Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “I’ve never treated you as an inferior.”

  “You’re doing it now! You’re talking down to me!”

  He laughed. “Have it your own way, Elsa. If this is down, what’s up? I was admiring you.”

  “I know it. The way you’d admire a dog that obeyed orders, or a pony that wouldn’t quit, no matter how tired it might be. — Please! I’m sorry I spoke. I won’t do it again.”

  “May I apologize?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Then you listen to me!”

  “Your obedient, humble servant,” she answered grimly.

  “God!” he retorted. “It’s a mystery how a girl can use formal words and make them cut like frost! What have I done now?”

  “You? Nothing, Andrew, nothing! ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.’ Is that what you meant?” She sounded almost more heartbroken than sarcastic. “Dear Andrew, I’m truly grateful to you. Truly I am. I would die to prove it, and be grateful for that too. But I love clairvoyance.”

  “Very well,” he answered. “Let it go at that. You’re clairvoyant. You love it. I’m looking for something rational to help to deal with a human devil in this village we’re coming to.” He urged his pony forward, so that all she saw now was the broad of his back.

  She felt like crying. She fell farther behind for a moment as the ponies passed between two boulders. When she drew abreast again she was smiling. That gave her away. Even blinded by anger Andrew knew she couldn’t smile like that and mean it, after what had just passed. He reined in — dismounted — held her pony’s rein:

  “See here,” he said, looking her in the eyes, “we’ve got mad at each other for no reason. Let’s forgive, and not do it again.” He forced a laugh into his voice. “I’m still so angry I can hardly keep from swearing. But I’ve nothing against you. It can’t be your fault. Please!”

  “I forgive you, Andrew. Of course I do. Please forgive me.”

  He nodded, staring. Suddenly they both asked the same question: “What for? What have we done to each other?” They laughed lamely.

  “Damned if I know,” said Andrew. “What have we done to each other? Something’s gone. We were first-class friends until—”

  She interrupted: “Andrew, I believe I know what has happened.”

  “Then I wish you’d tell me.”

  “You won’t get angry again?”

  “I’ll try not to. Is it something personal? To you? Or to me?”

  “Both of us, Andrew! Personal as breathing!”

  “Jesus! Now what’s coming! Metaphysics? Okay. Go ahead — I’ll listen.”

  “Will you really listen? Will you believe I’m not trying to — not trying to put one over on you, or—”

  His voice changed perceptibly: “Sure. I said I’d listen.”

  “And you begin with Huxley?”

  “He’ll do. Quote him accurately, that’s all.”

  “Didn’t he say there must be beings in the universe whose intelligence is as much beyond ours as ours exceeds that of a black beetle?”

  “Yes. Huxley wrote that.”

  “You believe it?”

  “I don’t disbelieve it. I’d take Huxley against the field, and lay odds on.”

  “Andrew! You and I are tuned in with Nancy Strong, Morgan Lewis, and — and they’re tuned in with Lobsang Pun — and he’s tuned in with even higher intelligences!”

  “Maybe. But what are you driving at?”

  “Their thought, even when it tells of murder, doesn’t make you and me angry.”

  “No. But something else did. I’m in a bloody temper.”

  “Bulah Singh and the black magician in this village know each other. Didn’t you say that?”

  “Yes. Lung-gom-pa has been to Darjeeling.”

  “They’re tuned in to each other’s thought, and they’re thinking about us! We’re between them, thinking about them. That’s what made us angry. We’re between a devil and a would-be devil; and they, too, are tuned into a greater intelligence, such as Huxley spoke of. But theirs is wicked! Ours isn’t.”

  Andrew whistled, softly at first, then louder. He grinned at Elsa, studying her face as if he were going to carve her portrait in wood. “I can’t argue it,” he said at last. “Your saying it seems to take the strain off.”

  “Making us angry with each other,” said Elsa, “would be the easiest way to make us make mistakes.”

  “Yes, that’s true. It would be. Get a man’s goat and you’ve got his number. Sure that’s true. But would they do that deliberately?”

  “That’s how black magic works,” she answered. “White magic works by restoring confidence and canceling anger and fear. Black magic—”

  “But deliberately?”

