bout de papier, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2011) — Summer/Fall 2011 // Été/Automne 2011, pp. 45–47
With the implementation of Tactical Review /!, HQ has gone beyond a traditional focus on financial restraint and personnel reduction, to a new focus on policy conformity through interactive commentary applied by central agencies on all written materials. With some reluctance, bout has agreed that the A Aalto puzzle can act as a first pilot for this project, subject to reconsideration. This issue’s review is conducted by The Annotator.*
* In the immortal words of Spiro T. Agnew, “OK you slobs, the picnic’s over!”
Liebnitz poked at his centipede carpaccio with peeled eel, saying to Manitoba Jones, “T can see why they call this place ‘Chew’s Well’ — a fair warning.” He scowled at the restaurant’s neo-neo-Confucian! decor. “And where’s Bugbyte? She hasn’t been the same since she came back from that unexplained vacation babbling about future shock. Now she wants a meeting outside the office.”
From behind the eponymous well, Bugbyte appeared with a small oriental man in saffron robes, led to the table by the nightspot’s owner, Ah Chew.’ Bugbyte introduced her companion. “My partner Effie works for the private detective Shamus Dikk. This man is a client with a big problem. It has international aspects and Dikk’s local, so he thought you’d be in a better position to handle it. Oh, and did I mention that it could mean the end of the world?”?
The man in saffron beamed and said, “My name is Yi Xing, I am a monk and a scientist by profession and I have a small flaw in my biography. I was born in 683, died in 727 and have since been mostly resting on Mount Tiantai. But I was able to assist the August Personage of Jade last year in the minor problem of a lost star, and he has summoned me again.” Liebnitz pushed away his carpaccio‘ and said, “Bugbyte wouldn’t have introduced you without a good reason. What’s the problem?”
“To explain that, I will need to say something about ancient Chinese geology. There is a theory, recorded by the Prince of Huai Nan in the second century BC, but certainly older. It holds that the great moving spirit of qi transmutes itself over centuries to produce specific minerals, which over more centuries change into specific colours of mercury, which then transmute to specific metals, which change into great dragons of specific colours and directions, which eventually sink into the earth and continue the cycle. This, you understand, is a simplified version.”
Even Bugbyte looked a bit dazed. The monk continued. “The transmutations envisaged in this system are largely metaphorical. Unfortunately, they are not entirely so. A strong enough Taoist alchemist can set the process rolling and it will proceed without him, creating a local reality outside the rules of science in the world at large. Things get sticky when the dragons appear. They are 50 metres long, invulnerable to all weapons and highly predatory. As I said, they ‘eventually’ depart — but that can be hundreds of years later. There won’t be much left of Earth by then, and the Jade Emperor has grown fond of you.”
Liebnitz coughed. “Why the sudden rush?” Yi Xing went on. “Each of the first three transmutations takes 500 years. The step that yields the dragon takes 1,000. Now, in 490 BC, an apprentice alchemist named Wang Bubu° managed to initiate the transformation by accident.® Once started, there was no way to stop it — and only one
A mixture of filial piety and dialectical materialism, with a side of tofu.
Anyone who said “gesundheit” at this point should turn themselves in to the PC police immediately.
Up until now, no — get a grip.
Not without relief, I’m sure.
aka “Wang Oops”.
He was actually trying to perfect the platypus catapult.
man cared about some hypothetical dragon scheduled to appear 25 centuries later. Which is in about an hour, by the way.”
“That man was Marquis Yi of Zeng, a minor state in what is now Hubei province. An alchemist himself, Yi worked out a way to send the dragon to the Yellow Springs, the Taoist hades, as soon as it appeared, by exposing it to the sound of specially-tuned stone chimes played on a specific scale and base frequency. He had the chimes carved and they were buried with him when he died in 433 BC. Over the years, the knowledge of his work was lost to all but a few. But when his tomb was “accidentally” discovered in 1977, I knew that something was stirring.”
“The problem was that his instructions for the chimes were not in the tomb.’ They had been stolen by Wang Bubu’s grandson and descended in his family for generations until inadvertently used to wrap leftover Sea Cucumber Surprise’ during the late Ming dynasty.”
“Heaven was stymied until an acolyte saw a photo in the IHT about a palace in the Maghreb that had been shelled in the recent battles. Behind the victorious rebels was a wall from which ancient tapestries had been knocked loose. Faintly visible in Tifinagh Berber script was a lead to the long-lost instructions. A branch of Wang’s family had emigrated and taken a copy, which they encoded in the decor of certain rooms in the palace. Working out the encoding will determine two crucial facts. First, the nature of the dragon, so we know what we will face. Secondly, the scale and base frequency that can defeat it.”
“This was where the Jade Emperor called me in. The palace had been nearly destroyed and the rooms were in chaos. The first thing needed was an accurate record of their former contents. I hired a man named Tailor Zonal-Sewage, who offered his help free. He worked quickly, then vanished with all the information he had gathered. He also took a gold ingot, which was significant, since the Tifinagh message said the room with the gold also contained the information needed on the dragon.”
“T reconstructed some of Tailor’s findings from papers in his garbage, but the information is partial and I am not good at such things. Mr. Dikk says that you people are — can you help me? Here are my notes.”
Liebnitz glanced at Bugbyte, coughed and said, “I don’t suppose it would do any harm to look at the data. Without saying that I accept what you claim, of course.” He examined the paper. “I can work this out, but I’ll need a copy of the floor plan of the palace — before it was shelled.” The monk nodded and then…vanished. Liebnitz blinked. Manitoba Jones fell off his chair backward, somersaulted over the salad bar, bounced off an obese man in a lobster bib (who fell into a flaming crème brûlée) and disappeared down the well,”° before re-appearing swiftly and taking a bow to general applause.”
