Neon Lotus

by Marc Laidlaw

  “I thought the herds were hunted to extinction long ago,” she said. “Like the American bison.”

  “Yes, they were,” said Dhondub. “Long ago.”

  “Then what’s this?”

  The herd kept coming closer. Had it been daytime, she could have seen them with her bare eyes by now. The fluorescent colors in the scope were disorienting. She saw what looked like a stampede of neon beasts with glittering forked antlers and shaggy, shadowy heads. They flowed over the contours of the land, darting in and out of the gullies, dodging rocks and brush.

  There was something strange about the way they ran, in broken patterns, back and forth.

  As they spread out across the plain, she realized what was wrong.

  They ran on two feet.

  They were human.

  “Look!” she said, passing the glasses to Dhondub.

  He laughed. “I don’t have to. I was expecting them.”

  Dr. Norbu climbed onto the ledge beside them. “Ah, the niche-runners.”

  “Who are they?” Marianne asked.

  “Ecologists, you might say,” he answered in a humorous tone. “They were plains people once, simple nomads and hunters. It was partially through their efforts—with the introduction of better weapons—that the old herds were so quickly hunted to extinction.

  “A hundred years ago, one of these hunters had a vision in which the spirit of the animals came to show him the hole that was left in the world by the passing of the herd. The story says that the hunter felt such remorse he asked a Bon shaman to change him and his people into antelopes, so that they could do something to repair the damage. That is the legend. Actually, they availed themselves of pirated retrogenetics—even then, the nomads had the best of the contraband technology—and they fit themselves into the empty niche. They are browsers now, except when they’re running. They metabolize forms of cellulose which are not much in demand by other humans. Of course, they didn’t give up their guns or their intelligence. They have few predators, though I have heard the Chinese soldiers sometimes hunt them for sport.”

  “Infrequently,” said Dhondub. “For the most part they run free, unwatched because their presence is so common. We use them to carry illegal supplies and suchlike. Sometimes we even run with them, in regions where the presence of vehicles would draw too much attention.”

  His eyes seemed to glint in the dark. Marianne saw that he was grinning.

  He looked down into the gully and called up his company, then scrambled onto the level ground. Marianne followed, then gave a hand to Dr. Norbu. Jetsun Dorje came along with the others of Dhondub’s party.

  “You may have wondered how far we expected to get, traveling with no supplies,” Dhondub said to Marianne.

  “I thought we were meeting a larger contingent,” she said.

  “Indeed we are. But they are many miles from here. Farther than we can walk before sunrise.”

  “Then how . . . ?”

  “Farther than we can walk.”

  She looked toward the herd, hearing their feet and the storm of their breathing. Fear overwhelmed her. She could no longer see them, but she imagined the huge and mindless stampede bearing down on her, human intellect obliterated by instinct, blind hungers, animal passion. It was like a nightmare. She couldn’t understand why the few of them were standing patiently on the edge of this gulch, waiting for that wave to crash over them. She looked to Reting for confirmation of her own fears, but he was standing poised and expectant, staring at the night with half a smile on his face.

  It was all she could do to keep from throwing herself backward to shelter.

  Dhondub drew his flashlight, switched it on, and set it by his feet—shining toward the herd.

  “Take this,” he told her, holding out what appeared to be a wristwatch without a dial. “We call these lung-goms.”

  She held out her hand. He strapped the band onto her forearm, setting the small lozenge against the inside of her wrist. She felt a slight pricking of the flesh. Raising her arm, she saw nothing but a small button on the face of the tiny panel.

  “Lung-gom,” she repeated. “I thought that was a trance the lamas used when they wished to cover great distances on foot.”

  “This is an artificial lung-gom,” Dhondub said. “This way, you don’t have to be a lama.”

  She noticed that Dr. Norbu and many of the others were already wearing lung-goms. Jetsun Dorje, however, took a moment to inspect his before strapping it on. He smiled when he saw her watching.

  “I always wanted to try one of these things,” he said.

  “When I say the word, press your button,” Dhondub told her. “Are you ready?”

  She looked out into the night. Dhondub’s flashlight faintly picked out the gleaming eyes of the niche-runners.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Now,” he said.

  The herd came straight toward them, converging on the light. At the last instant, Dhondub snatched up the torch and slipped it into his belt, switching it off—but not before Marianne had seen the wild faces of the runners. They were dressed in ragged cloth, some decked in antlers, their faces streaked with dye, their mouths wide and flecked with foam. They looked human only because they ran on two feet, and because some of them carried weapons.

  Dhondub grabbed her wrist and squeezed, triggering the lung-gom.

  She gasped, stumbling back toward the ravine. The edge of the gully crumbled underfoot.

  She twisted around, spinning on one heel, and felt the muscles in her leg suddenly bunch and then straighten. She became a flame, soaring up into the night, arcing over the dark trench.

  And then she stood numb—but still burning—on the far side of the ravine.

  She threw back her head and let out a wild laugh. The rest of the herd came leaping after her.

