.
Then, with nothing pressing that he could presently address, he decided to visit the temple dominating Zhengyi Square, a temple he found open to both worshippers and nonbelievers, unlike many of those in the southern reaches of the Celestial Mountains, perched on tall jagged peaks dwarfed by the northernmost peaks.
He nodded politely to the two monks at the entrance and made his way inside, where he studied the statues representing the three purities. They did not look terribly different from those he beheld before the last Fall … or the Fall before that. They were male, with beards and mustaches, and far heftier than anyone presently inhabiting Heaven. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the small altar to the blue-green dragon, and nodded to the one for Hebo, the god of the Yellow River, although he sensed no immediate presence in the temple, but then the Taoists tended to place the principles of living life and harmony with nature above the power of gods, or the lesser powers of spirits, powers, or principalities, which resulted in less concentrated foci of power … or should have, since that was not always so.
He could only hope that whoever was behind the tridents had not yet been successful in undermining that dispersion of power among the wider-spread lands of the Taoists and that he would not find a concentration of power growing when he reached Keifeng.
As he left the temple, he sensed a certain presence in the afternoon shadows that spilled onto the stones of the square and paused before linking them to a figure almost invisible in the shade beside one of the granite pillars of the temple’s outer walls. Nodding to himself, he deepened the shadows around himself and waited.
A woman with two children walked by the temple and shivered, not knowing why. An older man, preoccupied with either thoughts or communications, strolled by in the other direction, not even looking in the direction of the slightly shadowed woman with the lithe figure, the strawberry-ginger hair, and the close-set reddish-brown eyes that were all too bright.
A broad-shouldered young man walked briskly past the temple, then paused as the woman in the silvery jacket and trousers stepped into the light.
Corvyn smiled and immediately hurried down the steps, calling out, “Dear one, I’ve been looking all over for you.”
The woman turned toward Corvyn, opened her mouth, then shut it as he neared, glancing to one side, as if judging whether she should flee.
“You look like an absolute vixen,” he said quietly. Which, in some ways, she was.
The woman froze in place, although her eyes flashed. “I don’t know what you mean.” She glanced in the direction of the young man, who had already walked past her and continued away from the river, then back to Corvyn.
“Or should I say hulijing?”
“I’m hardly that.”
“Just a helpless and powerless vixen, then?” replied Corvyn, not quite sardonically. “Like Su Daji?”
“To one such as you, I am but Hu Mei.”
The woman’s tone was flirtatious, but Corvyn sensed both concern and fear behind the words. “I doubt that, but I don’t intend you harm. I thought we might have an early dinner and a pleasant conversation. Nothing more.”
At that moment, Corvyn sensed the arrival of a greater force.
So did the woman, who paled and murmured, “Shui Rong.” She looked past Corvyn.
He stepped back and turned, noting the shadows that enclosed and concealed him, the woman, and the new arrival, a massive dark-haired figure with a sweeping black mustache that joined an equally formidable beard. A presence that also wore ancient armor finished in red and black lacquer.
The new arrival turned to the woman. “Hu Mei, indeed. Have I not told you that you are not welcome in the square? Have I not warned you what will become of you?”
Her spine stiffened. “What would you have me do? Return to what I was?”
“That is no concern of mine. One must adapt to nature and what is.”
“She has adapted,” said Corvyn mildly. “You just don’t like how she adapted.”
“This is no matter for you, power that you may be. This is not your realm within Heaven.”
Corvyn briefly thought about using the shadows and spiriting the woman away, but that would create … greater complications. “She has done nothing against your will, except be present in the square. If you had not appeared, we would have left the square, and with that act, she would have complied.”
Shui Rong laughed, an encompassing booming sound. “So be it!” He turned to her. “Go with him. Do not return … or I will not be so merciful.”
The woman shuddered.
Corvyn said gently, “We need to have dinner. Shall we go?” Then he turned to Shui Rong. “As one of the eight and city god of Baiyin, you must have others with whom to concern yourself.”
