Then she noticed the smell.
"What is that awful smell?" she asked, pinching her nose shut and breathing through her mouth.
"What smell?" asked Kula.
Squirrelly yanked him out onto the step with her.
"That smell!"
"That is India."
"It smells like a cesspool," Squirrelly said in a nasal tone.
Kula nodded. "Yes, India."
Lobsang joined them, tasted the air with his long nose, seemed to find it acceptable and said, "We have landed in India!"
"Does it all smell like this?" Squirrelly asked, still holding her nose.
"This good?" asked Lobsang.
"This bad."
"Some of it is worse. Come, we cannot tarry. Chinese agents may be lurking about."
"Shouldn't we wait for the reception committee? Usually I get the key to the city when I land in a foreign capital."
"The key to New Delhi," Kula said, hustling her down the steps, "is not to remain here for very long."
There was a car waiting. It looked like some British model that had seen better days. Squirrelly got in the back and rolled up the windows. As the car left the airport, the soupy heat made her open them again.
For the remainder of the ride, she alternately rolled the windows up when the smell got to be too much and down again when the heat started wilting her hat.
New Delhi, even blacked out, was a mess. Traffic was a nightmare. A lumbering red bus almost sideswiped them. Wrenching the wheel, Kula swiped back, running the bus off the road and into a ditch where it rolled over three times before coming to a dusty halt on its side.
It seemed that every other bus they encountered tried to run them off the road.
"What's wrong with these bus drivers?" Squirrelly demanded huffily.
Kula shrugged his broad shoulders. "They live in New Delhi, are devout Buddhists and therefore have nothing to lose by dying suddenly. The odds of a better next life are overwhelming."
Beside her, Lobsang was talking. "Now, the Dalai Lama wears a pleasant face," he was saying. "Do not be deceived, Presence. He will be envious of your karmic station."
"I wonder if he'll remember me," Squirrelly murmured.
"From which life?"
"From this one. I met him at a party once. He was a very nice little man."
"When you met him that time, he failed to recognize you for the Bunji Lama, his ancient rival. Now it will be different. Beware the serpent behind the mask. He will appeal to your more trustworthy instincts. He will preach dangerous ideas."
"Like what?"
"Pacifism." The word was a short cobra's hiss.
In front Kula spit on the floorboard.
Squirrelly wrinkled up her gamin face. "Isn't that what Buddha taught?"
"Lord Buddha," Lobsang said in precise tones, "did not suffer under the iron yoke of communism."
And the brittleness in the close confines of the bus-dodging car made Squirrelly Chicane shiver and wonder what she had gotten herself into.
THE DALAI LAMA STOOD outside his temple in exile, surrounded by his retinue, when they entered the dusty hill town of Dharamsala, north of New Delhi, in the shadow of Mun Peak.
He was just as Squirrelly remembered him-a little man with merry but wise eyes behind aviator sunglasses. His robe was maroon. His retinue all wore saffron hats. Squirrelly remembered Lobsang telling her that the Dalai Lama headed the yellow-hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism. As the Bunji Lama, she was the head of the red-hat sect. Personally she would have preferred burgundy.
Walking with her ceremonial bronze dorje clutched in one hand, trying to keep her maroon miter in place, Squirrelly floated up the dirt road to where the Dalai Lama awaited.
The Dalai Lama stood with his hands clasped in prayer, his face a pleasant mask. He neither smiled nor blinked, nor did he otherwise acknowledge Squirrelly's arrival. Not even when Squirrelly stopped just six feet in front of him.
"What do I say?" she whispered to Lobsang.
"Say nothing."
"What's he waiting for?"
"For you to bow."
"So why aren't I bowing?"
"To bow would be to acknowledge inferior status."
"Listen, to get out of this frigging heat, I'd get down on my hands and knees and kiss his little saffron sandals."
"Do not bow!" Lobsang warned. "It is in this moment that your supremacy will be decided."
"Does a curtsy count?"
"Do nothing!"
So Squirrelly didn't curtsy. Neither did the Dalai Lama bow.
Then Lobsang spoke up. "Your Holiness, I present to you the forty-seventh Bunji Lama, presently occupying a body known as Squirrelly Chicane."
The Dalai Lama blinked. Members of his retinue craned their shaved heads forward as if seeing her for the first time.
"Is this the selfsame Squirrelly Chicane who was in Brass Honeysuckle?" asked one.
Lobsang looked to Squirrelly, at a loss for words.
"Say yes," Squirrelly murmured.
"The answer is yes," said Lobsang.
The stony faces of the regents of the Dalai Lama broke out into smiles of recognition. "It is Squirrelly Chicane!"
They began crowding around.
"Is Richard Gere well?" one asked.
"He's doing great," Squirrelly said, laughing. "Chants every day."
"What tidings from the lotus land of the West?" asked another.
Through it all the Dalai Lama stood impassive behind his mirror aviator glasses.
"He's not budging," Squirrelly whispered to Lobsang.
"He is stubborn," Lobsang advised.
"Yeah? Well, I know just how to break the ice. Here, hold this," said Squirrelly passing her dorje to Lobsang. Snapping her fingers once, she accepted a silk wrapped package from Kula. Untying the drawstring, she brought to light the gleaming Academy Award she had won for Medium Esteem.
"Check this out," she crowed.
"It is the icon of the long-lost Bunji Lama!" the regents gasped.
And to the astonishment of all, except Squirrelly Chicane, the Dalai Lama lifted his prayerful hands to his forehead and bowed not once, but five times low and deep.
"May I have your autograph, enlightened one?" he asked humbly.
After that it went swimmingly, Squirrelly thought. They retired to the Dalai Lama's personal quarters, where the regents shut the doors and they drank tea-thankfully without rancid butter-sitting face-to-face on cushions. The Dalai Lama admired Squirrelly's Oscar while she got a good look at his Nobel Peace Prize.
"Strange are the ways in which the Wheel of Destiny turns," said the Dalai Lama.
"I saw this coming, you know. I'm a Taurus. They have the best karma."
"Now that you are recognized as the Bunji Lama, what will you do?"
"Liberate Tibet. That's what I'm here for," said Squirrelly, admiring the Nobel. "How hard is it to earn one of these things, anyway?"
The Dalai Lama hesitated over his bowl of tea. "Why do you ask, Bunji?"
"One of these would look great over my mantel between my Oscar and Golden Globe. By the way, may I call you Delhi?"
" 'Dalai.' It means 'ocean.' My title means 'ocean of wisdom.' And yes, you may call me that if it is your desire."
"That reminds me. Let's dish, lama to lama!" Squirrelly leaned forward. "When we feel the urge, what do we lamas do?"
"We do nothing. To sublimate the lower urges is our purpose in this life."
"Exactly how long have you been sublimating?" Squirrelly wondered.
"All my lives."
"Okaaay. Tell me, if you couldn't free your people after forty years, how'd you snare this baby?"
"I earned the Nobel by keeping the peace. For my way is the way of nonviolence. Is that not your way, Bunji?"
"I've always been nonviolent. Not that it's been easy. Sometimes I wanna give my little brother such a smack."
"I am pleased to hear this. Aggression is not the answer to the problem of Tibet, for the Chinese are many, and Tibetans few and poor."
"Don't sweat the Chinese. I've handled them before."