Mindful
Chapter 8.
Mystical Orient.

Despite the powerful new engines and superchargers, Iona’s modified plane still had to labour manfully as it clawed its way over the stratospheric peaks. At 9,000 metres, she only cleared the mighty peaks by a meagre 1,000 metres, just enough to escape the up-draughts and turbulence caused by the monsoons fighting to clear the mighty Himalayas. At this height, she depended utterly on her oxygen mask while her engines relied entirely on the powerful superchargers to ram the thin air into their greedy maws.

Had it been the dry season, Iona would have slipped along the spectacular valleys between the towering Himalayan ranges but it was now the Monsoon, and storm clouds filled those valleys. Deep in the precipitous gorges, visibility was nil and the cumulus clouds thrashed and swirled as they fought to lift their rain sodden bellies over the impassable heights. If she had ventured below into the cauldrons of rain and hail, the raging turbulence would have snatched her tiny plane and flung it against the crags.

Height was her only safety but height brought its own dangers. Up in the thin, clear, blue sky, only the mightiest peaks poked their razor-sharp crowns above the monsoon clouds that boiled evilly amidst the high passes and dumped their moisture on the southern Himalayan slopes. The dry lighter air then escaped over the Himalayas and ‘jet-streamed’ across Tibet and Lop Nor. The ensuing clear air turbulence rocked and buffeted her little plane as it threaded its lonely path to Lhasa.

Set on the Northern side of this huge barricade of mountains, Tibet nestled on an arid plateau in the rain shadow. The country received little rain and what little that did fall, usually settled as snow mostly to lie frozen for tens of thousands of years before melting off from the glacier feet.

Beyond the northern horizon, the mountains seemed to stretch for eternity before finally plunging into the Lop Nor basin. Iona shuddered at the fearful majesty of the remote mountains and double-checked her GPS for reassurance. As she cleared the mighty barricade, the turbulence eased and she dropped a couple of thousand metres thus enabling her engines to settle into a steady comforting growl.

Eventually, the mountains gentled slightly into less ragged peaks then to more rounded hills. Finally, the precise outline of Lhasa airport sprang out from the chaotic patchwork of dwellings and agriculture. She landed with little fuss and the plane bounced once in the thin mountain air before settling easily on the harsh white concrete.

The hardest obstacle proved to be immigration. As a private pilot, she had to clear health, immigration, police, military intelligence and several other interviews before finally entering Tibet. The strange eccentric ‘lady’ pilot, who was so obsessed with ancient Buddhist philosophy, intrigued the Chinese political officers. They asked many deep and meaningful questions about Buddhism but her telepathy garnished the requisite answers and they were soon convinced of her sincerity about Buddhism. The strange little middle-aged blond obviously enjoyed a deep and intimate knowledge of Buddhism and they finally let her through.

Lhasa was not a closed city, but westerners were getting rarer. Curious eyes followed her as she entered the old city and used telepathy to find a vacant room amidst its narrow steep streets. Accommodation was scarce in the old city and those few western aesthetes who made it into Tibet usually had to use the soulless concrete hotels in the modern town. Every morning a small procession of occidental Caucasians trekked from the harsh, blaring, traffic infested modern Chinese city to the slightly quieter pedestrian bustle of the old Tibetan quarter.
The crude soulless architectural atrocities of the modern Chinese invaders held no attractions to these occidental visitors each seeking their personal nirvanas amidst the old town’s ancient alleyways and monasteries.

Recently, the Chinese had recognised their mistake and moved to remedy their earlier architectural blunders but progress was slow. The new town had now become a festering eyesore of hammering building sites as attempts were made to appease the touristic appreciation of the old city.

Iona was grateful to have found a room in the old city, for once again, telepathy had served her well. At night, it was peaceful and the faint distant growl of the new town was almost inaudible. The old city curfew compelled most foreigners to return to their hotels in the new quarter every night. Each evening the busy little cafes were left to the locals and the few lucky tourists that had managed to find rooms in the old quarter. The real Tibet came out to enjoy the chilly peace of the night.

