Stone Lake was an abandoned oil field camp, a place on the fringe of the desert where fossils were found in the outcroppings. As she drove, Jakli explained that Lau often took the zheli there in the autumn, between the summer and winter temperature extremes to collect fossils and imagine the world as it existed when the fossil forms lived. They drove on a rough track cleared and compacted for oil crews thirty years earlier, across a coarse, gravelly plain dotted with clumps of ephedra and the other tough stunted shrubs that, like some of the clans, had learned to survive where few other life forms could exist. Sand could be seen in the lee of boulders. Sometimes, as they crested low hills, Shan saw the endless white expanse of the Taklamakan in the distance.
As the shrubs began to disappear and the barren desert landscape took over, Jakli stopped the truck Fat Mao had provided them, paused to look for any approaching vehicles, then released air from the tires for better traction. She climbed back in and eased the truck off the road, cresting the dune that ran parallel to it, then drove for another mile in a trough between dunes before surmounting a second dune and stopping in its shadow.
They climbed out and she led Shan along the dune for fifty yards, then onto a low rise. At the top they stopped and surveyed a long bowl between the high dunes. Rock formations were scattered along the edge of the bowl and at the south end a cluster of cement foundations could be seen, with several sun-bleached timbers rising out of the sand, the ruins of the oil camp. Past them, near the south end of the bowl, was the frame of a building that swayed in the wind, and beyond it, fifty yards away, a dip in the encircling dunes where the road entered the camp. Several smaller structures, looking like tool sheds and housing for machinery, were scattered across the southern end of the bowl. The largest, big enough to garage a dump truck, was built of cinderblocks with two large rusted metal doors that opened at the center. It had survived the desert conditions better than the other structures. Beyond it against the dune on the opposite side of the bowl was a much older ruin, a stone foundation with part of a mud-brick wall still intact, its timbers no doubt long ago scavenged for fuel. To the north lay the desert, broken only by a single clump of shrubs perhaps three hundred yards from where they stood. Shan gazed to the far south, to the distant peaks of the Kunlun, where Jowa now searched. He was going to the lama field, with a Mao guide, to the grave of Khitai, in case Gendun and Lokesh visited.
A small dust devil spun around the bowl. A bird, a large carrion eater, floated overhead.
"No one," Jakli said, but as she spoke Shan pushed her down, pointing silently toward the road at the end of the bowl, where a man and a dog had just appeared at the crest of the dune.
As they watched, their eyes barely above the dune, the man turned and waved to someone behind the bowl, out of sight. Moments later two more figures appeared, another man and two boys wearing the dark, bulky clothes of herders.
They watched as the boys scampered down the dune toward the garage, the intact structure in the center, followed by one of the men.
"It's Kaju," Shan said. "But who's the other?"
"Akzu!" Jakli exclaimed, and she bolted over the dune.
Shan followed reluctantly, watching Akzu and the dog. Akzu could warn them of anyone approaching. But even if he did, where would they go? They had no place to hide.
They reached the building at the same time as the boys. A moment later Akzu arrived and greeted Jakli with an embrace, then turned toward the boys. One was Batu, who looked sheepishly at Jakli, then explained quite soberly that he had had a dream of a beautiful horse that had spoken to him and told him that as the oldest of the zheli he had the obligation to protect them. Akzu offered a silent nod, as if he was familiar with the power of such dreams. The second youth was introduced as Jengzi, a name that hinted of Tibetan origins. Jengzi offered a shy grin as he was introduced and tossed a stone against the metal doors. He stood close to Kaju, as if wary of Shan and Jakli.
Kaju watched the road with a worried expression.
"Is someone else coming?" Shan asked.
"I don't know. With Jengzi here, only one boy is left. High in the mountains, away from everything." He gave Shan a knowing glance. Micah, the American, had not come.
"I mean, from town," Shan said.
"No," the Tibetan said in an uncertain tone. "Director Ko said to bring them back when I was done, so he could present their gifts. I said after all that happened I didn't expect anyone to come."
Shan nodded. He was watching Jengzi as he listened. Jengzi had come from one of the shadow clans. He might know where Micah was.
Kaju followed his gaze. "He speaks Tibetan," the teacher said quietly. "He has an old rosary, says someone gave it to him as a baby."
"Where did you find him?" Shan asked.
"On the road, five miles south. Walking. It's what his zheli family does, he says. His foster father will not be seen. He won't go on roads, treats them like they're poison. He distrusts everyone. They came out of the high mountains last night, to bring Jengzi, then went back into hiding in the foothills. They will return to pick him up at dusk."
As Shan took a step forward, Kaju touched his arm. "Ko said something else, as I left. He said to ask if the boys would like a helicopter ride. He said he might bring the Brigade helicopter here. Ko just wants to help," the Tibetan added in an uncertain voice.
