Lost in Translation Page 0,72

stood up too quickly, caught the belt loop of her jeans on the edge of the tray that held the telephone. She heard a small ripping sound, felt her body restrained for an instant. A moment of confusion swirled around her. "What the hell?" she said to herself, reverting to English. Then she saw the snag. "Oh, it’s this thing." She leaned over and unhooked it.

But the soldier had heard her English words. "Western cow," he muttered in Mandarin. "Supposed to be an archaeologist! But she makes phone calls to sensitive numbers—top diplomatic status—"

He thinks I don’t understand him! she thought. He thinks I don’t speak Chinese.

’’Lai, " the soldier said gruffly, and motioned toward the door.

She knew instantly that it was to her advantage to play dumb. So she answered in English. "Okay, okay. What’s the problem?"

All conversation in the high-ceilinged hall had stopped. The Mongols all stood silent, staring at them.

Now the soldier took her arm and attempted to pull her away from the booth.

She planted her feet, resisting.

He responded by signaling aggressively, exaggerating it, using his hands.

"All right, all right. Take it easy." She had to cooperate, she knew that. Keep calm, she told herself. Use only English. It’ll be okay. She let him prod her outside.

A van waited there, in the hot glassy light. People rushed by, all careful to look away from the soldier and the foreigner.

The rear doors of the van lay open.

"Shang che," he ordered softly, Get in, and gave her a gentle push.

She looked inside to see two rows of soldiers, seated. In one motion they brought their rifles up, click, pointing straight to the ceiling.

"Okay," she shook out. "Cool down."

She climbed into the van like a remote movie image of herself, a bad dream, a sheet of water over everything. It can’t really be. But it is. Somebody bolted the van doors from outside and the motor turned over, howled to life.

She grabbed for something to stay steady on her feet as the van lurched into the street.

The soldier on the end moved down to make room for her. He pounded on the seat and made wild eye motions, as if communicating with a gorilla.

A searing Chinese reply came automatically to her throat -Idiot! Do you also look at the sky through a bamboo tube and measure the sea with a conch shell?—but she bit it down. She nodded in silence, then sank onto the bench.

"Waiguoren, " she heard one of them murmur in amazement. Foreigner.

"Hao chou-a," another one swore in the soft accent of Shanghai, What a stinking mess.

"Ta yiju hua ye tingbudong, " She doesn’t understand a word.

Don’t let on you understand.

Her eyes were barely adjusted to the dark, her heart still battering; but she could see around her. There were eight of them. PLA greens. Recruits. Kids—no more than nineteen, twenty. Driving somewhere, bouncing over the city streets, at lurching, slamming speeds. She wrapped her arms around her torso and squeezed down the trembling as hard as she could. Jing tian dong di, Terror startles the heavens and rattles all the earth.

9

It was time for Adam Spencer to admit there was nothing at Shuidonggou. He knew what he was doing: he was a former Leakey Fellow, a full professor, a published scholar of the archaic cultures of western America. But this time he’d been wrong.

Because there was nothing here.

He took his book from his patch pocket and wrote rapidly. One, where did Teilhard put Sinanthropus?

He sighed. He felt lately that this question was strangling him.

Two, he wrote. Whom did he tell about it?

The Mongols, the Mongols, it should have been the Mongols. He sighed and rubbed his chin. It was itchy all the time now, dusty and sticky like the rest of him in this desert sun. There was no wind yet. It would come up later, in the afternoon, as it did every day.

Where did he put it? What clue had they not yet followed?

There was Eren Obo, of course, Spencer thought; the village at the foot of the Helan Shan range. He wrote it down. They could go out there and find the petroglyphs. Though how many monkey sun gods were carved into boulders in the Helan Shan? Dozens? Hundreds?

And could they really obtain permission to cross the missile range, and the mountains, to get to Eren Obo in the first place? According to Kong and Lin it was a godforsaken spot in the most remote western part of Inner Mongolia. Closed to outsiders, because of