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As they rested along the mountain trail, Dom Joi asked Smokey if he had any interest in viewing an ancient artifact at the isolated and abandoned temple, built by the earliest people called the “Ba”. These were the first inhabitants known in this area and were speculated to have fled the Mongols years before Genghis Khan.
“I will tell you some things, secret things we have never shared with foreigners. I feel a prodding, an urge to show you the ancient light vehicle. The monastery is not far from our route to the Thom temple. This artifact is one of the most revered and sacred things left from the Ba, so old and powerful the human mind cannot comprehend it.”
Dom Joi was focused and as solemn as Smokey had seen him since they first met.
“You must promise to share this with no one and keep the true light. This ancient artifact is as nothing before seen in our country. It appears to be made from something broken. There is a term in our language known as kurt sukuroi. It is to repair or build with gold or rare alloy. If something is broken, such as a rare Ming vase or ceramic painting, it can be made even more valuable by putting it back together with metal in all the cracks. Beautiful things become even more beautiful.”
Smokey asked, “So, if my people had some broken pottery, they would restore it with a gold metal seam where ever it had cracked and broken?”
Dom Joi nodded. “And,” he continued, “such is the light vehicle. It is a grouping of rare stones, shaved and carved, fit into a metal framework, as our kurt sukuroi and made valuable by the process.” Dom labored to his feet. “Mer means light, ka is spirit and ba is the body. Mer-ka-ba.”
“Well, I don’t need convincing to see that. It almost sounds like a secret to the universe.”
“Come, my friend, we will detour a short way and see the temple and this thing from the past. It is the future, also. The ancient gurus claim it did powerful things for any who could control it. It could carry people in an instant to faraway places or blast powerful energies into those who would harm its bearer. I have asked the old people and researched this little stone and gold creation; but all I can find is a mention in old records that it is called a Mer-ka-ba. The last human to use it was the Fifth Dali Lama, centuries ago. It is now devoid of any energy or life but it is the most rare and precious thing ever hidden in a temple. There is an old fable I have read of an Arabian, who found a thing like it and traded it to King Solomon.”
Smokey was enthralled. All the things he had learned with Luke and Ho were energy forces mankind had used in ancient times and lost. He could hardly wait to take a look at this ancient workmanship. Maybe he would find something Ho and MJD Corp could figure out and use. “What shape is it?” he asked the old monk.
“It is curious, a thing that looks like a star; it has eight points and many facets or planes, each a different stone. I have never seen it glowing with light but I guess it would be stunning in beauty. Legend says it is surrounded by the rainbow, when it has full power. Many of the past monks saw it in that way. You will see it shortly, for we are only a mile from the canyon cliffs, where the temple was built.”
The ancient Buddha Temple was an amazing architectural feat and an imposing structure, sitting alone on the top of a stone tower at least a thousand feet away from the cliffs of the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon. Smokey Joe and his new Tibetan friend stood surveying the old, forbidding structure, isolated for centuries from human contact, unless scaling the vertical cliff was part of your resume. The Kadam Potrang Government had installed a flimsy tram system, to replace the old rope, swinging bridge, which had rotted and fallen a century ago. To Smokey, who stood by the cliff surveying the distance and the height above the canyon floor, the cables looked insignificant.
“Is it safe?” questioned Smokey. He was used to sandstone spires, standing alone in the desert, remembering some of the spectacular cliff towers around Canyon de Chelly, and Monument Valley; but this was high and the age of it contributed to the suspicion the engineering of the tram might have been somewhat hastily built or its function not maintained. The monk chuckled and assured him the small cable cars could easily transport two passengers.
“These strong cables will not even feel a couple thin passengers like us.” This brought an amused smile to Smokey’s lips.
The monk had made this centuries-old artifact seem to be something Smokey had to see. He seemed driven by an urgency beyond Smokey’s understanding or capacity to fathom. Standing on the cliff, Dom Joi claimed the design of metal and stone-imposed pyramids had also been able to show anything to the person who knew how to operate it, almost anything he wanted to know, past, present or future.
“It worked as an ancient computer, all knowledgeable, all seeing and capable of providing incredible energy—a force of nature that could obliterate even matter, not just life forms. It could also transport to other places, maybe even other dimensions of the universe,” the old monk related.
“Jom Doi, you claimed the Fifth Dali Lama was the last mortal who controlled it. Doesn’t anyone know what makes it work?”
“The Tibetans called it ‘the light vehicle’; I did some research and learned it was referred to as ‘the chariot of ascension’. There is mention made in several old records, your Bible being one of them.” the monk reiterated, for the tenth time, it seemed to Smokey. I have to see this machine or artifact. Smokey told himself.
Every country had legends and every culture repeated stories of the awesome power of ancients. Even his own people had claimed the original Indian had grown wings and could fly away from their enemies. He had read in the Bible where Elijah had consumed entire armies and dared the priests of Baal to demonstrate their power. He had completely consumed them all then raced the king and queen back to Samaria. They were in a chariot and he ran alongside on foot. It was a crazy story, a bed time legend, or camp-fire myth, Smokey thought, but maybe, if I had this thing, this Mer-ka-ba, I could do things that seemed impossible or paranormal.
