Neon Lotus (24 page)

“I’m sure we
can get nectar for them if they want it, but there’s no reason for you to give
yours away. Although it was certainly a generous thing for you to do,” he
hastened to add. “An act worthy of a bodhisattva.”

The young
man laughed. “We must extend help to all sentient beings, mustn’t we?”

“Quite true.
But never forget that you are also such a one and hence must care for yourself
as well.”

The young
man rose and bowed to Marianne and Jetsun. “I hope that you will soon enter the
realm of bliss. Good day.”

“Thank you,”
Marianne said, returning to her senses. She felt an odd sense of gratitude to
the young man, although his attempt to convert her had been frustrated.

Jetsun Dorje
whispered, “What got into you? You fought me like a demon.”

She shook
her head. “I don’t know. One whiff of that nectar and . . .” She
could feel her eyes widen as the blood rushed from her face. “The nectar!”

“I know it,”
he said. “But hide your astonishment. Laugh if you can. That’s the only thing
that won’t seem suspicious around here.”

The
innkeeper came up behind them and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Loudly
he said, “Gyan Phala tells me you’ll be needing rooms for the night. Why don’t
you come upstairs with me and we’ll get you settled in?”

Gyan leaned
close to Marianne and said, “He’ll take care of you till I return. He’s not as
crazy as he sounds—you’ll see. Follow his advice.”

“You lucky
girl,” the innkeeper said to Gyan. “If you only knew what most of us would give
to be invited into the Laboratories.”

“I can
imagine,” she said.

When she was
gone and the hovertruck had hissed away on the road out of town, the innkeeper
rubbed his hands together and said to Jetsun and Marianne, “Care to come up?”

He took them
to a room overlooking the square; it was cold despite the sunlight that came
slanting in. It contained two beds.

“Will one
room suit the three of you?”

“Why not?”
said Marianne. “We’ve been sharing the same seat for days now.”

“I can bring
in a third mattress.”

“That won’t
be necessary,” she said.

The
innkeeper laughed then leaned out into the hall. He came back in looking
somewhat subdued and shut the door. His face was serious, even grave.

“I can’t say
how glad I am to see you,” he said, dropping his merriment and revealing a
great weariness underneath. He sat down on one of the beds, shaking his head.
“I get so sick of laughter.”

“You don’t
drink that nectar, do you?” she asked.

He shook his
head. “I never have and I never will if I can help it. I’ll not be an addict
like the rest of these poor fools. It happened so quickly. The first rations
were distributed before anyone knew what to expect. We didn’t learn about the
experiment until somewhat later, when it was much too late. I was sick the day
they came around with the first batch; I certainly didn’t feel like drinking
anything unusual. But now I’m the only one who isn’t sick.”

“It comes
from Golmud Laboratories?”

He nodded.
“Yes, but you won’t see the Lab workers smiling like the rest of us idiots.
When I noticed that, I became really afraid. The people at the Lab all know better
than to drink the stuff.”

“When did
this happen?” she asked.

“About a
month ago. It’s nearly driven me crazy; I find it almost impossible to function
at times. Of course, if I drank some nectar myself, I wouldn’t care so much
what happened. I’d think I was doing all that needed to be done. I’d feel like
a regular bodhisattva. But from what I’ve seen, this nectar hasn’t brought
enlightenment or liberation to anyone. It’s brought nothing but insanity. They
call it the nectar of bliss, as if the gods had dispensed it. But there are no
gods working in Golmud Labs; of that, I’m certain.”

“I wouldn’t
be so sure,” said Marianne. “The nectar might well have come from Chenrezi—but
long ago and in quite a different form.”

The
innkeeper looked shocked. “Chenrezi would never visit such a curse on us!”

“Perhaps it
was a blessing until Golmud Labs twisted it into a curse.”

“But why has
it appeared now?” Jetsun said. “The
nectar was hidden away for ages, and the lotus
was in the mountains for just as long. Why does this laboratory dispense the
nectar only now? How did the agents come to the blossom just as we chanced upon
it?”

Marianne
thought of Mr. Fang’s warning that there were enemies in China or Tibet who
suspected her mission. Perhaps they knew more than Mr. Fang guessed. She
regretted that Dhondub Ling was such a perfect nomad, with a nomad’s thorough
distrust of cities. Wide as his net was flung, it had missed picking up
important events developing in more populous parts of Tibet.

“I don’t
know, Jetsun,” she finally replied. “But I don’t think any of this is
coincidental.” She looked up at the innkeeper, who had listened to their last
words with interest but without understanding. “Did Gyan Phala tell you
anything of why we’ve come here?”

“She said
that you were warriors, that you had come to seek Tibet’s independence. I fear
you won’t find it here. The people of the Tsaidam have lost what little freedom
they had. But if there is any way to free them again, rest assured that I will
give you all the help I can. We’ve been cut off from the rest of the world—and
even from ourselves. You don’t know what I would give to see someone cry, to
hear a sour word about my cooking. Speaking of which, I forgot the mapa! You
must be starving.”

Jetsun
laughed wearily. “That’s hardly the word for it after two days of living on
stale bread and hard cheese.”

“It’s hot,
with lots of fresh butter. You two relax for now. I’ll bring it right up.”

