The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  He shrugged again. “Nevertheless, they have things in common with the Jews. They slaughter their animals in a ceremonial manner almost kasher, except that they do not remove the terephah sinews. And they are even more than Jewishly strict in the customs of dress, never wearing garments mixed of animal and vegetable fibers.”

  Stubbornly I maintained, “The Han could never have been a lost tribe. There is no least physical resemblance between them and the Jews.”

  Master Shi laughed and said, “But there is now—between the Jews and the Han. Do not judge by my looks. It only happens that the Shi family never much intermarried here. Most others of the seven names did. So Kithai is full of Jews with ivory skins and squinty eyes. Only sometimes by their noses shall you know them. Or a man by his gid.” He laughed again, then said more seriously, “Or you may know a Jew because, wherever he wanders, he still observes the religion of his fathers. He still turns toward Jerusalem to pray. Also, wherever he wanders, he still keeps the memory of old Jewish legends—”

  “Like the Lamed-vav,” I interrupted. “And the tzaddikim.”

  “—and, wherever he wanders, he continues to share with other Jews what things he remembers of the old, and what worthwhile new things he learns along his way.”

  “That is how you knew of me! One telling another. Ever since Mordecai escaped from the Vulcano—”

  He gave no sign of having heard a single word I had interposed, but went right on, “Happily, the Mongols do not discriminate among us lesser races. So I, albeit a Jew, am the Court Firemaster to the Khan Kubilai, who respects my artistry and cares not at all that I bear one of the seven surnames.”

  “You must be very proud, Master Shi,” I said. “I should like to hear how you came to take up this extraordinary profession, and how you became so successful in it. I have always thought of Jews as being moneylenders and pawnbrokers, not as artists or seekers of success.”

  He snorted again. “When did you ever hear of an inartistic moneylender? Or an unsuccessful pawnshop?”

  I could give no answer to that, and he seemed to expect none, so I inquired, “How did you come to invent the fiery trees?”

  “I did not. The secret of making them was discovered by a Han, and that was ages ago. My contribution has been to make that secret more easy of application.”

  “And what is the secret, Master Shi?”

  “It is called huo-yao, the flaming powder.” He motioned me to the work table and, from one of the many jars and phials thereon, he took a pinch of dark-gray powder. “Observe what happens when I place this very little bit of huo-yao on this porcelain plate, and touch it with fire—so.” He picked up a stick of already smoldering incense and applied its spark end to the powder.

  I started as, with a quick, angry, fizzing noise, the huo-yao burned away in a brief, intense flash, leaving a puff of the blue smoke whose acrid smell I had come to recognize.

  “Essentially,” said the Firemaster, “all that the powder does is to burn with the fiercest rapidity of any substance. But when it is confined in a fairly tight container, its burning bursts that confinement, making a loud noise and much light as it does so. Adding to the basic huo-yao other powders—metallic salts of one kind or another—makes it burn in different colors.”

  “But what makes it fly?” I asked. “And sometimes explode in sequacious bursts of those different colors?”

  “For such an effect, the huo-yao is packed into a paper tube like this one, with a small opening at one end.” He showed me such a tube, made of stiff paper. It looked like a large, hollow candle, with a hole where the wick would have been. “When touched with a spark at that hole, the powder burns and the intense flame spurting from that aperture at the nether end throws the whole tube forward—or upward, if it is pointed that way.”

  “I have seen it do so,” I said. “But why should it do so?”

  “Come, come, Polo,” he chided me. “We have here one of the first principles of natural philosophy. Everything flinches away from fire.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Of course.”

  “This being the fiercest of fires, the container flinches away most energetically. So violently that it recoils to a great distance or a great altitude.”

  “And,” I said, to show how well I understood, “having the fire in its own vitals, it perforce takes the fire with it.”

