The second old man laughs, as old men will.
“Funny kind of afterlife,” Daniel Wallaby Ng muses. “But gentlemen—uncles—if you don’t mind my saying so, um, I hope you’ll forgive me mentioning it, but don’t you think there’s something just the tiniest bit sexist about your attitude to women?”
“He’s off with the ancestors again.” One nudges the other. “‘Daniel’? What sort of a name is that? Fine young fellow, though. Let’s sing some more about the Making of the World.”
Under the moon, the drone of the didgeridoo rises, and the clatter of wood on wood, and men’s strong voices rise in rich chant. Daniel closes his eyes and settles into the sweet night.
FOREIGN DEVILS
Walter Jon Williams
Walter Jon Williams was born in Minnesota and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His short fiction has appeared frequently in major anthologies and magazines such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Wheel of Fortune, When the Music’s Over, and in other markets, and has been gathered in the collection Facets. His novels include Ambassador of Progress, Knight Moves, Hardwired, The Crown Jewels, Voice of the Whirlwind, House of Shards, Days of Atonement, Rock of Ages, and Aristoi. Last year his novel Metropolitan garnered wide critical acclaim and was one of the most talked about books of the year. His most recent book is a sequel to Metropolitan, City on Fire. His stories have appeared in our Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Annual Collections.
Here he gives us an evocative and gorgeously colored look at the bizarre, ritualized, and mannered world of court life in nineteenth-century China—and how that world is shattered catastrophically forever when the Forbidden City itself is attacked by an even stranger bunch of foreigners than they’re used to dealing with: H. G. Wells’s invading Martians.
There is no longer anyone alive who knows her name.
She has always been known by her titles, titles related to the role she was expected to play. When she was sixteen and had been chosen as a minor concubine for the Son of Heaven, she had been called Lady Yehenara, because she was born in the Yehe tribe of the Nara clan of the great Manchu race. Later, after her husband died and she assumed the regency for their son, she was given the title Tzu Hsi, Empress of the West, because she once lived in a pavilion on the western side of the Forbidden City.
But no one alive knows her real name, the milk-name her mother had given her almost sixty-five years ago, the name she had answered to when she was young and happy and free from care. Her real name is unimportant.
Only her position matters, and it is a lonely one.
* * *
She lives in a world of imperial yellow. The wall hangings are yellow, the carpets are yellow, and she wears a gown of crackling yellow brocade. She sleeps on yellow brocade sheets, and rests her head on pillows of yellow silk beneath embroidered yellow bed curtains.
Now Peking is on fire, and the hangings of yellow silk are stained with the red of burning.
She rises from her bed in the Hour of the Rat, a little after midnight. Her working day, and that of the Emperor, begins early.
A eunuch braids her hair while her ladies—all of them young, and all of them in gowns of blue—help her to dress. She wears a yellow satin gown embroidered with pink flowers, and a cape ornamented with four thousand pearls. The eunuch expertly twists her braided hair into a topknot, and fits over it a headdress made of jade adorned on either side with fresh flowers. Gold sheaths protect the two long fingernails of her right hand, and jade sheaths protect the two long fingernails of her left. Her prize black lion dogs frolic around her feet.
The smell of burning floats into the room, detectable above the scent of her favorite Nine-Buddha incense. The burning scent imparts a certain urgency to the proceedings, but her toilette cannot be completed in haste.
At last she is ready. She calls for her sedan chair and retinue—Li Lien-Ying, the Chief Eunuch, the Second Chief Eunuch, four Eunuchs of the Fifth Rank, twelve Eunuchs of the Sixth Rank, plus eight more eunuchs to carry the chair.
“Take me to the Emperor’s apartments,” she says.
The sedan chair swoops gently upward as the eunuchs lift it to their shoulders. As she leaves her pavilion, she hears the sound of the sentries saluting her as she passes.
They are not her sentries. These elite troops of the Tiger-Hunt Marksmen are not here to keep anyone out. They are in the employ of ambitious men, and the guards serve only to keep her a prisoner in her own palace.
Despite her titles, despite the blue-clad ladies and the eunuchs and the privileges, despite the silk and brocade and pearls, the Empress of the West is a captive. She can think of no way that she can escape.
