Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [188]
“That’s one of the bargaining chips still out there, of course.”
“You wouldn’t want to be too late with that!”
“No.”
Charlie thought it over. “My Lord. What a world this is.”
“Yes.”
“So,” Frank persisted, “have you ever had any, like, memories of your previous incarnations?”
“No.”
Frank nodded. “That’s what the Dalai Lama said too, in the paper. He said he was an ordinary human being.”
“I am even more ordinary, as you know.”
“So why should you continue to believe you are the reincarnation of some previous person?”
“We are all such. You know—one’s parents.”
“Yes, but you’re talking about something else. Some wandering spirit, moving from body to body.”
“We all have those too.”
“But identifiable, from life to life?”
Drepung paused, then said, “I myself think that this is a heuristic device only.”
Charlie laughed. “A teaching device? A metaphor?”
“That’s what I think.”
Charlie began to think about that in the context of what had been happening to Joe.
“And what does it teach us?” Frank asked.
“Well, that you really do go through different incarnations, in effect. That in any life your body changes, and where you live changes—the people in your life, your work, your habits. All that changes, so much that in effect you pass through several incarnations in any one biological span. And what I think is, if you consider it that way, it helps you not to have too much attachment. You go from life to life. Each day is a new thing.”
“That’s good,” Frank said. “I like that. The theory of this particular Wednesday.”
Charlie was still thinking about Joe.
A few weeks later, by dint of some major begging, Charlie got Roy to give him ten minutes of Phil’s morning time. Dawn patrol, as it turned out, because it was not only the best time to fit something in, as Phil himself remarked, it was also the traditional time for him and Charlie to meet. On this occasion, however, a Sunday morning.
Charlie showed up at the White House having slept very little the night before. Phil met him in a car at the security gates, and they were driven down Constitution and past the front of the Lincoln Memorial. “Let’s walk from here,” Phil suggested. “I need the exercise.”
So they got out and were followed by Phil’s Secret Service team through the Korean War Memorial. It was a foggy morning, and still so early that the sun was not yet up. The pewter statues of the patrol hiked uphill through a wet mist, forever frozen in their awful moment of tension and dread. A long black wall on the Potomac side of the statues was filled with little white faces peering out from what seemed to be different depths within the stone, all bearing witness to the horrors of war. At the top of the memorial a small stone basin was backed by a retaining wall, on which was carved the message “FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.”
Phil stood for a while staring at it. Charlie left him to his thoughts and walked over to the apex of the statues. We here honor our sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they did not know and a people they never met.
Then Phil was beside him again. “It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So many wars. So many people died.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if we can make it all worth it.”
“Sure we will,” Charlie said. “You’re leading the way.”
“Can anyone do that?”
“Sure. People like being part of a cause. And Americans like to like the president.”
“Or hate him.”
“Sure, but they’d prefer to like him. As with you. Your numbers are really high right now.”
“Any time you get shot your numbers go up.”
“I suppose that’s so. But there you are.”
Phil shook his head. “Doesn’t it seem like these memorials are getting better and better? This place is a heartbreaker.”
“They found a really good sculptor.”
“Let’s walk down and see FDR. He always cheers me up.”
“Me too.”
It took several minutes to walk from the Korean to the FDR Memorial, skirting the north bank of the Tidal Basin and heading for the knot of trees around it. On first arrival it looked unprepossessing; one felt that FDR had been shortchanged compared to the rest. It was a kind