  “Exactly so. And takes with it more than the fire, in fact, for I have previously attached other tubes around the one that flies. When the first has consumed itself—and I can predetermine how long that will take—it ignites the other tubes. Depending on what sorts I have used, they either explode at that instant, scattering fire of one color or another, or they go flinging off on their own, to explode at another distance. By combining in one engine a number of flying tubes and explosive tubes, I can contrive a fiery tree that sprouts upward to any height, and then bursts into one of various patterns of the sparkling flowers in many different colors. Peach blossoms, poppy flowers, tiger lilies, whatever I choose to make bloom in the sky.”

  “Ingenious,” I said. “Fantastic. But the main ingredient—the huo-yao—of what magical elements is it compounded?”

  “It was indeed an ingenious man who first compounded them,” the Firemaster concurred. “But the constituent elements are the simplest imaginable.” From each of three other jars he took a pinch of powder and dropped them on the table; one powder was black, one yellow, one white. “Tan-hua, liu and tung-bian. Taste them and you should know them.”

  I licked a fingertip and picked up a few grains of the fine black powder and touched my tongue, then said, wondering, “Nothing but charcoal of wood.” Of the yellow powder, I said, “Only common sulphur.” Of the white powder, I said thoughtfully, “Hm. Salty, bitter, almost vinegary. But what … ?”

  Master Shi grinned and said, “The crystallized urine of a virgin boy.”

  “Vakh,” I grunted, and rubbed my sleeve across my mouth.

  “Tung-bian, the autumn stone, so the Han call it,” he said, wickedly enjoying my discomfiture. “The sorcerers and wizards and practitioners of al-kimia deem it a precious element. They employ it in medicines, love philters and the like. They take the urine of a boy no older than twelve, filter it through wood ash, then let it solidify into crystals. Rather difficult of procurement, you see, and in only trifling amounts. But it was specified in the original recipe for making the flaming powder: charcoal, sulphur and the autumn stone—and that recipe was handed unchanged down through the ages. Charcoal and sulphur have always been plentiful, but the third ingredient was not. So there simply was not much making of the flaming powder, until my lifetime.”

  “You found some way to procure maiden boys in quantity?”

  He snorted, very Mordecai-like. “Sometimes there are benefits in coming from a humble family. When I first tasted the element, as you just did, I recognized it as another and much less exquisite substance. My father was a fish peddler, and to make the fillets of cheap fish look more delectably pink, he soaked them in a brine of the lowly salt called saltpeter. That is all the autumn stone is—saltpeter. I do not know why it should be present in boys’ urine, and I do not care, for I have no need of boys to make it. Kithai is abundantly supplied with salt lakes, and they are abundantly rimmed with crusts containing saltpeter. So, these many centuries after the flaming powder was first compounded by some Han genius of al-kimia, I, merely the inquisitive son of the Jewish fish peddler Shi, am the first to make it in vast quantities, and to make the glorious displays of its fiery trees and sparkling flowers enjoyable by all men everywhere.”

  “Master Shi,” I said diffidently. “In addition to my admiration of the beauty of those works, I have been struck by the thought of turning them to more useful account. The thought came to me when my own horse shied and bucked at first seeing a display of the fiery trees. Could not these engines of yours be used as weapons of war? To break up a cavalry charge, for example?”

  He snorted yet again. “A good
idea, yes, but you are more than sixty years late with it. In the year when I was born—let me see, that would have been by your Christian count the year one thousand two hundred fourteen—my native city of Kai-feng was first besieged by the Mongols of the Khan Chinghiz. His horse troops were affrighted and dispersed by balls of fire which flew into their midst, trailing sparks and whistling and banging. The Mongols were not stopped for long, needless to say, and they eventually took the city, but that valiant defense contrived by the Kai-feng Firemaster became legendary. And, as I told you, we Jews are great rememberers of legends. Thus it was that I grew up enthralled by the subject, and finally myself became a Firemaster. That employment of the flaming powder at Kai-feng was its first recorded use in warfare.”

  “Its first,” I echoed. “Then it has been used since?”

