From somewhere in the far distance to the north came the half-mournful, half-comic sound of a Tibetan mountain horn like the two Gunter had been shown downstairs, a sustained baritone bleat that made him think of a brontosaur dying in agony. It made the mountains ring with echoes. “What’s that?” he asked idly. “Call to prayer? Some sort of religious ceremony in another temple?” Perhaps this trip need not be a total loss. Exotic religions were a hobby of Gunter’s; having had his mouth set for a grand festive colorful Buddhist ceremony, he was now prepared to settle for the local equivalent of Vespers, rather than go home empty-handed.
But the old man was shaking his head. “I have no idea.”
For some reason, this irritated Gunter. “Well, who lives up that way, then?”
The old man looked sore puzzled. “Hardly anyone. There is an old hermit who lives in that general direction… and I know he has such a horn, because I have seen it outside his home. But I have never heard him blow it—if indeed that is his horn.”
Gunter lost his manners. He had wasted a week and a fortune to see something exotic, and now he was freezing his buns off in a crumbled ruin—an empty crumbled ruin—that would be deserted for the next six months, with a canny native guide—clearly one of the oldest inhabitants of the area—who could not even tell him the significance of a simple mountain horn signal. “Perhaps it is Charlie Parker,” he snarled, “practicing in secret until the day when Kansas City needs him again!”
He did not expect the monk to get the reference, of course—but the gesture the old man made indicated that he had not even heard the remark. The wind had redoubled in fierceness and volume. “Never mind!” he said, louder, and could not even hear himself this time. Again the monk pantomimed, Excuse me? Gunter’s temper boiled over; he waved his arms angrily, gave a wordless shout of exasperation, and set off toward Lo, below. He deliberately left the ancient ruin by a different exit than the one by which he and the monk had entered, one which was more difficult to negotiate, and once he had reached the ground he continued at a pace which he knew the old man would be unable to match. He had forgotten how difficult the climb up had been.
Within a few hundred meters, he was breathing hard. It occurred to him suddenly, as he was negotiating a two-meter drop-off, that in his irritation he was about to leave here completely empty-handed. He stopped and took his camera from his shirt pocket. At least he could get some good shots of the ruined temple itself. He had purchased enough memory for five straight days of shooting; might as well get a few minutes. He turned and grunted with satisfaction: the decaying temple really did look striking against the sky. It somehow gave Gunter the impression of a fortress built to defend men against the gods. Unsuccessfully. He backed off a few steps for a better angle, and checked the camera’s charge. To avoid wasting power, he disabled the audio pickup. The wind was really roaring now, and he could overdub the audio later, with something suitably timeless and melancholy.
He peered through the viewfinder and panned across the face of the ruin, left to right and then back again. He did not see the old monk anywhere, and wondered if he were still within the walls, paralyzed by Gunter’s rudeness. Then he did see him—and sure enough, he was standing in the same window they had both been looking out from, minutes earlier. He appeared to be doing jumping jacks.
Gunter grunted in surprise, and zoomed in. No, the old man was hopping up and down and flapping his arms, but not in any organized fashion. He seemed to be waving at Gunter. Gunter zoomed in farther, and became even more puzzled. The old man appeared to be laughing like a loon. And he was pointing now, pointing to the north. Was he trying to say something about that silly horn blast? In sign language, at this distance? Gunter waved back with his free hand, signing, forget it. This seemed to convulse the aged monk; he held his ribs and roared with silent laughter.
Gunter had heard of this: Himalayans were known to go into spontaneous laughing jags, due to the low oxygen content at this height. He found it annoying: here he was trying to get an imposing shot of this ancient temple, and its caretaker was capering like an ape in the foreground. Go away, he gestured. Get out of the window!
The monk nodded at once, still laughing merrily, and vanished from the window. Gunter kept shooting. Now the wind began to devil him, increasing its force until it was tugging at his clothes, pressing at him like a Tokyo commuter, hammering at his eardrums. The camera was just big enough to present sail-area to it; the wind kept trying to force it to the right. Gunter had image-stabilization circuitry, but knew that this much wavering was taxing it. He twisted slightly to his right to put his back toward the wind, shielding the camera with his hunched left shoulder. The wind pressed especially hard at his ankles, for some reason, and his feet began to feel chilly. Oh fine, he thought, defective boots on top of everything else. I am definitely going to sue somebody when I get home!
But almost as he finished the thought, he realized that his feet were actually cold, colder than they should have been even if the boots’ heating systems had both failed completely. He glanced down, and discovered that he was standing ankle deep in crystal clear water. It rose as he watched, climbing his shins.
He looked to the north, and saw the Kali Gandaki river returning, after five centuries, dividing around his feet. Now his ear could distinguish between the sound of its passage and the similar sound of the wind. For no reason at all he remembered the damned travel agent saying that the Tiji festival was also known as the Festival of Impermanence.
From above him, in the temple, came the continuous BBBRRRRRAATTTTTTTT! of a mountain horn, cutting cleanly through the wind and water noise to alert the village below, and this horn sounded to Gunter more like a brontosaur laughing…
PART FIVE
13
The Shimizu Hotel
18 January 2065
Rhea was drifting helplessly in deep space, her air supply almost gone, her thrusters dry, gasping for air that wasn’t there, when windchimes sounded in the distance. She sighed, came back to reality, saved her changes, folded the typewriter and tucked it in her pocket, and went to answer the door.
It was Duncan, of course—the only person besides Rand, Colly and Jay for whom the doorbell would function while she was working. “Is Colly ready?” he asked.
His eyes seemed to ask several other things, and Rhea sighed again. I wonder what my eyes are answering, came the sudden thought. “Come in,” she said, and looked away. “Max, please tell Colly Duncan is here.”
“Beg pardon?” the AI said.
“Sorry. Tell Colly that Duncan is here.” Rhea hated making syntax errors; it was professionally embarrassing.
After a pause, her AI said, “Colly says to tell you she’s changing clothes and will be with you in two seconds.”
They looked at each other. “Five minutes,” they chorused together, and shared a grin.
Almost at once something about that trivial event bothered Rhea. It was a domestic little moment, something she and Rand might have shared, a small intimacy. Rand had in fact been doing his best to generate such moments, lately—probably because the deadline for her Big Decision was approaching. That underlying awareness had been making the return grins she gave her husband slightly forced. The grin she had just given Duncan was quite genuine. She realized she was drifting just perceptibly toward him, and overcorrected. “Come on in,” she said to cover it. “You know where everything is.”