In the confusion, Yi Xing was able to reappear unnoticed in his chair. Liebnitz gave him an appraising look and said, “Translocation? Interesting.’ The monk smiled innocently and handed him the plan.
Each of five rooms (dining room, salon, receiving room, great hall and library) contains a different mineral sample, an ingot of a different metal, a hanging scroll giving a different position on the Chinese musical scale and a bell sounding a different note in the Chinese 12-tone system. Each is also haunted by the spirit of a dragon associated with a different colour and direction. On the floor plan, north is at the top and doors are indicated with a small blank rectangle.
1. The room with the malachite sample and the lead ingot shares a wall with the library.
2. The southern red dragon haunts the great hall; the sky-blue dragon and Gu Xian bell are in the salon.
3. The room (not at a corner of the palace) that has the Da Cu bell is haunted by the dragon of the centre.
4. From the dining room, which is haunted by the black dragon and contains the Zhi scroll, you can go through one door to the room haunted by the western dragon and containing the Yi Ze bell, or through a different door to the room with the copper ingot and the Gong scroll.
5. Starting from the room haunted by the white dragon, the room with the grindstone sample is to the west, the room with the Nan Lu bell to the south and the room haunted by the eastern dragon to the east.
6. You can walk through the five rooms one after the other directly and without backtracking in this order: the room with the realgar sample, the room with the Yu scroll, the room with the arsenolite sample, the room haunted by the northern dragon and the room with the cinnabar sample.
7. The room with the Jue scroll and the silver ingot, like the room with the iron ingot and the Wu Yi bell, have doors onto the terrace. The room with the Shang scroll and the yellow dragon does not. After a few minutes, the logician said, “OK, I know the room from which the gold ingot is missing, and its other contents.” The monk looked over Liebnitz’s solution, blinked and asked, “Since you have been so helpful, would you and your friends be willing to join me for the endgame? I can translocate four.” Getting nods from Bugbyte and Manitoba Jones, Liebnitz agreed. At once, they were in a dimly-lit underground room,!” a heavy sarcophagus in the middle of the floor and a long rack of L-shaped
7 Hopefully not the Marquis.
8 Maybe you can take it with you.
9 The surprise is that some people will eat it.
10 The man certainly knows how to make an exit.
11 Although not, presumably, from the man in the flaming lobster bib.
12 Nicely stiffing Ah Chew for the bill.
stone chimes hanging from a rack along one side. Picking up two mallets with cloth-covered heads, the monk explained, “The Marquis built his tomb on the site of Wang’s workshop, where the dragon would appear at the spell’s culmination. IfI strike the right chimes with these hammers, it should banish the beast.”
Intoning an incantation, he took down a long scroll from the wall, revealing a niche in which lay a large tripod with a mass of gold dust whirling around a naked flame above its centre.
Then a slender man with a pencil-thin moustache slipped into the sepulchre. Yi Xing calmly said, “I expected as much, Tailor Zonal-Sewage!” “Rialto Sleazewagon!”” cried Bugbyte. “Yes,” the man sneered. “And I have plans of my own for that dragon. Wang Bubu was my distant ancestor and the family legends say that a direct descendent can control the beast, using the gold from the original crucible in the spell. This ingot, which I took from the palace, contains that gold. Finally, my chance to rule the world!!* And you’re not going to stop me.” He drew an automatic from his pocket and levelled it at them.
A sound like distant thunder came from the niche, growing louder and louder, as an actinic light began to pulse. With Sleazewagon’s attention distracted, the monk stepped silently to the rack of chimes, shielded by the sarcophagus. Sleazewagon lurched over to the tripod, brandishing his ingot and snarling words of power as the brightly glowing head of a classic Chinese dragon began to emerge, richly scaled and fiery-eyed. The human and the dragon froze face to face in a contest of wills that Sleazewagon was clearly losing, the dragon slowly but surely pushing out from the niche.
A gentle hum began to fill the room, growing deeper and stronger as new overtones were added. Liebnitz turned to see Yi Xing tapping expertly at certain of the chimes, his face a mask of concentration. The eerie hum grew louder and sweeter, For the first time the dragon faltered. Desperate to break free, it raked the ingot from the human’s hand and inhaled deeply. But too late. The monk whirled around and struck a final hard blow on a large chime hung separately. Its deep resonation struck the dragon like a punch. It wavered and faded from sight, only a ghost-fire washing Sleazewagon’s face.
The arch-villain took off like a shot, closely followed by Manitoba Jones. A few minutes later, Jones returned, dragging the dripping man. “He nearly got away, but slipped and skidded into an underground river. I checked the floor. What toppled him was a footnote! in the middle of the passage. As I ran to nab him, saw a tall, thin shadowy figure disappear around the floor plan, giving a funny laugh.”!6
Folding his hands into the sleeves of his robe, Yi Xing bowed to the three from the Centre and said, “May your deeds earn you rapid release from the Great Wheel. For now, as the Buddha says, all’s well that ends.”
Can you duplicate Liebnitz’s feat by identifying the room with the golden ingot, the dragon (identified by colour and direction) that the team manages to thwart, and the musical scale and note (scroll and bell) used to subdue it? To choose a winner, bout de papier will draw from a hat containing the names of everyone submitting a correct answer by the deadline of November 28, 2011. The prize will be a book autographed by A Aalto. Not necessary to win, but can you also fill in the chart?
13 Anagrams are so passé, n’est-ce pas?
14 A man who has clearly been paying no attention to the shape the world is in.
15 “Banana peel”,
16 “Bwah-hah-hah” — always a favourite of mine.
17 This guy apparently does no original work — clearly senior management material.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2011) — Summer/Fall 2011 // Été/Automne 2011, pp. 45–47. Read the rest of this issue →
