Brenda swallowed hard, and looked at Auntie Pearl. The older woman was studying them with a look that mingled compassion and something like envy. Brenda wondered how that original Tiger had felt about his beautiful and talented daughter. Brenda had figured Pearl’s father would have been proud of his daughter, but maybe he hadn’t been. Men could be weird about strong daughters.
Auntie Pearl glanced at the face of the slim diamond and emerald wristwatch that adorned one wrist. “It’s getting on to dinnertime here, which means that I can still make a call to the Rooster. Des lives in Santa Fe. I’ll warn him to be careful of strangers.”
“How would Des know the difference there in Santa Fe?” Dad said. “They’re all strange there.”
He grinned as he made the joke, but the expression was forced. “More seriously, doesn’t Des work in retail? It’s going to be hard for him to avoid strangers completely.”
“He can be careful,” Auntie Pearl said. “I’m more worried about what we’ll do about the Dog. However, let me make a call where it may do some good.”
“Why don’t you use the phone in the bedroom?” Dad said. “I’ll get on my cell out here and call Deborah Van Bergenstein and Shen Kung. Those are the Pig and the Dragon,” he added to Brenda. “I’ll ask a few questions, see how they respond.”
Auntie Pearl nodded. “Good. We should also look to getting someone out to Denver. That’s where, according to my last report, the Dog lives. I’ll call my travel agent after I talk to Des.”
Brenda bit her lip to keep from asking any of the thousand questions this strange exchange evoked.
“Dad, I’ll step out in the hall, call Mom and let her know we got here safely.”
“Good,” Gaheris said, his own phone already in hand. “I’ll call her later when we know better what we’re doing.”
When Brenda came back from making her call, she found Auntie Pearl and her dad in deep discussion. They stopped the minute she came in, but not, she felt, because they were trying to close her out.
Dad turned to her. “Breni, we’re going to Denver tomorrow, you and me. Auntie Pearl is going to make some further inquiries into the well-being of the other members of the Twelve. However, since there’s nothing more productive we three can do for the rest of this evening, I think now is the time for you to ask Auntie Pearl every question you can think of.”
“And listen to the answers, as well,” the older woman said with a thin-lipped smile. “Pleasant as this hotel room is, I could use a change of venue. Brenda, with your father’s agreement, I have made reservations at Hour’s Deserve. The food is excellent, and the menu varied enough that we should all be able to find something we’d enjoy. Hour’s Deserve has the added advantage of being accustomed to hosting guests who wish to be given their privacy. We can talk freely about the most outré matters.”
Brenda mentally reviewed the clothes she’d packed. She thought she put together an outfit respectable enough to pass in a good restaurant. They agreed to meet in the lobby in half an hour.
“I am not as young as I once was,” Auntie Pearl confessed. “Fifteen minutes to rest my eyes would be useful.”
Pearl Bright’s eyes were shut, but her mind was racing. The results of the phone calls she and Gaheris had made between them had been disturbing. Des had taken her warning seriously, but several of the others had shown evidence of that same peculiar amnesia that she had witnessed in Albert Yu.
They had remembered whatever ostensible reason they had for knowing her, but of the deeper mysteries that bound them they had remembered nothing at all.
All of these were people Pearl had known all their lives, and, in some cases, for much of her own. She was among the oldest of the Twelve, the only surviving first-generation descendant of one of the original Orphans, but several of the others had held their positions for decades. The Exile Tiger had been the youngest of the Orphans. Some of his older colleagues had passed their heritage on to their children within a few decades of their being exiled. This had, of course, created problems of its own. Orphaned orphans had not always cared for their inheritance. Some had rejected it outright, but it would not reject them.
“I didn’t ask for this either,” Pearl said aloud to the empty hotel room. “I didn’t ask, yet here I am. Now with Albert gone … Is it worth going on?”
But Pearl knew she would. For one, even if she were to resign her role, that did not mean whoever had gone after the others would leave her alone. Moreover, the Tiger had an interesting problem. The Tiger did not have any children. There was a serious question as to whether or not she had an heir. The auguries Pearl had cast had been more than a little ambivalent on the matter. Probably the Tiger’s power would pass to one of her brothers, or to one of their sons and daughters. Probably.
