Martha Macnamara stood at the Pacific, her toes
digging into the froth. She had come the length of the
country in one day's flight, and she had trouble believing
that this was a different ocean.

"Oh go on, admit it," she grumbled, kicking the ivory
scum from a pile of kelp. "You're all the same water."

Perhaps not. She peered at the line where the iron
blue of the sky hit the soft-colored water. So bare a sky
did not shine over Coney Island.

A gull plunged, kissed the water and veered right and
away, all ten yards from Mrs. Macnamara. Her head rose
to follow its flight and her hands lifted, echoing the bird's
gesture. For a moment it seemed her prim figure, gray
suited and graying, would fly away into the west—or
north along the dirty beach toward the Bridge.

But that was just for a moment, and then the hands
touched at the braids that coiled around her head, braids
that threatened to slip over her ears.

"If you would know the Way," she recited to herself,
"observe the subtlety of water." Martha considered these
words as she watched the waves fling themselves roaring
onto the sand. What was subtle in such a display of
power?

With her round blue eyes very calm in her small
round face Mrs. Macnamara watched the ocean. Slowly
she smiled.

Where was Liz now—at work? Should Martha try to
call again, or wait for her daughter to make the move?
After all, Elizabeth had set up the reservation. Martha
Macnamara would never have chosen to stay in a place

2        TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

like the James Herald Hotel. Oh, it was comfortable,
doubtless, and the only person she had spoken to in the
hotel—a bartender—had proven friendly; she had bent
his ear for forty minutes at lunch—her dinner, what with
the time change—perched on a red leather stool amid
black oak and brass, rattling on about airplanes racing
the sun, and how the violin had evolved from the viola
when Europeans were able to afford carpets and drapes
. . . But with the price of a night's lodging at the James
Herald she could have bought that bass bow she'd

wanted since June.

Martha could just as well have slept on Liz's couch as
spent so much of her daughter's money. It was all very
strange. The smile disappeared from her lips as she
considered how strange. She turned from the water and

ascended the sandy slope.

"Mysterious meetings in expensive places," she mum-
bled as she climbed. A wealth of sand was trapped in her
open-toed shoes. "Intrigue. Suspense . . .

"Tune in tonight for shocking revelations!" The sole of
her foot gritted against concrete; she stood on the
pavement above the beach, emptying her shoes. Except
for her gray form, unobtrusive as a rock, the beach was
empty on this workday afternoon. Empty and cool.
Martha shivered deliciously in the good wool suit she
hadn't been able to wear since May.

The Great Highway cut between the City and the
Ocean, sharp as the mark of a razor. A young boy ran
along the curb, all dressed in white, his feet making a

noise like pigeon wings.

Thinking of pigeon wings, Martha's spirits lifted once
again. It was her spirits' natural condition, to be lifted.
She sprinted across the street in her cordovan brogues,
her pleated skirt flapping, receiving the honks of motor-
ists with quiet grace. On the far side—the City side—
stood the stand of a pretzel vendor. His teeth flashed at
her from a strong, Latin face. She bought a soft pretzel,
decorated it with mustard, and ate it where she stood.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON         3

Three men walked by together, arm in arm in arm,
and then a young woman with bushy hair red as a radish.
A bare-chested boy on a spyder bike did wheelies in the
street. Honks again. Martha's approval was limitless; San
Francisco bid fair to being as zany as New York.

And this was a good corner, probably packed on
weekends. Close to downtown yet in sight of the water.
She wished she had brought her fiddle. How invigorat-
ing to sit down next to the pretzel vendor and play a
Bach passacaglia, or maybe a slip jig. Put out the hat. Liz
would hate that! Liz behaved with propriety.

Martha Macnamara was smiling again. She licked
mustard from her fingers and turned toward the hotel.

She took the stranger's long hand in her own and
shook it. "How wonderful! You could span way over two
octaves!"

The hand retreated as soon as custom permitted. The
owner of it remained standing, a dark figure in the
shadow of a paneled wall. He bowed slightly to Mrs.
Macnamara.

" May land Long . . . Martha Macnamara . . ."The
young bartender continued his introduction. "I thought
you two should meet."

Both parties stared at him. "Because of the violin," he
explained.

"But surely you play keyboards," Martha insisted.
"With such a reach ..."

Mr. Long motioned across the white expanse of table,
and did not sit again til Martha had lowered herself into
the chair opposite. "Forgive the clutter. I have had a late
dinner." He spoke quietly, as empty plates and silver
were cleared away before him. "Please have tea with
me."

0 my, thought the woman to herself. His voice.
Lovely English. How wonderful.

"I don't make music," Mr. Long stated. "I merely

4         TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

appreciate it." He sat in the shadow of his corner table,
gazing across to where she sat touched by a beam of
light. He saw a slim woman of some fifty years. Her
features were small and regular, and her head set well on
a slender neck. Her grizzled hair was braided around her
head. The hair and her gray wool suit were back lit,
causing Martha Macnamara to shine about the edges.

She saw a thin man, dressed darkly, hidden in the
dark. The hands stood out against the white linen. They
were very dark also, unusually dark, if this man were
indeed English. She thought of the beautiful voices of
the West Indies. Beautiful, yes, but not correct. Mr.
Long's pronunciation was faultless.

"But you, madam," he was saying, "are a creator. I
remember you."
"I doubt that!"

"I have a record upstairs in my rooms. A 78. I believe
the label is Seraphim. You play, among other things, the
Chaconne from the Partita for unaccompanied violin 4n
D minor, by J. S. Bach. I have never heard that piece
played better."

He leaned forward as he spoke. Martha Macnamara
saw his face.

Her new-built conceptions fell apart as she looked at
Mayland Long. The man was Oriental. At least his eyes
were. But the rest of him . . . Too long a nose. Too
much cheekbone. She gave up trying to place his origin.

"You must be an historian," she laughed. "How many
years has it been since they pressed 78s?"

He smiled but did not answer. The tea arrived. Mr.
Long poured for her, then for himself. Ignoring the
handle on the white china cup he wrapped his hand
around it. The thumb overlapped the fingers.

Martha experimented, to see how much other cup her
hands would compass. "Ouch! It's hot!"

"Do not burn yourself, Mrs. Macnamara," said Mr.
Long. He smiled with excellent teeth. "I am not an

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON         5

historians—in any organized sense. If you tell me where
to find your latest stereo album or Dolby tape, I will
bring my collection out of the middle ages."

Martha smiled in turn—not with the smile of flattery
well received, but as though she were a child who was
about to reveal a naughty secret. It was a smile that
made her round face rounder. "Look under the label
Ceirnfni Claddagh. I play fiddle in a Irish-American Cei
li band." Having uttered this, she sat back, wondering if
she had become so jaded with the public life—a
musician's life—that it was now effortless to talk to
strange men alone in strange places. And if she were
jaded, then why were Mr. Longs attentions so pleasant?

"Thar Ci'onn! How wonderful," he laughed.

"Oh. You mustn't call my bluff. I speak very little
Irish, though I'm taking lessons with a Meath man. He
says although my spirit is willing, my accent is very bad.
But then music is international, and with a fiddle under
my chin I can't talk anyway."

She heard her voice echo through the empty dining
room. "And I guess that's the only time I don't. But Mr.
Long, I have to ask. Where are you from?"

He glanced into his teacup, then met her blue eyes
again. He did not seem offended. "I was born in China,"
he said. "But I am not entirely—Chinese." Gripping the
teapot around its portly middle, he freshened her cup.

"What is the name of your ensemble?"

"It's called Linnet's Wings, after a poem by Yeats." She
sighed. "Actually, it's a poem Yeats hated ..."

"I know it," said Mr. Long. " 'There midnight's all a
glimmer, and noon a purple glow, and evening full of the
linnet's wings.' He had schoolchildren prattling that into
his ears for twenty years, so his distaste may be
understood."

"I've never been to Innisfree," brooded Martha,
staring across the dining room and into the deeper
dimness of the bar. She swallowed a yawn. "I don't even
know if ifs a real place."




6        TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

The chandeliers were crystal. The tiny drops sparkled
in their own light. The weariness of a day's flight blurred
her vision, and the play of light reminded her of snow
falling into the bright circles of street lights.

But here in San Francisco there was no snow. Never.
Just fog and sea. How strange. Unreal.

The voice recalled her. "It is quite real," the voice was
saying. She focused again. He meant Innisfree, of
course. Not San Francisco.

"You have been to Ireland?" she asked. But she
guessed his answer before he could speak.

"What did you do there?"

His eyebrows lifted, and the lean face softened in
memories. "I was looking for something." There was a
silence Martha allowed to grow. Then he spoke again,

with animation.

"Mrs. Macnamara—it is Mrs. Macnamara, if I remem-
ber?"

"It was."

He did not falter. "Mrs. Macnamara, have you heard
the story of Thomas Rhymer?"

"I know the ballad," she admitted. "But it's not Irish."

"That ballad? No. That is Walter Scott. But the story
itself is Irish, I believe. It was an Irishman who told it to

me.

"Listen!," he began, and as he spoke he stirred his
spoon in his cup with a silver sound. Mrs. Macnamara
noted this gesture with amusement. She was sure that
Mr. Long had not taken sugar.

"You know how Thomas the Rhymer was taken off by
the queen of Elfland on her horse of the nine-and-fifty
bells. How they swam the river of blood, and how she
showed him the roads to heaven and hell, avoiding both
of them to take a third. How he served her seven years
in delightful capacity, and how in the end his poor
reward was that he was made incapable of lying. This
much is what got back to Scott."

"There is more?"

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON         7

"Obviously. The ballad is cut off just where it becomes
interesting. It does not touch on the predicament of a
bard bereft of his stock in trade—flattery. It does not so
much as mention the Rhymer's son."

Mr. Long straightened in his chair, thereby disappear-
ing into shadow. His hands touched together and then
opened, as though he were releasing a bird into the air.
"Thomas Rhymer," he stated, "had a son by the queen of
Elfland. The boy was five years old when his fathers
term ended and the Rhymer was sent upon his way."
Mr. Long paused, breathed deeply and stared into the
air above Martha's head.

"Thomas left, but he came back again, fording the
river of blood, blundering through the tangle of green
which hides that road from mortal eyes. It was not so
pleasant a journey for a man alone, but Thomas Rhymer
found his way back to the land of the not-so-blessed and
he stole his little son away."

"No. I've never heard this," whispered Martha Mac-
namara. "Have you got the verses?"

He stopped and drew breath. "There are verses," he
admitted. "But I don't sing. Humor me."

And he continued. "Back in the world again, Thomas
Rhymer took to his trade, and the lad went with him.
But fortune no longer smiled upon him."

"Because he couldn't lie."

"Quite likely, Mrs. Macnamara. And before the year
was out, the Rhymer began to hear the wailing of the
Sidhe in the night and he knew he was hunted."

"Oh no!" exclaimed Mrs. Macnamara, finding herself
moved, almost frightened. It was that voice . . .

"Hiding the boy at the monastery at Lagan—this was
in the days Cormac O'Dubh was Abbot—he rode off,
leading the hunt away.            .

"Crofters heard the racket of his horse's hoofs pass in
the early night, but in the coldest hour they saw the
passage of riders who made no sound, a company with




8        TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

faces like chalk and horses shining without moonlight.
This part of it has been remembered in Lagan Valley
from then til now.

"In the last hour before dawn this ghastly company
arrayed itself before the gates of the monastery, and she
who led them threw down upon the grass the body of
Thomas. Knowing she could not storm such a stronghold
of the new faith she offered a trade: her son for the small
breath of life she had left in the father.

"Cormac himself stood at the gate. He was a burly
Abbot. He cried out that he would pray for souls, but he
could not sell them.

"But out from the gate squirmed the boy himself, and
he ran to his father and knelt beside him. Spurring her
horse the queen plucked up her son. In the same
moment Abbot Cormac O'Dubh ran out from the
monastery gate to Thomas Rhymer. Him he took and
carried to safety behind the gates.

"But even this is not the end of the story. For the
queen of Elfland, chalk faced on her pale horse, let out a
wail of anger, and she held the boy at arm's length from
her, and she put him down from her horse.

" 'He stinks!' she cried. 'He stinks of the dove! My
boy, ma'cushia! Heart of my heart, has been dipped in
the filthy bowl!'

"And all the shining horses reared up and sank into
the earth, and the Sidhe were gone.

"Because the good Abbot had put the boy beyond the
reach of his mother's people as long as time holds sway.
He had baptized him."

"Ah! Of course." Martha hit her palm against the
table. "The obvious solution. I never thought of it.

"But Thomas Rhymer . . . he's alive? I mean, he was
alive after that?"

"He lived. He was a very quiet man in later years."

Mayland Long stared into the depths of an empty cup.

"I believe you have that tale from Thomas Rhymer
himself," said Martha. "You tell it with such . . .

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON         9

authority." She sighed, once more aware of the time
change. While Mr. Long was speaking she had forgotten
she was tired.

"From the Rhymer?" He leaned forward and lifted his
eyebrows in mock wonderment. "How could that be?

"He was unconscious during the crux of the story. I
have the story from the boy, of course. The Rhymers
son.

"Beautiful boy," he added, after a moment. "Resem-
bled his mother."

Martha blinked twice. The hour and the moment
combined to overwhelm her. Cradling her head in her
arms she laughed until she hiccupped.

"Forgive me—I'm tired. Jet lag. I'd better turn in
now. Getting up at five." This last word dissolved into a
yawn.

As she pulled herself to her feet Mr. Long rose also.
"You will remain through tomorrow, though?" He spoke
with some alarm. "I have not let you talk about your
music. You must join me for dinner."

She put her hand to the gray braid above her ear and
scratched thoughtfully. "Tomorrow I'm supposed to meet
my daughter. That's why I flew in. But she hasn't called
yet, and I can't reach her. Can I call you sometime in the
middle of the day?"

"Certainly. My schedule is not crowded; if I am not in
my rooms, you can leave a message at the desk."

His voice pulled at her once again as she turned to
leave the table. "Mrs. Macnamara. Why so early? Why
five o'clock?"

"I sit," she called back. "Zazen."

Mayland Long stood alone beside the empty cups.
"Zazen?" he whispered to himself. His dark face was lit
with an amusement which grew and deepened.

The bartender stopped her on the stair. "Mr. Trough,"
she greeted him, and continued walking.

"Jerry," he corrected. "Can you spare two minutes?"




10 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"Just about," Martha smiled, and putting the key to
her door, she ushered the young man in.

Marthas rooms were not the largest nor the most
opulent in the James Herald Hotel. Had Martha herself
made the reservations, they would have been the
cheapest. As it was, she had a bed-sitting room with
three chairs, all of which were too large and too soft to be
comfortable and a canopy bed that dwarfed her.

Jerry Trough was still clutching a damp bar towel in
one hand. He sought for a place to put it down, rejecting
the walnut table, the quilted satin spread, the brocade
seat of a side chair. At last he dropped it to the carpet,
where it lay by an open suitcase which spilled over with
white cotton underwear and paperback books. He
cleared his throat.

"I saw you leave the dining room and wanted to catch
you before you turned in. It's about the man I introduced
to you tonight."

She turned quickly, leaning her hip against the
Chippendale reproduction dresser. "Mr. Long? Yes, we
talked an hour away. What about him?"
"What did you think of him?"
She smiled at the impudence of the question. "I found
him informative and entertaining. Not to mention exot-
ic. I may have supper with him tomorrow."

"Watch out," mumbled the bartender. "I know. He
can be a real—actor, and all. Loads of fun. He's a friend
of mine, too, in a way." Trough shifted from foot to foot.
"Just 'in a way?' " Her eyebrows lifted interrogatively.
Trough shrugged. "Okay. He is a friend. But I ask you
to be careful, Martha. I don't think he's quite all there."

"Mr. Long?" Her voice rose in consternation. "I've
rarely met anyone more—more there. More present, I
mean." She glared at the bartender. "If the man is
schizophrenic or something like that, why did you
introduce me to him?"

As though Martha's outrage had shaken the starch out
of him. Jerry Trough sat down on the edge of the bed.
His eyes darted about the room and he laced his hands

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        11

together. "I told you why Because of the violin. And
because you're a lot alike in other ways."

"Oh. I'm a nut too?" Marthas eyes went even wider,
and she put her hands on her hips.

The young man sighed and ran his fingers through his
curly black hair. "Of course not. You take me wrong.
What I mean is that you both seem to like . . . conver-
sation. Have large vocabularies. And you're both alone
—you because you just got here, and he because
... he just is.

"And when I see you get excited about little things.
Like the way you talked about racing the sun in the
airplane and almost winning except you had to stop at
the end of the country Well, Mr. Long's like that too; he's
got these old, falling apart books of Chinese poetry he
says nobody's ever translated before, and he brings them
to the bar and sets them down and scribbles in little
notebooks. He gets excited about it, but I never hear
about his translations getting printed anywhere, so I
don't know . . .

"I used to think he was really stuffy until I noticed that
half of everything he said was a pun or a joke. You're
somewhere around the same age ... I think ..."
Here Troughs words faded. He knew himself to be
treading shaky ground on the subject of age.

"So I thought he'd interest you—to talk to for a few
minutes. But Mr. Long . . . I want you to know if you
get him drunk," Trough said, "Old Mr. Long will tell you
that he used to be a dragon. And he's not joking around
when he says it."

Martha pushed off from the dresser and came to stand
beside the awkward young man. On her face a trium-
phant smile was blossoming.

Trough regarded his own feet as he continued. "He
told" me he used to be ten yards long and solid black,
with a head like a chrysanthemum. Not any other
flower—he insisted it was a chrysanthemum. He also
thought it was important I knew that he had had five toes
on each foot. As a dragon, that is."

12

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

13

The worry had cleared from Martha's brow. "Oh!" she
breathed. "I see. Well, Jerry, me boy. This night he told
me that he was personally acquainted with Thomas

Rhymer.

"Or at least knew his son," truth compelled her to add.

Trough stared blankly. "And he doesn't?"
"Not likely. But don't you see where his head is at,
when he says things like that?"

"No. Where?"
She gestured in the air above her head, as though

calling all available Muses to her aid. "Why he's . . .
exercising a scholarly imagination. He's smashing the
world, to recreate it in his own pattern. That man is an
artist, and conversation is his medium.

"If he appears a bit crazy it's only because he's too
much alone," she concluded. "I understand him. Or I
think I do. I can't explain any better than that." Her blue
eyes stared at the carpet, the pile of books, the wet bar

towel . . .

The bartender stood up. "Still, be careful, Martha.
They found a body in the hall last year, in front of his

door."

Martha Macnamara took Trough's place on the bed. It

bounced. "What? A body? Whose?"

"The dead guy was a junkie, I heard. Police record
long as your arm. No loss to San Francisco, I guess, but
that was just a freaky way to Bnd him, you know? No
marks, no blood, just his neck bone snapped. Coroner
decided he fell, but why he was there in the first place,
and why he should fall so hard he broke his neck ..."
Here the bartender stopped portentously.

"So you think poor Mr. Long is a secret killer, do you?
He's part Chinese—perhaps he knows some deadly
Oriental way to kill a man from behind a wooden door.
Perhaps he's the head of a Tong!" Eyes flashing, Martha

rose to her feet.

"I rather like old Mr. Long," she stated. "He may tell
me that he used to be a dragon, or will be a dragon come
Tuesday next, or that he actually is a dragon underneath

his suit jacket and white shirt-front. I will try to receive
such a confidence in the spirit in which it is given."

She paused for breath, and her bright outrage flowed
away from her. She regarded the bartender more calmly.
"And I doubt very much that you'll find me in the
hallway outside his door, dead with no marks of vio-
lence."

Mr. Trough shrugged an ineloquent shrug. "Sure.
You're safe, I guess. Besides, he never drinks much with
dinner." Martha's irritated frown sent Trough out the
door.

She put her face between the panels of the drape and
rested her forehead against cool glass. Outside the city
swept twinkling north and west to the sea. No snow. Also
no fog.

That little interview had almost ruined her mood. She
decided she wouldn't let it. After all, she was in San
Francisco neither to fight nor frolic, but to talk to Liz,
who evidently had problems and wanted her advice.
Martha had been able to give her daughter little enough
as a child—surely she could now spare a week and a little
maternal concern. Regardless of impudent bartenders.
Regardless of fascinating men.

Where was Liz's apartment? San Mateo. That was
south. Behind the hotel. She could not play the game of
pretending to locate her daughter among the lights
below.

Was Liz nervous also? Sleepless? Afraid of the inter-
view for which she'd called her mother clear across the
continent? That would be unlike Liz. She was probably
sleeping soundly, believing her mother was getting in on
a late flight. Or she could be out on a date, or what was
most likely of all, at work amid a clatter of computers.
Liz would get in touch.

She turned from the window and yawned. Her
thoughts returned to the man she had met tonight. What
a wonderful voice. Impossible hands. And that strange
hybrid face, falling in and out of shadow.




14 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

It was easier to think of this brief acquaintance than it
was to think of her daughter. Easier and more fun.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the dresser mirror.
One other braids was falling over her ear. She shook her
head dubiously at her image. She could not see herself a
remarkable beauty.

Yet Mr. Long—she felt—liked her. He knew who she
was. He was interested to know more. Her gaze
searched the mirror.

So he has an old 78 and a good memory—the mirror
told her. And he likes an audience. Her shoulders sagged
as she kicked ofF her shoes.

But in five seconds this depression also vanished,
swept away in the tides of Martha's good humor. She
threw off the tweed suit and stepped out of her
underwear. Stark naked, she dialed the switchboard and
asked for a wake-up call at five.

In darkness, leaning against a wall of red brocade,
Mayland Long waited for the elevator. He smiled, and
his teeth glinted in the greenish light of the control
buttons.

Zen. ... to have come so far, to this stone city where
the ocean was on the wrong side of the sun, to wait and
watch himself age with cruel speed, foreign in form, in
speech, in feeling. . . . Here to find again the trace of
his own interminable, floundering search. And in such
unlikely shape as that of Martha Macnamara.

Ch'an.

There was that odor about her: not a sweetness,
exactly, but a wildness suggesting breezes that have
touched cold water and living wood. The air surrounding
Martha Macnamara was charged with . . . reality. Un-
pronouncable reality: Long could feel her reality against
his face like sunlight or rain. Her every gesture had
spoken to him in certainty, yet she had expressed no
opinions, leaving such pronouncements to him.

Martha had something which drew him to her, like a
wondering beast to the fires of men. She had what he
lacked, in her laughter, her simplicity, her quick pas-

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        15

sions, her certainty. It was the taste of existence—of
being.

It was the Tao.

His breath escaped slowly between his teeth. He
wanted to see her again, and feared chance would not
allow it. Out of habit he tamped down that desire,
attempting to snuff it before it could do him harm. He
would see her or he would not; pain was irrelevant to the
future.

The elevator shuddered open. It was bright inside,
and empty. He stepped in and pressed the button for the
seventh floor. Memories competed with the drum of the
motor.

Old hands. The smell of rain—the smell of Ch'an.
Quiet words in rough Cantonese. "I am not to be your
master. Your master has to be stronger than you are—has
to tell you you are a fool and make you to know it. And
make you feel content in being a fool. How could I do
that for you? I'm old. You are too strong for me; you are
full of chi." The old man had paused then, huddled
against the wind while clouds thickened above them.

"I will tell you this. Long," he continued. "Before you
find yourself you will lose your chi. Also you will leave
behind you all pride of body, pride of mind. You will be
reduced. Like me." The old man closed his eyes, and
rain began to beat against his gray, crew-cut hair. He
pulled his coat closer. Suddenly his eyes snapped open
and he looked Long in the face.

"You must leave China. Go across the ocean. There
you will meet your master." He set down his teacup with
a palsied hand. His voice rose, grew fierce.

"I tell you this, most honored and impressive visitor.
You are a fool, yes, but you will find the very thing you
seek. You will find truth!"

Mayland Long stepped out of the elevator. The words
of the old man faded. They had been polished by
repetition in his mind til they gleamed gray; links of
iron, beads on a chain. They were a string of beads that

16 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

Long told daily, while he waited and studied and
thought.

He yawned and felt for his key. He didn't want to think
any more. He'd rather tell stories to Martha.

2

The James Herald Hotel stood on a high slope of Nob
Hill. The sea wind broke upon it like the Pacific broke
over the shore rocks that were visible from the hotel's
upper windows. It was built of brick, but its ground floor
was encased with brass and varnished teak. All its
myriad windows were shining. The James Herald was
not the oldest of the great San Francisco hotels and it
was not the largest. It was, however, old enough and
large enough. In Martha Macnamara's opinion, it was
quite expensive enough, also.

The cut glass doors to the dining room stood open. An
August evening light, admitted through the tall leaded
windows beyond, filtered into the hallway where she
stood. The angles in the glass doors cut the light sharply.
The crystal chandeliers, too, sparkled painfully sharp
and exact this evening. Tiny pendants emitted a spec-
trum of color. They would provide her no soft visions of
snow tonight.

She sought around the room, among the glistening
white circles of linen, looking for a man alone. There
were few of those; the Crystal Room was not a place
where one ate alone.

Yet he did. Mr. Long lived at the James Herald Hotel
and took his meals in the dining room. Both these things
were very strange. Martha could bring to mind places in
San Francisco where she would rather eat—Henry

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        17

Africa, where the window was gilt with the motto Vive la
mort, cive la guerre, vive la legion etrangere, and young
men, brittle and elegant, stood warily around the door,
or the fast-food stall in Japantown, where the cookies
were pressed in the shape of a fish. And Martha had only
arrived in the city yesterday. Eating in the Crystal
Room's icy splendor every evening didn't say much for
Mr. Long. Where was he, anyway? Had she been stood
up twice in one day?

As she passed between the glass doors, a dark shape
welled out of the shadows. "Ah!" she began, but it was
not Mayland Long, but the Maitre d'. "I'm just looking
for someone," she explained, as the man bowed stiffly
from the waist, like a bird. She restrained an impulse to
return the bow.

"Mrs. Macnamara?" he addressed her. "Please come
with me."

She followed, her eyebrows drawn down and together.
Martha Macnamara did not like being known to people
whom she did not know. It made her feel unpleasantly
like a child. She contemplated asking the Maitred' his
name, but if she did that she was certain he would give
her his first name alone, and she would then have to
insist he call her Martha. And she did not really want to
be called Martha by this man, who would then continue
to call all other customers by their surnames. She
remained silent.

Mayland Long sat at a table beneath a window full of
sky. It was a very good table, and its desirability
impressed upon Martha that Mr. Long was a wealthy
man.

He rose from his seat as he saw her approach, and he
too bowed to her. Mrs. Macnamara lost all restraint.
Placing her palms together she bowed in turn. The
Maitre'd held her chair.

She greeted him with a smile. "Wonderful weather,
today," she began. "Clear and crisp."

Affably, he nodded. "Of course. The rainy season
hasn't started yet."

18

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"Did I scandalize the poor man with my gassho?" she
asked, as soon as they were alone.

He responded slowly, as though she had broached a
subject of some depth. "Scandalize? How can one
scandalize a maitre d'hotel? Such a man has seen it all
before. And if one did succeed in subjecting him to
scandal, I don't believe his face would express his
condition. Did you intend to scandalize Jean-Pierre?"

The voice was the same. Her memory had not added
quality. "No. But I can take only so much bowing before
I bow back. Is he really Jean-Pierre?"

He considered the question. "To the best of my
knowledge he is. Jean-Pierre Burrell. Father of five.
Canadian by birth. I believe he has managed the floor in
the Crystal Room for over ten years."

Mr. Long leaned back in his chair and regarded his
dinner companion. Sunlight fell slanting across his face.

His eyes, she thought. Last night she had seen them
as solid black-brown. Chinese eyes. Today they were not
opaque. Light entered the iris and was trapped in it,
glowing. Almost amber, like the sun through a beer
bottle.

And he was letting her see him—hands, face and all.
He did not court mystery. Martha was very glad of this;

she had no patience with mystery.

"I am very sorry your daughter failed to show," Mr.
Long continued, as he looked in turn at Martha. She was
wearing a plain blue dress and her eyes were blue.
Sunlight or moonlight, Martha Macnamara's eyes were
always blue. "Is this something one can expect, with
her?"

A frown imprinted itself on her round, innocent
features. "No. Not at all. Liz is very—reliable. Almost
too much so. She wants things done right. She keeps all
her shoes in the pockets of a big plastic bag hanging in
her closet. And she believes in independence for
women."

She stared at the menu with sightless eyes. "That's
why we don't get along, I guess."

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

19

Mr. Long smiled slowly. "You don't approve of
your daughters views, Mrs. Macnamara? I would have
thought a lady of such independent spirit ..."

She waved his words aside. "Oh, no. I approve of Liz.
I wouldn't dare do otherwise. It's she who disapproves of
me."

His eyebrows drew together. "Then I am at a loss.
Please explain."

She drew a deep breath as her fingers played with her
water glass. It was cut crystal, of course.

"Liz disapproved of my cutting off my—my musical
career to raise a child."

Delight etched Mr. Long's lean face. "A child? Do you
mean Elizabeth herself?"

"Exactly. She feels she is a sort of involuntary accom-
plice in my oppression. And, she feels I caved in, when I
should have fought."

"How should you have fought?" He leaned forward,
hands wrapped together on the table.

He can't be more than sixty, considered Mrs, Mac-
namara. Probably younger, though it's so hard to tell
with Eurasians. Too young to retire. Too young to live in
a hotel and eat in the Crystal Room every night.

"I should have continued in the job I was educated for,
playing Bach and Berlioz in long dresses. I should have
left her with a nanny, or even had an abortion, though
that was a very different story in those days.

"At any rate, she is sure I shouldn't be wasting my
time playing fiddle in an Irish band, touring about and
sleeping in the living rooms of friends. Not at my age."

"And what age is that?" he asked blandly. A challenge
hid somewhere within the question, and his brown eyes
hid within their creases.

Easily she answered, "I'm fifty. How old are you?"

Mayland Long threw back his head and laughed. His
teeth were large and very white against his skin. "Older
than you are, Mrs. Macnamara. And more vain. I won't
answer that question just now."

Then he leaned forward again. His elongated fingers

20        TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

stretched across the menu he had not opened. He
touched her pink hand for just a moment: "But I think it
would be wonderful to fiddle with the Linnet's Wings
and sleep wherever one finds oneself. At any age."

She found herself saying, "Then why not do it, Mr.
Long. I know you're not a musician. I don't mean that. I
mean . . . Why do you live here, in this beautiful,
boring hotel? And why do you eat ... here? In the
Crystal Room. Every night. When you are ..." she
finished with quiet intensity ". . . who you are."

He drew back, his two hands flat on the tablecloth. I
have offended him, thought Martha. She watched.

"And who is that?" he asked softly, but he gave her no
time to answer. "There is time," he continued, in the
same tone of voice: softly, very softly. "There is time for
the James Herald, too, in a long life. Sometimes one
must wait for things."

Wait for what? she thought, but did not continue her
attack. "Forgive me if I was out of line. I spoke on
impulse."

The light was failing outside. The chandeliers cast
haloes against the beamed ceiling. Mr. Long nodded.
"Impulse or instinct. I am not offended, Mrs. Mac-
namara."

She did not quite understand. She opened her menu
and stared, seeing nothing.

"There is something marvelous in formality," she
murmured. "Greetings. Bows. And surnames." She gave
up searching among the cuts of beef and lamb. She
looked at him again. "But I'm a poor peasant, really. I
can't be Mrs. Macnamara for more than a half hour at a
time before I get giddy."

She found herself saying the words she had swallowed
earlier in front of the Maitre d'. "Please call me Martha."
Then she quailed before his silence, realizing she could
no more call this man by his first name than she could fly.

"I don't ask the privilege in return," she qualified.
"Especially since you admit to being older than me."

It was his turn to concern himself with a water glass.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        21

He held it up to the last light of day "Why? Am I so
stuffy, Martha?"

"No. Not stuffy," Her forehead creased. She searched
for the word. "Intimidating."

"But not too intimidating to have my ear twisted for
living in a comfortable 'hotel. For dining at the same
place nightly." He lowered the crystal to the table. The
corners of his mouth turned upwards.

"There are very few people who call me by my given
name. I don't know why that should be, but it's true."

"Isn't that the way you want it?"

