The E. Hoffmann Price Fantasy & Science Fiction

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Carver was not yet ready to bail out, but the time was near.

  Then Kwan began to chant, which made things worse. The mantra was a blast of power. The drum proved to be only a carrier wave for the massive surge which the man set in motion. He could not understand a word, yet he felt the command to quit his body and come nearer.

  Fighting to disobey, he had no power left for flight.

  Dr. Tseng had showed good judgment in avoiding a contest.

  Abruptly, drum and mantra ceased. Carver now felt that he was isolated, and in a vacuum. This was absurd, since he could hear cars grinding up the steep grade of Washington Street, the horn-blasts, the squeal of wheels spinning before they caught and took charge with a jerk. Such intrusions were music, a reprieve. All these sounds were attenuated as from a world he was quitting, had quit.

  Silence become as abominable as the sound had been. His pulse and breathing were backing off toward the vanishing point. Bailout time was here—make it, if you can—Tai Ching moved back into view. His hair gleamed lacquer-black. Something—someone stirred beyond him. He did have a visitor. A woman.

  Even before she momentarily faced toward Carver, he knew that this was Lan Yin. He might have been mistaken about features glimpsed through distorting glass, but not about the skirt with the Persian border design.

  Her face was blank, immobile. A moment later, her smile blossomed as in sudden and happy recognition. Lan Yin extended her arms. She turned, making what might have been a dance-step, as she wafted out of Carver’s view. Tai Ching moved out of sight.

  Carver flipped a leg over the parapet. “How did she get here ahead of me? And why, Goddamn it, why?”

  He was relieved to be out from under it all, and at the same time, desolation and loneliness depressed him. He began to realize the strength of the bond which still linked him and Lan Yin. Bitterly, he reminded himself that it was a one-way tie. Next move, get out, out, out!

  Stretching long legs, he set out at a pace conspicuously out of keeping with the place. Mirror magic, making her conscious of the bond which linked her to Kwan, had nudged her toward the Taoist magician. At least, he could quit down-grading her, but he lead-footed his way to the temple, and into the shrine room. The final eighth of an inch of joss stick smoldered between two candles. She had lost little time.

  Now that Lan Yin was gone, he’d resume his own cell. He wondered how long her perfume would haunt the room.

  More than perfume awaited him.

  A girl sat by the reading lamp. A paper-back, The Nature of the I Ching, lay on the floor. She was all asprawl, too much chair, not enough girl.

  “So, Lan Yin sends a stand-in. Try this one, you won’t miss me so much. No, it’d take Sally to pull that one!”

  That was what Carver was thinking until he stopped short and quit all thought. He could not grapple with the fact that the girl was nobody but Lan Yin. And then came the question he could neither consider nor avoid: “Who—what—did I see at Kwan’s place?”

  Yanking the door shut, he made for the shrine room. He glanced about, chin jutting, and he scowled. Having someone with whom to argue would have been a blessing. Finally, he grabbed the mirror of Ko Hung, and headed for the rear. Once more, he held it to see whether he could get the reflection of her averted face.

  As before, swirling mist took form, solidifying here, parting there: and then, a clear glimpse of Kwan Tai Ching. He was making ritual gestures. Near him was a vague figure, hidden as the clear space clouded, contracted, curtain-wise. Lan Yin’s dismissal?

  Carver went back to the shrine room to replace the mirror.

  A latch click startled him. He stepped to the passageway. Lan Yin was coming out of her temporary bedroom, moving unsteadily. Her eyes didn’t come into focus until she was within arm’s length of Carver.

  “I must’ve had another blackout.” She glanced at the altar. On the red stem of the joss stick was only a flake of unburned incense, and scarcely a thread of smoke. “Now I remember, I lit it to bring you luck. You didn’t lose much time getting back.”

  “You took even less,” Carver retorted.

  “Took less what?” She regarded him perplexedly.

  “Time getting back from Tai Ching’s place.”

  Turning, he put the mirror back in its crescent cradle.

  “Getting back from Tai Ching’s place,” she echoed. “Oh, that crazy night! But I mean, tonight, now—”

  “I mean tonight, just now. You were there at his place.”

