All the Gates of Hell (18 page)

"What's the matter with them?"

"I'm not sure I understand you," Frank said. "This is the Ninth Hell and all is going as it should."

Jin glanced skyward and sighed. "I
mean
why does everyone look so glum? As hells go this one is very pleasant."

"Not everyone," Ling said, and nodded her head toward an old woman hobbling up the path. She seemed positively cheerful by comparison. She even nodded pleasantly to the three of them as they stepped to the side to let her pass. "To most people who come here, the Ninth Hell is just about the worst there is. Some, like that old woman you just saw, think it as splendid as you do. The only difference between those two reactions is this: those who look sad do so because they know what's about to happen to them. Those who look happy, do not."

"Oh. Just what is about to happen to them?"

Ling looked astonished but Frank shook his head. "We beg your pardon, Immanent One, but we sometimes forget the extent of what you do not remember. You know about the Terrace of Oblivion?"

"Yes, but only since today. It's why I need to speak to Madame Meng. Isn't it where a person's memory is blanked out before they are reincarnated?"

"Exactly," Frank said. "Those who look unhappy do so because they still remember their old hell and, even though they will soon forget, they know they're going back again, that they are not ready to move on. Those who are happy have been released, like that old woman. They more than likely will be going to a hell also, but a
different
one, so they don't know what will happen, just that they are going on to something new. They're making progress. Their time on the Wheel of Life and Death is getting shorter."

"But I don't remember releasing that old woman. And if I'm the only one who can..."

"You don't remember releasing her," Ling said. "That doesn't mean that you didn't. The fact that she's here at this particular
now
and not in some age long gone "now" doesn't mean she was released recently. She took her own path here, as everyone must. If you went and touched her, you'd remember."

Jin thought of racing ahead and placing a hand on the old woman just to see if she would remember being the Guan Yin That Was as well, but she knew the visions didn't work that way. They would be about the old woman, not her redeemer.

"Fine. So where are the animals?" Jin asked. "I released my own cat, Missus Tickles, back before I even knew who I was. If that's so, then why isn't she here, or some other?"

"Humans are at an advantage in this," Ling said. "The greater the sentience, the more possibility of understanding error. Animals do move on, as you discovered, since all living things share this burden. That doesn't mean it's common. I believe the fact that Missus Tickles did appear here was Teacher's final proof that you were who he thought you were."

"She gave me away, huh? I wondered about that. Do... do you know what happened to her?"

"Missus Tickles? She was reborn in a different hell, of course. As a human this time. Progress," Frank said.

"I know some cat lovers who would dispute that point," Jin said dryly.

"I would dispute that point as well," Ling said. "Before my Enlightenment, there were those who argued that a woman could not, in fact, achieve Enlightenment. That I was a dragon besides and not human at all was doubly astonishing to them."

"Grrl power," Jin said, smiling.

Ling flexed her arms, grinning. "Indeed."

Frank just shook his head. "I look forward to the day when we can shed these corporeal forms again. Having a body makes one silly."

Jin smiled. "There are advantages. Though when I'm trudging up some infernal corridor or path trying to get somewhere I need to be, it's hard to remember what those advantages might be." Jin stopped a moment to rest on a large stone. "How much farther?"

Frank studied the path ahead. "Fifteen steps."

Jin looked up the mountain path as it meandered upward.

"More like fifteen miles."

"Appearances deceive. In hell, doubly so. Please count."

Jin rubbed her aching legs and then stood up again. "All right. One," she said as they took a step together.

"Two," said Ling.

"Three," said Frank, and by the time they all called "Fifteen!" they stood at a massive door of bronze, silver, and gold.

"On the nose," Jin said. "Nice job."

"Oh, he can count," Ling said. "I'm so impressed."

Jin sighed. "Don't start, you two. Where is Madame Meng?"

"Inside," Frank said. "But this is as far as Ling and I can go."

Jin blinked. "You're not coming? Why?"

"It's hard to explain," Ling said. "You could say it's outside our jurisdiction."

