17

STEEL JADE

Mandala Hotel,

Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, Northern India

The Dalai Lama’s voice and laughter filled Beth’s hotel room as she replayed the recording of their interview while she worked late into the night. She had enjoyed their talk and was, despite her best professional intentions, as charmed as her colleagues had warned.

Listening to their discussion again in the small hours of the morning, she let her mind freestyle around his answers to the questions, her pad filling with random words and doodles, seeding the key elements of her article. Beth focused on one of the words scratched and underlined across the page—reincarnation—acknowledging to herself that the word still immediately took her beyond her own reason and into unknown territory.

Do I even believe in it?

She had already confessed the same doubt to Wangdu who had worked hard to try to explain to her the subject’s complex puzzle of prophecy, portent, geography, and time as it might relate to the Dalai Lama.

She considered his explanation again. It was a process, he had said, that started while the Dalai Lama was still living through his consideration of the writings of his predecessors, consultation with oracles, and, when it used to be possible, meditation and contemplation at a holy lake—the place of the protectress deity of Tibet, Palden Lhamo. There, in those restless windswept waters set high in the gray jagged hills of Gyaca could be seen symbols, letters, shapes, numbers, animals; all possible clues to the identity and location of a future reincarnation. But that place was off-limits to him now, a forbidden zone to anyone outside of the People’s Armed Police.

The Dalai Lama would also consider his own thoughts and dreams, combining all his findings in additional new writings. Beth realized that she had heard this very same process in His Holiness’s own words when she replayed her recording.

“. . . for now, I am very much still here so I think, I consult, I listen, I pray. I wander places in my mind that might be forbidden to my feet to seek guidance, to understand the path ahead . . .”

After his death, a search committee would take over. To the Dalai Lama’s writings, they would add details of the last words he spoke, any natural phenomena seen at the precise moment of his death such as rainbows or the shape of the clouds, the final position of his body, any distinctive marks that might appear on his corpse, even the direction taken by the smoke of the subsequent funeral pyre.

From all these indicators the search committee would determine the possible locations of suitable candidates and seek young children there that might be deemed auspicious because of distinct physical markings, precocious abilities, or affinities and passions similar to those of the deceased. Committee members would visit them all, then make a recommendation based on intense discussion with the children and tests such as the recognition of possessions of the former lama. In the case of the Dalai Lama, the final arbiter of who was the reincarnation would be the Panchen Lama and vice versa in the case of the Panchen Lama. Enthronement and education of the selected child would then follow as he aged.

Considering the case of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the missing boy, Beth had asked Wangdu, “And what if that subsequent education and enthronement is denied?”

His reply had been grave.

“That would prove to be extremely dangerous for the child. If he is a reincarnation, he must be trained to handle it correctly. Without such guidance, some have gone mad, others have committed suicide. Being denied their true selves is incredibly destructive to such children.”

Every way she looked at it Beth saw little possibility of the boy still being alive, but then again, she thought, if Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was dead and reincarnation was real then didn’t that mean . . .

The chime of an incoming message on her phone stopped Beth’s train of thought.

The text was from her editor.

Unlike everything else before her that evening, this time there was no equivocation. The message was direct and simple.

Due to scheduling conflict DL story is on indefinite hold.

Agreed fees and incurred expenses will be paid in full.

Frank

Beth cursed as she turned to her open laptop to search for news of the passing of any famous musicians; they had been dropping like flies recently.

Nothing new came up to justify an immediate need for column inches, so she switched to the magazine’s website for possible answers.

The homepage was newly emblazoned with a fiery banner advertisement for a forthcoming action film.

A Chinese-American coproduction, the film looked overblown and asinine, yet it also figured. People had warned her this could happen, that Chinese influence might well curtail such a visible Dalai Lama feature. Instantly angered, Beth told herself that no one was going to shut her down. Defiantly she typed the name “Gedhun Choekyi Nyima” into the search engine and hit Enter.

The homepage immediately dissolved to black. A white dot appeared, growing into a golden star as the background turned blood red. The star twisted and bulged, morphing its shape into that of an equally golden cat. The cat split into two. The two became four. The divisions accelerated to line Beth’s screen with ranks of grinning felines that waved their curled left paws to the beat of a Kylie Minogue song. At the end of each chorus of “I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky,” the screen blanked to flash the word “cat” at her in golden capitals.

“What the hell?” Beth shouted, the keys of her laptop no longer responding to commands. Tearing her eyes away from what she understood must be some sort of malware, she stabbed instead at the computer’s power button. She held it down hard until all the shiny cats were extinguished and it was only her fingernail that continued to pulse with the pressure.