Neon Lotus
Page 6
“Mommy,” she said, “I want to go home.”
Kate laid her down on the bed. “Honey, you’re home now. Why don’t you just close your eyes and get some sleep?”
“No, I want to go home.”
“But Marianne, this is your home.”
“No!” her daughter screamed. “Home!”
She pointed at the slate. Kate saw high mountains, capped with snow.
“Oh my God,” she murmured.
“Home. . . .”
PART TWO: RAINBOW TARA
(A.D. 2158)
4. Memories of a Thousand Hands
At midnight they crossed from Mustang into the Tibetan Autonomous Region, flying down from a tongue of the Nepalese Himalayas that protruded into Chinese territory like an insult. The CIA jet was supposed to be transparent to Chinese surveillance equipment, but Marianne Strauss couldn’t quite believe that. She felt anything but invisible, floating there in the darkness above snowcapped peaks. Spy satellites were said to outnumber the visible stars. Even Jetsun Dorje, the guerrilla pilot, had hinted that detection was only a matter of time. If they stayed in the T.A.R. long enough, it became a certainty.
“Like Br’er Rabbit, we could be stuck in TAR,” he had said with a chuckle. “You like puns?”
“Not much.”
Now he watched his flight board with complete concentration. The topology of the land below appeared in three dimensions on his screen: rugged mountains were sketched in thin green lines, settlements crossed the panel in the form of hot red clusters. Peering over his shoulder, she watched the fragile green mountains closing in like lace curtains as he guided the plane through a narrow pass. He did it with the calmness of a computer operator, as if the lovely green lines had no reality beyond what appeared on the screen. She had to remind herself that the images represented tangible objects, walls of solid rock, any one of which would have erased them had Jetsun flown into it. But he was an excellent pilot and he was at ease in the terrain. Tibet, although he had never lived here, was his home.
“Marianne,” said a voice from the cabin behind her. “Why don’t you come sit down?”
“Listen to Dr. Norbu,” Jetsun said without looking up from his board. “Between Zhongba and Paryang there is plenty of traffic. Don’t make me any more nervous than I am already.”
“Sorry.” She pulled out of the cockpit and resumed her seat next to Dr. Norbu. “It’s those pills I took in Jomsom. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep for days.”
“There is no time for sleep.”
“We have a few hours now, don’t we?”
“Look out the window, Marianne. That is Tibet below. You’ve done what Tashi never managed.”
“So I can die happy now and let my next incarnation take over from here.”
“It wouldn’t be that simple with the nearest Bardo device in Dharamsala. By the time you were old enough to continue the work, everything would have changed yet again. There might be nothing left worth the effort—nothing but the struggle itself, and the suffering. Now is the time, Marianne. Now is the best time to do all we can.”
She reached over and squeezed his hand; it felt frail to her, and his skin was always cold. There was gray in his hair these days. He was her oldest friend, the friend of two lifetimes.
“I’ve lived for this chance, Reting, you know that.”
He nodded with a melancholy smile. “Lived more than once.”
“I’ve fought death and ignorance and governments. Not to mention my mother.”
“She was the hardest.”
She smiled. “I’ve gone through a lot to get here. I’m not going to give up an inch of what I’ve gained.”
“Tibet is fortunate to have you.”
She looked out her window, down at the dark land, and shook her head. “It has been so unfortunate, Reting. I love this land with all my heart. I would give anything to see it liberated.”
“You sound like a Tibetan,” called Jetsun Dorje from the cockpit.
She was silent a moment, watching the lights of a town far away to the west. Finally she said, “That I am.”
***
Two hours later, the first mandala appeared. They passed to the east of it, giving Marianne a perfect view.
It was a wheel of five-colored light burning on the plain, composed of thousands of steadily glowing points. At the center was a blue disk, around which the four other colors shone in quadrants—white to the east, yellow to the south, red to the west, and green to the north. She knew that the lanterns were held by Tibetan nomads, the plains people, but she could see no individuals from this altitude.
“Aren’t we landing here?” she asked.
“Not this one,” Jetsun said.
“There are dozens burning tonight,” said Dr. Norbu. “They will appear all over the countryside, and should distract the Chinese.”
“And what do the Chinese think is happening out here all of a sudden?”
“This isn’t sudden, Marianne. The nomads have been doing this for decades. The mandalas are beacons to the night, signals shining out to the gods.”
She shook her head. “The gods don’t travel in flying saucers.”
“Do you know this for a fact? Why shouldn’t the gods avail themselves of technology, if it provides a means of reaching those in need?”
“Right,” she said. “The legends say that the first king of Tibet descended to earth on a sky-cord. I suppose he was a passing alien in a human-suit.”
“And when he died,” said Jetsun, “his body vanished completely—poof! No trace of it.”
“Obviously there was a matter transmitter in orbit.” She sank back into her seat, laughing.
Dr. Norbu sighed. “Many people used to say that death was a frontier we would never explore.”
“Science has stripped the human soul of any lingering vestige of privacy,” she said. She shook her head. “And to think I’m the one responsible.”
