Chasing the Phoenix (33 page)

“You will take care of that, then?”

“Of course. But in return, when negotiations with Shrewd Fox begin, you must keep Gentle Mountain far away from her.”

“I will do the negotiations. I think you are not dishonest enough for this kind of work.”

*   *   *

THE ARMY
encampment was like a city with canvas tents instead of buildings. It had broad avenues with streets leading off of them, like a city, and was organized into neighborhoods as well, some residential and others concentrating on specialized services, like cook tents, medical facilities, or corrals for the animals. Surplus chose the locale for the planned show with care: an open square within earshot of Ceo Shrewd Fox's tent, backed by a maze of interlocking hospital tents, some of which were tall enough that the props needed for the big surprise could be hidden in cul-de-sacs created by the larger wards.

There, the Dog Pack suddenly appeared one afternoon, with the prefabricated parts of a stage. These fit together swiftly. Poles were lashed to the stage's sides and, hauling on ropes, the crew erected a puppet theater that was as bright as a child's dream.

It all went up in a flash.

Soldiers were already gathering when two musicians—Terrible Nuisance and his aunt, Predatory Hibiscus—rattled an attention-getting tattoo on drums and then picked up flute and lyre and began to play. Vicious Brute stepped forward and, as the square rapidly filled with gawkers, announced in his most stentorian voice, “The Dog! Warrior's! Gallop! To the City! Of Peace! The Raising! Of the Flag! Of China! And the Joy! Of the Council! Of Eight! Plus! White Squall's! Attack! Upon the City! With Monsters!”

Vicious Brute stepped away from the theater, and the play began.

The show that followed did, admittedly, take certain liberties with the historical truth. But what did that matter when the equestrian puppets of the Dog Pack, led by the Dog Warrior and his flame-haired bride, were rocking up and down in such a splendid imitation of riders at full gallop? Or when their battle with pursuing survivors of the Mountain Horses army was so exciting? Or when the ambush by radioactive mutants from the ancient power plants came as such a shock? Or when the incident wherein, laughing, the Fire Orchid puppet turned its back on the audience and flashed its breasts at the Dog Warrior indelibly burned the unseen image into the minds and imaginations of its audience? Such small embellishments were needed to liven up an otherwise drab and unconvincing narrative.

Puppetry was an adult art form, of course. But Surplus noted children here and there in the crowd—a vendor boy with a tray of mooncakes for sale, a delivery girl who burrowed through the sea of legs to the front and sat down upon an overturned five-gallon jug of herbal wine she had been conveying to the hospital, a few others. Their eyes glowed. For an instant, Surplus saw into the future, centuries after he was gone, when he would survive as a shadow in the minds of children, a legend they would for a time believe in and then, as they matured, grow out of. He did not know how he felt about that.

But now the puppet Dog Pack came at last to the city of Peace. They ran their ruse on the Council of Seven (the slapstick here was entirely the puppeteer's invention), and when, at the climax of the scene, the Dog Warrior ordered the flag run up, a full-size flag of China lofted into the air on a pole above the puppet stage, prompting cheers from all.

With such a chaotic scene in the square, anybody less observant than Surplus would not have noticed when Ceo Shrewd Fox came out of her tent to see what all the noise was about. But when it mattered, Surplus could be very observant indeed. He waited until the ceo, satisfied that nothing untoward was happening, started to turn away, and then hooked two fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly.

At this signal, a spider larger than the puppet theater burst from a side alley, legs thrashing, and rushed at the crowd with a mechanical roar. Those soldiers nearest it surged back in alarm. Some screamed.

Then laughter washed through the square as it became obvious that the monster was made of cloth with black-painted bamboo legs and worn like a costume by its puppeteer. The
clack-clack-clack
of the cunningly jointed legs—cranked by the puppeteer—merged with the buzzing of a bullroarer spun by Terrible Nuisance to create a noise that convincingly made the tiny people of the puppet city cower in fear of this terrifying threat.

Then a crushing wheel, also constructed of cloth over a light frame, made its appearance, to general laughter and screams of delight.

