Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

"A long time ago."

"So what the hell is going on here?" the American asked in a hollow voice. "I came looking for a missing woman. And now all this… What would an investigator say?"

"That investigator interviewed people to discover facts and fit them together to reach a conclusion," Shan replied quietly. "It never works that way here. In Tibet facts are misleading, hard to connect. The Tibetans don't think one thing happens because of another thing, they think everything just happens, because it was meant to be." He saw the confusion on the American's face and pointed to a bird flying between rocks below them. "That lark isn't in the air because it leapt off a branch and spread its wings, or because something scared it. It is just in the air, now. And in the now that existed five minutes ago it was in a tree. They don't see cause and effect, so it can be useless to ask someone why something happened. There is no why of action, there is only action."

After a moment Winslow spoke again. "But for you and me, and a guy like Lin, it's more complicated. We believe in cause and effect." He looked into his hands. "There was a woman in Beijing who loved orphans…"

"Lokesh says I learn things in a contrary fashion, that things should be learned in the heart before reaching the mind. But I must understand things first in the mind, by asking the why of them. Like why someone is hiding on the slope with a drum. Why tools get stolen from Jenkins's garage the night after the eye gets stolen from us. Why Lin is really in Yapchi Valley. Why that ghost lama is wandering around the mountains. Why Melissa Larkin wanted to lose herself here. If we knew the motivation and sequence, we might know everything."

"Sequence?"

Shan pulled the newspaper from his shirt, the paper from the week after the theft of the eye in Lhasa. It was full of articles about the Serenity Campaign. But near the bottom of a middle page was a small notice about a security incident at an army office in Lhasa. An area around the headquarters of the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade had been cordoned off and new security procedures had been posted for all citizens to read. Most of its civilian workers had been dismissed. Four pages later, on the back of the paper, was another article which Shan read carefully. The revered abbot of Sangchi, creator of the Serenity Campaign, had not arrived to give a scheduled speech. Anyone who had seen the abbot was to contact Public Security immediately. The paper he had read at Norbu, reporting the flight of the abbot toward India, had been dated several weeks later. Tenzin had said he had been there when the abbot fled.

"Sequence," Shan repeated. "Looking for connections in the sequence of events." He pointed to the second article. "Like why the chenyi stone and the abbot of Sangchi disappeared the same night. And motivation, like what we learned from Tuan today."

"He didn't-"

"He told us he knows we are connected to the valley, and so is the one he wants, because he came here in his search. But if he was interested in the stone eye he would have been here before, or sent those men in white shirts. I think," Shan said slowly, "that Lin and Tuan seek the same person but the difference is that Lin is looking for him for what he did, and Tuan is looking for him because of who he is."

The two men looked at each other, then stared at the valley for several minutes.

"What did that woman at the camp mean- she said we'd ruin everything?" Winslow asked.

Shan had not realized the American had heard Somo's words but had not forgotten them. Somo was at the oil camp for the purbas, doing something she feared they would ruin. "I don't know," he said.

"Nothing is going to stop the oil," Winslow said grimly, as if he had begun to hate the venture as much as the Tibetans. "It's going to take a deity to do that."

They listened to the drumming for nearly a minute before Shan turned to the American again. "It's not something you should be involved in. You should go. The things that go on here, the things that are going to happen here, you can't do anything about." He realized bitterly that what the American said was true. The huge machine that Beijing had unleashed decades earlier was out of control. Or not out of control exactly, just embedded so deeply in the world Beijing had created that it was impossible to stop.

Winslow said nothing. He just gazed at the oil derrick, raised his glasses, and pointed. Several figures in chubas were near the derrick, sitting in a circle. It was the prayer circle, Shan knew. The Tibetans had taken their prayers to the derrick. Perhaps Lepka had told them of the bell hidden there.

Winslow pointed to a second group of figures, a squad of soldiers jogging toward the slope where Gyalo and Jampa had been seen. "I liked that yak," he said in a distant tone as though they were unlikely to see Jampa and Gyalo again. When he looked at Shan a strange anguish was on his face. "If I know about all this, and do nothing, what does that make me?"

"Smart," Shan suggested. "Pragmatic. A survivor. A foreigner who does not have to worry about these things."

Winslow took off his hard hat and examined the number printed on the front and back. "That horse left the stable, partner." He looked absently toward the opposite ridge where Gyalo and the yak had been. They listened to the drumbeat fading in and out as the wind ebbed and flowed. "I was at home on my father's ranch years ago when my uncle was killed by the kick of a horse," he said in a contemplative tone. "I got there just after he was kicked, when my mother was running to call an ambulance, and I knelt beside him, as blood starting trickling out of his mouth. He knew he was dying. He said he didn't mind at all, and no one was to harm that horse. He said if he had to choose between being a good cowboy and just someone who lived a long time, he'd choose being a cowboy every time." Winslow slowly returned the hat to his head, stood, and, without looking back, continued at a steady determined pace along the slope. They had another mile before reaching the village.

Shan gazed at the American, then at the distant, quiet village. All the villagers had wanted was the return of their deity. A great sadness settled over him. It was more than premonition he felt, it was a certainty of tragedy to come. No one could save the valley, for the world was in the control of petroleum ventures and Colonel Lins, who believed that everyone belonged to the new order or they belonged not at all. The American could pretend to hope, but Shan had learned not to pretend anymore. Lokesh and Gendun said Shan suffered even more than the Tibetans from men like Colonel Lin and what they did, for the Tibetans could accept it as part of the great wheel of destiny, but Shan always felt he should do something to change it, and therefore Shan would always live in defeat.

Winslow was out of sight by the time Shan began walking again. The rumble of the derrick drifted through the air, and the sounds of more heavy equipment. A new vehicle approached the derrick in a cloud of dust. He paused to watch it stop behind the tall scaffolding and shuddered again. It was a battle tank. It aimed its turret at the prayer circle, then shut off its engine.

Something inside shouted for him to run, but he could not, he could only stare at the very Tibetan stalement, the tank against the prayer circle. His legs seemed as heavy as his heart and he had to will each one to move again. After a quarter hour he was in the north end of the valley, where the wind drowned out the sounds of the machines. He paused for a moment, trying to clear his mind, then dropped to the ground in the lotus fashion, his back against a tree. There was a calming exercise, a meditation practice, which Gendun called 'scouring the wind.' Let yourself float with the wind, extend awareness into the natural world as a way of reaching the inner world. He needed to be scoured, he thought, he needed more than anything to reach the emptiness that brought the calm, and the calm that brought the clarity. He absorbed himself in the sound of birds, inhaled the scent of the junipers, watched a tiny bee float among yellow flowers, and saw a blue flower bow its head over an orange blush of lichen. After a few minutes a new sensation came to him; he explored it a moment before he recognized it as the smell of fresh paint.