The Years of Rice and Salt (24 page)

When he could spare a moment he went to her side, in the highest cabin on the rear deck, and looked beseechingly at I-Chin, who would not reassure him. She was coughing up a foamy blood, very red, and I-Chin was sucking her throat clear of it from time to time with a tube he stuck down her mouth. “A rib has punctured a lung,” he said shortly, keeping his eyes on her. She meanwhile was conscious, wide-eyed, in pain but quiet. She said only, “What's happening to me?” After I-Chin cleared her throat of another mass of blood, he told her what he had told Kheim. She panted like a dog, shallow and fast.

Kheim went back into the watery chaos abovedecks. The wind and waves were no worse than before, perhaps a bit better. There were scores of problems large and small to attend to, and he threw himself at them in a fury, muttering to himself, or shouting at the gods; it didn't matter, no one could hear anything abovedecks, unless it was shouted directly in their ears. “Please, Tianfei, stay with us! Don't leave us! Let us go home. Let us return to tell the emperor what we have found for him. Let the girl live.”

They survived the storm: but Butterfly died the next day.

Only three ships
found each other and regathered on the quiet blank of the sea. They sewed Butterfly's body in a man's robe and tied two of the gold disks from the mountain empire into it, and let it slide over the side into the waves. All the men were weeping, even I-Chin, and Kheim could barely speak the words of the funeral prayer. Who was there to pray to? It seemed impossible that after all they had gone through, a mere storm could kill the sea goddess; but there she was, slipping under the waves, sacrificed to the sea just as that island boy had been sacrificed to the mountain. Sun or seafloor, it was all the same.

“She died to save us,” he told the men shortly. “She gave that avatar of herself to the storm god, so he would let us be. Now we have to carry on to honor her. We have to get back home.”

So they repaired the ship as best they could, and endured another month of desiccated life. This was the longest month of the trip, of their lives. Everything was breaking down, on the ships, in their bodies. There wasn't enough food and water. Sores broke out in their mouths and on their skin. They had very little qi, and could hardly eat what food was left.

Kheim's thoughts left him. He found that when thoughts left, things just did themselves. Doing did not need thinking.

One day he thought: sail too big cannot be lifted. Another day he thought: more than enough is too much. Too much is less. Therefore least is most. Finally he saw what the Daoists meant by that.

Go with the way. Breathe in and out. Move with the swells. Sea doesn't know ship, ship doesn't know sea. Floating does itself. A balance in balance. Sit without thinking.

The sea and sky melded. All blue. There was no one doing, nothing being done. Sailing just happened.

Thus, when a great sea was crossed, there was no one doing it.

Someone looked up
and noticed an island. It turned out to be Mindanao, and after the rest of its archipelago, Taiwan, and all the familiar landfalls of the Inland Sea.

The three remaining Great Ships sailed into Nanjing almost exactly twenty months after their departure, surprising all the inhabitants of the city, who thought they had joined Hsu Fu at the bottom of the sea. And they were happy to be home, no doubt about it, and bursting with stories to tell of the amazing giant island to the east.

But any time Kheim met the eye of any of his men, he saw the pain there. He saw also that they blamed him for her death. So he was happy to leave Nanjing and travel with a gang of officials up the Grand Canal to Beijing. He knew that his sailors would scatter up and down the coast, go their ways so they wouldn't have to see each other and remember; only after years had passed would they want to meet, so that they could remember the pain when it had become so distant and faint that they actually wanted it back, just to feel again they had done all those things, that life had held all those things.

But for now it was impossible not to feel they had failed. And so when Kheim was led into the Forbidden City, and brought before the Wanli Emperor to accept the acclaim of all the officials there, and the interested and gracious thanks of the emperor himself, he said only, “When a great sea has been crossed, there is no one to take credit.”

