Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Gosh!” he answered, “if it’s true, it would explain why—”

  “No, Andrew, it only hints, and suggests. It doesn’t explain. It can’t be phrased dogmatically. It can’t be materialized on a basis of profit and loss. Only the definition-mongers, the splitters of hairs, the materialists — the criminals — and the people who believe that death is the end of everything — can fool themselves into believing they can explain it.”

  “Well, see here. If you can’t explain it to me, what’s the use of—”

  “Listen, Andrew. You and I have touched superconsciousness. It touched us.”

  “You mean you did. It touched you. I don’t even know what it is.”

  “The bright light, that will take care of us at the proper moment, lighted our subconsciousness and let the watchers—”

  “Who d’you mean — watchers?”

  “Bulah Singh, for instance. Also others — lots of others.”

  “Okay. Let’s keep it personal. You say it let Bulah Singh—”

  “It let him read something that our subconsciousness reflected from superconsciousness. There, is that clear?”

  “I’ll be damned if it is. Why couldn’t we read it?”

  “I believe I can read it,” she answered. “But I can’t believe it. Or I’d rather put it this way. I know I couldn’t possibly make you believe it. You would think me crazy. So I’m afraid to tell you.”

  “I wish you would tell. I guarantee one thing: even if I don’t understand, I’ll know you’re trying to tell the truth.”

  “Andrew, you can be wonderfully comforting at unexpected moments!”

  “What do you think you can see?”

  “Lobsang Pun!”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean just that, and nothing else. We’re near him.”

  “You mean physically near?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not talking about his projected image?”

  “I am talking about Lobsang Pun, coming toward us — now — near.”

  “It can’t be,” he answered. “We’ve made a wider circuit around Lhasa than we should have, hoping to pick up news of him. But it’s no go. I’ve figured it out. If he’s on the lam and they haven’t caught him, he must be scores of miles away — perhaps hundreds — perhaps headed toward India.”

  Elsa insisted: “I can see Lobsang Pun! Andrew! He doesn’t want to be seen. You and I mustn’t recognize him! Look! Look!”

  “I can’t see a thing!”

  “That was a plain message!”

  “What was?”

  “He put a finger to his lips. He shook his head. We’re not to recognize him!”

  “When?”

  “When we meet — soon — I think very soon.”

  “Hell, are you and I going crazy? Well, all right — if we do meet him, that should be simple enough.”

  “Andrew, there’s a big price on Lobsang Pun’s head!”

  “I know there is.”

  “Bulah Singh knows it! And Bulah Singh knows we are very soon going to meet Lobsang Pun!”

  “Are you really sure he knows?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll go the rounds again. I’ll soon find out.”

  “Andrew — better not speak to him. Isn’t it better to let Bulah Singh believe we don’t suspect him?”

  “Maybe you’re right. I’ll go and talk to the men. Just a second while I look at the time. Thought so. We’ll be breaking camp by lantern light, in two hours. Do you think you can get two hours’ sleep? You’re going to need it.”

  “Andrew, after all those days of grumpiness, you’ve been so kind again all at once, that I could do anything! I feel like singing! But — yes — I can sleep — I know I can.”

  “Good. You don’t have to worry. I won’t talk to Bulah Singh. I’ll try not to wake you when I come back. Good night.”

  CHAPTER 43

  The storm turned up about an hour late. Soon the snow began drifting like waves on a wild sea. Sheep can’t tackle that stuff. The overloaded yaks and ponies couldn’t carry the sheep; so Andrew and the Tibetans had to do it, wherever the sheep couldn’t follow the ponies through the drifts. They hadn’t made more than two miles by noon. Then Bompo Tsering was for calling a halt. But there would be less snow on the wind-swept ledges, and the ledges wouldn’t come, one had to go to them; so Andrew had his own way about carrying on for a couple more hours. But then suddenly Bompo Tsering, who was leading, said they were surrounded by dugpas. The column halted. Elsa rode her pony in the way of Bulah Singh’s to prevent the Sikh from crowding forward. Andrew showed Bompo Tsering his automatic and the head-man agreed, as every Tibetan does, that an automatic pistol is excellent magic. But he said he had never seen a dead dugpa. He suggested that a bullet could go straight through a dugpa’s heart without hurting him. Dugpas, he said, could make a lot of trouble by making the animals go lame, even if they didn’t do worse things. He said the wise course was to bivouac and say plenty of prayers. He pulled the prayer wheel out of his bokkus and spun it furiously.

