"I'm sorry," she said, lowering the brush. "I should have taken you back to Senge Drak. You had a new life to go to. It is my fault."
"I think in that storm," Shan said after a moment, looking out the opening toward the desert, "in those moments when the blackness overtook us, I think I gave up that life."
She looked up and nodded solemnly, as if she perfectly understood, as if it had been the bargain Shan had made with the deities of the desert, the price he had paid to keep them all alive.
He gestured toward the bowl and she gave a sigh of exasperation, then rubbed the object in her hand with an oily cloth and held it up for Shan's inspection. "Virtue medallions," she said. "Deacon uncovered them by one of the altars."
Shan saw that there were perhaps a dozen pieces in the bowl, some caked with dirt, others already cleaned and shining brightly in the light. Jakli held the one she was working on in her open palm. It was a two-inch trapezoid made of bronze, slightly curved at the ends, which were punctured with small holes and inscribed with intricate ideograms.
"For the warrior monks," she explained. "We found references in some of the old books. Today, soldiers receive awards for valor. But valor was taken for granted in the old armies, in the monk ranks. It was virtue that was sought. Maybe a soldier made an act of sacrifice for his parents. Maybe he dedicated his life to the perfection of his archery. Maybe he spent all his off-duty hours writing the nine million names of Buddha, or performed great feats for the cause of truth. He would be rewarded with a medallion from his general."
"They must be centuries old," Shan said in an awed tone.
"From the Tibetan garrisons that were here. Eleven, maybe twelve centuries ago."
"They belong in a museum."
The words brought a strangely emotional reaction. Jakli clenched her hand around the medallion. "Not with the communists," she said in a fierce tone, then calmed. "Virtue shouldn't be locked in museum."
"No," Shan said, not certain what he meant. He knelt and reached into the bowl, picking up two of the restored medallions. Half of those in the bowl, all the clean ones, were tied in pairs with waxed string. Each pair matched. In his hand was a pair of two rectangles, inscribed with lotus flowers running across their faces. There was a round set, with an eagle's face, and another pair with a running horse.
"Auntie Lau," Jakli said. "She once told me that such treasures belong to no one, that they are entrusted from time to time to an honored few, then passed on like a force of nature."
Shan remembered that Lokesh had used similar words, about virtue. "But where do such things go?" he asked, reaching into his pocket to touch the medallion there, realizing now that Lau had possessed one of the ancient tokens. He began to pull it out, to show Jakli.
"The people of the desert are the ones to decide how to share the secrets of the desert," a woman's voice said at the edge of the shadows, speaking in English.
Shan dropped Lau's medallion back into his pocket and pulled out his hand.
"Warp!" Jakli exclaimed as a woman with long black hair tied in a single braid at the back emerged into the light. She wore heavy black-framed spectacles and was older than Jakli, and shorter, so small-boned that she seemed lost in the oversized green smock she wore. It was the kind of smock doctors wore, or laboratory workers.
"And the dead will walk again," the woman said, with a narrow smile toward Shan. She extended her hand as Shan rose. "We were very worried about you," she said, now speaking in fluent Mandarin. "Abigail Deacon."
"Professor of Cultural Anthropology," he said in English. Her grip was firm, and as she squeezed his hand the woman stared intensely at him. Her skin was olive-colored, and her eyes, though brilliant blue, had an almond shape, the hint of an Asian heritage.
"Shan Tao Yun," the American woman shot back. "Formerly of the Chinese government."
Shan nodded slowly, with a quick glance at Jakli. "Good," he said. "There is no time for anything but the truth."
"Is he always so serious?" Abigail Deacon asked Jakli with raised eyebrows.
Jakli smiled at Shan, who stood uncomfortably between the two women. "Sophie licks his face," Jakli offered in reply.
The American nodded thoughtfully, as though acknowledging the point, then wiped her spectacles on her smock and studied Shan carefully. "Jakli said you lost a chance at a new life, by coming to warn us."
Shan shrugged. "All I know for sure is, I gave up a hard week's ride in the back of a truck."
The American woman smiled. "The least we can do is invite you to dinner," she said, then turned and stepped back into the shadows.
"In his hut at Karachuk," Shan recalled after a moment. "Deacon was studying old cloth. Is that what his wife is doing here?" He didn't ask Jakli the rest of the question. What had Deacon been doing with a human leg?
Jakli nodded as she scrubbed another medallion. "Abigail is an expert. She sees things in cloth no one else can see."
"Why here? Why so much secrecy?"
"Here is where the cloth is. In the desert. In the ruins. It doesn't travel easily. So it's better to study it here."
"But there are museums of antiquities. In Lhasa. In Urumqi."
"What she does is special," Jakli said enigmatically.
"You mean political," Shan said in puzzlement. The Americans clearly were in China without permission. Surely they hadn't put themselves at risk of capture by a man like Bao over pieces of cloth.
Jakli kept cleaning a medallion without reply.
"What could be political about cloth?" he pressed.
Jakli frowned without looking up.
"I was sent on a path leading from the murders. The only way I can get to the end of it is by understanding everything I encounter on the way."
She cast a peevish frown his way, then covered the bowl with an old towel and stood with the bowl balanced against her hip. She led him down the tunnel, past the corridor to the room where he had slept. They pushed aside a heavy felt blanket that had been hung in the corridor, then a second, lighter cloth that was tacky to the touch, as though designed to catch dust and flying insects. They entered a well-lit room that seemed half laboratory and half library. Eight tables, made of planks on trestles, were arranged in two rows. One, against the wall, had a series of smaller trestles and planks that had been stacked to form shelves for dozens of books. Two tables held binocular microscopes, like the one Jacob Deacon had used at Karachuk, with a sophisticated camera beside one. Scattered about were large clear plastic envelopes holding bits of cloth. A balding man, with several days' growth of whiskers, was bent over one of the microscopes, manipulating a piece of cloth with two metallic probes. Abigail Deacon sat at a computer console surrounded by pieces of cloth in long transparent envelopes. Incandescent bulbs hung from wires strung across the ceiling. Shan followed the wires to a bank of batteries, larger but otherwise identical to the solar power system he had seen at Karachuk.