One of the boys let out a cry of surprise. Shan turned from Kaju to see Jengzi pointing excitedly toward the shadows inside the building. In the darkness beside a broken window at the rear of the structure the outline of a figure could be seen, sitting on a steel barrel. Kaju jerked Jengzi back.
"Hungry, anyone?" a deep voice called out. "I brought us some multicultural cuisine. Peanut butter." Jacob Deacon stepped out of the shadows.
Shan watched the American as the boys greeted him warmly, As if they knew him already. They eagerly grabbed the jar from his hands, opening it to explore its contents with their fingers.
The American embraced Jakli and nodded at Shan, then extended his hand to Kaju. "Small class for the new teacher," he said.
Kaju grasped his hand with a nervous glance toward the road. "I didn't expect Micah's father today. Not with all the trouble."
"Trouble? What trouble? Lau wanted the class to hear about the archaelogy digs and hear about fossils. Weeks ago she asked, and I said I'd come. I came."
"But how? You came so far?" Jakli asked. "What if someone saw? The knobs."
Deacon held his palm up to silence her protest. "Not so far, if you go straight across the sand. With a good compass and a good horse, only four hours. I left at midnight. I'll be back before the sun sets."
"You've been waiting all this time?"
Deacon pointed to a small backpack at the foot of the barrel. "I've always got research to write up." He spoke in an absent tone as his eyes restlessly surveyed the dunes. Not for the danger, Shan knew. For his son. He had come for his son.
Shan watched as the two boys squatted at Deacon's feet, still excited about the American peanut butter.
"Micah," said Batu with a grin. "He takes peanut butter with rice. He makes balls out of it." The boy looked up at the American. "Let me take some back. I'll see him in the mountains this week, I know I will. Malik and I-" The boy cast a guilty look toward Jakli and Shan. "We're going to ride up near the glaciers to look," he said in a low voice. He pulled on the American's hand until Deacon looked away from the dunes. The American knelt beside the boy and began patting his pockets, as if searching for a container that might carry a few ounces of peanut butter to Micah.
Kaju glanced back toward Akzu, who had returned with the dog to squat on the dune overlooking the road. "People are scared," he said to Deacon. "The family he's with, they're so shy. Next class, it's the full moon. A few more days. I'll be here," the Tibetan added. "I'll come alone."
"Sure," Deacon said, his disappointment obvious. "Next class." He looked at Shan and winked. "Got a date on the full moon."
Shan offered a small grin. At least amid all the tragedy there were two good things. Jakli was starting a new life with Marco's son. And Deacon would be under the full moon with his son, listening to their insect orchestra.
Suddenly the dog started barking. They looked back to see Akzu rise. He raised his hand straight up, then lowered it to the back of his head as if scratching it.
Kaju gasped. "It's the signal," the Tibetan said urgently. "Someone is coming. Someone he has to warn about."
"Shit!" the American spat. "Shit and double shit." He began fumbling in the pockets of his baggy pants as Kaju herded the boys toward the shadows inside the structure, away from the line of sight to Akzu, who stood waiting for someone now, facing the road. The Kazakh was staying on the dune deliberately, Shan realized, so the new arrivals would come to him, so they would be visible from the building. Jakli and Kaju quickly pulled the doors shut, leaving a crack a few inches wide to see through.
A moment later a man appeared at Akzu's side, shorter and wider than Akzu. As he began speaking to the headman, he turned toward the bowl and his uniform came into clear view.
"Bao!" Jakli cried.
"It's all right," Kaju said, though his voice had no confidence. "Akzu has a plan. He will say he is checking the path for the Brigade herds to move to winter pasture. Sometimes there is water near here. If there is, he can save a day by cutting across the sand. He only wants to help the Brigade now, he will say, because he will be an owner soon. Since there is no water here, he will ask Bao to look on his map for a better route. If Bao wants to help, Akzu will go with him. If not, Akzu will keep talking until they all drive away together. Then he will return in four hours. It is agreed."
But the words seemed to give little comfort to the boys or to Deacon, all of whom stood wearing grim expressions in the dim light. The American had something in his hand that he had pulled out of his pocket- a small battery light, the size of a pencil. He had strapped his pack to his back and stepped to the window.
Shan watched Bao with a cold intense stare, remembering their last encounter, remembering how Bao's slap had drawn blood. The man seemed like a dark planet that had captured Shan in its orbit. Who else was there, how many others waited behind the dune in a knob patrol car?
