sort out this logic.
"I just have to figure out where to get the money."
"It’s going to be more than you think. You have to pay for these two extra guys now. And the vice director is sure to pile on a lot of fees and charges."
"He is?"
She shrugged. "I’m sure he wouldn’t have granted the permits unless he thought it’d be profitable."
"Hmm." He ran his hands through his pale hair and looked at his plate. "This any good?"
"Very. Try some."
He tasted the jellyfish. "Hey, you’re right. Alice, listen. I have a great project here. If I find Peking Man, it’ll transform the field. It’ll answer some huge questions. I can’t let the whole thing go just because the people back in Washington don’t understand it—can I?"
"I guess not."
"Right."
"Teilhard wouldn’t."
"What?" He looked at her.
"Teilhard wouldn’t let this go. Think about it. He had this vision of evolution—he saw it, saw the whole design, the spiral of life from the most primitive to the highest levels of development. He saw it, and he got the fossils to prove it. But his Jesuit order said no, no way. Littera scripta manet, Holy doctrine. So they exiled him to China. They forbade him to publish. But did he stop studying it and writing about it? No!"
"And he wrote books, and put them away, and then after he died they were read by millions of people."
"Exactly."
He thought about this. "So what was it, after all, that the Church objected to so much? What made them exile him?"
"Original sin. The Fall. His vision of man’s development didn’t jibe with the Adam-and-Eve myth—the idea that all humans are born soiled, sinners, and need to be redeemed. The Jesuits ordered Teilhard to sign a statement explicitly endorsing original sin. He refused. So they sent him to China."
"It sounds so insane," Spencer said. "The idea that we’re born with guilt."
"I don’t know," she said, uncomfortably aware of her own burden of shame. "Maybe some people still believe it."
"Well, he saw the truth—and he had the courage to be himself. I’ve got to have the same courage, Alice. I have to go ahead."
"But you don’t have the money."
"Look." He leaned across the table. "I think I can scrape up enough for the out-of-pocket. I’m not sure, but I think I can. What I want to ask you is this. Would you consider deferring your fee? It’s not like I wouldn’t pay you. I would pay you"—he swallowed—"I would pay you just as soon as I could."
She looked at the table, dismayed. I should back out, she thought. It’s his problem. Not mine.
"Listen," he rushed on. "Don’t answer me right now. Okay? Think about it. Please. Take your time."
She found herself remembering the things Teilhard had written—the carefully composed thoughts in his books and the more spontaneous lines in his letters to Lucile: I don’t believe fundamentally in anything but in the awakening of spirit, hope, and freedom. And for some reason she saw, flitting across her mind, the profoundly reflective face of the Chinese archaeologist, Dr. Lin. His eyes, aware. His hands holding her name card, turning it over and over.
"Okay," she said. "I’ll think about it."
A waiter stepped over the doorsill and placed three dishes on the table. "Gan bian niu rou si," he declaimed. "Yu xiang qiezi. Siji dou."
"Dry-cooked shredded beef," Alice said quietly. "Eggplant in garlic sauce. Four-season beans."
"I can’t do this without you, you know."
She sighed. "I know."
"Here. I want to give you this. I copied it." He opened his notebook and removed a small square of paper with the pictograph traced on it, the disembodied monkey-head that looked like a sun. "I don’t know what it means yet, but—keep it with you. Ask people about it. Maybe you’ll run into someone who’s seen it before."
"Okay," she said, sliding it into her jeans pocket. "But I don’t know if I’ll be going with you. I mean, if you can’t pay me ..."
"I know." He raised his hands to stop her going further. "I know. Just think about it. All right?"
They went together to the Bank of China counter in the hotel.
"Dr. Spencer wishes to draw cash advances on all these credit cards." She handed the three cards across the shiny new marble counter.
"In what amount?" The clerk had one hand on a computer keypad, the other on an abacus.
"How much?" she asked him in English.
"To the limit," he whispered back.
He watched her convey this in Chinese. It seemed effortless for her, all the strange singing syllables.
She