Текст книги "Bone Mountain"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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Yapchi Village was even emptier than the day before. The only sign of life seemed to be the lambs which pranced about in their earthen-walled pen, as though wildly excited that the sun had risen. Then he noticed faces in some of the windows watching him, and watching the path up the valley. The rumble of the drilling rig echoed off the valley walls in the still air, accompanied by the distant whine of chain saws. At the door of the last house, the simple timber house he had admired the day before, an old woman appeared. She offered Shan a quick bow of her head, then slowly, shyly, still standing in the doorway, extended a bowl of tea toward him. He stepped hesitantly through the open gate of the low wall that surrounded the house and nodded, accepting the bowl. The woman retreated silently into the shadow of her house, beckoning him inside.

The house consisted of one large room with a sleeping platform built into the north end and an alcove for preparing and eating food on the opposite side. The finely worked planks that made up the walls and floor bore a rich patina of age. A small wooden altar stood against the rear wall, near the sleeping platform, bearing the seven traditional offering bowls, and a framed photograph of the Dalai Lama, a single smoking stick of incense beside it. The carpet at the center of the room, though worn almost threadbare near the altar, depicted the endless knot, symbol of the unity of all things, and the other eight sacred emblems in rich reds and browns. Everything in the room seemed to be made of wood, or clay, or wool. The chamber was like a clearing in an ancient forest, radiating a natural, soothing tranquility.

The woman smiled awkwardly and sat on a squat stool near the sleeping platform, assuming a somber expression. Shan followed her uncertainly, and saw a figure in the shadows, leaning against the wall, on one of the two pallets unrolled on the platform. The figure turned, rising very slowly, his hand on the wall for support. The aged man moved with obvious effort toward Shan, one hand still on the wall. He sat on the edge of the platform, near the woman, and studied Shan as he smacked his cracked, dried lips together. Silence, Shan suspected, prevailed in the room, a fixture as real as the little altar and the simple benches that lined the wall. In the stillness he became aware of quick, shallow breathing and his eyes fell upon a small shape lying on a blanket in the corner of the platform. A lamb.

"We just wanted to thank you," the man said. His voice was hoarse, nearly a whisper, as though it had not been used in a long time. "I am called Lepka."

Shan lowered himself to the floor in front of the man, balancing the bowl between his legs. "I have done nothing. I lost the eye."

"But you came anyway," the man said, in a lama's voice. "Already things happen. You got the eye closer than it has been for a hundred years."

Things happen. Shan could not bring himself to question the aged Tibetan. What things? The destruction of Chemi's village? The gathering of knobs and army troops in the valley, probably for the first time since the terrible day when the eye was stolen? The distant rumbling of the oil derrick, scraping and grinding deep in the earth? The reckless talk of opposing the Chinese in the valley?

He offered a sad smile and studied Lepka. He had learned to think of such aged Tibetans as one of the treasures that the hidden parts of Tibet offered up, men and women who seemed to defy time, or at least to resist aging, who might live a century or more, and whose most vibrant memories were not of the times since Beijing had arrived, but before. The man's skin was like ancient parchment. He was very old, perhaps old enough to have been alive when the eye was taken from Yapchi. His gnarled fingers, Shan saw, were formed into a mudra, his thumbs pressed together, the knuckles of the first joints above the hands joined, the middle fingers extended and pressed together. With a blush of shame, Shan recognized the gesture. It was an offering mudra, the offering of water for the feet, used for initiating monks or receiving sanctified visitors.

"I went down to that place," Lepka declared. "I leaned on my staff and went down to that Chinese machine." He smacked his lips again and the woman handed him a bowl of water from the side of the platform, which he sipped from before speaking again. "I threw a stone at it." A thin line of water dribbled from his mouth as he spoke. "Sometimes demons make people have visions, make them see evil things that are not really there. But the stone hit metal, and bounced back. The workers laughed and said, 'look at the crazy old man.'" Lepka looked at Shan and grinned. He was missing most of his teeth. "But I can throw rocks good. When I was young I kept wolves away from the herds, with rocks and my sling. I threw another rock, and another, at different places. They laughed some more. But you know what?" he asked, then coughed and made a long wheezing sound before continuing. "I found a place that was a bell," he said with a meaningful gaze. "It didn't look like a bell, because it had been hidden in a different shape. But it sounded like a bell," he declared with a grin. "It was the essence of a bell, hiding there."

