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"And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another: 'Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.' And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said: 'Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.' And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said: 'Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do; and now nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do. Come, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.' So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city. Therefore was the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."

• Genesis 11:1-9

"There are no limits."

• Kala: 2nd Fundamental Principle of Huna.

"Effectiveness is the measure of truth."

• Pono: 7th Fundamental Principle of Huna.

Next morning at 8:00 a.m. shortly after breakfast the group assembled in the Lodge and debriefed their experiences from the Night Fight and their overall impressions of the course. I more or less kept to myself, since I had not been in the context of the program from which most people reported, and because I was still nursing sore ribs and shoulder. The overall tenor of the meeting was that they all learned a great deal of skills, but more importantly they gained increased confidence in their own abilities and in conquering their inner fears.

For the novices the course was a transformational awakening to discover that they could feel the subtle energy fields of people without even seeing them, or blast through thick pine boards by mere intention and the lightest touch. They found opening before them a vista of limitless possibilities, of strengths that they never imagined were so easily attainable.

For those already skilled in the arts, such as Noah, Wieger, and the Seals, the week had been a golden opportunity to work out with world-class Masters, pick up fine points from them, and to observe closely how they operated on a day-to-day basis.

For me the whole brief experience of last night had been a rude awakening to how deep and dangerous the mess was that I had gotten myself into. Here I was with friends that I admired and respected, but I could not enjoy our time together because I was obsessed with the unfolding of this strange project and overwhelmed by the physical pain and fear and mental confusion it had already brought me.

In spite of the congratulations that I felt I should extend to the celebrating graduates, I couldn't help a creepy sense that one or more of them was directly or indirectly responsible for my battered body. Was it the suspicious-looking Geleg? No, he was at the gazebo - or was he? Maybe it was another member of the Rinpoche's followers who was not on the course, but knew what was going on? I continued thus, rolled up in myself, until Maria and Gracie presented the instructors with bouquets of flowers that they had gathered from around the grounds. Then the whole group expressed especial thanks to Geleg and his associates for arranging the use of the facility and providing meals and other necessities. Then the meeting dissolved into goodbye hugs and exhortations. The students dispersed to pack and leave on the journey back to their respective homes. The instructors relaxed into a break that would last for a few days until the next weekend when they had another course in the Bay area.

Brad directed Norm and Tom to handle the pack-up of the course materials. Then he and Kang and Noah and I went to Kang's cabin to consider my incident of last night.

"Well, I don't know, Derek. What kind of trouble are you getting yourself into now?" began Kang in his usual no-holds-barred manner. "I don't think it was one of the students on course that got you. I was closest to where it happened, and I could feel that there was something going on up there."

"I agree it wasn't one of the people on course," said Yamada. "That would be difficult to pull off. That means it was either another member of the Rinpoche's group or an outsider. Why would they pick on you, Derek?"

"I've begun studying the belief systems underlying organized international terrorism," I replied. "I also happened, quite by accident, to witness a terrorist act that Noah tells me was actually part of a covert espionage operation, and so they may feel that I am a threat to their plans. Specifically, I have been looking into the role of the Communist Chinese in this matter, and the incident in Iowa City happened to involve a Chinese graduate student from the mainland."

"Oh, yes. I read about that unfortunate situation in the news," said Brad. "I see your predicament. And what have you come up with so far?"

"Well," I responded cautiously, "I'm still in the preliminary stages. I'm trying to get right to the bottom of the whole thing. I have a hunch that language has something to do with it. There are two main writing systems that govern the communications of the world - the alphabet system that the Semites spawned in the Middle East, and the ideograph system that the Chinese apparently invented. Everything comes from these two sources. The Mayans may have had a separate system, but they aborted it for some reason a few hundred years before the conquistadors arrived.

"My suspicion is that there has been a conspiracy to suppress certain aspects of the Semitic alphabet and use the truncated system for the formulation of laws and abstract principles for the purpose of controlling people. How the Chinese fit in I'm not sure. On the one hand, certain ruling classes claimed to use written communications for maintaining law and order, and the development of scientific knowledge. In actuality they suppressed certain knowledge and used the language as a tool to manipulate and oppress people. The Hebrews under Moses developed the basic Western viewpoint of worshipping one God, codifying His laws, and recording them with an alphabet script. The impact of the alphabet on the Greeks took them from the Homeric oral tradition into science and philosophy. This led to notions such as Nature and Universal Law and the individual. The invention of printing greatly expanded the influences of this method of organizing and manipulating the masses.

