End of the Century

by Chris Roberson

  In through the cramped confines of the laundry, thick with the alkaline smell of lye, they came to a narrow door behind a counter. The lead laundryman pushed his way through a thick curtain and the other three urged Blank and Miss Bonaventure on from behind. With a shrug, the pair elbowed their way past the curtain and found themselves in a labyrinth-like winding corridor from which innumerable chambers opened. These were heavy hung with a floral scent, sickly sweet like rotting fruit. Miss Bonaventure arched an eyebrow at Blank, and he nodded in ascent to her unspoken observation. It was a secret opium den, the rooms littered with the insensate bodies of the patrons stretched on couches and divans, or else sprawled unceremoniously on the floor. Blank noted that the vast majority of the patrons were Occidentals, the few sons of the Orient in evidence those employees of the establishment who tended to the needs of the lolling patrons.

  At the rear of the opium den, they came to a sturdy, barred door. This the laundryman swung open, after first beating a staccato rhythm on the wood, and on the other side appeared a burly figure, his forehead shaven in the Manchurian fashion, his hair hanging in a heavy plait down his back. He wore loose-fitting black silk garments, shirt and trousers, with a golden circle stitched to the front, upon which were embroidered the ideograms for Freedom.

  The black-clad gatekeeper did not exchange more than a glance and a nod with the laundryman, but without speaking to Blank and Miss Bonaventure, escorted them deeper into the labyrinthine bowels of the building. Beyond the heavy door was a steep stairway leading down, which jogged at a landing, then again, zigzagging back and forth every few dozen feet. The walls of the stair were close on either side, unadorned wood paneling which seemed black as pitch in the dim lighting.

  Finally, they reached the bottom of the stair and another door, but while the door above had been rough-hewn oak, this was more elaborate, lacquered red with a gold fox rampant in bas relief on its surface. In the place of a knob was a heavy brass ring, large enough to be worked around the neck as a torque, and this the gatekeeper turned. The red-lacquered door swung open easily, noiselessly on well-oiled hinges, and Blank and Miss Bonaventure stepped out of the darkened stair into the bright light of a throne room.

  It was a massive chamber, substantially underground it would seem, lit by rows of massive lanterns that depended from iron stanchions on the walls, with polished marble underfoot. The chamber was dominated by an immense golden statue of a fox which was raised on a dais at the far side of the floor. The fox held two jade disks, one in either paw, one engraved with the symbol “zì,” the other with “yóu,” which together comprised the ideogram for “freedom.” Standing in ordered rows along the walls to either side of the door were guards dressed in traditional Chinese armor, swords at their belts and long halberds in their hands, staring forward dispassionately.

  Seated before the dais, on a simple and unadorned wooden chair, sat an ancient Chinese woman in a simple dress of green and black silk embroidered with gold thread. She seemed almost like a child's doll, given her diminutive size. Her eyes, staring out from a face like a nest of wrinkles, were the color of violets, her fingers thick jointed and gnarled, while her skin and hair were a uniform shade of alabaster, the color of bleached bone.

  In one sense it had been only days since Blank had seen her, but in every other way that mattered it had been a lifetime.

  “Miss Bonaventure,” Blank said, taking his companion's hand and leading her forward into the chamber. “Allow me to introduce Madame Quexi, better known as the Ghost Fox.”

  “It has been a long time, Kongbai,” the ancient woman said. She motioned with one hand, the white nails on her fingertips impossibly long. “Come closer that I might see you better. These eyes of mine…” The albino trailed off, indicating her violet eyes with a long-nailed finger.

  “You never could see very well, could you?” Blank said, meaningfully. “But that was your problem all along, wasn't it?” He took a step closer, but Miss Bonaventure hung back. “Come along, my dear,” he said to his companion, reassuringly.

  Miss Bonaventure shrugged and swung her parasol up onto her shoulder.

  “It has been a long time, Quexi,” Blank said, somewhat sadly, stopping a few dozen feet from the dais. “I must say that you're looking…well?”

