Neon Lotus by Marc Laidlaw Page A

They
took advantage of the shelter while Dhondub conversed briefly on the radio.
Marianne gazed over the top of the gulch but saw no signs of life. She stared
to the northeast, toward the heart of Tibet, and watched the darkness deepen.
    Her skin had
been stained to a shade of brown, and her hair felt stiff and coarse from the
black dyes. Only her eyes remained untinted, green. She was dressed like a
nomad woman in brown robes, a round cap with a fur brim, and a striped apron.
While the cloth of her garments mimicked natural materials, it was all
artificial, tailored for changing conditions of weather and exertion. Her gownlike
chuba was meant to breathe and keep her cool if she were working strenuously,
and to insulate and warm her if she were standing still. Her tall felt boots,
embroidered with golden eyes, had the spongy, flexible soles of running shoes.
    As she
leaned against the rocks, looking away from the wind, she couldn’t help but
feel a pang of disappointment.
    This was
Tibet. Khawachen. Bod Chenpo. The land of her dreams.
    And there
was nothing here, nothing to be seen. It was a land so vast that she might
travel for months without finding anything but vistas like this one, unless it
were harsher and more desolate landscapes. She felt like a hypocrite, after her
words to Chenrezi. What did she truly know of Tibet? How did she expect to care
for it?
    Her first
good look at the country showed it to be cold and bleak as the stars that lit
it, and as indifferent to humanity. For the first time she feared that this was
the wrong place for her. Tibet was a large and empty land. She might never make
sense of it—or of her own needs.
    Far out
across the plain, she saw a cloud rising against the lowest stars. She could
see nothing else, but she had the feeling that there was movement near the
horizon—something subtle and shadowy, only barely visible.
    She called
down to Dhondub Ling: “Can I borrow your field glasses? They’re night scopes,
aren’t they?”
    He nodded,
handing them up; then he climbed to her side.
    The scopes
gave her a vibrant view of the plain, painting it in shades of violet and
crimson. Against the horizon was a shifting line of hot blue motion,
approaching.
    She focused
the lenses on the blue shapes, picking out the nearest. What she saw resembled
a herd of fleet-footed luminous animals, perhaps antelopes. They ran close
together for protection, rather than grazing. She listened for the pounding of
hooves but heard nothing. They were graceful, light-footed runners.
    “I thought
the herds were hunted to extinction long ago,” she said. “Like the American
bison.”
    “Yes, they
were,” said Dhondub. “Long ago. ”
    “Then what’s
this?”
    The herd
kept coming closer. Had it been daytime, she could have seen them with her bare
eyes by now. The fluorescent colors in the scope were disorienting. She saw
what looked like a stampede of neon beasts with glittering forked antlers and
shaggy, shadowy heads. They flowed over the contours of the land, darting in
and out of the gullies, dodging rocks and brush.
    There was
something strange about the way they ran, in broken patterns, back and forth.
    As they
spread out across the plain, she realized what was wrong.
    They ran on
two feet.
    They were
human.
    “Look!” she
said, passing the glasses to Dhondub.
    He laughed.
“I don’t have to. I was expecting them.”
    Dr. Norbu
climbed onto the ledge beside them. “Ah, the niche-runners.”
    “Who are they?”
Marianne asked.
    “Ecologists,
you might say,” he answered in a humorous tone. “They were plains people once,
simple nomads and hunters. It was partially through their efforts—with the
introduction of better weapons—that the old herds were so quickly hunted to
extinction.
    “A hundred
years ago, one of these hunters had a vision in which the spirit of the animals
came to show him the hole that was left in the world by the passing of the
herd. The story says that the hunter felt