Terrorism and mugging was blamed for the curfew but in truth, Caucasian occidentals were the safest people on the streets of old Lhasa. What few Tibetan ‘terrorists’ there were, only had an axe to grind with the occupying Chinese. The tiny number of westerners left in the old town at night had to surrender their passports and cameras to the police so they carried little of value, nothing that could invite a mugging. However the truth lay elsewhere, the Tibetan activists considered the westerners as allies who could bear witness to any ‘atrocity’ committed by the detested Chinese. In the dimly lit smoke-filled cafes, the few ‘resident’ westerners were actually welcome in the old city at night.
For Iona however, the political climate was of little concern. Her interest lay in the steady but persistent trickle of rumours that had been filtering for centuries out of Tibet. This was the reputed ability of some Buddhist monks to achieve levitation by transcendental meditation.
Telepathy and other related ‘supernatural forces’ like levitation or ‘connecting with the other side’ had become the driving force in Iona’s middle years.

She now wore her transvestism and feminine sexuality like an old shoe. She hardly remembered being a male unless some particular incident brought it to her notice and that usually only occurred if she developed some sort of relationship. Iona found that with maturity, she found it increasingly difficult to develop long-term relationships. She put it down to her abusive childhood and the burdens associated with telepathy. She felt little need for companionship and she was beginning to find any ensuing intimacy from a relationship invasive.
She knew this reasoning was utterly flawed but she accepted it as an indication of the depth and extent of her dysfunctionality.
‘Know thyself first,’ she reasoned, ‘thence thou canst to thine own self be true, and thus be true to others.’

In Tibet, she had no expectations of any such relationship nor any intentions of starting any; especially the sexual side. She was utterly preoccupied with the spiritual and cerebral issues.

After a week exploring the old city and its monasteries, Iona had scanned the mind of nearly every available monk. Her telepathy had narrowed the possibilities of levitation down to a tiny group of altruistic monks who existed at the most refined level of existence in a secretive little monastery deep amongst the remote mountains of northern Tibet.

Her problem now lay in getting there.

The Chinese occupiers viewed travelling foreigners with greater suspicion even than the ordinary tourist, so she had to pick her moment to leave un-noticed.

A day’s ‘bone-shaking’ in an ancient Tibetan farmer’s truck eventually brought her to the remote mountain pass below the monastery. Telepathy told her that the mountains were alive with rebels but she knew her spectacularly occidental appearance would signal her impartiality. Her stunning blond hair and round turquoise eyes would never be mistaken for an oriental and therefore Chinese. She knew many Tibetan eyes were following her but none carried any threat. A few more hours clambering up a rugged mountain path brought her to the hidden monastery door.

From the road and from the sky, the roughly hewn cave was invisible and Iona realised it was still not known to the Chinese invaders even after twenty years of occupation. The monks were surprised and a little frightened to see her. Telepathy quickly facilitated an entry and it was not long before the altruistic monks realised their visitor was indeed a very rare bird. Nevertheless, the monks still needed convincing that their guest was not after material gain or profit. Iona only managed to convince them by demonstrating the extent of her telepathy and revealing her true gender.

The revelation of her transvestism finally broke the ice. Despite their astringent philosophical existence, the monks all harboured varying degrees of misogyny arising from their Asiatic culture and upbringing. Their deeply ingrained concept of Asian womanhood was one of drudgery and submission. The idea that a man should willingly choose to live and appear as a woman seemed to them as an extreme sacrifice, a sacrifice similar to their own forbearance of all things material. Iona realised that her transvestism had unwittingly unlocked the final door into the fortress of the monk’s distrust. They concluded that the telepathy and the transvestism might be connected through any duality to be found in the human female mind. Iona agreed; she had long suspected that in her own personal circumstances; transvestism and telepathy might be connected.

It was not universal though; her son Ben had no transvestite inclinations whatsoever. Iona often considered this hypothesis and wondered about the recurring question.

‘Didn’t women use both halves of their brain; and wasn’t her own ‘fish organ’ intimately connected to both sides of her whole brain?’ she asked herself, ‘there must be something female in cerebral physiology.’

Whatever it was that caused her dysphoria, Iona found herself accepted utterly by the monks for having declared her transvestism and subsequent vulnerability. The monks agreed to share their knowledge of levitation and transcendental meditation in exchange for her knowledge of telepathy.

For nearly a month, Iona studied with the monks until she finally achieved a state of levitation and then held it longer than any monk had ever achieved. The monks who had witnessed her achievement nodded sagely to each other as she finally descended exhausted to the polished floor of their sacred inner secret chapel. They put it down to her obvious telepathic power and any other inexplicable, unrevealed, paranormal powers that the strange little platinum blond might possess.