  The Ghost Fox made an angry gesture, and the guards on either side of the room rippled into motion, raising their halberds menacingly. Then the ancient albino moved her bone white hands in a soothing gesture and leaned back in her chair, sighing heavily. “At least have the good graces to lie more convincingly, Kongbai. I know very well that I am hideous with age.”

  “Are you?” Blank raised an eyebrow. “I hadn't really noticed.”

  “Bah!” The Ghost Fox curled her white lip in disgust.

  “Blank?” Miss Bonaventure said in a low voice, leaning close. “Just who is this woman, anyway?”

  “Have I never mentioned her?” Miss Bonaventure shook her head, and Blank gave a playful scowl. “Oh, I was sure that I had. Well, in any case. The Ghost Fox”—he mimed an abbreviated bow in the direction of the ancient woman—“controls the lion's share of all criminal activity conducted in China and throughout Asia.”

  “Crime?” the Ghost Fox sneered, tapping her long white fingernails on her chair's arm. “Crime, is it? A great empire seizes an entire nation and calls it expansion. A small band of men and women take back what little they can, and it is called theft. If that is your notion of justice, Kongbai, you can keep it. But we are not relegated to the Eastern Hemisphere any longer. These last years, the reach of the Ghost Fox Triad has extended, first to Australia, then India, and now as far as your beloved London itself. There is no ‘crime’ committed within the boundaries of the Limehouse without my permission, and no crime committed elsewhere by Limehouse's inhabitants but that they pay a percentage in tribute to our cause.”

  “My, my,” Blank said, nodding admiringly. “You have been busy, haven't you?”

  “Blank, you do have the most interesting friends,” Miss Bonaventure said, spinning the parasol on her shoulder. “I admit I'm often forced to wonder what your life was like before that day six years ago when we met.”

  Blank looked at her and smiled. “Bleak and lonesome, my dear. Bleak and lonesome.”

  “Enough of this prattle!” the Ghost Fox snapped.

  Blank turned back to the ancient woman, shaking his head disapprovingly, clucking his tongue. “Such manners, Quexi. What would Michel Void say, if he were to see you now, hmm?”

  The Ghost Fox exploded out of her chair, jumping to her feet with a loud curse. From all sides came the clang of steel on steel as the armored guards took a step forward, brandishing their halberds, eyes narrowed at Blank and Miss Bonaventure.

  “If you wanted to kill me, Quexi, you'd have tried it long, long before now,” Blank said with a slight smile, inclining his head.

  The ancient albino breathed heavily, violet eyes flashing menacingly, but by inches relaxed, bringing her emotions once more under control.

  “You bring out the worst in me, Kongbai, and always did.” Then she gently eased her ancient bones back onto the chair and addressed the guards to either side. “You may leave us,” she said, a subtle thrumming sound humming beneath her words at the very edge of hearing. “You will be called if needed.”

  The thrumming continued for a long moment and then stopped, at which point the guards turned as one and filed out of the chamber in an orderly fashion. The last to leave closed the large red-lacquered door behind them, and Blank and Miss Bonaventure were left alone with the ancient Chinese albino.

  “It's your fault I've become as I am now, you know,” the old woman said in a quieter voice, sighing. “I could have lived a long life of service, not thinking to ask the questions that couldn't be answered. And then you had to teach me to segment my thoughts, to hide myself away from Omega, and now look what's become of me.”

  “I am looking, Quexi,” Blank answered, tenderly.

 
“Youth lost, beauty faded,” the ancient albino said. “But worth it in the pursuit of the cause.”

  Blank scoffed. “What cause is that?”

  “You know full well! I fight against empire, Kongbai!” The Ghost Fox's voice rose now, with a pleading tone. “Just as you always said. And like you said, I pay whatever price necessary.”

  “But…” Blank began, shocked. “I never meant…” He shook his head. “We've had this conversation a thousand times before, child. There's little to be gained from another performance. As I told you when last we spoke, all those years ago, I work for the end of the empire, and against the interests of Omega, but not at the cost of civilization itself. There is a balance to be struck.”

