Lost In Translation Part 13

"Okay-"

"Or better yet, come home and visit. You haven't come in two years. Please, darling. I'd love to see you."

"I don't know, Horace. I'll try. But please take care of yourself-"

He cut in, his voice different, businesslike. "My meeting's here now. Got to go."

"Bye, Horace-"

But the line had gone dead.

She sat staring at it before she replaced it in its heavy black cradle. Then it rang again.

She jumped. "Wei?" "Wei?"

"Shuo-wan-le ma?" the operator screamed, Are you finished? the operator screamed, Are you finished?

"Wan-le, " she answered, fighting back her apprehension, I'm finished. She tumbled the phone back down. " she answered, fighting back her apprehension, I'm finished. She tumbled the phone back down.

In Beijing, International Operator Yu finished filling out the little onionskin form with its six layers of carbon. She filed one copy in her logbook and carried the rest to her supervisor. "This call was to an official government office," she told the older woman. "It came up on our highest-level track."

"Well done, Fourth Apprentice Yu." Supervisor Ling did not conceal her excitement. Phone numbers that sorted to top diplomatic status were always reported. And this call originated from the people they'd already been asked to record-by the Army, no less. By the PLA. Supervisor Ling set aside the stack of paperwork she'd been sorting through, and lifted her tea mug for a long lukewarm drink. She clicked the ceramic lid back on the cup decisively.

"Try to get through to District Commander Gao of the PLA," she ordered the apprentice. She watched the girl hurry to an empty desk and dial.

"It's ringing," Apprentice Yu reported, head twisted over her shoulder.

Supervisor Ling laid a hand over the receiver, ready to pick it up. She felt flushed, important, her heartbeat steady and strong. Things like this never happened on her s.h.i.+ft.

6.

"Okay," said Dr. Spencer. "Here's what we're going to do."

They sat facing him in his room.

Spencer waved at the pile of books, ma.n.u.scripts, and essays on his desk. He might just have brought along every single thing Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had ever published.

"All right. Nineteen twenty-three. He and emile Licent took the train as far as Baotou, then rode mules. When they arrived here in Yinchuan they stayed with a Dutch missionary, Abel Oort. Interesting man; Catholic, but knew a great deal about Buddhism and Lamaism. He and Teilhard seem to have had a philosophical meeting of minds. Then the two French-men stocked up on supplies and rode out of the city on April twenty-sixth."

Kong and Lin listened attentively.

Spencer studied his notebook. "Heading northwest, they found the Border River and followed it. This was the edge of Mongolia. And here is the important clue: the Mongol family. When they stumbled on the site alongside the river-the site we now call Shuidonggou-there happened to be a family of Mongols living nearby. The Mongols helped them, and Teilhard in particular struck up a close relations.h.i.+p with the family. He said he felt free there, with them."

"He felt free-why, exactly?" Lin asked.

"Because there he could be his true self," Alice said. "Imagine. Him traveling along the river on mules, stopping, sitting by the water to eat. Then glancing up to see a stone tool protruding from the cliff! He must have seen it all-the site, the first proof of ancient man in Asia-and yet he knew the Church would only laugh at him. All others might see the truth, but it was to the Church he'd made his lifetime vows. And they would say it proved nothing."

He stared at her. Eh, how her face shone with feeling and fascination. She seemed to want so badly to make him see. Like Meiyan used to do. She'd have had some point, some insight, and would come near to tears, explaining it to him. As if nothing on earth mattered more than that he should know. So long since he'd thought of that. "I see," he said to Alice now.

"The Mongols were different," she finished. "They were wild about the find. Totally into it. They dropped everything to help the priests dig. Sorry," she said, turning back to Spencer. "Go on."

"Okay," Adam continued. "They found the skeleton of a man, bone ornaments, crude stone tools. Crates and crates of stuff. And the Mongols, of course-they believed in him. That's why I know he brought Peking Man back out here. Teilhard scholars never made much of his relations.h.i.+p with them, but I think it was central for him. Birth of hope. Acceptance."

