Nothing Sacred Part 19

"Is that why I'm here?"

He surprised me by turning to me and taking my shoulders in his hands and saying with a laugh, "You are here, my dear Viv, to be asking a lot of questions everybody else is wondering and no one else is asking. Your purpose is very clear, and has always been very clear to me. You are a bridge, and though sometimes you sway in the wind as you try to take the weight of the world upon you while spanning all the time of this place and all of the lives and concerns of the people, you have been a very strong bridge. And you know, do you not, that a bridge is a very dear thing to the heart of an engineer?"

We talked all afternoon, sitting in the deep shadows of the library, paying no attention as the kitchen crew trudged back and forth from the old dining hall with food for the people outdoors, sitting in darkness for a time when the generator droned to a halt for the night and the work lights blinked off. A little later, I lit a b.u.t.ter lamp so that I watch it gleam on his eyes as he talks and cast shadows across the moon craters of his face.

He had been born in Kalapa, as he told me, and studied to be a monk of the religion of Shambala, which is not precisely the same thing as Tibetan Buddhism, but a mixture of that and a sort of universalist creed born out of a powerful respect for all other faiths mixed with an intellectual study of how spirituality affected people living in the world.

"But I was curious about many things practical as well as spiritual, and when the Chinese invasion looked as if it was going to be a permanent thing, my lama and the Terton who now wears the body of Ama-La told me that I must leave the lamasery, at least in an exterior sense, and depart Shambala for a time to be an emissary to the Tibetan people, an ally to the Dalai Lama. I would a.s.sist the Terton in bringing to Kalapa those who were necessary.

"To that end, shortly after the Chinese takeover in 1959, at the age of eighteen (give or take a year or two, time sense being blurred as it is here in Kalapa) I walked over the pa.s.s and continued walking until I met a band of immigrants. They thought I was a bandit at first and feared me, but I had grown so skinny that as soon as they got a good look at me they decided that if I was a bandit I was certainly not very good at it, so they allowed me to travel with them."

On the journey to Dharmsala, he encountered death for the first time, when a child and then its mother died of hunger and exhaustion. "It was much a surprise to me," he said simply, staring into the flame of the lamp. "I knew that they would return but somehow, that did not make me feel better, then, when her other children cried for their mother and her husband grieved for his wife and the infant, who was his only daughter. More died of hunger, and of the change in climate when some of us were moved to the southern plains of India to farm. More died on road gangs. I myself was rescued from this by the intervention of foreigners. Kalapans are naturally somewhat taller than average for Tibetans and when the American CIA found it expedient for a time to a.s.sist the Tibetan cause, I was chosen to train as a guerrilla."

He laughed ruefully. "I very much enjoyed flying above the clouds as if I was much more advanced spiritually than merit had earned me, and your Colorado Rocky Mountains were very nice, what you would call a homey touch, although of course I was not supposed to know that was where we were training. What I did not care for was the shooting practice and the suspicions they wished us to entertain of everyone, even of our own families. Avoiding the aspects I disliked, I made myself useful instead as a mechanic of airplanes and jeeps and displayed a great interest in the flora and fauna and the minerals."One of the Americans who was training us, the first to call me Tea, was also most interested in minerals, particularly silver and gold. I told him we had much gold and silver where I came from and he thought I meant Tibet.

"Later I returned with the others to Dharmsala but when they were selected for a mission, I was not.

To tell you the truth, I hid from those who came for us. I preferred to work on old automobiles. As a guerrilla I was a failure. But then I was found out and one day while I was beneath a car, a man came to talk to me. I only saw his feet. His shiny black shoes were muddy from the road. He said to me that it was arranged that I would go back to America to study geology, engineering and mining, that this had been arranged by interested parties and that it was the wish of His Holiness that I serve him and Tibet in this fashion.

"At that time, in the Montana School of Mines, no one knew where Tibet was so I wore a T-shirt made by one of our little home industries. It said Free Tibet. One of my cla.s.smates asked me where a person could acquire a free tibbet and what it was. This was also during the early years after the American involvement in Vietnam, you understand. Many of your people were very mad at Asian people of any country. I spoke to my cla.s.smates of how it was for my countrymen in Tibet and of my journey and life in exile in India and they came to know me and to understand a little so that by the time I graduated, although I missed my people very much, I was sad to leave the school too.

