“It’s weird how few people pay attention to how many religions are essentially contractual.”
-samzdat
It was an artfully complex transaction.
The opening was typical of the diplomatic speculation that pervaded China’s Warlord Era. So many sides, so little to agree on–supremacy is an inherently zero-sum prize and all that.
The context: Cao Kun of the Zhili had beaten back the Fengtian and consolidated power over Beijing. Wu Peifu, Cao’s right hand, was thus mired, from the administrative discomfort of his temporary office in the capital, in the effort of helping him keep it. This meeting was one of many seeds cast, little investments with little expectation but–Wu hoped–incredible potential. Cao had already secured the blessing of interests from the Western nations that would soon agglomerate into “Britannia”, but today’s talk promised a more bespoke advantage. A private citizen with an interesting personal history. Perhaps a charismatic figurehead, a cunning informant, a diplomatic shield if it came to it. Wu had little idea of what this man wanted, but that was not unusual. These meetings were, by their nature, exploratory.
At this point, the prospective exchange was simple: a little of my attention for a little of yours.
He entered Wu’s office with a small retinue: a manservant and a bodyguard, putatively, themselves flanked by eight of Wu’s own soldiers. Wu gathered that the manservant would be interpreting when the unassuming man spoke first, in accented but otherwise inoffensive Mandarin:
“Thank you for meeting with us, General.”
This was in incorrect apprehension, but Wu did not yet have reason to realize it.
The man, Richard Sterling, a Western celebrity of whom even Wu was aware, had a surprisingly direct proposal: He and Wu had a mutual interest in the eradication of the Fengtian to the north, and he claimed to have the means to execute this goal bloodlessly. But to do this, he needed two things: He needed men and materiél to bring him close to the enemy’s seat of power unscathed, and more peculiarly, he required that a more subtle operation be completed first.
There was a soldier, he explained, under the command of the Fengtian general Feng Zongchang, known as “Tianyi”. Tianyi was to be captured, deprogrammed, and extracted from China without Sterling’s involvement. Wu was, of course, aware of Tianyi–the name, along with numerous revolting accounts of his crimes–had spread through the provinces bordering Manchuria. His capture would not be a trivial task, but that didn’t much matter. Wu’s part in the transaction had ended nearly thirty minutes prior.
It was strange, in hindsight, that all of these negotiations had proceeded–between Sterling’s English and Wu’s Mandarin–without any further need for an interpreter. Strange for Wu, that is, but not for the meeting’s singular outside observer.
For Em, Architect of Exchange, aware by nature of every passed coin, every promissory note, every clicking bead on even the most abstractly conceptual abacus, this context had become quite common of late among the planet’s most valuable transactions. A little of my attention for a little of yours. No one realized that all the King in Yellow needed was your attention. After that, he had all of you.
What was beautiful about this transaction, though, was that what was nominally being asked of Wu Peifu by the King in Yellow was in fact being asked of the King in Yellow by Dick Sterling. It was beautiful for its intricacy. It was beautiful for its mystery: Why would one of the King’s agents ask another agent for a favor he cannot refuse? Why would the King grant a personal request from his thrall so clearly at odds with his agenda? And most delightfully maddening: Why would the King expend these resources to keep Tianyi–to keep Lamont Sterling–deliberately out of his control?
Em had learned a great deal of the gods of his existence, his own creators, gods that admittedly played dice but who made up for it with a command of mathematics that seemed impenetrable–even to the economy. He had learned more of them even than the other Architects, he was sure, which would be an unpleasant surprise for See eventually.
But the devils–the Elder–were new. Deities much more like the ones humans fantasized. Deities who wanted worship, even in this petty, token sense, because that’s what this was, this bargain between Dick Sterling and the King in Yellow. Because when a god exists, worship is a transaction.
And so it was there, in that office in Beijing, that Em first caught a glimpse of that black mirror in which, he realized, he was the reflection.
Salt-Powered Investments, LLC 