Bells, in traditional Tibet, were sometimes used to frighten demons away.

"And they didn't even know," Lepka said, and made the wheezing sound again. Shan realized it was a laugh.

Shan answered with a solemn nod and drank some tea. "Your home," he said, searching for something to say, "is so peaceful. Like a temple."

The woman smiled, and the old man surveyed the chamber slowly, as though seeing it for the first time. "The grandfather of my grandfather built this house," he said. "In the first year of the Eighth." He was speaking of the eighteenth century.

"It has heard many prayers," the woman added quietly. "Our son likes to bring the village here to meet with him on important decisions because he says no one ever speaks rudely in this house, for all the prayers that live in the wood."

Shan gazed back over the sleeping platform. He saw that there was another pallet, rolled, against the back wall, and suddenly he realized whose house he was in. "It's a long journey, to Lamtso."

The old man smiled. "When he was three years old, I took my boy for the first time. He sat on my shoulders as we walked and we would sing. For hours we would sing. And there was a dog, a huge mastiff that let him ride on its back. Sometimes he would lie down and fall asleep on that dog's broad back and the dog would just keep walking. I said it was too dangerous…" The hoarseness was gone from the man's voice, as though the memories had revived something inside.

"But you made all the other dogs work," a voice said softly, behind Shan. "You put packs on all the other dogs when we left the lake. All but that one, so I could ride it home."

"Son!" the woman cried and leapt up to embrace Lhandro.

The village headman looked up from his mother's arms and smiled wearily.

"Lha gyal lo, Lha gyal lo," Lepka intoned quietly, his eyes filling with moisture. "The salt has found its way again."

Lhandro stepped to his father and knelt, opening his hand to reveal a mound of brilliant white crystals. He raised his father's hand and solemnly poured the salt onto the dry, wrinkled palm and closed the gnarled fingers around it. The wheezing laugh erupted again from Lepka's throat, and he pressed the handful of salt against his heart.

As Shan stepped to the door sheep began streaming past the outer gate, salt packs still on their backs, coming from north of the valley. Excited greetings echoed down the central path of the village, but also warnings. He stepped outside in confusion. On the slope above the village, near the trees, several of those from camp stood waiting, some waving, some pointing toward the arriving caravan. Then he saw a figure run from the group, in the opposite direction, as if to hide. He turned and saw that not all the Tibetans had been pointing toward the caravan.

Nyma appeared in the midst of the sheep, worry clouding her face. "They searched all our bags, and made us leave five sheep for them," she blurted out, without a greeting. She looked at the rear of the caravan. Two army trucks were winding their way up their valley, just a few hundred yards behind the last of the sheep.

Lhandro appeared in the doorway behind Shan, raised a hand to warn his parents to stay inside, then swept past Shan, pushing him into the shadows. As Shan took a position just inside the door, the headman stepped out into the central path to wait for the trucks. A knot tightened in Shan's belly as he watched the trucks stop and a dozen soldiers jump out. One of them opened the side door of the first truck, emblazoned with a snow leopard, and a man in an officer's tunic stepped down.

"Good morning, Colonel Lin," a voice called out with false warmth from behind Lhandro. Through the open door Shan watched Winslow walk jauntily to Lhandro's side. The American had washed and shaved, and put on a clean shirt. "Another glorious day for youth league maneuvers."

One side of Lin's mouth curled up as he recognized the American. He turned and spoke to someone behind him, out of Shan's sight. A moment later a soldier marched past Winslow and Lhandro, holding a clipboard as he surveyed the village with restless, hawk-like eyes.

"The American embassy has no authority to meddle in the internal affairs of China," Lin growled as he took a step toward Winslow. He spoke loudly, as if to address a larger audience.

"Of course not," the American agreed in a business-like tone. "The Qinghai Petroleum Venture has an American partner. One of its American workers is missing. Matter of international relations," he added pointedly, in a voice as loud as Lin's.

"Not missing," Lin said readily, as if he had made it his business to know what the American had been doing in the mountains. "Dead. Most unfortunate."

Through the door Shan glimpsed a pair of soldiers advancing around the back of the village, behind the animal pens on the opposite side of the path. They seemed to be searching for something.

"Our village is honored by the presence of the glorious soldiers of the People's Liberation Army," Lhandro said in a flat voice, casting an uneasy glance at Winslow.

