Snake Agent

by Liz Williams

  “I’ll be all right,” Chen said, trying to sound sincere. “Don’t worry. And keep an eye on No Ro Shi, whatever you do.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Lao said, with something of a return to form. “I’m not letting that mad bastard out of my sight until doomsday. Or until you come back. Whichever’s first. By the way—” he paused.

  “What?”

  “If that demon shows up—the vice cop.”

  “What about him?”

  “What shall I tell him?”

  Chen paused for thought.

  “Tell him the truth. Tell him where I’ve gone. But don’t tell him the whole reason why. Just let him know I’m going after whoever snatched Tang.”

  “And if he doesn’t believe me?”

  “Don’t give him the luxury of choice. You’ll just have to be especially convincing.”

  He reached out and gripped Lao’s hand. “Lao—thanks.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Lao said grimly, returning the grip for an instant. He stepped backwards, leaving Chen standing in the middle of the circle. “You’re certain this will work?” he asked, picking up the laptop and settling it onto his bony knees.

  “Yes, I’m certain. Pretty sure, anyway,” Chen said, making a quick epistemological adjustment. “All you have to do is run the program.”

  “And you’ve done this before?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly. Usually, the goddess herself recites the litany, but it’s some nineteen pages of ancient Mandarin and, frankly, I haven’t had the time to actually learn it myself, so it didn’t seem right to ask you to do so. That’s why I digitized it instead.”

  “Is that likely to make a difference?” Lao asked, alarmed.

  “Well, it’s true that there is a bit of a difference between the intonations of an actual deity from the Celestial Shores and a Sony-Hyundai voice synthesizer, but I’m hoping the effect will be the same,” Chen said, more flippantly than he felt. “Right,” he added, leaning down to touch a lighter to the incense sticks and stepping back as each one flared into fragrant smoke. “Off we go.”

  Through the incense haze he saw Lao’s long fingers hovering over the keyboard of the laptop, and heard the first words of the litany that would send him down to the Night Harbor and on to Hell. He did not need to glance behind him to see that he had the goddess’ full attention. He could feel her lambent eyes boring into the back of his head like a drill, and the full weight of her disapproval felt as though someone had thrown a bucket of icy water over him.

  “Chen Wei!” The voice was a familiar one, and it echoed inside his head as if nothing lay between the twin walls of his skull. Chen concentrated on the uneven, artificial voice of the litany. “Chen, do you think I don’t know what you are doing?” Uncanny, thought Chen, how the goddess’ voice could sound so like that of his own mother in one of her more imperious moods, yet he could not find it surprising. He did not reply.

  “If you are following her, Chen, the little demon whom you took to your bed, then all that you can ever be is one man. One man, without my protection, against the armies and legions of Hell. I am compassionate beyond measure, but even my com­passion has limits.”

  In the matter of prejudice, Chen thought, we are all the same. Goddess and demon, human and monster: none of us understand difference, but at least some of us make the effort to try.

  “Do you have the temerity to compare yourself to me?” the goddess asked incredulously, and this time Chen flinched. All Heaven’s icy command was behind those words. Yes, she is the compassionate and the merciful, but she is also a goddess, and woe betide anyone who forgets that. But the litany was winding to its end. He could feel the heat rising, spiraling in the smoky air that filled the temple, burning through the soles of his shoes and snatching at the back of his throat. His head was beginning to ring like a bell, and a band akin to the iron grasp of a migraine seized his skull with crushing force.

  “Chen Wei!” someone cried, but through the pain Chen could not tell whether it was the goddess or Lao, or some other, crying out his name from the depths of the abyss. Words echoed in his head: if you gaze into the abyss, sooner or later you will find it looking back at you. And then the temple was stripped away and he was standing in the great hallway that was the entrance to the Night Harbor, its iron doors at his back.

