Neon Lotus Read online

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  Tashi and Reting were the only nonministers allowed into the Kashag hall this afternoon. Oracular disclosures were generally kept in strictest confidence, the Kashag passing edited reports to the Assembly of Eight—the next larger box in which the Kashag nestled.

  The ministers sat on cushions along the left side of the room at the right hand of a life-sized golden image of Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, which wore a crown of blinking lights. Two cushions were set out for the doctors against the righthand wall.

  When they were seated, the Silon rose and approached the Dalai Lama. He put his palms together and touched them to his forehead, lips, and breast, then prostrated himself completely on the floor before the image. He repeated the grand prostration twice more. Upon rising the third time, he drew the transcription slate from a fold of his chuba and inserted it into a slot at the base of the shrine.

  The lights dimmed but the wall behind the Dalai Lama stayed bright.

  “Please state your name and authorization code,” said the gentle voice of Tenzin Gyatso, familiar to Tashi from countless recordings of religious teachings which he had heard all his life.

  Tashi saw the Silon’s silhouette leaning to whisper into the ear of the statue. The wall flickered and writing appeared upon it.

  The Silon turned to Tashi and Reting. “Yours was the first question submitted, therefore the first answered. Once you’ve studied it, we must ask you to leave.”

  Tashi looked up at the lines of script. He had some difficulty focusing in the dark. Reting spoke the words aloud:

  “Not a thousand eyes has Chenrezi,

  But a thousand and twenty-three

  For watching the six worlds,

  And shining out like beacons

  To souls in distress”

  Tashi saw the eyes of the Silon upon him. The ministers read the prophecy and shook their heads.

  “The prophecies often take the form of riddles,” the Silon said. “Does it mean anything to you, Dr. Drogon?”

  “Silon, with all respect, I will need time to contemplate this. It may well contain the answer we seek.”

  “Take all the time you need. If you will commit the prophecy to memory, please? We cannot allow it to leave this room in any other form.”

  Tashi read the message several times, learning it by heart. He was only slightly disappointed to find no reference to the scarf blessing he had received.

  As he recited the phrases inwardly a final time, the wall flickered and a second message appeared. The ministers rose up in alarm at this disruption of protocol. The Silon stepped close to the shrine and spoke with amusing urgency, as if scolding an unruly child. The image persisted however, stubbornly defying his commands.

  Tashi wondered if he should look away but that seemed pointless now. The message was so brief he had learned it the instant it appeared:

  “Gyayum Chenmo, the Great Mother, is among you.”

  “I must ask you to leave,” the Silon said. “There appears to be a malfunction in the slate-reader. Anything you have seen here must be considered strictly confidential.”

  “Of course,” Tashi said, rising and bowing to the Silon and then to the ministers of the Kashag. “We saw only the first message.”

  Lights came on, the words faded from the wall. Tashi and Reting found guards waiting to escort them from the complex. When the doctors were on their own again, they could scarcely wait to discuss what they had seen—not their own message but the second.

  “Did you read it?” Reting said.

  “It seems like greater nonsense than our own prophecy. There were no women in the Central Cathedral this morning except the Venerable Tara, and she’s too old to mother a Dalai Lama.”

  “Perhaps it’s a coded message to which only the Kashag holds the key.”

  “Hm,” said Tashi. “I wish we had the key to our message. I didn’t expect Dorje Drakden to give a simple solution, but this . . . If anything, our problem looks more complex than before. Let’s go back to my room; we should work on this.”

  For once Reting looked genuinely pleased and hopeful. He patted his teacher on the back. “Let’s pick up something to eat first.”

  “What’s this, Reting? An appetite? I think that scarf must have miraculous powers. And there’s color in your cheeks!”

  Reting stopped to haggle with a streetside vendor who sold him a carton full of momo and another of curried goat. When Reting paid for the purchase out of his own pocket, Tashi crowed with laughter.

  “It’s true!” he cried, “A miracle!”

