God's Dogs

People who say that ordination is no longer relevant in the modern world misunderstand its purpose. This method was taught by both Buddha and Jesus to protect us from delusions, to prevent us from harming ourselves or others. As a result of the karma of not harming others, we receive the immediate benefit of not being harmed by them, and experience great happiness and peace.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

“What the hell happened on Svenwold?” the emperor yelled at his advisors in his throne room.

A senior aide to John Scanlon, one of the defense ministers, answered, “We’re still piecing together reports, but we’re fairly certain a Coyote team was involved.”

The emperor sat heavily in his chair and continued with controlled calm, “It’s out of their Sector.”

“We think the League requested their presence, and the Penglai council agreed.”

“I thought the League didn’t like using outside forces.”

“It may mean a policy change, your Excellency. We don’t have enough information yet to clarify what happened.”

“What happened,” the emperor’s voice rose again, “was my fleet turned tail and ran. The rebellion we created fizzled out. The referendum we authored was rewritten to strengthen a constitutional monarchy that was ripe for the picking.”

“It was a set-back, your Excellency, but we didn’t lose any ships, and we did recover some of our agents on the ground.”

“It was a disaster, you nincompoop. We need to do something about Penglai.”

Another assistant minister, this one from FAST, the off-world clandestine agency, stood and said, “A diplomatic mission? At the very least, we could ascertain what their future involvement might be.”

“A good idea. Put it together.” Then the emperor shook his head and said, “We do need a military answer for their meddling. Our path to bringing human space into our Empire may have to pass through Penglai after all.”

“Let’s see what the diplomatic visit yields, your Excellency,” Scanlon’s aide cautioned. “We’ve only faced Coyote teams a handful of times so far.”

“The League is mobilizing its resources because it now realizes the threat. They know it will take a while to bring their navy and marines from a peacetime routine to war footing. So wouldn’t you enlist Penglai’s aid if you were them? It would buy the League time as Pengali's foreign service is always on a war footing — at least, the Coyote forces are.”

“I would, but that’s not to say the League would want to relinquish that much power.”

The FAST aide, who was still standing, spoke up, “Penglai doesn’t care about power. The League risks nothing by using them.”

“What do you mean?” the emperor demanded.

The aide squirmed but answered, “It’s a Buddhist world. Philosophically, all they want is Enlightenment. They live, work, procreate, trade, mine their asteroids, and excel in science and technology. But they do so as a Way – a Tao, as they call it.”

“No greedy corporations? No jealous husbands? No thieves or drug addicts or prostitutes?”

“Well, sire, there are no jails. Those caught breaking the law are sentenced to a specific monastery where they are counseled for an open-ended period of time. When released, they seem to become productive citizens.”

“A strange world,” the emperor pronounced. Then he told the aide, “You’ll go on the diplomatic jaunt. Find leverage on them.”

“Yes, your Excellency.”

The delegation left for Penglai a week later. A fast trader left earlier to announce the delegation was on its way. The FAST aide, Robert O’Brian, ended up a supernumerary to the ambassador’s team. Per custom, O’Brian was officially listed as a cultural attaché.

During the weeks they travelled through hyperspace, O’Brian identified contacts, mostly traders the Empire used for information gathering. He found no contacts on the ground.

He searched for leverage by studying how Penglai organized the given institutions of society. Since part of his education included a degree in sociology, he was at home looking at the details of those institutions: education, government, military, law enforcement, business, and so on. Religion was an important institution, but he found that Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, which was dominant on Penglai, was more a philosophy than a religion.

He learned there was no God to worship. There were no revealed sacred texts. Indeed, in Zen, there was no dogma, no required beliefs, and no mandatory tithing.

The monasteries formed a symbiotic relationship with the surrounding land and its people. The farmers and ranchers worked the land; the monasteries provided education, trade fairs, and spiritual guidance.

