“Y-y-yes, Uncle,” I manage.
“Good, I’m glad you see it my way,” he says.
He pulls my arm from the tank and releases his grip. I cradle my ravaged wrist in my other hand.
“Well?” Uncle asks. But it’s more a command than a question. It’s clear what he wants me to do.
Slowly, I bring my hand up and slip the jellybean between my lips. I bite down hard and grimace as a strong licorice taste fills my mouth.
When I look up, he’s smiling.
“You may go now, Caleb,” he says.
My entire body is shaking, and I make no attempt to hide it. As I leave, out of the corner of my eye I see Shu Fang and Ting Ting circling the aquarium, searching for a way out. But there is no way out. Not for them. And certainly not for me.
June 23, 2061, 10:36 A.M.
Timeless Treasures Headquarters
Tribeca, New Beijing (formerly New York City)
Come with me,” says Nassim, when he sees me exit Uncle’s office.
I follow him down to the fourth floor.
It’s obvious the redecorating demon didn’t make it as far as Nassim’s office. The place is really drab: no water cooler waterfalls, no stone lions, not even a single three-legged toad sculpture. The only personal touch is a small photograph in a simple wooden frame on the desk. It’s a picture of a man sitting astride a chestnut brown horse. If not for the fact that the man looks much older than Nassim, he could be his twin. Same strong jaw, high cheekbones and flat nose. I’ve seen the photo before. My guess is it’s Nassim’s father, but I’ve never asked him. He’s such a private guy that it wouldn’t feel right.
I sit quietly in the visitor’s chair as he starts rummaging through a first aid kit.
“I believe this will work,” he says, fishing out a large gauze pad and squeezing some antiseptic onto it. I grimace as he gently swabs my wound.
“Looks like Shu Fang’s work,” he says removing a fresh bandage from the kit.
“How can you tell the difference?” I say. Call me racist, but in my book, one turtle looks just like another.
“Here is how,” he says, pulling up his left sleeve, revealing some nasty red marks. “This is Shu Fang.”
Then he rolls up his right sleeve. The marks on this arm are deeper and uglier. “And this is Ting Ting.”
Why is he showing me this? Is this some kind of trick to gain my trust so that I’ll open up to him and then he can go straight to Uncle with everything I say? No, Nassim isn’t that type of person. Maybe he’s trying to tell me that I’m not alone, that he’s also had the pleasure of experiencing Uncle’s anger in exactly the same way.
He finishes bandaging me. “There. That should do it,” he says, replacing the first aid kit in his drawer.
“Thanks,” I say. “I really appreciate it.” I turn to leave.
“You’re welcome, Caleb,” says Nassim. “I’ll see you at supper. By the way, what are you making?”
Making? Why is … Oh. I almost forgot. It’s my turn to cook tonight.
“I call it Peking pasta,” I say quickly.
“Sounds mysterious.”
“Believe me, it is.” I’ve got the name of the dish. Now all I’ve got to do is figure out how to make it.
“Uncle sends his regrets. He will not be able to join us tonight,” says Nassim once we’re all seated at the table that evening. “But at his request, we will continue with our Chinese language lessons. The word of the evening is zuò mèng. Which means ‘to dream.’ Everyone must either use zuò mèng or its noun form, mèng, in the sentence of their choosing or describe a recent mèng that they had.”
The only advantage of pulling cooking duty is not having to go first in these ridiculous word games.
“Caleb, you’re first,” says Nassim.
Wrong again. I make busy ladling out the Peking pasta. So far, I haven’t received nearly the number of compliments that Frank got for yesterday’s supper, but I figure the night is still young.
“I pass,” I say.
“You can’t pass,” says Frank. “You’ve got to play just like the rest of us.” He’s eyeing the bandage on my wrist but, surprisingly, doesn’t ask me about it.
“He’s right,” Lydia chimes in. “No dropouts.”
“I’m not dropping out,” I say. “I just want to go last for a change.” I wonder what Frank’s going to come up with for his sentence. Probably something about how he sees Abbie in all his mèngs.