The Wanli Emperor nodded, fingering one of the gold disk ingots they had brought back, and then the big hummingbird moth of beaten gold, its feathers and antennae perfectly delineated with the utmost delicacy and skill. Kheim stared at the Heavenly Envoy, trying to see in to the hidden emperor, the Jade Emperor inside him. Kheim said to him, “That far country is lost in time, its streets paved with gold, its palaces roofed with gold. You could conquer it in a month, and rule over all its immensity, and bring back all the treasure that it has, endless forest and furs, turquoise and gold, more gold than there is yet now in the world; and yet still the greatest treasure in that land is already lost.”

Snowy peaks, towering over a dark land. The first blinding crack of sunlight
flooding all. He could have made it then—everything was so bright, he could have launched himself into pure whiteness at that moment and never come back, flowed out forever into the All. Release, release. You have to have seen a lot to want release that much.

But the moment passed and he was on the black stage floor of the bardo's hall of judgment, on its Chinese side, a nightmare warren of numbered levels and legal chambers and bureaucrats wielding lists of souls to be remanded to the care of meticulous torturers. Above this hellish bureaucracy loomed the usual Tibet of a dais, occupied by its menagerie of demonic gods, chopping up condemned souls and chasing the pieces off to hell or a new life in the realm of preta or beast. The lurid glow, the giant dais like the side of a mesa towering above, the hallucinatorily colorful gods roaring and dancing, their swords flashing in the black air; it was judgment—an inhuman activity—not the pot calling the kettle black, but true judgment, by higher authorities, the makers of this universe. Who were the ones, after all, that had made humans as weak and craven and cruel as they so often were—so that there was a sense of doom enforced, of loaded dice, karma lashing out at whatever little pleasures and beauties the miserable subdivine sentiences might have concocted out of the mud of their existence. A brave life, fought against the odds? Go back as a dog! A dogged life, persisting despite all? Go back as a mule, go back as a worm. That's the way things work.

Thus Kheim reflected as he strode up through the mists in a growing rage, as he banged through the bureaucrats, smashing them with their own slates, their lists and tallies, until he caught sight of Kali and her court, standing in a semicircle taunting Butterfly, judging her—as if that poor simple soul had anything to answer for, compared to these butcher gods and their eons of evil—evil insinuated right into the heart of the cosmos they themselves had made!

Kheim roared in wordless fury, and charged up and seized a sword from one of the death goddess's six arms, and cut off a brace of them with a single stroke; the blade was very sharp. The arms lay scattered and bleeding on the floor, flopping about—then, to Kheim's unutterable consternation, they were grasping the floorboards and moving themselves crabwise by the clenching of the fingers. Worse yet, new shoulders were growing back behind the wounds, which still bled copiously. Kheim screamed and kicked them off the dais, then turned and chopped Kali in half at the waist, ignoring the other members of his jati who stood up there with Butterfly, all of them jumping up and down and shouting “Oh no, don't do that Kheim, don't do that, you don't understand, you have to follow protocol,” even I-Chin, who was shouting loudly over the rest of them, “At least we might direct our efforts at the dais struts, or the vials of forgetting, something a little more technical, a little less direct!” Meanwhile Kali's upper body fisted itself around the stage, while her legs and waist staggered, but continued to stand; and the missing halves grew out of the cut parts like snail horns. And then there were two Kalis advancing on him, a dozen arms flailing swords.

He jumped off the dais, thumped down on the bare boards of the cosmos. The rest of his jati crashed down beside him, crying out in pain at the impact. “You got us in trouble,” Shen whined.

“It doesn't work like that,” Butterfly informed him as they panted off together into the mists. “I've seen a lot of people try. They lash out in fury and cut the hideous gods down, and how they deserve it—and yet the gods spring back up, redoubled in other people. A karmic law of this universe, my friend. Like conservation of yin and yang, or gravity. We live in a universe ruled by very few laws, but the redoubling of violence by violence is one of the main ones.”

