Текст книги "The Skull Mantra"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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Luntok's eyes narrowed, but he did not look up from the photo map. "The ragyapa are proud of their work. It is a sacred trust, the only religious practice that has been allowed to continue without restriction."

"They seem well provided for. Happy children. Lots of warm clothes."

As if Shan's comment were a cue he had been awaiting, Luntok picked up his own hat and rose. "It is considered bad luck to underpay a ragyapa," he said with a wary glance, then turned and left.

That the ragyapa had the ability to carry out Jao's murder Shan had no doubt. Had the military supplies been a reward? If so, someone else paid them to kill Jao. Someone with control over military supplies. Shan stepped back and studied the room. The woman was snoring now. No one else was present. Shan moved to the red door and opened it.

Computer terminals, four in all, dominated the room. A few bowls with noodles clinging to the rims, the remains of lunch, were on a large conference table. Two Chinese, dressed in Western clothes, one wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his head, sat studying glossy catalogs and sipping tea. From an expensive sound system came Western rock and roll. At a corner desk sat Tyler Kincaid, cleaning his camera.

"Comrade Shan," said a familiar voice from the back of the room. Li Aidang rose from a sofa. "If only I had known, I would have invited you to ride with me." He gestured toward the table. "We have a luncheon meeting twice a month. The supervisory committee."

Shan moved slowly around the room. There was an empty cassette case on top of a speaker. The Grateful Dead, it said. Perhaps, Shan considered without remorse, it was what Chang listened to as he and his truck tumbled into the abyss. Li retrieved a Coca-Cola from a small refrigerator and extended it toward him.

There were photo maps on one wall. Photographs were fastened with pins to another: more studies of Tibetan faces, taken with the same sensitivity as those Shan had seen in Kincaid's office. Li handed Shan the soft drink.

"I didn't realize the prosecutor's office had an interest in mining," Shan said, and set the can on the table, unopened.

"We are the Ministry of Justice. The mine is the only foreign investment in the district. The people's government must be certain it succeeds. There are so many issues. Labor organization. Export permits. Foreign exchange permits. Work permits. Environmental permits. The Ministry must be consulted for such approvals."

"I had no idea boron was such an important product."

The assistant prosecutor smiled generously. "We want our American friends to stay happy. One third of the royalties stay in the district. After three years of production we will be able to build a new school. After five, maybe a new clinic."

Shan moved to one of the computer monitors, closer to Kincaid. Numbers were scrolling across the screen.

"You know our friend Comrade Hu," Li said, pointing to the first of the two men at the table. Hu gave him the same mock salute he had left Shan with in Tan's office. Shan had not recognized him with the hat. He studied the Director of Geology closely. Was Hu surprised to see him?

"Comrade Inspector," Hu acknowledged in a curt tone, his little beetle eyes fixing Shan for a moment, then turning back to the catalog. The one he was reading had pictures of smiling blond couples standing in snow, wearing sweaters of brilliant colors.

"Still giving driving lessons, Comrade Director?" Shan asked, trying to look distracted by the console.

Hu laughed.

Li gestured toward the second man, a well-groomed, athletic figure who stood as though to better survey Shan. "The major is from the border command." Li looked meaningfully at Shan. "His resources are sometimes useful for our project." The major, nothing more. He was so polished that he could have been lifted from the pages of the catalog, Shan thought at first. But then he turned his head toward Shan. A gutter of scar tissue ran across his left cheek; it could only have been made by a bullet. His lips curled up in greeting but his eyes remained lifeless. It was a familiar insolence. The major, Shan decided, belonged to the Public Security Bureau.

"A fascinating facility," Shan said absently, continuing to wander about the room. "Full of surprises." He paused in front of the photographs.

"A triumph of socialism," the major observed. His voice had a boyish tone belied by his countenance.

Tyler Kincaid gave a slow nod toward Shan but did not speak. Half his forearm was wrapped with a large piece of gauze taped over a recent injury. A shadow of dried blood could be seen through the gauze.

"Comrade Shan is investigating a murder," Li announced to the major. "Once he led anticorruption campaigns inBeijing. The famous Hainan Island affair was his." The Hainan Island case, in which Shan had discovered that provincial officials were purchasing shiploads of Japanese automobiles– for an island with only a hundred miles of roads– and diverting them to the black market on the mainland, had made Shan a celebrity for a few months. But that had been fifteen years earlier. Who had the assistant prosecutor been speaking to? The warden? Beijing?