  “They could — if the magician is skillful. But it might work that way anyhow, without their intending it. Nancy told me that crossed mental currents are much more deadly than an electrical short circuit.”

  Andrew climbed into the saddle, carefully, giving the pony time to get set to the weight. He led the way. Turning in the saddle suddenly, he said:

  “See here! If you’re right about the anger, then it must be a magnetic field that — what are you laughing at now?”

  “Your magnetic field! And your logic! Andrew! Supposing anger should need a magnetic field — does that prove that Nancy and you and I — or anyone else — need one for not being angry in? Does the fact that sharks need water prove that birds can’t fly in the wind? — Andrew — didn’t Nancy tell you about superconsciousness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “No.”

  “Are you getting angry again?”

  He waited until her pony drew abreast. Then he answered: “I don’t understand about superconsciousness. But can you keep me from getting angry until we’ve dealt with Lung-gom-pa and Bulah Singh?”

  “I don’t know. I can try. Have I your permission to try?”

  “You sure have. Hop right to it. I’m feeling fit to kill the first son of a bitch who—”

  “Poetry, Andrew! Poetry! Try Milton!”

  He had no use for Milton at that moment. They rode forward to the buoyant stanzas of Walt Whitman, chanted, as if harp strings set the time:

  “Roaming in thought over the universe, I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening toward immortality, And the vast that is evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Revolting filth and a breath-snatching stink, which not even the Tibetan wind could deal with, increased the sensation of being close to the village, although they couldn’t yet see it. Huge dogs announced its neighborhood — from over by the cemetery, where the ragyabas had carried a recent human corpse and had dismembered it with axes. But no sign of the ragyaba carriers-out-of-the-dead: perhaps they had seen, and were scared, and had run for cover. The dogs were quarreling with vultures for the fragments of human meat, but some of them found time to do their duty and bay downwind, threatening all comers. There was no otherthreat — no sign of armed men, nor even of a lookout — only smoke, rising over a dune and flattened by the wind into a long smear, like a brush stroke reaching to the sunset on the far horizon.

  Bompo Tsering and the baggage train were waiting in a group in a hollow. Beyond that was a gap between yellow dunes. Framed in the gap was the turquoise sky.

  “Like the end of the world!” said Elsa.

  “Like the jumping-off place!”

  “Like one of Dunsany’s plays!”

  “I never saw one.”

  “Like you go first — like hot damn being no afraid like me,” said Bompo Tsering. He was stuttering — nervous. “Being Lung-gom-pa!” he added.

  It was puzzling that no one had come to greet or challenge them. The village was a notorious bandits’ stronghold. Its inhabitants had no other known occupation than robbing and smuggling. Bandits, as a rule, don’t hide from small numbers. Andrew puckered
his eyes, staring:

  “If it weren’t for that smear of smoke, I’d say the place was deserted. No very recent hoof marks. No new footprints.”

  Bompo Tsering shook his head. His warning right hand clutched a prayer wheel. “Uh-uh! Plenty peoples catching — what-you-call-um? — ambush — maybe! Uh-uh!”

  Andrew questioned Elsa with raised eyebrows.

  “No,” she answered. “No sensation of immediate danger. It’s all strange and new and scary, but not terrifying.”

  “New?”

  “That’s how it feels. Changed in a hurry. I can’t explain it. It was bad. Now it isn’t so bad.”

  “If we wait too long, they may think we’re afraid,” said Andrew.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “For someone to show up. That’s customary. It isn’t manners to go forward uninvited.” He meant, it isn’t wise to be caught, on tired ponies, in a gap between dunes, with no room to turn and run. But he didn’t choose to say that to Elsa.

  “Why not send one man forward?” she suggested.

  He shook his head. He made a signal that re-formed the line behind Bompo Tsering, with the dejected baggage ponies at the rear. Then he spoke slowly, thinking in back of the words:

  “This is one of those times when any move may be right or wrong. There’s no way to figure it. It’s a question of are we in luck? Let’s go forward and find out.” He gave the command. “Ride behind me,” he told Elsa, “just back of me, where I know where you are. Tell me anything you see that you think I don’t see.”