“I don't believe it,” Kheim said, and stopped to fend off the two Kalis now pursuing them. He took a hard swing and decapitated one of the new Kalis. Swiftly another head grew back, swelling atop the gusher on the neck of the black body, and the new white teeth of her new head laughed at him, while her bloody red eyes blazed. He was in trouble, he saw; he was going to be hacked to pieces. For resisting these evil unjust absurd and horrible deities he was going to be hacked to pieces and returned to the world as a mule or a monkey or a maimed old geezer—

Butterfly cried often for the first three days after they sailed, then ate raven
ously, and after that began to talk exclusively in Chinese. Kheim felt a stab every time he looked at her, wondering if they had done the right thing to take her. She would probably have died if they had left her, I-Chin reminded him. But Kheim wasn't sure even that was justification enough. And the speed of her adjustment to her new life only made him more uneasy. Was this what they were, then, to begin with? So tough as this, so forgetful? Able to slip into whatever life was offered? It made him feel strange to see such a thing.

One of his officers came to him. “Peng isn't on board any of the ships. We think he must have swum ashore and stayed with them.”

Butterfly too fell ill, and I-Chin sequestered her in the bow of the flagship, in an airy nest under the bowsprit and over the figurehead, which was a gold statue of Tianfei. He spent many hours tending the girl through the six stages of the disease, from the high fever and floating pulse of the Greater Yang, through the Lesser Yang and Yang Brightness, with chills and fever coming alternately; then into Greater Yin. He took her pulse every watch, checked all her vital signs, lanced some of the blisters, dosed her from his bags of medicines, mostly an admixture called Gift of the Smallpox God, which contained ground rhinoceros horn, snow worms from Tibet, crushed jade and pearl; but also, when it seemed she was stuck in the Lesser Yin, and in danger of dying, tiny doses of arsenic. The progress of the disease did not seem to Kheim to be like the usual pox, but the sailors made the appropriate sacrifices to the smallpox god nevertheless, burning incense and paper money over a shrine that was copied on all eight of the ships.

Later, I-Chin said that he thought being out on the open sea had proven the key to her recovery. Her body lolled in its bed on the groundswell, and her breathing and pulse fell into a rhythm with it, he noticed, four breaths and six beats per swell, in a fluttering pulse, over and over. This kind of confluence with the elements was extremely helpful. And the salt air filled her lungs with qi, and made her tongue less coated; he even fed her little spoonfuls of ocean water, as well as all she would take of fresh water, just recently removed from her home stream. And so she recovered and got well, only lightly scarred by pox on her back and neck.

They sailed south down the coast of the new island all this while, and every day they became more amazed that they were not reaching the southern end of it. One cape looked as if it would be the turning point, but past it they saw the land curved south again, behind some baked empty islands. Farther south they saw villages on the beaches, and they knew enough now to identify the bath temples. Kheim kept the fleet well offshore, but he did allow one canoe to approach, and he had Butterfly try speaking to them, but they didn't understand her, nor her them. Kheim made his dumb show signifying sickness and danger, and the locals paddled quickly away.

They began to sail against a current from the south, but it was mild, and the winds were constant from the west. The fishing here was excellent, the weather mild. Day followed day in a perfect circle of sameness. The land fell away east again, then ran south, most of the way to the equator, past a big archipelago of low islands, with good anchorages and good water, and seabirds with blue feet.

They came at last to a steeply rising coastline, with great snowy volcanoes in the distance, like Fuji only twice as big, or more, punctuating the sky behind a steep coastal range, which was already tall. This final giganticism finished anyone's ability to think of this place as an island.

“Are you sure this isn't Africa?” Kheim said to I-Chin.

I-Chin was not sure. “Maybe. Maybe the people we left up north are the only survivors of the Fulanchi, reduced to a primitive state. Maybe this is the west coast of the world, and we sailed past the opening to their middle sea in the night, or in a fog. But I don't think so.”

“Then where are we?”

I-Chin showed Kheim where he thought they were on the long strips of their map; east of the final markings, out where the map was entirely blank. But first he pointed to the far western strip. “See, Fulan and Africa look like this on their west sides. The Muslim cartographers are very consistent about it. And Hsing Ho calculated that the world is about seventy-five thousand li around. If he's right, we only sailed half as far as we should have, or less, across the Dahai to Africa and Fulan.”

“Maybe he's wrong then. Maybe the world occupies more of the globe than he thought. Or maybe the globe is smaller.”

