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.