Nothing Sacred Part 18

"I don't think he believes you," Thibideaux said. "I wouldn't myself, except for some of the things you've showed me since he was injured and Danielson, of course."

"He's in denial," Terton said, falling back on the jargon of what was apparently only one of her professions.

"Nope," Marsh said, getting to his feet. "He's in the same place he's been for the last you-only-know-how-many years and has been thinking of it as a prison camp and now you tell him it's paradise. How do you expect him to react? It's like playing tug-of-war, hanging on to your end of the rope as hard as you can and having the other guys let go of their end. It's a little hard for any of us to take. I just want to know a couple of things right now. One, if this was supposed to be paradise, how come you left a martinet like Wu in charge?"

"She had to learn to use her authority better than those who once had authority over her, and also she is a performer, and acting a role came more easily to her than it did to the rest of the people who remained here to receive you. I saw to it that none of the rigors you suffered were more than would havebeen asked of a monk seeking enlightenment. The more difficult tests were not of her devising."

"She doesn't seem like much of a candidate for enlightenment to me. Why bring her here anyway?

Did you do it to protect her? She's not your daughter, is she?"

"No, she's not my daughter. She has been my mother, however. She was once a very idealistic young woman, a television journalist, in Beijing. She had the courage to publicly support a student movement demanding government reform. When the soldiers overwhelmed the students, she was captured, tortured, slated for execution. I happened to be a private in the Chinese army at that time, a lowly Tibetan recruit, but I was her jailer. I freed her, and together we fled the city. I was wounded as we drove through a roadblock. It was a small wound, but in the days and nights that followed as I attempted to take her to friends on the Indian border, the wound festered. I spoke to her of my birthplace, of the friends who would help her, and told her how to find them. Finally, when I was too sick to move, she took the last of our food and left me to die. Later, she found Lobsang Taring and he led her back here. Within a few months, she gave birth to my next incarnation and I was once more born here."

If this startled Marsh, he didn't show it. "Okay," he said. "So Wu's your mama. Now, my next question is this. If we are in the only safe place left on earth, we're the last of the human race, right?"

"That has not been revealed to me, though logic would seem to suggest-"

"That's just what I thought," he said, and started walking back up the hill.

"Where you goin'?" Thibideaux asked.

"I'm going to get started on my traditional duty as one of the last men on earth. The war's over.

Time for the re-population part."

"I think I'd better get back to those sick refugees too," Thibideaux said. I rose and caught his arm and we took a few steps, out of Terton's earshot.

"Wait," I said. "Don't you want to hear what she has to say?"

"Cher, that old lady is a mighty fine doctor and there is somethin' funny happenin' here, I grant you.

But all this stuff about the power of prayer and her rescuin' Wu and Wu bein' her mama after she died, that's a little crazy. I think all this has been a little strain on the old girl, you know? I don't know what happened to Danielson but I begin to wonder if Marsh is wrong and what we saw was really nuclear missiles."

"But why would they stage a hoax?" I asked.

"I don't know but I don't know why anybody'd deploy nukes either. Ain't n.o.body asked my opinion on any of this. So I'm gon' go back to my patients and think it over some more. Between doctorin' and that repopulatin' Marsh mentioned, I reckon to have my hands full for a good long while, and that's just in this life. I ain't thinkin' no further than that right now."

The doctor watched Marsh and Thibideaux leave with a somewhat pained expression and Tea, who had quite successfully made himself invisible after his initial comments, raised his eyebrows quizzically at me.

I shrugged. "They're upset and they're joking to cover it up, I think.""No, no, it is a good idea," Terton said. "To think of conception instead of destruction. Very natural, very healthy. But I am afraid they do not entirely believe me."

"Well, as you said, doctor, it's easy for your people to believe in this stuff. They were raised on it.

Most of my people are steeped in a belief in logic and reason. We aren't quite ready for the truth as you know it. You should have softened it up a little maybe. Given a little white scientific explanation of everything so it would have made sense to them." I appealed to Tea. "You're an engineer with a Western education. You know what I mean."

"Oh, yes, I know. But you, Viv, you are also a Western person. Are you believing Ama Terton?"