  “Tao Fa, I don’t get it, what’s this about? I’ve not been away. Right after you left, I picked up your book about the I Ching and sat down. Before I read far, I blacked out.”

  She obviously believed every word of it.

  “Do you know of anyone who looks a lot like you? And who wears a skirt like yours? Embroidery, wide embroidery at the hem, same kind of pattern.”

  “I’m a stock model. Might be a dozen women who’d resemble me from a distance, and by artificial lighting. This skirt—I copied the pattern from a book—What’s going on? I’m all confused!”

  Carver sighed. “So am I!” He told her of his spying, of the sinister drumming and chanting, and of the facsimile Lan Yin. “When I saw you, or your double, or whatever it was that I did see, well, I’d had it! Whatever possessed you to leave the temple and go over to see him—anyway, I hustled back. Knowing that you were at his place—after all we’d talked out, and decided we’d do—I was sure you’d not come back—so, I barged into my room, the one you’d not be using any more.”

  “I’ve not been out of the temple. It’s all so simple. Let’s go over and meet the girl. You’ve had a weird hour, and having me around the place—who wouldn’t be twitchy!”

  “If he has a doll over there, he’d not let us in.”

  “But I’ll phone.”

  “That’ll make him so happy, he’ll tell you to come right over?”

  “I’ll tell him I’m coming over with a friend. That way, whoever his date is, he won’t be embarrassed or annoyed. She showed up about the time you started peeping. We’ve not been yakking long. We’d not be interrupting anything that’s gone beyond happy notions.”

  “Darling, you’re talented! And here’s our play—there’s a public phone a short half block from his street entrance. I’ll make for that while you’re calling. No chance of her leaving and our not noticing her.”

  “You think of everything!”

  “I do,” he conceded. “Including most of the wrong things first.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Carver followed Lan Yin into Kwan Tai Ching’s cluttered living room.

  “Good evening, Mr. Carver. It was kind of Lan Yin to give me this pleasure.” He swept aside a topcoat, several books, a week’s accumulation of China Daily Times, to make room on the chesterfield.

  “Sit down, sit down.” And to Lan Yin, “What a delightful surprise!” However intense the dark eyes beneath heavy brows, however commanding the distinctly beaked nose and rugged, squarish face, Kwan was amiable, outreaching, a gracious person. Carver was unable to picture a red card, DANGER! MAGICIAN AT WORK. Even more difficult was it to see him in the role of treacherous friend. Nothing added up. He had to make his case against Kwan before the charm and magnetism of the man undermined his wits and his resolution. Carver glanced about the room.

  Everything was dust-filmed except the musical instruments—p’i p’a, several drums, a moon fiddle. These gleamed.

  A bedroom door yawned, exposing chaos—books, garments, bottles, furniture, all tied into a tight pattern by lanes of clear floor which interconnected the islands of accumulated odds and ends.

  Through an archway, Carver saw a compact kitchen. His glance shifted back to the Taoist shrine, the tall urns, the life-size ceramic Kwan Yin, and the wall scrolls of the living room.

  “No place to lay her,” Carver thought,
“except on the floor or that club chair… No place to hide her, except under the garbage… That’s out… Whoever she is, she’d spend an hour of housecleaning first.” The big table presented a flower arrangement, slide projector, an ink slab, half a dozen brushes, and many strips of paper. “Calligraphy,” Carver groped. “As well as music?”

  “So many things, and life so short. One can only dabble.”

  Carver gestured to indicate one of the strips of paper. “Soaring Dragon: Dancing Phoenix,” he read, and bent closer. “A single unbroken stroke, four characters!”

  “Unusual!” Kwan applauded. “That this style of script is no problem for you.”

  Carver declined the compliment. “This is one of Dr. Tseng’s favorite exercises. He must have taken lessons from you.”

  “On the contrary, he taught me.”