  She ran ahead of them, ran as if she had no other reason to live. Pupils wide, she drank in the starlight. The plain seemed luminous with its own fires. The grasses glowed with a wan green light; minerals flickered underfoot like earthly constellations. She laughed again and the cry became a howl. She went loping ahead of the herd, leading them into the night, feeling them swerve after her in a single body.

  For a moment she felt Rainbow Tara rising up to look out through her eyes.

  “Marianne,” Tara whispered, “there are others here with us. Look!”

  A pale shape appeared just ahead of her, like a noctilucent cloud forming over the plain. It was a lean, four-legged creature with striped flanks and slender horns. By comparison, her flight was clumsy and slow. It looked back and fixed her with its large brown eyes.

  She felt as if the dream-beast were herding her in the direction it willed her to go. She resisted for a moment, darting one way and then another, but it always ran ahead of her and cut off her escape. Finally she laughed and let it guide her. She did not know where they were headed after all. But this venerable creature had a true instinct for navigation.

  Once she was moving evenly again, it fell in alongside her. She glanced over and admired its ease, its grace,

  “Gyayum Chenmo,” it said.

  The voice seemed natural coming from the creature. She inclined her head for a moment, having no breath herself to spare on words.

  “We are honored that you run with us,” the creature said.

  Again, she could not reply, but she felt as if the animal understood her thoughts.

  “Many are the children of the great plateau—the snow lions and the grazing beasts alike, the fish and birds. Few of us survive as we once were. Everything is altered on the wheel. But we honor you, and are grateful to have this chance to aid you.”

  She thought, What is the difference between animals and humans? We are all born; we all grow old, suffer and die. We should help each other.

  The creature moved closer, holding her in its great eyes. Closer still. And suddenly it gave a leap from every hoof at once and plunged at the spot into which she was running.

  She could nei
ther slow herself nor swerve to avoid collision.

  There was no impact. She felt a warm thrill, as if she had passed through a cloud of heated air. The creature had vanished but she could sense its presence. It was here, inside her, running in that same warm green field where she had met Tara.

  There were more animals around her now, all of them two-legged. Looking to one side she saw Dhondub Ling, who occasionally barked a few words to a lean, shaggy-haired man running at his side. Dr. Norbu ran behind them, loping along like a marathon runner. There must have been something in the lung-gom that cleansed the blood of toxins even as it fueled this strenuous run.

  She turned her eyes again to the dark plain ahead, watching the shapes of distant hills rising against the stars. They did not look so distant now.

  The air was crisp and vitalizing. She was infused with strength, and felt confident that she could endure a full night of such running. It would be hard to leave the herd, in fact; hard to give up running for the slower pace of normal human life.

  But she could not think of that now.

  She gave her whole being to the herd, bent herself to running, abandoned fear and worry. The night stretched on, the ground rose and fell beneath her feet. She splashed through icy creeks, slid down crumbling slopes, and finally fell into a dream.

  She dreamed she had four legs with which to run across an endless plain of lush green grasses and cold serpentine streams. She ran with her people, ran and ran without any purpose other than to live, eating grass and wild onions, drinking the cystalline water that ran in rills across the plain.

  In her dream she carried a rider, a young girl with skin of every color, who braided wildflowers in her mane and patted her gently; who stroked her ears and called her by a lovely but meaningless name:

  “Marianne.”

  6. Prayers at a Two-Way Shrine

  The sound of wind woke Marianne; it seemed to have followed her from sleep. She felt a warmth that could only have been sunlight seeping down into her muscles and bones, working out kinks and cramps. She moaned and rolled over and the sun hit her right in the eyes. Shading her face with a hand, she opened her lids a fraction of an inch and stared straight into the huge glassy eye of a lamp. It shone with a clear white light, warming her thoroughly. Above it, she saw a sloping ceiling of cloth. She was inside a tent.

  She had only the faintest memories of having entered the tent. Their nightlong run had brought them to a sprawl of nomad dwellings just as the first pale light of dawn had begun to erase the stars at her back. She’d already felt weariness creeping over her when they sighted the encampment. Dhondub said that they had nearly exhausted the artificial lung-gom’s capacities—as well as their own.

  Upon trying to rise, she found herself cramping into a tight ball of muscle. Her knees jerked up to her chest. She let out a cry of pain, then relaxed and let the lamp continue with her healing.

  A moment later she heard the swish of a tent flap, and Dr. Norbu appeared. His eyes were circled more darkly than usual, but he was smiling and appeared not much the worse for his exertion.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Afternoon?” She tried to sit but her back seized up; she was forced to lie down again. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Only since dawn. Here, you’ll want to wear this purifier for a time. You should be feeling better very shortly. The lamp helps. Why don’t you rest until there’s no more pain?”

  She strapped another band onto her wrist, felt the familiar dermal pricking. Her cramps began to ease gradually, as if crystals of pain were slowly dissolving from her knees and buttocks, freeing her to move again. She sighed and spread her arms out to either side, brushing the felt floor of the tent.

  “I’ve got to get up,” she said. “Need to stretch. What are you doing up and around so soon, Reting? You’re in worse condition than me.”

  “I’m also more conservative. You didn’t see me leaping gorges or springing any higher than was strictly necessary.”

