"Grr-arrh," he said again. "Grr-arrh!"
"Okay," Festina said. "Berry… bear… it’s a stretch, but I get the point."
"Tut!" I yelled. "See the gray moss, Tut? The moss, Tut, the moss. Show the bastards you still don’t care."
For a moment, he didn’t respond… and I feared his brain had been damaged by the pretas who’d worked all night to possess him.
Then: "Hot damn, Mom!" He whipped the mask off his head. "You’ve finally found some fun on this shit hole of a planet. Swan dive!"
As he’d done atop the ziggurat in Zoonau, Tut threw himself onto the spores.
When the Divine pulled Li and Ubatu into their midst, they’d taken their time. They’d reeled the diplomats in, making sure their descent was slow — slow enough not to crush any spores underneath.
But when Tut plunged into the mossy heap…
The Divine weren’t prepared to split their attention in so many directions: having to deal with Tut, as well as playing tug-of-war with the yellow wire, maintaining the gray fog to protect the pyramid’s mechanical guts, and keeping up pressure on the red glow that shielded Festina and me. Tut’s move caught the Divine by surprise. They were used to dragging prey in, not having it leap on top of them. Besides, the demonic gray spores were too fixated on reconnecting the yellow wire; they didn’t react to Tut until a nanosecond before he plunged into their midst. Then, at the last instant, as Tut plummeted down like an avalanche of long-delayed karma… the Divine simply bolted in fright.
Pure atavistic instinct: jump out of the way. The spores forgot everything else as they scattered in all directions, fleeing to the edges of the room with the grainy sound of a sandstorm.
The tug-of-war on the yellow wire ended abruptly. Festina and I hit the floor as the panicked Divine let go of their end.
Tut landed on solid gold: a golden disk embedded in the floor, almost exactly the size of Tut himself as he threw out his arms and legs to absorb the impact of landing. He looked like da Vinci’s drawing of human anatomical proportion as he posed spread-eagled within the golden circle. Then Festina, free from the Divine’s TK, shrugged me off and slapped the yellow wire back into place on its terminal.
All around the room, machines began to hum. A heartbeat later, golden light flooded upward from the emitter disk, streaming around Tut’s body like honey-colored fire. Gray spores howled and tried to scurry back to the radiance… but at the edges of the disk, they ran into a glowing red barrier. I could feel the Balrog spores inside me blaze with dying determination as they spent their last reserves of energy holding the Divine back.
Gold light filled the dome of the station. It built to a blazing intensity, then exploded outward through the spikes in the building’s crown. For a moment, my sixth sense returned, showing me hundreds of pretas outside the station, permeated with healing bursts of energy. I waited to see them transform…
…but instead I went blind. Truly blind. No sixth sense. No eyes. The spores in my body — the ones replacing parts of my brain, the ones that had kept me alive through broken bones, hemorrhages, and even amputation — all of them reached the end of their strength and died en masse within me.
I was purged of my infestation… and left with a body no longer able to survive on its own.
Everything went black.
CHAPTER 19
Prajna [Pali]: Wisdom; insight; understanding.
To my great surprise, I woke up. More or less.
I was no longer in the station. I was no longer anywhere. My surroundings were neither light nor dark, hot nor cold. Just there. Peaceful and placid, undemanding, unyielding.
So, I thought, the Afterlife Bardo. I’m dead.
Tibetan scholars liked to contemplate the gaps between things — particularly the gap between death and rebirth. They called these in-between states Bardos. The Bardo of Death was sometimes pictured as a spirit realm where the recently deceased made choices in preparation for their next life.
As a non-Tibetan, I had my doubts. In standard scriptures, the Buddha never mentioned Bardos; I’d always considered them holdovers from some pre-Buddhist mysticism. At best, I’d thought Bardos might be useful metaphors for stages in a more metaphysical journey.
Yet here I was. Or so it appeared.
Balrog, I said, with soundless words, you’re manipulating my perceptions again. Simulating an afterlife. Must you keep playing these games?
A point of red appeared in the nothingness. A solitary Balrog spore. It hovered in my consciousness — not speaking, just waiting.
This is all in my mind, I said. What’s left of my mind. Considering I’m missing most of my brain, it’s surprising I can think at all.
Silence.
You’re helping me, aren’t you? Working your magic from afar. For thousands of years, the Divine walled off the station from your influence… but the Divine are out of the picture. As soon as a few pretas got elevated — truly elevated — they’d deal with the Divine, one way or another. So you’re no longer shut out, and you can reach my dying brain. Right?
The glowing red spore showed no reaction… but I felt as if it was listening. Hearing my final thoughts.
I am dying, aren’t I? When you came to me back in Zoonau, I knew this all might lead to my death. And here it is. My death.
The spore dimmed slightly, then returned to its steady glow.
But, I continued, you could still save me, couldn’t you? If I invited you into my body again, you could patch me up. You could teleport spores into me from anywhere in the galaxy. You could heal me by infesting me again.
The spore bobbed slightly.
For several moments, I didn’t speak. Finally, I said, I’m not afraid of death. True death might not lead to a Bardo, but I’m not afraid. Fear is unskillful.
This time, the spore didn’t respond. It was still waiting.
There’s more I could do, isn’t there? I’m not afraid of death, but living would let me accomplish useful things. I laughed lightly. The Bodhisattva’s decision — choosing not to move on, because there are still creatures who need help.
The spore fluttered momentarily. I didn’t know what that meant. There were surely an infinite number of things I would never understand even if I became enlightened. Enlightenment isn’t omniscience; it’s just freedom.
At that moment, I had a degree of freedom. Free choice: I could bid farewell to the Balrog and let death come as it always comes eventually; or I could invite the Balrog to enter me, once again surrendering to alien infestation.
Put it another way: I could run from the sufferings of the universe, or I could join forces once again with a quirky creature who’d called me to be its champion.
I had no body, but I moved toward the glowing spore. I opened my being… my trust… my love…
Once again, I woke up.
Festina was lightly slapping my face. "Youn Suu. Come on, Youn Suu, wake up. Come on…"
I opened my eyes. What I saw first was Festina’s hand; it had ooze on it. She’d been slapping my bad cheek and hadn’t cared. I took her hand… kissed it… wiped it off on my uniform. When she looked embarrassed, I just smiled. "I’m fine," I said. "I died for a bit, but decided that was too easy."
"What do you mean, you died?" By now, Festina had pulled back her hand and was wiping it vigorously on her own uniform. Wiping off my kiss? "I scanned you with the Bumbler," she said. "You weren’t dead, you just fainted." She gave me a look. "If you’d been dead, you idiot, I’d be giving you CPR, not patting your face as if you were a swooning chambermaid."