a bridge for you to climb, so that you may rejoin the Star Shepherd in Heaven, but it is illegal for one who has not completed the full cycle around the Great Wheel of Transmigrations to spend a full year in Heaven. On the first day of the first moon you must summon the birds once more, and they will build the bridge that will return you to earth, and on the seventh day of the seventh moon you will be allowed to climb once more to Heaven, and so it will continue throughout eternity because if the Star Shepherd doesn't give you the Peach of Immortality, he's a greater fool than I think he is.’
“The August Personage of Jade waggled a finger in front of the peasant girl's nose to emphasize the importance of what he was saying.
“ ‘Jade Pearl, do not forget the seventh day of the seventh moon! The conditions will be entered in the Imperial Book of Etiquette, which not even I am allowed to disobey, and if you fail to return to the Star Shepherd on the appointed day you will pass from the protection of Heaven. The Imperial Book of Etiquette does not allow for excuses,’ the emperor said urgently. ‘The gods will be forbidden to help you, and none but a mortal can restore you to Heaven, and at a conservative estimate the odds against somebody pulling off a trick like that are one in ten thousand billion trillion. Do you understand me?’
“ ‘I hear and obey,’ Jade Pearl whispered.
“So the peasant girl knelt before the Emperor of Heaven and he placed the little gold crown upon her head. ‘Arise, Princess of Birds!’ he commanded, and when Jade Pearl stood up she was astonished to see that she shone with a divine light. ‘Call your subjects!’ the emperor commanded, and when she called to the birds a great song of joy arose, and all the birds of China came flying toward their princess. They carried green twigs and branches, and with these they built a bridge that stretched up to the stars. Jade Pearl climbed the bridge to Heaven, and the Star Shepherd married the Princess of Birds and gave her the Peach of Immortality, and on the first day of the first moon they parted with many tears and the beautiful Bridge of Birds returned Jade Pearl to earth.
“Heaven saw to it that her little village lacked for nothing, so that the princess could spend her time singing songs and weaving daisy chains. She had three girls from her own village as handmaidens, Snowgoose, Little Ping, and Autumn Moon, and she had a goat and a cat and a little dog to help her pass the time. Still, it seemed an eternity before the seventh day of the seventh moon arrived. Jade Pearl kissed her handmaidens and bowed to her parents. Then she called to the birds, and the peasants of China gazed up in wonder and delight as the Bridge of Birds ascended to the stars, and the Princess of Birds ran to the arms of the Star Shepherd, and they lived…”
Henpecked Ho sighed and shrugged.
“Happily ever after?” he said. “You see, that's as far as I had gone when my dear wife had the fragments destroyed. If they lived happily ever after, I cannot imagine why half of the tale remained to be deciphered, although at some point it would most certainly have returned to ginseng lore. What do you think, Li Kao?”
“Ho, they did not live happily ever after, and I strongly suspect that your tablets did not preserve an ancient fairy tale,” Master Li said grimly. “When history crumbles into dust, the events of history are sometimes preserved in the form of myth or fable, and I am rash enough to believe that if Ox and I can get our hands on one or two more missing pieces, we will have the solution to a rather baffling puzzle.”
Li Kao chewed thoughtfully on his beard, and then he said,
“Ho, Ox and I are wrapped in so many chains that we can't move, you are attached to the wall by a leg chain, this dungeon is solid rock, the torture chamber is crammed with soldiers, we are eleven stories beneath the earth, and each landing is guarded by more soldiers. The palace is swarming with the army of the Ancestress, the army of the Duke of Ch'in is camped outside the walls, and Ox and I must escape from here immediately. Unless you look forward to being drawn and quartered, I suggest that you accompany us.”
“I think that's a splendid idea,” said Henpecked Ho.
25. The Triumph of Henpecked Ho
You who know so much more about the world than does Number Ten Ox will have already figured out six or seven different ways to escape from that place, and if you will bear the momentary indignity of imagining that you are soldiers in the service of the Duke of Ch'in we will see if any of your methods is similar to that of Li Kao.
Very well, you are soldiers who have been forced to stand guard in a loathsome torture chamber deep in the bowels of the earth, where slimy green water drips from black stone walls, and sickly white cockroaches crawl through puddles of blood, and fetid feverish odors mingle with the stench of discarded intestines and eyeballs. A horrible scream splits the air! The Key Rabbit topples over in a dead faint, and you follow the executioner into an adjoining dungeon where a ghastly spectacle greets your bulging eyes.
An elderly gentleman of scholarly mien lurches in lunatic circles at the end of a leg chain, frantically clawing at his throat. His face and hands are covered with loathsome black splotches, and his blotched black tongue protrudes most unpleasantly, and black saliva spurts and dribbles from his blotched lips. His eyes roll up until only the whites are visible, and he does an acrobatic somersault and lands upon his back. His hands spastically pound the floor. He bounces rigidly up and down, jerks, twitches, spurts more saliva, and finally comes to rest as stiff as a board.
Another gentleman who is even more ancient, and who is wrapped in so many chains that he can't move, views the scene with eyes that bulge in terror and screams, “The cockroaches! For the love of Buddha, look at the cockroaches!”
The black wine called Wu-fan is invisible upon a black stone floor, and you cannot possibly see that the pounding hands of the deceased scholar have uncovered a trail of it, and that the trail leads to large invisible ideographs that are traced upon a black stone wall. What you do see is that ten thousand repulsive white cockroaches are scrambling frantically across the floor, dashing up the wall, and writhing in artistic patterns upon thick sweet invisible lines that spell out the following message from the Board of Health:
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
IT IS THE PLAGUE OF
THE TEN THOUSAND
PESTILENTIAL PUTRESCENCES!
I sincerely doubt that you will stand there and make learned comments concerning the calligraphy of insects.
It was all up to Henpecked Ho, and his timing couldn't have been better. The executioner turned and fled. Ho jerked his leg chain taut and the executioner tripped and fell to the floor, where he was pounded into jelly by the feet of the fleeing soldiers who dashed back into the torture chamber, scooped up the Key Rabbit, who had just regained his consciousness and his feet, and carried him up the stairs like a minnow riding the quest of a tidal wave. “Run for your lives!” they screamed. “It is the plague of the ten thousand pestilential putrescences!” The pounding feet and shrieking voices faded away and Henpecked Ho collected the keys from the flattened form of the executioner. His eyes were worried as he unlocked his leg chain and started to work on ours.
“Do you think that I overdid the saliva?” he asked in a small voice.
“It was perfect,” I said.
“Do you really think so? I was afraid that the final spurt and dribble might appear to be in poor taste.”
“When you do it again, don't change a single spurt or dribble,” Master Li said firmly.
The last chain fell away, and it felt marvelous to stand up and stretch my limbs. We walked into the torture chamber and collected weapons. Li Kao filled his belt with daggers, and I took a sword and a spear. Henpecked Ho had his heart set on the monstrous axe that was used for decapitation, but since he was quite incapable of lifting it, he was forced to settle for a small double-bladed model. Li Kao started leisurely for the stairs.
“There is no hurry,” he explained. “The soldiers from the torture chamber will have collected the soldiers on the landings, and by the time they burst into the palace they will have become a large screaming mob. Anyone who isn't trampled flat will dash into the courtyard, where they will collect a couple of divisions from the army of the Ancestress, and when they hit the wall I doubt that a stone will remain standing. They will then collect the army of the Duke of Ch'in and bolt hysterically through the city and reduce it to rubble, and the citizens who survive will