  “Our Khan Kubilai is not a warrior likely to ignore any promising tool of war,” said Master Shi. “Even if I were not personally interested in trying new applications of my art, and I am, he has charged me with investigating every possible use of the huo-yao for war missiles. And I have had some partial successes.”

  I said, “I should be gratified to hear of them.”

  The Firemaster seemed hesitant to confide. He looked from under his fungoid eyebrows at me and said, “The Han have a story. Of the master archer Yi, all his life prevailing over every foe, until he taught all his skills to an eager pupil, and that man finally slew him.”

  “I do not seek to appropriate any of your ideas,” I said. “And I will freely tell you any that might occur to me. They could be of some small worth.”

  “The danger of beauty,” he mumbled. “Well, are you acquainted with the large, hairy nut called the India nut?”

  Wondering what that had to do with anything, I said, “I have eaten its meat in certain confections served at table here.”

  “I have taken hollowed-out India nuts and packed them full of the huo-yao, and inserted wicks to supply the spark after a suitable interval. I have done the same with joints of the stout zhu-gan cane. Those objects can be thrown by a man or a simple catapult into an enemy’s defenses and—when they work properly—they let loose their energy with such explosive force that a single nut or cane would well nigh wreck this whole house.”

  “Marvelous,” I said.

  “When they work. I have also used cylinders of larger zhu-gan cane in another manner. By inserting one of my flying engines into a long empty cane before lighting its wick, a warrior can literally aim the missile like an arrow, and send it flying toward a target, more or less straightly.”

  “Ingenious,” I said.

  “When it works. I have also made missiles in which the huo-yao is compounded with naft oil, with kara dust, even with barnyard dung. When they are hurled into an enemy’s defenses, they spread an almost inextinguishable fire, or a dense, stinking, choking smoke.”

  “Fantastic,” I said.

  “When they work. Unfortunately, there is one flaw in the huo-yao that renders it totally impractical for military use. Its three component elements, as you have seen, are finely ground powders. But each of those powders has a different inherent density, or weight. Therefore, no matter how tightly the huo-yao is packed into a container, the three elements gradually separate out from one another. The least movement or vibration of the container makes the heavier saltpeter discombine and sift down to the bottom, so the huo-yao becomes inert and impotent. Thus it is impossible to make and store any supply of any of my inventions. The mere movement of them into a storehouse, not to mention out of it, causes them to become absolutely useless.”

  “I see,” I said, sharing his air of deep disappointment. “That is why you are perpetually on the road, Master Shi?”

  “Yes. To arrange a fiery-tree display in any city, I must go there and make the things on the spot. I travel with a supply of paper tubes, wicks, barrels of each of the constituent powders, and it is no great chore to mix the huo-yao and charge my various engines. That is obviously what the Kai-feng Firemaster did, when my city was besieged. But can you imagine doing all that in wartime, in the field, in the midst of battle? Every company of warriors would have to have its own separate Firemaster, and he to have at hand all his supplies and equipment, and he would have to be inhumanly quick and proficient. No, Marco Polo, I fear that the huo-yao will forever be only a pretty toy. There seems no hope of its military application, except in the occasional case of a city under siege.”

  “A pity,” I murmured. “But the only problem is the powder’s tendency to separate?”

  “That is the only problem,” he said, with heavy irony, “just as the only impediment to a man’s flying is that he has no wings.”

  “Only the separation … ,” I said to myself, several times, then I snapped my fingers and exclaimed, “I have it!”

  “Have you now?”

  “Dust blows about, but mud does not, and hardened clods do not. Suppose you wetted the huo-yao into mud? Or baked it into a solid?”

  “Imbecile,” he said, but with some amusement. “Wet the powder and it does not burn at all. Put a baking fire to it and it may blow up in your face.”

  “Oh,” I said, deflated.

  “I told you, there is danger in this stuff of beauty.”

  “I am not over timid of danger, Master Shi,” I said, still pondering the problem. “I know you are busy preparing for the New Year celebrations, so I would not obtrude my company upon you. But, while you are occupied, would you let me have some jars of the huo-yao, so that I could speculate on ways and means—”

  “Bevakashà! This is nothing to play with!”

