Текст книги "Bone Mountain"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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Anya was standing now, facing the smoldering patch of earth in confusion.

"Damned fool," Lin muttered, and slowly rose as another shell screeched through the air.

But this one was not aimed up the ridge. It connected with the chorten. There was a thunderous explosion, and the chorten was no more.

Nyma screamed and ran toward the ruins.

"Noo– ooo!" Lin moaned, and clenched his chest as if he had been shot. "No– ooo!" he repeated in an agonized voice. He rose, took a step forward and fell to his knees.

Shan, staring in horror at the smoking ruins, found himself helping Lin to his feet. The colonel, his face drained of color, lashed out at Shan with his fist, then stumbled down the slope. "Anya!" he called. "Anya come here! Xiao Anya, did they hurt you?"

Shan followed him, his feet leaden, his heart a lump of ice.

Nyma was first to reach the small, limp body lying on the spring blossoms. She seemed not to even notice when Lin pushed her away and knelt beside Anya. She was not bleeding much, Shan told himself, but then he saw the splinter of rock embedded in the base of her neck. The girl's eyes were opened in surprise, but there was no light in them. She had died instantly.

"Xiao Anya," Lin said in a feeble voice, stroking the girl's cheek. "Little Anya," he repeated, again and again. In her hand, clenched almost shut, was a piece of green stone, a tonde for Uncle Lin.

Soldiers approached, then halted a hundred feet away as they saw their colonel. One of them called out excitedly, and began running back toward the tank, which was now visible below. Lin seemed not to notice the soldiers. He lifted Anya's shoulders, pressing her lifeless check against his for a moment, blood oozing out of her wound now. His eyes fixed on the green stone in her hand, and he wrapped his own hand around her limp fingers and the stone. He seemed to have trouble breathing for a moment, and he collapsed, his head buried in her shoulder, his back arching in a long, wrenching sob.

No one moved. No one spoke. Slowly Lin rose to his full height, stiff, his face sagging, and carried the dead girl cradled in his arms, down to his troops.

Chapter Eighteen

Who will sing for me when the songbird dies? Who will sing? The words of the oracle echoed in Shan's mind until, numbed with pain, he realized Nyma was speaking them.

"Did she know?" Nyma asked again and again, then grabbed Shan's arm and burst into tears. "Blessed Buddha, she knew. Our little Anya knew this would happen," Nyma sobbed.

She would not leave the ruined chorten. Nyma planted herself in the patch of flowers where Anya had been thrown, scrubbing away her tears, reciting a mantra, not seeming to notice when the soldiers milled about, only staring at the spot among the flowers where the girl's blood had mottled the blooms.

Shan watched, still paralyzed with grief, while the commandos searched the rubble as though looking for more bodies. Several seemed hesitant, looking at the anguished woman, or down the slope at their colonel who had refused to let go of the dead girl, whose blood now ran down his arms and legs. One soldier seemed to recognize Shan, and hung by him, as though waiting for orders to drag him down to the trucks.

Who will sing for me when the songbird dies, Shan heard again.

Then came the shrill call of a whistle, and the soldiers seemed to melt away, jogging down the slope as first the tank and then the trucks retreated in a cloud of dust.

"It may not be safe here," Shan pleaded with Nyma. "I can take you to one of the caves at least." But she gave no sign of hearing. Tears streamed down her cheeks again, and her invocation of the Compassionate Buddha grew louder.

"It doesn't matter," Nyma said in a brittle voice. "Don't you see? Tibetans have no reason to hope. This is what happens to those who hope. We've been abandoned," she said in a haunting tone.

"I have to go to Yapchi," Shan said. He repeated the words, and when she did not respond he turned away and began walking toward the valley, feeling painfully alone, suddenly deeply regretful that he had left Lokesh. Tenzin and Winslow had fled. Perhaps they would reach Lokesh and keep him safe. He kept telling himself that as he climbed, until he stopped, his legs wobbling strangely, and collapsed onto a rock. No one was safe. The army was in the mountains and it was shooting at Tibetans. Gentle Anya, who spoke with lambs, lay dead, because she had wanted to find a charm to attract a deity to the leader of the soldiers who had killed her.

He emerged at the top of the ridge, at a high point between the oil derrick and the village, then found a game trail and began to descend into the valley. Five minutes later he heard someone conversing loudly and crouched behind a rock.

