Eight Skilled Gentlemen

4

“Well, Kao, have you found anything interesting?” the Celestial Master asked.

“Mildly so,” Master Li replied. “To begin with, another mandarin—I assume you know, or knew, Mao Ou-Hsi?”

“Revolting fellow. Third-greediest man in the empire, the Celestial Master said disgustedly.

“The fourth-greediest will be interested, because he’s just been promoted,” Master Li said. “Mao bade farewell to the red dust of earth last night in a rather spectacular manner. Ox and I happened to be there at the moment, and the creature who killed Mao then disappeared in a bright blinding flash, and the next thing we saw was a white crane flying away across the moon.”

The Celestial Master paused with a teacup halfway to his lips. Briefly, in an instant in which his eyes sharpened and hardened, I glimpsed the brilliance and sureness of long ago, when he had been considered to be the finest mind in the empire.

“How convenient,” he said dryly. “Did it carry a sign in its beak saying ‘Save the Celestial Master from Mother Meng’s Madhouse?’ “

Master Li tossed his head back and laughed. “Believe it or not, this actually happened,” he said. “As soon as we’d looked around and found nothing we summoned the magistrate to take over, and at the moment the gates opened at dawn we entered the Forbidden City and chased the honor guard away from the remains of the late Ma Tuan Lin, and I had Ox open the coffin. You tell it, Ox.”

I gulped nervously as the bright eyes of the saint flicked toward me.

“Most Reverend Sir, the corpse was lying on its back, of course, but I managed to lift it upright—”

“That must have been a hell of a job,” the Celestial Master said, with real concern in his voice.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “The body was covered with Dragon’s Brains (Borneo camphor), which made me choke, and after I scooped it away I started to choke from the smell of the corpse, and there wasn’t any head and it looked horrible.” I started choking again, just at the memory. ‘The body was stiff as a tree trunk and I almost got a hernia trying to lift it.”

“Ghastly tub of lard, wasn’t he?” the Celestial Master said sympathetically.

“He hadn’t missed much rice,” I said diplomatically. “Master Li had me prop him up so we could examine the back.”

“And?”

“Reverend Sir, it was just as you told us!” I said excitedly. “The entrance mark of the fireball was very small and the folds of robes covered it up, but Master Li cut through the clothes and skin, and just beneath the outer flesh there was a great big hole! Everything inside had been burned to a crisp.”

The saint sipped his tea and put the cup down, and then he leaned back and rubbed his eyes.

“How odd,” he said. “Kao, I’d just discovered what caused me to hallucinate about that old man and his ball of fire, and now you tell me I wasn’t hallucinating.”

He leaned forward, and his eyes were clear and keen. “I’m going to show you what might have stimulated a senile imagination, but first I’m interested in a matter of symmetry. You say Mao Ou-Hsi died spectacularly. Was a monster involved?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

Master Li told what we had seen, simply and clearly, and as he talked I saw wonder and speculation form in the saint’s eyes.

“Well, Kao, I said at the beginning this was your sort of case, but I didn’t know how right I was,” the Celestial Master said. “Before I tell what I know, is there anything else you want to add?”

“Indeed yes. Beginning with this,” said Master Li, and he pulled the cage we’d found from beneath his robes and placed it on the table.

“Pretty, and it looks like the thing Ma was carrying, but what is it?” the Celestial Master asked.

“Damn. I was hoping you could tell me once you got a close look at it,” Master Li said. “It is indeed the cage you saw and we found it where you said it was. The interesting thing is that Ma Tuan Lin had made a rubbing of an old stone carving depicting a cage like this. On the back he indicated he might have found as many as eight of them. A plausible inference is that he gave cages to partners in some sort of enterprise, and I had traced one to Mao Ou-Hsi, which is why we were there. Simultaneous with the murder the cage was being stolen, and the burglar was another monster. It was a man resembling an ape like the one the emperor takes such pride in at the imperial bestiary: silver-gray fur or skin on the forehead, bright blue cheeks, a crimson nose, and a yellow chin. The eyes are deep and shadowed, and the gaze is highly intelligent.”

The Celestial Master nodded. “A mandrill, if one excepts the intelligence. Why do you say ‘man-ape’?”

Master Li shrugged. “So far as I could tell, the body was that of a medium-size but very powerful and acrobatic man, and both the body motion and eye contact were human.”

The saint nodded and said, “The creature means nothing to me. He got away with Mao’s cage, you say? Another crane?”

“No, he simply leaped out the window to the garden before either of us could move. Speaking of monsters, the vampire ghoul who decapitated Ma Tuan Lin is dead, in case you haven’t heard, and I haven’t the slightest idea what its connection to the rest of it is. I’m trying to track down the owners of the other cages, and until I can find out why monsters would want them I’m at the end of a blank alley.”

Master Li leaned back and the Celestial Master leaned forward, taking a sheaf of papers from a lacquered box lying on the table.

“I can’t tell you why the cages are valuable, but I can give you something to think about concerning monsters,” he said. “When I was a young student—long before you were born, believe it or not—I went through the normal period of fascination with ancient shamanism. That means shamanism of the aborigines who originally inhabited China, of course, practiced by priests of beliefs and rites that to some extent evolved into our own, and I found repeated but maddeningly unspecific references to a small group of shamans who seem to have been greatest of all: Super Shamans, if you will, aloof and mysterious, to be appealed to only as a last resort. I was never able to prove this, Kao, but I became convinced that they’re the mysterious hooded figures depicted on the walls of the Yu.”