"Then... isn't it outside of mine as well?"

"You are Guan Yin." Frank said, as if that explained everything. Not that Jin was particularly worried about going in alone; in fact she much preferred a private audience with this Madame Meng, whoever she might be. Yet it was just one more reminder of how much she had yet to understand. She was hoping that Madame Meng could help with that.

"Wait for me, then. I'll be right back," Jin said, though at the moment she had no idea if that was true or not. Jin opened the door.

(())

Chapter 14

It's just like Grand Central Station
!

Jin had only been to New York's Grand Central Station once, but the similarities with Madame Meng's domain were remarkable. Jin stood in one vast central space ringed by numerous doors disgorging people. There were high windows of colored glass that let the sun in, and everywhere was the bustle of people trying to get from one place to another. Everyone seemed to know where they were going except for Jin.

She stood just inside the doorway for a moment, then moved to one side as more people came through while she continued to study all the activity for a time. Soon Jin was able to make out patterns: when people first arrived, they all moved toward what looked like a vast waiting room off to the left, only no one waited there for very long. After a fairly short while they milled back into the main section, looking somewhat confused but still moving with purpose toward a huge open doorway on the far side of the central chamber opposite Jin. In time Jin began to think that the comparison with Grand Central Station wasn't totally accurate. In many ways it was more like the Gateway to All the Hells, except people were coming in through different doors and all leaving by the same one.

Jin left the wall where she had been watching everything and found one of the new arrivals, a rather depressed-looking old man. "Excuse me, do you know where Madame Meng is?"

"Here, of course," the man said and kept walking.

That wasn't very helpful, but it seemed to be all the help Jin was going to get. All the depressed-looking people said more or less the same thing with slight variations, and all the confused looking people just said, "Who?"

The Terrace of Oblivion
, Jin thought.
If I were double-jointed, I'd kick myself
.

Jin had thought of the Terrace of Oblivion as a metaphor, but she thought now that, perhaps, that was an error. She fell in with the people heading out toward what she'd first thought was the waiting area. They shuffled through great open doors, far larger than that those of an aircraft hanger, and out onto a vast balcony of marble and granite. In the distance Jin could see another mountain, much like the one where her path from the Gateway to All the Hells emerged, and there were so many bridges spanning the gulf from that side to this one that Jin was a little amazed that she hadn't noticed them at first. That aside, the view, as it was from the other side of the mountain, was simply breath-taking. Jin even noticed waterfalls on the opposite side, fed, she assumed, by high mountain lakes and rainfall. They emerged through fissures in the rock to fall in long white plumes toward the valley below, creating permanent rainbows in their wakes.

Jin thought of the central hub where the people had been going after visiting the balcony; she wondered if, perhaps, it was a stairway down to the Tenth Hell. Maybe the valley below was the Tenth Hell.

A large group of men and women shuffled past Jin, and something about them got her attention. Or rather, something missing: voices. The place was filled with people and no one was talking to each other. Even the people who moved in groups seemed to do so more from some sort of unconscious flocking instinct than any real interest in each other's company. They were simply bodies moving from one place to another as if by stage direction: go there. Stand here for a moment, then go over there.

There were multi-level fountains that looked like stacked marble mushrooms, and this was the "there" where most people were headed. They would walk up, take a ladle from the basin, and drink. Some seemed to drink eagerly, some drank looking resigned, and others still looked angry and sullen. Yet once they had drunk, all assumed the slightly bewildered look that Jin had noticed in the main hall. Then they would shuffled back into the main hall and proceed toward the central hub and its huge black doors.

All but one. She stood with her hands on the balcony railing. Her hair was long and pure white, her hands spotted and wrinkled with age. She did not drink. She did not speak. She simply looked out over the valley toward the far mountain. Jin approached, hesitantly.

"Excuse me... are you Madame Ming?"

The woman turned then. Jin's impression of age was not mistaken; the woman was ancient, her face lined and care-worn. Yet she stood straight and there was a dignity about her that made Jin feel more than a little awkward.

