The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Mei Ling beckoned, and Hwa Lan came nearer. “Go, Li Fong—” She nudged him. “Always, the Dragon’s Shadow protects you and her. Don’t look back. I ride the wind alone, to my own land.”

  “Dancing Phoenix—” Li Fong choked back the words. For a moment, he stood in a circle of aloneness, in the vacancy made by her departure. Then he stepped into the Red Earth, and faced Hwa Lan.

  “Last night,” she said, “you didn’t recognize me, and no wonder! Each time we meet, I’m a slave.”

  He turned, and pointed to the scorched circle.

  “I still don’t know what happened,” Li Fong said. “Wasn’t lightning, but surely fire from Heaven. The strangest thing—the bandit chief and two of his men, burned to ashes. Now, when the gold they had is cool enough to pick up, I’ll buy your contract, and we’ll find you a new lute.”

  “And something to wear, and a bronze wine jug,” she said, happily. “Just like it was when we met. And I’ll sing of the Uttermost West, and the Mountain of the Gods—”

  “Hwa Lan—Jade Lady—” He sighed, looked far away, and then shifted his glance to meet her glowing eyes. “Songs of the Red Earth are much better.”

  THE MIRROR OF KO HUNG

  Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, July 1980.

  CHAPTER I

  The girl ignored Carver. She was sizing up the reception area of the Taoist temple, and then, from one flank, the narrow passage between the altar and offerings-table in front of which were kneeling-cushions. Evidently, she was looking for Reverend Dr. Tseng. Being ignored gave the middle-aged Occidental custodian time to envy the well-dressed young man who followed her, and to approve of her choice of a companion. The young man wore a well-fitted blue cashmere jacket, a maroon tie, gray slacks, and black shoes, recently shined.

  The young man glanced about, uneasily. His lean face made it clear that he had his doubts about the entire business, whatever that business might be. He was watching the girl to get his next cue.

  “Par for Chinatown,” was Simon Carver’s estimate: he’d become accustomed to seeing the Asiatic female exercise command in her submissive and infallible way.

  At last she discovered Carver.

  “Where’s Reverend Tseng?”

  “He took off for Taiwan last night. Don’t know when he’ll be back.” Carver noted that the eyes became troubled: they were large, very dark, and devoid of the green or blue shadowing somewhat too popular in Frisco’s Chinatown. “You had an appointment?”

  She nodded. “Adeline Marie Liang. Did he leave a message?”

  If seeing a gray-eyed, squarish-faced Foreign Devil wearing the ankle-length blue robe and black hat of a Taoist layman struck her as unusual, her magnolia-blossom mask of loveliness did not show it. Before she could carry on with her inquiry, Carver said, “Sit down. My Buddhist name is Tao Fa. My American name wouldn’t interest you. I’m in charge until Dr. Tseng comes back.”

  The young man brightened. “I’m Sang Chung Li. You’re a Taoist apprentice?”

  “I like your way of putting it, Mr. Sang. Novice would be rubbing in the obvious!” Carver reached for the appointment book on the table near the altar. After flipping a few pages, he paused to say, “Adeline Marie Liang—or do you prefer Liang Lan Yin?”

  She stepped up, eyed the page, eyed Carver. “You read Chinese?”

  “Miss Orchid Petal—” He grinned amiably. “I do. But if you have a problem, you’d better see an expert.”

  Lan Yin’s glance shifted from Carver to the shrine, with its images of Lao Tzu and the Eight Immortals; it paused on a gilded Buddha, and rose to the glass lanterns and prayer pendants hanging from the ceiling. Of these there were a dozen rows or more, so that they formed a canopy which began at the offerings-table.

  “If you have to have a wish lantern, try somewhere else.”

  For the first time, warmth glowed in Lan Yin’s eyes. “You could have offered me the twenty-five-dollar size.”

  The most dangerous of Asiatic women is the one who builds up, insidiously, so that the girl watcher admits that she’s nice enough looking—and then, that she has an air of quiet distinction—next, exquisite bone structure—and then the fatal dive, as from the Golden Gate Bridge, or the crater rim of Haleakala, or any other spot very high, with no bottom to hit.