Shan studied the major, who had no interest in Li's words. There had been no challenge in his eyes, no question in his voice despite Shan's abrupt intrusion. He already knew who Shan was.

"This is where your telephone system operates?" Shan asked Kincaid.

The American rose, and forced a smile. "Over there," he said, indicating a speaker above a console on a small desk against the wall. "Wanna order a pizza from New York?"

Li and the major laughed hard.

"And the maps?"

"Maps? We have a whole reference library. Atlases. Engineering journals."

"I mean the ones from the sky."

"Amazing, aren't they?" Li interrupted. "The first time we saw them, it seemed like a miracle. The world looks so different." He moved toward Shan and leaned toward his ear. "We must talk about our files, Comrade. The trial is only a few days away. No need for undue embarrassment."

As Shan considered the assistant prosecutor's invitation, the door opened and Luntok appeared. He nodded to Kincaid and quickly left, leaving the door open. Kincaid stretched and made a gesture of invitation toward Shan. "Afternoon climbing classes. How about some rappelling?"

"You're climbing with your injury?"

"This?" the American asked good-naturedly, raising his arm. "Walking wounded. Came down on a jagged piece of quartz. Can't let it stop me. Always get back on the horse, you know."

Li laughed again and moved back toward the sofa. Hu returned to his catalogs. The major lit a cigarette and pushed Shan out of the room with a daggerlike stare.

Outside he found Rebecca Fowler sitting on the hood of her truck, studying the valley.

He didn't think she had noticed him until she suddenly spoke. "I can't imagine what it must be like for you," she said.

He was uncomfortable with her sympathy. "If I had never been sent to Tibet I would never have met Tibetans."

She turned to him with a sad smile and reached into the deep pocket of her nylon vest. "Here," she said, producing two paperback books. "Just a couple of novels, in English. I thought you might…"

Shan accepted them with a small bow of his head. "You are kind. I miss reading in English." The books indeed would be a treasure, except that they would be confiscated when he was returned to the 404th. He didn't have the heart to tell her.

He leaned back on the truck, gazing at the surrounding peaks. The snowcaps were glowing in the late afternoon sun. "The soldiers are gone," he observed.

Fowler followed his gaze over the ponds. "Not one of my better ideas. Called away for some other emergency."

"Emergency?"

"The major had something to do with it."

Shan paced along the front of the truck, surveying the compound. Someone was sitting on one of the dikes, staring at the mountains. He squinted and saw that it was Yeshe. Sergeant Feng was sitting on the hood of their own truck. As his field of view extended behind the buildings, Shan froze. Behind the first one was a familiar vehicle. A red Land Rover. Another red Land Rover. "Whose car is that?"

Fowler looked up. "The red one? Must be Director Hu's."

He resisted the urge to run to the vehicle and search it. The committee members could emerge at any moment.

"These Land Rovers. Do they all belong to the Ministry of Geology?"

"Don't know. I don't think so. I saw the major driving one."

Shan nodded, as though he expected the answer. "What do you know about this major?"

"One powerful son of a bitch, is all. He scares me."

"Why is he on your committee?"

"Because we're so close to the border. It was a condition of our satellite license."

Somehow Shan felt he knew the man. With a wrench of his gut he remembered. Jigme's description of the man who had come for Sungpo. A man with a slice on his face, a deep scar. His name, Jigme had said, was Meh Jah.

"What if it wasn't Hu who wanted your license suspended?" he asked abruptly.

"He signed the notice."

"He would have to sign it, as Director of Mines, but it may be at the order of someone else. Or a political favor to someone."

"What do you mean?" Fowler asked, suddenly interested.

"I don't know what I mean." He shook his head despondently. "I'm supposed to be finding answers, and all I find is more questions." He gazed out over the pond complex.

Workers were moving along the dikes at a relaxed pace with shovels and pipe fittings. Yeshe and Feng were moving back down the slope, approaching the buildings.

"Did someone– did you have a ceremony? For your workers."

She looked at him with a pained expression. "I almost forgot– it was your idea, wasn't it?" The nervousness had not left her eyes.

"I never thought it would be so soon."

The American woman jumped down and gestured for him to follow her along the line of buildings.

"Who was the priest who came?"

"There was no name," Fowler said in a near whisper. "I don't think we were supposed to use his name. An old priest. Strange."

"How old?"

