Lost in Translation

11

First they had to cross the Helan Shan. Through most of its length, running north-south parallel to the local flow of the Yellow River, it was a towering escarpment-completely impassable. Its limestone walls rose from four thousand to thirteen thousand feet in less than a mile. So they had to drive around to the south end, where the range crumbled down to brown peaks of dirt and rock and was cut by passes. They rattled up the burning asphalt road. The jeep engine groaned down a gear. Alice laid her head on the seat and watched the gray specter of the Helan Shan’s crest, the wall of rock Teilhard had loved, a million years in the making.

Through the pass itself there was a brief shady forest of cedar and pine. This was not the highest zone: in the upper elevations, to the north, Alice could see the deep green belt of spruce. Higher still, above the tree line, rose the glaciated peaks of bare stone.

This long, thin range divided the two deserts Teilhard had written about, the Tengger and the Ordos. It was the Tengger that spread out in front of them now, as they roared down the Mongolian slope. The road was less steep on this side, winding a little more gently down through the oak brush and rock piles. It settled finally into a long, rocky alluvial apron that landed in a sea of stabilized dunes, shadowed with a thin, patchy cover of brush.

Near the bottom they passed a few dwellings, simple earth boxes with holes cut for their doors and windows. Roofs of mud and straw, held by a jutting row of rafters. These were the only signs of human habitation.

The last half hour into Eren Obo was on a dusty, unpaved road cut with deep ruts and potholes. And then Eren Obo itself: a desert town frozen in time.

To Alice, Eren Obo was another Tonopah, Nevada-the way Tonopah had looked to her when, years before, she’d first driven out west from Texas. Just the sight, now, of these low sand-colored buildings, this contained little grid backed right up to a tributary range of brown desert mountains and the blazing blue sky, brought back the memory of being a college student, on the highway, in an open car, pretending she was flying away from her life as she drove west.

But this was Mongolia. The streets were full of dark, chisel-faced men, laughing over their complicated board games on the sidewalk, piloting pickups through the unpaved streets.

"This is the hotel?" Spencer asked. It was a two-story stucco building with glass doors, linoleum in the lobby. And no other guests besides themselves.

A fuwuyuan took them up to their plain white-walled rooms, each with a narrow bed and toilet dry as bone. And a powdery sink-also never used. There appeared to be no running water. So why had they installed the plumbing? Alice switched the plaintive faucet on and off. There was a TV, though-naturally! She flicked it on. Only one channel, a horse-oriented sporting event in Mongolian.

"Will you be comfortable?" came a voice in Chinese.

She turned. Lin in the doorway. "And where is your room?" she asked.

"Duimian, " Across the hall.

"Amazing. We are near each other."

He inclined his head.

"Do you like that?" she asked boldly.

"Lin Boshi!" They heard from downstairs. Kong’s voice.

"You should come, bring Dr. Spencer," Lin said. "The forestry man’s downstairs."

"Xing."

On the first floor they found a kind-faced, rough-and-ready Mongol in loose clothes. "I am called Kuyuk," he said in heavily accented Chinese. "Is it true you’re looking for the ape-man?"

They walked into a side room off the lobby and eased into upholstered chairs around a low wooden table. "This is what I was told," Kuyuk continued. "But ape-man fossils have never been found here. Never! I am therefore not sure how to help you."

"We’re not looking for a new ape-man site," Spencer explained. "We’re looking for the original cache of Peking Man bones-the artifacts from 1929."

Alice’s translation caught up, and Kuyuk’s sun- and wind-burned face with its towering cheekbones creased in bewilderment. "Peking Man! But why here? We are so remote."

"We think there’s a chance it was hidden near here at the end of the war. We need to determine first if anybody is alive who might know whether a tall, thin Frenchman visited the town in the spring of 1945. Here is his picture." Spencer produced an old photograph and passed it around. Kuyuk studied it seriously, as if Father Teilhard were someone he might have seen recently on the desert-dirt streets.

"We have evidence he was corresponding with someone here at that time. That someone sent him a drawing of your local rock art. Here." Spencer pulled out a sketch of the monkey sun god and showed it to the Mongol. "What if the French priest hid Peking Man near Eren Obo? Somewhere near"-he pointed to the drawing-"one of these? As a forestry manager you know the land. You know where these petroglyphs are. We need you to help us pin down the places he might have put it."

