Текст книги "Bone Mountain"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

It was midnight when he awoke to find Lokesh staring at him with his crooked grin. "Who is supposed to be watching whom?" his old friend asked. Shan brought him a plate of cold tsampa and a bowl of tea, and Lokesh spoke energetically of little things, like a grey bird he had seen in the mouth of the cave, dipping itself in a pool of water, and a cloud he had seen that looked like a camel.

The chamber was silent except for the sputter of several butter lamps. Larkin had fallen asleep at her table, her head cradled in her folded arms. Most of the purbas were asleep, the others outside on guard duty.

"She has green tea, the American," Lokesh said, knowing that Shan preferred the green leaf.

Shan studied his friend. It was as if he were trying to avoid speaking of something.

"What are they doing, Lokesh? Larkin and the purbas. I fear for them."

Lokesh looked out over the chamber. "I saw old images painted on the wall in the back. I think that hermits once lived here."

"What are they doing?" Shan repeated.

Lokesh shrugged. "Trying to align the earth deities and the water deities."

Shan sighed in frustration.

"I think they are trying to learn about how miracles are performed," Lokesh added in an excited whisper.

"They have explosives," Shan said, and pointed to the wooden boxes, stacked where the purbas slept.

Lokesh stared at the crates a long time. "I don't know. Nyma and Somo, they wouldn't use avoiders."

Avoiders. It was part of their particular gulag language, stemming from a teaching given in their barracks by an old monk, in his twenty-fifth year of imprisonment, just before he died. Guns were avoiders, he said, and bombs and tanks and cannons. They allowed the users to avoid talking with their enemy, and allowed them to think they were right just because they had more powerful technology for killing. But those who could not speak with their enemies would always lose in the end, because eventually they lost not only the ability to talk with their enemy but also with their inner deity. And losing the inner deity was the greatest sin of all, for without an inner deity a man was an empty shell, nothing but a lower life-form.

Shan looked at Somo and Nyma, both asleep on the floor of the cave. He could never consider them lower life-forms.

"We must speak with those purbas in the morning," Lokesh said in a sorrowful tone. "If a bomb is set off, Jokar is lost forever." Despair flashed across his face, then he settled back into his blanket as Shan blew out the lamp closest to the pallet.

But in the morning the purbas, the American geologist, and the explosives were gone.

"They left three hours ago," Lhandro said in a confused voice. He was standing at the cave opening, as if he had been out searching for them. "They wouldn't speak with me. Except some of the purbas gave me letters for their families. Before they left they sat in a circle and prayed, even the American woman, then they picked up their boxes and left. They made a fire outside." He gestured toward the opening.

Shan and Somo darted out onto the ledge. Against the wall was a small pile of ashes, fragments of charred papers. The maps. They had burned their maps, the notes of their research. As if they had abandoned the idea of publicly announcing the discovery of the river. There was an alarming sense of finality. They had taken the explosives. They had burned their records. The convoy of officials was arriving that morning.

"She left a note," a melancholy voice said over his shoulder. Winslow stood with a small piece of paper, a page ripped out of Larkin's notebook. "Her address in the States, where I should write to tell her parents about her if things don't go well. A special telephone number in Lhasa where people might have information about her. She says no one but me will have that number. She says come back in the summer and we can make a camp at the sacred lake." The American looked up the mist-shrouded trail, toward the grey patch above them where daylight was beginning to show. "If she's still alive. She says a venture supply truck will be leaving for Golmud before noon, to be sure I am on it, because she's an American taxpayer and wants me back at work."

Before noon. Before the officials were scheduled to arrive, she meant.

"Everyone has to go down," Shan said urgently, "get down to the road. Flee." Lokesh looked at him pointedly. Shan realized he sounded like someone else they had heard desperately exhorting everyone to flee. Perhaps Drakte, too, had given up hope. He gestured toward Chemi's uncle, who seemed to be stirring to consciousness at last, and would need help if he were to make it down the mountain. "The soldiers will be swarming over the slopes by tomorrow."

The refugees looked at Shan oddly, as if he had misunderstood something about them, but they began leaving the cavern in small groups, wearing anxious expressions. Shan heard one young farmer call out excitedly. "Siddhi's chair," he declared in a proud, defiant voice. Shan's heart sank. They were going to the high meadow where the other farmers and herders were gathering, waiting, because they had faith, because they believed the old lama would somehow escape and find them to lead them into a new age.

