Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  Tan fixed the Tibetans with one of his frigid stares, then gestured Shan forward. “This is work for the civil authority,” he announced to Jiao’s men. “Inspector Shan will take them into custody.” Tan took the notepad from his sergeant and handed it to Shan, then ordered his team to escort the Tibetans to their truck.

  The cleanup crew watched uncertainly as Shan assembled the Tibetans in a line, then relaxed when he asked the corporal for hand restraints. He nodded with approval as Cheng ordered the men to place their hands behind their backs and secured them with the plastic ties used by Public Security when making mass arrests. Shan marched his prisoners to the parking lot, where two of Tan’s men waited by a pickup truck, supporting Yeshe, the patient from the infirmary, between them.

  “Silly cow of a nurse slept the whole time at her desk while her movie kept playing,” one of the soldiers reported. “We took his chart and made the bed. She’ll have no idea what happened to him.”

  Yeshe gave Shan a confused smile as he was laid in the back of the truck and the other Tibetans nervously climbed in beside him. Shan drove quickly up the long switchback until reaching the hidden flat where he had intercepted Pike and Cao the week before. He had the four bound Tibetans line up behind the truck and the nearest man groaned as he unfolded his pocketknife, then Shan asked him to turn and he cut off the plastic restraint. After freeing all four, he asked them to help Yeshe out and they sat in a small half-circle of rocks as he passed around his water bottle and told them what he knew about Metok’s execution and the deaths of the archaeologists.

  “I have an old friend,” Shan declared, “who told me about monks from a long-ago time who found a way to travel between the heavens and hells of human existence. They walked between worlds, finding ways to keep the worlds in balance. Right here, right now, that’s where you are,” Shan said. “You are on the edge of worlds. In the world you just came from men have laid explosives above the ancient cave to obliterate it forever tomorrow morning.” He looked at Yeshe the demolition expert as he spoke. “Four big holes packed with explosives and marked with yellow flags,” he said.

  “There is another world, above here, where the relics of gods are being recovered and taken to safety. There is also your homes, wherever they may be. It is your choice where you go now, back to the valley, the mountain, or your homes. If you think it safer to take the government’s punishment, then go to Yangkar and tell my deputy I said to arrest you. No one from the cleanup crew will reach you in one of my cells.”

  Yeshe staggered to his feet, pulling off the bandage that covered his head with a defiant expression. “Plastic explosive or just plain TNT?” he asked with a wincing grin.

  Another of the Tibetans stood with him. “The mountain is dark and vast. How do we know how to reach the world above?”

  “You already have,” came a soft voice from the shadows. Jaya, as Shan had hoped, had been keeping watch in the night.

  As they began to follow Jaya, one of the Tibetans paused, then approached to press something into Shan’s hand. “This was pushed through the window of that shed the first night we were locked in there,” he explained. “Bless you, Constable,” he said, then turned and disappeared into the shadows. Shan turned his flashlight on the object in his hand. It was a little blue tsa tsa, a crude ceramic image of the god Gekho.

  * * *

  Tan was sitting outside the module assigned as their quarters with a cigarette when Shan returned to the compound. “I assume all your prisoners are getting what they deserve, Constable,” he stated.

  “They are grasping the painful lessons of this valley, yes,” Shan answered, raising a nod from the colonel.

  They sat in silence, the only motion Tan’s occasional lifting of his cigarette to his lips and the smoke that seeped out of his nostrils. “Over there,” the colonel suddenly said, indicating a patch of sky with the ember of his cigarette.

  The meteor was so close they could see a long glowing trail behind it. As it soared overhead, they could hear a whistling sound, then it abruptly crashed on the flat below the pass.

  Tan gave a rumbling sound of pleasure.

