The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid Read Online Free

the rest of which, like Theseus in the Labyrinth, they paid out behind them as they swam.
    “That approach won’t work, I’m afraid,” Laszlo explained to Jesse later. “When the ship hit the bottom, it threw everything in the hold forward against the bulkhead. We can’t shift it from down there, so we’ll have to open the hold and go in that way.”
    “It should be an easy enough job.” We were sipping drinks in Jesse’s palatial Tang Dynasty lodgings. He had, of course, acquired a suite, complete with a little Taoist shrine all in scarlet and gold. The Taoist god, with pendulous earlobes the size of fists, gazed at us with a benign smile from his niche as we plotted our retrieval.
    “Clearing the wire is going to be the most dangerous part of it,” Laszlo continued. “Afterward we’ll have to use jacks to get the mast off the cargo hatch. Actually opening the hatch and retrieving the target will be the easiest part of all.”
    “Do you have all the gear you need?” Jesse asked.
    “We’ll have it flown to Macau to meet us,” Laszlo said. “It’s just a matter of your giving us your credit card number.”
    “There isn’t a cheaper or quicker way to do this?” Jesse asked.
    “Total. Artistic. Control,” said Laszlo, which settled it as far as he was concerned.
    *
    As for myself, I planted some sandalwood incense in Jesse’s shrine and set it alight along with a prayer for success and safety. It seemed only sensible to try to get the local numina on my side.
    Happy with a drink in my hand and my feet up on a cushion, I was inclined to loiter in Jesse’s sumptuous suite as long as I could. The passengers lived in a Forbidden City of pleasures and delights, but the crew and entertainers were stuck in little bare cabins below the water line, with no natural light, precious little ventilation, and with adjacent compressors, generators, and maneuvering thrusters screaming out in the small hours of the night.
    Eventually, though, Jesse grew weary of our company, and I wandered out to the Peaches of Heaven Buffet for a snack. I got some dumplings and a bottle of beer, and whom should I encounter but folk music fan Tobe Oharu, fresh from bargain-hunting at the Stanley Market, who plunked down opposite me with some ox-tendon soup and a bottle of beer.
    “I got some pashmina shawls for my mother,” he said with great enthusiasm, “and some silk scarves and ties for presents, and some more ties and some cashmere sweaters for myself.”
    “Very nice,” I said.
    “How did you spend your day?”
    “I went out for a swim,” I said, “but I didn’t have a good time.” I was still embarrassed that I had so completely flaked out at the forty-meter mark.
    “That’s a shame,” Oharu said. “Was the beach too crowded?”
    “The company did leave something to be desired,” I said, after which he opened what proved to be a highly informed discussion of Andean music.
    The audiences for our shows that night were modest, because most of the passengers were still enjoying the fleshpots of Hong Kong, but Oharu was there, right in front as before, wearing his poncho and derby and leading the audience in applause. We tried “Twist and Shout” as an encore number, and it was a hit, getting us a second encore, which meant that the band took Oharu to the bar for several rounds of thank-you drinks.
    After the second show, I stuck around for the entire Hopping Vampire Show and had a splendid time watching Chinese demons chomp ingenues while combating a Taoist magician, who repelled them with glutinous rice, which enabled him to dodge attack long enough to control the vampires with yellow-paper magic, in which a sutra or spell was written on yellow paper with vermilion ink, then stuck on the vampire’s forehead like a spiritual Post-It note.
    I made a note to remember this trick in case I ever encountered a Hopping Vampire myself.
    After the second show, the Tang Dynasty got under way for its short run to Macau, and