Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

In secret. The five could be anywhere. They could be wearing robes at Norbu. He remembered the camp Dremu had found above the Plain of Flowers, after the meadow had been burned. Had it been knobs? Shan extended the paper back toward Somo, but she raised her palm to decline, as if the paper frightened her now.

The truck bounced and slid along the rough track until it finally reached the north-south highway and picked up speed, then climbed and descended, and climbed again, through rough, barren terrain, along what Shan knew was one of the highest roadways in the world. He slept, and when he woke they were traveling through a snowbound landscape. After dark, past the snow, the truck stopped at a cluster of rundown mudbrick buildings for gas. The driver filled a thermos with hot water, threw in a handful of tea, and left it in the rear of the truck with two tin mugs and a bag of apples.

Shan slept fitfully, starting awake each time a faster vehicle overtook them. Heavy trucks and buses frequented the road. Twice they passed army convoys which had halted on the shoulder.

Several hours after sunset the air became thick and acrid. Dim sulfur-colored streetlights appeared and the truck began weaving around men and women on bicycles, its horn blaring. They passed blocks of dingy grey buildings and factories belching thick smoke. Shan watched out the back of the truck, standing now, holding onto the frame of the cargo bay. It was China, or at least the China that hundreds of millions of Chinese knew.

"Godforsaken place, Golmud," Winslow observed.

Shan said nothing. God-forsaken perhaps, but it was the closest he had been to China in over five years. There were other smells he noticed mixed with the factory smog. Sesame oil, chili peppers, coriander, fried pork, ginger. A woman rode past on a bicycle, holding a bamboo pole on which were skewered four roasted ducks. A man rode by in the opposite direction, balancing a long rolled carpet on his handlebars. An aged woman on a bench tended a brazier with little spits of roasted crab apples. For a moment Shan fought an urge to just go sit with her, and smell the intermingled diesel and spices, the scent of modern China.

Thirty minutes after leaving the city, under a brilliant floodlight mounted on a tall metal pole they turned onto a broad gravel road wide enough for four trucks. Idled vehicles began to appear on the right side, dozens of vehicles: dumptrucks, bulldozers, towing trucks, truck trailers, cement mixers. It was a huge parking lot for heavy equipment. More floodlights on poles appeared every hundred feet, and they entered what appeared to be a parking lot for trailers identical to those used at Yapchi. Dozens of trailers, over a hundred, Shan estimated, in orderly rows, a city of trailers. As the truck slowed he swung his head out and looked forward. There was nothing else except four enormous cinderblock buildings facing each other, creating a huge square of gravel perhaps two hundred yards on each side.

The truck stopped at the edge of the empty, open square and the driver, after rapping hard on the rear window of the cab, walked away, stretching his arms over his head, without a word to them. They climbed out cautiously, peering about the empty compound. Shan took a few hesitant steps toward the only building whose windows were lit, gravel crunching loudly under his boots. It was one o'clock in the morning.

In the dim orange glow of the sulfur lamps, with a gibbous moon rising over it, the huge yard had the air of a stark, sturdy temple compound in repose. There was a strange vibration in the air, a beating, as of a distant drum. Then suddenly one of the doors of the building he was facing opened and loud rock-and-roll music poured into the yard. Two men staggered into the night, holding onto each other to stay upright, waving energetically at the new arrivals then turning toward the huge complex of trailers.

Shan stood, exploring the strange, unexpected feeling that rose within. He had entered a different world, or at least a world he had not known for years. He had last seen drunken men, had last heard such music, had last walked in the night under such lights, in Beijing, in his prior incarnation.

Winslow tapped him on the shoulder as though he suspected Shan of napping on his feet, then pulled him toward the door the men had exited. They entered a short hallway, lined in unpainted plywood, illuminated by a single naked, intensely bright bulb. The walls on both sides held long bulletin boards which overflowed with papers of many shapes, sizes, and colors, and in several languages. Shan glanced at them in confusion. Monday Night, one said in English, African Queen, Bring your own Leeches. Another said, in Chinese, All Dogs Found in Trailers Will Be Donated to the Kitchen. Lost, One Monkey, the top of another said in English and French. A poster for the Foreign Affairs Branch of the Public Security Bureau reminded foreigners to strictly observe the terms of their entry visas. An announcement in the style of a banner stated that all unassigned workers would be expected to assist in assembling platforms for the upcoming May Day celebration. There was even a bulletin from the Bureau of Religious Affairs reminding venture workers that any religious artifacts found in the field were to be surrendered to the people's government.

The corridor led to a darkened hall that ran the length of the long building, with many doors on either side. Directly across from them was a door marked Infirmary, in Chinese and English. Twenty feet away on the opposite side was a set of open double doors, through which red light flooded out, flickering in time to the music. The sound was almost unbearably loud to Shan, but no other door, no other place in the compound seemed to show any sign of activity. With a mock bow, Winslow gestured them through the doors. Somo stared at her feet self-consciously, and Shan saw her clutch at a piece of turquoise that had appeared in her hand, her remembrance from Drakte, then she swallowed hard and followed Winslow into the bar.

The room, nearly sixty feet long and perhaps twenty-five wide, was jammed with people. No one gave them more than a glance as they worked their way toward an empty table at the rear. At one end was a bar, constructed of unpainted timber, with two men standing in front of shelves stacked with bottles of beer and hard liquor- not just the Chinese mainstays, but Western whiskeys, Russian vodka, French brandy, British gin, and, conspicuously displayed under a small spotlight, a bottle of hejie jiu, lizard wine from Guangxi, complete with a dead lizard suspended in the bottle. Men and women, many in green jackets, were raucously ordering drinks at the bar. On a stage at one corner a huge machine with a television screen displayed video images of women in fields of flowers and English words scrolling across the bottom of the screen, with a small ball bouncing over the words. A stout Han man wearing a purple silk shirt sang into a microphone, standing close to the screen, swaying, staring intensely, expectantly, as if he were about to jump into the field to join the women. A small crowd milled about the stage, some jeering, some calling words of encouragement to the man.

Two of the walls were plastered with posters, most of them of handsome men and women with images of martial arts, beautiful mountains, sleek cars, or other handsome people in negligible bathing suits behind them. Each had captions of what Shan assumed were movies, in English, Chinese, or French. He stared at them a moment, vaguely remembering that once he had attended movies, but he couldn't recall where, or when.

At the opposite end of the room where the light was dimmer, there were two tattered sofas and a dozen high stools. Several young women were perched on the stools, as though on display, all wearing heavy makeup, tight low-cut dresses, elaborately styled hair and high boots of brightly colored vinyl. Half a dozen Westerners sat at a table near the stage, burly men with big hands, four of them smoking cigars, one with his head resting in his palms, elbows on the table, as if asleep. With the Westerners was a well-groomed middle-aged Han man wearing a blue dress shirt, who watched the man on the stage with an uneasy smile.