"Well?"

Finally words came, but they were words in English. "I needed a better ancestor."

"Speak reasonably, Ai-li. You know I cannot understand your language."

"It's not my language"-she switched to Chinese-"it's never been mine. It's theirs."

He looked at her strangely.

"And this"-she took a deep breath and raised the tablet -"it was made for an old woman I loved, a woman who's just died. She had one son. He will never practice filial piety. Not in the old way. And she loved me as a daughter. So I-I had it made."

His face sagged in disbelief. Quickly he scanned the characters, gaped up at her again. "So you made her an ancestor?" "So you made her an ancestor?"

She nodded.

"Mo Ai-li, that's-that's ignorant!"

"Well-"

"It's not done now! Not by people like us. Those are ancient customs."

"I like old things," she said defensively.

"But culture evolves! You say you care for China! Is this all you care for, this vanished miasma of-of paintings and poems? Of mandarins and"-he finished with chilly contempt -"women with bound feet?"

"No!" She laid the ling-pai ling-pai on the table, her heart banging in her ears. on the table, her heart banging in her ears.

"Have you not seen me at all, Ai-li? What do you think I am?"

"I think you are a man!"

"The 'true Chinese man,' " he mocked her. "Shall I wear a silk robe and practice martial arts? Spout Confucian phrases for you?"

"How can you say such things!" she cried, tears spilling.

"Because suddenly you are as clear as water to me! You say you are leaving! Eh, go ahead-leave!"

"No, Shiyang, that's because-"

"What? Found something better? Another man?"

"I don't want any other man."

"No, only a new set of ancestors! Forget it. You can't be Chinese."

"You're not being fair. Just because I've devoted my whole life to China-" she said, her voice breaking.

"To your dream of China!"

"But I respect and admire you-all of you-I've done everything to learn your language, literature, culture-"

"Ai-li," he said bluntly. "You are who you are. An interpreter. An American woman who speaks Chinese. No more. Don't you know what we say? You can move mountains and alter the course of rivers more easily than you can change a person's nature! This"-he gestured derisively to the plaque- "is ridiculous! A cliche."

Silence.

"Next you are going to tell me you went to some street corner and burned grave goods!"

Oh, G.o.d. She didn't answer.

"Well?"

"Shiyang-I don't know-maybe I see China incorrectly. But to say I can't be faithful to you is wrong! I swear, if you and I took our road together I would be true to you." She turned her streaming sea-colored eyes to him and felt, for once, that she was wearing all of herself on the outside. "I'd come to Zhengzhou, if you wanted. I would live with you. Or near you. And whatever vow I made to you, I would keep."

"You'd vow to what? To see my culture-which even a foreigner must admit is the most highly developed one on earth -as some cartoon of dragons and red silk?"

"No, I wouldn't, of course not-" She yanked open the drawer and stuffed the plaque inside, slammed it shut.

"Or swear to be a foreign female who loves me until she is bored and then follows convenience?"

"No!" she screamed. "I'm not perfect! Okay! But I'm trying! Why are you making it so d.a.m.n impossible?"

"Mo Ai-li!" His face changed. "Calm yourself! Be more quiet! Every one of our colleagues can hear you!"

"I don't give a f.u.c.k!" she screamed in English.

"Ai-li!" He stepped to her and wrapped his arms around her, but not to embrace her-to contain her. His powerful arms pinned her to him while he squeezed her face into his chest.

Her tears flooded onto his shirt, her shoulders shaking.

He held her stiffly.

She burrowed into him, wrapped her arms around and pressed her body against him. Any moment, any moment, he would soften and return her embrace, he would hold her, show his love to her through his body the way he had been doing for days. "Shiyang?"

But he did not answer. He only kept a secure hold on her.

"Shiyang, please," she begged, looking up. "Don't cut it off like this!"

Pain and regret and confusion roared across his face. But still he did not return her touch.

"Shiyang!"

He began, with no more than a soft and minute motion, to shake his head.

From outside the door, footsteps. Voices.

"Alice!" English-the voice of Spencer. "Are you all right? "

"Interpreter Mo!" Dr. Kong chimed in.

"Don't open it," she whispered in English to Lin Shiyang. "Please! Bie kai men." Bie kai men."

He dropped his arms and stepped away from her. There was a cold, unhappy cast to his face.

"Jiu zheyang jiesu-le ma?" Is that it, then? Is that it, then?

He didn't answer, but turned and opened the door. There hovered the balloon faces of Spencer, frightened, concerned; and Kong, who looked from Lin to Alice and gave a nod of infinite sadness and understanding.

"Excuse me," Lin said shortly, and pushed past them.

"Alice?" Spencer said. Across his open blond face marched fascination, pity, kindness. "Hey! Are you okay?"

Not even bothering to wipe at the tears that now made an ugly river on her face, she hiccuped, "Just leave me alone," and slammed the door.

18.

The world should have stopped. Everything ought to have gone dark and shrunk into some permanent nuclear winter. But the routine morning light appeared anyway and advanced across the plain stones of the lobby floor as if this were just another cruel quotidian turn of the wheel. She walked across the lobby, dead. She was dimly aware of Spencer, bent over some papers in the side sitting room.