  Eagles — blue sky above the yellow flanks of the notch — an increasing stench — then, suddenly, the village, walled like a secret fortress in the midst of a hundred irregular acres of yellow muck. The surrounding dunes formed a natural rampart that a mere gang could defend indefinitely against anything less than long-range guns. It was a perfect hide-out. Sunset revealed the roofs of long, low buildings, just visible over the village wall. No monastery. Nothing resembling a religious building; and no bells. Only one roof higher than the rest, and even that not visible beyond the outer ramparts. One wooden gate — and in front of the gate, on foot, the reception committee — ten men, clad in long Tibetan overcoats, armed to the teeth.

  “Japanese rifles!” said Andrew. “But Heil Hitler! — German automatics! I wonder which of ’em is Lung-gom-pa.”

  “None of those is,” said Elsa.

  “I believe you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right.”

  One man strode forward, smiling. He didn’t stick out his tongue. He wasn’t servile. He gave the impression of being something less than friendly, but, if actually hostile, then treacherous; because he certainly offered hospitality. He might have been deaf and dumb for all the response he made to Andrew’s greeting. He made a grandiose gesture of invitation, faced about and led toward the gate in the village wall, not glancing backward.

  The gate guard stood aside, out of step, but in something vaguely like a military movement. They formed an irregular line and presented arms. No two held their rifles in quite the same way. They certainly weren’t soldiers, but they had been drilled recently. Someone who peered through an eyehole opened the gate. Andrew followed the guide and the procession followed Andrew into a very narrow lane that turned sharp left between the wall and a line of one- storied buildings. The gate slammed shut behind the last pony. It sounded like a deadfall. The armed men climbed up rough steps and redistributed themselves along the wall, on watch. Andrew stared both ways along the filthy lane.

  “It’s a pip of a trap, if it is one,” he remarked to Elsa. “That wall’s a honey. From beyond the dunes it looks like part of the dunes. It’s perfect camouflage. We couldn’t see those guys’ heads on the wall. But they saw us.”

  “Someone else can see us now,” said Elsa. “We’re being watched.”

  “Yes. It’s probably Lung-gom-pa. But where is he?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s a trap. Not yet, it isn’t.”

  The guide beckoned. At the far end of the narrow lane a man stood with a lantern. Beside him was a boy with a flashlight. It was hardly twilight yet, but the buildings at the turn of the wall cast a deep shadow — almost black darkness. Very strange it felt, under a blue sky. It was freezing hard; the ponies’ breath went upward in clouds of steam. From a roof, not more than a couple of feet above Andrew’s head, a Tibetan woman leaned over and stuck her tongue out. Realizing suddenly that Elsa was female, she drew in her tongue and spat. She just missed Elsa’s eyes. Standing in his stirrups Andrew slapped the woman’s face hard with the back of his hand. She fled along the roof, holding her jaw as she ran, pursued by laughter and by a long string of curses from Bompo Tsering.

  “Are you angry?” Elsa asked. “Better be more careful. That woman wears gold jewelry. She’s someone. She owns a rich man.”

  Andrew wished he hadn’t hit the woman. He had done it on the spur of a moment. However, the guide took no notice; perhaps he actually was deaf, dumb and stupid. With a gesture he turned them over to the lantern man, who appeared to obey the boy with the flashlight. The boy was too well dressed, and too clean to be honest. Andrew disliked him, and the boy disliked Andrew. Making impudent remarks in Tibetan about foreign devils, the boy led around the corner, where it was really dark and as cold as a morgue. Lantern and flashlight revealed a door into a barn-like building that was thatched with straw and floored with flat stones set in clay. The boy led the way in. Someone lighted a torch. In a moment at the far end there was a bright fire of resinous wood; it threw clouds of spark-lit smoke through a square hole in the roof.

  “You’re right. No trap yet,” said Andrew. “This is reckless hospitality. That firewood cost a young fortune. They must have brought it a hundred miles — maybe farther.”

