Chapter 24: Joyla and Kaa plot over pizza
Joyla paid, stepped out of the taxi, and as always when visiting Luca, walked across the narrow road and leaned on the wall, enjoying the view of water, moored boats and greenery in this lush corner of the New Territories of Hong Kong. She breathed in, then turned and walked into her favoured Italian restaurant in this city. She and Kaa had arranged to meet here, safely out of the way of potential prying eyes, human, draconic or otherwise. And the food was excellent.
She looked around, saw his familiar pale skin and ginger hair at one of the tables on the patio, organza bunting above his head, espresso with a twist of lemon sitting empty, glass of water also almost empty, glanced at her iPhone and realized she was running later than she’d thought. Damn it.
He stood, plucked her into a hug, dropped her in front of her chair. They sat, looked at each other for a second.
“Dian Mu.” They spoke simultaneously, Kaa mispronouncing the name slightly.
“Okay, we’re at the same place, but how did we get here?”
Tattooed arms interrupted them, depositing an antipasto platter groaning with smoked salmon, prawns, prosciutto and cantelope and two glasses of the homemade lemonade in front of them. Kaa loaded their plates, and the first prawn tails hit the platters before any additional words were spoken.
“Okay, I know how I got to Dian Mu. I was there when Zau met with her at Panxi. How did you get there?”
Kaa recounted his trip down memory lane, the increasing linkages, the epiphany of the Chinese melodrama. In turn, Joyla told Kaa of the meeting at Panxi, the nervous preparations Zau had made, of being frustratingly out of earshot of the discussion.
“So the mirrors are her traditional channel for lightning. And Rex is putting them in place near fossil fuel generation plants all over Asia.”
“Yes. Your new friend is putting in place the means for Dian Mu to destroy every fossil fuel generation plant in half the world.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“Order pizza. It’s excellent here.”
The tattooed arms materialized again, waited as Kaa pointed at the margherita pizza, then left.
“No, really, what are we going to do? Don’t we need coal and gas generation to keep the lights on?”
“More than that. The electricity in the grid keeps the factories working, powers transshipment ports, keeps all of the computer systems running, powers our traffic lights and keeps the airports working.”
“Wait a minute. That’s… everything.”
“Yes.”
They paused. Minutes stretched as the implications sunk in. Pizza arrived. They didn’t do it justice.
“Armagnac. We need brandy.” The tattooed arms came and went, returned with snifters.
“To the end of the world as we know it.”
“I don’t feel fine.”
They drank.
“Okay, so Zau’s daughter is dead due to ocean acidification and he and his people can’t return to the water until it clears up. He’s going to destroy human civilization for the next several centuries in order to bring the world into balance again, and to let the seas return to normal. He can wait the century or two it will take before he can go for a swim again, but a few billion people will die.”
“That’s about right.”
“He’s enlisted Dian Mu, given her some sort of gift of data which she was really pleased with and she’s bought into this plan to return most of the earth to the middle ages.”
“It seems so.”
“What’s in it for her?”
“I don’t know. She’s the Chinese Goddess of Lightning and has been for thousands of years since she ascended from being a mere human woman, if any of the mythology holds up, and it certainly seems to. What motivates any immortal deity today? Worshippers? Relative power? Nostalgia?”
“Hmmm… I know someone who could probably have a good chance of getting close enough to a woman to find out whatever he wanted.”
“Wait a minute. She’s a goddess. Married to a god, Lei Gong or something. A blue-skinned, beaked prude of a god perhaps, but still, just a little more horsepower than I’ve got, not to mention the hammer he wanders around with.”
“Since when have you worried about jealous husbands?”
“Point. But I’m not really a man of action. Lover, fighter, etc.”
“So don’t get caught by him. But you have to find a way to seduce Dian Mu.”
“You realize she could fry me with a lightning bolt, don’t you?”
“So? That djinn you told me about once could have roasted you over an open flame. And Qi could have bitten you in half and swallowed the pieces. Stop being a casuist. You’ve got a rather singular talent for seducing exotic and dangerous creatures, surely seducing a goddess must have some appeal.”
“I feel as if I’m being put between Lei Gong’s hammer and an anvil. I think we need more Armagnac.” Tattoos came and went again.
“Okay, I’m not exactly resigned to this, but I’ve had enough of this excellent brandy to think it’s worth trying to figure out how we might pull this off. And by pull this off, I think we need to do more than find out what’s motivating Dian Mu, but also change her mind.”
They talked for another two hours, tiramisu and espresso arriving with sugar and caffeine in the nick of time to keep them going.
They talked over all of Kaa’s seductions, and the times he’d been pursued as well. Joyla reminded him of when she’d been his teacher’s pet, the lessons he’d imparted. They reminded themselves that Dian Mu was no teenager, no novice, and that the odds of her being naïve after centuries of marriage to a prude were mixed at best.
For a few minutes, they waxed nostalgic about their first meeting in the flesh, the picnic Kaa had waved out of the air in the clearing by the spring in Singapura.
They debated settings and storylines, drama, intemperate actions he might take, whether putting her through trials and tribulations might be the path to her heart or at least parts close to her heart. They talked tactics of flags and storm signals, tempestuous squalls of passion that could be brought to bear, things which might pass her eagle eye, and certainly things which would escape her husband’s beak.
After a while, they had a plan. Of sorts. And they were full. And quite a bit afraid. So like naked apes since time immaterial, they went back to his cave — or at least his hotel suite — and huddled together in fear of the lightning and thunder, no sexual intimacies marring their comforting embrace.