‘Here indeed was a truly unique individual! What was more, that same individual had introduced them to another way of passing over by way of herbs and potions and the monks were amazed to find they could communicate to an Indian Shaman in America, a Muslim woman in India and some young westerners who were scattered around Europe.’ What Iona had done was introduce the monks to the telepathic web that was slowly growing as Iona’s children matured and developed their communicative skills. However, the monks could not do telepathy themselves for that was purely a genetic function of Iona’s and her children’s evolved brains. Regretfully, the monks had to accept this. However, they were supremely happy that Iona had `patched them in’ to the world-wide telepathic web that was slowly growing with Iona’s expanding family of children.

After garnering the rudiments of the monk’s secrets and honing them to a higher degree of intensity, Iona concluded it was time to leave. She knew some of the monks were still nervous of her true intentions and were reluctant to let her leave. The monks were terrified that their levitation knowledge might escape their temple and fall into evil hands. She took nearly a week to convince the doubters that she would not abuse her newfound powers and that her aims were entirely altruistic.

‘Indeed!’ she explained, ‘had she not kept her telepathy a secret from the authorities?’

This argument finally convinced the doubters and finally, Iona was able to leave the monastery and return to Lhasa, - only to find she was in trouble with the Chinese authorities. By staying with the monks for that extra week, she had missed the monthly registration check and they had been searching for her.

It took some careful telepathically contrived contrition to placate the offended officials who had actually been genuinely concerned for her safety. Their search for a corpse had produced nothing and they were genuinely convinced that the wealthy western lady had been abducted for ransom. By apologising profusely and offering to pay for the cost of the search, Iona managed to allay suspicion and stay a few more weeks in the old city. By way of explanation, she put her absence down to having made a mistake whilst putting herself into a trance and she had remained unconscious for too long. The Chinese, who, despite their supposed atheist, communistic politics, were themselves alert to spirituality and the Buddhist traditions; accepted her story, for after all she had declared that Buddhism and transcendental meditation was her prime reason for visiting Tibet.

Finally she advised the authorities of her intentions to continue her journey into China.

As she prepared to fly from Lhasa to Beijing, some high-ranking officials became aware of her intended journey. One was a senior general in the people’s army and the other was his lady friend who was a highly placed political commissar in the party. They learned of Iona’s intentions as she processed her papers and the opportunity to fly on a private plane across the roof of the world was too good to miss. They approached Iona and made a deal. They would arrange some convenient, cheap, fuel stops at some military bases if she would kindly carry them as passengers.

The fuel stops were to be weeklong stopovers at some famous historical sites where a lot of archaeological work was in progress. Iona checked their intentions telepathically and learned that the pair shared a passion for archaeology and their own Chinese history.

Not all soldiers and bureaucrats were philistines and this couple’s mutual passion had brought them together. They could not miss a chance to fly from dig to dig.

Iona was in no great hurry. Like them, she shared more than a passing interest in history, - especially the history of China with its long traditions of learning and meditation. She agreed to carry them as passengers and found her applications suddenly speeded up. She gave a wry smile as all her necessary permits arrived by hand delivery within hours of agreeing to share her flight.

The general had intended to take home leave with his elderly parents but this unique opportunity to visit some famous archaeological digs put him in an excellent mood.

He was an unmarried career officer who had only recently met his partner whilst both working in Tibet. They decided to make the flight a honeymoon and Iona was delighted to be invited to the very private wedding ceremony. The trio left Lhasa in high spirits and spent several months hopping between archaeological sites as the general and his commissar bride indulged their hobby. By the time they finally reached Beijing, Iona had some excellent contacts and powerful friends.

In Beijing, the newlyweds and Iona separated. Iona hired a private female guide called Lee Bin to visit all the famous places. She had no schedule or timetable to follow and the girl slowly dropped her inhibitions as Iona employed her telepathy to develop a deep rapport and a rapid understanding of Mandarin. Iona also spent much longer than the average tourist exploring various sites and the girl soon recognised a visitor who shared her own enthusiasm for China’s antiquities.

They quickly became friendly and the girl started to show Iona some of the less savoury side of Chinese life. Telepathy explained why the girl was not a very happy individual.