He shook his head. The smile widened. "I ... don't
have an opinion on the matter. And you ..." He
adopted the imperturbability of a stage Chinaman,
"Must decide for me what I am to be called from this
moment toward. And where I—"

The waiter interrupted, letting Mrs. Macnamara
blush in comparative privacy. She chose the lobster.
Given the choice, she almost always picked the lobster.
Mr. Long asked for rock cod. Rock cpd was not on the
menu, but the waiter merely nodded and inquired about
the wine.

It was dark out now. The window was shiny black, and
whatever crisis had been approaching had passed away
with the waiter. Mr. long was eager to talk about
Buddhism. Martha tried to listen, but her mind drifted
back to Liz. She vacillated between being annoyed with
her daughter for this cavalier treatment and being very
anxious for her. Being annoyed was by far the most
comfortable feeling.

"I used to have quite a collection of the commentaries
of Nagarjuna," he began. "Are you interested in the
Indians?"

She shook her head and hurried to swallow a bite of
romaine. "I have no head for philosophy. I get confused."

He lay down his knife and fork neatly. Martha
withstood five seconds of silent scrutiny. "I see," he said
finally. "Zen."

"Whatever word you like. I sit still, or I try. Truth is

22 TEA WITH THE BLACK DBAGON TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON 23

what is important, and writings just . . . catch me by
the heels. I think Bodhidharma has the right attitude, to
sit for nine years facing a wall. Truth!" she sighed,
gesturing helplessly. Her fork clinked and rolled into her
salad bowl.

"He fascinated me," admitted Mr. Long. He stared
over his shoulder into the black glass. "I used to watch
him from where he couldn't see me. Or so I thought."

"What was this?" Martha groped, her mind skipping
tracks as she listened.

"Bodhidharma. Sitting by the rock wall of a cave, in
Honan. Sometimes he sat in fall lotus, but more often he
tucked under his right foot. Sometimes he wrapped a
blanket around him, and the snow would make a mound
over his head.

"But it would burn off. The snow—or rain, as the
season dictated—would melt and turn to steam and the
blanket would smell of scalded wool. That is probably
what called the man to my attention first. Burning off the
snow " Mayland Long opened his eyes very wide as his
gaze slid from the window to the intent face of Martha
Macnamara. "I was not always—subtle—you know That
comes with age, if we are fortunate. But two things I
have ever respected are warmth and the ability to sit
still."

Martha listened to him speak. She had a peculiar .skill
at listening which was in no way to be confused with an
aversion to talking herself. Her listening had an intensity
which reached out into the speaker and eased the
meaning from him, which knitted word to word beyond
the first mere intent which called him to speak. She
listened—as she moved—with grace.

And she noticed, in passing, that Mr. Long had
scarcely touched his wine.

"I don't know where the story began that the man
called Bodhidharma was a frog-faced ogre. He was a
small man—an Indian, of course. But he was quite
courteous.

"Courteous to me, at least," he added. Then there was

silence between them till the gentle pull of Martha's
listening was felt again.

"I waited for him to speak." He chuckled and touched
the bright blade of the butter knife. "I did not cut off my
arm to impress him. I don't know who it was who did
that, if indeed that story is not pure fabrication. I merely
waited to be noticed. All the winter and most of spring.

"I waited ..." Mayland Long's head rose up and his
eyes met that peaceful, blue, inescapable listening. "I
have been waiting so very long, Martha," he said.

She only nodded.

Once again they were saved—or lost—by the arrival of
the waiter bearing the entree. The placing of the dishes
entailed a certain amount of bustle.

Plates were lifted and lowered. Silver winked in the
light and the knives made a sweet tinkle against one
another. Behind all this Mayland Long sat patiently still,
having uttered a confession, and having that confession
erased by events. His face was touched with loss.

On the other side of the mild turmoil sat Martha. Her
smile grew as the waiter receded. It was a smile which
committed Mayland Long to nothing, welcoming all.

He glanced down at his plate. The fish filet was wound
around itself, skewered and dusted with paprika. The
potatoes came out of a pastry gun. "When must you
leave?" he asked.

Martha stared with true interest at her lobster. It was
enormous and red. She realized the depths other folly
then, and wished for a bib.

"I will leave when I find her," she spoke with a grim
determination which owed something to her feelings
concerning the dead crustacean before her.

"Then I may arrange to have her kidnapped." Mr.
Long spoke quietly, almost to himself. Martha, attacking
a bulbous scarlet claw, seemed not to hear.

"Where does she live?"

"Umph! This is impossible," Martha muttered, as a
steak knife slipped in her now-greasy hand. "I'm not fit




24 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

for this sort of establishment. Don't they believe in using
nutcrackers, Mayland?"

"Allow me." He pulled her plate to the center of the
table, where with his fingertips he curled the shell back
from the meat as though it were paper. "There is no
delicate way to eat a lobster." In this manner, the new
intimacy of his given name passed without comment.

"Where does she live, your daughter?"

Martha sighed, picking at her food. "I don't know," she
admitted. "She used to work for FSS, in San Mateo, or
so she told me. I called them. The switchboard said
there was no one by the name Macnamara."

Mayland Long's eyebrows lifted, and his eyes glittered
with a harder sort of light. "Ah!" he said. "We have a
puzzle.

"Tell me, Martha, what does Elizabeth do for a
living?"

Martha swallowed a bite of lobster. It was very good,
but it was a Maine lobster and not native to this seacoast
at all. It arrived by plane, as did Martha. Perhaps the
same plane.

"She's a systems analyst. FSS stands for Financial
Systems Software. She went to Stanford in math." She
was reminded that her dinner companion was Chinese
by the fact that his face, open so recently, had gone
completely unreadable to Martha. She watched and
waited.

"A systems analyst? Umm. Systems analysts rarely call
their parents from across the country with mysterious
problems. Still more rarely do they disappear. It is not
part of the technical mentality to disappear.

"How will you go about finding her?"

Martha Macnamara's unobtrusive chin attempted to
assert itself. "I will start by renting a car and buying an
area map. I will drive down to Financial Systems
Software. If they cannot or will not help me I proceed to
Stanford University and seek out Auld Acquaintance.
Hers, not mine. If I fail there, I try an old address I
have. She moved about six months ago and was staying

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        25

with a friend from college while she tried to buy a condo;

I have that girl's number, but no one ever answers
there."

She shook her head admiringly. "Just think of it! She's
not twenty-five yet, and buying a condo. Without help,
of course—I don't have a nickel.

"If that doesn't work, and she hasn't called in a few
days, then I go to the police."

He paused before speaking. "Is it so serious?"

"She told me she was in trouble. She said I was not to
know where she lived because she was . . . nervous
. . . about somebody. What am I to think? A pesky
boyfriend? Bills?

"I don't know what to think," she concluded.

Mayland Long folded his hands together. "No use to
draw conclusions amid such a lack of data." He regarded
nothing, intently.

"Martha—what do you know about your daughter's
line of work. About computers?"

"Me? Why, nothing. They send bills. They eat my
little bank card and give me money—when they're
working."

"Then, may I be permitted to assist you?"

She started in surprise. "Help me find Elizabeth? That
would be too much to . . ." Her face lit in wonder. "Do
you mean that you know about computers, too, as well as
Ireland and China?"

He shrugged. His shoulders were thin beneath his
excellently fitted suit jacket. "A language is a language."

Mayland Long entered his suite of rooms and closed
the door behind him. The sitting room was neat and
sparsely furnished, with a pair of wing-back Queen Anne
chairs set beside the bay window, a sofa of similar design
before the swept and evidently useable fireplace, and a
single table of black lacquerwork standing between the
two chairs. On this table lay an oilcloth pad, and upon
that rested a hot plate, a red kettle and a jade-green
teapot. The striking feature of this room was its walls,

26 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

which were covered floor to ceiling with books. Wherev-
er space and the angles of the room permitted stood
high, heavy book cupboards, some with glass doors.
Elsewhere single shelves were drilled into the plaster,
and atop all, near the high ceiling, piles of books
ascended, stacked flat.

The books in Mr. Long's room were a motley crew,
being old or new, soiled or stiff and clean, composed in
equal numbers of leather binding and bright paperback.

There was one other object of note in this idiosyncratic
chamber, and that was a bronze statue, one meter high,
which sat on a shelf at eye-level: a lacuna in the wall of'
books. It was the figure of a Chinese dragon. The
creature sat up on its hind legs, in a manner reminiscent
of the caterpillar in Alice. It held in its left hand a tiny
and exquisite teacup, and in its right a saucer. Its tail
curled around in front, like a third hand, and held open a
book. The entire statue was brassy black except for the
eyes, which were polished and lacquered and shone like
gold.

Mayland Long paced to the low shelves beneath the
window. Searching through the row of books, his hand
reached out and began to harvest. First he found the
three volumes ofKnuth's The Art of Computer Program-
ming, Principles of Compiler Design, and the Confer-
ence Proceedings of the Third West Coast Computer
Faire. Then, rising with this armload, he made his way
to a large, slotted magazine rack, whence he plucked out
Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Or-
thodontia.

He lowered this accretion of technical expertise to the
seat of one of the chairs and, picking it up by the carved
wooden arms, so as not to damage the Turkish rug, he
placed it next to the other chair, on which he sat.

A tall lamp stood beside him; he snapped it on. He
grunted briefly as he opened Knuth, vol. I, Fundamental
Algorithms: a happy little sound, full of contentment.

3

With reddening fingers Martha pried apart the loops
other key ring and forced the keys of the rental car upon
it. She had reached the landing between the third and
fourth floors and stopped to breathe for a moment before
continuing her ascent. She wondered what sprite had
tempted her to hoof it from the lobby to the seventh
floor, where Mayland Long resided. Surely it was not the
spirit of physical fitness. Health trailed along in Martha
Macnamara's wake; she had never turned to pursue it.

She snorted as she recognized her motive. She was
visiting a man's rooms alone, and so had unconsiously
avoided observation. What an absurd right hemisphere
you have, she railed at herself. Nasty half-brain. Sneaky
and absurd . . . Serve it right to climb the rest of the
way.

She stood at the top. "There," she mumbled to
herself. "See what you made me do?"

The plain iron sign read seventh floor. She leaned
against a newell post cast in the shape of an acorn,
feeling the heat in her face. She stepped through the fire
door into the hall.

Here, somewhere along the maroon turkish-patterned
runner, was where the body was found. The junkie. With
his neck broken. She ought to ask him about that story—
get it over with and out of her mind.

Lifting her hand to knock on the door marked 714 cost
a great effort of will. She stared at the shiny brass
numbers. Heavy. Solid. 7-1-4. Her face was still hot; he
would think she were blushing. Perhaps she was.
Definitely she would not ask about the body.

27

28

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

She listened for movement within and heard nothing.
Then the door softly opened, revealing Mr. Long. He
balanced a cup on a saucer in his left hand. In the
morning light he looked thinner and less exotic. Stand-
ing in shirtsleeves between Martha and the window, he
seemed very slight indeed.

"Looking for bloodstains?" he asked gently, smiling.
He laughed at her reaction. "Forgive me, Martha. That
unfortunate accident is our one piece of notoriety at the
James Herald. Everyone who speaks to Jerry Trough
finds out about it."

"Did you see the body, Mayland? It must have lain
just outside your door."

He shook his head. "No. I slept through the entire
incident. I had been out late the night before, you see,
and only woke when the police started knocking on
doors. Couldn't help them."

She stood in the doorway, blinking all around at the
book-lined room. Mayland Long lifted his suit jacket
from the closer of the two wing-back chairs and gestured
her to sit.

She noted the teacup, and the fact that his shirt cuffs
were not buttoned. "Sorry. I guess I'm on time." She
snorted in self-deprecation as she lowered herself into
the delicate chair. "Unforgivable, really. You become so
used to people being twenty minutes late that you tack
that time onto the real time you want them to be there
and then someone like me comes along and ruins
everyone's schedule. It's because I'm so literal
minded."

"Never apologize," said Long. "Especially not for
punctuality. I was not underway as early as you this
morning, but that ought to give you cause for resent-
ment, not me." He placed the saucer and cup neatly on
the floor, atop the second volume of Knuth. "I have only
just gotten out of the shower.

"Please pour yourself a cup of tea while I finish
straightening up. It is not black but Chinese," he added,

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        29

and knelt beneath the window, paging books carefully
into their shelves.

It was the tea, she discovered, which was not black
but Chinese. Smelled like peaches. Tasted slightly salty.
As she sat, craning her neck to stare all around, she
began to swing her legs. The chair was too high for her.
It made her feel like a little girl.

So did all this room, so old looking—old mannish
looking, really, but in such good taste. And almost
oppressively neat by her standards. Having a few books
scattered across the floor proved the rest weren't just
book-binding wallpaper.

Martha Macnamara was resigned to being too early.
She sat swinging her stockinged legs while her toes
brushed the subtle cream and maroon pattern of the rug.

Mayland Long did not mention that he himself hadn't
shut eye the past night, and if weariness caught him as
he squatted on the floor, slipping Dr. Dobb's between
Donleavy's and Forbes September 4th issues, that
drowse might hav6 been merely the effect of the first
sunlight, which struck suddenly through the morning
haze and threw him into a sort of peaceful trance. His
amber eyes lidded over and his hand was slipping down
the slots of the rack when he heard Martha gasp. Then
his head moved quickly.

"That is Oolong," he stated.

The half empty cup and saucer rattled in her lap.
"No," she whispered eagerly. "The statue! That magnifi-
cent statue!"

He turned back to the window, brushing invisible dust
from his trouser knees. "Yes. It's called Oolong." His
perfect voice had sunk to a mumble of disinterest and
Mayland Long stared out into the sky, caught by some
pattern of sun and mist.

"Is that the name of the piece, the sculptor, or the
dragon who posed for it?"

Motionless, he answered, "Any one you please," and

30 TEA WITH THE BLACK DBAGON

he yawned an enormous yawn, with his tongue curling
up like that of a cat. But when he turned again toward
her there was crispness and decision in his attitude.

"Now, my dear lady, I have done with dawdling and
we may off."

"Ah. Okay." She deposited her white cup on the
oilcloth beside the green teapot and the red kettle.
Puzzled, she lifted the lid of the pot and the smell of
leaves leaked out. She was sure that tea was Oolong.
Both the tea and the statue were named Oolong? The
tea, the statue and the dragon? The word swelled in her
mind, assuming awful proportions. Perhaps if she asked
him the name of the black lacquer table here, he would
state, "Oolong" again. She had once had a Master like
that; no matter what the question was, his answer had
been, "Dust on the floor." After a year of that she had
rebelled, shouting, "There's nothing in you but 'Dust on
the floor!'" That had turned out to be the proper
response; from then on they'd gotten along famously.

She met Long's challenging eyes with a greater
challenge. "Oolong," she announced. "The tea, the
statue, the dragon—and you too. The same word can do
for all." And she laughed, till the bare shock in his face
drained the humor away.

"I'm not insane, really," she explained carefully. "That
was just a little Zennie joke. Very little.

"And now, Holmes! The hunt's afoot! Or the game's up,
or ... something ..." She preceded a thoughtful
Mayland Long out the door.

"When Thou hast done, Thou art not done, for I have
more," he announced, sinking back into the upholstery
of the passenger seat. Brown fingers, seemingly by
themselves, sought out the handle of the door and swung
it closed.

Martha was a bit dejected, having drawn a blank both
at FSS and Stanford. What was worse, Judy Freeman,

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

31

Liz's school friend and Martha's best hope, had moved to
Seattle months previously.

She started the engine of the silver Mercury Zephyr
and lurched into first gear. Her passenger was uneffected
by the jerk; he had had his arm braced against the dash.
It was not the first lurch of the day.

"Done? Oh yes. Donne. That's John Donne, isn't it?
Punning as usual. When I was first at school, everyone
was mad about Donne. Now dropped like a stone. Sign
of the times, I guess."

Mayland Long cast a cold eye in her direction. "You
insist on dating me, madam."

With complete frankness she said, "Yes. I would love
to. Hate mysteries, and you insist on being one. But I
like Donne. '. . . outside that room. Where I shall be
Thy music, I pause to tune my instrument before . . .'
or something.

"But tell me, Mayland. What is the More? I find the
only child of my flesh has no job, no friends, no
forwarding address. She had grown into a positive
nonentity, if that is not too much of a paradox. How do
we find her?"

Long glanced at her face and read her concern. He
didn't reply immediately. The date palms of Palm Drive
passed by the windows of the car: tall ones and .short
ones, the sick and the healthy, dead nubs and towering
majesties. He peered through them at the road ahead.
"Please turn right on El Camino," he said.

"Yessir." She did so.

"You'll find her, Martha," said Long quietly. "You
always find the thing you look for in the last place you
look."

Laughter caught her unaware. She shifted lanes. "My!
Look at these bicyclists! How pretty they are. All blond.
And such muscles. Stanford has always had good-looking
students; just the opposite of Columbia. I wonder if one
still has to send a picture along with the applications?"

32 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

He let her prattle unimpeded while a few blocks
passed, then spoke sharply. "There's a parking spot. On
the right."

She pulled into it. "Are we there? Where?"

"At a shop called Friendly Computers," he replied,
striding purposefully across the street.

"Friendly computers? What kind are those?"

"We're about to find out, Martha. Please do not
become a traffic statistic." And he took her elbow and
maneuvered her into the doorway of the shop.

The little shop was filled with magazines and tele-
vision screens, which Liz had once told her mother were
properly called cathode ray tubes. The walls were tacked
with bright posters and diagrams, all meaningless to
Martha's uneducated eye. The place gave forth an air of
sophisticated clutter. Behind the single counter a young
man sat, holding what appeared to be a walkie-talkie. As
she glanced at this fellow, something prodded her in the
ankle. It was a toy race car. She lifted her foot out of the
way and the little thing nudged obstinately against her
other ankle. It seemed to be alone.

"Want to try?" The young man smiled at her.

"To work the car?" she asked incredulously "I can't. I
never could. Machines."

He held the box under her nose. "Say 'forward.' "

"Forward?"

"Again, without the inflection."

"Forward," said Martha Macnamara. Then the words
"right," "left," "stop" and "reverse" were elicited from
her. Finally he placed the box in her hands.

"Now what?"

The young man beamed with pride. He was blond.
Good looking. Probably a Stanford student. "Now you
tell the unit what you want the car to do."

Martha knew she was the butt of a joke. She waited for
the laughter to start. She glanced at Mayland Long, who
watched her with noncommital interest. No one would

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        33

dare shove a walkie-talkie at him and tell him to say
"forward," "right," "left," "stop," and reverse." A shame,
too. Probably do him good.

She cleared her throat. "Turn right," she commanded.
The car sat.

"Perhaps it has to be moving, before it can turn,"
suggested Mr. Long.

She tried, "Go forward." The tiny vehicle trundled
across the carpeting and butted itself against the leg of a
table.

"Far out!" she cried with instant enthusiasm. "Oh
wonderful!" She commanded a right turn, a left, and
then produced series of jolting jerks reminiscent other
encounters with the Mercury's clutch. In fascination, she
withdrew to a chair placed before a multi-colored
terminal display, where she continued her monologue of
limited vocabulary.

Mayland Long turned to the shopman. "Modistics?"
he inquired.

"Mostly. I took the i.d. plate off the box because I
made some changes inside. How'd you guess?"

The older man shrugged his shoulders. "I have seen it
advertised."

"Oh? Byte or Kilobaud?" The young man's eyes were
calipers. He judged his customer closely, according to
criteria known only to himself.

"Both," answered Mr. Long. "But that was in the May
issues. I remember reading that the speech recognition
response was inadequate. That it was easily confused by
labials, in fact."

A fat man in a white shirt walked through the door. He
ignored Martha and her car and they ignored him. He
proceeded to the magazine rack, where he planted
himself.

^ "S'true I made mods. Added a laser-cut filter, and a
routine to cancel noise. Least mean squares."

"You are Fred Frisch?"

He had a sizable blond moustache. He pulled on it
now. "Yeah. Have I met you somewhere?"

34

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"No. But I have met you." Mayland Long's well-tuned
voice slid from polite impersonality to something a shade
warmer. He lounged against the counter. "In the pages
of Dr. Dobb's. Your article on financial system for the
home computer, with a sample 8080 implementation.
Interesting! Almost wasted, really, such elegant al-
gorythms for a 16 K machine ..."

Mr. Frisch responded to this praise. He straightened.
His silky moustache whuffed. His hands worried a black
power cable into circles on the dusty counter. "Did you
try it?"

Long's eyes shifted only slightly. "Alas, I don't have
CPM," he demurred. The fat man by the magazine rack
dropped a well-thumbed copy of Byte back into its slot,
sighing deeply.

"Oh. Well. There's that," Frisch admitted. "Interrupts
would have made it run quicker, but so many people
have CPM."

"You went to Stanford, I imagine," said Mayland
Long, as he stared down at the floor, where the toy car
was careening in circles around his legs. Martha Mac-
namara showed quite a skill.

"How'd you know? It wasn't in the article, was it?"
asked Frisch. Immediately he answered his own ques-
tion. "No. They print only your name and address: no
biography. I remember that because I got letters for
months after, wanting me to send free tapes."

"But you acknowleged the assistance of a Professor
Carlo Peccolo for certain of your ideas. And Professor
Peccolo has published in EDN, where a biography did
accompany his article. How would you have received his
help if you were not a student of his? Since he teaches at
Stanford, it must be that ..."

Fred Frisch cut in. "Oh sure. I see now. I thought for
a moment you did auras, or like that."

Mr. Long let his toe down upon the hood of the
irritating race car, which protested like an angry bee.

"But I suppose Liz Macnamara might have told me
who you were, without my chance reading."

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        35

He shot a look upward and locked eyes with Frisch.
"How'd you know I know Liz?"

"You were in the same department. You are of an age."

"Who are you?" countered Frisch. "You work with
Liz?"

"No." He slipped his hand into his upper jacket
pocket, as though to produce a card. Failing to find one,
he patted the two side pocket, while furrowing his brow.
Finally he spoke again. "Forgive me. My name is Long:

Mayland Long. I know very little about Miss Macna-
mara. I am trying to learn more."

"You're a headhunter?" Fred Frisch spoke with the
politeness of contempt. Mr. Long exposed his large
straight teeth in a laugh.

"A job recruiter? No. Hardly. I represent a more
personal interest." His voice dropped almost to a
whisper. "The lady with the talent for driving is Eliz-
abeth Macnamara's mother."

Frisch peered covertly at the top of Martha's head'and
at her obliviously hunched shoulders. The control box
dangled unnoticed from her wrist, for she had dis-
covered the more adult fascination of computer check-
ers.

"Why doesn't she ask her daughter herself?" he
muttered uneasily. "I hardly know Liz."

"Elizabeth has disappeared, Mr. Frisch."

Frisch blinked at the word. "Disappeared? Jeez."

"Mrs, Macnamara lives in New York, and so she's
slipped out of touch with Liz, who seems to have quit
her job and moved from her last known address. We do
not know who her friends are."

"I'm not the one to ask," said Frisch, for Long's ears
only. "Liz's a bit of a pushin' baby, if you know what I
mean."

Dryly, Mayland Long admitted he did not. "I've
gathered the impression that Miss Macnamara is a rather
ambitious young woman and she keeps to herself. Is that
what it is to be 'a bit pushin' baby?' "

Frisch sighed and shrugged, with a half-smile that was

36 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

one-quarter apology. "Not quite. She can be friendly
when she wants to. When she thinks a guy might
be ... good for her career. She got along with Pec-

colo."

Mr. Long's eyes widened. Frisch hurried to explain
"She was his T.A.—teaching assistant, you know? They
were very chummy, for a while. But it didn't last,"

"Why not?"

The blond fished with one hand til he snagged the
back of a high stool and pulled it under him. Once
seated, he remained in thought for a count of five. "I
think it was this way. Liz wants to be a manipulator—the
kind who controls. Peccolo is that kind. Much better at
it. He used her when it was supposed to be the other
way around. She put in a lot of hours on the machine for
him—designing his lessons, cleaning up his math . . .
Peccolo is a good teacher, fine organizer—all that
jazz ..." Frisch, who had been talking to the glass
counter top, suddenly sought out the other's eye. "But
Liz has the technical brain. She's real good." The gaze
slid away again. "Too bad technique ain't everything."

The dark man smiled slowly. His fingers drummed on
the glass. "You've knocked heads with her? Don't worry
about offending me; I've never met the young lady."

Frisch shuffled in place, embarrassed. "Well—no. Not
me. I avoided Liz, you see, so I wouldn't."

"Do you think Peccolo would know where she is
now?"

Fred Frisch shrugged once again. "Better than I," he
said. "What's your part in this. Detective?"

Mayland Long laughed. Martha looked up. "Worse
and worse! I'd rather be a headhunter!"

Frisch looked unconvinced.

"Mrs. Macnamara doesn't speak the jargon, you see,
and my field is languages." Long found Martha standing
beside him. Gently he took the controls of the racer from
her hand and returned the box to Frisch.

"That fellow went to Stanford, didn't he?" asked
Martha, as she was propelled across the busy street.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        37

Mayland Long, in a graceful inversion of traditional
politeness, waited for her to let herself in the driver's
side, then swung around the front of the car and waited
for her to reach over and unlock his door.

"So you were listening?" he replied, once in the quiet
of the closed car.

"Oh no. I heard you say 'modistics' and immediately
tuned out the conversation, since I would not be able to
understand a word. I knew the fellow was from Stanford
because he was blond, and there was a bicycle locked to
the post outside." Her voice trailed off. She was thinking
of something.

"Well, however you came upon it, the supposition is
correct. He is a Stanford alumnus, and knows your
daughter slightly."

Martha nodded. "Only slightly?"

"He has given us another name. Perhaps a more
important one. Back to campus," he commanded, and
the car lurched obediently forward.

"Mayland—" she began, as she found a space in the
flow of traffic, entered and took it with unexpected
competence. "I enjoyed myself back there. I think I
missed my calling in life."

The dark man smiled and his arm, braced against the
dash, relaxed to the seat. "You should have been a
computer engineer?"

"Sweet Jesus, no! I should have sold toys."

4

"I'm sorry. I haven't the least idea," said the professor.
He leaned back in his leather chair until the springs

38 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

creaked; his pale fingers drummed against the mahogany
desktop. It appeared that the conversation was over
early.

Martha frowned. Her blue china eyes shone like
beads. Mr. Long and she had spent the last half hour
being wonderfully lost among the Spanish red sandstone
buildings and the dusty live oaks of Stanford campus.
They had stopped to nose into the chapel, with its gold
murals and gaudy, loud, Victorian glass, and had known
the satisfaction of excoriating the place together. Now it
was getting hot and she was tired. Peccolo's attitude was
no help.

Mayland Long drew breath slowly and spoke. "I
believe she assisted you in your researches until quite
recently ..." His calm had an edge on it—an edge
which told Martha she had better bite her tongue and
leave this matter to him. It spoke another message to Dr.
Peccolo.

"Recently? No. Not at all. She's been gone almost two
years, now." He pulled himself erect again and focused
over the expanse of the desk at Mr. Long. Dr. Peccolo
was a much heavier man than the Eurasian, fair and
stocky.

"Let me tell you something about graduate students,
Mr.—uh—Long. By the way, are you in the legal
profession?"

The answer was dry. "Not exactly."

"Graduate students. They come and go. Very fast. MS
is two years work. A doctorate . . . well, Elizabeth
Macnamara was not headed for the doctoral program.
She worked for me: grading papers, coding, handling
technical correspondence. I've had two students—one
per year—in that position since she graduated. No
reason I should keep in touch. I'm sorry."

The last two words alone were addressed to Martha
Macnamara, who sat to one side of the two men,
between a wooden table piled high with printouts and a
neat glass case containing, among other objects of
interest, a diploma from Massachusetts Institute of

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        39

Technology, a certificate of merit from Advanced Micro
Devices, and a gold urn on a marble base with the words
DENVER INVITATIONAL 1959 engraved upon the
side. She burned with the desire to know what sort of
invitation Dr. Peccolo had received from Denver in
1959. She heard his words only distantly.

Mayland Long did not allow the interview to slip from
him. "Liz Macnamara was one of the more useful finds
among this flowing river of students, was she not?"

Color deepened in the professors flat face and the
muscles along his jaw gained sudden prominance. "Just
how do you mean that?" he growled. His right hand
plucked up a rapidograph pen and closed to a tight fist
around it.

Mayland Long retained advantages of pigment and
breeding. If this sudden confrontation roused him in any
way it was not for the world to know. "I had heard that
Miss Macnamara was quite an apt student. And diligent.
Not all apprentices are like that, unless things have
changed since I was young."

'^She was quite competent for the sort of work I had
her doing," admitted Dr. Peccolo, with no great grace.
"Which was, as I told you, coding and correspondence.
She had marketable skills—at least marketable today, in
a society where demand has outstripped the supply of
technical expertise, in a computer ghetto like the Santa
Clara Valley ... I helped her to develop these skills,
and I paid her while I did so. I helped her find her first
job, with Floyd Rasmussen at FSS, and I advised her
against leaving it, when she came to me for advice. She
has no cause for complaint."

Mayland Long regarded him abstractly. "The young
woman is not complaining," he reminded the professor.
"She is missing. So she came to you for advice, before
leaving FSS?"

Dr. Peccolo nodded once. "It was the last time I heard
from her. Over a year ago. She had this idea of going into
consultant work. I told her you don't consult until people
are banging on your door. Until you have a reputation."

40 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"You consult, I imagine, professor."

"I have a reputation."

Mr. Long folded his hands amicably. "Her talents were
nothing special, then?"

Dr. Peccolo stood up, nearly tipping his chair back-
wards. "I'm sure we are all rather special," he stated. "To
our mothers."

Martha stood also, thrusting herself out of her chair
with her arms. Slowly she raised her hands to her hips
and faced him in this manner. She smiled at the
professor who loomed over her. She began to laugh.

"I know how irritating Liz can be," she said at last.
"But you shouldn't have let her get to you this way. Envy
makes big men look so silly."

Mr. Long was still seated, part of his face hidden by
the church steeple of his fingertips touching together in
front of his mouth. He watched with interest, perhaps
with amusement, as Dr. Peccolo took two steps away
from Martha Macnamara's mirth and flailed behind to
catch the falling chair.

As Martha sailed out the office door, Mayland Long
rose sinuously to his feet, not touching the arms of the
chair. His eyes were caught briefly by the angry glare of
Peccolo's, but slid off toward the diploma case. "Denver,
1959," he mused. "Chess?"

The answer was grudging. "Softball."

Mr. Long nodded, thanked the professor for his time,
and closed the door quietly behind him.

"Isn't this interesting?" Martha peered owlishly
around her at the table of tinned biscuits, the hand-
painted linen clan map of Scotland, and the black maw of
the fireplace, which emitted a pleasant cold draft into the
room. "The London Tea House. Actually it reminds me
more of Kent. What do you think?"

Mayland Long's scrutiny was more circumspect. "I
have no objections. Kent will do. Or Sussex. It might
even pass for Cornwall. Any shire, borough, or city

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        41

except London might have germinated such a flower as
this."

Outside the row of glass doors the California sun was
shining on tiered pots of geraniums. A young woman
passed, wearing a light cotton pinafore and sandals. An
immaculate blond toddler clung to her hand. Light from
the windows of the passing cars flashed and glinted on
the walls in the tea shop. Observing the street outside,
Martha thought not of England, but of the Italian
Riviera, which she knew only through pictures. Her
gaze slid to her companion.

His improbable hands were cupped in the air before
him. They steamed. Martha Macnamara was not sur-
prised, for she had seen the blue-patterned Royal
Doulton teacup disappear into his clutch.

She was tired and a little depressed, and so felt it
incumbent upon her to cheer up Mr. Long. She grasped
her own bottle of stout around the neck and held it up.
"See that?" She pointed at the tiny, intricate harp on the
label. "The original is about 750 years old. It lives at
Trinity College in Dublin."

"I see." Mr. Long spoke mildly, but hfe forehead
pulled into faint wrinkles and his eyes hooded over. He
sighed before he spoke.

"My dear lady," he began. "I'm sorry our soundings
this morning have not been . . . productive."

Her eyes widened in opposition to his. "Speak the
truth with me, please. They have been very productive.
Merely not reassuring."

"We haven't found your daughter. In fact, we have run
out of leads."

