by Xu, Lei
"Old Tian said that this plateau extends for three thousand feet at most before reaching the cliffs," I said. "The Japs would never have been able to build on this terrain. We're not going to find anything over here."
"Wrong," he replied. "We already have." He shined his flashlight beam into the gaps between the rocks, revealing an electrical cable that ran from the tower and snaked through the crevices ahead. "The devils would never have built that tower if this place was worthless. Something very important is up ahead, something that could not have been built anywhere else."
The way he said this made it seem like he already knew what he was looking for. "What do you think it is?" I asked.
"I think it's a signal tower."
I didn't understand. "Why a signal tower?"
"It's obvious," he said, breathing hard. "It has to be that, and we'll find it as long as we keep following this cable. Once we're there I'll explain everything."
Between breaths Pei Qing urged me to go faster, but it was no use. He barely had strength enough to bear the weight of his own gear. Supporting me quickly wore him out. We continued along haltingly, frequently stopping to rest. Suddenly the mist thinned out and a fierce wind blew through us. We were approaching the edge of the plateau. Around us everything was black, the twin cones of our flashlights nearly worthless. Then, all of a sudden, I saw a dim reflection in the darkness ahead. It was an immense iron structure at least 10 stories tall—a signal tower.
Pei Qing laughed triumphantly. "You see that? Was I right or what?"
"How did you know?" I asked, my surprise outweighing my terror. "You've been here before?"
"Of course not," he said, staring at the dark structure. "Like I told you, there had to be a tower here. It even looks just as I'd imagined."
Pei Qing scanned his flashlight over our surroundings. There appeared to be nothing but the signal tower. Regaining his composure, he turned back to me. "You still remember the telegram that was transmitted from the abyss?" he asked. "Old Tian said that it originated here, but not only is this place close to the dam, it even has electricity. So, if they were transmitting from here, why didn't they just make a phone call?" Gesturing at the mist behind us, he continued. "Much of this first plateau is shrouded year-round by a mist thick with heavy metals, and the dam itself is located at the narrow mouth of the underground river. If you wanted to build a station for receiving and transferring signals sent from the abyss, neither of those places would have fit the bill. Right here, however, where the mist thins out near the cliff's edge, this would have been perfect."
If he was right, this meant the devils had descended even deeper into the abyss. At the meeting Old Tian had denied this possibility, saying it was too unrealistic. Pei Qing had said nothing. I cursed under my breath. I had believed Old Tian, but now I couldn't deny that Pei Qing's explanation made a lot more sense.
"Not only did they keep descending," said Pei Qing, "they survived. That message was definitely sent from somewhere down below."
As Pei Qing said this, I noticed a slight tremble in his voice. This was strange, but I didn't have time to give it much thought. We continued on until we reached the base of the tower. Pei Qing immediately craned his neck and stared upwards. Something didn't seem right. Ever since entering the abyss, Pei Qing had been almost gleeful. Where had this stark change in personality come from? Was he merely happy to have thoroughly defeated Old Tian?
The signal tower was made of iron, the frame covered in cement. Many other layers of stuff, probably rust-proofing, could be seen beneath the disintegrating exterior. Compared to the buildings you see today, this tower was by no means tall, but for us it was a magnificent sight. The electrical cable entered the tower through a small hole in the side. An iron ladder scaled the wall all the way to the top, much too rickety to climb. We walked around to the back of the tower. There, not 30 feet on, the ground dropped away, plummeting to the next level of the abyss. Sharp, fang-like stones pointed into the darkness beyond, like spiked parapets on a castle wall. The darkness itself was vast and silent. Somehow, when compared to the void beyond the dam, this one seemed even darker, even deeper.
We laid our flares along the edge, hoping the wind would blow the gunpowder dry. By now Pei Qing had calmed down. Staring off into the abyss, he seemed to have turned back into his old self. The wind slowly dried my asbestos suit and it rested lighter on my body. My bleeding also seemed to have stopped, but the bloodstain was discomfortingly large. Sitting down beside Pei Qing, I too fell into a daze. There was no way to make the gunpowder dry any faster. We could only sit and wait.
After gazing blankly into the darkness for several minutes, Pei Qing turned to me. "You ever heard the Legend of the Fox Spirit?" he asked. When I shook my head, he continued. "I think it comes from the Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. A scholar is taking shelter from the rain inside a cave. There he meets a beautiful young woman who leads him deeper underground. The cave seems to go on forever, until at last they arrive at a fairy world. The scholar eats, drinks, and makes merry. He is wonderfully happy. The next day the young woman pleads with him not to go, but the scholar misses the hustle and bustle of life in the outside world. And so he leaves. When he finally makes it back to the surface, though, he finds the world has changed. The scholar wanders the earth for many years. Eventually he returns to the cave, hoping to find the fairy world waiting for him once more, but this time there's nothing inside but ugly stone."
"What are you trying to say?" I asked.
"I'm saying, what would've happened if that scholar never left the cave?"
