Neon Lotus

by Marc Laidlaw

  Tara said, “I do. Come down with me and you will learn. The lotus will help us. Come warm your hands.”

  She found herself moving through darkness, a cold and silent void. Far beneath her danced a shimmer of light in the shape of a girl. It was Tara. She plunged toward the rainbow form and saw her yidam receding, changing color, turning red and then orange and finally white.

  It was not Tara below her now but a tiny stroke of flame, like the tip of a fine paintbrush.

  The flame grew only slightly as she descended. At last she perceived her yidam again, holding that flame cupped in her hands.

  Tara was black now, black as ebony or obsidian. She had never seen her yidam as anything but colorful and bright. There was something savage and terrifying about Tara now that she had no more detail than a silhouette. The flame in her hands cast no light on her face; it seemed to shine through starless space.

  Tara blew on the flame, sending it licking upward at the dark. Ribbons of fire flew high into the emptiness. She blew again, again, and the fire coiled, twisting around itself, a thin stream stretching up and out of sight like a beacon directed into the night.

  Suddenly, from high above, a flare of light flashed out like a white neon sign—it was a sigil, a Sanskrit syllable: OM. As it brightened, she saw that the flame had set fire to the tiny dot at the crest of the character. Now the whole syllable began to melt, spraying drops of liquid diamond fire in every direction. The molten light began to percolate through a myriad of subtle channels that she had not perceived before. The dark, limitless cavern around her became filled with warmth and light. Then she discovered that her environment did indeed have limits and a recognizable shape.

  It was a body, enormous and alive, hollow except for the heat-light. She could see all the way up to the crown, following the inflated tent of skin along its folds and billowing curves. She stood now at the juncture of the legs, just within the mouth of the womb.

  Yes, it was a woman’s body, with a woman’s breasts and a woman’s hips. She had the feeling—no, a certainty—that it was her own.

  In confirmation of this, she woke suddenly from her strange trance to discover that she was sweating, burning up inside her clothes. She could no longer feel the breath of the wind, although she heard it roaring outside.

  Her attention went to a subtler sound: a rapid rattling, the sound of chattering teeth.

  Jetsun moaned, shrinking into himself. He seemed to be in delirium, a nightmare—or perhaps it was more than that. His suit had not been functioning, he’d said.

  Hypothermia. . . .

  She moved swiftly, desperately, laying her hands over his face, trying to melt away the chill in his body. She could not see him in the dark, but she felt his eyes opening under her palms.

  “Jetsun?” she whispered. “Jetsun, can you hear me? Are you awake?”

  He moaned but said nothing more. His whole body was shaking with the cold while hers felt like a furnace. She kicked her feet free of the snow that had built up against the mouth of the cave, and the wind cut back slightly.

  “Jetsun,” she said. Her voice was a wail. “Jetsun!”

  She could feel him literally shrinking in her grasp, collapsing as shivers wracked him. She tried to blanket him with herself, tried to envelop him, but the chill was deep inside. There was no way to reach it, no way to start the fires again.

  “There is a way,” Tara said.

  “Help me, then,”she said.

  “Imagine one candle lighting another. That’s what you must do.”

  “Then show me! Guide me!”

  “Apply your passion. Learn to discriminate its uses. In a sense, you’ve already begun. You desire him, Marianne. Now use that desire.”

  Marianne came back to herself and found that her hot hands were moving on Jetsun Dorje’s flesh—not through his garments, but over his bare skin. She made circular, rubbing movements, squeezing the blood through him, trying to work her own fire into his veins.

  When had she made contact? When had she opened his shirt?

  It must have been in that moment of terror when she first cried out for aid. It must have been when she knew that she must save him now or lose him forever.

  She hesitated no longer. One candle lighting another. Yes, she was truly afire, aglow with the mystic heat. Even her fear was burning away inside her, fueling that bright warmth; this was the forge in which she was to temper her soul. The flame was a thing of passion; it would consume her ego and leave behind nothing but pure essence. Gyayum Chenmo. Not even ash.