"We have some history, Mayland! We know she
intended to consult—go freelance. We have found two
people who have been involved with Liz—one still
involved enough to be touchy. In fact ..." Here
Martha raised her head to heaven. She was a vision in
blue with rosy cheeks. "... if we only had Carlo
Peccolo tied in that pig skin chair of his, and one hot
poker apiece ..."

42 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

Long grinned, showing his teeth. "Then how would
we dispose of him? We couldn't very well let him go, and
I, for one, have lost my taste for long pig. Still, I agree
that Dr. Peccolo is a well of information not wholly
emptied." He regarded his cup a while, as though it
were the well in question.

"No matter. There are other ways to go about things."
He raised his hands to his mouth and drained the cup.

In this action, his eyes were lowered, his face half
hidden. Martha watched and she saw the West melt
away from him in the simple intentness of tea. She
reminded herself that this man had no business to be
here with her this day, engaged in tedious toil, fencing
words with unamiable people, measuring miles of hot
pavement in search of a young woman he probably had
no interest to meet.

She remembered further, distantly, as though out of a
story read in childhood, that Mayland Long was a rich
man.

She shook her head in dismissal. He told wonderful
stories in a wonderful voice. That was far more impor-
tant. He tended to drowse in the light of the sun—she
had seen that twice today: once by the window of his
apartment, and once in the car. She recalled his words—
"I have always respected warmth and the ability to keep
still." Perhaps he was drowsing now, behind the empty
cup, as his elbows rested on the table and the quiet of
mid-aftemoon filled the shop. He was a man. He got
tired. He could be hurt. She thought about that last one:

he could be hurt.

Suddenly the spectre of parting sprang up her mind,
forbidding as the shadow of an axe. She started, and the
brown eyes caught her motion. He had not been asleep.

Martha spoke. "I will be concerned when I can do
something about this. When my concern will be useful.
And I will reach that point. I'm going to find Liz."

He nodded, accepting her certainty. "Perhaps it's time
for the police to help."

"No. Not yet. I don't feel that." She pursed her

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        43

mouth, seeking the words for explanation. She raised
her glass and took a long swallow of the black beer. "You
see, Liz has never feared God or the devil. When she
says she might be in trouble, well, I don't know with
whom. God or the devil."

"Are the police one of the above?" he inquired,
bringing one arm up to rest along the chairback. "Would
she have called you into the mess if she were in trouble
with the law?"

"I doubt it, Mayland. But I've got another reason for
hesitating." Martha frowned, trying to explain. "When
Liz was nine she was picked up on Riverside Drive by a
policeman who thought she looked lost. She wasn't, of
course; we lived in a building right around the corner on
West 106th. But Liz didn't tell him that. She thought it
was none of his business. She spent three hours in the
station and never told them who she was or where she
lived. Complete stonewall, and just because she was
angry. And she didn't call me, either, though the officers
would have been glad to let her use the phone—I only
found out about it when she didn't come home for dinner
and I called the police. That's the kind of person she is.

"Liz's held a grudge against blue uniforms ever since.
She wouldn't thank me if I reported her missing."

Long shrugged. His suit jacket rustled, dry as paper.
"Then our next step must be to question Floyd Rasmus-
sen of FSS. He may know something about this consul-
tant work she planned."

"I'm going to do that in the morning," Martha said,
rummaging in her purse. "Perhaps I can .arrange to meet
him for lunch."

"It might be easier if I call, arranging the meeting on
some technical pretext." He broached the subject warily.

The large floral purse shut with a snap. "No, Mayland.
I think you'd better not go any deeper into this."

The dark face drew back. The long hands flattened on
the table. "I admit I have intruded into affairs which are
not my business, my dear . . . Martha. But you've
convinced me there's an element of danger in this."

44 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

Her head bobbed forcefully. The gray braid threat-
ened to slide. "Yes. That's exactly why I want you out of
it."

His expression went blank—as blank as it had been
when she teased him about the word "Oolong." Then
Mayland Long laughed, a low rumble which ran along
the walls of the room, echoed in corners and tangled
among the legs of the wooden chairs. The cashier in the
corner raised her head. When the laughter subsided, a
wide smile remained.

"You are concerned about me? About my respectabili-
ty perhaps? My personal safety?"

Martha Macnamara's nostrils flared. She thumped her
bag heavily. "Why not? Are you superman? Do you know
everything?"

The smile faded. "No. I am not. I do not. I am only
Mayland Long, and as I have said before you must tell
me what I am to do, and how I am to live my life
properly."

She looked sideways at him, waiting for the punch-
line.

"Shall I go back to my rooms in the James Herald
Hotel and sit there with the pot and the kettle, many
books and a bronze dragon, stepping out only to visit
Bames and Noble, and to dine on white linen in the
Crystal Room?"

She opened her mouth but did not speak.

"I'll tell you plainly, Martha, I came to San Francisco
waiting for something to happen. Something that was—
predicted—for me years ago in Taipei. A sign. An
awakening. It is rank superstition on my part to believe
in this, perhaps, but as a result of this prophecy I have
changed my living, my language, my ..." His words
died away and his fingers drummed the table top. "I
have changed in many ways." His eyes met hers briefly,
then slid away. "It is hard to change when one is old. It's
almost easier to give up and die. Almost."

"Do you know how to give up?" asked Martha quietly.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        45

"No." He smiled ruefully and his eyebrows rose like
wings. "Is that something I must learn?"

He gave her no time to reply. "But you mustn't expect
me to behave like a Westerner, Martha, just because I
speak the language. Nor like a ... man of the pres-
ent."

Martha leaned forward, peering left and right in
conspiritorial fashion, wearing a small, round, Buddha-
smile. "My dear Mr. Long," she whispered, "I expect
everything and nothing of you. And I wouldn't be
surprised if you rose from this table and flew off among
the hanging geraniums. I would assume you had a
reason.

"And I assume you had a reason to come to San
Francisco, and a reason to park yourself at the James
Herald. If you came on the strength of a prophecy, well
then, you're working with clearer goals than most
people."

She drew back an inch, but her gaze didn't waver.
"What are you seeking?"

Mayland Long lifted his head and as he spoke the light
struck his face, turning his eyes oak yellow. "Among
other things—truth."

"Among other things!" Martha folded her hands.
"What else is there?"

He mimicked her gesture, laughing. "Don't ask me
such a question! I have never been good with paradox.
Isn't it enough for you that I've revealed the core of
superstition that lies at the heart of this man in a
business suit? But I will share with you a thing I have
learned—that I am learning even now. I discover that
waiting may be accomplished in divers ways. And
stillness has many . . . appearances, as does warmth.
Your own sort of stillness, for instance, Martha, can be
full of movement, like a tree full of birds. Yet I see it as
stillness. And your warmth . . . Well, that is marvel-
ous, like the color of your eyes."

She exclaimed involuntarily. "My eyes? Marvelous?"

"Certainly. Blue is a cold color, yet the brighter the

46 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

sun shines, the more blue is the sky." He paused,
regarding her blue eyes, her blushing face.

"Martha, I am through sitting passive. Realization is
not a dove to be coaxed to the hand. It will find one or it
will not.

"Besides—what if my chance for understanding has
come and gone, unrecognized? What if signs and events
of all colors and meaning: joys, sorrows, wonderments—
have passed by and are lost because I have been too busy
looking for a box with the label 'truth' on it? I want to
help you find Elizabeth—not because I am altruistic, but
because I am curious and alone. I like puzzles and I
enjoy your company I think I can be useful, if you will
allow me to be."

She put her hands to the sides of her round head. "I
don't understand half what you're saying. And what can I
answer? You're using my own arguments against mel"

He shrugged, and the fabric of his suit jacket rustled
dryly. It was silk. "You can agree to a collaboration.
Together we will find your daughter."

She touched his hand.

Martha parked in a lot a quarter mile away from the
hotel, where the parking was cheaper. They began
walking.

San Francisco was ten degrees cooler than the penin-
sula, though the same dry, Italianate sun shone. A large
gull flew past them along Van Ness, strafing the cars.
Having just crossed Turk Street, Mayland Long spied
something on the sidewalk and bent to pick it up.

It was a red rose bud, its petals disarranged, the stem
half torn through where a pin had pulled out. He
grunted and smoothed it out as though it were wrinkled
cloth. "The rose," he announced. "Loveliest and most
formidible of flowers. Arms of York and Lancaster. In
medieval times, symbol of Jesus. Always, it has meant,
beauty, love, peace ..."

He presented the bud to Martha Macnamara. It lay

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        47

resting on his long fingers until she scooped it up. She
sniffed it and held it up in the light.

"Symbol? What's a symbol? This is a rose." She smiled
and walked on.

The moment rang for Mayland Long—rang as though
the entire sky had become a gong and Martha Macna-
mara had struck it. He stood still, while the gray stone
city reeled about him.

The four words echoed in his head. "This is a rose."
The simple, dumb truth of them announced the uni-


verse.

And he stood there for an endless moment—perhaps
two or three seconds by the clock—a thin man in a dark
suit, rather old, rather elegant, rather frail, rubbing his
thumb along the length of his hand and feeling the
memory of a rose.

Then he moved quickly, his eye fixed on the receding
blue dress. She knew who he was. She had shown him
his own face, reflected in all creation. But did she know
who she was? Standing alone and perfect, or standing by
him—did she know what she was to him? He snaked
forward along the crowded street, burning with a desire
to tell her.

Martha Macnamara reached the corner just as the
walk sign lit. She did not seem to realize she had left her
companion behind, nor that she had redeemed his life.
She stepped into the street. A bus pulled into the
crosswalk behind her, concealing her from Mayland
Longs sight. A black Lincoln stopped at the corner
parallel to her path, then turned right into the crosswalk.

The light changed as Mr. Long reached the corner. He
raised his eyes over the roofs of the cars, seeking the
blue dress along the next block.

She was not there. Martha Macnamara was nowhere
along the street between Mayland Long and the James
Herald Hotel. Nor was she in the lobby.

Nor in her room.

She was gone.

5

The early sun pried silently into the window. It
counted the books in Mayland Longs sitting room. The
black statue against the side wall drank in the sun's light,
reflecting it only through the eyes.

One of the two armchairs in the room had been turned
toward the bare window; the chair was dull gold. So was
the skin of the man asleep in that chair, his head resting
in the angle of the wing-back. The dark silk suit-jacket he
had worn the day before was thrown across the chair
arm; one empty sleeve dragged upon the wooden floor.

In sleep, Mr. Longs strange hands and features asked
no explanations. They merely were: facts of nature like
tangled tree roots, like the face of a tiger, like the odd,
water-washed stones on the cold beach visible from his
high window.

The edge of bright light finished with the bookshelf
and crawled across the carpet to the chair. It touched his
face and hands, and the sleeping man relaxed into it. His
head slipped against the fabric and his eyes cracked open
to receive the dazzle of sunlight. He blinked. Yawned.
Twisted left and right in the chair. Finally he peered
behind him at the still, uncluttered room, as though it
could tell him why he found himself in the sitting room,
fully dressed.

Then he remembered, and with the arrival of memory
his hands groped for the chair arms. The padded wood
protested with small creaks.

Yesterday evening had been the phone call to the San
Francisco police. The polite, endlessly repeated expla-
nation of who he was, who Martha Macnamara was, and

48

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        49

why he believed she had met foul play. He had not told
them all he knew, because it had been necessary to
balance his concern—no, give it its true name—his fear
for Martha against the woman's own determination not to
involve her daughter with the police. He could only
repeat that Mrs. Macnamara had been walking along Van
Ness with him, and had vanished at the corner of Fell
Street. That she had not yet returned to her room,
though she was still registered at the James Herald
Hotel, that the desk clerk had not seen her.

That she had been worried about something.

It was hardly a compelling story. It -carried the
implication that Mrs. Macnamara had dropped out of
sight to avoid him, and his call to the authorities further
intimated that he was the sort of importunate busybody a
person might well want to avoid.

The officer had told him that they would have to wait
at least a day before they could regard the woman as
missing. The policeman had taken down name and
address.

He had realized the uselessness of the attempt then,
and had tried no further to interest the police. He knew
the disparity between his voice and person; if his words
could not convince, then his face and form would be of
no help.

Besides, if Martha Macnamara had been killed by
whoever it was who snatched her up—no one in the bus,
surely. The black Lincoln?—then she was dead, and
neither police nor power could bring her back.

And if she was alive, spirited away somewhere, then
she was kept alive for a purpose, and would doubtless
remain that way until the purpose was fulfilled. In that
case, the police were still not much help, but another
power might be. Without conscious arrogance Mayland
Long applied that title to himself. Another power.

And he was sure with a granite certainty that Martha
Macnamara was not dead. He would know if she were.

50

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

For if she were dead, then hope was dead, and his own
existence turned to ashes.

And, looking at the gray, waking city, the quiet mirror
of the bay, the jangled mirror of the sea, he did not feel
dead nor burnt out. He felt—he turned the unfamiliar
emotion over in his mind with intellectual curiosity,
trying to identify it—he felt angry.

He rose from the chair and brushed at the crumpled
jacket without seeing it. He was trying to remember the
last time he had felt anger. Three years in San Francisco.
One in Kyoto. Before that, Taipei—two years. There
came grief and loss. Even fear. Anger? No. No one to be
angry at, that evening in Taipei. Not even himself.

And before Taipei there had been no need at all for
anger.

He stopped this raking of memory No need. He knew
what anger was. It was hot.

Like Carlo Peccolo, Floyd Rasmussen was a fair,
stocky man, but there the resemblance ended. Peccolo
kept his credentials under glass, while Rasmussen had a
wall stuck full of clippings from the Sunday funnies,
along with three Kliban cats. Peccolo was sober, but
Rasmussen laughed. He rattled the windows with his
laughter. He laughed when Long introduced himself.
He chuckled at the name of Dr. Peccolo. He let loose
gales of laughter when Mr. Long brought forward the
subject of Liz Macnamara, and with his wiry yellow
beard and wiry yellow hair spreading out from his face,
Floyd Rasmussen was the image of some Aztec sun god,
graved in gold.

"Liz? She's done work for me. I hope she will again,
though the money she's asking now . . . Oh Lord, yes,
I know Liz Macnamara. That's like asking me how well I
know Blanco, my cat. Liz is a warrior, bright, spunky,
ambitious. She brought life to RasTech ..."

Coolly Mayland Long wondered how much more life

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        51

the company called RasTech could bear. Floyd Rasmus-
sen seemed to fill all available comers with his own vital
substance. Mr. Long pulled at the tiller of the conversa-
tion.

"Bright? Then you would say her level of technical
ability was above average?"

"Average? You can hardly use that word in the same
breath as Liz Macnamara. She's original; Sound. Big
systems, little systems, software, firmware, pc layout
. . . Just give her a handful of bipolar visi chips and
stand back. She can even, occasionally, meet a deadline.
And I don't say that for most of my friends!"

This last admission dissolved into dull rumbles. Floyd
Rasmussen beamed at Mr. Long.

The office did not contain a desk. Rasmussen worked
from a drafting table set against one wall. There was thus
no barrier between the booming geniality of the presi-
dent of RasTech and the fastidious composure of his
guest. Mayland Long did not feel that the advantage was
his.

"Then, it was not out of line for her to set herself up as
a consultant—to go free-lance?"

The big' man snorted. "What else should she do? Give
half her salary for a benefits package and insurance, and
the other half to Uncle Sugar? She's gone the smart way.
consulting."

Long prodded patiently. "Even at her age, without
contacts? Dr. Peccolo believed ..."

". . . in Santa Claus. He doesn't like knowing a
young whippersnapper he was supposed to be teaching
actually had more on the ball than he did." Rasmussen s
furry eyebrows pulled together and his mouth pursed.

"Carlo's a friend of mine. Hurts me to say it, but he's
not that good, technically." His voice expressed no great
pain.

Mayland Long digested this—both the words and the
manner. "Tell me, Mr. Rasmussen. Just what did Eliz-

52

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

abeth Macnamara do for you at FSS which convinced
you to hire her services here, in your own company?"

"Eh?" Rasmussen stopped to think. A few moments of
silence leaked into the office.

"She did lots of things. An interface board for teller's
terminals: Z80 based. An accounts receivable package in
6502 assembler. Half a bank security system ..."

"Half a bank security system?"

Rasmussen grunted and shrugged. "We only got the
contract for half. Works that way a lot. Maybe their guy
quits in the middle of the job and they don't want to train
a programmer from scratch, or . . . Well, lots of things.
Then, let's see—she wrote a disk controller for our own
use." Rasmussen stopped. He crinkled little eyes behind
sandy lashes. It was difficult to tell what color those eyes
were.

" 'Zat the kind of thing you want to know?"

Mayland Long detached his gaze from the man and
swept it once around the square, unsubtle room. One
wall was orange; that was the one dotted with comic
clippings. One wall was stenciled with a single, diagonal
black stripe, dipping left. Against that wall stood a model
of a sailing boat, white, gleaming, intricate, its spiky
rigging echoed in the tines of a set of deer antlers hung
above. The carpet was looped in orange and green. The
plastic chair he sat on was yellow.

Mayland Long, in his quiet gray suit, felt like a quote
taken out of context.

"Yes, Mr. Rasmussen, that is part of it. And, since you
do not have a current address or phone number for the
lady, I shall have to be satisfied with that much." He rose
to his feet.

Rasmussen heaved his own bulk off the drafting stool.
"She'll call me once she's settled in her new place. It
always takes a month or so to let people know when
you've moved. That's a real problem when you're self-
employed. I know. Been there."

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        53

He reached out to shake Mayland Long's hand.
Shaking hands was a ritual Floyd Rasmussen practiced
whenever he could, and somehow his guest had begun
their conversation without it. He succeeded in grabbing
Long's unresisting hand now, but there was something
wrong in the gesture. This was not the usual wrongness
which accompanies shaking hands: cold, wet palm, no
strength in the grip, or too much. The hand he
commandeered was dry and warm. It held his own
securely, without squeezing the knuckles together. The
wrongness was in the shape of it.

He dropped his eyes from the dusky face, but the
hand had been withdrawn. Mayland Long was speaking.

"You have not asked what my interest is in Miss
Macnamara. Aren't you curious?"

Rasmussen looked up in surprise. "Your interest?
You're looking to use her, right? But you weren't sure she
was the engineer you needed. Peccola gave her sort of a
lukewarm recommendation and you wanted a second
opinion?"

Mayland Long smiled. It was not an English smile,
but a Chinese smile. "Very close. I have need other, and
am interested to know what she has been doing. I worry
I may not find her in time." He turned to leave.

"Well, I wouldn't worry," boomed Rasmussen down
the hall. "Don't . . . commit yourself to anything yet.
She'll show."

Mr. Long found himself on Mathilda avenue, feeling
the even, flat, shadeless street and the reek of traffic as a
relief after the force of Rasmussen s joviality. He fingered
the keys of his own car, a small green Citroen. He sifted
among Rasmussen's words. Gold and dross: how to tell
one from the other? Turning the ignition key, his face
meditative, he felt for the anger he had found within
himself earlier.

It was still present, and it retained the same size and
shape. Good. If he was to be angry, Mayland Long
wanted that anger to de dependable.

54 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

Today there was no buzzing robot-car on the floor of
Friendly Computers. Instead, Fred Frisch was involved
in a lengthy discussion with a boy who appeared both too
young and too poor to have business there. The subject
of the dialogue was breadboards, a large assortment of
which lay scattered across the counter. At least half the
display machines along the wall were running, some
throwing fantasies of color over their screens, while
others flashed words. One unit emitted a monotonous
beep, beep, beep as images of tiny rockets exploded into
flame.

Mr. Long did not attempt to interrupt the conversa-
tion, but sat down in the same chair that Martha
Macnamara had graced the previous morning. The
repetitive, multi color display on the nearest video
screen caught his interest. Mayland Long's experience
with computing was as extensive as the books in his
library and existed on no other level. He pressed the
return key tentatively.

The display vanished, leaving in its place a list of
available games and instructions for invoking them. He
conjured up something called simply Life.

The resultant display was impressive. Small cells of
white grew over the screen from dots of his placing.
These expanded like lichen, and like lichen died away in
the middle. Mr. Long grasped the mathematics of it, and
also the metaphor. His eyes watched tiny colonies grow,
proliferate, compete with one another for space, fail
through mysterious inner processes, die . . . Like so-
cieties of men.

It was a game he was quite familiar with, watching
mankind from a distance: civilizations, tribes, individ-
uals ... As always, he felt a desire to interfere.

He focused on one white speck, no different from any
of its fellows. It was one of the rare stable ones, situated
in a small pulsing colony. It might continue forever, or at
least until the next power failure.

But wait—no. At the far edge of the screen a small,
odd-shaped colony was moving sideways. A glider. It left

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        55

the screen at the right and re-entered from the far left.
Its path was going to impact the pulsar in ... how
many moves?

Mayland Long worked the puzzle in his mind. He saw
each move that would bring the attacker toward the
small colony. He constructed the impact, and saw in
foresight the end of that tiny dot of light, no different
from any other on the screen.

He sat motionless and watched, his eyes black, his
face impassive. But a moment before the glider intersec-
ted the stable colony, his hand struck the keyboard of the
computer, freezing the action.

"Live," he whispered to the dot of light.

He heard movement behind him. Frisch stood there,
dangling a green plastic board from his nervous hands.
"Ever play that before?" he asked. "Life?"

Long looked around him at the empty store. "Not
this . . . implementation."

"I suppose everyone's got one," the young man
admitted. "But this one's faster. Most of them are written
in BASIC. Would you believe that?"

Long did not answer. He stretched out an arm, found
another plastic tub chair and pulled it into position
beside his own.

Obediently, Frisch sat. "You haven't found her, I
guess."

Mayland Long smiled ruefully. "Progress has been
retrograde. I have now lost the mother."

Frisch stared. "Maybe she gave up and went home."

"If she did, she left her luggage behind." Long's
gesture made circles in the air.

"Mr. Frisch ..."

"Fred."

"Will you answer me a few more questions? I realize
you're busy and I'm a bother ..."

Frisch bit his lower lip and pulled on his moustache.
"I'm not busy," he admitted. "And I don't mind talking.
But as I said yesterday, I don't really know Liz."

"These are technical questions. You see, I value the

56 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

breadth of your interest. You understand both methodol-
ogy and personality. I imagine you know Floyd Rasmus-
sen."

"RasTech," answered Frisch promptly, responding to
the flattery with innocent eagerness. "I don't know him,
though. Just about him."

"Go on, please. I know him, you see, but do not know
about him."

The young shopowner took a deep breath. "Rasmus-
sen. He's a mover. Sharp. Not a technical man, but a
great entrepreneur. He's made a lot of money."

"On his own?"

Frisch nodded affirmation. "He's started half-a-dozen
firms in the last ten years."

"Then why was he working for FSS in the position of
department manager last year?"

"Oh, he's lost a lot of money, too. His last couple of
ideas went bust: small business systems.'" Frisch began
intensive demolition work upon his moustache, his eyes
puckered, staring through the blank window of his shop
at the street beyond.

"But I don't think he was personally hurt either
time—just the stockholders. Only I imagine it's hard to
find any more capital after two Chapter Elevens."

"Evidently he has managed," interjected Mr. Long.
He sighed and murmured, "Interesting.

"Tell me . . . Fred. Why would a bank want to hire
an engineer to write half a security system?"

There was no hesitation in Fred's reply. "So the right
hand won't know what the left hand is doing. It's often
done that way. Like for the little plastic cards they use
nowadays. You know? Supposedly no one knows the
algorithm by which the card code is evolved out of the
account number, or the customers name. That's because
two programmers wrote it. Each knows half.

"A bank'll go to a lot of trouble to randomize the
choice, hiring one man on this end of the country and
one in New York, taking two or even three programmers

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        57

out of different segments of the field—industry, re-
search, schools."

"Have you ever been involved in such a project
Fred?"

"No, not me." He shook his head, releasing his
moustache from its duress. "That's big league stuff. They
don't look for a hacker with his head full of new ideas and
his heart among the hobbyists."

Frisch frowned as he spoke, but his eyes remained
vague, reflecting the sky through the window: detached,
speculative, feeling his grievances against the world only
superficially. He was very young. Mayland Long found
him interesting. His own brown eyes, watching Frisch,
were anything but vague.

"But Peccolo has done security. He contracted for one
while I was at Stanford. I remember. It was for North
Bay Savings."

Long stirred in his chair. "While you were at Stanford.
That must be—oh—two years ago, then? You've not
done badly, being only two years out of school. This shop
filled with expensive toys, contacts in all fields of
electronics ..."

Frisch linked his hands together behind his head and
cracked all his knuckles at once, exhaling loudly through
his moustache as he did so. "Well, I guess not. This
shop? Yeah, it's something."

The young man got up and regarded the row of
screens before him. Some of them were dusty. Some
dotted with fingerprints. He turned to the wall of
esoteric journals, and the counter filled with boxes of
components, spools of bright ribbon cable, and small
chips laid like dead roaches on their backs, brass legs
sparkling under glass. "Seems I never sell anything,
though. I just have interesting conversations."

Long laughed at Fred Frisch and then, unexpectedly,
he bowed to him, hands together across his middle,
thumbs lightly touching. "May you have many more
such," he said, his accent shifting slightly from Oxford to

58

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

the East. "And may they be of equal value to the people
with which you have them."

He took his leave. As the door closed behind him,
Fred Frisch leaned over to the console and hit the return
key. The program resumed, the glider touched the small
pulsing colony, and one particular dot of light went out.

No one saw who cared.

6

There were clouds toward the north, over the city.
These darkened the rear-view mirror, while Mayland
Long drove into the late afternoon sun. They reminded
him that autumn was approaching: autumn and the rain.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His left
arm lay along the sill of the open window. His bare hand
sprawled out over the dark green enamel of the car door:

too dark for the sun to burn.

Fire was Mr. Long's chosen element; he had no
sympathy with the rain. Yet he knew water was pre-
ordained to win, in the end. In mans end, at least. No
vault or sepulcher could keep out the damp forever, and
even ashes dissolved. But if he stared at the mirror with
a bleak eye, driving south on Alma Street in the dusty
shade of trees, it was not such philosophical speculation
which disturbed him.

He parked out of the line of sight of anyone coming
from or going toward RasTech, and strolled down the
street. Mathilda Avenue was wide and choked with
traffic. The earth around it—like the entire Valley—was
flat and dry, only partially won from desert. In Long's
eyes it was an unworthy victory, too. The cheap concrete
architecture depressed him; it seemed to spring out of




TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        59

nowhere, like the sudden idea of some not-very-imagi-
native child: all boxes and cylinders, not even colored
with crayon.

Each bare-fronted building had its tiny, begrudged
rectangle of green and a huge parking lot. The only other
shrubbery on the street consisted of the occasional ivy
bed, and a few sapling olive trees which struggled for life
at the corner, where the words Sunnyvale Industrial
Park were engraved on a sign cut from an immense slice
out of a redwood tree. RasTech itself was featureless as a
shoebox, except for heavy concrete buttresses along the
side of each window and which made a sort of porch
before the front entrance.

This landscape offered very little concealment to a
man seeking concealment—especially a man as distinc-
tive in appearance as Mayland Long. Nonetheless he
concealed himself,- standing motionless in the afternoon
shadows cast by the overhang of the entrance. Behind
him rose the slab wall of the building. To his left was the
lintel of the doorway. In front of him, further obscuring
him from sight, stood a lattice overwhelmed by mounds
of Algerian ivy. His clothes were dark; so was he. The
shadow slowly .grew.

People issued from the building—it was nearly five
o'clock. RasTech employees accounted for only a fraction
of the workers who dashed out or paused on the walk
before the door, expanding in the open air for a moment
before confronting the traffic. Long searched them all
from the darkness; his eyes were very good.

He waited for Rasmussen, knowing he might well
have a long wait. He wanted information from the
president of RasTech, the last known employer of
Elizabeth Macnamara. He did not think he would obtain
that information by asking the man. He planned to
follow him.

Mayland Long was tired. Save for those few hours in
the chair early in the morning, he had been awake for
three days. He was also hungry, having neglected to eat
since the previous day's lunch with Martha Macnamara.

60 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

He had no patience for the way his body clamored to
be fed, two or even three times a day.

Sleep, however, he took seriously. He liked to sleep,
and he would have to sleep tonight, or his mind would
begin to fail. He told himself as much and continued his
watch.

Three women came out of the door, dressed in tight
trousers, talking in Spanish. He followed their conversa-
tion with half an ear. A man came out alone: too thin to
be Rasmussen. Then a young woman appeared. She let
the door slam behind her and stood hesitant on the
stoop.

She was tall and blonde, dressed in tailored navy blue
gabardine. She turned her head left and right, as though
she could not remember where she had parked her car.
Mayland Long took a step out of the shadow and froze.

Beneath the smooth grace of hair, above the strong
jawline, she had the blue eyes of her mother. She was
taller, yes. Larger of bone. Most probably Martha
Macnamara had never been this beautiful.

Nor, probably, had she ever been so quietly terrified.
The face Mayland Long saw in profile was white and
sweating, concealing a sick fear. The perfect lips trem-
bled. Seeing this in a reflection of Martha, whose
listening had pulled from him more than he had believed
himself to know, who had said, "This is a rose" and
thereby cracked all the barriers in his life, his abiding
anger flared. One hand clutched at the redwood grating
before him. Wood crumbled.

She headed for the street, her foot stumbling once on
the concrete stair. She wound through the crowded
parking lot, among cars that honked and bulled their way
toward the exits. She climbed the grass edgeway and was
at the street.

Mayland Long followed. He abandoned the shadow,
fading unnoticed through the crowd of loungers at the
door. He pursued Liz Macnamara at a distance. She
stopped by a white Mercedes and stepped out to the
driver's side. Standing a distance away, he smiled,

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        61

imagining Martha behind the wheel of that car. Then he
turned back the way he had come.

She bolted the door behind her and leaned against it.
Immediately the shaking grew worse. She bit her lip
until she had her body in control again.

Hearing the sound of the fountain in the courtyard,
she strode over to the living room window. With
repeated thumps of the heel of her hand, she forced the
sash open.

Cool air stole into the room, smelling of water. The
pampered grass of the central court waved silver and
green. There were gulls in the fountain; she heard the
smack of their wings.

Liz had heard a story about geese being used to keep
watch in some country; warning of invaders. Where was
that—Greece? Would these gulls cry out if one of the
condominiums were invaded? She peered down at the
sidewalk that wound through the grass below, and at the
shingles of the wall. Finally she turned away from the
window.

Mumbling to herself, she pushed open the bedroom
door and pulled off her suit. This she hung on a wooden
hanger, with a care born out of habit. She pulled a pair of
blue jeans out of the dresser drawer and put them on,
along with a French T-shirt. Then she flung herself
across the bed, trying to cry. Huge, painful sobs sounded
for five minutes, wracking her body, while the bed
dandled and rocked her. Abruptly she gave up the effort,
for no matter how she wailed, her eyes remained dry.
She could not cry for her mother. She could not cry for
herself.

Suddenly she jackknifed from the bed. Had she heard
something? For almost a minute she stood listening. But
why would they want to break in on her? They knew the
thing they wanted was not there. And they knew better
than to touch her personally.

She sighed silently. Hysteria was no use; she had to
think. She brushed her hair back with her fingers. Her

62

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

hands were large boned, her arms long. The only
thought that occurred to her was that she wanted a
drink. Barefoot, she paced into the kitchen.

She could reach the high cupboard easily. For years
mother had depended on her to fetch things like the
meat chopper from the cabinet on top of the fridge. Now
her fingers closed on a dusty quart bottle of Teachers and
brought it down. Setting it on the butcher-block table,
she opened the china cupboard, where the tea cups
hung in rows from little hooks, and picked out a pebble-
bottomed tumbler. She poured and downed the shot
without tasting; Liz didn't really like Scotch. She poured
another and stared at it. After five minutes she capped
the bottle and headed for the sink to dump the tumbler.
She heard a step behind her.

The only thought she could muster was that the geese
had let her down. But they weren't geese, of course.
They were gulls. She swivelled and raised her slim right
arm. With excellent aim, she threw the bottle of
Teacher's at the sound.

And stood staring at the apparition in her kitchen: an
elegant, swarthy man with black hair and a gray suit,
whose hand wrapped around the sloshing bottle. Who
smiled and said diffidently, "Thank you. Usually I use a
glass."