“You amuse me, dark one.” Then Shui Rong vanished and the shadows around Corvyn and the woman lightened.
She looked closely at Corvyn and shivered, obviously concerned that she faced even greater dangers with him than with Shui Rong.
“You’re thinking I’m worse than he is. Not for you, I’m not. By what name shall I call you?”
“Hu Mei will do.” Her voice was firm, but there was even more hidden fear than before.
Corvyn let himself sigh. “Believe it or not, I have no evil designs on you. My only designs are conversational.”
“What … what can I tell you?”
“More than you think.” He gestured toward the side of the square away from the river.
She looked at him warily, then took a step.
He matched her steps and released the shadows gradually so that anyone looking would not notice their sudden appearance—or reappearance. “Suggest a good place to eat, one where the fare is excellent and they won’t be too curious.”
“I’m not that hungry.”
“You don’t have to eat, but I’d like to, and you can eat or not, and keep me company while we talk.”
“Just talk, is that all you really want?”
“Talk and your feelings and impressions about certain matters. That’s all.” Corvyn smiled. “I did remove you from the clutches of Shui Rong.”
“That’s true.” She smiled, tentatively. “You can’t do any worse to me than he could … could you?”
“I’m not interested in doing anything painful or fatal to you, or anyone else, not in the near future, anyway. By the time I am, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be free to do as you wish.”
“That’s a rather long answer.”
“That’s because it’s truthful. Now … dinner?”
“Is there anything you’d prefer not to eat?”
“I don’t care for raw or uncooked meat, fish, or fowl … or insects, for that matter. I prefer quality to quantity. Price isn’t a consideration.”
“The River Pearl, then. They might not let me in.”
“They will,” replied Corvyn. “Do we need transportation?”
“No. It’s only five blocks from here. We’ll turn right on the corner.”
The buildings immediately north of the square were also stone, in the fashionably commercial style that had bypassed Helios when it had been the latest fad in the more northern reaches of Heaven a century previous, a style that once might have been described as polished
stone and angular bronze, and one that did not appeal to Corvyn and never had, possibly because of its ponderous ornateness.
They walked five blocks past largely black stone buildings, in time reaching their destination. The River Pearl’s stone façade, unsurprisingly, resembled pearl, and the door was faux pewter with impermite presented as etched glass, a construction designed to resist anything that would not have leveled the building.
Corvyn opened the door for Hu Mei, then followed her inside the foyer, a space of black glass, framed in silvered metal with subdued lighting.
The greeting functionary, clad in a muted green jacket and trousers, looked askance at Corvyn, but only for a moment, most probably because the establishment’s systems had detected the information scan block on Corvyn’s card, a block that suggested, one way or another, that he should be accommodated. “One moment, sir.”
“You’ve never been here before?” murmured Hu Mei.
“I’ve never eaten anywhere in Baiyin before. They have ways of telling.”
In moments, the functionary returned. “This way, most honored sir.”
Corvyn and Hu Mei followed him to a table set in an alcove, as were all the tables. The table linens were a pearled cream that contrasted favorably with the dark green hangings that covered the alcove walls and absorbed most sound. At each place was an ivory-edged bill of fare.
Once they were seated, and he scanned the menu, he asked, “Would you like the duck?”
“If you would.”
Corvyn suspected she would be more than pleased with that.
A woman server, also in green, appeared. “Would you like an aperitif, sir?”
“We’ll just have a bottle of your best aged Carmenére,” Corvyn replied, knowing that choice would be frowned on, but he preferred the character of Carmenére, given that even subtly prepared duck needed a strong red wine to stand up to it. “The mixed appetizers and the duck for two with the pumpkin puree.”
“Very good, sir.” The server slipped away momentarily, then returned with the wine, opened the bottle, and poured a slight amount into Corvyn’s wineglass.
He sniffed and sipped. The Carmenére was good, if not as good as he had hoped, but he was not in a mood to quibble. So he nodded.
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