But I didn’t want to brood about the spores in my blood. Casting about for other subjects to occupy my mind, it occurred to me that Li had interrupted my last communication with Captain Cohen, long before I’d had a chance to make a full report. I tongued my transmitter, contacted Pistachio’s ship-soul, and was transferred to the captain.

"What’s going on down there?" Cohen asked. "The mayor of Zoonau is up in arms. He wants to arrest the lot of you for wanton destruction and public endangerment. Did something go wrong with the Balrog?"

"No. Ambassador Li got carried away in his haste to meet Admiral Ramos."

"The Cashlings are furious, Youn Suu. They’ll want someone’s head for this." Cohen didn’t have to add, Your head goes first — you were the lowest-ranking person on the mission. Everyone in the navy knew that shit flowed downhill.

"Captain," I said, "a court-martial is the least of my worries." I gave him a summary of what had happened, including the coordinates for Muta and the admiral’s wish to set sail as soon as we reached Pistachio. Cohen reacted with gratifying horror when he heard I’d been infected with spores… but thirty seconds later, his tone brightened greatly as he learned he had a Class One mission. He raced me through the rest of my story, in a hurry to contact Starbase Trillium for confirmation of the assignment.

I didn’t know why he was excited. For Cohen, the trip to Muta was no different from his usual duties. Pistachio would fly Festina where she needed to go, then wait in orbit till she decided to leave. Maybe there’d be survivors to evacuate, but so what? They were all just passengers. Transporting passengers was routine business for Pistachio.

Why did the captain welcome this trip when it was really the same old thing? Cohen would never set foot on Muta; he’d just watch from the high exosphere and listen to our reports. At most, he’d have the excitement of being a passive witness as we faced whatever had attacked the settlers…

Was that why Cohen sounded so eager? For the chance to observe a life-or-death mission from the safety of his command chair? Or was I simply in such a negative mood, I immediately thought the worst of everyone’s motives?

Time to clear my head of unskillful thoughts.

One good thing about the ambassador’s shuttle: it had remarkably wide seats. Wide enough that I could pull up my legs and assume full lotus while still wearing my seat belt. I settled in, let my breathing go quiet, and forced myself to meditate.

Westerners believe a lot of nonsense about meditation… especially that it’s some kind of trance where you lose touch with reality. No. Just the opposite. Meditation aims at awareness of the here and now. You don’t let your mind wander to the past or future, to the tug of memories or plans; but you also don’t compel your thoughts to go somewhere you think they should. You don’t strive for bliss or release from old regrets. Meditation is just being where you are.

Which is much much harder than it sounds.

When meditation works, nothing special happens. There’s no mystic ecstasy — just a sense of truly being present. Sitting in the cabin of Li’s shuttle, I simply perceived what was there. The plush seats. The dusty smell of upholstery. The motion of the shuttle. The sound of Tut’s breathing. My own breathing. My own breath.

No fancy life force perception. Just being awake and aware. Calmer than I’d been in a long time. Certainly better meditation than I’d managed in many a month or year…

Suddenly furious, I jerked back to my normal clenched-up ground-state: ambushed by the thought that the Balrog was behind my atypical meditation success. It was helping me — clearing my mind. Since becoming an Explorer (and long before that), I’d only managed fitful bits of quiet… a second here, a second there, interspersed with long bouts where my thoughts drifted off on a string of casual distractions. Sitting sessions still helped me relax, but they’d seldom delved anywhere deeper. Now, unexpectedly, with all the troubles on my mind, why could I immediately reach a crystal-clear dhyana state and hold it?

The Balrog was manipulating my mind: making meditation trivially easy.

You demon, I thought. You’ve ruined this for me. You’ve cheapened the most valuable thing in my life.

I could never meditate again. If I achieved any heightened awareness, I’d always fear it was the Balrog’s doing. And if I didn’t achieve any "skillful effect," what was the point of meditation?

"You utter bastard," I said in a low voice. "You’ve cut my lifeline."

No answer.

For the rest of the trip, I just stared out the window at the black airlessness of space.

Yana [Sanskrit]: Vehicle, conveyance. The different schools of Buddhism are often called "vehicles" since they are different ways of traveling toward the same goal: enlightenment. Hinayana (the small vehicle) centers around monastic life. Mahayana (the large vehicle) is more populist, teaching all people to strive for compassion. Vajrayana (the diamond vehicle) has a mystic bent; a number of Vajrayana sects practice esoteric rituals to gain spiritual purity. Tarayana (the starry vehicle) arose after humanity left Old Earth; it concentrates on the psychology of freeing one’s mind from unskillful ways. While there are doctrinal variations among the schools, history has seen very little actual conflict (as opposed to, say, Protestants and Roman Catholics in Christianity, or Sunni and Shiite Muslims). Differences are more a matter of emphasis than of outright dispute.

When we got back to Pistachio, my first priority was clothing. Luckily, I had a spare uniform in the Explorer equipment lockers, not far from the shuttle bay. I could get dressed without having to sneak half-naked through the ship to my cabin.

While I was in the equipment area, I found a Bumbler and checked myself for alien tissue. The scan was solid black: Balrog deposits from my head to my toes. If I slashed my wrists, I’d ooze spores instead of blood.

It was quiet in the equipment room. I sat on a bench for a while, wondering if I’d cry.

I didn’t. Enough was enough.

By leaving to get a new uniform, I missed the uproar surrounding Pistachio’s exit from Cashleen vac-space. The Cashlings refused to give departure clearance until they received reparations for the damage done to Zoonau’s ropeways. Our Technocracy embassy on Cashleen wanted Li to come back and make some token appeasement — not necessarily an apology, but at least a repentant gesture. Li wanted to gesture at the Cashlings, all right, but not in a contrite manner. Captain Cohen wanted Li and every other diplomat off his ship, to free up passenger space for Muta survivors. Festina just wanted to get under way as soon as possible… and since Class One missions took priority over other concerns, she had the clout to cut short the yammering.

In the end, Li and Ubatu ordered the rest of their delegation to go down to Cashleen, where the team of diplomats would smooth the ruffled feathers of the Cashling government. Li and Ubatu themselves remained on Pistachio… partly from a ghoulish desire to see what would happen on Muta, partly from an urge to keep riding Festina’s coattails, and partly from the need to get out of the Cashleen system before the authorities pressed charges. Still, we divested the ship of ten unneeded diplomats, which gave Cohen more room in the passenger section and gave everyone else something to smile about… except possibly Tut. He was still unconscious, and would stay that way for five more hours. Festina suggested that Tut be taken to the infirmary, and Cohen said he’d "take appropriate measures."