The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  He’d made the U-turn in a spot as treacherous as it looked: off the hard surface, one wheel spun, churning mud. The other remained motionless.

  Tai Ching took charge. “Uncle Tao Fa, for two, three days or more, you’ve worried about us. Stay here, I’ll find the lodge.”

  Carver slid from the wheel so that his passenger could get out without wading in the ditch. “Chung Li can snake us out.”

  He shouted to offset the rumble of the river. Moonlight slashed through rifts in black clouds, and picked the foam where water swirled against pier or outcropping rock. A fallen tree snagged, broke loose, to resume its drifting. Dead timber floating from upstream flats raced along.

  “Here, take the flashlight. There’s a marker. It says WAN FU, in English and Chinese. Oh, yes, white Chrysler in driveway.”

  Tai Ching went jogging down the road.

  Carver cut the engine and slid into the back seat. Storm was moving inland. Mission accomplished. Relax and rest.

  Tai Ching’s return startled Carver. He’d been sound asleep.

  “I found Wan Fu and white Chrysler, but…no lights. No voices. Possibly recuperating from honeymoon doings. While you rest, let me watch. I can see when lights go on.”

  “Right… I’m good and tired… Let ’em…” His words tumbled on their faces and into unspoken thought. “…have their fun and games…bound to take time out…for tea…or breath…”

  Storm going inland…moonlight on the heels of darkness…no problem…until the latch click awakened him, Carver had been deep in the limbo between sleep and waking.

  Tai Ching was at the river side of the road. Above the rumble of the flood there was a grinding, splintering sound. Tai Ching exclaimed. Carver sat up. He put a foot on the paving, and jerked back. Forgot he’d taken off his shoes.

  Tai Ching was running. He yelled something in Chinese.

  “What the hell…no lights on…”

  Then Carver got the message. Something downstream had Tai Ching on the verge of panic. Carver got into his shoes. He fumbled with the laces, abandoned the attempt, and set out.

  Tripping over his shoes cost him time. He tied the laces and resumed the chase.

  Still no lights. Moonlight was mirrored by the wet roof. Quitting the pavement, Tai Ching was dashing directly to the lodge. He splashed water with every bound. He fell headlong. Getting up, he yelled to split his throat. He stooped, clawed earth and threw something. A rock crashed against the lodge.

  Carver, catching up, began to understand what Tai Ching had sensed from the beginning. A floating tree nestled against the piers which supported two thirds of the house. Smaller driftwood was accumulating. Foam outlined the growing stretch of debris. That the storm had moved inland had reassured him—but the narrowing of the valley, upstream, was concentrating the rainfall. Glancing back, he could just catch the foam of the crest, racing seaward.

  Tai Ching hurled another rock. Glass splintered.

  The lodge was twisting, toppling. Tai Ching splashed to the verandah. He lurched against the door, and into the darkness. Carver stumbled, clawed wrist deep into mud. He got to his knees. Half crippled, he made vain efforts to regain his feet.

  Furniture toppled. Glass shattered. Lights blazed on. Carver relaxed. All under control—Or so he thought until the flood crest raced ever nearer. He got to his feet, yelling as he lurched along, “Tai Ching! Get out—get out—”

  A door slammed. “Chung Li! Chung Li!” Another door slammed. “Brother, wake up—flood—get out—”

  Tai Ching knew what he was doing. He knew far better than did Carver.

  The lights went out. A wall of water tore the lodge from its foundations, and took it with its escort of driftwood into the current. Midstream, it made for the sea.

  CHAPTER IX

  Water, knee deep, pulled at Carver, twisted him, clung to him, until at last he won good footing on the driveway, to fight his way to the road.

  “O mi to fu!” he gasped. “The three of them—all three—”

  Stunned, Carver stood in the ankle deep water of the road. The lodge bobbed like a cork. Its wet shingles mirrored the moonlight. There was not a single fleck of black on the roof. Without hope, Carver had looked for a survivor. The river curved. Rocky snags would tear the lodge to pieces before it reached the sea.

  He doubted that the Coast Guard would ever find the three. He hoped that they would not. Homesick Chinamen, homeward bound. Better that way.

