Neon Lotus

by Marc Laidlaw

  A dozen monks waited inside the gate, enduring the attentions of two three-eyed guards who were stationed at the entrance.

  “No results, eh?” one of the guards asked the departing monks.

  The other laughed. “Nothing but the golden ray that won’t even light a cigarette?”

  The departing monks bowed their apologies to the laughing guards and stood aside as Marianne’s group entered. She expected some request for identification but apparently this station had been isolated for so long that its regulations were lax—almost nonexistent. A minute later they reached the main entrance of the chorten. A tall door slid open, admitting them to an antechamber whose walls were hung with scrolls. On a low table sat a bowl full of red powder, a brazier set with sticks of smoking incense, and a pitcher with peacock feathers jutting from the spout.

  “You must be purified before entering the central chamber,” said the little nun.

  Marianne and Jetsun submitted to a brief rite of purification. Sweet water was poured into their hands; they were directed to sip a little and sprinkle the rest over their heads. Then a dab of the red powder was smudged on their brows.

  “Very well,” the nun said at last, her own ministrations complete. “Go ahead.”

  They passed through several doors and corridors and finally came out on a ramp that encircled the hollow interior of the chorten. Above them the dark air was crosshatched by catwalks and cables, hung with hooks and cranes for lifting heavy objects. Ten meters below was a blaze of light and color, bright lines sketched in ionized gas: a neon mandala.

  She gasped when she realized where she had seen it before. It could easily have been a model for the glowing symbol that had appeared in her mind at the time of Tara’s torture.

  She had the strange impression that she was moving in a dream—-that all the things she considered external to herself were actually the creations of her own mind.

  Four evenly spaced gates permitted access to the mandala. The enclosure was divided into quadrants and a fifth circular zone at the center. Each area was built out of lights that glowed in traditional colors: red, yellow, white, green, and blue. She half expected to see neon guardians dancing in the gateways, but nothing was visible from the ramp except the flickering colors. The interior of the mandala was constructed like a maze: a monk well versed in the design would have no trouble reaching the center, but she had doubts about her own ability. Once inside, surrounded by the snapping lines of light, she might become confused.

  Nonetheless, she was anxious to enter. The lotus insisted on being drawn from her pocket. As she brought it into the open, a spark of gold fire flared in the heart of the mandala. She stared at the spot but saw no more than a tiny chip of golden light.

  The vajra? It was too small to make out.

  “Take us in,” she said.

  Five of their guides began to walk away along the ramp. The little nun gestured that they should follow her down a stairway to the southern gate.

  “Where are they going?” Marianne asked, indicating the other monks.

  “They have jobs to do.”

  The southern gate was yellow as a blazing fire. Shading her eyes, Marianne stepped through.

  Suddenly the opening was filled by a black shape. Mahakala, the Great Blackness, stared down at her with a wrathful expression. He slashed the air with a curved knife and held out a skullcup whose jagged rim was wet with blood. Through his dark body, dimly, she could see the lines of the opposite wall. Steeling herself, she walked straight into the god and allowed the illusion to consume her.

  She expected nothing more than a flash of light, perhaps a tingle of electricity. Instead, the gateway devoured her.

  She was tossed through space, her senses confused and torn, every nerve on fire. She felt as if her limbs were being pulled apart, her organs ripped out by clawed hands, her skin flayed from her body in a single motion. Sightless, reduced to a mote of agony, she had no alternative but to let the guardian of the gate finish his work. It was pointless to struggle. If she were caught here, if this were the end of her journey, then so be it. At least the lotus and the vajra would be reunited; and someday perhaps another adventurer would carry on where she had left off. Perhaps that adventurer might even be herself, reborn.

  A dark wind rose to blow away every last speck of Marianne Strauss. She was void of body, void of mind. She no longer felt pain nor any other sensation. She rested in emptiness. A sense of bliss enveloped her.