  A side glance, catching Lan Yin’s eye, convinced Carver that she’d completed her inspection and had dismissed the woman, real or imaginary, as another of those phenomena which needn’t be explained. No doubt Lan Yin had told Tai Ching that he and Carver had much in common: and whatever it was, they’d finally get to it, or, it would be skillfully buried or evaded. Meanwhile, without interrupting his comments on Professor Ho’s concert tour of Latin America, Tai Ching stepped to the kitchen to heat water for tea.

  Presently, he cleared table space for serving tea and setting out a tin box of fung wong rolls.

  Carver had taken all he could. Before he and this amiable character became buddies, he’d break through and play it foreign devil style. “Mr. Kwan, I’d enjoy getting back to this conversation some other time. Right now, you could help us—me and Lan Yin—we are trying to figure out how you and she have a common interest in a funeral that took place quite late in the Tang Dynasty.”

  Kwan smiled, nodded, as though he’d heard a question about parking spaces or Chinese New Year. “It’s time to discuss things which have worried you and Lan Yin more than they should have. My friend, Sang Chung Li, has also been concerned.” He addressed Lan Yin: “I didn’t know how to start. But I’d sensed that you both were in a mood very much like my own.”

  “A funeral, or was it a wedding, Mr. Kwan?”

  “Both. Please do not think I am being sticky when I tell you that this funeral came before the marriage.”

  “Unusual, even during the Tang Dynasty. Please tell us more?”

  “Since you read Chinese and have an unusual appreciation of our customs, you needn’t take anyone else’s word for anything. The written words of the Ancestors prevent us from having unsociable qualms.” He got up. “Please excuse me, while I find a writing.”

  Lan Yin leaned close and whispered, “Easy, wasn’t it? We’re not cryptic, poker faced, or subtle. No, there hasn’t been a woman in the house for weeks and weeks.”

  “Wait till you see what he comes up with.”

  Within a minute, Tai Ching had outwitted chaos. He returned with documents and an accordion-pleated book. These things were dust-free. He untied the cord which secured the lot. From the bottom he took a scroll which was rolled on a rod half an inch in diameter. The ends of the rod were trimmed with knobs of agate. He offered Carver the roll of silk damask.

  Carver shook his head. “This is historical. If it’s not a sacred relic, it comes very close. Except that it’s not the right color, I’d guess it to be an Imperial proclamation. You handle it.”

  Tai Ching unrolled a foot or more of damask with characters brushed in columns, edge to edge. He said, “Take your time, please. You mustn’t hurry.”

  Finally, Carver said, “This certain branch of the Kwan family and that certain branch of the Liang Family conducted a wedding. The two principals were represented by proxies. This was because the bride-to-be and the groom-to-be had died within a few days of each other. This was several years before they were old enough to marry.

  “The contract of betrothal had been signed while they were quite young.” He was now addressing Lan Yin. “In this there was nothing of the American style, boy-meets-girl, falling in love business. It was very much like the European marriage, as in France and elsewhere. This was to join two families, financially and politically. Each was wealthy and important.

  “Now I’ll add words not written here: What with wars and pestilences there was no member of either family to marry in his own right, to bind the two groups. So, back to the written word: Mr. So-and-So and Miss Such-and-Such represented the deceased. This wedding came in the proper season of the year in which the Liang daughter and the Kwan son would have been old enough to marry, had they lived.

  “I see now,” he said to Kwan, “how it came that the boy and the girl went to their funerals before they were married.”

  Silence, until Tai Ching said, very softly, “Mr. Carver, you are correct as far as you have gone. But there is more.”

  “Please tell us. I’ve had it. So has she.”

  He choked, he blinked, he swallowed. Like Lan Yin, he was again experiencing wedding and funeral in lands beyond the Mirror. Her face twitched. Tears trickled down her cheeks. Tai Ching sighed, nodded.

  “I know how you feel, Mr. Carver, but why you are moved so deeply is far from clear. Let me carry on, from the Kwan Family history.

  “The Liang daughter and the Kwan son saw much of each other during their early years, before their association would have been considered improper. After they had attained such age, they managed to steal a few moments, a few words, whenever festivals brought their families together.

  “In their young emotionality, these early-teens were in love and looking forward to their marriage. One died of the epidemic. The other died without bodily illness or sign of harm, some days later.”