"The young woman in the story was a fox spirit. If the scholar remained underground, the two of them would probably have fallen in love, like in the Legend of the White Snake. Inevitably, however, he would have missed the surface. He would have worried about his parents and his place in society. Sooner or later, he would have left."
"What if someone entered a cave like this, one they knew to be perfectly ordinary, and promised to never come out? You think they would succeed?"
"Not unless their faith in what they were doing was extremely strong." I had no idea what he was driving at.
"What kind of world do you think is down there?" he asked, pointing at the abyss.
I thought back to the towering figure in the flight recording. Given my limited imagination, I couldn't even begin to speculate. I shook my head.
"If someone made you live out your entire life in a place like this, would you do it?"
"What are you talking about?" I was becoming annoyed.
"What I'm getting at is this: Do you think any Japanese people are still alive down there? Their faith is extremely strong."
I looked out at the darkness. It was tough to say. Twenty years had passed. But if the abyss was somehow habitable, then anything was possible.
Climbing to his feet, Pei Qing picked up a flare and loaded it into his gun. He looked up. From here the signal tower would block the trajectory of his shot. He walked a short distance away, aimed at the sky and fired. An orange tracer flew through the dark air. Swept up by the wind, it arced toward the top of the dam. It had worked. Immediately I felt much more at ease. Pei Qing fired a second flare. This one was green. The light of the two flares overlapped, creating a strange color and illuminating our surroundings.
All around us flat iron platforms were balanced atop the broken rocks. On some were tents, on others tarp-covered pieces of machinery. I was astonished. I called Pei Qing over and we lifted up one of the tarps. Numerous components, their names unknown to me, lay underneath—all scrap, long since rusted together and unusable. We continued on past the first few platforms, discovering dozens more behind them. Pei Qing climbed atop a relatively tall rock and looked around.
"Interesting," he said and motioned for me to aim the flashlight beam in a certain direction.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I'll tell you in a moment. Keep aiming your light over there." Pei Qing aimed his flashlight in the same
direction. When the two beams were parallel he began walking in the direction they were pointing. I didn't know in the least what Pei Qing was doing. He stopped, shined his flashlight around and called back to me. "Not only did we wipe the floor with Old Tian, we've also made a truly remarkable discovery."
I didn't want to look stupid by asking more questions, so I nursed my ignorance silently.
Pei Qing jumped back down. "The Japanese hid one of their biggest secrets here, and I've just discovered it."
CHAPTER
36
The Big Secret
My heart thumped in my chest. "What is it?" I asked. I looked where he was pointing.
Under the light of our beams I could see the platforms positioned in a long, straight line—a line you couldn't see except when looking from the right angle. They were covered with all manner of equipment, stretching farther than the eye could see. I looked back at the other platforms we'd seen. They ran in a neat line parallel to this one, but there were also several other platforms that seemed to have been scattered without rhyme or reason.
"What's the purpose of all this?" I asked.
"It's an airplane runway," said Pei Qing.
"Maybe if the pilot wanted to commit suicide," I said, looking at the jagged rocks between the two rows.
"They just never finished building it." He shined his flashlight across the equipment stacked on the platforms. "These things here would've been high-powered signal lights. And you see how the whole runway slopes down? That's because this place isn't long enough for a full-scale one. They had to slope it to create enough surface area."
"What are those?" I asked, pointing at the other platforms placed outside of the two lines.
"Have you never taken a night flight on a military plane?" he asked. "Those are auxiliary signal lights. I've seen them flying into Karamay."
Pei Qing was often grouped with other specialists and flown all across the country to work on top-secret projects. The oilfields at Karamay were a national priority and so Pei Qing was often sent to the deserts of Northwestern China to make firsthand examinations. It might have sounded like he was just showing off, but I knew this wasn't the case.
"The space behind the dam is too small," he continued, "so this is where they planned to build their main runway."
"That's the big secret?" At most this was just a regular discovery.
Pei Qing shook his head. "Just listen, all right? The Japs would've required a huge amount of power to get these signal lights to shine through the mist." He squatted down, reached behind one of the iron platforms and hauled out a black length of electrical cable. The cable was pockmarked by corrosion. "This contradicts my original theory." He seemed puzzled.
I motioned impatiently for him to just spit it out.
"If what I initially said was correct," he continued, "then after the dam's sluice gates are opened, floodwater and super-hot steam will cover this whole area. So the only way the Japs could have built a long-term airport here would be by ceasing to operate the dam. Otherwise the planes would all be underwater, not to mention that during the rainy season this flooding problem surely becomes much worse. So I doubt the Japanese intended this runway for regular use. And the wrecked bomber behind the dam makes it clear that not only did the plane take off, it also flew back. But construction on this landing strip had barely begun. Did they plan to finish the job while the plane was still in flight? I find that extremely unlikely. In an environment like this, even a huge team of troops would be unable to complete an entire runway in such a short amount of time. The buffer bags lining the underground river make it clear the first flight was always intended to make a crash landing, but to fly only once and then crash would be a waste of all that preparation. To fully explore the abyss they would have needed to fly again. This runway was stage two of the Japs' engineering project. And since there was a stage two, there must also be another plane."
