Voice of the Elders

by Greg Ripley

  As Zhongkui spoke, the campfire flared up suddenly, startling Dayan and Jianhu. With an eyebrow raised, Dayan shot Jianhu a questioning look. She simply shrugged in reply. While it was said that some Elders had these types of abilities—especially among the older ones—displays such as this were rarely seen. Most could travel as they had to Earth, and many had some degree of telepathy as Dayan and Jianhu did, but telekinetic powers were infrequent enough to be the stuff of legend, even on the Elders’ world. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, Dayan thought, until he noticed the grin on Zhongkui’s face as he warmed his hands over the fire.

  “Ah, that’s better,” Zhongkui said. “These mountain nights can get a bit chilly.”

  37

  Qilian Mountains

  Gansu Province, China

  After dropping his party at the base of Qilian Shan, Tenzin had been riding for about an hour when he spotted them—two men were hiding in the rocks a few hundred yards ahead. They lay in wait on the uphill side of the trail he followed. He’d spotted them quickly, his eyes accustomed to taking in the wide-open spaces of the mountains with his peripheral vision. The stillness of the mountains made even the subtlest movement glaringly obvious.

  He continued down the trail, giving no indication he noticed them, but his hand slowly slid into his chuba. He made sure his weapon was accessible and the safety was off. He would avoid bloodshed if possible, but if left with no alternative, he was prepared for that as well.

  The nomads of Qinghai, the former Tibetan Provinces of Amdo and Kham, were no strangers to violence, despite being followers of the Buddha. They had put up the fiercest resistance to the Chinese Army when they moved into Tibet in the last century and, though rare, it wasn’t unheard of for feuds between clans to be settled with bloodshed if no understanding could be reached to address a dispute.

  The traditional Kham-style knife he carried on his belt was really more of a short sword, its blade over a foot long. It had a handle of nickel-silver, matching the elaborately carved scabbard. But this was no ceremonial or ornamental weapon, its steel blade was razor sharp, despite being used as an all-purpose tool for the horseman. There was a dragon carved on the handle, with another eight on the scabbard. His knife hung on his left side, while the right side held a traveling cutlery set of chopsticks and a small knife in a similarly designed scabbard, decorated with the eight auspicious symbols of Tibetan Buddhism, a common design motif in the region.

  As he neared the boulder, he stopped his horses about ten feet away and dismounted. He feigned checking on his horses, one eye on the boulder behind which the men hid. They would have to come to him. He positioned himself amongst the horses and just as he expected, they stepped out onto the trail when they thought their presence would be least noticed.

  “Don’t move,” one of the men said in Chinese.

  As he came around the front of his horse, taking them in at a moment’s glance, he registered the two handguns trained on him. He waved his right hand in front of him as he pleaded, “Please don’t shoot,” while his left hand was already drawing his knife in a reverse grip. In one smooth motion he slashed the gun hand of the man nearest him. The other man fired, his shot going wide as Tenzin spun away, positioning himself on the other side of the man he had slashed, now doubled over holding his arm.

  While the shot missed Tenzin, an awful groan told him one of his horses hadn’t been so lucky. His free hand found his own pistol in his chuba as he completed his turn, drawing and firing in a flash. The second assailant fell, an angry red eye appearing in the once pristine flesh of his forehead. Tenzin cursed, and clocked the injured man with the butt of his gun, knocking him unconscious. Wiping his knife on the man’s pants before sheathing it, he turned to his injured horse, which had fallen where it stood, still tethered to the others.

  Though his horse still lived, he could tell by its labored breathing and the blood-flecked foam around its nostrils that it wasn’t long for this world. Kneeling next to it, he put a hand on its neck, stroking it tenderly and whispering into its ear to calm it. Then he fired the fatal shot, ending its pain. He began to recite the Mani mantra, said to liberate beings from rebirth in the six realms of existence, continuing as he focused his awareness on the man he had killed. Even his enemies deserved his compassion.

  He took a moment to calm the other horses before he returned his attention to the unconscious man. Sitting him up, he grabbed him under the arms from behind and dragged him towards one of the horses. When he got close he heaved him upright, until he could bend down and grab him around the waist, then he pushed him onto one of the horses, before binding his wrists and ankles.

  Returning to the dead man, he searched the body, checking his pockets. He didn’t find anything of interest until he pulled up his left sleeve. On the inside of his left wrist was a tell-tale tattoo. It was unmistakable, the Hawk of Quraish with crossed swords, the symbol of the Soldiers of the Caliphate. Though tattoos were usually considered taboo amongst devout Muslims, members of the SOC broke with tradition and marked themselves with the would-be country’s symbol.

  He dragged the body back behind the boulder, and began piling stones over it from the scree-covered slopes. He’d notify the rogyapas, the body-breakers, of the location of the corpse when he returned to his village. They would dispose of the corpse through sky burial, leaving it in pieces to be picked clean by the vultures. He kicked dust over the blood left on the trail, and prepared to depart. He would hurry to his village and leave the captive with members of the society before returning with one of his clan to deal with his horse, if the scavengers didn’t beat him to it.