The whole of Penglai was organized around the monastery system. The few cities were there to foster interstellar trade, provide advanced education in science and technology, practical training for diplomats, and encourage tourism. The ruling council met in the cities on a revolving schedule. Over the course of a year, the council would have visited each city.

Manufacturing was in space, and miners worked the asteroid fields. On each of the orbiting factories and stations, there was a temple. Monks and nuns worked in cafeterias, sick bays, and other support positions alongside career support staff.

The typical expectation of bars and brothels serving rambunctious spacers didn’t exist in Penglai space.

The whole planetary system defied human logic. No one, it seemed, made a living off human vices. It baffled O’Brian’s mind. In fact, he found he just couldn’t believe what he was reading.

The delegation arrived at the main space station, and a Coyote team met them as they exited the ship.

The ambassador, in a royal blue suit with a scarlet sash draped from left shoulder to right hip, marched out in front of his team of ten, including O’Brian.

“I am Ambassador Tomlinson, representing the Empire of Man. I request an audience with your ruling council.”

“Welcome to Penglai, ambassador. I’m Quinn, team leader for this Coyote team. I’ll escort you to lodging and alert the council to your request.”

O’Brian eyed the team, studying them in hopes he could see something he could report. Quinn had a full, chiseled face but was unremarkable otherwise. The other two men and one woman were all of average body style and average looks. Although, they moved with athletic grace and seemed to be aware of everything around them. They wore black skin-suits and were armed with pistols, but they gave no hint of nervousness.

One of the men, darker in skin color and a hint of Asian in the shape of his eyes, moved next to O’Brian and said, “I’m Pax. I’m an empath, just so you know. You’re broadcasting your intent all over the place.”

Then Pax smiled lightly, “We do hope you find what you’re looking for. It will aid us in knowing what we’ve overlooked.”

The woman, rugged rather than pretty, sidled up on his other side, took O’Brian’s arm and said, “Leave him be, Pax. He just got here. The poor man is trying to be a spy and you ruined it.”

Then she glanced at O’Brian, “Hi, I’m River. We hope your stay with us is – what? Productive, enjoyable, enlightening…”

“Uneventful,” Pax added.

“How’s the emperor, by the way?” River smiled.

“Not too happy with you people,” O’Brian tried to sound nonchalant.

“Yeah. We’re not fans of dictators that want it all. Didn’t he learn how to share when he was in kindergarten?”

O’Brian stared at River as his jaw dropped in surprise. He sputtered, “Aren’t you supposed to be on your best behavior? This is a diplomatic mission we’re on.”

“We’re Coyotes,” River grinned. “Rules don’t apply to us.”

“In fact,” Pax said in hushed conspiracy, “when we were in Svenwold, Quinn bullied the king into changing his government.”

River worked her eyebrows and smiled. “That must have upset the emperor. Now he’s blocked on two fronts, in two Sectors, and every world in the League knows what he’s up to.”

“The question we have is,” Pax continued, “do you think he’s going to abandon his annexation scheme and just attack or not?”

O’Brian looked from Pax to River and back to Pax. Then he answered, “This is a diplomatic mission. We want to find a way for us to become allies not enemies.”

Pax laughed softly and said, “I told you I was an empath. You don’t think the Empire is strong enough to take us on. How long do you need? A year, two, somewhere in between? Thanks, Mr. O’Brian. That’s about what we figured as well.”

“Here’s your room,” River said and pivoted him to a door in a side corridor. Ahead, Quinn was showing the ambassador his lodging, while Moss directed the others to theirs. O’Brian put his hand on the pad to open it and stumbled inside.

River grabbed Pax’s arm and squeezed. “That was fun.”

“Poor guy,” was all Pax said.

They met up with Moss and Quinn at a nearby cafeteria. One of the nuns, wearing a hooded mantle over her working uniform of a brown ship suit, was their server. She joined her hands at her chest and offered a quick namaste before announcing, with heavy sarcasm, “Now I can die and go to heaven. Coyotes are at my table.”