The man stared into space for a moment, rubbing his brown hands, then said: "Yes, of course-I have seen this rock art up in the Helan Shan. But you will have to talk with our Leader. Anyway tonight, at six o’clock, we hold a dinner for you. The Leader will attend. The Leader knows more about past events than anyone else. See you at six."

A silence fell after Kuyuk walked out. "Who’s the Leader?" Alice asked.

"Ah!" Kong smiled. "They used to call the man who controls Alashan Banner the Prince. Now he is simply the Leader." In the last few days Kong had become more relaxed. He had stopped clipping his cell phone to his belt, since they were out of range. There were no lines for his fax. He had changed his suit pants for khakis and his white athletic shoes were streaked with dust.

"Whoever he is," Spencer said, "let’s hope he kept good records."

The Leader waited at the banquet table in the small outbuilding that passed as the guesthouse dining room. Kuyuk sat on his left. A young woman with high, narrow eyes and a wide, composed slash of a mouth was to his right. Other Mongols lounged against the walls.

"Sit!" the Leader barked. He spoke Chinese with an accent. He was in his mid-fifties, vigorous, the black hair racing straight back from his bronzed forehead. He half rose from the round table set with plates and teacups and tiny wine cups. "Tea!" he called. One of the men from the wall sprang up and poured. "You know Kuyuk," he said, and then indicated the woman on his left. "Ssanang. My daughter. Eh, it’s a long time since an outsider came to Eren Obo. The last one was a soil-conservation man from Australia. Let me see-five years ago. Welcome. Trouble you to explain your work."

Spencer fell right into his theory. The Leader listened carefully as the American told how Teilhard got the bones back late in the war. Everyone at the table looked at the drawing of the petroglyph. "So you see, we have to think like Teilhard," Spencer concluded.

"Cigarette?" the Leader asked. He held out a pack of the smelly local brand.

"Uh"-Spencer drew back-"no thanks."

The pack went around the table. Kuyuk and Kong helped themselves. The woman Ssanang declined. Alice stole a glance at Lin. No. He didn’t take one.

The Leader leaned to Kuyuk, accepted a light. All around, the Leader’s men took out smokes and lit up. The discreet fffft of matches, the pull of indrawn breath circled them, then the cigarette smell rolled overhead.

"Now," said the Leader, exhaling a pale cloud, "you say we must think like the Frenchman. First?"

"First"-Spencer grinned-"he loved it here-the countryside, the Helan Shan. Okay. I figure to Teilhard, the Helan Shan might have been a perfect place. It was a landmark, a mountain range. It had unique rock art, a motif that was found no place else in the world. Something to guide scientists to the spot later. But more! He sensed beauty here. I mean divine beauty. He said in his letters that here he felt close to God."

The Leader listened closely to her translation, approval replacing the neutral glaze on his face. "It’s so! Any man with a heart would feel that in the Helan Shan!"

"Yet it was remote," Spencer pointed out. "He could hide something and know it would never be disturbed. There’d be a marker-the petroglyph. And a dry, favorable climate.

"Other types of terrain around this village, I think Teilhard would have passed over. He wouldn’t have hidden anything in the desert floor, for instance. The sand shifts too much. He might never find it again. And the alluvial fans are no good either-flash flooding. So if he got Peking Man back, if in fact he came out here with it in 1945-I say he took it up to the mountains. Near some rock art." Spencer sat back.

"Interesting." The Leader stubbed out his cigarette. The doors flung open at the end of the room and three garishly made-up Mongol girls twirled in with platters above their heads. With a flourish they set down steaming platters of sculpture: sautéed eggplant and hair vegetable, arranged in small mountains and canyons to look like the desert’s wide open spaces, with a Great Wall of crenelated Spam down the middle of each plate. "Please," said the Leader happily, and he helped himself.

Alice stared. So different from Chinese manners! In China the host would serve others first, would not eat until the guests began. She bit into the eggplant; it was simple, but fresh and perfectly cooked. The Spam she pushed discreetly to the side. This was just the first course, she knew. She loved banquets. They always included a stupefying parade of food, endless dishes, five times as much as anyone could eat. In America, where food was plentiful, such a display would be impolite. In Asia it was de rigueur. She ate happily.

"To your visit," the Leader cried, and raised his tiny cup.

They all drank. She had to hold in a yell, the alcohol was so strong. It burned all the way to her stomach.

"That’s some moonshine," Spencer sputtered. "So." He wiped his mouth. "What do you think about my idea?"

"Most interesting." The Leader reached into his shirt and withdrew an envelope.

"What’s that?"

"Please have a look." He handed it over.

