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The Second Achmed Abdullah Megapack. Achmed Abdullah
Читать онлайн.Название The Second Achmed Abdullah Megapack
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781434442932
Автор произведения Achmed Abdullah
Жанр Публицистика: прочее
Издательство Ingram
The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack
The Robert Sheckley Megapack
The Steampunk Megapack
The Time Travel Megapack
The Wizard of Oz Megapack
HORROR
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack
The Second Achmed Abdullah Megapack
The E.F. Benson Megapack
The Second E.F. Benson Megapack
The Algernon Blackwood Megapack
The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack
The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack
The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack
The Ghost Story Megapack
The Second Ghost Story Megapack
The Third Ghost Story Megapack
The Haunts & Horrors Megapack
The Horror Megapack
The M.R. James Megapack
The Macabre Megapack
The Second Macabre Megapack
The Mummy Megapack
The Occult Detective Megapack
The Vampire Megapack
The Werewolf Megapack
WESTERNS
The B.M. Bower Megapack
The Max Brand Megapack
The Buffalo Bill Megapack
The Cowboy Megapack
The Zane Grey Megapack
The Western Megapack
The Second Western Megapack
The Wizard of Oz Megapack
YOUNG ADULT
The Boys’ Adventure Megapack
The Dan Carter, Cub Scout Megapack
The Doll Story Megapack
The G.A. Henty Megapack
The Girl Detectives Megapack
The Penny Parker Megapack
The Pinocchio Megapack
The Rover Boys Megapack
The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack
The Tom Swift Megapack
AUTHOR MEGAPACKS
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack
The Edward Bellamy Megapack
The B.M. Bower Megapack
The E.F. Benson Megapack
The Second E.F. Benson Megapack
The Algernon Blackwood Megapack
The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack
The Max Brand Megapack
The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack
The Wilkie Collins Megapack
The Ray Cummings Megapack
The Guy de Maupassant Megapack
The Philip K. Dick Megapack
The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack
The Jacques Futrelle Megapack
The Randall Garrett Megapack
The Second Randall Garrett Megapack
The Anna Katharine Green Megapack
The Zane Grey Megapack
The Edmond Hamilton Megapack
The Dashiell Hammett Megapack
The M.R. James Megapack
The Selma Lagerlof Megapack
The Murray Leinster Megapack
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack
The Talbot Mundy Megapack
The Andre Norton Megapack
The H. Beam Piper Megapack
The Mack Reynolds Megapack
The Rafael Sabatini Megapack
The Saki Megapack
The Robert Sheckley Megapack
OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY
The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany Megapack”)
The Wildside Book of Fantasy
The Wildside Book of Science Fiction
Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories
More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories
X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
THE EVENING RICE
Up there in the gray North a great triple tomb thrusts its frowning parapet obliquely into space. On its outer walls, to left and right of the entrance, are bas-reliefs in sea-green majolica, representing five-claw, imperial dragons.
It is the Fu-Ling, the Happy and August Tomb, where lies the T’ai Tzu, the Nurhachi, the Iron-capped Prince, the founder of the Manchu dynasty, who centuries ago swept out of the barren Central Asian wastes at the head of his host of red-skinned, flat-nosed horsemen, and turned placid China into a crimson shambles.
Last year the hereditary keeper of the sacred tomb, a Ch’i-jen, a Manchu bannerman, sold it to a moon-faced Chinese farmer for a lean sack of clipped silver taels. Next year it will house the farmer’s squealing, red-bristled pigs.
And still the Manchu has his sword and the strength of his sword-arm; still the moon-faced coolie is a coward who shrinks at the swish and crackle of naked steel.
Yet, next year, the pigs will dirty the tomb’s yellow imperial tiles. And the pigs, too, are symbolic—and necessary. For what is the evening rice without a few slivers of fried pork?
* * **
The last time Ng Ch’u had seen him had been nearly forty years earlier in the squat little Manchu-Chinese border town of Ninguta, in the hushed shelter of an enameled pagoda-roof that mirrored the sun-rays a thousandfold, like countless intersecting rainbows—endless zigzag flashings of electric blue and deep rose and keen, arrogant, glaucous-green, like the shooting of dragon-flies and purple-winged tropical moths. There had been murder in the other’s, the Manchu’s, eyes; murder in the hairy, brown fist that curled about broad, glistening steel.
But on that day he, the despised Chinese coolie, had had the whip-hand.
“A Manchu you are!” he had said; and his eyes had glistened triumphantly through meager almond slits. “A Manchu indeed! A Pao-i bannerman, an aristocrat—sloughing your will and your passions as snakes cast their skin, brooking no master but yourself and the black desert thunder! And I am only a mud-turtle from the land of Han.” He had sucked in his breath. “But—” he had continued; had slurred and stopped.
“But?”
“But—there