Bone Mountain (66 page)

“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 was an empty shell, nothing but a lower life-form.

Shan looked at Somo and Nyma, both asleep on the floor of the cave. He could never consider them lower life-forms.

“We must speak with those purbas in the morning,” Lokesh said in a sorrowful tone. “If a bomb is set off, Jokar is lost forever.” Despair flashed across his face, then he settled back into his blanket as Shan blew out the lamp closest to the pallet.

But in the morning the purbas, the American geologist, and the explosives were gone.

“They left three hours ago,” Lhandro said in a confused voice. He was standing at the cave opening, as if he had been out searching for them. “They wouldn’t speak with me. Except some of the purbas gave me letters for their families. Before they left they sat in a circle and prayed, even the American woman, then they picked up their boxes and left. They made a fire outside.” He gestured toward the opening.

Shan and Somo darted out onto the ledge. Against the wall was a small pile of ashes, fragments of charred papers. The maps. They had burned their maps, the notes of their research. As if they had abandoned the idea of publicly announcing the discovery of the river. There was an alarming sense of finality. They had taken the explosives. They had burned their records. The convoy of officials was arriving that morning.

“She left a note,” a melancholy voice said over his shoulder. Winslow stood with a small piece of paper, a page ripped out of Larkin’s notebook. “Her address in the States, where I should write to tell her parents about her if things don’t go well. A special telephone number in Lhasa where people might have information about her. She says no one but me will have that number. She says come back in the summer and we can make a camp at the sacred lake.” The American looked up the mist-shrouded trail, toward the grey patch above them where daylight was beginning to show. “If she’s still alive. She says a venture supply truck will be leaving for Golmud before noon, to be sure I am on it, because she’s an American taxpayer and wants me back at work.”

Before noon. Before the officials were scheduled to arrive, she meant.

“Everyone has to go down,” Shan said urgently, “get down to the road. Flee.” Lokesh looked at him pointedly. Shan realized he sounded like someone else they had heard desperately exhorting everyone to flee. Perhaps Drakte, too, had given up hope. He gestured toward Chemi’s uncle, who seemed to be stirring to consciousness at last, and would need help if he were to make it down the mountain. “The soldiers will be swarming over the slopes by tomorrow.”

The refugees looked at Shan oddly, as if he had misunderstood something about them, but they began leaving the cavern in small groups, wearing anxious expressions. Shan heard one young farmer call out excitedly. “Siddhi’s chair,” he declared in a proud, defiant voice. Shan’s heart sank. They were going to the high meadow where the other farmers and herders were gathering, waiting, because they had faith, because they believed the old lama would somehow escape and find them to lead them into a new age.

Finally only a handful of the villagers remained, waiting to carry out Lokesh and Dzopa. But when they went to lift the big man onto a blanket to carry him, he called out in protest and pushed away his niece.

“Rinpoche!” the man cried in a tormented voice.

Shan took a hesitant step toward the man. Dzopa blinked rapidly, then pushed his brow as though to stretch open his eyes. He had been cut badly on his arm and taken a concussion when the village was bombed. He had an infection, Chemi had said, and a high fever that made him delirious. Shan had felt sorrow for the man who had left his freedom in India only to return to his village just when it was being destroyed. The delirium had seized him again, and he was calling for a teacher he had left in India.

Chemi spoke rapidly to him, saying comforting words, and handed him a bowl of tea. The man stared at his niece as though he did not recognize her, then drained the bowl. With shaking hands he reached for a pan of tsampa on the floor and began shoving the food into his mouth with his fingers.

“I must find Rinpoche,” Dzopa said between mouthfuls, his eyes growing steadier.

“We will get you down to the road today,” Chemi said uncertainly.

The man hesitated and gazed at her with wide, hollow eyes. “He made me well again, my niece, all of me. He knows the working of miracles,” Dzopa said. Then, more urgently, looking around the cavern he asked again, “Where is Rinpoche?”

Shan stepped to the man’s side. “Jokar is below,” he said tentatively. “In Yapchi.”

“Jokar?” Nyma asked. “But this man—”

Dzopa fixed Shan with a penetrating gaze. His eyes were no longer cloudy. “Jokar Rinpoche is in Yapchi Valley?” The question leapt from his lips in a voice that was suddenly strong and angry. He sighed when Shan nodded. “He always said things were not finished at Yapchi. He said someday there will be great destruction there again, before things are settled.” He looked absently toward the huge boots that sat beside his pallet, then slowly reached for them and began to ease them onto his feet.