“You! Puppeteer!” Ceo Shrewd Fox cried. “Stop this performance at once and come immediately to my tent. I wish to speak with you.”

The show stopped. The crowd turned. Before Gentle Mountain could step out from behind the puppet theater, Fire Orchid materialized at the ceo's elbow. “It is really me you wish to talk with. The puppet troupe is made up of my family, and I am its head. As well as its agent.”

“Agent? There is no money involved. You are soldiers and sworn to the service of the Hidden Emperor.”

“Oh. I see. Do you have a Division of Puppetry and Marionettes? I do not think so. But if you do, then take up this matter with its commander. My family and I are not soldiers but rather independently contracted mercenaries, paid monthly on a week-to-week agreement, which we are free to abrogate at any time simply by forfeiting whatever pay we are currently owed.”

“What?! No military commander in her right mind would agree to such an extraordinary arrangement.”

“We had twenty mountain horses, which Powerful Locomotive wanted very much. Also, nobody thought much of having my family among their own troops because we look like such a bad sort. Also, we had a very good agent.”

“All this is true, great ceo,” Surplus said.

“Shut up, sweetie-puss. This is girl business.” Addressing Ceo Shrewd Fox, Fire Orchid said, “We will go to your tent like you said and discuss this. Because I am so cooperative.”

Time passed. At last, Fire Orchid emerged from her commanding officer's tent. “Well?” Surplus said, taking her aside, where they would not be overheard.

“She is a very tough negotiator. I wanted to keep the copyright on Gentle Mountain's designs, but she would not give in on that because she said she might want to use them again. However, she ended up offering very good money for his services, with a little more on the side for the family to work as his assistants. So I agreed to her terms.”

“No, no, the plan I mean. What about the plan?”

“Oh, that. Yes, she thinks it's her own idea, just like you said.”

The square exploded with applause. On the stage, Gentle Mountain emerged from behind the puppet theater to take bow after bow. Smiling as he was, he hardly looked sinister at all.

“As soon as things have returned to normal, we'll have to do this again,” Surplus said. “This is a perfect crowd for the family's pickpockets—thronged and not at all on guard.”

Fire Orchid looked away without saying anything.

“You
didn't
let them work, did you?”

“No, of course not. Well, maybe a little.”

“What? Fire Orchid, you gave me your word! I told you that Shrewd Fox had warned me about this. If one of our people had been caught, we'd all be in serious trouble.”

Fire Orchid put on her innocent face. “Oops,” she said.

*   *   *

THE DAY
began with a deep rumbling like distant thunder. Half of it was drums and the other half soldiers lifting and dropping makeshift weights—some of them large stones, others sections of log—onto hard ground and then raising the weights using block-and-tackle arrangements and letting them fall again, over and over, until the earth shook. More soldiers joined in the effort, and more, so that the rumbling grew.

Black figures bulged up out of the darkness—giant spiders, their ebon legs lashing. Rising up behind them came the eerie sight of row after row of crushing wheels. Dimly glimpsed behind them were massive walking figures, from which occasionally erupted gouts of flame.

From Surplus's perspective the puppet machines looked terrifying. He tried to imagine them as seen by the besieged citizens of South: One moment the horizon was dim and flat in the predawn murk. Then came the rolling thunder of countless giant machines, building and building until black blisters popped up, one after the other, by the hundreds. More spiders, clearly, than anyone had suspected ever existed. Behind which came endless machines for which they did not even have names. All converging upon a city that had no idea how to defend against them.

These were the weapons the citizens of South had heard about in terrible detail and been reassured no longer existed. Yet here they were.

It must, Surplus concluded, look like the end of the world.

Standing on the sidelines beside Surplus, Darger said, “I know now how Shrewd Fox must have felt seeing her plan to win the Battle of Three Armies being fobbed off as my own. I feel strangely unhappy about letting her have the credit for this.”