Finally only a handful of the villagers remained, waiting to carry out Lokesh and Dzopa. But when they went to lift the big man onto a blanket to carry him, he called out in protest and pushed away his niece.

"Rinpoche!" the man cried in a tormented voice.

Shan took a hesitant step toward the man. Dzopa blinked rapidly, then pushed his brow as though to stretch open his eyes. He had been cut badly on his arm and taken a concussion when the village was bombed. He had an infection, Chemi had said, and a high fever that made him delirious. Shan had felt sorrow for the man who had left his freedom in India only to return to his village just when it was being destroyed. The delirium had seized him again, and he was calling for a teacher he had left in India.

Chemi spoke rapidly to him, saying comforting words, and handed him a bowl of tea. The man stared at his niece as though he did not recognize her, then drained the bowl. With shaking hands he reached for a pan of tsampa on the floor and began shoving the food into his mouth with his fingers.

"I must find Rinpoche," Dzopa said between mouthfuls, his eyes growing steadier.

"We will get you down to the road today," Chemi said uncertainly.

The man hesitated and gazed at her with wide, hollow eyes. "He made me well again, my niece, all of me. He knows the working of miracles," Dzopa said. Then, more urgently, looking around the cavern he asked again, "Where is Rinpoche?"

Shan stepped to the man's side. "Jokar is below," he said tentatively. "In Yapchi."

"Jokar?" Nyma asked. "But this man-"

Dzopa fixed Shan with a penetrating gaze. His eyes were no longer cloudy. "Jokar Rinpoche is in Yapchi Valley?" The question leapt from his lips in a voice that was suddenly strong and angry. He sighed when Shan nodded. "He always said things were not finished at Yapchi. He said someday there will be great destruction there again, before things are settled." He looked absently toward the huge boots that sat beside his pallet, then slowly reached for them and began to ease them onto his feet.

"How long?" he asked Chemi when he had finished his task. "How long have I been unaware?"

"A week."

The man's face sagged, and he seemed to lose his strength for a moment. "The little blue flowers with the grey leaves that grow along the southern cliffs. Are they out yet?" he asked his niece in a voice that was suddenly small and anxious.

Chemi looked at her uncle in confusion. But Lokesh reached into his pocket and produced a tiny grey stem with a blue bloom.

Pain filled the big man's face as he stared at the flower. He looked as if he were about to cry. Then he sighed and studied the faces about him. "He would have gone with someone from Yapchi Village," he said, and settled his gaze on Lhandro, squinting, studying the rongpa. "You are Lepka's boy?" he asked. "Did he go with Lepka?" He nodded, answering his own question. "He would have gone with Lepka."

Chemi knelt and put her hand on his shoulder. "You cannot go to Rinpoche. Soldiers arrested him."

Dzopa's face froze. His eyes seemed to glaze again for a moment, then they grew bright as embers. He stared about the chamber with a challenging, almost threatening expression, then gazed at the cave wall, as though he could see beyond it, as though he were searching for Jokar far in the distance. He reached out for the brazier, only three feet away, and dipped his fingers in it. He began rubbing his cheeks with ashes.

The man's strange behavior was frightening, and Shan took a step toward him, to help the obviously delirious man back to his pallet. But suddenly one of the rongpa by the entrance cried out in warning. Two men charged into the cave, brandishing rifles. One of them slammed his rifle butt into the belly of the man who had shouted, leaving him writhing on the floor. Dzopa moaned and crawled toward the shadows at the rear of the cave. Somo crouched as if about to attack, then one of the men leveled his weapon at her and coolly touched his fleece hat in greeting. The second man, who wore a loose leather jerkin and a black felt hat, leaned his rifle against the table and began examining its contents.

They were not soldiers but nor were they purbas, Shan realized. Zhu. The Special Projects Director could still have men in the mountains. As the man with the lowered rifle herded them together against the wall of the cave, even forcing Lokesh to his feet, his companion began dumping the contents of the table into a drawstring bag. A pack of cigarettes, a metal mug, tea bags, a ruler, pencils. The men were not interested in arresting them, or asking questions.

"Golok!" one of the rongpa spat, and the man with the cap answered with a grin that showed an uneven row of brown teeth. The intruders were thieves.