It seemed that Lee Bin was an ‘orphan’ of the ‘little emperor syndrome’ and in China, despite sixty years of communism, the importance of family was still immense. To have no family left an individual with no proper sense of identity and therefore no proper respectability. Family gave every Chinese individual a deeper connection into China’s long history. Lee Bin felt lost and angry at having no proper sense of identity and no feelings of belonging.

In truth, her orphancy had not been accidental. She was of the first generation of female infant victims to emerge from the ‘little emperor’ syndrome. This social catastrophe had befallen China after the authorities had used crude attempts to control the population growth. They had introduced fines and penalties to any couple that had more than one child in an attempt to stem the population explosion. Inevitably, in the primitive countryside, this had led to millions of first-born female infants being abandoned by peasant couples who desperately wanted a boy to continue the family line. This was both a cultural and proprietal obsession to protect the family’s future wellbeing.

Consequently, rural couples desperate to have a boy, abandoned millions of firstborn female infants on state orphanage doorsteps.
The damage was two-fold.

Baby girls grew up enduring the most basic care and rarely experienced the close, warm, and compassionate affection of a mother. They were simply left in crude ‘baby-bouncers’ for days on end getting zero stimuli either tactile or audible. Consequently, their brain patterns were permanently set and they grew up to become unfeeling dispassionate automatons.

A similar phenomenon had become apparent to western psychiatrists with the fall of the Romanian dictator Chaoucheskow. Thousands of male orphans from the state orphanages of Rumania had grown up with no affection or compassion to become unfeeling brutes who ran the Stazi, the state security apparatus. Rumania had been left encumbered with thousands of emotionally dysfunctional individuals who would forever fail to become fully functional, citizens.

It seemed that an infant’s brain continued developing during the early months of infancy and the essential neural pathways for compassion and affection could only grow if the parents or carers provided the essential stimulus of warmth and affection.

China now had the same problem as Rumania but in spades for the problem was compounded because the victims were girls. These girls were utterly unsuited to motherhood and would never be able to empathise affectionately with their own children who would then grow up as emotionally bankrupt as their own mothers. Chinese doctors were now beginning to see the results of this disastrous policy.
The other side of the coin was equally catastrophic. Many of the firstborn girl babies were left to starve and the population had become grotesquely lop-sided. Consequently, the ‘little emperors’ faced permanent bachelorhood. There were simply not enough women to go around and many of those that were, suffered serious emotional troubles.

There were nearly one hundred million unmarried men in China who had no hope of ever finding a bride and ‘bride snatching’ had reached epidemic proportions.

Prostitution had also exploded to spread disease and AIDS throughout the country.
Iona learned of this disaster at the very personal level when Lee Bin was attacked right in front of her own eyes as they visited some antiques shops in a small city near the great wall.

The attackers were paid abductors who snatched marriageable women off the streets and forced them into marriages with any man who had the wherewithal to pay for the kidnap. It was a growing crime in China.

Unfortunately, of course, they chose the wrong target.

As the gang erupted from the side alley and threw a sack over Lee Bin’s head, they had utterly ignored the inconspicuous little middle-aged ‘white-haired’ companion who was gazing in a shop window.

Lee Bin let out a shriek of terror and Iona turned to see the gang already dragging her guide into the alley towards a waiting van. The attractive Lee Bin would fetch a handsome price irrespective of her emotional unsuitability for motherhood.

As Lee Bin continued screaming and struggling, Iona released a single powerful telepathic blast that disabled the gang and they fell as one to the ground. The blast had also disabled Lee Bin but Iona managed to persuade an elderly Chinese woman to help her remove the sack and drag the girl into the safety of the old woman’s house. With Lee Bin safely hidden, Iona returned to the sleeping gang and used her telepathy to permanently damage the motor nerve connections in their brains.

When they awoke, they would each forever walk with a disabling limp and carry a permanently paralysed right arm. They would never be able to attack any more women. For good measure, Iona further damaged the villain’s speech and sight centres in their brains. With blurred vision and incoherent slurred speech, they would be unable to recognise Lee Bin or Iona.