  38

  Huanyuan Guan

  Qilian Mountains, China

  The next morning the group awoke and joined the community for breakfast. The morning meal was again somewhat unusual for a typical Daoist monastery as eggs were available. That made sense with the chickens they’d seen outside. Thinking about it, Rohini hadn’t heard a rooster that morning. She could have slept through it, or perhaps their sleeping quarters were far enough away from the coop not to hear the rooster crow. The meal was again eaten in silence followed by a group prayer.

  After breakfast Rohini noticed Guangming in conversation with the Abbot, so she walked over to join them.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.

  “No, please join us,” the Abbot replied.

  “Long Daozhang was just telling me we’ve been summoned, so we’ll need to head up to the Guanzi’s abode this afternoon,” Guangming told her.

  “Does that mean we might still have time for a quick tour of the farm? I’d love to see what you’re growing and experimenting with here,” she said.

  I would be happy to show you around, Rohini,” the Abbot replied. “I just have a few duties to attend to first. I will come fetch you shortly.”

  They headed back to the guesthouse to wait for the Abbot. When they arrived Guangming had other news. “Long Daozhang had some worrying news for me this morning,” he said. “It appears we were followed from Zhangye.”

  “Oh crap. That’s not good,” Jane said, rising from her seat. “Are they here in the valley?”

  “No. Fortunately, they were intercepted outside the valley. As far as we can tell they didn’t get close enough to follow us here.”

  “Who intercepted them, someone from the society?” Jane said.

  “Yes. It was Tenzin, actually. He spotted two men on his way back to his village after dropping us off and took care of them,” Guangming said.

  “Tenzin? Really? Did he kill them?” Rohini said.

  “Unfortunately, he did have to kill one of them. He was able to subdue the other one. He took him back to his village where he’s being questioned,” Guangming said.

  “Tenzin seemed like such a sweetheart,” Rohini said, “I wouldn’t have guessed he had it in him.”

  “Don’t let his jov
ial personality fool you,” Jimmie said, “The nomads from Kham and Amdo are a hardy bunch. I’m sure you must have noticed his knife. Those aren’t just for show. Many of the men carry guns as well.”

  “I didn’t realize this was the Wild West out here,” Jane said. “Did the Abbot tell you anything about the men?”

  “He said they were SOC. They had the Hawk and Swords tattoo on their wrists,” Guangming replied.

  “That makes no sense,” Jane said. “There’s no way they would have the connections to track us here.”

  “You said there was no way they should have been able to pull off the attack in DC either, remember?” Rohini said.

  “That’s true. We’ve got to find out who they’re working with. We’ve got to let the White House know about this. I’d better fill in President Powers while you take your tour,” Jane said.

  Jane went to her room to retrieve her satellite phone, then headed outside to make her call. Before calling the White House, she put in a quick call to her old friend Burt to give him a heads-up as well.

  “Burt, it’s Jane,” she said, after he picked up.

  “Jane, what’s up? Are you guys still doing OK out there? Wherever ‘out there’ is?” he replied.

  “Yeah. We’re fine for the time being. Listen, I’ve got some intel. I’m about to call the White House with this as well, but I wanted to keep you up to speed,” Jane said. “Somehow we were tracked by the SOC. One of our local contacts was able to take them out—most likely keep them from gleaning our location—but somehow, they tracked us most of the way here. Listen, Burt, we’re in the middle of nowhere, way out in the mountains in Gansu, China—there’s no way the SOC could have tracked us to China, let alone way out here.”

  “Gansu! You are way out there. But you’re right. They must have had help, or someone else is calling the shots for them. Even state-sponsored assets would’ve been hard-pressed to track you there. Unless the SOC reconstituted themselves in China. There is a significant Muslim population in that part of China, isn’t there?” Burt speculated.

  “It’s possible, but I think it’s highly unlikely. If you recall these guys weren’t just fundamentalists like other Wahhabis, they were also Arab Nationalists. I know there were indications that Wahhabism spread into China, but the SOC never had much tolerance, even for non-Arab Muslims. I think these guys were sent to follow us by whoever their current paymasters are. Our contacts managed to take one of them alive, so perhaps we’ll know more soon. I haven’t heard anything further yet,” Jane said.

  “Who have you got watching your back out there, anyway? Are they locals or agency people?” Burt asked.

  “Definitely locals. Alright, look, I’ll let you in on part of that long story I was telling you about. Our hosts here are from a Chinese secret society,” Jane said.

  “You mean the Triads? How they hell did you get tangled up with them? Are you sure you can trust them?” Burt responded.

  “They’re not quite like the triads you and I know, Burt. Think more like the historical predecessors to the current day gangsters. These guys apparently go way back for over a thousand years and are more religiously and ethically motivated. They’re more like do-gooder vigilantes than mobsters,” Jane said.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Who knew?” Burt said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You always had a knack for stumbling into some weird stuff, Jane.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s only going to get weirder, old buddy. But I’m afraid the rest of the story will have to wait. I’d better get on the horn with the president. Take care Burt. We should see you in a few weeks, at the outside.”

  Jane ended the call and placed another to the White House. The president called her back a short time later with some interesting news of her own. In their absence, another attack had occurred in the United States.

