The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Sally ran out of words and breath. Carver asked, “How’d you get all that dope in such a short while?”

  “I know a marriage broker. They know more about girls than the girls know about themselves or each other.”

  “Mmmmm—well, if I ever want the low-down on you, I’ll know how to check up.”

  “You’d have to pay an eee-normous sum of money. And I tell you confidentially, you don’t need a broker go-between these days. Just marry your doll, or find a spot on Concubine Alley for shacking up. Her boyfriend—nice fellow, but too young, she’d go for a grown man.”

  “You and your low mind! I’m not interested in her.”

  “So much briefing because of no interest.”

  “Sally, you’re a little hellion.”

  “Oh, yes, always hellish. Old custom. Good bye, Uncle Tao Fa.” Carver got back to his mirror experiment. He’d not reached the first phase of balance when he heard a stirring, a gasp, an exclamation. Lan Yin was busy sitting up and also trying to get her skirt down over her knees. She would have succeeded if the colorful appliqué which began at the hem-line and went up had instead been arranged to lengthen the skirt.

  Then her eyes focused. “Ah—how long—I was gone—gone—”

  “Look into that mirror right now—please!”

  Still dazed, she obeyed. Carver glanced over her shoulder. For an instant, the metal was misty, and her features, vague and wavering. Then they solidified, looking through a faint haze. In a moment, the reflection was normal.

  After pouring her a cup of tea, Carver told Lan Yin of Master Ko Hung’s magic. He concluded, “Some of his mirrors reflected what a person actually was, and didn’t show what the eye saw. When you blacked out, you weren’t present, so your visible body didn’t show. What was it like, wherever you were?”

  “Like being in all directions at once, everything fuzzed up, all distorted, like in modern paintings.”

  Carver turned to a desk from which he took some eight-by-ten glossies. He thrust them into her hands. Sally’s mention of the classical music society had touched off a chain of recollection.

  “Reverend Dr. Tseng with the k’in,” Carver began. “Mr. Sang Chung Li, with the san hsien. Miss Orchid Petal, with the p’i p’a. And who’s the good looking man with the intense eyes, the heavy brows—a p’i p’a player, too.”

  Miss Orchid Petal didn’t know what to say.

  “See why I thought that you looked familiar? And I think I am not far off the beam when I say that since Dr. Tseng knows at least two of the cast, he wants no part of your problems. And none of Chinatown’s Taoist masters want any of the action. A matter of courtesy, let’s say.”

  “The one you didn’t name is Kwan Tai Ching. He and Sang Chung Li have been friends for years. They’re sworn brothers. I can’t, I mustn’t cause trouble. In the end, they’d remain brothers, and I’d be the loser.”

  “Each wants you, and for keeps. And Kwan Tai Ching has put an expert tao shih on the job—you’re unemployable already, and next move, you’ll be unmarriageable—except to Kwan,” he summed up. “So, I’m the apprentice magician to chase the devils away. Either break up Kwan’s game that way, or—”

  “You do understand!”

  “I ought to! Some close Chinese friends tell me things that the standard foreign devil never hears.”

  “Devil,” Lan Yin resumed, “is just right. You use the word our way, not the way missionaries mean it. When I’m insulated, and the force, the power, can’t get at me, he’ll have to quit.” But before he could answer, she went on, “I interrupted you, when you were saying, ‘either break up Kwan’s game that way, or—’. Maybe your other way has its points?”

  Carver drew a deep breath. He regarded Yan Lin as he had, some minutes earlier, the mirror of Ko Hung: and this, scarcely conscious, was a carry over from his intent scrutiny of the strange surface-depths. Her expression changed, as it would not have because of simple intentness, such as that of Kwan’s photographed eye-expression.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said, hesitantly.

  “I might as well. This sworn brother business—or sworn sister, for that matter—is something the West has forgotten for centuries.”

  “That’s why I’m so deadly worried—I never tried to break them up—I couldn’t help it—I hate even to think—”

  “The other way,” Carver said, speaking very slowly, “is for me to take you out of circulation—take you for keeps—brotherhood uninjured, and—”

  “Kipling said something—”

  “Something about, but a good cigar is a smoke.”

