Neon Lotus Read Online Free PDF Page B

him, drew his blond-bearded face to her breast.
“Oh, Peter. I love you, too.”
    He murmured
into her sweater, “Will you come with me?”
    “Why can’t
you come to California?”
    “If that’s
what it takes, I will.”
    She felt
tears starting from her eyes. She wasn’t sure what to think.
    “Is this too
sudden?” he asked. “Because I don’t feel that it is. We’ve gotten to know each
other gradually, you must admit—considering we’ve been together continuously for
. . . ”
    “A month.”
    “Will you
think about it?”
    She kissed
him. “I’ve already thought about it. I do want to stay with you, Peter, but I
don’t know that I want to live in Geneva—no more than I want to go home and
pick up where I left off. But you know, there’s another place we could go.”
    “Where’s
that?”
    “The
Fellowship needs volunteers. We could travel together, couldn’t we? There are
projects in Europe and America, even in Asia if we—”
    “Not Asia.
This place has opened my eyes a bit too wide. I need to see something familiar
again.”
    She
remembered the man in white rolling over when she pushed him. Three eyes.
    “I know what
you mean,” she said.
    He drew her
down to him.
    ***
    Reting awoke
from a nightmare of violence. A storm had broken over his head, trapping him in
a land of jagged crystals and broken glass. Every step and stumble was torment,
slicing him to ribbons. The rain was red; it had the stink of old blood. He
knew it was his own.
    He had been
wandering forever, perpetually in flight, a fugitive.
    The dream
had begun in darkness, but then a great light had arisen like a sun vaster than
infinity. As the merest edge of its circumference had dawned on the horizon of
his dreams, he had fled in terror, fearing that he would burst into flames,
    Then
lightning crashed at his feet. The sky pulled itself up into peaks crested by
foaming clouds, arching above like a wave that would drown him utterly.
    As the wave
began to break, he heard a soothing voice say, “Nobly born, you have passed
beyond the Clear Light. It is out of reach. But do not lose hope. Do not lose
hope.”
    He jerked
himself awake and found that he had fallen asleep upon the console of the Bardo
device.
    The silver
vapor had passed from the screen. Green light filled the tank, a watery
turmoil—
    Yes, it was
a breaking wave.
    As the foam
came crashing down, he flinched as if it were falling on his own head. He saw a
shadow, black as a hole into nothingness, cowering beneath the wave. He watched
as it was swept away. The Bardo device tracked it through rushing tides. Surely
it would be destroyed. . . .
    But no. It
was Tashi s soul. It was indestructible.
    Or was it
still Tashi? Could he give it such a name? What relation did it bear to his old
friend?
    He
remembered the feeling of being a fugitive, nameless, without identity, no
more than a shadow in a dream of shadows. He remembered the howl of wind and
the sound of thunder, the agony slashing at every raw nerve.
    He had seen
it all in his dream, as if somehow sharing the experience with Tashi.
    More likely,
he had been gazing into the screen with his dreaming eyes half open.
    The flood
left the black soul-shadow stranded on a rocky shore. Fierce winds peeled it
from the momentary purchase and swept it like a scrap of inky paper into the
midst of an inferno that could not consume it. The images were silent but
Reting Norbu could easily imagine the roar of an infinite forest in flames.
    “You cast no
shadow,” said the Bardo device, still coaching the soul through the labyrinth.
“You journey through an infinite number of worlds in an infinitesimal amount of
time, but you leave no footsteps.
    “No one can
see or hear you, though their thoughts echo in your ears.”
    The flames
were gone. The black doll whirled at the center of a kaleidoscope. A million
patterns flickered across the screen, too fast for him to register. There was
no telling what the passage of time might have