Lin stood staring down at her, still holding her lightly by the elbows.
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
"Shenmo?" he whispered, noticing the change in her face and raising his own eyebrows in inquiry.
"Why did you call me over here?"
He released her elbows. Uncertainty shadowed his face. "Duibuqi. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I guess I just wanted to see if you’d come."
Longing rose up in her throat. He was releasing his reserve so gradually, with such infinite control. Would he let it go completely? What would happen when he did? If he did. She dropped her arms to her side, stood stock still, her eyes in his, only a few inches separating them.
At the sound from the second floor they both looked up. The voices were back, and the footsteps, now scuffling above their heads toward the top of the stairs. She sighed. The two of them stepped apart, and walked out into the light, into the large empty hall, as if nothing had taken place.
Kuyuk took them to three canyons with monkey sun god petroglyphs. At each place they drove to where the dirt track became impassable and then hiked on farther, until they came to the rock art. The petroglyphs were small, only a few inches high, and each was carved on a boulder that sat in some spot utterly lacking in significance. Just the steep limestone canyons, the rivers of rock, and on one rock, inexplicably, the carving. They searched all around each rock. They explored the canyons. They saw nothing to suggest Peking Man was here instead of in the cave. There was only the jumble of rocks, and the petroglyphs.
"You’re right about these," Spencer said to Kong. He stood staring at one of the carvings in the third canyon, his usual blue work shirt spotted with sweat. "The way the carving’s worn down-it looks really old. Late Paleolithic at least. Yet it’s a complex motif-sophisticated-and a monkey, which was a nonnative animal. And this far up the canyon"-he paused, looked up and down the slope-"so far from the valley floor where they must have lived. Who were these people?"
Kong looked longingly at the rock carving while she translated. "Shui dou bu zhidao, " he answered, No one knows.
"A messenger brought it," she said to Spencer, holding out the single sheet of crackly onionskin paper. "I’ll translate. ’Invoice to the American Dr. Spencer. For special escort services requested, including four trucks, twenty armed men, three munitions specialists, and two vault technicians-’ "
"I didn’t request all that!"
"Of course you didn’t. Anyway: ’Please remit in advance our costs, twenty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight renminbi. Cordially, Lieutenant Shan, People’s Liberation Army, Commander, Alashan Base, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.’ "
Spencer sank down on the edge of his bed and dropped his face into his hands. "Twenty-eight thousand what? What?"
"Renminbi." She calculated. "Almost thirty-four hundred U.S. dollars."
"What!"
"That’s what it says."
"But that’s impossible."
"Nothing’s impossible. This is how things work."
"I can’t believe people stand for it."
"You know what a lot of the Chinese say about their system? Yi pan san sha, That China is a plate of sand. If they don’t have a firm hand holding the whole thing together, it will fly off to the heavens in random pinwheels, no gravity. So they expect stuff like this. They work with it. It’s the deal."
"Why didn’t he bring this up in the meeting?"
"I suppose he found it difficult to ask you directly." Of course, she knew, it was also because she’d just beaten him and he’d lost unimaginable face.
"But I don’t have any more money."
"I know," she sympathized.
He rubbed at his head. He took his notebook out, wrote the numbers, and stared at them. "Alice, help me out here. Is there any way around this?"
"No," she said. "Not entirely. The PLA is a business. You’re a customer. You want something special and it’s going to cost. Now the first price has been named. In my experience, once a bribe is demanded, it has to be satisfied. It might be negotiated down-but it must be paid. Otherwise he’ll lose face again. And then you’ll never get what you want."
"So how do we negotiate?"
She thought. "Entering a nuclear silo is a pretty stiff request. I think it’s worth at least a thousand U.S. dollars. Let’s say you aim to end up at that level-that would be about eight or nine thousand renminbi-you should start out offering say, half that. Offer four or five hundred dollars. Then there’s room to compromise."
"I don’t even have that much to spare."
She fell silent.
"You got a credit card?" he asked.
"Of course."
"Well?"
She looked at him sharply. "Well what? Would I put up the money?"
"We’ve come this far! Alice, you saw it-the monkey sun god-the cave-the fossils’re in there!"
"But why should I-"
"Look, I know how this must sound to you. But I would pay you just as soon as I could."
"Bie shuo-le, " she said in Chinese without thinking, Don’t talk like that.
"You mean you will?"
"I didn’t say that."
"But you will?"
"I have to think."
"Alice, I would-"
"Save your breath." She cut him off.
He stopped.
Who am I really? she thought. Am I a woman who’s careful, who follows the set plan, does only her duty? Because there is no need for me to go any farther than I’ve gone already; I’ve given all this time without pay. So I could stop. Or I could commit to go on, a little farther, into all this that I never expected in my wildest dreams to happen. Breaking somerespected boundaries means a torrent of new life. And Lin. Lin wants Peking Man, wants it so badly… "Anyway," she said. "That’s the way to negotiate. We get a much smaller amount of cash, we show it to Shan-U.S. dollars, you never know-he just might take it."
"But where are we supposed to get actual U.S. dollars in Eren Obo?"
"Oh, that’s no problem. That, they’ll have."
"What? No phones here, no running water…"
She rolled her eyes. "You are so naive, Adam. You’re right, there’s not much here in Eren Obo. But I guarantee you, they will have American currency."
The next day Alice went to the village bank. She had decided to front Spencer’s money and he had fallen all over himself, thanking her, the night before. "Don’t thank me," she had said. "It’s only a loan. And don’t you think I’m dying to go into the cave too?" Now as she entered the single desk-crammed room inside a tiny loess-brick structure to draw money on her credit card, she noticed something odd.
"Is that a phone?" she asked.
"Does it look like a phone?" the Mongol inquired.
"Of course. Sorry."
He shrugged and went back to counting out her money in U.S. tens and twenties.
"Might I use it?"
He stared at her as if she had asked for a free camel. "This is the only telephone in the village! It is for the bank’s use."
"Pitiable," she said softly.
He gazed at the amazing pile of American money, mouth working silently. Finally he said, "Of course, for a small fee, the bank might consider allowing its use. I’m not too clear. I could ask. We’re talking about an emergency, of course."
"Of course," she agreed, and took her money and left.
Kong Zhen had also noted the presence of a telephone in the bank; he possessed an internal radar that guided him infallibly to available telecommunications devices. A gift of rough, sweet local wine to the bank manager came first. Then, the next day, he casually asked permission to make a call to Beijing.
Kong chose the time with care. It was early morning; the bank would be half empty. In Beijing, his cousin Vice Director Han would just be sitting down at his desk, with tea. And then the phone would ring.
"Have you eaten, elder cousin?" Kong asked amiably when first greetings had been exchanged.