"Not old in years. Middle-aged. But old like austere. Like timeless. Thin as a rail. An ascetic, I guess."

"What do you mean strange?"

"Like from another century. His eyes. I don't know. Sometimes it seemed like he didn't see anyone. Or he saw things we could not see. And his hands."

"His hands?"

"He had no thumbs."

On the side of the last building, facing the valley, was a patchwork charm, a square an arm's length on each side. It was filled with complex pictograms and writing. Two poles flanked it, draped with prayer flags.

Yeshe appeared behind him and muttered something under his breath. It had the tone of a prayer. "Powerful magic," he gasped. He held up his rosary as though for protection, and stepped back.

"What is it?" Shan asked. He remembered the building from his last visit. There had been a line of Tibetans outside, waiting for something.

"It's very old. Very secret," Yeshe whispered.

"No," Fowler said. "Not old. Look at the paper. It has printing on the back."

"I mean, the signs are old. I can't read them all. Even if I could I would not be permitted to recite them. Words of power." Yeshe seemed genuinely frightened. "Dangerous words. I don't know who– most of the lamas with the power to write such words are dead. I don't know of any in Lhadrung."

"If he traveled far he must have been very fast," she said, looking at Shan.

"The old ones," Yeshe whispered, obviously still in awe of the charm. "Those with this kind of power. They would say they used the arrow ritual to fly. They could jump between dimensions."

No, Shan was tempted to say, the charm had not come far. But perhaps it had come between dimensions.

Fowler grinned uneasily. "It's just words."

Yeshe shook his head. "Not just words. You cannot write such words unless you have the power. Not power, exactly. Vision. Access to certain forces. In the old schools they would say that if I tried to write this, or someone else without the training-" Yeshe hesitated.

"Yes?" Fowler asked.

"I would shatter into a thousand pieces."

Shan stepped up and examined the paper.

"But what does it do?" Fowler asked.

"It is about death and Tamdin."

She shuddered.

"No," Yeshe corrected himself. "Not exactly that. It is difficult to explain. It is like a signpost for Tamdin. It celebrates his deeds. His deeds are death. But good death."

"Good death?"

"Protecting death. Transporting death. It offers the power of all souls here to help him open a path to enlightenment."

"You said death."

"Death and enlightenment. Sometimes the old priests use the same words. There're many kinds of death. Many kinds of enlightenment." Yeshe turned back to Shan for a moment, as though he had just realized what he had said.

"All souls here?" Fowler asked. "Us?"

"Especially us," Shan said quietly, stepping closer to the charm.

"Nobody asked me if I wanted to offer my soul," Rebecca Fowler said, trying to make a joke. But she did not smile.

Shan ran his finger over the patchwork. It was made of thirty or forty small sheets, stitched together with human hair. He didn't need to lift the edge to know that the sheets were from the guard tallies at the 404th. He had seen the charm being made.

"And this is all he did, this priest?" Shan asked.

"No. There was something else. He had them build the shrine on the mountain." She pointed to the shrine Shan had seen earlier. "I am supposed to go there tonight."

"Why you? Why tonight?"

Fowler did not reply, but led them into the building, which was a dormitory for workers. The entrance chamber seemed to be a recreation area, but it was abandoned. Shelves were packed with jigsaw puzzles, books, and chess sets. Tables and chairs had been pushed to the sides, against the shelves. In an empty food tin, incense was burning. One small table stood in the center. On it was a bundle, surrounded by flickering butter lamps.

"Luntok found it near one of the ponds," Fowler said. "Where a vulture dropped it. At first we thought it was human."

"Luntok?"

"He came from one of the old villages where they do– you know, sky burial. He has no fear of such things."

"Does he know Director Hu?" Shan asked. "Or the major? Does he ever speak with them?"

"I don't know," the American woman said distractedly. "I don't think so. He's like most of the workers, I think. Government officials scare them."

Shan wanted to press, to ask how Luntok came to work for her, but suddenly she seemed incapable of hearing anything. She was staring desolately at the bundle. "The workers say we have to give it back tonight." Her voice cracked as she spoke. "They say it is the job of the village headman. And that I am the headman here."

Shan took a step forward and opened the bundle. It was a severed hand, a huge gnarled hand with long, grotesquely proportioned fingers that ended with claws covered in finely worked silver.

It was the hand of a demon.

