The Demi-Monde: Summer (17 page)

‘Be silent,’ snapped Mao.

‘No … let the girl speak. Her words please us.’

Ignoring the look of undiluted hatred Mao aimed in her direction, Dong E continued. ‘You are Divine, Your Majesty, ordained by ABBA, therefore it is unthinkable that ABBA, in all Her wisdom, would seek to punish one such as you. Certainly it appears that we are advised that to destroy the Daemon would be to transgress the Way ordained by ABBA, but perhaps the iChing wishes you to be more subtle in your treatment of the creature. There are other ways, are there not, of negating the Daemon’s baleful influence, ways that stop short of killing it. Could we not, say,
protect
the Daemon by keeping it here in the Forbidding City, held in solitary confinement?’

Dong E was impressed with herself: she had found a way of giving the Empress what she wanted – the neutralising of the Daemon – without violating the advice yielded by the iChing. And she had saved the Daemon’s life …

This last thought gave her pause: why was she so concerned about a
Daemon?

‘I must beg that you forgive this impudent and ridiculous interruption, Your Majesty,’ spluttered Mao. ‘And know that
Fresh Bloom Dong E will be punished most severely for this violation of Li.’

‘No,’ came the quiet reply. ‘She will not be punished.’ The Empress leant forward. ‘Ask the iChing this, TongJi: if the Daemon was to be kept safe and well here in the Forbidding City, would ABBA deem this to be a transgression of Her will?’

Once more the TongJi asked her question, once more the drums turned and once more the coins were read. The third NonaGram painted on the floor was that of the ninety-ninth Epigram, the one known as the UnDecided. A frown creased the forehead of the TongJi: this was not the response she had been expecting from the Oracle.

‘What does this Epigram say?’ prompted the Empress.

‘It is one of the iChing’s most perplexing statements,’ stuttered the TongJi. ‘It reads:

Can Good be born of Evil?

Can Poison beget Life?

Can Fire quench the Thirst?

Only you can answer
,

And, as in all things, the answer is the question
.

So question yourself
.

Peer into your soul
.

There you will find yourself

Peering back.’

‘But what does it mean?’ demanded the Empress.

‘As I say, Your Majesty, the UnDecided is the most devious of all the Epigrams and its meaning is elusive. My own interpretation is that the Daemon is the Poison, the Evil and the Fire which will rack our world and therefore it must be eliminated.’

‘Hmmm. And what of you, Dong E? What is your interpretation?’

In truth, Dong E didn’t have a clue, but as she had learnt during her years in the Forbidding City, when in doubt, always give the answer the Empress most wanted to hear. ‘That the keeping of the Daemon safe here in the Forbidding City will remove her mischievous influence from the Kosmos, such that the Demi-Monde can proceed into the Second Age of Femmes without let or hindrance.’

Empress Wu gave a distracted nod. ‘I believe you have correctly interpreted the will of ABBA, Fresh Bloom Dong E. There will be no more 4Tellings. You may leave us, Imperial TongJi, this ritual is now completed.’

Very sensible
, thought Dong E. The Forbidding City was a hotbed of gossip and rumour at the best of times and if the Empress posed any further questions and the iChing’s answers were similarly inauspicious, the bad news – that the Second Age of Femmes was off the agenda – would be quickly known to everyone in the City.

But ever the one to ensure that the rumours percolating through the Forbidding City were the rumours she personally approved of, the Empress Wu announced in a loud voice, ‘Let it be known that the iChing has confirmed that by holding the Daemon safe in the Forbidding City we have removed the final obstacle standing between Femmes and their attaining of the long-dreamt-for state of MostBien. By making the Daemon as an empty vessel we usher in the Second Age of Femmes.’

Calling the Daemon an empty vessel was an unfortunate insult, decided Dong E as she left the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Empty vessels are full of the Nothingness and hence replete with
wu wei
.

Interesting
.

As she had been taught by PhilosopherNoN Xi Kang, there was great power and strength in the Nothingness that is
wu wei
. The spaces between the spokes of a wheel, the void that is the Kosmos, the invisible flight of an arrow … all were examples of the Nothingness, but none was as powerful as nonviolence, the power to fight without fighting.