The litter’s yellow brocade curtains part for a moment, and the Empress catches a brief glimpse of the sky. There is Mars, glowing high in the sky like a red lantern, and below it streaks a falling star, a beautiful ribbon of imperial yellow against the velvet night. It streaks east to west, and then is gone.
Perhaps, she thinks, it is a hopeful sign.
* * *
The audience room smells of burning. Yellow brocade crackles as the members of the family council perform their ritual kowtows before the Son of Heaven. Before they present their petitions to the Emperor they pause, as they realize from his flushed face and sudden intake of breath that he is having an orgasm as he sits in his dragon-embroidered robes upon his yellow-draped chair.
The Emperor Kuang Hsu is twenty-eight years old and has suffered from severe health problems his entire life. Sometimes, in moments of tension, he succumbs to a sudden fit of orgasm. The doctors claim it is the result of a kidney malady, but no matter how many Kidney Rectifying Pills the Emperor is made to swallow, his condition never improves.
The illness is sometimes embarrassing, but the family has become accustomed to it.
After the Emperor’s breathing returns to normal, Prince Jung Lu presents his petition. “Your Majesty,” he says, “for three days the Righteous Harmony Fists have rioted in the Tatar City and the Chinese City. There are no less than thirty thousand of these disreputable scoundrels in Peking. They have set fire to the home of Grand Secretary Hsu Tung and to many others. Grand Secretary Sun Chia-nai has been assaulted and robbed. As the Supreme Ones of the past safeguarded the tranquillity of the realm by issuing edicts to suppress rebellion and disorder, and as the Righteous Harmony Fists have shown themselves violent, disorderly, and disrespectful of Your Majesty’s servants, I hope that an edict from Your Majesty will soon be forthcoming that allows this unworthy person to use the Military Guards Army to suppress disorder.”
Prince Tuan spits tobacco into his pocket spittoon. “I beg the favor of disagreeing with the esteemed prince,” he says. Other officials, members of his Iron Hat Faction, murmur their agreement.
The Dowager Empress, sitting on her yellow cushion next to the Emperor, looks from one to the other, and feels only despair.
Jung Lu has been her friend from childhood. He is a moderate and sensible man, but the situation that envelops them all is neither moderate nor sensible.
It is Prince Tuan, a younger man, bulky in his brocade court costume and with the famous Shangfang Sword strapped to his waist, who is in command of the situation. He and his allies—Tuan’s brother Duke Lan, Prince Chuang of the Gendarmerie, the Grand Councillor Kang I, Chao Shu-chiao of the Board of Punishments—form the core of those Iron Hats who had seized power two years ago, at the end of the Hundred Days’ Reform.
It is Tuan who has surrounded the Dragon Throne with his personal army of ten thousand Tiger-Hunt Marksmen. It is Tuan who controls the ferocious Muslim cavalry of General Tung, his ally, camped in the gardens south of the city. It is Tuan who extorted the honor of carrying the Shangfang Sword in the imperial presence, and with it the right to use the sword to execute anyone on the spot, for any reason. And it is Tuan’s son, Pu Chun, who has been made heir to the throne.
It is Prince Tuan, and the others
of his Iron Hat Faction, who have encouraged the thousands of martial artists and spirit warriors of the Righteous Harmony Fists to invade Peking, to attack Chinese Christians and others against whom they have a grudge, and who threaten to envelop China in a war with all the foreign powers at once.
The young Emperor Kuang Hsu opens his mouth but cannot say a word. He has a bad stammer, and in stressful situations he cannot speak at all.
Prince Tuan fills the silence. “I am certain that should the Son of Heaven deign to address us, he would assure us of his confidence in the patriotism and loyalty of the Righteous Harmony Fists. His Majesty knows that any disorders are incidental, and that the Righteous Harmony Fists are united in their desire to rid the Middle Kingdom of the Foreign Devils that oppress our nation. In the past,” he continues, getting to his point—for in the Imperial Court, one always presented conclusions by invoking the past—“In the past, the great rulers of the Middle Kingdom established order in their dominions by calling upon their loyal subjects to do away with foreign influences and causes of disorder. If His Majesty will only issue an edict to this effect, the Righteous Harmony Fists can use their martial powers and their invincible magic to sweep the Foreign Devils from our land.”