  Each exhaled a long, sighing breath. They studied each other. Carver finally resumed, “Relax, Lan Yin. I’ll bust my tail, chasing devils and following Master Ko Hung’s book. Do you still want to stay here?”

  “Yes. It’s getting stronger. Any time, he’ll command me to go to his place, and I’d go. Keep the door locked!”

  He caught her by the shoulders, whisked her to her feet. “Now hear this! This is no drill! We are getting stronger. And you are going to give me a hand!”

  Fumbling in a cabinet drawer, he found a pencil, a piece of chalk, a length of string. He pushed table and rug into a corner. Giving Lan Yin the pencil to hold to the floor as a center mark, he drew a circle, and within it a five pointed star. Lines connecting the vertices formed a pentagon. At one of the sides of this figure he set the mirror of Ko Hung.

  Gesturing, he said, “You sit here—I’ll sit at your right—we’ll both look into the mirror.”

  Lan Yin shivered. “That mirror—”

  “It’s the gateway—correction, one of the million-million gateways into Space-Beyond-Space, Time-Beyond-Time.”

  “Wait, you’ve lost me already!”

  “Welcome to the Ko Hung Club! You and I will get answers.”

  Carver put a reel into the tape player. He set up three fuming joss sticks at each vertex of the star. In response to his gesture, Lan Yin seated herself, effortlessly, in the full lotus posture.

  “Hitch around till you can look my reflection in the eye but without seeing yourself. It’s like the wedding picture where the bride looks into the glass, while Mommie fixes the veil. She shows, but the camera that ‘sees’ both doesn’t show in the picture.”

  “Then what?”

  “Keep eyes level. One handicap, nobody to sit at points three-four-five.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “Look along the lines of the star, and chant. You and I don’t know the chantings, hence the tape player.”

  Carver snapped the switch. On one track was the chanting of twenty or more Chinese students. The other brought in the tinkle of a sistrum, the tock-took-tock of a “fish-head”, the silvery note of a hand bell, all against the deep voice of drums.

  Esoteric electronics—the incongruity jarred Carver, but only for a moment. The recorded voices blocked out the more insistent sounds of the city. He intoned his instructions, briefing Lan Yin as he got her and himself in tune with the thought. Sound would take care of itself.

  “…Reach for no-one, reach for no-thing,” he droned “…thought comes from no-where… Thought goes nowhere… Sound not heard is the Way… Mirror not seen is the Gate…”

  Lan Yin’s mirror-reflected eyes were changing, or Carver’s perceptions had changed. Background details blurred and wavered as her eyes expanded. Perspective and distance altered themselves. A swirl of mist filled the circle, obscuring all but the dark fire of her slanting eyes. Carver swayed and regained his balance. With an effort he avoided going headlong to spiral into space.

  Finally, he knew that Lan Yin was experiencing what he experienced, if only because he had begun to have perceptions which must be hers. They could not have been his own. Bit by bit, the distinction between him and her became unreal. It flickered out.

  No more Lan Yin
. The cryptic eyes expanded, to become a single eye. And, no more Carver. Paradoxically, he, whatever or wherever or whenever he was, still existed. Although not annihilated, “he” was neither Carver, nor Lan Yin, nor a blend.

  It was as though in a lovers’ total embrace, each had been wholly absorbed by the other, but without losing identity.

  And the music: that had never been recorded in that finest of all Chinese temple study-halls, the one on Albany Crescent, just off 231st Street, in the Bronx. Flutes moaned, fiddles wailed, gongs clanged. Chattering blasts of fire-crackers touched off by the bunch, by the long string, masked the music. Mist patterns jumped and jerked from concussion. And then the keening of mourners, professional mourners whose pride it was that not even a stranger just come to town could hear their dirges and not break into tears, then sob, wail, and join the procession.

  Dirge of the White Horse: Carver-Lan Yin could not resist the voices that tore at the heart. But the devastating one was Dew on the Garlic Leaf, sung only at the burial of exceedingly exalted persons.

  A funeral.

  A double funeral.