  He moaned.

  Her hands moved down along his hard convulsing belly. His skin was smooth, lightly furred. She pressed against him and closed her eyes, not that it mattered in the total dark. With her eyes closed she could see Jetsun as a faintly glowing silhouette, cool blue in color, speckled and hazed with frost. Her hands roamed over the translucent blue contours, fingers of flame driving away the ice. All she could touch was the surface of his life. Deep within his body, she could faintly see something locked in ice, unreachable but struggling: a tiny flame that diminished by the instant.

  A flame so close to going out. . . .

  She burst from her clothes, shedding them like a useless husk. Then she tore Jetsun’s clothes from him as well, finding them cold as death. She pressed herself against the man, breathing life into him, trying to share her fire.

  His flame was deep inside him, shut away so deep, and dwindling. She would have dived toward it but a wall of flesh, an impenetrable barrier, kept her out. She roamed the surface, seeking a way in. She called to Tara then realized that she had lost any sense of separation from her yidam. She felt like a goddess herself now—a goddess who could bring life with her ministrations or cause death by her denial.

  Life was the only thing in her heart. Life was the thing that fueled the fire in her hands.

  “Use your passion,” Tara had said.

  She grasped his cock and saw the flame flare down inside him. His fire had grown more distant, more entrapped, until she touched him.

  Suddenly steam infused Jetsun Dorje. She could hear crystals of ice cracking, hissing, turning to water. But it was not yet enough.

  She bent over and took him into her burning mouth. His fire blazed through her eyelids. He moaned, quickening now, seeming to expand. She could see the actual flame of his existence, could glimpse it through the walls of his flesh where sudden water flowed. The channels of his body began to fill with heat.

  The flame lapped up toward his crown. She imagined the brilliant diamond OM floating there, beginning to melt, permeating him with fire. If he could not envision the reaction, she would do it for him. The end result would be the same. He would live.

  He was hard now and the heat was coming from him, merging with her own. She drew herself up against him, put her mouth to his, and blew a fiery blast into his lungs, finishing off the last of the frost that the wind had driven into him. Then she guided him into her warmth, pressing him as close as possible to the stroke of white heat deep within her. She touched her hearth to the one that burned in him.

  One candle lighting another. Their bodies slick with sweat, both burned like a single flame.

  The night filled with their cries; they drove the chill from the rock. At the mouth of the cave, the snow began to melt. She heard it trickling between the rocks. The wind came in again, but they did not feel it. They were aware of nothing but each other, nothing but the mystic heat, the Tantric fire that had saved and purified both of them.

  PART FOUR: THE BODHI SYSTEM

  11. Tibetan Truckstop

  Marianne and Jetsun were treated with suspicion at the first door upon which they knocked. It opened no more than an inch, just enough to allow a wide brown eye to examine them.

  “Excuse me,” Marianne said. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. His name is Jigme.”

  After a moment the door opened all the way. A hunched little woman stepped out of the house and pointed at a shack across and down th
e street.

  “That’s Jigme’s house,” she said, “but you won’t find him there. His cousin died yesterday. He’s with the boy’s parents right now, in that house over there, but they won’t be wanting any extra company.”

  “We were friends of Tsering’s, too,” said Marianne. “We were with him when he died.”

  The old woman gaped at her for a moment, then quickly put her palms together and raised them to her brow. She bowed, muttering apologies, and hurried back into her house. “I’ll tell them you’re coming!” they heard her say.

  Marianne wondered how much gossip had twisted the tale of yesterday’s events. In any case, they left the house and headed down the street toward the house she had indicated. The ground was slushy with snow; frozen puddles cracked beneath their boots.

  “Still warm?” she asked Jetsun, squeezing his hand.

  He grinned, meeting her eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever be cold again.”