Shan turned. Jakli was in the shadows with the boys now, one arm around each of them, comforting them. What a land we live in, he thought, where ten-year-old boys not only know what Public Security is but know to be terrified of it. He looked from Jakli to Deacon, and somehow knew each was thinking the same thing. Bao could take them all and have enough glory to get noticed in the capital. Shan the fugitive. Deacon the illegal American. The orphan boys for whom there was a private bounty. Jakli, absent from her paroled job.
Suddenly Bao was pointing at the building.
"We've got to go," Deacon said, and he began lifting Batu through the window.
"Go?" Kaju croaked in a desperate tone. "There is no place to go."
"Sure there is," Deacon replied. "We're going to become invisible." The American dropped Batu outside and climbed out himself.
Bao began slowly walking down the dune. Akzu hesitated, then followed, waving an unfolded map in the air, as if asking Bao a question. It took less than ten seconds for Jakli, Jengzi, Shan, and Kaju to clear the window.
Deacon was thirty feet away, at the remains of one of the small sheds, tearing away the floorboards. The shed was out of Bao's line of sight, blocked by the garage, but for how long no one could know. By the time Shan got to it the American had removed three planks and lowered the boys into a shaft underneath. Jakli and Kaju dropped inside, then Deacon pushed Shan in and jumped down himself.
"What is-" Shan began, but Deacon shoved him hard, pushing him into a darkness at the north side of the six-foot shaft. "As far as you can go!" Deacon ordered in a hushed, urgent voice, then he reached up to replace the planks.
Not until the American finished and began moving toward the others with his light did Shan see that they were in a tunnel lined with stone, nearly four feet high and perhaps five feet wide. Jengzi was crying, held by Jakli at the front. Kaju was next with Batu.
"Okay," Deacon said from behind Shan. "Today's archaeology lesson is about to begin."
"Archaeology?" Kaju gasped. Shan could hear the Tibetan breathing hard, as if he couldn't get enough air.
"Thirty more feet and it'll be safe to talk," Deacon said in a loud whisper.
The bottom of the tunnel was coated with a layer of sand, under which were the same square-cut stones that lined the rest of the tunnel. Every eight feet, wooden timbers, many still with their bark, stretched across the width of the tunnel, supported by small posts. As the group inched along in the dim light from Deacon's pencil lamp, sand trickled down from between the stones overhead.
"The karez," Deacon said when they stopped. "The ancient irrigation tunnels from the mountains, built to carry the melt water, like at Sand Mountain."
"Still intact?" Shan asked.
"Sure. See for yourself. Runs for miles in places. Up around Turfan, they still use them for irrigation, like some of the old Roman aqueducts in Italy. We found a map at Sand Mountain. Seemed to indicate a tunnel here. I checked it out this morning."
"But it's impossible," Kaju said, still breathing hard. "It can't be stable. We'll be-" He stopped, and Shan looked up the tunnel. The teacher's eyes were on his students.
"There were portals, all along the way," Deacon said. "Access for maintenance, access for taking out water. Just like what we came through. Just got to find the next one and out we go. Like pikas from their den."
The builders of the aqueduct had done their job well. For long stretches the stone work still fitted so tightly that the karez appeared to have been swept clean. In places there were small, stagnant puddles, meaning, Deacon pointed out excitedly, that at times of high water, in the spring thaw, some water was still finding its way down the old tunnels.
Shan began to recognize a pattern in the tunnel supports as they moved slowly forward. Every fifth set of beams was thicker and carved with scrolls and the shapes of plants, the plants once kept alive by the karez. In the center of each of the heavier beams was a small dragon head, facing north, ready in defense should demons seek to invade by subterranean means. To the front he heard Jengzi make a whimpering sound, calling out that there were spiderwebs. Shan felt like whimpering himself. There was no danger of Bao discovering them now, only the much more real threat of disturbing the fragile walls. If the roof collapsed, there would be no rescue, only blackness and enough time for horror to take hold as the oxygen was exhausted.
He heard Jakli speak calming words. Khoshakhan, he heard her repeat, the calming word for lambs. Jengzi, in front of Shan, stopped whimpering. But as they paused the boy began to inch forward to be beside Kaju. Shan was about to warn him that there was no room for two abreast when the boy's foot pulled against one of the ancient posts. There was a sound not of cracking or splintering, but simply a dry crunching noise as the bottom of the post fell away. The dribble of sand above became a steady flow, creating a thin falling veil that quickly accumulated on the tunnel floor.
"Go!" Deacon shouted. Jengzi scrambled forward, followed by Kaju and Shan. A stone fell onto Shan's back as he passed through the spilling sand. Before he cleared the breach, a second stone fell onto his leg. He paused to see if Deacon needed help.
"Go!" the American shouted again.
