Tripitaka only waited, face impassive.
"It was enchanted!" Shea gasped.
Chalmers nodded. "A trap!"
"Forgive me, Master!" Monkey cried. "I was wrong to lose my temper, to turn against you! I apologize!"
"Will you swear to do whatever I tell you?" Tripitaka demanded.
"I swear, I swear!" Monkey cried. "I will obey you in all things! I will never lift my hand against you! Only make the agony stop, Master, make the agony stop!"
Tripitaka gestured, reciting another short verse which somehow eluded Shea completely.
Monkey sagged with relief. "Thank you, Master! Oh, thank you! Where did you get that wondrous hat?"
"From the Bodhissatva Kuan-Yin," Tripitaka answered. "From Kuan-Yin! But she is the Goddess of Mercy! "Of mercy, certainly—but the Taoists are mistaken in thinking she is a goddess. She is a Bodhissatva, a person who has attained Enlightenment but postponed passing to Nirvana so that she may guide and instruct those of us here on Earth."
"Oh yes. Master! A Bodhissatva, not a goddess! Of course, Master!"
"But she is, as you say, the patron of mercy," Tripitaka rejoined, "so you can be sure that she must have a merciful reason, for so binding you to my authority."
Monkey stilled, half-risen. Then he lifted his head "Perhaps it is even as you say, Master. In any event, I have sworn to obey you, and I will."
"It is well." Tripitaka looked massively relieved.
"Why, he was as loath to hurt Monkey, as he was afraid of him," Chalmers hissed to Shea.
Shea nodded. "Exceptional young man, here. Maybe one of the ones who justified monasticism."
Tripitaka looked up, alert. "Who are these you have brought to join us, Monkey?"
Monkey looked up at Shea with blood in his eye. No, not blood—the little monster's orbs were actually beginning to glow with fire! "These? Why, they are the barbarian sorcerers who persuaded me to return to you, Master! This one is Xei, and that one is Chao-mar-zi."
Shea did a double take, but Chalmers only opened his eyes a little wider, then bowed politely. He had become accustomed to hearing his name mispronounced.
"They have a strange appearance." Tripitaka frowned. "But they must be wise, even magical, if they could have persuaded you. What did you tell him, barbarians?"
The "barbarians" was beginning to chafe on Shea, but he tried to ignore it. "Just a parable showing him the virtues of patience and respect for authority, Your Highness."
"I am only a monk now," Tripitaka protested. "I have forsworn worldly titles with all other vanities. If you are so wise and patient as that, I doubt not that you would be a great help on our quest. Do you wish to learn the Way of Buddha?"
"Well, actually, we were just visiting," Shea said. "We're trying to track down Dr. Chalmers' wife, you see, and Monkey tells us he found her and sent her further on her way. So if you'll just send us to the same place, Monkey ..."
"Nay." Monkey bared his teeth, but Shea could not have said whether it was a snarl or a grin. "I find I have taken a liking to your company."
"But my wife!" Chalmers cried.
"If you aid us in coming to India," Monkey said, "I will gladly send you to the place where she is—when we have found the stupa that holds the Three Baskets."
"But the time!" Chalmers cried. "Months may have elapsed!"
"Years," Monkey corrected, enjoying his discomfiture.
"Years! But any number of things could have happened to her in that much time! She could have fallen prey to bandits, been enslaved, or ..." Chalmers swallowed heavily. "... fallen in love with another man!"
"Monkey!" Tripitaka intoned severely.
"Oh, all right!" Monkey said, disgusted. "When we have attained our goal, I will send you not only to the land where she is, hut to the time at which she arrived there! Will that suit you?"
Shea goggled. "How can you do that?"
"Magic," Monkey said, all teeth. "Will it satisfy you?"
Shea looked at Chalmers, who gave him a frantic nod, then turned to Monkey with a sigh. "Why, sure. Monkey—anything you say. Which way is India?"
India was south and west, of course, and they did take a long time on the road. It seemed considerably longer because, though Tripitaka had a horse to ride, the rest of them were expected to walk, in spite of Monkey's knack with magical clouds. Shea kept trying to console himself, and Chalmers, with the spectacular scenery they were seeing, but their enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by the encounters they had along the way. For example, fairly early on, they started to cross a river, but wound up running away from the dragon that surged out of the waters. Everybody got to safety except Tripitaka's horse, which the dragon gobbled up as an hors d'oeuvre, then turned his attention to the rest of the band, intent on a five-course banquet. Monkey killed his appetite with a running fight, but had to go to Kuan-Yin for help. She changed the dragon into the spit and image of the horse he had gobbled up, and commanded him to go with the expedition, to help protect Tripitaka. Monkey almost forgave the Goddess for that.
Kuan-Yin had been foresighted, it seemed—she had sent ahead two spirits who had sinned against the Jade Emperor of Heaven, commanding them to wait for the Pilgrim Monk, then to accompany him, protect him, and learn the Way of the Buddha from him. The first had been locked into the form of a humanoid pig for his sins; his favorite weapon was an iron muckrake, and he and Monkey had an epic running battle before Monkey finally thought to mention whom he was protecting, whereupon Pigsy surrendered and joined up for the duration.
The other monster was an even harder case. They met him at the River of Flowing Sands, where he was accustomed to collect travellers trying to cross the river and having them for lunch. He was an Expressionistic monster who wore the skulls of his nine victims around his neck. Even with Chalmers' and Shea's magic assisting Monkey and Pigsy, they could barely fight the monster to a draw. Shea volunteered to keep the monster preoccupied while Monkey went for help.
Shea managed to get the monster involved in a philosophical discussion about whether or not he was a cannibal. Shea's case was that eating human beings made him a cannibal, but the monster replied that since he was not strictly human, the people he had been eating were not his own kind, so he was only a carnivore.
Meanwhile, Monkey went to ask help of Kuan-Yin. She came and converted the monster, who was a fallen spirit like Pigsy. He repented, swore off eating people, and joined the expedition, transforming himself into the likeness of a human being. Since he was the Monster of the River of Flowing Sands, they nicknamed him Sandy. He became a pious monk and a vicious infighter.
Meanwhile, they had been travelling farther and farther south, and though they were not near the foothills of the Himalayas yet, they had travelled much farther west. Shea could tell how far south they had gone by the heat and the size of the mosquitoes.
"You can tell the physics of this universe are magical," he grumbled as he lay down on a straw pallet in the guest room of the monastery at which they had just arrived. "Something that big could never fly, where we come from."
"Come, now, Harold," Chalmers sighed. "They're not nearly as bad as some of the nurses who take blood samples at the Institute."
"Bad! Doc, have you looked at these critters? Ever since we crossed the border into this Kingdom of Crow-Cock, they've been like Dracula in insect form! The last one that buzzed my ear was the size of a B-29!"
"Then if we need to fly," Chalmers sighed, "we can just borrow their wings. Do go to sleep, Harold."
"Why? So they don't have to deal with a moving target?"