She glanced over at Reting and saw that her words had upset him. The Bardo device had been the center of his life for many years.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn't tease you. Of course the gods are aliens. Nothing like Chenrezi could have evolved on this planet. Perhaps one day, after eons of peace, it will be possible to have eyes in our palms; but they make one rather vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat.”
“I didn’t say I shared the nomads’ beliefs,” he said. “Some Communist instructor must have given a halfhearted explanation of religious psychology, attempting to describe the etiology of the gods, and the people turned it around to suit their needs. It is fortunate that they have salvaged any sort of spirituality from the depredations of the last two hundred years.”
Marianne nodded. “I know.”
“And besides,” he continued after a moment, “you are about to see something for which even the most farfetched explanations seem unsatisfactory.”
“Mm. I suppose.”
“So keep an open mind.”
“We never close,” she murmured, thinking of the Nowrojee Supermarket in Dharamsala. That motto was inscribed on a placard in the grimy display window, and nothing could have been less true of the shop with the most erratic hours in northern India.
It was hard to imagine that twenty-four hours ago she had been asleep in her own bed, spending her last night at home in the comfortable old house above Dharamsala. Her mother had been shocked to find out where the Tibetan government had housed her. It was a condominium-style building that looked as if it had been imported direct from the United States. Her parents had noted it with disapproval on their brief visit to India decades before.
She didn’t imagine that her mother would look with any greater pleasure on her present situation. Fortunately, she was well past the age of consent. Kate could protest, but that was the extent of her power over her daughter. Marianne required no more permission slips from Geneva—where Mother had remained after Father’s death—in order to work for the exiled government of Tibet.
Nicholas Tiedemann, once Marianne's father, had parents of his own; and they were none too receptive to Mother’s concerned interference.
Kate Strauss had finally come to understand Reting's position in the last three years. It hadn’t helped her temper in the least.
***
An hour later, Marianne glimpsed far-flung glimmers of light that might have been several more mandalas ahead of them. They were gradually losing altitude, though, and the mountains cut off her sight of all but one brilliant wheel.
“Right on target,” Jetsun Dorje said. He stretched a hand over his head, yawning, and patted his topknot of thick curly hair. “Down we go.”
When they were directly over the mandala, the jet engines whined with a new sound, tilting. The plane began dropping straight down. The blue lights at the center of the wheel dispersed rapidly as they descended, shading out into the rest of the figure. The yellow southern quadrant took on a green cast, the west turned purple. A circular void formed in the middle of the luminous field, opening like a black iris beneath the jet. Marianne’s stomach lurched into her throat. She pulled away from the window, but not before she saw a myriad of five-colored upturned faces, each belonging to a nomad clutching a lantern.
They settled lightly to the ground, engines whining into silence. The sound of voices reached her through the hull:
“Gyayum Chenmo! Gyayum Chenmo!”
The chanting of the crowd surprised her. She turned to Dr. Norbu.
“Reting, how do they know about that?”
“Word spreads quickly,” he said. “More quickly than I would have thought.”
“Great Mother?” said Jetsun, looking at Marianne with widened eyes. “Do they mean you?”
She avoided meeting his eyes. “Shouldn’t we be moving?”
Jetsun rose from his seat, massaged his thighs briefly, then walked to the hatch and pushed it open. A ladder unfolded from the door. Standing at the threshold, Marianne looked down on the lantern-lit crowd.
The mandala had lost its definition. A crush of people came toward.her in the dark, holding out pale white scarves and other offerings. The sweet smell of wildflowers fought with that of acrid cheese.
“They do mean you,” Jetsun said. “I didn’t realize—”
“Sh!” said Dr. Norbu suddenly, pressing past Marianne to the door. He leaned out into the night, looking up at the sky.
Marianne followed the direction of his gaze. Up above, she saw what looked like a cluster of falling stars.
Aircraft.
The nomads had already spotted the intruder. In an instant, every light on the plain went out. Marianne was blind now; she waited for her eyes to adjust to starlight, but there wasn’t time. Footsteps clamored up the steps and caught hold of her wrists. She was urged to descend quickly.
“You were followed,” said a gruff voice.
“Dhondub,” said Dr. Norbu. “Good to see you. We half expected it.”
“Hurry,” Jetsun Dorje said. “I’ve got to close up and get out of here.”
Marianne reached the bottom of the ramp. She could hear them arguing above her.
“You can’t fly back now,” Dr. Norbu said. “They’d shoot you down.”
“But my jet—”
“Leave it,” said the voice of Dhondub. “We’ll take it from here. We’ll also have a party fleeing overland on horseback to further confuse them.”
“But you can’t fly that plane,” Jetsun protested.
“I can fly anything,” said a woman. “You go with your friends.”
“Quickly, Jetsun!” said Dr. Norbu.
Suddenly two beams of light stabbed down from the sky and touched the earth perhaps a quarter mile away. They swept back and forth across the plain like luminous calipers, closing in on the nomads. She hoped the beams were only meant for illumination, but it seemed unlikely.