"I do believe in fairies, I do believe in fairies," I mumbled.

"Pardon?"

The doctor smiled at him. "Your education was neglected, Lobsang. She quotes the famous death scene of the Tinkering Bell from the child's story Peter Pan. In my fourth life, it was very popular in all Western countries and once a stage version was shown in Hong Kong. To save the Tinkering Bell, all children must aver their belief in fairies. The force of their collective will goes into the Tinkering Bell so that her soul is restored to her same body. It is very moving."

"It helps, Ama Terton, that you understand some of our stories too," I said. 'These stories were already old and much disused when I was a child, but my grandparents and my mother held rather anachronistic views for their time and had many unfas.h.i.+onable books and videos for me to study. Would you understand the reference if I told you I feel now like Alice after she fell down the rabbit hole?"

The doctor thought for a moment, then shook her head. "That story too I may have heard in another life but this body's mind does not recall it."

- POST-BIG BOOM, DAY 40-REPOPULATION (Late September or Early October 2070) The doctor so far hasn't found another opportunity to tell me her complete story, though pieces of it come out on walks, in brief anecdotes, and in the stories told by the other former prisoners and guards.

Sometimes the children pester her for stories about her past lives and she welcomes my listening, if I have time. But she's often busy in the evening and although I'm sure she has told some of the other former prisoners at least a portion of what she told us, I haven't talked about it to her or to them. As for the refugees, the legend of Shambala seems to be enough for them now, probably because dwelling in the more recent past is too painful, and thinking of the future impossible. Thibideaux, Marsh, and Colonel Merridew haven't discussed the doctor's story with me since the day by the lake.

Marsh and Thibideaux earnestly pursue the repopulation campaign, and Marsh in particular has been steadfast in his determination that the maximum number of possible mothers be the recipients of his efforts. This has presented a few problems.

I found him one day in the far end of the valley sitting by a streamlet that fed into the lake. The late rhododendrons were in bloom-something blooms all the time in the valley now, and I thought I would pick a bunch to please Dolma, whose spirits had failed lately, perhaps because of the presence of so many children. Marsh sat in a spot so well sheltered by rhododendron tangle that I almost missed seeing the flash of his orange uniform until I heard mysterious splas.h.i.+ng sounds. Parting a few more tangledbranches. I saw him sitting on the bank throwing rocks at the fish, trying to stun them.

"Cease fire!" I called out, ducking through the brush. He shushed me, and with exaggerated stealth looked around. "You weren't followed?"

"Not that I know of. I didn't exactly know I was coming here until I got here. What are you doing killing these innocent, and possibly rare fish? Don't you realize they should be encouraged to sp.a.w.n or whatever it is that fish do so we can get more fish? G.o.d only knows how they found their way here. You don't suppose they've been nuked, do you, and will have mutant swamp monster offspring? Speaking of which, how's the repopulation program going?"

He groaned. "I hope you're not here to volunteer. Not that I'm turning you down, you understand, because at least I'm dead sure that you're female, but I really think you and the other women ought to get together and straighten out that refugee group. I can't be sure, but it looks to me like all the boys under the age of forty are gay. At least after I approached a couple of women I thought might be interested, I started getting these languis.h.i.+ng looks from those guys. I'm as broad-minded as the next guy but seriously, if we are going to colonize this place, everybody is going to have to do his or her part and that means laying aside-"

I couldn't help it. I giggled.

He grinned. "Bad choice of words. I mean that I think we should set aside personal predilections until we are knee-deep in squalling brats."

"What an attractive way you have of putting things," I said "But you know, from something Dolma told me, even going on the a.s.sumption that every woman producing lots of children is going to be a good thing, there may be a problem."

I started to tell him about how Dolma lost her baby when rattling brush announced the arrival of two boys who looked slyly at Marsh and t.i.ttered behind their hands.

He stared pointedly in the other direction. I had the funniest inclination to avoid rudeness at all costs and began trying to chat with the boys, but my conversation was of no interest whatsoever to them. One started to touch Marsh on his deliberately turned back and I said quickly, "Perhaps I can help you. Mr.

Marsh is- uh-deep in thought. What was it you wanted?"

