Monsters and Magicians (5 page)

"But Pedro," she expostulated, "Mr. Hara says

that.. r

"Ah, yes, the venerable and most eminent Mr. Hara." He nodded. "I had intended to ask how you two were getting along. How is my good old friend Tadahira these days?"

"We had dinner together tonight. He often asks that I pass on to you his regards. He speaks of you quite often, Pedro; he seems of the opinion that, all tilings considered, you and I are more like each other than we are like anybody else. We've dis-* cussed Fitz, too, and Mr. Hara is very anxious to meet and talk with him as well.

"Pedro, how old would you say he is?"

The dark man shrugged. "Probably, exactly as old as he says he is, since I've never known him to lie about anything. But comes to that, Danna, I've never asked his age and I don't think he ever volunteered the information. Why?"

"It's just that he was speaking tonight about having captained a warship during the Russo-Japanese War \ . . . but, Pedro, as I recall my world history, that | was . . . well, at least seventy years ago, and if he'd only been, say, thirty at the time, that still would make him a hundred or more now. Could he be a century old, do you think? He shaves his head completely and apparently has no beard, his eyebrows are white, but he certainly doesn't look or move or act like a centenarian."

"Actually," he answered, "Tadahira is probably older than a century, Danna. Ships are not, as a rule, given into the hands of inexperienced officers, so for a thirty-year-old to command a warship would have been most exceptionable in a nation that at that time must have had more than sufficient numbers of veteran maritime officers.

"But how did this subject come up? He never once has spoken of a naval career to me, Danna, and Tve known him for quite a few years/'

The woman shuddered strongly, rubbed her forearms briskly to lay the gooseflesh that had sprung up upon them, then drained off the remainder of her sherry and said in a low, hushed voice, "It's a long story, Pedro, a ... a weird story. I . . . sense that it is completely true—or that Mr. Hara believes it to be true, anyway."

She did not think it a good idea, then and there, to tell her employer, partner and friend that, using the telepathy that Fitz had so recently shown her how to employ, she had entered just far enough into her ancient friend's mind to ascertain that he was indeed imparting the truth as he knew it in his singular narrative.

Then, of a sudden, she recalled time and place: especially time. "But, Pedro, it's nearly midnight and you've got to get home and get at least some sleep tonight."

Rising, he strode to the liquor cabinet and brought back the two decanters of cognac and sherry, saying, "Whatever Tadahira told you tonight, it shook you, and you don't shake up easily, as I well know. Just recalling it all shook you again, too. So, if you don't

tell it to me, here and now, I'd lie awake the rest of this night wondering just what you knew that I don't yet of the gentleman's past. So sip your sherry like a good girl and tell me."

When she had refilled her goblet with the amontil-lado, she took from her bag a small, fancifully-carved meerschaum pipe, packed it slowly and carefully from an eelskin pouch, then used one of the gold lighters from the cigar-chest on Pedro's desk to puff it into life. Then she began to speak.

"Mr. Hara says that, after the virtual destruction of the Czar's Pacific Ocean Fleet at Port Arthur, the Japanese admiral ordered his fleet to disperse and steam back to Japan. Mr. Hara was commanding a light cruiser—only recently completed and commissioned, new, sleek and modern by the standards of that day—and was very proud of having been chosen to take her out and be her captain during her baptism of fire.

"Steaming homeward through the Yellow Sea, having experienced some minor boiler problems that he feels still were due to the inferior quality of captured Russian coal then stocking his bunkers, his ship had fallen behind the rest of the fleet, even his escorting destroyers. But with those few Russian ships remaining afloat and uncaptured fleeing the area at flank speed, he knew that he and his fine, strong, well-armed and fully-manned warship had nothing to fear, so he proceeded slowly while his crew worked on the boiler repairs and refittings.

"As the sun came up of a morning, with the repairs effected and the coast of Chosen a dim smudge off the port bow on the horizon, he was hastily

summoned to the bridge by the watch-officer to view a brace of 'monsters' disporting in the sea some thousand meters off his starboard and almost every officer and man aboard his ship crowding the rails to watch them."