Chapter Twelve

Kham was a vast and wild landscape, located not only on the top of the world but at what seemed the very end of it. It was a land that seemed to defy being tamed, or claimed, a land unlike any Shan had ever experienced. The wind blew constantly over the high lonely plateau, churning the sky into a mosaic of heavy clouds and brilliant patches of blue. When Sergeant Feng stopped, as he frequently did to consult his map, Shan heard fleeting, unidentifiable sounds, as if the wind carried fragments of voices and calls, strange broken noises like the distant cries of suffering. There were places, some of the old monks believed, that acted as filters for the world's woes, catching and holding the torments that drifted across the earth. Maybe here was such a place, Shan thought, where the screams and cries of the millions below collected to be beaten by the wind into snippets of sound, like pebbles in a river.

He waited until they had driven nearly six hours to call back to Tan from a battered, tin-roofed garage near the county border.

"Where are you?" Tan demanded.

"What do you know about Lieutenant Chang of the 404th?"

"Dammit, Shan, where did you go? They said you left before dawn again. Feng never called."

"I asked him not to."

"You asked him?"

In his mind's eye Shan could see Tan's lips curl in anger.

"Let me speak to him," Tan demanded icily.

"Chang was an officer of the guard. I'd like to know his prior postings."

"Don't mix my officers into-"

"He tried to kill us."

He could hear Tan breathing. "Tell me," came his sharp reply.

Shan explained how they had followed Chang's shortcut, and how he had ambushed them.

"You're mistaken. He's an officer of the PLA. He has duties at the 404th, nothing to do with Prosecutor Jao. It wouldn't make any sense."

"Fine. Try to locate him at the 404th. Then you might want to drive up his shortcut on the North Claw. It's an old trail to the north, two miles above the valley turnoff. From the top of the cliff you can see the wreckage. We told no one else. By now there will be vultures you can follow."

"And you waited this long to tell me?"

"At first I wasn't sure. Like you said, he was in the army."

"Weren't sure?"

"Whether you had arranged it." Another silence from Tan. "It might be tempting," Shan suggested, "if you had decided not to pursue a separate case."

"What changed your mind?" Tan asked matter-of-factly, as if conceding the point.

"I thought about it all night. I don't believe you would kill Sergeant Feng."

Shan heard a muffled conversation on the other end. Tan began barking instructions to Madame Ko. When he came back on he had an answer. "Chang was off-duty yesterday. Acting on his own time."

"He decided on his own to kill us? Just some idle amusement for his day off?"

Tan sighed. "Where are you?"

"Every other lead is cold. I am going to find Jao's driver. I think he's alive."

"Leave the county and you're an escapee."

Shan explained the file found at the garage, and why it meant he had to look for Balti. "If I had asked for permission, there would have been preparations. Word could have gone to the east, to the herders. Any chance of finding Balti would have been lost."

"You never told the Ministry of Justice either."

"Not a word. It is my responsibility."

"So Li doesn't know."

"It occurred to me that we might benefit from speaking to Jao's driver without the assistant prosecutor's assistance."

In the silence that indicated Tan's indecision, he decided to tell about the hand. It was a public phone, unlikely to be tapped. The demon's hand that had so frightened Rebecca Fowler's workers had been of exquisite manufacture. A casual observer could easily have been convinced it was nothing less than the shriveled remains from a creature of flesh and blood. But Shan had shown Fowler how the ligaments had been meticulously crafted of leather sewn over copper strips. The pink palm had been made of faded red silk. When he had raised it the fingers had dangled limply, at odd angles.

"You're saying you found part of the Tamdin costume," Tan observed tautly.

"The one Director Wen said was not missing." Shan had already made a note in his pad. Check the audits done by Religious Affairs.

"There could have been one hidden away."

"I don't think so. These were so rare, such treasures, that they all have been accounted for."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning someone is lying."

There was a moment's silence. "All right. Bring the driver back alive. Forty-eight hours. If you're not back in forty-eight hours, I'll turn Public Security loose on you," he growled, and hung up.

Patrols. If things went bad, Tan could still give up. Li would prosecute Sungpo, the case would be closed, and the 404th would receive its punishment. Tan could turn off his investigation by simply declaring Shan a fugitive. All a Public Security patrol would need to bring back was the tattoo on Shan's arm.

If he used two full days, moreover, Shan would have only four more until Sungpo was brought before his tribunal. Two days. Balti of the Dronma clan had had a week to lose himself in Kham. But Shan's task wasn't the impossible one of finding a solitary man in 150,000 square miles of the most arduous terrain north of Antarctica. It was simply the vastly unlikely one of finding Balti's clan. For a khampa, the safest place would always be the hearth of his family.

