“Perish?”
“Disappear. Cease to be.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. I glanced at Sam, expecting to see incredulity on her face, too. But her face remained impassive. And it didn’t look as though this took effort.
“Is it? You know very little about these things, don’t you? What if I told a medieval man about an atom bomb?”
I shook my head at this analogy. Is Bhante claiming to be a millennium ahead of me in his understanding? “Why don’t you try to make your case with more logical arguments?” I suggested.
“Very well,” he said. “If you don’t accompany us on a boat ride to where the relics are stored, your life will be in great danger.”
“From Jackson?”
Bhante nodded. “And others.”
“Thanks to you.” My head hurt. “I’ll need to think this over,” I told him.
“Am I welcome on this relic-gathering trip?” Sam asked cheerily.
“Oh yes,” Bhante said. “Please join us. We were planning to contact RGP when we were a bit further along.” He clambered to his feet. “I need to make a few phone calls before our transportation arrives,” he said. “Jason will provide you with funds and take you to buy clothes and other necessities.”
“We’ll talk again,” I said. “I’m not necessarily signed up for any plan of yours, so don’t count on me.”
“I understand,” he said and ambled back toward his room. He definitely wasn’t as spry as the day before.
I visited the spotlessly clean restroom while Jason paid. Then I met Sam and the Maori in the cozy lobby, and we strode out onto a narrow sidewalk. In a souvenir shop a few doors down, we managed to find toiletries and several articles of clothing that were neither T-shirts nor wool sweaters. The store hadn’t been open, but when the girl vacuuming inside saw Jason through the glass front door, she’d rushed over to let us in. She threw in a nylon duffel bag for free since we were with him. Unfortunately, it was bright orange with turquoise lettering proclaiming I was the “World’s Best Fisherman!”
When we returned to the B&B, Bhante met us in the lobby. He stood at attention with his hands behind his back. “We need to board our benefactor’s yacht soon,” he said. “It’s at the hotel dock taking on supplies for our journey.”
“I need some alone time to think things over,” I said. “I’m not willing to be rushed onto a boat or anywhere else.”
“Certainly,” Bhante said. “But I can grant you no more than an hour. The ship must sail by then.”
“Uh…okay.” I looked at Sam.
“I’m fine either way,” she said. “It’s up to you, Sid. I think I’ll take a stroll on my own.” She marched away without waiting for a response, which I found odd. And hurtful. Maybe she needed to call her RGP bosses for further orders.
“When you’ve decided,” Bhante said, “come knock on my door. It’s number eleven.”
“Sure.”
I walked to my room and lay on my back on the bed, propping my head up with both arms. With the bed aimed at the window fronting the bay, I couldn’t help but spy a huge boat tied to the dock. It looked like a photograph I’d seen of a presidential yacht from the twenties or thirties. Clad in dark wood, two stories tall, it sported a wraparound deck and railing. An unfamiliar flag flew at its stern, which looked to be about eighty feet from the bow. Beyond it in the patchy mist of the bay, a host of small sailboats sliced through the azure water, and a distant sunlit dot looked to be a rowboat.
Letting my head fall back to stare at the ceiling, I got to work. Sam was first and foremost on my mind, despite Bhante’s urgency about leaving soon. I didn’t flatter myself that I was so attractive or endearing, any beautiful woman would be smitten by two days of exposure to my irresistible charms. And while I’d been traumatized at times by our adventures together, I didn’t think we’d bonded through shared trauma. Sam hadn’t seemed unduly upset by any of it, which was strange.
Perhaps she was drawn to me because of my purported role as a future messiah. By the time she met me, she must’ve already believed I was—or at least could be—Buddha. This might be an aphrodisiac of sorts to a serious Buddhist.
I vowed to pay attention to how my future experiences with Sam supported this hypothesis. I felt tempted to sign up for one of the I-still-get-to-have-sex-with-her versions of reality, but clearly I was in way over my head with these people already. It would be wise be wary.