  Two brush portraits: youngsters, twelve-thirteen years old, Tang Dynasty, a thousand years ago, judging from the girl’s headgear, the boy’s robe and cap—dressed for a wedding—no, betrothal—

  Time—place—space, interweaving.

  He and she, lovely youngsters. They exchanged cups of wine. He thrust two pins into her hair to signify that she pleased him.

  Dirge of the White Horse: their funeral procession.

  A swirling, a spiraling, a devil’s dance of transformation, and now there’s a wedding procession.

  The hand-bell and the dirge—

  Deadly sadness knifed Carver. The cries of the mourners were his cries. The grief of all the family was his grief. Lan Yin’s woe—but that wasn’t Lan Yin’s funeral portrait. However he was one of the funeral party, she was equally a participant.

  What followed was beyond sharing. This was no mirror vision, no projection into Space-Beyond-Space. Lan Yin cried, “Tai Ching!” Her voice tore into Carver’s consciousness. That scream of misery, of uttermost anguish—the sense of returning to his normal space and time made him realize how far he had gone.

  The mirror image faded. Carver heard taped music. Lan Yin toppled from her lotus posture. She tried to get up. Carver got to his knees. He caught her under the arms. Kneeling, they swayed, wove, each keeping the other in balance. Then he made it to his feet, and took her with him. She clung to him, sobbing, as he walked her to the lounge.

  “I was at my own funeral—and wailing for him.”

  “For Tai Ching, Kwan Tai Ching.”

  “Yes, but it didn’t look like him, and she didn’t look like me.”

  “Be God-damned!” Carver got no further.

  “She should have, he should have, looked like me and Kwan Tai Ching. Engagement ceremony—funeral—then wedding.” Her laugh was hysterical. “Tao Fa, we’re, oh, crazy—”

  They clung to each other, mouth to mouth, passionate, incoherent. Their parting was—Carver couldn’t imagine which had broken the enchantment. He was certain of nothing except that in another moment, Sang Chung Li and Kwan Tai Ching would have had no woman standing between them and marring fraternal harmony.

  Carver indicated the ash on the joss sticks they’d not knocked over. “We weren’t gone more than forty-odd minutes, this-earth-time. We were glimpsing your previous incarnation, and I was getting it from you—we’re still inter-scrambled, psyches mixed.”

  “But if I was dead, how could I remember, how see my funeral?”

  “Being China-Chinese, you ought to remember that you’re never completely out of touch. Body in a coffin, and you, watching it all, crying for Tai Ching.”

  “But I didn’t look like me. He didn’t look like him.”

  “Surprising if you had, or if he had. If you got all made up to play Ssu Chun in White and Green, you’d not be a Snake Woman, you’d still be Lan Yin. No matter how you looked.”

  “Now I get it! Everyone is a reincarnation of someone else.”

  “Lovely Orchid Petal, damn it, NO! You are always you. You were never Lady Wu, or a wealthy merchant’s Number One Wife—or anyone else in your past lives. Simply YOU, no tags. The names and bodies were accidental, temporary. My best guess is that the mirror got our psyches so scrambled that we interchanged feelings and thoughts, so I got a peep-in on a life you were reviewing, a playback.

  “Whether we were wafting around on the astral plane, or on the akashic plane—” He shrugged. “Just words that Hindus love!”

  She regarded the mirror. “That thing is bad joss! Where did we go?”

  “Either the mirror is a Gateway, or else Tai Ching has sold you, by hypnotism or otherwise, the idea that you two were married, a thousand years ago. Selling you that during blackouts. He must have plenty of power. He could tell me a thing or two about Taoist magic.

  “You quit the music society, after how long?”

  “Maybe six months.”

  “Sometimes Dr. Tseng and Chung Li missed a meeting you made?” She nodded; a shade of apprehension shadowed her face.

  “And you went to Tai Ching’s place for more p’i p’a practice?”

  “Well, yes. He’s awfully talented.”

  “And before long, you two were in bed. Not at all planned, not by you, anyway, but there you were. You stayed well away, but you found you were being hooked by remote control. I’m not asking you, I am telling you.