"When I returned to Dharmsala, I wondered why I had gone to mining school, because instead of working as an engineer, I was instructed to train a new guerrilla group which was to infiltrate Tibet behind the Chinese occupation lines. I spent many years waiting for something to happen, losing one friend after another as our team dwindled until finally I alone waited, ostensibly as a Tibetan interpreter for the Chinese. I should have paid closer attention in spy school because despite what was going on around me I was still very trusting. Then one day, I learned firsthand one of the many hardships to which my people were subjected. I decided I should have a wife and I married a young girl in Shigatse, of good family connected with the Panchen Lama. Our child was butchered by the Chinese, my wife mutilated ..."

His voice wavered as he said this and he stared hard into the candle flame.

Wonderingly, I realized that I had heard that story before from another viewpoint, "Dolma?" I asked. "You and Dolma were married?"

He nodded.

"But your names are different. You call her Miss."

"Naturally she felt I had betrayed her and when she was stronger, after her ordeal, I used both the sages who dreamed of Shambala and my guerrilla connections and returned with her to a family I knew within one of the villages that were the vestiges of the eight cities surrounding Kalapa. We have provisions for divorce, although they are not frequently practiced, and it was her wish that we divorce, so we did. Since then, she has come to see that I was as ignorant as she, and we are very good friends and family of a sort. But she cannot forget entirely, of course. We are not Buddhas here yet."

"Then you never really became a monk?"

"No, it was not my destiny. When I brought Dolma back here, I learned that the Terton had died in the Golmo labor camp, beaten to death by his fellow prisoners in a thamzing session.

"When next I saw the Terton she was a little girl, only six years old, and it was my task to help her return to Beijing, from which her mother had come before she was sent to Golmo, where she had tried toaid the previous Terton. The little girl was already very wise, and clearly, although her body was still a child's, her spirit was that of our Terton. She did not weep when I handed her over to our Chinese agent, but her eyes searched each pore of my face and every feature of the landscape along the trail, memorizing it.

"She did not find me again until fifteen years later and by that time she was a dying young woman and the soul of the Terton drained from her eyes before I could speak to her.

"With her was another injured girl who did not talk and who moved very little, but who lived. The Terton had given her life to deliver that girl to me so that I could take her to Shambala, so once more I made the trek through the mountains.

"By that time I was nearly fifty years old and it was much more difficult. I came here and have not left from that day to this.

"The girl slowly awoke from her shock and grief and would trust no one but me. Her friends and her husband had been executed. I think she had had to help kill some of them, perhaps including her husband, as part of her torture. And then the others who had shared with her such a faith that their government would not harm them and so many ideals, these friends were turned loose on her. On the eve of her execution Terton, who had hidden herself in the army and become the girl's jailer, smuggled her away and brought her to me, though, as I said, at one point they were nearly captured and the Terton received the mortal blow that in time claimed her life.

"I failed to understand for some time why Terton had brought the girl to me. However bravely she had once behaved, her spirit was broken, she would not speak or cry and had to be fed and taken to the toilet. She cringed if anyone but me came near her. In time, however, she grew a little better. Her wounds healed, the beauty of Kalapa soothed her, and her own beauty grew. I began to love her, and she would have no one else near her. She was a very glamorous woman in China. She had a career in media, was both an intellectual and a celebrity. She had been married three times, divorced twice. He third husband was the one whose execution she was forced to witness. All this came out gradually, and the last came out when she asked me if I would marry her and stay with her, so she would not be alone and afraid again. I married her. We had a daughter, and with her, the Terton returned to Kalapa."

"So you're Ama-La's father?"

He nodded. "She was with Nyima and me in the country visiting Dolma when the avalanche occurred."

It had occurred to me more than once from the tender way they behaved toward each other that Tea and Terton might be related, Tea her grandson perhaps, but now I began to see the whole timelessness concept in a very personal light. Despite what great a.s.sholes they are sometimes, I do care very much about the other men, my countrymen, my fellow prisoners, but I quite simply like Tea better and always have. It's partly his gentleness and his humor, and even the disarming goofy accent, but it's also because he has been the one since the beginning who explained things to me and shared things with me. I've identified less with the other prisoners because Tea at least has never treated me like a prisoner.