  Even the air was different in this antechamber between the worlds. It crackled with anticipation, like the wind before a storm. Shadows chased across the hall, darting up into the metal lattice of the immense and distant ceiling. This portal of the Night Harbor reminded Chen of a Victorian railway station that he had once visited in London: there was something echoing and gloomy about it, with the edge of anticipation that one found in places where journeys were about to be made. From the corner of his eye Chen glimpsed a vast, milling crowd of people: both old and young, but all of them pale and weary. When he turned to gaze at them directly, however, he was unsurprised to see that there was no one there. The dark, indistinct form of a warrant officer was bringing a new ghost through the doors. At the far end of the hallway, seated behind an ornate desk, sat a receptionist filing her talons. Chen frowned, though he knew that administrative tasks were shared equally between the worlds and it was often true that demons were rather easier to deal with than the frequently hide-bound personnel from the Celestial Realms. Ignoring the insubstantial queue, Chen walked up to the desk. It was hard to get his balance: he found himself lurching as though he’d just stepped ashore, which to Chen raised interesting questions about the exact nature of gravity. When he reached the desk, he presented his credentials. The girl looked up. She was chewing something, Chen noted with distaste. Her gaze flickered incuriously across Chen, who said, “Police Department, Liaison Division. I’ll be going to Hell.”

  He was expecting an argument over his authorization, but the girl merely shifted whatever it was she was chewing to the other side of her cheek and flicked up some records on a computer that looked as though it had been carved out of ebony. Her talons clicked across bone keys. She mumbled, “All right, then. Through there.”

  “It’s all right if I go straight through?” Chen asked sharply, checking. The girl shrugged. She took a glutinous red lump out of her mouth, studied it for a moment, then replaced it. Taking this for assent, Chen went swiftly to the indicated door and pressed his scarred palm against its carved iron surface. There was a sudden warmth beneath his hand. He could feel a hundred pairs of envious eyes on his back as the door opened and he stepped cautiously through.

  The Night Harbor was the greatest nexus between the worlds. It resembled such sites as Kuan Yin’s temple and the Pellucid Island Opera House, but unlike these places, which remained firmly rooted in their own particular worlds, the Night Harbor constantly shifted and changed. It seemed to Chen to contain all possibilities at once, all destinations. Blossoms drifted by, fragile as snow, from the peach trees of Heaven’s shores; turning to flakes of ice as Hell’s configurations took precedence. Faces drifted by Chen: a young man whose mouth formed a gaping zero of horror; a girl in a Western wedding dress as white as the peach blossoms and ashes through which she was floating. Her dress was on fire, yet unconsumed. Pagodas reconstructed themselves against a sky that altered from moment to moment, and for a dis­orienting minute­ Chen found himself gazing up through water. His hand groped in his breast pocket and located the rosary, which anchored him a little. Chen knew that the embarkation queues were to be found in what passed for the south of the port area, as far as one could go from the entry doors before reaching the shores of the Sea of Night, but given the alchemical landscape in which he currently stood, finding a particular direction was not easy. Mountains streamed by; firecrackers thrown by a group of spectral children, their mouths open in silent, frozen laughter, snapped at his feet. Before his eyes they turned to dog spirits, the hounds of Hell, and he recognized the tottering buildings of Dog Village. There was an ululating howl as something smelled live meat. Teeth snapped at Ch
en’s arm and he turned, whipping the rosary across a long, dark muzzle. The spirit wailed, and fell back to flee on two spindly legs. Chen hunched his head into his shoulders, gripped his rosary and fled past the rickety houses with a snarl echoing in his ears.

  Then the Dog Village was gone: the ground on which he walked was suddenly the whole of China and his head was in the clouds. Concentrate, thought Chen. Concentrate. He thought of Comrade No Ro Shi, the demon-hunter, attempting to make sense of these anarchic surroundings and smiled. Definitely not the party line; No Ro Shi would disapprove, deny, refuse to see. Perhaps No Ro Shi’s way was the best after all; perhaps Chen should have taken a firmer stance in the matter of his own ideological convictions, but Chen could not resist the subtle appeal of shades of gray, which maybe made him the best person to navigate these shadowy shores after all. Maybe.