They t.i.ttered some more.

Marsh turned around, having apparently had time to gather patience, and asked in Chinese, with all the diplomacy he no doubt had gathered on peace missions, "How can I help you fellows?"

In English I smirked, "Remember, Marsh, studs are a dime a dozen but you're a remarkable person," and started to leave the young folks alone but Marsh grabbed my elbow in a bruising grip. I pretended to shrink from him and to the boys said, "Oooh, watch out, guys, he's an animal."

"We want make babies with you," the bolder of the two said.

"Me? Or her?" he asked.

"Do you suppose 'make babies' is the local euphemism for copulation of all descriptions?" I asked, tickled with my own owlishness and his discomfort. Marsh is always so in control, so deliberate, that it was great cruel fun to see him squirm."Who is she?" the bold boy pouted.

"You can speak freely in front of her," he lied. "We've been living together for some time now, haven't we, honey?"

"Right, my poppet, but there's no need for me to be selfish about it. These boys-"

One of the "boys" abruptly pulled "his" s.h.i.+rt off, displaying more-than-adequate-for-nursing b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Not boys," she said, in case the gesture hadn't already amply proved her point.

"I guess not," he said, whistling appreciatively, which was more than usually effusive of him but I suppose was intended to make up for his former lack of enthusiasm. "Which of the many perils females imagine they face that men don't were you two avoiding with this ruse?"

The women looked at each other and shrugged. He had forgotten himself and lapsed into English.

"Sterilization?" I ventured, using a complex mixture of the Tibetan words I knew that I thought might mean that. The girls nodded.

"Yes," the s.h.i.+rtless one replied in Chinese, in which she seemed more fluent than in Tibetan. "Many other ladies also pretend to be boys. It has been the custom in our villages for some time. The philing invaders wondered once how there came to be young ones when there were so many men and so few women. Someone said we must be hermaphrodites and so our village has been jokingly called since." To Marsh she said quickly, "But we are not hermaphrodites. We are normal women. We want babies and there are few men among us who are not close kin. You aren't bad, for a Westerner. And you're sure not a relative. How about it?"

I excused myself and left Marsh to defend his own honor.

PBB, DAY 45 (probably mid-October 2070 by old reckoning)-THIBIDEAUX Most of the time I stick to my old prisoner schedule, spending every other day belowground helping Tea excavate, and alternate days in the garden, clearing my lungs and thinning vegetables. The plants grow in greater profusion all the time, like the bottomless purse in old fairy tales. Another small herd of yaks, six in all, and five deer have somehow found their way into the valley. They are kept in pens and guarded carefully from the snow lions, and one of the yaks and several of the domestic animals have been carefully sacrificed to leave as offerings for the cats so they won't starve. Tsering wanted to recapture them but Terton, familiarly called Ama-La by the Tibetans, vetoed the idea. The cats are half grown now and wouldn't survive, she said-which is certainly true, especially if Tsering has anything to do with it.

The valley looks like an old nature film, fast forward from planting to harvest, exaggerated animated springtime quickening to life over and over.

Tea works harder than ever, and every day we make new discoveries which add to our resources.

Last week we opened another pa.s.sageway and found, not another series of storage cells, but two huge rooms. In one were spinning wheels and enough bales of wool, bowls of cotton, and bats of silk to satisfy Rumpelstiltskin. The raw fleece basketed in one corner still smelled nauseatingly strong of lanolin and ancient sheep s.h.i.+t. In the other room looms hulked up like robotic monsters and shelves and baskets were filled with yarns so dusty the colors were impossible to tell apart, bits of vegetable matter and a witch's laboratory full of what I imagine were dyes and mordants, since they were shelved near a hodgepodge of large ceramic and enameled pots. Further along, oh joy, oh happiness, was thelonged-for room of farm implements and gardening tools. Why they were not put next to the seeds is beyond me. So much for the all-knowing wisdom of Shangri-La.