The man at the table finished quickly, then turned to face his captives, removing his hat to reveal a bald scalp. His eyes flared, and he ran a finger along his thin moustache as he studied them. His gaze fell upon the metal stove Larkin had left behind and he lowered the rucksack on his back, rummaging through it until he produced a similar, smaller stove, into which a blue canister was fastened. He set the stoves on the table, unscrewed the canister, and with a satisfied grin screwed the canister into Larkin's stove. As he stuffed the two stoves into his sack Shan realized he had seen the smaller stove before. He exchanged a glance with Winslow, who also had recognized it.

The man with the moustache ordered them to line against the wall and began searching them, pulling off bracelets, necklaces, and even prayer amulets, dumping them into a smaller pouch he kept at his belt. When Nyma clamped her gau in both hands, refusing to give it up, the second man stepped forward, reaching for his knife.

"Go to hell," Winslow growled, and pulled Nyma behind him.

"No!" a voice boomed from behind the two men as the blade flashed out of its sheath. The Goloks spun about and stared into the deep, empty shadows behind them.

Shan's heart sank. It could only be Dzopa, in his delirium. He would only anger the thieves, and get hurt for doing so. In his weakened condition another injury could kill him.

The Golok with the rifle raised it as though to fire.

"It's only my-" Chemi began, her words choked to a gasp as a wrathful creature lunged out of the darkness. It was a huge man with a grey robe draped over his ox-like shoulders, his cheeks blackened, his eyes ablaze. In his hands was a stout pole, one of the poles used by the purbas for carrying their cargos.

"Ai yi!" Lokesh cried out, and pulled back against the wall, joined by several of the rongpa.

Shan, too, found himself retreating, his throat suddenly bone dry. They had seen the man before, that terrible night when Drakte had died. The dobdob had returned.

The Goloks did not retreat but stared in confusion, the tips of their weapons drifting toward the floor. In their moment of hesitation the dobdob sprang. The pole spun through the air and slammed into the head of the bald Golok, an instant later into the skull of his companion. The two men hit the floor together, slumped, unconscious.

His eyes no longer wild, the dobdob searched for Chemi. "Rinpoche," he said to his niece in a voice like quiet thunder, "sometimes he forgets he is mortal." He said it as if it explained something important.

"You were with him in India," Shan said in a faltering voice, and settled his gaze on Chemi. Her uncle was the dobdob, and the dobdob was the guard companion of the medicine lama. "You came with him from India."

The man did not respond, did not seem to hear Shan. He hefted his new staff in the air, as though to get its balance, pulled his tattered backpack from the floor, then marched out of the cave. His face had the glint of a feral beast.

"My uncle…" Chemi murmured in a strange blend of fear, awe, and even affection as she gazed at the opening of the cave. "I didn't know he could become a…" She looked at Shan. "I didn't even think he could stand."

Maybe he couldn't, Shan thought, not until he had heard that Jokar was a prisoner. Since coming to Yapchi Mountain Shan had begun to realize that there were many ways of healing.

"They were just old stories, about how the men in our family became dobdobs," Chemi said, wonder still in her voice. "But that was all so long ago, from before Rapjung was destroyed. Dzopa used to stand in his barley field and talk about Rapjung, but never about… I never knew. Dzopa was away when it happened, the destruction of the monastery. He had come to our village because my father was sick and never went back."

"He found Rinpoche," Lokesh said, sharing her awe. "In India he found the last lama from Rapjung."

Shan nodded. "They came all the way together, with Dzopa protecting him." He remembered Dzopa's frantic warning about lamas being burned. He had caught Padme trying to burn the Plain of Flowers. He had probably seen the smoldering ruins at Rapjung. "What did he mean when he asked how long Jokar was off the mountain? Why this mountain?"

Chemi stared vacantly toward the pallet where her uncle had lain. "The stories said they were supposed to go, the oldest boy of each family from the villages around Yapchi, to become monk policemen. Enforcers of virtue, my father always called them. He said it was a pledge we made to Rapjung a hundred years ago."

Shan studied the woman, then looked at Lokesh. The two searched each other's faces. It almost sounded as though the families had been told by the lamas of Rapjung to perform penance. But the families had been the victims of the Yapchi massacre a hundred years ago.

"Drakte," Lokesh whispered.

The dobdob had come that night not to kill Drakte but to do what he always did, to protect the only Rapjung lama still alive. Somehow Dzopa had seen Drakte as a threat. Shan remembered the dark bruise on Jokar's neck and the sling the purba had carried. Surely Drakte would not have attacked the lama. But the dropka with Jokar that night had said the lama had been attacked.