  So Andrew showed him the aneroid in its neat leather case and said it was an infallible protection against all sorts of devils. He even told him the names of the master magicians who made it — showed him their names on the face of the dial — pronounced them for him. Bompo Tsering admitted that Negretti and Zambra sounded wonderful. But he stuck to his prayer wheel. He smiled courteously. And then he demonstrated beyond any doubt in his own mind that Andrew was a silly foreign devil who didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Gunnigun,” he said, “your talking too much. Now your looking. There being too many dugpas. Not going away. Keeping on coming.”

  He was right. And they did look like ghosts. The whirling snow was black against the sky, shot through and through with lurid gray where the wind tore gaps that let dim light through. The ghosts approached from the moaning gloom of that storm, led by a tall one who rode the ghost of a pony. The others staggered behind him, on foot. Andrew went out to meet them. Bompo Tsering ordered a bivouac the second his back was turned and then ran to help two of the men who were at grips with Bulah Singh. The Sikh had tried to plunge past Elsa through a snowdrift. Elsa cried aloud for help. They seized the Sikh’s reins and off-saddled him, so that he lay on his back looking upward, full of anger but — as concerned dignity — lost. Elsa followed Andrew and drew rein beside him.

  “I think Bulah Singh knows who is coming,” she said. “He tried to snatch my automatic and go over to them. But Bompo Tsering is loyal.”

  “He’s what he calls loyal,” said Andrew.

  There were thirteen ghosts, twelve of them walking. They all looked like Tibetans. They all looked half dead, famished, including the pony ridden by their leader. Andrew and Elsa waited for them in the lee of a gray rock, where the drift was shallow and it was easier to speak. The leader got off his pony because Bompo Tsering shouted to him to do it or be pulled off. He was dressed like a nobleman, full of assured self-importance. But he had none of the take-it-for-granted authority that clings, even in adversity, like an invisible skin to a man of real breeding. If he had had, Bompo Tsering would never have dared to tell him to mind his manners. In a voice as hoarse as a frog’s, he demanded Andrew’s name.

  Elsa whispered: “Bad accent! Careful!”

  So instead of telling his name, Andrew let him see the butt of an automatic and asked what he wanted. He was pretty arrogant about demanding food at once, but that might have been due to hunger; empty stomachs aren’t always polite. He ordered his ragged followers to keep their distance as if they were dirt. They obeyed him — one especially — without a trace of enthusiasm. Andrew kept an eye on that one man; he seemed neither to resent the leader’s ill manners nor to care about him one way or the other; he looked as ugly as the devil — a big man in peasant’s clothing.

  Andrew spoke under his breath: “They’re a bum-looking lot.”

  Elsa answered: “They are those we saw coming!” />
  “You mean, you saw coming! You watch ’em while I do the honors.”

  It seldom pays to cut the ceremonial in Tibet. Andrew knew the routine phrases. He and the insolent leader expressed the customary happiness at meeting each other. Meanwhile Bompo Tsering and his men made themselves polite to the others and found out all about their weapons. Then they set to pitching a bivouac, making a lean-to of spread-out tents in no time. They had saved plenty of yak-dung fuel; and the conditions are hardly imaginable in which Tibetans can’t make tea, salted and greasy with rancid butter. There was a yak’s leg, tolerably rotten and therefore easy to eat. One doesn’t have to worry about bad meat at that altitude; lucky to get what you get. Bompo Tsering whispered to Elsa, and she told Andrew how many automatics, how many revolvers.

  Andrew played host with his back to the lean-to and Elsa beside him. Before long the strangers were all doing their duty by hunks of yak meat and barley bread. They guzzled, as if they hadn’t eaten for days. There was one man who kept the lower part of his face covered, except when he thought Andrew wasn’t looking. He avoided Andrew. He had very intelligent eyes, but they looked barren, as if even evil would not ripen in the thought behind them. It would windfall, rotten from within. Twice Andrew spotted him reading signals from Bulah Singh, who was at pains, when he thought Andrew wasn’t looking, to reveal that he had been deprived of his weapons.

