“You mean,” I said, unconvinced, “I could go into the market and buy a bowl of mian to eat and the vendor would accept one of these pieces of paper in payment?”
“Bismillah! He would give you his whole market-stall for it. Probably his wife and children as well. I told you: each of those is worth a whole liang. A liang is one thousand tsien, and for one tsien you could buy twenty or thirty bowls of mian. If you have need of small change—here.” He took from a drawer several packets of smaller sized papers. “How do you want it? Notes of half a liang each? A hundred tsien? What?”
Marveling, I said, “The flying money is made in all denominations? And the common folk accept them like real money?”
“It is real money, unbeliever! Cannot you read? Those words on the paper attest its realness. They proclaim its face value, and appended are the signatures of all the Khakhan’s numerous officers and bursars and clerks of the imperial treasury. My own name is among them. And over all is stamped in red ink a much bigger yin—the great seal of Kubilai himself. Those are guarantees that at any time the paper can be exchanged for its face amount in actual silver from the treasury stores. Thus the paper is as real as the silver it represents.”
“But if,” I persisted, “someday someone should wish to redeem one of these papers, and it were repudiated …?”
Achmad said drily, “If the time ever comes when the Khakhan’s yin evokes disrespect, you will have many more urgent things to worry about than your wages. We all will.”
Still examining the flying money, I mused aloud, “Nevertheless, I should think it would be less trouble for the treasury simply to issue the bits of silver. I mean, if there are sheaves of these little papers circulating throughout the realm, and if every official must write his name on every last one—”
“We do not write our names over and over again,” said Achmad, beginning to sound very annoyed. “We write them only once, and from that signature the palace Master Yinmaker makes a yin, which is a backward-written word like an engraved seal, and can be inked and stamped on paper innumerable times. Surely even you uncivilized Venetians are familiar with seals.”
“Yes, Wali Achmad.”
“Very well. For the making of a piece of money, all the necessary separate yin for words and characters and letters are arranged and locked together into a form of the proper size. The form is repeatedly inked and the papers pressed onto it one by one. It is a process the Han call zi-shu-ju, which means something like ‘the gathered writing.’”
I nodded. “Our Western monks will often cut a backward block of wood for the big initial letter of a manuscript, and impress several pages with it, for the several Friars Illuminators to color and elaborate in their individual styles, before proceeding to write the rest of the page by hand.”
Achmad shook his head. “In the gathered writing the impression need not be limited to the initial letter, and no hand writing need be done at all. By the molding in terra-cotta of many identical yin of every character in the Han language—and now having yin of every letter of the Mongol alphabet—this zi-shu-ju can combine any number of yin into any number of words. Thus can be composed whole pages of writing, and those combined into whole books. Zi-shu-ju can produce them in great quantities, every copy alike, far more quickly and perfectly than any scribes can indite by hand. If provided with yin of the Arabic alphabet and of the Roman alphabet, the process could produce books in any known language, equally easily and abundantly and cheaply.”
“Say you so?” I murmured. “Why, Wali, that is an invention more to be admired even than the advantages of the flying money.”
“You are right, Folo. I perceived that myself, the first time I saw one of the gathered-writing books. I thought of sending some of the Han experts westward to teach the doing of the zi-shu-ju in my native Arabia. But fortunately I learned in time that the zi-shu-ju forms are inked with brushes made of the bristles of swine. So it would be unthinkable to suggest the process to the nations of holy Islam.”
“Yes, I can see that. Well, I thank you, Wali Achmad, both for the instruction and for the wages.” I began to put the papers away in my belt purse.
“Allow me,” he said casually, “to proffer one or two other bits of instruction. There are some places you cannot spend the flying money. The Fondler, for example, will take bribes only in solid gold. But I think you already knew that.”
Taking care to make my face expressionless, I raised my eyes from my purse to his cold agate gaze. I wondered how much else he knew about my doings, and obligingly he told me:
“I would not dream of suggesting that you disobey the Khakhan. He did instruct you to make inquiries. But I will suggest that you confine your inquiries to the upper stories of the palace. Not down in Master Fing’s dungeons. Not even in the servants’ quarters.”
So he knew that I had put an ear belowstairs. But did he know why? Did he know that I was interested in the Minister of Lesser Races, and, if he did, why should he care? Or did he fear that I might hear something damaging to Achmad the Chief Minister? I kept my face expressionless and waited.
“Cellar dungeons are unhealthy places,” he went on, as indifferently as if he were warning me against rheumatic damp. “But tortures can happen aboveground as well, and far worse ones than anything the Fondler inflicts.”
I had to correct him there. “I am sure there could be nothing worse than the Death of a Thousand. Perhaps, Wali Achmad, you are unacquainted with—”
“I am acquainted with it. But even the Fondler knows how to inflict a death worse than that one. And I know several.” He smiled—or his lips did; his stone eyes did not. “You Christians think of Hell as the most terrible torture there can be, and your Bible tells you that Hell consists of pain. ‘To be cast into the Hell of fire, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.’ So spoke your gentle Jesus, at Capharnaum, to His disciples. Like your Jesus, I warn you not to flirt with Hell, Marco Folo, and not to pursue any temptations that might put you there. But I will tell you something more about Hell than your Christian Bible does. Hell is not necessarily an ever burning fire or a gnawing worm or a physical pain of any sort. Hell is not necessarily even a place. Hell is whatever hurts worst.”
11.
I went from the chambers of the Chief Minister directly to my own, intending to tell Nostril to cease his spy activities—at least until I could give some serious cogitation to the Wali’s warnings and threats. But Nostril was not there; another slave was. Biliktu and Buyantu met me in the vestibule, their eyebrows haughtily aloft, to inform me that a slave, a stranger, had come calling and had begged leave to stay and wait my return. The twins, not being owned by me or anybody, were always disdainful of their inferiors, but they seemed even more than usually bothered by this one. Rather curious to see what had provoked them, I went into my main room. A woman was seated on a bench there. When I came in, she swept down to the floor in a graceful ko-tou, and stayed kneeling until I bade her rise. She stood up, and I looked at her, and I looked with wide eyes.
The palace slaves, when their errands brought them from their cellars or kitchens or stables up among their betters, were always well dressed, to reflect credit on their masters, so it was not the woman’s fine garb that made me stare. What struck me was that she wore it as if she deserved nothing but the best, and was used to it, and was aware that no richest raiment would ever outshine her own radiance.