Neon Lotus

by Marc Laidlaw

  It was a short corridor with blank walls at either end and doors along both sides. She crossed the hall and waved the lotus at the opposite door. It slid open instantly, revealing a room yellow-lit like her own, but empty.

  The room next to hers was also empty. But across the hall from that one, in the third room, she found a man. He stood with his back to her, shoulders tense.

  “Jetsun!”

  He spun toward her, astonished. “Where did you come from—how—?”

  His eyes lit on the lotus bud and a grin came reluctantly to his mouth. “They didn't find it?”

  “It camouflaged itself. How have you been?”

  “Worried,” he said.

  “They haven’t questioned you?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t seen a soul since they dumped me here. How about you?”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re out of here. The only thing is, I’m not so sure we should leave just yet. I would like to know more about our captors. If we stayed a bit longer, we might gain some valuable information.”

  He nodded. “It’s up to you, of course. Have you looked at their books? Mad doctrines—”

  “I’ve heard enough of those already.”

  There was a sound in the corridor. She spun toward the door, hearing footsteps. There was no time to rush back to her room, nor even to close Jetsun’s door. In a moment two armed guards blocked the entrance, a man and a woman. The woman had three eyes.

  The lotus sang a weird and piercing song, almost leaping from Marianne’s hands. Beams of colored light flowed through the amber air, dancing out toward the guards.

  They dropped their weapons and covered their ears, staggering backward out of the room. They landed heavily against the opposite wall and slid to the floor in a tangled heap.

  Without a word between them, Jetsun and Marianne bent over the guards and dragged them back into his room. The chance for a leisurely gathering of information had obviously passed them by. They stripped the soldiers and clothed themselves in the green outfits, taking particular care to pull the caps down low over their foreheads.

  They left the male guard in Jetsun’s room, the woman in Marianne’s, and used the lotus to shut and lock both doors. The flower gave each lock a strange burst of sound, causing tiny implosions; Tsering reassured her that the locks had been sealed, the mechanisms fused.

  One end of the corridor proved to be a blank wall and nothing more. The opposite wall slid open when she passed the lotus before it.

  Beyond was an uninhabited office. Banks of switches and monitors covered one wall; a book lay open in one of several chairs. The screens showed interference patterns that wavered and sparked in time with the humming of the lotus. The humming quieted gradually, allowing the screens to clear. Several showed empty rooms; two peered into the cells where they had left the naked guards. One showed the corridor they had just traveled. The final screen pictured yet another corridor, this one patrolled by an armed guard; Marianne guessed that she was watching the hall outside this office.

  Her fingers moved among the switches, shutting off lights in the televised cells and then darkening the monitors themselves. At last she found the switch that blackened the office.

  Holding Jetsun’s hand in the dark, she unlocked the outer door. As it slid open she called out, “Help us! Quickly!”

  The guard outside ran into the room. “What happened to the lights?” he said.

  The lotus gave a short burst of song. The man fell. They rushed out and sealed the door behind them.

  “Which way?” Jetsun asked.

  Marianne hesitated. Suddenly the lotus surged with light and the voice of Tsering said, “The amrita is here, Gyayum Chenmo! It calls to us.”

  “Amrita? You mean the nectar?”

  “Yes!”

  “Which way, then? Left or right?”

  The lotus trembled violently in her hands; the sensation was so unusual that she almost dropped the flower.

  “What’s happening?” Jetsun asked.

  As the petals folded back and showed themselves to be engorged with light, she realized that the lotus was a kind of antenna, shedding and receiving energy.

  In the heart of the bloom was a moonwhite disk, smooth as a polished opal. An image formed in the air above the disk, a tiny but sharp three-dimensional picture. At first it looked like a diagram of circuitry, a schematic of some sort. Then the song of the lotus changed slightly, echoing in the hall. The image grew, floating up to a point perhaps a foot above the blossom. It resembled a transparent cube made of lines and shadows, divided into numerous compartments. Tiny figures moved through the cube, attending to machinery, riding elevators through the illustration.

