Dragon Dance Read online

  The Indians were still coming up. Two of them carried between them a female corpse. Night Eagle and Stone Blade were the bearers: the body was that of Little Green Bird.

  “Slavery’s slavery,” Brad said. “And death is death. There’s no way of prettying them up.”

  4

  THE HARBOUR WAS IMPRESSIVE; BUSIER and more crowded than any Simon had seen, though the vessels were small by QE2 standards. Their junk was among the largest. But the really amazing thing was that, while most were sailing ships, there were paddleboats as well; and the paddleboats carried tall thin chimneys puffing black smoke.

  “So they have steam power,” Brad said. “I suppose it’s not all that improbable when you think about it. The Chinese were skilled metallurgists when King Alfred was burning the cakes. Marco Polo made a comment on the amount of black stone there was lying around.”

  “Coal?”

  Brad nodded. “It’s not unreasonable that a Chinese Watt could have come up with steam propulsion.”

  “So why is this a sailing junk—and most of the other ships, for that matter?”

  “Coal’s a bulky fuel, too bulky for long voyages unless you make the leap in scale to really big carriers—and that depended on the massive increase in trading that came in with capitalism. And remember, the Chinese despised traders. I’d guess the skippers of those paddle steamers rank way below Chung-tu socially.”

  It was a grey calm morning, and the junk steered a slow course through the assembly of craft. While the Indians squatted apathetically in a well deck aft of the main mast, the Chinese seamen were everywhere, chattering excitedly.

  Brad was staring with fascination at the approaching shore. Behind and between the wharves, Simon saw the roofs of a large town, a city more likely. Further back, misty hills merged with the drab sky.

  Brad asked sharply: “Did you see that?”

  “What?”

  “On that waterfront street—no, it’s gone.”

  “What was it?”

  “A wagon.”

  “I can see dozens of them.”

  “A steam wagon,” Brad said. “But again, why not?”

  • • •

  Chung-tu did not appear until they were tying up. He wore a tunic of creamy stiff brocade with jade buttons, over green silk trousers and pearl-studded pointed shoes, and carried an enamelled fly whisk. He also had a tall green silk hat, embroidered with pearls. He looked truly comic, but Simon decided against laughing.

  Chung-tu took up a position on the port side and stayed there while a gangplank was laid and secured. Simon expected him to go ashore, but he remained where he was. Minutes passed.

  Brad was twitching. “What’s this about?”

  “I don’t know. Waiting for Customs?”

  Gulls had followed them most of the morning and were now screaming round the stern. They were smaller than the ones Simon remembered, with chocolate heads on top of white blue-winged bodies, but they made at least as much noise as herring gulls. He was watching them when Brad nudged him.

  A double line of soldiers had appeared on the wharf. They wore helmets and breastplates, and escorted a litter borne by half a dozen loin-clothed American Indians, which was set down near the foot of the gangplank. The litter’s curtains were parted, and the officer in charge helped someone out and deferentially escorted him on board the junk.

  The newcomer was dressed even more magnificently than Chung-tu. His crimson silk robe was crusted with gold, and a high peaked hat carried an ornate gold and silver superstructure. He was tall and portly. Chung-tu greeted him with a very low bow, then led him to the spot where his human cargo squatted forlornly.

  The crimson-robed man moved slowly among the Indians, appraising them. He stared into a face here, pinched an arm there. After the inspection, he turned to Chung-tu and spoke briefly; his voice sounded approving. The officer barked a command, and two soldiers came on board and shepherded the Indians down the gangplank and away along the wharf.

  The Indians outnumbered their guards forty or fifty to one. If they scattered and ran, some would be bound to get clear. Were they still hypnotized, Simon wondered? But where, anyway, could they run to, in a land where their physical appearance all too plainly branded them as foreigners? It reminded him, depressingly, that the same applied to Brad and himself.

  Chung-tu gestured respectfully in the direction of his cabin. The big man started to move that way, then stopped. His glance had taken in Simon and Brad. He asked a question and, when Chung-tu answered, strode to where they stood.

