I don’t know if they’re a power or just an annoyance, but the strange dark fog scrams. The shabu dong that lives in the Lodge swirls and dances. The swirls pull into spirals and thicken into columns and a sighing breeze licks at my face and at the fire, which leaps up to tango with the mist. I hear Whispers now — many Voices that are one Voice.
Shen, they say, Shen.
I think even the Mountain says it.
The Red Dragon falters, stumbles, and drops the rattle. It hits the ground with a shower of sound and rolls to my feet. I snatch it up, expecting all hell to break loose, but nothing happens except that the connecting threads glow brighter. Strange thing is, one of them still connects to Shen.
I get this at the same time I get that he’s not finished with me yet. Leering like he knows a whole lot I don’t, he tears the amulet from his neck, casts it into the fire at my feet and shrieks a Chinese incantation at the top of his lungs. Then he hurls himself at me.
In two heartbeats, we are in a bubble inside a bubble inside the Mountain. The fire is between us, but everyone else is outside the bubble looking in. I can see the Dolores (sort of) and Firescape and Hoot and Lou. Their lips move, but no sound comes in here.
We are alone, Shen and I, and we know each other’s names.
But I got the magics, I tell myself. I got the relics. Why isn’t he outta here?
As if I’ve said this aloud, Shen smiles at me and raises his hand, shaking back the long sleeve of his robe. The shaman’s headband is wrapped around it. A bright ribbon of magic connects us. The air inside the bubble tingles.
”You make a habit of underestimating me, young merlin,” he tells me. “You may have stolen the power of my name for the time being, but you will not defeat me. Your magic is so... transparent. You thought you could hide in this place from me because it was, itself, hidden in the coils of Time. Yet I pried it from its secret place into plain view.”
I wonder if this is an auspicious moment to tell Shen I actually asked the Dolores to let him see the Lodge, but before I can impart this info, he goes on. He doesn’t just want to win, ni dong. He wants to rub it in.
“This place I have brought you to,” he informs me, “is outside of time. It is a place into which neither your mortal friends nor your spirits can reach. I have constructed it carefully, so that we might have our final...conversation.”
He lets out this weird little sound that’s half wheeze and half laugh. “This body of mine is failing. It is time for me to move on. True, I will have immortality when I have done here, but who would want to face eternity in this?” He taps a golden fingernail to his breast. “Better to have a young, virile, healthy body. One pleasing to the fairer sex. One like yours.”
Whoa. What’s he chewin' on here — body snatching?
He cackles at me again. “You think I can’t do it? Hmm? You think I can’t acquire your body, if I wish? However do you think I’ve lived this long? In my second incarnation, as Lao-Tzu, I discovered the secret of transferring my Self to other forms without having to trust myself to the forces of death and rebirth. Only my body disappeared into the mountains — my real existence continued, after a fashion. I have lived a myriad lives — I have been Khan and king, emperor and storyteller, philosopher and astronomer. I took whatever form lent me the most power. It was immortality of a sort, and very handy, I suppose you might say. It saved much time in the way of having to relearn the basic capacities of thought, speech, action. It saved the toil of having to learn who I had been and ferret out what I had known. I’m sure you appreciate how much time could be wasted in such activity, not to mention childhood. Much better to let someone else waste the time.”
“Then,” I ask, suddenly curious, “how did you get here?”
His mouth goes all twisty. “A miscalculation. This body belonged to a scholar whose force in the community I overestimated.”
“Yeah, okay, but why bother with this other stuff? Aren’t you basically immortal now?”
“I have not beaten Death, merlin. I have merely cheated it, tricked it, outrun it. I would spend eternity in one body, holding all of the knowledge I have acquired, keeping all of the skill, without ever having to relearn any of it. You see, even with the ability to transfer my Self, I still must invest much time in making each new body uniquely mine, and in getting the mind of its owner to acquiesce. Then too, sometimes I am not in a position to choose propitiously. I have to take what the gods place in my path. I do not take kindly to being at the mercy of the gods. This time, the choice is mine.