"In China, on the other hand, technology reached high levels, but there was no concept of Universal Law or even socially codified laws, only a vague Mandate of Heaven, which amounted to the collective consciousness. For the Chinese Nature is things just as they are. Man is a collective creation. To the Chinese China is the Central Kingdom, the highest civilization on the planet. It is not so much a specific place as a mystical state of being. There is not a monolithic God for the Chinese, but there is a monolithic civilization.

"There is a secret conflict going on between these two traditions and their communication systems for control of the emerging world civilization. The main clues to the source of this conflict seem to have to do with a code in the old Semitic alphabet that has to do with the ancient nomadic way of life. Sex is involved. And that aspect has been deliberately suppressed. The Chinese mass consciousness has been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that they have created their own civilization in East Asia 5000 years ago, with a glorious literary tradition built around the ideographic script that they use. Many aspects of sex are also strongly suppressed in modern Chinese civilization.

However, I have uncovered some evidence that the great Chinese culture heroes were not Chinese after all, but may have been Central Asian, or even Mesopotamian shamans. If that's true, maybe the Chinese characters didn't even come from China. Maybe they are just a branch of the Sumerian system adopted to the local Chinese dialects the same way the Akkadians adopted them to their Semitic tongue. The whole thing seems to go back to something that happened in the time of the ancient Sumerians. Last night Noah even dropped in the notion that there may be aliens involved in the whole thing. I hope he's kidding, but I'm not so sure anymore. There are far-out high-technology aspects in the picture that somebody wants to make sure they control. And there's some question of whether the technology runs on an alphabet code or an ideographic code. Furthermore, terrorism seems to be exported clandestinely to the Mid-East, various countries, and even the U.S., from a central source in or near China. That's where I am with the puzzle right now. It doesn't quite fit together yet. In fact it's rather confusing, don't you think? So now what can you tell me that might clarify things?"

"OK," said Kang. "You've bit off a big one this time. I don't know anything about the language stuff. I do know that China is changing. There are a lot of groups doing different things there that the government can't control and doesn't even know about. And that has them worried. Chinese are very clever. And it's a big country. The breakup of the Soviet Union has had a powerful impact on the people in China, especially the minority peoples who have suffered a long time under the Communist regime of Mao and his successors. And before that they suffered under the Chinese warlords and the Japanese. I would particularly pay attention to Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and the Western provinces like Xin-jiang. These people still remember the good old days for them when the empire of Jenghiz Kakhan stretched from China into Europe.

"You know, Chinese bureaucrat officials can be very ruthless. But Jenghiz Kakhan used to say that a man's greatest joy is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him, to ride their horses, and take away their possessions, and see their dear ones weep, and to fuck their wives and daughters. His men were totally loyal and totally dedicated. They would wipe out any resistance, and ride for months over mountains and deserts to kill any ruler who escaped their revenge for disobedience. When the Great Khan's horsemen arrived, whole cities simply disappeared forever.

"The reason I mention this is that there is a new guy, named Sabutai Galdan. Most people have never heard of him because he keeps himself in the background. He's of Mongol-Uighur descent. He was born in the Altai mountains and grew up specializing in smuggling people, weapons, drugs or anything illegal across the various borders -- Xin-jiang, Tibet, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and even into Iran and Iraq. He was one of the masterminds of the Mujaheddin during the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion and still directs the Taliban in their bid for supremacy from his mountain stronghold. Through the dissident network he penetrated the highest operational levels in the former Soviet Union and has connections throughout the maze of the Russian underworld."

"Are you suggesting," cut in Noah driving right to the point, "that this Sabutai is the head man responsible for the distribution of sophisticated terrorist mines and plastic explosives throughout Central Asia and the Middle East? Has the fabled Silk Road now become the Plastic Road?"

"Right," said Kang. "He has mastered the skills of the Kakhan and of the Old Man of the Mountain, Hasan i Sabbah. His headquarters are in a remote mountain fastness with impregnable underground tunnels. His followers give him absolute loyalty, and he rewards them well. He uses drugs, sex, and other booty to motivate his assassins. At the same time he plays on the fears of power loss among the Islamic mullahs and the Communist cadres alike, and he has the technocrats in the palm of his hand."