  39

  Jane was still on her call with President Powers when the Abbot came for Rohini, so she stayed behind while the others went on a tour of the grounds. The Abbot gave them a little history about the valley and the monastery as they made their way out toward the orchards and fields beyond.

  The monastery had originally sprung up around a shadowy figure known as Tianyinzi, the Master of Heavenly Seclusion, who lived in the small cave located at what was now the rear of the monastery grounds. The monastery itself hadn’t been built until several centuries had passed, the early history of the original community gathered there lost until the discovery of the society’s texts at Dunhuang by Wang Yuanlu. As it turned out, Tianyinzi was none other than Zhongkui himself, according to what the Guanzi had told the Abbot.

  As they walked past the chicken coop, Rohini noticed something she hadn’t seen on the way in the previous day, there was another building beyond, to which the Abbot now led them. Opening the door and turning on the lights, they saw rows and rows of shelves. At first Rohini thought the Abbot had taken them into a storeroom until she realized what she was looking at. It was a mushroom growhouse.

  Many of the shelves held trays full of a composted growth medium, while others held small logs which had been inoculated with spores. There was quite a variety. She thought she recognized a few, like shiitakes and maitakes, though she only knew them by their Japanese names. But there were others she was less familiar with, so she asked the Abbot about them.

  “Actually, several of these are shiitake. We grow three different kinds here, Donggu, Xianggu, and Huagu. They each have slightly different characteristics. The shiitakes and maitakes are usually considered food mushrooms though they are quite good for one’s health. We also grow several types of mushrooms which are considered more medicinal like Lingzhi and Yunzhi,” Abbot Long explained.

  “I think we have these in the states too, but we call them Turkey Tail mushrooms,” Rohini said. “What does the Chinese name mean?”

  “Yunzhi means ‘cloud mushroom,’” Guangming said. “But we don’t have turkeys in China.”

  “Well, maybe just the one, anyway,” Rohini said, pointing a thumb at Jimmie standing next to her.

  “Hey, I heard that,” he said, smiling.

  They left the mushroom shed and continued their tour of the grounds, making their way through the orchards and out to the fields. The Abbot showed them the garden of medicinal herbs first, most of them unfamiliar to Rohini, though some she recognized as common ornamental plants in the US, like balloon flower. The Abbot called it Jie Geng, and said its root was used to open up the lungs and treat cough. Rohini recognized most of the vegetables in the next field. They were fairly common varieties, with the exception of a few, like bitter melon, Gai lan or Chinese broccoli, and burdock, which she certainly didn’t expect to see.

  When her family visited her grandparent’s farm as a child, their golden retriever always got covered in burrs from the burdock which grew along the fencerows around the farm. She never expected to see someone growing it on purpose, but Guangming explained that burdock root was a common vegetable dish in much of East Asia. She didn’t recognize the crops in the next field either, though they looked familiar.

  In the first field were tall grassy plants with large red plumes which reminded her a bit of the ornamental plant cockscomb.

  “What are those, are they just weeds or a cover crop of some kind?” She asked.

  “These are some grains we are experimenting with. They grow well at this high-altitude and are quite prolific,” the Abbot said. “This first field is quinoa and the field beyond is amaranth.”

  She only remembered amaranth as a weed from her uncle’s farm in New Mexico, but as they walked closer, she realized it was indeed the same plant. This looked like a variety that had gone through some degree of selection though. The seed heads looked much heavier than the weeds she remembered from her uncle’s fields.

  As they walked around the farm, Rohini was struck at how much it reminded her of the ecovillages she had visited in the pa
st. It sounded like they used the farm in much the same way, both as a source of self-sustainability for the monastery and also as an education and research facility—albeit an unofficial one—passing their knowledge on to the outside world. Rohini recalled how she’d felt at the UN the day after the Elders had appeared. She was reminded once again that the people of Earth already had much of the wisdom and knowledge necessary for avoiding the worst catastrophes of climate change. We had simply lacked the political will—or just the maturity—to make the necessary changes. Then again, she realized, that was not entirely the case. Much of the problem lay with the forces in the world that were actively fighting against the necessary changes.

  There were people who had gotten filthy rich by keeping us complacent, corporations which had known about the disastrous effects of climate change for decades, yet kept it hidden from the public. It was much like the smoking lobby before them. They’d tried to hide the science on how destructive cigarette smoking was for years. In fact, she thought she remembered learning once that many of the very same PR firms were responsible for both charades.

  They had taken the same strategy of ‘muddying the waters’ they’d used with tobacco companies and applied it to climate change. The science was still unsettled, they’d said, years after a scientific consensus had been reached. Though much of the public hadn’t been fooled by this, enough were that business as usual was accepted long after we should have begun to clean up our act. She was glad the tide finally seemed to be turning.

  They finished their tour of the farm and were headed back to their quarters a different way than they had come before, passing by two small structures set off by themselves in the northwest corner of the grounds. Walking past, Rohini caught a glimpse of a statue inside the open doors and stopped.

  “Long Daozhang, what is this building?” Rohini asked. “I hadn’t noticed it before. May we go inside?”