  At close quarters, his dress and accoutrements were even more obviously those of a very important man. Simon was wondering just how important when Chung-tu screamed an order: “Make obeisance!”

  He wasted no time in obeying, but Chung-tu was not satisfied.

  “Lower! Prostrate your miserable bodies before His Supreme Excellence, the Lord Yuan Chu, Grand Chancellor to the ineffable and almighty Son of Heaven!”

  • • •

  The imperial palace was a conglomeration of buildings of varying shapes and sizes, interspersed with courts and gardens and walkways hung with flowering plants. It covered hundreds of acres, and a high stone wall separated it from the teeming city beyond. They were housed in one of the smaller outlying buildings, in the care of an old woman who chattered volubly in an unintelligible dialect.

  No one came near them for the remainder of the first day; nor on the following morning. Brad said: “I suppose Madam Butterfly”—he nodded towards the old lady—“would raise an alarm if we pushed off. Unless we tied her up and gagged her.”

  “I imagine she’d scream blue murder if we tried, and there are plenty of people within earshot.”

  “Or we could get away at night.”

  “There’s a wall, and a guard on the gate.”

  “The wall’s climbable. No more than ten feet, and not sheer.”

  “That would only get us into the city. We’d be spotted straight away as foreigners.”

  “At night all cats are grey. We could be clear before morning.”

  “We’d still be whites, in a country of yellows.”

  “We’ve been whites in a country of reds.”

  “I’ve got a feeling the Chinese might be more curious than the Indians were. And better organized.”

  “True,” Brad said. He looked about him. Their room was about twelve feet square, with walls and ceiling of bamboo and thick paper decorated with flowers. Two of the walls had windows, unglazed but fitted with roller blinds. The front door was open to a view of ornamental shrubs, and a smaller bead-curtained doorway at the back gave access to the room where the old lady lived, and made the tea which she brought them, along with little sweet cakes, at frequent intervals.

  “And so far it’s not so bad, is it? Not quite like a suite in the Waldorf Astoria, but not a prison cell, either.”

  That afternoon the Lord Yuan Chu honoured them with his presence. He brought with him a thin-faced man with a shaven head who wore a blue robe and carried a thin black stick, a sort of wand. The robe was of rough cotton, his sandals of simple leather. After they had made obeisance, Yuan Chu introduced him to them as Bei Tsu, a priest of Bei-Kun. He told them to obey the priest in all things, and got back into his litter.

  What followed was a variation, or variations, on the procedure Chung-tu had tried unsuccessfully on the junk. The priest had a small leather satchel and from it produced a disk which he held before them and spun, chanting in a soporific voice as he did so. When this had no effect, he switched to making complicated passes with his hands. That having failed, too, he called Madam Butterfly to pull down the blinds.

  In a low voice, Brad said: “I wonder if we should try going along with it—pretend we’re hypnotized?”

  “I think he’d know the difference.”

  “I guess you’re right. So, what next?”

  Madam Butterfly scuttled from the darkened room, and Bei Tsu brought out a small lamp, which he lit and set on the flo
or. Over it he placed a milky white translucent hemisphere. They squatted round it, and the chanting began again.

  It went on for a long time, and at one point Simon wondered if it might be having an effect: the surrounding darkness, the flickering light, and the monotonous chanting combined to make him drowsy. But realizing that, he fought against it. He thought discomfort might help, and braced his feet hard against the floor. Soon after, Bei Tsu dowsed the lamp and called Madam Butterfly to pull up the blinds.

  The session was not over, though. The priest turned from attempted hypnosis to lecturing. He was telling them about the Laws of Bei-Kun, and a couple of times paused to ask them if they understood. Simon nodded, though his feeling was he wouldn’t have understood it even in English.

  At the end, the priest clapped his hands, and Madam Butterfly brought in tea and cakes. Taking refreshment with them, Bei Tsu asked polite questions about the land of the Lomani, which Brad answered. He nodded in acceptance.

