The ashes blew straight up,” repeated Sonam, knowing he shouldn’t be talking, “as if caught in a vortex. There is no clearer sign than that.”

The wind whispered soft prayers as the committee of High Lamas meditated on the shores of the lake. Sonam should have been relaxing into that meditation along with the rest of the committee. Instead, his thoughts were restless, colored with anxiety. No, it was more than anxiety. It was dread.

“Yes,” replied Yonten, far from happy. He sat cross-legged to Sonam’s left, equally failing to meditate. “It was only a matter of time.”

Sonam could guess the source of his fellow monk’s unhappiness. It was the same as his own. Neither of them objected in principle. There was no denying, though, that if what they suspected was true everything they held dear would change. Sonam craved tranquility—he never got it.

“The Oracle couldn’t get any sense of him here on Earth,” Sonam continued. He hissed the words from the corner of his mouth. “And you remember? His head, all the time his body lay in repose, it never moved, never tilted to one side or the other, it remained pointed up at the sky.” They’d looked for a movement in the angle of the head. So often, the smallest change indicated a direction where they should seek his reincarnation.

From his position in front, venerable Saragarhi turned his head and regarded them with a sour expression, all meditative quiescence gone. Expecting to be rebuked, Sonam was surprised by the older lama’s words. “Your minds seem scattered today, brothers. You may calm yourselves. I have had the vision that we seek.”

Sonam asked, “You have? Already?” Visions were how they found the tulku. Visions and auguries. Some people said the monks used astrology. Sonam always winced at that—the last few Dalai Lamas in a row had taken pains to explain that astrology wasn’t a part of Tibetan Buddhism. Still, the falsehoods stuck. People seemed endlessly inventive in finding ways to claim their type of Buddhism was something it wasn’t. Usually, they said it was something dangerous, something that needed to be attacked.

Still, it was early to have a clear vision. The Dalai Lama had passed thirteen months ago. It frequently took two or three years to identify his new incarnation.

Saragarhi nodded, cementing his pronouncement. Yes, he’d had the vision. They’d all known Gendun well, but as the Dalai Lama’s closest friend, it was to be expected Saragarhi would be the one to experience it. With unusual gentleness, the senior monk added, “Tell me Sonam, do you enjoy long journeys?”

“You know I do not,” he answered.

“Then I fear you will not like what I saw.”

Sonam felt the dread settle about his shoulders, bearing down on him like a dead weight. “Is the tulku we seek so very far away?” Mars, he thought. Let it be Mars. That isn’t so far. Not compared with the outer colonies. Mars is almost civilized.

Yonten muttered, “You know how contrary Gendun Gyatso could be. He even said before he died he’d use his phowa as a way of protesting what’s happening here in Nepal.” That was Yonten—his comments always carried a faint air of disapproval. Sniffiness, that was it. He was sniffy about others, even those whose memory he should honor. Sonam was a week younger than Yonten, and the other high lama never let him forget it. He sniffed about it with a vague attitude of well-what-can-you-expect-from-Sonam mixed with he’s-so-young.

Sonam chose to ignore Yonten. He beseeched Saragarhi, “Tell me.”

The senior lama was serene, his answer matter of fact. “My vision was of an orange moon orbiting Saturn.”

“No,” exhaled Sonam before he could stop himself.

Saragarhi continued, “And of a small metal thing that floated near it. The metal place looked very old. Almost worn out, I’d say.”

“Getting there will exhaust our funds.” As he thought it through, Sonam realized the cost was the least of their problems—the transit time to the Outer System was a bigger concern. A round trip was going to account for a non-trivial proportion of whatever allotted lifespans they had left to them.

Saragarhi had the cheek to simply shrug in response. “We go where we must. The days when we searched only the local region are long gone.”

Sonam knew the truth of that. The Chinese had forced his forebears out of Tibet three centuries ago. Virtually every last temple razed, believers beyond number murdered; the head monks had fled to keep their traditions alive, to keep Vajrayana practices from extinction. When the last of the Tibetan Dalai Lamas had died, the leaders of their religion had sought for his reincarnation in India. They’d appointed a leader from outside Tibet for the first time. It had been a historic moment. The Chinese government had swiftly marred that moment by appointing a rival Dalai Lama of their own. Tibetan Buddhism had come through that schism only recently, finally reunifying the faith under the governance of the monks who’d gone into exile.

India had protected them for nearly two centuries, providing the source of their True Dalai Lamas. Then, sectarian violence had again left the monks with no option but to flee. Here they were in Nepal, with a recently passed Nepalese Dalai Lama, and history was repeating itself. Temples burned by mobs whipped up into frenzies by populist demagogues, believers killed in the streets, the government unwilling to intercede.