Shan shot forward ten feet and turned just as the entire roof around the weakened support collapsed. Deacon was halfway through as the stone and sand closed over him. Shan reached out and grabbed his flashlight with one hand, then grabbed Deacon's wrist with the other and pulled.
With a great heave the American came out of the rubble. He lay face down, gasping for a moment, then took the light and shined it forward, into the face of each of those ahead of him. "Okay," he said with a forced grin. "Guess Bao can't hear us now."
"Where exactly is the exit you promised?" Jakli asked slowly, each word sounding like a vast effort of self-control. The light barely reached her face. Beyond her was the vague shape of the tunnel extending a few feet, then blackness.
"There's access, has to be. There was a community here. You saw the stone ruins," Deacon said. "And cisterns. Almost all the cisterns have been sealed off at the top, but they might have only a foot or two of desert above them."
"But when?" Kaju said, unable to hide the fear in his voice. "Where is a cistern? It's hard to breathe."
"I think Mr. Deacon is saying we just keep going," Shan offered.
"Right," Deacon said in a subdued voice. "A few more days, maybe we'll come out in the northern mountains, with frogs in our pockets." He aimed his light at the boys' faces. "They say there's treasure in some of the old Karez," he offered with hollow enthusiasm.
Batu smiled. Jengzi looked at the American with skepticism, but they both began to crawl with new energy, following Jakli as she probed the darkness.
No one spoke for several minutes, as though fearful that a sound might shatter another of the frail supports. Then Kaju suddenly stopped. "Here!" he said, and pointed to the beam above his head. "We have protection."
As Deacon raised the light, an inscription painted with crimson pigment in Tibetan script could be seen. "The six-syllable mantra," Kaju said with a glimmer of hope in his voice. "The tunnel has been blessed."
"Again!" Jakli called out, pointing to a beam near her own head. The same inscription, in the same paint. She crawled ahead at a faster pace, as though the mark might portend a portal. As Shan watched, she faded into the darkness, but the sound of her movements continued. Then suddenly there was a sound of stones falling and a splash. Jengzi called out Jakli's name in alarm. There was no reply.
"Nobody move!" Deacon warned. "Not a muscle. Not a hair. I'll go."
"No," Shan said. "You're in the back. Pass the light to Batu."
The boy's eyes were wide with fear, but he took the light without speaking and inched forward. He moved twenty, then thirty feet in front of them. Jakli's voice could be heard in the distance, echoing as though in a hollow chamber. The muffled words of a conversation rolled down the tunnel and then, incredibly, laughter. Kaju and Jengzi shot forward, followed closely by Shan and Deacon.
Shan and the American arrived to find Kaju and the boys arrayed on a stone ledge, depressed along its bottom to continue the main course of the karez as it curved around a huge hole lined with stones. The cistern that had been designed to capture the overflow from the main channel was at least forty feet in diameter under a dome of tightly fitting cut stones, and had been built in four tiers, each several feet higher than the one below. Jakli stood below them, on the top tier, up to her waist in water, her head three feet below the top ledge.
Deacon whistled in awe at the construction as he shined his light along the ceiling and far wall. Roots pierced the stone at the apex of the chamber. Shan remembered the surprisingly vigorous clump of shrubs that grew near the far end of the bowl.
"With Jakli's permission," the American said, "I will record Batu and Jengzi as the discoverers. The solvers of the great mystery."
"Mystery?" asked Kaju.
"Sure. We just found out why this place has always been called Stone Lake."
The boys wore grins that nearly reached their ears. Jakli splashed them from below.
"If there was a cistern," Shan suggested, "there must have been access."
Deacon was already easing himself along the ledge toward the far wall. "Probably a stone stairway leading down from something like a bath house." He stopped and aimed his light at a point just below where the dome began on the opposite side. "Right about there," he said. A large stone could be seen, supported by two cut-stone posts. But the area below the lintel stone was packed with rock, sand, and timber debris. The entrance had collapsed.
As Shan and Kaju reached down and pulled Jakli onto the ledge, Deacon's light searched the side of the cistern. "It's too fragile here," the American concluded. "We could collapse the whole thing by moving the rocks. But the cistern would have been near the center of the settlement here. There will be more access ahead."
Just as his hopeful words rang out his light flickered and went dim. He shook it and it brightened, though not nearly to the brilliance it had a moment before. "Go!" he barked.
Two hundred feet past the cistern, Jakli, in the lead, asked for the light. A moment later she began describing in a shaking voice what lay ahead. But there was no need for words. The beam of the light told them everything. Several side posts were loose, three of them fallen and leaning across the tunnel. One top beam had fallen to the bottom and had a pile of sand and stones around it. Another small beam was rotted away, with little more than a few splinters holding it up. The tunnel appeared ready to collapse at any instant.