The team laughed along with the nun, and then they ordered lunch. While they waited, Pax filled them in on what he learned from O’Brian. Quinn rolled his eyes before he tried to summarize the diplomatic double-speak of the ambassador. It seem to boil down to the Empire would do most anything to keep Penglai from blocking the Empire’s expansion.

“Sort of the carrot or the stick,” Moss said. “I’m thinking the only way they can stop us is some kind of chemical or biological attack.”

“Killing worlds has been outlawed for generations,” River pointed out.

Moss shrugged, “What does he care? We’re one world he could never control. He probably knows that. So what’s one more uninhabitable world in the geography of the galaxy?”

“He’d do it,” Quinn agreed in a flat voice. “He just needs to find a way to justify genocide.”

“That’s not easily done,” River protested.

“He finds some way to blame us for the need to do it,” Quinn told her. “It’s SOP for abusers, dictators, and criminals.”

“Blame the victim,” River sighed. “I remember studying that in secondary school. It didn’t make sense then, but it’s making a horrible kind of sense now.”

Pax spoke up, “We need to turn O’Brian.”

“Is he high enough to be in the loop about plotting genocide?” Quinn wondered.

“He thinks – or feels – he is. My sense is the emperor ordered him on the mission.”

“Can we turn him?”

“He’s got a good heart, but his ambition is over-riding it. It’s a toss up, but worth the effort, I think.”

“Let’s run it by Master Lu,” Quinn said. Then their lunch arrived and they dug in.

After lunch, they shuttled down to the monastery to report to Master Lu. He agreed the emperor had nothing to lose and everything to gain by rendering Penglai a sterile planet.

“How do you turn this O’Brian?” Lu asked them as they sat in his office.

“We sic River on him,” Moss said.

She snapped back, “I don’t do honey pot kind of work.”

“No.” Moss back-pedaled. “I mean big sister, little sister, mysterious killer woman, something like that.”

Pax added, “His mission is to find leverage on us. Who better to interrogate than big sister River?”

“You guys are ganging up on me,” she whined.

“If you don’t want to do it,” Lu intervened, “we’ll find another way.”

“I’m not trained for something like that,” she persisted. “It’s too important an assignment. I don’t want the fate of the world hanging over me.”

“Who is speaking those words?” Lu asked in a soft voice.

River sighed, “The girl who could never fit in, who couldn’t get anything right.”

“What does River the Coyote say?”

“I need a tutor.”

Quinn rose from his chair and patted River’s shoulder. “I know just the person.”

Over the next week, River met with O’Brian so he could pump her for information about Penglai. She also met with a tutor who taught her how to turn someone to their cause.

It was easier than River thought. Find what motivated them and use it for leverage. The problem was O’Brian’s ambition was focused on power and status. There wasn’t much of that available on Penglai. She needed to find different motivation.

After lunch one day, she sat with O’Brian at the cafeteria on the space station. The same nun was their server, and she knew what River was about.

River answered a question about the council then asked O’Brian, “Have you ever been sitting at the beach watching the sun go down, or been on a mountain and witnessed a distant thunder storm, and just felt how good it was to be alive?”

O’Brian’s mouth drooped and his eyes dropped to stare into his coffee cup. “Not for a long time.”

“Then what are you striving for, if not the radical feeling of being alive?”

“I wonder myself sometimes.”

River glanced over to the nun as she caught up on her side work – cleaning tables, restocking salt and pepper shakers, and so on.

“See her,” River pointed to the nun. “Her spiritual discipline is to remain in that place all the time.”

“Impossible. It’s a fleeting sensation.”

“Maria,” River called to the nun, who promptly hurried to their table.

“He doesn’t believe you can sustain the feeling of being alive.”

Maria’s smile lit up the room. She was hardly a beauty before she smiled. She was lean and fit as most Penglai residents, unassuming in her presence in that she didn’t seem to take up much space, and her dark hair was no more than an inch long. Her smile, though, was like the sun shining through a stained glass window. O’Brian blinked a few times for his vision to reset to the plain woman Maria was.