  Then she found herself moving, slipping back into her body as if it were an empty glove. Taking a step, her sight returned. She saw her hand reach out and touch a transparent wall. Yellow light shimmered over her skin.

  She turned quickly and saw Jetsun behind her, frozen in midmotion, his eyes and mouth wide as he stood paralyzed in the gate. She knew what he was experiencing but realized also that the pain was illusory. It had done her no harm. Perhaps it even had a purpose.

  Suddenly the field released him and he stumbled forward into her arms. He took a gasping breath and looked around.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “We paid a price for admission.”

  The nun stood beyond the gate, watching. She looked disappointed to see them unharmed. She took a few steps, passing through the gate without deliberation. The field did not seem to affect her. She joined them, showing a slight smile, then pointed to the west.

  “We must approach the center by traveling clockwise.”

  “What was that in the gateway?” Marianne asked, following the nun along the circumference of the mandala.

  “A chod barrier,” she replied. “One must sacrifice all possessions when entering the mandala, including the body. The demons tear you to shreds, devour your very atoms, and yet they cannot destroy you. The road to enlightenment can sometimes seem cruel, can it not?”

  The walls turned from yellow to red; it was like stepping from a flame into a ruby. At the western gate the nun stopped briefly, prostrated herself, and offered a short prayer to the guardian of this quarter. Then they walked on. Marianne watched the air for the appearance of another projection; she was waiting for the onslaught of another chod barrier. But they passed unharmed into the green northern quadrant.

  It was a long walk around the mandala. Marianne's eyes grew dazzled by the play of colors. The lotus sang impatiently in her hands, for they were still no closer to the center than they had been at the southern gate.

  At last they reached the realm of white light, and here they turned sharply into an inner corridor that led them counterclockwise back into the green quadrant. They wound their way to the west and then to the south again before doubling back into yet a third concentric corridor. Back and forth they wound, gradually drawing nearer the central blue zone. Marianne’s eyes began to water from the brightness of the lights. Whenever she blinked she saw curious inversions of the mandala: dark passageways sketched in brown and violet lines.

  When fewer transparent walls separated them from the center, she caught sight of a platform surmounted by a golden object whose features were indistinct. Finally one tip of the vajra appeared, gleaming like molten gold. They made their last clockwise circumambulation of the blue-lit center, then walked into the chamber.

  The lotus almost leapt from her hands.

  The vajra sat at the level of her heart, affixed to the platform with wires and delicate clamps. An array of lights blinked at the edges of the dais; numbers flickered across tiny meters.

  As Marianne gazed at the vajra, looking for a place to set the lotus, her eyes strayed over a panel where a single insistent message flashed in English characters: HELP ME.

  She straightened abruptly, pulled the lotus close to her breast, and turned to Jetsun.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She gazed past him, horrified by what she saw.

  The little nun was striding away from them, taking long steps toward the southern gate. She moved down an aisle that had not existed a moment ago. As she hurried on, the wall
s closed up behind her and the doors were swept away.

  A sickening rush of colors blurred around them. Dizziness rose up within her.

  The inner walls of the mandala were spinning ever faster. Marianne saw the little nun exit the mandala by the southern gate, and then the outermost ring began to rotate.

  She looked up at the other monks and nuns on the ramp above the mandala. Their mouths began to move in unison; she knew they were chanting, but she could not hear them over the rushing of the walls. The hostility in their eyes was like a crushing blow.

  Why do they hate us? she wondered. Surely they would help us if they understood our mission.

  But there was no way to make allies of them now, no way to clear up whatever confusion had arisen. The monks might trust no one but themselves, having lived so long with the suspicions of the three-eyes: It was pointless to worry about them now. Their enmity was a natural product of their circumstances.

  The lights began to intensify. She could hardly see beyond the limits of the mandala except when she looked into the dark air above. The flicker of the walls sickened her, made her dizzy.

  She put out a hand to steady herself. Her fingers closed on warm metal.