Well, h.e.l.l. I loved my grandparents a lot but I never thought I had such a thing for much older men. A great-grand-Electra complex?

"Does it disturb you that such a venerable person is my daughter?" he asked.

"Umm, aspects of it, yes," I admitted."There then, you see why I have not been able to tell you everything before this? Before there was a need for you to know about Shambala it would have been very confusing to try to explain. The Terton is simply not like the rest of us. Though in different bodies, she is always the same child, whether male or female, the same young person, and if she lives so long, the same adult. Her soul has been incarnated so many times it needs very little refinement. It is her task that keeps her among us. So although biologically I am her father, she is still my most revered teacher and leader. And yet I still remember that little body trembling in my arms that day as we ran as fast as we could back toward the city, to see it sliding with pieces of the mountain into the lake. We did not dare go closer. Those who could flee had fled and the whole valley was full of stones bouncing like a child's ball and the dust and water spraying high into the air. Our mountain, our protector, which had shielded us since the earth first cooled enough to sustain life, toppling in upon us, its crown falling as effortlessly as that of a sand dune in a high wind.

"As soon as the earth settled enough to risk it, we began digging out our friends and relatives but we could save very few. We had no heavy equipment, you see, since we could never use aircraft to bring things here-it all had to be packed on the backs of men or animals. Those who were injured healed very slowly and that was when our little Terton understood that in this incarnation she was to be Ama-La.

Our medical college was destroyed and all of the doctors, save one, were killed. The one remaining had been pinned beneath a building, crushing one of his arms and severing the other arm at the elbow.

"Our climate is such, so healthy, the water so beneficial, that he survived, but he was no longer able to diagnose by the pulse or to use his hand for healing. The little one learned all he had to teach before he died, a few years later. By the time she announced she would study in Dharmsala, she already knew more than most of her teachers.

"You have seen the simulation of the damage and the earliest photographs so you have some idea of what we were up against in trying to dig out our city. We were so few. Our lake, not just a water supply but the Jewel in the Eye of the Lotus, was swallowed by the earth, the most dire of all possible omens. If we could not somehow repair this damage, our mission had failed and we would be able to save no one.

I feared we were doomed, that more bombs would weaken our borders and that we would die as Tibet was dying, without accomplishing our purpose, without saving a piece of the world and a remnant of humanity to begin again when the world destroyed itself.

"Nyima mourned more deeply, perhaps, even than those of us who were born here. She wandered among the ruins and rocks like a forlorn ghost, her eyes ever staring at the cleft in our mountain or into the barren moonscape where our shining jewel had been. Her eyes reddened and grew dull as if they actually, physically thirsted for a glint of water where water should certainly be. Ama-La, when she visited, tried to comfort her, but my wife would not be comforted.

"At last Ama-La, already playing mother to her own mother, helped Nyima to cry and then to become angry at those who had destroyed her second home even more thoroughly than her first had been destroyed. 'They should have to pay,' Nyima said. 'If I could, I would make them fix this.'

"Ama-La just smiled at her and said, 'Your idea has merit. I'll arrange it.'

"When next we saw her, she was leading a group composed of a few of our young people who had gone to serve Tibet and so missed being killed in the avalanche, along with two or three uniformed Soviet soldiers, all very sick from the alt.i.tude, and six half dead Chinese she had, in her capacity as a high-ranking Soviet officer, 'transferred' from the abysmal conditions in their Siberian camp to this place, for which she had forged papers to indicate that it was the top-security death camp you know and love so well." His mouth twisted ironically but his eyes smiled as he rubbed the back of my cold hands with his own work-roughened palm."She brought us weapons too, to maintain the cover, but also medicine and food, since our storage cellars and our tillable soil were buried beneath the peak of our sacred mountain and the ruin of our sacred city.

"The newcomers took a long time to recover enough to work. The Soviets had come as guards and at first seemed to feel that it was expected that they bully the rest of us, particularly the Chinese prisoners.

