Chapter 25

Chapter 25: Moving a Mountain

Zhao Meiyou snapped his eyes open.

This time it wasn’t a ward or a corridor. It was an endless void. Not far away an open door hung in the dark, and beyond it a long gallery draped with lanterns, specimen jars of preserving fluid ranked in tidy rows on either side.

Ruin 000.

He was back.

As his mind surfaced, his body came with it. There was weight on him. He raised his head and found Qian Duoduo straddling him in some impossible pose, half kneeling, half sprawled.

Qian Duoduo’s mouth was smeared red. Blood. Zhao Meiyou’s tongue brushed his own lips on reflex; pain flashed white, and he hissed.

Only then did he register that his mouth had been bitten raw—whoever had done it hadn’t been gentle. A kiss like a beast’s: savage, brutal.

At his breath of sound, Qian Duoduo looked up, met his gaze, and let out the air he’d been holding. “You’re awake.”

“Qian Duoduo, you—” Zhao Meiyou startled at his voice, rasped almost to nothing.

“Don’t talk yet.”

Qian Duoduo leaned down and sealed his mouth again, slow and inexorable. Zhao Meiyou felt blood pour into him, burn down his throat, sink to his stomach, pass through his gut, and finally surge out through his cock—only to be drawn back into the man astride him, the two of them locked in a closed loop.

He had no sense of time. At last Qian Duoduo let him go and briskly put their wreckage to rights. “The magnetic field here hit your subconscious on entry. You fell asleep. If no one woke you, you’d keep looping your dream. Forever.”

Zhao Meiyou lay spread-eagle on the floor. Fireworks still popped behind his eyes. He felt wrung dry. After a moment he cleared his throat. “Qian Duoduo, that is one hell of a wake-up call. Wild.”

Unruffled, Qian Duoduo said, “I had to dive into your subconscious and drag you out. This is the most effective way to link.”

Zhao Meiyou laughed hoarsely. “Our Qian Duoduo really can do anything.” He got a hand on his back, and yelped when Qian Duoduo pressed down. Qian Duoduo smacked and set him with practiced efficiency; bones crackled like dry twigs. “Sit up. Try it.”

Zhao Meiyou obeyed, surprised. “Huh. Back doesn’t hurt anymore.”

He took in the dark around them. “Qian Duoduo, where are we?”

Qian Duoduo snapped his fingers, conjured a new pair of pants, and pulled them on. “Don’t know.”

It was the first time Zhao Meiyou had ever heard those words from Qian Duoduo.

The place could have been a cavern or a clot of void, entirely bare. Qian Duoduo led him deeper. “While you were out, I tried a few things. Here, an archaeologist’s abilities seem to be entirely useless.”

“Useless?” Zhao Meiyou was startled. “You just conjured pants.”

“It’s not that we can’t use our abilities,” Qian Duoduo said. “It’s that using them changes nothing here.”

He stopped and raised a hand. “Look up.”

High above, the ceiling had split a hair. Light seeped through—ash gray yet bright, like moonlight.

“Let’s assume we’re inside a museum,” Qian Duoduo said. “Or some other building. Then that light is the single exit.”

Zhao Meiyou realized how long they had been roaming this museum. There were walls and a ceiling, but no windows, no door to the outside.

“I tried conjuring explosives,” Qian Duoduo went on. “No good. I couldn’t even shatter those glass jars out there.”

“Did the explosives get weaker?”

“No. The shock wave almost knocked me on my ass.” Qian Duoduo shook his head. “It’s that nothing in here is affected by an archaeologist’s ability.”

He demonstrated. A snap—there was a lighter in his hand. He held his palm above the flame; the skin charred black in seconds. Then he led Zhao Meiyou back to the first corridor. The angel still slept in its jar. Qian Duoduo plucked a lantern from the ceiling and tried to catch the candle inside. Nothing.

He flicked his hand; the skin of his palm was whole again. “See?”

Zhao Meiyou clicked his tongue and caught his hand. “So if we want out of this museum, we can’t blast a wall or force a door. We can only go up through that crack.”

“Right.”

“Can you fly to it?”

“No. I tried.” Qian Duoduo shook his head. “No matter how high I go, the distance between me and the gap never changes.”

“Then we find stairs.”

“Yes. Stairs.”

They set off into the dark. The space seemed circular. After who knew how long, they came back to where they’d started. Zhao Meiyou eyed the trousers abandoned on the floor. “Qian Duoduo, are those your pants?”

“Mmh. We might need light.”

They thought of the endless lanterns down the hall.