There had to be a permanent home for them somewhere. A place where they could follow their beliefs in peace. They engaged with the world from a position of compassion—surely the world could reflect some of that compassion back?

Yonten cut in, his comments restricted to practical matters. “I’ll get some pictures of the moons of Saturn. Let’s see if our brother can identify the one he saw in his vision. Once we have the moon pinned down, it should be relatively straightforward to establish what station we need to visit.”

The head lama stood up. His joints seemed stiff to Sonam. Hardly a surprise. None of them were young. “When I was a boy in Kathmandu—” he began.

Here we go, thought Sonam. ‘When I was a boy in Kathmandu’ was the senior high lama’s favorite way of beginning an anecdote. His meandering stories had become a running joke between he and Yonten. Maybe Yonten’s habit of judging others had rubbed off on Sonam.

He must not have guarded his expression as well as he’d intended, because Saragarhi cut his tale short. “I was only going to say, we often found that tasks that seemed impossible at first turned out to be nowhere near as daunting as we’d thought once we’d finished. So, don’t fret, Sonam. I’m sure the flight won’t last more than a year. Eighteen months, tops.”

Saragarhi’s words were intended to be comforting. They were not successful. The phrase ‘cold comfort’ came to Sonam. The term was strangely appropriate, he reflected. After all, space was very cold.

*     *     *
Saragarhi’s guess at the flight duration turned out to be wrong. It took them two years, not eighteen months.

Long enough for them to see more visons. A tube hundreds of meters long, shrouded in the shadows of a poisonous moon. The station: Titanville. A mesh of metal over a layer of protective ice as its rad-shield skin, a factory churning out processed materials for its heart. It was old, so old. Forty years of service and still going. Somehow, still going.

When they arrived, they saw it looked even more dented and patched together than in their visions.

“They’re asking us to sign a legal disclaimer.”

Yonten was handling the conversation. He was better at the language and, though he’d never admit it, Sonam felt ill-at-ease around westerners in uniform. A man was moving up and down the line of waiting visitors handing out tablets—clearly, the lamas were expected to sign them. It was a mystery to Sonam why they weren’t permitted to take care of things like this before station-fall.

Sonam noted again how tired Yonten looked. The trip had been hard on all of them, Yonten the most. He had a hard time sleeping in zero gravity, and none of their berths along the way had featured anything as luxurious as spun-up gravity: not the rocket from Earth to the Mid-System waystation and not the cargo transport from there to Titan. At least the cylinder that was Titanville rotated fast enough to simulate two-thirds Earth-standard gravity on the levels closest to its hull. Here in the disembarkation area at the center of the cylinder, they were still stuck in near-weightlessness.

A body that weighed something was close enough to taste, yet still denied them. Soon, hopefully, they’d be reacquainted with ancient notions like up and down. Sonam knew his bones would welcome it.

“Another waiver?” Sonam rubbed his eyes. “Don’t tell me. If we get hurt or killed, it’s not the station owners’ fault.” They’d been forced to sign similar documents at every stage of their expedition. Space was not merely dangerous; it was litigious as well.

Yonten’s expression told Sonam he was right. “Oh, sign it, or we’ll never get through Immigration. I, for one, am not getting straight back on an outgoing transport. ‘It’s not the destination that counts, it’s the journey,’ they say. I beg to disagree.” He was sick of traveling.

The monk caught sight of Saragarhi gliding back to their position in the processing line. The diminutive lama was using the guide rope to steady his course in the microgravity. It also gave him something to push against. Sonam wondered how his inquiries had gone. There was no doubting Saragarhi’s energy. They’d barely been on-station five minutes and he’d immediately nipped off to further the cause of their mission. Age was just a number to the old fellow.

Well, here they were. Titanville was a far cry from the open skies and beautiful mountains of Nepal. Compared to the claustrophobically limited interiors of the vessels they’d spent the majority of the last two years on, though, it was a paradise limitless in scope. If you ignored the scuffmarks and duct tape.

The cargo ship was docked on a gantry outside the end of the cylindrical station. To get inside, passengers transferred through a long pressurized accessway. The gantry rotated in the opposite direction to the station while the transports were making fast, seeming to stand still to any off-station observer—all to simplify the maneuvers approaching craft needed to execute. Then, once the arrivals and the baggage handler were in the connecting passageway, the entire gantry slowed its spin down to nothing, at which point they were able to push themselves into the disembarkation area with a minimum of disorientation. Minimum being the operative word. Emerging into mid-air in the center of the large tube-shaped chamber, Sonam had still been disturbed by the sight of a slowly turning room, where the outer surface curved round in a circle and there was no up or down until you chose which part of that floor you were going to aim yourself at.