“But his method was good. I made the same measurements on our trip to the Moluccas, and did the geometry, and found he was right.”

“But look!” Gesturing at the mountainous land before them. “If it isn't Africa, what is it?”

“An island, I suppose. A big island, far out in the Dahai, where no one has ever sailed. Another world, like the real one. An eastern one like the western one.”

“An island no one has ever sailed to before? That no one ever knew about?” Kheim couldn't believe it.

“Well?” I-Chin said, stubborn in the face of the idea. “Who else before us could have gotten here, and gotten back to tell about it?”

Kheim took the point. “And we're not back either.”

“No. And no guarantee we will be able to do it. Could be that Hsu Fu got here and tried to return, and failed. Maybe we'll find his descendants on this very shore.”

“Maybe.”

Closing on the immense land, they saw a city on the coast. It was nothing very big compared to back home, but substantial compared to the tiny villages to the north. It was mud-colored for the most part, but several gigantic buildings in the city and behind it were roofed by gleaming expanses of beaten gold. These were no Miwoks!

So they sailed inshore warily, feeling spooked, their ships' cannons loaded and primed. They were startled to see the primitive boats pulled up on the beaches—fishing canoes like those some of them had seen in the Moluccas, mostly two-prowed and made of bundled reeds. There were no guns to be seen; no sails; no wharves or docks, except for one log pier that seemed to float, anchored out away from the beach. It was perplexing to see the terrestrial magnificence of the gold-roofed buildings combined with such maritime poverty. I-Chin said, “It must have been an inland kingdom to start with.”

“Lucky for us, the way those buildings look.”

“I suppose if the Han dynasty had never fallen, this is what the coast of China would look like.”

A strange idea. But even mentioning China was a comfort. After that they pointed at features of the town, saying “That's like in Cham,” or “They build like that in Lanka,” and so forth; and though it still looked bizarre, it was clear, even before they made out people on the beach gaping at them, that it would be people and not monkeys or birds populating the town.

Though they had no great hope that Butterfly would be understood here, they took her near the shore with them nevertheless, in the biggest landing boat. They kept the flintlocks and crossbows concealed under their seats while Kheim stood in the bow making the peaceful gestures that had won over the Miwok. Then he got Butterfly to greet them kindly in her language, which she did in a high, clear, penetrating voice. The crowd on the beach watched, and some with hats like feathered crowns spoke to them, but it was not Butterfly's language, nor one that any of them had ever heard.

The elaborate headdresses of part of the crowd seemed faintly military to Kheim, and so he had them row offshore a little bit, and keep a lookout for bows or spears or any other weapons. Something in the look of these people suggested the possibility of an ambush.

Nothing of the sort happened. In fact, the next day when they rowed in, a whole contingent of men, wearing checked tunics and feathered headresses, prostrated themselves on the beach. Uneasily Kheim ordered a landing, on the lookout for trouble.

All went well. Communication by gesture, and quick basic language lessons, was fair, although the locals seemed to take Butterfly to be the visitors' leader, or rather talisman, or priestess, it was impossible to say; certainly they venerated her. Their mimed interchanges were mostly made by an older man in a headdress with a fringe hanging over his forehead to his eyes, and a badge extending high above the feathers. These communications remained cordial, full of curiosity and goodwill. They were offered cakes made of some kind of dense, substantial flower; also huge tubers that could be cooked and eaten; and a weak sour beer, which was all they ever saw the locals drink. Also a stack of finely woven blankets, very warm and soft, made of a wool from sheep that looked like sheep bred with camels, but were clearly some entirely other creature, unknown to the real world.

Eventually Kheim felt comfortable enough to accept an invitation to leave the beach and visit the local king or emperor, in the huge gold-roofed palace or temple on the hilltop behind the city. It was the gold that had done it, Kheim realized as he prepared for the trip, still feeling uneasy. He loaded a short flintlock and put it in a shoulder bag tucked under his arm, hidden by his coat; and he left instructions with I-Chin for a relief operation if one proved necessary. Off they went, Kheim and Butterfly and a dozen of the biggest sailors from the flagship, accompanied by a crowd of local men in checked tunics.