Time seemed to have a different quality in the tomblike stillness. The small party stared at the doom ahead, and Shan had no idea how long it was before Deacon spoke.
"Okay," the American said in a taut voice. Shan heard him breathe deeply, as if trying to calm himself. "It'll be like this. The light stays with Jakli. She goes first, then the boys. We need someone strong behind, in case there's quick digging to do, so Kaju goes, then Shan. Call back when you reach a stable zone, and I'll come. I'm the biggest, and so the most dangerous."
No one argued. Jakli began inching forward.
"You'll have no light," Kaju called back to the American.
"I got matches," Deacon said in a hollow tone. "No problem."
Shan urged the Tibetan forward with a touch on his leg, and gradually the four in front made progress. Ten feet, proceeding with agonizing slowness, then twenty feet, and the light began to quickly fade, as if perhaps the tunnel had curved.
"I know you're here, damn you," Deacon said in the darkness. "You're smaller than Kaju. You can make it."
"I thought there might be crickets," Shan said. "Why should you have all the fun?"
There was silence for a long time. When he listened hard, Shan thought he could hear particles of sand turning over.
"How many do you have?" Shan asked. "Matches."
"I just counted. Ten."
"I've got maybe half a dozen." Shan said.
"Great. Run out for marshmallows. We'll have a roast."
"Marshmallows?"
"Never mind."
Silence again.
"I got Old Ironlegs to sing," Deacon announced through the darkness. "Big bass voice. I fed him some peanut butter."
They spoke of crickets again, of the ones the old monk had when Shan was a boy and those Deacon had collected so far for his son.
"Is this all we do?" Shan asked at last and heard the sadness in his own voice. The killer could strike again and he would be lying in the sand, chased into his grave by the knobs.
"Going ahead in the dark-" the American said quickly and urgently, as if forcing the words out, "-it's suicide. A handful of matches, no better. So we wait. Jakli's going to send an army of pikas with lighted helmets."
"We could go back," Shan said.
"No better chance back there. This is where we told her we'd be."
Did he mean, Shan wondered, this is where they would dig for their bodies?
A match flared, hurting Shan's eyes. Deacon was looking at him, the American's head propped on one arm, a strange peacefulness on his face.
Do we just lie here until we die of starvation? Shan wondered.
"No, no," Deacon said, with an oddly calm voice. "There's no circulation of air in here. We'll die of suffocation long before that," he added, and Shan realized he had spoken his thought out loud.
The match flashed and went out.
Shan lay on his back, his head on his hands. He could hear the American's quiet breathing behind him. He reached and ran his fingertips along the stones, feeling a strange affinity for the builders of the karez. Other men had been here before him, worshipful men laboring in the dim light of oil lamps, tapping stones and supports into place, taking the measurements that assured gravity would move the water. Some paused to paint inscriptions in the tunnel, where no one would see them. No one but a small desperate group of castoffs, centuries later.
What would it be like when someone pulled his body out in a thousand years? Someone who would study his clothes and declare, How strange, this dried-up Han with an old Tibetan gau wore twenty-first-century textiles and had a tenth-century medallion in his pocket.
"Is it true," Deacon's voice came through the blackness, "that there are lamas who can speak with mountains?"
Shan smiled in the dark. "I think mountains might have much to say."
"A mountain is full of age," the American said very slowly, in English now. "And water and crystal and roots. I could learn from a mountain." He breathed silently for a few moments. The lack of oxygen was beginning to tell. "I used to walk in the mountains. I sat under huge trees and just absorbed everything. I stopped thinking, I just felt it. For hours."
"A meditation," Shan said.
"I guess. There are people in Tibet who do that for years, I hear. If I did that for years I would- I don't know. I wouldn't be me anymore. I'd be something better. Something more than just human."
"I've known people like that," Shan said softly.
"Then you're lucky. Me, I guess all I do is just hope that if I do real good- you know, acquire merit- that in the next life I can get to be a hermit in Tibet."
They were quiet again. Deacon lit another match and held it closer to the bricks, apparently studying the construction. There was no sound from the others. They could be lying in a cave-in, already dead. Perhaps that would be better than the torture of slow suffocation in the blackness. Shan felt something on his hand. Moisture. He wiped the sand from a bottom stone and laid his finger across it. After a moment the finger was damp. He pushed aside the sand and laid his cheek in the dampness on the rock. There was something of a miracle about it, he thought, something of great power in the dampness, something akin to the feeling he had known when he had touched the pilgrim's mummy, as if the dampness itself were a thousand years old.