  He could see something in the distance: a thin dark line like a crack in the world. It was not the first sight Chen had had of the Sea of Night, and he had crossed it in his travels between the worlds, in this life and in others, but it never failed to chill him. It was the great gulf, the line between Life and Death, and he could not help but be afraid. He came to the bridge across the abyss, and here Chen halted. He hated heights, and the bridge was no more than a few inches wide, as thin as a razor. Chen, panicking, thought: I can’t do it. I can’t; I’ll have to go back. You’ve done it before, his rational self reminded him. But he could not imagine how. Inari’s face swam before his mind’s eye and then something striped and dark stepped in front of him. It was the badger. Dimly, Chen remembered a shape streaking into the circle at the moment of his departure from the temple. Black eyes gazed up at him.

  “Follow me,” the badger said without compassion. It placed a clawed foot on the bridge and stepped forwards. Fixing his gaze on the back of the badger’s striped head, pointing like an arrow to safety and the other side, Chen took a deep breath and followed.

  After what seemed like an eternity, they stepped safely onto the dock on the other side. The badger glanced back indifferently, as though it mattered little whether Chen had fallen silently into the abyss, but Chen could read much into that glance.

  “Thank you,” he sighed. He had rarely been more pleased to be on solid ground. He felt shaky and weak, as though death had come to claim him after all. The badger inclined its head in what might have been a bow.

  As they drew nearer to the long quay, bypassing the scales that weighed the souls and the great mirror that would tell each one where its future lay, Chen could see the line of souls waiting patiently for the next boat across the Sea of Night. The quay itself was made of human teeth, the last payment made by the abandoned flesh, and it towered high above the transmuting ground of the port. A sharp, rickety tier of bone-steps led upwards. Chen took a deep breath of unnatural air and started climbing. The steps crunched beneath his feet. The badger glided alongside. Curious faces turned to watch their progress, until a swarm of spirits had gathered at the side of the quay. At last Chen stepped onto the quay itself and looked around him. There must have been a hundred spirits gathered there, still wearing the vestiges of their living selves. Most of them, Chen was glad to see, were quite old, a startling tribute to Singapore Three’s rather less-than-adequate health-care system, but one or two small spirits flickered around his ankles like dogs and he saw again the girl in the burning wedding dress. Chen shivered, wondering what her story might be. There was also a sullen group of young men; the ritual scars on their forearms fading with the memory of the flesh but still sufficient to identify them as members of Singapore Three’s various gangs. Even in death, it seemed, they kept to their tribes. Chen looked around him. There was no sign of the boat that traveled the Sea of Night. The spirits of the elderly people clustered around Chen, bewildered and vague, as if they had not yet realized they were no longer alive. He said, “I’m looking for the boat across the sea. Does anyone know when it leaves?” Wondering, pale eyes widened at the sound of Chen’s voice, which seemed to echo out across the darkness beyond. Then the ghost of a middle-aged woman stepped forward; Chen could see the traces of an open wound carved down her smiling face. Her form was still clad in the red robes of a Buddhist nun. Her eyes narrowed as she saw him, with something that might momentarily have been envy.

  “You’re alive,” she said, wonderingly.

  “I know,” Chen said, feeling guilty. “I’m with the police liaison department. I’m traveling to Hell.”

  “You’re a brave man. Or a reckless one.”

  “I’m never sure which, myself. Do you know where the boat is?”

  “It’s on the other side of the dock. These folk are waiting for their final documents to be processed. Do you have proper papers?”

  Chen nodded.

  “Then come with me.”

  Chen accompanied her through the crowd. The nun walked slowly, limping. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said over her shadowy shoulder. “Still not quite used to being dead yet. You forget, don’t you?”

  “How did it happen?” Chen asked diffidently. He had never quite ceased to feel that this was a somewhat insensitive question, but the dead seemed to take a grisly enthusiasm in talking about their means of demise.

  “Kid in a stolen Daewoo Wanderer. Knocked me off my bike last night,” the nun said. “It was very quick. I was a bit cross at first, then I thought, well, there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s not as if it’s the first time, after all.”

  “We’ll all end up here in the end,” Chen said.