It was Gyalo, speaking with Jampa, briskly walking down into the valley on an adjacent trail, several steps ahead of a long single-file line of grim-faced Tibetans. It looked like a column of soldiers, Shan thought with a start, but then he saw that the implements they carried on their shoulders were shovels and axes and picks. There were at least forty men and women, some of whom he recognized as the refugees he had seen in the cave the night before. Some of them sang songs. Scattered among them were helmets of green, as though Gyalo had found defectors from the venture. Except that they were heading back toward the valley.

Maybe, Shan realized with a sinking feeling, they were soldiers of a sort. He stepped out of his hiding place and the monk greeted him with a warm grin. "The army is still down there," Shan warned.

The monk smiled, and gestured the other Tibetans to pass around him as he stood with Shan and Jampa.

"Please," Shan said, "there's been enough suffering." He explained what had happened to Anya.

The outlawed monk shut his eyes a moment, then looked at Shan and nodded gravely. "That oracle spoke of it." The big yak, who had been studying Shan, gave a massive sigh and looked off into the distance. Gyalo fingered one of the braids twined with bright beads which Anya had tied at Norbu.

"Even if you could undermine the derrick," Shan said, thinking he may have understood the purpose of Gyalo's party, "they would never let you close enough to try."

Gyalo gave Shan a long, slow look, then stepped off the trail toward a ledge that overlooked the southern end of the valley and pointed. Shan followed Gyalo's finger, shielding his eyes with his hand, toward a place perhaps two hundred feet from where the painted rock had been. He pulled out his binoculars. There seemed to be movement in the shadows under the trees.

"We have to release the deity that's trapped," Gyalo explained in an earnest tone. He looked at Shan with a bright expression. "They say you found it, that you solved the puzzle," he declared gratefully, and without another word continued down the trail, pointing out a bird to Jampa as they walked.

Shan looked after the monk and his yak in confusion. He had solved nothing, but he had no time to worry about the monk's strange words. At least, he told himself, the Tibetans would be out of reach if they stayed on the upper slopes. The soldiers might not care if the displaced Tibetans wanted to pass their time digging out boulders from the mountainside.

The ruins of Yapchi Village lay silent as he passed through them, undisturbed except for a small work party that was ripping apart the burnt timbers of the houses and stacking them in one of the stable yards. The sheep that had journeyed with them from Lamtso were in a small pen, several of them gazing at one of their number that hung upside down, skinned and gutted, on a scaffold of timbers. The caravan sheep were being butchered for the oil workers.

As he continued down the path toward the derrick a voice echoed in his head again. You and the Yapchi deity are going to fix the land for us, you are going to make the Chinese leave, Nyma had said at Lamtso. The wave of emotion that surged through him was so powerful he had to stop again. He found himself fighting for breath, and sat again. Anya was dead. Yapchi Village was destroyed. Lokesh had been tortured, and was leaving, crippled, for Beijing. The old lama was a prisoner. Drakte had died. Lin, who alone had the power to take the soldiers away, had not been changed, only hollowed out, turned into a bitter shell of a man. The Tibetans were still going to resist, and lose, with more of them dying or imprisoned. Soldiers had died. The valley was slowly being destroyed. The oil was still going to flow. Not for a moment had they even cast a shadow of uncertainty over that outcome, not for a moment had there been any doubt that those who craved the oil would win. The deity would stay blinded forever.

He could not bear to look at the derrick as he walked past it. It was like a cold metal monster hovering at his shoulder. Workers crawled over it. It whirled and pounded and groaned so loudly that it seemed the machine was indeed fighting the earth.

Beyond the derrick, close to camp, a platform had been built, supported by raw logs taken from the slope above. Along the front of the platform hung a freshly painted banner, declaring in bright red letters, Serene Prosperity. On the far side of the platform workers bent over cans of red paint to complete one more banner, fastened along its top to a long rope. Victory for Lujun Valley, Shan read, painted on a long roll of cloth, with small derricks painted along the bottom, like the religious symbols sometimes arrayed along the borders of thangkas. Chairs and benches stood on the platform, enough for perhaps twenty people, and from its stairs Jenkins directed workers. The manager paused as a utility vehicle appeared in the camp, followed by two boxy black limousines. The convoy of dignitaries had arrived. Shan looked back in puzzlement at the northern slopes, again wondering why Larkin had taken her Tibetans there, not to the road, not to start an avalanche to block the convoy, not to the angry Tibetans who gathered on the mountain, waiting for the lama to lead them.