Did that ambivalence make Pearl’s life safer, or at greater risk? She wasn’t about to wait quietly and find out. Unfortunately, Albert was not available to coordinate the Twelve as he should. Pearl would need allies. Would the others assist her? Would they accept the leadership of an old toothless tiger as once the Orphans had accepted her father?
Are you laughing, Old Tiger? she thought. Your challenge was that your allies considered you too young. Here I am, wondering if I am too old.
Pearl looked down at her hands. The once-elegant fingers now showed swelling around the joints. She’d let the jetty hair whose blue-black highlights had been her private pride go silver. She’d resisted the urge to get “just a little bit” of plastic surgery: a tuck, a nip, an injection.
I’ve let myself grow old outside. Have I grown old inside as well? Can I still lead my people into battle?
Pearl moved restlessly, feeling all the aches of joint and muscle that were her daily companions. Then she smiled.
Of course I can, even if only to spite you, Old Tiger.
She fell asleep with that tiny, infinitely happy smile on her lips, knowing, as an actress never stops knowing her face, how that joy made her face young again.
Pearl’s travel alarm beeped a reminder and Pearl opened her eyes. Years of practice had made her skilled at touching up her hair and makeup with a few quick strokes. Tonight she went for the shadows and tints that would accent the features she had inherited from her Chinese father, rather than those from her Hungarian Jewish mother. Tonight was a night to remind her audience, ever so subtly, of her connection to the mystic Orient.
Once the reverse had been the law by which Pearl had ruled herself, seeking to blend into the general population, but the older she became, the closer that old Tiger stalked her, ruling her life in death as he had never wished to in life.
Pearl put her father from her mind and hurried down the corridor to the elevator. Gaheris and Brenda were waiting for her on the ground floor. Brenda’s eyes were alight with questions, but she asked not a one until the three were settled at their table at the Hour’s Deserve, and the waiters had finished their awed hovering over the faded celebrity and her guests.
However, once drinks were ordered and the gentle hum of conversation and music assured their privacy, Brenda leaned slightly forward.
“Dad told me about the calls, how the people you reached didn’t seem to know, well, you know, about Things.” She paused, obviously embarrassed, but nonetheless determined. “Then he told me about why we’re going to Denver. He said you’d explain how this Dog we’re going to find doesn’t even know he’s a Dog.”
Pearl decided not to glower at Gaheris. He couldn’t be blamed for briefing his daughter. Pearl would have liked to handle that briefing in her own fashion, but she could adapt the script.
“I said I would answer your questions,” she said. “The answer to this one is among the most simple, yet the most complex. I have already told you how the original Orphans were six men and six women. I have also told you how their families were not permitted to come with them into exile.”
Brenda nodded, and reached for the cut-crystal water goblet beside her plate. The young woman did not drink, her concentra
tion so intense that she seemed to forget the glass as soon as her fingers wrapped around the stem.
“To understand why the Dog and many of the other lineages became separated from their heritage,” Pearl said, “you need to understand that despite the care the Twelve took to make certain their abilities were fixed in their family lines, the refusal of just one heir apparent to learn his or her duties would be enough to complicate matters.”
Pearl paused when a waiter arrived with their drinks. Over Gaheris’s protests that she need not go to such expense, Pearl insisted on ordering several appetizers for the table. They needed time to talk, and she felt more at ease here than she did in the sterility of a hotel suite.
When the waiter walked away, Gaheris took over.
“Brenda, our family came pretty close to being one of the ‘lost’ lines. My dad, your grandad, was one of those who resented the tutoring his father had forced him to accept. My grandfather, the Exile Rat, lived until I was eight, and when he died my dad found himself in a real bind. Basically, according to the terms of his father’s will, he couldn’t inherit his father’s estate—and it was a good one—unless he filled me in on what it meant to be the Rat. Moreover, Dad had to pass this information on in front of witnesses, one of whom was Auntie Pearl. Now, your grandad may have wanted to deny he was a Rat, but he shared the rattish love for gain. He gave in, just as his father had known he would.”