  Their good spirits lasted into the evening, adding to Tashi’s enthusiasm as he set about unlocking the prophecy. Intricate it was, but not insoluble. Ecstatic utterances followed precise patterns, mirroring the whorls of the human mind. Analysis of these geometries had become a commonplace to Tashi, who had delved into the region where mysticism and mathematics merged. Illogic ruled the rational mind; reason could not exist without unreason, any more than clouds could exist without a sky.

  Tashi’s battered electronic slate contained the programs that had been troubling him—the ones with which he’d asked the gods’ assistance. Once he solved the problems on his slate, he would take them to the lab and enter them into the Bardo computer. He hated working in the lab with so many soldiers about and the high frequency whine of security systems droning in his ears. Most of the real work of the last five years had been done in this little room, where he kept up his guise as a simple mathematician, tutor to some of the ministers’ children, a figure of no importance to the state.

  He called up the image of a revolving sphere, a bubble which spun as it floated in space. In the center of the bubble stood a white god with eleven colorful faces, a thousand arms, and an eye in the palm of each hand. The penultimate head, bright blue in color, had three eyes.

  Tashi clucked his tongue. “A thousand eyes in Chenrezi’s hands and twenty-three more in his heads. I wasn’t counting those. We made the wrong assumption from the start, Reting. We’ll have to recalibrate the scope. That should have quite an effect.”

  The image of the god dissolved into a screen full of equations which he invited his pupil to inspect. The ancient images held a wealth of sacred mathematical information, preserved by generations of holy men—even worshipped. Before computers, men had counted on their fingers. He saw the connection now, the intentions of the early artists. One thousand and twenty-three was as high as he could count on his fingers in base-two. The Bardo computer would recognize the figure as an even “K,” and that would doubtless make the rest of its operations run more smoothly.

  He laughed and clapped a hand on his thigh. The sun had set and it was growing cold in the little room, but he hardly minded now. His jacket remained where he had thrown it hours ago. He rose, paced to the window, and looked down into the shadowy courtyard. The Interfaith Fellows had taken a number of rooms in the hotel and some of them were in the yard now, laughing and talking.

  But his soul was filled with a silence that could hardly be touched by sounds from outside.

  He made a few more swift entries onto the slate. His insights came from the shallows of his mind, but they had been rising to the surface for years. At last his work had achieved coherence. The prophecy had acted as a catalyst, causing the crystallization of understanding. His new perspective made the proper operation of the Bardo device seem not merely possible, but inevitable.

  Tonight the flame is lit, Tashi thought. The work can go forward. I bring the torch that enlightens humanity, a shining ray that will plumb the darkest confusion of the realms of death and illumine the way for lost souls. I carry the light of liberation.

  Liberation . . .

  The strange words of the second prophecy returned to him. Great Mother—Gyayum Chenmo—was a title of respect for the mothers of Dalai Lamas. What did it mean?

  As in a dream, he remembered the slow falling of the white scarf that had draped itself upon his shoulders.

  “Gyayum Chenmo is amo
ng you.”

  Tashi’s flesh grew chill.

  “Let’s turn on that heater,” he said abruptly, putting down his slate. “How about some more tea?”

  Reting looked up from his own slate, where he had been working over a diagram of Chenrezi. “Hm?”

  “Never mind, I’ll get it.”

  “Tashi, I think you’re right about the recalibration. It changes everything.”

  Tashi smiled until he thought he would never stop. “We’ve got it, Reting. Take a look at my slate. I’m close to—”

  Someone rapped on the door. As he went to answer it, he continued to speak his thoughts.

  “I’ve just summed up a decade’s work in one equation. It makes me dizzy, Reting. I feel as though I’m dreaming. It’s a mathematical expression for the fusion of emptiness and appearance—the operation of bliss! The Bardo device’s operation may be more thorough than I ever expected. One day we may be able to send a soul directly to nirvana, bypassing the terrors of the Bardo, overriding the need for rebirth!”