Not that they were allowed to leave the no-grav zone yet. They were, to coin a phrase, left hanging while the Immigration officer at the end of the line did whatever it was she felt she needed to do. Scrutinizing the entry details of the transport’s occupants in absurd detail, if Sonam’s guess was right. It was taking so long for each newcomer to be processed, he was almost glad for the distraction of the liability waivers.

The line moved forward finally, bringing him closer to the mid-air Immigration checkpoint. His eyes flickered past it to where the elevator shaft cut through the chamber. He watched a car moving through the transparent shaft. The elevator car flipped end-to-end as it passed the midway point. Ah yes, that made sense—the bottom of the car would become its ceiling unless it inverted its orientation. All very logical, he supposed; although he couldn’t imagine what that must feel like to the lift’s occupants.

The guide rope next to them vibrated as Saragarhi came to a halt by their sides. There were similar ropes strung in various directions. The ones leading to the floor (and he was having a hard time accepting it was the floor) had signs attached reading ‘Ensure Feet Are Pointing Toward Surface. Centripetal Force Increases As You Approach. This Way Is DOWN.’ The sign featured a big red arrow underscoring the point. Sonam assumed more than a few arrivals had forgotten that fact and had landed head- or face-first. Maybe there was a reason for the waivers.

“Good, you haven’t finished processing. I was worried I’d miss you.”

Sonam snapped, “Not much chance of that, the speed they’re going.”

Yonten frowned. “They’re doing basic indoctrination with each arrival. Safety tips, expectations, all the things they need to prove they told people—and that the people confirmed they understood—for legal reasons. It takes a while.”

Sonam was embarrassed at his outburst. He wasn’t living up to his role of a high lama very well. Despite the fact that none of them were under fifty, there were times he suspected the elder monk regarded he and Yonten as naughty schoolboys. The last thing he wanted was to give him further reason to feel that way.

The senior lama in their evaluation group was smiling, though. “I left a message with the station commander. A gentleman named Hanover. I asked for a meeting once we get through our assimilation lectures.”

The Immigration official was waving them forward. Sonam let Saragarhi handle the exchange. He was even more fluent in Standard than Yonten. Titanville was predominantly Standard speaking, the relatively new mixture of languages being the lingua franca of space. When so many people were from somewhere else to begin with, a common tongue was a necessity.

Sonam understood enough to know the official was confused. People came to the plastics processing facility orbiting Titan to work, typically. One or two arrived to visit family or to transfer to the moon itself. Once in a long while, a group used the station to resupply while on a journey to another outpost in the Outer System. The monks fitted in none of these categories.

“I can’t tell from the paperwork you submitted,” the woman was saying. “What is the purpose of your visit?”

*     *     *
They couldn’t call ahead, of course. They couldn’t tell the conglomerate that owned Titanville what they suspected, what they were here to verify. They couldn’t put their cards on the table. That would have given the authorities on the station time to prepare.

To make certain the person they were interviewing was genuinely the tulku they sought, the reincarnated custodian of their friend’s teachings, the Dalai Lama himself, they needed to avoid any accidental coaching of the subject. That way when they asked their questions they’d get honest answers.

More to the point, they still weren’t certain who the subject was.

They had, Sonam reflected, through visions and auguries and the Oracle, narrowed the birthplace down to one of the least likely and, frankly, least appealing spots in the Solar System. If the tulku was, indeed, located off Earth for the first time ever, he’d certainly picked a horrible place to be born. Again, an image of the respectable habitats on Mars came to him. People on Mars had money. Titanville did not have money.

Sonam wasn’t a stranger to poverty. He appreciated, however, how much temples cost to build, even when most of the gold trappings were holographic pretenses. The lack of money on Titanville wasn’t Sonam’s only concern. The news from Nepal was getting worse by the week, what little of it they were allowed to hear out near the gas giants. There was every chance they’d need to guide their brother monks in another relocation effort soon, and here they were, traipsing around a canned slum hundreds of millions of miles from home, not very able to help.

For so many reasons, why did it have to be Titan?

Imagine you are the Buddha, thought Sonam. Imagine you have achieved enlightenment. Then you shall attain an end to the cycle of rebirth and suffering. You shall find samsara. That was the essence of Vajrayana. That was the lightening path. Sonam was hoping for some enlightenment. It would help him know what to do.

It would help him find his friend’s new incarnation.