Still, my chief consolation, recreation and hiding place remains the library. Last night after a long day in the garden (I had to weave myself a hat of barley stalks-my nose is brighter red than the reddest of the rhodies in the valley) I crept down the cool foot-worn stone stairs of the command bunker, previously so frightening, and with my b.u.t.ter lamp in hand slipped down the chilly, dusty pa.s.sages which smell less like incense and sweat and more like freshly butchered wood and mildew these days. No one forbids us to go anywhere now, although most of us stay within the compound at night because of the snow lions. I needed to flee from that ma.s.s of people crowding, jostling, crying, arguing, laughing and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, and lose myself in a nice sane book.

It was not to be.

The glow and distinctive stench of two b.u.t.ter lamps greeted me as I opened the door. A figure huddled in the shadows between the lamps and the shadows jumped like jack-in-the-boxes as pages flipped in the book the figure held before it.

I was greatly tempted to ignore the figure and isolate myself behind a huge stack of Tibetan language reference books, but then I noticed that the hand nearest me was making big sweeping gestures across the surface of the table so I walked a step closer and Thibideaux glanced up. He looked no happier to see me than I was to see him, so of course I had to make conversation.

"Hi. What are you doing?"

"Trying to find something that shows the order of colors on a peac.o.c.k feather," he said. Once a bird person always a bird person, I thought.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I got to thinking about it. Something reminded me, I don't know-oh yeah, the colors on the lake this evening- and I thought, that's just like a peac.o.c.k feather only the colors are in another order.

But I couldn't remember the order and none of the books here seem to have a color close-up."

"Too bad."

"Yeah. Ain't it? Because there are no peac.o.c.ks here and if the rest of the world is kaput, there are no peac.o.c.ks anywhere anymore. Shame for a kid to never know about somethin' as pretty as that. And the same kinda thing is going to make it hard to talk to them about other things, unless it's in these books.

Maybe they won't miss it but ..."His voice trailed off.

I nodded slowly. He was right. The children born here would have a totally different frame of reference, even, than the children born in the villages. The generation gap between them and the adults would be a doozy, even though we wouldn't look too much older than they would once they grew up (I'm sure they do grow up-Pema's been growing as fast as the crops), since we supposedly will age very slowly. The world we knew is gone, I suppose, and the proper att.i.tude with the kids should be "Long live the world" as we'll come to know it. But it's going to be a tight little, constricted little world, limited even in the memories of those of us who are left, and that makes me sad.

"I guess there's not much we can do about it, is there?" I asked.

"I dunno," he said. "I always been real good at art. I'm goin' to start drawin' everythin' I canremember. Maybe get the rest of the folks to do it too, or help me draw things for them. Give me somethin' to do once everybody gets well. Doctorin' is pretty slow around here most times. Somethin'

else. These underground rooms are fine but I can't help feelin' like this place is still a prison because it looks like one. Soon as things settle down a little, I'm goin' to make me some plans and see about buildin' some proper houses and such around here."

I think Thibideaux's att.i.tude is commendable as h.e.l.l. I admire the industry of the refugees. I respect the stated motives of Dr. Terton and the other compound administrators, but right now I'm downstairs in our old cell, writing by the light of my little lamp like I used to do. Sometimes I just need to stay the h.e.l.l away from everybody. I'm happier working by myself these days, without even Dolma or Tea around.

When I'm not needed I study or read in the library, though sometimes I find myself weeping uncontrollably over a book for no apparent reason except to think that Huck's river and the island and Agatha's and Sherlock's London and all of the other places and people are gone forever. Which is silly because they were gone forever by the time I was born, in the sense that they appeared in the books.

Perhaps in some ways it would have been easier if the loss was more personal for me, but I have no one specific to grieve for, unless you count Sammy maybe. But I don't think of her dead but still wearing that stupid hat, conning me with her Calvinist-rooted no-nonsense psychology into enlisting. My mother, my grandparents, have been dead for years. I believe I mentioned earlier that a virus killed my grandparents. I always wondered about that virus. It seemed particularly to hit people in their late sixties and early seventies, people with good minds and still a lot to offer but who continued to embrace an outdated value system. My mother didn't outlive them by many years. I had barely enough money to see me through four full-time years of college and graduate school before they upped the fees, and from then on I was always scrambling for cash. No real friends. No long-term lovers.