  At that, he opened the door.

  Outside stood a man, dark and thinly mustached, dressed in white and wearing a white turban. At first Tashi thought it was the Sikh who lived down the hall, a surveyor who sometimes posed obscure problems in triangulation for Tashi’s amusement. But on closer inspection the face was not familiar, nor the voice. And the turban was not orthodox—it covered too much of the man’s forehead.

  “Dr. Tashi Drogon?” said the man, extending an open hand.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Please accept my apologies.”

  The hand exploded. Smoke filled Tashi’s eyes, bitter and stinking of charred blood. He felt crushing pain and then an all-enveloping numbness. As he toppled into shadows, crying for Reting, he tried to find his heartbeat, tried to recapture his breath.

  Both were lost to him, along with the rest of the world.

  He was dying.

  2. Beyond the Clear Light

  Peter Strauss and Kate Riordan met on the Interfaith Fellowship bus. For the first part of their journey, from Bodh Gaya to Benares, they had been seatmates. Now, in the last week of the tour, they were roommates.

  Kate sat on her bedroll in the middle of the floor and looked out the window. Mountains capped in violet snow rose above the hotel like a pale, jagged wall against the blackening sky. She had never seen such bright stars nor felt such a cold room.

  “It’s colder than my old dormitory room,” she told Peter.

  “Bad news,” he said, unrolling his down sleeping bag. “I think it’s going to get colder.”

  “You’re used to snow in Switzerland,” she said. “It never gets this cold where I come from.”

  “California doesn’t have mountains?”

  “I only went there in the summer. Then it was mosquitos I worried about.”

  “I’m surprised they’d bite a skinny girl like you.”

  “I have sweet blood.”

  “I know.” He grinned and crawled toward her, flattening his sleeping bag as he came. “The sweetest I’ve tasted.”

  As their lips met, she wondered if she were insane to be sharing a room with him. In a few days they would board the bus again, endure the jarring ride back to Pathankot, perhaps share a seat on the plane to Delhi, and from there the Fellowship would fragment once more into two dozen individuals with common goals but separate destinations. She would probably never see him again, despite their talk of meeting in California or Switzerland in the next year or so.

  She wondered if she should have shared a room with Marguerite, in order to begin the painful process of separation. But it wasn’t as easy as that. The time for a clean break would come soon. Too soon.

  “I can’t kiss you when you’re thinking so hard,” he said.

  “I rarely stop, but you’ve managed to kiss me often enough.”

  “Often enough, eh?” He sat back on his bag, feigning distraction. “I guess I’ll play with my altimeter. How high would you say we are?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that, Peter.” She leaned toward him, planted a kiss on his neck.

  “I need a shower,” he said.

  “You’re not the only one. I’ll tell you what: If I find anything, I’ll share it with you.”

  She stood up, bundling into her parka.

  “You’re going out?” he said.

  “I think we’d better check on the facilities. You don’t have to come. I’ll bring back a full report.”

  “That’s all right, I’m not ready to bed down yet. There’s got to be some nightlife here, after all.”

  She laughed as he slipped into his own jacket and pulled on a knit wool cap. “Peter, this is the center of Tibetan Buddhism—what sort of nightlife do you expect?”

  “Oh, you know. Neon stupas, microwave ghats—all the traditional Asian fare.”

  He took his glasses out of his pocket and set them on his nose; they had fogged up when he entered the hotel.

  Kate opened the door and stepped into the hall. Several doors were open; music and chatter echoed down the corridor. A few of their companions ducked from door to door, tossing a battered Frisbee the length of the passage.

  Avoiding the sailing disk, Kate and Peter headed toward the stairs at the end of the hall. They had just set foot on the landing when thunder broke above their heads.

  “What was that?” Kate said.

  Peter pressed against the rail and twisted to look up at the next landing. “Sounded like a shot.”