  Despite the loss of the jet, she was full of confidence this morning. The snow was like a fresh coat of white paint on the world. The sky was a crisp, deep blue, the sun yellow and warm; she did not expect that the snow would stay on the ground for long.

  Her mood was also kept aloft by the fact that she had the tight bud of the lotus safe in her pocket. The first of Chenrezi’s ornaments was in her keeping now.

  Jigme stepped out of the house they were approaching and greeted them with a puzzled smile. “You’re back?”

  When they explained what had happened, he looked doubtful. “Well, I have a snowskimmer, but i don’t think that will get you as far as you want to go.” He looked back at the house of Tsering’s parents. “Come, we’ll go to my place. The mourning will continue without me.”

  Jigme’s shack proved to be small but comfortable, being well heated by a central stove. He put on water to boil then began the churning of butter tea while they devoured balls of moistened tsampa. He offered them sausage but the smell of it turned Marianne’s stomach.

  “I can take you to the highway,” he said. “Trucks pass through all year round. You might find a ride with someone heading south, though it would be dangerous to cross the provincial line. They search all trucks, you know.”

  Marianne accepted a cup of steaming tea then sat down in the light from a window and spread out the map they had taken from the three-eyed man.

  “I’m not convinced we should go south anyway” she said. “If we can signal Dhondub and tell him what we’re up to, then I think we should head northeast and look for the next ornament. We’ve come all this way. Why should we go back?”

  “I would like to recover my plane,” said Jetsun irritably.

  She nodded. “Well, I don’t think we’ll find it in the south. Just look at this map.”

  The chart showed details of the Kunlun range which extended from the westernmost borders of Tibet, curved north above the plains, then swept down again toward the Tsaidam basin in northern Tibet. The basin was a chaotic jumble of colored dots, triangles, and broken lines that might have represented roads or flight paths. A number of markings had been made by hand in this area as well as in the western Kunlun where they had found the lotus.

  “I think this may be where your jet has gone,” she said, pointing to a small “X” on the map. “And in any case, the Tsaidam is where we hope to find Chenrezi’s nectar.”

  Jetsun nodded, leaning over her shoulder, his cheek lightly brushing against hers. “Then we want to catch a ride through here.” His finger traced a thin red line that trailed along the southern edge of the Kunlun, running east-west. It was a highway leading straight into the Tsaidam.

  “The truckers could tell you about that,” said Jigme.

  “Where can we meet them?”

  He reached for his heavy coat. “You won’t want to wander into the main depot; many of the drivers are from mainland China and they would report suspicious strangers. I’ll take you to a place I know. We might also find someone to carry a message to your nomad friends.”

  She gulped the last of her tea and replaced the map in her pocket. Then she patted the warm bulge of the lotus.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  * * *

  A journey of several miles brought them down into the pine-covered foothills. The going became rather rough for the snowskimmer. There was snow on the ground but it was melting into mud. Marianne kept an eye out for the road that Jigme had said they would encounter.

  The sky ahead of them was full of vapor, as if clouds were peeling from the trees. She couldn’t imagine what caused the phenomenon until they came out on a snowy bank and she saw the black stripe of a road below. Steam rose from it in the form of a long veil stretched from horizon to horizon. Solar disks gleamed at intervals along the edges of the road, like sequins dotting the hem of a misty curtain.

  Nearby, she saw three trucks parked along the road. From their squat oval shape and the gray rubber skirts around their bases, she knew they were hovercraft. Hover vehicles were not permitted off the roads because they contributed to soil erosion, but they were widely used on major highways. There was a fourth hovertruck set back from the road, an older model with rust streaking its sides. She would have thought it abandoned, save for the trail of smoke that rose from a pipe in the roof.

  Jigme drove down the bank and plowed across a patch of wet earth. He parked the skimmer in the shadow of the ancient hovertruck.

  Wooden steps led up the back of the vehicle, ending at a loading door. Jigme climbed up and knocked sharply, then ducked as the door opened outward over his head,

  A thin dark man, his thick woolly hair set with turquoise beads, looked down at the three of them.