That was when Nyima a.s.sumed her role as commandant. Because of her ability as a television actress, as a journalist for the People's Republic had to be at that time, she could speak very harshly while at the same time discouraging harsh actions. She made the rule that only our own people were to carry weapons, most of them not loaded with live rounds, though her own sidearm and a rifle or two were kept ready for attacks by wild animals, more numerous at the time and attracted by the odor of death that still hung like poison gas over our valley."

"I'm surprised we haven't found any bodies," I said.

"The rooms we have uncovered so far are all surface rooms," he said. "The people ran outside, as you saw. There are many bodies, I am sure, beneath the lake, beneath the jungle in the valley. But those who died on the slope we recovered at once, or else they were so utterly destroyed that you have dusted their bones from your hands without realizing it. We lost a few more people during the initial efforts to locate bodies, for any loud noise would cave in new sections of ceiling. That was when Nyima issued strict orders against firing the weapons, yelling or screaming-or causing anyone to scream-when beneath the surface."

I grunted noncommittally. Wu could single-handedly reverse the damage of the avalanche by divine intervention and I still wouldn't think of her as one of my favorite people, but maybe she does have a few redeeming qualities. Subtle ones. At least her background explains why I had such mixed reactions to her role as a martinet. She may be an actress but she's particularly convincing.

"With the help of these people we were able to clean out some of the underground rooms and make quarters for ourselves and for them. The Terton established the helicopter route and those of us with the training for the trek to the edge of Shambala formed the pack trains to meet the shipments at the drop-off point.

"Later, the Terton returned many times, sometimes as a Russian, sometimes as an Indian, sometimes a Chinese. Always bringing a few more people when she came and sometimes simply sending them to us, with the supply train, having hypnotized them into making the walk. This she did with you and most of your friends. The first one she brought was Sergeant Danielson, followed by the Colonel, then Mr. Marsh and Dr. Thibideaux."

"How long ago was that?"

"Sergeant Danielson came to us with the second batch of prisoners, the first among the group she brought from the Chinese camp. He was not, you understand, a young man when he came to us. Our climate was quite healthy for him and he appeared much younger than his true age when you met him. I would guess he was in his mid-fifties. And he was with us many, many years. The Colonel was not a young man when he came here either ..."

PBB, DAY 46-MERRIDEW.

Crisis time. Merridew had just enough understanding of our new freedom, apparently, to takeadvantage of it by finding out that the blond Russian woman, Tania Enokin, is a former mountain climber, quizzing her on the hazards of this particular sport getting her advice on which equipment to use, swiping the gear she recommended from the locker room, and abducting Dr. Terton. Apparently, when Tania witnessed the abduction and objected, he knocked her out and left her in the coatroom.

Dolma first discovered the missing gear when she did her weekly inventory. Then Tsering and Pema, who had been looking for Merridew, couldn't find him-or Samdup's side arm. Finally, Wu could not find Dr. Terton to ask her advice on all these irregularities and when Tea and Dolma rushed back to the coat-room to don enough gear to try to follow Merridew, they covered Tania hidden under the blanket where scarves, hats and mittens are spread out to dry.

Tania was the one who confirmed, most indignantly, that Merridew had taken the old lady hostage.

"He left last night," she told us. "He wanted me to help him but after I gave him advice on what to take, how to tackle the rough spots, he said to me, 'I am traveling light or I would take you along, young lady.'

As if I cannot go by myself if I wish! I am at first very angry but then I think, foolish man to try it alone, with his limp and those other recent injuries. Still, I go with him to help him pick out equipment. But the old lady interrupted us-not as if she was going to stop us, just in that curious way she has about her. He pulled a gun and pointed it at her, ordering her to attire herself to accompany him. I tell him that this is crazy, and he says that no one will follow him if she is his hostage, and that I should not worry, he will bring help that will release all of us. I try to talk to him, to make him relinquish the gun, but he looks at me as if I am the one who is crazed and then he bits me."

"We must stop them before they reach the border of Shambala," Tea said, tucking his snowsuit pantlegs into the tops of winter boots as he talked.

Marsh and Thibideaux, who were there because we had asked them to help us find Merridew, grabbed parkas and snow-suits from the racks and pulled them on too, insisting that Tea shouldn't go after the Colonel alone. "You'll have better luck talking him down if we go with you," Thibideaux said.