But even though n.o.body special is left behind, everybody seems special now. I wish I'd known them better. I wish I'd told that one history prof how illuminating I found his remarks. I wish I'd told Sammy to f.u.c.k off. I just can't help thinking what their faces must have been like when they saw the flash, not from a protected distance, as I did, but close up, just before they turned into human X-rays and ashes, in that moment they had to realize "This is it." The big one. Surprise, surprise. You didn't have to be in the military after all to be at risk. Or did you? Was NAC, somehow, s.h.i.+elded? I guess I'll never know. So. What do I do? Live out my elongated span in this small place enclosed by mountains among a lot of very strange people.

I guess I know how the Colonel feels, at least a little. Somehow, it was easier to keep going in the prison camp, where even if my life was limited, it was still just one kind of life in a big and varied world-some people were much better off than I was, some not as well off. But that this is all there is, maybe all there will ever be...

PBB, DAY 60-TARING AND THE TERTON.

I've stayed aboveground lately, and I suppose I've overdone the gardening bit. Guess it's part of my grieving. I keep seeing my grandfather's hands doing what mine do and find myself bawling into the radish bed. This morning was warm and hazy and I kept working, hours it must have been, until once when I reached up to wipe my eyes, in the moment that they were closed, I heard a roaring in my ears that sounded like the foghorn chanting I'd heard so long ago in my cell, and behind my closed lids points of light glittered in a deep maroon darkness. Not keen on being the first case of heatstroke in Kalapa, I washed my hands in what was left of the water for the plants, dumped the rest of the containerful on a grateful bean vine, and decided to retire to the library for the rest of the day. Lately when I've read I'vesought a rock by the lake or headed for the cheerful solitude of the stream in the rhododendron jungle, but today the idea of the library's darkness and cool seemed more attractive.

Once more, someone had beat me to my sanctuary and sat laughing softly at what lay between the widespread covers of a largish book. But this time the light was better and even if it hadn't been, the laugh was a giveaway.

"Tea, what are you up to? Research?" I called as I walked toward him.

"Of a sort," he said, swallowing chuckles long enough to answer me. "Come and look. Look at this funny fellow."

I looked. He pointed to one of several head-and-shoulders portraits in what appeared to be a yearbook. The one he indicated had a shaven head, prominent cheekbones, a distinctly Asian cast to his features and a bad case of acne.

"You?"

"Yes. From Montana School of Mines. Not a former life, you see, but it is sometimes seeming so."

"Might as well be," I said, unable to match his mood. "The Montana School of Mines is no more.

Like everything else."

"Almost everything else."

"Tea, how can the doctor be so sure the aftermath of the bombs won't reach us here? I mean, prayer is all very well but there was one avalanche already ..."

"Yes, the one that is occurring when His Holiness, the last Dalai Lama died, and Shambala was more needing than ever of protection and concealment. We believe that this was a beneficial occurrence-anyway, Ama-La and some of the rest of us so believe. It was coming as a great shock to Nyima. She wants everything to be unchanging, always. Me, her, Ama-La, the lake. Like your Colonel Merridew, she is liking to keep her enemies in their place and her friends as well."

"Do you believe all this karma stuff and people living a really long time or one life after another? I mean, I know it's your religion and Dr. Terton is one of your leaders, your lama I guess, but do you really believe all that stuff?"

In answer he turned the cover of the yearbook toward me. Across the padded fake leather it said, Montana Schoolof Mines, Cla.s.s of 1969.

"Well, the long-life part, I guess you do," I said, pretending that the revelation didn't affect me at all, that I really didn't care that the man was almost as old as my grandparents and looked no older than I was. "But I just don't understand all this karma stuff. Who came and why. I mean, why Danielson, for instance? Why should he be chosen to come here and be a prisoner until he died trying to get out?"

"We don't always know why, Viva," he said just a little impatiently. "We are just people, you know.

Not some sort of G.o.ds or Superman heroes. Maybe Danielson was here so he would not kill other important people. Maybe he was here to learn something vital to his soul before he died. Maybe he was here just to be what he was to those people at his funeral-the representative of all they had lost and the death of the glory of war.But I know that he was here preparing for his next incarnation, as we all are for ours."