  “It has been said that the Lomani are people of earth, not of wind or fire. They cultivate second mind. It is not surprising you cannot enter into the way of peace.”

  When he had gone, Simon asked: “How much of that spiel did you get? Anything? First mind . . . second mind—what was he on about?”

  “I’m not sure. As far as I can make out, the basic notion is that we have two minds, not one. Second mind is our ordinary consciousness—what we do our thinking with. First mind is something deeper, more fundamental. Second mind works through the brain, first mind doesn’t.”

  “So what does it work through?” Brad shrugged. “And what are the laws that are so important?”

  “The law of suggestion seems to be the big one. First mind is supposed to be totally governed by suggestion. It does what it’s told—by second mind chiefly, but also by other people’s second minds. And according to Bei Tsu, by devils and by the divine spirit. Being hypnotized puts you into the way of peace, where first mind can function freely.”

  “And that means doing as it’s told by whoever’s on the other end of the hypnotizing. Great deal. Look where it got the Indians.”

  “I don’t see the point of it myself, but he claims there are advantages. Anyway, he wasn’t too surprised it didn’t work with us. People of earth, the Lomani.”

  “That sounded like a nasty crack.”

  “I don’t think it was meant to be. The Chinese regard all foreigners as beneath contempt, but they don’t mean it unkindly. I wonder what comes next, now we’ve been tried and found wanting a second time.”

  • • •

  What came next was a summons to the imperial palace. The Lord Chancellor’s bodyguard escorted them through a bewildering succession of courts and colonnades. At one point, they passed between bronze gates, guarded by tall soldiers, into what was obviously the citadel. On the far side, the gardens looked as immaculate as if they had been trimmed with nail scissors but were full of exotic plants, and pools dense with gross golden fish. Eventually, through an open bronze door decorated with a tangled riot of dragons in high relief, they entered a high-ceilinged room, more than a dozen yards across and twice that in length. The walls were deep crimson, inset with ivory panels carved to give an impression of a forest of moonlit trees. People in gaudy dress stood talking; one, who beckoned them imperiously to him, was the Lord Yuan Chu.

  They followed him over a deep-pile carpet in concentric arcs of yellow, successively deeper in shade. At the innermost arc, the Lord Chancellor dropped to his knees and touched the floor with his forehead, and Brad and Simon followed suit. There was a dais just ahead, with a golden throne. Simon guessed they were in the presence of the Son of Heaven himself, the Emperor.

  On the throne sat a figure wearing a tunic of bright yellow silk and a golden headdress trimmed with large pearls. Daring at last to look at him directly, Simon was amazed. He was expecting someone venerable, and probably very old; what he saw was a frail-looking boy of about fourteen.

  • • •

  The interview was brief. They were introduced by the Lord Chancellor, who thanked the Celestial One on their behalf for his condescension in admitting them to his sacred presence. Then, after the Emperor had uttered a few words of acknowledgement in a thin colourless voice, all three retired, walking awkwardly backwards. The escort returned them to their hut, and it seemed that was that.

  The following morning, though, the Lord Chancellor visited them again. He announced that a great honour, unprecedented for barbarians, had befallen them. The Son of Heaven had decreed that they were to join his household: they would take up residence in the Crimson Palace right away.

  He studied them with a cold eye.

  “It is not possible for you to show sufficient gratitude for this favour, Lomani. But at least you will remember your unworthiness of it. You will understand that to offend the Celestial One in the smallest item merits flogging; in any other than the smallest, death. Nor can you expect such a death to be easy.”

  He paused. “And remember, also, that the Lord Yuan Chu, the humble servant of the Son of Heaven, has a thousand eyes which watch you always.”

  The reality, after this menacing introduction, proved surprisingly pleasant. Rigid protocol governed the actual throne room, but outside it life was simpler. Four heavily armed Indian guards attended the Emperor constantly, but they were silent and unobtrusive, and one soon came to ignore their presence.

