Interesting Times

thieving again and thus tarnishing his soul. A peasant who could not pay his taxes should be executed, in order to prevent him falling into the temptations of slothfulness and public disorder. And since the Empire was created by Heaven as the only true world of human beings, all else outside being a land of ghosts, it was certainly in order to execute those who questioned this state of affairs.
    But he felt that it wasn’t right to laugh happily while doing so. It wasn’t pleasant that these things should happen, it was merely necessary.
    From somewhere in the distance came the screams. The Emperor was playing chess again. He preferred to use live pieces.
    Two Little Wang felt heavy with knowledge. There had been better times. He knew that now. Things hadn’t always been the way they were. Emperors didn’t use to be cruel clowns, around whom it was as safe as mudbanks in the crocodile season. There hadn’t always been a civil war every time an Emperor died. Warlords hadn’t run the country. People had rights as well as duties.
    And then one day the succession had been called into question and there was a war and since then it’d never seemed to go right.
    Soon, with any luck, the Emperor would die. No doubt a special Hell was being made ready. And there’d be the usual battle, and then there’d be a new Emperor, and if he was very lucky Two Little Wang would be beheaded, which was what tended to happen to people who had risen to high office under a previous incumbent. But that was quite reasonable by modern standards, since it was possible these days to be beheaded for interrupting the Emperor’s thoughts or standing in the wrong place.
    At which point, Two Little Wang heard ghosts.
    They seemed to be right under his feet.
    They were talking in a strange language, so to Two Little Wang the speech was merely sounds, which went as follows:
    “ Where the hell are we? ”
    “ Somewhere under the palace, I’m sure. Look for another manhole in the ceiling… ”
    “ Whut? ”
    “ I’m fed up with pushing this damn wheelchair! ”
    “ It’s me for a hot footbath after this, I’m telling you .”
    “ You call this a way to enter a city? You call this a way to enter a city? Waist-deep in water? We didn’t enter a… wretched… city like this when I rode with Bruce the Hoon! You enter a… lovemaking… city by overrunning it with a thousand horsemen, that’s how you take a city—! ”
    “ Yeah, but there ain’t room for ’em in this pipe .”
    The sounds had a hollow, booming quality to them. With a kind of fascinated puzzlement Two Little Wang followed them, walking across the manicured gravel in an unthinking way that would have earned him an immediate tongue-extraction from its original lover of peace and tranquility.
    “ Can we please hurry? I’d like us to be out of here when the cauldron goes off and I didn’t really have much time to experiment with the fuses .”
    “ I still don’t understand about the cauldron, Teach .”
    “ I hope all those firecrackers will blow a hole in the wall .”
    “ Right! So why ain’t we there? Why are we in this pipe? ”
    “ Because all the guards will rush to see what the bang was .”
    “ Right! So we should be there! ”
    “ No! We should be here, Cohen. The word is decoy. It’s…more civilized this way .”
    Two Little Wang pressed his ear to the ground.
    “ What’s the penalty for entering the Forbidden City again, Teach? ”
    “ I believe it’s a punishment similar to hanging, drawing, and quartering. So, you see, it would be a good idea if— ”
    There was a very faint splashing.
    “ How’re you drawn, then? ”
    “ I think your innards are cut out and shown to you .”
    “ What for? ”
    “ I don’t really know. To see if you recognize them, I suppose .”
    “ What…like, ‘Yep, that’s my kidneys, yep, that’s my breakfast’? ”
    “ How’re you quartered? Is that, like, they give you somewhere to stay? ”
    “ I think not, from context .”
    For a while there was no sound but the splash of six pairs of feet and the squeak-squeak of what sounded like a wheel.
    “ Well, how’re you hung? ”
    “ Excuse me? ”
    “ Hur, hur, hur…sorry, sorry .”
    Two Little Wang tripped over a two-hundred-year-old bonsai tree and hit his head on a rock chosen for its fundamental serenity. When he came round, a few seconds later, the voices had gone. If there had ever been any.
    Ghosts. There were a lot of ghosts around these days.