Going through this logic made me dizzy, but now that he'd reached his conclusion, I could see how rational it all was. I looked over the iron platforms. To see these things and immediately think of all that was something no regular bookworm could have pulled off.
"This other plane should still be in pieces inside the dam's warehouse," said Pei Qing. "Now wouldn't you agree that that qualifies as one of the devils' biggest secrets?"
"I guess so, but it doesn't really seem all that groundbreaking." Of course it would have been impressive had Wang Sichuan or I been the one to figure this out, but Pei Qing was already among the country's top oil prospectors and his fame was well earned. Compared to his previous discoveries, a hidden plane didn't amount to much.
"When the time comes, you'll see how important this is," said Pei Qing as he adjusted his gas mask and motioned that it was time to go. "At the right moment, many things that normally appear insignificant can become more valuable than anything else. If my suspicion is proven true, this project's largest and most vexing problem will be instantly solved. And I will be good to my word; a portion of the credit will go to you."
"Don't start bragging just yet."
Pei Qing laughed. "Bragging's never been my specialty. Now let's head back and see what method they've cooked up to get us out of here."
CHAPTER
37
The Extra Man
We walked back to the bottom of the cliff. Thin streams of water dripped down its face, the immensity of it humbling. We wandered about for two hours before finding a thick rope hanging down. First we collected the corpses of our fallen comrades and fastened them to the rope, then we hooked ourselves in and were raised slowly upwards. When we reached the top of the dam, I saw nearly all of the head officers were waiting for us. We'd been taking our time down in the abyss, but up here they must have been nervous as ants dropped in a frying pan.
Everyone applauded as we were helped onto solid ground. Wang Sichuan gave me a bear hug so tight I nearly fainted. The fallen soldiers were laid in a row on a raised part of the dam. Seeing these mangled men, the officers took off their hats and many soldiers began to cry. Others began confirming the corpses' identities.
Suddenly, one of the young soldiers performing the inspection cried out in surprise. "Commander, something's not right here!"
The commander looked to him. "What is it?"
"The number of men is incorrect."
"Incorrect? What do you mean?"
"There's one man too many. Four people were sent into the abyss. Engineer Pei said that one man was dead on the cable and another managed to make it back up here. That should've left two down in the abyss, but instead we have three."
Another man beside him called out. Squatting next to one of the corpses, he yelled, "Commander, there's something wrong with this corpse!"
We all walked over to see the soldier peering at the teeth of one of the corpses, its face unrecognizable. "What's the problem?"
"This is He Ruping," said the soldier.
"He Ruping?"
Wasn't He Ruping lying comatose in the medical camp?
"How is that possible?" asked Wang Sichuan.
"I don't know," said the soldier, "but this is him all right. He's missing the same three teeth."
The soldier who'd first spoken up walked over and looked. After a moment he nodded. "He's right. He Ruping was missing those three teeth. This has to be him."
Cold sweat began to drip down my back. I turned to look in the direction of the medical camp. "If this is He Ruping, then who was the man we saved?
"It was the spy!" cried the Pei Qing. "We saved the spy! The dead man on the cable must've been trying to stop that son of a bitch from reaching the top. He must have snuck through camp while we were all asleep and descended the cable."
One of the officers gave Pei Qing a look. Pei Qing shut up. Then the officer turned to the bodyguard at his side and spoke a quick command. At once the bodyguard went tearing off towards camp. Later I learned that the fake He Ruping was immediately put into custody, but he came out of his coma. The
knowledge that he was the spy proved useless. At the time I couldn't understand it. Why had the spy risked his life to descend into the abyss? Nothing of value appeared to be hidden down there. Had we missed something?
Several mid-level cadres escorted me to the medical camp while Pei Qing went immediately to give his report. I didn't notice Old Tian anywhere. I'd really wanted to see the look on his face. That very day I went through an endless surgery in which 24 pieces of shrapnel were removed from my body. The main reason I was still alive was that wood-handled grenades direct most of their explosive power out to the sides. Luckily, I'd been directly in front of the bundle. Even so, my left foot had been severely damaged and they told me it might have to be amputated.
I remained in the medical tent for many days, but unlike my previous stay, this time I had numerous visitors. Yet one thing remained the same: whenever the tent was quiet and no one was around, I would always think of Yuan Xile, still laying in a tent only a few steps away from my own. This closeness couldn't help but throw my heart into confusion. Many times I wanted to go see her, but a strange feeling always stopped me. Although I tried to forget her, there was something in me that wouldn't let her go. It was like when you don't know whether a fire has gone out and so you wait and you wait, and after some time you really think it's finally been extinguished, but if you pour oil on the embers, the fire will blaze hotter than it ever did before.