  There was an odd air of familiarity to the scene. Shan realized that this was exactly what he and Lokesh would do on such a night, when the air was impossibly clear and the sky brimming with stars. Years earlier Shan and the colonel could not have been more different. Tan had been the tyrannical, merciless overseer responsible for the prisons where so many died. Shan had been the frightened, suffering gulag inmate who despised men like Tan, who represented all that was bad in Beijing. Now Tan mourned an old Tibetan janitor and sometimes seemed to hate Beijing as much as Shan. With the death of Jampa, Shan suspected he was closer to Tan than anyone other than Amah Jiejie. The grudging respect that had developed between them after so many years of shared ordeals was evolving into something more, although Shan was hesitant to call it friendship.

  Neither man acknowledged the bond, but Shan had seen the telltale signs of a transformation in Tan’s eyes. The colonel was a hero of the Chinese army, who had immersed himself in the holy cause of taming the heathens and bringing communism to Tibet. He had been a hardened warrior who found glory in training his cannons on monasteries and reducing them to rubble with their chanting monks still inside, or in directing machine guns toward villages, killing even their herds. His had been a sacred cause and he had risen far because he had been the perfect warrior, wrapped in the armor of his perfect cause. They had shared adjoining bedrooms at a conference a few months earlier, and Shan had confirmed what he had long suspected. Tan woke with frequent nightmares. Shan knew Tan was beginning to see the terrified eyes of the innocents who had been shot or bayoneted by his troops. He was hearing the prayers being chanted in the monasteries as his tanks brought the walls down on those inside. The nightmares had come because he had begun to suspect that his cause had been deeply flawed. Without a perfect cause, he could no longer be a perfect warrior.

  “My first year in Tibet,” Tan said, in a low, contemplative voice, “we stayed on combat alert twenty-four hours a day. I sat in my command seat in the lead tank of my brigade many nights, all night. At first, based on what I heard from Beijing, I was watching for the enemy but after a few weeks we realized there was no enemy, none that would attack a battle line of tanks.

  “I started watching the stars instead of the terrain. There were many nights like this, when it seemed you could reach out and grab a handful of the galaxy. At first the vastness scared me, because I was just a little insignificant creature in a uniform, but later the stars calmed me. I wasn’t insignificant, I was part of it.”

  Tan sighed, and Shan heard the rasping that rose in his surviving lung when he was weary. “Hell,” he confessed with a forced laugh, “good thing they began ordering us to shell the monasteries, or I might have become a monk.”

  “Lha gyal lo,” Shan said.

  Tan gave another laugh. “Victory to the gods, right?”

  “Right.” After a moment Shan added, “Most forget that it is part of a longer phrase. The ‘warrior’s cry,’ they used to call it, and Tibetans would always offer it at mountain passes, like the one where the dam is being built.”

  “Why passes?”

  “Because that’s where the good gods do battle with the evil gods. They have to hold the passes, or the evil will flood down onto humanity. Ki ki so so lha gyal lo, that’s the full cry of the prayer. It means something like through the strength of your heart and eternal spirit, the gods will be victorious. There’s a second part I learned in prison. Tak seng khung druk, di yar kye, which means Tiger, lion, garuda, dragon. May they all arise here. They are the allies of the good gods, the protectors on spiritual journeys.”

  “Huan, Xun, Jiao,” Tan spat the known names of the Amban Council like a curse. “Ki ki so so lha gyal lo,” he whispered. “Bring out your dragons, old Gekho.” He turned his head toward the pass, where the drone had been defeated that day. “If they wanted this valley, they should have as
ked us first.”

  Shan was not sure if he was speaking to Shan or to the god.

  * * *

  He slept fitfully on his narrow metal-framed bed in the guest quarters, though much better after he got up and reversed the portrait of the Chairman that seemed to be staring down at him. In his dreams he walked along a pilgrim path with Meng and Kami, calling Lokesh’s name.

  An hour before dawn a terrified scream awakened him. It came from the building next door, the director’s quarters. Shan pulled on his trousers and ran outside. Three men jumped from the cleanup crew truck as it skidded to a halt, their clubs ready for action. Tan’s sergeant darted out from their quarters, a pistol in his hand.

  The director was on his front step, wearing pajamas that clung to his body at several damp patches. “He was here!” Ren cried out. He was near hysteria. “He brought down the skies! He found me in my own bed!”