  She looked around to find the vajra under her hand. She started to tug on it, to see if she could pull it free, but the counter flashed insistently: NO-NO-NO.

  “Jetsun,” she said, “come here.”

  “They’re insane,” he said of the monks. “They’re risking the whole project—the vajra itself,” he said. Then the counter caught his eye: LOTUS-LOTUS-LOTUS.

  Marianne set the flower beside the vajra, letting the ornaments touch. A froth of images appeared in the air above the podium. Light rays sprang and darted between the vajra and the lotus. Marianne and Jetsun clung to the podium, the only stable point in that maddening maze of light and speed. The walls were spinning so swiftly now that she expected the whole mandala to explode. Jetsun yelled something, but she could not hear him.

  TOUCH, flashed the counter. TOUCH.

  They both put out their hands. They touched the lotus, the vajra, and each other.

  The mandala howled with a powerful jolt of energy, a blast which the monks intended to destroy them. But the lotus raised its voice in a subtle song and subsumed the blast, which was no more than the amplified power of the vajra itself. The ornaments transformed the death-bolt.

  The walls of the mandala began to spark and ignite. Marianne smelled smoke and ozone. The vajra power coursed through her, seeking a focus. She knew that the power to channel the energy was hers. Instinctively she started to aim it at the monks who had trapped them here; they would die like the three-eyed scientist and Tsering’s murderer. Let them taste their own anger—

  But something kept her from the blind destruction. It would gain them nothing, and the monks were not truly to blame. They had kept the vajra safe. In a sense they were still allies. She must use the deadly energy to liberate them.

  Yes. . . .

  Now, at the center of the reeling mandala, she felt herself dissolving, blurring into pure forms of energy, flowing into Jetsun as well as into the ornaments of Chenrezi. The moment of destruction had passed, had been transformed into an opportunity for creation. Marianne had never felt such self-contained coherent power as that which was generated by the fusion of the nectar, the lotus, and the vajra wand. The fabric of space closed in around them. At first she thought the walls were slowing down, the mandala coming to a stop—but then she saw the figures frozen on the ramps above, frozen in midstep, blurring into darkness. Time itself was halting.

  The void beckoned.

  She took a deep breath, squeezed Jetsun’s hands, and closed her eyes.

  They were in a mandala, but not the one she expected. This was the dark place she saw when her eyes were closed, where colors were reversed and strange hues lay limned upon the darkness. She floated in space, watching the mandala as it shifted its forms and began to glide through emptiness.

  Despite the absence of real light, she could see. The mandala expanded around her, until its limits were like the horizon. It resembled a vast map. She had seen it somewhere before. The vajra glowed at the eastern edge, amrita spouted from a pitcher in the north, and the lotus unfolded its petals and emitted a pink radiance throughout the west.

  Now, at the center of the map, a bright wheel appeared. It looked like moon and sun fused in one. She reached out for it, as if it were a precious coin she longed to spend.

  She realized where she had seen the map. It was the one on the wall of Chenrezi’s cavern. It was the world.

  And then they were falling, plunging down toward the bright central wheel.

  The map lost its quality of abstraction. Instead of painted lines representing rivers, she saw winding silver tracks reflecting moonlight. She saw hills with the star-thrown shadows of clouds moving across them. She saw desert lands, a trackless waste of ice and sand, absolutely empty . . . .

  Empty except for a mandala. A shifting, bright circle made of light had sprung into being on the plains as if to call them from the sky. It offered solace, a safe harbor. Something powerful drew them. Voices rose in chanting and in song. She saw the moonlight shining from a metal disk in the midst of that mandala; she saw the faces of nomads and felt the rushing of wind.

  And then they landed.

  She fell without letting go of Jetsun Dorje or the lotus or the vajra. She felt as if she had seen the entire world in an instant, had looked every direction at once. But now her mind was focused on this one place, this single spot which might have been the center of the universe.