  “It’s a living map,” said Jetsun. “Of this place. There, you can see us!”

  He pointed into the bowels of the transparent cube. Two shadows stood close together in a stretch of corridor. One held a many-pointed flower and the other was pointing at it. Above the flower was a miniaturized version of the very same cube in which the shadows stood, and in that tiny cube she could almost see a reproduction of the same figures—even tinier—bent over a microscopic lotus.

  “You’re right,” she said. “But where is the amrita?”

  A glinting white diamond blinked in the three-dimensional map, several levels above their own. It flashed repeatedly, signaling them with something like desperation.

  “We’ll go to the left,” Jetsun said, studying the image. “That will take us up these stairs to an elevator. The halls just above seem to be deserted, but there’s a lot of activity on the level of the amrita. And there’s someone in the room with it as well.”

  The white light fluttered as fast as a sparrow’s heart.

  “Well have to chance it,” she said.

  The map blinked out but the lotus stayed open in her hands. Jetsun led the way up a flight of stairs and along a second corridor. As they approached the elevator, a man in a green uniform came striding toward them. His eyes widened in wonder when he spied the lotus.

  “We claimed it after all, eh?” he said. “That’s three out of five now, isn’t it?”

  Marianne kept her face low, bent over the lotus. “Three?” she said.

  “The nectar, the vajra, and now the lotus! Victory is only a matter of time.”

  The elevator door opened. Jetsun stepped in and Marianne followed. The man stared after them. As the doors closed, she appreciated the fact that he plainly had only two eyes. He must have been one of the residents of Golmud, a mere employee. It relieved her to think that they would not be conspicuous for lack of a third eye.

  “Get ready,” said Jetsun.

  The elevator slowed and came to a stop. Marianne felt the lotus tugging her forward as the doors opened; she gripped it firmly. Several people strode past the car; two guards were waiting to enter. Everyone who saw the lotus gave it his full attention, slowing to stare and turning to look as Marianne and Jetsun approached the room where the amrita was being held.

  “So much for staying inconspicuous,” she whispered.

  The door they wanted was flanked by two three-eyed guards; like everyone else, they stared at the lotus in amazement.

  “It was just found,” Jetsun said. “We brought it as quickly as we could. Please open the door—”

  The guards raced for the privilege, both of them training their sonic keys on the lock simultaneously.

  As Marianne walked through the door, a tingle spread through her fingers and arms.

  Then the lotus grew silent.

  The room was wide, circular, crowded with equipment. Despite this, it contained only one person. He stood before a column at the center of the chamber. The door shut behind them and they took a few steps forward, but he did not turn.

  Suddenly the lotus spoke. It sounded like a deep bass growl this time, like a brazen god chanting “AUMMMMMMM.”

  The man in the middle of the room turned slowly toward them, his three eyes narrow with intrigue. They were deep blue eyes
; his hair was fiery red.

  It was the man who had interrogated Marianne.

  Her reaction was spontaneous, uncontrollable. A burning hatred flooded forth from her heart and merged with the song of the lotus. It streamed toward him, focused by the tapering petals.

  He slammed backward into the column with a soft shriek, then sank to the floor.

  Jetsun gripped her arm. “Don’t kill him, Marianne!”

  She did not want to stop the hatred from flowing through her fingers into the petals of the lotus. Tara, her guide, a part of her soul, had been crushed by this fiend!

  Jetsun grasped her hands and tried to pry her fingers apart.

  “Give it to me, Marianne,” he whispered.

  She let go abruptly. Jetsun whirled away with the lotus.

  Slowly he advanced on the fallen man, keeping the flower aimed at the ceiling. Crouching down, he studied the strange dark face and broad nose, the triple eyes.

  “Who are you?” Jetsun asked. “Where do you people come from? What do you want?”