Pearl felt a bitter smile rise unbidden as she remembered how the Rat had been beaten by his own nature. “Gaheris’s discovery of our shared heritage was not a pretty scene. And at the end of his recitation of family history, your grandfather shoved the mah-jong box at Gaheris and said, ‘The damned thing is yours now. May it do you as much good as it ever did me.’ Or something like that.”
“Pretty close,” Gaheris said. “My head was spinning with fairy tales of emperors and magical lore, and then I had this box in my hands with a rat looking up at me from the lid. I’d never even played mah-jong. My dad had been determined that we were going to be the all-American family. We played poker, Go Fish, and Old Maid but I don’t think there was as much as a box of dominoes in the house. Auntie Pearl tutored me in what I needed to know, and my dad never stopped resenting that. I think that ate him up. He was a sour man, older than his years, when that heart attack finally got him.”
Brenda looked at him. “You decided a middle ground for me, then, right? No sudden revelations, but no childhood indoctrination either.”
Gaheris shrugged, and Pearl saw all over again the little boy who had held that heavy box of tiles in his hands and stared up at his father in disbelief.
Brenda seemed to see something, too, because she said softly, “Not too bad, Dad. Not too bad.”
Pearl decided they’d better return to the subject of the Dog. This family bonding was lovely, but she wanted Brenda to have more than Gaheris’s point of view.
“Not all the Orphans were as fortunate or as conniving as the Rat,” Pearl said. “The current Dog is a young man several years older than you are. His father was a soldier, and died before he could tell his son about his heritage. Albert has periodically talked about the need to seek out and educate this young man—Charles is his name—as to his inheritance, but Albert has always shied away from actually acting.”
“It wouldn’t be an easy thing to do, would it?” Brenda said. “I mean, I’m having a hard enough time accepting this, and my dad is here, and I’ve known you for as long as I can remember.”
“And,” Gaheris added, “Albert might have been an egocentric, self-opinionated, pompous ass, but he wasn’t one to disrupt someone else’s life without reason. The Orphans had sought to pass their abilities on with the direct intention of someday returning to what they thought of as ‘home.’ However, over a century has gone by. Is there a home for any of us to return to? Perhaps the time for the return home the Thirteen Orphans dreamed of is forever over. What remains is a curious family heritage, but nothing else.”
“So I might have agreed,” Pearl said, “until now. Someone is hunting the Thirteen Orphans. Someone sees a value in the heritage the Orphans retained. I, for one, have no desire to lose any part of my memory—and I am greatly apprehensive as to what else this stalker might want from us. Will he stop with memories, or will there come a time when he—or she—wants something more?”
“You’re making my skin crawl, Auntie Pearl,” Brenda said.
“Mine, too,” Gaheris said, “but I don’t disagree. That’s why I’m willing to go to Denver to try and find the Dog, and then take on the nearly impossible task of convincing him he’s in danger of losing something he doesn’t remember ever having.”
“For my part,” Pearl said, “I am going to Santa Fe to brief Des Lee—that is, the Rooster. There are things that should not be discussed over the phone. Denver and Santa Fe are an easy day’s drive from each other. We five should be able to meet up and share counsel after that.”
Appetizers arrived, and with them a waiter hoping to take their entree orders. Pearl discovered she had far more appetite than she had imagined. She decided she could handle a rare filet mignon, and noted that Brenda, who had ordered something to do with scallops and mushrooms, seemed impressed. Gaheris ordered lobster, something he did every time they dined together. He always said that this way, between them, they managed surf and turf.
“Does this ‘Des Lee’ know about all of this?” Brenda asked.
“Des knows,” Pearl said, “and believes. Unlike many of the Orphans, his grandmother married a Chinese. So did his mother. He was raised within the culture, and is inclined to take all the talk of Orphans and zodiac signs as a sort of special family fairy tale. He knows a considerable amount, both theory and practice, but has never really had to utilize all that knowledge for anything serious.”
“How old is he?” Brenda asked.
