DAC 3 Precious Dragon (8 page)

"A tiger!" he said. His eyes shone. It was indeed a tiger, stuffed and moth-eaten. She had never seen one so close to life. It was enormous, twelve feet from head to tail, and its yellowing jaws were open wide, wrinkling the striped muzzle. A hum came from behind them.

"Quick! Here it is," Mrs Pa said. They only just caught the tram in time. Precious Dragon sat craning his head back toward the shop until it was out of sight. Mrs Pa made a decision. Despite her painful feet, she got off the downtown a stop early and took Precious Dragon into the Singapore Road General Emporium. Upstairs, they had a toy department and in it, they had tigers, with staring glass eyes.

Mrs Pa bought him one, even though she couldn't afford it. How often, after all, do you visit a demon temple and collect your only grandchild, newly arrived from the land of the dead? Precious Dragon was delighted with the tiger, and clutched it all the way home.

By the time they got back to Ghenret, it was late afternoon, and the sun was low on the water. Mrs Pa set about preparing dinner, shredding spring onions and cabbage, peppers and beef. Her grandson sat on the edge of the bed, hugging the tiger tightly and sucking something.

"What have you got in your mouth?" Mrs Pa asked. "Let me see." She held out her hand and after a momentary oblique gaze he spat it into her palm. At first she thought it was a sweet, a gobstopper or something, but it was too hard and smooth, and it glowed faintly as if lit from within.

"It looks like a pearl," Mrs Pa said.

"It is a pearl. Can I have it back?"

Normally, the last thing Mrs Pa would have done would be to return such a jewel to a child, but this was not an ordinary child and she felt disinclined to go against his wishes. She handed it back to him.

"Where did you get it from?" Mrs Pa asked, curiously.

"It came with me," he said. He returned the pearl to his mouth. "It's important," he added.

All day, Mrs Pa had desperately wanted to ask Precious Dragon about his mother. There were so many unanswered questions, but something stopped her from raising the subject. She nodded and went back to her cooking. Precious Dragon remained sitting on the bed, swinging his feet and sucking the pearl.

With Pin's spirit still lodged inside her, the demon crouched in the alleyway until the great eye had vanished, then she rose and made her way through a bewildering maze of alleys and backyards toward the city center. Carried along in the demon, Pin occupied himself with watching the scenes that passed by him. He had not ceased to be terrified, but the fear was paradoxically so great that he could almost ignore it, and concentrate on minor details.

Hell was indeed remarkably similar to Singapore Three, in terms of planning if not occupancy. They had gone up Battery Road, and crossed over into Shaopeng, but whereas in Pin's version of the city the central district was full of shops and teahouses and offices, here there was only a suggestion of life. Every building was dark and silent. Shadows watched them from the doorways as they passed and Pin sensed a growing anticipation in the air. They knew what was passing by, concealed within the demon's carapace: a small, succulent spirit, rent prematurely from its body and still warm. Now, Pin understood why they said that ghosts were hungry.

He had never failed to honor the dead. Before she had died, his mother had impressed upon him the importance of compensating the ancestors for their current inconvenienced state. He had delivered food and incense and flowers to the legion of departed relatives, supporting them in the loneliness of the afterlife and ensuring that, on those days when the dead stride the city, they would know that he had honored them and stay away. Yet Singapore Three was home to the limitless dispossessed, and when they died, who had they to comfort them? Many of the dead must be hungry indeed: forgotten by their descendants or simply the last of their lines. They waited now in the empty storefronts, and watched him with their avid gaze.

"Now," the demon said. They had come out onto the topmost landing of Step Street. The derelict buildings of Shaopeng stretched below. Where the Eregeng Trade House had stood in his own city rose an immense pagoda. Its peaked roofs were wreathed in cloud. Balconies and balustrades covered its sides; carved dragons writhed. There was a subtle and indefinable wrongness about it.

"What," Pin said, inside the demon's mind, "is that?"

"That is the Ministry of Epidemics," an echoing thought replied. He had the impression that the demon was outraged at being addressed by a mere spirit.