  “I will be most careful, Master Shi. I will not ignite so much as a pinch of it. I will but study its properties and try to think of a solution to the problem of its sifting down—”

  “Khakma! As if I and every other Firemaster have not devoted our lives to that, ever since the flaming powder was first compounded! And you, who never even saw the stuff before—you truly are suggesting that I play the master archer Yi!”

  I said, with insinuation, “So might have spoken, once upon a time, the Firemaster of Kai-feng.” There was a short silence, and I said, “The inquisitive son of a Jewish fish peddler might not have been trusted, either, to bring a new idea to the art.”

  There was another and longer silence. Then Master Shi sighed and said, evidently to his deity:

  “Lord, I am committed. I hope You see that. This Marco Polo must once have done something right, and the proverb instructs us that one mitzva deserves another.”

  From under the work table, he picked up two tightly woven cane baskets and thrust them into my arms. “Here, estimable fool. In each, fifty liang measures of huo-yao. Do as you will, and l’chaim to you. I hope the next I hear of Marco Polo is not his thunderous departure from this world.”

  I took the baskets back to my apartment, intending to start my essay at al-kimia straight away. But I found Nostril again waiting for me, so I asked if he had brought any information.

  “Precious little, master. Only a salacious small item about the Court Astrologer, if you are interested. It seems he is a eunuch, and for fifty years he has kept his spare parts pickled in a jar that stands beside his bed. He intends to have them buried with him, so that he will go entire to the afterworld.”

  “That is all?” I said, wanting to get to work.

  “Elsewhere, all is preparation for the New Year. Every courtyard is strewn with dry straw, so that any approaching evil kwei spirits will be frightened off by the crackling noise when they tread on it. The Han women are all cooking the Eight-Ingredient Pudding, which is a holiday treat, and the men are making the many lanterns to light the festivities, and the children are making little paper windmills. It is said that some families spend their entire year’s savings on this celebration. But not everybody is exhilarated; a good many of the Han are committing suicide.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “It is their custom that all outstanding debts be settled at
this season. The creditors are going about knocking on doors, and many a desperate debtor is hanging himself—to save his face, as the Han say—from the shame of not being able to pay. Meanwhile, the Mongol folk, who do not care much about face, are smearing molasses on the faces of their kitchen gods.”

  “What?”

  “They have the quaint belief that the idol they keep over the kitchen hearth, the house god Nagatai, ascends to Heaven at this time to report their year’s behavior to the great god Tengri. So they feed molasses to Nagatai in the quaint belief that thus his lips are sealed, and he cannot tattle anything detrimental.”

  “Quaint, yes,” I said. Biliktu came into the room just then and took the baskets from me. I motioned for her to set them on a table. “Anything else, Nostril?”

  He wrung his hands. “Only that I have fallen in love.”

  “Oh?” I said, immersed in my own thoughts. “With what?”

  “Master, do not mock me. With a woman, what else?”

  “What else? To my own knowledge, you have previously had congress with a Baghdad pony, with a young man of Kashan, with a Sindi baby of indeterminate sex—”

  He wrung his hands some more. “Please, master, do not tell her.”

  “Tell whom?”

  “The Princess Mar-Janah.”

  “Oh, yes. That one. So you have now fixed your regard on a princess, have you? Well, I give you credit for craving wide variety. And I will not tell her. Why should I tell her anything at all?”

  “Because I would beg a boon, Master Marco. I would ask you to speak to her in my behalf. To tell her of my virtues and uprightness.”

  “Upright? Virtuous? You? Por Dio, I have never even been sure that you are human!”

  “Please, master. You see, there are certain palace rules regarding the marriage of slaves to one another—”

  “Marriage!” I gasped. “You are contemplating marriage?”

  “It is true, as the Prophet declares, that women are all stones,” he said meditatively. “But some are millstones hung about our neck, and some are gemstones hung about our heart.”