Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [167]
“At head of Arun valley. Phumchu, we call it in Tibetan. And over Tsibri La, into Tibet. That was the trouble.”
“China?”
“Yes.”
“Why is China so much trouble, do you think?”
“China is big. Like America.”
“Ah. So you left there.”
“Yes. South gate in a cave, opens way down Phumchu. Then downvalley to Darjeeling.”
“Does anyone go through that hidden valley anymore?”
“They go through without seeing. Too busy!” A gravelly chuckle. “Buddhafield not always visible. In this case, Dorje Phakmo, the Adamantine Sow, lies along that valley.”
“A pig?”
“Subtle body, hard to find.”
Another time, because of that:
“So animals are kind of magical too?”
“Of course. Obvious when you see them, right?”
“True,” Frank said. He told Rudra about his activities with FOG, including the arrival in Rock Creek Park of the aurochs.
“Very good!” Rudra exclaimed. “I liked them.”
“Uh huhn. What about tigers?”
“Oh, I like them too. Very good animal. Scary, but good. They have scary masks, but really they are friendly helpers. At power places they are tame.”
“Tame?”
“Tame. Friendly, helpful, courteous.”
“Kind, obedient, cheerful, brave, clean, and reverent?”
“Yes. All those.”
“Hmm.”
Another time, Frank read a passage on his screen and said, “Rudra, are you the Rudra Cakrin, the one people write about?”
“No.”
“You’re not? There’s more than one?”
“Yes. He is very old.”
“Sixteen thousand years before the birth of Christ, it says here.”
“Yes, very old. I am not that old.” Gurgle. “Almost, but not.”
“So are you some kind of boddhisattva?”
“No no. Not so good as that, no.”
“But you are a lama, or what say, a tulku or what have you?”
“What have you, I guess you say. I am a voice.”
“A voice?”
“You know. Vehicle for voice. Spirits seem to speak through me.”
“Like in those ceremonies, you get taken over and say things?”
“Yes.”
“That looks like it must hurt.”
“Yes, it seems so. I don’t remember what happens then. But afterward I often seem to be sore.”
“Does it still happen?”
“Sometimes.”
“Are you scheduled for a ceremony anytime soon?”
“No. You know—retired.”
“Retired?”
“Is that not word? What say, get old, give up work?”
“Yes, that’s retirement. I just didn’t know that your kind of job allowed for retirement.”
“Of course. Very hard job.”
“I imagine so.”
Frank googled “oracle, Tibetan Buddhist,” and read randomly for a while. It was pretty alarming stuff. What always got him was how elaborated everything was in Tibetan Buddhism; it was not a simple thing, like he imagined American Protestant churches being, with their simple creeds: I believe in God, an abstract or maybe a human image, with some vague tripartite divisions and a relatively straightforward story about a single visit to Earth. Not at all; instead, a vastly articulated system of gods and spirits, with complicated histories and interactions, and ongoing appearances in this world. The oracles when possessed would grow taller, lift enormously heavy costumes, cause medallions on their chest to bounce outward under the force of their elevated heartbeat. If certain powerful spirits entered the oracle, he had less than five minutes to live. Blood would gush from nose and mouth, body go completely rigid.
Maybe this was all a matter of adrenalin and endorphins. Maybe this was what the body was capable of when the mind was convinced of something. Oxytocined by the cosmic spirit. But in any case they were quite serious about it; to them it was real. “The system is so complex and multilayered that it operates with some degree of freedom.” The mind, ordering the incoming data one way or another; different realities, perhaps. And what if they were evaluated on the basis of how they made one feel? On that basis there was certainly no justification to condescend to these people, no matter what strange things they said. They were in far better control of their feelings than Frank was.
______
Through all of March the winter stayed as cold and windy as ever. Twelve days in a row record lows were set, and on March 23rd it was twenty below at noon. Frank worried that any