Shan saw no sign of Winslow or Somo as he walked toward the camp. Perhaps the American was back in the office trailer, arguing with Jenkins. Everything looked normal. The army tents were still at the rear of the camp, bristling with activity. Soldiers ran in and out of tents, shouting. Their lost colonel had materialized. Even Professor Ma continued his digging, with many more helpers now, racing against his deadline, although now they worked under the eyes of a stern sentry, with a heavy staff for a weapon.

But as he walked past the archaeology dig, two hundred feet off the trail, he halted abruptly. It wasn't a soldier guarding Professor Ma, it was the dobdob. He studied the army tents again. No one seemed to have noticed Dzopa. Shan began walking hestitantly toward the dig, recognizing the workers as he approached. Lhandro was there, and his parents, and Jokar, all on their knees, digging earnestly in the square of open soil, now much larger than before. Dzopa stood erect, his staff at his side, a pile of blankets below him, his backpack and Jokar's staff a few feet behind him.

Professor Ma and his assistant both sat beside the opened square of earth with soil sieves, acting as though nothing had disturbed their routine, the diggers alternately bringing their buckets of earth to them, the bench beside them covered with artifacts. Why would Jokar be permitted his freedom, Shan wondered, then with a chill he saw that it was not a pile of blankets at the dobdob's feet but the crumpled form of a soldier. From where Dzopa stood it was no more than fifty feet to a large outcropping at the base of the slope. He must have circled about, and come at the guard from behind. The dobdob seemed to have simply assumed the sentry's duties, however, for neither he nor Jokar seemed to show any intention of fleeing.

Shan picked up one of the trowels by the side of the dig and stepped into the loose earth to help Lepka fill his bucket. The old man acknowledged Shan with a casual nod, as if he had expected him, and continued working. Shan studied the man's face as he dug his trowel into the earth. It was not fear he saw, or the exhaustion he might have expected, it was a deep spiritual pain.

As he emptied his bucket into the professor's sieve, the old Han exchanged a worried glance with Shan. Behind him on the bench were new artifacts. "You were supposed to be gone by now," Shan said.

Curiosity filled the professor's eyes. "I was packing to leave when that old lama came. I didn't stop him when he started digging, and after an hour he beckoned me to his side. He said I must not be in such a hurry. He said my spirit was out of balance, and I needed to tend to my heart wind." Ma gave a small, confused smile. "I stopped packing."

Shan returned the empty bucket and squatted at the bench. There was a little bronze tray for burning incense cones, and metal arrowheads. There were pieces of jade, fragments of a statue. Strangely, one appeared to be the leg of a hooved animal. Not a horse, for the hoof was split. A yak perhaps, or a cow.

Shan looked back at the old lama, and heard Dzopa groan. Jokar's serene face seemed to have gone blank again, as it had that awful hour at the hermitage. His shoulders sagged. The dobdob approached him with a deliberate air and raised the lama's hand with a slow, reverent motion, then cupped the lama's hand around his own mouth and blew hard into it. The lama's eyes fluttered and seemed to struggle for a moment to find focus, then Jokar was back. "It has been exhausting, this journey, has it not, my old friend? I'm ready for a long sleep," he said to Dzopa with an apologetic smile, then resumed his digging.

After a moment the lama paused and stared at his hand then, with a movement that somehow chilled Shan, he touched it with his other hand, running his fingers along it with a look of wonder, as if he had never seen a hand before. A living Buddha, Nyma had called Jokar, a Bodhisattva. In the middle of the chaos and fear the living Buddha was pausing to– what? Marvel at the miracle of the human body?

As the dobdob returned to the edge of the dig Shan saw a new figure beside the bench. Winslow. The American stared at Shan with an uncertain expression. He held a piece of paper. As Shan stepped to his side, Winslow lowered the paper, as though he were thinking of hiding it. Shan eased it out of the American's hand.

"That doctor, he found my card, it fell out of my shirt that day at Norbu." The words came out in a slow whisper as Winslow's gaze settled on the lama. "Guess I offended his dignity."