  Shan reached the director at the same moment as the sergeant, who quickly ordered his men to search the building.

  “Who found you?” Shan asked. “Who brought down the skies?”

  “Who do you think!” Ren’s hand trembled as he opened it to reveal several balls of blue ice. “That damned god! The demon! He made it hail on me!”

  The sergeant lowered his gun. “Sir,” the soldier said, “that isn’t possible.”

  “Don’t tell me it isn’t possible, you fool! I was there. The hail came pounding down on me! It hit my head!” Ren remembered and began patting his skull as if seeking an indentation. “I could have a concussion!” He seemed near paralysis. Shan twisted his wrist and Ren dumped the ice balls into his own hand. “We’ll take care of this, Director,” Shan said, then pulled Ren away from the others. He handed the director the little blue tsa tsa god that the Tibetan had given him the night before.

  “I … I don’t know about these Tibetan things.” Ren stared at the blue god. He was clearly very shaken. “Some of the men speak about a hail sorcerer who kills people with ice balls.”

  Shan nodded at the blue figure. “Keep this with you to let the god know you respect him,” he suggested. “And I’ll light some incense in your room to call in the protective spirits.”

  The director gave an anxious nod. As he clamped the tsa tsa tightly in his fist, Ren saw that Colonel Tan was staring at him from the step of the guest quarters and nervously retreated inside, Shan a step behind.

  Ren led Shan to his bedroom but stayed in the hallway as Shan stepped through the entrance. The bedding lay in a tangled heap. As Shan lifted it, over a dozen ice balls rolled onto the floor. The window at the head of the bed was slightly ajar. Shan leaned toward it to confirm that the sash could easily be lifted from the outside. On the metal sill a ball was melting.

  He lit a cone of incense, assuring the director that he would be safe for now. As he left, he heard Ren ordering the sergeant to bring out his clothes. He was too scared to go into his bedroom.

  Tan could not contain his amusement when Shan explained the attack on Ren. In the kitchenette of their quarters, Shan laid the blue ice balls on a cutting board and sliced through one. Tan watched him with curiosity as he studied the cross section of ice. “Hail has rings, like a tree,” Shan explained. “No rings here. This was made in a freezer.”

  The colonel laughed out loud. “I like this god!” he exclaimed and tossed one of the ice balls into his mouth.

  At breakfast Shan resisted the temptation to go into the kitchen to search the freezer for an ice ball mold. It was probably gone by now, he told himself, then studied the Tibetan workers seated about him with new worry. Dangerous games were being played in the valley of the Five Claws, hopeless, impossible games that could never succeed but could easily result in the deaths or imprisonment of the Tibetans who played them. On the bulletin board by the food line, someone had pinned a new drawing, another caricature. This one was of the Chairman depicted as a five-clawed dragon whose neck had been seized in the talons of a huge garuda.

  Tan was engaged in a lively conversation with some of the drivers about the similarities between tanks and bulldozers when the workers looked up then quickly lifted their trays and fled the table. The director and his deputy were approaching, with a Public Security soldier walking behind them. The armed knob took a position behind Ren as they sat across from the colonel and Shan.

  “Worried about an attack from another Tibetan demon, Director?” Tan chided Ren, who flushed and kept eating.

  The deputy director shot Ren a scathing glance before turning to Tan. “What do you think of our glorious project, Colonel?” Jiao asked. “We are changing the face of your county.”

  “I admire your willingness to take on such challenges, Comrade Jiao,” Tan said.

  “Challenges?”

  “So remote. So old.”

  Jiao hesitated. The confusion on his face changed to amusement, and he shrugged. “Moving a pile of rocks is much the same work no matter where you are.”

  Tan sipped at his tea. “How long have you been in Tibet, Deputy Director?”

  Jiao did a poor job of hiding his contempt for the colonel. “Long enough.”

  Tan returned his gaze with a frigid expression. “Not more than a few months, I suspect,” Tan observed. “Took me years to understand how deeply we had underestimated the Tibetans.”

  “Underestimated pathetic ditch diggers and unwashed sheep herders?”