"Does he have any idea what they were?" asked Pedro.

She shrugged. "He says that in his crew there were former fishers and whalers, as well, and that none of them had ever before seen or could put any name other than that of 'sea monster* to the creatures. He says that he viewed them through some land of range-finding instrument and found them to be both huge and awesome in shape, size and appearance, but exactly what their species was, he cannot say with any degree of certainty to this day, though he got to see most of their bodies as they rolled several times while he watched.

"He says that they were, according to the measuring device scribed onto the lens of his instrument, at least twenty meters long, their thick bodies looking a bit like slightly flattened barrels, smooth skins of a dark-gray color on top and almost white on the undersides."

"How many legs?" asked Pedro.

"No legs at all," she replied, "just wide flippers, four of them. They had necks as thick as tree trunks, he says, and between three and four meters long, with heads a good meter long and wide jaws well supplied with teeth, eyes quite large for their heads and no visible ears. The monsters both seemed completely oblivious of the warship and much involved in what looked much like real play.

"But despite their lack of aggressiveness, Mr. Hara ordered two of his smaller guns manned and loaded to await his order to fire upon the distant, inoffensive creatures. When his intent was made clear to all, one of his crew, an officer who was also a Buddhist monk and, like Mr. Hara himself, scion of an old and noble family, courteously implored his captain not to harm the innocent beasts, warning that if they were harmed by his orders, great calamity was certain to ensue.

"Mr. Hara, with great shame and infinite sadness, told then of how he callously ridiculed the well-meaning holy man, caused all of his other officers there gathered to join in the cruel mockery, then gave the guncrews the order to fire and continue firing so long as the beasts or any portions of them still were visible. Through the range-finding device he watched while his well-trained and experienced gunners blew the frolicking and all-unsuspecting animals into gobbets of bloody flesh and bone. Then, after he had personally congratulated the gunnery officer, he went below to enjoy his first meal of the new, sunny day."

The woman paused for a sip of the sherry, puffed vainly at the now-dead pipe, refit it finally, then went on with her second-hand recountal. Pedro listened in silence, rolling an unlit cigar in his fingers.

"Mr. Hara says that, within turn of the glass, the sun became obscured by masses of dark clouds and the wind metamorphosed suddenly from a gentle zephyr to a half gale, then a full gale, then even worse. The pond-like sea rose up in mast-high mountains of dark water to crash onto and sluice over the ship as if it had been some tiny chip of a fishing boat.

He says that there was simply no riding out the sudden, murderous storm in the proper manner, for no sooner did he see her bow put into the monstrous waves than, by some perversion of the natural order, she would be struck from another quarter by seas no less fierce and deadly.

"The howling winds and crashing seas swept men overboard and did immense damage to the vulnerable parts of the ship, but as he was a master-seaman and had come to know his ship well, he had, despite everything, managed to keep her at least afloat and well-out from the coast of Chosen. But then, all at once, the repaired boiler burst and, denied enough power for any meaningful sort of headway, the battered ship wallowed helplessly until a wall of water higher than any Mr. Hara had ever before seen or even imagined struck the light cruiser on her port side and capsized her. To the best of his knowledge, Mr. Hara was the sole survivor of his ship, though he was to subsequently find that there was one other.

"He has never known just how he survived the diaster, Pedro. He was washed shore on the coast of the Chosen Peninsula, a bit of splintered wreckage having miraculously pierced his uniform coat in such a way as to keep his head and upper body out of the water ... or, at least, that is what those who questioned those who found him later conjectured.

"But back in Japan, he was given cause to wish that he too had gone down with the ship. His superiors made it abundantly clear to him that, having lost the ship and all her crew, he was in disgrace . . . and that in order that the disgrace be his alone and not that of his family and clan, as well, he must perform the act of seppuku in the tradition of his class.

"Obediently, he put his affairs in order and made the necessary arrangements, being offered the use of a cousins antique swords, his own equally venerable and treasured blades by then resting and rusting beyond recall on the floor of the Yellow Sea. An old friend sadly agreed to serve him as his kaishaku, the man who would behead him with the katana after he had himself slit his own abdomen with the wakizashi.

