Hell to Heaven

‘So wear a spacesuit,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll even provide one for you.’

‘And I have to go in serpent form since it’s on the Celestial. Do you have a long, narrow spacesuit you can lend me?’

He sighed loudly, leaned back and put his hands behind his head. ‘The things you ask for. A snake spacesuit. Now I’ve heard everything.’

‘But you have ordinary human spacesuits?’

‘Of course I do. Some of the wives are thrillseekers and love being taken up into orbit. After a nasty accident where I became …’ he hesitated ‘… distracted, I decided to make them wear spacesuits when I take them up there.’

‘I do not believe you sometimes! Someone died because you can’t keep your mind off your gonads?’

He shrugged. ‘Can’t stop me being what I am.’

‘Where do you have the suits made? Maybe I can get a special suit designed.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. A human suit might be okay; if you can make yourself small enough, we can just pop you in. Leave it with me. But I want something in return.’

It was my turn to be suspicious. ‘What?’

He grinned. ‘The blood sample you promised you’d give me when you visited the West. You never coughed up. So you’re coming down to the shoebox that passes for an infirmary in this place and giving me some right now.’

‘I never promised any such thing.’

‘Beside the point now, ’cause if you want something to keep you warm and alive when you visit Nu Wa, you’ll provide it anyway.’

‘Oh, okay.’ I went around the desk and opened the door. ‘Yi Hao, is Edwin in the infirmary?’

Yi Hao’s face went blank for a moment, then she nodded. ‘He’s there, ma’am, and asks if there is a problem.’

‘Tell him we’re coming down to give the Tiger a blood sample from me. It isn’t enough that the damn cat gets our best students when they’re fully trained, now he wants my blood as well.’

‘That’s a lie and you know it,’ the Tiger growled behind me. ‘The Jade Emperor gets your best graduates and you leave me with the rejects.’

‘If you don’t want my rejects, let me know, because there are more people asking for our graduates than we can spare. I’m sure some Celestial residents would be delighted to take them.’

‘Just give me the damn blood so I can get the fuck out of here,’ he said.

‘Mind your language in front of my rejects.’

‘Humph.’

After we had given the blood sample to the Tiger, I asked him: ‘Do you think you can carry me to Wudang? I have a couple of things I need to do. Won’t take more than thirty minutes.’

‘Which one?’ he said.

‘Celestial.’

He studied me appraisingly. ‘No. You’re too fat.’

I changed into serpent form. ‘I love you too.’

We landed in the main forecourt of the Celestial Wudang Mountain, an area about a hundred and fifty metres to a side and tiled with dark grey slate. It was used for the grandest displays of martial arts and the regular Taoist ceremonies held at the Mountain. The Hall of Purple Mist, majestic with its black roof and polished slate walls, stood to our north, facing Imperial south. To the east and west stood Dragon Tiger and True Way Halls. The Golden Temple rose on the highest peak behind Purple Mist, at least another hundred metres above us. Its gold walls and roof shone in the brilliant Celestial sun.

The Tiger put his hands on his hips and looked around. ‘I haven’t been here in a while. Good job on fixing it up.’

I slithered towards True Way, heading to the part of the complex where the forge was located. ‘I don’t like coming up here. It’s too quiet.’

The Tiger stopped and I waited for him. The only sound was the breeze whispering through the buildings and the rustle of the pine trees that covered the hillside around us.

‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘Wudang was never this quiet. There was always the noise and shouting of the Disciples, and the drums and chanting in the temples.’ He shook his head and caught up with me. ‘Spooky.’

We walked together along a narrow path that cut into the hillside. About three hundred metres on we came to a soaring arched bridge that straddled the deep gorge between the peaks. The breeze carried clouds below us, making the deep green pines in the gorge disappear and reappear. I led the Tiger around the edge of the peak and through a narrow passage to the next peak. A complex of smaller buildings, without open areas for practice, stood at the end of the passage. There was more noise here — no voices, but the gentle background sounds of people busy about their lives. As we neared the forge, the smell of burning and clanging of metal being struck became apparent.

‘Good to see the Wudang forge back up,’ the Tiger said. ‘Must send some orders in.’