Spencer opened it and gently extracted a frayed, folded paper. Then he almost tipped over his chair.

Alice craned over. Teilhard’s signature! She could not really read French, or speak it, Je sais me faire comprendre, c ’est tout, she would answer when someone asked her, but this was clearly a note of thanks. She swallowed. Even with her patched-together French she could see the phrasing was not current, but reflected the flowery style of a bygone time.

"See the date," Spencer breathed.

She swallowed, nodded. May 1945.

"This is the man, then?" The Leader made a small gesture to the men by the walls, and one sprang up and refilled their wine cups.

"Jesus-yes-it’s him!" Spencer thrust the note over to Kong and Lin. They erupted into Chinese.

Spencer pressed open his notebook and wrote excitedly, then leaned forward. "Where’d you get this?"

"From my father."

"You mean-"

"Your Frenchman came here in 1945. He saw my father, stayed for many days. He talked of his love for this Banner. Do you know its name? Alashan. And it was as you said. The priest told my father he had been happier here in Alashan than anywhere on earth."

Spencer, Lin, Kong, and Alice exchanged glances.

"But so sorry, according to my father he said nothing about any fossils. The subject of Peking Man was never raised. In fact, my father said the visit lacked any obvious purpose."

"Yet that could be consistent," Kong said slowly.

They all stared at him.

Kong puffed on his cigarette. "Suppose the Frenchman did bring the Peking Man bones? Would he take the Leader into his confidence? Maybe not. It might have seemed too risky."

The three girls swept back into the room with the main courses: shredded lamb with chili peppers; deep-fried carp, hauled overland from the Yellow River; creamy scrambled eggs, and high piles of tomato and eggplant stir-fry, all with huge tureens of white rice.

"Still," said Alice, "he would tell someone where he put it -wouldn’t he? Someone?" She translated her words into English for Spencer.

"True," Lin put in. "He was growing old. He wouldn’t have wanted the secret to die with him."

Ssanang, the Leader’s daughter, cleared her throat and spoke for the first time. "I agree." Her gaze was direct and candid. It affected none of the womanish retreat a Chinese woman would use. "Perhaps there is someone here the French priest contacted-someone with whom he cleared his heart."

"The Mongol family," Lin said.

"Shenmo?" Ssanang asked.

"Shuode shi di yici lai, " I’m talking about the first time he came here. And Lin explained how Teilhard had come to Shuidonggou in 1923 and befriended the family of Mongols there. "We did find their homestead," he concluded sadly. "But it was long abandoned."

"Of that family, from Shuidonggou, we would know nothing," the Leader apologized. "It is out of our Banner. You should seek the help of someone on that side of the border."

"We have," Alice told him. She thought about Guo Wenxiang. Would he yet learn anything? Would he even be able to get in touch with them up here?

Food was served around, and in the silence of their temporary impasse they fell to eating. "Is your father still living, then?" Spencer asked the Leader.

"Yes."

Everyone felt the sudden increase in voltage. "Can we meet with him?"

"Oh, no, the Leader doesn’t see anyone anymore, especially outsiders. He spends his time in contemplation."

"I thought you were the Leader…" Spencer glanced around the table, confused.

The man shook his head. "No. His son. But I attend to all the Banner’s affairs. And I assure you, he has told Ssanang and me everything. He remembers these events with great clarity." He snapped his fingers for more wine, which was instantly poured by one of his men.

Dr. Lin stood. "Health, long life." They all drained their cups.

Alice put her empty cup down with exaggerated slowness, afraid she would somehow miss the table and send the tiny thing crashing to the floor. Her mind was a whirl. There. The cup met the tablecloth with a hard bump. God, the stuff was strong. She looked at her plate. Had she eaten all that?

"Will you have more?" Kuyuk asked, following her gaze and reaching for the nearest platter, which still held a gelatinous mass of hair vegetable and green, glisteny peppers.

"No," she said, feeling the word come out of her throat like a bubble and float to the top of her head. "No-I couldn’t possibly-"

"The lamb, then!" the Leader cried. "Bring the lamb!"

"What did he say?" Spencer whispered.

"He said, the lamb." Alice closed her eyes, feeling full now, finally. God, could they really bring more food?

Of course they could, in China.

The Leader had his cup up in the air again. His grinning face seemed to swim at her. "To the friends of the Frenchman!" he called, and upended his cup.

She translated, then drank again. Before, it had seemed like fire going down; now she barely felt it. Just a warm liquid line running from her tongue to her stomach.

