Sixty Days and Counting

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  But in the committees and on the floor of Congress the hammering went on. Roy said to Charlie, “The media is to legislation as professional wrestling is to Olympic wrestling. The real moves are hard to see. We’ve got them on the run, so come on what’s your latest?” The need for a constant stream of good initiatives was getting such that Roy was now hectoring the brain trust to think faster.

  “This is just a start,” Phil would say at the end of his press conferences, waving away any questions that implied he had suddenly become more radical. “All this had to be done. No one denies that, except for special interests with some kind of horrid financial stake in things staying the same. We the people intend to overturn those destructive tendencies, so grab this tiger by the tail and hold on tight!”

  A FEW SATURDAYS LATER, the three kayakers went out on the Potomac again, putting in just downstream from Great Falls.

  The overflow channels on the Maryland side had been so torn by cavitation in the great flood that things had been forever changed there, and one new channel of the falls dropped down stepped layers in the gneiss in a very regular way. This channel had been diverted and a few adjustments made with concrete and dynamite to make it even more regular, leaving it stepped so that kayakers could with a hard push paddle up it, one level at a time, catching a rest on the flats before ascending the drops. “Some people make it all the way up to above the falls, and then ride the big drops back down again.”

  “Some people,” Charlie said, looking over at Drepung and rolling his eyes. “Don’t you do that, Frank?”

  “I don’t,” Frank said. “I can’t get to the top of the Fish Ladder. It’s hard. I’ve gotten around two-thirds of the way up it, so far.”

  They rounded the bend leading into Mather Gorge, and the falls came in sight. The air was filled with an immediate low roar, and with clouds of mist. The surface of the river hissed with breaking bubbles.

  The lowest rung of the Fish Ladder by itself turned out to be more than Charlie and Drepung wanted to attempt, but Frank shot at the bottom drop at full speed, hit the white flow and fought up to the first flat, then waved at them to give it a try. They did, but found themselves stalling and then sliding backwards down the white-water rapids, plunging in and struggling to stay upright.

  Frank shot down the first drop and paddled over to them.

  “You have to accelerate up the drop,” he explained.

  “By just paddling faster?” asked Drepung.

  “Yes, very fast and sharp. You have to dig hard.”

  “Okay. And if it catches you and throws you back anyway, do you try to go backwards, or turn sideways on the way down?”

  “I turn sideways, for sure.”

  “Okay.”

  Drepung and Charlie gave the lowest flume a few more tries, learning to turn as they stalled, which was in itself quite a trick; and near the end of an hour they both made it up to the first level patch of water, there to hoot loudly against the roar, turn, gulp, and take the fast slide back down to the foamy sheet of fizzing brown water. Yow! While they were doing this, Frank ascended six of the ten rungs of the chute, then turned and bounced down drop by drop, rejoining them red-faced and sweating.

  After that they floated back downstream toward their put-in, looking over at the Virginia side to spot climbers on the dark walls of Mather Gorge. Frank got interested in a woman climbing solo on Juliet’s Balcony, and led them over to watch her climb for a while. Charlie and Drepung reminisced about their one climbing lesson on these walls as if it had been an expedition to Denali or Everest.

  While paddling lazily back across the river, Frank said, “Hey, Drepung, I’ve got a question I’ve been meaning to ask you—that day at the MCI Center, what was that with you putting a scarf around the Dalai Lama’s neck, before he gave his talk?”

  “Yeah, what was that about?” Charlie chimed in.

  Drepung paddled on for a while.

  “Well, you know,” he said at last, looking away from the other two, so that he was squinting into the sunlight squiggling over the river. “Everyone needs someone to bless them, even the Dalai Lama. And Khembalung is a very important place in Tibetan Buddhism.”

  Frank and Charlie gave each other a look. “We knew that, but like just how important?” Charlie asked.

  “Well, it is one of the power spots, for sure. Like the Potala, in Lhasa.”

  “So the Potala has the Dalai Lama, and Khembalung has you?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “So how does the Panchen Lama fit into that?” Charlie asked. “What’s his power spot?”

  “Beijing,” Frank said.

  Charlie laughed. “It was somewhere down in Amda, right?”

  Drepung said, “No, not always.”

  Charlie said, “But he’s the one who was said to be on somewhat equal terms with the Dalai Lama, right? I read that—that the two of them represented the two main sects, and helped to pick each other when they were finding new ones. Kind of a back-and-forth thing.”

  “Yes,” Drepung said.

  “And so, but there’s a third one? I mean is that what you’re saying?”

  “No. There are only the two of us.”

  Drepung looked over at them.

  Charlie and Frank stared back at him, mouths hanging open. They glanced at each other to confirm they were both getting the same message.

  “So!” Charlie said. “You are the Panchen Lama, that’s what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “But—but…”

  “I thought the new Panchen Lama was kidnapped by the Chinese,” Frank said.

  “Yes.”

  “But what are you saying!” Charlie cried. “You escaped?”

  “I was rescued.”