"We're going there?" Pin asked in horror, but before he could protest, the demon had leaped from the top of the steps. Even in this disincarnate state, however, he was thankful to be leaving behind the needle teeth and hollow tongues of the hungry ghosts of Shaopeng. The city wheeled below, glimpsed through the massing clouds. It was as though someone had made a rough sketch of the landscape of Singapore Three. The main roads, which followed the meridians, were still present and he could see the dark energy lines which ran beneath them. The principal buildings of his own city were also mirrored. The pagoda towers of the Ministries of Storms, Water, Epidemics, and Fire occupied their place, named silently by the demon as they passed, and there were other buildings, too, which Pin did not recognize. The Ministry of Lust: a fat, scarlet blob below. The Ministry of War: a towering iron ziggurat, and at this the demon's heart inexplicably leaped. Fires burned blue in the spaces between the streets, and beyond, where the sea should be, stretched a troubled darkness. Pin could hear the beat of the demon's heart, like a drum in a well. The storm streamed by and the demon plunged, to come to a graceful landing on the steps of the Ministry of Epidemics.

"Where now?" Pin quavered. The demon did not answer. She strode through the double doors of the Ministry and stopped.

The queue, Pin saw, stretched down a corridor so long that the end of it was invisible. A thousand pairs of eyes turned curiously toward the new arrivals. Everyone smiled, politely, and gave a little bow. Muttering, the demon began to pace down the line. Pin looked into each face as they passed. Every manner of illness was represented here. He saw traces of smallpox and leprosy; cancer and Jiangsu fever and illnesses that he could not even name. The polite, ravaged faces turned away once the demon had passed, to resume their passive stare at the opposite wall. They were preserved in a dreadful patience. It is the manner of your death that marks you, Pin thought, not your life at all. What did anyone remember of his mother, except that she had been the chorus girl who had succumbed to a hemorrhage? How long had these spirits been waiting here? Pin wondered.

To him, the ordered line of the dead seemed sad but proper, a progression from the chaos of their last illness to this quiet hallway. Some of them wore costumes that had gone out of fashion a hundred years before, and their wearers seemed frail and thin as paper, bearing their wounds and tumors with a dignity that only the dead can attain. The demon blew lightly upon the doors and they swung open without a sound.

Inside, the Ministry of Epidemics was quiet. The demon closed the door behind her. Pin gazed around him. The fragile, courteous ghosts in the corridor seemed to present little threat. The office in which the demon stood was a cavernous room, divided by screens and cooled by fans set into the ceiling. The desks were hidden beneath mounds of paper; Pin recognized the red seals and ornate parchment coils that were thrown into the graveyard fires to placate the restless dead. Presumably, this was where they ended up.

"Oh, so much to be done," someone mused.

"I have to speak to Lu Yueh," the demon said.

From around the corner of a desk stepped a small elderly gentleman. "Good afternoon," he said.

"Good afternoon. I need to make an appointment."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible. Lord Lu is out of town at the present moment, and is not due to return until after the festival. Perhaps someone else might be able to assist you?" he asked, helpfully. Pin studied him. The administrator wore a neat, dark robe. His eyes were entirely covered by cataracts, giving his gaze a cloudy, indefinite quality. As he stepped forward, Pin looked down and observed that his feet were back to front. The toes of his elegant black slippers pointed behind him.

"I don't think so, no. I need to speak to Lord Lu. It's urgent."

"Today is a holiday, after all. The echelons of Epidemics are as entitled to their festivities as the rest of us. Indeed, I plan to go home myself within the hour."

"And no one else is available?"

"So sorry."

"Very well, then. It's always the same. If you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself," the demon snarled. Wheeling around, she headed for a door set in the wall.