  “Something like that,” Tan said. “Nobody asked them about this valley.”

  Jiao gave an indignant snort as he lifted his mug of tea. “Surely you are joking!”

  “Nobody asked me.”

  Jiao laughed into his mug. “This had been a Beijing project from the very first brilliant suggestion made to the Minister of Public Works. A task force was created. Satellite photos were analyzed, and electrical demand algorithms constructed. They have computer programs calculating peak loads five and ten years from now and how the Five Claws will meet the demand.”

  “Still, it’s my county.”

  Jiao’s eyes flared. “Beijing’s county! The Party’s county! You haven’t even attended a Party meeting in years!”

  Tan shot Shan a meaningful glance. Jiao had been investigating Tan. “I found I wasn’t learning much at those meetings. I memorized the Chairman’s book of quotations decades ago. I have a drawer full of citations and medals for bravery and protection of the socialist imperative.”

  “Collecting dust! What you know about the socialist imperative is forty years old! This is the twenty-first century!”

  “I’ll be sure to change my calendar when I return to Lhadrung.”

  Shan found himself on the edge of his seat, actually worried that Tan might strike the deputy director. Men who knew Tan would be trembling under his icy stare, but Jiao’s arrogance blinded him to it. But the director understood and tugged at his deputy’s arm as he interrupted. “I have a wonderful video of the Three Gorges Dam, Colonel,” he declared. “We can view it in my office. We are planning to use some of their same turbine technology here.”

  Jiao’s mocking stare took in the director as well now.

  Tan nodded. “We have an hour before my helicopter returns. We can go straight to your—” he paused, seeing the chief of the cleanup crew darting toward them.

  The chief bent and urgently whispered to Ren, whose face slowly drained of color. He abruptly stood, then remembered his guests. “Perhaps you should collect your things first. I will meet you in my office,” he said distractedly, then hurried after the crew chief, followed by his new Public Security guard. Jiao muttered under his breath, then drained his tea and hurried after Ren.

  Shan and the colonel climbed into their own truck and followed the director as he and Jiao sped toward the southern end of the valley. Half a dozen vehicles were already parked beside a patch of smoldering earth as they approached. The air had a foul, acrid smell, tinged with sulfur and burning rubber. The director and Jiao stood with Lieutenant Huan beside a rapidly expanding crowd of workers staring at
a bizarre pattern of objects lying on the ground. Arrayed in two opposing arcs, each about fifty feet long and perhaps thirty feet apart at their tips, were tools and weapons, with a boulder above the arcs that was burning with blue flames.

  “I don’t understand,” Shan heard Director Ren say in a near-frantic voice.

  Shan saw that some of those among the workers did understand. Several Tibetans were talking in excited tones, and three or four ran away as if to bring others to witness the miracle. Jiao cursed and picked up one of the tools in the arc, a large hammer with a metal handle. He gasped and dropped it, shaking his hand. The hammer had burned him.

  “What the hell is this!” Jiao shouted.

  When no one spoke, Shan stepped through the crowd. “Gekho,” he announced as he reached Ren’s side at the base of the two arcs. “Gekho the Destroyer. Gekho the Mountain God.”

  “You fool, Shan!” Jiao spat. “Stop spouting nonsense!”

  “It was that meteorite last night!” Huan insisted, then hesitated as he gazed at the tools. No one seemed comforted by his explanation. Meteors did not come equipped with the tools of a god.

  Shan spoke toward the director and Tan as he recalled the painting of Gekho he had seen in the secret archives. “Gekho has eight arms on each side. In his left hands he holds bow and arrow, lasso, battle hammer, iron chain, iron hook, spear, horn of a ram, and a caldron of boiling water.” He pointed to each item that comprised the left arc, which in sequence were an old battered bow with an arrow nocked in it, a coil of rope, the hammer Jiao had dropped, one of the chains used for hauling logs, a large hook that was used with the chains, the handle of a shovel that had been broken off and sharpened to a point, the horn of a sheep, and a brazier filled with a liquid that was also spouting blue flames.