"Of course you are," Lin said in an amused tone as he lit a cigarette and shot a stream of smoke toward Lhandro. "And your honor can only increase."

The knot in Shan's gut drew so tight it hurt.

Lin stared at Winslow intensely, as though trying to will the American to back down. "There were others with you before. Tibetans. Two tall men." He paused and stared at Lhandro expectantly, then shifted his gaze toward Lhandro's feet as though reminding Lhandro that Lin had once had the headman in manacles.

"I had a driver…" Winslow offered in a speculative tone.

Lin's hand made a quick jerking motion upward, as if he meant to strike the American. But he stopped it in midair and it collapsed into a fist. He surveyed the soldiers moving through the village, then turned back to the American. "But later that day you insisted your driver leave you at the side of the road. Just drop you there and drive away. He was wrong to do that. His report caused quite a disturbance at Public Security. He was punished for his irresponsibility."

"I wanted to walk. Fresh mountain air and all. We call it trekking."

"But how did you get over here?" the colonel pressed. "The mountains are impassable."

"Almost."

Lin frowned. "The petroleum venture is going to bring great wealth to this valley," he observed to Lhandro in his loud, public address voice. "Comrade Lhandro," he added, as if the colonel wanted to remind the village headman that he still knew his name, still held his papers.

"Perhaps," Lhandro offered in an anguished tone, "there isn't any oil."

The amusement returned to Lin's face as he drew deeply on his cigarette. "There's oil. The geologists just have to prove how much. Already there is not enough room in the camp for all the workers, and others will be coming when the oil starts to flow. A pipeline will need to be built. Workers will be stationed here permanently to operate the pumps."

Lhandro stared at the colonel's boots. "We have an empty stable," he said in a hollow tone. "We could convert it, make straw pallets."

Lin's eyes flared, but it seemed as though with pleasure, not anger.

"Please colonel," Lhandro pleaded. "We are simple farmers. We have farmed this valley for centuries. We pay taxes. We could supply food to the workers…" His voice seemed to lose strength. "We have done nothing wrong," he added despondently, still staring at Lin's boots.

"You never explained what you were doing a hundred miles south of here that day."

"Salt," Lhandro said, extending his hand toward the sheep, which the villagers were herding into pens at the far end of the village. "We always go for salt in the spring." Even from his distance Shan saw the hand was shaking.

Lin answered with another frown. "This is the twenty-first century, comrade. You are required to have certificates from the salt monopoly."

Lhandro shrugged morosely, and stepped toward the gate that led to his house. A salt pouch lay on the low wall. He pushed his hand into the open side and extended a handful of salt toward Lin. "We have some money. We could pay the monopoly," he offered.

The colonel sighed impatiently, motioned to one of the nearby soldiers. The man roughly seized the pouch and tossed it on the ground, kicking it with the toe of his boot so that both of the side pockets lay flat. He produced a short bayonet from his belt and probed the contents of the open pocket, then looked up expectantly at Lin, who nodded. The soldier began stabbing the still-sealed second pocket, ripping apart its tight woolen weave, spilling the precious salt onto the ground.

"It is special salt," a woman's voice interjected. Shan saw Nyma step past the door opening to stand by Lhandro. "It could heal you," she declared to Lin, looking straight into the colonel's eyes.

"I'm not sick."

Nyma stared back, as if she didn't agree, but would not argue.

"You should be careful," Lin said icily. "Someone might mistake you for a nun. Yesterday Public Security arrested someone a few miles from here. Under his coat he wore a maroon band on his sleeve. He had a little piece of yellow cloth in his pocket."

Even from a distance Shan could see Nyma swallow hard. Lin meant an outlawed monk had been caught nearby, one reckless enough to carry a Tibetan flag in his pocket.

The tension became a tangible thing, like a frigid cloud in the air about them. Lin cast a gloating grin toward the American. "Even in America, Mr. Winslow," the colonel said, "those who commit treason are sent to prison." He gestured to the headman. "This man Lhandro knows about prisons. He had an old man with him, a former criminal who wore a lao gai registration." Lin's eyes squeezed into tight slits. "Where is that old man?" he barked abruptly. "And the one named Shan, the one who has no papers. They were not with you when you arrived with the sheep. If you are hiding them it will go worse for you when we catch them. And if any of you have something of mine," he said pointedly, "we will consider the entire village guilty of the crime."