The old Chinese woman knew about the gang and was clearly terrified of their activities in her neighbourhood. She had displayed supreme courage by helping Iona rescue Lee Bin. After seeing what Iona had done, she was clearly grateful. She had one of the few, female grandchildren in the district and she knew her granddaughter had already been targeted by the gang for the future. The old grandmother cried gratefully as Iona joined her in the courtyard of her home and closed the doors behind her. From the safety of the courtyard, they watched the gang recover their senses and realise their crippling disabilities. Their shocked incoherent squawks of terror attracted the waking Lee Bin who joined the pair and watched with stupefaction as the gang stumbled blindly down the alley towards their van.
“What happened to them?” asked Lee Bin.

“They bit off more than they could chew,” declared Iona dispassionately.

“But they are like beggars, cripples!”

“That’s what they will be for the rest of their lives,” continued Iona.

“How did it happen?” pressed Lee Bin.

Iona motioned silence.

‘Later’, she mouthed silently across the old woman’s stooped back.

Lee Bin nodded acknowledgement and turned to thank the old woman.

“It’s not I but this one you should thank,” replied the old woman.

Lee Bin remained puzzled but realised something auspicious had occurred. The old woman demanded that they stay for tea but Iona was reluctant. To stay near the scene of one of her ‘crimes’ was inviting curiosity. Already other old people were emerging to watch the disabled blinded gang squawking and babbling incoherently around their van for none of them was now capable of driving it. The gang was well known locally for they had terrorised the district over a decade. Many daughters had been lost to their kidnapping and prostitution activities. The gang’s faces were unchanged and each was easily recognisable to the local people. Once their disabilities were deemed permanent, they would face considerable retribution.

Lee Bin explained to Iona that good manners required them to accept the old lady’s invitation to tea, so reluctantly Iona stayed. She would have far preferred to refuse the invitation and be regarded as a ‘foreign barbarian’.

Having stayed for tea, Iona was delighted when the granddaughter returned from school. She was a beautiful child and Iona was charmed by her lively, bright little mind. As the child skipped off to do her homework, Iona turned to the old lady.

“Where’s her mother?”

“Working; she’s a doctor,” declared the old lady proudly.

“And her father?”

“Dead; killed by that gang.”

“Oh! Why?”

“He has a daughter, the reasons should be obvious,” she spat bitterly.

Iona frowned and considered finishing the gang off altogether. There would be no tell-tale signs; the gang would simply collapse dead as a group around the van. She decided against it. A troupe of crippled beggars would be a far better warning to any future gangs hoping to muscle in on their patch and fill the vacancy. Finally, Iona stood to depart and offer her respects for the hospitality extended by the old lady.

“Please stay longer,” begged the old lady, “my daughter is due home soon.”

Lee Bin motioned silently so Iona sat again.

‘The Chinese could be extremely formal sometimes,’ she thought.

“My daughter must thank you properly,” continued the old lady, “we three generations are beholden to you.”

“There’s really no need.”

As Iona’s words left her lips, the locked door to the courtyard clicked and a strikingly beautiful young woman entered. Iona’s heart missed a beat as she and Lee Bin rose to greet her.

For a moment, the young woman’s smile faded. The appearance of strangers usually meant another prospective bridal offer for her young daughter’s future hand. Usually, such offers were preceded by a private approach by the ladies of the other interested family. Hospitality demanded that such ladies were received courteously. Invariably there would be much heartache as the doctor explained her daughter was ‘not for sale’.

The doctor knew her daughter was a bright intelligent child and she was determined her daughter should be allowed to fulfil her potential academically. Furthermore, her daughter was a permanent reminder of her beloved husbands love. This intense love between her and her dead husband had protected the girl as a new-born infant. This same love had led her husband to confront the gang in his endeavours to protect his daughter’s future. This confrontation had led to his murder by the gang.

At birth, both sides of the family had tried to persuade the young couple to dispose of the girl infant and try again for a boy, another ‘little emperor’.

The young doctor and her husband had stuck to their guns and been proven right. Decent ‘respectable’ girls of good family were like gold dust as millions of hopeful bachelors searched desperately for a bride. Intelligent, pretty little girls where at an even greater premium.
Respectable families were desperate to find their sons good wives with no emotional scarring from long years of isolation in the orphanages.
The old lady smiled and grasped her daughters hand to put it in Iona’s.

“It is not another bridal offer Hon Li; this lady is an American.”

Iona refrained from correcting the old lady by saying she was actually Welsh. After all she had two passports and she had entered China on her American one.

The young doctor’s stiff smile relaxed slightly as Iona extended her tiny hand. She read the doctor’s tension and simply waited as the old lady explained.

