"Why, this is it." Monkey pulled the dead body onto the well-curb.
"What! Nothing but this? Monkey, you lied to me!"
"It is for the best," Monkey assured him. "What would you have done with gold and jewels, anyhow? We could not take time to spend them."
"You tricked me! You bamboozled me!"
"We had to have this body," Monkey explained, laying out the dead king on the ground, "and you are a far better swimmer than I."
"I'll get even," Pigsy growled. "You see if I don't!"
Shea looked at the drowned body, then looked away again, shuddering. It was swollen, bloated, and the color of a fish's belly. Still ... "It's in strangely good shape for a three-year-old corpse, Monkey."
"It is." The stone simian frowned. "Almost as though a magician had cast a spell of preservation over it—or as though Yama, King of the Dead, had not yet taken his due." He looked up at Shea, brooding. "Perhaps he knows something that we do not."
"Maybe," Shea agreed, feeling a prickling of dread envelop his back and neck. "Let's get the stiff out of here, Monkey, okay?"
For some reason, the sentries were all looking the other way as Shea and Monkey hoisted the dead king over the garden wall and off into the night. They must have been selectively deaf, too, for Pigsy was not worrying about how loud he was grumbling.
"It is he, even as he appeared in my dream!" Tripitaka shuddered, staring at the dead body before him. "In truth, his body does not appear anywhere nearly as ravaged as I dreaded. What could have caused this. Monkey? Why would Yama not have taken his due of it?"
Monkey shrugged, for once without an answer.
But Chalmers was not. "Could it be," he said slowly, "that the King is only in some sort of coma?"
Shea looked up, frowning. "No, impossible, Doc! Even a body in coma has to breathe! Besides, he's bloated."
Tripitaka looked from one to the other, frowning. "What is a coma"?
"A state of unconciousness," Chalmers explained, "much deeper than sleep, but still just barely living. It usually ends in death, though the body may linger for years. Sometimes, though, occasionally, very rarely, a person will come out of a coma, and regain full use of his faculties."
"A deathlike sleep?" Tripitaka frowned. "How could the dead return to life?"
Pigsy saw his chance. "Why, just ask Monkey, master! He can bring the dead to life! Just ask him!"
"Be still, lump of lard!" Monkey frowned. "I can do no such thing!"
"Oh, aye, he will deny it!" Pigsy jibed. "But he has been in Heaven, and even in the laboratory of Lao Tzu! If anyone can bring the dead back to life, he can!"
"What nonsense are you speaking, fool!" Monkey barked. "Only Yama can bring the dead back to life!"
"Oh, of course he will deny it!" Pigsy cried. "But only say the magic words, Master! Invoke the spell of the golden headband! Make it tighten about his temples, and he will admit the truth!"
Tripitaka, looking very stern, began to recite the rhyme.
"Master, no!" Monkey cried in a panic. "He speaks only in spite, he seeks revenge because I tricked him into ... Aieeee!" He fell on the ground, clutching his temples and shrieking. Pigsy laughed, enjoying the sight immensely.
"Speak truth, Monkey," Tripitaka said sternly. "If you can raise the dead, it is needful that you do so!"
"I can, I can!" Monkey cried. "I will find a way! I will bring the dead king back to life, if I have to go to Yama himself to demand it! Only make the pain stop, Master!"
With a curt nod, Tripitaka recited the counterspell. Monkey went limp with relief.
"Remember your promise now, Monkey," Pigsy jeered. "Raise the dead king to life!"
Monkey leaped to his feet, eyes glowing fiery red, and ran at Pigsy with a bellow.
"Disciple!" Tripitaka snapped, and Monkey came to an instant halt, shouting, "I will be revenged on you, Pigsy!"
"Did you speak of revenge?" Tripitaka demanded in dire tones, and Monkey froze. Then, slowly, he turned and bowed to Tripitaka. "I shall do your bidding, Master."
Behind him, Pigsy snickered.
Tripitaka eyed him coldly. "I shall deal with you later."
Pigsy blanched.
Tripitaka turned back to his smallest disciple. "How shall you do this thing, Monkey?"
"There are only two ways," Monkey sighed. "The one is to go into the Abode of the Dead, and beg Yama to restore the soul to the body—but Yama has no reason to grant our request, and is very stingy with the souls he has gathered."
"Agreed," Tripitaka said slowly.
"The only other way," Monkey said, "is to force my way into Heaven and beg a grain of Life-Restoring Elixir from Lao-Tzu—and that is what I must do. I know the way, for I have been in Heaven before."
Tripitaka said severely, "Yes, I know you were, and I have heard the tale of the havoc you caused there, five hundred years ago. Do as you did when you were a groom to the Jade Emperor's horses, and every deity in Heaven will seek to punish us." He turned to Shea. "Do you go along with him, Magician Xei, for I have found that you have an understanding of people that may enable you to restrain Monkey from his wildest excesses. And, too, your diplomacy may gain more help than all Monkey's bullying could ever do. Will you go?"
Shea swallowed, hard, and glanced at Chalmers, who shrugged almost imperceptibly, then gave him the slightest of nods.
Shea turned back to Tripitaka. "Of course, Reverend Sir, if that is what you ask." Inside, he asked himself frantically if Heaven could really be real.
The Chinese Heaven? Why not? As real as the Norsemen's Asgard, anyway—and Shea had been there already. Why not, indeed?
Seconds later, they were on a cloud and rising fast. Shea had to gulp air to quiet a queasy stomach, and tried to remember a spell for Dramamine. He decided that he definitely preferred a broomstick, under his own control—or better yet, a reclining seat with a seatbelt and a stewardess.
Then they rose above the floor of a cloudbank, and Shea found himself facing a huge Chinese gate in a wall that towered up and up. Both were of gold, and the gate was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and jade.
Monkey hopped off his cloud and swung up his cudgel; it lengthened into a six-foot iron staff.
"No, hold it a minute!" Shea grabbed the tip of the staff—and almost got another free ride, but Monkey halted in the nick of time and grunted, "Wherefore?"
"Because breaking down somebody's front door isn't the best way to get them to like you."
"Why should we want them to like us?"
"Because if they do, they're more likely to grant us a favor."
Monkey bared his teeth in a grin. "I assure you, Xei, none here has cause to like me—and they all have long, long memories.''
"Still, we might try another way."
"Why?"
"Humor me."
Monkey sighed. "You western barbarians are so unreasonable! Well enough, Xei—how would you gain entrance to Heaven? We are neither of us ghosts, you know—and, if truth be told, neither one pure enough for Heaven!"
"There's some truth in that, I suppose," Shea sighed, "but Heaven is common to both our cultures, so maybe I can impose a little of my own on this image of it." He frowned at the gate, concentrating very hard on his own private image of the Pearly Gates—and a small metal rectangle with two buttons appeared on the right-hand jamb. "There, see?" he said triumphantly, and stepped forward to press the button. The two gates slid apart with a slight hiss, to show a richly appointed little room, painted with red laquer and gold leaf, and hung with silken tapestries.