And as this Daemon was the proselytiser of this strange
philosophy of non-violence, Normalism, it was little wonder it – correction,
she;
only humans could embrace
wu wei
– was blessed by ABBA. ABBA, after all, was the ultimate embodiment of
wu wei
and the Nothingness.

Dong E shook her head, trying to clear it. A Daemon being possessed of
wu wei
was an intriguing thought, so intriguing that she wasn’t inclined to return to her quarters as Mao had commanded her. Instead of turning left towards the Pavilion of Delicious Delights, she turned right towards the Gallery of Literary Profundity. Luckily for her, it was the Time of the Replenishing of Bodily Strength and the corridors of the Forbidding City were deserted as everybody took luncheon.

Still Dong E knew she had to be careful. The Gallery of Literary Profundity was out of bounds to Fresh Blooms as knowledge and learning were believed to make them lose that oh-so-cherished glow associated with the first awakening of FemmeHood. But for her these unofficial visits to the library and her chats there with Xi Kang were what made her tedious life in the Forbidding City worth living. Breaking the rules and violating Li was exciting. Better, she had decided, to die seeking knowledge than to die of boredom.

She came to the servants’ door of the long-neglected library and, after taking a quick look around to check that she was not being watched, eased it open. Taking a deep breath she shimmied her way inside, steeling herself against the putrid onslaught of the millions of gently mouldering sheets of paper the library was home to. This was the second and inferior library of the Forbidding City and it was where all the discredited texts, the scrolls containing outdated opinions and the tomes relating to obsolete theories were housed, only protected from destruction by the belief that words once written became the property of ABBA. Without this injunction the whole lot would have been turned to ash years ago.

The size of the library showed just how much heterodoxical philosophy had been concocted over the years. The Gallery of Literary Profundity was, by Dong E’s estimation, almost five hundred metres square, at least fifty metres high and was crisscrossed by a perplexing maze of floor-to-ceiling bookcases each crammed full of books, rolls of parchment and document boxes. It was also home to the Coven’s most irascible HerTorian, the PhilosopherNoN Xi Kang.

Silent on her slippers, Dong E tripped through the vast room, feeling intimidated as she always did by the cliffs of books that loomed over her. It was pitch dark, there were no windows and no gaslights in the room, so all she had to guide her was her memory of previous visits and the smell wafting towards her from the cubicle set in the furthest corner of the library where Xi Kang had built his home.

She rounded a final bookshelf and by the light of a neargutted candle standing on a rickety table could just make out the huddled form of the old NoN as he lay on his cot swathed in a threadbare blanket. Braving the smell – a concoction of mustiness, neglect and urine – Dong E bent down and gently shook the NoN by the shoulder.

‘Revered PhilosopherNoN Xi Kang, it is me, Fresh Bloom Dong E. I have come to visit you. Look, I have brought you a present.’ With that she placed a small bottle of Sake Solution on the side table.

The NoN grumped off the blanket, stretched and then made a grab for the bottle. He took a long, long guzzle. ‘Excellent. Fuck, that was good. Just what a man – a former man – needs to wake him up in the morning.’ He gave his arse a deep and very profound scratch. ‘It is morning, is it not?’

‘No, afternoon.’

‘Date?’

‘It is the second day of Summer, one thousand and five.’

‘No kidding. Summer already, eh? Fuck, doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourself. I thought it was still Spring.’

He took another swig from the bottle, then swung his skinny legs off the cot and let out a loud fart. Dong E was forced to turn her head to protect herself from the smell and to avoid watching the NoN peeing into a rusted bucket. The NoN was a truly repellent individual: excessively tall, excessively thin, excessively dirty and excessively disrespectful to Li. He reached up a grubby hand, gave his bald head a rub and then pushed his feet into his sandals. ‘Afternoon you say? Too fucking early to be drinking, so I’ll pretend it’s midnight; time is, after all, an infinitely malleable concept. What did the Master say about Time? Ah, yes, “
The sands of time flow so don’t let it get in your sandwiches, otherwise you’ll be eating desert
.” Absolutely no fucking relevance to what we’re talking about but that’s the Master for you.’ He drained the bottle and smacked his lips. ‘Fucking good Solution, though it comes to a sorry pass when brainless whores like you are provided with better rations than intellectuals such as me, but the Demi-Monde is, as the Sage Too Zi often remarked, a world that has been fucked over more times than an ImPure hooker, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised.’