  “Balance? Ha!” The ancient albino waved her long-nailed fingers in a dismissive gesture. “You sell yourself short, lacuna, if you think you don't still serve the interests of Omega and empire alike. You protect a system which facilitates the domination of one people by another. Or did you fail to notice the white men lounging on the couches in the opium den upstairs? Or the poor who crowded the streets through which you came to this building?”

  Blank shook his head. “It is unfortunate, but I am forced to take a longer view.”

  The Ghost Fox exploded with anger, leaping out of the chair. Her bone white hair streaming behind her like a nimbus, she rushed towards Blank, long-nailed fingers out like claws. Miss Bonaventure moved to block a blow, but Blank waved her away at the last instant and stood still as the old woman came to a halt just short of him, her talonlike nails stopping bare inches from either cheek.

  “Ask the innocents if they should take a longer view. Ask the men, women, and children who were ground underfoot in the Opium Wars. Ask them!”

  Blank closed his eyes for a moment, a pained expression on his face, the memories of those dark times rising unbidden from the depths of his mind.

  “I didn't come here to argue,” Blank said at length, opening his eyes and meeting the violet gaze of the ancient albino. “And I'm sure you didn't bring me here to replay old discussions. What is it you want of me?”

  The anger slowly bled from her, and the white-haired, white-skinned dervish who had leapt from the chair seemed to diminish, reduced once more to an elderly Chinese woman of short stature, her hands small and frail, her bones thin. She looked up at him, standing no taller than Blank's chest, and for a brief moment he could see in her the girl she'd once been, the daughter he'd never had, the child who'd been lost to him forever.

  “Kongbai,” she said in a quiet voice, her violet eyes glistening. She reached out her hand to him again, but tenderly this time, not in anger.

  “Child,” he said, his voice cracking, and reached out his own hand.

  Their hands drew nearer, nearly touching, but the years had driven a gulf between them that could never be breached, and there were things they had done and said which could never be taken back. With bare inches of empty space separating them, the old woman snatched her hand back and turned away. They stood frozen for a moment in tableau, the man reaching out, the old woman turned away, hand clutched to her chest. And then the moment was gone, passed as quickly as it had come, and they were no longer a man and the child he'd lost, but a consulting detective and the mistress of crime, staring at one another across an impassable gulf.

  The Ghost Fox returned to her chair and with a groan eased her tired bones back down. She drew a ragged breath and let out a sigh. Then she turned her violet eyes back on Blank and Miss Bonaventure.

  “The police hunt the streets of my Limehouse for a killer,” the Ghost Fox intoned, regal and aloof. “They seek to protect the interests of their bitch queen and of the coddled masses who live above the bridges. This interferes with my business and with the operations of the Triad, and I would have it stopped.”

  “You would, would you?” Miss Bonaventure said, hands on her hip. She'd followed little of what had gone on between Blank and the ancient albino, but she clearly recognized a puffed-up piece of self-importance when she saw it.

  The Ghost Fox ignored the jibe, focusing her attention on Blank. “I want this killer caught and this harassment stopped, detective. I know you have been engaged in this matter, but it is not for their sake that you must catch this killer, but for ours. The Triad must be free to pursue its cause unimpeded.”

  Blank nodded, thoughtfully. “The matter already has my every attention,” he said. “But if I were to have the assistance of, say, a large network of resources, I might find a solution that much sooner.”

  The Ghost Fox narrowed her violet eyes. “Go on.”

  “Will you cooperate?” Blank asked, flatly. “If I call for your assistance, will you give it?”

  The Ghost Fox regarded him for a long moment, unspeaking. Then she folded her thin arms across her chest, wrapping her long-nailed fingers around her upper arms. “In this one regard,” she said, closing her violet eyes, “yes.”

  A long silence stretched out between them. Miss Bonaventure shifted uneasily, glancing from side to side. Finally, Blank broke the silence. “Quexi, I…”

  The Ghost Fox interrupted with a quick shake of her head, her eyes still squeezed shut. Then, taking a deep breath, she said simply, “You may go.”

  The ancient albino fell silent and would not be induced to speak again. Their audience with the Ghost Fox had come to an end.

  BY THE TIME THE PLACE REALLY STARTED TO FILL UP, when all the banks and shops closed down for the day, Alice and Roxanne had moved over to the booth vacated by orange-shirt-blue-tie and company and become fast friends.