"Aha," broke in Noah again. "I've heard there's someone in Central Asia who has his finger on the Chinese nuclear trigger in Xin-jiang and runs the show at Baikonur. He's setting up the deals between the Kazakhs and the oil companies, supplies the Islamic resistance leaders in Western China and places like Chechnya and Dagestan, and handles all the mineral rights for the Pamirs, Altais, and probably most of Tibet, too. And guess who looks down on us from the friendly skies of the Mir Space Station and its satellite network - Big Brother Sabutai, who nobody in the Western world, or most of the Eastern for that matter, has ever even heard of. He just lets the Russians and the Chinese do all the work and get all the publicity. It's a cinch from his lofty viewpoint that he coordinates the U.S. continental smuggling activity. So the Golden Triangle, Cosa Nostra, Cocaine Lords and all the emerging Third World gangs on the New USA Turf happily run at his beck and call."

"Boy, he sure knows how to run a low profile," I agreed. My imagination boggled at what was unfolding in their conversation.

"Yeah, and I guess you're it," said Noah looking at me and laughing wildly.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Well," he prompted, "for starters, you know Chinese, Russian, and Turkish. You're familiar with Uighur and Uzbek, which are variations of Turkish. You're a linguist, and you're cracking open the secret issues of the alphabet/ideogram 'Oracle Bone' War. And you're knowledgeable about the history of China and Central Asia. Kang and Yamada will give you tactical support to move you through the jiang-hu network. I'll give you strategic and logistical support - including financial and technical solutions - and maybe a few laughs. I have a hunch that your new tutor Rivah Tsur will be helpful for your Middle Eastern contacts. The task is simply to figure out what Sabutai and Company's actual agenda is and then to neutralize it. First we get you out of your ivory tower, and then we knock him out of his golden tunnel."

"I don't know," I wavered. "This is getting pretty heavy. I'm just a college instructor. I'm not even a professor. How am I supposed to get to someone like Sabutai?"

"It's OK," said Brad quietly, looking me right in the eyes. "Remember the Kahuna principles. Jenghiz Kakhan was elected to his position as the Great Khan by a kuriltai of his peers. I've taught you some of the teachings of our Hawaiian Kahunas. A true Kahuna is at least as great as a Kakhan, and he works from the Light of the Higher Self. There are no limits, and effectiveness is the measure of Truth. Truly believe what you will, and you will have that experience. Don't hold yourself back from going for what you know in your heart is right for you. We're your kuriltai."

"Go see your old friend, Master Zhao," suggested Kang. "He is a Great Zen Master, one of the Treasures of China. He has been to Tibet and Western China, and may give you insights into how to proceed."

"All right," I agreed. "I'm off back to Iowa City. I'll let Ping know what's going on and then head for Colorado."

"I'll stay in touch," said Noah ambiguously. Then he added, "And I'll take care of your bill. You have a good trip."

I walked quickly to Noah's cabin, picked up my briefcase and carry-on bag, and returned to my car which was still parked on the circle in front of the Lodge. There I embraced each of my friends. There was wiry Kang with his monkey face, unruly hair, and Taoist flow. By him stood bulky Yamada, broad swarthy face and round brown Kahuna eyes of compassion gazing intently into my soul. Then there was Stormin' Norman, silent in the background, but spring-tight, ready to explode into action when the brother's moment came. And proud, blue-eyed Taiji Tom with his South-African cockney stood ready to spar. Finally wild-laughing spooky Noah squeezed me between his big hairy arms like he was hefting a hive.

The drive back to JFK was uneventful. I drove and brooded over the developments of the past day that left me feeling more paranoid than ever. I felt at their mercy, whoever they were. They could watch me, or even kill me, but I couldn't watch them. It wasn't fair. They were toying with me, and could dispose of me whenever they thought I might become too much of a threat to their agenda. The revelations of our morning conversation at least gave me more information and a name. But the prospect of me neutralizing an operation that huge by mere research into alphabet letters and beliefs seemed so outrageous as to be extremely depressing. I felt inadequate, both physically and mentally. Nevertheless, I had powerful allies who trusted in my abilities to provide a key piece to their plan. One thing was obvious to me now. Kang and Yamada knew a lot more than I suspected. They were also in close cooperation with Noah, and probably with his whole invisible apparatus. I also reassured myself that I had a deeper knowledge and intuition about the nature of Chinese culture and language than almost any other Westerner, though by birth and race I was forever an outsider, just as I was a knowledgeable, but permanent Goy.

After check-in at the airport I called Dan from a public phone. Lo and behold he was at his place studying with his girl friend for another exam on Monday. I told him my expected arrival time and offered to come by and pick him up around 4:30 to go by the University Hospital and see how Stephie was doing. He agreed and said he and Tina would get some flowers ready.