"It must have been some terrible mistake," Somo said, as if sharing the same thought. Her voice shook. "People had been following Jokar and Dzopa, and knobs were treating the lama like a criminal." She looked at Chemi, biting her lower lip. "Dzopa didn't kill him," she said as though to comfort the woman.

"He is going to fight those soldiers," Chemi said in a voice heavy with despair. "He is the last man living from my family."

Shan knelt by the unconscious thieves and dumped the small pouch onto the floor. The Tibetans who had been robbed quickly retrieved their belongings, then Shan studied what was left, an assortment of silver chains and other jewelry. He picked up a tiny leather pouch on a long hide thong that seemed familiar. He stared at it a moment, then sorted through the booty until he found a lapis bracelet, and an elegant pocketknife with a folding spoon. He studied Somo a moment, who knelt by Lokesh again, then rose, the knife, bracelet, small pouch in his hand, and retrieved his own sack of belongings.

"Lokesh walks slow with his cast," he said to Chemi, but looking at Lokesh, "Keep him off the steep slopes. And be sure he doesn't stop for tonde today. Make him safe." I will find him, Shan almost added, but knew it was unlikely he would leave the valley, except in manacles.

"You can't go," Somo protested.

Shan looked back at Lokesh with a sad smile. "There is a deity to patch."

Chemi stepped toward Lokesh and knelt at the old man's side as though to confirm she would respect Shan's request.

He saw Lhandro waiting by the entrance for him and nodded at the farmer, then knelt at Lokesh's side. "The rongpa have trucks. Stay with the others. They will find the purbas, and the purbas will get you back to Lhadrung."

His friend reached out and tightly grasped Shan's hand. "We started this together," Lokesh said in a tortured voice.

"And I would never have made it without you, old friend," Shan said, his voice cracking. He squeezed Lokesh's hand then quickly stepped to the cave entrance.

"Things will be better," Lokesh said to his back, "after I return from Beijing, you'll see."

Shan turned a last time and looked into his friend's eyes. "I will never see you again if you go to the capital," he said, fighting a torrent of emotion. He could not stop Lokesh from sacrificing himself in Beijing unless he stayed with him. But he had no hope of saving Jokar unless he went to the valley.

Lokesh grasped his gau with one hand and waved goodbye.

Somo and Nyma were close behind him as he reached the ledge over the water. "Lha gyal lo," he said quietly to them, and looked into Somo's eyes. "You can still get Tenzin north," he said, "still complete the plan. Avoid the oil venture. Go in secret. You must complete the plan," he said, seeing the grim determination on their faces. "Something must be completed," he added, trying hard to keep defeat out of his voice. He took a step toward the trail. The two women matched his step.

He stopped and threw his arms up in frustration. "I have to go," he pleaded. "It's over. Drakte would be pleased that you have saved Tenzin." But they continued to follow him up the trail. Suddenly a figure appeared in the mist ahead of him. Tenzin stood there, gazing at the swirling cloud seeds. A few feet above him stood Lhandro and Winslow, his backpack in his hand.

"North," Shan said, like a plea. "People are waiting outside for you," he said to Tenzin. "In America."

The lama kept gazing at the mist. "There is no path to the north today," he sighed.

"How could it be better for both you and Jokar to be lost?" Shan asked in his pleading tone.

"Going north and leaving Jokar with soldiers, when I had not tried to stop it, if that happened then I would surely be lost," Tenzin said with a small smile.

Shan looked into the swirling waters. Maybe any hidden world would be beautiful, and better, because this one was so painful. They had no chance against the soldiers and howlers. But for the Tibetans it would still be better, for their souls, to be prisoners in the gulag, or dead, than to walk away and abandon Jokar.

"How," Tenzin asked slowly, "can you insist on going while denying us the same opportunity?"

Because, Shan wanted to say, I am the only one with nothing to lose, the only one who will not be missed, the only one with such a huge debt to repay to the lamas. But then Somo grabbed the pouch off his shoulder and ran up the trail.

