They tarried there to wash off the grue and stink of the bone pit they had climbed through. “It’s the fastest way to the karst,” Bobo Shin had told them. “Anyone who shudders is no zen man.” Rinzai had a headache. “I’ll massage you. I’m good.” Mukan’s hands slid down like cool water over Rinzai’s small, shaven head. It soothed him. His eyes closed. He sighed. There was plenty of sun here, inside the ring of mountains. The sun warmed him. It dried him. It never rained here. All the rain was milked from the clouds when they were blown up the outsides of the mountains. That’s why the City Planners had moved them there, hypodyned the entire area from parts of Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, changed them into transcat jazz and statted them down again a few miles off Route 90. Ahh… Then the Voice in his head thundered again, and he had to squeeze his mind shut with all the muscles in his head and neck, to make it stop. No Mind’s crystal set had lashed a sore in Rinzai, like the sore that trainers lash in circus animals, then merely touch to make them obey.