The paper was a facsimile, directed to the camp managers of all oil venture operations. Sent by the U.S. embassy in Beijing, it gave a description of Winslow and requested that they immediately report his whereabouts. Winslow had lost contact with the embassy and the Chinese government had filed a complaint about criminal activity by the American. Winslow's official credentials had been suspended, and if he was seen he was to be directed to contact the embassy and surrender himself to Public Security, with his passport.

Shan read the message twice. The embassy seemed to be disowning Winslow. If he were not given the cover of his diplomatic immunity, he would be subject to criminal charges before the knobs. Shan looked up to return the paper to Winslow, but the American seemed to have lost interest in it, and was with Jokar now, holding the lama's bucket of soil.

Shan stared at the others in the dig, as confused as ever. They all seemed to see things Shan could not understand, all except Lhandro, who paused every few moments and looked at the others with the same confusion Shan himself felt.

It made no sense. Had Jokar come to the valley to dig? Had he really surrendered himself to do this? He had come back to Yapchi to restore balance. Jokar and Lepka had come together to heal the valley, just as the derrick was about to strike oil, just as the officials were to arrive for the ceremony that marked the end of the valley.

Shan stepped back to Professor Ma. "I don't see your assistant."

"She is finishing the report, in the office," Ma said, with a nod toward the trailer complex. As if, Shan realized, whatever the lama was doing, or finding, did not belong in the report.

"So you didn't find anything important enough to stop the project?" Shan asked in a futile tone.

Ma looked at him as if Shan had told him a joke. "You mean did I find the missing link that explains evolution? Or the tomb of a Chinese emperor?" He gave a thin laugh. "No." He gazed at the open patch of soil. "Not so old really." His eyes drifted toward the small chest where he kept the bronze shard with the Chinese and Tibetan writing.

A loudspeaker in the camp started playing a martial anthem: The East is Red. A line of vehicles appeared over the low saddle of land and descended into the camp.

Suddenly Lhandro grunted loudly and called for the professor. Ma seemed reluctant to go. He looked at Shan with a strange plea in his eyes. Lhandro called out. His fingers were scratching at the soil covering what appeared to be a cylinder, perhaps twelve inches long.

"A piece of pipe," Lhandro speculated. "Sometimes they brought in bamboo to carry water."

It was indeed bamboo, Shan saw as he knelt beside the rongpa, a sturdy piece over two inches in diameter. Shan dug a finger around the end of the cylinder, then abruptly pulled his hand away and looked at Ma, who returned his steady gaze. Lhandro finished the digging and raised his find. It was not a water pipe. It was capped at both ends, and made a rattling sound when he shook it. Shan looked from Ma to Jokar, who solemnly nodded as though to confirm Shan's suspicions. Lhandro saw the exchange, and looked from face to face, searching for an answer to the mystery. His gaze settled on his father.

"He's a good man, that professor," Lepka said. "We have told him things about what has happened to you, and to Shan."

Lhandro took the cylinder to the professor, expectation in his eyes, but Ma simply placed it beside the other artifacts on the bench, without comment. Shan stood, and stepped to the wooden chest beyond the professor and opened it. Inside, beside the felt that covered the bronze shard he had seen before, was another piece of felt. He lifted the top layer. It covered a human skull, with a jagged hole in its temple.

"I don't understand," Winslow said over his shoulder. Shan looked up and followed the American's gaze to Lhandro's father, who rose slowly and sat on the ground at the edge of the dig, rocking slowly back and forth. The American picked up the bamboo canister and shook it as Shan lifted the bronze shard and studied its markings again. He ran his fingers along the Chinese characters.

Shan took the cylinder from the American. He had one of his own, probably older than this one, handed down from his great-grandfather, left for safekeeping with the lamas in Lhadrung. He twisted the top of the cylinder and it loosened, then pulled free in his hand. He dumped the contents onto the bench. Lacquered sticks of yarrow wood, yellow with age.

"Sixty-four," he said in a voice tight with emotion. "There will be sixty-four sticks." He looked up into the confused faces of those around him. "Throwing sticks, for the Taoist verses." He looked back at Lepka. Stickmen, he had said. Lepka had had nightmares about the stickmen. Shan turned to Winslow and quickly explained how the sticks were used to ritually build a chapter number by throwing them and separating them into groups of three, using the grouping remaining after the count to create solid or broken lines that in turn built one of the tetragrams which, in the tables memorized by students of the Tao referred to a specific chapter of the Tao te Ching. Like the tetragramLepka had unexpectedly drawn at the mixing ledge. "I would throw sticks like these for hours with my father when I was young," Shan said quietly, "and we would take turns reciting the Tao."

