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them, helpless and stark staring naked, ready for the kill or whatever else he wanted to do with them.
Fortunately, he had a pretty good imagination. "You know, honey," he said to the smirking little ghost
who looked down her nose at him from above the smoke-filled holo of the NAC, "I mean to take real
good care of your sweet hide."
"That's reassuring," she said pleasantly. How come he could see her anyway? He'd never been able to
see ghosts before. In fact, that was kind of a good thing, seeing as how he created so many. Maybe it
was because hewas in her body and she hadn't officially died yet, or maybe it was because hehad died,
so they were sort of birds of a feather now. No matter. He thought he could wipe the smile off her face.
"In the old times, in some parts of the world, people believed that you could stay young forever if you
sucked the blood out of living people-especially young ones, but hell, anybody'd do in a pinch."
"Yes," she said. "Such stories occur in all myths, and my friend Meekay was for some reason very fond
of the story of Count Dracula."
"Meekay.He's the one I shot, right?"
"That's correct," she said, still blandly.
"Well, I thought maybe I could just sort of use those people in there as a kind of blood bank-among
other things. You seemed to get a kick out of the idea of being a dirty old man. How about being a
vampire?"
"Well," she said. "Quite aside from the damage done to innocent persons, such a course might not be the
best way to take care of my body. Many diseases are borne by the blood."
"You're really somethin', you know that?"
"Thank you."
Little bitch. She was so smug. He grabbed his new breasts and crotch and rubbed them suggestively.
"I'm gonna go to NAC, you know. This little body ought to fetch a pretty good price on the street, and
I'm going to enjoy sellin' you, honey."
"Perhaps," she said. "But you may find you feel differently than you suppose when you have to actually
occupy the body while doing so. And if you intend to live in it for a good long time, take precautions
against pregnancy and disease. But of course if you continue to live in my body and go to another
country, these matters will no longer concern me."
" 'Causeyou'll be dead, huh? I'll have your body and you'll be dead, little bitch."
"Actually, I will probably simply continue straight to Nirvana. As a bodhisattva, I've been qualified for
some time. I will regret not being able to help others here, but I'm sure someone will turn up who will
perform the same sort of task."
"You sound pretty goddamn cold about it."
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"My faith teaches us to be willing to detach from all things."
"Oh, yeah, well, speaking of that, show's over, folks. So now I guess it's time to detach the old Master
here from his worthless legs, eh, Meru?"
"Excuse me," Chime Cincinnati said, "But in former lives I was a doctor. I believe that if you simply set
the bones in Mr. Meru's legs, and bandage his wounds, he will heal."
"Yeah, honey, but it's harder to eat them on the hoof. But okay, if you say so."
He knew how to get to her, then. "Inez, get your ass over here. Hold his other leg. Meru, you move,
buddy, and you'll lose more than your leg."
Jamming the gun in Meru's ear, Buzz lifted the leg, keeping an iron grip on the ankle, and bit deeply into
the wound. Meru jerked in spite of himself and screamed like a stuck pig. Buzz looked up at the
apparition, chewed meditatively on the piece of pulpy flesh and gristle, dropped the leg and wiped his
mouth. "How's that for detachment, sugar? 'Course, I only detached one bite."
"Haven't you hurt enough people? You have a chance at a whole new life-you can even go to North
America if you wish."
Meru gasped, "There's a plane-"
"No shit. Tell me where. I'm a pretty good pilot."
"Leave him alone," the ghost said. He saw that he'd finally gotten to her.
"How's that?How you going to make me, bitch? Little bit of air and wind like you ain't gonna beat me."
The image of the girl's form atop the smoky hologram sighed, distorting it into waves. "Beating you is not
my intention. Instead, I shall join you."
While Chime had been conversing with her body, watching the brutality and listening to the coarse
boasting of the being occupying it, she had been struggling to know what to do.
Hardship and the extremities of suffering have driven humanity from this man,her former selves informed
her.In our last life, we worked with him. He was wily and cruel, but not without redeeming
features. Now he has become terribly unbalanced. Depravity has taken control of him and he has
taken control of our body.
"He is like one of the wrathful blood-drinking deities referred to in the Great LiberationThrough Hearing
in the Bardo," Chime reflected, looking down at her own face with the blood of Meru dripping down its
chin. "True, his body is not strangely colored, nor does he appear to have three heads or multiple limbs,
but at this moment he bears a fearsome weapon, while Inez, like the deity's consort, holds a vessel
containing blood for him to feed from."
You recognize your yidam, your teaching deity, in the guise of this perverted soul, then?
"Perhaps.I remember reading also a saying of the fourteenth Dalai Lama about the Chinese who had cast
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him out and kept him from his country as this being has cast me out of my body andkeeps me from
Shambala, who tormented his people as this being torments these people."
Ah, yes.The former selves seemed to blend with her now in agreement. In that moment a great
peacefulness settled over her soul, which had been like the white water at the confluence of many
mountain streams pouring into a mighty river. Now the river of her self coursed with a steady, relentless
rhythm as the words of the Dalai Lama came back to her.Tolerance can only be learned from an
enemy. It cannot be learned from a spiritualteacher. . . enemies are precious in that they help us
grow. . . the enemy teaches you inner strength.
"The Great Liberation says not to be terrified or bewildered, but to recognize him as part of my own
mind, and to feel longing. . . ."
Feeling the longing to understand that which was so alien to her, focusing on the grinning mouth that had
once been her own, she concentrated on embracing her former body, on becoming one with it, kissing it
so deeply that her whole self went into the kiss. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]