Liz's lungs filled with air, but the scream never
arrived. "Shit!" she cried instead. "Who the hell are
you?"

He stood for a moment, brow furrowed, holding the
bottle of whiskey. It was as though her question required
some thought. "I am ... not an enemy. Miss Macna-
mara. In fact, I am probably the best hope you have."

"Who are you?" she repeated in a small voice—a
child's voice. Then stronger. Angry. "Who are you?
Rasmussen never said ..."

"Rasmussen? No, miss. I do not represent the inter-
ests ofFloyd Rasmussen." Calmly, he set the bottle back
on the table, while his eyes followed her closely.

Her hands clenched repeatedly. "Then who? Where'd

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        63

you come from? How'd you get in here?" Liz Macnamara
stalked closer, stiff legged, amazement and outrage
overcoming her fear.

The man, by contrast, leaned insouciantly against the
table, rolling the bottle from hand to hand. "My name is
Long—Mayland Long. I am sent by your mother to find
you."

She took one more step forward, a cry escaping from
between clenched teeth. She grabbed at 'Mr. Long's
sleeves, caught one brown hand and held it. "Then she's
all right. He lied? She's not being held ..."

Her words slowed and stopped, as she glanced down
at the dark fingers clutched in her own. She stared at the
hand, puzzled.

Long sighed. "She is not all right at all. She has
vanished, and if you have been told that she is being
held somewhere, it is probably not a lie."

Two seconds worth of hope died in the young woman's
face. Without another glance at Long, she walked into
the living room and sat down on the bright, chrome-
framed sofa. Jaw clenching spasmodically, she stared out
the window. He, meanwhile, made a quick circuit of the
room, drawing the drapes. Lacy panels of fiberglass
filtered the light, concealing them from the outside and
casting a pattern of brilliant squares against the stark
white walls. In the dimness Long was nearly invisible,
but the woman's skin shone like blue glass. Wind blew
the drapes about, sending the dappled wall into a star-
dance.

Long sat down beside Liz Macnamara. "Elizabeth.
Your mother is taken but she is not dead. We've got no
time to brood."

Her eyes shocked open. She stared at the strange face
so close to her own. "0 hell!" she whispered. "I can't
believe this is really happening."

Hers was a strong face, smooth and lean featured. A
Viking face. Suppressed fury sharpened its lines. "I did
this to her ... I did."

He raised his eyebrows as he settled himself cau-

64 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

tiously into the ultramodern foam sofa. "Yes, I rather
think you did," he agreed, his voice terribly gentle.

He turned to her in the dimness, with no sound
except the rustle of silk. "You have been playing with the
big boys, Miss Macnamara."

These words pierced through Liz's funk. Her jaw
tightened and she pulled herself up. "What do you mean
by that crack? Why shouldn't I 'play with the big boys?' "

He folded his hands on his knee and considered. "No
reason at all.

"But in this particular sort of game one does not call on
one's mother when things go badly. You see?"

Liz Macnamara dropped her eyes. "You're right. How
can I explain? It felt like a nightmare, you see, and
mother was always so good with nightmares.

"My mother has the power to put perspectives
right . . . She's so—so confident. I thought nothing
nasty could touch her."

Then, abruptly, her hands clenched. "You can't know
about this. Not unless you're from them: from Rasmus-
sen or Threve. But I don't know why they sent you.
What more can you want from me? I'll get the letter
tomorrow; the banks are already closed today."

Mayland Long drank in this assortment of informa-
tion. "Your mother also shifts mood like that: floats like
dust in the air and then comes down with a great crash. I
had thought this was part other spiritual attainment, but
perhaps she was born that way."

He met the confused stubbornness in Elizabeths face
and sighed. He let his eyes wander through the starkly
furnished, expensive rooms.

Liz Macnamara's home was sharp angled, glacial pale.
The walls were neither ecru, dove nor cream but a white
so pure as to shimmer with blue. On the bare, bleached
oak floor were scattered cobalt Rya rugs, like holes in
smooth ice. On a table in the dining ell rested a tray of
Swedish glass, glinting smooth and colorless.

Long's brow darkened. "What can I say that will
convince you? Let's see . . . You don't get along with

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

65

your mother. She irritates you. Makes you feel vaguely
guilty. You believe she has abandoned her true life's work
as a concert violinist."

Her face remained frozen. "You got that from Rasmus-
sen. I told him all that a long time ago."

He sighed, raised his hand to the side of his head, and
scratched his ear with one elongated finger. Liz Mac-
namara stared at that finger, fascinated.

"Did you tell him also that your mother wakes every
morning at five to do zazen? That she appreciates the
poems of John Donne?

"That she can listen to ... a person . . . until
truth comes out of him? Sometimes it's a truth that never
was truth before?"

Liz's jaw worked. She sorted the words Long spoke so
diffidently. Her eyes sought reassurance in his impassive
face.

"Do you even know these things about her?" His voice
sank away.

There was silence in the room. Suddenly Liz Mac-
namara got up and paced to the window. The drapes
swirled about her as she peered out at the gulls in the
shower of the fountain.

"How did you get in here?"

He hesitated before answering. "Through that win-
dow. "

"Here?" She leaned out. "It's ten feet from the
ground," she accused. "The wall is shingle."

He sighed, as though he were being compelled to
speak on a subject he found in poor taste. "Only the top
six feet are shingle. The foundation is brick." He
shrugged off the doubt in her eyes, obviously irritated.
"Believe what you will. I'm here.

"And I'm here for a reason. As of yesterday, my goal
was merely to locate you. Miss Macnamara. I promised
your mother I would help her. Now you must help me
find her."

Mayland Long raised himself from the couch, frown-
ing; in the soft depths of foam his thinking was hindered.

66 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

He strode across the room and sat down in a white
wicker chair. His back was straight. His fingers thrust
among the twisted reeds. "It is time for you to tell me
what you know," he announced.

Elizabeth Macnamara sat in the shadowed room,
looking at the wall. "I've been robbing a bank."

"I guessed as much." His voice reflected a dry
triumph.

Her head spun toward him. Her hair made a dim halo
around her face. "You guessed? How . . . how did you?
What kind of detective are you? From the police?"

The complexity of her mistake amused Long, but the
woman did not see his smile. "No, miss. I'm not from the
police. Your mother didn't want to call the police."

Liz settled again, but wary as a bird. "How did you
find out, then? Do you know how I did it?" It was
difficult to see Long in the dark. He sat very still.

"I believe I do. You wrote half of a bank securities
package for North Bay Savings, while you were at FSS.
What the bank did not know was that you had assisted
Dr. Peccolo of Stanford to design the other half."

Liz shook her head violently. "Assisted, nothing. I
wrote the whole thing. He said it would be valuable
experience for me."

"Was it?" asked Mayland Long. His teeth glimmered
briefly.

Elizabeth let out a shuddering groan. As she turned
from Long to the window she seemed to gather the stray
light around her. Outside the gulls keened.

"Shit! Lies lead from one to the other. That was Carlo's
lie—that he had done the system. It was the first bit of
rottenness in this whole mess. I'd been dating him
almost all of my second year in grad school—on the sly,
of course. He's married.

"But I broke with him while I was doing the security
package. I realized he was using me, and it just stuck in
my craw, you know?"

Long didn't answer. She continued. "And how he used
me! I thought Carlo was a wizard in the beginning. My—

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        67

my mentor! He said he would take care of me, lead me to
the top. I wanted to be a wizard too."

She snorted. "I was a real innocent."

"A wizard," Long echoed, thoughtfully. "Odd word to
use in connection with computers. I've always found
there to be so much . . . flimflam about wizards, and I
can't see how one could get away with that in computer
engineering. But perhaps that's my own innocence.

"At any rate, if the masters of your art are called
wizards, then I'm sure you deserve the name."

She recoiled, shaking her head.

"I've heard about you from all sides. Miss Macnamara.
I'm told you are very good at what you do.

"And meeting you, I now know two computer wiz-
ards." Long chuckled at his private joke.

She fought against vanity and curiosity both. "I don't
know what you mean," she answered, sullen. "I told you
I'm not ..."

"I don't mean anything," Long murmured. "Go on.
You never mentioned to anyone you had done Peccolo's
work for him? Not even when you were so—bitter?"

"He knew." The words were a hiss. Liz took two steps
toward Long's chair, placing herself between him and the
fading light of the window. Though her figure was a mere
silhouette against the dusk, the smugness in her voice
was unmistakable. "I knew he knew. And he was never
sure whether I had told anyone. I let him sweat it."

Mayland Long stirred in his chair. "A subtle ven-
geance." Her words were dry and dispassionate. "But
you told Rasmussen."

"Yes. I had to. When Floyd assigned me the bank job
last winter, I told him why I couldn't do it.

"He was marvelous about it! He patted me on the back
for my integrity, and went away. I thought it was all okay,
and he'd get somebody else to write the code, but he
came back the next day and said he had no one else who
could handle the project and the department couldn't
afford to lose the contract. And he said that the fact I told
him I'd done the other half proved more than anything

68 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

else could that I could be trusted with the responsibility.
He said the only real safeguard in life was personal
integrity. North Bay trusted FSS and FSS trusted me.

"We used to joke about it, while I was blocking out the
program, about the power I had over the little sidewalk
tellers: how I could make them spit twenty-dollar bills all
over Oakland at exactly twelve noon some Saturday.

"Now the federal insurance agency would rise or fall
by my design. How a wrong branch would send bureau-
crats out of tenth-floor windows.

"I felt like really hot stuff," she whispered. "It was a
great couple months." Liz took the stuff of the drape in
one hand. She leaned against the wall, head drooping.

"And I designed a really good piece of software.
Nobody could have broken it. Except me."

One dark hand snaked out; Mayland Long turned on a
lamp. In the soft yellow light Liz Macnamara looked
lovely. The length of her arms and legs emphasized the
slender fragility of her body. Her hair was like a sheet of
glass, falling over her eyes. The taut, strained hands
which wrung the fabric of the drape, however, were
those of her mother, square and ordinary.

Long broke the silence. "Tell me about your father,
Miss Macnamara."

She raised her head. Blinked. "Why? I haven't seen
him in almost twenty years. It's not relevant to this."

His hands wove into their characteristic steeple pat-
tern. "I reserve the right to ask irrelevant questions.
Even impudent ones. You, of course, don't have to

answer.

"My . . . my father is named Lars. Neil Lars. I
refuse to use the name. He was a wind. Still is, probably,
if he's still alive."

"Pardon? He's a what?"

Liz gestured vaguely. "A wind. He plays winds. Flute,
mainly, but also piccolo, some oboe, clarinet. He ran off
when I was a little kid. He's not involved in this."

"Are your parents divorced?" pressed Mr. Long
stubbornly.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        69

"Yes. Mother divorced him in absentia. Abandon-
ment. He took all her money when he left. She used to
say it was all 'gone with the wind.' "

He nodded. "That seems in character. Tell me more
Miss Mac—Elizabeth. Was your father a tall man? Fair?
Large boned?"

She nodded, mystified. "He was a huge, gorgeous
Swede. He knew it, too."

"Why has your mother never remarried?" Longs eyes
caught the light suddenly, gleaming like brass.

Liz shifted, foot to foot. "I don't know. Too busy, I
guess. I'm glad she didn't. All the men she knew were
losers, and her music is more important . . .

"Why do you ask?"

Long smiled at her confusion. "I want to know
everything about your mother. It may help us locate her.

"But I interrupted a very interesting story. You wrote
the second half of the security program and gave it to
Rasmussen."

She nodded. "Then he asked to see a listing of what I
had done for Carlo. Said he wanted to see what kind of
criticism the old fool had made.

"I wasn't supposed to have one—a printout of the
code—but I did. I kept it to spite Carlo. It was a mess;

no structure, no comments. That's not my style, but I
was being tricky when I wrote the thing, you see,
because I knew I wasn't going to get credit for it. Carlo
couldn't understand what was in it. No one could but
me, I think. But he didn't have time to write it over, so
he had to trust me that it worked."

"You are subtle," Long broke in. "And it was that
incomprehensible listing you gave to Rasmussen?"

"Yes. I told him why I did it that way. He loved the
joke. I thought. It was his idea to stick a wrench into the
program to see if anyone would notice."

"What sort of wrench?"

Liz wandered over to the couch. She plucked up a
tasseled pillow and hugged it to her. "I created a phoney
account number which bled the bank of a thousand

70        TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

dollars a month. Rasmussen said we would just sit back
and watch it get bigger and bigger until someone finally
noticed. There was no theft involved, at this point. We
didn't take the money. We just let it sit."
"And it was never noticed?"

Elizabeth raised her eyes from the pillow. "Doug
Threve noticed. He worked for data processing at North
Bay. He found the dummy account, but he's no engineer,
couldn't get toto the code to find out what was going on.
He came to see Rasmussen, and I guess Floyd let the cat

out of the bag."

"Did Threve . . . see the humor of the situation?"

Without warning the pillow went flying across the
living room. It knocked an Escher print to the floor. "Did
he? Hell! Goddamn, we were all such good friends!
Threve, Rasmussen and Macnamara. Jolly bank rob-
bers!"

She stood with her hands clenched uselessly in the air.

Her hair covered her face like a veil.
Mayland Long cleared his throat.

"Herkneth, felowes, we thre been al ones, Lat ech of
us holde up his hand til oother, And ech of us bicomen

otheres brother."

These words recalled her from the tempest of her

thoughts. "What did you say?"

"I quoted Chaucer. A bad habit, quotes."
"It sounded like Dutch." Elizabeth shuffled across the

room to the fallen picture. There followed the plink of

broken glass.

He measured her mood carefully before continuing.

"But I interrupted again. Another bad habit of mine.
Am I to assume that it was Mr. Threve's idea that you
three share the profits from this small bloodletting of
North Bay Savings? He supplied credentials for the false

account? Under whose name?"

"The name was Ima Heller." She spoke with distaste.
"Rasmussen picked it—that's his kind of humor."

"That's the name on your mailbox," commented Long.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

71

"Right. That's the name under which I bought this
condo. Out of my account at North Bay. I've been Ms.
Heller a lot, lately. Since the account is in a woman's
name, we needed a woman to make all the personal
appearances. And to take all the risks, of course, but I
didn't realize that until later.

"Can you believe I went along with that?" Her words
gritted. "A name like Ima Heller?" She stood cupping
broken glass in her two hands.

Long regarded her from behind his hands. "How can I
doubt you, when you speak with such sincerity?" He
met her angry gaze and held it, smiling.

"Well, that was only the beginning. We emptied the
account and went out on the town. Had a lot of fun. It
wasn't serious then.

"I showed Threve what changes to make in the code to
rake off more. We created phoney corporation accounts."

She approached the chair where he sat, swimming in
shadow. The jagged glass in her hands sparkled as
though she were holding diamonds. "In the past year we
have pulled out of that bank two million dollars. I never
decided to do it. I was still thinking whether it was right
or it was wrong and I had done it. I can't even tell you
why!"

"Elizabeth," said Mayland Long. "You've cut your
hand on the glass."

7

Liz Macnamara thrust one hand beneath the running
faucet. The water flowing down the drain was tinted
pink. "The letter?" she echoed. "I did that when things
began to go wrong, about a month ago."




72 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"How did things begin to go wrong?" Mayland Long
stood behind her in the kitchen. Absently he hefted the
bottle he had left on the table. Golden liquid swirled
about the sides. Elizabeth noticed.

"Oh! I'm sorry; I've forgotten all my manners. Can I
get you a drink?"

"That's because I came in through the window. The
formalities don't apply to visitors who come in through
the window." A smile crept across his lean features: not a
Chinese smile, but a very English smile, shy and
diffident. "I believe I would like some of your excellent
Scotch." The whiskey lapped and spattered within its
confines of glass. "Isn't it lovely?" mused Long, "like
bottled sunshine.

"And I do usually take it in a glass these days."

"Oh God, don't remind me. I might have killed you."

Long shook his head. "Not so easily as that."

She took the bottle from his hand, fetched another
glass from the cupboard, and filled it for her guest. This
homely task brought others to mind.

"What about food? It's dinner time. I've got some cold
barbequed chicken in the fridge ..." She opened the
refrigerator door. "And French bread. And cake."

"You are very kind," sighed Mr. Long. He eased
himself into a spindle-back kitchen chair and rubbed his
face with both hands. His fingertips were hidden in his
black hair. Then he sighed again and held the Scotch up
to the light in contemplation.

"This matter of the letter at the bank," he reminded
her. "When things began to go wrong ..."

The plate she lay in front of him he recognized as
Arabia china, from Finland. It was white as a northern
winter, and at its edge ran a bold blue band. Long
murmured to himself, "White plates and cups, clean
gleaming, ringed with blue." The rest of the poem
flashed unbidden through his mind, until he came upon
the lines "the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon smooth
away trouble; and the rough male kiss of blankets

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        73

. . . Sleep ..." His eyes closed against the sight of
red-stained chicken and the tawny length of bread crust.

Liz Macnamara stood attentive beside him, her own
plate in her hand. "What did you say? After you asked
me about the letter—was that Chaucer again?"

Long snapped awake. "Forgive me. No, it was Rupert
Brooke, and I wasn't aware I was speaking aloud. I want
to hear about the letter." He rubbed his fingers into his
eye sockets, as though to punish his eyes for their
treachery, and blinked a few times, focusing vaguely on
the chocolate cake that sat on a doily in the middle of the
table. Next to the cake lay an elegant, formidible knife
with a rosewood handle and a blade five inches long.

Mayland Long was very much aware of the knife. He
wondered that the young woman would trust him so
much as to leave a weapon in his reach, when not a half
hour ago she had been convinced he was an enemy. Did
she leave it there as a test, having a gun concealed on her
person? Did she assume fatalistically that if he were
going to attack her he would have brought weapons of
his own?

Long peered out of the corner of his eye at her as she
sat down: tall, hard faced, ramrod straight. Was she the
kind of cool gambler to whom the placement of a cake
and a cake knife might be a move in a game of strategy?

When she had been duped by Peccolo, she had
revenged herself quite creditably; the professor was still
stinging from that. Long knew from personal experi-
ence. Yet within a year of that episode, she had allowed
herself to be manipulated and badly used by Rasmussen.
A smile twitched across Long's features. He saw Liz
Macnamara as an eaglet, its first pinfeathers protruding
through the coat of down. She was half pathetic, half
dangerous, awkward and breakable at this stage in her
life but promising power to come. That was, of course, if
she survived.

And her survival had become Long's responsibility,
somehow. He watched her and wondered what it would
be like to be the father of a child.

74 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

She began to speak. "There's going to be an audit.
Next week. Threve got scared. I don't know why; he'd
been telling me all along that he could keep us bullet-
proof.

"Anyway, instead of laying low, they started tapping
the bank really heavily. No more individual withdrawals.
It was all dipping into the corporation accounts. Hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars at a time. And daily.

"I complained. I said they were making sure we
couldn't survive the audit. And Rasmussen said then I
ought to keep my mouth shut, because my part was
done. Ima Heller wasn't necessary any more.

"And he said it wasn't any fun having a nagging broad
around." She finished the sentence in steely composure.
The chicken wing in her hand snapped in two. "Floyds
always been a walking pork roast!"

Immediately she shot a guilty look at Long. "I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to offend you."

"Why would I be offended?" he replied. "I too have
noticed the porcine element in Mr. Rasmussen's phys-
iognamy. And character. On top of that he has an
unpleasant laugh. Pray continue."

"Well, I wrote this letter and left it in my safe deposit
box. Explaining all I've told you. I gave the key to Ellie
Haig, of Surber and Haig. She's my lawyer. I call her
every Monday, to check in. If I should miss a call she
opens the box, where I left the letter in an envelope
addressed to the police."

"I see. And you told Rasmussen about it."

"It was my trump card. I thought he couldn't touch me
as long as I had that letter."

Long nodded. He tore a sheet from the roll of towels
and fingered it absently. "It seems a sound idea. Why did
you feel it necessary to call your mother?"

"I was frightened!" She shuddered. "As soon as I
mentioned the letter, Threve got . . . ugly."

Neat black eyebrows shot up. "You could have simply
left town."

"And wound up in prison, as soon as they audit the

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        75

bank. I'm the obvious suspect. I mean, as soon as the
police squeezed Carlo, he would squeak. Then it would
all be over for me. Not Doug or Floyd, just me.

"Oh, I should have gone to the police myself, I know.
Confessed the whole thing," she said in a rush. "But I
kept hoping I would find a way to make it right, first. I
haven't spent that much of the money, you see—not like
Floyd, who bought a yacht, or Doug with his Cessna and
constant partying—and by working a few years I could
make it up.

"I'm afraid of going to prison."

"You don't sound like a person who is afraid," remark-
ed Long.

Stern blue eyes met his. "I know. I don't know how to
show I'm afraid. Never have. I can be scared green about
something—like now—and I come across as pissed off."

Liz scowled, tearing skin from the bone of the
wing. "Sorry if my language bothers you. I can't think
straight."

"No sort of language bothers me," he answered,
"unless it's dull. But you looked quite frightened. Miss
Macnamara, the first time I saw you."

"In the kitchen? Well you spooked the sh—you really
startled me, there."

"No. I first saw you outside Rasmussen's office, about
an hour ago. I followed you home."

She stared a moment. "What were you doing at
RasTech?"

His answer came slowly, as finger by finger, he
toweled the grease from his hands. "I was standing in the
shrubbery, waiting for events. I expected the evening
would produce Floyd Rasmussen. Instead, it has pro-
duced you. That was a change for the better, Elizabeth."

"Liz. And if I looked bad, the reason was that Floyd
had just told me Threve had picked up my mother, and if
I didn't go with him to the bank tomorrow morn-


ing

Liz paused and took a deep breath. Her hands

76 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

clenched together, blotched salmon and white. "They'd
kill her."

Long's brown face remained impassive. He looked
down at the remains of the meal. "Tomorrow morning,"
he said, and sighed. "I didn't know we had so little time.

"How did you think your mother's presence would
neutralize a major felony, not to mention two major
felons?" His words were mild—merely curious, and he
did not look at Liz Macnamara as he spoke.

"If you knew my mother you wouldn't ask that
question. But I didn't expect her to ... neutralize the
crime. I just wanted her to know all about it before I
gave up and went to the police. I knew she'd stand by
me. At first I was going to fly to New York and talk to her,
but I had a hunch that my leaving town would put the
wind up Floyd and Doug, and they'd be gone when I
went to the police. That would have taken a lot of the
impact out of a voluntary confession, you see. If it was
found that my partners had already run out on me." The
young woman shivered. "When I called Mother last
week I didn't know what—monsters—those two were."

"Not monsters, Elizabeth," he murmured. "Merely
thugs."

"Anyway, I decided that if I were going to dump the
bad news on Mother, I'd treat her as well as I could in
the process. It was kind of silly, really, because my
mother doesn't care whether she sleeps on satin pillows
or gunny sacks. Maybe I did it for my own sake, to salve
my conscience, but I sent Mother two thousand dollars
and told her to fly out first class. I made a week's
reservation at the fanciest hotel I could find. In the City,
I mean, not down here. I didn't want her too close to
Floyd or Doug. I told her that I had to talk to her. I
didn't tell her I was afraid."

"You didn't have to," said Mayland Long. The gen-
tleness of his words caught her attention and she stared
at him.

Food and drink had worked their magic on Mr. Long.
His face flushed gold. His eyes glistened with lights of

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        77

the same color. His left hand arced out in an involuted
gesture, as though he followed threads in a tapestry only
he could see. She followed his motion.

"Your mother can read signs in the air," he said. "The
winds talk to her. She knew there was something very
wrong with you and that is why she ... let me help
her find you." He let his gesture hang in the air. His eyes
saw memories: a blue dress, a blue eye.

Liz Macnamara's eyes perceived an odd and unexpect-
ed beauty in the man's words and in the man. She
blinked away the tears that terror alone had not brought
forth.

He rose with boneless grace. His eyes were narrowed.
He was thinking, Liz Macnamara stared up at him.
"Where did she find you?"

"On a shelf," he answered, preoccupied. "I owe my
involvement in your trouble to that gift you sent
Marth—your mother."

She shook her head, not comprehending how a few
thousand dollars could command the man before her.
"Just get Mother away from those two and I'll work the
rest of my life to pay you. I'll give anything. Do
anything."

He became aware she was speaking. His gold eyes
searched her face, puzzled, not following her words. A
huge yawn caught him unaware. He shot a glare at the
bottle, and he leaned one elbow on the refrigerator door.

"All I need," he said, "is a dark corner. And I only
need it for a few hours."

"You need what? Why?"

He yawned again. "Because I'm tired. Too tired to
think properly. It has taken a number of days to find you,
Elizabeth, and I haven't slept much in that time.

"I have work to do tonight. It is a task important to our
purpose, and best accomplished after nightfall. Between
then and now . . ."He stepped forward, resting his
hand on the back other chair, "I must sleep. And since I
haven't the time to drive to my rooms in San Francisco, I
am asking you to put up with me."

78 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"Of course." Liz Macnamara pushed herself away from
the table. "But not in a corner. Please. Give me a minute
to straighten up the bedroom." Dropping a rumpled
paper towel into the wastebasket, she left the room.

He stared at the bed in horrified fascination. "I ...
I have heard of them, of course, but ..."

Elizabeth dropped a hand to the undulating mattress,
as though quieting a huge beast. "It's just a waterbed. It's
really comfortable. Not cold at all." Seeing his expres-
sion unchanged, she half-smiled. "Don't be afraid." She
left him, closing the door behind her.

He was dubious but also very weary. Mr. Long
undressed, folded his clothes, and gave himself to the
embrace of the waves.

Liz spent the next two hours seated at the kitchen
table. Her mind raced wildly, without traction. At nine
she cracked the bedroom door to wake Mr. Long. The
vertical thread of light happened to fall over the form on
the sheets. He was bronze, like a statue, and his skin
appeared as tight to the body and as hard as the finish of
a bronze statue. He lay sprawled with the dramatic
indifference of a statue, also. One arm was tossed up in
line with the lean torso, and the back-tilted head
repeated the angle. The other arm, the left arm, was
flung outward, and the fingers grasped air. There was
passion in the pose: passion and a quality of abandon-
ment quite foreign to the presence who had shared her
meager dinner.

And it was this attitude, more than the fact that the
sleeper had thrown off the sheet and lay naked in the
light, which impelled Liz Macnamara to close the door
again and knock.

"Thank you," Mr. Long said, stepping out of the door
fully clothed. "I'm surprised. I didn't really expect to fall
asleep on that contrivance."

He glanced behind him at the digital clock, which
shone its red numbers silently beside the bed. He felt in

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        79

his pocket for keys. "Please do me one more favor. I
need addresses for both Rasmussen and Threve."

Her first attempt at a reply choked her. "Do you need
to see them? Tonight?"

"I do. But it is not necessary for either of the
gentlemen to see me. I want someone to lead me to your
mother. Miss Macnamara. It has to be tonight."

She took a step forwards. "I'll come too."

Long frowned. "It has taken me three days to find you,
Elizabeth. If I lose you again ..."

"You won't. I want to go with you. I can't take sitting
here alone." She was two inches taller than Long. Her
frosty eyes bore a challenge. "Why should you go out
and I stay here?"

"I think it likely Rasmussen or Threve will call to
check up on you tonight. If you are not home they may
think you have abandoned your mother and run off. Or
they may believe you are out to work them mischief, as
indeed you would be. Either way I think they will react
by killing their hostage."

Liz's teeth ground together, but she made no answer.
Instead she blundered about in a desk drawer for paper
and pencil.

As she wrote she was speaking. "There. Rasmussen
lives in Santa Clara. Big house: he used to be married.
Threve has an apartment. I drew maps."

He took the paper and looked at it for twenty seconds.
Then he put it down. "Burn this," he dictated. "And
close your address book. Under no circumstances must
your colleagues find out you've seen me."

Liz Macnamara was staring at Long's shirt. Her eyes
held sudden doubt. "You're going burgling like that?"

His left eyebrow rose. "What exactly do you mean,
Elizabeth, 'like that?' "

"That shirt almost glows in the dark."

Inspiration hit Liz Macnamara. Inspiration and the
memory of a very thin dark body on the bed. "Wait
here," she commanded. "Don't go away."

She returned in two minutes, to find Mr. Long sitting

80 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

obediently where she had left him. Instead of jeans she
was wearing a mint green satin dressing gown. Green
was a color that suited her very well.

She carried a bundle. "Here," she announced. "These
are . . . more appropriate, I think. The sweatshirt is
gray, and blue jeans don't stand out in the dark."

He rose and said "No." He said it with great authority.

"Yes. It's my mother," she replied.

His face was unyielding.

"What if you have to climb a fence? What if you have
to run? If Throve or Rasmussen catch up with you and
shoot you, or hit you on the head or something—well
that's a pretty high price for both of us to pay for your
vanity."

"Vanity?" echoed Long. His eyes flashed yellow.

"Vanity," she insisted, as the clothes slipped from her
arms and tumbled to the floor. "Please. For my mother's
sake."

Mayland Long folded before the urgency in her voice.
"You are so much like your mother," he sighed, stooping
to retrieve the outfit. "And I ... I am not at all what I
was at the beginning of the week.

"They will not fit," he predicted, as he vanished again
into the bedroom.

"They do fit," she crowed in triumph.

"I admit it," replied Long. He was a very different
seeming man, in faded jeans and a sweatshirt.

He did not look so old, since age generally follows on
tailoring. He did not look so terribly well bred, since
class follows the same rules. Most obviously, he did not
look half as self-satisfied as he had before.

His left hand pulled at his right sleeve, which was too
short for his arms.

"I think you look fine!" she stated, surveying all she
had done to Mr. Long. "And now there's nothing white
about you.

"Oh! I'm sorry."

He laughed. His teeth denied her words. "What

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        81

would you have done had I had the coloring of Mr.
Rasmussen?

"Or your own fairness," he added, his gaze halted on
the young woman's face.

"Shoe polish," she replied, smiling for the first time
since he had met her.

He transferred his wallet to his jeans pocket. "Ah!
While I remember, Elizabeth."

"Liz."

"Liz. Yes. You are supposed to surrender that letter
tomorrow. Don't. Create a copy and give Rasmussen
that."

"That can't work. I thought of it already Rasmussen
knows I wrote the letter on an 8080 text processor at
RasTech. I can't get back to copy it without being seen."

He was stopped by this, and stood motionless for half a
minute. "Then I have to return by dawn tomorrow. If I
haven't found your mother yet, I'll have a copy of that
letter for you to surrender."

"How will you do that?"

"I'll print one," he replied confidently.

"You . . . know how to use the system?"

His gesture was reassuring. "That's no problem. But if
dawn comes and I fail to show ..."

"No!" she cried out. Then she spoke more reasonably.
"What do I do if you fail to show?"

"Go to the police."

"But they'll kill her! Threve said if the police showed
up anywhere around ..." She put her hand to her
mouth and bit down, so that she would not start shaking
again.

Mayland Long stepped closer. One hand against her
yellow hair pulled her head gently to his shoulder. He
could feel her body tremble. Slowly and clearly he
whispered in her ear. "Elizabeth, these men intend to
kill your mother. Only if there is no one left alive who
knows, can they escape suspicion."

The trembling died away. She mumbled something
that was lost into the fabric of Long's shirt.

82

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"I didn't hear that," he whispered, suddenly conscious
of her hair against his face and her warm, moist breath

on his neck.

Liz Macnamara took one step back and stood alone. "I
said I know. They intend to kill mother as soon as they
can kill me. And they'll do that as soon as they have the
letter. I'm not even sure she's alive now. I asked to hear
her voice and Floyd said later."

"She's alive," said Long. "I'm sure of it."
She didn't ask him to explain his certainty. "But what
shall I do till you come back? To help, I mean."

He smiled. "Sleep, if you can. If not, then drink
Scotch. Or pray. Survive in your own way; I can't know

what's best for you, Elizabeth.

"Til morning," he concluded, bowing slightly. He
flicked off the light and pulled wide the courtyard
window. Cold mist from the fountain blew in with the
breeze. There was no sound from the gulls asleep in the
grass.

