"Has he the document from King Lajpat?" asked Aki.
"Show it to him, Master Rao," said Toga. Both Kuromonians ignored Nogiri, who stood at Kerin's side.
Aki clapped his hands, and a young Kuromonian woman appeared with a tray supporting a teapot and two small cups without handles.
"Seat yourself, honorable Toga," said Aki. "Pray partake." He and Toga began a rambling conversation, devoted to gossip about promotions, bureaucratic intrigues, and competitive examinations, leaving Kerin and Nogiri standing and ignored. Kerin grew angrier and angrier, but as a single foreigner in the midst of thousands of locals he dared not give vent to his feelings.
Toga finished his tea and rose. He and Aki exchanged more bows, and he led his charges out. Glancing at Kerin's angry face, with its thin lips and narrowed eyes, he said soothingly:
"This person must apologize for the honorable Aki's manners. His faction would cut off all contact with barbarians. He hates them all, having lost kinsmen to pirates from the Gwoling Islands and nomadic raiders from the steppes. Now we shall visit his superior."
They entered a larger office. Kerin was presented to Second Assistant Secretary Ushio, who said: "From Mulvan, eh? I should have expected a man of darker hue."
Kerin gulped, fearing that his imposture was on the verge of exposure. "It—it depends on what part of that land one comes from."
"Toga!" snapped Ushio. "Where hast been? You were expected a fortnight past."
"Exalted superior, this vile creature brought the honorable barbarians as quickly as the chairmen could walk."
"Walk? I sent down orders for you to be furnished with a horse for you and a cart and driver for Master Rao."
"Your order never reached me, sublime sir. Methinks Secretary Aki may have detained it. You know his sentiments anent barbarians."
"Huh! Belike he did; but if we accuse him, he will put the blame on his clerks. Oh, well, the main thing is that you are here."
More tea was brought, and Ushio ordered his clerks to furnish Kerin and Nogiri with seats and teacups. Toga plunged into a discussion of the proper channels for bringing Kerin before Imperial Wizard Oshima. Ushio said:
"I could not authorize a direct approach. Belike my superior, the honorable Kaga, could if the Secretary have authorized him to conduct interdepartmental contacts. Let me see. . . ."
Ushio got out a chart, unrolled it, and placed it on his desk with small objects at the corners to keep it from rolling up again. Kerin saw a spiderweb of lines connecting characters in Kuromonian writing.
"Now," said Ushio, "we can go up this way, and across thus, and down thus. . . . Or else we could go to the bureau head, the honorable Sendai."
"If all else fail," said Toga, "this person could apply to the Lord High Mandarin of Roads and Shipping. . . ."
"Methinks we need not go to that extreme," said Ushio. "Being unwell, the exalted Aoba had delegated many duties to assistants. If the honorable Kaga can get you transferred, well and good; if not, you must needs go through Sendai. Convey my respectful regards."
Leaving Ushio's office, Kerin asked: "If I am supposed to report to the Imperial Wizard, why can't we go straight thither? Why all this roundabout skirmishing?"
"This person would not expect you as a barbarian to understand," said Toga. "To keep confusion to a minimum and prevent the different branches of the government from acting at cross-purposes, we need rules of who may do business with whom. It is called 'going through channels.' It is a nuisance, but not half the nuisance we should have if everybody rushed about from department to department without their superiors' knowledge. Of course, old hands like this person know how to take shortcuts without causing trouble.
"The wizard Oshima works in the Magical Bureau of the Department of Health and Welfare. To get from one department to another . . ." Toga launched into the complex rules of the civil service. By the time he finished, they had arrived at the office of First Assistant Secretary Kaga.
"The honorable Sendai is on vacation," said Kaga, "and has deputized me to act in his place. I shall write you a pass to the Health and Welfare Building. There you shall report to Secretary Huso. If he be unable to receive you in person, he will authorize your conveyance down the channels to the proper office in the Magical Bureau. Have a cup of tea; you, too, my dear barbarians. . . ."