  Shouting came from above. A man’s voice cried out louder than the rest. She didn’t understand the words but she sensed his despair.

  A figure rushed onto the higher landing, blotting out the light from above. She grabbed Peter’s arm and pulled him down the stairs as a man in a white turban came leaping around the bend, four steps at a time. His eyes bulged from his face, his teeth were clenched in determination. He gripped the rail with his left hand; the right was a shattered ruin. For an instant she thought he must be the victim, but one detail was missing: blood. The ruined hand gleamed like hard plastic.

  “Stop!” Peter yelled, tearing away from her.

  “No, Peter!” She grabbed at him—missed.

  Peter leapt to regain the landing and cut off the man’s escape. Seeing the stairs blocked, the man in white turned and rushed into the hallway. His right hand dropped off and clattered onto the stairs, skittering past Peter. The scorched fingers cracked under her feet as she ran after the two of them.

  Out in the hall, things were strangely silent. Nothing moved except the Frisbee, which rolled past Peter and wobbled to a halt at her feet.

  Peter stood with his arms spread across the corridor. Looking past him, she saw the man in white bent over with his left hand cupping his forehead, gasping in agony. The turban lay on the floor like a pile of discarded bandages.

  Doors stood open all along the hall, but no one moved. The owner of the Frisbee, a stocky young man, blocked the far end of the corridor, mirroring Peter’s stance.

  Another man rushed out of the stairwell only to find himself blocked by Peter’s arms. Kate stared at him. He was a thin Asian with pinched features, crooked teeth, dark circles under his eyes. He pointed at the man in white, speaking words in a language that Kate didn’t know. Words, she thought, of accusation.

  The man in white straightened slowly to face his accuser, still covering his brow.

  “Don’t move,” Peter said firmly. “Do you understand English? You’re trapped.”

  Kate saw no fear in the man’s eyes—only resignation. His jaw clenched, then he slumped to the floor face down.

  Peter was the first to reach him. He put his hand under the man’s jaw, taking the pulse from his throat.

  “Dead,” he said.

  A woman in one of the doorways came out jabbering. She kept pointing at the dead man then at her forehead where a spot of red pigment glistened. What was she saying?

  Kate knelt and rolled the dead man over. She drew back wi
th a start as his face came into view.

  After a moment she whispered, “Peter, is it real?”

  The witnesses began to whisper, coming up to stare.

  In the center of the man’s forehead, where the Frisbee must have struck him, was a bloodshot third eye. It stared at the ceiling, unblinking in death, until Peter reached out and closed it.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s real.”

  ***

  Reting knew that there was no time for mourning. Nor was there time to question the police, nor to ask the Kashag who might have opposed Tashi’s work. There was no time to speculate on the assassin’s employer, nor even to wonder where a three-eyed man had come from in the first place.

  There was time for only one thing. He had to get Tashi to the Bardo device.

  When the police arrived, Reting called the Silon and notified him of the murder. The Silon asked with great calmness if Tashi were definitely dead.

  “There’s no question of that,” Reting informed him. “And there’s no time to waste. Tashi believed the work must begin immediately—according to the Bardo Thodol, within the time it takes to consume a meal. Not long.”

  “Rush to the laboratory then, Dr. Norbu, and do what you can in preparation. I promise we’ll have Tashi’s body delivered to you immediately. My staff is already on the way.”

  Reting hurried upstairs only long enough to retrieve Tashi’s electronic slate. The police had covered the body with a blanket. He fought down the numbing tide of pain and disbelief that threatened to sweep him away, and suppressed the urge to give explicit directions about where to deliver Tashi. He must trust that the Silon would take care of the details. Furthermore, there was no time for such things.

  Down in the street he found an officer sitting behind the wheel of a covered jeep. He approached the man, stammering hopelessly, trying to explain why he had the authority to commandeer the vehicle. As soon as he said his name, the officer started the car. “Dr. Norbu, please get in. I’m to drive you to the Institute of Science.”