A Momentary Lapse of Reason - 17
A Novella
17. 勾心斗角[i]
(gōu xīn dòu jiǎo)
“I told you, you would fall short of success.” And the Dragon grinned, she was darkness incarnate.
The sound comes in like the drop of a ring in the middle of a bright light in an apartment that you have only seen glimpses of,
before a nine-legged Dragon belches the poison gas upon her two opponents,
before Kit on his belly and trying to grasp his knife, which is just out of reach,
before Maggie was spun like the cross and calling for a spell preparing to hurl the knight in her right hand at the intoxicating 9th Dragon bearing down on her illuminated by the almost full moon from the double doors onto the patio, the story needed to
goto Kit and Maggie planning their assault on her mother’s den.
So let us go before the Kowloon filled her lungs off to eructate the mortal smoke, and Kit was trying to pierce the neck, and Maggie wanted to hurl the knight through the night.
Therefore, we reset the tale to the ground outside along Nathan Road with the two desperately trying to hatch a plot to remove one obstacle between where they stood and the freedom that was dangling in front of them.
“So, What do we do when we take the IRT down to Corner Street HKC?”[i]
It was in the position of thinking with her head on her knuckles that she finally got thinking what would they see?”[ii] But in her head a refrain echoed: The youth of Hong Kong on LSD.[iii] Or to put it another way, the two of them pitting their full might against the ninth Dragon would and with a splooch being wiped off the living room wall.
But then thought drifted down from above: “She has had to make sacrifices to pierce us. She has ripped her minion sending him down to Kowloon to stop us from getting the information from the mirth.”
“Such as it is. What will a coin do for us in the combat she is planning?”
“She knows the value of it and therefore we only have to think what she knows.”
A moment passed, one in which Kit assumed the same position that she was in. The ob of thought transcended both of them.
“What do we do with the pieces that we have that would defeat such a …” he wanted to say in person, but such a description is not truly adequate for a nine-legged dragon. While in traditional Chinese myth, the Dragon is benevolent, clearly, this had been mixed when the Western idea that dragons were devious, malevolent, and therefore, evil. But this is why Hong Kong was granted to Britain: the evils of opium were held here above all else.
Maggie touched her head to her steepled fingers. “I do not know what. Clearly, the forces that came out of the darkness to give us this light felt it was enough. To ”
“We have a person merged with a dragon, that is comforting for any reader. But we are in the protagonist position, and we need to tell the author what words he showed right for us so that we can survive the encounter. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”[iv]
“Pretty, but it still does not change the fact that with the pieces we have, we need to convince everyone that she should die.”
It was at this point that she pulled out all of the things that they had accumulated in their many encounters. There were some pieces to a chess set, a tournament version. There was a coin with writing on it. She knew that Kit still had the knife. The rest of what they had was mostly lint.[v]
They were bent over on the sidewalk inspecting the equipment that they had. Then Maggie looked straight into his eyes.
“That is all that we have.”
“So, what clue do we have to trap her? We are not the first to tangle with her.”
A glance fluttered with the eyelashes. “Yes, but you were the first to know about the connection between the garden and the lost city. So, we may not be the first but we are the first who has the information even if we do not know what it means yet.”
In a small way, this cheered Kit up because he knew that few others prowled in the night as he had.
Then straightening to a squat, he looked at the pieces and made a pronouncement: “I must defend you, but you need to decide which chess piece you can throw that dispel the apparition.”
It was now her turn, and she leaned back sat on her jeans, and contemplated what would be the trick that she could use. Then she stood up and had a contemplative grin on her face. “It is so obvious that once you have the information… It works itself out in triple time.”
“You are not being very clear at the moment. Your plays on language are too recursive for me.” As he said this he jump to up and remembered what he meant because fighting involved stretching and bending to the hidden meter of the fight.
“It must be like a proof or a column in the line of Modern Chess Openings. You must live through the steps until they become truth. We must play Hunt the Snark.” [vi]
“But you must say that three times for it to be true.”[vii]
“That is concisely and precisely what I mean. The game has to be played out to determine the victor on the vector by vernal vlogic. My skill will have to be immense.”[viii]
“It looks like our crew is complete: we have no more time to make bonnets and hoods.”[ix]
And with that, they began to Hunt the Snark and hoped they had a way to defeat a Boojum in its turn.[x] Into its brightly lit streets and grimy alleyways. Into the places that normal people do not speak of, looking for pleasures that they hide their faces from. Through the trees, through the apartment buildings with their terraces spiraling upwards. Underneath a night sky that hides everything but the moon and a single planet which neither of them could name. to the haunt of a nine-leg dragon, who is waiting for them.
[i] Reference to Hair, ”Initials”
[ii] Reference to Hair, ”Initials”
[iii] Reference to Hair, ”Initials”
[iv] Tennyson, “Ulysses” Last line.
[v] Pun on lint in the debugging context.
[vi] Reference to Lewis Carroll, “Hunt the Snark”
[vii] Reference to Lewis Carroll, “Hunt the Snark” L 7
[viii] Reference to Lewis Carroll, “Hunt the Snark” L 13
[ix] Reference to Lewis Carroll, “Hunt the Snark” L 10
[x] Reference to Lewis Carroll, “Hunt the Snark” Last Line