A dozen cups of tea later, Second Assistant Secretary Hiei of the Thaumaturgical Laboratory of the Magical Bureau of the Department of Health and Welfare led Kerin, Nogiri, and Toga down a hall, saying: "This person had better take you himself, since our Imperial Wizard is not the most affable man in the Empire."
They entered a large room cluttered with apparatus. Fiddling with the equipment was a small, wrinkled man with a straggly white beard. The man ignored his visitors while he made an adjustment, then said:
"Well, Master Hiei, what folly hast come to demand of me now? A magical rug that shall fly to the moon?"
"My good wizard," said Hiei, "the barbarian is Master Rao, with a message from the King of Kings of Mulvan. If you will momentarily bridle your churlishness, he has something for you."
"Oh, I remember. It is that deal betwixt the Son of Heaven and that so-called King of Kings, eh? Lajpat has surely taken his time with his part of the bargain. Well, where is it?"
Kerin handed over the little oiled-silk package. "You are Wizard Oshima, I take it?"
The little man snorted. "Certes! If Master Hiei had not forgotten his manners, he would have presented you properly. And this I suppose is your fancy woman?"
"My wife," said Kerin, thinking that Oshima's cantankerous manner was enough to subvert any system of etiquette.
"Wife, eh?" snarled Oshima. "Does she respond with invigorating delight when you mount her?"
"Uh—" said Kerin, feeling himself flush. He tried to answer, but so violent was his embarrassment that only inarticulate sounds came forth. He wanted to say: "None of your futtering business, you damned old clown!" but dared not. While he struggled for utterance, Nogiri quietly remarked:
"We manage to our mutual satisfaction, my lord."
"Good!" barked the wizard. "Any fool can see you are the more intelligent of the pair. The trouble with the Heavenly Empire is that women are deemed mere things of no account, thus depriving the society of the effective use of their talents."
"Take him not to heart, Master Rao," said Hiei. "He likes to utter absurdities for the pleasure of shocking his hearers."
"Nought shocks the multitude like an unwelcome truth," growled Oshima. "Now let us see."
Oshima broke the seal on the package and unfolded the paper. He scanned the lines of Mulvanian writing, grunting: "Hm, hm." At last he said:
"This seems to be the formula for making Ajendra's fan—or to be exact, Tsunjing's fan brought hither by Ajendra. Making and ensorceiling the thing will take at least a month, and we cannot send Master Rao on his way until we know if the fan does work. So, Master Hiei, you must needs find quarters for the barbarians, where they can live until we release them."
"Excuse me," said Kerin, "but what is your part of this bargain with Mulvan?"
"Oh, it is merely the secret of the device for finding the true north—"
"Enough!" barked Hiei. "You should not talk about it."
"Since Master Rao will doubtless break the seal and read the contents, as I suspect he have already done with this one, it makes little difference. Well, get on with it! I must concentrate on deciphering these Mulvanian squiggles."
As they left the wizard's oratory, Hiei said: "Now I shall find you quarters. If there be a vacancy in the Diplomatic Village, you shall reside there whilst we await the result of Oshima's experiments."
"Wilt take care of that matter, Honorable Hiei?" said Toga. "This lump of iniquity has not yet been home to his wives and children. I must also pay off the chairmen. You will take care of the baggage porters, I trust?"
"Run along, Master Toga," said Hiei, "ere you burst your breeches with unrequited lust. At least y
ou are not a boy lover like Secretary—but I had better not name names before these foreign devils. Come with me, my dear barbarians."
Following Hiei, Kerin said: "Your wizard seems—ah—different from other Kuromonians."
Hiei chuckled. "You allude to his appalling manners, eh? By the fifty-seven major deities, anyone else would have lost his head for his temerity long ago! Oshima keeps his attached by virtue of being the ablest wizard in the Empire and by the fear he inspires. All believe that if one made a hostile move against him, he would instantly evoke some demon or dragon to destroy one. Fortunately he has no lofty ambitions. So long as we furnish him with a wellequipped oratory for his researches, he is satisfied."