As they pushed on Shan turned toward Yeshe. "You have my gratitude. For the ragyapa."

"It wasn't hard to understand, once I saw all those army socks."

"No. I mean, thank you for not telling the warden. It would have made you look good, a victory in your record. It might have meant getting your travel papers."

Yeshe gazed out over the seemingly endless plateau as it rolled by. "They would have raided the place. All those children." He shrugged. "And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they got the supplies legally. Maybe," he said, turning to Shan, "they got them in payment for the charms."

Shan nodded slowly. "Someone in the military who's scared of offending Tamdin?" he wondered out loud, then handed Yeshe the envelope of photos from the skull cave he had been given by Rebecca Fowler. "Take a look."

Yeshe opened the envelope. "What am I looking for?"

"First, a pattern. I can't read the old Tibetan text. Are they just names?"

Yeshe frowned. "That's simple. They're arranged by date, in the traditional Tibetan calendar," he said, referring to the system of sixty-year cycles that had started a thousand years earlier. "The tablet in front of each skull shows the year and the name. The first-" Yeshe moved the photo into the direct sunlight by the window, "– the first is Earth Horse Year of the Tenth Cycle."

"How long ago?"

"The Tenth started in the middle of the sixteenth century. Earth Horse Year is the fifty-second year of the cycle." Yeshe paused and cast a meaningful glance at Shan. Shan remembered the empty shelves. The shrine must have been started far earlier than the sixteenth century.

Yeshe picked up the next few photos. "The sequence continues. Tenth Cycle, Iron Ape Year, Wood Mouse Year, ten or twenty more skulls, then the Eleventh Cycle."

"Then you may be able to find what happened to the one that was moved to make way for Jao."

"Why wouldn't it just be discarded?"

"Probably was. I want to be certain."

Feng slowed for a herd of sheep with two young boys, who tended their charges not with dogs but with slingshots. As he watched, Shan kept seeing the hand in his mind's eye. The damage to it had been more than would have been incurred by severing it, or even in the fall when the vulture dropped it. The delicate hinges comprising the knuckles had been smashed. The fingertips had been crushed, ruining their fine filigree. Someone had smashed it deliberately, as if in a fight with Tamdin. Or as if in anger, to prevent further use of the costume. Had Balti fought with the thing, damaging the hand? Had Jao done it, when he struggled on the side of the mountain?

Feng stopped the solitary herdsmen who sometimes walked along the road, asking for the clan listed in Balti's official record, the Dronma clan. Each herdsman replied warily, watching the gun on the sergeant's belt. Most of them reacted by pulling out their identity papers as soon as the truck slowed and waving their hands in front of their faces to indicate they spoke no Mandarin.

"It's there," Yeshe gasped suddenly, as they pulled away from their fifth such stop.

Shan spun around. "The skull?"

Yeshe nodded excitedly, holding up one of the photos. "The skulls around the single empty shelf are from the late Fourteenth Cycle. Iron Ape Year on one side, then Wood Ox Year, the fifty-ninth year, on the other, say about one hundred forty years ago. The last skull on the shelves in the sequence is eighty years old, Earth Sheep Year of the Fifteenth Cycle. Except the very last one, on the bottom. It's Fourteenth Cycle, Water Hog Year."

Yeshe looked up with a satisfied gleam. "Water Hog is the fifty-seventh year, between Iron Ape and Wood Ox!" He showed the photos to Shan, pointing out the Tibetan characters for the year. The missing skull, and its tablet and lamps, had been reverently arranged on the last shelf.

Their excitement quickly faded. Shan and Yeshe exchanged an uneasy glance. The movement of the skull was not the act of a looter, or a rabid killer. It was what a monk, a true believer, would do.

Feng slowed down for an old man in the road. The man reacted to his inquiry by pulling out a tattered map of the region. It was contraband, for it depicted the traditional borders of Tibet, and Shan quickly moved to block it from Feng's view.

"Bo Zhai," the old man said, pointing to a region about fifty miles eastward. "Bo Zhai." Shan thanked him by giving him a box of raisins from the supplies Feng had hastily packed. The man seemed surprised. He stared mutely at the box, then with a proud, defiant gesture swept his hand over the vast eastern half of the map. "Kham," he pronounced, and marched off the road onto a goat trail.