The purba had gone almost a mile before Shan and Nyma caught up with her. She was standing alone, on a ledge that looked north and west over the rolling, starkly beautiful ridges that led to Yapchi Valley. In one hand she clutched the turquoise stone given to her by Drakte. She was wearing a look he had not seen before, the look of a fierce warrior, the look of a protector demon. A chill went down his spine. Somo seemed to be saying goodbye to something. Was it to the mountains that would forever be changed when the oil started flowing? Or was it to life itself? She was descending to do battle with the Chinese soldiers. He looked at the stone in her hands. Drakte had wanted to be a monk, but Beijing had prevented it. She had wanted to be a teacher, but Beijing had prevented it. Then, because they had both been cast away by Beijing, they had met and fallen in love. But they could not stay together, not in this life, because Beijing had prevented it.

Somo turned with a forced smile, then glanced back up the trail where the figures of Lhandro, Winslow, and Tenzin could be seen in the distance.

An hour later they were walking silently, grim-faced, through the ruins of Chemi's village, toward the chorten where they had promised to meet Anya. When the crumbling chorten came into view, Nyma pointed, relief flooding her face, toward a small figure walking around the chorten, then quickened her pace. Shan and Nyma were less than a hundred yards away when Shan stopped and held up his hand.

"It's her, I know it is," Nyma exclaimed, and began waving to get the girl's attention. She followed Shan's gaze and her hand slowly dropped. Lin sat on the ground forty feet from them, a chuba arranged under him like a blanket. The colonel was watching Anya with a melancholy smile. He wore his uniform, except a small piece of heather extended from his breast pocket. As Shan approached he glanced up and the smile disappeared.

"They say oil should come today or tomorrow," Shan said as he squatted beside Lin. "A delegation of venture officials are on the way."

Lin nodded slowly.

"I remember those snow caterpillars," Lin said suddenly, in a reluctant, hollow voice, as if compelled to continue the conversation Shan had offered the day before. "Suddenly last night I just remembered, how those women swept the snow, like you said. Sometimes little sparrows would be numb with cold and get swept up in the snow. My father would go down to the street sometimes when the caterpillar passed, to check for sparrows. If he found one he would put it in his pocket and we would take it home, then release it in the afternoon when it warmed.

"One day the block captain called a meeting," he continued, referring to one of the watchers who kept political order in residential units. "She had a burlap bag which she dumped on the table. It was dead sparrows, maybe twenty dead sparrows. She said from now on it would be our patriotic duty to collect the sparrows from the gutter after the sweepers passed, and eat them. Because the Chairman insisted that all resources be put to use for the cause of socialism. Then she gave us instruction on the approved methods for killing sparrows."

Shan stared sadly at Lin. He remembered children from his own youth filled with revolutionary zeal, stoning pigeons and seagulls, parading with the carcasses of mice. It was how the Chairman shaped good little soldiers, his father had said bitterly.

"So we killed the sparrows," Lin continued. "We ranged far beyond our block when the snow came, just to find and kill sparrows. One day I caught my father with a live one in his pocket and I told the block captain. I thought it was a joke I played on my father. But that afternoon I came home and there was a meeting. A tamzing. My father was in the middle, with welts on his face, and a sign pinned to his shirt that said reactionary pig. They wouldn't stop until my father killed that sparrow, in front of everyone. He was crying when he did it. The only time I ever saw my father cry."

They were silent a long time.

"Why," Lin said, looking at his hands, deeply perplexed. "Why would I have forgotten that until yesterday?" He glanced at Shan awkwardly, as if he had not intended to speak the thought out loud, then gazed toward Anya in the distance. "She's getting one more tonde," the colonel said. "Said that sometimes old chortens attract good tonde. Says I need one to keep rocks off my head." He spoke in a sober voice, as if he had come to fervently believe in tonde.

Lin turned to Shan and frowned. "I still have orders," he said, as if to correct himself. "People can't be allowed to do things to the government."

"Duties," Shan acknowledged with a small nod, still watching Anya.

The sound of heavy engines echoed up the narrow valley that led to the Yapchi road.

"There was something she did," Lin said, "when we were coming today. There was one of those rock rabbits, a pika she called it. It ran away and stopped about forty feet away. Then she sat and sang a song. She said, sit, Aku Lin." The colonel frowned again, as if displeased with his confessional tone. "She sang this song like I have never heard before. In Tibetan. I couldn't understand. But the words weren't important. It was like– I don't know, like what it would be if an animal could sing. And that pika came right up and sat in her lap. She picked up my hand and put it on top of the pika. I felt it breathing, like those sparrows when I was a boy." He cut his eyes at Shan. "A silly thing," he added, in a new, gruff tone. "A thing for children."

