"Just a little way in," Spencer pleaded. "We’ll be careful."
"Xing, " Kuyuk sighed.
So forming a line, they crept inside.
Lin was worming into the irregular opening behind the others, stooped over. He looked back around to her and gave her his hand. "Lai."
Farther. They inched over the uneven rock floor. Loud breathing, crunching rocks. They passed through the dense overhanging shadow, and the darkness was almost total.
"This is a bad idea," Kuyuk protested from somewhere up ahead. "Let’s return later!"
"Just a little way." Spencer’s voice from somewhere, insisting.
"Yidian, " she translated, noticing that the voices sounded farther away from her now. But what was this? She felt Lin squeeze her hand and pull her to him in the blackness. Her nose bumped the front of his shirt. She froze. His hands moved to either side of her waist, touching her softly, experimentally. They moved up, taking the measure of her rib cage. Outlining her torso. Avoiding her breasts.
She held her breath.
The warm hands drifted up her shoulders, her neck. Fingers waved through her hair, curious.
"Wait, I think I have a match," Kuyuk called.
The hands vanished.
The scrape and flare, the sulfur, and in an instant of flickering light and shadow she saw the damp irregular cave walls, just where they ought to be, the rocks and boulders, the others standing there.
And Lin. He stood facing her, eyes boring into her. Had he really touched her?
"See that?" Kong said, in a wondering voice. There was a petroglyph carved into the wall. The monkey sun god.
"The rock art!"
"Is it not?"
"It is!"
Then Spencer’s voice, shouting, "Jesus Christ!" and they all turned again.
In the last microsecond of the match they saw a man-made wall, the dark burnished gleam of metal. The cave passage ahead was completely closed off. There was a steel wall, and a giant submarinelike wheel-lock glimmering in its center.
The match went dead. The snuff of darkness.
"I have only one more," Kuyuk whispered.
Through the pounding of her heart Alice heard the papery sounds of him fumbling, and then the chuffing hiss, and then light again. Lin had moved away from her. He knelt by the metal door, the same brown hands that had just explored her now tracing along the metal wall.
"See those characters?" Kong pointed to an incised marking down in the corner.
"It says, ’Installation forty-eight, Alashan Base six,’ " Lin read. "People’s Liberation Army."
"Anything else?"
Lin peered closer, dropped to a whisper. "Yuanzidanchangku."
She whispered this in English. "Nuclear silo."
"Damn!" spat Spencer.
The match went out.
She lay in bed on her back, heart pounding, staring at the ceiling. He had touched her. In the cave, in the moment of total darkness, despite the possibility that Peking Man was near-he had done it. It was already as unreal to her as a dream. She put her own hands on her waist, trailed them up. Wasn’t this what he had done? She touched her neck, her hair. Lin had never made a sound. He just touched her. He was telling her he wanted her. Wasn’t he? The thought made her ache. What would it be like with him? She put her hand between her legs and began to move, arching her back, imagining it. How would he do it? How?
12
She slid into her chair at the sun-pooled breakfast table. No one was there but Lin. "Dr. Kong’s not up yet?"
"No. Dr. Spencer?"
"The same."
"Are you excited about today?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," she said, wondering which way he meant it.
"I am too." He began serving her, lovingly, the way family members serve each other at home, selecting the finest-looking morsels and piling them on her small plate.
"You needn’t," she murmured, and hurried to reciprocate.
But he stopped her. "No," he smiled. "you must let me. Set your heart at ease." He surveyed the table and scooped up a few more things for her plate. "Eat now, girl child," he said gently. He chose food for his own plate and started in.
She chewed slowly. He appeared relaxed, happy, as if they had been eating breakfast together for years.
"I believe we’ll have success today." He glanced at her.
"I hope so."
"Peking Man is certain to be in the cave. Is it not so? Not only do we know the French priest went there-to the lamasery-but there, in the cave entrance, was the rock art."
She nodded.
"It should not be so difficult to meet with the military head of Alashan." Lin paused, thinking about it. "He will make time for us. Peking Man is a matter of importance."
"It’s so." And we’re in another autonomous region now, too, she thought in a quick flood of relief; far away from that horrible Lieutenant Shan in Yinchuan.
He poured her tea.
She started to eat, then, feeling his eyes on her, looked up. He was not eating. Instead he was watching her, playing with one of his chopsticks.
His fingers moved deliberately up and down the wooden utensil. He watched her while he did it.
Am I imagining this? she thought.
No. He’s actually doing it.
"I think, despite everything, we may be close to it." He didn’t glance at his fingers stroking the kuaizi. His eyes stayed on hers. "Do you think so? Do you think we’re close?"
"Close to what?" she whispered, barely able to speak.
"Finding Sinanthropus. Of course."
She could only nod, afraid to even breathe.
"I really think we are," he said, but now his voice had gone slightly hoarse.
Then an utter change clicked over him. "Eh," he said, "Dr. Spencer." He laid the chopstick down.
Adam sat noisily beside them. "So? We have a meeting with somebody?"
"Today, we hope. Someone military."
Spencer nodded. Still suffused with his new optimism, he started serving himself.
She snatched a glance at Lin. He ate as if nothing had occurred.
She cleared her throat gently at the empty desk. A fuwuyuan came out from the back room, her world, her bed and desk and basin. "Miss, I trouble you too much. Is there any phone?"
"No phone," said the tall, equine woman.
"May I ask, where is there a phone?"
The woman thought. "In Yinchuan."
"So it’s like that."
The woman made the faintest affirmative expression with her eyes, high set, brilliant, and black.
Now what do I do about Horace? Alice despaired. I’m out in the middle of nowhere, there’s no phone, and what if he is dying?
What if. Because the day will come, maybe soon, when I’ll stand on this earth without him. He’ll be gone and it’ll just be me, Alice Mannegan.
Free to choose, to love.
Free to live in China, or in the United States.
No-not the United States. People will still remember. My name will still be Mannegan and people will never let me forget it. It’s not worth fighting it there. But I could live here-or Hong Kong or Taipei. Nobody cares or knows or is even aware of it in Asia. And I could let my guard down, be what my instincts tell me to be. My real self. It was the same thing Pierre had wished for Lucile: You know that nothing makes me more happy than to feel that you are living fully by the best ofyourself.
"Hai you qita shi ma?" the woman inquired.
Alice shook her head sadly. "No. Nothing else."
"The lieutenant will see you now," said the crisply uniformed soldier.
He held open the door.
Lieutenant Shan half rose from behind his desk, all courtesy, all controlled bearing.
Oh, God, she thought: it’s him-he’s in charge of the Army here too.
The lieutenant recognized her too. She saw it in his face, although he covered expertly.
Shan smiled. Everyone smiled back except Alice.
Kuyuk made introductions. "Dr. Lin, Dr. Kong of Huabei University, and the Americans, Dr. Spencer, Miss Mo."