“You should be honored, Taco Del, merlin, that you will become the vehicle for my complete victory over Death. Your knowledge of the arcane will be added to my own and yours shall be the form that is known as the Sovereign Lord of a united Gam Saan. You will be pleased to know that my first actions after toppling Hismajesty and his inane counterparts will be to drive the alien invaders from my Empire and to construct a Great Wall that will forever deny them access.”
My Alice bone tickles. “I can see how jakes like Lord E might wrinkle your universe, but what’ve you got against Hismajesty?”
“I have against him that he and his forebears have weakened my people. We are buried in the Gee Gah, our virility sapped, our power depleted, our ancient Tongs demoted to mere community service groups. We should be rulers of the Gam Saan, not its scurrying servants.”
He is silent for a moment, already decorating the Imperial Palace, I bet, and I wonder how much of this stuff is for real.
“Bullshit,” I say — I mean, what’ve I got to lose, right? “You don’t fool me. You’re the one who’s been demoted, Shen, and you don’t like it much. You don’t like it so much, you’ve gone shining, napoleon, and seriously fruit-cake.”
“Del!” he snarls.
“Shen!” I cough.
He waves a foot-long hand in my face. “Enough of this nonsense. Playing for time will do you no good. You will never possess as much of that commodity as I do. And let me squash any hope you have that your friends will fight me. They won’t, because they’ll see you emerge from this noplace victorious. While the being they knew as Master Chen will be seemingly annihilated. But, once again, I shall be the victor. I, Shen Ah Nen, shall be the only true Immortal. I shall have conquered Death utterly. So you see, you may as well give up. Give me the relics, Taco Del. Surrender, and perhaps I shall leave a part of you alive, give you a corner from which you can watch your world through my new, young eyes.” He gives up this big, sigh and adds, “It has been a long time since I have held in my arms a woman as beautiful and courageous as your Jade.”
Well that just does it, you know? I mean, my eyes have glazed over by now and anything else he might’ve said would’ve just gone in one ear and out the other, but that — I mean, the thought of this creepy old Dragon getting his claws on Jade — even if they’re my claws materially speaking — is just too much.
In a heartbeat, I am beyond mad. Through this wave of high and righteous dudgeon, I see that the threads of magic between the artifacts have become fat, bright, virtual ropes of magic. This gives my Alice bone a sharp poke, and I hold up the rattle and say, “Say, Shen, what do you see?”
He looks annoyed, but says, “I see an ancient spirit rattle, which I want.” He opens his hand and smiles as if he really expects me to just give it up.
“That’s all? Look again. Don’t you see it glowing, Shen?”
He chuckles. “No, I don’t. And don’t imagine that you can make me see something that isn’t there. You are no match for me, merlin. Cease these futile games. Surrender.”
He moves closer to the fire, and spirit flames leap toward his face. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“Um, watch out for the fire.”
“There is no fire, merlin. Come. Your time is up.”
Okay, that clears that up. I gaze at the fire for a moment, then I step into the flames. These are spirit flames, ni dong, so they don’t burn me, but they do amazing things to my eyesight. I see Shen as the Red
Dragon he is, jaws wide and hungry, eyes bright and hot, with a black, rotten peach pit for a heart.
Whoa. Don’t go there, Taco, I tell myself. I focus instead on the blazing cords that bind the magics — on the ghost flames that now leap over my head.
With a cackle of satisfaction, the Red Dragon steps into the fire he cannot see and grabs the rattle with the same hand/claw that is wrapped in Paguin’s headband.
His dragon mouth opens wide on a shriek like a gale force wind, but it’s lost in the sound of heaven and earth splitting wide open. We are hit with a shock of light and heat and wind and the Mountain twists and opens up under our feet. And then Shen is just gone, like he got sucked right out of his dragon scales down into hell. His out-of-time bubble collapses.
Prodigious.
I am still standing in the fire, but I am fully back in the Dream Lodge among family and friends, with a whole lot of fully-formed Dolores looking on. Pedro is there, and there are two other guys next to him. One looks a lot like Pedro, only younger, and the other I know without asking, is Paguin.
The spirit shaman steps into the fire with me.
“Honored,” I say, and mean it.