There was another long silence as Lin surveyed the village with smoldering eyes. His gaze finally drifted downward, and he pushed the pouch of salt with the toe of his well-polished boot. "I am a simple man," the colonel said in a strangely frustrated tone. "I keep my world simple. There are those who belong to the new order, and those who are trying to. Everyone else," he said in a tone of mock apology, "has no place, and is owed nothing."

Winslow pulled the cover off his camera lens and Lin's face hardened. "The Qinghai Petroleum Venture," he said in a loud voice, as if he were making a proclamation to the entire village, "is prepared to give liberal compensation to all those who cooperate in building the new economy, in building the new valley. We are even honoring it with a new name. We have decided to call it Lujun Valley now," he said with a taunting expression. "I will be issuing orders for the maps to be changed."

Lhandro's head shot up and he lurched forward as if about to attack the colonel, until Winslow restrained him with a hand on his arm. Lin was renaming the valley to honor the Chinese soldiers who had destroyed its people a century earlier.

Lin paused, as if inviting Lhandro to attack, and seemed about to offer another taunt when he was interrupted by a booming noise, a distant, hollow repetitive thumping sound that echoed through the valley. Lin twisted about as though searching the derrick and the oil camp for the source of the noise. But it was not a mechanical sound. It was almost like a heartbeat, slow but steady. Shan found himself inching out the doorway, his eyes searching the outside wall. The deity drum was missing.

Lin's thin lips folded into something like a snarl. He gestured to the soldier who had stabbed the salt pouch, who instantly whistled toward the village. As the soldiers sweeping through the village turned he raised his left arm and clenched his right hand around the left forearm, then pointed to the west side of the valley and made a spiraling motion with his fingers. They were to deploy west, Shan guessed, and climb toward the sound.

"I will need to know about the men I saw with you," Lin said in a low voice to Lhandro. "There can be many ways to ask." He climbed into the nearest truck.

The drumbeat continued. In the distance Shan saw workers on the derrick standing still, looking toward the upper slopes. The few Tibetans who were left in the village had also emerged from their houses and were also gazing at the slopes, some with expressions of hope, others of fear.

The sound of the truck engines starting drew Shan's gaze away from the slopes, and he watched the vehicles drive away, not back down the path but directly to the west, across the fields of sprouting barley. A whimper rose from nearby and he turned to see a small figure huddled inside the earthen wall near where Lin had been standing. Anya had been hiding, listening to the colonel.

She gazed at Shan with wide, afraid eyes, then leapt up and ran down the village path, disappearing into the rocks and trees of the slope.

"Your drum," he asked Lepka as the old man stepped into the sunlight. "Where is it?"

"Gone, disappeared in the night," Lepka said with a shrug, and he placed his hand over his heart and closed his eyes a moment, as if seeking a connection between the drumming and the beating of his own heart.

"You mean someone from the village is up there?"

"No," Lepka exclaimed happily, his eyes wide, as if that were his real point.

Shan and Winslow exchanged worried glances and when Shan began jogging out of the village, in the direction Anya had taken, the American followed a step behind. They found Anya standing alone in the center of the canyon camp with only Lokesh and a handful of the Yapchi villagers. Tenzin and the purbas were gone. The sick strangers were gone.

"Up the trails," Anya said with a puzzled expression. "But these trails are for goats," she said, gesturing toward the end of the short canyon, where the slope was nearly vertical. "So many sick people…" she added, her voice drifting off. "They are fleeing. They saw the soldiers. They heard there are knobs at the camp. There is no healing in this valley any longer." The girl's voice faded again as she began staring intensely at a small hole near the base of a large boulder. She limped to the rock, then dropped to her knees and pressed her eye near the hole, as though she expected to see something inside it.

"He's so interested in Lokesh," Winslow said at Shan's shoulder as they both watched the girl in confusion. "Why?"

"When he found travelers from Yapchi coming from the south a former lao gai prisoner was among them," Shan said, his voice heavy with worry. "I think what he really means is that Lokesh could be a convenient suspect, could be arrested if no one else produces whatever Lin wants."

"You mean the eye."

"I don't think it's the eye anymore. Lin wouldn't trouble himself so over a piece of stone. I think what he wants is the one who stole the eye. Because whoever stole it committed a security breach."