“I, too, am no fan of ironic justice,” Surplus said. “Particularly since, on reflection, we seem to have experienced more than our share of it. But consider, Aubrey, that a distressing lack of public admiration is the confidence trickster's lot in life. Our very best illusions pass for reality until that moment of cold lucidity when the mark realizes that he has been sheared—and by then we are too far away to bask in the applause of an appreciative, if impoverished, audience. Which, moreover, is rarely anxious to trumpet its own humiliation. This is simply the way things are.”

“Too true. Still, I suppose we must suffer for our art.”

All the while they two talked, the giant puppet machines created by Gentle Mountain slowly advanced upon the city. In fact, they advanced so slowly that it seemed they would never actually get there. As, indeed, they could not, under penalty of shattering the illusion that they were anything more than cloth stretched over bamboo frameworks.

But now a party emerged from the Gate of China, the oldest and most massive of South's city gates, bearing a flag of parley. Ceo Shrewd Fox, who had been awaiting this very thing, dispatched a delegation to negotiate with them.

“Did you know,” Surplus asked, “that when it was originally built, during the Ming Dynasty, the Gate of China was called Gathering Treasure Gate? It was renamed when South became the capital city following the fall of the Qing Dynasty, because the Qing capital of North had an identically titled city gate. The older name seems to me much more auspicious.”

“You are as good as a guidebook! However did you become so knowledgeable on such matters?”

Ceo Shrewd Fox's delegation, halfway to the Gate of China, dismounted. So too did the delegation from South. Both groups converged. Words were exchanged.

“I am in China, and so of course I read every history book I can get my paws on. I am surprised you do not do the same.”

“For me, literature is all. Give me a volume of Wang Wei's poetry and I am good for the evening.” Striking a pose, Darger declaimed:

In my old age I grow calmer.

Knowing little of the world's affairs,

I do not worry how things will turn out.

My quiet mind makes no cunning plans.

I dwell within the woods I love;

Pine-sweet breezes rustle my robes.

Mountain moonlight fills my lute,

Mocking what learning I have left.

If you ask what makes one rich or poor

Hear the fisherman's voice float to shore.

To which he swiftly added, “I read history as well, of course. But it is weak tea by comparison.”

Below the city walls, the two delegations remounted and rode toward South as one group. The gates opened for them. They eddied, entered, disappeared.

“Your poem is good stuff,” Surplus said, “and I am glad to have heard it. But it cannot compare to a rousing account of the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire.”

“
De gustibus non est disputandum,
my friend. Of taste and scent, no argument. We shall simply have to agree to disagree.”

They were thus pleasantly conversing when the flags of South and the Yellow Sea Alliance came down from the Gate of China, to be replaced by a familiar red flag with yellow stars.

The world went silent.

In the distance, flimsy cloth structures collapsed in upon themselves.

The Hidden Emperor had taken another city.

*   *   *

IT HAD
been months since Surplus had entered a conquered city where the mood was as dark as it was in South, and those earlier cities had been brutalized by Powerful Locomotive. “I fail to understand,” he said. “The terms that Ceo Shrewd Fox extended to South were generous, the Immortals were informed that there was to be no looting, and a siege that promised to be long and unpleasant came to a painless end. In the days since, every promise made in the name of the Hidden Emperor has been kept. Why should our conquest be regarded as a tragedy?”

“Why are you asking me this?” his guide said. “I am only a guide.” They were riding beasts such as Surplus had never seen before—part reindeer, part horse, and part otter at a guess—with elaborately curlicued antlers that had been painted red, yellow, and orange. They were spirited creatures and yet comfortable saddle animals, a credit to whoever had designed them. “You hired me to take you to Emperor Sun's mausoleum—that I can do. If you want to know its height above sea level, details of its history, or what materials went into its making, I can tell you those things and much more. But I am no political analyst. For such questions, you should refer to an expert.”

“But you live here and presumably have much in common with your fellow citizens. Further, I have yet to see a cheerful and optimistic face upon a native—and that includes you. So it seems likely that you understand the source of your own malaise. Finally, I am prepared to tip you five grams of silver for the information.”