Followed by the baggage porters, Hiei led Kerin and his bride to a walled enclosure in the farthest corner of the Prohibited Precinct. Inside were smaller enclosures—Kuromonians, Kerin thought, must have a passion for building walls around things—each containing a little house with a garden. At the gate outside the Diplomatic Village, guarded by soldiers in brazen helmets and gilded cuirasses, Hiei spoke with a man in the office beside the gate. He told Kerin:
"Master Sinsong says he has just the place for you, save that the present tenants are but now departing. If we sit on this bench, he assures me you shall soon be settled. Meanwhile he will have tea brought. I must compliment you on your progress with the language of civilization. Why, I can understand what you are driving at more than half the time!"
"Thankee," said Kerin. "Tell me, pray, the story of this magical fan!"
"I suppose it will do no harm," said Hiei. "The tale begins centuries ago. The wizard Tsunjing made it for the then King of the Gwoling Islands. With it one can fan any creature out of existence and bring it back by tapping the wrists and head according to a code. When Prince Wangerr, grandson of that king, encountered a dragon on Banshou Island, he fanned it away.
"Generations later, the fan came into possession of the Mulvani ascetic Ajendra, together with the code book listing the taps to summon back beings of every category."
Nogiri spoke, as she had seldom had a chance to do that day. "What befalls the vanished beings?"
"None is certain," said Hiei. "One school holds that they be translated to another dimension, coexistent with this one. Another believes they be dispersed into their constituent atoms, to be reassembled by the signal for recall. To continue: Holding to a principle of harmlessness, Ajendra had no use for the fan; but he wanted money to endow a temple to his favorite gods in his native village, where he could pass his remaining days in meditation of the Thatness of the All.
"Since the Mulvanian king was straitened by the costs of a recent war and so could not alford to help with the project, Ajendra brought the fan to Chingun in the reign of Tsotuga the Fourth. He persuaded the Son of Heaven to pay ten thousand golden dragons for the fan and the code book, with a military escort back to his native land.
"Tsotuga was not an evil man, but testy and irascible. When one of his ministers argued too strongly against some project the ruler had set his heart on, Tsotuga sometimes fanned the unfortunate mandarin out of existence. Meanwhile he had packed the code book away in a special place, to be sure of finding it in emergencies—but now he could not remember where he had put it.
"After the disappearance of the mandarins of the departments, the rule fell into confusion. Underlings devoted themselves to intrigue, peculation, and private business interests instead of to their proper work. Hard times came upon the land, aggravated by the paper-money inflation that Tsotuga had launched against the wish of Finance Minister Yaebu. Misliking Yaebu's advice, Tsotuga had fanned him away.
"At last Tsotuga took counsel with his consort, Empress Nasako, and hired an able supervisor of provincial roads and bridges, Zamben of Jompei, as Prime Minister. Tsotuga did not know that Zamben and Nasako were secret lovers who plotted to get rid of the Emperor.
"Zamben inveigled Tsotuga into a game of sachi. Whilst they fumbled on the floor for a piece that Zamben had dropped, the Prime Minister managed to trade fans with the Emperor, and a wave of the magical fan did the rest.
"Zamben married Nasako and became the Dowager Empress's consort. He improved administration but also set himself to reconstruct the missing code book for recovering beings banished by the fan. He tried out combinations of raps, with a secretary to record the kind of being recalled for each procedure. Amongst others he restored Finance Minister Yaebu.
"Eventually he inadvertently gave the combination that recalled the dragon that Prince Wangerr had vanished long before. The dragon snapped up Zamben, fan and all, ere Zamben could defend himself and fled from the Proscribed Palace.
"Prince Wakumba, though a stripling of fourteen, became Emperor. After the ceremony he pulled off the plumed and winged crown, complaining of its weight. Whilst poking about this complex headpiece, he caused a metal flap to spring open, revealing the missing code book. Tsotuga had hidden the book in the secret compartment. Since, however, the fan was gone, and nobody in the Empire knew how to make another, the book was filed away in the archives.