  Around her was cold earth, baked hard by the sun and scoured smooth by the wind. She gaped at the midnight sky then at the lantern-lit faces staring down at them.

  She sat up slowly, helping Jetsun to do likewise. The two of them gazed down at the golden disk on which they had landed.

  It was the fourth ornament: Chenrezi’s wheel

  “I don’t believe it,” said a man in nomad garb, kneeling beside her, examining the lotus and vajra with interest but not daring to touch them. He glanced at her, narrowing his eyes behind round spectacles.

  “You!” he said.

  “Changchup,” she replied. “You’re Dhondub’s brother.”

  “He mentioned we might expect you, but not so soon . . . and not like this.”

  “The vajra carried us,” she said.

  She regained her feet and looked around at the mandala of lanterns which the nomads had formed. Skinny Changchup shook his head in amazement.

  “We haven’t formed a mandala in weeks,” he said. “Tonight it seemed important. The wheel itself insisted, though not in words, The urgency formed in all our minds at once; we found ourselves agreeing on the need for a mandala. And now this!”

  She looked across the formation. Slowly, the colored lights were blinking out. She could see the dark shapes of tents on the horizon and the white of snow around them. She put her arm around Jetsun, then turned back to Changchup.

  “There’s much to discuss,” she said. “But can we sleep first? I don’t know about Jetsun, but I’m exhausted.”

  “How far have you come?” Changchup asked.

  “Halfway across Tibet,” said Jetsun Dorje.

  Changchup nodded. “No wonder you’re tired.”

  Marianne stood on the disk for a moment after the others had started to walk away. In her right hand she held the vajra, in her left the lotus. The wheel was at her feet and amrita ran in her veins. Her circumambulation of the Tibetan mandala was nearly complete; only the Wish-Fulfilling Gem remained to be found.

  For the first time she had the notion that this journey had served more than one purpose. It was not merely Chenrezi who would benefit from the finding of the ornaments, for at every encounter Marianne herself had been changed in ways she could hardly describe. If the mandala symbolized the perfection of the soul, then what powers would be hers once she had successfully negotiated the obstacles of each realm of the c
ircle?

  Perhaps in the end, she thought, I will truly be the Gyayum Chenmo. Perhaps I will be worthy of Tibet.

  “Marianne!” Jetsun cried. “Are you coming?”

  She nodded and started after him. Two nomads were waiting to take up the golden wheel.

  I will finally be the Gyayum Chenmo, she thought. And then she had a thought that chilled her more than the snow-laden wind.

  When it happens, will I cease to be Marianne Strauss?

  PART FIVE: THE CLOUD PRISON

  16. Reforming the Formless

  The city of Lhasa lies in the Kyichu valley, in the south of Tibet. The journey from Changchup’s camp in the Changthang had taken over a week, due to road conditions that opposed the sleek sailing bikes even when the wind was in their favor. Jetsun and Marianne had spent much of their time with the sails packed away, pedaling through heavy rain and snow, anxious to get out of the wastelands before winter made the cycles all but useless. In another few weeks they would have been caught in the snow, forced to negotiate the mountain passes on foot.

  After a climb that lasted most of an afternoon and swallowed the last of their emergency batteries’ reserves, Marianne and Jetsun crested what they knew was the last peak on their journey. The mountain walls obstructed any view of the valley. They drank water, shared some food, and decided to press on immediately.

  “It’s downhill from here, after all,” Jetsun said. He slipped back down into the cycle’s transparent shell and took off around a sharp curve in the road. Marianne waited for an ancient truck to pass, groaning and coughing smoke, then she put her feet back into the pedals, released the brake, and coasted after Jetsun. The bike’s generator whined, recharging the batteries. For a few days it had been heavenly to fly along the Changthang’s highways with a sail flapping above her: but there had been all too much pedaling since then. She was anxious to finish the trip and get out of the cycle for good.