“This other lady, Lee Bin was being kidnapped by the gang and somehow, the gang was disabled.”

“Yes. I saw them at the top of the ally. They are all crippled and blind. I can’t deny I am not glad but how did it happen?”

“I don’t know,” replied the old grandmother. “One minute they were dragging this young lady away in a sack then suddenly they were lying unconscious on the floor. Some sort of thunderbolt must have struck them.”

Hon Li frowned disbelievingly. There was no evidence of a lightning strike and the gang carried no evidence of any burns. She had briefly examined the huddled terrified gang as she passed by and the gang members all seemed to share identical injuries.

‘A very strange lightning strike indeed!’ She mused as her mother handed her some tea. Then another thought struck her. ‘If the young Lee Bin was amongst them, why was she not injured?’ There’ was more to this than met the eye but the young doctor kept her counsel. Like all her neighbours, she was glad and relieved that some sort of divine retribution had struck the gang. Her little girl might now be able to play in the street with the surfeit of boys from neighbouring homes. The local streets might be a little bit safer but she doubted it. Eternal vigilance was the price to pay for having such an eligible daughter even though she was still not yet ten. The doctor returned her gaze to examine Iona.

‘An undersized, uniquely blond, occidental woman of uncertain age, was utterly out of place in the suburbs of a remote Chinese town; and a woman who spoke fluent Chinese Mandarin at that!’

“So what brings you here?” asked Hon Li.

“My guide, Lee Bin was showing me some of the dreadful conditions in the orphanages. Your daughter is lucky to have a loving home.”

“Are you interested in adopting one of these poor victims?” pressed the doctor ignoring Iona’s remarks about her own daughter.

“No,” replied Iona bluntly.

“So what is your interest?”

“I was hoping to do something more. Maybe build a better facility, perhaps here, in this town.”

“It’s not buildings these little girls need, it’s love and affection. You’d do better by adopting one.”

“Or two or three or twenty-three,” finished Iona, “I’m not cut out to be a mother. Besides’ I’m too old.”

“If you can afford to build an orphanage, you could afford to adopt children,” continued Hon Li.

“That’s a non-starter,” finished Iona, closing the issue. “I am too old to become a mother again; my own children are grown up. Besides, it’s wrong to drag the girls from their own culture.”

“Huh! D’ you call those ghastly orphanages a culture. It’s a culture of deprivation and neglect. You’ve seen it. What d’ you think?”

“I must agree. Lee Bin has not hidden anything. I have seen the worst abuses but I am still not able to adopt. I’m too old. All I can do is help financially.”

“What! All fifty million girls?”

“Is it that many?” wondered Iona aloud.

“Nobody knows,” answered the young doctor. “I was just picking any figure. There are millions of unregistered children. Look at the beggars on the streets. They are not registered. They have no proper identity; they are ‘none-people’.”

“But they are all boys.”

“Of course they are, but the same equation applies to the girls though they are mostly enslaved prostitutes. No girl could go begging in safety. You’ve seen the gangs! The lost girls are hidden in brothels. They die very young, as do the boy beggars for that matter.”
Iona fell silent. Her telepathy had already told her much of this but the doctor’s anger served to concentrate Iona’s thoughts. She turned the tables.

“Do you see a solution?” She asked the doctor.

“No. These kids have nothing going for them. If they pass their teens, they are extremely lucky or very bright.”

“And then?” pressed Iona.

“They usually turn to crime. With no proper identification or registration papers, they cannot get proper jobs or housing. They remain forever out of the loop. The authorities don’t help. They use the non-registration as an excuse to avoid helping them. No papers; no help. It’s a vicious circle.”

Iona fell silent. She read the utter resignation in the doctor’s mind. It sat like a hopeless black mantle as the doctor considered the immensity of the problem. Every day a procession of sick, dying children and teen-agers were brought to her hospital doors needing treatment. Every day she gave them what little she had and sent them back to the streets, mostly to die quickly.

