The Year of Rice and Salt

Keeper took one of these thick books and without hesitation swung it like a tomahawk, knocking Biancheng over his paper laden desk. Keeper looked around at the long lines of souls waiting their turn to be judged, and saw them staring at him amazed, and he shouted at them, 'Riot! Revolt! Rebel! Revolution!' and without waiting to see what they did, led his little jati into a chamber of mirrors, the first room on their passage through the process of judgment, where souls were to look at themselves and see what they really were.

'A good idea,' Keeper admitted, after stopping in the middle and staring at himself, seeing what no one else could see. 'I am a monster,' he announced. 'My apologies to you all. And especially to you, Iagogeh, for putting up with me this last time, and all the previous times. And to you, youth,' nodding at Busho. 'But nevertheless, we have work to do. I intend to tear this whole place down.' And he began looking around the room for something to throw at the mirrors.

'Wait,' Iagogeh said. She was reading her copy of 'The Jade Record', skimming pages rapidly. 'Frontal assaults are ineffective, as I recall. I'm remembering things. We have to go at the system itself. We need a technical solution… Here. Here's just the thing: just before we're sent back into the world, the Goddess Meng administers to us a vial of forgetting.'

'I don't remember that,' Keeper said.

'That's the point. We go into each life ignorant of our pasts, and so we struggle on each time without learning anything from the times before. We have to avoid that if we can. So listen, and remember: when you are in the hundred and eight rooms of this Meng, don't drink anything! If they force you to, then only pretend to drink it, and spit it out when you are released.' She read on. 'We emerge in the Final River, a river of blood, between this realm and the world. If we can get there with our minds intact, then we might be able to act more effectively.'

'Fine,' Keeper said. 'But I intend to destroy this place itself.'

'Remember what happened last time you tried that,' Busho warned him, getting into the corner of the chamber so he could see the reflection of the reflections. Some things were coming back to him as Iagogeh had spoken. 'When you took a sword to the goddess of death, and she redoubled on you with each stroke.'

Keeper frowned, trying to recall. Outside there was a roaring, shouts, sounds of gunfire, boots running. Irritated, distracted, he said, 'You can't be cautious at times like this, you have to fight evil whenever the chance comes.'

'True, but cleverly. Little steps.'

Keeper regarded him sceptically. He held his thumb and forefinger together in the air. 'That small?' He grabbed up Iagogeh's book and threw it at one wall of the mirrors. One of them cracked, and a shriek came from behind the wall.

'Stop arguing,' Iagogeh said. 'Pay attention now.'

Keeper picked the book back up and they hurried through close little rooms, moving higher and higher, then lower again, then higher, always up or down stairs in multiples of seven or nine. Keeper abused several more functionaries with the big book. Pounds the Rocks kept slipping into side rooms and getting lost.

Finally they reached the hundred and eight chambers of Meng, the Goddess of Forgetting. Everyone had to pass through a different one of the chambers, and drink the cup of the wine that was not wine set out for them. Guards who did not look as if they would notice the slap of a book, be it ever so thick, stood at every exit to enforce this requirement; souls were not to return to life too burdened or advantaged by their pasts.

'I refuse,' Keeper shouted; they could all hear it from the nearby rooms. 'I don't remember this ever being required before!'

'That's because we're making progress,' Busho tried to call to him. 'Remember the plan, remember the plan.'

He himself took up his vial, happily fairly small, and faked swallowing its sweet contents with an exaggerated gulp, tucking the liquid under his tongue. It tasted so good he was sorely tempted to swallow it down, but resisted and only let a little seep to the back of his tongue.

Thus when his guard tossed him out into the Final River with the rest, he spat out what he could of the not wine, but he was disoriented nevertheless. The other members of the jati thrashed likewise in the shallows, choking and spitting, Straight Arrow giggling drunkenly, totally oblivious. Iagogeh rounded them up, and Keeper, no matter what he had forgotten, had not lost his main purpose, which was to wreak havoc however he could. They half swum, half floated across the red stream to the far shore.