Lost In Translation Part 20

"Okay."

"Horace, be sure you get enough sleep, and vitamins, and everything."

"Of course, my darling."

Please don't die, she thought desperately, hanging up. Don't leave me.

All through the next day she was able to think of nothing but Horace, and the possibility that he was seriously ill. By the time they got back to Yinchuan in the afternoon she had decided to call Roger. That was it. Get hold of Roger, and just demand that he tell her the whole truth. How sick was Horace? What exactly had the doctors said? She lined all this up in her mind as she walked up Sun Yat-sen.

At the public phone hall they kept her waiting. Forty-five minutes, then an hour. It was outrageous. She had never waited this long before in a public phone hall, anywhere.

She plodded back to the counter again.

"Qingwen, " she said politely to the " she said politely to the fuwuyuan. fuwuyuan. "I've been waiting such a long time-" "I've been waiting such a long time-"

"Destination?"

"United States. Washington, D.C."

"Oh, yes," the woman said. A sudden light flooded her eyes. "Calls to Washington take a long time."

No, they don't, Alice thought, but she returned to her seat.

"Yi bai wushi wushi hao!" hao!"

Finally. Her number. She walked quickly to the booth, slid inside.

The phone rang.

Jesus, about time. "Wei!" "Wei!" she said. she said.

"Phone call to America?"

"Yes."

"Wait a moment." The line went dead.

What? thought Alice- Now a man was tapping sharply on the booth window. Sharp faced, authoritative, narrow eyes, and a crisp PLA uniform. With a brusque wave of the hand he ordered her out.

She 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 h.e.l.l?" 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. " 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 gla.s.sy 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. 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 -Idiot! Do you also look at the sky through a bamboo tube and measure the measure the sea sea with with a a conch conch sh.e.l.l? sh.e.l.l?-but she bit it down. She nodded in silence, then sank onto the bench.

"Waiguoren, " she heard one of them murmur in amazement. Foreigner. " 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. another one swore in the soft accent of Shanghai, What a stinking mess.

"Ta yiju hua ye tingbudong, " She doesn't understand a word. " 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 Jing tian dong di, Terror startles the heavens and rattles all the earth. 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? 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.dforsaken spot in the most remote western part of Inner Mongolia. Closed to outsiders, because of the military. Closed even to Chinese.

Alice had told him that Kong and Lin were working on it. He had to rely on her; he couldn't understand a frigging word they said without her. Though he felt he caught the essence of the Chinese men. Kong was a walking flurry, all faxes and phone calls and excited conversations. Lin was quiet, removed.

And Alice. Such a strange woman. Smart as a whip. Would obviously have had some kind of hugely successful career if only she weren't so held down by her life.

But she was doing a great job. Tonight, for instance, that Mr. Guo she'd hired was supposed to take them to Abel Oort's grave.

Though it didn't look like Peking Man was here at Shuidonggou. They'd already found the one thing they'd known to look for-the Mongol homestead-and it was as dead as skittering leaves.

Still, they had the petroglyph. The monkey sun G.o.d. Had that been what was in Teilhard's thoughts, his secret mind? Spencer continued to write. As usual, the act of forming the words, the scratching sound of the ballpoint on the page, made things clearer for him. Eren Obo. That was the next place. They had to get visas for Eren Obo.

"Can't you wh.o.r.es get anybody who speaks English?" growled the man everyone addressed as Lieutenant Shan. "What am I supposed to do with this foreigner? Eh! Little w.a.n.g! Drag your lazy legs back to the base and get pockface Wu! He graduated high school." Shan took another pull on his fat, strong-smelling Chinese cigarette. As he smoked on the other side of the rough wooden table she could see little distinction between his breathing in and breathing out, so that when he talked smoke leaked and eddied constantly around his tobacco-stained teeth.

"Wu studied Russian in high school, not English. Sir!" The little man named w.a.n.g stood at terrified attention, trying not to look at Alice, with her unnaturally red hair and her green eyes. Eyes of a ghost. Eyes of a demon.

"You wh.o.r.es have twisted everything up!" the lieutenant barked. "Why did you bring her in here! I only told you to watch her! Now look what you've done. We can't detain an American like this!"

"But, sir, she resisted-"

"Shut up," Shan said darkly. "Why didn't we get a background report on these people from Beijing? Where's my briefing? We don't know anything except that they're Americans and they're doing something with archaeology. All right, so they're both archaeologists. And now they've got two of our Chinese archaeologists from Henan hooked up with them. That's not enough! We should know everything Beijing knows before we even make a move! And now"-his voice shook with anger-"you've dragged one of them in!"

"Sir-"

"Do your mother's smelly delta," the lieutenant snapped, switching to Cantonese.