Well, perhaps they could have another fundraising drive in the western countries. That was how a large percentage of their operating budget was financed. At least those nations weren’t trying to tear down their temples and monasteries.

Oh, how to find the tulku. Sonam hadn’t expected this degree of difficulty. There were only a few thousand people on the station. There couldn’t be many children born at the right time. Unfortunately, their records were restricted, inaccessible from Earth and certainly not available to travelers on transport ships. Something to do with privacy, Sonam had been told. He would have preferred to have examined a list of possible candidates ahead of time. That had not been possible.

There was one redeeming feature to the situation. Titanville did release general census data. So, the evaluation team had managed to determine that there were residents from every corner of Earth on-station, including many from India and nearby regions. When you added in the descendants of people originally from Tibet, Nepal, and India, as well as Bhutan, there had to be a few possibilities. Without that reassurance, Sonam doubted the team would ever have boarded the shuttle up to the trans-system vehicle in the first place. Two years to get here. Another two years to return with the child and the parents if it all worked out, without them if it didn’t.

He tried to clear his mind; breathe in, breathe out, through the nose, keeping each in-breath the same length as the out-breath, no pause in between. Anapanasati: mindfulness of the body. Then visualize a positive outcome during the meditation. Everything would work out.

He heard the hatch to their rented quarters open. Saragarhi was back. Sonam opened his eyes and noted that Yonten had also emerged from his meditation early.

“Commander Hanover was most reasonable.” The old monk moved carefully over to where he and Yonten were sat. They had sprung for a cabin with one-third g and none of them had entirely acclimated yet. It took a while to shed the habits of two years of moving about in the zero-g environment of a craft that mainly coasted through space.

Only minutes ago, in fact, Yonten had let go of his bag of personal possessions several inches above his bunk and been surprised when it had fallen. Things didn’t stay aloft in a gravity environment; that was something that needed to be relearned. Sonam had made a mental note to put objects down very deliberately before letting go of them.

In response, Sonam offered a traditional greeting. “Namo Buddhaya, Saragarhi.”

“Our search is at an end, I feel.”

Sonam blinked. “I welcome your optimism, bhante. But surely such a conclusion is premature? Even if the commander provided a list of possible children to interview, there remains much to do. There are tests. The tulku will, in all likelihood, be the one who, out of all of the candidates, recognizes us, his closest friends—”

“There was exactly one child born here the week Gendun Gyatso passed on.”

Sonam let the words sink in. “Yes,” he replied. “That does simplify things.”

*     *     *
‘When can we see the child?’ was the obvious question.

The answer was, with hindsight, every bit as predictable: when the commander arranges the meeting. It was fortunate the station commander was open to act as go-between. Walking up to the family and informing them their child was a potential Dalai Lama would have been a problematic conversation.

Saragarhi advised patience. Of course he did. He was good at waiting. Sonam hated waiting.

Two years on transports, coasting through nothingness. Anyone would think that would have taught the lama how to bide his time. True, he’d spent a fair percentage of it in meditation and exercise (how the crew medic had nagged them to exercise). Some hours had been taken up with correspondence with monks back on Earth. He’d even reached out to the sole lama from their school based on Mars, attempting to strike up a long-distance dialog. And always, always, he’d scanned the news packets for reports about Nepal. But that had still left yawning gulfs of tedium in each and every day. Sonam had imagined himself a resilient man when they’d begun the journey. He’d lost that illusion in a week.

“Anything on the news here?” asked Yonten, having finished checking his hat had survived intact for the tenth time that hour. He appeared to be struggling with the wait as well. “You know, about home.”

Sonam doubted it. He tried a search anyway, flipping through the cabin’s entertainment system. The station had the same problem as a ship in transit when it came to signals from Earth. It wasn’t the distance, as many assumed. Communications traveled at the speed of light. Yes, there was an increasing delay as you got further away and, yes, some traffic was lost if there was a body blocking the exact comms path, such as when Earth was on the far side of the Sun. Here, near Saturn, there was also a roiling field of energy spewed out by the gas giant to contend with. That energy field caused genuine and unavoidable interference. All that was true, but still wasn’t the reason why messages, social media, and general entertainment broadcasts were so slow to trickle down to end users off-Earth. At lightspeed, comms should get through fairly quickly, if all other things were equal.

That was the trouble—all other things weren’t equal. On a planet or a moon, where you could buy your own land and erect your personal antenna, things might be different; however, in space, you dwelled within habitats owned wholly by corporations. They had paid for and built everything, and they took whatever measures they deemed necessary to protect those investments. Such as interdicting all signals and only releasing those they determined would not undermine the safe and productive operation of their vessels and stations. If a company censor felt a piece of news reporting would disturb the harmony of their realm they’d either edit out the offending parts or delete the article entirely. The power of words, whether they be in real or fake news, could not be ignored. Even in places where the censors were relaxed they still had to review everything, and that meant everything was delayed. Sonam assumed a place like Titanville could afford a single censor at most.

