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 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."