Dong E’s indulgent smile was hidden in the darkness. It was hardly surprising that Xi Kang had been exiled to this, a forgotten part of the Forbidding City; the rather scatological philosophy of the TooZian branch of Confusionism he espoused had never been popular in the more refined circles of the Coven. And since the triumph of HerEticalism the study of Confusionism was only permitted within the Forbidding City and here the only interpretation of Confusionism considered legitimate was that of the Great Sage – and Femme – Wun Zi. Only her rendering of Confusionism’s greatest work – the BiAlects – was now considered valid. As a result, TooZian
Confusionists, such as Xi Kang, had been shunned and banished from the presence of the Empress. The poor sod had been lucky to avoid execution for blasphemy and sedition.

The old NoN cocked his head to one side. ‘What’s that noise?’

The distant rumble of gunfire had been going on for so long that Dong E hardly noticed it. ‘Oh, that. We haven’t been told
officially
but the rumour is that the ForthRight Army is attacking Rangoon. What you can hear is the sound of our artillery.’

‘
Our
artillery? Fucking nonsense: more like the UnFunnies’ artillery. Maybe if I get lucky, one of their gunners will land a shell on Wu’s head.’ He looked over to Dong E and gave her a twisted grin. ‘Anyway, enough of this chitter-chatter: to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?’

‘I have been present at a ritual of 4Telling conducted by TongJi Fu Shi …’

‘Incompetent WunZian cunt,’ muttered Xi Kang.

‘… where she consulted the iChing regarding a number of questions posed by the Empress Wu.’

The old NoN froze. ‘You were present at a 4Telling held in the presence of Wu? You heard the questions? You saw the NonaGrams which were cast?’

‘Yes, yes and yes,’ Dong E answered, hardly able to keep the triumph out of her voice.

Xi Kang gave a sniff. ‘A whore like you would never have been permitted to attend a 4Telling in my day. No surprise there though: standards have been going to shit ever since the Yin Revolution.’ The NoN spat on the floor. ‘Fucking Femme Liberation Movement … or rather unFucking Femme Liberation Movement: I hope all those bitches die of rampant vaginitis.’ He pushed a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil towards Dong E. ‘Write the NonaGrams down for me.’ Even in the flickering candlelight she could see that the NoN was aquiver to know what had happened during the 4Telling: he might have been
able to disguise the excitement in his voice but there was no concealing the trembling of his fingers.

‘And if I do that, will you promise to interpret the Changes for me?’

This was the great insight that PhilosopherNoN Xi Kang had shared with her during their many candlelit discussions, that the BiAlects and the iChing had been written to reflect the two disparate aspects of the Kosmos: Yin and Yang. The Master had chosen to articulate this dualism through the antagonistic Voices of the mythical Sages of the Ancient World, Wun Zi and Too Zi, the pair locked in continual and unresolved debate over the purpose and ultimate fate of HumanKind. Unfortunately for a TooZian like Xi Kang, since the advent of HerEticalism the Yang insight of Too Zi had been expunged and it was blasphemy to even mention that almost every NonaGram cast had a Yang shadow that added shading to the initial WunZian – Yin – reading. And it was this ‘Change’ reading that Dong E wished Xi Kang – the last of the TooZian scholars – to explain to her.

‘I might,’ said Xi Kang slyly. ‘But the question is, what are you offering in exchange for my unique knowledge of the Changes?’

‘Another bottle of Sake Solution?’

‘Tush … a mere bagatelle. You demand deep and profound insights into the Kosmos, insights that only I can give you, and you offer me a bottle of Solution in return. You’ll have to do better than that.’