"You all right, Alice?" he asked.

She stopped and stood motionless, her eyes closed.

"You don't have to answer." He sighed. "I just wanted to say, you know, I'm sorry." He resettled the papers on his lap and went on with what he was writing.

She nodded and walked on. She needed to go out. To walk. Even if everything else was a stinging piano wire of pain, she could still move her body. It was a thing that sometimes got her through.

So she walked Eren Obo for a long, uncounted time, until the sun was far and hot across the sky. The desert light, in which she had once taken pleasure, now seemed to beat on her relentlessly.

Horace was going to die. He was going to leave her.

And Lin didn't want her after all.

She trudged up the meandering creek through the scattered houses, past the temple complex. She ignored her thirst until it was a screaming need, and then she walked back to the center of town and bought an orange soda, loosely bottled, of extremely dubious hygiene. She drank it frantically. I'm Alice Mannegan, not Mo Ai-li, she thought. An American obsessed with China. Is that why I loved Lin, because he is China? No. Because he is Lin, a man. Not that it matters now. He's gone. And I'm alone again.

At the edge of Eren Obo, where the town dissolved into bare desert that rolled gently to the edge of the mountains, Dr. Kong Zhen was walking too. He kept his eyes moving in a practiced sweep over the ground. He knew how to spot the microliths, the flakes and detritus and the tools themselves, the sc.r.a.pers and hammers and points. So like plain rocks to the ordinary eye. To him, relics beyond price.

He stopped suddenly, at the edge of a crudely dug hole. He studied the hole, about a meter deep, and three or four meters long-a trench, actually. There was a creek not far away. Probably, he thought, the ditch had been started as an irrigation sluice. Begun-when? Ten years ago? Fifty?-partly dug, then abandoned.

Dr. Kong dropped into the hole and examined it. A dark horizontal streak, four inches thick-could it be? His pulse picked up. Stay calm, he told himself, running his fingers over the darkened earth. Was it ash? When one excavated cross-sections of primitive huts they looked like this, from the years and years of fires inside. Trembling he turned to the trench wall, to the pebbles and rocks studding it. With practiced care, despite the antic.i.p.ation roaring in his brain, he removed these objects from the ash layer one by one and examined them. Each breath caught in his throat. A flake. Another flake. A cobble. Had this been a hunter-gatherer dwelling? Oh, yes. Yes it had. He stuffed the artifacts in his pocket, scrambled out of the trench, and hurried back to find Spencer.

She went to the bank and begged the manager to let her call her father's office. On the other side of the world, in Washington, the secretary recognized her voice and called Roger to the phone at once.

"How bad is it? Tell me."

"Bad, Alice."

"So he's having surgery? Chemotherapy? What?"

A tiny but perceptible pause. "Neither of those is indicated right now. They're mainly trying to make him comfortable-"

"What?" She heard her voice rising. "Why aren't they doing anything?"

"Alice, ..." Roger sighed. His voice was flat, exhausted. "Look, he's desperate to speak to you himself. He'll be back here in four or five hours. Can you call again then?"

She looked frantically around. "No, the bank'll be closed then. This is the only phone in the town."

"I see." Roger sounded deflated.

"I'll keep trying, though. I will. And I'll come right home, of course."

"Good. He's stepping down from Congress on Friday, Alice. We'll make the public announcement then."

"Friday! Are you kidding?"

"Can you be here by then?"

"I don't know-I'll try...." She calculated quickly. It was Monday. They were supposed to drive back to Yinchuan tomorrow. The next flight from Yinchuan to Beijing wasn't until Tuesday night anyway. If she could get on that flight, it might be possible. She knew enough people in Beijing to get a quick ticket from Beijing to Hong Kong or Tokyo. Once she got to Hong Kong or Tokyo, it'd be a clear shot. "I'll try," she repeated. "If not Friday, I can definitely get there before the weekend's out."

"Good."

"Roger? How long does he have? A month? Six months?"

Silence again. "I'd rather he talked to you himself, Alice, so when you call back-"

"Roger, please. You know how hard it's going to be for me to get him on the phone. Just tell me. How long."

She heard a long, defeated exhalation. "Alice," Roger said at last, "just get here as quickly as you can."

When Kong Zhen found Adam Spencer, he had no language to tell him what he had just found. So he made a quick sketch of the landscape, the canyon mouth, the alluvial fan, and then drew the trench. Speaking rapidly in Chinese even though he knew the American couldn't understand, he colored in the ash layer and tapped the pen against it for emphasis.

"An ash layer?" Spencer said. "Are you kidding?" He stared at the page.

Kong pulled double handfuls of microliths from his pockets and scattered them on the table between them. He pointed to the microliths and then the ash layer.

"You found these in the ash? Oh, my G.o.d."

"Zou-ba, " Kong said, indicating the door. " Kong said, indicating the door.

"I'm with you," Spencer agreed, looking around for his hat. "Let's go take a look."

"Thank you, elder brother," Lin said, climbing down from the truck.

"Will you be all right?" the Mongol asked him, hands on the steering wheel.