He fingered the shard again. Now that he knew what to look for, deciphering was simple. "It is Chapter Seventy," he explained, "in Tibetan and Chinese." He pointed to the characters. "The verse ends here with these characters," he said, and looked to Lepka.

"Evolved individuals wear a coarse covering with precious jade at the center," the old Tibetan recited as he stared at the pile of sticks. Jade. The leg of jade was of an ox. It had been a statue of Lao Tzu, the Taoist sage, with his ox.

Shan continued to search Lepka's face. "When the soldiers came, the Lujun troops, there weren't just Tibetans living in this valley," he said.

The old man shook his head. "My father explained the secret to me before he died," he said, looking at Lhandro with apology in his eyes. "Some Chinese had come, twenty or thirty years before the Lujun soldiers came, to build a small Taoist temple. They were scholars he said, who lived like hermits, trying to explain the similarities between the teachings of the Tao and the teachings of Buddha. To bridge the gaps between our peoples. Monks came from Rapjung sometimes and they would have debates or throw the sticks and recite verses for us. The village would come and listen."

He looked at Jokar, who offered a nod of encouragement. "They weren't any problem, they were peaceful, and built gardens for the herbs that the Rapjung monks used. They spoke of how wonderful it would be if Chinese and Tibetans could work together to study the mysteries of healing, and they themselves took lessons from the lamas." Lepka looked toward the army tents for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the freshly turned soil. "My father was away in the Tibetan army when it happened. He said those monks would probably have tried to stop the Chinese soldiers, too, that they would not have wanted bloodshed. But there was no one left from Yapchi when the soldiers left, no one to defend those Chinese monks. When people came from the villages nearby and found all the bodies, they went crazy."

He looked only at Shan now as he spoke, as if he were confessing, as if it were a story he had to tell to a Han. "My father said probably those Chinese monks were trying to bury the bodies, trying to help. But the people were too angry."

Too angry at Chinese, he meant. People came and became crazed with rage and the lust for revenge. Not soldiers, but the farmers and herders. He looked at the skull in the still-open bench. A hoe could have killed that monk, or a pick.

"They couldn't tell anyone afterwards," Lepka said forlornly, wringing his hands. His wife stood beside him, holding his shoulder tightly. "If word got out about the Chinese monks, the Chinese army would return. So our families burnt the Tao temple and covered it with a barley field." Tears streamed down the old man's face. "Afterwards, the monks from Rapjung heard. They came and said words for the Chinese, for all those who had died. They made the people reopen the grave that had been dug for the Yapchi villagers and bury whatever remains they could find of the monks with the villagers. Made the people who had killed the monks promise to send their first sons to become dobdobs at the gompa, so such a thing could not happen again." He looked at the yak-like Dzopa. Enforcers of virtue, Chemi had called the monk policemen. "My brother went," Lepka said, "but he died at Rapjung when Mao's children came."

Suddenly there were loud voices at the platform, commands for workers to leave the platform and allow the dignitaries to be seated. The chairs and benches were quickly filled with Chinese and Tibetans in business suits. Jenkins's secretary stood at the top of the stairs, welcoming the guests, handing them paper programs, but glancing frequently toward one of the army tents, where a tight knot of soldiers had formed. Lin must be there, with Anya. Other soldiers were moving around the compound, holding their weapons conspicuously.

Professor Ma had opened Dzopa's backpack and produced a blanket from it to cover the fallen sentry but it was only a matter of time before the man revived, Shan knew, and more trouble would begin. An officer from Lin's command climbed onto the stage and stood beside a microphone on a stand, facing the assembled dignitaries as he waved a polished wooden pointer in the air. He was gesturing toward the ruined village, the denuded slopes, even the patch of scorched earth where the painted rock had been. He explained the victorious role of the People's Liberation Army in the opening of the valley, and pointed out the soldiers stationed on the outer perimeter of the camp like a security net.