News from Nepal, for instance, was labeled Sensitive: likely to upset workers from that region. Also, low priority for a censor here, if Sonam was any judge.

“Nothing?’ inquired Yonten. There was a suggestion in his tone of do-you-know-what-you’re-doing?

Sonam let out a sigh and kept looking. He was worried about the lamas back there too. Maybe there was something about home in less recent postings. He broadened his search.

Forced out of Tibet. Then forced out of India. Now being evicted from Nepal. There had to be somewhere they couldn’t be moved on from.

“When I was a boy in Kathmandu,” announced the elder lama, “there was a tree in a park. A huge tree, good for climbing. A jacaranda. How I loved that tree.”

Oh, here we go, thought Sonam, not for the first time. He braced himself.

“I must have spent days in that tree’s branches, when you add up all the time I frittered away there, staring out over the park’s verdant grass at all the people who were walking and playing.”

“Yes—” tried Yonten.

“Strong and tall and solid, was that tree. It seemed to me then, as a boy of nine years of age, it would stand forever. I could not imagine a world without that tree. How violet were its flowers in spring, how green its leaves were in summer, and how red they became in fall—”

“Sounds like an amazing tree—”

“A storm came, one terrible night. Uprooted the jacaranda, tipped it over, shattered its red branches. I could never have dreamed of such destruction. Yet it happened.”

Ah, thought Sonam. Is this about impermanence? Accepting change, perhaps?

“This tree, that I had loved so much, was gone. In its place, they built a small coffee stand. Very modern, very western. It sold all manner of snacks that I’d never seen before, and they brewed a type of coffee that drew customers from miles around.”

Sonam cast the senior lama a sideways glance. “So, it all worked out, is that it? It turned out for the best?”

“No, no, couldn’t stand coffee then, can’t drink it now. I just really miss that tree.”

Sonam caught Yonten rubbing his forehead.

“I’ve found something,” said Sonam. He turned on the display projector in the cabin. Not as sophisticated as the holos they were used to at home, but they took what they could get.

The news footage was heavily redacted, Sonam could tell. It kept jumping. What remained was disturbing enough. The Swayambhunath Stupa temple in Bhaganpau aflame. Lamas running for their lives. Sonam saw a glimpse of blood on the road outside the temple complex before the images cut to a less gruesome shot.

“It’s worse than ever,” said Yonten.

Sonam thought he recognized one of the lamas in the pictures. He’d worked with him.

He said, “Bhante, when will this Commander Hanover arrange our meeting?”

The senior lama relied, “Soon.”

“That is good. I do not wish to wait any longer.”

Reflections of burning washing over his face, he wondered what the child was doing.

*     *     *
Molly Douglas was trying to get Oli to put on PJs when Commander Hanover called. She answered the line with her three-year-old child shrieking in the background.

“Molly? Sorry to disturb you. Something important has come up.” She couldn’t quite decipher the expression on Hanover’s face in the small image projected by the wall-mounted communicator. He looked as amused as he was panicked, the two conflicting feelings warring for territory on his features.

“Is there an issue with a flight plan?” she asked. “I’m not due back on shift yet, but I suppose I can come in early if you need me in Control. I’ll have to get hold of Maureen to watch Oli for a while—”

“No, it’s nothing to do with work. All the traffic you were tracking last shift is fine.” He paused, “Actually, the inbound cargo transporter docked already. The, ah, people who want to see you were on it.”

“People?”

“Yes. Well, I say people, but ‘delegation’ might be a better term.” Molly wasn’t reassured by his smile. She could see Hanover was struggling to tell her something and she couldn’t imagine it was anything good. “You don’t mind if they drop by, do you? Say, at nineteen-thirty hours? I’ll pop along with them, just so you know there’s nothing fishy going on.”

Molly didn’t know what to say. “Oli is meant to be getting ready for bed,” she began, before realizing the kindly if no-nonsense station commander was telling, not asking. He was going to arrive in her cabin in just a few minutes and the cramped confines of her living quarters were a cluttered, toy-strewn mess.

“We won’t keep you long,” replied Hanover, bulldozing his way through her feeble argument. “They’ve come a long way to see Oli.”

“Oli?’ Molly thought she must have misheard. She opened her mouth to quiz Hanover further, but the commander had already hung up.