Smokey was intrigued, willing to brave the cable crossing to the old temple, out in the middle of nowhere. He surmised these tall, rugged mountains were as good as anywhere to be the place chosen to keep the “light”. It was old—everything about this site and the chasm guarding it, seemed old. This temple was sitting out on the peak of a tall limestone spear, away from the cliffs. Dom Joi told him for centuries it was untouched, but now, the cable with its tiny gondola type basket hanging from a rigging of pulleys, was installed to let travelers and tourists have access. There was no electricity, so the gondola pulleys were operated by the passenger, who would lift a handle up and down, much as the repair platforms of a railroad company. The vertical action, like a pump, would transfer motion to the pulleys and inch the contraption along the cable, a zip line with manual power; but not a lot of zip, thought Smokey. The two crammed inside the small car and began the twenty-minute journey across the intervening chasm. It was breathtaking. Looking down was not for the weak or anyone afraid of high places. The river was just a small ribbon winding at the bottom of the famous Asian equivalent of the Grand Canyon. Smokey thought, it would be good to have Ho Tanner right now; this is just his style; adventure relying on strength, courage and savvy.
Smokey had an uneasy feeling about the set-up, the rigging and the Buddhist Temple but it was over-ridden immediately by a curiosity to discover the artifacts Dom Joi had insisted were still kept within its walls. Maybe it was part of his ancestry demanding to know. He knew he was descended from some ancient tribe of Mongols—he felt a kinship with the plateau people; the Tibetans and their struggles resonated with him more than with many people due to the shared atrocities throughout history that their respective nations had been subjected to. The current impasse with China and the Dalai Lama were similar to the reservation existence of Native Americans. They were aborigines held captive by a conquering government, which refused to give back autonomy or sovereign rule. Smokey was positive something from the past was driving him to find out more, to look for some lost key to understanding the generations before him. It could be, he reasoned, the old shamans were prompting him, maybe some people with whom Red Eagle was now. Chief Joseph knew, in the back of his mind, he was important and the old shamans had indicated him, Ho, and even Luke, for some impending event.
They were about thirty feet from the old rock turret the gondola cable disappeared into, when the pump handles they were operating went slack. Looking out and up, they saw the cables were drooping with huge swales, not the tight taut wire with which they had started. Suddenly, the car was dropping elevation. Fear and adrenalin surged through Smokey. With his elbow, he smashed out one of the viewing windows in the tiny gondola car. Pulling his body out to the exterior he could see they were in danger of free fall to the bottom of the canyon. Placing his feet on the sill of the broken window, he launched himself at the cable, now sliding past the pulleys at an alarming rate.
Aiming at the cable just above the pulley, he made contact, felt his fingers tighten on the jagged worn cable wire and his flesh rip as he clamped his hands like a vise. In another heartbeat he was dangling a half mile above the forbidding canyon floor and the tiny river. The car was falling, with Dom Joi staring out the small window Smokey had just leaped through. His last impression was the stoic, frozen face of the poor monk, fear in his eyes but serenity in his bearing, as he plunged into the abyss below.
It was instantly in Smokey’s brain the cable had snapped and he was clinging to a suspension that was not attached to anything firm. There would be a huge cable drum or turnstile in the turret but the cable would whip around it and fall behind the car, which had pulleys attached to one cable going in but the other would eventually clear the port post on the cliff and whip through the turn pulley in the old rock structure, flying out into nothing.
Smokey climbed hand over hand, with a feverish anxiety he had never before felt. He would be lucky to get to the turret before the return cable line cleared its mooring. With a panic, realizing his life was over and he would be joining Dom Joi in a few seconds, he summoned superhuman will. His aching muscles, hardened by his lifestyle on the reservation, in spite of his age, now 47, enabled him to reach the imposing rock structure. As the loose end of cable whistled out of the turret, he grabbed at a crooked little tree, growing from a crack in the rugged rock spear. There was hardly a living thing on the barren surface of rock, or the medieval stone surfaces of the ancient temple, just this hardy small tree. Breathing in ragged bursts, he still marveled at the little twisted branch, just a bush, really, as a bonsai tree. An ancient little living crooked trunk tree was responsible for saving his life. Looking down he watched the gondola, a speck by now, hit the base of the gigantic rock spire and shatter into little slivers of red and yellow.
The car was gone and so was the new friend. Smokey slowly and carefully traversed the face of the stone, which supported the turret, a welcoming part of the temple but forbidding and dangerous. He was able to pull himself into the opening where a few seconds before he and Dom Joi had anticipated landing and exploring the old abandoned temple. This was almost surreal, it was something that couldn’t be happening but his ragged breath, his pounding heart and throbbing pulse let him know it was real. The sharp pain is his bloody hands reminded him it was real. He was stuck on a lonely spire; a thousand feet separated him from the main cliffs, half a mile above the river basin.
The gravity of his predicament dawned slowly. He was alone, no one knew he was here; there would be no food, no rescue and no escape. Smokey Joe was in a jail for life, trapped; his only contact in Southeast Asia, Dom Joi, was dead at the bottom of the canyon.
A foreboding gripped him, nothing he had experienced in his years had prepared him for this lonely exile. A thought crossed his mind he was in a parallel situation his friend Ho Tanner had survived at Angel Falls, a few years earlier; but Ho had the Mariachi, Makaewalani and some kind of anti-gravity force field, about which Smokey knew nothing. He would not be able to escape this promontory, except by somehow climbing down the face of the craggy spire on which the temple was perched. With no rope or climbing skill, it would be suicide. Staying would be death by starvation and no one here understood smoke signals.