Shan pushed his cheek down against the stone. He had been to a well outside an old gompa, where pilgrims came to drink. During the Chinese invasion, a khampa child had gone there, after being forced by the soldiers to shoot both her parents. She had cried for a week over the side of the well, and later the monks had covered the hole so the invaders would not fill it in. They opened it for visits by the faithful. Her tears were still in the water, the monks said solemnly, for once the tears had mixed in the well, no matter how many buckets came out, something of the tears remained.
He felt the moisture on his cheek and wondered how many tears had mingled with it. All those who had cried in the mountains beyond, for all the centuries, had something of their tears in these waters. He realized that though he had felt a great thirst earlier, the thirst was gone. A memory, a snippet of conversation with Malik came back to him. Is that how you know you are dead, Malik had asked, when you have no more thirst?
"If mountains could talk," Deacon asked through the darkness, "what do deserts have to say?"
"The same thing," Shan said, "only with sorrow."
"What do you mean?"
"Deserts are where the mountains go when they die."
There was silence again. His consciousness seemed to fade, as if he were falling asleep. He put his fingertip on his eye, unable to tell whether it was open or shut. He heard something. Music, and a falsetto voice. If bits of water could linger for centuries, he thought, maybe particles of sound could do the same, gathered into the karez by ancient winds. Maybe it was what the wind demons did, gathered up pieces of human lives and deposited them into quiet, shadowy places.
He smelled ginger and heard a voice that was unmistakably his father's. Not specific words at first, but tones, as if his father were humming, to comfort him. Then he heard his father speak, in a tongue he had never known. Khoshakhan, he was saying to Shan. Khoshakhan.
A trickle of sand fell into his mouth and Shan choked, coughing, awake again. "Back at the Stone Lake," he said wearily, "when it was an oasis, it would have been a good place for crickets."
A sound like a muffled laugh came from behind him. "We found a scroll last week," Deacon said. "An essay, on the proper diet to feed singing crickets. Ming dynasty. I'm going to show it to Micah. We'll mix up some of the recipes and see how they work."
"At the full moon."
"Yeah." The American paused before speaking again. "It's going to be hard."
"Hard?"
"When he hears about Khitai. The Maos told us what happened."
"You said they were friends?"
"Khitai was the best friend Micah made here. Lots of mischief together. We were excited about the news, that Micah would have a brother now. Warp was already expanding the house in her mind. Buying bicycles."
"I don't understand-" Shan began, then he realized Deacon was speaking of the future. He rolled over, pressed his back against the moisture, and extended his fingers into the darkness. There was nothing like being blind to make a man see. Marco had not known where Lau had planned to take the Yakde Lama. But Deacon did. "Khitai," he said. "I understand now. You were going to take him to America. You were going to take him after the full moon." It seemed odd now, talking about the future, as if they had become disconnected from it, as if they were speaking of other people's lives.
Deacon didn't answer.
"I know about it. The Panda. The medallions. I just didn't know how far he was going."
"Somebody told me once that no one should die with secrets. So I guess I can tell you mine and you can tell me yours." Deacon paused and breathed rapidly, as if speaking had become a great labor. "Micah and Khitai were hatching out ideas to be together long before the trouble started. Then a month ago Lau came to us all upset and explained about the boy, about who he was. Said things had changed, that she might have to find a new home, that she would have to get Khitai away. Maybe we could say he's our new adopted son from China. Warp acted like it was predestined, the perfect thing for us to be doing. Marco can get us out. Marco knows people outside, he has lots of money, in banks outside. He had papers made, good ones. U.S. passports he bought in Pakistan." Deacon sighed and seemed to sink back into his thoughts.
The silence of the grave. It was weighing on the American too, Shan knew. The silence seemed to shout. It seemed physical, as if pressing down, as if the tunnel were shrinking around them. He raised his fingers slowly, until they made contact with the top of the tunnel.
"I don't understand," Shan said.
"What?" the American asked. It seemed as though sound itself had slowed, as if ages passed between his words and the reply.
"I don't know. You. Why you and your wife came to Xinjiang. Why you would send your son to clansmen you don't really know."
Deacon was quiet so long Shan wondered if he had stopped breathing. "A splinter," he said. "It's all because of a splinter."
"A splinter?"
"We were in the Amazon jungle. It got infected, real bad. Warp was with me, and two Indian guides. We were doing an article on weaving techniques in one of the disappearing tribes. I was delirious off and on, I was going to die, I knew I was going to die. Fever. In and out of consciousness. She sat with me, wiped my brow, talked with me while the Indians looked for medicine in the jungle. I made a vow that if I lived it was going to be different. We were going to make a difference."
Slowly, sometimes pausing to draw in a deep breath of the depleted air, Deacon explained that he had spent much of his youth roaming the world, seeking adventure, spending most of what his father, an automobile dealer, had left him. "Kayaking for a month in Tasmania. Climbed four mountains in Alaska and Nepal. Bungee jumping in New Zealand. The Andes. A month in Peru. A month in Patagonia."