  Lan Yin, dangerous, let the smile creep from her eyes, to lurk at the corners of a most exciting mouth.

  Finally, Mr. Sang spoke. He suggested, hopefully, “Maybe we should go to another temple. Mr. Tao Fa says he’s not an expert.”

  “Lover, that is why I like Mr. Tao Fa.” She fingered her brocade handbag. “What’s your charge for a consultation?”

  “Ask Dr. Tseng.”

  Convinced now that she could trust this thirty-nudging-forty oldster, Lan Yin relaxed sufficiently to look as upset as her companion. Her eyes were haunted, troubled.

  Carver said, “Maybe the I Ching could help you.”

  “I need more than the Book of Oracles! There’s something that has to be done before I waft away and don’t come back. I’ve been stepping out of myself and prowling in a dream world!”

  “Blacking out at her desk,” Mr. Sang added. “She finally got herself on the unemployable list.”

  Lan Yin said, “We’re awfully serious about each other. Now we don’t know where or which way we’re going. I don’t have to work. Chung Li can and does. But for marrying, I’m no good! It’d be a disaster for us both.”

  Carver reached for the phone. “I know an herb doctor. He’s—”

  She caught his wrist. “This is something psychic—I’m hexed—hoodooed! Someone—something is reaching for me. It began in ordinary sleeping dreams, then, those blackouts. It’s trying to separate us.”

  “That’s bad joss,” Carver said, sympathetically. “Bad joss.” Then, with a sharp snap, “Who’s wishing Chung Li’d drop dead?”

  “Why—no—”

  “Don’t tell me, no one!” Carver grinned amiably. “Level off, or take this to another parish. You don’t want to know what to do—you’re interested in how to settle an enemy, and my guess is that you know pretty well who it is.”

  “But we don’t know what. Nor who. That’s why we wanted to have Dr. Tseng consult the I Ching.”

  “Chung Li—Lan Yin—Orchid Petal—I don’t know whether the Reverend Dr. Tseng actually headed for Taiwan or not, and I couldn’t care less. My feeling is that he wanted none of this problem—too hot—too hot even for diddling around with the yarrow stalks!

  “You better go to the temple at 146 Waverly Place. Maybe you’ll end up realizing you need a Taoist magician, with mirrors, and spirit sword of peach-wood, and all the rest. For a fight, not a talk. Me, I’m no tao shih! But I’ll be studying on it. Now, let me offer you some tea.”

  He got the tiny cups of white jade. From a vacuum jar he filled the antique jade pot. This was not a refreshment. It was Carver’s formal permission for Lan Yin and her fiancé to take leave.

  Lan Yin’s words told him of her appreciation. Her eyes told Carver that he’d not seen the last of her.

  What nagged him, that evening and all the following day, was the conviction that he’d seen that couple before. He enumerated the temples, the art galleries, the visitor-groups. He knew that he’d never had words with either, else he’d have remembered them; or at least, Lan Yin.

  Routine visitors interrupted his cogitations from time to time. Some came to fire up joss sticks for the altar. Others left offerings of fruit, rice wine, roast duck, or roast pork. All kowtowed. Some cast divining lots, and consulted the book. When they left, and with a favorable answer, they put cash into the contribution box. This was for Dr. Tseng, and for temple upkeep.

  It was understood that Carver would eat the food on the altar. The incense fumes were for the Immortals. Something for everyone. Behind the faça
de of what Foreign Devils termed superstition was an ancient philosophy and this was what engrossed Carver. He paid his way by doing temple chores. At meals, Dr. Tseng briefed him. During his solo hours, Carver studied Chinese texts.

  Taoism was whatever you wished to make it: alchemy—divination—esoteric wisdom—the wiring diagram of the Cosmos—pure-strain fortune telling—it had given Zen that which made it different from other Buddhisms. And, there was the Mirror Magic of Master Ko Hung, who had summed up his experience in a book, the Pao P’u Tzu.

  After a glance at his watch, Carver dialed a well known number. The girl who answered spoke Americanese with Chinese-Hawaiian intonation. Carver said, “Hi, darling. Uncle Tao Fa.”