The Emperor attempts again to speak and again fails. This time it is the Dowager Empress who fills the silence.
“Will such an edict not bring us to war with all the Foreign Devils at once? We have never been able to hold off even one foreign power at a time. The white ghosts of England and France, and even lately the dwarf-bandits of Japan, have all won concessions from us.”
Prince Tuan scowls, and his hand tightens on the Shangfang Sword. “The Righteous Harmony Fists are not members of the imperial forces. They are merely righteous citizens stirred to anger by the actions of the Foreign Devils and the Secondary Foreign Devils, the Christian converts. The government cannot be held responsible for their actions. And besides—the Righteous Harmony Fists are invulnerable. You have seen yourself, a few weeks ago, when I brought one of their members into this room and fired a pistol straight at him. He was not harmed.”
The Empress of the West falls silent as clouds of doubt enter her mind. She had seen the pistol fired, and the man had taken no hurt. It had been an impressive demonstration.
“I regret to report to the Throne,” Jung Lu says, “of an unfortunate incident in the city. The German ambassador, Von Ketteler, personally opened fire on a group of Righteous Harmony Fists peacefully exercising in the open. He killed seven and wounded many more.”
“An outrage!” Prince Tuan cries.
“Truly,” Jung Lu says, “but unfortunately the Righteous Harmony Fists proved somewhat less than invulnerable to Von Ketteler’s bullets. Perhaps their invincibility has been overstated.”
Prince Tuan glares sullenly at Jung Lu. He bites his lip, then says, “It is the fault of wicked Chinese Christian women. The Secondary Foreign Devils flaunted their naked private parts through windows, and the Righteous Harmony Fists lost their strength.”
There is a thoughtful pause as the others absorb this information. And then the Emperor opens his mouth again.
The Emperor has, for the moment, mastered his speech impediment, though his gaunt young face is strained with effort and there are long, breathy pauses between each word. “Our subjects depend on the Dragon Throne for their safety,” he gasps. “Prince Jung Lu is ordered to restore order in the city and to stand between the foreign legations and the Righteous Harmony Fists … to prevent further incidents.”
Kuang Hsu falls back on his yellow cushions, exhausted from the effort to speak. “The Son of Heaven is wise,” Jung Lu says.
“Truly,” says Prince Tuan, his eyes narrowing.
Using appropriate formal language, and of course invoking the all-important precedents from the past, court scribes write the edict in Manchu, then translate the words into Chinese. The Dowager Empress holds the Chinese translation to her failing eyes and reads it with care. As a female, she had not been judged worthy of education until she had been chosen as an imperial concubine. She has never learned more than a few hundred characters of Chinese, and is unable to read Manchu at all.
But whether she can read and write or not, her position as Dowager Empress gives her the power of veto over any imperial edict. It is important that she view any document personally.
“Everything is in order,” she ventures to guess.
The Imperial Seal Eunuch inks the heavy Imperial Seal and presses it to the edict, and with ceremony the document is presented to Prince Jung Lu. Prince Tuan draws himself up and speaks. “This unworthy subject must beg the Throne for permission to deal with this German, Von Ketteler. This white ghost is killing Chinese at random, for his own amusement, and in the confused circumstances none can be blamed if there is an accident.”
The Empress of the West and the Emperor exchange quick glances. Perhaps, thinks the Empress, it is best to let Prince Tuan win a point. It may assuage his bloodlust for the moment.
And she very much doubts anyone will miss the German ambassador.
She tilts her head briefly, an affirmative gesture. The Emperor’s eyes flicker as he absorbs her import.
“We leave it to you,” he says. It is a ritual form of assent, the Throne’s formal permission for an action to take place.
“The Supreme One’s brilliance and sagacity exceeds all measure,” says Prince Tuan.
The family council ends. The royal princes make their kowtows and leave the chamber.