"Wait!" the elderly gentleman wailed, but she was already beyond his reach. Pin could hear him shuffling forward as the door closed. They were in a lift. The demon's taloned forefinger pressed the topmost button, and then they were sailing upward, so fast that Pin found himself forced against the sides of the demon's skull. Pin had not expected to encounter laboratories, but when they stepped out of the lift and into the upper reaches of the Ministry, he could see the rows of beds and equipment through every door they passed. It reminded him of the stories about Paugeng: the endless, secret dormitories where all the intricacies of the body were unraveled and revealed, documented and stored for alchemical transformation. A thought occurred to him. He said to the striding demon, "Those people in the hallway—the ghosts—what are they waiting for? Are they going to come here, to be tested?" He thought of his mother, so savagely and suddenly torn from life. Was she here, among the ranks of the patient spirits? He had not seen her, but perhaps she had changed, worn away by death and time. It was a dreadful notion: even after the expiration of the body the suffering might not cease. The demon did not reply. She brushed aside the equipment: the silken nets of the drip feeds, the bronze crucibles and frosted tubes, as though they did not exist. The wards were empty. At last the demon reached the end of the long line of laboratories. They were in a small room, painted an unpleasant institutional green. Outside the small window, the storms of the upper air continued to rage.

As they stepped through the door of the last lab, Pin saw a young woman sitting at the desk. She was wearing a neat black uniform and slippers, and her round face, though pasty and pale, was unmarked. She looked utterly dumbfounded to see the demon.

"Can I help you?" she asked, mechanically. For the second time that day, the demon explained.

"I'm sorry. I don't think I can help. I—"

"Perhaps this might change your mind." The demon slid something into the woman's hand, a crackle of paper, and then sat in the chair before the desk.

"Oh," the woman said. She looked doubtful. "I don't know if I should—well, all right then, I'll try. But I'm only a technician; I don't know if there's anything I can do." Turning to a nearby shelf, she took down a large leather-bound book and began leafing through it, mouthing the characters silently to herself as she did so. At last she said, "Ah . . . Perhaps this might work. I'm not qualified to practice, you understand," she added anxiously. The demon made an impatient gesture.

"Just get on with it. I haven't got all day . . ."

Pin, eavesdropping on the demon's thoughts, realized that this was true. The demon was running a considerable risk in coming here so blatantly; she was counting on a swift exorcism and then flight, to her home. Presumably, Pin thought uneasily, it was only a matter of time before the Storm Lords showed up.

The woman was writing something assiduously on a long strip of paper.

"Anyone can do this, really," she said "But it needs to have the proper seals put on it . . .there." She stamped the paper and leaned over the demon. As she did so, Pin glimpsed a name on the little badge that she wore: her name was Kung Mai.

"Open your mouth," Mai said to the demon. The serrated jaws fell open and Mai rolled the scroll neatly beneath the demon's tongue. "Now. Close your mouth."

Encased in the demon's jaws, the scroll began to smolder and smoke. The demon shifted uneasily in the chair; Mai placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. Pin became aware that the demon's head was growing increasingly uncomfortable. Pressure was building within it like a migraine, and he was being forced against the bony interior of the demon's skull. Then he was channeled into the demon's bloodstream, flowing out into the hot, echoing cavity of the demon's mouth. Mai gave the demon a resounding blow between her shoulder blades. The demon's mouth opened and Pin's spirit shot out into a waiting flask. He glimpsed the demon rising from her chair. She had the face of an ancient skull, all bones and angularity, and her fur-collared robes were the color of fire. She was, Pin had to admit, rather impressive. She said, in an immense whistling voice, "I will not forget this," and sprang toward the window. There was a soundless blast as the window shattered and the demon was gone. Through the sides of the flask, he could see Mai's distorted face looking back at him.

"You come from the city," she said. "From the living city." Her voice sounded wistful; Pin wondered how long ago she had died.

"Yes," he said. "My name is—Pin."

"My mother is there," Mai told him. "And now my son. I can't reach my mother anymore. Do you think you can help me?"

"I don't know how—especially at the moment. And anyway, why should I?" Pin asked, whispering against the sides of the flask.

Mai glanced uneasily over her shoulder.

"Because something terrible is going to happen, and that demon who brought you here knows what it is. I don't. I only listen to rumors. Hell is in danger. And so is my son."

"Where exactly is your son?"

"He's with my mother. Her name is Pa Niang; she lives by the harbor." Her head jerked up. "I can hear something. We must hide you—" and she thrust the jar hastily into a drawer. Pin tried to speak, but it was already too late. The world had gone dark.