  Sally Wong took ten minutes to tell about the bitchiness of her supervisor at the office. Next, she wondered how her adopted uncle had been faring. Finally he got to the point: “If you happen to know anyone who happens to know something about a girl named Liang Lan Yin and her boyfriend, Sang Chung Li, I’d be awfully interested. She’s about your build and age, stacked up like you, only not as beautiful or charming.”

  “That last is what you always call Chinese manure.”

  “Would I have adopted a niece who wasn’t gorgeous and talented?”

  “I adopted you,” she reminded him. “What’ll I find out?”

  “Just about everything. Is she Catholic or Christian? What are her hobbies? How does she spend her weekends, and who with? Who’s she sleeping with, and who’s trying for a turn?”

  Carver had long been convinced that each of Chinatown’s 60,000 Asiatics knew all about the other 59,999.

  Presently, he looked at the burnished bronze of a mirror somewhat more than a foot in diameter. It sat in a crescent carved of teak, which was mounted on a teak pedestal. During the past year, Carver had learned that a trained eye could see unusual images, which were not always reflections of objects in front of the mirror. There was something peculiar about its curvature. However, the curvature was so slight that he had no ground for considering it spherical instead of elliptical, parabolic, or hyperbolic. He fancied that it might be one which was not even included in the appendix of Granville’s Differential & Integral Calculus, which gave the equations of some downright eerie curves.

  Having picked his way through the booby traps of the Pao P’u Tzu, he was ready to give the mirror a work-out, his first step toward looking into what Lan Yin and Chung Li had stirred up.

  Before he settled down to looking, Lan Yin came to the temple door, alone. Although this did not amaze him, he had not expected her to bring a weekend bag.

  “Long time no see. Mr. Sang—will he be up later?”

  “I hope not!”

  “That’s an interesting start,” he conceded. “Where have we met before?”

  “We haven’t.”

  “Mmmm…how long’ve you been in Chinatown?”

  “I came in from Hong Kong two years ago.”

  “Wait a minute! No one ever learned Americanese-English in any two years.”

  “I was born in China. We had American neighbors, a missionary family. My dad said to me and my brother, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Baker are awfully nice people, but they’re not converting anyone at all. That makes them unhappy. You youngsters go over and become Christians. It’ll please them a lot, and you needn’t believe their nonsense!’ So, we learned Americanese from them, and from their son and daughter, when they came back with newer States-talk.”

  “That adds. And the other day, you made a check-up to see if you really ought to buy me?”

  “Well, yes, of course, but it wasn’t so awfully necessary. I’d heard you have an adopted niece who calls you Uncle Tao Fa. Mind if I call you that? Lots nicer than ‘Mr. Carver’.”

  “OK, providing you tell me who and what troubles you.”

  “What I want is to have you build up protection against devils and spirits. Recite mantras, chant sutras—oh, anything at all, only do something! I’m going wild, I can’t take it.”

  “Five minutes out for chasing devils and then you’re off—” He eyed the luggage. “Skiing—surfing—”

  “I am mad at Dr. Tseng, so I’m moving in. I’m hiding out till you build up protection for me.”

  For a moment Carver regarded Lan Yin: a fragile-seeming, pint-size package of woman who, by some ancient Chinese magic, was neither hipless nor flat-chested as a tape line would be forced to indicate: instead, her subtle curves were pure luxury, exciting from understatement.

  And elegant legs had been invented in China, along with paper, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass: hers were a demonstration set which she knew better than to conceal with any pants-suit. Instead, the hem of her skirt was appliqué, embroidery evidently based on a Persian rug border design, which was sufficiently eye-catching to draw a girl-watcher’s gaze from the emerald-jade pendant which reached just to the right area of the vee of a see-more blouse, and thence south of the border—the Persian border—

  Her timing was right: “You can’t throw me out. I’d kick and scream.”

  “And people would think I’m crazy, and they’d lock me up.”

  He went to the phone table, where he got a big card on which was lettered BE BACK TOMORROW, and an equivalent in Chinese. This he clipped to the door, and removed the lever from the hand-operated bell. That done, he picked up the bag and headed to quarters in the rear.