They went back and hauled them down by the dozens, then hundreds, trying to pour light into the abyss beyond the door. The lanterns came in every shape imaginable: miniature stars, flowers and goldfish, the brain of some alien thing, an eye. In some, the glow had congealed into something like living matter. The lanterns were wombs for light, or cages, or coffins. By the end, what they had stripped formed a shimmering mound—an illuminated graveyard where the sun and moon lay buried. Zhao Meiyou climbed, stepping from lantern to lantern, treading the stars underfoot.

“Qian Duoduo!” His voice drifted down from above. “I think I’ve found a way out!”

Qian Duoduo squinted up. “What way?”

“We build our own stairs!” Zhao Meiyou shouted. “Qian Duoduo, I’m jumping!” He leaped. Qian Duoduo took a few steps back and caught him cleanly.

“What do you mean, build stairs?”

“When I looked up from the top,” Zhao Meiyou said, “the distance to the crack looked smaller.”

Qian Duoduo understood at once.

Nothing in this museum could be altered by an archaeologist’s power. Then what about Creation that belonged to the museum itself?

You can’t stretch your body to pluck down the stars, but the Taihang Mountains rise, sheer and ten thousand fathoms high.

He couldn’t fly. But he could move a mountain.

“Come on, Qian Duoduo,” Zhao Meiyou said beside him, light and a little mad. “Let’s move a mountain.”

And they did. They ranged through the museum. Specimen jars, colossal bones, even dead planets—exhibits beyond number were dragged into the void and piled into a peak. Zhao Meiyou found a gallery filled with porcelain; they heaped slender-necked vases and little wine cups into their mountain. Some shattered, and the void rang—an enthralling sound, like ruin and like rebirth. Zhao Meiyou had read in the library how ancient porcelain was made: earth dug from a mountain, fired to a blaze of glaze. Now those beautiful Creations broke and returned to what they had been—earth and stone in a mountain’s flank. Only this was a strange mountain. Its waist was stuffed with bones; its foot buried angels. And the ones moving it were no gods, just two people who wanted to walk toward the sky.

At last they stood on the summit. The split in the vault above hung close. “Hey, Qian Duoduo,” Zhao Meiyou said suddenly, “how tall do you think our mountain is?”

Qian Duoduo considered. “About three hundred kilometers.”

“That close?” Zhao Meiyou was surprised. Less than an hour’s drive if you put your foot down. “How’d you figure?”

“Books say that’s the distance from the ground to space,” Qian Duoduo said. “Sometimes the sky isn’t as far as you think.”

Zhao Meiyou stared into the white light raining down. From the floor, the crack had seemed a slit; up here it was a hole wide enough for two. “From here, we look like people walking out of a cave.”

A metaphor. Qian Duoduo caught it and answered, “Those who leave the cave must also return to it, to test whether they walk the road of the good.”*

“Hey, Qian Duoduo, throw me a bone. I worked hard to memorize that one.”

Qian Duoduo weighed him and said solemnly, “You memorized it well.”

“Now you’re humoring a kid.”

“Then you didn’t memorize it well.”

“I’m going to make a scene.”

Yu Gong moved mountains. Jingwei filled the sea. The Babylonians built a ladder to heaven. Socrates walked out of the cave. Layers and layers of old stories overlapped. Zhao Meiyou rose on his toes, found the hole still a shade too high, dropped into a crouch, and patted his shoulder. “Qian Duoduo. Up.”

Qian Duoduo lifted an eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Come on—you’re not heavy.”

Qian Duoduo shook his head, stepped onto his shoulders. Zhao Meiyou steadied and rose. “Well?” Zhao Meiyou asked. “Can you reach?”

Qian Duoduo stretched. They both went up on tiptoe, and still his fingers couldn’t touch.

He narrowed his eyes, measuring light and reach.

Like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—Jehovah reaching for Adam. The gap between god and man’s wisdom, a breath, a hair.

Qian Duoduo stared at the white shine beyond his fingertips, drew his hand back, and hopped down. “Zhao Meiyou. You go.”

“Me?”

“You’ve got the better jump,” Qian Duoduo said. “Step off me, and you’ll make the light.”

It wasn’t the time for modesty. Zhao Meiyou climbed onto his shoulders, and Qian Duoduo lifted him.

Zhao Meiyou reached.

A heartbeat later, a thunderclap rose from the mountain’s foot. Uneven gravity, probably. A massive fire-stone broke loose and rolled. They’d brought that planet in from some gallery. Qian Duoduo had studied it for a long time and said it looked like the sun.

With that touch, the whole structure began to go. “Zhao Meiyou!” Qian Duoduo shouted from below. “Hold on!”

Zhao Meiyou scrambled into the hole and hauled Qian Duoduo up after him.

In that instant, the sun went down.

And together they saw the light beyond the peak.

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Author’s note: “The Man Walking Out of the Cave” – Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave