It took him an hour to explore the first three clefts, struggling up the jumble of rocks that filled each, until he was forced to retreat by massive blocks of stone that could not be climbed without ropes. He was about to enter the fourth cleft when he spotted movement half a mile away. A mountain goat had materialized as if out of the wall itself, one of the nimble white creatures native to the ranges. Shan eased into the shadow of a boulder and watched as another shaggy goat appeared, then three young kids and another adult. As the small flock wandered down the slope, languidly nibbling at the lichen-covered slabs, he slipped along the wall. Had he not fixed the point in his mind he could easily have missed the goat’s portal, for it was not one of the clefts he had seen but a narrow shadow behind an outcropping that folded out, parallel to the wall.
The twisting trail was sometimes so narrow both shoulders brushed against stone, sometimes so low between overhanging slabs he had to crouch to continue. After two hundred yards the trail was blocked by a huge mound of rubble that seemed impassable. But then he noticed scattered piles of goat droppings on several boulders and pulled himself up onto the first of the massive rocks. More than once Lokesh had joked with him that those who lived on the fringes of Tibet, as they did, had to be half goat to survive.
He paused after several minutes’ hard climbing to study the scratches and gouges that began to appear on the stones underfoot. Someone had worked with chisels and levers, prying up rocks, levering them this way and that, clearing if not a path then at least a course that could be attempted by creatures less nimble than a goat. Near the crest, at the center of the wide escarpment, two huge fallen slabs created a treacherous pit at least twenty feet deep. A goat might have tried the tiny five-inch lip of rock that followed the side wall but for humans someone had laid a makeshift bridge of juniper poles and twine, constructed like a ladder, with narrow cross pieces every two feet.
The jumble of rocks grew more treacherous, with sharp jagged stones, some scorched by explosives, jutting upward, threatening injury. A huge bird of prey, another lammergeier, soared overhead, interested not in Shan but in the small furry rock pikas that scurried in front of him. He tried to visualize the high-walled path that had once existed underneath him. The dark winding passage would have made a natural
Shan and Lokesh had visited a pilgrim’s shrine on another mountainside earlier that year, reached through a much shorter passage whose walls had been painted with guardian demons. It was to have been the last day of that painted rock shrine. The government was about to destroy it in order to erect a radio transmission tower. Although the engineers agreed to move the painted rock, Lokesh had settled onto the ground as the bulldozer advanced.
“That rock picture is just a bunch of old peeling paint, abandoned by its deity years ago. They don’t understand. Here is what is important,” the old Tibetan had said, patting the path, compacted from centuries of pilgrim’s prostrations. “Here is the sacred thing.” He had not resisted when the machine’s operators lifted him bodily and set him on the ground fifty feet away, then continued ripping up the old path. But he had carried a little sack of the compacted earth with him ever since.
On the far side of the ruined trail he was traveling now, Shan found proof of his speculation that inhabitants of the eastern slopes were aware of the passage. On one side of the entrance to the cleft was an image in faded paint of Tara, the mother protector. Opposite the Tara was an image painted by another kind of pilgrim. In fresh, bright colors, someone had portrayed a four-foot-high Buddha sitting, like a cartoon character, in a miniature convertible car, cigarette dangling from his mouth, sunglasses covering his eyes. He had reached the real world.
The landscape on the eastern side of the mountain was gentle, the slope sweeping outward for miles, interrupted by occasional outcroppings and a few low ridges that jutted like fingers from the main peak, joining with the matching slope of the neighboring mountain to create a wide, lush, and empty valley. Almost empty. In the distance, perhaps five miles away, was a small compound of white buildings, surrounded by half a dozen antenna masts and three huge white saucers that seemed to have been tipped by the wind. Satellite reception dishes.
Much closer to Shan, half a mile away, was the only other visible structure, an old
He hurried across the high meadows, wherever possible using outcroppings to block the line of sight to the distant compound below, knowing that its sentinels could use powerful lenses to scan the landscape. He paused for a moment, ambushed by his emotions again, a voice within shouting that he had to return to the village. He would find Gendun beaten unconscious. He would find Lokesh lashed to a canque. He would reach the stable and find nothing but bloody spoons on the floor. The waking nightmares would not leave him, distracting him so completely he did not realize something vital about it until he was only fifty yards away from the dzong.
The building was inhabited. The narrow windows were glazed. The structure at the base of the tower was new, though built of stone in the traditional boxy, tapered wall style of the original dzongs. Flowers were planted along the walls. Prayer flags flapped in the shadows behind the tower. Not prayer flags, he realized as he ran toward the shadow of another outcropping. Laundry.
“You’re not a soldier,” a voice behind him suddenly declared. “You’re not a scientist. You don’t look prosperous enough for one of those damned miners.” The voice was oddly whimsical. “If I shot you right now, we could call it a socialist experiment and devise a sad, politically correct story of the path that led such an antisocial creature to his inevitable death by a bullet.” The words were spoken in fluid Mandarin, tinged with a Beijing accent.
Shan replied in a level voice as he turned to face the speaker, hands open at his side. “The particular experiment I represent was declared a failure years ago. What is left was considered not worth the price of a bullet.”
He was prepared to confront a soldier, an angry bureaucrat, anything but the figure in front of him. The man was a head taller than Shan, well groomed and athletic, with long blond hair going to gray that covered his ears. Resting in the crook of one arm was a high-powered rifle and a case for a compact set of binoculars hung from the belt that held up his khaki trousers. A brown cashmere scarf was tucked under the collar of his leather jacket, which covered most of a black T-shirt bearing the image of a red dragon over the legend, in English, BORN TO BE WILD.
“Then how do I classify you?” the stranger asked. “Animal, mineral, or vegetable?”
“Perhaps you believe in ghosts?” Shan ventured. He remained still as the stranger circled him, examining him from head to toe.
The man seemed to appreciate Shan’s wit. “I think,” the man said with a grin, “we will just call you the most interesting luncheon guest we have had in weeks.” He gestured Shan toward the dzong.
It was the most extraordinary new construction Shan had seen in Tibet. On the outside great care had been taken to keep the structure’s sixteenth-century appearance, right down to the small mound of mani stones near the door. But inside were touches that spanned the five centuries since. The entryway was flanked by two long portrait scrolls of Chinese emperors, hung over a beige fabric wall covering. Bamboo stalks grew out of an elegant willow green celadon pot. As the stranger left his rifle by the door, Shan leaned over the nearest painting of one of the early Ching emperors wearing a fur cap and yellow brocaded gown embroidered with dragons. It was not a reproduction. From a speaker somewhere behind the planter came the soft, hollow music of a wooden flute.
Shan followed his escort up two flagstone steps into a large room lined with a huge carpet in which were woven traditional Tibetan symbols. The left wall was covered, floor to ceiling, with shelves of books and that to the right with paintings, dramatic mountain landscapes, and maritime scenes, all in Western style. In the center of the floor was a huge overstuffed U-shaped sofa, arranged to give the occupants a view out a long row of windows in the far wall. As his escort paused, gazing toward a half-closed door by the paintings, Shan took tentative steps toward the windows, his eyes on a powerful telescope that stood on a tripod.
He paused and placed a hand on the sofa, pressing his fingers into the soft fabric. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. The house was impossible. It belonged in the Swiss Alps or the mountains of North America. Except for the