The shaman raises his hands, palms up, and I know it’s time for me to give back his stuff. I tuck the rattle into my belt, take off my coat, my shirt and the vest that is underneath them. I fold the vest ceremonially and lay it across Paguin’s hands. Then I lay the pipe and rattle on top of that and, last, I fetch the headband, which is lying across the toe of my boot.
Then I wait.
Paguin looks at the things, smiles and bows his head to me. Then, it’s like he just dissolves down into the fire. Well, the artifacts got burned after all, which means I did obey Pedro’s wishes, after a fashion.
I turn to Pedro. “Is that it? Did we do it? Did we save the world from Wiwe?”
He nods gravely. “The world is safe from Wiwe. Your magic is as big as the Mountain and your wisdom is the wisdom of the Mountain, for you listened to the Mountain, where once, I did not.” The corner of his mouth seems to twitch. “But, you did not listen when I told you to burn the magics.”
“I listened,” I say. “I just...improvised a little.” There’s something I just gotta ask. “Shen said that he was gonna take my body and...and pretend to be me. How do I know that hasn’t happened?”
Pedro laughs. Really laughs. “Only you, Taco Del, shaman, would ask such a question, and so, answer it. Shen is now in our world; he is no longer in yours. Go now. You have done well.”
“You found your son?” I ask quickly, in case he means to suck himself back from whence he came.
He nods and tilts his head toward the younger version of himself. “I have found my son. He is in my world, as your son will soon be in yours.”
There is a vast, silent Moment and then Pedro and the Dolores and the Dream Lodge and the fire are all sucked away by the cosmic Vacuum of Time and the rest of us, me and Firescape and Hoot and Lou, are left standing in a foggy clearing on the side of the sacred Mountain.
There’s no sign of Master Chen’s ninjas. There’s no sign anything but trees and rocks and grass. Birds chant instead of monks or spirits.
The Sun chooses this cosmic Moment to slip through the clouds and turn everything to emeralds and diamonds and gold.
“Wow,” says Creepy Lou.
“Amen,” says Hoot.
Firescape just runs into my arms and cuts off my air for a minute or two. After that, Hoot comes and slaps me on the back, and then we are all hugging and laughing and back-slapping.
When we turn to go back down the Mountain, my foot nudges something on the ground. It clinks. I pick it up. It is an ankh on a silken thong, one the late Master was wearing around his neck not that long ago.
“What is it?” asks Firescape, peering over my shoulder.
“A souvenir,” I tell her. I pocket it, and we go back the way we came.
Twenty-fourth:
One Down and Three-hundred Twenty Four to Go
Going back, it’s down hill all the way. It’s about time something was down hill all the way. Even Vespas are pretty sprightly on a twenty percent grade.
I am not surprised when the knighties at the bottom of the Mountain report no Chen sightings. I somehow get the feeling our man Chen didn’t get up the Mountain on a motor scooter. I do gotta wonder what happened to his ninjas, though. I mean, did they just poof right alongside their lord and master, or did they turn back into regular guys? And what about all those bespelled monks back at the Tin Hau?
In my mind’s eye, I got this weird image of a humongous bubble bursting and sunlight and little songbirds pouring into Chen’s dark shrine while all the monks and ninjas, stretch and blink their eyes and say, “My, what a curious dream!” Then there’s music and dancing and firecrackers and much celebrating.
Okay, stupid image. But it makes me guffaw, so I share it with the others, and it makes them guffaw, too. So it is a combination of laughter, relief, and adrenaline that carries us as far as Treasure Island.
We approach with caution. I know Captain Ahab said we weren’t the enemy and that it didn’t make any sense to hold us, but I’m still a little woggly as we draw on up to the Tunnel.
There are no Islanders to be seen. Nor is there any longer a fishnet over the Tunnel exit. After a hasty conference, we zip inside. The day is gray, but there’s enough light that we can make out the Embarcadero end of the Tunnel as a silvery beacon in the dark. Before we reach the Black Dragon’s mouth, though, we see some brightly colored flags fluttering from saw horses along the sides of the road. Muy peculiar.