I had no empirical evidence that Bhante was trustworthy. His air of authenticity and the trappings of a Buddhist leader pulled for this, but what he said was often so fantastic, I felt gullible for having gone along with so much. For all I knew, he could’ve been an actor or a well-disguised criminal. Certainly, some of his underlings’ actions had been villainous. And one of them had apparently betrayed his own people, since Jackson could only have known about the cave if there was a traitor.
Jason seemed sincere, and everyone we met confirmed he wasn’t merely an actor, but clearly he had anger-management issues and was willing to compromise his values to promote his organization’s goals. He was a convert, I assumed, and converts usually embodied a problematic zealotry.
The clones—my brothers?—were another matter entirely. I’d been avoiding thinking about them from the moment I’d spied two of them in the mouth of the cavern. It was time to approach my fear.
Did we share a common personality? I hadn’t noticed that in the cave. Were they all on board with Bhante’s program? It had seemed so, but how could I know from my brief exposure to something so surreal?
Once again, a strong feeling snuck up on me, this time with almost no physical manifestation. I was more scared than I realized. Deep down, I was close to terror again. I couldn’t find my center—my psychological security. My sense of self had been so destabilized that, if I wasn’t careful, I might clutch at whatever straw came my way to feel solid again. I retreated up into my head in an effort to regulate the dosage of all this. For better or worse, this was how I’d been coping for decades.
Clones represented a different class of personhood—a lower-class, it felt like. We were cookie-cutter people who’d been manufactured, not born. And our supposed seed person—Buddha—lived 2500 years ago. Were we way behind everyone else in terms of evolution?
My fists clenched and a surge of anger overcame me, directed not at Bhante or some anonymous scientist—but at my adopted parents. They either knew the deal and didn’t tell me, or they didn’t bother to investigate my birth circumstances. Whatever the story, they’d set me up to suffer. My life felt like a hoax—a scam perpetrated against me. In fact, my so-called father had been German-American. Perhaps his father—whom he never talked about—had been a Nazi geneticist.
I’d lost my parents in a plane wreck when I was twenty-one. They were celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary by zipping around South America in a friend’s small jet. Somewhere between Cartagena, Columbia, and Cusco, Peru, their plane went down.
I’d been angry then, too. They’d abandoned me—by dying—because, as usual, they’d been pursuing their extravagant, pleasure-seeking lifestyle. I was busy grinding away in school while they were taking foolish risks. Flying over interminable jungle in bad weather was just stupid. It took me years to begin to forgive them. And it didn’t help that they’d left most of their fortune to a nonprofit foundation instead of me.
Despite the emotional roller coaster I was currently riding, something I trusted floated up from somewhere. Whatever the risks, whoever the involuntary bedfellows, I genuinely felt a strong need to follow things through. I couldn’t be happy in my old life knowing I was a clone and maybe even Buddha’s reincarnation, so what choice did I have? I didn’t have to push all my chips in the pot, after all. The only pressing decision was whether to go for another boat ride.
Relief swept through me, relaxing my painfully tight muscles. I liked boats. Maybe it would be fun. This was the kind of convenient thinking that had gotten me into trouble with the cult
I’d joined, and with my first crazy girlfriend. What was the harm in trying an Amazonian herbal drink? I liked herbs, right? And Earline was so cute. How could someone like that have a prison record for aggravated assault? Sure, she seemed a bit wild and passionate, but that didn’t mean her ex was right about her when he called me early on and told me to run as fast as I could.
A few minutes later, when I knocked on Bhante’s door with my bag in hand, Jason opened it and ushered me in.
“I’ll go with you,” I told the two of them.
Jason immediately hugged me so tightly, I dropped my duffel bag and wondered if he could completely compress someone if he tried. I pictured police detectives puzzling over a two-dimensional corpse.
“That’s great!” he boomed. “All systems go!”
Bhante bowed deeply. “I’m honored. May I suggest we board the yacht without further delay?”
“Is Sam back?”
“I’m sure Samavati will rejoin us soon. You can meet our host while we wait for her. He’s an extraordinary man.”