The Dowager Empress leaves her chair and approaches her nephew, the Emperor. He seems shrunken in his formal dragon robes—he has twenty-eight sets of robes altogether, one auspicious for each day of the lunar month. Tenderly the Dowager dabs sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. He reaches into his sleeve for a lighter and a packet of Turkish cigarettes.
“We won’t win, you know,” he sighs. His stammer has disappeared along with his formidable, intimidating relations. “If we couldn’t beat the Japanese dwarf-bandits, we can’t beat anybody. We’re just going to lose more territory to the Foreign Devils, just as we’ve already lost Burma, Nepal, Indochina, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, all the treaty ports we’ve had to cede to Foreign Devils.…”
“You don’t believe the spirit fighters’ magic will help us?”
The Emperor laughs and draws on his cigarette. “Cheap tricks to impress peasants. I have seen that bullet-catching trick done by conjurors.”
“We must delay. Delay as long as possible. If we delay, the correct path may become clearer.”
The Emperor flicks cigarette ash off his yellow sleeve. His tone is bitter. “Delay is the only possible course for those who have no power. Very well. We will delay as long as possible. But delay the war or not, we will still lose.”
Tears well in the old woman’s eyes. It is all, she knows, her fault.
Her husband, the Emperor, had died of grief after losing the Second Opium War to the Foreign Devils. Their child was only an infant at the time. She did her best to bring up her son, engaging the most rigorous and moral of teachers, but after reigning for only a few years her son had died at the age of eighteen from exhaustion brought on by unending sexual dissipation.
Since then she has devoted her life to caring for her nephew, the new Emperor. She had rescued Kuang Hsu from her sister, who had beaten him savagely and starved him—one of his brothers had actually been starved to death—but she had erred again in choosing the young Emperor’s companions. He had been so bullied by eunuchs, so plagued by ill health, and so intimidated by his tutors and the blustering royal princes, that he had remained shy, hesitant, and self-conscious. He had only acted decisively once, two years ago, during the Hundred Days’ Reform, and that had ended badly, with the palace surrounded by Prince Tuan’s Tiger-Hunt Marksmen and the Emperor held captive.
“I will leave Your Majesty to rest,” she says. He looks at her, not unkindly.
“Thank you, Mother,” he says.
Tears pr
ickle the Dowager’s eyes. Even though she has betrayed him, still he calls her “mother” instead of “aunt.”
She walks from the room, and with her twenty-four attending eunuchs returns to her palace.
Alone in the darkness of the litter, no one sees the tears that patter on the yellow brocade cushions.
* * *
“All the news is good,” Prince Tuan says. “One of our soldiers, a Manchu bannerman named Enhai, has shot the German ambassador outside the Tsungli Yamen. Admiral Seymour’s Foreign Devils, marching up the railway line from Tientsin, have turned back after a battle with the Righteous Harmony Fists.”
“I had heard the Righteous Harmony Fists had all been killed,” says Jung Lu. “Where was their bullet-catching magic?”
“Their magic was sufficient to turn back Admiral Seymour,” Prince Tuan retorts.
“He may have just gone back for reinforcements. More and more foreign warships are appearing off Tientsin.”
It is the Hour of the Ox, just before dawn. Several days have passed since Prince Jung Lu was ordered to seal off the foreign legations. This has reduced the number of incidents in the city, though the Foreign Devils continue their distressing habit of shooting any Chinese they see, sometimes using machine guns on crowds. Since no one is attacking them, the foreigners’ behavior is puzzling. Jung Lu sent several peace delegations to inquire their reasons, but the delegates had all been shot down as soon as they appeared in sight of the legations. Jung Lu has been forced to admit that the foreigners may no longer be behaving rationally.
“In the past,” Prince Tuan says, “Heaven made known its wishes through the movements of the stars and planets and through portents displayed in the skies. This unworthy servant reminds the Throne that this is a year with an extra intercalary month, and therefore a year that promises unusual occurrences. This is also a Kengtze year, which occurs only every ten years. Therefore the heavens demonstrate the extraordinary nature of this year, and require that all inhabitants of the Earth assist Heaven in creating extraordinary happenings.”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection Page 93