  Headlights blazed. A jeep splashed to a stop. A gun barrel leveled off. Carver raised his hands. A passenger cried, “Uncle Tao Fa! Earl, it’s all right! Oh—what happened to you—”

  “I thought you two were in the lodge. I saw the flood crest.”

  The shotgun went back into its sheath.

  Lan Yin, Chung Li, and Earl, the Occidental driver, came toward him.

  “So that’s what happened! Trying to warn us. We saw the lights,” Lan Yin said, as the men crowded up to join her. “We came down—”

  “Expected trouble,” Earl cut in. “Punks, looting. Hope they were washed down stream. Almost worth a house, just to drown a pack of those rats!”

  Lan Yin continued, “Earl’s our neighbor. Across, up the hill.”

  “Jeep road,” Earl explained. “Came down to pick them up, they couldn’t drive up to join us for drinks. Then this rain—nice mess. Their car’s hood deep in water.”

  Carver said, “House gone—everything gone. Earl, my car’s up the road, one wheel in the mud. Give me a pull, I can get out, easy. These honeymooners ought to get back home, for some more clothes.” He regarded Lan Yin for a moment. The moon was white and full. “I came up here,” he said to Earl, “to give them both some news.”

  The jeep man read the two Chinese faces, and Carver’s too. “If it’s that way, we can do it that way, no sweat. You better go back by the Coast. No telling what’s blocking the road, between here and Gurneville—heck, yes, this jeep’s a stump-puller. No problem—crowd in, and I’ll show you!”

  With little time lost, Carver, Lan Yin and Chung Li got under way. Finally Carver said, “Tai Ching asked me to bring you the Kwan family documents. Also his blessing, and your freedom.”

  “You did it! How wonderful!”

  “I did nothing. It was old-time friendship, the ancient oath. Tai Ching recited the lines. He recited a couple of poems. Something snapped. Cracked. He said it was time for him to be liberated, too. He had some fine prospects in Taiwan. Would be leaving at once. Well, he did. Suddenly.”

  Lan Yin exhaled a long breath, a quavering sigh.

  Chung Li said, “Going with Old Custom was better than a fighting contest. Before you take us to my place, let us stop at the temple, to make an incense offering.”

  “Very good,” Carver agreed. “Tai Ching gave me a bottle of wine for the bride to heat. Your stove went down the river, so the one in the temple will have to do.”

  To have given them the story, and with half or more of his attention on the winding road, would have been a gross impropriety, Carver felt. So he reviewed the details, to fix them…

  In the temple, they fired up nine joss sticks. They kowtowed three times. They went into the all-purpose room. Carver got the Mirror of Ko Hung, while Lan Yin was heating the wine.

  When she brought the jug, he said, “Before we drink, let us look into the Mirror. I do not think that we will need circle, pentagon, and star. We three, sitting together, will be enough.

  “I offer each a hand. We will look into the mirror lands.”

  “This is a ceremony to thank my absent friend?”

  “Yes, and in remembrance of the oath that he remembered and honored. This time, no music, no chanting. Silence will be better.”

  Silence…silence so total that it had force. The sounds of Chinatown were far off, unreal, and could not jar the psychic silence which those three
had created. It was easy for Carver, as it had never before been, to sit, neither thinking nor not-thinking. His mind was like a traveler who, having reached his destination, ceases walking.

  From weariness, from let-down, he swayed ever so little. Thus in the mirror he sometimes saw himself, sometimes saw Lan Yin, again, saw Chung Li; for the curvature of the polished metal derived from a geometry which Euclid had never known.

  At last, there was a faint misting of the metal. The three faces merged, and became one composite face—deep set, burning eyes, overshadowing brows, a majestic beak of a nose… Tai Ching faced Carver, and surely, Tai Ching was also facing the others… The fierce eyes became soft and glowing with affection, with happiness, the majesty faded, and all barriers fell.

  Carver had often wondered whether lip reading was possible in Chinese, since meaning depended so much on tones as well as context. And then he recalled, as from ancient times, the funeral music, and the music of the betrothal festival, and the wedding music—this was the mirror of Ko Hung, projecting sight and sound, and who knows what other senses, if trained, would respond?