‘Go right ahead,’ I said. The revenue from the sale of some Wudang weapons would be welcome. ‘Tell your friends. We have plenty of demons trained and working; we can handle any size order.’

He grinned at me. ‘You give me good price, okay?’

‘Yeah, dream on, Devil Tiger.’

We walked down four flights of stairs, flanked by small cypress trees, to the forge itself, with its well-worn rough stone bricks and clumsily put-together walls. The demons working there dropped to their knees when we entered, touching their heads to the floor; a couple of them fled in terror.

‘You may rise,’ I said to the head demon. ‘I’ve come to check the status of the sword being forged for the Black Lion.’

The head demon pulled himself to his feet and grinned broadly. ‘We will be fitting the handle tomorrow, ma’am, it has nearly cooled sufficiently. Please, come and see.’

He guided me past the cowering demons to the racks in the oven where weapons were gently cooled from the forging process. Cooling them too fast would make them brittle. He gestured towards a single black sword resting on the highest rack by itself. The simple metal spike that would be the base for the handle looked incongruous protruding from the slender black blade.

The Tiger eyed it appreciatively. ‘Is it too long?’

‘The Masters say it’s the best length for him,’ I said.

The sword was almost two metres long and Japanese katana style. There’d been some discussion about the most suitable blade for Leo to wield, and the consensus among the Masters and the forge staff was that for someone of his size, the light and slender but balanced and deadly katana style was the way to go. I hoped Leo would appreciate it.

The handle sat on another rack nearby. It hadn’t had the final leather wrap put around it yet and its studded black metal gleamed in the lights of the forge. It was decorated with the head of a black lion, mouth open to reveal its fangs. The lion’s eyes were covered with a strip of red paper, so that a demon could not possess it before it was blessed and its spirit entered it.

‘What are you going to wrap it in?’ the Tiger asked the head demon.

‘Ray skin,’ the demon said. ‘Maybe even some thick sharkskin if we can get our hands on it.’

The Tiger glanced up from the handle. ‘Don’t wrap it yet. I have some skin taken from one of the biggest sharks that ever lived. I caught it a couple of hundred years ago, with my own claws, off a tiny fishing boat in the South China Sea. I had the skin tanned; it’s not black, but you can dye it. It would be perfect.’

The demon grinned with delight. ‘My thanks, sir, that would be more than suitable.’

‘Thanks, Tiger,’ I said. I turned to the demon. ‘When are you planning to put it together?’

‘We were planning to wrap and fit the handle tomorrow, sharpen the blade the next day, and then have it blessed three days from now,’ the demon said. He bobbed his head at the Tiger. ‘Now we will wait until the sharkskin arrives.’

‘I’ll have it here for you tomorrow,’ the Tiger said.

The demon shrugged. ‘Then it will be right on schedule.’ He nodded to me. ‘You can present it to Lord Leo anytime after that, ma’am.’

‘I’ll need to send out invitations, so at least five days after that,’ I said.

My next stop was the mess hall, where the head caterer, a human Immortal, was preparing food for the demon workers.

‘The sword will be ready in three to four days,’ I said. ‘Can we hold the presentation ceremony in about nine or ten days?’

He quickly checked the calendar. ‘Neither of those days are auspicious, but the day after, eleven days from now, is a good time to give gifts.’

‘Done,’ I said. ‘I’ll have Yi Hao give you a list of who to invite.’

He nodded. ‘Looking forward to it, ma’am, it’s way too quiet around here. I’m sure the demons that turned from the service of One Two Two will be delighted to see the Disciples back here where they belong, celebrating.’ His smile faded. ‘Is there any word on the possibility of changing you back so that the Academy can be moved back here? That is what we all want to see, ma’am, the buildings and courts full of students again.’

‘I have some leads that Xuan Wu himself gave me,’ I said. ‘They sound difficult but I’m determined.’

‘That’s good to hear, ma’am.’

I led the Tiger back along the narrow path cut into the side of the cliff and to the main forecourt in front of the Hall of Purple Mist.

‘Before you take me back down, could you give me a few minutes alone in the temple?’ I said.

The Tiger changed to True Form and stretched out on the stones in the sunshine. ‘Go right ahead. I’m not going anywhere.’