8

Martha Macnamara awoke with a miserable aching
nose. It felt as though it had been stuffed for two weeks
straight. Her hands were cramped; she must have been
lying on them. There was something else bothering her
as well; it took her a few confused minutes to figure out

what that was.

"Oh!" she cried out. "I have to go to the bathroom."
She opened her eyes, and the results were so unpleasant
she closed them again. The ceiling had looked so ugly,
and it swept by with unsettling speed. The spinning
ceiling was mere dizziness, of course, like the time she




TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

83

had had her wisdom teeth pulled. And the ugliness
must be a result of nausea; dizziness and nausea always
went together.

But why was she nauseated? Why dizzy? And why
couldn't she place that ceiling she had glimpsed, with its
acoustic tile and round fluorescent lights?

Where was she? Where should she be?

Not at home; her own ceiling was plastered, with a
crack through it like a lightning bolt, and the fixtures
wore white paper lanterns. Besides, Martha knew she
was not at home; she was staying at the James Herald
Hotel. Which did not look anything like this. Those
ceilings were arched, and the picture moldings were
impressively Corinthean.

She felt so awful that maybe she was in a hospital. Yes.
She had passed out on the street. Someone in a black car
had spoken her name . . .

And now she just had to go to the bathroom, dizzy or
not. She pulled her eyes open.

How very odd. She was stretched out flat on a table.
Brightly colored lengths of wire were wrapped around
her wrists, tying them together in front of her.

"Out that door and to the left," said a voice. She
searched for the speaker.

He sat sprawled in a white director's chair, amidst a
clutter of magazines. He was a small man whose dark
hair was carefully slicked back and curled about the ears.
He wore a wine-red shirt which hung open, revealing a
gold medallion. His belt was wide and black, his trousers
white. His voice matched his appearance perfectly.

Martha tried to sit up; it was a hopeless effort.

"I can't do anything without my hands."

He stared insolently and flung another magazine to
the floor. He lounged across the barren room toward her.
In his hands were black steel dikes, he snipped through
the skinny windings on her wrists.

"Try to run and I'll break your leg," he said, as she
slipped off the wooden table. "There's nowhere to go,
anyway."

84

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

He was quite correct. The tall, barnlike room had no
windows and only two doors. One of the two was green
metal. It had a key lock and a hole beneath where the
doorknob had once been. The other door stood open,
and as Martha passed through it, leaning on the doorsill
for support in her vertigo, she saw that it led through a
short hall to two other doors. One of them was identical
to the door in the large room, except that it had a knob
on it. The other door was wood.

She turned the knob on the green door. It was locked.
"Other door," came the voice behind her. It was a nasty
voice, the sort of voice which might make a child cry,
hearing it say "other door" in that sneering fashion. It
was the sort of voice that would want to. Martha turned
and passed through the wooden door.

"You are very mistaken in this," repeated Martha. "No
one I know has more than four hundred dollars in the
bank."

"The less I hafta say, the better off you'll be,"
grumbled her captor, as he rummaged around on the
floor. He had leafed through all his magazines while his
prisoner was unconscious, not reading them, but reading
the captions on all the pictures and spoiling the interest
of them, and so now had nothing to read.

"You've said that twice in the last hour, and you must
know by now it doesn't shut me up."

He raised his eyes. "Less you say, happier I'll be," he
added.

Mrs. Macnamara sat only a few feet from his chair. A
small pile of discarded magazines kept her from the chill
of the floor. Her feet were folded on her thighs in the full
lotus posture. She had spent a large part of the day in
this position, and now daylight was fading from the crack
beneath the green door. Had it been just one day since
the trip to the Valley and the lunch in the tea shop with
Mayland Long?

She remembered the car, and how a man had leaned
out, smiling, and taken her hand. She remembered the

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

85

open door. The yank on her arm. The hankie with its
operating-room stink.

That was how she got her nose burned, she decided.
Ether, or chloroform, or whatever.

Had no one seen this? Where was Mayland? He'd
been right beside her. He just found that flower, and
given it to her. So very romantic, but silly, too, in his
dignified, almost pedantic manner. Had they snatched
him too? Had they killed him? The thought was unbear-
able.

And what about Liz? A spasm of fear nearly cut off
Mrs. Macnamara's breathing. Liz was the hub around
which all this mystery revolved. Though Martha Mac-
namara pleaded ignorance of the affair, pretending to
assume she was being held for ransom, she knew that
her capture was tied in with her daughter's trouble. Oh
Liz, Liz! What had she done to herself?

And what a silly grief it would be to her to find that her
mother was kidnapped, just because she had called her
for help. Or that her mother was dead.

The floor glinted with brass snippets. Huge soft dust
kitties rolled ponderously whenever the man threw a
magazine.

Except for the table on which Martha had awakened, a
dirty white refrigerator, and the director's chair—also
white, also dirty—the room was empty. No sound leaked
in from the outside world.

Martha felt despair well up from her chest to her
throat. She let it sit there, paying attention to her
breathing instead.

The first drops of rain spattered against the wind-
shield. Long had been expecting them since the wind
turned from the north. The wet air summoned a host of
visions to his mind—the bare, black cliffs in the rocks
above Taipei. Old eyes filmed with blue, and a mouth of
bad teeth, rudely laughing. Laughing at him, while the
rain came down. He shook his head against these
inchoate memories.

86

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

The freeway was quiet, at 9:45 on this Thursday
evening, but it was treacherous with the first rain of the
season. He kept the speedometer hovering around
seventy-five. The neon signs of bars and cheap motels
sparkled by, diffracted in each clinging drop.

He believed that Martha was not dead. He believed
this strongly, but it gave him no feeling of security,
because it was a belief not under his control. If suddenly
that belief went out, like a candle—a candle in the

rain . . .

He hit a pothole, skidded across the lane and re-
covered automatically. His conviction that Martha was
alive was not a feeling like his anger, which he could test
and find durable. It was rather a gift from outside, and
Long had never trusted gifts.

Pink billows of oleander filled the median strip. Long's
thoughts drifted to Liz Macnamara. He relived his
interview with her: her courage and her terror, her
sudden shifts of mood, the remarkable concessions he
had found himself making to her.

She was like her mother, yes, but much stormier. And
at the same time, more fragile. He remembered her
head on his shoulder, her hair against his face. He was
disturbed, not by the incident, but by his reaction to it.

But mankind had always been like that, turned off its
course by a step, by the turn of a mouth, by a covert
glance, or scented hair. Should he be any different? His
teeth ground together as he considered; was he any
different? He was alone with the hiss of Wet tires on wet

concrete.

He turned off both engine and lights on Dover Park
Avenue, and he coasted to a stop by the curb.

The world was gray and insular, filled with rain. His
excellent hearing listened for more. He heard tele-
visions. The thin voice of public entertainment floated
from house after house as he walked. The same two
speakers, repeated endlessly. No conversation. No mu-
sic.

Rain beaded on his heavy black hair and in his

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        87

eyelashes. It was not so bad to be wet, while the weather
was warm.

Rasmussen's neighborhood was new; it lacked street-
lights. Mr. Long passed down the street invisibly, the
sound of his footsteps swallowed by the rain.

The house took shape from the grayness. It sprawled
on a low hill, set on a corner a little apart from its
neighbors. A board set on a spike by the street an-
nounced the address.

The sloping yard had been sodded quite recently. The
scars between the strips had not healed; they bled red
clay. No garden, outcrop nor tree interfered with the
sweep of lawn to the house. The doorway was flat against
the wall of the house, and that wall itself was white
stucco. The windows were dim, but somewhere within
the shell of the house at least one light was lit. Gazing
along the prospect of the sidewalk, his sigh melted into
that of the rain.

The back of the house was much like the front, except
that from there the light was brighter.

Mayland Long squatted down, resting his palms on
the glistening sidewalk. For thirty seconds he tested the
silence. Then he stepped onto the grass.

The thick plush of root and blade was reassuring,
almost intoxicating to his hands as he half-crawled up the
slope toward the house. Fearing his silhouette against
the bright wall he lowered himself flat upon the grass
and began a slow circuit of the house.

The wall he had approached was broken by five
windows. The middle one was frosted glass: obviously
the bathroom. Three of the others were tall framed and
clear. Bedrooms? The one at the rear of the house
emitted a faint yellow glow. It was wider than the rest.
He guessed it to be the kitchen.

This wall faced a side street, and beyond, a low growth
of scrub which had stolen back land the builders had
ravaged and left. He stood, peering through the rain-
runneled glass of the rightmost window.

It was a bedroom, but unused by the look of it. The

88

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

mattress on its Harvard frame lay gleaming in the night.
A small bureau stood against the far wall. No mirror.
Once it had been a boy's room, perhaps.

The window frame was new, and bore a bolt lock. He
looked beyond the window and through the room, to
where a door stood open, revealing a hall with staircase.
Across the hall from the bedroom door was the living
room. He caught his breath with a small, satisfied sound.
On the far side of the parlor, against the opposite wall of
the house, stood a pair of french doors.

He dropped once more to the ground and began to
crawl toward these.

Beneath the kitchen window he paused to listen.
There was no television to be heard. No movement at
all. A cat murred once. perhaps next door.

When he came to the patio which opened out from the
french doors he took off his shoes, and wiped the mud
from his hands onto the grass. Neither the knees of his
jeans nor the front of his sweatshirt had gotten muddy.

He stood at last, examining the parlor from around the
edges of bright print curtains. The furniture was all a set:

of pine, heavy and crude. Some pieces of it still wore
strips of bark. The head of a deer hung on the left hand
wall, its idiot gaze fixed on the stones of the fireplace.
Beneath it stood a spindle-sided magazine rack, empty.

The door was locked with a bolt like that on the
bedroom window. But the door was made of small panes
of glass held in place by wooden mullions. With his
fingertips he peeled one of these strips away, and then
another. After the third minton was removed, a rectan-
gle of glass slipped into his hand. He reached in and slid
back the bolt.

He stood dripping in the silent room. It was warm in
the house, and as he ran his hand through his head,
releasing a spatter of drops, he realized that his few
hours sleep had not sufficed. He was still weary.

And he had so much to do. Since it seemed Rasmus-
sen was not receiving this evening, he had to gain what
information he could from the house itself. He needed to

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        89

find the address of the place where Martha was being
held. He needed to find it tonight, before Throve and
Rasmussen got their hands on what they thought was
Liz's letter, and both women's lives became superfluous
to their plans.

If he could not find the information here, then he must
go to Threves apartment and try again. But that would
require time and risk. He felt pressured on both counts.

He began with the room he was in, working with
quick eyes in the dimness. The barbaric furniture held
few drawers or hiding places. The mantel was bare.
Rasmussen's house seemed much neater than his office.
Perhaps the man had a housekeeper.

A sharp hiss announced that he was not alone in the
room. He swiveled from the waist, very fast, to confront
the outrage of a startled white cat, which stood frozen on
the stairs, tail stiff and bristling. It snarled at the intruder
and lifted one snowy forepaw, displaying its armament.

For an instant cat and man faced one another, the lean
rigidity in the posture of the one reflected in that of the
other. Then the man relaxed. He sank down on one knee
and averted his eyes. A throaty trilling filled the room: a
soft, comfortable cat-sound.

The thrashing of the cat's tail subsided. Pink-rimmed
ears unfolded. The white cat stalked closer.

Long centered his small noise deeper in his throat. It
became a purr. It ceased. As the cat reached him, he
extended his hand—felt it butted by the blunt, white
skull.

"I have no argument with you, little warrior," he
whispered, as brown eyes lost themselves in green.

At that moment the room was blasted with light. The
white cat leaped straight into the air as Mayland Long
spun about and froze, staring straight down the barrel of
a twenty-two rifle. It might have been the cat that
hissed.

Martha wanted to ask the fellow about Mr. Long, but
it was possible the kidnapper hadn't noticed Long, and

90

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

any mention of her companion might imperil him. Liz,
she assumed, was already neck-deep in this.

The man in the red shirt was peering into the ancient
refrigerator that stood against one wall. Martha noticed
he had a dust mark on the seat of his white trousers
shaped like an upside-down heart. There was a rattle of
beer cans.

She realized she was very thirsty. "Can I have a beer?"

she asked.

"No," he said, surly. He didn't look at her.

This small nastiness roused her. "Why the hell not?
You've got a whole six pack."

"They're mine. I don't want to waste them."

Hearing these words, Martha felt a cold certainty that
the little man intended to kill her.

She was afraid of dying. She believed anyone who
claimed not to be was either a liar or had never been
close to death. But her fear was of manageable size; she
could endure it.

If Liz were to die, however, at the age of twenty-four,
bright and strong, having known so much hardship and
so little fun in her short life . . . Martha knew that she
herself was being kept prisoner as bait in some sort of
trap for her daughter. She refused to be so used. She
would die first. Or kill.

Settling again into the lotus pose, her bound hands
resting on her lap, she stared about her at the dirty,
depressing room, empty as a dry skull. The little
kidnapper returned to his chair, a bottle sweating in his
hand. He belched loudly.

It was hard to believe that just yesterday (or was it
now the day before?) she had sat across the table from
Mayland Long, the two of them pretending that the
world was essentially civilized and had been created for
the sake of play. Theirs had been expensive play, too.
She recalled the dazzling chandeliers of the James
Herald Hotel. She recalled Mayland Long's strange,
mutable eyes.

Better to die tonight, having known him, than to have




TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

91

died alone last week in New York, in the August stink
and heat.

And even if she died tonight. Even if he were already
dead . . . the fact that he had lived and been who he
was: elegant, diffident, kindly, with his funny hands and
gorgeous rich voice. That meant something. That they
had met meant something, too: dying now could not
erase that.

Martha's thoughts sank to the bottom of her mind,
leaving it attentive and quiet. The kidnapper stared at
her with distrust upon his features. Her stillness fright-
ened him.

9

"Why, it's Mr. Long," boomed Rasmussen, smiling
hugely. "What a surprise! And looking like something
the cat dragged in."

He received no answer. "Couldn't you guess I'd have
an alarm system rigged up in this house?"

Long was a moment in replying. "I didn't take that
into consideration, Mr. Rasmussen. I confess I've under-
estimated you." Wet, ill-dressed and pretematurally
calm, he regarded the threatening gun.

"May I stand up?"

The big blond stared over the scope sight. At a range
of ten feet, the sight was more of a hindrance than a
help.

"Why not?" He moved back a few steps, to prevent
Long from slipping in beside the gunbarrel. "And then
you can tell me what you're doing in my house. Besides
breaking the law, of course."

Mr. Long climbed to his feet. His movements reflect-

92        TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

ed the stifihess of age. "We both know very well," he
began, "that I am looking for Elizabeth Macnamara."

"I told you yesterday I don't know where she is."
Rasmussen's voice sharpened.

Long's remained quiet. "Obviously I did not believe

you yesterday."

The rifle moved a bit, as Rasmussen perfected his aim.
Through an effort of will. Long kept his eyes not on the
trigger, but on Rasmussen's ruddy face.

"Obviously." Rasmussen was silent for a moment as he
considered the situation. Then the mask of amiability
disappeared from his face. Long saw and understood.

"Whatever pay you got, buddy, it wasn't enough,"

muttered the blond.

"Did you call the police when the alarm sounded?"
Long stalled, shifting his weight to one foot. "Or do you
plan to present them with a fait accompli: the corpus of

one aging burgler."

The muzzle of the gun followed his movement effi-
ciently. "I haven't called yet," mumbled Rasmussen.
"Maybe I will later. I haven't decided what's the cleanest

way out of this."

Rasmussen found his grin again and put it on. "You
know, fella, you're totally in the wrong, being found in
my living room like this. In the legal sense, I mean."

Mayland Long lifted his eyebrows; his eyes were
opaque. "The legal sense? Would you care to discuss

others?"

The smile stuck to Rasmussen's face, quite irrelevant.
"You put me in this position," he growled, his full cheek
against the black metal of the rifle. "And now I have to
do this. I really hate it."

He breathed in slowly, then let half the breath out and

pulled the trigger.

The rifle coughed, but Long was not standing before
it. Rasmussen's exhalation had been as much of a signal
as the dark man needed. He moved with the abruptness
of a startled lizard, sideways, sailing three feet above the
carpet, and he vanished up the stairs.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        93

Rasmussen cursed and followed. On the landing he
hesitated, peering into the unlit reaches above. His left
hand fumbled in his trouser pocket with a clip of twenty-
two shorts.

The second floor of the house was a single large
chamber, originally an attic. At each gable end were
semicircular windows of leaded glass. The only other
openings were skylights, set high in the roof. In the
center of the floor stood a velvet couch and loveseat.
Against the wall was a heavy liquor bar of oak and brass.
Beneath the far wall, under a window gleaming red and
gold, sat an enormous pedestal bed. A comer of the
room to the right of it had been enclosed to create the
bathroom.

Long took this all in as he leaped out from the
stairwell. The bathroom was a trap: no way out. The bar
might conceal him, but its confinement would also hold
him helpless. The carpet was white plush. With the
lights on, Mr. Long would stand out like a sparrow in the
snow.

The lack of windows was the worst part of it; there was
no escape from this place. He heard Rasmussen's feet
upon the stairs.

There was a small door set into the left-hand wall. It
was less than four feet high and very narrow. He darted
toward it, pausing only to plunge his fingers into the
dryboard of the wall and yank out the light switch.

In the still darkness behind the wall he picked his way.
This triangular space had no flooring; support beams
alternated with soft, treacherous strips of insulation. He
sank again to hands and feet and crawled away from the
entrance.

The passage ended above the stairwell. It turned no
comers. There was no exit. He turned around and
waited.

Rasmussen's progress was unmistakable; Long could
hear the weight of his passing in the creak of the support
beams. He stood above the stairs, put his hand to the

94 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

wall and cursed aloud. The rifle shifted against the man's
shoulder, Rasmussen, too, began to wait.

Mr. Long was no claustrophobe. This musty hole
comforted him, and he weighed his alternatives.

Up until now his choices had been forced. He had
headed for the stairs because they were dark. Had the
rifleman been fool enough to stand closer to his intended
victim. Long would have gone for his attacker. As it was,
he had had to slink into this blind hole, lacking other
concealment.

But his enemy was at a small disadvantage, now, with
no light available except that of the drizzling heavens. If
he attempted to pursue Long behind the wall, this
disadvantage would become severe. If Rasmussen stum-
bled into the darkness, the game would belong to Long.

The biggest danger was that the man might find some
sort of light. But it was doubtful he kept a flash in the
master bedroom, and if he went downstairs to fetch one,
that would give Long valuable time.

Time not to escape this house but to change the
balance of power.

Old instincts awoke in Long's memory: old and no
longer quite familiar. He knew what it was to hunt. He
also remembered, though less well, what it was to be
hunted. His lips shrank back from his teeth.

Rasmussen put his back to the wall. He was very
close. Long, hearing the scrape of his shirt, considered
breaking through the flimsy wall. and taking Rasmussen
by the throat. He decided against this because it was
more important to question the rifleman than to kill him.

Rasmussen edged by. Eight feet from the small door
he stopped. The muted smack of a twenty-two cartridge
cut the silence. Another. Rasmussen was methodically
piercing the shadows with bullets.

One shell buried itself in the wall behind the bar. One
cracked tile. One glanced off metal and sang down the
stairway.

And then five bullets in quick succession slammed
through the flimsy panels of the little door. The smell of

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        95

powder cut into the air. Basmussen inserted a new clip.
The door was jerked open.

Standing just outside, Rasmussen shot diagonally into
the corridor, first left, then right. Long dared not move.

Then the gunman stepped off the floor, giving his
weight hesitantly to a beam.

A shot into the wall behind Long sent a shower of
' powder around his head. Rasmussen raised the barrel of
the gun above his head and brought it down on the other
side of the narrow passage. He fired and turned again.

Long moved toward him. His face was only inches
above the insulation, fine as angel hair.

This methodical attack was original and deadly. Long
had depended on fear of discovery to make his opponent
stingy with his fire. But the spit of this rifle was hardly
louder than the pre-recorded violence emitted from the
tvs along the street. It would be lost in the rain.

If this continued, he would inevitably be hit.

But there was a weakness in Rasmussens strategy; he
had to divide his time between the left and right
passage. During those moments Long crawled toward
Rasmussen.

The air sparked by his left ear. The noise of the shot
was deafening. Then Rasmussen turned and he was free
to move. The rifle swung back and Long froze again.
Twice more and he would be able to touch Rasmussen.
The bullet hit Long in the right shoulder and smashed
his collarbone. Passing through flesh it buried itself in

the wooden frame post beside him. White teeth flashed
in dumb shock.

He felt his right hand slide from its grip on wood. It
caught against splinters as it fell, and came to rest finally
in the bed of insulation. The arm was useless; it had been

taken from him and replaced with a focus of astounding
pain.

Instinct alone kept Long quiet. He shifted his weight
to the left and brought his right leg forward. He had no
choice but to attack now, before Rasmussen had time to
turn and fire again: little hope, but no choice. Long lifted

96

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

himself from the beam and stood swaying. Measuring
the distance, he crouched to spring.

But Rasmussen stood motionless, his rifle pointed at
the ceiling. His head was tilted, listening.

Long heard the noise too. It came from outside the
passage—from the bathroom. He identiBed the sound
with no trouble.

Rasmussen turned, nearly losing his footing. He
bulled his way through the narrow door. Long recog-
nized this as his moment.

He recognized it, and yet he did not attack. He tapped
his bottled anger, commanding it to flare up, heat his
nerves, impel him with the certainty of violence—the
single-souled violence of a wounded beast which fuels
ferocity with pain. -

There was no response from within. Merely the
recognition. And the pain.

It might have been the ignominy of his condition—
wet, ill from lack of sleep, dressed like a sidewalk tramp
and barefoot—which blocked his response. It might
have been the blood which even now filtered through
the gauzy fiberglass and spread a sad pink stain through
the plaster of the child's empty bedroom below. It might
have been that civilization had penetrated too deeply
into him.

It might have been that he was old.
Long slunk out from the passage behind Rasmussen
and faded down the staircase. He heard three shots, and
a high-pitched yowl cut off. He heard Rasmussen's cry of
frustration and rage. He opened the trench door quietly
and stooped for his shoes, clenching his teeth around a
groan.

He had known it was the cat.

The rain had slowed. A few stars burnt through the
cloud. Mayland Long wove into the scrub wood across
from Rasmussen's house. He put his back to a tree and
waited for Rasmussen to come out.

For nothing had been changed by this little pas de
deux. Long still had to find Martha Macnamara. Rasmus-




TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

97

sen must lead him to her. With his quarry escaped, the
man would have to move.

Liz was still safe, since Rasmussen didn't know Long
had found her. She would remain safe until the banks
opened tomorrow. Martha must be alive. He could say
no more.

Chill seeped out of the earth and air. It invaded his
anatomy. Blood and water mixed beneath the tree where
he sat.

Why had he failed himself? He felt he had reacted in a
manner alien to his own nature, and he was very familiar
with his nature; it had been with him a long time. He
ought to have taken Rasmussen as soon as the man's back
was turned. Had he killed the man it would have been
unfortunate, but understandable. That was proper be-
havior, with logic and the fire of the beast in harmony.
Instead he had run away.

Tentatively, he sorted his feelings. Was he ready to
confront Rasmussen again, if need be?

Where was his anger?

He was rewarded for his probing with cold, deadly
pain. His vision swam with meaningless stars. His ears
filled with a pounding, like surf. Mayland Long passed
out under the weeping trees.

Martha had not noticed the box before. It lay hidden
amid a pile of trash the small man had accumulated
during the day: candy wrappers, soda cans, broken
cigarettes. He pulled it out now, brushing the ash from
the black plastic grill on the top of it.

She stared grimly at the cassette recorder. She knew
what it was for and she had guessed events would come
to this.

A magazine jacket covered with print caught her
desperate eye. "Dr. Dobb'sV she chirped. "I know
someone else who reads that."

His eyes held only boredom and contempt. His fingers
fiddled with the machine. He drew the microphone out
of its compartment and plugged it in the back of the box.

98

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"Now, lady. It's time for you to talk to your daughter."

She regarded him with birdlike intensity, her blue
eyes unblinking. His own face flushed, heavy and sullen.

"Just tell her you're all right. Tell her to do what we
say." He pressed the record and play buttons.

The whirr of the moving tape was the only sound in
the room. Martha Macnamara's small mouth was pursed.
With her round face and tangled braids she was the
image of rebellion.

He stopped the tape. Smacked her backhanded across
the face. Rewound and started again.

"Talk," he grunted. She stared at nothing, across the

room.

The man hit Martha three more times. The last time
he hit her, he used his fist. "Talk!" he bellowed. His voice
cracked. The tape reached its end and the machine
snapped off.

Martha Macnamara abruptly began talking. "You
spend a lot of money on your clothes," she observed,
through cracked lips. "But you don't know how to put
them together. With white trousers you should not wear
a bright red shirt. Except in Italy, maybe ..."

His finger jabbed the rewind. He stood looking down
at his captive, grinding his teeth. He kicked her. Kicked
her again, just below the wire-bound hands.

"Ow, owww, owww!" shrieked Martha Macnamara.
"Yow Owww!" She cried out once for every kick, loudly
and with great animation. He pressed record once more,
and the tape filled with wordless howls and yelps.

The small man turned away, purple faced. He leaned
against the wall, slicking back his hair, and stood in
unconscious parody of Michelangelo's David. He did not
see Martha stagger to her feet, pluck up the recorder by
the mike cord, swing it around her head, and send it
crashing against the back of his neck.

He tottered and fell, but as the machine was made of
light plastic, he did not lose consciousness. As Martha
bent over him, scrabbling through his pockets for the

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        99

keys and dikes, his arms shot up and grabbed her by the
throat.

"I'll kill you, you Intch!" he roared. The woman's head
snapped back and forth as he shook her and squeezed.
Her face was mottled, under the bruises.

The green door suddenly opened and the small man
looked up into small eyes set in a huge head, a head gold
and spiky as .an Aztec platter.

"Jesus Christ, Threve, what'd you do that for?" gritted
Floyd Rasmussen.

10

Mayland Long woke under a cold clear sky. With an
agony of effort he pulled himself to his feet. A cautious
walk down the sidewalk in front of Rasmussen's house
told him the man had made his escape, for the lights
were all out and the french door closed once again.
Around the square where Long had removed the glass
the injured wood gleamed white.

He didn't curse himself for his body's latest failing; he
merely proceeded down the street toward his car, each
step premeditated, slowly . . .

Long felt about as sick as a man can be, still standing.
Wet cold ate into his lungs; his breath steamed. He
cradled his right arm in front of him. A dull pounding in
his ears had haunted him through .dreams into miserable
wakefulness. Its dull thunder confused him, though he
knew it was his own heartbeat.

Worse than the cold, worse than the confusion, almost
worse than the lancing pain in his shoulder was the
thirst. If he could find water, he could bear the cold and
the pain.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

100

Oily puddles in the road tempted him. Had they been
deeper he might have bent to drink from them. If he
were able to bend. The car. Was there water anywhere
in it? Perhaps in the washer reservoir.

But no. That water would be mixed with antifreeze.
Thoughtfully he regarded the dark houses he passed.
Water in the garden faucets? In the green plastic hoses
coiled in the grass? His steps slowed—stopped.

He didn't dare. If he were caught, found by some
insomniac householder, staggering bloodsoaked and fro-
zen among the dahlias, or if there were a dog . . . He
could go without water. For a little while.

The Citroen gleamed under starlight. He found his
keys, but his hand was not steady and he had difficulty
unlocking the door. He pulled it open and sank into the
tan leather seat. Wherever he touched it, the leather
darkened: brown with water, russet with blood.

In the comfort of the car he rested, until faintness rose
up from his chest to his throat and threatened to drown
him. Words echoed in his head. Tinny, removed,
without meaning . . . "In order to become what you
are not, it is necessary to go by a way in which you are

not."

Whose words? Who had said that? Long's distracted
mind pursued the question. Donne? No. Not like
Donne. They were from a poem of Eliot's. Or ...
were they the Formosan's? The old man in the rain. Rain
again . . . Whatever, they made no sense. Didn't help
at all. Never had. Words.

What would help? He needed . . . rest. There were
so many miseries, crowding him close. Pain, thirst, cold,
worry, loss. It hurt to think. It hurt to breathe.

Failure.

Suddenly it occurred to Mayland Long that he didn't
know what to do next. He couldn't remember. Staring
into the darkness, broken only by the pale arc of the
steering wheel before him, he shuddered.

It was rest he needed, he told himself. He would

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       101

regain both memory and strength if he could rest.
Where to look for it?

Long could not recall his childhood, nor any time he
was under the care of others. He had not been ill in
many years. He conjured'up a vision of his sitting room
like an animal yearning for its den, yet there was nothing
within those book-lined walls that had the power to
comfort him now. Nothing called to him but sleep.

Blankness soared toward him on owl's wings.

His eyes opened and his head jerked up. He remem-
bered his commitments. Both to Martha Macnamara and
to Elizabeth, he had made promises. Because he was
born in China, he had a great respect for promises.
Because he had always kept them. Long believed most
strongly in his own promises, and knew that a promise
he did not fulfill would fulfill itself upon him. Live or
dead, no creature might escape the unfolding of its own
actions.

He turned on the engine.

And the heat.

Elizabeth's bedroom was green. The bedside lamp
gave off a gauzy light, like filtered sunlight falling on the
forest floor. The lamp, the table beneath it, the dresser,
the standing cheval mirror—all were of golden oak. The
bedroom was just the way she wanted it. It was one of
the few things in her life that were just the way she
wanted.

She sought solace in that room, beneath the rumpled
covers of the great waterbed. As she had assured Mr.
Long, the bed was quite warm. Within her was the
additional golden warmth of Scotch. She hugged her
down pillow.

Her mind revolved endlessly on one question. How
had she gotten involved in this horror? The question had
become a ritual exercise, for she already knew the
answer: it was a union of philosophy and greed.

What made transfer of property sometimes morally
justifiable and sometimes theft? Mutuality was a good







102 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

criterion. When one took and gave nothing, that was
theft. But the bank might take one's car away, when one
was down on one's luck and needed the car most. That
was lawful behavior on the banks part, but was it morally
justifiable? And if transfer of property could be justified,
was it the idea of transfer, or of property itself which sat
at the root of the problem?

Pragmatism was a sword that cut through such knots;

an action was to be judged by its consequences alone.
Liz had been introduced to the philosophy as a penniless
freshman in college and had lived by it. There was
nothing wrong in a deed which hurt no one and did the
doer much good.

Liz's sophisticated robbery was of that kind. No one
was hurt but the federal insurance agency, and Liz's own
situation was marvelously improved. Of course, if every-
one followed her lead, the bank would break and
individuals would be hurt, but everyone was not robbing
the bank. Only Liz Macnamara was robbing the bank
and now that she was a bit older and no longer penniless,
that suited her quite well.

The problem was that Floyd Rasmussen was not a
philosopher, but a crook. He was a man of quick
changes. He loved his cat and all Disney movies. He also
shot things for fun: deer, quail, even wildcats. Floyd
turned on and off like a faucet which was levered by his
own self-interest. She had liked Floyd in the beginning,
though never quite enough to go to bed with him, as he
had wanted. Now she wanted to see him dead.

And Threve? Thinking about Threve, Liz clutched her
pillow spasmodically, hiding her face in white cotton.
Threve was the devil himself. Without Threve, Rasmus-
sen would be no threat to her, but Rasmussen himself
was afraid of Threve.

Why? He wasn't much to look at. He was much
shorter than Liz, and he dressed like a gigolo, raising
eyebrows in the expensive places where he liked to
spend his time. Being in Threve's company had been
purgatory for Liz, but she had not dared avoid him, for

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       103

fear of his temper. The three of them had been locked
together in bonds of mutual guilt, in which camraderie
soured into distrust.

She had spent much of her life in the company of
people she didn't like and wasn't able to avoid. Her
mother's friends, for example.

She remembered her early years with glass clarity.
Her father had disappeared when she was six. For years
she carried the notion—picked up God knows where,
certainly not from her mother—that he'd been taken
bodily into heaven. Mother had let her believe this; it
was only when she discovered, overhearing a phone
conversation, that he had cleaned out the savings before
he left that she realized the truth.

Then came mother's odd jobs, playing Mendelssohn
and Wagner for weddings. Cole Porter at the occasional
bar mitzvah. Night and Day, Lohingrin, Miss Otis
Regrets . . . Liz couldn't listen to any of them without
a shudder. In no sort of music could she find pleasure.