“A bit younger than your father and Albert … Somewhere in his thirties. I have trouble remembering. Years go by so quickly.”
Gaheris had been methodically sopping a bit of toasted bread with a large spoonful of buttered crab. Now he stopped, the dainty half raised to his lips.
“I’ve been thinking about that divinitory reading we did. Of the unaffected signs, most were yang: Rat, Tiger, and Dog. Rooster is yin, true. Hare is yin, Tiger’s partner. I wonder if there is any significance in that?”
“Possibly,” Pearl said. “It also might be a matter of ease of access. If you look at a map, you will see that the unaffected signs also live farther west. Albert is the first of the victims to be touched in this part of the world.”
“But the Hare lives in Virginia,” Gaheris protested.
“But Nissa is a very social person. She lives with her sisters in an extended family arrangement. Unless she is working, she has her small daughter with her. Nissa would not be one to be conveniently approached by a stranger.”
“Dad,” Brenda said, “you’d better eat that before it disintegrates.”
“Oops!”
Gaheris gulped down the sodden bit of bread, and Brenda looked at Pearl.
“Nissa … That doesn’t sound Chinese. Who is she?”
“Nissa Nita,” Pearl said. “She is the great-granddaughter of the original Hare. She is about your age, a little older, I think.”
“But she has a daughter?”
Pearl couldn’t decide whether Brenda sounded impressed or appalled.
“A very rabbitlike accident,” Gaheris said, trying not to laugh. “The story I heard was that Nissa was on the pill and still managed to get pregnant. She won’t tell anyone who the father of her daughter might be, and her entire family is so in love with the little girl that no one cares.”
“Noelani,” Pearl said, dredging the name from her memory. “That’s the baby’s name. Every indication is that she will be the next Hare.”
“Noelani really doesn’t sound Chinese,” Brenda said. “I’ve been wondering. Except for Des Lee’s family and maybe that Shen Kung, it sounds like most
of the Orphans didn’t marry Chinese. How come? And weren’t cross-cultural marriages, well, frowned on, back then?”
“You have a Rat’s nose for detail,” Pearl said, and was glad to see that the young woman took this as a compliment. “The Orphans not only did not marry Chinese, in most cases, they actively sought to marry outside that ethnic group. They were hiding, you recall, and even an immigrant Chinese community was not large enough to hide them. As for the problem of racial intermarriage … Well, they tended to find ways around it.”
“They changed their appearances,” Gaheris explained. “They couldn’t eliminate all elements that made them look Chinese, but they could minimize them. Some of the changes were cosmetic or surgical, others were, well … wizardly. The alteration wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. However, since they couldn’t completely alter their genetic heritage, not without eliminating the very traits they were seeking to preserve and pass on, there are throwbacks.”
Brenda glanced at her reflection in one of the polished serving pieces. “I’m a little bit of a throwback, aren’t I? I always wondered why I’m so dark-haired when all the rest of you have reddish-brown hair.”
“That’s it,” Gaheris said. “You still look enough like both me and your mother that no one really thinks about it, but there’s some of the old blood cropping up in you. Your heritage won’t be denied, even when you try to deny it.”
The waiter was approaching with their entrees. He made a bit of a production out of clearing away appetizers, then setting their selections in front of them.
Pearl sniffed appreciatively at the perfectly cooked rare filet in front of her. “Quite honestly, I have no desire to deny my heritage.”
Brenda looked up from cutting a scallop with the edge of her fork. “Your father didn’t like that you were going to be the next Tiger, did he?”
“He did not,” Pearl said. “The Chinese have never been comfortable with female tigers. Your father mentioned yin and yang signs earlier. There are six of each, but some are, you might say, more yang—or yin—than others. Tigers and Horses are very yang. Hares and—yes, I know it’s odd—Rams are very yin. It is a mistake to equate yin with female, yang with male. That is only one of many paired oppositions, but many people do make that equation. My father was a warrior, and he was far from happy that his heir apparent was—as he saw it—unsuited to follow him. He fathered two sons, but no matter how many times he cast the tiles, the omens told him that I was his heir.”
Thirteen Orphans Page 6