“Ah,” I said, holding up my gaudy bag with the inane fishing boast embossed on it. “But can he fish like me?”
Chapter Seven
The yacht was even more impressive close-up. Its gleaming wooden hull proclaimed its name—the Silent Love—which I assumed had a backstory. A deaf-mute wife? A pair of star-crossed lovers who’d been barred from expressing their feelings?
Two solicitous, khaki-uniformed crew members met us at the gangway. “Welcome,” the beefier of the two said crisply in a broad Australian accent.
“Thank you,” I said and then asked, “How could a ship this big dock here?”
“We have eight feet to spare,” the other crewman told me in a by-now-familiar New Zealand accent. “The town is here because this is a deepwater harbor. From glaciers or whatever.” He took my bag. “Watch your step,” he told us as we began to board the yacht.
Belatedly, I glanced at Bhante and Jason’s empty hands—no luggage. Why was this?
“We have things here on the ship,” Bhante said. The guy certainly paid attention. “It is our home away from home. Ram has been very generous.”
Ram? Wasn’t that a Hindu god? Was Bhante expressing his gratitude toward God’s bounty? I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“Call me Ram,” a very elderly, slim Indian man said as he emerged from a nearby doorway. His maroon shirt and brown paisley ascot set off the white of his linen suit. He was completely bald and so clean-shaven, I doubted he had a beard at all. Actually, it looked as though his sparse eyebrows were tattoos. Maybe he suffers from alopecia.
He moved slowly, but with precision. As he shook each of our hands, he looked us squarely in the eye. His hand was tiny and very dry. It was like holding the hand of a papier-mâché puppet.
I found his small-featured face hard to read. On the one hand, he displayed a superficial deference, exhibiting a warm smile, but his dark brown eyes belied this by projecting an aura of great authority. It was easy to believe he was rich and powerful. He seemed genuinely glad to meet me, but he also studied my face as though he were searching for the presence of something quite specific. I pretended I was Santa Claus and tried to beam good cheer. I’d had some practice with this as a therapist.
“Come,” Ram said once he’d shaken everyone’s hand. “Let’s sit in my parlor and chat.” His English was very English—impeccably so.
“Do boats have parlors?” I asked no one in particular.
“This one does,” Jason said. I’d forgotten he was standing behind me.
Truly, the room looked as though it had been lifted from a nineteenth-century English manor house, replete with an array of antique pieces of furniture, including a massive wooden bookcase that held autographed cricket bats, blue and white Chinese vases, and a collection of glassware—decorative plates, pitchers, and even a few snow globes. I couldn’t imagine keeping things like this on a boat. I hoped they were glued down, at least.
In the historical film that might unfold in a stuffy Northumberland parlor like this, Sam would be drawn to the forbidden love that our various ethnicities represented. But unfortunately, she’d be the only one white enough to be allowed upstairs in the main house. End of film.
We seated ourselves on various upholstered chairs and loveseats, and Ram spoke. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Sid,” he said. “Is that short for Siddhartha? Were your parents aware of your status?”
“I have no idea. And it’s just Sid—not even Sidney. It was a tough name for a little boy.”
“Perhaps it better suits an old Jewish man,” Ram said. “I have known several.”
“Exactly. Now what about you? Who are you?” I asked.
“I was a physician. Then I discovered the power of love—of spirit—and things came my way. It began with an invention—an early stent that was less expensive to make than what was on the market.” His simple gestures and pursed lips somehow conveyed the pride that underlay his supposed spiritual transformation. “Eventually, I came to own hospitals and resorts and extremely large tracts of land,” he continued. “Much of the land has water, and water will be the new international currency.”
“Isn’t owning and doling out water a rather ruthless enterprise?” I asked. “Are you really living true to your spiritual values when you hold people’s health for ransom to make even more money?”