“How long?” he asked Chemi when he had finished his task. “How long have I been unaware?”

“A week.”

The man’s face sagged, and he seemed to lose his strength for a moment. “The little blue flowers with the grey leaves that grow along the southern cliffs. Are they out yet?” he asked his niece in a voice that was suddenly small and anxious.

Chemi looked at her uncle in confusion. But Lokesh reached into his pocket and produced a tiny grey stem with a blue bloom.

Pain filled the big man’s face as he stared at the flower. He looked as if he were about to cry. Then he sighed and studied the faces about him. “He would have gone with someone from Yapchi Village,” he said, and settled his gaze on Lhandro, squinting, studying the rongpa. “You are Lepka’s boy?” he asked. “Did he go with Lepka?” He nodded, answering his own question. “He would have gone with Lepka.”

Chemi knelt and put her hand on his shoulder. “You cannot go to Rinpoche. Soldiers arrested him.”

Dzopa’s face froze. His eyes seemed to glaze again for a moment, then they grew bright as embers. He stared about the chamber with a challenging, almost threatening expression, then gazed at the cave wall, as though he could see beyond it, as though he were searching for Jokar far in the distance. He reached out for the brazier, only three feet away, and dipped his fingers in it. He began rubbing his cheeks with ashes.

The man’s strange behavior was frightening, and Shan took a step toward him, to help the obviously delirious man back to his pallet. But suddenly one of the rongpa by the entrance cried out in warning. Two men charged into the cave, brandishing rifles. One of them slammed his rifle butt into the belly of the man who had shouted, leaving him writhing on the floor. Dzopa moaned and crawled toward the shadows at the rear of the cave. Somo crouched as if about to attack, then one of the men leveled his weapon at her and coolly touched his fleece hat in greeting. The second man, who wore a loose leather jerkin and a black felt hat, leaned his rifle against the table and began examining its contents.

They were not soldiers but nor were they purbas, Shan realized. Zhu. The Special Projects Director could still have men in the mountains. As the man with the lowered rifle herded them together against the wall of the cave, even forcing Lokesh to his feet, his companion began dumping the contents of the table into a drawstring bag. A pack of cigarettes, a metal mug, tea bags, a ruler, pencils. The men were not interested in arresting them, or asking questions.

“Golok!” one of the rongpa spat, and the man with the cap answered with a grin that showed an uneven row of brown teeth. The intruders were thieves.

The man at the table finished quickly, then turned to face his captives, removing his hat to reveal a bald scalp. His eyes flared, and he ran a finger along his thin moustache as he studied them. His gaze fell upon the metal stove Larkin had left behind and he lowered the rucksack on his back, rummaging through it until he produced a similar, smaller stove, into which a blue canister was fastened. He set the stoves on the table, unscrewed the canister, and with a satisfied grin screwed the canister into Larkin’s stove. As he stuffed the two stoves into his sack Shan realized he had seen the smaller stove before. He exchanged a glance with Winslow, who also had recognized it.

The man with the moustache ordered them to line against the wall and began searching them, pulling off bracelets, necklaces, and even prayer amulets, dumping them into a smaller pouch he kept at his belt. When Nyma clamped her gau in both hands, refusing to give it up, the second man stepped forward, reaching for his knife.

“Go to hell,” Winslow growled, and pulled Nyma behind him.

“No!” a voice boomed from behind the two men as the blade flashed out of its sheath. The Goloks spun about and stared into the deep, empty shadows behind them.

Shan’s heart sank. It could only be Dzopa, in his delirium. He would only anger the thieves, and get hurt for doing so. In his weakened condition another injury could kill him.

The Golok with the rifle raised it as though to fire.

“It’s only my—” Chemi began, her words choked to a gasp as a wrathful creature lunged out of the darkness. It was a huge man with a grey robe draped over his ox-like shoulders, his cheeks blackened, his eyes ablaze. In his hands was a stout pole, one of the poles used by the purbas for carrying their cargos.

“Ai yi!” Lokesh cried out, and pulled back against the wall, joined by several of the rongpa.

Shan, too, found himself retreating, his throat suddenly bone dry. They had seen the man before, that terrible night when Drakte had died. The dobdob had returned.