"Who were they?" Kong asked.

"He never mentions a name. They must have been living there in 1923. Now..." Spencer shrugged. "Way I see it, we go out to the site and start looking. Maybe their descendants will be there. Or somebody who knows where they went."

"Because," clarified Kong, "you believe this Akabori actually returned Peking Man to the priest in 1945, and then the priest carried it out here? And contacted the Mongols?"

"That's... one scenario."

"Hmm," Kong said. He crossed one narrow leg over the other and wagged a running shoe rhythmically in the air.

"And just to refresh your memory..." Spencer pulled out a photocopied list and pa.s.sed copies around. "Alice, would you..."

She began reading aloud from her list in Chinese, while Lin and Kong took notes. "Six facial fragments, fourteen cranial pieces and six partial skullcaps, fifteen jaws, one hundred and fifty-seven teeth, four arm pieces, eight leg pieces, one collarbone-parts of forty different hominids, in all. These were the contents of the crate when it was last seen."

They all stared at the list.

"There's one other thing," said Spencer. "Alice and I found this letter in Beijing, in some boxes left by Lucile Swan. You both know the name, Lucile Swan?"

"Yes-the American," said Dr. Lin. "The woman friend of the priest."

"Right. It was among her effects, but it actually appears to be a letter written to Teilhard." Spencer handed it to the Chinese scientists. "Whoever wrote it is talking about the warlord out here, Ma Huang-gui, saying he kept out the j.a.panese and he'll keep out the Communists too. See? As if he's rea.s.suring Teilhard that it's a safe place to hide Peking Man. It all fits. Except that little drawing-I don't know what that is."

"That's the Helan Shan petroglyph," Kong said promptly.

"What?" Spencer's eyes popped. "You know it?"

"Of course. It's a rock art design found only in the Helan Shan Mountains around Eren Obo-that's a village over the border in what's now Inner Mongolia. They're quite controversial, these petroglyphs. n.o.body knows whether they are from a thousand years ago or twenty thousand years ago. And no one knows what they signify. Or what culture created them." Kong's thin, high-cheeked face was lit with knowledge and pleasure. "Here!" He reached for one of Spencer's maps, uncapped his ballpoint, and drew a circle around a section of the Helan Shan mountains. "This is where they're found. No place else."

"Only here?" Spencer's grin pulled slowly at his mouth. "This is great. We've got to check this out. I've never seen any design like this in the Americas, a sun with the face of a monkey."

"Isn't it so. Moreover, monkeys were never native to this part of north China. Never."

That stopped Spencer cold. "Then the image must date from after trade was established."

"Yet the patina on the rocks suggest these petroglyphs are much, much older," Kong countered. "We don't know. We only know that this motif-we call it the monkey sun G.o.d-is unique to the Helan Shan."

"And it was sketched in this letter, written to Father Teilhard in 1945. What does that tell us?"

Dr. Kong touched his fingertips together. "Let me think back and forth. Certainly by 1945 nothing would have been published about this rock art. At that time the monkey sun G.o.d would only have been known to local people."

"Suoyi, " Alice said, "whoever wrote this letter lived in or near the Helan Shan Mountains." " Alice said, "whoever wrote this letter lived in or near the Helan Shan Mountains."

Spencer picked up the map Dr. Kong had drawn on. "So worst case-I mean, suppose we don't find what we're looking for here? We could go on to"-he squinted-"Eren Obo." He propped open his notebook and wrote swiftly, beaming. "You're something, Dr. Kong. How'd you know about this petroglyph?"

"How could I not know? Late Paleolithic hunter-gatherers are my specialty."

"Late Paleolithic ..." Spencer glanced from Kong to Lin. "I'd a.s.sumed both of you were h.o.m.o erectus h.o.m.o erectus specialists." specialists."