  Roxanne had explained that she lived not far from here, in Bayswater, but that she traveled a great deal. She stopped in at the pub when she was in town, but since most of her friends lived elsewhere, or “kept different schedules” as she put it, she was most often alone. And since she hated drinking alone, she usually struck up conversations with strangers, a favorite hobby of hers, and passed the time getting to know them.

  She'd been on the other side of the pub when orange-shirt-blue-tie had tried to put the moves on Alice, as it were, and had seen the whole thing.

  “Oh, God,” Alice said, feeling a blush rise in her cheeks. “Was I rubbing my stomach and licking my lips like a hungry cartoon character?” Roxanne nodded. “Jesus.”

  Roxanne raised one of her dark eyebrows, quizzically. Her eyebrows were one of the first things Alice had noticed about her. That, and the fact that she knew how to use judo or kung fu or whatever on big drunk guys in ugly shirts and ties, which was a habit that certainly must have come in handy. Roxanne had really striking eyebrows and looked to Alice like an older, taller, blonder Natalie Portman or someone like that. She was maybe thirty years old, but didn't show any signs of slowing down.

  Before Roxanne had a chance to say anything, Alice went on. “Anyway, I thought the guy was gay when I saw him earlier. I mean, that shirt? Really?”

  Roxanne laughed. “No, not gay, just English. But sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.” Then she narrowed her eyes and studied Alice closely. “Is this something you do often, though? Zone out and make like a cartoon thinking about something good to eat?”

  Alice shook her head, sheepishly. She hesitated for a moment, and then figured, why the hell not? It wasn't as if she was going to be seeing this woman again, right? She reached into the backpack on the ground by her feet and pulled out a little orange plastic bottle with a bright white childproof cap. She popped the top, effortlessly, and then shook out a single tablet onto the table between them. It was tiny and salmon pink, with a little symbol and a couple of letters stamped on it in black.

  “What's that?”

  “That's 125 milligrams of Depakote,” Alice said. “Divalproex sodium. If I take that, then all of my problems go away.” She chuckled ruefully. “At least, that's what my doctors and my mother think.”

  Roxanne reached across the table to pick the tablet up, and as she stretched out her arm her leather jacket rode up enough to expose th
e bracelet on her wrist, a wide silver band with a big round gem inset, like the face of a watch. She put the tablet on the palm of her hand and held it up for inspection. “It's an anticonvulsant, right? Used for seizures and the like?”

  Alice raised her eyebrow. Impressive. She nodded.

  Roxanne looked up from the tablet and met Alice's eyes. “You epileptic, then?”

  Impressive, once more. Alice nodded again. “Not the grand mal kind, though. No frothing at the mouth and writhing on the floor. Just the kind where you hear and see things that aren't there.”

  Roxanne hummed, thoughtfully. “The god spot.”

  “The what now?”

  “A scientist name Michael Persinger did some experiments back in the eighties, where he stimulated the temporal lobes of patients with electromagnetic fields. He found that he was able to generate something very much like temporal lobe seizures, and that in many cases the subjects reported a feeling of a presence in the room with them, and some even had visual or auditory hallucinations. Some said it was God, some said it was angels, or aliens, or demons, but some just thought it was indistinct presences. It's called the ‘god spot’ because some people think that's where all religious experiences come from.”

  Alice remembered what Mr. Saenz had said, about Lewis Carroll and van Gogh and Tennyson all having TLE, and all of them taking their seizure experiences and turning them into art.

  “Do you believe in God, Roxanne?”

  Roxanne cocked an eyebrow and quirked a smile. “I thought that politics and religion were topics never to be discussed in the pub. Or was that the dinner table?” She chuckled. “But it depends on what you mean. If you mean a guy with a beard sitting up in the sky, lording it over us, then no. If you mean something more like the universe itself as a living mind, and us as its thoughts…then maybe. I've seen a great many strange things, Alice, and while I've more questions than answers at this stage, I'm still very much interested in the asking.” She tapped the bracelet on her wrist, thoughtfully.