"
Guan
Shi Yin. It is you, isn't it? Let me look at you, girl."

The old woman frowned, then sniffed the air. Jin thought for a moment that maybe she needed a shower, but the old woman was smiling. "Real living flesh. Impressive. I'm surprised you made it here intact. Everyone else is dead, you know."

Jin did, in fact, know that, but the blunt way the old woman said it rather startled her. "Ahh, excuse me, you
are
Madame Meng, aren't you?"

"That I am. Sorry to go on so. Rude of me, but of course you didn't recognize me and I should have realized. It would make no sense at all if you did. Not even a bit. How have you been?"

Jin, confused, just stammered out the conventional reply. "Uh, fine. And you?"

"The same. Always the same." She was looking back at the far mountain again, and Jin joined her at the rail.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Madame Meng asked after a short while.

"It's incredible," Jin said. "Though most of the people who come here don't seem to appreciate it. Frank... I mean, Shan Cai and Lung Nu said it was because they were dreading what was about to happen to them."

"I'm sure that's part of it," Madame Meng said, "but this is my realm, and I have my own theory."

"May I ask what that is?"

"They're dead, Immanent One. It's not that dying removes your sense of esthetics; I simply believe your priorities change. Now, take us by contrast -- we're alive. This sight means something to us. I've been here for longer than most glacial epochs and I never get tired of it. Which is fortunate, else I think I would go mad."

Jin wondered if she should say something, but Madame Meng didn't seem to expect it. Jin waited for her to say something else, but she didn't do that either. She simply leaned against the rail, looking out, just as she was when Jin found her.

"Listen, I hope you don't mind my asking -- "

"Not at all, and the answer is 'yes,'" Madame Meng said, not even waiting for Jin to finish the question. "Your divine self came to me to be reborn on the Wheel of Life and Death. That
is
what you came to ask, isn't it? Once your mortal incarnation found out that I and this place existed?"

Jin just stared at her for a moment, then blushed. "Well...yes."

Madame Meng just sighed. "I thought as much. You don't remember any of that, of course. Your choice. How I envy you that."

"You envy me? Why?"

The old woman smiled. "Well, not you as such, Guan Yin. Your responsibilities are grave and, despite my complaints, I would not wish to trade mine for yours. Just the 'forgetting' part. I wish I could do that."

"I don't understand."

Madame Meng looked back into the distance. "The nature of my responsibilities is that I must remain here, brewing the Elixir of Oblivion. It's my gift, you see. Or curse. It has to be done, and only I can do it. I have been doing it for a very long time, and I remember everything. One day, one time, one 'now' pretty much like another, and I think what a joy it must be to forget the journey, the path ahead and behind and all that has gone before."

"Like the people who come through here?" Jin asked.

Madame Meng nodded toward the confused-looking men and women shuffling out on their way to the Tenth Hell to be reborn. "Yes, and that's the true rebirth, not the taking on of crude flesh one more time -- the rebirth of the spirit. To start over fresh, your sins and errors all forgotten, to see the world with new eyes..." Madame Meng closed hers for a moment as if trying to imagine it. She finally shook her head, and opened her eyes once more. "I'm supposed to be beyond all that now, yet sometimes I think it would be worth all that I am to forget, just once." She smiled at Jin then. "Forgive my rambling. I get so few visitors. Or rather too many, but none of them are much for conversation. I gather conversation is what you had in mind? Answers?"

"Yes... I was hoping you would help me."

Madame Meng leaned over and patted Jin's hand in a grandmotherly fashion. "Let's have some tea and talk about it." She turned away from the railing. "It's not good for me to stare out like this for too long anyway. I start to believe I can fly, like those silly cranes who are always flittering around out there."

Jin followed the old woman to one side of the balcony, where a small door of iron-bound wood appeared. At least, Jin was pretty sure the door had suddenly appeared, since she was certain that it had not been there a few moments ago. They went up a spiral iron staircase into what looked like the den of a very comfortable apartment. While Madame Meng put the kettle on in the adjoining kitchen, Jin looked around.