Her fears were confirmed a moment later. One of the rays swept over some members of the party, not far distant. Screams tore the night, following the path of that burning light.
Marianne gasped, sickened. Walls of black rock rose around her, shutting out the stars and those merciless rays. A soft green flare came to life, lighting the way through a corridor of rock.
She glanced back and saw Dr. Norbu and Jetsun Dorje hurrying along behind her, accompanied by a number of the nomadic men and women who had greeted them. When she saw the helpless expression on Reting’s face, she knew that he had also heard the screams. She could think of nothing to say. Besides, she had to pay attention to the path. The floor was uneven and it was all too easy to stumble.
Gradually the corridor widened. The radiance of the green lantern grew diffuse in the greater darkness and she heard their footsteps echoing from unseen walls. Just ahead, she heard the rushing of water. A moment later she saw the green light reflected on the surface of a tossing river. Stalactites hemmed in the watercourse, like columns along a low-ceilinged canal. Floating along the shore, tethered to the stone pillars, were three large rubber coracles fitted with outboard motors.
She and Dr. Norbu were helped into one boat along with two nomads. The remaining Tibetans clambered into the other boats and the tethers were undone. Motors purred to life. The boats turned against the current, spotlights probing the cold and misty darkness ahead of them.
After several minutes of watching the featureless walls slide past, Marianne grew drowsy with the bobbing of the boat and the steady hum of the motors. No one spoke. Dr. Norbu sat with his eyes half closed. She began to grow numb with cold and exhaustion. At last the pills she’d taken in Jomsom were wearing off; everything had an unreal quality, as if she were observing distant events through a warped window.
Unable to keep her head high any longer, she slumped against the side of the raft.
No, she thought. This is not the time.
She jerked herself upright again, thinking that she saw light ahead.
She was right. The boatman switched off the lantern but this new source of light persisted, pale as moonglow on the subterranean river. It flooded down from a gentle slope where a number of coracles rested. Several Tibetans came down to the stone beach to meet them. She knew, upon seeing them, that this place was a haven; unlike her nomadic companions, they carried no weapons.
The camp was set back a hundred yards from the water; a number of lamps cast a steady glow over the painted stone walls, but the upper reaches of the cavern remained dark. Wherever she looked she saw brilliant decorations and religious images inscribed on the rock. There were enormous Sanskrit syllables surrounded by bright orange flames. She saw a Buddha the color of lapis lazuli, his dark blue skin flecked with pyrite that glittered like underground stars. A cinnabar Maitreya, Buddha of the Future, towered over the camp, sheltering it beneath his delicately curved fingers.
Much nearer were the Tibetans themselves, looking no less fantastic than their icons. The nomads were wrapped in multicolored outfits, layer upon layer of clothing, long coats with bright buttons, tasseled caps. They came toward her, bowing and putting out their tongues to show that they had no sins to hide, no demonic blackness within them.
“Gyayum Chenmo,” said several, bowing and offering scarves to her.
If she had accepted the scarves, they would have muffled her and eventually become a burden. Instead, she smilingly returned the offerings, wrapping the silks back around the shoulders of the nomads.
She noticed a fissure in the rock wall not far beyond the c
amp, with two men standing sentry on either side of it. They were tall, broad-shouldered, and wore their hair in long braids; they seemed to hold themselves apart from the nomads in many ways. They dressed in nothing but khaki military gear and stood with their rifles ready, looking suspicious even of Marianne. She decided that they were Khampas, the Eastern hill people, Tibet’s first guerrilla fighters. Of course they would not trust a white girl in their sanctuary, no matter that the others called her the Gyayum Chenmo.
When she had drunk a cup of tea flavored with borax and dze butter, she asked Dr. Norbu about them. “They’re guarding the temple, aren’t they? They look at me as if they think I’m a spy.”
Dr. Norbu took her arm and led her toward the sentries.
“They will see that you are not.”
The Khampas raised their weapons. She found herself reaching for one white scarf which had remained around her neck; she took another from Dr. Norbu.
“Blessed are the guardians of Chenrezi, the protectors of Tibet,” she said.
The first guard looked embarrassed. He dropped his rifle and bowed his head, waiting like a timid child as she draped the cloth across his shoulders. Turning, she saw that the other sentry had also lowered his head to accept the scarf with equal grace. She was gratified to see nothing but good humor in their eyes when next they regarded her. Smiling, they stood aside from the dark fissure, clearing the way.
She stared into the opening and saw that there was light up ahead. They would not need a lantern.
“Go on,” said Dr. Norbu.
“Hold it!” called a voice from the shore.
Looking back, she saw Jetsun Dorje running toward them. “Don’t go without me,” he cried, hurrying up the slope.
The soldiers stepped away from the wall, raising their guns as Jetsun approached.
“There’s no need for that,” said Marianne.
One nomad, a stocky man with a long mustache, caught Jetsun as he passed. “They’re not going anywhere,” he told the pilot; Marianne recognized the voice as that of Dr. Norbu’s friend Dhondub, the leader of the party.