The older man's head jerked up. He muttered a syllable of alarm and Abigail Deacon turned. Her frown was not one of anger, only irritation at being interrupted. She turned for a moment to make several strokes on her keyboard, then removed the computer disc and inserted it into a plastic case. Shan counted a dozen similar cases on the table, all with discs inside. She spoke to the older man in the Turkic tongue, then turned to Shan.
"My husband said you would have questions. Lots of questions," the American woman sighed. She rubbed her eyes a moment, then motioned to a large thermos, from which she poured tea into three mugs, setting two on the table by the second microscope. "Sorry," she said. "Chairs are in short supply. We don't bring many nonessential goods this far. Take mine," she said with a gesture toward the stool at the computer console.
Shan shook his head. "You speak both Mandarin and the tongue of the clans," he observed, question in his tone.
The American woman nodded. "My grandmother was a Kazakh. Married an American archaeologist when he was here exploring the Silk Road early in the last century. Kept the languages alive in our family."
Shan's eyes fixed on the nearest envelope of fabric, a strip of vivid and jagged red, yellow, brown, and blue lines, like lightning bolts. It was frayed at the edges and had several small holes, but the colors were vibrant and the cloth looked strong. "You find cloth, Mrs. Deacon," he said uncertainly. "You make records about types of cloth."
"Warp," the woman said. She smiled when she saw Shan's confusion. "My husband is Deacon. I'm not Mrs. Deacon. Or Dr. Deacon. And not Abigail. Just Warp, like on a loom. Nickname from college." She made an up-and-down, swimming sort of motion with her hand, and Shan understood it to mean the motion of thread being woven through a loom.
"Warp," Shan said slowly, and the American smiled.
"Before we began paying attention to the Taklamakan," the American began, "there was only one place on the planet that gave us worthwhile samples of ancient textiles: Egypt. Always a problem for archaeologists, because it means a huge gap in understanding ancient cultures. Textiles played such an important role in life. Always a major industry. Typically textile production consumed more labor in ancient society than production of food, and always it reflected religion and culture. In Egypt we can use textiles to place a person's social status, his job, sometimes even his or her personal hygiene."
"But in Egypt," Shan said, "the fabric must be two, three thousand years old." He looked back at the sample. "This looks much more recent." As his gaze drifted across the laboratory, it paused on the top shelf of books. One end had been cleared away to make room for half a dozen cricket cages. He recognized them— Deacon's treasured cages from Karachuk. On another shelf were stacks of the wedge-shaped wooden tablets.
"We date with radiocarbon, using wooden artifacts found with the samples. Hairpins, utensils. Wooden jewelry. Wooden letters, sometimes," she said, nodding toward the stacked tablets. The American woman pointed toward the textile sample in the envelope by Shan. "That's about a thousand to twelve hundred."
"Sung dynasty," Shan said, wonder in his voice.
The American shook her head. "One thousand B.C. Your Shang dynasty."
Shan looked up in disbelief.
"The sands. The dryness. Exactly like in Egypt," she explained. She pushed another piece of fabric toward Shan, showing him its subtle design of sheep in several colors. The border of a robe, she explained.
"But this should be celebrated," Shan said. "I've never heard—" He broke off in confusion at the sad glance exchanged between Jakli and the American.
"These textiles and the others we have, they span over two thousand years," the American continued. "They share nothing with the lands east of here. Many designs coincide with Persia, even Macedonia. And this—" Warp pointed to a plaid with blue, yellow, and brown. "This twill is a direct match to shreds preserved in salt mines in what is now Austria, made by ancestors of the Celts."
"Dr. Najan," she said, nodding to the balding man at the microscope, "is retired from the museum in Urumqi. He has deconstructed the weaving of several pieces and can tell you exactly how the looms were built to produce such weaving. They were primitive looms of a kind still used today in Turkey and Afghanistan." There was a glimmer of challenge in the American's eyes now. "The evidence is irrefutable. When we publish we'll have enough to fill five volumes."
The People's Republic, Shan knew, was itself the oddest of fabrics, a patchwork of peoples and cultures and histories woven together and compelled to stay together by force and doctrine. History books were crafted in Party workshops to validate that patchwork, and the annexation of the vast lands of Xinjiang and Tibet had been politically justified by pronouncements that the native peoples had always been part of the Chinese people. Every few months headlines proclaimed more Party-sponsored research that proved the common roots of the Chinese and the Tibetans, or the Chinese and the nomads of Xinjiang. A favorite of Party bosses was a permanent Chinese chromosome project designed to prove scientifically that Tibetans and the other minorities all descended from Han Chinese stock. Shan knew about such studies, had even known some of the scientists involved in Beijing, for the same scientists sometimes worked on forensic teams. First came the doctrine, and the science was designed to accomodate the doctrine. It was not unlike his own work in Beijing, where in every investigation he had been assigned a political mentor and where it was even possible for investigators who defied doctrine to be accused of the crimes they were investigating.
Abigail Deacon seemed to be reading his mind, "Party scientists have announced with great fanfare that Tibetans and Han Chinese share 99.9 percent of the same DNA material," she said with a sour smile. "Likewise Kazakhs or Uighurs with the Han. What they don't tell anyone is that Han Chinese and Nigerians, or Amazon Indians, or Scottish Highlanders also share 99.9 percent of the same DNA. Because we all happen to be the same species."