Mother had to work nights, too, playing bass at the
jazz cafe, and came home in the early morning, her
clothes smelling of smoke and beer. Sometimes, when
the babysitter didn't show, she had to go with her
mother, and curl up on the table in the pantry off the
kitchen, where the Chinese dishwasher would babble
interminably in Cantonese, in which every syllable
sounded like a threat to the child.

She held none of this against her mother. Mother had
had no choice. She had worked like a dog, with help
from no one.

The terrible, hurting love Liz felt for her mother
welled up in her until she could hardly breath. That was
why she couldn't be near Martha Macnamara: why she'd
fled the length of the country to go to college and stayed
away ever since. Mother was a noble cause continually
being lost. Liz gasped and the bed rippled under her like
a warm, maternal bosom.

Their years of life together had been marked by the
constant parade of stray people through their apartment:

104 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

fruitarians, musicologists, women with shaved heads and
men with politics. These were all friends Mother picked
up along the way, indiscriminately—or chosen according
to standards known to no one else in the world but
Mother. There was the fat woman who had told Liz to
call her Bagheera, who slept on the zabutons in the
dining room for a week every summer. There was big,
smelly piper named Hamish who insisted on making his
instrument imitate a squealing pig, thinking to amuse
the little girl. Once, half by accident, she had referred to
him as Anus, causing her mother to drop a plate of
tomato slices on the kitchen floor. The memory nudged
Liz into smiling.

The one characteristic shared by all Mothers friends
was that they were irresistably attracted to Mother. They
came for her sudden blue flashes of insight, when she
would lift her head and point, speaking a few words to
prove she did understand what the speaker had been
saying in an hours confused, monotonous monologue—
bursting the confusion with an arrow of pure good sense.

They came for the curve of her mother's neck
and her grace of movement. They came for lessons,
arrangements, transpositions, hamburgers . . . They
came with broken dreams, with fiddles unstrung, with-
out carfare home . . .

Without exception they took more than they gave, and
Mother, who was a real musician—a professional, and a
real spiritual expert—a human being, allowed them to
play their games around her as if she were blind to them.

Liz's fists balled up in anger at people.

And Stanford she had found to be filled with the same
sort of self-involved zanies. They dressed badly, their
rooms reeked of dope, and they babbled interminably.
She had found that her fellow students were friendliest
when they were about to borrow money from her. In that
freshman year she had learned to protect herself from
leeches: deadbeats, grabby dates, "friends" who only
wanted to crib her papers. She became very good at it
and soon had few friends of any sort.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       105

She'd envied the students in business administration.
They got up in the morning at reasonable hours, dressed
as well as their purses permitted, and studied with
moderate diligence, knowing it would pay them in the
end. Of course, these were a different breed, and in a
way a lesser breed, for Liz was an engineer. But she

followed the regimen as closely as her thirsty mind
permitted.

When she had money, she would be able to call
bullshit bullshit. When she had money, her mother

would have time to be a real musician again—in concert
halls instead of bars.

The contrast between the dream and reality drove a
single cry from her throat. She flung herself to her feet.

There, in front of her eyes, lay Mayland Long's
clothes, folded neatly. These were the only reassurances
she had that the strange man had really been there—was

actually out somewhere in the night trying to find her
mother.

She touched the white shirt. By the dry, smooth feel of
it, it was silk. The suit, too: raw silk, undyed. She called
an image to mind and saw him again, standing composed
and still in the doorway of the kitchen, holding the bottle
aloft, like a lantern.

His manner, too, had been dry and smooth. She had
fallen apart in front of him—a thing she had not done
before any human being since cowing to Stanford. She
had offered to give him everything she had, and had
meant it. She still meant it—money, reputation, flesh,
future—all of it would be a good trade for the life other

mother. And he had turned the conversation gently
aside.

She had the feeling that Mr. Long had refused her
merely because he had all he could want or need already.
It was all just the way he wanted it. Clothes, manner,
confidence.

Yet this was the man Martha Macnamara had hired for
a few thousand dollars. To risk his life.
Of course he liked Mother. That was clear from the

106        TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

way he spoke about her. But everyone talked that way
about Mother. Liz accepted that as her mother's due.

In the corner of her eye she saw movement—herself
in the standing mirror. She did not like her body. It was
awkward, and the bones were too big. She turned back
to the folded shirt.

It was silk. It gave her hope.

11

The small cities of the Peninsula followed one another
along the freeway. Mayland Long drove, his headlights
cutting through a fog of pain. His single useable hand
clutched the bottom of the wheel. The left arm lay limp,
the hand resting on his thigh. At a dip in the road it
shifted. This hurt so his grip on the wheel slid, and the
Citroen veered across two lanes. Fortunately, his was
the only car on the road.

The Rengstorff exit loomed ahead. He took the curve
slowly, but was forced nonetheless against the door of
the car. Wheels scraped gravel. The left side of the car
dipped as it left the pavement, but he threw himself
against the wheel and found the road again.

The Southern Pacific Railroad track rattled beneath
his wheels. Only the forgiving suspension of the Citroen
made the jolting bearable. He turned right on Universi-
ty Street and glided the car to a dark stop.

The building in which Threve lived sat amid grubby
wooden houses like a stork in a pond full of ducks. The
high-rise sparkled in the dim moonlight; its concrete
facing had been mixed with glass. It was a white,
impregnable virgin of a building, having no windows on
the ground floor.

Long skirted the ghostly walls, treading the grass of its

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

107

tiny lawn. Wearily, he leaned against the bole of a small
olive tree, his shape hidden by moonlight among silvery
leaves. He no longer felt the cold.

There were two doors set into the rear face of the
building. One of these was glass, and possessed a
splended brass lock. The other was steel, with a lock to
match. Mr. Long walked up to the glass door.

He needed his good hand, which had been supporting
his wounded left arm. He forced his left hand into his
jeans pocket.

Mr. Long knew a bit about metals. He believed he
could force the aluminum frame of the door, even if the
lock was too strong. Yet he stopped with his fingers
wrapped around the door-pull, remembering his error at
Rasmussen's house.

He investigated the other door. It smelled of garbage.
This lock could not be forced, and though the idea of
dismantling it appealed to Long's curiosity, he had
neither tools nor time.

He turned the doorknob tentatively and the door
opened. A wad of ancient gum was blocking the bolt-
hole.

He found himself in a reeking chamber full of trash.
He picked up a black plastic bag—one that upon
inspection seemed less noisome than the rest—and
proceeded through the inside door.

Threve's apartment number was 10-10. Long took the
elevator; he could not have climbed the stairs. It was
empty, and when the box stopped, he cradled the soft
package against his chest and stepped into the hall.

"Stop!" cried the voice of a woman. "Hold it!" She
wore nurse's whites. The "it" she referred to was the
elevator. Mayland Long squeezed his burden higher,
obscuring his face, and propped the door with his foot.

She had red hair. She smiled. "Thanks," she continued
in more conventional tones. "Sorry 'bout the noise. I
forget other people sleep nights." The doors closed and
the kindly face vanished into the depths.

"Do they?" whispered Mr. Long to the empty hall.

Threve's apartment was at the end of the hall. Beside




108 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

the door Long dropped the small bag of trash; its
function was fulfilled.

Speed was essential now, not stealth. Mayland Long
meant to see Mr. Throve and to be seen by him. In heat
of rage or chilly wet night, he would get answers from
the hoodlum.

The door jamb of 10-10 snapped with a single explo-
sive crack. He stepped in and pulled the door closed
behind him.

The apartment was empty. He crept from the front
room to the bedroom. He kicked open the door to the
miniscule bathroom. Nothing. Finally he entered the
kitchen, put his mouth beneath the tap and drank. He
was a long time at it.                    ~~'

Now what? Should he wait for the unpleasant Mr.
Throve to return? He could not wait long, for it was after
midnight, and there was the matter of the letter to be
accomplished. . . .

He busied himself as productively as he could,
searching through Threves belongings. Prying into the
private affairs of others had always been one of Mr..
Long's deepest interests, and now it served to distract
his mind from his body's calamity.

Under the telephone in the bedroom he found an
address book, old, spine-broken and filled with scraps of
paper. He carried it out to the front room and began
sifting through it, while listening for sounds from the
elevator.

The oldest entries, judging by the fading of the ink,
were of places in Detroit. Other cities were represented,
notably Austin, Texas and Baton Rouge. Evidently, Mr.
Throve was a traveler, and had only recently arrived in
California. That was a help, for it reduced the number of
relevant entries.

He sat upon a boxy white sofa beneath the large
window of the living room. He read by the light of the
full moon.

He placed his finger upon a promising scrap of paper,

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       109

then started at a glimpse of movement at the far end of
the room.

He stood up and walked toward a figure which walked
toward him. It was a shadowy man dressed in shapeless
clothes, one hand stuck insolently in a pocket.

The entire wall of the room was covered with mirror
panels. The image jumped and danced at the intersec-
tions of the squares. He stood respectfully in front of the
image, as though he were waiting for it to speak to him,
as though the faceless, sullen figure knew something he
did not. His right hand folded the address in two and
stuffed it away. The image then appeared with both
hands in pockets, or possibly chained behind its back. It
stood with its head down; a prisoner awaiting sentence.
This sad figure was no one he knew.

Outside the broken door his odorous camouflage was
waiting. He picked up the garbage bag and headed for
the elevator. He knew his appearance would not stand
up to much scrutiny; the rusty stains on his gray
sweatshirt covered half its surface. The shirt was stiff and
stuck to his back. He could smell the drying blood.

He was very warm, and with warmth came the desire
for sleep. This desire was mitigated by the distant white
dazzle of the moon. He heard the pounding again, but it
seemed too slow to be his heartbeat. It was too much like
the sea.

The engine turned over and the fan blasted hot air
against his face. He turned it off.

He'd been driving all day and night, it seemed. He
would need gas soon. He was losing his taste for driving.

The address in his pocket was not far: just across the
line into Sunnyvale. He drove down the empty El
Camino, straight at the moon.

The building was nothing more than a concrete shed,
surrounded by gravel. The immediate area was zoned for
industry, and was desolate by night. The words Rasmus-
sen Mas were painted in orange letters across the front
wall, but it appeared the place had passed beyond that
particular incarnation. Mallow and dock grew among the

110 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

stones of the parking lot, and the shriveled heads of
chickweed made a desolate border beneath the wall. It
seemed to be one of Rasmussen's earlier miscalcula-
tions—if in truth his bankruptcies had been accidental.

No cars were to be seen. The two doors of the building
were green steel. There were no windows.

No noise leaked out, even when he put his ear to the
metal. He sighed and leaned against the door, summon-
ing what remained of his strength.

There were tracks in the gravel, from a vehicle which
had driven right up to the door and backed away again.
No telling how long the tracks had been there.

The factory was a fortress, but Mr. Long was not
overawed by fortresses. He closed his eyes, seized the
knob, and pulled.

The knob came out in his hand, trailing its tarnished
entrails. The sliding bolt fell into the round hole the
knob had left, and the door creaked open; the deadbolt
had not been set.

He stepped into a wide empty room, lit only by the
light emanating from a gaping refrigerator. The room
held one wooden table, gouged and solder stained, a
filthy white folding chair and a litter of magazines.
Approaching closer he found in one corner more maga-
zines that had been arranged into three piles, one pile
four inches high and the other two consisting of one
Playboy and one Dr. Dobb's each, with the computer
journal on top. These three piles made a triangle
eighteen inches on a side. Next to this formation was the
sad carcass of a tape recorder, smashed. Within it he
could see a small white cassette tape. Mayland Long
would have given much to know what was on that tape.
He put it in his pocket.

Prowling the perimeter of the room, he came to the
open refrigerator. He felt within it.

The shelves were still cold. His breath drew in in a
long hiss.

Continuing his investigation, he found the bathroom

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        111

by the back door. He entered and turned on the light.
The bottom of the sink was damp.

On the bathroom wall, amid graffitti in English and
Spanish, someone had drawn a large red circle. It began
and ended at the top. It was a fat, open, hearty circle,
drawn in fresh lipstick. In Zen Buddhist tradition it
meant nothing. Literally nothing—zero, Mu, the Void.
To Mr. Long it meant quite a lot.

He staggered into the yard, scattering gravel. He
leaned his back against the door of the car. Trying to
untangle his keys from the cassette tape, he dropped
both on the roadway. He stooped for them, and found
himself on hands and knees on the concrete, overcome
by the knowledge of failure. He cried out, a thin,
wordless, wail.

Too late . . . Too slow . . . Too late . . .

Breathing raggedly, he found the keys, the tape. He
climbed to his feet and stood motionless for sixty
seconds.

He got in the car.

The knocking continued. Fred crawled out of bed,
dazed. The clock said 2:45.

This was a real bitch.

He slept in his b.v.d.'s, and wearing nothing else he
stood by the door.

"Whozat?" he croaked, his voice breaking in the
middle of the compound word.

"Frisch? Fred. It's Mayland Long. I hope you remem-
ber me."

Had Frisch forgotten the name, he could not have
forgotten the voice. He wrestled with the lock and flung
the door open. Long stepped in.

"Forgive me. I am aware of the hour. I have come
because I need your help, Fred. Both the Macnamara
women are in terrible danger, and I know no one else to
whom I can go."

Frisch blinked and stared. "You're white as a sheet,"
was all he found to say. "Sit down."

112 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"Am I?" whispered Mr. Long, obeying. "How odd. I
thought there was nothing white about me." Suddenly
he started up again. "I will ruin your upholstery."

"Too late for that," mumbled Frisch. "Years too late."
He squatted on the floor next to Long, taking the blood-
stiffened fabric in his hands.

"What in hell happened to you?"

The wounded man gently pulled the shirt out of
Frischs grip. "I've been shot in the shoulder. Please
don't."

Frisch sat back on his haunches. "You gotta go to the
hospital, man. I'll drive you."

"No. I don't have the time. Martha Macnamara has
been kidnapped by men who intend to kill her. I must
forge a letter on a RasTech text processor—an 8080—and
hand it to Elizabeth before tomorrow morning."

"You can't do anything if you bleed to death," insisted
Frisch, letting the rest of the statement slide by him. He
dropped his hands to his knees and stood up. He headed
for the bathroom.

"The bleeding has stopped, I think," replied Mr.
Long. "And I cannot use the machine at all, which is why
I came to you."

Frisch came back with a pair of shears. He knelt again
beside Long. The heavy blades sliced through the fabric
of the sweatshirt.

"I was a boy scout. Got a first aid merit badge." He cut
from the waistband to the neck while the older man
watched. Silver blades gnashed together, but slowly
their bright surfaces grew dull, as though with rust.
When Frisch began snipping through the left sleeve,
Longfiasped and swayed. Frisch apologized, but kept
cutting.

The cloth at the top of the shoulder was stuck to the
wound. Frisch cut around it, and the remains of the gray
/Sweatshirt fell to the cushions of the chair.
/   Fred Frisch whistled. "Oooh, man. You ought to see
your side."

"I can do without."

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        113

Frisch dropped his scissors on the worn carpet. "Who
shot you?"

Long leaned back. "Floyd Rasmussen. With some sort
of hunting rifle." His eyes glittered. He rubbed at them.
"I didn't know a gun could make so little noise."

Mr. Long was not really white, but he was decidedly
gray against Frischs decrepit green recliner chair. His
eyes fell shut. He heard Frisch in the distance, along
with the sound of running water.

"It is hot in here," he observed. "I imagined the rain
would cool the air."

Agony struck him in the shoulder, worse than the pain
of the bullet. Long grabbed at the source of it.

Frisch gasped and cried out. A steaming cloth
dropped onto Long's lap.

"Leggo!" cried Frisch. "Let go. Please! You're break-
ing my arm!"

Astonished, Long released him. "I'm so very sorry,"
he said. "I didn't know what you were doing."

The young blond flexed his fingers doubtfully. "Good
God, Mr. Long. Where did you develop a grip like
that?"

"I didn't develop it. Holding on comes naturally to
me." He tried to smile. "But I won't do it again, I
promise."

Frisch soaked the cloth again. "It's going to hurt just as
bad," he warned his patient. He lowered the washcloth
onto the filthy wound.

As he had promised. Long did not attack Frisch. He
passed out.

12

Fred continued soaking the wound in warm water
laced with Betadine. At length the mangled scrap of
fabric came off. The exit hole of the bullet was black and
ragged, though it had not adhered to the shirt. He put
his hand behind Long's back and eased the man forward,
propping him with a sofa cushion.

With every unconscious twitch of his patient Fred
flinched. The tendons along his forearm still hurt when
he clenched his hand. Jeezus what kind of grip this guy
had . . . Must have been adrenaline, like with the
little kids who pull cars off their mothers ...

He ought to call the police. This guy was in no shape
to tackle anything more tonight. Kidnapping. Attempted
murder.

Maybe this Mr. Long was simply a lunatic. Maybe the
story he told Fred at the shop was sheer gas—after all,
the woman who came with him, with her ballerina hair,
the one he said was Liz Macnamaras mother, hadn't
followed the conversation. And she had seemed a bit
happy herself.

But who shoots a lunatic in the shoulder? And from
above. Top down. Was Rasmussen sitting in a tree when
he shot Mr. Long?

He did not really doubt his visitors story. He only
wished that he could. And he thought he really ought to
call the police.

What he did instead was to dribble hydrogen peroxide
into both bullet wounds. He winced as he watched the
stuff foam. Long's lips pulled back from his teeth but his
eyes did not open. He noticed the teeth—white, perfect

114

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

115

and heavily rooted. He always noticed teeth; he had
spent four years in orthodontia.

He went rummaging through the medicine cabinet.
Not finding all he wanted, he proceeded through the
kitchen drawers. Finally he raided his tool box.

The red wounds he covered with gauze pads, which
he attached by adhesive tape. The damaged arm he bent
at the elbow and lay flat against his patients stomach,
securing it with duct tape wrapped around the body

He stepped back and examined his handiwork.

Serviceable. No design award, but the guy looked
better than he had before. Except for his color, which
was bad.

With a great deal of trepidation, he bent down and
raised Mr. Long, one hand under the knees and the
other at the shoulders. The task was far easier than he'd
feared. Mr. Long was very light.

Maybe he had hollow bones. Why not? He looked
strange enough in other respects. Those hands, for
instance.

Maybe he was an extraterrestrial, passing for human.
An extraterrestrial detective. From Fomalhaut, maybe.
And Rasmussen was the most-wanted criminal in this
arm of the galaxy. He liked this idea. He could relate to it
more easily than that of someone kidnapping Liz Mac-
namara. Or was it her mother that was kidnapped?

He lowered Long to the carpet, gently. Next he
yanked all the back cushions from the couch and stuffed
them under his patient's knees. He wondered if Long
were a marathon racer and that was why he was so light
and strong. He himself jogged.

He went into his bedroom and pulled the blanket off
the bed. Kneeling beside the sick man he hesitated,
blanket in hand. He put his hand on the tight dry skin of
the man's forehead.

Jeez, he was hot . . . Really burning up. He didn't
need a blanket; he needed icepacks.

116 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

He needed a hospital. Fred wavered in indecision
while his hand—which was like all of him, rather chilly
in the air of night—moved to the back of Longs neck. He
felt tension harden the muscles before he saw the brown
eyes open.

"How did I get here?" Mr. Long inquired mildly.

"Oh. Well, you looked kinda bad, and I remembered
from boy scouts 'Face red, raise the head. Face pale,
raise the tail.' "

"A useful maxim, but inelegant," the dark man
whispered. Long looked about him, noticing the shabby
furnishings, the worn rug, the piles of incomprehensible
electronics equipment gathered in the corners of the
room like dust kitties and sharing the surface of the
single table with two pears and a loafofOrowheat Brand
bread. None of the machines seemed to be in working
order, judging by the bouquets of bell wire and brass
popping from the tops or seams, the black holes where
knobs should have been, the green boards protruding at
odd angles from the frames . . .

"What time is it?" Long asked. Among all this
mechanical litter, there was no clock to be seen.

Fred trotted into the bedroom. "Three-twenty," he
called back. When he returned to the living room Long
was standing.

"I have no more time, Fred. I thank you for what you
have done. Will you also do what I asked of you?"

Under the intensity of Long's gaze Fred was aware of
his near-nakedness. He shifted from one bare foot to the
other. "Can't we call the police?"

"When we have the letter we can call the police. The
letter may become my bargaining power with Rasmus-
sen and his colleague. I found where they were keeping
Martha Macnamara, but they had moved her before I
arrived."

"That might mean . . . that ... I mean ..."

"That she is dead? It might, but I don't think so." Long

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       117

did not explain farther. Instead he added, "I have no way
to find her. I don't believe the police would be in a better
state. Only Rasmussen or Threve can lead me to Martha
now, and I may need that letter for bait.

"If you don't want to become involved I will return to
Elizabeth's apartment and waylay the hoodlums as they
arrive."

"You will? You can barely stand up!" cried Frisch.

Mr. Long's lips parted with a trace of a smile. Frisch
glimpsed those teeth, and with a chaining of memory he
touched his aching right arm.

"Acrobatics may not be necessary," said Long. "But I
can't blame you for not wanting to ... to delve into
this affair. It is dangerous and of disputable legality. And
you have already ruined a night's sleep to help a man
who has no claim upon you ..."

"Wait a minute. I never said I didn't want to help you
with this letter business. All I'm saying is . . ." Fred
looked about him. His blond moustache whuffled with
the force of his thoughts. His hands lifted from his sides
and slapped down again, helplessly. "... is ...

"Let me get some clothes on. That's all."

"Some car!"

May land Long accepted the tribute with a nod.
"There are not many of them in California. Never until
tonight have I been so glad of the automatic transmis-
sion. " He lowered himself slowly into the drivers seat.
He was now wearing a red flannel shirt of Fred's, soft and
blouselike, which fit easily over the taped arm. The
empty sleeve was tucked into the waistband of his Levis.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

"I look like a one-armed lumberjack."

Fred had remained standing by the door, leaning into
the open window. "No way," he stated. He sought for
words to explain how very difficult it would be for Mr.
Long to look like a lumberjack. "No way," he repeated.

118 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON 119

"Maybe I better drive, huh?"

"No," said Long. The word came out sounding like the
answer to a question rather than the blunt refusal it was.
He waited for Frisch to get in.

"So tell me," urged the young man. "What's the story?
Why is Floyd Rasmussen going around kidnapping
people and zapping them with guns?"

Long told the story. He told it not from the viewpoint
of his own involvement, but chronologically, beginning
with the affair of Carlo Peccolo and Liz Macnamara and
her subsequent disillusionment, and leading up to the
finding of the smashed tape recorder and the circle on
the wall of the bathroom. He spoke so that Frisch should
know the sort of trouble he was purchasing, but in his
words the explanation became a tale of blood and
betrayal.

Frisch sat gaping when Long was done. "Jeezus. What
made Liz do such a stupid thing?"

Long grunted and licked his cracked lips. "I believe
she wanted to become a wizard. That is what she said, at
least."

"Oof!" Frisch stretched in his seat and cracked his
knuckles behind his head. "Everyone wants to be a
wizard. Every engineer, that is. Goes with unicorns and
dragons: but with technical people it's particularly wiz-
ards—a secret fantasy that lies behind all the pin
diagrams. It's really silly, don't you know? Wizards! But
engineers can be really naive about themselves; they
think because they can design a pc board and it's right
and it works, that everything they do or beheve is going
to be just that right. Better than what the nerd on the
street does or believes. That's where wizards come in.
Secret ways. Secret knowledge. Not bound by ordinary
rules. Liz is a little bit like that, isn't she?"

Long smiled ruefully. "She did want to be a wizard,"
he admitted. "So unlike her mother."

Fred nodded his understanding. "I myself try not

to ... not to take myself too seriously, you know? But
I get into it too: working at night, with all the colored
lights blinkin', and the machine responding to my
commands.

"It's all a power trip, man." Frisch settled into himself,
chewing on his moustache as the car sped on. The moon
was now directly overhead.

Long's voice broke the stillness. "I see. That explains
wizards. What about unicorns?"

This question was not easy for the engineer to answer.
"I dunno. I heard they were symbols of virginity,
hundreds of years ago. Nobody I know goes in for
virginity."

Long laughed, and bright wheels of pain formed in his
shoulder. His mind was clouding over. He sought to
keep Frisch talking. "Dragons?"

"Power." Frisch spoke with decision. "Raw power."

"Is that all?" asked Mayland Long. "Is that all there is
to dragons?"

"Isn't that enough? Terror on bat wings. Fire and cold
stone. Gold and jewels in heaps. Raw power!" He
paused for only a moment. "Watch out when you meet a
guy on a dragon trip!"

Mr. Long spared a moment from the road to glance at
Fred Frisch, who sat, hands laced behind his neck, pale
hair waving to his shoulders.

That rosy face shone like an angel's in the moonlight.
He was no more than a boy. Long felt himself buffeted by
the cruelties of time. He spoke.

"In China, it was different. I think. Chinese dragons
were not always such brutes. They lived for centuries,
and had a certain reputation for wisdom."

Frisch brought his hands down. "Didn't they eat
people?"

Long grinned. "At times. And at times people ate
dragons. Powdered dragon's blood has been known to
bring a man back from the edge of death."




120 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

Frisch looked doubtfully at Mr. Long. "Are you
. . . Chinese?" he asked.

"More or less." Long strangled a yawn, afraid how the
movement would affect his shoulder. His face was hot
and dry. His lip was bleeding.

"The Chinese imperial dragon has five toes to a foot.
All others have three or four."

"Why's that such a difference?"

"It makes it much easier for him to turn the pages of
books. To write letters to his friends," answered May-
land Long.

"Don't laugh. It is true."

To their surprise the building which housed RasTech
was lit and open. A small circle of men squatted on the
front stoop, drinking soda and tossing pennies. Long and
Frisch hesitated at the foot of the walk.

"This is an additional complication," whispered Long.

"I guess somebody in there works three shifts. 'Can't
believe it's RasTech. Those guys look like Mexicans.
Probably they do parts assembly."

"One of them is Mexican born." The sick man spoke
absently "The rest seem to be from the Central Valley,
by their accent.

"But their presence, and that of the guard in the
lobby, forces me to rethink our strategy I'd planned to
break the lock."

"Well, now we won't have to," replied Fred Frisch,
and he skipped bouyantly toward the door.

Mr. Long followed.

The guard was tan faced, portly and balding. As the
two entered he put down a Harlequin romance. Fred
was a vision of blond innocence. He sailed to a stop
before the guard and, leaned over the desk.

"I'm supposed to meet Floyd Rasmussen here," he
said. "I'm a little late."

The fat man blinked. His English was not too good.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       121

"No Mister Rasmussen here. Not in the night. Come
back tomorrow."

Fred ran his hand through his hair. "We have to boot
up the system. Comprende? Boot up the system?"

"Do you want me to translate?" murmured Long in
Fred's ear.

"No," answered Fred in the same tones. "I want him
to stay confused."

The guard cleared his throat and glanced wistfully at
his book. "Booting is not my business. Come back"
tomorrow."

"But if we don't boot the system right now, it's going to
get hot for us. Overheat. Muy caliente and a lot of
money."

The guards pudgy face creased with worry, but he
shrugged. "I cannot boot; What can I do?"

"You have the keys, I know. Let us in so we can do it."

The guard blinked resentfully. "I cannot do that," he
stated. "It is not permitted."

Fred ran both his hands through his hair and his
moustache bristled like a live thing. "Have you ever
seen a computer crash?" he demanded. "It's horrible. All
over the floor! It will put Rasmussen out of business."

Unhappily, the guard stood. He looked vaguely
around, as though the corners of the lobby could give
him some advice. He put his hand into his baggy
uniform pocket and pulled out a ring of keys.

"You come," he commanded, with great bitterness.
"When you leave, I have to search you."

"Fair enough," said Fred, as the private door opened
before them. Long withheld comment.

13

In Rasmussen's office, lit only by window light, the
model of the ship cast complex shadows on the floor.
Fred bent to marvel at the miniature while May land
Long perused the wall of yellowed comic strips, studying
the tastes of this man who had come so near to killing
him.

He liked Hagar the Horrible, evidently, and a strip
titled Garfield. Anything by Kliban. Anything with cats.

Long remembered the wretched cry of the white cat
in the bathroom. The cat had betrayed him to Rasmus-
sen—by accident, of course. He had, in turn, caused the
cat's death.

Also by accident.

Rasmussen's taste was pedestrian—nothing in the
decoration of this wall exposed the humorist as a
murderer. Rut then, Mayland Long could also laugh-^
And kill men.

He leaned against the wall, waiting for Frisch to be
done. It was hard to stand. Swallowing, too, was
becoming difficult.

"This is a beauty. You like boats?" called Fred.

"No."

The weariness expressed in a single syllable brought
the young man out of his reverie.

"Sorry," he said, peering through the dark. "I'll look
for the system now."

Mr. Long followed Fred Frisch from room to room,
searching for anything which resembled a microproces-
sor with printer connections. It was not easily found.
After a few minutes. Long realized his efforts were

122

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       123

hindering the search. He returned to the reception room
and sank into the secretary's swivel chair.

At least with the lights out one did not notice that the
walls were orange. The flat telephone console was green,
however, as was the terminal screen at the secretary's
desk. Evidently this was a "paperless" office, such as
Long had read about in the pages of EDN magazine.
That meant that all correspondence was stored on disk
and sent to the printer as copies were desired.

He tried to call Fred; his voice failed him. On the
second try he succeeded.

Frisch appeared. Long pointed to the box in front of
him. "Is this a microprocessor?"

Fred smote his forehead with the heel of his hand.
"What a jerk I am! Here I am, clawing my way through
the back labs looking for something esoteric and here it
is.

"Sure. The box is a Vector—that's 8080 all right, and
the rest of the system . . . well I don't know."

Long eased out of the chair. "I had hoped you would
know."

"Nope." Fred explored the desk with nimble fingers,
searching for the various power switches.

"Will you be able to use it?"

"Dunno that either," grunted Fred, offhand. A fan
began to whirr. After five minutes he succeeded in
lighting the screen with gibberish.

A harsh, rattling sigh reached Fred's ears. He swiv-
eled in the chair.

What he saw broke through his concentration. Long
was crouching on the carpet behind the desk. His knees
were up and his head rested between them. His usable
arm encircled his legs and his left hand hung limp,
trembling visibly.

With a squeal of chair wheels, Fred got up. He
stepped awkwardly over to Long and laid his own hand
on the glossy black hair. "Don't worry," he said. "When I

124 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

said I didn't know how, that didn't mean I couldn't learn.
I'm pretty good at this impromptu kind of thing.

"And you know what they say. 'If you know what
you're doing, it isn't research.' "

Long lifted his head. His eyes were faceted with gold.
Fred smiled.

"Ignore my noises. It's only that I'm losing my voice,"
rasped Long. Suddenly his eyebrows lifted and he
added, "Mr. Frisch, you are stuffed like a sausage full of
little sayings."

Fred laughed. "Surprise you to learn that I've read
Don Quixote, too. I always thought I'd make a good
Sancho Panza." He brushed off his knees and returned to
the console.

"Actually, I'm not entirely your typical North Califor-
nian, with head carved out of redwood burl. You know,
'Nuke the Whales' bumper sticker, doing yoga suspend-
ed in a vat of blood-temperature salts." Fred typed as he
talked, trying to establish some sort of rapport with the
green box.

"I'm not even from California. But then who is? I'm a
good half-Jewish boy from Shaker Heights, Ohio. I've
been afraid to tell my friends here, but I don't believe in
reincarnation."

Fred scowled and backed his chair away. "This isn't
working. I don't think the bootstrap is in ROM at all.
Who, this day and age, would be so clunky as to . . ."

His quick eye covered the desk, the table set against
it, the file cabinets along the wall. Finally he noticed a
box the size of a toaster covered by an embroidered cozy
which read "Bless this Mess." With a flourish he yanked
off the cover, revealing a paper-tape reader with a neat
row of spools built into the front.