  Frank and Charlie paddled themselves into positions on either side of Drepung’s kayak, both facing him from close quarters. They laid their paddles over the kayaks to secure themselves as a loose raft, and as they slowly drifted downstream together, Drepung told them his story.

  “Do you remember what I told you, Charlie, about the death of the Panchen Lama in 1986?”

  Charlie nodded, and Drepung quickly recapped for Frank:

  “The last Panchen Lama was a collaborator with the Chinese for most of his life. He lived in Beijing and was a part of Mao’s government, and he approved the conquest of Tibet. But this meant that the Tibetan people lost their feeling for him. While to the Chinese he was always just a tool. Eventually, their treatment of Tibet became so harsh that the Panchen Lama also protested, privately and then publicly, and so he spent his last years under house arrest.

  “So, when he died, the world heard of it, and the Chinese told the monastery at Tashilhunpo to locate the new Panchen Lama, which they did. But they secretly contacted the Dalai Lama, to get his help with the final identification. At that point the Dalai Lama publicly identified one of the children, living near Tashilhunpo, thinking that because this boy lived under Chinese control, the Chinese would accept the designation. That way the Panchen Lama, although under Chinese control, would continue to be chosen in part by the Dalai Lama, as had always been true.”

  “And that was you,” Charlie said.

  “Yes. That was me. But the Chinese were not happy at this situation, and I was taken away by them. And another boy was identified by them as the true Panchen Lama.”

  Drepung shook his head as he thought of this other boy, then went on: “Both of us were taken into custody, and raised in secrecy. No one knew where we were kept.”

  “You weren’t with the other boy?”

  “No. I was with my parents, though. We all lived in a big house together, with a garden. But then when I was eight, my parents were taken away. I never saw them again. I was brought up by Chinese teachers. It was lonely. It’s a hard time to remember. But then, when I was ten, one night I was awakened from sleep by some men in gas masks. One had his hand over my mouth as they woke me, to be sure I would not cry out. They looked like insects, but one spo
ke to me in Tibetan, and told me they were there to rescue me. That was Sucandra.”

  “Sucandra!”

  “Yes. Padma also was there, and some other men you have seen at the embassy house. Most of them had been prisoners of the Chinese at earlier times, so they knew the Chinese routines, and helped plan the rescue.”

  “But how did they find you in the first place?” Frank said.

  “Tibet has had spies in Beijing for a long time. There is a military element in Tibet, people who keep a low profile because of the Dalai Lama’s insistence on nonviolence. Not everyone agrees with that. And so, there were people who started the hunt for me right after I was taken by the Chinese, and eventually they found an informant and discovered where I was being held.”

  “And then they did some kind of…?”

  “Yes. There are still Tibetan men who took part in the rebellion that your CIA backed, before Nixon went to China. They have experience in entering China to perform operations, and they were happy to have another opportunity, and to train a new generation. There are those who say that the Dalai Lama’s ban on violence only allows the world to forget us. They want to fight, and they think it would bring more attention to our cause. So the chance to do something was precious. When these old commandos told me about my rescue, which they did many times, they were very pleased with themselves. Apparently they watched the place, and spied on it to learn the routines, and rented a house nearby, and dug a tunnel into our compound. On the night of my rescue they came up from below and filled the air of the house with that gas that the Russians used during that hostage crisis in a theater, applying the correct amount, as the Russians did not, Sucandra said. So when they rescued me they looked like insects, but they spoke Tibetan, which I had not heard since my parents were taken away. So I trusted them. Really I understood right away what was happening, and I wanted to escape. I put on a mask and led them out of there! They had to slow me down!”

  He chuckled briefly, but with the same shadowed expression as before—grim, or pained. Anna had spoken from the very start of a look she had seen on Drepung’s face that pierced her, but Charlie had not seen it until now.

  “So,” he said, “you are the Panchen Lama. Holy shit.”

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s why you’ve been laying low in the embassy and all. Office boy or receptionist or whatnot.”

  “Yes, that’s right. And indeed you must not tell anyone.”

  “Oh no, we won’t.”

  “So your real name is…”

  “Gedhun Choekyi Nyima.”

  “And Drepung?”

  “Drepung is the name of one of the big monasteries in Tibet. It is not actually a person’s name. But I like it.”

  They drifted downriver for a while.

  “So let me get this straight!” Charlie said. “Everything you guys told us when you came here was wrong! You, the office boy, are actually the head man. Your supposed head man turned out to have been a minor servant, like a press secretary. And your monk regents are some kind of a gay couple.”

  “Well, that’s about right,” Drepung said. “Although I don’t think of Padma and Sucandra as a gay couple.”

  Frank said, “I don’t mean to stereotype anyone, but I lived in the room next to them for a few months, and, you know, they are definitely what-have-you. Companions.”

  “Yes, of course. They shared a prison cell for ten years. They are very close. But…” Drepung shrugged. He was thinking about other things. Again the tightened mouth, with its undercurrent of anger. And of course it would be there—how could it not? Once Drepung had said to Charlie that his parents were no longer living; presumably, then, he had reason to believe that the Chinese had killed them. Perhaps the search for him had made this clear. Charlie didn’t want to ask about it.