This causes us to slow down and proceed with even more caution. Which is a good thing, since it keeps us from driving headlong into the flag-covered rope that’s stretched loosely across the Tunnel’s maw. It’s obviously not meant to stop anyone coming from this side, just slow them down, and after a quick recon, the reason becomes clear. Where yesterday there was a full roadbed, today there is something much less than that. The Treasure Islanders have gone and blown out the span again.
However, on the bright side, they have done it in a most inventive way. We, on our little Vespas, can putter safely, if slowly and trepidatiously, across the quarter-mile of half-lane wide sidewalk the Islanders have left along the seaward rail. John Makepeace, with his winnebagoes and sundry big machinery, is going to either have to find a new way home, or perform another patch-it job on an exposed piece of Bridge with less than friendly Islanders for neighbors.
As we clear the newly busted up section, I feel Captain Ahab’s sea-storm eyes on us. I wave, knowing she’s watching from that stubby lighthouse. I wish her the best of luck with her domestic problems and reflect that it’s not such a bad thing to be loco after all.
It’s afternoon when we pull up to the Regency Palace. Cinderblock meets us and drags the whole story out of us before she’ll tell us any more than just “status is quo.” After we’ve generated the appropriate oohs and ahs and sent smeagols and knighties scurrying with the news that we have saved our spiritual bacon, Cinderblock reports that God seems to have put a bookmark in the saga of Our Alien Encounter.
I’m surprised, ‘cause it feels like we been gone an ice age and I half expect to find everything changed. But the Royal family is still out at the Presidio, Elvis is still shivering in his Potrero planetarium, and the aliens have not spread beyond their current encampments, which now number three.
In fact, according to the smeagols reports, they’ve been strangely quiet. Deadend suspects they are still recuperating from the damage Hoot has done to their communications system. I hope his suspicions are well-founded, ‘cause I can think of other things they could be doing that we would like a lot less.
In our room at the Regency Palace, the first thing I do is embrace my Tree. If it weren’t for that little branch, which has now moved on to the spirit world with Paguin’s rattle, I don’t know what we would’ve done. One thing I know — among all the things I don’t — is that wha
t we just did was a Group Effort, and Doug — for all his totality was sitting up here in the Palace — was in the heart of same.
I push my face into the soft branches, close my eyes, and smell his smell. It’s the perfume of home and family and safety and happiness — none of which may last much longer if John Makepeace has his way. Tears come out of my eyes. When I open them, I marvel — a droplet of fir sap has squeezed out of Doug’s topmost bough. He has missed me as much as I have missed him.
Doug and I sit for a while in what they call companionable silence, watching the sky redden toward evening. Then Jade comes, fresh from a warm bath, and tells me it is time to sleep.
I barely make it from Tree to bath to bed, but as I slip away into Dreamland, I realize suddenly how lonely it is inside my head. There are no Whispers there anymore. Nada peep.
At least this time, I know this is a good thing. Pedro and company have made it safely to the Abhá Kingdom and I got to have a part in that. Feels good. I can also feel good, I tell myself, about still having Jade and Doug and a Flannigan-to-be. That oughta be plenty to keep my chickpea brain occupado.
I don’t dream. At least not portentous stuff. I just go back over the Great Trek up Diablo, during which I am mostly trudging uphill through fog.
Huh. Not so different from daily life in the Gam Saan.
General Jade has given Colonel Cinderblock explicit instructions to wake us after six hours, so naturally, she lets us sleep for sixteen. It’s hard to be real twigged at her over it, but Firescape does some prodigious scowling at her anyway.
“What if the aliens had gone on the offensive again? We’d’ve been caught flat on our backs.”
“What — I got lo mai for brains?” argues the Colonel. “Th’aliens haven’t budged, and if by some happenstance, they did budge, I’d’ve waked you up, pronto.”
“It’s been quiet, huh?”
Cinderblock gives her commandant a weird look. “There’s more goin' on in the Mission Dolores crypt than there is in those alien camps. It’s like they’re all locked down or somethin'. Yesterday morning, they looked like they were gearing up to spread out some more, but then they just hunkered down instead. Little bit ago, I got some recon from Berk’s team over at the Dolores. He says they’ve stopped working on anything but that satellite whatsit your pal Hoot hacked.”
Taco Del and the Fabled Tree of Destiny Page 30