Eliot Pattison - The Skull Mantra

The four-story building that housed the government of Lhadrung County had a crumbling synthetic marble facade and filthy windows in corroded frames that rattled in the wind. Feng pushed Shan up the stairs to the top floor, where a small gray-haired woman led them to a waiting room with one large window and a door at each end. She scrutinized Shan with a twist of her head, like a curious bird, then barked at Feng, who shrank, then sullenly removed the manacles from Shan's wrists and retreated into the hallway.

"A few minutes," she announced, nodding at the far door. "I could bring you tea."

Shan looked at her dumbfounded, knowing he should tell her of her mistake. He had not had tea, real green tea, for three years. His mouth opened but no sound came out. The woman smiled and disappeared behind the near door.

Suddenly he was alone. The unexpected solitude, however brief, overwhelmed him. The imprisoned thief suddenly left alone in a treasure vault. For solitude had been his real crime during his years in Beijing, the one for which no one had ever thought to prosecute him. Fifteen years of postings away from his wife, his private apartment in the married quarters, his long solitary walks through the parks, the meditation cells at his hidden temple, even his irregular work hours had given him a hoard of privacy unknown to a billion of his countrymen. He had never understood his addiction until that wealth had been wrenched away by the Public Security Bureau three years before. It hadn't been the loss of freedom that hurt most, but the loss of privacy.

Once in a tamzing session at the 404th he had confessed his addiction. If he had not rejected the socialist bond, they said, there would have been someone there to stop him. It wasn't friends that mattered. A good socialist had few friends, but many watchers. After the session he had stayed behind in the hut, missing a meal just to be alone. Discovering him there, Warden Zhong had dispatched him to the stable, where they broke something small in his foot, then forced him back to work before it could heal.

He examined the room. A huge plant extending to the ceiling occupied one corner. It was dead. There was a small table, polished brightly, with a lace doily on top. The doily caught him by surprise. He stood before it with a sudden aching in his heart, then pulled himself away to the window.

The top floor gave a view over most of the northern quarter of the valley, bound on the east by the Dragon Claws, the two huge symmetrical mountains from which ridges splayed out to the east, north, and south. The dragon had perched there and taken phantom form, people said, its feet turned to stone as a reminder that it still watched over the valley. What was it someone had shouted when the American's body was found? The dragon had eaten.

He pieced together the geography until at last, across an expanse of several miles of windblown gravel and stunted vegetation he discerned the low roofs of Jade Spring Camp, the county's primary military installation. Just above it, and below the northernmost Claw, was the low hill that separated Jade Spring from the wire-enclosed compound of the 404th.

Almost without thinking Shan traced the roads, his work of the past three years. Tibet had two kinds of roads. The iron roads always came first. The 404th had laid the bed for the wide strip of macadam that ran from Lhasa, beyond the western hills, into Jade Spring Camp. Iron roads were not railways, of which Tibet had none. They were for tanks and trucks and fieldguns, the iron of the People's Liberation Army.

The thin line of brown that Shan traced from an intersection north of town toward the Claws was not such a road. It was far worse. The road the 404th was building now was for colonists who would settle in the high valleys beyond the mountains. The ultimate weapon wielded by Beijing had always been population. As in the western province of Xinjiang, the home of millions of Moslems belonging to central Asian cultures, Beijing was turning the native population of Tibet into a minority in their own lands. Half of Tibet had been annexed to neighboring Chinese provinces. Population centers in the rest of Tibet had been flooded with immigrants. Endless truck convoys over thirty years had turned Lhasa into a Han Chinese city. The roads built for such convoys were called avichi trails at the 404th, for the eighth level of hell, the hell reserved for those who would destroy Buddhism.

A buzzer sounded. Shan turned to find the birdlike woman standing with a cup of tea. She extended the cup, then scurried through the far door, disappearing into a darkened room.

He gulped down half the cup, ignoring the pain as it scalded his throat. The woman would realize her mistake and take it back. He wanted to remember the sensation, to relive the taste in his bunk that night. Even as he did so he felt demeaned, and angry at himself. It was a prisoner's game that Choje warned against, stealing bits of the world to worship back in the hut.

The woman reappeared and gestured for him to enter.

A man in a spotless uniform sat behind an unusually long, ornate desk lit by a single gooseneck lamp. No, it was not a desk, Shan realized, but an altar that had been converted to government use.

The man silently studied Shan while lighting an expensive American cigarette. Loto gai. Camels.

Shan saw the familiar hardness. Colonel Tan's face looked like it had been chiseled out of cold flint. If they were to shake hands, Shan thought, Tan's fingers would probably slice through his knuckles.

Tan exhaled the smoke through his nose and looked at the teacup in Shan's hands, then to the gray-haired woman. She turned to open the curtains.

Shan did not need the sunlight to know what was on the walls. He had been in scores of such offices all over China. There would be a photograph of the rehabilitated Mao, pictures of military life, photos of a favorite command, a certificate of appointment, and at least one Party slogan.

"Sit," the colonel ordered, gesturing to a metal chair in front of the desk.

Shan did not sit. He examined the walls. Mao was there, not the rehabilitated one but a photo from the sixties, one that showed the prominent mole on his chin. The certificate was there, and a photograph of grinning army officers. Above them was a picture of a nuclear missile draped with the Chinese flag. For a moment Shan did not see a slogan, then he saw a faded poster behind Tan. "Truth," it said, "Is What the People Need."

Tan opened a thin, soiled folder and fixed Shan with an icy stare.

"In Lhadrung County the state has entrusted the reeducation of nine hundred and eighteen prisoners to me." He spoke with the smooth confident voice of one accustomed to always knowing more than his listeners. "Five lao gai hard labor brigades and two agricultural camps."

There was something Shan had not seen at first, fine wrinkles below the close-cropped graying hair, a trace of weariness around the mouth. "Nine hundred and seventeen have files. We can tell where each was born, their class background, where each was first informed against, every word uttered against the state. But for the other one there is only a short memorandum from Beijing. Only a single page for you, prisoner Shan." Tan folded his palms over the folder. "Here by special invitation of a member of the Politburo. Minister of the Economy Qin. Old Qin of the Eighth Route Army. Sole survivor of Mao's appointees. Sentence indefinite. Criminal conspiracy. Nothing more. Conspiracy." He pulled on the cigarette, studying Shan. "What was it?"

Shan held his hands together and stared at the floor. There were things far worse than the stable. Zhong didn't need Tan's permission to send him to the stable. There were prisons where inmates never left their cells except in death. And for those whose ideas were truly infectious, there were secret medical research institutes run by Public Security Bureau doctors.