  “This is the study and utility room. Over that way, kitchen. There’s the bath, at the end of the hall.” He opened a door. “This is what Dr. Tseng vacated. Be his guest, but take my room and I’ll take his. That way, if he comes back unexpectedly, he won’t have any treats he doesn’t rate. I’ll be making fresh tea while you check your make-up and decide how much to hold out when you tell me all.”

  He turned on the speed burner. He found almond cakes, a couple of Moon cakes. When he came out with a pot of tea, she was waiting.

  “Remember, you wanted me to see an herb doctor? That was nice. Not suggesting a psychiatrist.”

  “Boyfriend has?”

  “Mmmm…well, not in so many words.”

  “Chung Li’s not too happy about your digging for answers—now that he’s not here, give me your private guesses—” He stopped short. He was talking to a dummy. Her expression was vacant. Her cup dropped from limp fingers. Her mouth gaped. The eyes stared. All the while, she had been folding, sliding slowly, legs reaching out, heels raking the rug. Finally she sagged enough in the middle to check her motion.

  So—this was what she’d been telling him about. Carver, though warned, fought off panic. He took her wrist, but could make nothing of her pulse. He listened to her breathing. All in all, no need for first aid. Carver got the mirror from the Shrine Room. Stepping behind the low back chair, he lowered the mirror. There was no image, neither of her face nor of his own.

  The metal was not fogged from her breath. Mists seemed to swirl as though behind the polished surface. He decided not to wait for the mists to become recognizable shapes. He set mirror and pedestal on the table. The metal was bright again.

  Carver scooped Lan Yin from the chair and stretched her out on the lounge. Seating himself well away from her, he regarded the polished metal. His reflection was clear and normal.

  Between Lan Yin and the Mirror of Ko Hung, Carver had enough to keep his cogitation department busy for some while to come…

  CHAPTER II

  Although Carver was certain that the mirror itself was no menace, he was wary of what lay behind it. During the moments of looking into it, as he stood behind Lan Yin, he had had the feeling that hyper-space had been drawing him into a vortex. This had not been physical: it had been a peculiar eye-glazing compulsion to take a mental dive. He recollected that whenever Dr. Tseng had permitted himself to be baited into talk of the mirror, he’d been evasive.

  Kicking off his shoes, Carver seated himself cross legged in his c
hair, the Chinese monk’s habitual posture. Being lean and wiry, he found the half-lotus seat easy enough. Sitting with spine vertical, head level, he “followed” his breathing in the Taoist mode. His eyes, however, were not closed. Master Ko Hung had described a non-visual perception akin to that of the blind swordsman who won every duel because he saw with his mind—a direct perception. Although regarding the mirror, Carver did not anticipate that he would “see” images in it. Instead, he might get impressions, awarenesses, such as those which Lan Yin was getting during her sojourn in blackout land. All this might be like Zen or, as the Chinese called it, Ch’an meditation, during which one got no specific knowledge whatsoever: but one’s capacity for knowing increased itself, expanded enormously.

  He had to avoid reaching, grasping, greed for the specific. Seek and ye shall find was the way of children, the way of fury and frustration. The seeker names what he seeks. By defining, he limits, he restricts and makes it unreal, destroying before he finds.

  The jangle of the phone jerked Carver from the first stage, that of neither withdrawing nor of not-withdrawing. Sally Wong was on the line.

  “Uncle Tao Fa! I got something for you.”

  “OK, let’s have it.”

  “She’s all the time with the man you mentioned, nobody else. Oh, yes, she was born in Hangchow. Studied to be a Buddhist nun, but never cut her hair.”

  “Huh! Got sour on religion?”

  “Oh, no, Uncle Tao Fa. Got soured on sleeping alone. Let me see—oh, yes, parents dead, one brother living. Used to work for Pacific Coast Insurance. Belongs to underground music society.”

  “What’s that? Underground—”

  “Not political. It is in a basement.” She gave an address on Clay Street, between Grant and Brenham Place. “Classical stuff. No folk music, no modern, and no opera crap—really good music.”