Shan looked back at the blanket. It was white, heavily soiled but still white, streaked with lines of soot. Dzopa's blanket. Dzopa who had traveled with Jokar from India. Shan's vision seemed to blur a moment, and he saw something else, in his mind's eye. He saw Jokar sitting in the night wrapped in Dzopa's blanket. He saw Drakte running, frantic, in great pain, fleeing from Tuan's howlers, knowing the white-shirted men were pursuing, trying to capture him, perhaps even trying to ambush him. He saw Drakte pause as a white figure appeared before him, saw Drakte fit a stone to his sling and fire a shot into Jokar's neck. The shudder that coursed through his body somehow told Shan that he had glimpsed the truth.

Another figure appeared, striding purposefully up the stairs, watched expectantly by the seated figures. It was Jenkins, now wearing a clean blue shirt and red tie, leading half a dozen others in ties and blue shirts, including two Westerners. As Jenkins stepped aside and gestured his party onto the platform, Shan spotted another group assembling near the platform. Or being assembled. Over fifty Tibetans were being herded by soldiers toward the front of the platform. The forced laborers, Shan suspected, by the way several of them acknowledged Lhandro and Nyma with small, tight nods.

Finally came Special Director Zhu, and an older woman wearing a dark grey suit, and a large-brimmed straw hat against the sun, to sit in the last two seats of the front row. Zhu began to sit, then straightened, squinting toward the dig, toward Shan and Jokar and Tenzin. Even from the distance Shan sensed his sudden excitement and he watched as Zhu called a knob soldier to the edge of the platform and pointed in their direction. The knob took several strides toward the dig, then paused as an army officer called out. The officer bolted up the platform steps, looking toward the southern end of the valley as he spoke excitedly into a handheld radio. After a moment the officer ran to Jenkins and pointed southward with a victorious gleam.

Shan could not hear the conversation, but from the man's excitement, from the way the party in blue shirts raised their hands, clapping in Jenkins's direction, he knew the soldiers had scored one last victory. An army truck sped past, and Shan saw the distant figures of a patrol jogging along the south end of the valley.

"She's okay, Winslow," a deep voice suddenly announced. Jenkins was there, at the side of the dig, studying Winslow with an apologetic expression. "I thought you'd want to know. Larkin's up there, the soldiers say, hiding in the trees with a lot of Tibetans, digging for something. They're bringing her down." The American manager studied Winslow, then shook his head and sighed. "I'm sorry about that fax. If it helps I'll put in a word. You were trying to help, I know." Winslow did not acknowledge him, only stared toward the far end of the valley. Jenkins shrugged and stepped back toward the platform.

A mocking voice called from a distant corner of Shan's mind. Thirteen months of freedom. Four years in the gulag, then thirteen months of freedom. It was the way many purbas lived, he knew, alternating long stretches of lao gai with short intense bursts of work on behalf of their cause.

But there was another voice, equally distant at first, shouting at him down a long dark corridor in his mind. The deity rock. Even a small distraction might allow some of the Tibetans to escape, perhaps even taking Jokar with them. If only Tenzin and Jokar could flee, Shan could bear all the suffering to come. He inched toward the crew putting the final touches on the Serenity banner. Without consciously understanding what he was doing at first, he found himself by the stack of paint cans. He leaned and picked up a can of red paint. When he looked up Somo was there, only five feet away, staring forlornly at the line of prisoners coming down the valley through the ruins of the village. He stepped to her side and extended the can of paint. She accepted it with a confused look. They gazed at each other a moment, exchanging the kind of sad, proud gazes soldiers might trade as they were about to throw themselves against impossible odds.

He opened his mouth with a small, sad smile. "Can you run?" he asked.

An intense energy seemed to build in her eyes as Somo considered his question. Then she looked at the can of paint and smiled back. He spoke quietly to her, and an instant later she faded away through the crowd.

As she did so the East is Red anthem exploded through the public address system again and scattered applause broke out as the dignitaries rose to formally welcome a final set of visitors marching from the camp toward the platform. Shan's throat tightened as he watched Khodrak, Padme, and Tuan escorted by a line of the white-shirted guards, each of them shaking hands with many of those in the crowd, acting like guests of honor. This was their day as much as Jenkins's. Khodrak moved slowly, ceremoniously carrying his mendicant's staff, Padme a step behind, carrying the black satchel Shan had seen in the conference room at Norbu.

The professor wandered toward the delegation from Norbu. Shan watched as Ma politely shook hands and spoke, first with Padme, then with Khodrak, who seemed at ease with the elderly Han.