Interesting Times

'What does that mean?'

'It means each one must be the same as the one before. Oh, dear. I thought it would just be entertainment. I didn't think people would take it seriously. I do hope it's not causing too much bother.'

Well, your revolutionaries are still at the slogan-and-poster stage, but I shouldn't think that'll count for much if they're caught.'

'Oh, dear.'

'How come you're still alive?'

'I don't know. I think they may have forgotten about me. That tends to happen, you know. It's the paperwork. Someone makes the wrong stroke with the brush or forgets to copy a line. I believe it happens a lot.'

'You mean that there's people in prison and no-one can remember why?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Then why don't they set them free?'

'I suppose it is felt that they must have done something. All in all, I'm afraid our government does leave something to be desired.'

'Like a new government.'

'Oh, dear. You could get locked up for saying things like that.'

People slept, but the Forbidden City never slept. Torches flickered all night in the great Bureaux as the ceaseless business of Empire went on.

This largely involved, as Mr Saveloy had said, moving paper.

Six Beneficent Winds was Deputy District Administrator for the Langtang district, and good at a job which he rather enjoyed. He was not a wicked man.

True, he had the same sense of humour as a chicken casserole. True, he played the accordion for amusement, and disliked cats intensely, and had a habit of dabbing his upper lip with his napkin after his tea ceremony in a way that had made Mrs Beneficent Winds commit murder in her mind on a regular basis over the years. And he kept his money in a small leather shovel purse, and counted it out very thoroughly whenever he made a purchase, especially if there was a queue behind him.

But on the other hand, he was kind to animals and made small but regular contributions to charity. He frequently gave moderate sums to beggars in the street, although he made a note of this in the little notebook he always carried to remind him to visit them in his official capacity later on.

And he never took away from people more money than they actually had.

He was also, unusually for men employed in the Forbidden City after dark, not a eunuch. Guards were not eunuchs, of course, and people had got around this by classifying them officially as furniture. And it had been found that tax officials also needed every faculty at their disposal to combat the wiles of the average peasant, who had this regrettable tendency to avoid paying taxes.

There were much nastier people in the building than Six Beneficent Winds and it was therefore just his inauspicious luck that his paper and bamboo door slid aside to reveal seven strange-looking old eunuchs, one of them in a wheeled contrivance.

They didn't even bow, let alone fall on their knees. And he not only had an official red hat but it had a white button on it!

His brush dropped from his hands when the men wandered into his office as if they owned it. One of them started poking holes in the wall and speaking gibberish.

'Hey, the walls are just made of paper! Hey, look, if you lick your finger it goes right through! See?'

'I will call for the guards and have you all flogged!' shouted Six Beneficent Winds, his temper moderated slightly by the extreme age of the visitors.

'What did he say?'

'He said he'd call for the guards.'

'Ooo, yes. Please let him call for the guards!'

'No, we don't want that yet. Act normally.'

'You mean cut his throat?'

'I meant a more normal kind of normally.'

'It's what I call normal.'

One of the old men faced the speechless official and gave him a big grin.

'Excuse us, your supreme… oh dear, what's the word?… pushcart sail?… immense rock?… ah, yes… venerableness, but we seem to be a little lost.'

A couple of the old men shuffled around behind Six Beneficent Winds and started to read, or at least try to read, what he'd been working on. A sheet of paper was snatched from his hand.

'What's this say, Teach?'

'Let me see… 'The first wind of autumn shakes the lotus flower. Seven Lucky Logs to pay one pig and three [looks like a four-armed man waving a flag] of rice on pain of having his [rather a stylized thing here, can't quite make it out] struck with many blows. By order of Six Beneficent Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang.''

There was a subtle change among the old men. Now they were all grinning, but not in a way that gave him any comfort. One of them, with teeth like diamonds, leaned towards him and said, in bad Agatean:

'You are a tax collector, Mr Knob on Your Hat?'

Six Beneficent Winds wondered if he'd be able to summon the guard. There was something terrible about these old men. They weren't venerable at all. They were horribly menacing and, although he couldn't see any obvious weapons, he knew for a cold frozen fact that he wouldn't be able to get out more than the first syllable before he'd be killed. Besides, his throat had gone dry and his pants had gone wet.

'Nothing wrong with being a tax collector…' he croaked.

'We never said that,' said Diamond Teeth. 'We always like to meet tax collectors.'

'Some of our most favouritest people, tax collectors,' said another old man.

'Saves a lot of trouble,' said Diamond Teeth.

'Yeah,' said a third old man. 'Like, it means you don't have to go from house to house killin' everyone for their valuables, you just wait and kill the—'

'Gentlemen, can I have a word?'

The speaker was the slightly goat-faced one that didn't seem quite so unpleasant as the others. The terrible men clustered around him and Six Beneficent Winds heard the strange syllables of a coarse foreign tongue:

'What? But he's a tax collector! That's what they're for!'

'Whut?'

'A firm tax base is the foundation of sound governance, gentlemen. Please trust me.'

'I understood all of that up to 'A firm tax'.'

'Nevertheless, no useful purpose will be served by killing this hard-working tax gatherer.'

'He'd be dead. I call that useful.'

There was some more of the same. Six Beneficent Winds jumped when the group broke up and the goat- faced man gave him a smile.

'My humble friends are overawed by your… variety of plum… small knife for cutting seaweed… presence, noble sir,' he said, his every word slandered by Truckle's vigorous gesticulations behind his back.

'How about if we just cut a bit off?'

'Whut?'

'How did you get in here?' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'There are many strong guards.'

'I knew we missed something,' said Diamond Teeth.

'We would like you to show us around the Forbidden City,' said Goat Face. 'My name is… Mr Stuffed Tube, I think you would call it. Yes. Stuffed Tube, I'm pretty sure—'