*     *     *
Molly made tea for the Buddhist lamas. It seemed like the right thing to do; although, on reflection, it was probably the wrong type of tea.

Twenty minutes notice had barely been enough time to shove toys into the under-bed storage bins and straighten the sheets. There was still a pile of dirty dishes in the tiny galley’s sink.

There were three men in the Buddhist delegation; each one was stooped and wiry, dressed in robes of dark crimson and golden yellow, with tall hats shaped like rooster combs. The color of their hats and under-robes wasn’t entirely dissimilar to the light orange atmosphere of the moon the station orbited.

Two introduced themselves, in faltering Standard, as Yonten and Saragarhi. For some reason, the third monk didn’t supply his name. Saragarhi took on the majority of the talking, his colleagues being more comfortable with Nepali. Apparently, there should have been more than three of them—there should have been an entire committee and a gaggle of officials—but space travel was enormously expensive, and they’d been forced to economize.

Given the limited amount of room available in her single-room cabin, the three lamas perched on the edge of Molly’s bed while the commander occupied one of the bar stools at the breakfast counter. Oli was racing around, bouncing off people’s legs and reveling in the opportunity to stay up late.

While she waited for the kettle to boil, Molly attempted conversation. “We don’t see many outfits like those on Titanville. What do you call those? Robes?” They sure were different from Oli’s plain unisex coveralls and Molly’s lightweight pants and tunic.

“Yes,” answered the one who’d not introduced himself. He seemed pleased to know the word in Standard.

The middle lama, who looked to be in his fifties (Yonten, if she was remembering the names right), muttered something about not having ceremonial clothes with them on account of being unable to afford the increased luggage weight. His Standard was a little garbled.

The lama-with-no-name made a tiny gesture and the other Buddhist clammed up. Strangely, they had an air of schoolboys trying to be on their best behavior. They were also clearly very interested in Oli.

The oldest of the lamas asked Hanover with a piercing glare, “And you’re sure no other child was born on the date we specified?”

Hanover shrugged. “Titanville has a population of exactly four thousand six hundred and twelve permanent residents and, since we’re all cooped up in the same tin can, it’s kind of easy to keep track. So, yeah, I can say with absolute authority you’re looking at precisely the only kid born on August fifteenth or on any day near then: little Oli Douglas.”

The lamas went back to staring at Oli. The boiling kettle filled the yawning silence with its shrieks.

*     *     *
“You think Oli might be the Dalai Lama.” Molly’s voice was, she thought, perhaps a tad more strident than she’d intended.

She almost poured the hot tea right over the elderly Buddhist, steadying her aim just in time. The second his cup was full, she put the pot back down on the counter, not trusting herself with it.

The senior lama, Saragarhi, explained, “The Dalai Lama is a type of bodhisattva called a tulku. He is able to reincarnate by choice. During his phowa, his transfer of consciousness, he can decide how he is to reincarnate. This time, we think he may have chosen here.”

Molly struggled to recall the details of the Dalai Lama’s passing. Titanville was a long way out and its censor was an officious, by-the-rulebook sort, but Earth news still reached them, even if it did arrive weeks late. “Didn’t he die, what, three years back or thereabouts?”

“Yes,” said the unnamed lama heavily. “You are correct.”

She got the point; Oli’s birth coincided with the Dalai Lama’s passing. “This is ridiculous,” she protested. “We’re not Buddhists. And Titanville is a shabby, forty-year-old hydrocarbon processing plant left over from the start of the twenty-third century. Everything here has seen better days. Your leader isn’t going to want to be born into any place like this.”

Hanover interrupted, “They have a test they want to perform. It won’t hurt Oli. They already talked me through what they want to do, and there’s nothing dangerous involved. Can they go ahead?”

Molly pursed her lips. “If you think it’s fine, I guess so. They have come all the way from Tibet.”

The most wrinkled of all the lamas corrected her as he pulled a small bundle out from the folds of his robe. “We had to leave Tibet nearly three centuries ago. These days we are based in Nepal. However, I think our association with that country might be coming to an end soon too. The country is a dictatorship, and the government interferes in our religion just as the Chinese did in Tibet. When we object, they whip up hatred. It was not always that way. Why, I remember when I was a boy in—”

For no reason Molly could discern, Oli chose that exact moment to shout from the far end of the cabin, “Cat Mandy Doo!”

Saragarhi nodded. “Indeed. Well, things were less fraught back then, that’s all I was going to say.” He finished unwrapping the bundle. Six small items were revealed in the open folds of the material. Molly could see some keys, a necklace, a statue of a bird, some other jewelry. They looked like personal effects.