  “We will indeed. Over and over again … At least I know where I’m going. Half these poor souls haven’t worked out what’s happened to them yet, and not all of them are bound for the Celestial Shores … or Hell by choice, like yourself.” She paused, nodding in the direction of a small, frail figure with its head bowed over its knees. “Like that poor soul.”

  The spirit looked up, and Chen saw with a jolt that it was the ghost of Mrs Tang. She gazed at him dully; there was no spark of recognition in her pale eyes.

  “Wait a moment,” Chen said. He sat down beside her, with the nun hovering solicitously nearby. As gently as he could, he said, “Mrs Tang? I’m so sorry we couldn’t do more to help you. We tried to save you, you know, but I’m afraid there was nothing we could do.”

  “Oh,” Mrs Tang said. A vague comprehension washed over her features. “It’s you. And you’re still alive … You living people all look the same to me, now—isn’t that odd? But I do remember … yes. You tried to help, you and that tall man with the moustache.” Her face twisted. “I was possessed, wasn’t I? I don’t like to remember.”

  “It’s all right,” Chen said hastily. “Don’t think about it. It’s over.”

  “It was my husband, of course,” Mrs Tang said numbly. “At first I tried to pretend that it was nothing to do with him—Pearl’s death, I mean. But I had my suspicions, and at last I decided to do something. I couldn’t prove anything, and then I heard of you. So I went to see you. And he found out. He—did something. Called something up, to make me talk.”

  “Your husband’s fallen foul of whoever he was in league with,” Chen said. “Don’t worry. He’s already met his just desserts. But we still don’t know who he was working with. Do you have any idea?” At his shoulder, the nun shifted, a little impatiently, but having found Mrs Tang, Chen was reluctant to relinquish his unexpected good luck.

  “I don’t know much,” Mrs Tang said slowly. “I know he had some sort of arrangement with the Ministry of Wealth, but he didn’t think they were doing enough for him. So he went to someone else instead.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “Another Ministry, of Hell.” The ghost of Mrs Tang shivered. “I don’t know which one, exactly—there are lots, aren’t there? I think it was one of the ones to do with disease.”

  “Mrs Tang,” Chen said, trying not to look too exultant. “Would you be prepared to testify?”

  “Against my husband?” Mrs Tang asked bitterly. “
There’s nothing I’d like better—he killed me, didn’t he? He’s the reason I’m sitting in the middle of this—this nowhere. But you have to understand, Detective—I know what he can do now. I’m sure he’s got contacts in the otherworld—in Hell. I don’t even know if they’ll let me into Heaven. I’ve never really been religious, you see; I never used to believe in any of this stuff before I came to Singapore Three and even then I thought it was just superstition.”

  Chen could believe this, thinking of chic Mrs Tang as she had been in life. Now, stripped of her designer clothes and her status and social position, she was nothing more than just another shade. It had often occurred to Chen how shattering it must be for someone who had devoted their whole life to material possessions to suddenly find themselves in a world where status depended on entirely more intangible matters. He glanced across at the nun, whose feet were planted squarely on the nebulous surface of the quay and who could not have looked so very different from her appearance in life. “And if I end up in Hell and I testify,” Mrs Tang went on, “who knows what he might do?” Her hands wrung together in her lap. “I used to think there was nothing worse than death, and now—”

  “Listen,” Chen said. “Let’s be practical. Your documents haven’t been processed yet. We don’t know where you’re heading, and it may very well be that you’ll get into Heaven after all. In that case, you’ll have automatic immunity—the Celestial Realms look after their own. If you go—elsewhere, there may still be something we can do to protect you.”

  “Detective?” Mrs Tang said. “What happens now? I know what the religious people say, but what really happens when you die? I mean, after this? When will I be reincarnated? And what as?”

  Chen sighed. “Mrs Tang, even I can’t say for sure, and I’ve traveled between the worlds several times as a living person. No one is permitted to remember their voyage across the Sea of Night. All souls are sent back—reincarnated—after their time in Heaven or Hell. But we’re not granted any real understanding of the mechanics of the process—the gods deem it best that we don’t know, or if they tell us, then we forget. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”