"Mo Ai-li," said Kuyuk, leaning toward her. He looked almost sober, although he had drunk every round. "Tell me how you learned to speak."

"In school," she said, and with the two abrupt words a kaleidoscope of her years at Rice rolled over her, pulled into flaccid Edvard Munch shapes by the alcohol: beginning Chinese, intermediate, advanced… the two hundred and fourteen radicals, streaming down the page in the front of her notebook, the nine thousand characters she had committed to memory, writing each a thousand times, then another thousand times, then more…

Her teacher had been a soft-spoken little gentleman of Manchurian ancestry who wore old slippers in the classroom and always buttoned a sweater vest over his trim shirt and tie, even in the summer months. He had a lined, dark-bronze face and a fastidious way of clearing his throat before he spoke. "See how each character combines the radicals, the component symbols of its basic nature-man, wood, fire, water, rain, the sun, the moon-to form an ideogram for each thing known to man. Thus each time you sit down to write, you review, by inference, the nature of the world itself. It is an unending labyrinth, timeless and secure. Yet never static. For," he told her, "each phrase can be interpreted in different ways-especially in spoken Chinese. Never one meaning, always many. Not like English. And our idioms-the best ones are not literal, no, not at all, instead they are oblique, they make reference to legends, stories, famous dramas, and books. They do not offer specific information, do you understand me or not? They produce a state of mind! Ah, so few of you outside people grasp the pleasure of speaking a truly civilized language -never base, never obvious and therefore clunky and painful, as English is…"

But Alice had understood. Chinese was a huge maze-world: stable yet evasive. Nothing was permanently what it seemed. Yes meant maybe and no meant maybe and so did everything in between-other Westerners saw this as Chinese prevarication but to Alice it was simply the natural mutation of things. Natural and welcome-because here in China the self could always be reinvented. She, too, could become someone else. Eventually. Or so she’d told herself all these years.

"Your Frenchman," said the Leader. He threw a loose, lubricated wave at the letter, which was propped now at an odd angle against a soy sauce bottle next to the wine.

"Teilhard, my good friend!" called Spencer. "Turn my life around!"

Alice did not translate anymore. No one seemed to care.

"The Frenchman," the Leader repeated, but in a different voice, an insistent voice which commanded their attention. Silence settled. He continued: "The Frenchman went to the lamasery during his visit. To the baisi. It is recorded. This is a sacred place, high up a canyon."

They stared.

"What?" Alice managed.

"Kuyuk will take you there tomorrow."

But just then the doors flew open and the girls in the shiny red lipstick bore in the lamb, still whole except for the head, slow-roasted out in the open air to a dark crackly caramel. The smell was round, pitched, monumental. The men who’d been lounging around the edge bolted from their seats now, and with instant, sinuous grace produced long and copiously decorated daggers from within their clothes. They fell on the meat in a circle. Slices dropped into their hands and were carried to plates.

She whispered to Spencer what the Leader had said about Teilhard visiting a lamasery. He leaned over, intent on her English, eyes fixed in a glassy stare at the steaming meat in front of him. Then his face broke open in an unfettered smile.

"This is it," he whispered, writing the three words in his notebook as he said them to her. She watched him underline them.

He’s drunk, she thought, but he might be right. We might actually find the damn thing.

"I have a toast," Spencer announced, pushing away from the table and standing with exaggerated care. He held his wine cup in front of him. Then he dipped two fingers in the wine and tossed the drops on the floor. "To the earth!" he cried. He dipped again and flicked drops into the air. "To the sky!" The third time, he wet his fingers and drew them across his own forehead. "To the ancestors!" he finished.

There was a stunned silence, broken by a thundering cheer as the Mongols leapt to their feet and drank. "The American!" they called, hoisting their cups. "The American!"

The Leader drank, beaming. "How do you know this toast of ours?"

"Books!" Spencer cried happily. He raised his cup and drank. "History, letters, memoirs of foreigners who have come here."

"Impressive," Alice grinned, toasting him.

They all fell to eating lamb, which was lean and long-cooked and fell apart perfectly in their mouths. When she pushed her plate back she was aware of Lin’s gaze and risked a glance at him. He was watching her quite openly, as if there was nothing to hide. He smiled, a smile that seemed magically to target only her.

She smiled back.

"Now!" called the Leader with a hearty clap, and one of the knife men was back in a spinning instant to the table.

On the Leader’s signal the man used a quick pirouette of his hand to disengage the glistening suet oblong of the lamb’s tail. He deftly cut off a long, paper-thin slice, and bore it to Alice on his open brown palm.

