“John Wanderer,” the American supplied.
“Why, that is what you called yourself before,” the woman said.
Wanderer shrugged. “What difference, after so long and in a foreign country? I like the name, take it again and again, and otherwise usually a version of it. Who are you being?”
“What does that matter any more?” It came as a bass cry from the man’s throat. “We are what we are, together for always.”
The room where they conferred was gracious, the furniture Chinese, a variety of objects on shelves. The pair had adventured widely before they raised up this home. That was in 1810, as nearly as Wanderer could figure from the calendar they employed. Subsequently they had absented themselves from time to time for years on end, gone to oversee the businesses that kept them prosperous, brought souvenirs back. Those included books; Tu Shan found his diversion mainly in handicrafts, but Asagao was quite a reader.
In the presence of their fellow immortal, they chose to recall those ancient names. It was as if they snatched for a handhold, now when once more their world was falling to pieces.
Nevertheless joy overrode uneasiness. “We hoped so, hoped you really were what you seemed to be,” Asagao said. “How we hoped. More than an end to loneliness. Others like us, why, that gives meaning to these lives of ours. Does it not?”
“I can’t say,” Wanderer replied. “Besides you, my friend and I know of only one who is certainly alive, and he refuses to associate himself with us. We may be mere freaks.” From the end table next his chair he lifted a cup and took a sip of the pungent local chong, followed by a mouthful of tea. They comforted.
“Surely we are on earth for a reason, however mysterious,” Asagao insisted. “At least, Tu Shan and I have tried to serve some purpose beyond surviving.”
“How did you find us, fifty years ago?” the man asked in his pragmatic way.
No real conversation had been possible then, when everything passed through an interpreter who had better not realize what meaning lay behind the words he rendered. Wanderer could just hint. Presently he thought these two had caught his intent and were doing likewise. They made it clear that they had no wish to depart, nor did they invite him to prolong his stay. Yet they were abundantly courteous, and when he risked his guide’s astonishment and suggested that he return in fifty years, their answer throbbed with eagerness. Today they all knew, past any doubt, what they were.
“I was always restless, never fond of cities, for I began as a wild plainsman,” Wanderer related. “After the first World War I set off around the world. My friend Hanno—he uses different identities, but between us he is Hanno—he had grown rich in America and gave me ample money, hoping I might come on the track of somebody like us. Nepal was not easy to reach or enter in those days, but I guessed that on that account it could harbor such persons. In Katmandu I caught rumors of a couple in the uplands who lived a kind of baronial existence among tribespeople whose benefactors and teachers they were. In spite of treating themselves well, they were considered holy. The story went that when they grew old they left on pilgrimage, and their son and his wife reappeared hi their place. Imagine how such a tale drew me.”
Asagao laughed. “Things were never so simple, of course,” she said. “Our people aren’t fools. They keep up the fiction about us because that is plainly what we want, but they know quite well that the same two come back to them. They don’t fear or envy us, their nature is to accept various lots in life. To them, yes, we are sacred and full of power, but we are also their friends. We sought long and far to find ourselves a home like this.”
“Besides,” Tu Shan grunted, “they don’t care to be overrun by worshippers, curiosity seekers, and the government and its tax collectors. At that, we have to deal with several visitors a year; more than that lately. Stories do get about. Only our distance from everything keeps them faint enough to protect us.”