next day,' she reported in a tone of resignation.
The words had the sound of an epitaph. It would be over when Jenkins's crews struck oil. The fate of the valley would be sealed. The slopes would be completely stripped of their timber. The fields of barley would be ruined by the venture's machines. The songs of the lark would be replaced with the sound of engines, the fragrance of the spring flowers with acrid fumes.
'Less than twenty-four hours,' Larkin nodded grimly. 'There is a convoy coming in, of high officials. People from Lhasa, and Golmud, for the big celebration.'
Nyma looked back at the purba who lay on the pallet. 'Who took the bullet out?' she asked.
'I did,' Larkin said. 'There wasn't anyone else. He bit a piece of leather rope as I worked. Just in the muscle. Lokesh says his blood is still strong.'
Shan looked at the wounded purba in alarm. A bullet. With a sinking heart he noticed one of the army's automatic rifles on the ledge above the man.
He studied Larkin again, remembering how frustrated she had been when they had had to leave the explosives behind. 'You can't,' he heard himself say with sudden despair. 'All these people,' he said, gesturing toward the refugees in the cave. 'They have suffered enough.'
Larkin met his stare. 'Cowboy has their names and registration numbers. He's going to make sure they get relocated properly. Next time he's in Tibet, he's going to report back to me.'
Winslow looked up, grinning at Shan. Cowboy.
There was a murmur of surprise from across the room. Shan looked up to see six large Tibetan men enter in pairs, each pair carrying a heavy wooden box slung from a stout pole. Larkin stood and stepped forward to help the men stack the boxes at the rear of the cave.
'There was an accident,' Somo said at his side, in an uncertain, worried tone. 'They were laughing because they said a company truck slid off the road.'
Shan stepped away and circled back, away from Larkin, to get closer to the boxes. They were marked in Chinese. Qinghai Petroleum Venture, they said. High Explosives. He wandered outside, fighting the sense of defeat that seemed to have overtaken Nyma and Lhandro, then found Winslow at the mouth of the cave, standing over the churning water of the buried river.
'Some of the Tibetans are very superstitious about this place,' the American said. 'They say it is a connecting place.'
'Connecting?'
'I don't understand all the words I heard. One of them said it was a gate. I think they mean to another universe, one of the hidden lands. The bayal. Melissa said Tibetans believe there are many worlds inhabited by humans, some not visible to most of us, and many different types of heavens and hells. Nyma said years ago, before she was born, an old nun who lived nearby brought her students here and announced she had been called to speak with a deity that lived in the hidden land past this gate. Then she just jumped in.'
Shan followed Winslow's gaze toward the maelstrom below. Larkin's secret river. Somehow, he thought, it wouldn't be the same when the geologists put a name to it and fixed it on their maps. In a wild and largely untamed land this was one of its wildest and most untamed parts. It was like a whirlpool, he thought, a dark whirlpool that had sprung up on dry land. He imagined the water rushing down, roiling through its hidden course. Perhaps they were looking at the top of a waterfall that dropped through a vast underground cavern into a lake where nagas lived. Perhaps there was indeed a hidden land beyond, and a hermit in that land was sitting on a rock looking up at the waterfall, wondering about the world that lay above it. Perhaps this was where the chenyi stone belonged. Perhaps in that world deities were not so hard to find.
'Larkin will be in grave danger,' he said suddenly, pulling his gaze from the mesmerizing waters, 'if she lets her camp become the base for saboteurs.'
'She's not just a geologist,' Winslow said absently, still watching the water.
'There are only two things they can do with those explosives,' Shan pointed out. 'Try to attack the camp, maybe ruin it with an avalanche. Or put them on the road into the camp, when that convoy of dignitaries comes. Either way it won't solve anything.'
'It's the road. It must be,' Winslow said, his eyes heavy with worry. 'But they wouldn't deliberately kill all those people. Just block it.'