"All Mongols must do this." The Leader laughed.

"Oh, I can’t," she said, affecting retreat. It was an accepted ploy in Chinese manners. Women could excuse themselves from any excess by saying, simply, that they could not. As if they were physically unable. This invoked the female frailty that Chinese society, despite the fact that it no longer actually bound the feet of pampered girls, still found endlessly compelling.

Lin smiled at her Chinese decorum and looked away. Whether his smile was one of affection or amused superiority, she could not tell.

"Then to the American scientist," insisted the Leader.

The brown man, his planar face creased by a smile, carried the lamb fat to Spencer.

"To be a man, you must." The Leader smiled.

"All right!" Spencer slapped the table with his palm.

"You should take it all in one gulp," Alice whispered in Spencer’s ear, repeating what the knife wielder was declaiming in Chinese. "Don’t stop. This is a manhood thing. Don’t look back."

He nodded, an intimate glance to her, they were confederates, the Americans.

The Mongol pushed the tip of his middle finger right up against Adam Spencer’s pale Caucasian lip. He tilted the blond head back with his other hand, as if in baptism, and then the white slab, with a sickening fat sluicing sound, disappeared down Spencer’s mouth. The American contorted a long instant. Then he swallowed hard, grinned broadly.

The room roared with approval.

"The scientist! The friend of the Frenchman!" the Leader cried. "He’s as one of the Mongols!"

Alice made it back to her room, across the open courtyard, then the stone-floored empty lobby, then the stairs. Come on, up. Up. Next loomed the linoleum hallway, and her door, then suddenly there was her tufted bedspread, which flew up and slammed her in the face.

Where was she? Eren Obo, the Mongolian desert.

She groaned and turned over. Was that someone knocking on the door? Again. A knocking sound. Yes. "Come in," she said. Now that she was down she couldn’t get up.

"Xiao Mo?"

"Oh-Lin…" She struggled to a sitting position.

"No, no." He held up his hand. "It’s quite all right."

She sank back gratefully, closed her eyes. At least she was still fully dressed. She opened one eye to see him looking at her.

"You’re all right?"

"Yes." She propped her head on the pillow, aware that she was floating, and he was standing over her. "Dr. Lin," she said. "Do you not think it remarkable that we met like this?"

"You know, Mo Ai-li, what’s remarkable is that we came to this place and Dr. Spencer was right: they do know something about Teilhard. He did come here. It makes me think there is hope, where before I had no hope. It makes me think things can change. I thank you for this. You and Dr. Spencer."

"Don’t thank me." She rolled her eyes. "It’s not like my life is much of an example."

"No, no. You’ve exerted yourself against the fates. You told me about your father. In our world, Mo Ai-li-our Chinese world-we just endure these things."

"So you do," she said, looking at him. Accept my world, she begged in her mind. My world where I am walled in, where Horace may soon be leaving me. Oh, was Horace going to die? Was he desperately ill right now? "But I get so frightened sometimes," she admitted.

"I know. Fear is only fear, though."

"And somehow you live without it."

"No," he corrected her. "You live with it." He smiled down at her. "Good-night, Mo Ai-li."

Alone in the hall outside her room, Dr. Lin paused. Could he do this, with this woman? Could he keep advancing toward her? She was so intelligent. He could talk to her, really talk to her. But she was a Westerner. Later she might grow bored, turn to some other man. Lose interest in him. The idea made him sick, even though he had not yet possessed her. He stared down the dimly lit hall, which ended in a square window framing the desert night.

No, he thought finally. She was not like that. Other Western women might follow convenience, but not Mo Ai-li. He could see her character in her face, her words, her actions. She would be a woman he could trust.

It was more than an hour next morning in the jeep, climbing steadily up into the arid, rubble-pile mountains, before they finally turned up a deep, cutting canyon. The ravine was covered with pebbles, the walls so narrow they scraped the jeep. As they climbed they saw smaller tributary washes twist down to join them. Then the canyon opened out to an enclosed plateau and Alice caught her first sight of the baisi temple complex. It was built in pagoda style, its vermilion-and-gilt colors howling against the brown cliffs. The repeating, supplicating roofs under the endless blue desert sky.

They got out of the car. Alice breathed deeply the good baking smell of hot sun on rocks. Then over the dry silence she heard a long, mournful note, calling like a boat horn.