"And I will go," Wu said. "If necessary, I will exchange myself for Ama-La. It is me that the Colonel blames."

I like her a little better for that, especially now that I realize that so much of her frostiness is because she's skating on such thin ice, mentally.

"And I will go," Tsering said. "I am a good climber."

Pema insisted on coming too. She all but worships the Colonel and I think she's afraid he'll be hurt.

And he might.

The upshot of it is, I'm going too, in case Tea's right about me being a bridge. I would prefer that nothing happen to the Colonel or Terton or Tea-or anyone else-and if there's anything I can do to prevent it. I want to be there to do it. I never thought I'd do that trip again unless someone was chasing me. Anyhow, there's only time to write this down while the others are dressing and then we're off.

PART NINE.

PBB, DAY 120 (Approximately)- NEW YEAR'S DAY, OLD TIME 2071.

It's over. It was a long chase and a long, sad return trip, but it is, beyond a doubt, all over.

They had a good head start but they were, after all, a limping man and an elderly woman. We almost caught up with them several times, or rather the front runners did, and those of us farther back heard about it by relay. Tania, Tea, Thibideaux, Tsering and Samdup, the fittest and fastest, led and were soon miles ahead of all of those of us who trailed behind, including Wu, Dolma, and me. Dolma could have traveled with the advance group but Pema was with us and would not be left behind. Dolma stayed behind to help her. Long ago, back on the NAC, I would have locked her in her room and told her to shut up, but Dolma swung Pema up piggyback and I strapped the child to her. Dolma trotted along with her as if the little girl was a sack of barley.

Once when we stopped for a few minutes, I looked up to see Pema pointing at something with one hand while patting Dolma's shoulder to get her attention with the other; meanwhile, Dolma was pointing in a different direction with her walking stick and gesturing with her opposite hand. I had the oddest feeling I was staring at a picture of one of those multiarmed statues come to life.

The trip was both harder and easier for me this time. Harder, of course, because I was doing it consciously, without the mixed blessing of Ama-La's hypnotic spell, and also harder because we pushed ourselves to keep going before and after the best light of the day and through the strongest winds, trying to catch up with the Colonel and Ama-La. But it was also easier this time because I was in better shape-I breathe easily in the thin air now, and the gardening has developed my legs so that with little more than a pleasurable stretch in the backs of my legs, I can climb inclines which once would have stopped me cold. Also, this time I was among friends and we helped each other, if in no other way than by our very intensity reminding one another of the gravity of the reason we were traversing ridges of blowing snow and long, avalanche-blocked valleys rather than remaining in the relative safety of the compound.

On the third day of the trip, we paused to drag our midday ration from the folds of our clothing and to eat a few hurried bites while Pema gave Dolma's back a rest. She had remounted and Dolma was adjusting the pack straps when Tania came sliding down the snow meadow into which we were about to ascend. It had snowed the night before and the tracks of the forward party were half filled, and Tania looked legless as with each step she took she slid down, hip-deep, another few feet closer, snow spraying in high wide arches on either side of her body.

"We've spotted them," she told us. "I am supposed to let you know and to lead you forward. The pa.s.s is very treacherous. A small slide half buried Keith Marsh this morning and there are whole sections of trail missing." To Dolma she said, "The child must walk by herself now."

Dolma shook her head and deliberately tightened the strap binding Pema to her. Tania shrugged as elaborately as she could, bundled as she was, and turned her back on us, returning through the ditch her body had made as it plowed toward us.

Once we climbed the meadow and into the pa.s.s at its head, I kept my eyes glued on the trail,glancing away only far enough to note the position of Wu, who preceded me. Dolma and Pema preceded her.

When the path narrowed even farther Dolma unhitched Pema and we roped ourselves together and inched sideways down the steep face of the mountain.

Straight across from us was another peak, a monstrous fang looming above the abyss yawning beneath my toes, which curled out over the eroded edge of the trail as if trying to meet my heels. I sc.r.a.ped my backside along, one centimeter at a time, baby step by baby step, my heels barely shuffling, my ankles and calves shoved firmly against the cliff face.

All the time the wind tried to sweep us from the mountain, bowing the line between us if the least slack occurred, the wind-borne rope tugging the person on either side toward oblivion.