During the flight I was uncomfortable in the narrow seats with my aching body. I began by reading the newspaper reports about the funeral in Iowa City. There were also human-interest stories about the families and friends, about gun control issues, about confusion and disruption to the campus routine during the emergency, and then there was an interesting piece about interviews with Chinese students here and in China. The American public and press treated the incident as that of a lone unbalanced student and tended to feel sorry for him as well as recognizing the shock and grief of the family and friends, and the tragic deaths. The Chinese views ranged from criticizing Shao's extreme individualism, or the stress of students living abroad, to belief that Shao had been unfairly treated, or even that the professors must have been 'ugly Americans.' Even the other Chinese student (sic) must have been awful or Shao would not have killed him. What a range of viewpoints this incident brought up.

Having exhausted the newspaper, I decided to divert myself by arranging the Hebrew letters according to the manner of their production. Then I would take a look at their names and the imagery they suggested in terms of human physiology to see if any patterns emerged. Nobody knew exactly how ancient Hebrew was pronounced, so I would be making a reasonable guess.

I started with the labials, letters made with the lips: Peh, Beth Mem, and Vav. I mouthed them. Wow. Mmmm. Bab. Pop. Phiph.

Bab means 'gate.' The lips are a gate into the body. Two houses and a space between give 'BaB,' and Ael means 'God.' BaB-AeL, 'The Gate of God.'

Then I moved inward to the dentals, letters made with the tongue against the teeth. I found a whole bunch: Tav, Daleth, Shin, Zayn, Nun, and Lamed. There were also @eth and $amekh and Cady, but I decided they had to be differentiated from Tav, Shin and Zayn or they wouldn't have separate letters. Shin means teeth, so it had to be dental. That meant $amekh had to be further back (since it clearly wasn't a labial,) so I called it a palatal.

A palatal is made with the tongue further back from the teeth, touching instead the roof of the mouth, the hard palate. Resh clearly went there, and then $amekh. @eth is a round letter with a T-like sound, so I took it also as a palatal T with tongue rounded back. Chady could have a Ts or a Tsh/Ch type of sound, which made it a good candidate for a palatal, though it could also be considered a dental. Rivah Tsur? Rivah Chur? Palatalization of such affricates was common, so I finally put it down as a palatal.

Next came the velars, sounds made with the blade of the tongue pressed against the velum, or soft palate. These were Kaph and Gimel. A little further back came the Semitic uvulars, made with the back of the tongue against the uvula, that fleshy nipple that dangles in the back of the mouth: Qoph, #heth, and Hey. Moving down into the larynx I found the laryngeal 'O. Beyond that, in the chest, was a virtually unmanifest consonant governed only by the diaphragm pumping an impulse through the throat - Aleph. Listing the letters vertically by point of articulation, I then spread them out horizontally by manner of articulation, starting with unvoiced stops, then voiced stops, unvoiced sibilants, a catch-all for voiced sibilant/aspirant/affricate, nasals, liquids, and finally semivowels.

Then I started to connect the letters on my little chart with body parts and functions, starting with obvious ones. 'Oayn was the eye. Beth was the house of the body with its foundation in the buttocks. Peh was the mouth, or maybe another mouth, the anus. Mem was the body fluids, blood and urine. Vav looked like a pictogram of the crotch. Lamed was the lingam and Daleth was the yoni. So Tav must be intercourse.

#heth looked like the striated throat and $amekh, the spine with its vertebrae supporting the body. Qoph looked like a tongue sticking out. Gimel was a breast. Yod was a hand or arm. @eth was a ringer for the belly button. Aleph, the bull's head, was notable for its horns. So it must be the top of the head. Resh not only means head, but also means start, and some forms of the letter suggest a pregnant belly, the beginning of life. Shin was a picture of teeth. That left Hey, Kaph, Nun, and Chady without at least a guess.

The pattern showing up in my chart was clear, except for Shin being out of place. But it was all arranged upside down, with Aleph at the bottom. So I flipped the chart over and recopied it with Aleph at the top and Beth at the bottom, and put Shin back into the question pile.

I now had what looked like a map of the seven chakras. From the bottom up - Root, Genital, Navel, Heart, Throat, Eye, and Crown! That made it easy to fill in the rest of the letters: Hey was breathing, Kaph was the rib cage or the hands grasping something. Nun (fish or dwarf) represented the little testicles swimming in their sack. Shin, the teeth, might also represent the food chewed by the teeth. It would then serve as a euphemism for the sperm that is fed into the womb - the seed of life. Cady then was coitus that quickened the womb into pregnancy. And Aleph, the bull's head, must then refer to the brain, memory, and consciousness, and the bull's horns thus represent the aureole of the crown chakra.