"Dremu was going to steal the stone but the purbas stopped him," Winslow recalled.

Shan nodded. "They had other plans. They could have placed someone on the inside. Lin couldn't afford to let such a person escape. There would have been things more important than the chenyi stone in Lin's office."

"You mean Lin thinks the thief stole secrets. You mean they're looking for some kind of spy?"

Spy. The word had not occurred to Shan. But it had doubtlessly occurred to Lin. It would make sense. It would explain why the mountain commandos had come all the way from Lhasa, following a piece of a deity.

A figure rushed past them and bent towards Anya. It was Lhandro, and as he gently pulled the girl up he cast an apologetic glance toward Shan and Winslow. "Sometimes she forgets things," he said, as though the girl could not hear him. When Anya straightened her eyes were hooded, and she searched the landscape restlessly, without any sign that she saw them. "Sometimes all she can do is look for deities. I think it is another way they speak with her," he said awkwardly. "Sometimes we have to go out and search for Anya, with the dogs, like an old monk," he added, referring to the way some old monks might wander away in a spiritual reverie, or lose themselves while meditating on their feet.

Lhandro showed relief for a moment as Lokesh put his arm around the girl and guided her to a pallet. Then his eyes hardened and he surveyed the canyon. "Where is he? Horsetracks led into the valley."

"Dremu?" Shan asked. He had not thought of the Golok since seeing him ride away the day before.

"No sign of the bastard," Lhandro said. "He could be negotiating to sell it back to the soldiers right now."

"The eye?" Shan asked.

"Of course the eye. He knew exactly where it was. He ran away the morning after it was stolen. He knew the mountain trails. And he has helpers. We saw the tracks of three horses, not one." Lhandro looked back at Anya and Lokesh. "He will sell all of us if the price is right."

Shan walked one step behind Winslow as they approached the oil camp an hour later. The American had protested when Shan had said he was going with him to meet the camp manager, but Shan had insisted he would just go alone if the American did not want to accompany him. "Lin will pounce on you," Winslow protested. "He wants you in manacles."

"Lin is in the army camp, in those tents past the oil camp," Shan said in a thin voice. "He doesn't expect me to walk into the camp. And no one else will suspect me if they think I am connected with you."

Winslow had reluctantly agreed, but only if Shan stayed with him, and spoke only English, playing the part of an assistant. For thirty minutes they had worked on making Shan's clothes presentable, finding a nearly new shirt in the village for Shan to wear, over which the American had put his own red nylon coat. Finally, Winslow hung his expensive binoculars around Shan's neck.

The American began to whistle as they approached the derrick, and took several photographs as the workers waved, as though he were a tourist. They were broad shouldered, beefy men, Chinese and Tibetans, who smiled with pride and paused to pose for Winslow, their huge wrenches and hammers raised.

Two hundred yards before the camp was an open square of earth, the size of a large vegetable garden, where two figures knelt. They wore aprons, and one held a large magnifying lens as he studied something in the soil.

"Wasn't there last time," Winslow observed in a voice tinged with curiosity as they walked past the bent figures. "Guess the colonel lost a button."

No one at the camp seemed surprised to see the American. The workers who scurried about the complex of trailers and tents nodded briefly as Shan and Winslow slowly circuited the compound, or made no eye contact at all. Tall stacks of logs lay at the base of the slope where the logging was being conducted, a heavy gas-powered saw on a metal frame whirled and groaned as it cut the logs into long planks.

Shan was watching a huge diesel truck being unloaded of its cargo of heavy pipe, its engine idling loudly, when Winslow pulled him away. A young Han woman, looking out of place in a bright white blouse and neatly pressed blue skirt, had appeared at the door of one of the center trailers. She greeted them with a solicitous nod, then gestured them inside, into the fastidious world of the venture's management. Passing through a short hallway lined with dirt-caked boots and jackets they stepped onto a clean tile floor in a room furnished with two metal desks and a long sofa. Shan might have forgotten he was inside one of the metal boxes, except that all the furniture was bolted to the floor. Black framed, color photographs of famous Chinese landscapes– the Great Wall, the natural limestone towers of Guilin, the Shanghai waterfront– were screwed on the wall above the sofa. The woman opened the door to a small conference room. "I will bring tea," she announced, and left them to sit at the table.