“Well-argued,” Ram said, flashing bright white teeth. “I am not in the water business. All who live on my land have free water for life. But the value of the land—the financial leverage it affords me—is based on water. More specifically, on vast aquifers. I tell you this because there are many inaccuracies about my business online. If you Google my name, you may read things that sound monstrous. I am not a monster.” He gestured elaborately to the ornate tea set on the low table. “Tea?” He seemed to be trying to demonstrate whatever goodwill a monster wouldn’t have.
We nodded our assent as Ram focused on each of us individually as he poured us the fragrant tea. I was struck by how he never dealt with us as a group but always as individuals. Perhaps this was a technique in the Indian version of How to Win Friends and Influence People.
“There is nothing quite like tea,” Ram said.
“Certainly not,” Bhante agreed. The Sri Lankan sat to my right and beamed at our host. Perhaps he was always happy.
I spoke up again while several fit young men in blue jumpsuits brought in trays with shortbread cookies and fruit tarts. They looked like they belonged in a children’s movie—Hollywood’s idea of what a billionaire’s servants would wear.
“So your answer to my question seems to be centered on your career,” I said to Ram. “Is that how you define yourself?”
He cocked an index finger at me. “You are a pistol,” he said. “There are no flies on you.” He paused and thought for a moment, looking upward. “You ask me who I am. There is no more basic question. Sri Ramana Maharshi taught that if all one does is ask this question of oneself, always delving deeper into its meaning, one eventually finds there is no one. So in one sense I am a rich man in retirement, trying to better the world. In a deeper sense, I do not exist.”
“What do you mean?” Jason asked. “Did Buddha teach this?”
“Am I this body?” Ram asked. “Am I this role I have in the world? Am I my feelings? My thoughts? Who am I?”
Jason still looked puzzled.
“There is no ‘I,’ my friend,” Ram continued. “There is no one who exists as a separate individual. It just seems so. Certainly the Buddha taught this—in his own way.”
“Are you a Buddhist?” I asked, shifting in my cushy chair. I was ready to get this show on the road.
“I am not,” Ram said, his voice thin but strong. “But I have a perspective that is compatible with Buddhism, as well as several other faiths. I support whatever and whoever can help transform this era of spiritual and social decadence.”
“This is a dark age,” Bhante agreed
affably. “But the wheel will turn.”
Sam strode into the room, and Ram arose and met her. She moved so gracefully and embodied my idea of beauty so perfectly, I found myself briefly holding my breath as I watched her.
“You are a wonder,” Ram told her. “I am merely Ram Jessawalla. Welcome aboard.”
Sam was equally gracious. “You are kind to help us,” she said. “And your yacht is a work of art.” After several more flowery interchanges, she sat and Ram served her tea.
“Would it meet everyone’s approval if we set sail now?” Ram asked. “I understand that time is of the essence.”
We all nodded. Then he pressed a button under the edge of a small tabletop beside him, and within moments, I felt the deep vibration and heard the low hum of the yacht’s engines. Shortly after that, we moved smoothly away from the dock.
Sam asked questions about the boat, which Ram answered thoroughly, occasionally asking her something about herself. She carefully crafted her answers to sound forthcoming, but didn’t reveal anything substantive.
We were only out in the bay for about twenty minutes when a gunshot rang out across the water. Before anyone could react, there were several more shots, including at least one from our boat. Jason scrambled to his feet and sprinted out of the room.
“Get down!” Sam called, and we all hit the floor—in the nick of time, as it happened. A moment later, a bullet shattered one of the room’s windows and embedded itself in the chair in which I’d been sitting.
We lay as flat as we could manage. My heart pounded against my tight chest, and I shook uncontrollably. Could we run? Where to? We were trapped on a goddamned boat, weren’t we? And would my jellified legs even obey me?
After a minute or two, we heard more gunfire and a lot of shouting, some of it through a bullhorn or loudspeaker. I couldn’t make out any words, but clearly the demanding electronic voice originated from another boat.
More gunfire followed, and I could hear the high-pitched staccato of the other craft’s engine as it approached us. It must’ve been a smaller, faster boat. It seemed alarmingly close, and the shouting outside our room grew in volume and intensity.
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