  Tai Ching was speaking—

  Lan Yin cried out, wordlessly.

  Chung Li spoke a few words. He choked, he spoke again. He bowed three times, that geometrically perfect, right-angle bow, as when one faces the coffin of an Ancestor or another venerable person.

  The image blurred, faded. The mirror gleamed, and Carver saw only his own face, until, weaving a little, he saw Chung Li, with tears coursing down his cheeks.

  The three regarded each other.

  Carver said, “I thought that he might tell you himself. Now you know that he came with me, to take leave of you. Perhaps he did not tell you that he knew the danger far more clearly than I did. That he went in, looking for you. Thinking you might be drinking-drunk, kissing-drunk, honeymoon-drunk. No telling what wild games lovers might play, and he searched—

  “Chung Li, you have lost a true friend. Not once, during those moments of searching an empty house, while I was floundering and stumbling, an old man wallowing in deep mud and deep water, did he ever call Lan Yin. To the end, he cried, ‘Chung Li—wake up—Brother, wake up!’”

  Chung Li bowed. “I am happy, but not amazed.”

  Lan Yin caught Carver’s eye. Her eyes were warm and lovely, and the smile in them crept down to the corners of her mouth, to lurk there. Uncle Tao Fa had buried Tai Ching forever.

  EXILE FROM VENUS

  Originally published in Planet Stories, May 1951.

  The solicitude of Linda’s voice, the seductiveness of her perfume, her very presence as they sat in the artificial twilight of the Domes of Venus, tempted him to abandon his plan to sail at once for Terra, venture among the savage Terrestrians, and get possession of that enormous ruby they called the Fire of Skanderbek.

  Linda was long legged and supple-waisted, with dark eyes and gold-bronze hair, and very white skin. Her cheek bones were just sufficiently prominent to keep her face from being too regular; and there was a perceptible dusting of tiny freckles which accented the irregularity, adding a piquant touch. These were natural, and a rarity that had existed only in fable for the past six-hundred years, for the glow-lamps and the occlusive Venusian atmosphere seemed to combine to make the freckle almost impossible. However, though the cosmeticians had driven the Board of Science frantic until they had devised a process for artificially imitating Linda’s unique flaw, this distinction had not spoiled her.

  “Never mind what I said, last night,” Linda pleaded. “We were all angry, you and Gil and I. No sense at all!”

  “But I promised,” Verrill said stubbornly. Which helped—a little—to sustain himself against backing down from the rash venture for which he had not a bit of taste.

  He had an angular face, narrowish, with the bony structure well accented. His nose was prominent; his hazel eyes were intent and impatient. He was lean, muscular, and all in all, just the sort of Venusian to go on such a crazy venture—yet he didn’t like the idea at all, now that he had had time to consider.

  “Let’s forget it all, Craig! Rubies aren’t important enough. The one Gil brought me from that trading post of Terra isn’t—wasn’t—”

  Verrill said sourly: “That’s what makes me feel so foolish about it. He brought you a souvenir, and I grabbed it from you, flung it into the lake, and pasted him. What for?”

  “Oh, Craig, who cares! Gil was lording it over you. I was too smug and pleased with the gift to realize how far he was going. Oh, all right, of course you were wrong! But what of it?”

  Verrill shook his head. “I fairly shouted myself into it.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “I know you don’t. But too many of our friends were within sight and hearing of the whole mess. Sooner or later their attitude would make you unhappy about a man who talked big, and then backed down.”

  His insistence widened Linda’s eyes. The civilized Venusians were always ready to take the sensible, the expedient way. Had they been otherwise, had they not been the descendants of sensible Terrestrian ancestors, they would have been included in the devastation which had left all but small and widely scattered patches of Terra uninhabitable for the past seven-hundred years. Rather, those who today were Venusians would have been struggling savages, scraping out a living in some uncontaminated area.