"Doing research?"
"Hell, no. At least, not often. After we got married, sometimes Warp would go on my adventures and pay her way by writing an article. I was just a thrill seeker. She settled us down for a while, said I had to grow up. Got jobs at the university, good jobs. Micah came. Then one day we're at a shopping center, a place where many stores are all together, in a cement maze. Had a big basket of toys, waiting in line. Suddenly I see she's crying, tears rolling down her cheeks. She says here we are, playing along. It's how everyone measures their lives, she said, when you have young children you go to the giant toy stores and buy expensive plastic things. They get older and you buy expensive electrical things at a different store. Then it's expensive clothes. If you're really successful, expensive shoes and expensive cars. It's called Western evolution, she says. You mark your existence, and your place in the herd, by what stores you shop at. I said it's just some toys, Warp. But when it came time to pay and she reached into her purse, her hands were shaking so much she couldn't hold her wallet. She couldn't move. Just cried and cried. Police came, then an ambulance. They put her in a place like a hospital for a week. Some fool heard about it and told Micah his mother had a breakdown in the toy store. He came to me- he was five- with all his toys in a big box and said he would give them up, never have toys again, if they would give his mama back. I went to the hospital and took her out, told them they were the goddamned crazy ones, not my wife. We agreed we would take every research project that came along, to get away from the world.
"Then months later I lay dying in the Amazon. I said to her, I married the wisest person in the world. You were right that day in the toy store, I told her. Nobody's accountable. People sit back and let bad things happen. Forests get leveled. Cultures get destroyed, traditions get cast aside because they're not Internet compatible. Children get raised to think watching television is required for survival and get all their culture from advertising. We pledged to each other if we got out of there we would make it different for us and Micah. We would be accountable, and we would find a place where we could make a difference."
"And here you are," Shan said distantly. "In an ancient tunnel under an ancient town, just waiting-"
"No regrets," the American shot back, as if he did not want Shan to continue. "Our government and the Chinese government doesn't want us here. Screw them. This is where it is, this is where we make the difference." Make a difference. Oddly Shan recalled, Prosecutor Xu had used the same words just the day before to explain why she was in Yoktian. "These people, Beijing thinks they're broken. They're not. They're just waiting. All we do is what you do. Help them find the truths."
"But your son." Shan tried to pretend that he was simply lying on a rock under the open sky, talking in the night.
"Two hundred years ago in America ten-year-old boys were out hunting food for their families. They were learning how to survive, how to build barns and cabins, how to ride, how to heal a sick horse, how to shear a sheep. That's what our boy is learning, essential things. The first things, Warp calls them. Hell, I couldn't even teach him some of them. But the old Kazakhs and Tibetans, they know. We trust them like family. After the first two weeks, Micah said he wanted to switch families, that his shadow clan didn't have any horses and he wanted to be with horses, like the Kazakhs, like his mother's ancestors. But we said stay up there, learn about the sheep for now. Lau said she would make sure he didn't switch among the zheli families. He's safer with them than anywhere."
Deacon's voice drifted off. But Shan knew what he was thinking. Thank god the boy had not come to Stone Lake, to die with his father.
Shan was under one of the support beams. In the darkness he traced the contours of its carving with his fingers. A dragon head. A flower. He broke the silence a few minutes later. "What kind of New Zealand animal is a bungee?" he asked somberly, wondering whether, after a lifetime of questions, he only had a handful left. "And why would you jump over it?"
The sound that came out of the American was a rasping, wheezing noise that Shan knew was intended to be a laugh.
"Okay," Deacon said after he explained. "How about you? A secret."
Shan thought a moment. "I was a bad father."
"Come on. What man isn't? Every man with a child is a good father and a bad father, all in the timing."
"I was a disloyal worker."
"I hope so. You worked for the People's Republic, for chrissake. Not good enough."
"In my heart," Shan said at last. "There is constant pain. Because I am Chinese and China has forsaken me."
His consciousness seemed to flutter, and he wondered if perhaps he had passed out. He said Deacon's name, and the man made a small moaning sound. He inched forward, wide awake now, and touched the first of the rotten beams. He called to the American. "If we could ignite the fallen beam we could use it as a torch, see our way forward."
"And burn up what oxygen is left," Deacon said in a hoarse voice. "And if we move the wrong way, even in the light, it could collapse."
"Maybe," Shan suggested, "that would be better than slow death over the next few hours."
He could hear Deacon venturing forward. As the American approached, Shan found his hand in the dark and placed it on the beam. He produced one of his matches, lit it, and held it under the end of the beam. The wood smoldered but did not ignite.