  The place stank, but it was Tibet, so that was natural. The big room had been roughly swept quite recently. There were only the faint remains of heaps of dung along the side where ponies had been stalled from time immemorial. On the opposite side was a long wooden shelf for humans to sleep on. There was a table — two benches — buckets. At the far end, near the fire, was water in a big iron barrel — frozen on top, but beginning to thaw.

  The ponies clattered in and stood in line, rumps to the wall, whinnying a little. Andrew ordered the loads and saddles off first thing, and Bompo Tsering knew better than to hesitate. He prodded and goaded the gang. He even ordered hoofs and backs examined — then the buckets filled. The ponies drank greedily.

  Four elderly men entered, with their hands, hidden by long sleeves, crossed on their breasts. They bowed slightly, glancing curiously at the loads that made a big pile, near the table, in mid-room. They were expensively dressed, heavily robed in handwoven cloth and knee-high cloth boots. They gave an impression of being educated, civilized. One wore spectacles; he went close to the loads. He seemed to be smelling them. The three others approached Andrew. He bowed stiffly, not sure yet just what attitude to take.

  “Which of you speaks English?”

  None did. Bompo Tsering came forward to interpret. But Andrew didn’t choose just then to be at Bompo Tsering’s mercy. Neither did he wish to amuse those Tibetans, who were sure to laugh at his effort to pronounce their language. Such laughter isn’t always contemptuous. It’s sometimes friendly. But dignity is better, to begin with. So he dismissed Bompo Tsering and asked Elsa to interpret.

  “Ask ’em first whose guests we are.”

  They were so surprised by Elsa’s fluent Tibetan and perfect singsong pronunciation that they couldn’t find words for a moment. They couldn’t make out whether she was man or woman. They glanced at each other; and when they did perceive at last that she was female they were even more puzzled — not embarrassed, but surprised. One of them spoke at last, and Andrew understood him, but he pretended not to. Elsa interpreted:

  “He says we are pelings, who have no business in Tibet. Consequently we are no one’s guests, because the law forbids hospitality to
foreign devils. But since we are the keepers of a promise—”

  “What does he mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. Since we are the keepers of a promise we may spend a night here. But tomorrow we must turn back. — You asked me to help you keep your temper!”

  “Okay. Anger’s gone downwind. I’m feeling swell.”

  “Shall I ask for the magician?”

  “Don’t mention names. No. Give ’em nothing to lay hold of. Tell ’em I want food for the ponies.”

  Elsa interpreted. The Tibetans consulted each other before one of them answered.

  “They say they will first send food for us,” said Elsa. “It shall be brought now.”

  “Tell ’em I want food for the ponies first thing.”

  “They say no.”

  “I say yes.”

  “They say ‘very well’ then, since you are so insistent.” But they add that you don’t know the danger of giving offense to someone who is better not offended.”

  “Tell ’em that’s fifty-fifty.”

  “Must I?”

  “Yes. Say I’m reasonable if I get fair treatment.”

  “They say they intend to show you as much kindness as it is permitted to show to a foreign devil.”

  “Tell ’em my ponies are me, and their empty bellies are my belly. A full meal for the ponies might open my mouth.”

  Elsa interpreted. One of the Tibetans turned toward the door, where two men lurked who looked like real brigands. They were filthy, bulky, evil-looking fellows, each armed with two automatics in leather holsters. They leaned against the doorposts and listened sullenly while the man who had turned toward them gave an order. Then one of them walked away, and presently he could be heard cursing and giving orders of his own. It sounded as if scores of villagers were out there in the dark, but no one could be seen, although the door was open.

  “That man has gone to get food for the ponies,” said Elsa. “Barley and hay.”

  “Good. Ask now why the man in spectacles is poking his nose in among our loads.”

  Before Elsa could speak, the man in spectacles looked up and spoke suddenly. He seemed excited. He almost shouted a command. The one brigand left in the doorway stood erect at once and strode forward. Evidently the man in spectacles was an important personage. He pointed to one of the loads. The brigand hauled it off the pile and looked around for someone to help him raise it to his shoulder. He had the impudence to tell Bompo Tsering to come and do it.