The
innkeeper rushed out of the room. Marianne walked to the window and looked out
over the square. A mangy brown dog with a curly tail loped across the street,
passing a smiling man. As he leaned to pet the cur it rounded on him with a
snap and a snarl, the first display of honest hostility that she had seen in
the Tsaidam basin. She found it only slightly reassuring.

* * *

After
devouring two bowls of mapa, the buttered barley flour, Marianne and Jetsun lay
down with their arms around each other. A sunbeam fell across one end of the
bed, warming her feet while the mapa warmed her insides. Although the bed was
hard and lumpy, it seemed luxurious

simply because it didn’t continually
jolt and jump beneath her like the seat in Gyan Phala’s truck.

She expected
to doze off immediately, and in fact Jetsun was soon snoring. But sleep did not
come for her. The sunbeam traveled up her legs, approaching her face, and as it
traveled she found her thoughts drifting down an ever darker path.

The
coincidences that Jetsun had pointed out began to seem completely improbable.
She was convinced that the three-eyed men could not have found that tiny valley
in the Kunlun without some recourse to information that only Marianne and the
nomads should have known. And the only way such information could have reached
the assassins was by way of a spy or spies among the nomads.

A spy in the
cavern of Chenrezi could have copied the mandala map years ago. She had no idea
how many Tibetans might have seen the map over the ages. But to have learned
the lotus’s whereabouts with such precision, they would have had to hear the Voice
of the Lotus speaking through Marianne; and only once had she named that
location in front of others.

Was there a
spy in Dhondub’s camp, perhaps in his very family?

She wished
that her reasoning would encounter a wall at this point, a dead end that could
cut her worries mercifully short. Unfortunately, her fears turned the key in a
hitherto unseen lock, and now a series of doors began to open ahead of her. She
hated to pass through them but she could not stop her mind from moving forward.

A spy must have
dispatched the assassin who murdered Tashi Drogon. Only a spy could have
signaled the moment to strike—the precise moment when the Bardo device was
complete and Tashi could be dispensed with.

That spy
must have been very close to Tashi Drogon to have selected the moment so
carefully.

Very close
indeed.

Unwillingly,
she remembered the face of Reting Norbu as she had last seen him. It was an
image that she had resisted recalling ever since she’d lain down with Jetsun.
Her hands went cold, as though drained of blood; the sunbeam shone directly on
her fingers, but they felt like ice all the same.

A spy in
Tashi’s presence. His closest friend.

A spy in
Dhondub’s camp. A trusted emissary.

“No,” she
murmured.

He was her
oldest friend, her mentor. Dr. Norbu had guided and cultivated her all through
her life; he seemed like a part of herself. She could not doubt him; she would
not do it!

How ill he
had been in Dhondub’s tent. The fever had taken hold of him, had weakened and
turned him pale. But what if . . . what if he had grown
sick not from some unnamed germ, but because of his own betrayal? What if he
had trained her from a child, merely because she would serve as the greatest
weapon that could be used against Tibet? After all those years, no matter his
intentions, no matter his ulterior motives, mightn’t he have genuinely come to
love her like a daughter? And then, upon bringing her into Tibet for the
ultimate betrayal of his country, mightn’t his body turn against him, striking
him down with illness to keep him from further treachery?

Could he
have contrived somehow to send explicit instructions to someone in the Tsaidam
basin?

Who would
suspect him?

Who would
ever suspect Reting Norbu?

No,
she told herself again,

I know him better than anyone
,
she thought
. I
know that Reting is to be
trusted utterly. Utterly!

And unbidden
into her thoughts came her yidam, Rainbow Tara,

“I know it
pains you, Marianne, for all the evidence is in your mind; it’s circumstantial.
You cannot prove a thing against him, nor can you truly defend him. You will
have to wait and see. Meanwhile, follow the safest course. Put your trust in no
one but yourself.”

The sunbeam
had almost reached her face. She opened her eyes and watched Jetsun sleeping
peacefully next to her. She recalled the sensation of his phallus sliding into
her. Tears started from her eyes.

“No one?”
she whispered.

She searched
for Tara but her yidam was gone. All that remained was a trace of the flame
burning deep in her belly, white and hot and true.

* * *

The room was
so quiet and still, so much more peaceful than the hovertruck’s cabin, that
they both slept
past
sunset. What finally aroused Marianne was the sound of laughter echoing in the
square below. Such sounds had been often in her dreams, matched with ominous images,
but none had frightened her quite as much as this laughter from the waking
world.

She threw
herself out of bed and gained the window before she was fully awake. In a
heightened state that felt much like dreaming, she searched the dark square
until she discerned the huge shadow of the hovertruck, returned from Golmud
Labs.

Beside the
truck, laughing as she stumbled toward the inn, was Gyan Phala.

Gyan stopped
at the door, threw back her head, and howled up at the window where Marianne
stood. Then she bent over, gasping for air, choking on her laughter.

“Jetsun,”
Marianne said. “Wake up!”

The door to
the inn opened wide and the keeper rushed out into the courtyard. He took Gyan
by the shoulders but she pushed him back into the inn.

“It’s too
late!” she cried, filling the square with her voice. “I drank—drank deep! They
made me do it, Sonam Gampo! They forced it down my throat! I had to be made
trustworthy, after all. I’ll be carrying tons of the stuff across Tibet!”