"Dr. Lin is an expert on h.o.m.o erectus," h.o.m.o erectus," Dr. Kong clarified, pointing to the other Chinese. "Early-Middle Paleolithic." Dr. Kong clarified, pointing to the other Chinese. "Early-Middle Paleolithic."

Dr. Lin nodded. "And I study nomadic foragers in the Late Paleolithic," he finished. "Also the Neolithic, the transition to agriculture."

"Ah. Like me," Spencer said.

Kong nodded.

"Then why were you selected to come, Dr. Kong?" Alice asked.

"Oh! Because I am the vice director's cousin."

Aha, Alice thought. Of course.

"The vice director depends on me to take care of you. And, of course, to watch you."

Alice jumped on his candor like a small animal. "Do you know anything about those men who were following us in Beijing?"

He shook his head. "I don't know who they were. But it was ordered, I know that. They are watching you. Surely you realize they watch foreigners."

"Yes-sometimes-" Alice said.

"It's because you're looking for Peking Man. Please understand, this is considered most important."

"Of course it is," Spencer agreed. "And thanks for being honest. I appreciate it. I think you're all right, Dr. Kong. I like you."

"Bici." Kong smiled. It's mutual. Kong smiled. It's mutual.

An hour later they were bouncing out of Yinchuan in a cheap rented jeep, an old machine that had seen many better years. It had gray splotches of primer everywhere, rudely patched tires, and one door that wouldn't shut. The driver grinned at Alice crazily when she addressed him in Chinese and asked if he thought the jeep would make it. He had a mouthful of silver teeth and lentil-shaped freckles splashed over his jutting cheekbones. "I have my tools!" he explained, waving a thin, muscled arm at a single screwdriver and a plastic jug filled with water. "It's no problem!"

"Those are your tools? That's it? You have a spare tire?" are your tools? That's it? You have a spare tire?"

"Foreign woman, don't worry. I can drive to the sh.o.r.es of the four seas and back."

"What's he saying about the jeep?" Spencer asked nervously.

"He says it runs great."

And it did attain surprising speeds as they roared out of the city, out of the oasis with its lush fields and into the desert. The dirt and rocks became a carpet, rolling gently away toward the horizon, where the wall of the Helan Shan could faintly be seen. No one followed them. Alice could see miles of empty road behind. Scotch broom and sagebrush and other scrubby plants Alice could not name grew in patches. The terrain was so like the Mojave that Alice expected to see a green-and-white sign at any moment, announcing Barstow or Needles. But the road was unadorned and the desert was empty under the brilliant azure sky. Alice held on hard to the window frame as they slammed over potholes and rattled in and out of ruts.

"Dr. Kong." Spencer leaned over the seat. "Is it true as I've heard-the archaeological sites out here are undisturbed?"

"Oh, yes! Untouched." Kong smiled, though his bony frame was bouncing cruelly against the hard seat. "Man has been here continuously for eons. We just have not had the resources to study the place. Only a few of the major cultures have even been identified!"

"G.o.d," Adam groaned next to her. "Alice, there's nothing like this in the West. It's a gold mine."

"Want to change your project?" she joked.

"No! Peking Man's the thing. That's what we're after."

"But it's heaven for Dr. Kong," she said, glancing at the rapt Chinese professor.

Lin was watching her. "Dr. Kong loves the Neolithic," he said.

"And you, Dr. Lin? You love h.o.m.o erectus?" h.o.m.o erectus?"

"I do," he said, and excitement touched his mouth and eyes. "I've studied Sinanthropus Sinanthropus all my life-from pictures, you understand, and from the bits and pieces we have found at other sites around China. It's not much. A skull fragment here and a tooth there. Of course, we keep digging at Zhoukoudian, but during the fifty years since Peking Man disappeared we have found almost nothing. Nothing like the original cache of fossils." all my life-from pictures, you understand, and from the bits and pieces we have found at other sites around China. It's not much. A skull fragment here and a tooth there. Of course, we keep digging at Zhoukoudian, but during the fifty years since Peking Man disappeared we have found almost nothing. Nothing like the original cache of fossils."