  Carver pulled himself together and said, “Lan Yin and I got a glimpse of this through the Mirror of Master Ko Hung. Identity of surname means ever so much more with the Chinese than with the Occidental. But there are so many hundred millions of Chinese, and so few surnames in that language, this need not, can not, except by wildest coincidence, relate to Liang Lan Yin of here and now.”

  “Correction, if you please.” Tai Ching bowed. “There is more to this than you realize, more than likeness of surnames.” His eyes became intense, luminous; the man’s magnetism compelled belief, enforced acceptance of what he said. “You do not understand at all.”

  Lan Yin’s color was receding. Her breathing became impossibly slow, scarcely perceptible.

  “I, Kwan Tai Ching, was for a dozen or thirteen years that young Mr. Kwan of the betrothal contract. Liang Lan Yin for a dozen years was that Miss Liang Hua Lan, a thousand years ago.

  “We are born again in new bodies, with brains that can not remember the names and forms of previous incarnations. Still, there are ways of recalling. With some, there is growth into spontaneous awareness. With others it comes from occult study and long practice. I spent a number of years at the Lion Mountain Monastery in Taiwan.

  “So, when she and I at last met here, in San Francisco, I recognized Liang Lan Yin, once Liang Hua Lan. My recognition was in my ordinary consciousness. She sensed that we were linked, but this was not in her ordinary awareness—you may prefer unconscious or you may use that word every American bandies about glibly, subconscious.”

  He addressed Carver: “Now that you know that she and I belong to each other, you can help her see for herself, help her to look backward, look inward, let the soul wisdom of the Unconscious reach into her everyday awareness.”

  Lan Yin swayed. Before Tai Ching could steady her, she was clinging to Carver. He scooped her from her feet and stretched her on the chesterfield. Turning, he rasped, “Goddamn it, Mr. Kwan! I can buy your story—I really can—I saw enough—but I can’t—” He gulped, regained control of himself and continued in a level voice, “I can’t applaud your methods. Forgive my rudeness. I am sorry. I offer my sincere apologies.”

  “A thousand years is
a long, long time,” Tai Ching said, sadly, and with tone and bearing which Carver recognized as acceptance and also as rebuttal of his accusation. “A nip of brandy, and she’ll be all right.” Then, as he returned with a bottle and a porcelain soup spoon, “Better take her back to the temple. Help her look deeper into the mirror.”

  “You might help by knocking off those blackouts! I leave it to you. I ask you to think it over.”

  Kwan Tai Ching bowed. “The blackouts brought her to you. So far, you have done much good. Please continue.”

  And then he poured, without spilling a drop, until the soup spoon was brim full.

  CHAPTER V

  After an hour or more of sitting with Lan Yin and Chung Li in the study room of the temple, Carver said, “I don’t blame you for wanting to talk this thing out, but the fact is, we get nowhere. There is every reason to believe that the documents are genuine family records. We’re all inclined to accept reincarnation as being as plausible as any other doctrine on life and death and survival or return. Whether Kwan Tai Ching is actually a later model of the young man who was going to marry Liang Hua Lan a thousand years ago is interesting but totally irrelevant! The only thing that concerns us is to figure out what we can do to liberate Lan Yin. Let’s get at that, and be damned to speculation and reasoning!”

  Chung Li and Lan Yin exchanged glances. She said, “My want-to’s haven’t changed a bit. Tao Fa saw the wedding and the funeral, just as Tai Ching told us about them. No doubt that he’s been gaining control of me—he’s as good as admitted it.”

  “Here we go again!” Carver interrupted. “Lan Yin, how far will you go, if you have to—call it having your want-to’s, or self defense, or—”

  She said, finally, “You didn’t speak the words, but you were thinking them—would you make a date, kill him, claim it was to prevent rape?”

  Carver nodded. “I was wondering just about that. But I didn’t ask you. Well, what would you do?”

  She crumpled in the face of the challenge. “I’m afraid—I can’t dishonor the Ancestors—I can’t make them default.” She turned on Chung Li: “And you’d be upset if I did!”