I looked at my sketch of an alphabet chakra map and recalled Stephen Daedalus' childhood discovery of the true meaning of 'Tower of Ivory, House of Gold' in Portrait of an Artist. The alphabet was right there in my body, my real ivory tower and house of gold!

But the strange thing was that the points of articulation were upside down. The root chakra letters were pronounced at the lips, and the crown letter was sounded deep down in the belly. Why? The letter sounds stimulated vibrations in their respective points of articulation. I could feel that by humming: MMMMMM, NNNNNN, NGNGNGNG, RRRRRR. That was a kind of subtle acupressure done in the vocal tract with sound vibrations.

In a flash I saw in my mind's eye the detailed acupuncture charts of the ear that Kang had recently shown me. The one thing about the ear chart that had impressed me stood out again in my memory. It was an upside-down map of the whole body. The eye point was in the ear lobe. Then the mouth, neck, shoulder, hands, and feet were distributed along the edge of the ear, with the toes at the top. The internal organs were located among the folds leading into the ear's orifice, again moving from the nose upward to the heart, liver, intestines, and buttocks. If the energy map of the body on the ear was inverted, why not also the mouth's energy grid? The alphabet map I had made added a further interesting feature. At the velar region, corresponding to the heart chakra, the sequence turned ninety degrees and proceeded down the throat. The whole system had an upside down L shape.

"That's interesting," I thought as I gathered the scribbled charts and notes into my briefcase in preparation for landing. After deplaning, I picked up my car and drove to Dan's. He and Tina were ready with a bouquet of roses, and we headed for the hospital. Stephie was able to have visitors, and we went into the room, happy to see her awake amid all the colorful well wishing of friends. But we were deeply saddened by what we saw. She was sitting up in a wheel chair. But she was thoroughly paralyzed. She could move her eyes, speak, and blow through a tube to control her chair. And that was it. Her face and neck were still heavily bandaged, but she was very much alive. Unfortunately, the prognosis was that once her wounds healed, she would live the rest of her life with only those three abilities. What a challenge for such a bright and beautiful young girl!

There was her tower of ivory, and her shimmering golden hair. But it seemed she would never truly live its glory. She did, however, have the ability to vibrate all the points for her alphabet chakra code, once the doctors repaired her shattered teeth.

We said goodbye to Stephie and drove home to have dinner with Ping.

That night after Dan and Tina left, Ping and I spent time together and made love for several hours before I broke the news to her that I was going to have to leave again. She was not pleased to see me shift out of my simple academic schedule to a life on the road. But she shrugged and smiled and suggested that if I was going to go on long trips, maybe she should give up her business, rent out the house, and come with me. I smiled back and nodded, but at the same time felt a pinch of fear for her safety, knowing the bruises I already bore and looking forward only to greater dangers and rigors as the project unfolded.

Monday I spent settling affairs with the University and my Department, letting them know I would go on leave for an undetermined period, at least a year, and making alternative arrangements for students under my care and courses I had scheduled. Tuesday I closed my library office down, turned in the key, and packed all my files and papers into the back of the station wagon to haul home. As I reached our neighborhood at about 3:30 in the afternoon, I heard sirens that reminded me eerily of the events of last week. When I turned into our block, I was shocked to see that there were fire trucks and police cars at our house.

A perimeter had been cordoned off with that ominous yellow tape. I leaped out of my car and rushed toward my front door, or what remained of it. The door and porch were in smoking ruins. Firemen were hosing around to make sure any flames were out and medics were moving a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. My heart sank. Oh my God! This has gone too far! I pushed my way over to the ambulance, and was held back by an officer.

Once I had identified myself, he said, "I'm sorry, Dr. Walker. There was nothing we could do. I think she died instantaneously in the blast." I saw now that it was indeed a body bag they were loading into the ambulance.

"What happened?" I asked in a trembling voice. My reality was definitely getting out of control.

"The bomb squad experts are examining fragments of the device right now, but it looks like she picked up a package that Fed Ex delivered and started to open it. There was a letter bomb inside that she triggered when she pulled the tab on the envelope. You are lucky. Fed Ex says the package was addressed to you, which means you were the intended target. This smacks of a Unabomber look-alike type deal. We'll see what we can do to find this nut."

I was stunned and speechless.

"I understand how you feel, Dr. Walker. Take some time to gather yourself. You won't be able to stay in your house tonight. Stay with some family or friends tonight and in the morning we will have you come in to the morgue to give positive identification of the body and tell us whatever you can." The officer handed me a card indicating how to reach him, and I stumbled back into the wagon to go find Dan.

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