“I take it you two know each other?” I called out.
Quentin relented first and snaked out of the old man’s grasp. “Genie,” he said, proud to make the introduction. “This is the Great White Planet. Herald of the gods, and maybe the only one who’s not an ass.”
If I remembered the story of Sun Wukong correctly, the Great White Planet was the embodiment of Venus. And he was the first being to recognize that the Monkey King was not a mere beast but a special, uncategorizable being. He’d recommended that Sun Wukong be given a role in the celestial pantheon, like a real god.
That explained the friendly terms he and Quentin were on. While Sun Wukong’s entry-level foray in Heavenly duties had been a disaster, at least the Great White Planet had tried. It didn’t matter what culture or plane of existence you were talking about. Anyone who got you a job, who tried to get you your money, was as good as gold.
Dude’s name still sounds like an online forum that needs to be monitored by the FBI, I thought to myself.
Guanyin, who Quentin had forgotten was also not an ass, stepped forward and smiled. “It’s good to see you again, Grandfather.”
She was calling him by an honorific. True family relations between gods, like the one between the Jade Emperor and his nephew Erlang Shen, were somewhat rare. The Great White Planet took her hand and bowed. “My lady, you are as radiant as ever,” he said in a warm, raspy voice. Then he turned to me.
“The Shouhushen.” He made the title sound grander and a lot less sarcastic than the Jade Emperor or anyone else had. He gave me the kindest, crinkliest smile, his gentle eyes positively dancing with wisdom and understanding.
Then he bashed me in the face with his staff.
His attack moved me as much as Yellow-Toothed Elephant’s did, which is to say not at all. The head of the shillelagh shattered along the grain, splitting the body down to where he gripped it. The sudden cracks in the wood must have pinched the Great White Planet’s skin, because he yipped and put the web of his thumb into his mouth.
“You were supposed to dodge that,” he said, looking disappointed. “I suppose reflexes aren’t your strong suit.” He planted his ruined staff into the ground, pulled out a faded yellow booklet from his sleeve, and began scratching in it with a surprisingly modern ballpoint.
A lot had happened in the past three seconds, and my senses, dulled from yaoguai complaints and introversion fatigue, were only now beginning to catch up. The first thought that went through my head was that I, unlike Quentin, didn’t owe this guy a damn thing, and second, I was perfectly willing to commit eldercide right here and now.
I cracked my knuckles loud enough to make the Great White Planet look up.
Quentin put his hand on my elbow. “He was testing you. That’s part of his job. Besides carrying messages, he’s also like the inspector of Heaven.”
“That is correct,” the Great White Planet said in a distracted cadence, scribbling all the while. “I’m here to evaluate the performance of the Shouhushen in her Earthly duties on behalf of the Jade Emperor, whose mandate she is blessed by.”
Quentin and Guanyin seemed to be blind to how infuriating that was. “I’m being judged on a job that I was forced into and don’t even want?” I said incredulously.
The Great White Planet glanced at me over the top of his notes. “I see motivation could be improved as well.” He went back to his scrawling, this time at double speed.
I knew what points being deducted sounded like. The Great White Planet was making blatant use of negative reinforcement. And it was working. The instinct to simultaneously grovel for a better grade and try harder at whatever I was lacking rose to the forefront. Motivation? I’ll show you motivation, you wrinkly old windbag. Also, please kind sir, don’t fail me, I beg you.
I cleared my throat. I wasn’t Little Miss Perfectionist anymore. I’d grown. I could call his bluff.
“I don’t have to put up with this nonsense,” I said as casually as I could. “This is horse crap.”
The Great White Planet gave me a mournful look before shaking his head and tsking with his teeth. He put his pen away and brought out a bigger, redder one. The tip of it glistened with ink like a snake’s fang, wet with crimson venom.
Quentin and Guanyin had to restrain me from grabbing the pen and shoving it up his nose.
“Tea!” Guanyin shouted as she twisted one of my arms into a hammerlock. “We should have some tea and catch up. It would be nice to sit down with a drink instead of being under the hot sun, no?”
The Great White Planet’s eyes lit up, and he put away the Red Pen of Doom. “That sounds like a wonderful idea,” he said. “There is a particular Earthly confection I’m interested in trying.”
▪ ▪ ▪
I stared at the Great White Planet from across the table in the bubble tea shop, plotting out how I could grab his booklet and force-feed it to him. My best option seemed to be waiting for him to slip on the greasy, canola-oiled floors.
The cafe was right around the corner from a more popular one that served the same menu, so we didn’t bother with disguises or illusions or the like. The clerk was sitting in the back unhygienically on the prep counter, more interested in his phone than the Great White Planet’s odd robes. If anyone cared, we could have passed him off as a cosplayer.
In our booth the old man sipped his boba’ed, jellied, foamed abomination through an extra-wide straw with satisfaction.
“I think there’s been an issue with communication,” the Great White Planet said as he wiped milk froth off his mustache. “No one ever gave you the inside track on what having the mandate of the Jade Emperor means.”
Guanyin got a little defensive upon hearing him suggest she’d failed at bringing me up to speed, though she hid it much better than me. “We explained to Genie that the source of her authority on Earth comes from the fact that the Jade Emperor granted her his official approval. The exact same way that early human kings were dependent on Heaven’s favor to rule their lands.”
Quentin and Guanyin had indeed explained it to me. And I’d expressed my distaste for the lesson vehemently. In my opinion, the reason the demons did what I told them was because they didn’t want me punching them straight into the bowels of Hell.
Plus I hated what the whole concept of a mandate implied. The idea that you could only hold power because a higher-up gave you permission was utterly terrible. That meant your personal merit counted for nothing. The well-being and opinions of the people you were supposed to be leading counted for nothing.
“Yes, but what can be given can be taken away,” the Great White Planet said. “When a king of old lost favor with Heaven by making one too many mistakes, the gods withdrew their mandate and visited disaster upon him until he was overthrown. The mandate passed on to the new leader, who was able to overcome said disaster and right the course of governance.”
“I know my actual Chinese history, thanks,” I said. I was better versed in Things That Had Really Happened than legend and folklore. “The Zhou Dynasty supplanted the Shang Dynasty, the Qin took over from the Zhou, and so on and so on. The conquerors always used the idea of a mandate to justify and legitimize their conquests. Which to me smacks of post-hoc rationalization, survivorship bias, and a whole bunch of other logical fallacies. Someone takes advantage of a flood or a famine to create a violent rebellion, beheads the ruler, and then screams ‘Look at me, I have the mandate now.’”