I slithered up the narrow stairs to the temple. The Celestial version of the Golden Temple was double the size of the one on Earthly Wudangshan. Statues of the Xuan Wu — the snake/turtle combination of John’s True Form — guarded each side of the entrance, the snake wrapped around the turtle’s shell and disappearing into it where they touched. Inside the temple was a statue of John in Celestial Form — a black-skinned human with wild hair and a small goatee, sitting on a throne and holding a sword across his knees. The sword was Seven Stars. A snake and turtle were beneath each of his bare feet. An altar was laid out in front of him, holding two vases of flowers, cups of wine and burning incense. A screen stood behind him.

I curled up my coils and sat in front of his effigy. His black fierce face gazed at me and he seemed ready to leap up and cut off my serpent head with the sword.

I meditated on the lives of those who had died because of the battle between Heaven and Hell. Charlie, Rhonda, Regina: women who had died caring for others rather than fighting, the way so many women in the world’s conflicts died. The Disciples who had died defending the Mountain — the stronghold against the forces of Hell. April, whose naivety had killed both her and her child. The fox spirit who had died trying to hide herself and protect her child, who had died anyway. All the stone Shen destroyed by Six. It was a long list and I wished I could shed a tear for them all, but it wasn’t possible in serpent form. Many of them had chosen their path and died with honour, but for some their deaths were what those in the military blithely called ‘collateral damage’ and dismissed as part of the necessity of war.

Even though John was God of the Arts of War, he had never revelled in war and had always sought negotiation first. He was a study in contradictions, being the greatest fighter in existence and at the same time holding a deep abhorrence for killing. It didn’t stop people from dying, however. Always so many people giving their lives, even more so recently because John was no longer present to protect them.

I raised my serpent head. I wasn’t a fighter of his calibre but I would do my best to protect those who needed protection. I nodded to John, and his statue stared fiercely back at me.

I turned. I was on top of the highest peak in Celestial Wudangshan and the view was breathtaking. The mountains below me spread as far as I could see, their bases covered in mist and their peaks jagged and sharp. Something to do with the altitude and the geography made it seem that all the lower peaks were facing this highest peak and bowing to it. I turned back to glance at John’s statue and bowed to him. My warm, caring, generous, reptilian god.

I went down the stairs to the waiting Tiger.

‘Okay, I’m ready to head back to work,’ I said.

‘Did he appear to you?’

‘No.’

‘I’d expected his statue to take on a life of its own and come charging down to carry you away.’

‘He’s in two pieces at opposite ends of the world. Not very likely to happen.’

‘Has he appeared to anybody recently?’

‘Not since Chinese New Year.’

‘Okay.’ The Tiger touched my snout with his nose and carried me back to the Academy. He bowed on one foreleg and disappeared.

Gold was waiting for me outside my office. He jumped up as soon as I appeared and followed me inside. I sat at the desk and he shut the door and sat across from me, his face alight with excitement.

‘I can see you have something to tell me, so go ahead,’ I said.

‘I have a lead on Shenzhen. It seems that peasants are travelling there to work in the factories, and not leaving. At all. Ever.’

‘Couldn’t they just be falling through the bureaucratic cracks?’ I said. ‘This is all done on paper, I’ve seen it. When you go through immigration at Lo Wu, you fill in a mountain of bureaucratic forms that they don’t even look at. They just stamp them and then put them in a box for filing. There must be some pieces of paper that don’t make it through to data entry, even if they do have a computer system.’

‘They do, and I’ll have to investigate more; all I have at the moment is a hunch. A stone I know was working on the update of the China Bureau of Statistics’ databases and, in a fit of nostalgia, looked for a human ex-lover. He found her — but once she moved to Shenzhen her records disappeared; in fact, she’s disappeared completely. Normally people have to continue to pay taxes in their home province even if they move to the city to work, and she stopped doing it. He checked her residential, health, work permit and family planning records too — and found nothing. She’s gone. No death record either.’

‘More than one person has disappeared like this?’

‘Several hundred.’

I grimaced.

‘I know what you’re thinking, ma’am: there are millions of people travelling into Shenzhen, and many of them want to disappear to avoid being sent back to their villages or to avoid paying taxes back home. But there seems to be some sort of pattern to the disappearances, and we want to do some analysis on the data.’