  “If I really can help you—and don’t count too much on me!—I have to know what I’m doing.”

  A long silence. Then, “You got that from the I Ching? Or, you’re a psychic, a mind reader?”

  He shrugged. “Neither. You and I were pretty much interlaced during our mirror diving. So maybe I just knew, then, and still do.”

  “Is there anything you can do so I’ll be free?”

  “I promise you again, I’ll bust my tail, trying. Anyway, how do you feel now, after that mirror travelling?”

  “A bit twitchy, otherwise, OK.”

  “Then tell me about Tai Ching’s pad. I’ll spend some time studying his neighborhood. If I can manage some peep-ins, or listen-ins, I might—just maybe catch him off base. The more I know about him, the better our chances are. Yes, and this is important—does Chung Li know you’re here?”

  “No. I said I would go to a retreat to think this out. When you told us that Dr. Tseng had left town, or had pretended to, that was a disaster for Chung Li. What settled him was when we did have a few words with another awfully good tao shih.”

  “To a retreat. Meditate—recite sutras—group chanting—prayer—just for instance, like the spot on Page Street, or way out of town, Tassajara Hot Springs?”

  She nodded. “Sort of a true lie—this temple and the way you’ve done things—this is a retreat.”

  CHAPTER III

  Narrow, one-way Grant Avenue, the neon-blazing Chop Suey Lane where tourist traps, the “alligator jaws,” gape day and night, was a boulevard compared to Carver’s prowling ground, the ways which make a network parallel to Grant, and further up the steep slope which shoulders Stockton and Taylor. This network is a large piece of Chinatown, and is as remote from the remainder of San Francisco, and as alien, as the Asiatic homeland. It is the West’s closest approximation of a Chinese village. It was here where Carver went to stalk Tai Ching, to spy him out. They were almost neighbors.

  For Carver, belief and believing, and their opposites, had become meaningless concepts. Avoiding such Occidental snares, one simply went ahead and set to work. As would, for instance, the man who bakes Moon cakes, or makes dim sum for a tea house. A thing works, or it does not work. Thus, notions such as superstition, and unscientific, did not disturb him as he set out to tackle a Taoist magician, perhaps a full-dress adept. Having witnessed a few examp
les of minor magic, it would have been unscientific in the extreme to rationalize out of existence the blackouts and the mirror.

  And here was the start—

  Up four flights and thence to the roof.

  Thence, fire escape and down to balcony.

  Thence, to lower roof, a view of Tai Ching’s apartment.

  Carver had an assortment of keys and a bit of spring steel for outwitting an ordinary lock. This first reconnaissance was only to familiarize himself with the building and Tai Ching’s habits.

  Crouched in the shadow of the parapet, Carver could look across the narrow gap and into the corner apartment. Next prowl, when Tai Ching was away, he’d go up the stairs, drill holes through the panels of the hall door, plug them with putty, and come back later to observe the man.

  Nothing happening. Relax and look at Coit Tower, reaching up from Telegraph Hill, up—up—up and into the moonlight. Psychiatrists no doubt asserted it was a phallic symbol. Eventually, Carver glimpsed motion: a man crossing the living room. He seated himself, whether in a club chair or a chesterfield, Carver couldn’t tell, since only one arm was visible. The posture suggested that Kwan Tai Ching was not engaged with a visitor.

  He wasn’t reading. The head position wasn’t right for that. He got up, abruptly, as though phone or doorbell had set him in motion, or a glance at his watch had prompted him. Nothing to see. But, presently, something to hear:

  The drum was deep-voiced. The rhythm accorded with no pattern Carver had ever heard. Hearing it was disturbing. He found it difficult to keep his breathing normal. His mind warned him against letting it get in step with that diabolical drum. As ever more effort was needed to maintain control, he wavered between irritation and apprehension. At times it seemed that the cadence was being impressed upon his pulse. He concentrated on breathing, which was easier to control and which was linked to the pulse.

  He closed his eyes, shifted his consciousness so as to “follow” his breath; he pictured a purely imaginary course, the final phase of exhalation being up and through his spinal cord. This required relaxation. Resolving, determining to control, were self-defeating.