"What a hideous thing to force someone to do to himself, Pedro. What sort of people would, could, order such an enormity?"

Now it was the dark man who shrugged. "Just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, savage, bloodthirsty human being, Danna. Mankind was always more vicious than the prey he hunted or even the bestial predators with which he competed. That's why there're so few beasts left in this world that is bursting with humans.

"But, that aside, go on with the tale. It's fascinating. Mr. Hara lost his nerve at the sticking-point, eh? He found he couldn't go through with it, did he?"

Once more the woman rubbed briskly at her forearms, saying, "Oh, no, he did go through with it . . . rather, he did his level best to do so. Pedro, this is where the really weird part starts.

"On the chosen day, at the chosen place, with a dozen witnesses present, Mr. Hara prepared to go about his suicide. But when he put his hand to the cloth-shrouded wakizashi, the ancient but tough and razor-sharp blade shattered into countless pieces like length of fragile glass struck with a hammer! After a few minutes of consternation, one of the official

witnesses provided his own wakizashi to replace the inexplicably broken one, that he still might see the will of the high command properly done in the ritual manner. But no sooner had Mr. Hara touched the point of the blade to his bare belly-skin than that point and a handspan length of the fine steel behind it snapped off cleanly.

Next, his friend, on Mr. Haras frantic signal, whirled his blade up and swung it at the back of Mr. Hara's neck—but that longer blade, the kaishaku, shattered as it was swung through the air, and the poor friend landed flat on his face between his intended victim and the ranks of witnesses.

"At that juncture, another of the official witnesses drew, aimed, cocked and fired a Colt pistol at Mr. Hara. The priming-cap fired, but the charge of gunpowder did not, so the officer cocked and fired again . . . and yet again and again and again until he had tried vainly to shoot five of the six loads in his pistol. With a look of shock on his face, he pointed it at the floor and squeezed the trigger—to see the bullet penetrate the mat and the muzzle-blast set fire to it.

"The frustrated kaishaku had, by then, borrowed another katana, taken his preassigned post and indicated to Mr. Hara that he once more was ready to accomplish his bloody, painful, but agreed-upon chore. When on this occasion he whirled up the long sword, however, the tang impossibly came free of the hilt and the blade went flying through the air, through a paper wall and was later found sticking in a floor.

"Another try was made with the reprimed and reloaded pistol, an equally futile try. They . . . Can you credit any of this, Pedro? It's unbelievable, com-

pletely unbelievable, yet Mr. Hara is completely convinced that it's all true, to the last word/'

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," quoted the dark man, nodding and attesting. "If Mr. Hara says it's true, Danna, then I don't doubt that it is, all of it, even the hardest parts to believe. I'll swear by that old man."

After once more getting her pipe going and enjoying one or two puffs, then wetting her lips with a bit of the sherry, the woman recommenced her recountal. "Well, the 'festivities' were put on hold, so to speak, and Mr. Hara, his friend and all of the witnesses trooped off to the senior officers with their weird but fully-witnessed and attested tales. When all had been heard out by three of the superior officers, when the broken weapons and the strangely operating revolver had all been carefully examined, one of these seniors had an orderly fetch back to him a more modern firearm, a captured Russian revolver of larger caliber, fully loaded with metallic cartridges.

"Preferring the big weapon to Mr. Hara, he suggested a self-administered shot to the head, and Mr. Hara endeavored to comply . . . but as before, with the other revolver, all six cartridges failed to fire. A box of fresh cartridges was fetched, the weapon was reloaded, and the senior officer himself fired off two shots that left large, splintery holes in a ceiling-beam, then levelled the still-smoking piece at Mr. Hara and squeezed the trigger only to have the hammer fall on another misfire.

"They ended going through the entire box of cartridges, before they were done; those not aimed at

Mr. Hara fired without exception and with a great deal of noise, smoke and damage to the things the heavy, soft-lead bullets hit, but each and every time that the big pistol was aimed at Mr. Hara, the cartridges did not ignite, for all that the depressions left by the firing-pin were easily evident to the eyes of all the men present.