‘How big’s the database, Gold?’

It was his turn to grimace. ‘Huge. Even the current year’s data is in the terabytes. Older data is kept separately. It’s a nightmare.’

‘You’ll have to go down to crunch that.’

‘Even with three stones linked up, it would take about a day completely offline. Possibly longer.’

‘Do you have a couple of friends who’d be willing to do this? I know how you stones hate being used as computers.’

‘Calcite — my friend who worked in the Bureau of Statistics — will help. We just need to find one more.’

‘Don’t look at me,’ the stone in my ring said. ‘I’m not leaving Emma alone after what happened last year.’

‘Oh, good point,’ Gold said. He went quiet for a moment, thoughtful, then stopped moving completely, not breathing or blinking.

‘Gold, stay alive,’ the stone said.

Gold came back with a start. ‘Oh, sorry.’

‘This has you more upset than usual,’ I said. ‘It’s not often you forget to live.’

‘This sounds like a threesome,’ the stone in my ring said.

Gold wiped one hand over his face. ‘Not a threesome. She’s my great-great-granddaughter.’

‘Five generations?’ my stone said.

Gold nodded.

‘And you worry about her? You’ve been human way too long,’ the stone said.

‘Her great-grandmother was one of my wives at the tea plantation,’ Gold said. ‘When the Celestial found out that I’d helped steal the tea, they only gave me five minutes to put my affairs in order before I was taken to the Celestial Plane. I never really had a chance to say goodbye to them and to make sure they were cared for. The demon servants took off, then the local warlord found out I’d gone. He kept my wives as his own, but when he found that one of them was pregnant he threw her out, leaving her with nothing.’

‘She did well to survive.’

‘She was forced to do things that I’m not proud to be responsible for. Now our descendant, Ah Fua, has disappeared.’

‘This is ridiculous. I bet she doesn’t even keep a tablet for you,’ the stone said. ‘Five generations is way past any accountability.’

‘Her mother does. She has an ancestral tablet for me at home, and one for my whole generation in the temple. Ah Fua doesn’t need to do it because her mother does everything, even sweeps the graves. They’re good, diligent children.’

‘Do they know?’

‘Of course not, Dad. Now, if we’ve finished with the interrogation, I’d like to find another stone who can help locate Ah Fua.’

‘I wonder if Zara would mind helping,’ I said. ‘She’s still in hiding in the armoury, it would keep her busy.’

Gold’s face lit up. ‘She says yes.’ He grinned broadly. ‘I’ll go arrange it.’

CHAPTER 10

Simone, Leo and I had dinner together that evening, just the three of us.

‘The appointment with the Archivist is tomorrow after school,’ I said to Simone. ‘Don’t forget. I’ll need you to take me.’

She gasped, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, no! I’ve arranged to take some of my friends out on the boat after school tomorrow!’

‘You never asked me,’ I said.

She stuck her chin out at me. ‘I don’t need to. It’s my boat.’

‘Point taken; but I’m your guardian and you’re not an adult. Therefore I am legally required to be aware of where you are at all times.’

‘I’m going on the boat after school tomorrow,’ she said, stubborn.

‘I think an adult should go along with you, just in case,’ I said.

‘You have to go see the Archivist, and Leo’s …’ Simone hesitated, obviously not wanting to hurt Leo’s feelings. She changed what she was going to say. ‘Leo’s no good on the water.’

Leo grimaced but didn’t say anything.

‘How about Michael then? All the girls will think he’s the coolest thing ever.’

‘I told them girls only; they wanted to bring some boys but I said no, just all girls is more fun,’ Simone said. ‘They’ll get really annoyed if I bring Michael. I don’t need anyone along, Emma, really. The demons will look after us.’

‘I’d like to go,’ Leo said.

Simone’s expression softened. ‘You sure?’

He nodded with a false smile. ‘Sounds like fun. I want to meet your friends.’

Simone shrugged. ‘Okay. We can have fun pretending we’re related.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Leo said, his smile becoming more genuine.

‘I still need to get to the Archivist. Can you drop me there and be back in time for your cruise?’ I said.

‘How far is it?’ Simone said.

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘I thought General Ma was going to tell you where it is.’