  Again Andrew whispered to Elsa, if one could call it a whisper that pierces a Tibetan wind:

  “That big bozo, who keeps himself to himself at the far end?”

  “Andrew, you know! Remember: don’t recognize him!”

  He thought that over, watching his guests, especially their leader. He disliked the man, despised him. Presently he opened a can of salmon and set it down between himself and Elsa. The leader perked up like an ape at sight of a banana. There were only two who took no notice: the big man at the far end and another who sat next to him. The big ugly man had a long rosary under his coat and kept flicking the beads. The man beside him appeared to be dying. A Tibetan, like a camel, when he decides to die, does it. He chooses almost any old place for the job. The big ugly man appeared to know his friend wanted to die and to be bawling him out. The storm was making too much noise to hear what he said, but it looked as if the other man didn’t dare to answer back. The dying man didn’t eat, he only sipped tea.

  Andrew whispered to Elsa: “If that’s your fat friend, can’t he recognize you?”

  Elsa didn’t speak. She didn’t know what to answer.

  The ape-faced leader, seated near Andrew, gorged himself, said nothing, and kept staring at the opened tin of salmon. He didn’t eat like a nobleman, nor behave like one in any other way. He seemed much too conscious of the fine texture of the beautiful black clothing that he wore under his fur-lined coat. He was dressed like a High Lama. A genuine Tibetan lama might have made things rather awkward. But he wasn’t genuine. And he was lost. He hadn’t the slightest idea where he was. He wanted to be told without having to ask. Andrew didn’t tell him. Meanwhile, he kept greedily eyeing that opened can of salmon. Presently Andrew nudged Elsa to follow and went out to look at the storm, taking the salmon with him.

  It was a blisterer, growing worse. There was nothing for it but to stay where they were, even at the risk of running short of fodder for the animals. The ponies were on full rations, but now there was an extra pony to feed, and it wasn’t strong enough to carry a full load.

  “This doesn’t look too good,” said Andrew. “Several of those men are well armed. They’ve all got automatics, excepting the two at the far end. One of those two is dying. The other is—”

  Elsa interrupted: “Don’t name him! Don’t breathe his name!”

  “All right, all right! But get the hang of this. Their leader’s a phony. He’s a false front.”

  “He isn’t a real lama,” said Elsa. “He can’t be. But he’s wearing the clothes of a very important one.”

  “The important man,” said Andrew, “is the fellow who keeps his face half covered. I know who he is. But I don’t want him to know I recognize him.”

  “Then don’t breathe his name, either. Thoughts escape, Andrew. Give them a name and they go leaping from one to another.”

  “Right. Mum’s the word. Our business — yours and mine — is to keep that man and Bulah Singh from joining up to bump me off and grab you and our supplies. I’ve noticed eyes on you. You’re loot.” Elsa didn’t feel like loot. She felt tremendously excited. But it was no time to argue the point. “We can trust Bompo Tsering,” she said.

  “Up to his limit, we can. But what is his limit? We need friends. I’ll make a bid right now.”

  Andrew signaled. Bompo Tsering noticed it after the second or third attempt and came out.

  “Tell that big ugly old man at the far end I want to talk to him. Ask him to come out here.”

  Bompo Tsering didn’t like doing it. His superstition stiffened. He put up quite an argument, shouting into Andrew’s ear against the storm. He said it was very unwise to talk to mysterious strangers, who might turn out to be bandits, or perhaps Chinese soldiers in disguise, which would be even worse. Then, as if to change the subject, or else fishing for a bribe:

  “What your soon now doing with that salmon, Gunnigun? Your not wanting, my wanting too much!”

  Andrew playfully missed him with a right hook. He obeyed then, sticking out his tongue by way of gratitude, too well knowing how that fist could hurt when Andrew aimed it straight.

  “Andrew, what is your idea?”

  “I’ll give your man a chance to admit who he is. Watch him.”