Most of the territory he had indicated had been partitioned by Beijing and given to neighboring provinces. Thus it was that Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces contained sizable Tibetan populations. Sichuan had Aba Tibetan Prefecture, Garze Tibetan Prefecture, and Muli Tibetan County. It had been a subtle measure to erode the nomadic lifestyle of the Kham herders; residency permits could not be granted in more than one district at a time, and travel papers were seldom issued to such people. It had also been punishment for the emphatic antisocialist sentiments of the region. Kham guerrillas had fought longer and harder against the People's Liberation Army than any minority in China. Even in the 404th Shan had heard tales of resistance fighters still roaming the eastern ranges, sabotaging roads and attacking small patrols, then disappearing into the impenetrable mountains.

It was midafternoon before they arrived at the office of the Bo Zhai agricultural collective, an assembly of shabby buildings constructed of cinder blocks and corrugated tin surrounded by fields of barley. The woman in charge, clearly unaccustomed to unannounced visitors, eyed the three men uneasily. "We have tours during harvest," she offered, "for the Ministry of Agriculture."

"This is a criminal investigation," Shan explained patiently, extending a paper with Balti's clan written on it.

"We are just ignorant herdsmen," she said, too meekly. "Once we had a hooligan from Lhasa hiding in the hills. The procedure was to use the local militia." There was a faded poster on the wall behind her, with young proletarians extending their fists proudly. Demolish the Four Olds, it said at the bottom. It had been a campaign during the Cultural Revolution. The Four Olds were ideology, culture, habits, and customs. The Red Guard had invaded the homes of minorities and destroyed their traditional clothing– often heirlooms passed down for generations– burnt furniture, even cut off the braids of the women.

"We have no time," Yeshe said.

The woman eyed him stonily.

"You are correct, of course," Shan confirmed. "In our case the procedure would be to contact the Public Security Bureau to tell them we are waiting here. Bureau headquarters would contact the Ministry of Agriculture, who would arrange for a company of soldiers from the Bureau to assist. Perhaps I could use your phone."

The challenge quickly left her face. "No need to waste the people's resources," she said with a sigh. She took the note from Shan's hand and produced a tattered ledger book. "Not in our production unit. No Dronma clan," she declared after a few minutes.

"How many units are there?"

"In this prefecture, seventeen. Then you can start checking Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai provinces. And there're still the bad elements in the high ranges. They never registered."

"No," Yeshe said. "He never would have been cleared for his job if his family weren't registered."

"And his work papers," Shan added, "were not likely to be transferred from another province."

"That's right." Yeshe brightened. "Doesn't someone have a master list, just for this prefecture?"

"Decentralization for maximum production." The woman spoke now in a familiar antiseptic voice, the one for strangers, the one tuned to the safety of reciting only banners and anything heard over a loudspeaker.

"I've also heard that we should stop worrying about black cats or white cats," Shan observed. "And concentrate on catching mice."

"We would have no authority to hold such a list," the woman said nervously. "The Ministry's office is in Markam. They would have the master list."

"How far?"

"Sixteen hours. If there's no mudslide. Or flood. Or military maneuvers." The woman knitted her brow and moved to a dusty shelf at the rear of the office. "All I have is the names of those in the combined work units receiving production awards. At least, in the past five years." She handed a stack of dusty spiral bound books to Yeshe.

"It's like searching for a single kernel of rice…" Yeshe began.

"No. Maybe not," she said, for the first time warming to the task. "Most of the old clans were concentrated in maybe six collectives. They were considered the greatest political risks, needed closer scrutiny. You're just looking for the one clan."

"And if we find the right collective?"

"Then you start the real search. It's spring. The herds are moving."

In thirty minutes they had identified three collectives with Dronma clan members. One was two hundred miles distant. The second, nearly a hundred miles away, answered its phone after twenty rings. The man recognized the name. "Old clan. Not many left. Stays close to the herds. Gathering stock." The man spoke with an urbane Shanghai accent that seemed out of place. "Only half a dozen adult workers. Three over sixty. Another lost a leg in a riding accident."

The third, only fifteen miles away, announced that their Dronma clan members were as plentiful as the sheep in the hills.

Shan studied his map, marking the location of the three units. They had time for only one choice.

He wandered outside, as if the wind might bring an answer. He watched an old woman ride by on a pony, cradling a pig as if it were a child. Suddenly he halted and darted back inside. "We're going here," he announced and pointed to the second collective.