They walked up a track past fields and houses. The women in the fields carried their babies strapped to boards on their backs, and they spun wool as they walked. They hung looms from ropes tied to trees, to get the necessary tension to weave. Checked patterns seemed the only ones they used, usually black and tan, sometimes black and red. Their fields consisted of raised mounds, rectangular in shape, standing out of wetlands by the river. Presumably they grew their tubers in the mounds. They were flooded like rice fields, but not. Everything was similar but different. Gold here seemed as common as iron in China, while on the other hand there was no iron at all to be seen.

The palace above the city was huge, bigger than the Forbidden City in Beijing, with many rectangular buildings arranged in rectangular patterns. Everything was arranged like their cloth. Stone plinths in the courtyard outside the palace were carved into strange figures, birds and animals all mixed up, painted all colors, so that Kheim found it hard to look at them. He wondered if the strange creatures represented on them would be found living in the backcountry, or were their versions of dragon and phoenix. He saw lots of copper, and some bronze or brass, but mostly gold. The guards standing in rows around the palace held long spears tipped with gold, and their shields were gold too; decorative, but not very practical. Their enemies must not have had iron either.

Inside the palace they were led into a vast room with one wall open onto a courtyard, the other three covered in gold filigree. Here blankets were spread, and Kheim and Butterfly and the other Chinese were invited to sit on one.

Into the room came their emperor. All bowed and then sat on the ground. The emperor sat on a checked cloth next to the visitors, and said something politely. He was a man of about forty years, white-toothed and handsome, with a broad forehead, high prominent cheekbones, clear brown eyes, a pointed chin and a strong hawkish nose. His crown was gold, and was decorated with small gold heads, dangling in holes cut into the crown, like pirates' heads at the gates of Hangzhou.

This too made Kheim uneasy, and he shifted his pistol under his coat, looking around surreptitiously. There were no other signs to trouble him. Of course there were hard-looking men there, clearly the emperor's guard, ready to pounce if anything threatened him; but other than that, nothing; and that seemed an ordinary precaution to take when strangers were around.

A priest wearing a cape made of cobalt-blue bird feathers came in, and performed a ceremony for the emperor, and after that they feasted through the day, on a meat like lamb, and vegetables and mashes that Kheim did not recognize. The weak beer was all they drank, except for a truly fiery brandy. Eventually Kheim began to feel drunk, and he could see his men were worse. Butterfly did not like any of the flavors, and ate and drank very little. Out on the courtyard, men danced to drums and reed pipes, sounding very like Korean musicians, which gave Kheim a start; he wondered if these people's ancestors had drifted over from Korea ages ago, carried on the Kuroshio. Perhaps just a few lost ships had populated this whole land, many dynasties before; indeed the music sounded like an echo from a past age. But who could say. He would talk to I-Chin about it when he got back to the ship.

At sundown Kheim indicated their desire to return to their ships. The emperor only looked at him, and gestured to his caped priest, and then rose. Everyone stood and bowed again. He left the room.

When he had gone, Kheim stood and took Butterfly by the hand, and tried to lead her out the way they had come (although he was not sure he could remember it); but the guards blocked them, their gold-tipped spears held crossways, in a position as ceremonial as their dances had been.

Kheim mimed displeasure, very easy to do, and indicated that Butterfly would be sad and angry if she were kept from their ships. But the guards did not move.

So. There they were
. Kheim cursed himself for leaving the beach with such strange people. He felt the pistol under his coat. One shot only. He would have to hope that I-Chin could rescue them. It was a good thing he had insisted the doctor stay behind, as he felt I-Chin would do the best job of organizing such an operation.

The captives spent the night huddled together on their blanket, surrounded by standing guards who did not sleep, but spent their time chewing small leaves they took from shoulder bags tucked under their checkered tunics. They watched bright-eyed. Kheim huddled around Butterfly, and she snuggled like a cat against him. It was cold. Kheim got the others to crowd around, all of them together, protecting her by a single touch or at least the proximity of their warmth.