"Yet you've learned a lot about the yuanren." yuanren."

"Yes-his tools, what he ate, how he hunted, how he used fire. Where he found shelter."

"Did they have language? Imagination?"

He laughed out loud. "Of course, we don't know this. But, truly spoken, we could learn so much more if we could locate Peking Man. That is why I had to come on this expedition. If there is any chance at all to find it-even so little as one blade in a field of gra.s.s-it is worth going to the ends of the world."

Ah, she thought, such longing. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we succeeded?"

"Ke bu s.h.i.+ ma, " he said in the soft voice of a man who has learned not to allow himself to hope, Isn't it so. " he said in the soft voice of a man who has learned not to allow himself to hope, Isn't it so.

Presently the jeep left the road and bounced through a grove of oleaster trees. The trees stopped at a barren, skidding slope of bare dirt. At its bottom, slow and brown with the sun shattered all over it, crawled the Yellow River.

The jeep coughed to a stop in the trees. Red-cheeked children ran shrieking up the bank, and a gaggle of older women appeared with a watermelon, a cleaver, and a piece of bright cloth. In a moment they had rigged up a little table and awning and were selling slices for thirty fen fen apiece. Other pa.s.sengers rolled down into the grove to wait with them: a truckful of armed People's Liberation Army soldiers, a man driving goats, and a stunted little pickup truck overflowing with a family of Mongols. Alice stared at the ancient patriarch, tiny round gla.s.ses of hammered gold on his nose and a few wisps of white straggling from his chin. apiece. Other pa.s.sengers rolled down into the grove to wait with them: a truckful of armed People's Liberation Army soldiers, a man driving goats, and a stunted little pickup truck overflowing with a family of Mongols. Alice stared at the ancient patriarch, tiny round gla.s.ses of hammered gold on his nose and a few wisps of white straggling from his chin.

"Good morning, Elder uncle," she said politely.

"The foreigner talks! The foreigner talks!" The children punched each other and giggled. The old man's eyes were almost lost in folds of skin; his papery mouth trembled.

Then she studied the soldiers, wood faced, sitting in two rows in their flatbed truck. Each gripped the worn stock of an automatic rifle.

"What are soldiers doing out here?" Spencer whispered.

She swallowed. "Remember what they've been saying. This is a military area."

"So's Nevada," he said sourly.

He was right, of course. She noticed the other pa.s.sengers had edged away from the soldiers and turned their backs to them. An unpleasant silence ballooned over the group, broken only by the slight slapping of the waves and the hum of the barge's little motor as it bellied up to the sh.o.r.e and loaded everyone on.

They crossed the river in silence and drove off the barge on the other side. "The PLA's not too popular out here, is it?" Spencer asked. She translated softly. Kong and Lin looked at each other but didn't answer.

The road was now dirt, rutted and unpaved, and they drove west on it through landscape which had subtly changed. Instead of rocky, pebbly desert there stretched away all around them a carpet of yellow earth-loess, Spencer called it, the dust and silt carried and spread by the Yellow River over geologic time. This blanket of loess was not flat, but billowed and rolled in every direction, making hills and hollows and soft eroded canyons, all the same dun color. Loess. Left by the river. Carved out of this earth, every so often, were little settlements of houses, with sunflowers and hollyhocks blooming by their doors. But as they drove through these settlements the people Alice glimpsed didn't look as she expected. They had neither the flat, scornful faces of the Mongols nor the mixed, half-Turkic faces of the Muslims. They weren't tall the way northern Chinese were either. The people she saw were small, with wiry, curved legs and compact, corded bodies. They looked like the people in China's southern provinces. Puzzling.