"A deity song," Shan said. "Anya calls them deity songs."

The machine sound was louder now. "A tank," Lin said in a weary voice. "And two or three trucks. Coming this way."

Shan looked at Lin. Was the colonel warning him, so he and Nyma could flee?

Anya straightened from where she was digging, and waved at them. Shan and Lin both waved back.

"You and I," Lin said awkwardly, "we're the same age I think." He sighed. "I had a letter from my mother before she died. She said two generations had been lost, but that the next one would be ready, the next one had the chance to put it all behind them and find a new way."

Shan stared at the man. They were not the words of an army colonel. He was saying that the turmoil brought by the party and politicians had ravaged men like Shan and himself, and their parents. But Anya was of the new generation.

"A good doctor could fix that leg. I promised to meet her at that resettlement camp in a week or two. I have some leave coming. I am going to take her to a good hospital." Lin spoke in a rush, as if he had to get the words out quickly or they might not come at all. With a strange sensation Shan realized that there was no one else Lin could speak them to, that Shan had somehow become his confessor. "If she wants I will take her to a real school. There are private schools now. I could pay-" Lin spun about. Three figures stood behind them, barely ten feet away. Nyma with Winslow and Tenzin, his dung bag on his shoulder. Lin glared at Shan, as if Shan had tricked him.

"Please," Shan said to them. "You should stay back. Soldiers may be coming-"

"Tenzin has an offer to make," the American announced as Nyma approached and knelt in the grass. "The papers the colonel has been looking for. Tenzin wants to return them."

As he spoke Tenzin lowered the dung bag from his shoulder, knelt, then accepted a pocket knife from Winslow, which he quickly used to cut the threads at the top of the bag. He ripped the double layer of thick leather apart, reached inside, and pulled out a thin sheaf of paper, perhaps ten pages in total.

As Lin stared at the paper a sound like a growl came from his throat.

"It's a report on a disaster," Tenzin said to Lin, as if he had to remind the colonel. "A unit of the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade was inside a mountain on the Indian border, a secret command center, still under construction. The mountain collapsed. Everyone inside was lost, with several million dollars of computer and surveillance equipment. Forty soldiers died. And the Tibetan workers who were being forced to hollow out the mountain. The last part is very sensitive. It says all the workers died. But one old monk survived for a few hours. He was laughing a lot. They thought he was delirious at first. He said the prisoners did it, that they had gradually dug away the support columns, that they had destroyed one of the army's crack units. That none of them minded taking four because it had become the right thing to do." Taking four. It was a gulag term, for choosing to commit the sin of suicide– and the incarnation as a lower life-form that would follow, a life on four legs– instead of continuing the misery of the gulag.

Winslow put his hand on the report and Tenzin released it to the American. Shan stared at the papers. "Old monks destroyed the army's most advanced listening post. This is the secret that the colonel couldn't bear the world to know," Winslow said, looking with wonder at the pages. "Take the report, colonel," he said after a moment, in a plaintive tone, "and give us the lama."

It didn't seem that Lin had heard. His eyes drifted back toward Anya. For a moment it seemed he wanted to ask the girl's advice.

"The report for the lama," Winslow pressed.

When Lin did not reply, Tenzin stood. "Not just the report," he said to the colonel. "You can have the abbot of Sangchi, as well, if you wish. Just release Jokar."

Winslow cursed under his breath, and put a hand on Tenzin's arm as though to pull him away. Nyma moaned and reached out to hold Tenzin's leg.

Lin's eyes slowly shifted back to Tenzin. He seemed about to speak when Anya called out. She was waving at him with something in her hand. Lin leaned forward anxiously. Anya was climbing on the old chorten, as if maybe to better see the machines that were coming.

Beyond the chorten, perhaps half a mile from where they sat, Shan saw soldiers moving up the slope in a tight line. Suddenly there was a whoosh of air, a whining sound, and the slope above them, a hundred yards away, exploded. Shan turned in alarm. Had Somo been there, watching? Surely she would have gone over the ridge by now. Perhaps the tank was sending a warning shot for any Tibetans lingering in the hills, clearing the approach to the valley for the arriving officials. Or had the soldiers heard about the gathering in the high meadow, those waiting for the old lama to lead them in resistance?