'It will just bring more soldiers,' Shan said. 'More arrests. Zhu hasn't given up looking for Larkin. When he has soldiers to help he will find this place. When soldiers come the people here won't just be refugees, they'll be treated like enemies of the state. They will come to make arrests, they will come to attack.'
Winslow grimaced. He looked back into the cave.
'Some people say that when you save someone's life you become their guardian forever,' Shan observed quietly. But he knew the connection between Winslow and Larkin had grown more complex than that.
Winslow sighed. 'If my wife had been a geologist,' he said toward the cave, in a distant tone, 'that's who she'd be.' He glanced at Shan with surprise, as though the words had come out unexpectedly. 'I don't mean…' He stared at the wild water and for a moment Shan thought he saw a longing in the American's face, as if he were thinking of jumping in to explore the hidden land. 'I mean…'
'It's all right,' Shan said quietly. He backed away from the edge and stepped inside, approaching Lokesh's pallet, where his old friend spoke in low tones with Somo. The purba runner was drawing on a paper which Lokesh leaned over excitedly. But when Lokesh saw Shan he pulled the paper away and quickly folded it.
'Lokesh wanted a map of Beijing,' Somo explained. 'I was there for running competitions. And he's been writing a letter to the Chairman,' she added enthusiastically, then paused, seeing the strained look that passed between the two men.
'Shan does not want me to go,' Lokesh observed in a matter-of-fact tone. 'But not for any good reason,' the old man said as he pushed the paper inside his shirt pocket. 'Only because it could be dangerous.' Once the pocket was buttoned closed, his expression brightened. 'We saw many flocks of geese coming here,' he announced to Shan, then gave an exaggerated yawn and rubbed the skin above his cast. Shan sighed and lowered himself to the edge of the pallet, leaning against the rock wall.
Falling in and out of wakefulness, he watched the Tibetans in despair. Strangers came and quickly departed after exchanging messages with the purbas. Somo and Winslow sat with some of those from Yapchi and reviewed Drakte's ledger book. One of the farmers laughed as she explained what Tuan and Khodrak had done, and said they must have compiled their data in some bayal.
It was midnight when he awoke to find Lokesh staring at him with his crooked grin. 'Who is supposed to be watching whom?' his old friend asked. Shan brought him a plate of cold tsampa and a bowl of tea, and Lokesh spoke energetically of little things, like a grey bird he had seen in the mouth of the cave, dipping itself in a pool of water, and a cloud he had seen that looked like a camel.
The chamber was silent except for the sputter of several butter lamps. Larkin had fallen asleep at her table, her head cradled in her folded arms. Most of the purbas were asleep, the others outside on guard duty.
'She has green tea, the American,' Lokesh said, knowing that Shan preferred the green leaf.
Shan studied his friend. It was as if he were trying to avoid speaking of something.
'What are they doing, Lokesh? Larkin and the purbas. I fear for them.'
Lokesh looked out over the chamber. 'I saw old images painted on the wall in the back. I think that hermits once lived here.'
'What are they doing?' Shan repeated.
Lokesh shrugged. 'Trying to align the earth deities and the water deities.'
Shan sighed in frustration.
'I think they are trying to learn about how miracles are performed,' Lokesh added in an excited whisper.
'They have explosives,' Shan said, and pointed to the wooden boxes, stacked where the purbas slept.
Lokesh stared at the crates a long time. 'I don't know. Nyma and Somo, they wouldn't use avoiders.'
Avoiders. It was part of their particular gulag language, stemming from a teaching given in their barracks by an old monk, in his twenty-fifth year of imprisonment, just before he died. Guns were avoiders, he said, and bombs and tanks and cannons. They allowed the users to avoid talking with their enemy, and allowed them to think they were right just because they had more powerful technology for killing. But those who could not speak with their enemies would always lose in the end, because eventually they lost not only the ability to talk with their enemy but also with their inner deity. And losing the inner deity was the greatest sin of all, for without an inner deity a man