"White ribbons! What a sight. Now we're cookin' with
gas." He held up to the light three of the wound tapes.
He chose the smudgiest and inserted that into the
machine, nudging on the power and the read switch.
Immediately the strip of paper tape shot through the slit

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        125

in the machine and appeared at the other side. Fred
waltzed back to the chair in time to receive the message
PANDEMANIC WORD PROCESSING SYSTEM
FILE MANAGER AND EDITOR PROGRAM v. 1.0.
Without pause words INPUT TIME AND DATE (24 HR
CLOCK) AS FOLLOWS: MM/DD/YY/.HH/MM.

Fred crowed his triumph, then settled down to
interrogate the system. After a few minutes, he turned
to find Long sprawled on the floor, asleep.

"I wish I didn't have to wake you, friend," he
muttered. "You've had just as hard a time as a man can
take. I think your line of work must be all nails and no
shoe leather. But then, that's the way it is for most
people, I guess. Too much silly work, dull or dangerous,
and not enough dough.

"I'm damn lucky for a punk kid."

Fred swiveled back to the screen. "Maybe I don't have
to wake you up, yet. Le'me see if I can find the library,
here ..." He typed a few questions and the answers
pleased him.

"I run, you know," whispered Fred to the sleeper.
"More to clear my head after work than for macho. I go
from the park by Menio City Hall down along the tracks
to Stanford. Down by the railroad bridge there's a tree
that Palo Alto was named for: 'the big stick.' Everybody
around here knows about that tree, but no one stops to
see it—at least I never see anybody there but me.

"I'm not a very type-A guy, you know? Not driven. I
stop and touch the tree everytime I go by, and if I'm
winded I give it a big sweaty hug and lean against it a
while. It's the oldest live thing around here. Must be five
hundred years."

Another flurry of key-strikes and the screen filled with
print. Fred scrolled it slowly.

"I don't have a philosophy about it, or anything like
that, but I think there's a peace around old things. You
can feel it. If you get close, you can share it."

126 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"To be old is not always a guarantee of peace,"
answered a dry, snakeskin voice behind him. Startled,
Fred spun around.

"I'm sorry. I was mostly talking to myself," he said.
Mr. Long was attempting to sit up. His face was pale and
brilliant. Fred leaned over to forestall him.

"Not yet. Give me a few more minutes. But we're in
the groove, here, so you just rest. I'll wake you if I need
you."

He returned to his work. Almost immediately he
found what he had been looking for. He cuffed the
console affectionately.

"Besides, I meant really old things—not old as a man
can get old, but old like a tree. Hundreds of years."

"I am a very old worm," sighed Mayland Long, his
fevered eyes gazing at the ceiling. "I have been search-
ing for an illusive nothing called truth. Now I think I
would settle for sleep, if I had the choice."

Fred had been following with half an ear. He worried
he would have to carry Long back to the car. "For a
worm, I'm sure you'd be positively geriatric. But forty-
five, fifty, whatever—isn't what I'd call old. And you're
perfectly welcome to catch some zees now, Mr. Long.
We're safe, and the machine is eating out of my hand."

He hit carriage return, and the discreet hiss of an ink
jet printer sounded in the comer of the office. He rose,
stretched, and cracked his knuckles.

Next to the printer stood a coffee vending machine.
Fred dug into his pocket for money. He returned to Mr.
Long with a steaming plastic cup in his hand.

"Here you go. Empty calories." He proffered the cup.
"Say. I don't know what to call you. I mean, I can call you
Mister Long all the livelong night, but it feels awkward,
not knowing the rest. Is Long your Chinese name?"

Mr. Long sat up and reached for the cup. His hand
shook as he took it. After the first sip he blinked in
surprise. "What is this?"

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        127

"Cocoa."

"Ah." Long held it in both hands. "My—Chinese
name is simply Oolong. I use a first name, which is a
Latin translation on the original. Or it was; it's been
corrupted through the years." He coughed, and choco-
late splashed on the rug. Fred steadied the cup with one
hand.

"Translation. That's interesting. What does the name
mean, then?"

Mayland Long smiled at Fred. "I hesitate to tell you,
after our conversation in the car. Oolong has two
meanings. It means a kind of tea, and it means black
dragon.

"But I assure you, Fred; I did not name myself." \

Fred hit his forehead once again. "I gotta big mouth.
Forget what I said in the car. I don't know beans about
China. Drink."

Fred tore off the listing and began to read. His interest
grew. Long stood, using the wall for support. "What is
that?"

"The letter."

The dark man walked slowly over, his brow fur-
rowed ... "I don't remember dictating it. Have I
been so ill ..."

"It was on disk," replied Fred Frisch. "She left it
sitting in the secretary's library and no one thought to
look. Not even the secretary." He handed the scroll of
paper to the other, commenting, "It's fascinating. She
names dates, places and amounts of withdrawal. She's
got an orderly mind."

Long read. He nodded in agreement.

"Liz and I were in all the same classes when we were
frosh. I had this huge crush on her," Fred blurted.

Mr. Long looked up from the page he was reading. "I
see. She didn't return the sentiment?"

"Naw. She was after bigger fish."

"She told you so?"

128 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON 129

Fred scratched his head. He blushed. "I never told
her about it. No use."

Long regarded him intently. "So that's why you agreed
to help me."

The blond youth returned the stare. "No. No, I don't
think that's why. I—I think I mean don't you think I'd do
it just because . . ."He broke off and began the ritual
of powering down the equipment.

May land Long finished the letter in silence.

The guard patted each of Frisch's pockets before
standing aside. Then he approached Long, who stared
down at the fat man from infinite heights. "Yo no tengo
nada," he said.

For five seconds they locked eyes. "Lo creo," mut-
tered the guard finally, and he ambled back to his desk
and to romance.

The sky had returned crystalline while Frisch was
working. A late night wind struck their faces and made
streamers of their steaming breaths. Mr. Long inhaled
deeply.

"I feel tremendously better, Fred. The cocoa was a
saving grace."

Fred Frisch strode ahead and reached the Citroen
before Long. He stood with legs braced in front of the
driver's door. "Let me drive."

Mr. Long shook his head. "This car is very complex."

Frisch stood firm. "Remember me? I'm the quick
study."

"Don't you trust my driving?" Long's voice was lightly
ironical.

Frisch's answer was not. "No. You're sick, and there's
enough danger in this whole business without me
worrying about going into the median strip or ending my
life plowing into the front grill of someone else's Volks-
wagon."

Long extended the keys to Frisch. "You're right, of
course." He walked around the car.

Fred Frisch felt obscurely guilty as he studied the

instrument board. The automatic hydraulic suspension
levitated the body of the car as the engine caught; Fred
had heard about the strange Citroen suspension, but this
was his first experience driving it. At least the controls
appeared familiar. He played out the clutch gently,
experimenting.

Mr. Long loosened his grip on the dash. "You are a
quick study," he commented. "I expected rather a
rougher start."

Frisch shrugged. "Where do we go now?" he asked.

"We?"

"Of course we. You don't think I can go back to sleep
after all this, do you Mister Dragon?"

Long's smile grew and deepened into laughter. "Fred!
Have you such an appetite for adventure? But I forget—
I'm talking to a young man. Let's return to your
apartment, for now. I must make a telephone call."

"To call who?"

"I will tell you when we get there."

Fred looked at the clock. "It's just after four. You say
Liz is safe until the banks open?"

"I hope so. Until Rasmussen and Threve believe they
have the incriminating letter, they dare not kill the
daughter."

"But what about . . . Mrs. Macnamara?"

Mr. Long's answer was slow in coming. "She is in
terrible danger. The only reason they have for keeping
her alive is that she can be used to pressure the
daughter. If they believe this is not necessary, or if
Martha refuses—has refused—to be so used, then they
can be expected to kill her. And after they are done with
her, they must kill her. She is a curious, sharp woman
who has probably seen at least one of them face to face.
How can they let her live?"

Fred's face clouded over, remembering the blue dress
and the graying hair, and how the little voice-operated
race car made circles on the floor. It was the sort of
happening he fostered in his shop. That's what the shop
was for: friendly computers. Friendly people.




130 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"Can't the police help?" he asked.

"How? Tell me how, Fred, and I will show up on the
precinct house doorstep with you. I cannot find Rasmus-
sen or Threve ..."

"Throve I never heard of. What does he look like?"

"Like Satan himself, I gather. Elizabeth fears him
more than she does Rasmussen. Other than that, I know
only that he is rather short and dresses loudly.

"I believe he drives a black Lincoln. At least I suspect
such a car was involved with the kidnapping, and I didn't
see it parked at RasTech. With no more information than
this, can the police find Martha Macnamara?

"That is, can they find her in time? I am sure they
would eventually turn up the body."

Frisch shuddered. "Jeez! Do you get hardened to
things like this?"

"Do I?" inquired Long. "The longer one lives, the
more one sees, it is true, but I don't feel hardened.
Quite the contrary, in my youth I was far more
. . . brutal."

"Then you're in the wrong line of work," insisted
Fred. "No offense. I think a guy who could thrive in such
a slimy world, with fraud and criminals, always a bit to
the windward of the law . . . he'd have to be kind of a
snake."

Long leaned over curiously. "What are you talking
about, Fred. Which world is this?"

"I mean the world of iue private investigator. Or
police investigator. Any detective."

"Ah." Mr. Long digested this, and began again to
laugh, ignoring the lancing pain in his shoulder, "You
believe I'm a private detective."

"You're not?" Fred's eyes darted wildly from the road
to the smiling, tired face beside him. "Then what—who
are you? How'd you get involved in this?"

Mr. Long sighed. "Starting with what I am: my field
was languages, but I am now retired. Who is equally
easy to explain. I am a friend of Martha Macnamara's.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       131

How? Easiest of all. I promised her I would find her
daughter.

"So you see. You have been aiding a bumbling
amateur to trespass and steal documents. Have you
second thoughts?"

Fred was staunch. "Jeez, no. I'm glad. I mean, there's
something seamy about carrying the banner for money.

"But, Martha. Mrs. Macnamara. I'm really sorry. She
seemed like a fine lady."

"No eulogies yet, please," growled Long. "I don't
believe her to be dead. Allow me that."

The car glided to a stop in front of Frisch's duplex. He
left it double parked. Both men got out.

Fred felt the keys of the car being pried from his hand.
Half-embarrassed at his earlier show of force, he let
them go and fumbled for his door key.

With the front door open, he turned to perceive that
Mr. Long was not with him, but was unlocking the
Citroen from the driver's side. Fred sprinted across the
lawn.

"What're you doing?" he protested. "Trying to chuck
me?"

"Yes, Fred. That is exactly it," Long admitted, gently
fending the young man off. "I had hoped you would not
be so quick."

"You can't do it. I won't let you go alone!"

Long placed his right hand on Frisch's shoulder. It was
an affectionate, avuncular gesture and Frisch found he
could not move at all. "You can hardly stop me, Fred."

Fred fought against Long's grip. Defeated, he tried
words again. "If you leave me behind, I'll call the
police."

The dark man turned his face away and the hand
slipped off. "I can't prevent that," he admitted. "Not
without harming or detaining you.

"And I won't do that." He slid into the seat.

Fred wedged himself between the door and frame.
"But you need me. There are two baddies, and you have
only one arm."

132 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"Acrobatics may not be necessary," repeated Mr.
Long.

"But they may. I may make a little bit of difference.
Maybe the difference between saving a life and . . .
and not. I may be very important." The young blond
clutched at the door. His pale hair gleamed under the
streetlight.

"You are very important, Fred," whispered Mayland
Long. "And that is why I will not take you any further
into this."

With a slow, irresistible pressure, he forced Frisch out
into the street.

14

Martha Macnamara's universe was compassed by the
groan and creak of wood, and by the chill of wet air. Had
she been able to think, her very sickness might have
convinced her she was still alive. She was denied that
comfort, being barely conscious, and her thoughts were
bound up with a rhythmic rise and sinking. The beat was
molto lento, and she should be doing something in time
with it. What?

That question gnawed at her. She tried breathing in
time with the measure—no go. You can't force your
breathing, she reminded herself. What then—sing? She
couldn't remember a song as ponderous as the rhythm
the world now kept, and she couldn't find her mouth
anyway.

Neither could she find her hands, so she couldn't play
the fiddle.

The staccato beat of footsteps superimposed itself over
the slow rocking. She attended to the footsteps. Good.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        133

Percussion rounded out the work nicely. Someone was
taking care of things.
Martha was content.

He was driving on the reserve tank. That was unfortu-
nate, but not to be helped, at this hour of the morning.
Perhaps he could siphon gas from Elizabeth Mac-
namara's car.

As he had told Fred, he was feeling much better. This
hideous night was falling behind him.

Something else, too, was falling behind: a danger or
misery he could feel but to which he could put no name.

Perhaps it was despair.

He had partially fulfilled his promises, but promises
were no longer the only things keeping him alive.

He felt the pressure of the sun's approach, as it ate up
the night to the east. In two hours it would rise over
California. The sun had always been a great source of
comfort to him.

Yet he owed his increase in strength not to the slow
roll of time, but to the spontaneous kindness of Fred
Frisch. Except for the young engineer, he would prob-
ably not have survived. He felt the wonder of that
charity shimmering within his mind.

Long could be compassionate, in his dry, reserved
fashion. He had once or twice donated his varied and
considerable strengths to the service of others. But he
had rarely been subject to the compassion of mankind.
He had rarely needed it.

And Frisch's response to a man who was almost a
stranger went beyond casual kindness. He had given up
sleep and ruined his furniture. Long injured the mans
arm, and still he continued to help him. He risked jail.
He offered to risk his life. How could Long comprehend
such kindness, let alone pay it back? Like music, Frisch's
gift to him could not be translated into terms of gain or
loss. Nor was it subject to reason. It had no meaning but
that of its own existence.

Idly, because he was a methodical creature who did

134 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

think in terms of gain and loss. Long began to tally the
losses and gains of the last few days: loss of power. Loss
of blood. Loss of new hope.

Loss of certainty.

On the credit side was only this encounter with an
absurd young man who gave up a night's rest for
Mayland Long. Who performed the onerous duties of a
nurse. Who lent him a shirt.

Who dared place his hand on Longs head, and tell
him it was all okay.

With a ledger like this, Mr. Long wondered, why did
he feel so much stronger, now, driving toward the dawn?

The Citroen darted onto the freeway and he was
pressed against the back of the seat. This was the last
short step of the nights journey—to Elizabeth Mac-
namaras apartment. It would be profoundly anticlimac-
tic if he ran out of gas.

The chill of the air prophesied fog later, but now, in
the last hours of night, the sky was sharp and clear. He
shifted in the seat, and his flannel shirt stuck to the
leather upholstery, glued with drying blood.

At least this shirt was the right color.

He left the freeway and zagged right onto Middlefield.
His arm was numb to the turn. Passing by Liz's
condominium he noticed a single light shone yellow. He
turned the corner and parked along a side street. He
wondered if the car would start again. No matter. He
would not be driving again soon.

A stone tower obscured the light of the stars. He had
parked in front of a church. He was a connoisseur of all
stone architecture, and churches in particular were his
passion, but this edifice was disappointing. It was
obviously new, and the stone was merely veneer.
TRINITY PARIS read the signboard. A pale phantom H
in the varnish at the end of the word marked where the
brass letter had been lost.

He stood on the cold grass and yawned. "De profundis
clamor ad te," he growled to the cross on the empty

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        135

tower—"Out of the depths a call to you." He was not
certain to whom he was speaking. The effort made him
cough. He moved away from the street, crossing through
the churchyard.

The direction of his progress was against the clock, or
widdershins. To cross a churchyard widdershins is not
auspicious, as he knew, but in the churchyard of Trinity
Parish no one was buried. All the ground was paved over
by concrete.

Behind the church lot stood a hedge of yew. He passed
through the omen of its furry branches and found himself
beside a noise of waters. The fountain was lit from below,
and its shower sprang up in an arcing circle to fall again
with silver lights upon the backs of sleeping seagulls.

Cold spray beaded on his face. He stepped among the
gulls, who stood on one leg or with head under wing,
and they did not stir. He circled the fountain, avoiding
light, and reached the white stone walk which wound
between the gleaming buildings. No sound came from
within the condominiums, not even the mumble of
television. He came to Liz Macnamaras residence and
stood beneath the window he had climbed through
earlier in the evening.

Had it been just this evening?

The window was still open. Good. Had Elizabeth
closed it he would not have been able to make the
ascent. Not with one arm.

Drink, sleep or pray, he had said. According to your
nature. What was Elizabeth's nature? He would discover
something of it soon.

He leaped lightly against the wall, wedging his left
foot into the crack between two foundation blocks.
Before his impetus failed he kicked upwards and
grabbed the window sill with his good hand. The off-
center support disturbed his balance and his left side
struck the wall with a dull thump. Pain tightened rather
than loosened his grip, and he swung up through the
window. He rolled head first into the room, favoring his
wounded shoulder, and came to rest flat on his back on
the plush carpet.

136

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

137

Liz Macnamara was awake. She sat curled on the sofa,
as he had seen her before, and her face was white and
frightened, again as before.

But her hands and feet were bound with tape and her
mouth covered with a length of it. The terror in her eyes
was immediate and deadly, for Floyd Rasmussen had one
hand wound into her yellow hair and a squat black pistol
pressed against the side other head. His small, colorless
eyes regarded Long. The wounded man lay still as a
bronze statue.

"You shook my conadence earlier tonight, fella,"
remarked Rasmussen. "But at this distance I think I can't
miss. Her, that is."

Long's eyes met Elizabeth's, and found within them an
endless apology.

"Why? What is the purpose of this?" asked Long. His
seemingly casual attempt to rise was checked by a
movement of the gun. "I know about your financial
enterprises, but between theft and murder there is a
certain difference . . . They are crimes of different
quality."

Rasmussen relaxed onto the couch, holding Liz's hair
in a brutal fist. "True, but that bridge has been crossed,"
he stated. "Not by me, but that doesn't matter now."

The young woman's eyes closed in sick grief. Long's
face was expressionless. "Mrs. Macnamara is dead?"

"My—partner—couldn't use her. He lost his temper."
Rasmussen's words were resentful.

"Are you sure?" pressed Long. His frown was vaguely
puzzled.

"Beat her up and throttled her," snapped Rasmussen.
"I walked in just too late. Face all black and limp as a
fish. Ugly." Liz Macnamara reeled and sagged in his
grip. He ignored her.

"How unfortunate for all concerned," whispered
Long.

"Yeah. I hadn't intended to kill anyone. I only wanted-
to keep Lizzie here incommunicado for a few weeks
while I cleaned things up and got out. But life doesn't
work right; Lizzie wrote a terrible letter and then she

called her mother. And Doug, my partner: he's a vicious
little asshole and he blew the simple job he was
supposed to do. But all that's put me in a bind. So did
you, leaving blood all over my house. Now I've got to get
rid of both of you before I split."

"Where are you going?"

Rasmussen snorted. "Why should I tell you?"

"Because it doesn't matter," answered Long gently,
looking away from Elizabeths face. "If you're going to
kill us it can't hurt you to tell."

He stared through the darkened dining area, where
the Swedish glass shone like an assembly of ghosts.
There was no sign of a struggle in the immaculate decor.
The security chain on the front door hung unbroken. But
then, Liz Macnamara had thought herself safe.

The white tape concealed half her face, but Long saw
that Liz's jaw was clenched. Her blue eyes stared
straight ahead of her. She. appeared hard and angry.
Remembering the words she'd spoken the previous
evening. Long thought she was probably very much
afraid.

The big man shrugged. "Okay. I got a yacht—the
Caroline—remember the model in my office? And
Threve's got a Cessna, hangared out in Marin. We'll be
in Mexico this afternoon, and Sao Paulo tomorrow. Even
with their inflation, two million dollars tax free makes it
worthwhile learning another language."

"Why not simply leave us tied, then?" inquired Long,
dispassionately. "You will be safe by the time we can free
ourselves."

"Oh will I?" Rasmussen's voice was thick with sarcasm.
"Fella I don't believe it. I saw what you did to the light
switch in the bedroom, and how you tore apart the door.
With the amount of blood you left in my plasterboard
you ought to be dead—I've gutted enough deer to know
how much a body holds."

"Then you must know I'm not about to dismember any
more doors," sighed Long. Regardless of Rasmussen's
gun, he sat up. "Not tonight."




138

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

"I don't know that at all," the blond man growled. He
wound his fingers more tightly in Liz Macnamara's hair.
"You're one weird cat. I don't know what it is: medita-
tion, karate, hypnosis—but I have no idea what your
limits are. I don't trust you. Also, you made me kill
Blanco. I don't like you."

Mr. Long's smile expressed reciprocity. "But Miss
Macnamara—you know she is no yogic adept. You
needn't kill her."

Rasmussen laughed. Her head was twisted around by
his beefy hand. "Liz? Liz has been living dangerously for
months now. She's been having qualms of conscience.
Besides, I know little Lizzie here. She carries a grudge.
She'd follow me to hell, she would, simply to help the
devil stoke the coals."

He sighed. "No. I'm not up for leaving behind either
bodies or witnesses. Not after what Doug did."
Long's eyebrows rose. "How will you avoid that?"
"Simple. We're taking you along. On the Caroline.
Part way.

"Get on your feet." He stood up, dragging the young
woman with him. She thrashed against him, screaming
muffled curses, but without her arms she could do
nothing. Long regarded him without moving.

"Why should I cooperate with you?" he asked. "You
offer me no incentive."

Rasmussen smiled and prodded the barrel of the gun
against Liz's temple. "You'll do what I say because while
you are alive there's a chance you might find an
opportunity to get away. It's that simple. Of course I got
no intention of giving you that opportunity, but you've
got to bet the team you're on."

Long stood. The two men confronted one another in
the yellow lamplight. "Do you think you could shoot the
both of us before I could reach you?" he asked mildly.
"I don't have to," answered the heavy man, and his
laughter rumbled through the rooms. "If you had the
guts to sacrifice little Lizzie you would have gone for me

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       139

long ago. That much we know about each other, Mr.
Long. You know I'm able to kill her. I know you're not.

"That's why I'm the one in power."

Long's armour of composure broke momentarily at
Rasmussen's last words, and a fire neither subtle nor
civilized shone out of his narrow eyes. The burly blond
flinched. He gestured with the gun.

"Walk. Out the back way, through the garage."

The fire vanished as though the furnace door had
slammed shut. Long turned and preceded Rasmussen
through the length of the house. They passed through a
door in the kitchen.

The garage was so clean and empty as to appear
unused. There were no cardboard boxes stacked against
the wall, no broken Venetian blinds. Not even a step-
ladder.

Liz Macnamara had no old possessions: nothing of the
sort one can't use and refuses to throw away. Until
recently, she had been accustomed to owning nothing.

Within the garage the Mercedes sat in solitary splen-
dor. Rasmussen tossed the keys to Long.

"Open the trunk," he commanded. Mr. Long did so.

"Get her in."

Long stood motionless, keys in hand. "No."

Rasmussen's hand slid from Elizabeth's hair to her
throat. It slowly tightened.

Liz opened her eyes wide as the pressure grew, but
she did not look at Mayland Long. Her breath whistled
in her nose and then that noise ceased.

"Stop," said Long. "There's no need for that."

Rasmussen was smiling broadly. He loosened his grip
as Mr. Long bent to help to ease the bound woman into
the trunk of the Mercedes. In a single, smooth motion
he whipped the pistol around and struck Long on the
back of the head.

The trunk door slammed shut on both his captives.
"Goddamn," he said to himself. "Let's see what hypnosis
can do about that!"

15

The solid thud of the trunk lock closed them both in
darkness. Long groaned and eased his wounded side
away from contact with the wall. His free hand sought
and found Liz Macnamara's face. He pried the tape from
her mouth, then began to free her hands.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so very sorry."

"For what?" The bands of tape peeled away with
difficulty; she swallowed a cry of pain.

"For what?" Long repeated. "It's I who have failed
you, it seems, having entered the scene in the guise of a
rescuer and succeeded only in adding to the defeat."

Her hands now free, Liz began to work on the
bindings on her legs. "Floyd showed up about two hours
ago. I let him in. I was sure he wouldn't risk . . . Oh
hell!" Her voice began in outrage and faded.

"He told me you broke into his house, looking for me.
I knew you were looking for Mother, of course. He said
he shot you, and that you'd run off into the woods to die
like an animal. He said his ceiling was soaked in blood."

The thunder of the engine starting delayed his reply.
Acceleration pushed the prisoners against the back wall.
The air was close and sour with metal and gasoline. "He
hit me. That much is true, at any rate."

"Are you badly hurt?" Her hands blundered through
the darkness. Found him.

"It's bandaged," said Mr. Long. One slim hand touch-
ed his injured shoulder. He enclosed it in his own hand
and put it gently aside. "We have other things to worry
about, now."

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth repeated helplessly. "If I

140

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

141

had not gotten involved with Rasmussen in the first
place ..."

"If any one of an infinite number of events had not
happened in their sequence, the present would be a
different place." He yawned. The trunk was getting
warmer.

"Elizabeth, blame is a useless gesture. Regret is
worse. Yet I regret that I am so weak and weary I may
not be able to break the lock of the boot."

As he spoke his fingers tapped against metal, seeking
the point of attachment.

"Break the lock? Of course you can't. It's steel."

"I can do a few parlor tricks," Long said drily. "Even
against steel. But now ..." He flattened his hand
against the top of the rear wall of their prison.

"Ugh! I have nothing to brace against."

"Here." She put her back to the far wall and her hands
pushed against the middle of his back.

"I think your bones would give before the steel lock,"
said Long, and at that moment the car turned right,
rising onto two wheels, and the two of them were flung
sideways and into one another's arms.

The intimacy was involuntary, and lasted only as long
as the turn that caused it. When it was over the dark air
was filled with silence. Then Long began to laugh.

It was a heavy, deep, spontaneous laughter, incongru-
ous in a man so slight and lean, impossible from a man so
injured. Mr. Long's laughter was like the cool thunder of
a summers afternoon and Liz Macnamara found herself
smiling in the middle of her dread.

"Ah! Elizabeth. It's a very odd thing, to be a man."

His words challenged her and she found herself
replying, "I've often thought so myself, but of course my
knowledge is secondhand."

Without warning Long slammed the palm of his hand
against the trunk lid. The lock snapped and a crack of

142

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

light penetrated their prison. "Easier than I expected,"
he said.

Elizabeth wasted no time in compliments. She peered
through the crack. "We're on 280," she stated. "Going
north."

"Where is the Caroline docked?"          '••...

"North Beach. The marinas down here couldn't ac-
commodate her." She settled back. "What are we going
to do?"

Pushing with his feet against the trunk wall. Long
edged closer. "We wait for an opportunity to jump."

"Out of a moving car?"

"When it stops, preferably." She saw a gleam of teeth
in the darkness.

"You've never driven with Floyd Rasmussen," she
retorted, feeling stung. Remembering the earlier inter-
change, she added, "What did you mean—when you
said wasn't it funny to be a man?"

For a moment he did not respond, but rolled from his
side to his back and lay staring at the metal ceiling. "I
was referring to the species, not the sex.

"A man is an unusual being. He is capable of
tremendous precision of thought. What is more, he
creates—languages, philosophies, poetry ... In short,
he is the paragon of the animals. Yet he is so emminent-
ly—what is the right word?—distractable. During the
most concentrated moments he may—no he will—float
off like a butterfly and scatter all he has gained.

"Yet this is not a flaw in man, I think. This is what
makes him man. And I must believe there is a value in
that."

"Are you talking about me, or mankind in general?"
she asked in a small, hurt voice.

He turned toward her. "I am talking about myself,
Elizabeth." Seeing doubt in her face he continued, "You
see, I have always been a collector—a hoarder of other

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       143

people's ideas. I was not creative by nature. Not—
distractable. It wasn't in me.

"But lately I have learned what it is to be human.
Learned, but not understood. It seems to involve a great
deal of misery crammed into a very short lifetime."

His voice was urgent, almost demanding, as he looked
into Liz's eyes. "Why is that?" he asked.

"You're asking me?"

"Why not you, Elizabeth? You are human. Also, you
may be the last person I will be able to ask."

She smiled and touched his face. "You should have
asked my mother. I think she knew the answer to that."

"Ah, but I wasted my time in lesser matters. Though
perhaps she told me after all." He shook his head. "I
wish I could think more clearly."

"Your eyes," she whispered suddenly. "They glow in
the dark."

"I wouldn't know about that."

She kissed him. "They do. How did Mother find you?"

Slowly he drew his head back. "We were introduced
by a bartender at the James Herald Hotel—the fancy
place you yourself paid for, Elizabeth. I live there."

"Is that how you find clients? Through the bartender?"

He stared a moment, uncomprehending. "Elizabeth.
Do you also think I'm a professional detective?"

"You're not?" Liz Macnamara hit her head against the
trunk lid. "Then what are you?"

Mayland Long sighed and smiled. "I am a friend. Of
your mother's. I have no profession at all, merely
sufficient money to live in comfort."

Being the person she was, Liz Macnamara cried, "To
live in comfort! That's all I've ever wanted! How'd you
get it?"

He hesitated. The tiny space echoed with road noise.
"Out of a hole in the ground," he said finally.

"Oil?"

"No, Elizabeth. Gold."

144

TEA WITH THE BLACK DKAGON

"Oh! How free you must be."

She heard her own words. "I'm sorry. More sorry than
I can say The finest thing in my life was Mother, and
because of me she's dead." Long shot a glance at her,
frowning, hut he held his tongue. "And you ..."

"I am not dead yet," he replied, with a touch of acid.
"And in no case do I wish to be added to your list of

guilts.

"I have lived a long time, Elizabeth—longer than any
creature on this earth can expect to live. These last years
I have spent waiting for the fulfillment of a prophecy."

"A what?"

"A prophecy And it has been fulfilled. I don't under-
stand the sense of it, but then it was never said that I
would understand—only that I would meet one who
could show me the truth, and by that all I possessed I
would lose."

Liz's eyebrows drew together. "What? Who was that,
who could show you the truth, and take everything
away ..."

"Martha Macnamara showed me a rose." His words
were quiet, almost drowned in the rumble of the engine.
His face was turned slightly away.

She stared. "Are—were you in love with my mother?"
Elizabeth whispered.

The word struck Long by surprise. "In love?" He
considered it.

"Yes," he answered. "Your mother was the end of my
waiting. But even had she not been a master of truth,
had she only been the musician, the person she was
. . ."He shook his head vainly "But that's all one. Yes, I
am in love with your mother, Elizabeth. Even now." His
hands laced together over his face, concealing all but his
black unreadable eyes.

"I . . ."

"And if you say you are sorry once more I may throw
you out of the car." He turned his attention to the
passing scenery.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       145

"He's running the lights," observed Mr. Long.

"That's what I meant, about Floyd's driving. He never
obeys the rules if he thinks he can get away with it.

"And he always speeds."

"We're now on Nineteenth Avenue, Elizabeth. Per-
haps if I prop the boot open you can roll out at a corner."

"He'll see!"

"All the better. In order to prevent us, he would have
to stop the car, and I am confident I could delay him
while you run."

"My legs are both asleep. To the knees."

Long laughed again; as though all of time were before
him, as though the day were bright. "We're a pretty
pair," he said. "Three arms and two legs between us.
Still, it can't be helped. Let's see how the fellow
responds." He snapped the trunk open.

The answer was swift. The Mercedes shot forward as
Rasmussen trod the accelerator and Long was nearly
flung onto the pavement. He gripped the weather
stripping and pulled himself back.

"Well, now we know," said Liz bleakly "Would you
rather break your neck or be drowned?"

"Such a limited choice!" cried Mayland Long. He sat
upright, stretching his back with relief. The wind wake
blew his black hair around his face. "Our hand is played,
child. Sit here with me a while."

Liz Macnamara straightened painfully, propping the
trunk open with one hand. She sat beside him. He put
his arm around the young woman's shoulder, perhaps for
support. Nineteenth Avenue shot away beneath them;

streetlights, signs and automobiles fading into the past.
The streetcar tracks beat against the wheels of the
Mercedes. Rasmussen cut through the empty street at
sixty miles per hour.

"There's a man—walking!" Liz waved her free hand
and cried for help. The small figure vanished behind
them. Rasmussen responded to her noise with a quick

146       TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

fishtale—left, thei. right across the lanes. The metal wall
cracked her in the ribs.

"Goddamn him!" she shrieked, tears of anger in her
eyes. Mr. Long's hand tightened reassuringly on her
shoulder. His hand was warm.