A young man in plain terra-cotta robes, barefoot, shave headed, walked out into the light from the courtyard wall. He turned and spoke through the doorway behind him. The horn sound ceased. Another monk emerged, carrying a long metal instrument.

Kuyuk spoke to the lamas, who turned and led the way into the inner courts. One by one they all stepped over the bottom beams of a succession of great round gates, until they came to the central cell of the compound, where loess-brick rooms surrounded the bare yard.

The lamas said something to Kuyuk in Mongolian and he turned to the group, disappointment on his face. "I don’t know what we’ll be able to learn. These monks have only been here a few years. Records-there are none. The whole place burned in the Chaos and was rebuilt."

That’s the fresh paint, she thought. "No older monks remain?"

"None left living."

"The petroglyph, then," prompted Spencer. "Ask if they’ve ever seen one in the hills around here."

She took the paper from her pocket and gave it to Kuyuk. He talked to the monks and passed it back to her. "They say they have seen these before. They are carved on rocks here and there in the mountains. Some of these places are well known to the local people. But they have never seen one around here."

A silence. Finally Lin spoke up. "May we have a look around the area, then?"

Kuyuk conferred. "They ask only that we do not disturb the land, for it is sacred. Also he cautions that it is the time of wind."

Wind, yes: she had noticed the wind yesterday, at this same time, and then when the afternoon came to an end it had sunk low and died. Now that afternoon was upon them again the wind was back, a stinging fine-grained roar that whistled and slammed at them outside the high, protective walls.

They filed out of the complex and trudged up a narrow path that switchbacked steadily higher up the dirt flanks toward the sky. This was one of the side canyons, but one that looked like it went all the way up. They all tied on handkerchiefs, scarves, anything against the screaming wall of air that fought at them.

They stopped at a rise. Spencer heaved a look back at the sweep below. "Think like Teilhard!" he said.

"Anzhao Teilhard-de silu xiang!" She breathed heavily, looking downward. How marvelously and lucidly arranged is the geology here, she thought. The pattern of rock and shadow marching, like ripples in silk, down to the sea of dunes, then all the way out to the edge of the sky.

Lin was thinking the same thing. "The priest would have loved it here."

She put this in English, prompting Spencer to quote the man. "’The earth’s crust changes ceaselessly under our feet’- what’s next?"

" ’While the heavens sweep us along in a cyclone of stars,’" she finished. Spencer laughed.

They kept climbing against the onslaught of wind. They scanned the rocks, boulders, cliff faces on all sides, but there were no petroglyphs. Nothing but the sun and the wind and the walls of stone.

"A cave," Dr. Lin said finally.

"What?" Spencer stopped.

"Teilhard would have looked for a cave."

"Goddamn, yes, Dr. Lin, that’s exactly right." Spencer had been gleaming all day with the renewal of hope he’d been given last night at the banquet, grinning, writing in his book like a madman. Now, answering Lin, he seemed to ratchet up one notch more.

"The Helan Shan is full of caves," Kuyuk put in.

At that the wind roared louder, sending small rocks and pebbles dancing across the path. They huddled their heads down and climbed again, but this time studying the walls, each cleft and shadow and overhang, for signs of a cave as well as for the rock art.

They panted around a corner and saw, abruptly, the lamasery far below them, a box-walled labyrinth. They stood in silence a moment. Think like Teilhard.

"Look at that," Kong called, and pointed upward. It was a rock cairn, all the rocks piled on over many years by many pairs of hands, by travelers passing along the crest above where the five of them stood right now, the travelers stopping at the temple perhaps, or saying a solitary prayer, or adding a rock. From the top of the pile prayer flags, cloth long faded but still faint with Mongolian letters, crackled stiff and straight out in the wind.

"We need a cave." Alice sighed. "We need the monkey sun god."

"Let’s climb higher," Kuyuk said, muffled.

And later, after winding much higher and not talking, heads down in the wind, suddenly Kong’s voice was snatched out of him and tossed around: "I see one."

"What!" They all cried and shouted, but then, following Kong’s slim pointed finger, they froze, all seeing the abrupt black cleft in the hillside, the dark opening that was deeper somehow, blacker, than the mere shadow it should have been.

They scrambled to it, rocks and sand raining down away from their shoes.

"Careful," Dr. Kong said from the ledge above her. He extended his fine-boned hand.

"Caves are dangerous," Kuyuk barked. He seemed to have suddenly remembered he was responsible for two academics from Zhengzhou and two Americans, actual foreign guests. "It would be better if we came back with a light. I can prepare-"

"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?