The lama called softly to Oli to come take a look. Oli hesitantly tiptoed over and peered at the objects.

The old monk said, “Oli, two of these things are yours. Can you pick them out? We’d like to give them back to you.”

The child’s hands flashed, and before Molly could blink, the key and the tiny bird statue were gone from the collection of items.

“That’s right,” said Saragarhi. “Thank you, Gyatso.”

“Hold on one damned minute.” Molly didn’t like how fast events were moving. “I don’t care what you say, Oli is not the Dalai Lama. That’s the stupidest thing I heard in my life.” Buddhism, Tibetan or otherwise, was a trapping from Earth. It had nothing to do with Titanville.

The lama who hadn’t shared his name leaned over to Oli. He spoke in what Molly assumed was Nepali.

“Oh, what a strange question. I know your name,” giggled Oli. “You’re Sonam.”

Molly felt suddenly heavy, as if she were setting foot on the mother world.

“That’s right,” confirmed the older lama. “He’s Sonam. How do you know him?”

Oli stood by Molly, still laughing. “Sonam’s silly. He hates space. Look at my bird!”

*     *     *
“So, what’s next? Bing, bang, bosh, Oli’s the head of a major religion all of a sudden?”

“Part of a major religion,” clarified Yonten reflexively. Sonam was glad the other lama had jumped in—given his own skills with Standard forming a reply would have required much thought, and it would still have come out wrong. The mother’s mistaken idea about the role of the Dalai Lama wasn’t uncommon, and the lamas were well versed in pointing out he was, in fact, the head monk of the Gelug or “Yellow Hat” school of Tibetan Buddhism. Not the leader of every Buddhist in the world.

If Sonam were any judge, the child’s mother did not look pleased by events. Did she not comprehend the honor of her child being, perhaps, the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama? No, it seemed she did not appreciate this was an honor. In fact, if his shaky grasp of Standard and his interpretation of her body language were even half correct, Molly was wishing she had something strong to slip into her tea. Sonam sympathized. He wasn’t dealing with events well either.

She could have it worse. In earlier centuries, this situation would have been far more complicated. Up until 1959, the Dalai Lama had not only been the spiritual leader of the Gelug school, he’d been responsible for governing Tibet as well, with his official residence being the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital. These days, the Dalai Lama was more a figurehead, still the de facto leader of the Gelug compassion-first style of Buddhism, but also someone Buddhists of many other types looked to for guidance. Even now, his head monks acted as if they were a government in exile, which hadn’t been truly the case for a long time now. Still, traditions took a long time to die.

He couldn’t imagine this ‘Molly’ handling their conversation back in those days. Mind you, he couldn’t imagine her child would have been approached, either.

When he’d entered the room she called home and he’d seen her pale, very white skin sprinkled with freckles, he’d felt the grip of his old dread return. The Douglas’s were not from Tibet or India or Nepal. They weren’t from Bhutan. They weren’t, he was inclined to think, descended from anyone who’d ever even visited a temple. He had not been at all surprised by her admission not long after that she and Oli were not Buddhists either.

Saragarhi was talking with her. “Next, he will be shown to three more associates of the Dalai Lama to confirm his identity. The selection of the correct personal items was merely a first step, as was identifying Sonam. We have much left to do.”

Whatever the head of their group was saying, it wasn’t working. The mother was getting angrier. “Now you just hold on there, pal. Oli’s not going anywhere. Certainly not Earth!”

Sonam touched Saragarhi’s arm and requested a translation—her Standard was too colloquial and rapid-fire for him; he was catching maybe half of it. Saragarhi brought him up to speed and Sonam pointed out what he felt was obvious. Saragarhi nodded and turned back to the foreign woman, again switching to a language she could fathom.

“My brother monk wishes to point out the Dalai Lama must be trained in a monastery. He has to go to Nepal—”

Yonten interrupted in Nepali. “Forgive me, bhante. Are you telling the mother she must accompany us to Earth?”

“I am. Sonam’s words have merit. Our mission is to locate the person most likely to be the reincarnation of our friend and to bring him home to our monastery.”

“Are you sure? We’re about to be forced out of there. The Swayambhunath stupa was burned to the ground. It cannot be long before our temple at Pashupatinath is similarly attacked. Perhaps it is not wise to bring the new Dalai Lama into such a dangerous situation.”

Saragarhi considered. Sonam watched him thinking.

Perhaps some reflection was sensible, given the circumstances, and sometimes, just sometimes, Yonten’s words did contain wisdom. Sonam looked inward as well. Became mindful of his body, his breathing. A thought came to him. A truth.