  She closed her eyes and turned away from the lamp, remembering a few scattered images of the run. “That was incredible,” she said. “Where do the lung-goms come from?”

  “They’re a nomad development,” Dr. Norbu said. “I’m very impressed with all that I’ve seen of their pharmacology and technology. They’ve blended some very old lines of knowledge with the newest devices they’ve managed to acquire. Naturally, it’s all kept quite secret. They keep their most advanced work disguised in primitive forms. So far the authorities haven’t caught on. Are you hungry?”

  “Ravenous.”

  He smiled. “I’ll be right back, then. You just lie here a while longer.”

  As he pushed through the tent flap, the sound of wind grew louder for an instant. She saw a shard of blue sky and green land before the flap fell shut.

  She lay on her side a moment longer, but the purifiers had taken effect and she began to feel restless. She stretched her legs and arms, then rolled over and got to all fours.

  A light at the far side of the tent caught her eye. For a moment she thought it was a color holovision tank with the sound turned down, but there was no movement in the image. It was a three-dimensional display of some kind, out of focus from this distance. She could see a blur of pastel colors, shimmering gold and lush green, with a radiant fan of white at the heart of the screen.

  As she crawled closer, the picture slowly came clear. The green fell back into the depths of the tank, becoming hills that dwindled into distance. The golden light lifted up and became a sky. Instead of clouds, the air was full of lotuses, blossoms of all sizes with figures seated upon them. Between each lotus seat was a smaller lotus, and between each of those was one still smaller. As she stared at the deep screen, the grass and sky slowly vanished; every interstice came to be occupied by a tiny lotus seat—a seemingly infinite number of them.

  At the center of the display, seated on the primary lotus, was Chenrezi in his four-armed aspect. He had one head, topped with a five-pointed crown. His two upper arms were pressed together at his breast, holding a gleaming black Wish-Fulfilling Gem between them. Of his lower hands, the right one held a crystal rosary and the left a red flower.

  It was not a holovision set after all. It was a shrine.

  Marianne put her palms together and pressed them to her forehead, lips, and heart, invoking the body, speech, and mind of the Buddha nature. She visualized a white OM on her forehead, a red AH on her throat, and a blue HUM at her heart. Briefly she closed her eyes and imagined a rosary whirling in her heart, made of the syllables of Chenrezi’s mantra: Om mani padme hum.

  She felt Rainbow Tara stirring, but her yidam remained silent.

  Marianne imagined light flashing from the rosary, four brightly colored rays that illumined the universe. She visualized a god at every point in infinite space, and that these divine sparks were bathing in the radiance from her heart.

  Silently, she offered her activities to these gods, dedicating her work to the benefit of all living beings.

  Then she sat following her breathing, resting her mind in emptiness.

  Slowly, concrete thoughts and images crept back in. The emptiness filled up again with her passions, her concerns.

  How different she was from Tashi Drogon. She had tried to make herself distinct from that old dead man in every possible way. The only thing they shared was a love of Tibet, and in particular of the bright, vital religion that had been preserved for centuries at the roof of the world. For in Tibet, Buddhism had been kept alive in a pure form, even while it lay moribund in India. When Tibet’s barriers had finally been shattered by the Chinese occupation, that essential Tibetan Buddhism—called Vajrayana, the Diamond Path—had burst from its isolation and spread across the world as fast as the refugees could carry it. Some lamas insisted that this was the secret blessing of the Chinese occupation. They taught that Tibet’s liberation would come about not through violence but through the practice of Vajrayana, which
aimed to liberate all living creatures from ignorance and suffering. In Dharamsala, she had often attended religious talks which turned into discussions of Tibet’s history; the lamas continually compared the plight of Tibet to the spiritual plight of any living being. It had added to her conviction that by helping Tibet, she aided all life.

  Tashi had taken his scientific inspiration from the mysteries of Vajrayana. Similarly, her actions were motivated by an attempt to understand the Diamond teachings and put the practice to work in the world. Tashi had worked with his mind; she worked with her body. There was no reason to repeat his life, or to meet the expectations of those who had known him. She had every reason on earth to pursue her own goals.

  She opened her eyes and gazed at the shrine. It was undoubtedly of nomad design. She wondered if they truly lit their midnight mandalas to attract the attention of passing gods. They seemed more sophisticated than that.

  At the base of the hologram, arranged on the altar, were several sacred objects. She was reminded of her own quest.

  One was a drilbu, a silver bell topped with the five-pronged tip of a vajra. She did not wish to ring it, for fear of attracting undue attention. It was not generally considered polite to use another’s consecrated tools without permission. Next to the bell was a palm-sized vajra, the

  wand that symbolized the indestructible nature of the enlightened mind. Because it was silent, she picked it up and held it tightly in both hands, thinking of all that it represented. The Tibetan word for vajra was “dorje,” which reminded her of Jetsun Dorje. A diamond.

  The shrine flickered, went gray, and began to strobe.

  She realized that she had twisted the two knobbed ends of the vajra inadvertently; she had never known a dorje to do that before.

  Suddenly she heard Rainbow Tara’s laughter. She realized that the girl was with her, looking out through her eyes.