“Really?” Master Li appeared to be very interested. “Any specific reason?”

“One specific, one not. The nonspecific is simply the fact that they were spoken of with awe as always being silent, always performing mysterious rituals with mysterious objects beyond the grasp of man—the general atmosphere of the Yu, if you will, and the Yu and the shamans would seem to date from the same period. The specific is that there were eight of them, like the eight Yu figures, and indeed they were known as Pa Neng Chih Shih.”

“ ‘Eight Skilled Gentlemen,’ “ Master Li said thoughtfully. “Sounds like they may have practiced alchemy or engineering or astronomy in addition to their priestly and magical duties.”

The Celestial Master shrugged. “I never found a clear reference to their exact function, and I doubt anyone did. There was, however, one extraordinarily interesting fragment concerning them that I put down at the time as primitive myth, but peculiar enough to make notes of.”

The saint picked up the sheaf of papers and shook his head wonderingly as he looked at them.

“So long ago,” he said softly. “It had completely fled what’s left of my mind, and then suddenly, after you’d left for Hortensia Island, I remembered, and at least I keep good files. Long, long ago, the Eight Skilled Gentlemen were said to have enlisted the aid of eight very minor demon-deities, siblings although physically dissimilar. What they wanted them for was no longer known, but a brief description of each was provided. You can see why I planned to show you the origin of a hallucination.”

He slid a paper across the table. It was old and somewhat faded, but still clear, and I caught my breath. Years ago as a young scholar the Celestial Master had sketched a little old man who carried a glowing ball of fire, and beneath it he had written, “Third demon-deity: Pi-fang, kills with something like a tiny comet.”

Master Li whistled sharply.

“Save your whistles,” the Celestial Master said with a smile, and he slid another sheet across the table. This time I uttered a distinct yelp, and then turned bright red as the Celestial Master winked at me.

We were looking at a one-legged creature who was playing something like stone chimes, and beneath it was neatly written, “Fifth demon-deity, K’uei, the Dancing Master. Kills by forcing victims to dance themselves to death.”

Master Li’s eyes were gleaming. He seized an ink stick and a stone and a brush and some paper and went to work, swiftly copying each sketch and brief descriptive comment. Each of the eight creatures was very odd in that it was a killer whose ability to kill was limited to a specialty that couldn’t possibly massacre large numbers of people, such as our modern crossbows and exploding charges of Fire Drug—but then, I had to admit that the very limits and peculiarities made violent death seem real and terrible, like strangling hands around one’s throat as opposed to a random missile that strikes by accident on a battlefield.

“I said there were these eight and they were siblings, but later in a passing reference too insignificant to lead anywhere an anonymous commentator said there was a ninth child, a boy,” the Celestial Master said.

“Could he possibly have had a face like a painted ape?” Master Li asked sharply.

The Celestial Master smiled. “Not a chance, Kao. I said he was a boy, and I meant it. He was human, which implies one of his parents was mortal and one divine, and he was said to possess extraordinary beauty.” The saint shrugged. “That’s why I never tried to follow up on a ninth child. It reeks of a thousand fairy tales.”

“If not a million,” Master Li muttered.

I looked at the sketch he was making. It was of the fourth demon-deity, a huge snake, and it was very strange. Part was terrible: two human heads with fangs, a great crushing constrictor’s body—but it wore two silly little hats and a jacket far too small for it, and somehow it seemed lost and lonely, and beneath it the Celestial Master had written, “The Wei Serpent has known greatness and sorrow. It cannot abide noise, and when a carriage rattles past it raises its heads and hisses.”

Apparently the Celestial Master was reading my expression, and he said, “I know, Ox. There’s something sad about these creatures as well as terrible. They seem ancient to us, but they had to be among the last recognized by the aborigines, and gods—even minor demons like these—of a dying race are often creatures of pathos. You must ask Master Li about it sometime.”

Master Li had finished. He folded the papers neatly and put them in his money belt and reclaimed the cage.

“I’ve told all I know. Do you have anything else?” he asked.

“If I did I’ve forgotten it,” the Celestial Master said. “What’s next for you?”

“Ox and I are going to pay our respects to Eight Skilled Gentlemen,” he said. “Meaning I’m going back to Hortensia Island, and I want to show Ox the Yu. After that—well, I have a theory worth testing. I’ll report when I have anything worth talking about.”

The effort to maintain mental clarity had been exhausting. The Celestial Master managed only a wink and a wave as we bowed our way backward and then out the door, but Master Li was as full of energy as he’d been in a year.

“Ha!” he exclaimed as we walked out into the sunlight. “What a delightful development! I take back everything I said about white whales turning into minnows. What kind of case did I originally predict this would be?”

I thought about it.

“The spout reaches toward the stars, and the wake rocks offshore islands as it swims toward us, circumnavigating sacred seas with the awesome authority of an iceberg.”

“Slightly over-alliterative, but not bad,” said Master Li.