“He was born here.”

“Yes.” The other monks frowned at him.

“His body has only ever known this gravity.”

Yonten started. Like Sonam, he remembered the repeated admonishments on their transport ships to keep exercising, to focus on building muscle mass to compensate for bone loss caused by extended bouts of weightlessness. “He can’t live on Earth. His bones would break.”

They hadn’t factored that reality into their plans. They weren’t experts on living in space. Until they’d boarded the ships, they hadn’t really considered what living in space did to human bodies. They hadn’t been mindful of it.

“Oh,” said Sonam to the boy. “Is that why you picked this body? To leave us with no choice? To force us to move outward, away from those things that make us comfortable? To make us transcend those attachments?”

The mother and the commander were blinking at him. Ah, he’d been speaking Nepali.

Eventually, their head lama said, “Many of our teachings are spread through electronic communications nowadays. It’s not inconceivable that a Dalai Lama could be trained off-Earth. He could spend much, if not all, of his time out here. He would still have the same impact on followers throughout the Solar System.” He repeated the gist of their conversation to the mother in Standard, which set her to thinking as well.

Sonam gazed further inside his own thoughts. He had many attachments, many fixations of the ego. More than he’d realized. His insistence the Dalai Lama be of a traditional background, for a start. What was that, if not the ego straying from the lightening path? He was a high lama. He should have known better. History, tradition, what was supposed to be: these were not the concerns of the Buddha.

A tear slid down his cheek, startling the commander and the child’s mother. Sonam didn’t have the words in Standard. He was crying out of gratitude. His old friend had taught him another lesson, an important one. Sonam was joyful he’d found the mindfulness to hear it.

Saragarhi smiled at Sonam’s tears. He’d known Sonam for decades. He could guess at their cause.

The old monk peered at Oli. He said in Standard, so the mother and the commander could understand, “With so many people leaving Earth and moving to the Outer Worlds, is that what you intended? That we should look to the future, and relocate somewhere we will not be oppressed? Are we to focus our efforts on the spaces where humanity will come to dwell?”

Oli’s face brightened with the joy of bodhichitta, radiating compassion and resolve. “I like ice cream and penguins!”

Yes, thought Sonam. Your words evoke so much better than I ever could the wonder and happiness that Gendun always shared with the world. And I see now. There is more than the world. There are so many other corners of the dark where we can be compassionate. Our realm must be the universe, and we should dedicate ourselves to helping all the people in it to be free of the cycle of samsara—reincarnation—so they may each find nirvana.

Aloud, he said in his best Standard, “Ice cream and penguins are wonderful things to like, and I like them too.”

The mother, Molly Douglas, raised a hand to get their attention. “Excuse me, but you’ve said ‘he’ a couple of times now. I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding.”

It was Saragarhi’s turn to blink in confusion. “There is no misunderstanding. I am a humble student of your language, nevertheless Oli is short for Oliver, is it not?”

Molly winced. “It is sometimes. In this case, it’s short for Olivia.”

Sonam started laughing. It wasn’t long before Yonten and Saragarhi joined in. In Nepali, he said to them, “That removes any lingering doubt, as far as I’m concerned. Being in space wasn’t enough for Gendun Gyatso. Being a non-traditional ethnicity wasn’t sufficient a challenge. No, he would only settle for also reincarnating as the first female Dalai Lama.”

How else could the universe have unfolded? There were three universal truths, after all: nothing is ever lost, everything changes, and every event causes another to occur. Gendun was sending another message. Screaming it, more like.

Whatever occurred next was at the Dalai Lama’s instigation. It would embody change, that much was unavoidable. Change like their religious tradition had never known before; change that conservative elements would not likely accept. At the same time, there would be more opportunity than ever before. A whole universe of possibility. No matter what problems arose, no matter how difficult persuading the other lamas would be, nothing would ever be lost.

Sonam wiped tears from his eyes and stood up from the bed. “Miss Douglas,” he said in horribly accented Standard, stringing together more words in the foreign language than he’d ever attempted before, “we will see you bright and early in the morning. I think you will have many questions and I will try to give you answers. I also think you have a good heart and will listen.”

He thought a moment about how to phrase what he wanted to say. “If you can agree to not say ‘it cannot be’ we will find a way to never insist ‘it must be so.’ We will stumble along the lightening path and discover where it brings us together. As for Olivia, well, Olivia will be a good student.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because she is an excellent teacher.”

Sonam felt his dread evaporate, in the manner the Sun burns away the mist obscuring the distance. With that passing, a new feeling settled on him and through him; one he hadn’t experienced in long ages.

It was tranquility.