In the early hours of every morning, a silent discreet cart crept around the city street removing the detritus of dead beggars. The bodies were held for a day at the hospital’s morgue then taken away the following evening for cremation. The young doctor had often taken some hopeful relative down to the ghastly place in the remote hope of identifying a body but the bodies were nearly always too emaciated and scarred, to be recognised. The corpses remained anonymous and the visitors disappointed. Most of the bodies were children.
The emaciated younger bodies were invariably boy beggars dead from starvation or exposure. The older ravaged bodies were often those of teenaged female prostitutes thrown out to die after losing whatever attraction they might have had. This was the black side of China’s desperate attempt at population control and the doctor was daily confronted with its horror. The Chinese had re-learnt their social science lessons the hard way. Nature’s laws and demographic equations could not be disobeyed with impunity.

Iona studied the raging frustration burning in Hon Li’s breast and felt the anguish settle heavily in her own heart. A silence settled over the four as they sat with their thoughts.

Eventually, an idea started to germinate in Iona’s mind.

‘Perhaps if she could help produce a generation of telepathic girls then things might go better for the future.’

The problem lay in gaining Hon Li’s trust and Lee Bin’s co-operation.

For several minutes she scanned the other girl’s brains until she had identified the factors that would most persuade the pair.
To the doctor she used the arguments of compassion and caring. Hon Li reminded Iona of Doctor Mary for the two were alike in their humanitarianism.

In Lee Bin, Iona recognised the girl’s ferocious sense of independence and anger at how she had been treated as a child. Lee Bin had no time for maudlin self-pity or sentimentality. Her harsh orphaned childhood had forged a hard, angry self-reliance that could be put to good use if it was guided by Hon Li’s compassion. Iona realised she would have to bring the two minds together and forge a cast iron bond.
Carefully, Iona telepathically ‘seeped’ parallel ideas into both women’s minds and left them to germinate. Then she used her second strategy by broaching some ‘innocent’ ideas during the after-dinner table talk.

“I’m able to fund an orphanage that will care properly for any abandoned little girl babies and provide essential nurturing from an early age.”
Hon Li frowned sceptically.

“That would be prohibitively expensive. Each child really needs a full-time mother. It’s the tactile nurturing in the first weeks that’s so important.”

“Money’s not the issue,” continued Iona, “I already fund a special institute in India to help the ‘rat children’ and other deformed victims of the begging trade. If you’ve any doubts, I can refer you to a good friend of mine, Fatima, the director of the institute. She runs a school in Mumbai and an institute in Calcutta and she is a close personal friend of mine. She will put you right about funding. She will also enlighten you about other things. Do you have passports?”

Hon Li nodded but Lee Bin wagged her head.

“It’s almost impossible to get a passport unless you can prove your parenthood,” she sighed.

“Well I might be able to help you there. I’ve got friends in high places and they owe me a favour or two.”
Iona was thinking of the general and his commissar bride.

Lee Bin’s eyes widened hopefully as Iona sucked her slowly into her web. It was not an evil web. It was simply a series of radiating steps towards ameliorating the immense problem facing China.

Three weeks later the two amazed and somewhat disorientated Chinese girls found themselves in Calcutta talking to Fatima and examining the desperate plight of the deformed beggars.

Hon Li was sickened by the sight and resolved to accept Iona’s offer. ‘If this was the extent and ethicality of Iona’s patronage then there was merit in her offer to build a Chinese orphanage along similar lines. None but a saint would have taken on the thankless burden of the Indian orphanage. Fatima, the Egyptian Muslim peasant girl was that saint, and already, her charitable love was finding fame throughout the monotheistic world.

Furthermore, Fatima was an unmarried mother and, for a Muslim girl, that was a spectacularly brave step. Hon Li was impressed.
For Lee bin the trip to India itself proved a major argument. As an overworked, underpaid tourist guide in China, Lee Bin found it a wonderful opportunity to be on the other side of the tourist equation and be taken around the Indian sub-continent to visit the various sites.
If she became the director of Iona’s special Chinese orphanage it would provide her with opportunities to indulge her greatest wish; travel to other countries. Iona knew of this however, not for nothing was she a telepath and she understood Lee Bin’s selfish motivation. Iona was not however worried about Lee Bin’s selfishness; it was Lee Bin’s drive, determination and organisational skills that Iona wished to harness.
The newfound friends returned to China and Iona resumed enjoying Hon Li’s mother’s hospitality whilst teaching the little daughter English. During Iona’s extended stay, strangely, no thugs or criminals seemed to be blighting the neighbourhood. Several gangs had tried to muscle in but somehow they ended up ‘discouraged’.