  “They think they are gods,” she said, standing over him. “They bring death and they want the world.”

  The man blinked slowly with all three eyes, turning an injured expression toward her.

  “You . . .” he whispered. “You dare to strike a god?”

  “It was not I,” she said. “It was one of the gods’ own tools. This is the lotus that you sought.”

  She knelt next to Jetsun.

  “How did you know where to look for it?” she asked. “Who are your spies?”

  “Spies!” He laughed weakly. “What use would the gods have for spies?”

  “You have the amrita,” she said. “And you have the vajra as well. Where might that be?”

  The man shook his head. He sighed, closed his eyes, and groaned in pain. Deep in his mouth, she saw his black tongue working.

  “Look,” Jetsun said. He held out the lotus for her to see.

  Just over the opaline pad where the map had floated, a new three-dimensional image appeared. It looked like the translucent ghost of the man before them. Tiny traceries of colored light sizzled and snapped in his body, sending out rays of color, webwork patterns. After a moment all that remained of him was a shifting tangle of radiant lines. The brightest sparks were those in the brain. Marianne saw them brighten further, taking on shapes of their own, solidifying in the air above the lotus.

  “Where is the vajra?” she asked.

  The man let out a wordless shout, as if the information were being wrenched from him.

  Above the lotus, a golden vajra shimmered into being. At either tip of the wand, where nine prongs radiated outward and met again to form two ovoid cages, pools of rainbow color glowed brilliantly, trapped within the prongs.

  “Where is it?” she said.

  The vajra dwindled as if viewed in a camera that had drawn back to reveal its surroundings.

  The three-eyed man gave a weak cry of frustration.

  She saw a building, a shrine of monumental proportions: a tall base of tapering tiers capped by a vast gray dome. It was a chorten, traditionally the repository of sacred relics. But it lay within an enclosure of high fences crowned with barbed wire.

  “Where?” she asked again.

  The chorten dissolved. She stared down at a multicolored map of a realm she didn’t recognize.

  Jetsun nodded. “I know where that is. It’s in Kham near the Lancangjiang, the upper Mekong River. Eastern Tibet.”

  “Can you find the way?”

  He nodded. “With the help of the lotus. But how can we get there?” His eyes brightened. “Ah, now there’s a good question for this fellow. Where is the jet you stole from us in the Kunlun?”

  Marianne looked at the three-eyed man. His eyes were slits now, unfocused. She put her hand on his throat, then drew it away slowly.

  “Jetsun, he’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  She remembered Reting Norbu’s story of the three-eyed man who had assassinated Tashi Drogon. A poison capsule between the teeth. Perhaps they all took such precautions.

  “He must have killed himself to keep from talking.”

  Jetsun shook his head. “Well, it looks as if the lotus caught him, just as it did Tsering. He’s in here now.” He couldn’t keep the humor from his voice: “I think we’ve found ourselves a guide.”

  A guide, she thought, but not a friend. Small consolation for the one I lost.

  Jetsun stood up with the lotus. “Now, about that jet. . . .”

  A soft voice spoke from the flower: “Not yet, Jetsun Dorje,” said Tsering. “We must liberate the amrita.”

  “Where is it?”

  Marianne rose and put her hand on the central column.

  “Here, I think.”

  A dark pane of glass was set into the face of the column. When they’d entered the room, she had thought there was light beyond it. She found a button below the pane, touched it, and the light came on again.

  Inside the column, behind the glass, was a hollow chamber, and in this chamber was a tall, stoppered test tube. There was perhaps an inch of white liquid in the test tube, the subject of various kinds of scrutiny. Tiny lenses glittered like jewels in the ceiling and sides of the chamber; arranged in racks around the test tube were dozens of glass droppers, probes, and vials. A pair of rubber gloves lay in prayerful repose at the bottom of the window, and there were holes in the side of the column whereby one could insert one’s hands into the gloves in order to manipulate the objects inside the compartment.

