by P. B. Kerr
“Dear old Rakshasas,” said Mrs. Gaunt. “We were very fond of him.” She let out another sigh and wiped a tear from her husband’s rheumy eye. “I’m afraid it’s all been a bit of a disaster, really. My leaving home.”
“And how.” Marion told Mrs. Gaunt about what had happened to Mrs. Trump. “I didn’t think it was the right time to tell your husband about her accident,” she added by way of explanation. “I wanted him to make a full recovery first. That’s why he doesn’t know about it.”
“Poor Mrs. Trump,” said Mrs. Gaunt. “A coma. None of this would ever have happened if I’d stayed here in New York.”
“That’s how it is,” said Marion, and placed a large caring hand on Mr. Gaunt’s shoulder. “Safest place to stay is bed, I guess. But it sure ain’t the most interesting. A person needs to see more than just pillows and sheets if they’re ever to make the best of life.”
“True,” admitted Mrs. Gaunt. “What am I going to do?”
“Fate’s a funny thing,” said Marion. “Sometimes it deals you a hole card you don’t know you need until you need it. Reckon, maybe that’s what happened here.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” said Mrs. Gaunt.
“Mrs. Trump,” said Marion. “I think you should go and take a look at her. Might be she’s just the answer you’re looking for, pilgrim.”
Still a little uncertain as to what Marion meant, Mrs. Gaunt decided to go and visit her, anyway. And, having returned her husband to bed, Mrs. Gaunt left his body and floated out of the house. Invisibly, she drifted across the backyard, through the wall of the hospital on 78th Street, and in and out of the various rooms until she found the one with her comatose housekeeper.
Mrs. Trump looked very well for a seriously injured person. She was unconscious, but her skin was clear and her hair was lustrous and shiny. She had lost quite a bit of weight and, for the first time, Mrs. Gaunt saw something of the former beauty queen in her silent, closed-eyed housekeeper.
The door opened and a posse of doctors came into the room led by Saul Hudson, Mrs. Trump’s neurologist. He grabbed the notes on the bottom of Mrs. Trump’s bed, glanced over them, and shook his head. None of them could see Mrs. Gaunt, of course.
“I think it’s time we considered moving this woman to a long-term vegetable facility,” he said unkindly. “After more than thirty days showing no vital signs, it seems highly unlikely that she will ever recover from her fall. I’m afraid we have to face the fact that this woman is now broccoli.”
It angered Mrs. Gaunt to hear Mrs. Trump spoken of in this disrespectful way, and by a member of a so-called caring profession.
She’s not a vegetable, thought Mrs. Gaunt. Is she?
Mrs. Gaunt slipped into the housekeeper’s body and started to acquaint herself with all of Mrs. Trump’s physical functions. Everything seemed to be in perfect working order. Everything except her brain. But even that was undamaged. It was as if some of the spirit had been knocked out of her during the fall.
“Dear Mrs. Trump,” said Layla. “How are you?”
“Mrs. Gaunt,” she whispered. “How nice to see you again. I had an accident. I can’t seem to wake up.”
“Perhaps I can help you,” said Layla. It was already clear to her that Mrs. Trump would never be quite herself again. Not without the assistance of Layla herself. “Perhaps we can help each other.”
Mrs. Gaunt took a deep breath and opened Mrs. Trump’s eyes.
Dr. Hudson was still telling his medical students how Mrs. Trump’s brain injury was quite typical of someone who had received a severe blow on the back of the head, and that she might live for ten or twenty years, but that barring some kind of a miracle, she would be like this for the rest of her life. Given the shortage of neurological resources that had been caused by the recent epidemic of brain seizures among children, the doctor told his students, it might be best if her life support was just switched off.
“I don’t believe in miracles,” he said. “They just don’t occur. We’ve tried everything with this patient. But the golden rule in modern neurology is recognizing when you’re just beating your head against a wall.” He smiled apologetically. “If you’ll pardon the expression. That there comes a time when you admit that you’ve failed and that you have a hopeless patient. So, you wash your hands and then move on to the next patient. Of which, thanks to Jonathan Tarot, we have a great many.”
“Sir,” said one of the students, “the patient appears to be awake.”
“What?”
“The patient, sir. She’s conscious.”
Dr. Hudson spun around on his heel and saw his “hopeless” patient smiling back at him. Mrs. Gaunt took a certain pleasure in watching the man’s jaw hit the floor.
“You’re awake,” said an astonished Dr. Hudson.
Layla made Mrs. Trump swallow — with some difficulty because her throat was so dry. Then, taking control of Mrs. Trump’s vocal cords, she whispered, “Give me some water. I’m feeling rather thirsty.”
“You’re conscious,” he said, handing her some water and spilling half of it on himself with shock. “But that’s impossible.”
“That’s what you think,” said Layla. She drank the water. “Now hand me my robe. I’m getting up.”
“But you can’t,” spluttered the doctor. “You have to stay in bed. We have to run some tests. Your muscles will be weakened. You mustn’t try to stand.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Layla, and stood up.
“You’re still a patient,” protested Dr. Hudson. “Er, that means that you have to be patient.”
“I am extraordinarily patient.” One of the junior doctors handed her a robe. “Provided I get my own way in the end.”
And, of course, she did.
Landing in Xian some ten hours later, Philippa encountered a problem with using the golden tablet of command that, as an intelligent person, she felt she ought to have anticipated. She realized that it is one thing issuing a command, but it’s quite another making the command understood. The fact of the matter was this: She didn’t speak Chinese, and as she did not speak Chinese, her commands, which were spoken in English, were not understood, and therefore could not be obeyed. The taxi driver at the airport had no idea what she was talking about and even when she held the tablet right under his nose and told him to take her to the Most Wonderful Hotel in Xian, he continued to shake his head and look blankly at her. And it was only when she showed him the address of the hotel, printed in Chinese script, that he was able to take her to her destination.
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 begi
ns 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.”
CHAPTER 30
THE DAY OF THE DJINN WARRIORS
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 t
o 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.