“Dr. Wu!” the pale man said, coming forward to shake Leonard Wu’s hand with both of his own. “I’m Walter Trent. This is an honor! Your reputation precedes you. Please sit down.”

Leonard Wu did so, and the other man sat also, in a matching maroon leather chair. Leonard Wu said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Trent. Thank you for seeing me.”

“Of course! How goes the restoration in China?”

“Very well, thanks. That’s why I’m here, in fact. I’ll get straight to the point: I’ve come to ask in person for the return of the Buddha head from Cave Thirty-seven.”

“Ah.” The young Trent appeared crestfallen. “I was afraid of that. It’s right here—you’ve seen it?” He gestured to the rear of the room.

“Yes, just now.”

“Impressive, isn’t it? Everyone notices it. It’s always seemed . . . alive, to me. You might think it would make me nervous, staring like that, but I actually like it. But I’m sorry you’ve taken so much trouble, coming all this way. I’m afraid I can’t give it back to you.”

“Because you like it?”

“No, no!”

From behind me, while the young man was searching for words with which to explain himself, came a growl: “Because he’s an idiot!”

I turned. A large, rotund spirit wearing white whiskers, a stiff-collared shirt, and a vested suit hovered in the doorway. He drifted into the room, until he was beside me. “The boy’s a lunkhead, that’s the problem. Who’re you?”

“Explorer Trent!” I stammered.

“No, I’m Trent.” He peered at me through a glass attached to his jacket by a gold chain.

“Oh, yes, I know that. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I’m just so surprised to see you!”

“Why? This’s my house. And that’s my idiot great-grandson. Wait, I know you. You’re the monk from the cave where I got the Buddha head.”

“I am the Ghost of Tuo Mo,” I said. “Yes. Why are you still here?”

“Where? In the house? Can’t I haunt my own house?”

“In the spirit realm. You must have died not long after I did. Why have you not moved on to your next life?”

“Have no idea what you’re talking about. Next life. Didn’t expect to be here this long, though, I’ll grant you that. Thought I’d be getting some heavenly rest by now. Someone has to look after the place, though. Protect all this stuff from generations of nitwits.”

I was fascinated. “Did the Lord of the Underworld not send you on to another incarnation?”

“Hmmm? I met some fat red-faced fool, I vaguely remember. Ranting and raving. Asked me if I had any idea where I was bound for. Told him, as long as my numbskull son was in charge of the collection, damned if I was going anyplace. He said fine, and he sent me back here.” The spirit frowned. “Something like that, anyway.”

“But as long as you are here, you cannot continue along the path.”

“What path?”

“To enlightenment.”

“Can’t think what you’re getting at. You’re an odd one. Always were, if memory serves. What’d you say your name was? Moe? And what’re you doing here, anyway?”

“I’ve come with Leonard Wu, to request the return of the Buddha head.”

The spirit of Explorer Trent snorted. “Good luck.”

“It is very important that the head return.”

“It is? How come?”

“Until it does, I cannot continue on to my next life.”

“Next life? Listen, you mean, whaddaya call it, reincarnation? That what we’re talking about?”

“Precisely.”

“Well, I’ll be hornswoggled. You really get to come back as something else?”

“Every being does. Yourself included. I cannot hope for another life as any being better than a man, but I do hope to have the opportunity to be a better man than I was as Tuo Mo.”

“You’re making my head spin. And then what? Next man you are dies, you just go on like this forever?”

“For quite some time, hoping to gain wisdom with each life. Until finally, you have reached enlightenment and can meld into the not-made.”

“The what?”

I was at a momentary loss, until I recalled something he had said. “Heavenly rest,” I told him. “I think it would be like that.”

“Oh? Sounds pretty good.” He stroked his chin whiskers.

“You will be on the same path,” I said. “Once you leave here.”

“Hah. There’s the rub. I can’t leave until someone’s in charge around here who’s not a moron. When you look at these birdbrains, I think I have to plan on staying forever!”

“Please?”

He heaved a great sigh. “My son the idiot begat my grandson the jackass, who begat this simpleton here. Each one’s worse than the one before him. I should’ve gotten out when I had the chance.” He shook his head. “Can’t leave now, though. Not one of them has a clue about anything in the collection. Best I can do is make sure everything’s kept clean, gets repaired if it breaks, and stays together. That’s why Walter here won’t give you back the head. If I could’ve trusted any one of them even an inch I’d have let him make his own decisions about what stays and goes. But these imbeciles, they can’t be allowed to think for themselves, because whatever they do, it’ll be wrong! So I’ve drilled it into them: The collection stays together! Nothing leaves this house!”

“And you are remaining in this realm to make sure they behave correctly?” I tentatively inquired.

“You got it, Moe.”

“But then . . . your next life . . . your path . . .”

“Does sound good, got to admit. Made some mistakes this time around, I don’t mind telling you. That red-faced gent—what’d you call him, the Lord of the Underworld?—he pointed out a few. Might like a another chance, maybe see if I could correct ’em. But nothing to be done. Like I said before, can’t leave now.”

I regarded the ghost of Explorer Trent. Compassion stirred what would have been my heart, had I been corporeal. I remembered my attachment to the cloths and carvings in the monastery caves. Over the century of my guardianship of the spirits, those ties had loosened, until, I realized, I no longer gave a thought to any of these objects. In fact, as I contemplated them now, a hopeful warmth suffused me—an impossibility, of course, in my disembodied state, but nevertheless the sensation I felt I felt—at the thought that these works, having been spread willy-nilly around the world, might even now be aiding in their journeys beings who would never have reached the caves.

“You must let go of your attachment to these objects in your collection,” I told Explorer Trent. “Or you cannot move on.”

“Well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? That’s why I’m here.”

“But you cannot mean to remain.”

“As long as dunderheads are in charge here, yes I do.”

“As long as you remain here,” I said, voicing a thought that was new but, I was suddenly sure, correct, “ ‘dunderheads’ will be in charge.”

“Eh? How’s that?”

“Did you not say that each one is worse than the one before him? The Lord of the Underworld is clearly assigning, to be reborn in your family line, souls who, for whatever reason, must expiate the arrogance of pride—in their own intelligence and in their skills at decision making. Politicians, perhaps, or military commanders. They are reborn as directionless fools. As long as you remain attached to your collection, he will continue to send them here.”

“That the way it is, huh? Well, as long as he sends ’em, I’ll stay here and keep ’em from mucking things up!”

“You are not proposing to set yourself in opposition to the will of the Lord of the Underworld?”

“You think if I did, I couldn’t take him down a peg or two?” The ghost of Explorer Trent swelled, then deflated. “Nah, really, that’s not what I meant. But as long as all my stuff’s here, and being watched over by morons, I don’t think I can leave. No, I don’t think so.” He frowned, narrowing his eyes at me. “Wonder if I can help you out, though.”

While we had been conversing, Leonard Wu and Walter Trent had been in discussions also. The ghost of Explorer Trent turned to look at them now, so I did the same.