  Looking at the tiny bit of fluid in the test tube, she felt a sourceless but overwhelming sadness. It was as if she were looking at another victim of cruel and persistent torture. How many potent secrets had been extracted from the innocent white nectar?

  She felt certain that the substance was aware of her; it was conscious. The nectar that was drunk throughout the Tsaidam basin had its origins in this very compartment, although those tainted distillates were quite different from this primal fluid.

  And the amrita knew. It knew what had been done with the knowledge it had surrendered. The realization drove her to tears.

  It cried out to them, pleading for release.

  Jetsun must have felt the nectar’s desperation. He sobbed deep in his throat and handed her the lotus. Then, standing back, he raised his fist and twisted his torso as if coiling an inner spring.

  “No!” cried Tsering, from Marianne’s hands.

  But the boy in the lotus was too late.

  Jetsun’s blow was powerful. The glass smashed inward. Jagged shards danced against the far wall and came glittering down among the instruments. As if in slow motion, she saw the continued sweep of his hand, with drops of blood now streaming against the dark skin. She saw him strike the test tube and knew that he had intended it from the first.

  The amrita had cried out, after all, to be freed.

  The tube exploded. The nectar must have been under pressure, for it spattered the walls of the chamber and mixed with the blood on Jetsun’s hand. A warm, sweet scent poured out of the ruptured chamber.

  Dazed, apparently astonished by his own action, Jetsun staggered backward and raised his hand to his face.

  He touched his tongue to his hand.

  She could almost see light spreading through him.

  “Taste it,” he said to her. “Quickly!”

  She reached into the chamber and found a concave shard of glass still cupping a few drops of the precious amrita. She wet the tip of her finger in the nectar and touched it to her tongue.

  For a moment she was blinded. Light streamed from every object in the room, including the corpse. The walls grew transparent and then vanished completely.

  She saw the entire building around her, as if she were again staring at the lotus map. The building dissolved. She saw hills, fields, mountains, all of them fading into emptiness. She saw the world itself, the spinning globe of Earth, girdled by satellites so numerous that they formed a glittering ring t
hat would one day rival those of Saturn; these, too, disintegrating. The sun and planets whirling like cogs in a cosmic clock, now gone. The galactic lens paling to nothing, an evaporating dewdrop. All distinctions of time and space were void. She drifted in the realm where appearance and emptiness—sense and substance—fused; where the manifest met the unmanifest. It was all and nothing; it was now and never.

  She straddled reality. In a sense, she did not exist. Yet this nonexistence defined her being.

  Shadows moved on the mind’s horizon.

  Gods swam into sight like planets ascending. She floated in awe of their dark might, their snarling mouths and raging eyes. The lights of a million suns shimmered from their vast bodies with a visible sound like the crashing of worlds and the wailing of trumpets carved from the bones of dead stars.

  She knew them as if they were part of herself.

  These were the protectors, the wrathful ones—gods who could smash the world to crumbs between their fists unless they were placated, unless they were harnessed and kept as allies.

  For two hundred years, too few hands had formed mudras, those ritual gestures that acted as a sign language between the gods and humanity. During the centuries when the world filled up with fearsome new technologies, there had been hundreds of monasteries in Tibet keeping up constant communication with these entities, holding them in check, coaxing them to work for civilization.

  They were creations of the human mind, yes; but that mind was in turn a creation of the universe, and in it all of nature’s compassion and cruelty could be seen as in a mirror. Humanity interpreted the gods in forms that reflected their power, their primacy, and so they danced decked in skulls and corpses, waving bowls full of blood. Their needs must be met, their bellies filled.

  I know you, she thought. I know your other face.

  Towering above her, eclipsing the universe, was a great black dancer: Mahakala. His fanged mouth gaped wide enough to swallow the galaxy.

  “Mahakala!” she cried. “You are the wrathful Chenrezi! Om mani padme hum!”

  In a flash, he was transformed.

  White became black, and black was white.