Nassim looks at me for a moment before saying, “Very well. Raoul, you’re first.”
Raoul clears his throat. Along with being an excellent snorer, he’s a first-class throat clearer. He does it every chance he gets: before talking, after talking and even while talking. More than once, I’ve offered to go with Raoul to visit Dr. Margolies on the second floor to see if anything can be done about the various sounds coming out of his mouth. You know, maybe a little canine dental surgery to clear the old nasal passages. So far, though, he hasn’t taken me up on my offer.
“The new Monsoon from Forbidden City Ford drives like a mèng,” says Raoul.
I stifle a laugh. I’ve seen the same slogan on not less than a dozen billboards in SoHo.
But Nassim must not have seen the ads, because he says, “Very good. Lydia?”
“Zuò mèng the impossible mèng,” she croons and blessedly stops there.
“Uhhh, okay. Abbie?” says Nassim.
I turn to look at Abbie. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her since I came back from London.
Then I glance at Frank. His usual smug look is gone. Good. That means Mr. I Am the Center of the Universe has no idea what she’s going to say, either.
“I had a mèng last night,” Abbie begins, her voice breaking slightly. She has a very serious look on her face. I can feel the tension in the room as she takes a breath.
Then she looks straight at me and says, “You were in it, Cale.”
My stomach twists in a knot.
“We were on a mission. Somewhere in Asia. I don’t know exactly where or when. But we had to climb a mountain to get to the snatch zone. A very steep mountain.”
The room is completely quiet. Even Raoul has stopped his throat clearing.
“Somehow we got separated, and I got stuck on a high mountain ridge, surrounded by cliffs too steep to climb down,” she continues. “I couldn’t stay there, because there was no shelter at all from the cold wind. And night was coming. The only direction I could go was up. So I climbed higher, hoping desperately that I would find shelter.”
Abbie pauses, and I let out a breath that I didn’t know I was holding.
“I finally arrived at the narrow ridge at the top of the mountain. The wind was really strong, and it was snowing hard. So hard that I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me. But somehow I sensed that the snatch object was close by. And that if I reached for it, I would be able to grab it.
“So I did. I stretched my arm out as far as I could. But all my fingers snatched was snow. And as I lunged forward to try again, I lost my balance and began to fall …”
My mouth is dry. I drop my fork onto my plate.
“What happened then?” asks Lydia, her eyes wide.
“Then Caleb caught me,” says Abbie, looking over at me, smiling brightly.
Relief floods through me. I shoot a glance at Frank. He doesn’t look too happy.
“What about the snatch object?” asks Lydia.
“That’s the weird dream part, I guess,” says Abbie. “It had fallen also and landed not far from us. But even though we could hear it, Caleb and I couldn’t find it.”
“You could hear it?” says Lydia.
“Yes. It was”—Abbie pauses as if searching for the right word—“crying.”
Lydia is on the edge of her seat, and when I look down, I realize that I am too.
“You mean the snatch object was a child?” Lydia says.
Abbie shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know what it was. I never actually saw
it.”
“But didn’t you know what object you and Caleb were going to snatch?”
“It was a dream, Lydia. They’re not always logical, you know.”
“Well, what happened after that?”
“After that … I woke up,” she says.
Frank’s the first to speak. “It’s clear what that dream means, isn’t it? It means that Abbie can’t count on her snatch partner.” His smug smile is back again.
Abbie glares at him and says, “I don’t see how you get that, Frank. Caleb’s the one who caught me.”
“He’s also the one who left you stranded high on a mountain. And on top of all of that, the snatch failed. So it’s obvious you can’t count on him.”
I’m on my feet. I want to hurt him. To wipe that smug smile right off his face.
“That was uncalled for, Frank. You may leave the dinner table,” says Nassim.
Frank stands and gives me one of his trademark smirks. He knows he’s rattled me. Which is exactly what he wanted to do. As he leaves the room, I have another disturbing thought. What if he’s right? What if Abbie can’t count on me? What if something happens to her because of me?