"Not hot enough," Deacon said in a voice devoid of confidence. "Make a pile of the rotten chips, start them first."
They tried it and failed. Deacon had three matches left, Shan had four, and they laid all the American's matches on the pile and lit one of Shan's. The pile sputtered, flared, dimmed, and burned out. Silently Shan pulled papers from his pockets, his notes, his evidence, and crumpled them into a pile and lit them. They flared into a small but steady orange flame. He fed it more chips while Deacon held the beam over the flame. In two minutes they had a torch and were moving down the fragile tunnel.
A beam sagged as Deacon passed, then broke behind him. They crawled like snakes over a pile of rubble that rose to half the height of the tunnel. Shan moved at a snail's pace, knowing that his next movement could be his last. Their progress was agonizingly slow. The wall shifted once, and buried Deacon's arm. Slowly the American dug himself out, then gestured Shan on. Twice the torch dimmed, as if about to extinguish, but Shan thrust it forward as far as he could reach until it found oxygen and revived.
Suddenly Deacon called out in a loud whisper, "The wall!"
On either side was solid stone, huge cut pieces, with long slabs of stone overhead.
"A building foundation!" Deacon croaked excitedly. "It would have access, a tap to the karez."
They moved faster. Then, twenty feet later, Shan froze. A spirit hovered fifteen feet ahead of him, a shape that glowed and shimmered. Deacon saw it and cursed. Shan crawled closer and his heart leapt. It was light, a small shaft of sunlight. But it came through a tiny crack in the stone, only a quarter-inch wide.
The tunnel curved as they proceeded, then suddenly Shan saw a fire with a face in it, a sight that frightened him so much he dropped the torch.
Then the face spoke, with a woman's voice. "Shan!" it called, and they saw it was Jakli, with a torch held below her face.
In five minutes they were out, gasping great lungfuls of fresh air as Akzu and Kaju pulled them through a two-foot opening in the tunnel ceiling, into painful, brilliant sunlight. They were at a ruin in the side of the dune at the northern end of the bowl.
"The flashlight was almost out," Kaju explained, extending a water bottle. "We couldn't use it to go back. Then it took so long to find wood for a torch."
They drank in great gulps as Jakli and the boys explained to Akzu their ordeal in the darkness and the miraculous appearance of Deacon and Shan.
But Shan wasn't celebrating. He was exploring for papers he hadn't burned, the ones that he hadn't reached in the tunnel. The small folded paper of abbreviations from the dead American was still there. He refolded it and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. The only other paper was the map he had drawn of Karachuk. He turned the map over. It had been in the trash, used by the Tadjik to wrap the baseball he had stolen. It had been nothing, he had thought then, just blottings from a pen, strange lines in different degrees of shading.
Deacon approached him and handed him the bottle. "I was thinking, Shan," he said, squatting by his side. "You should come. Next week. Under the moon, with my son and me. I want you to. I was gone down there. You saved my life."
But Shan only half listened. He was watching Jakli, who now stared at him with anguish in her eyes. She stepped away from Akzu and approached him. "Bao didn't leave because of what Akzu told him," she said. "He left because there was a report on his radio that two old Tibetans had been seen on the highway."
Shan felt his head sag. He stared absently at the paper in his hands, fighting a wave of despair, until suddenly the American grabbed the top of the paper and pulled it toward him.
"Where the hell-" Deacon exclaimed and bent to examine the line of tiny print at the top of the page.
"That Tadjik had it," Shan said, "the one at Karachuk. Do you know what it is?"
"Of course. Genetic mapping sequences. A copy of our lab results. What's the point?"
Shan thought a moment and looked up with alarm in his eyes. "That Tadjik was much smarter than I thought. He wasn't trying to steal your white ball. The ball was cover, a distraction in case he was caught. He was trying to steal this, to take it to someone."
"Jesus." Deacon sat down heavily on the sand and pointed to the print at the top of the paper. "A lab registration number, for our lab in the United States. Big secret, until we publish. This lab code gets out, everything gets shut down. The knobs will know who we are. Washington and Beijing will be all over us." Deacon gulped down the remainder of the water and tightened the straps on his backpack.
Shan had one match left. He used it to burn the paper, then watched the American with a pang of guilt as he jogged off to his horse. He hadn't told the American the worst of the news, that his son, the last of the hidden zheli, was now undoubtedly the next target of the killers.
Perhaps, he thought absently, there would have been advantages to being buried in the desert. Now, finally, he had to decide. Others were going to be taken, to be killed or imprisoned. He couldn't stop it all. He could try to save Gendun and Lokesh or he could try to stop the zheli killing. But he couldn't do both.