  “Jigme!” he said with a smile. “Come in, come in. And your friends.”

  Inside, the huge storage compartment had been hung with shabby cloth and cluttered with odd items of furniture. Sooty oil lamps hung from the ceiling but most of the light came from a dim solar bulb. Battered roadsigns, a yak skull, other souvenirs of the highway were scattered throughout. And there were people, two men and a woman, sprawled on the torn cushions, smoke wreathing their heads.

  Suddenly nervous under the truckers’ scrutiny, Marianne looked to Jigme and took hold of Jetsun’s hand.

  “These are cousins of mine,” Jigme said, speaking to the man who had opened the door. The thin proprietor went back to a stove and busied himself over cups. “They came a long way to visit—all the way from the Tsaidam basin—and now they’re looking for a ride home. Is anyone heading east?”

  The woman asked, “Do you have money?”

  “A little,” Marianne said.

  “It’s a long drive, you know. It can take several days, depending on the weather, depending on the stops.”

  “How long does it take if you push through?” Jetsun asked.

  “Exactly how far do you have to go?”

  Marianne looked at Jetsun, hesitating. “Just to Golmud,” she said.

  The woman looked at the other two drivers. “It sounds funny to me.”

  Jigme said, “What do you mean, funny?”

  The thin man rushed out with a tray bearing cups of steaming liquid. It smelled alcoholic.

  “It does sound strange,” he said, handing Jigme a cup. “You know the Tsaidam basin is closed off these days. You can’t get through anymore unless you’ve got a government license. They’ll make you turn back at . . . at . . .”

  “At Nur Turu,” the woman answered for him. She came over to Marianne and stared into her eyes. She was several inches taller, perhaps ten years older.

  “When did you leave the Tsaidam?” asked the thin man.

  “I don’t think they were ever there,” the woman said.

  “But Jigme,” said the thin man, “why would your cousins tell such a story?”

  Jigme looked confused and apologetic. He started to stammer some excuse but Marianne cut him off.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We haven’t been there, but we must get there as quickly
as possible. Isn’t there any way?”

  The woman smiled at the confirmation of her suspicions. “Who are you really? And what do you want?”

  “You wouldn’t know my name.”

  “Perhaps not. But I don’t offer rides to those I don’t trust.”

  Marianne unzipped her pocket and pulled out the lotus bud. It glowed in her hand, sending warmth along her arm. As she brought it into the light it began to hum on a low, constant note.

  The woman looked mystified but not frightened. “What is it?”

  “A bit of sacred science,” she replied. “Do you know of the living Chenrezi?”

  The woman glanced at her, startled. “Only what anyone knows. The stories—”

  “Are true. We are Chenrezi’s emissaries. Our mission carries us into the Tsaidam basin. If you are a true Tibetan, you will take us as far as you can.”

  “I am pureblood, none purer—”

  “You can trust her,” said the thin man, who seemed more amused than shaken by the appearance of the lotus. “And all of us here. Jigme knows.”

  “I thought the living Chenrezi was a myth,” said the woman. “But there have been rumors. . . . I once heard of a young woman who would bring the revolution. The Gyayum Chenmo, Tibet’s mother. Could that be you?”

  Marianne nodded. “So I have been told.”

  The woman touched her palms together and put them to her brow, her lips, and her heart. She stuck out her tongue as far as it would go, then started to drop to the floor,

  Marianne caught her with a hand under her arm. “Don’t,” she said. “If we’re to travel together, we must be friends. In fact, you’re the one who deserves to be honored at the moment. You can take us where we’re going.”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “I will be honored to drive you. It would be an act of great merit.”

  “You must call me Sonam Gampo,” said Marianne. “And what is your name?”

  “Gyan Phala.”

  “Gyan? Is there any way we can get to Golmud? Can we get past Nur Turu?”