"Our present Ruler of the World, the divine Dzuchen, wished to possess a magical fan to go with the code book. So he tracked down the spiritual descendants of the ascetic Ajendra, hoping that amongst them the formula for making such a fan might still exist, having been passed down from guru to chela. With the help of Doctor Oshima's divinations, the magician Ghulam was found to possess these instructions. So our Son of Heaven agreed with King Lajpat to trade this secret for something else, possessed by the Heavenly Empire. Therefore—"
Hiei broke off as a party approached the gate from within. It comprised a group of stocky, brown-skinned, flat-faced men in sheepskin coats, left open because of the heat, bulbous fur hats, and big felt boots. A gaggle of baggage porters followed them.
"The nomad envoys," murmured Hiei.
Kerin became aware that these men could be smelled almost as far as they could be seen. He could not tell how much of their mud-brown hue was natural and how much a coating of dirt. They marched out, ignoring Kerin and his party, and barked commands. Grooms appeared with a train of horses. When the baggage had been secured to some of these, the nomads mounted, gave a wild yell, and galloped off, heedless of any pedestrians in their path.
As Kerin and Nogiri were being settled in the cottage assigned to them, Kerin asked: "When may I depart, pray?"
"When the fan has been completed and tested," said Hiei.
"In other words, this is a polite form of imprisonment?"
"Say not so, honorable Master Rao! Since you are destined, if the fan prove successful, to carry the returning message back to Mulvan, we must assure ourselves that you will be available when the time arrives."
"May we leave the Diplomatic Village at will, then?"
"Certes, so long as you remain within the Prohibited Precinct."
"Suppose we wish to see more of your great city?"
"If you will send a message, this person will arrange your escort. It will be for your personal safety, since it is easy to lose oneself in Chingun or fall prey to criminals, whereof we have, alas, a plethora. And now, honorable barbarians, I must return to my duties. As said the wise Dauhai, nought encourages diligence in a subordinate like the sight of his superior practicing that virtue!"
As Hiei walked off, radiating self-importance, Kerin turned to Nogiri and said softly in Salimorese: "Didst hear what old Oshima said, ere Hiei shushed him, about their secret navigating device?"
"Nay. I caught only the word 'north,' for they spake too fast for me."
"Well, you know my bargain with Klung. If they hand me directions for the device and send me off—as they suppose, to Mulvan—there's half our problem solved." Kerin's face took on a worried look. "But I know not. If I promise to convey the secret to King Lajpat and then give it to Klung, I shall be a faithless . . ."
"Were I you," said Nogiri, "I should wait upon the event. If we be lost at sea or slain by pirates betwixt here and Kwatna, you'l
l never have to wrestle with your thorny conscience. And in Salimor, Master Klung may not even be amongst the living."
"Sensible, as always," said Kerin.
X
The Forbidden Interior
Kerin sat on the pavement outside the gate to the Diplomatic Village with his feet, in overshoes with roller skates, stretched out before him. He scowled up at Nogiri, who stood shaking with laughter.
"Damn it, woman," he growled, "if you be so clever, let's see you manage these devilish contraptions!" He angrily yanked the straps on the overshoes as he took them off.
"Your pardon, my lord," she said as she mastered her mirth. "But after your boasting of how easy it seemed, you looked so droll."
She sat on the bench and put on her own skates, while Kerin climbed painfully to his feet. "I shall have a sore arse tomorrow," he grumbled. "Kuromonian wives are more respectful."Nogiri sailed away on her skates. She wobbled a little at first but soon caught the knack and came flying back in a long curve. Then away she went in a figure-eight.
"By Imbal's iron pizzle!" said Kerin. "Hast been practicing on the sly?"
"Nay, my lord," she said, ending with a pirouette. "I did but watch the locals. If you would really prefer a Kuromonian wife, I daresay you could find some civil servant willing to trade."
"Good gods!" said Kerin. "Don't even think such thoughts. I may have more than half our thews betwixt us, but you have more than half the wit. I'm sorry I lost my temper; I must indeed have looked a blithering ass."
"And I regret laughing. Wouldst try again, more cautiously?"
An hour's practice made Kerin fairly proficient, and the two skated off to tour the Prohibited Precinct.
Kerin knocked on the door of Doctor Oshima's oratory. He heard a snarl from within: "What is it this time?"
"Rao the Mulvani," said Kerin. "We wondered how you did with the fan?"
The Honorable Barbarian Page 19