Once the orphanage arrangements were concluded Iona explained her two-fold plan. Orphaned girls were to be rescued from the brothels and offered the security of the ‘orphanage’ provided they were prepared to each bear a girl baby and then bring it up in a proper, nurturing mother-child relationship. The girls would be well supported and well provided for and free to come and go as they wished, including foreign travel and education. It was a deal no sensible girl could refuse especially if it proved to be a route out of the slavery and abuse of the orphanages and brothels..

Iona used her telepathy to choose the most suitable and intelligent girls whilst Hon Li checked their health. If the girls were healthy or if any diseases could be cured, then they were selected. It wounded both Iona and Hon Li when they had to reject many girls but there was nothing they could do about the awful circumstances surrounding the girls.

When a girl was selected, lots of money changed hands to release them from the bondage of the brothels. Within a few months, Iona’s orphanage had its first batch of pregnant mothers.

As a doctor, Hon Li was stunned to learn of Iona’s well-hidden masculinity and even further baffled as to why Iona should want to make so many girls pregnant. She was quick to question the reasons for making the girls pregnant and Iona was compelled to take her into her confidence and reveal her telepathy. After a long private dinner far away from other ears, Hon Li emerged a stunned but excited woman. Naturally, she also wanted one of Iona’s telepathic children. As a special treat, and because she had already demonstrated her impartiality about her first baby’s sex, Iona gave Hon Li a boy child. Furthermore, she agreed to a natural conception, which intrigued Hon Li immensely. As a doctor, Hon Li was both fascinated and perplexed by Iona’s strange sexual duality and the nights spent conceiving her baby proved to be some of the most enlightening in her life. Even after confirming herself pregnant, Hon Li remained obsessed with her strange bed-partner and continued the liaison long into the pregnancy. After bearing her son, Hon Li felt her maternal duties to China were completed especially as the father; Iona bore the huge cost of the fine for having a second child.

Hon Li plunged enthusiastically into her second motherhood and the medical care of the telepathic babies in the orphanage. It was a pure delight for her to indulge her passion for medicine in a place where funding was never a problem.

Lee Bin never had a baby and never wanted one. Too damaged by her orphaned childhood, she would remain forever a victim of the emotional deprivation in her infancy. She did however prove to be an able and immensely effective administrator, a veritable harridan who was well able to confront and defeat the authorities whenever the need arose.

Additionally, as the administrator of the institution, Lee Bin was able to regularly indulge her passion for travel when duty called her abroad. Naturally she spent much time commuting to Mumbai and Calcutta to consult and socialise with Fatima. After several years getting the orphanage set up, it was time for Iona to leave. By that time, China was richer by several hundred happy, properly nurtured, telepathic little girls, and one telepathic boy. Iona knew it was time to move on. Like others before her, Hon Li found herself standing on the tarmac as she waved farewell to the enigmatic little transvestite.

After completing her investigations in Tibet and initiating her newfound endeavours in China, Iona had long harboured a wish to seek out the Native Australian Aborigines and investigate exactly what these people did when they entered their ‘dream times’. She had long suspected that it was a similar process to that of ‘He-that-sees’ but she still wished to investigate it. Naturally, of course, if the situation panned out correctly, she might offer the aborigines an opportunity to avail their people of her offer of telepathy by allowing some of their daughters to conceive.

Iona had come to realise that the girls were usually more than keen to conceive a telepathic child; it was often the culture of the people that had to be circumvented.

The day finally arrived when Iona bid her farewells to Asia and departed Shanghai airport southwards to Vietnam then ‘air-hopping’ via the south-eastern Asian countries of Laos, Thailand, Malaya and Singapore.

There she took a break while her trusty little aircraft underwent servicing that required some essential spare parts to be ordered from Canada. With over a month to kill, she availed herself of the sophisticated facilities that Singapore had to offer.

She debated finding a suitable mother to impregnate but concluded there was little chance of finding such an individual in the time available to her. Instead she decided to spend her time at the famous ‘Raffles’ hotel and savour some real luxury. Despite the city state’s fame as a shopping magnet, Iona spent most of her time taking short tourist trips to local historic sites.

Despite her decision not to seek out any suitable girls who might prove to make suitable ‘telepathic Eves’, Iona still searched with occasional telepathic scans while travelling around. Her lackadaisical endeavours, however, did not find any strong candidates for motherhood and the day came when her plane was declared ready. Australia beckoned.