The table was brown plastic, with simulated wood grain, as were the chairs. On the wall hung maps, many kinds of maps. Shan pulled a chair out, then found himself being drawn toward the walls. The oil venture needed precision in its geography. Three maps clearly depicted Yapchi, in sharply different scales, including one large one with a highlighted yellow line that wandered along the base of the nearby mountains to connect Yapchi to a red circle just west of Golmud, the large city more than two hundred miles to the north, the nearest airport and railhead. On a small metal side table there was a stack of single-page sheets that bore a reduced map outlining the route from Golmud to Yapchi, with landmarks highlighted. Shan took one, quickly folded it and stuffed it into his pocket.

"She's dead, Winslow," a gruff voice suddenly announced. "I'm goddamned sorry, but she's dead." The Westerner who spoke filled the door-frame. His hair, though close-cropped, was speckled brown and grey, as was the stubble of whiskers on his face, untouched by a razor for several days. His blue denim pants were held up by bright red suspenders. A cigar in a plastic wrapper protruded from the pocket of his light blue workshirt. The steaming liquid in the mug he set on the table was black coffee.

"My name is Jenkins," he said to Shan, extending a beefy hand.

Shan took the hand and the man squeezed his own, hard. "I am called Shan."

"Shan is helping me," Winslow interjected quickly, as though Shan had already said too much. "Do you know for certain, Jenkins? A man in the mountains said she fell. Said he saw it."

"Right off the edge of the world," Jenkins said, touching the map behind him at the same spot Zhu had shown them. "A thousand feet, she could have fallen." He turned back with surprise in his deep set eyes. "You saw Zhu? Here?"

Shan looked at the American manager in surprise. Had the Special Projects Director not informed Jenkins of his presence?

Winslow stared at the map intensely. "Did anyone try to find the body?" he demanded in a new, sterner tone.

Jenkins sighed. "You have any idea of the work we have to deal with here? I have deadlines. The goddamned banks are coming for inspection. Thieves stole half my garage tools last night. And I've got a horde of bureaucrats ready to descend in less than two weeks to celebrate our oil, even though I haven't struck it yet."

"Did you try to find her?" Winslow repeated.

Jenkins sighed once more and sat down heavily as the woman arrived with two oversized mugs of black tea. "The supply helicopter from Golmud. I asked them to do a flyover as soon as I got the details from Zhu. They saw nothing, and got called back to base. I'll send a team in on foot. I will. I promise I will. But not in the next two weeks. She's not going anywhere. Unless she went into the river, in which case she's gone already."

The big American looked from Shan to Winslow. "I'm sorry, Winslow. But plain talk is the only kind I know. I knew her before. This was our second project together. She was a star. My mother said the brightest stars always burn out early. I've lain awake nights trying to think if I did something wrong. I've written three letters to her family and torn each up. What do I say? Your daughter the trained field geologist, who had led field teams in Siberia, the Andes, and Africa, took a wrong step and fell? One of my Tibetan foremen said maybe she was called by the deities in the mountains," he added in an exasperated tone, and for a moment his head cocked at an angle, looking toward the wall.

"But even before she fell, she was missing," Shan interjected. He studied the room again. On a low shelf in the metal table was a stack of newspapers, the weekly paper published in Lhasa.

Jenkins drank deeply from his mug. "Sort of," he said, addressing his coffee mug. "I learned early on to give her slack. A strong head requires a loose rein. And if she had an excuse to be out of a city and in a camp she'd take it in a second, and likewise for being out of the camp to stay out in exploration. She got close to the Tibetans, started giving them English lessons. Once in a staff meeting she said America needed Tibet, whatever the hell that meant. She loved what she did, said she felt like an early explorer. She loved it here especially, even skipped days off to go back up on the mountain. Making new maps. The Chinese maps are rotten. Deliberate misplacement of locations, for security reasons, they say. Entire regions have never been surveyed. Who the hell knows what's out there?" He drank again. "There's another joint venture camp, a British one, two ranges north of here, about fifty miles away. I thought maybe her radio went dead, and she set out for the other camp. Or maybe one of her team got hurt and it was easier to take him out on the other side of the mountains. Could be a hundred reasons for no contact, I kept telling myself. Trapped in a blind canyon by an avalanche, maybe. When she left here the last time she left a whole pack of food behind, half her rations. Maybe she went to a village for food.