Alice's eyes widened. She didn't know much Cantonese, but every Chinese speaker who'd ever pa.s.sed through Canton or Hong Kong had heard this phrase. It was the stock obscenity of the streetwise Cantonese-speaking male. The Cantonese were known for their earthiness, and this was one of their favorite knee-jerk vulgarities. She had already deduced that this lieutenant was southern-he spoke Mandarin with an accent-but this crudeness was still a surprise, for he was a man of considerable military rank. Clearly, he didn't know she understood him. It was obvious he thought she was an archaeologist, not an interpreter. She had to keep this illusion going.

She forced out normal-sounding words in English. "Look, I don't know what the problem is." She looked around nervously. Where were they? Some Army office, a cement block building on the outskirts of the city. Please don't take away my life in China. "I'm just a tourist."

"If I may, sir," said a man she had heard called Zhao. He was a squat man with a broad face. His uniform was smartly cut, the belt around his thick waist real leather. He looked higher in rank than the others, though not as high as Lieutenant Shan, whose uniform was of the finest, softest tropical wool and whose pockets, collar, and shoulder seams were expertly detailed. "We've got the trace on the last call. It was to a private residence in Washington. Of course, there is nothing unlawful-"

"Do your mother," Shan hissed.

G.o.d, she thought, tracing my call. Is it about Horace?

But the lieutenant continued: "You should have let her talk on the phone. We were taping. Don't any of you wh.o.r.es have brains? How can we know now whether she was going to make arrangements with her government to remove Peking Man? How can we even know how close they are to finding it!"

Jesus, she thought, it's the expedition.

Shan was jabbing his brown finger at a sheaf of densely charactered pages in front of him. "The penalties for smuggling antiquities out of China are very-oh, very severe. We might have had a case that could turn into some true political currency. No. Oh, no. You dog bones have to bring her in before she even gets on the phone. Zao-le, Zao-le, Now it's all exposed!" Now it's all exposed!"

Take Peking Man out of the country? she thought. They can't be serious.

Shan, disgusted, was lighting another cigarette.

The men stood silent, watching him. Finally the one called Zhao spoke: "Sir, permit this lower man to speak, but what is exposed? She cannot understand a word we say."

"You brought her here, didn't you? Does she think this is a tourist diversion? Look at her!"

They all shifted their gaze to her, not daring to speak.

"Look at her," Shan said, and suddenly his voice was slow, almost thoughtful. "Do you suppose her hair is red down below?"

"I personally wouldn't want to find out," Zhao said primly.

"Actually, she's not bad," Shan said. Smoke curled around his mouth.

Oh, G.o.d, not this, she thought desperately. It took all her self-control not to scrunch up, cross her legs, or do something else that showed she understood.

"You know, their women do it with everybody," Zhao remarked. "That's what I've heard."

They all looked raptly at him, then at her.

Stop, she thought miserably. Out loud she spoke English: "I wish I'd brought my pa.s.sport today. Sorry. I left it at the hotel. But I'm an American, you see-here-I have an idea. Give me a pencil and paper." And she made writing motions with her hands.

"See that!" said the emaciated underling named w.a.n.g. "She wants to write something."

Shan looked at him witheringly. "w.a.n.g, you little wh.o.r.e, I don't know why I continue to expect intelligence from you. One can't get ivory from a dog's mouth, can one? Do your mother! Get her some paper and stop up your mouth!"

Little w.a.n.g yanked open the table drawer and shoved paper and a leaky-looking fountain pen in front of her.

"Thanks," she said, careful to stay in English, laboring to keep her voice steady. Quickly she sketched a creditable outline of the United States. Should she put a mark on Houston, Texas, her hometown? h.e.l.l, no. No mark. She pushed the paper back toward them.

"What fun," Shan said dryly. "The little oily mouth gives us a geography lesson. Zhao, w.a.n.g, listen. I'd like to lock this little west-ocean s.l.u.t up and teach her a lesson, lock the other American up, too, but they haven't done anything yet and it would bring too much bitterness down on my head. We're all supposed to be friends with them now, can it be believed? The imperialist f.u.c.ks. Eh? Who would have thought now I'd have one of their wh.o.r.es in my office and I'd have to play polite! Enough, I'm wasting too much time." He turned to Alice and stretched his mouth in a phony smile. "Mistake!" he shouted in English, the word barely comprehensible. He raised his palms. "Sorry! Mistake!"

She drew her brows together. Had he said "mistake"? Was he backing down? "Oh," she said in English. "Okay. No problem."

He glared at his men. "All right, you wh.o.r.es. Take this baggage back to downtown Yinchuan and let her off. Courteously. And then keep an eye on all of them. If they find the bones, I want to know it. Good and fast! Understood?"

"Sir!" Sharp salutes from Zhao and w.a.n.g.

"Diu neh loh moh, " Do your mothers. Shan waved them out. loh moh, " Do your mothers. Shan waved them out.

When she finally stepped down from the back of the van on the back street behind the Number One, her knees were like water and she wasn't sure where she was, what had just happened, or even what language she was thinking in. She tried to start walking. The pillared entrance to the guesthouse blurred in front of her.

Then there was a hand under her arm. "Xiao Mo."