Then she spoke, “It is a struggle, but the Zen metaphor of the clear lake with no ripples is my favorite guide.”

“Please explain,” O’Brian prompted. River could tell he was mildly curious, but his agenda to understand Penglai was strong.

“The clear lake with no ripples is the ground state of our emotional self, which is the feeling of being alive. There is no more basic feeling than that. It is the most basic feeling we can feel. But life chucks pebbles into the lake, and we thrash around trying to get those pesky pebbles out of there, and soon there’s a storm on the lake.”

“I never thought of emotions that way,” O’Brian said.

Maria nodded and went on, “Suppose instead we deal with each pebble – each event – until it’s drained of energy. If we do that, the clear lake with no ripples returns.”

“How do you mean?”

“Emotions point to their resolution. If I’m afraid, I need safety. If I’m lonely, I need companionship. If I’m confused, I need clarity. And so on. When I act to resolve what my emotions are telling me, the energy of the emotion gets used up. No more ripples. Serenity returns.”

“It sounds simple,” O’Brian muttered

“In theory, it is. Consider this: what emotions do you refuse to feel? You’re a man, so I would guess confusion, fear, sadness, and others. What happens on your lake when those emotions are never resolved?”

O’Brian dodged the question and retorted, “People use emotions to manipulate others.”

“I know. It’s why we teach our children what I explained to you. We want our people to be free of manipulation and responsible for their own emotional well-being. It is one of the disciplines on the road to Enlightenment.”

“So why are you waiting tables then?” O’Brian challenged.

She smiled again, and the room lit up once more. O’Brian’s attempt to distract her through an attack didn’t work. She patted his arm and said, “I like people. You could say it’s my ministry. Besides it gives me simple opportunities to deal with all those pebbles I still struggle with.”

She smiled at River and wandered off to continue her side work.

“Welcome to Penglai, O’Brian,” River said. “What will you do when your emperor decides to bomb us with a deadly virus or contaminate our atmosphere with deadly chemicals? He’ll eventually have to do it, because we’ll oppose him every step of the way.”

O’Brian leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. After a long moment, he said, “She’s for real, isn’t she?”

“Maria? Yeah. She’s a nun. Her whole life is about the Buddha, the Sangha, and the Dharma. She’s probably been at it for five or six years. They shave their heads when they take their vows. Her hair hasn’t come all the way in yet. So, yeah, I’d say she’s been at a monastery for five years or so before coming here.”

“And that bit about this being her ministry?”

“Right livelihood. It’s part of the Buddhist Eightfold Path,” River explained.

O’Brian sighed a couple of times, his eyes still closed. Eventually he said, “Of all the people I’ve met, Maria is the only one I can say deserves to live. The rest of us are accidents of nature. We take up space, claw out an existence, fight to keep what we have as we struggle for more. She does none of that. She embodies what we could be.”

River chuckled. “Hate to tell you, O’Brian, but your world is what we left behind in childhood. This is Penglai. Maria is representative of who we are, or at least who strive to be. Although, I can’t see you waiting tables any time soon.”

O’Brian snorted a laugh and opened his eyes. “It’s so simple. You people are the epitome of ‘what you see is what you get.’ There is no hidden agenda. I just couldn’t believe what I’ve read about you.”

“So here’s the big question, O’Brian. Will you let us know if and when the emperor decides on genocide for my people?”

O’Brian took a deep breath and said, “I can’t commit to doing something like that. It would make me a traitor to my people.”

“You’d rather be a partner to genocide?”

“No. I can’t commit to that either.”

“Classic double-bind, O’Brian. How will you resolve it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know someone who might be of help.”

The next day, River introduced O’Brian to her tutor, who was a member of Penglai’s clandestine service. They discussed O’Brian’s dilemma and, from what River could see, resolved it. She noticed they set up ways and means of communication, and O’Brian seemed lighter after the meeting.