The Mongol woman, taller than Mo Ai-li, stepped out. "I came here to buy things. It is the first anniversary of my aunt’s death."
"Lin, listen," Alice burst in. "She has a photograph!"
Eh, those eyes. Inhuman nearly. "Of what?"
"Of Teilhard!" she cried. "And Lucile!"
"Lucile Swan?" he repeated.
"Don’t you understand?" Mo Ai-li demanded. Her hand slipped out to touch his again. "It means Lucile must have come here with him in 1945. She was here in Eren Obo."
"But the Leader did not tell us this."
"It was not asked," Ssanang explained. She took a small book from her pocket, extracted a tattered picture, and handed it to him.
He bent over it with Mo Ai-li. The priest and the American woman stood small and wartime serious in the frame, arms folded, by a low cluster of buildings. Behind them a strange W-shaped cleft marked the mountain ridge.
"What is this place?"
"No one knows. One of the Leader’s men went with them and made the photo. It was a place the priest asked to be taken. That is all we knew."
"It looks like someone’s home."
"The Mongol family?" Alice asked.
He met her eyes briefly and then turned the picture over, as if some clue might be on the back. It was empty, crisscrossed only with a web of fine sepia crack-lines. "What about the men who accompanied them to this place?"
"Dead many years."
He blinked.
"I heard what happened in the cave yesterday," Ssanang said quickly. "That you found the box, and someone had removed Peking Man. Pitiable! Keep the picture. It has no use for us."
"Do you think we can find this place?" Alice asked.
"If you look"-Ssanang paused-"be careful. The Army is everywhere. Now I must go. My aunt’s memorial."
They watched her carry her purchases away down the hill.
Mo Ai-li stood close to him. He could feel the radiant warmth from her body, see her small chest heaving. If they were not in public he would have only to raise his hands and slip them around her shoulders, turn her toward him… He closed his eyes a second. He wanted to slide his hands under her shirt and feel her. Would he do it? Would he? Yes. If they were alone.
"Lin Boshi," she was saying. "Suppose Peking Man was actually removed by someone who was supposed to remove it? Who had been asked to do so by Teilhard?"
"What?" He looked down. "Interpreter Mo. In archaeology, when artifacts are taken, it is always by looters. Thieves. Why, Dr. Spencer has said in your own country, the Native American sites-"
She shook her head. "This is different, out here. And Lucile came here with Teilhard, don’t you see? That changes everything."
"How?" he asked, wanting to listen to her talk.
"Well. It proves Teilhard confided everything in her. And she would have wanted to make sure Peking Man was never lost. It was the key to his legacy. So I think, she might have seen to it that he arranged for someone to come and remove it. Later. It was because she loved him," she said.
"Ni shuo ta ai shenfu?"
"Of course she loved him. These people." She turned back to the photograph. "This house. This could be the Mongol family."
"Yet even the Leader and his men do not know where it is."
"I bet they didn’t really try to find out."
"Mo Ai-li." He allowed himself to run his hand once over her hair. He saw her eyes soften. "Wo kan ni zai zuo meng, " I see you are still dreaming. "Listen. Since the separation of heaven and earth, men have sought glory. And this, to find Peking Man again, would be the greatest glory to me. It is our ancestor. It is a thing beyond price. But I think it is not on my road."
"Can’t a road be changed?"
No, he thought sadly, it cannot; only a fool would even imagine that it could. But this he dared not say. She might take it to mean they could not try love together either-and that he could not bear to rule out. So he shrugged and said nothing.
She only smiled. "Let’s tell the others."
They turned to walk back. He didn’t ask-somehow he didn’t really want to know-what she had been doing inside a death-ritual store in the first place, a feudal place for ignorant tu people, out here in Eren Obo.
They huddled over the photo in the guesthouse lobby.
"I know Alashan Banner, every step of its earth," Kuyuk insisted again. "How is it I cannot recognize this place?"
"Maybe it’s outside the Banner," Kong said.
"Yet one of the Leader’s men took them here."
"What do you think, Adam?" Alice asked.
"I think it’s gone," he said flatly. "We found Teilhard’s box, right in the cave, near the rock art, right where it was supposed to be. But Peking Man had been taken."
"But now we have a new lead," she insisted.
"You call that a lead? It’s a picture."
"But…" She looked at the photo. "Okay, yesterday we were at a dead end. I admit that. But things change."
"Do they?" Spencer looked at her. His eyes said, Look at you, look at your life, has anything ever changed? "You think so."
"Yes," she said defensively, "I do." She turned to Dr. Lin. "Ni shuo zenmoyang?"
"I think we should continue on. Of course! This is something very important. We must keep looking."
She smiled at him. "Wo tongyi, " I agree. "Dr. Kong?"
Kong thought. "It’s like this," he said slowly. "Is there a chance to find the relics now? Yes. Perhaps. But it is a thing so distant now, so unlikely…" He paused. ’’Ke yu er bu keqiu," Only blind luck will bring us upon it, not searching. "Therefore. Since we have found an undreamed-of quantity of hunter-gatherer artifacts, of the highest quality under heaven – enough to support research for many years-I for one would prefer to continue surveying these sites and collecting artifacts." He looked at Adam. "Are you with me, Dr. Spencer?"
Adam listened to Alice’s translation and nodded decisively to Kong. "Yes. Let’s do it-survey, plan, come up with a good research design. It’s true. The Late Paleolithic opportunities out here are beyond anything I ever imagined." He opened his book and made a note. Alice could see him blocking Peking Man from his mind, putting another beacon in its place.
"Of course"-Kong looked at Alice and Lin-"if you two wish to continue to look for Peking Man, I invite you. Please."
Alice and Lin exchanged glances. Be alone together, all day? Quickly they looked away.
After the meeting broke up she walked by herself to the edge of the town. At its boundary Eren Obo’s hard-won civilization vanished all at once in the rock-strewn dirt. Then there was rolling yellow earth, ascending ever so gradually to the brown apron of mountain in the distance. Winded, scratching at the rivulets of sweat inching down through her hair, she slumped down by the side of the road.
She didn’t have to wait long. A truck came roaring out from the village. She jumped up and signaled.
It ground to a stop.
"Elder brother." The Mongol in the truck held on to the wheel with one callused hand, and with the other clutched the groaning gearstick. "I beg help. You are going to Yinchuan?"
He nodded, and spat casually onto the ground.
"I need a message delivered to someone there." She held up the envelope. "I will gladly pay you ten dollars American to do this thing which is so important to me." She passed him the envelope with a U.S. bill, noting that his eyes widened in a favorable way. "The address is written on the outside."
He looked at it and froze.
Oh, she thought, he can’t read characters. She rushed to explain. "The man’s name is Guo Wenxiang. It is one seventy-eight Gansu Street, the Chinese quarter. Can this be remembered?"
He secreted what she’d given him in his clothing, creased his dark face into a grin. "Ni fang xin hao, " Put your heart at rest. No further pleasantries, then, as there would have been with a Chinese; he simply nodded, gunned the engine, and drove off.