Interesting Times

Perhaps it was the number two, he'd always told himself. It was an unlucky birth number. Being called Little Wang was merely a lack-of-courtesy detail, a sort of minor seagull dropping after the great heap of buffalo excrement that Heaven had pasted into his very horoscope. Although he had to admit that he hadn't made things any better by allowing himself to become Master of Protocol.

It had seemed such a good idea at the time. He'd risen gently through the Agatean civil service by mastering those arts essential to the practice of good government and administration (such as calligraphy, origami, flower arranging and the Five Wonderful Forms of poetry). He'd dutifully got on with the tasks assigned to him and noticed only vaguely that there didn't seem to be quite as many high-ranking members of the civil service as there used to be, and then one day a lot of senior mandarins - most of them a lot more senior than he was, it occurred to him later - had rushed up to him while he was trying to find a rhyme for 'orange blossom' and congratulated him on being the new Master.

That had been three months ago.

And of the things that had occurred to him in those intervening three months the most shameful was this: he had come to believe that the Sun Emperor was not, in fact, the Lord of Heaven, the Pillar of the Sky and the Great River of Blessings, but an evil-minded madman whose death had been too long delayed.

It was an awful thought. It was like hating motherhood and raw fish, or objecting to sunlight. Most people develop their social conscience when young, during that brief period between leaving school and deciding that injustice isn't necessarily all bad, and it was something of a shock to suddenly find one at the age of sixty.

It wasn't that he was against the Golden Rules. It made sense that a man prone to thieving should have his hands cut off. It prevented him from 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.'