  “What about the other Panchen Lama?” he said. “The boy that the Chinese selected?”

  Drepung shrugged. “We are not sure he is still alive. Our informants have not been able to find him in the way they found me. So he is missing. Someone said, if he is alive, they will bring him up stupid.”

  Charlie shook his head. It was ugly stuff. Not that it didn’t fit right in with centuries of bitter Chinese-Tibetan intrigue, ranging from propaganda attacks to full-on war—and now, for the previous half century, a kind of slow-motion genocide, as the Tibetans were both killed outright, and overwhelmed in their own land by millions of Han colonials. The amazing thing was that the Tibetan response had been as nonviolent as it had been. Maybe a full-on terrorist campaign or an insurrection would indeed have gotten them farther. But the means really were the ends for these guys. That was actually kind of an amazing thought, Charlie found. He supposed it was because of the Dalai Lama, or because of their Buddhist culture, if that wasn’t saying the same thing; they had enough of a shared belief system that they could agree that going the route of violence would have meant losing even if they had won. They would get there on their own terms, if they could. And so Drepung had been snatched out of captivity with a kind of Israeli or Mission Impossible deftness, and now here he was, out in the world. Taking the stage in front of 13,000 people with the Dalai Lama himself. How many there had known what they were seeing?

  “But Drepung, don’t the Chinese know who you are?”

  “Yes. It is pretty clear they do.”

  “But you’re not in danger?”

  “I don’t think so. They’ve known for a while now. I am a kind of topic in the ongoing negotiations with the Chinese leadership. It’s a new leadership, and they are looking for a solution on this issue. The Dalai Lama is talking to them, and I have been involved too. And now Phil Chase has been made aware of my identity, and certain assurances have been given. I have a kind of diplomatic immunity.”

  “I see. And so—what now? Now that the Dalai Lama has been here, and Phil has endorsed his cause too?”

  “We go on from that. Parts of the Chinese government are angry now, at us and at Phil Chase. Parts would like the problem to be over. So it is an unstable moment. Negotiations continue.”

  “Wow, Drepung.”

  Frank said, “Is it okay if we keep calling you that?”

  “No, you must call me Your High Holiness.” Drepung grinned at them, slapped a paddle to spray them. Charlie saw that he was happy to be alive, happy to be free. There were problems, there were dangers, but here he was, out on the Potomac. They spread back out and paddled in to shore.

  CUT TO THE CHASE

  Today’s post:

  I’ve been remembering the fear I had. It’s made me think about how a lot of the people in this world have to live with a lot of fear every day. Not acute fear maybe, but chronic, and big. Of course we all live with fear, you can’t avoid it. But still, to be afraid for your kids. To be afraid of getting sick because you don’t have health care. That fear itself makes you sick. That’s fifty million people in our country. That’s a fear we could remove. It seems to me now that government of the people, by the people, and for the people should be removing all the fears that we can. There will always be basic fears we can’t remove—fear of death, fear of loss—but we can do better on removing the fear of destitution, and on our fear for our kids and the world they’ll inherit.

  One way we could do that would be to guarantee health insurance. Make it a simple system, like Canada’s or Holland’s or Denmark’s, and make sure everyone has it. That’s well within our ability to fund. All the healthiest countries do it that way. Let’s admit the free market botched this and we need to put our house in order. Health shouldn’t be something that can bankrupt you. It’s not a market commodity. Admitting that and moving on would remove one of the greatest fears of all.

  Another thing we could do would be to institute full employment. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people could offer jobs to everyone who wants one. It would be like the Works Progress Administration during the Depression, only more wide-ranging. Because there’s an awful lot of work that needs doing, and
we’ve got the resources to get things started. We could do it.

  One of the more interesting aspects of full employment as an idea is how quickly it reveals the fear that lies at the heart of our current system. You’ll notice that anytime unemployment drops below 5 percent the stock market begins to flag, because capital has begun to worry that lower unemployment will mean “wage pressure,” meaning management faces a shortage in supply of labor and has to demand it, has to bid for it, pay more in competition, and wages therefore go up—and profits down.

  Think for a minute about what that means about the system we’ve agreed to live in. Five percent of our working population is about ten million people. Ten million people out of jobs, and a lot of them therefore homeless and without health insurance. Destitute and hungry. But this is structural, it’s part of the plan. We can’t hire them without big businesses getting scared at the prospect that they might have to compete for labor by offering higher wages and more benefits. So unemployment never dips below 5 percent without having a chilling effect on the market, which depresses new investments and new hiring, and as a result the unemployment rate goes back up. No one has to say anything—it works as if by itself—but the fear keeps being created and profits stay high. People stay hungry and compliant.

  So essentially, by these attitudes and responses, big business and stock owners act as a cartel to keep the economy cranking along at a high rate but with unemployment included as an element, so that the bottom wage earners are immiserated and desperate, and the rest of the wage earners will take any job they can get, at any wages, even below a living wage, because that’s so much better than nothing. And so all wage earners and most salary earners are kept under the thumb of capital, and have no leverage to better their deal in the system.