  There was certainly nothing frightening about the boy emperor, Cho-tsing. They had to greet him with the ritual of obeisance, but after that informality was the order of the day. He proved, in fact, to be an unassuming, almost diffident character.

  This emerged clearly when it came to playing games. There was, for instance, a ball game played in something like a squash court, in which you hit the ball with a bat strapped to the lower arm. He introduced them to this but was not himself very good at it. He demonstrated it playing against one of the guards, and it was obvious at once that the guard was playing for him to win. Simon, when the Emperor asked him to take the guard’s place, started on the same tack, but after a few minutes, in the excitement of the game, found himself playing naturally, which meant outplaying the Son of Heaven. A warning call from Brad, who was a spectator, brought him up short, and he resumed his previous tactic. But the Emperor stopped the game and, shaking his head in a very unimperial way, told him to play his best.

  He had been, as far as they could tell, totally deprived of companions of his own age—indeed, of any real companions—and it was surprising that, despite this, he could adapt so well to the concept of give and take. He seemed quite content to accept being beaten by Simon and subsequently by Brad. They were both naturally better than he was, and after a time, in fact, on the Emperor’s suggestion, they played more often against one another while he watched and cheerfully applauded.

  The situation was somewhat different with chess, which they played on a gold and silver squared board, with pieces carved from light and dark jade. There Simon was weakest, Brad and Cho-tsing more of an equal match. But there, too, after Brad had taken the measure of the Emperor’s play, he began to win consistently and again without any sign of resentment from his high-born opponent.

  The chess games tended to be drawn out, and during them Simon amused himself slamming a ball round the court, or teasing and being teased by the palace monkeys. These wore jewelled leather jackets, were noisy and lively, and could be vicious. Though not, Simon noticed, with Cho-tsing, who was gentle with them and to whom they were unfailingly gentle in return. He was plainly fond of them, and they of him—Simon wondered if anyone else here was.

  It was not that he was short of company. Apart from the Lord Chancellor, a frequent visitor, there were the ladies of the court who lived in adjoining palaces. His mother, also quiet and gentle, was a small plump woman, the Lady Cho Pi. He also had dozens of aunts and female cousins, chattering and giggling behind their fans. And after they had been in the palace a few days, they were summoned to the presence
of the Lady Lu T’Sa, the Dowager Empress.

  Her palace was almost as grand as the Emperor’s, lavishly decorated in ivory and jade and silver. She perched on an ebony and ivory throne, a tiny figure swathed in a cloak of green brocade studded with a swarm of silver dragonflies, wearing a high green headdress with ropes of amber and garnet beads. Her face was small and wrinkled—they guessed she was Cho-tsing’s grandmother, or possibly his great-grandmother. After she had questioned them in a thin rasping voice, she called Cho-tsing to private audience, and he was a long time absent.

  Brad said: “Did you see the way she and Yuan Chu looked at one another? No love lost there. Rivals, I’d guess, and in quite a serious way.”

  “Rivals?”

  “The one person who doesn’t have power here is Cho-tsing. He’s been Emperor since he was a child, but the Lady Lu T’Sa’s been in charge of things. She means to keep it like that, but I’ve a notion Yuan Chu may have other ideas. She mistrusts him, and therefore mistrusts us, since he’s introduced us to the palace. Those questions, wanting to know exactly which part of the Western empire we came from . . . and that remark at the end—that she’d met other Lomani in her long life, but we were different . . .”

  “If she does mistrust us, does it mean we could be in trouble?”

  “I don’t think right now, but it bears watching.”

  Simon thought about it. “Do you think Yuan Chu did have some special reason for bringing us into the palace? And if so, what?”

  “Probably yes to the first. On the second, I don’t know. It may be connected with our not being hypnotizable, but it could also be that he thought he might be able to control Cho-tsing through us, if we became his friends. And that he was ripe for a change from all these women around him.”

  “There are a lot of women,” Simon added, as a random thought. “And they all walk funny.”

  “It’s their feet.”

  “Is it?” Simon frowned. “You can’t see their feet, with those dresses sweeping the floor.”