  Verrill’s was an almost Terrestrian stubbornness; something primitive and atavistic, very much like that queer quirk which made some Venusians return to their native Earth to set up trading-posts, where they bartered with the barbarian tribesmen for tobacco and wines, spices and jewels and perfumes, all manner of luxuries which Venus did not offer.

  Linda made her final appeal: “Leaving all this, to scramble around in that terrible waste and desolation—oh, do be sensible!”

  Her voice, and the kiss that followed it, made Verrill at once aware of what generations of Venusians had taken for granted. He looked across the gardens and the lake, and up at the prodigious span of girders. The original purpose of the structure had been to house a military outpost that was to have outflanked a comparable one on Luna. In the years just before The War, engineers and scientists had been sent from Terra to build those enormous domes, plastic-sheathed and air-tight, to exclude the raging dust-storms and the overwhelming concentration of formaldehyde which made up most of the natural Venusian atmosphere. Rather than rely on any system depending upon chemically prepared oxygen, they had established gardens, orchards, fields of plant-life which liberated sufficient oxygen to maintain the required balance.

  This was to have been simply a garrison. According to plan, it would have played a decisive part in the final clash for Terrestrian supremacy. Meanwhile, there had come to be little difference between the rival dictatorships, except in the wording of their slogans. The Anglo-Capitalist Bloc had borrowed all the kinds and twists of regimentation of the rival bloc. The difference finally became one of flavor rather than principle.

  A cool-headed few, in command of the Venusian garrison, had seen that neither side could win; that there would be only mutual and total destruction. The warfare became more and more atrocious; and the Anglo-Capitalist Bloc drifted further and further from the sort of organization that the Venus garrison, in no immediate danger, could contemplate defending with enthusiasm. Thus, when one day the Lunar Base radio complained of attack by suicide-ships and then went abruptly silent, the Venusian Base, which might have been expected to cry “Geronimo!” and leap into the holocaust, instead underwent a short and violent revolution in which the ardently military were disposed of. Then, stubbornly intending to survive chaos and idiocy, the Venus Base folded its hands and sat out the fatal clash that ended The War and virtually the whole of Terrestrian civilization with it…

  After several centuries, the Venus Council risked an exploration party to Terra to see whether the globe was becoming fit for human habitation
again. Large areas had, of course, through natural processes become decontaminated; there were scattered colonies of survivors—farmers, herdsmen, hunters, armed with clubs, spears, and other primitive weapons. Contact was made, communication struck up, trade—of considerable importance to both—established; and, after the ten years which this took, the Venusians were left with very little inclination to colonize Terra. Life under the domes was comfortable, with controlled climate, law and order, science and art. Comfortable, civilized, and sensible. While Terra—

  “Be a sensible Venusian,” was what Linda meant. “Don’t go looking for trouble when you can do better without. Don’t be a typical Terrestrian!”

  The whole clash of the previous night had been silly. Irritated by Gil Dawson’s giving Linda a ruby as a souvenir of his official inspection-tour of the Council-controlled Terrestrian trading-posts, Verrill had flung the trinket into the lake. After a brisk fracas in which Dawson had finally wearied of getting up, only to be knocked down again, Verrill had shouted to Linda and to most of Venus that he’d get her a man’s-sized ruby, the Fire of Skanderbek. She, thoroughly outraged, had told him and Dawson that by Heaven she’d not be the prize, either of a brawl or a souvenir-finding contest. To make it good, she had concluded by telling Verrill that he’d be far better occupied if he got the Venus Council to assign him to one of the committees for improving the living-standards of the Terrestrians, and won the Fire of Skanderbek as a token of their gratitude.

  But however earnestly she besought him to forget it all, Verrill was just as unhappily determined to go through with it. “I can’t back down. Dawson will surely take a crack at stealing the Fire himself—and that would make it tough for me. And for you.”

  “Oh, let the fool try!” she cried, desperately. “He’d never come back from the territory of those wildmen.”

  Verrill shook his head. “He might come back. Even though I did give him a trouncing, he’s anything but a clown. You wouldn’t accept the Fire of Skanderbek if he offered it—but he’d give it to someone else, and then—well, a lot of women do dislike you! There’s nothing I can do, except to beat him to it.”