Simone unfocused, concentrating, then snapped back, obviously happier. ‘It’s fine, it’s just next to the Celestial Palace. He said you can take the stairs in Wan Chai and then someone can summon you a cloud to take you the rest of the way. I don’t need to take you.’

‘Can Ma do it?’

She concentrated again. ‘No, he’s busy. I’m asking around … what time is it tomorrow?’

‘Three.’

She nodded, still concentrating, then snapped back. ‘Your stone is supposed to have all of this info, Emma. It’s gone to sleep again, hasn’t it?’

The stone didn’t reply.

She shrugged. ‘Michael will wait for you at the Celestial Palace at about two forty-five and take you across on a cloud. Problem solved.’

It was quicker to walk the kilometre or so from the Academy to the Celestial Gateway than to drive. I walked along Hennessy Road, the air thick with the fumes of the passing traffic and burning my throat and eyes. At Southorn Playground — a concrete soccer pitch painted green, used by locals to sit and talk, and by young people to play basketball and soccer — I took an escalator up to the pedestrian overpass. The overpass straddled the busy streets of Wan Chai — Lockhart Road, Jaffe Road and then finally Gloucester Road, five lanes each way and packed with cars and red taxis. The overpass led into the mezzanine floor of Immigration Tower, which was full of Filipina domestic helpers suffering the tedious all-day wait for their work visas. Before I’d met John I’d often spent the whole day here myself, waiting for hours in the cockroach-infested halls rich with the ripe aroma of the over-used toilet facilities, being shuffled from counter to counter and interviewed by bored or aggressively irritated immigration officers. The waiting areas had recently been upgraded, but the bored bureaucrats behind the desks remained the same.

The walkway continued out of Immigration Tower and into Central Plaza One, an office tower that had once been Hong Kong’s tallest building. It was triangular in cross-section, and each wall had a bank of lifts to go to a different section of floors. All of the fittings were triangular to fit with the theme, including triangular gardens on the ground around the tower. I walked through Central Plaza, across another small walkway and into the office tower connected to the Convention Centre. I passed a number of international convention attendees, their large identity cards strung around their necks. They were loudly discussing some sort of plastics manufacturing in American and French accents.

I turned right out of the Convention Centre complex and walked across another road to Great Eagle Centre, which sat right on the edge of the water. It and its twin tower, Harbour Centre, had massive advertising signs spanning their first to third floors — they were visible from all over the harbour and featured in any night-time Hong Kong postcard scene. I could see the Star Ferry pulling into the Wan Chai ferry terminal below me, and a few double-decker buses waited in the bus station. I took another overpass to the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre, then an escalator down to the ground. I’d walked more than a kilometre without touching the ground.

The Hong Kong Exhibition Centre had a large open area on its ground floor and a rectangular fountain with dragon-head spouts. Behind the fountain stood a replica of Beijing’s Nine Dragon Wall, the gate to the Celestial Palace.

I didn’t immediately approach the wall; instead, I went to the roadside, where two large bronze statues of qilin stood facing the traffic. Known as kirin in Japan, they were Celestial creatures with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, the horns of a deer and the feet of a goat; most interestingly to me, they were also covered in scales like a reptile. Westerners often referred to them as Chinese unicorns, and although their appearance was not very unicorn-like, their nature was similar. They were divine creatures of pure light, fleeting and rare, not even composed of yang or yin but somehow transcendent of universal essence. It was regarded as a blessing to see a qilin. I never had, and knew that only very few of my Celestial acquaintances had ever seen one.

I turned away from the qilin and walked up to the Nine Dragon Wall. As I approached, the wall grew from two to four metres high and spread to twice as wide. The marble balustrade guarding the front of the wall descended into the ground and the sounds of human life around me ceased. The dragons came to life and writhed to the centre of the wall to greet me.

I reached into the large Sogo shopping bag that I’d brought with me and pulled out a range of local snacks. I waved one of the boxes. ‘Strawberry pocky is who?’

‘Me!’ said a gold dragon; it whipped its head out of the wall and took the box of pocky in its mouth. The lid opened and all of the iced biscuit sticks flew into its mouth at the same time. The box disappeared.

‘Damn, you’re greedy,’ I said.

‘Any more in there?’ the dragon said, eyeing the Sogo bag.