Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [166]
Leap before you look, stop trying to decide, just act on the spur of the moment. On Saturday he went over to Rock Creek, first to move most of his stuff from his tree house to his van, then to play a round with Spencer and Robert and Robin. The frisbees still tended to shatter if they hit a tree straight on, but other than that the frisbee guys seemed fine with the hard winter. Spencer said it was the same with all the fregans. They were Ice Age people, running with the aurochs and the wolves.
And the bros were back by their fire, stubbornly waiting out the cold. The pile of ashes in their fireplace was huge, and the area beyond Sleepy Hollow where the deer carcasses lay was beginning to look like a real shambles. Fedpage handed Frank a paper plate with a scorched venison steak when he sat down at the picnic table.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. It’s a little bloody, but—”
“Blood for the hemophiliac! Just what he needs!”
“Uh huh. Hey Fedpage, how many spy agencies are there in the federal government?”
“Sixteen.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s how many they admit to. Actually there’s more. It’s like those Russian nested dolls, with blacks and superblacks inside.”
“Spy versus spy.”
“That’s right. They fight like dogs. They guard their turf by getting blacker.” This statement made Cutter laugh. “Nobody even knows everything that’s out there, I judge. Not the president nor anyone else.”
“How can that happen?”
“There’s no enemy, that’s why. They pretend there’s terrorists, but that’s just to scare people. Actually they like terrorists. That’s why they went into Iraq, they got oil and a bunch of terrorists, it was a two-for-one. Much smarter than Vietnam. Because it’s all about funding. The spooks’ job is to spy on each other and keep their funding.”
“Shit,” Frank said. He prodded his steak, which suddenly tasted off. “I think you guys need to kill another deer maybe.”
“Ha nothing wrong with that deer! It’s Fedpage making you sick!”
On some afternoons Frank walked around Arlington. He had never spent much time there, and this was an odd time to get acquainted with it, its big streets were so wintry. Broad avenues ran for miles westward, past knots of tall buildings erupting out of the forest in every kind of mediocre urban conglomeration. It was possible to walk to the Khembali house from NSF in half an hour, so some days he did that, and got in a winter hike through the snow’s bizarre masonry, with cars belching past like steam-powered vehicles.
At night after dinner he usually went up to his room and read on his mattress, chatting with Rudra every half hour or so. Otherwise he drifted around on the internet, looking things up under the long list of sites that came when he googled Khembalung. What he read in these rambles often caused him to shake his head.
before the great guru Milarepa left Tibet for the Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain, he made a tour of Tibet, among other tasks finding hidden valleys, or beyuls
“Guru Rudra, what is a beyul?”
“Hidden valley.”
“Like Khembalung?”
“Yes.”
“But you were on an island?”
“Hidden valley moves from time to time. This seems to be what Rikdzin Godem says. He was the guru who knew about the hidden valley. From Tsang. Fourteenth century. He talked about the Eight Great Hidden Valleys, but Khembalung seems to be only one that ever appeared. A refuge from the kaliyuga, fourth of the four ages. Iron age of degradation and despair.”
“Is that what we’re in?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“Ha ha. What else did he say about them?”
“He say many things. Many books. He told location and described how to get in. When it would be good to enter, what would be the omens. What say, the power places in Khembalung. The magic.”
“Oh my. And what was that?”
“Like Khembalung as you saw it. A place for good. A buddhafield.”
“Buddhafield?”
“A space where Buddhism is working.”
“I see.”
“Compassion increase, wisdom.”
“And Khembalung was like that.”
“Yes.”
“And where was it, before your island?