That’s ridiculous. It’s just a stupid dream. And why did she even tell it? I guess it never occurred to her that Frank would twist its meaning like he did.
After all the dinner dishes have been cleared away, Nassim asks Abbie and me to stay behind. We slump down on the couch.
He presses a button on his handheld and the wall screen lights up. The three-dimensional hologram appearing directly in front of the screen is fuzzy at first and then sharpens. It’s a silver door with a design etched into it of a snake intertwined around an hourglass. There’s only one door like that: the one to Uncle’s office. I watch as it slides open.
“Hello, Abbie and Caleb,” says Uncle.
He’s seated cross-legged on the floor in a red silk hanfu with a crouching dragon design and a yellow sash. I swear, Uncle must have a larger collection of ancient Chinese emperor robes than anyone else in Tribeca, or maybe even New Beijing.
“I’m so glad you could join me,” he says. “You must think this is a bit silly, me talking to you like this when it would appear I could easily walk down one flight and have this conversation in person.”
No comment. Silly is not a word that comes to mind when I think of Uncle. Calculating, yes, ruthless, definitely, and sometimes even charming. But never silly.
“A face-to-face meeting would have been my preference as well,” he says. “But alas, work has called me away yet again. As you watch this, I am in Shanghai.”
That was fast. He must have caught the supersonic express from La Guardia. I suppose he could also have timeleaped there, but Uncle prefers to travel the conventional way.
“Big things are afoot with Timeless Treasures,” continues Uncle, “but I won’t speak about that just yet. Suffice it to say that you will both find out soon enough.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Even though he isn’t physically in the same room as us, I’m still getting the jitters.
“The reason I have brought you into my office, so to speak,” he says, “is to show you something.”
The camera pans his office. First the wall mural, then the wooden screen and the aquarium. I catch a glimpse of Shu Fang—or is it Ting Ting?—and I wonder if they’ve been dining on any other wrists lately.
Uncle’s hologram floats across the office and stops beside a small table I’ve never seen before. “I procured this table from a craftsman in Hunan Province, China. It was built during the Tang dynasty and is made entirely of bamboo. Exquisite, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Uncle,” I say. It feels ridiculous to talk to a holo-movie, but who knows—Uncle could be listening in and watching us at this very moment.
“But a table, even a table from the Tang dynasty, is just that, isn’t it?” he continues. “Merely a surface for something to rest upon.”
We both nod.
“I have in mind something special to rest upon this table,” Uncle says. “Allow me to show you.”
He snaps his fingers and the wall screen in his office lights up. A second later, an image flashes on the screen: a 3-D drawing of a vase.
“It looks quite ordinary, doesn’t it?” says Uncle.
If it was anyone else asking, I’d say yes in a heartbeat. The vase has a long neck and two loop handles. It’s base color is cream, but the flying dragon and phoenix designs are both painted blue. It’s the kind of thing you’d find in any of the high-end antique stores on Second Avenue. But this is Uncle we’re talking about.
“This drawing is not from the artist’s imagination. It is an accurate depiction of a real vase,” he says. “If you look closely, you will see a mark painted on the bottom. This particular vase bears the reign mark Da Ming Xuan De Nian Zhi, which means it was made during the Ming dynasty and the reign of the Xuande emperor. We also know that the artist was Wu Yingxing, that the piece was crafted on April 23, 1423, near Jngdézhèn, China, and that it was presented as a birthday present to the emperor on September 28, 1425. It left China on board a ship piloted by the famous admiral Zheng on May 10, 1431. The voyage was perilous, and the ship came close to sinking when it came under fire from pirates. In the end, however, both the ship and the Xuande vase survived the voyage.
“Upon arrival in the Ottoman Empire, the vase was regifted to Sultan Murad II. After that, the trail goes dead until 1967, when the Xuande Ming vase was exhibited for the first time in the West at the world’s fair Expo 67 in Montreal, Canada. That is the last reference in the public record to the Xuande vase. Following Expo 67, it simply disappeared from sight.”
Talk about information overload. I hope Uncle’s not going to quiz us on this afterward, because if he does, I’m going to fail miserably. Especially if he asks us to spell some of those names.