"Why didn't you show up fifteen years ago," Elizabeth
lashed out. "We needed you."

He drew back to look at her: perfect features, angelic
hair, eyes like the sea. "You are a beautiful woman,
Elizabeth. Like a painting, which is beauty of color, and
like a sculpture, which is beauty of form. But you are
alive, and have a beauty of movement which is more
than these. Perhaps it is the beauty of music."

Before she could respond he added, "Do you remem-
ber Fred Frisch?"

"Fred? Of course I remember Fred. Class clown. We
sat in the same classrooms for four years. Got the same
grades, too, I think. How do you know Fred?"

He yawned and settled her against his good shoulder.
"I met him a few days ago, while we were looking for
you. This past night he . . . he kept me alive, I think."
"Fred?" she repeated helplessly. "Fred?"
"I like Fred Frisch," said Mr. Long.

This same Fred Frisch was sitting at his kitchen table,
scrubbing blood-stained chair cushions. They really
were ruined. He drizzled peroxide over the rusty
blotches. It made a satisfactory hiss and bubble, but
lifted the green dye from the ancient satin. By now the
cushions were soaked through with his various attempts
at cleaning. Probably they would mildew.

Fred sighed. He dropped the cushion, sighed again,
dropped the pinkish rag and sighed once more. He did
not know what to do.

He was gifted with a quick mind and a very simple
emotional nature. He wanted to be loyal to Mr. Long.
He was in awe of the man, who could endure such
sickness and pain without breaking. Who managed to
appear decisive in the middle of delirium. Who lay in

TEA WITH THE BLACK DBAGON       147

this tatty living room so very close to dying—close as a
military spec., was the way Fred put it—and spoke
considerately, with impeccable manners. Who apol-
ogized to Fred for holding his arm too tightly.

And Jeez, that arm still ached.

He would have liked to be like Mr. Long, but he knew
the stuff he himself was made of. He was just Fred, and
the best he could do was to be loyal, and not blow the
other man's game.

He stared at a cobweb high in the corner by the
window and wondered whether being Chinese helped.

He carried the cushions back to the chair. Have to
remember not to sit on them the next few days, till they
dried. There, on the bright fabric where the seat cushion
would rest, sat a small white cassette tape.

The story came back to him: the smashed recorder and
the circle on the bathroom wall—which sign he would
not have understood had not Long explained its Bud-
dhist significance. This was the tape from the kidnappers
hole. He picked it up by one corner, as though it would
bite. He took it to the kitchen.

He had four tape recorders in his small apartment.
One took large tapes only and two did not work at all.
The remaining unit had a bum recording head, but
played back reasonably well. He dragged it from its
place in the pile and plugged it in by the toaster. He
rewound the tape and played it.

After a few minutes his shaking hand slammed down
on the eject key. "Oh Jeezus."

The cries, the curses, punctuated by the thud of
something hard against flesh . . . This was concentra-
tion camp stuff. This was murder.

The image of Mrs. Macnamara filled his mind—her
old-fashioned braids, the bird-tilt of her head as she
followed the toy car over the carpet. Her round, blue
eyes, like Liz's eyes.

The face became Liz Macnamara's, delicate alabaster
yet flushed with anger as she turned to counter some frat
boy's silly cut. The memory was brief; it lasted as long as

148 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

the action it recorded—Liz was most easily remembered
in action.

Could she be dead? And her mother? Was this voice
on the tape the voice of a dead woman—dying even as
the tape ran? Fred's imagination quailed and the images
faded into darkness.

He shuddered, and the table rattled in sympathy. He
saw Mr. Long—the Black Dragon—as he had lain on the
living room rug, unconscious. Here was another one
who might be dead now. Or soon.

But the eyes in his memory opened. Brown eyes,
heavy lidded, looked out calm and focused. They held
Fred in place as though he were a rabbit.

No. The young man shook his thick pale hair. No sir,
loyalty was one thing but life was another. Lives.

Fred hit rewind. He picked up the recorder with tape
inside and snatched up his keys. As he locked the door
behind him he rehearsed the story he had to give the
police.

"The sea," whispered Mayland Long. "I smell it. And
listen!"

"I don't hear anything but the car," Liz responded.
"And I smell gas sloshing out of the tank. He's taking
comers like a madman."

He drew her close to him, his single hand gripping her
canvas belt. A screen of laurel appeared at the left, very
close to the car. The leaves rustled in the breeze—a sea
breeze, foretelling the dawn. "It is time for you to leave
us," Long announced. "Please double tie your belt, so
that it doesn't come loose."

Mystified, Liz complied with his order. "What do you
mean—time for me to leave? We're going too fast, still.
And what about you? I'll bet you could survive jumping a
lot better than I could."

The pressure against her waist increased. She was
lifted from the sheet metal. "Ouch! Please! You're
twisting me all around. What are you doing?"

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       149

"I'm sorry," said Mr. Long, in unconscious parody of
Elizabeth herself. "But it is difficult with only one arm."

"What is?" she began, as the Mercedes, following the
angle of the road, went into a hard right turn. In answer,
Long braced his feet against the right wall of the trunk
and flung his companion out of the ear and into the
shrubby trees.

Her shriek of surprise faded—like all else—into the
past.

16

The drive leading to North Beach Marina cut through
an immaculate lawn. The Mercedes careened into it,
skidding on gravel. The sky above the ocean was clear
and black; the moon was setting, tinged mustard yellow.
To the east, however, where the far shore of the Bay lay
hidden, the darkness was dull and linty, and the stars
were fading. As the Mercedes' nose dipped down toward
the piers, its lights flashed three times.

Rasmussen maintained his breakneck speed along the
straight entryway, then jammed the brakes. Before the
car had stopped moving he was out the door and
running. He dropped to one knee behind the open
trunk, bracing his pistol with his forearm.

A smaller shape sprinted up the road to join him. In
the distance, dogs began to bark.

"All right, folks. Get out here, now!" snarled the big
blond. Threve, standing beside Rasmussen, hissed,
"What the hell happened, Floyd? You got Liz in there?"

"No. Just me," answered Long, climbing wearily to
his feet. He ignored Rasmussen to consider Threve.

150 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

Threve glared in turn at Long over the gleaming barrel
of an automatic.

The prisoner spoke. "We haven't been introduced. My
name is Mayland Long. I know that your name is
Threve. And I'm told that you are a murderous thug."
His words were easy, urbane, almost cordial. "I've come
to make sure it is true."

Threve inched closer to Rasmussen. "This is—is this
the weird guy?"

Rasmussen nodded. "Wheres Liz?" he snapped.

"Far away," Long answered placidly. He lifted his
head to the breeze. The moonlight shone on his glossy
black hair.

Rasmussen's teeth ground together. "Then she's dead,"
he stated. "I didn't slow down under fifty the entire
trip."

"Why the hell didn't you lock the goddamn trunk?"
roared Threve, stung by the prisoners attitude and
furious at Rasmussen as well. The chorus of barking rose
with his voice.

Rasmussen divided his attention; he trusted neither
man.

"I don't think she was injured," said Long. "She
landed in a bush."

"Shit! You said you had her, Floyd! How the hell did
you let her get away?"

Floyd Rasmussen did not answer. He locked eyes with
Long, who smiled grimly. "Why her and not you?"
Rasmussen asked.

Mr. Long turned his face to the water. "I came to see
Mrs. Macnamara. Til I find her, my business with you
isn't done."

"It is, because you are," growled Rasmussen, shifting
his grip on the black pistol. His eyes were doubtful.
"Hell of a price to pay."

Long smiled. "You don't even know what I'm buying."

The dogs were silent suddenly; perhaps their master
had come out to hush them. Only a chorus of crickets
sounded at the edge of hearing, like the blood pounding

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON        151

in Rasmussen's ears. The pistol didn't waver, but he
stared warily at Long, afraid that his prisoner had plans
that he, Rasmussen, did not understand.

Threve answered for Rasmussen. "Wings and a halo,
that's all. Plug him, Floyd, and let's get out of here. If
that bitch gets to the police ..."

Rasmussen hesitated, gazing into pale brown eyes
under the light of a gold moon.

Douglas Threve was a less complicated man and so
less vulnerable to doubt. He cursed and raised his own
weapon slightly. Without warning Long struck him in
the chest and knocked the small man over the gravel
path. Threve's pretty automatic went sailing into the
brush of the hill. Long rolled onto his back and grabbed
Threve by the throat.

The small man's shout of surprise and rage was cut off
cleanly. His hands clawed vainly at Long's face. Threve's
heels kicked against the gravel.

As soon as Long moved, Rasmussen was free of his
paralysis. He leaped for the struggling pair and swung
the butt of the pistol at Long's head. The first blow
caught his victim on the right shoulder.

Long dropped Threve, and he turned upon Rasmus-
sen a glare of enduring, patient hate. The blond raised
his pistol again, and Long's hand rose toward this other
enemy in what seemed to be as much a gesture of
malediction as an attempt at defense. His fingers were
spread wide, and in the moonlight his hand looked like
the talon of some gigantic raptor. Rasmussen remem-
bered the odd grip of Long's hand on his own and he
shuddered, not knowing what it was that he fought. But
the pistol in his hand was falling, and it caught Long
above the temple.

"See?" hissed the blond at his partner, who lay dazed
at the edge of the path, gulping air. "Who's a fool? I told
you about this guy."

"Shoot him now," gagged Threve. "Shoot him or I
will."                          »

"With what?" Rasmussen stuffed his pistol in a jacket

152

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

pocket. "We don't need more noise." He straddled Long
and tore open the front of his shirt. The hunter examined
Long's bandages. "So that's where I got him. He was
crawling toward me in the dark, like a big lizard. I
wonder if he did this himself. I don't see how."

Rasmussen brooded. "I don't like that. He can't have
gone to the police, or they'd never have let him go in a
condition like this. But it means he had help, some-
where."

From his other pocket Rasmussen pulled a short
skinning knife and a roll of adhesive tape. He cut away
Fred Frisch's handiwork and bound Long's two hands
together, winding tape from the wrist halfway up to the
elbow.

"Shoot him already," insisted Throve, trying to stand.

"No shooting. I could cut his throat here and now, if I
wanted. In fact he may be dead already. Ought to be.

"But I tell you Doug, this guy's like a snake. No matter
what you do to it, it'll wriggle till nightfall."

Throve sneered. "It's already nightfall. It's almost
dawn," he answered sourly. "What are we gonna do
about it?"

Rasmussen smacked his hands on his thighs and stood.

"We're going to do what we planned. Dump them
both off the Farallons, tied to concrete blocks. Live or
dead, this guy can play with the lobsters."

"Help me carry him," grunted Rasmussen, bending to
lift. "No. Never mind," he reconsidered, feeling the
lightness of the burden. "You get ready to sail." He
started toward the water, plodding awkwardly, the limp
form of his prisoner over one shoulder. Clouds of dust
rose like smoke with every shuffling footstep.

"I lose my gun and you start giving orders, huh?"
rasped Threve. He touched his bruised neck gingerly.

Rasmussen sighed. "You want to tote him?"

Threve spat onto the dry road. "I had to carry the
mother."

"You wouldn't have, if you hadn't beat her to death. Or
strangled her." His steps echoed on wood.

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

153

Threve swallowed his rage, stalking ahead along the
pier.

The Caroline was a beautiful ship, even with all sails
tightly furled. She was five tons of teak, trimmed in
brass, and though she was primarily a sailing ship, she
had the power to drive fifteen knots in calm seas.

The night was failing when Long opened his eyes. The
first cries of gulls broke through the deep cough of the
engine. His head hurt and his vision was blurry.

He regarded his arms, wound in a tube of white tape.
Any attempt to pull them apart sent intolerable pain
shooting up his left arm and shoulder. He tried to pull
his feet under him and found they were also bound—
tied with wire to a large concrete block.

Next to him lay a bundle in a green oilcloth tarp. It
was also tied to the block. After a moments confusion he
knew what that bundle had to be. He sat up and looked
closer at it, forced finally to believe. Thoughts resounded
through the hollows of his skull. He listened to them
without interest.

So he was like other men in this way too. He believed
what he wanted to believe: what he felt he had to
believe. Until, of course, time slammed him into the
meaningless truth. Martha was dead and he was going to
die. Even without these men and their absurd, murder-
ous thievery, he would die soon, for he was old and his
search was over,

He'd found what he sought. Truth. He had nd'
questions any more. It was not what he wanted, said a
small voice within him, but it was what he'd chased so
long.

The little man by the cave in Honan must have been
mad, to appear so happy. Knowledge, of the truth led
only to despair.

He extended his hands and raucous, lancing pain
mixed into the cries of the gulls. He pulled the oilcloth
gently away from Martha, Macnamara's face.

That face was lacerated and bruised purple, and about

154

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

the nose and mouth were marks like sunburn. Her long
hair, grizzled brown and white, lay tangled over her
forehead. He brushed the hair away.

"Ah, Martha," he whispered. "I can't believe three

days was enough."

He stroked the sad, mottled face. "I had a question to
ask. I'd saved it for centuries. When I met you I wasted
my time with play, and I did not ask it. No matter." He
swallowed painfully. "The play was more important."

The Caroline dipped into a wave as it left the shelter
of the Bay and cut into the Pacific. Long raised himself
up and peered west, into the wind.

So this was the rapprochement with the sea he had
avoided for so long. Waves slapped the wood, sullenly.
Long still did not understand water.

He'd traded his future for the chance to say good-bye
to a woman who was already dead. That farewell had
been important. But why?

Was anything important, here on the edge of the
irremedial loss? Cold air filled his lungs. His breath
steamed. He heard the two men moving about in the
bow of the boat, but he did not take his eyes from the

sea.

The horizon to the right and behind him was streaked
with brilliance. The near side of each wave glistened. He
sat in a quiet which was divorced from both pain and joy.
Even his curiosity had left him.

Gaunt black rocks broke through the waves in the
distance ahead. A few ships dotted the water far from
shore.

He took one of Martha's cold hands in his own and
looked again at her face.

Suddenly he started, held his breath, and leaned
toward her. Again he saw the small cloud of white fog
dissolve against the green tarpaulin. He lifted her head
on his hand and whispered, "Martha?"

Blue eyes opened, brighter than the dawn sky. They
wandered unfocused. "Who?"

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       155

"M-Mayland Long," he whispered, stumbling over
his own name.

Her hands floundered in the tarp, like those of a baby
in swaddling. "Oh!" Like a baby, her eyes were blue and
vague. "I've . . . I've been so worried. About you."

He stripped away the oilcloth, shaking her gently to
keep her awake. "There is something I must ask you," he
began.

With great effort, she raised her head. "About Liz? My
daughter. Did you call the police?"

She lifted herself further, grimacing. "What's wrong
with your hands?" Martha blinked and began to look
around her.

"Your daughter is safe, I trust." He spoke eagerly, his
voice unsteady. "I left her in a bush. I haven't called the
police, although Fred may have. Must have, by now.

"But hear me, Martha. What I want to say, is that I
love you. Is that all right with you?"

Martha Macnamara took in all this without blinking.
Her smile was a painful, cracked thing. "Of course,
Mayland. I'm delighted to hear it, because I love you."
She tried to laugh and collapsed to the deck in dizziness.
"Couldn't you tell?"

He closed his eyes and gave a sigh that was half a
growl. In one fluid motion he got to his feet. The wire
around his ankles restrained him, and he suddenly
remembered their perilous situation. Carelessly, he
reached down and snapped the wire.

Mayland Long smiled, and the red sun broke over the
hills to the southeast. His lips drew back from his teeth
and he held his bound arms out before him. White tape
caught the new light and his bronze skin glowed. He
threw back his head and laughed—a laugh neither
English nor Chinese, but filled with glad thunder. The
tape gleamed ruddy in the sunlight, and as he strained
against it it fell away like charred paper.

His injured arm fell to his side. The right hand he
extended, impossible fingers spread wide, as though he

156

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

would grab the sun. All pain and weakness were gone,

drowned in a flood of simple joy.

He heard running footsteps and turned.
"He sure ain't dead!" shouted Douglas Threve, who

stood before Long holding a heavy steel wrench. "I'll fix

that!"

Long dodged the blow smoothly and struck Threve's
arm. The wrench clattered on the deck.

Long/struck again. His fingers closed around Threve's
neck, thumb pressed under the chin. He lifted Threve
quickly, and with the motion one makes to flick open a
cigarette lighter. Long snapped the man's neck. He
tossed the body aside.

Floyd Rasmussen stood before him, braced against the
cabin wall. The barrel of the pistol that he held was
shaking.

Long caught his eye. "You know better than that." He
spoke gently, chiding. He heard behind him Martha
crawl out of her rutch of oilcloth.

Rasmussen licked his lips and slid down against the
wall. "God! Can't you be killed?"

"Oh yes," answered Long. "But not disposed of. If you
kill me you will have me with you forever."

"Hypnosis," stated Rasmussen without conviction.

"No one has been killed, here, except this man. Who
is my responsibility." Long's voice was measured and
reasonable. It held the blond man pinned against the
wall. "Now you have the opportunity you thought was
lost forever. No past murder forces you to shoot. If you
do, it will be a fresh decision, and will seal your future
once again."

Waves slapped against the pilotless craft, turning it
out of its course. Wind whistled in the rigging.

"No one is dead? The mother ..." Rasmussen
looked wildly about. Long stepped aside to reveal the
empty wrappings. "She is risen. She is not here," he
whispered.

Rasmussen dropped the gun and put both hands to his
head. Instantly Long dived for the cabin wall and

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

157

brought Rasmussen down. The big man clawed ineffec-
tually against the single lean brown hand which closed
upon his throat. He gasped and choked. Long's face was
set and deliberate. He reached his thumb under Ras-
mussen's jaw.

"Oolong. No." Martha Macnamara spoke with authori-
ty. "All you said to him is true. I don't want you to carry
him as a burden for the rest of your life."

He raised his face to hers. His eyes flared yellow:

feral, merciless. Her own eyes were half closed in a puffy
face.

"It'll be nothing new to me."

"No!" she repeated, unwavering. Blue eyes and gold
eyes met: two colors of flame. "Everything is new,
forever," she stated. "It is always the first time."

The gold eyes dropped and the black head bowed.
Marthas hands went gingerly to her head. She winced,
groaning.

Mayland Long cleared his throat. "Then, Martha, I
suggest you search Mr. Rasmussen's pockets for the
adhesive tape he carries . . .

"And there will be a small hunting knife by it. Be
careful."

She bound Rasmussen while Long held him down by
the neck, feeling panic pulse beneath his hand. When
Martha was done they both stood and walked to the
stem.

"Can you handle a boat?" inquired Martha.

"Not at all," was the prompt answer.

Her broken lips tried to smile. "I can't believe there is
something you can't do." Her hands sought out a
tangled, fallen braid and began to work it free.

"I have avoided travel by water," answered Long, as a
swell pitched the Caroline sideways.

"Because of another prophecy?"

"Because I get sick," he replied. Only a narrow band
of dark iris was visible as a smile spread from his eyes to
his mouth. "And because I'm afraid of water. Can you,

158

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

Martha? Handle a boat? The question is of more than
academic interest."

She shrugged. Her blue dress was creased and
stained. It had lost half its buttons. "I can turn the
wheel."

Liz Macnamara sat at the sergeants desk as the officers
of the day patrol came on duty. She was acutely aware of
her dishabille. The sergeant himself sat in another room,
behind a glass door, talking on the phone. He had been
in there for the last ten minutes.

She heard that door open. "Miss Macnamara," he
began. "That's M-a-c-n-a^m-a-r-a?"

"Yes, yes! You have all that."

"Don't get excited. Miss." He picked up a pencil and
bounced the eraser end a few times against the desk
blotter.

"What do you mean?" Liz wailed. "They've killed my
mother! They're going to kill ..."

"Mr. Long. Mayland Long, M-a-y-1-a-n-d," inter-
jected the sergeant. His eyes were sleepy, his girth con-
siderable.

"Yes, that's his name."

"And your mother's first name is Martha?"

"Oh God, yes, what of it? Do something."

"We have," the policeman said. "Two days ago a Mr.
Mayland Long reported your mother missing. He didn't
have anything more for us to go on, so there wasn't much
we could do, but an hour ago a kid walked in on the Palo
Alto police with a crazy story about this man Long. And a
tape. Since then all the departments on the Peninsula
have been on the alert.

" 'Course, we hadn't thought to check the Bay until
you came to us with your information. Miss Macnamara.

"Thrown into a tree?" He dropped the pencil.

The young woman before him wriggled in her seat.
There was a leaf sticking out of her hair, a long slender
leaf like a donkey's ear. Her arms were scratched and that
bathrobe deserved an R rating.




TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       159

The sergeant was a fan of old movies. He couldn't
decide whether Liz Macnamara looked more like Mar-
lene Dietrich or Greta Garbo, but despite her tangled
hair and grease smears she sure looked like something.

"Tree or bush. A laurel. In Golden Gate Park. What
does it matter?" Liz folded her arms tightly, hugging
herself.

"I'm sorry about your mother," the sergeant said.

Liz nodded miserably.

"And considering what you've said about your rela-
tionship with these two kidnappers I think you need a
lawyer."

"Hell with that," moaned the young woman. The
sergeants mouth twitched sympathetically.

"Still, there's not much more I can say to you until
ypu're represented by counsel ..."

At that moment the outer door opened and Fred
Frisch walked in, carrying his tape recorder and tugging
on his moustache. Seeing Liz, he escaped the guiding
hand of the officer who had brought him in, and he
picked his way among the desks to her.

"I'm sorry, Liz," he began. "I tried ... I mean, do
you remember me at all?"

She stood, examining him closely. Loose jointed, with
limp blond hair, and eyes like a Bassett Hound: was this
the fellow who had saved Long's life? "Of course, Fred.
Mr. Long talked about you tonight. He said you
. . . kept him going."

"You've seen him since? Is he . . ."

She shook her head. "I'm afraid they've killed him by
now. They killed my mother." She sagged back into the
chair. "And it's all my fault."

Fred swallowed. "Hey. It's not that way. I know all
about it. I found your disk file at RasTech and printed it."

She glanced up in amazement and Fred shifted from
foot to foot. "He wanted me to. Mr. Long—the Black
Dragon."

"The what?"

Ignoring the sergeant behind his desk, Fred dragged a

160 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

chair across the floor and sat. "His name is really Black
Dragon, in Chinese. I really admire the guy, you know?"

"He liked you," responded Elizabeth, blinking away
tears.

"Did he say that?"

"Yes, and that he loved my mother. But they're going
to kill him. Even he thought so, when he threw me out
of the car."

"I don't know," said Fred, frowning and blowing out
his moustache. "He's a hard man to kill."

Liz turned to him with the dawning of real curiosity.
"Have you always had that moustache?" she asked.

"Hummm," snorted the sergeant behind his desk.

Martha held the glossy, many-spoked wheel, leaning
against it. The fat red sun had climbed a few degrees into
the sky, and she had turned the nose of the Caroline
toward it. Daylight touched the cold water, making the
air milky with fog.

Mayland Long stood beside her with a glass of water in
his hand. She started, for she had not heard him
approach. Gratefully, she took the glass and drank from
it.

"Oh yes, that's better," she said. He stood behind her
and said nothing.

"Talk to me, Mayland. My head hurts."

His answer came slowly. "I can't think of anything to
say." With great care he ran his finger through her loose
hair, combing it. Martha's battered features eased into a
smile. "I can't braid it for you without my other hand."

"That feels wonderful," she murmured, peering into
the pale obscurity at small dark shapes that had not been
there a minute ago. Were they rocks?

She shivered. "I think I've been cold forever."

"There I can help," chuckled Mayland Long, and he
put his arm around her waist as he pressed her body
against his.

"Oh my!" she exclaimed. "You're a furnace!" She
touched his bare arm wonderingly. It was smooth, with

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON       161

no trace of the sticky tape. It radiated heat. He bent his
face over hers. It, too, was very warm.

"So hot! You've used yourself up," she said.

He raised his head and stared out. "No, I'm not quite
used up. But I thought I was, early this morning."
Frowning, he added, "My understanding was . . . im-
perfect." A movement on the water distracted him.

"Look." She did so. One of the dark shapes in the fog
had become a boat, a Coast Guard cutter. It veered by
the bow of the Caroline, which bobbed in the faster
boat's wake.

Mr. Long strode to the stem to turn off the engine,
that being the only action in their power to assist the
boarders, while Mrs. Macnamara smoothed her dress.
With old-fashioned courtesy and a certain degree of self-
satisfaction, they welcomed their rescuers aboard.

17

The door opened to Martha's triplet knock. In Long's
sitting room rain beat against the windows, but a tall
lamp was lit, and soft light drew a circle around the
antique gold chairs.

"I just called the hospital and they said you checked
out. You weren't supposed to do that; the doctors said
you weren't ready."

Mayland Long smiled quietly, almost shyly, at Martha
and ushered her in. Except for the cotton sling around
his right arm, he looked as he had a week ago: a slight
Eurasian man of indeterminate age, whose dark features
faded into the shadows of the room.

"They didn't like their test results," he stated. "I didn't
like their tests. We were, neither of us, happy about

162 TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

the other, so I came home. Have you seen Elizabeth
today? Have they set bail?"

Martha sank into the nearest of the chairs. "She's out
on her own recognizance, because she turned herself in,
I visited her this morning, before the rain started. That
young man was there—the one with the talking car—I
mean the car you talk to.

"I hope Liz won't have to go to prison." Martha's small
jaw was set and her forehead creased with worry. "But I
think the judge will be lenient, under the circum-
stances." Her face in the lamplight showed every trace of
the mistreatment she had suffered. She smiled a round-
faced smile as he pulled his chair beside her and took her
hand in his.

"How long have you been ... a human being?" she
asked him.

He glanced from her face to the gray world outside.
"Less than a week, I think."

She snorted. "You know what I mean."

He looked back to her. "Six years ago I found an old
man in the hills outside Taipei. He was a master of Tao:

not my master, he informed me, but nonetheless he was
very wise."

Martha Macnamara frowned. "Tell me. I don't ap-
prove of mysteries."

Long looked down at his hands. His lean face ex-
pressed doubt. "What do you know of dragons, Martha."

" 'How many times,' " she quoted, " 'have I entered
the cave of the green dragon!' "

He turned halfway, and looked away from the brood-
ing weather. "Delusion. Yes. But I don't speak of a green
dragon, but a black one."

"An imperial dragon?" she questioned in turn.

He turned full toward her. "So you know about the
dragon of five fingers?"

She laughed at the eagerness in his words. "Oh, I've
been around the block once or twice. The black dragon is
a scholar. He was claimed as the ancestor of every ruling
family of China. The black dragon lives forever."

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

163

He met her eyes as he added, "But I will not."

Martha's chin rose and she spoke with conviction.
"Living forever," she began, "is what makes all dragons
delusion, whether they're green, red or black. Life is a
moment long, no more. If you hold on to it, you're lost!"

Gently he withdrew his hand and lay it on his lap. He
leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes to the light.

"I hold on to everything," he remarked. "I always
have."

"Back when you knew Bodhidharma?"

"Yes, Martha." His eyes opened and one neat brow
went up. "Did you think I lied to you?"

"And the son of Thomas Rhymer? The fairy host?" she
pressed him.

"I did not claim to be an eyewitness to those events. I
just repeated the story as told." He smiled broadly

"Meeting the man who sat in front of a wall—the one
you call Bodhidharma—changed a life which till then
had been devoted to the traditional pursuits of drag-


ons

"Which are?"

"Mmph! Scholarship, calligraphy, collecting objects
dart ..."

"That's all? Sounds pretty thin."

"Also devouring oxen, tigers, and occasionally peo-
ple." His smile remained intact.

"Better ... I wouldn't mind living like that," said
Martha.

"Yes, it is agreeable, on the surface. But I developed a
fascination for man—tiny, helpless, short-lived creature
that he was—because he created the beautiful things I
could only copy. And hoard. Dragons, you see, are not
very creative. We have never been great painters or
poets, but instead great collectors.

"I wished to know what it was that gave man the
power to do what he does—to paint, to write poetry, to
sit for nine years facing a wall. ..." His words trailed
off.

"Bodhidharma told me, Martha, that he was seeking

164

TEA WITH THE BLACK DBAGON

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON

165

truth. I thought about that for quite some time. I went
from teacher to teacher. At first my quest was to find out
what there was in man to make him act so strangely: to
desire an abstract nothing with a passion that should be
reserved for gold. But eventually I came to see that I
would only find out the truth about man by finding man's
truth itself!"

Long's right hand played with the whistle of the
teapot. His teeth shone and his opaque eyes were
dancing. "Dogbreeders grow to look like dogs," he said.
"And slowly, over centuries, I became like the creature I
studied, growing apart from my own kind.

"If I met a dragon now, I'd have nothing to say to him!"

"Cats don't like cats," interjected Martha.

Mayland Long shot one mischievous glance at her and
was obliged to look away. He was grinning hugely,

"I have spent decades in frozen caves in what is now
Nepal," he announced. "I have coiled by stone beehive
cells in Leicester. I have corresponded with the Dean of
St. Paul's. Not the present dean, of course ..."

"Of course not. You mean Donne."

He grunted assent. "The men I sought were those
who seemed to have found what Bodhidharma found
beneath the cave wall. That indescribable formless what-
ever . . . truth!

"Around me my kind faded. I hardly noticed. Dragons
are not social by nature. (I am the exception.) My
interest—my obsession—kept me alive.

"But I did not find truth," he concluded, without
irony.

Martha Macnamara lay her hands against his face.
"Don't you know that you yourself are the truth walk-
ing?"

He kissed the palm of one hand, then the other. "A
dragon cannot make sense of such a statement," he said.

"But now ..."

The moment's silence was filled with the sleepy drone
of the rain. The circle of light was small.

"I know," he began slowly, "that you are my master."

She laughed. "If you insist. But I would rather be your
mistress."

"That too."

Thunder rolled in the distance. Mayland Long turned
to the window. He walked over and pressed his hand
against the glass. "It rarely thunders in California. The
night I lost—that I became a human being—it crashed
incessantly.

"I had heard about a Taoist teacher who was very wise.
His name was Yung Chung-jo; he was a retired military
man. When I found him he was sitting on a bare hilltop,
wearing his tattered old dress uniform. He had come
there in order to die.

"He was not afraid. I coiled about him and shielded
him from the rain.

"I told him about my search, where it had begun and
where it had led me. I told him what scriptures I had
read, and in which transcriptions, for I had learned all
the major human languages to aid me in my task. I listed
the names of all the teachers I had had previously and
repeated the advice they had given me. I wanted to be
clear and exact with Yung, because I had failed with so
many before.

"And the old man laughed at me—he laughed as I
think only the Chinese can laugh, when they mock a
person. It's terrible, the way they can laugh. It can
reduce one to . . ."He glanced toward Martha and
continued gently. "You are laughing at me now, Martha.
That's all right. I know what sort of fool I am.

"Then he told me he was not destined to be my
master, because he was dying. He said my master would
be one who had more chi—more strength—than I. And
he foretold that when I met my master, all I had
gathered would be taken from me.

"He sat in the rain through the night, while I slept
coiled about him. In the morning, when I awoke, I
looked like this, and in my arms I was holding a dead




166       TEA WITH THE BLACK DBAGON

"It must have hurt, to become human," she whis-
pered, holding out her hand to him.

Mr. Long came back into the light. "It still hurts," he
said.

Lightning snapped in the sky and again thunder
rumbled. "What shall I do, Martha? Where shall I live?
How shall I spend my time?"

Martha Macnamara took a deep breath and sat straight
in the chair. She was wearing her respectable tweeds. "I
am not the Queen of Elfland," she began.

"You are more beautiful, Martha. And you possess
more chi."

She ignored the interruption. "But if ypu come with
me I will treat you better than she did the Rhymer."

He pulled her to her feet and kissed her, slowly and
with great concentration. Their hands were bathed in
yellow light. Their faces, above the lamp, were shad-
owed. "Still," he whispered in her ear, "he came back
with truth on his tongue."

She giggled. "It doesn't belong there."

"Then what will my mistress teach me?" He kissed her
cheek, the corner of her eye, her forehead . . .

Martha Macnamara took a step back and looked up at
Mayland Long. "Why, to play the piano, of course!" She
held up his dark slender hand. "How wonderful!"