  It was worth watching. Ugly-face showed no surprise; he merely shoved his dying friend into a more comfortable position, tucked his rosary under his coat and got up, as self-possessed as a bishop. He had to pass in front of the entire party. The leader made angry gestures and ordered him back to his place. Ugly-face walked past him with the humility of a monarch doing penance with peas in his boots. The leader struck him. He took no more notice of that than he did of the wind. He came and stood in front of Andrew with his back to his own party, ignoring Elsa as if she didn’t exist. He waited for Andrew to speak first.

  Andrew didn’t like to stare at him too hard. Of course, he could be a Tibetan, though he had never seen one who resembled him. He was big and big- bellied. The shape of his head was something like an owl’s, and he had a nose not unlike an owl’s beak, which is something rare in that part of the world. He looked to be more than sixty years old, but strong and healthy. He was the only one of that party who didn’t seem to have suffered much from the privation that had weakened the others.

  Instead of speaking Andrew handed him an automatic and some reloads. He made no comment. He simply buttoned the pistol inside his overcoat and stowed the reloads in his bokkus. Then Andrew handed him the can of salmon with as much courtesy as could be managed in the lee of a rock in a ninety-mile gale. He understood perfectly. The whorls of wrinkles on his leathery face danced with merriment, although his mouth didn’t move. He drank the half-frozen liquid out of the can and saved the salmon for later, glancing sideways at the phony high lama and then, at last, blinking at Elsa. He seemed to look right through her to the thought beneath. Then his lips moved.

  “Tum-Glain!” he said suddenly. “Elsa!” Then he turned and walked back to his dying friend. There he sat down and ate the salmon, using finger and thumb, reminiscently, as if recalling bygone better days.

  “He recognizes you all right,” said Andrew.

  “Of course he does! Andrew, he isn’t a fighting man. Why did you give him that automatic?”

  “You saw him accept it, didn’t you? D’you know a better way to explain I’m his friend without arguing about it? Do you feel any clairvoyant communication from him?”

  “No, Andrew, none. Not any — not even a trace — all flat calm.”

  “If he’s the man you think he is, there’s a price on his head. He’s a prisoner, for sale, worth m
ore alive than dead. If they can avoid it they won’t murder him. So, if he’s on our side, and secretly armed, that gives us a double edge. But this isn’t going to be as simple as all that. No fighting, I think. Do you see what’s happening? Bulah Singh’s already in a whispering deal with the real leader — that man who keeps his face half covered. Jesus! If I have to—”

  But he didn’t have to force a show-down at the moment. Bulah Singh spotted his intention and crawled away to watch two of Andrew’s men pitching his tent. So Andrew bided his time. He ordered Bompo Tsering to pull the covers off two yakloads and make a separate shelter for the man who was dying. That made the phony lama furious. He faced the storm and came out to pick a quarrel about it, demanding in coarse vernacular:

  “Why did you give that good foreign food to my menial, instead of to me? Why do you pitch for him a separate shelter, instead of for me?”

  Elsa stood by to interpret. “Tell him,” said Andrew, “I supposed he’d prefer whiskey.”

  Then he knew for a positive fact that the man was a fraud. The phony lama shook his head. But his eyes gave him away. He wanted whiskey. He craved it. Now he knew there was some to be had, he intended to get it. He returned to his place, where he listened with very obvious resentment to remarks from the man who kept the lower part of his face covered. Andrew was adding fact to fact, beginning to feel he could command the situation. He said so to Elsa.

  “But it’s a case of rule or ruin. They believe they’ve got me belly upward on the half-shell. They think they can take over whenever they please.”

  After he had got the bivouac to rights, and had fed the animals, he went and helped Bompo Tsering carry the dying man into the tent he had made from two yakload covers. They were very careful to submit the man to no indignities. As Bompo Tsering remarked; a dying man is very near to the spirits of the other world, and who knows what those spirits might do to anyone who is careless? But Andrew did get a look at the man’s shirt. It was silk. And he saw the skin of his neck, where the weather hadn’t touched it and the Tibetan dirt hadn’t stuck. He was as clean as Old Ugly-face, who was as clean as the wind. And he had the same well-bred air of taking privilege for granted. He was too busy dying to pay much attention to Andrew, but he fetched up a smile from somewhere along with a little blood, and he murmured a blessing, moving his right hand. No menial would have dared to do that.