There’s a long silence. Uncle does a slow half turn away from the camera. Then he turns back again, and the camera zooms in on his face. His eyes look moist. His forehead vein isn’t twitching at all, which is a rare sight.
“Excuse me for my momentary display of emotion,” says Uncle, wiping away a tear, “but the thought of something so precious disappearing from the world is almost too much to bear.
“What makes the Xuande vase so precious, you may well ask. After all, it was far from the only vase crafted during the Ming dynasty. There were scores like it and some perhaps even more beautiful. Well, I will show you what makes it unique.”
He pauses and the camera does a slow pan of his office, lingering for a moment on the small bamboo table before returning to the screen and zooming in for a tight shot of the bottom of the vase.
“Look closely. Do you see the small star next to the reign mark?”
I nod, and Abbie says, “Yes.”
“That star is the symbol of the house of Confucius. It tells us that Wu Yingxing was a descendant of one of the greatest Chinese philosophers, perhaps the greatest thinker in all of history.
“During his lifetime, Wu produced more than two thousand works of art, including perhaps three hundred vases and other works of pottery. But only on the Xuande vase does the Confucian symbol appear above the reign mark. The scholars I have consulted are divided as to why the symbol appears on this piece of work and not on his others. Some say it is because this piece was commissioned by the Xuande emperor, who was also a descendant of Confucius, and Wu wanted to endear himself to the emperor. Others say that it was only near the end of his life that Wu found out he was a descendant of Confucius, and so he painted the symbol on the Xuande vase, his last great piece of art. But my own research has lead me to a third theory. A theory that I prefer to keep to myself until I am holding the vase in my hands.”
It’s a fascinating story. I glance at Abbie. Her jaw is clearly in the down position.
The camera zooms in on Uncle’s face. “Your mission is to snatch the Xuande vase from Expo 67 before it vanishes,” he continues, and now his tone is a
ll business. “You will depart tomorrow and timeleap to six fifty-five P.M. local time on July 8, 1967, landing one hundred yards from one another.”
A staggered landing. Standard operating procedure on important missions. The theory is that one person suddenly appearing out of thin air attracts less attention than two people.
“You must complete the snatch by seven-thirty P.M. local time,” he continues. “If you are unable to snatch the Xuande vase by then, I will allow you a one-time grace period of fifteen minutes for this mission. But for the sake of your physical health, I wouldn’t recommend relying on the grace period.”
I raise my eyebrows. It must be an important mission for Uncle to allow us to go over the usual limit and risk time fog. I like the way he puts it too: “for the sake of your physical health.” Very caring.
The camera stays zoomed in on Uncle’s face. His thin lips are set in a tight line, and his ice blue eyes are gazing right into mine. Which is quite a trick, since he’s just a hologram, after all, and until now I’ve never known a hologram to look me in the eye.
“Don’t fail me, Caleb,” he says.
“I won’t, Uncle,” I answer. My injured wrist throbs in agreement. It isn’t lost on me that he didn’t say anything to Abbie about her not failing him. My personal theory is that he expects more of me than he does of Abbie. Again, it goes back to Uncle thinking of me as his first adopted. But there’s more to his remarks than just that. He believes Frank’s lies.
“That is all,” says Uncle. “Nassim will answer any other questions you have.”
The screen goes dark. My palms are sweaty, and I wipe them on my pants.
Nassim turns to us. “Any questions, guys?”
We shake our heads.
“Good,” he says. “Then I will see you in the morning.” He heads to his office, probably to work on his crossword puzzles.
“What happened to your wrist, Cale?” Abbie asks once we’re alone.
“I had a little run-in with Shu Fang,” I say.
“Who?”
“One of Uncle’s snapping turtles. He’s very territorial,” I say. “Don’t worry. It looks much worse than it feels,” Now, why did I just say that? To make Abbie feel better? I don’t want her to feel better. I want her to feel worse. Or at least sorry for me. No, not that either. What I really want is for her to pay me a little more attention and pay Frank a little less.
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