Even when no fresh blizzard a.s.sailed us, blowing snow whipped into our faces on the shrieking wind, blinding and deafening us at the same time.

So I didn't hear the first shot. All I knew of it was when the face of the mountain began tumbling toward us and Wu lunged half off the cliff as Pema slipped down the side. I grabbed for Wu and just at that moment my foot lodged in a crack, giving me enough stability to haul on Wu's arm as she reached for Pema with her free hand.

We would have all gone down then, except that Tania and Dolma had reached a broadening in the trail and sat firmly down, grasping each other, Pema, and Wu. For a moment I toppled forward, but my trapped heel held until first Pema, then Wu, could be half dragged onto the broad part of the path and I dislodged my foot and followed, shaking, as the cliff side above rained rocks on our heads.

We were halfway down the ridge when another shot rang out and this time all of those in the forward party dove into the snow for cover. We hunkered against the hill, our arms over our heads, and continued to scuttle to firmer ground. We'd known the Colonel was armed. Why hadn't we brought weapons too? Well, because it was stupid shooting at things in avalanche-p.r.o.ne country for one thing.

Okay then, crossbows or something. Anything to avoid being sitting ducks. Fine. But if we'd brought weapons, we'd have had to shoot someone and just who was it I wanted shot? The Colonel? He might be crazy and stubborn but he was still a good man and for all I knew one of the last of my own people in the whole world. And I didn't want Dr. Terton hurt either. Or any of us, G.o.d forbid. So I crouched and scuttled and prayed the Colonel would run out of ammo before he hit anybody or brought several of the more prominent peaks down on top of us.

On the trail below, Marsh called out to Merridew. A broad straight path stretched out before us and Tania unknotted her rope, lay on her stomach, pushed off with her mittened hands and body-sledded down the rest of the mountain. The rest of us followed. I wore a fiberfill suit of slick, water-resistant silon and slid much faster than I could control, headfirst at a dizzying speed down the mountain to land in a pile with the others.

Now I could hear Marsh coaxing the Colonel to give up his weapon.

"I can't do that, son," the Colonel said. "Got to make it back to headquarters with my prisoner. You could come with me. You and Thibideaux and even Viv, though she may have to face charges when I file my report." The doctor looked tiny and fragile beside him.

"We'll come with you but the old woman will never make it. Headquarters is too far. Come on, let's go," Marsh said and stepped forward.The Colonel fired in the air and the shot ricocheted, repeating over and over again, the single shot striking first one surface and then another, a veritable fusillade, and soon afterward it was followed by the artillery-like rumbling of a mountainside tearing loose. The usual small and medium-sized stones skidded down upon us, but the source of the rumbling became apparent as an outcropping just above the two lonely figures standing near the opposite peak broke off, fragmented, and fell. The Colonel was struck with the first large rock and the gun went flying. The doctor could have run clear but she knelt to help him, starting to pull him free, and another rock struck her down.

The worst of the slide bounced to a halt in a few seconds and during that time the forward party ran the distance between themselves and the pile of snow and rock where the Colonel and the doctor had been. They had already uncovered the doctor, who had fallen on top of Merridew, by the time I reached them. She was not badly hurt and had shielded his head from the worst blows. Most of what had fallen on them was snow. Thibideaux used the stock of the broken weapon to dig.

Merridew clawed his way to the surface and sat up, shaking off the snow, then dragged his legs clear.

"We better make a campfire and try to warm these two up," Thibideaux decided.

"No time for that. We have to make it behind the lines," the Colonel said firmly. "Come on, men, help me."

"Nah, Colonel, I don't think we better do that," Thibideaux said. "That trip might make an old man out of you in a hurry and besides, there ain't anything out there anymore."

Merridew gave him a pitying look. "For Christ's sake, Doc, these people are the enemy. They're just telling us that to keep us here."

"There was Danielson."

"Some kinda trick. Torture maybe. Who knows what those people did to him? d.a.m.n shame, too.

He was a d.a.m.n good man."

"Yeah, but he tried the same dumb stunt you're trying to pull and you notice he ain't around no more."

"You're not turning traitor on me too, are you, Doc?"

"No, sir, I'm not, but I'm tryin' to talk sense to you. What'd you think you was gonna do, blazin'