Winslow grimaced. He looked back into the cave.

"Some people say that when you save someone's life you become their guardian forever," Shan observed quietly. But he knew the connection between Winslow and Larkin had grown more complex than that.

Winslow sighed. "If my wife had been a geologist," he said toward the cave, in a distant tone, "that's who she'd be." He glanced at Shan with surprise, as though the words had come out unexpectedly. "I don't mean…" He stared at the wild water and for a moment Shan thought he saw a longing in the American's face, as if he were thinking of jumping in to explore the hidden land. "I mean…"

"It's all right," Shan said quietly. He backed away from the edge and stepped inside, approaching Lokesh's pallet, where his old friend spoke in low tones with Somo. The purba runner was drawing on a paper which Lokesh leaned over excitedly. But when Lokesh saw Shan he pulled the paper away and quickly folded it.

"Lokesh wanted a map of Beijing," Somo explained. "I was there for running competitions. And he's been writing a letter to the Chairman," she added enthusiastically, then paused, seeing the strained look that passed between the two men.

"Shan does not want me to go," Lokesh observed in a matter-of-fact tone. "But not for any good reason," the old man said as he pushed the paper inside his shirt pocket. "Only because it could be dangerous." Once the pocket was buttoned closed, his expression brightened. "We saw many flocks of geese coming here," he announced to Shan, then gave an exaggerated yawn and rubbed the skin above his cast. Shan sighed and lowered himself to the edge of the pallet, leaning against the rock wall.

Falling in and out of wakefulness, he watched the Tibetans in despair. Strangers came and quickly departed after exchanging messages with the purbas. Somo and Winslow sat with some of those from Yapchi and reviewed Drakte's ledger book. One of the farmers laughed as she explained what Tuan and Khodrak had done, and said they must have compiled their data in some bayal.

It was midnight when he awoke to find Lokesh staring at him with his crooked grin. "Who is supposed to be watching whom?" his old friend asked. Shan brought him a plate of cold tsampa and a bowl of tea, and Lokesh spoke energetically of little things, like a grey bird he had seen in the mouth of the cave, dipping itself in a pool of water, and a cloud he had seen that looked like a camel.

The chamber was silent except for the sputter of several butter lamps. Larkin had fallen asleep at her table, her head cradled in her folded arms. Most of the purbas were asleep, the others outside on guard duty.

"She has green tea, the American," Lokesh said, knowing that Shan preferred the green leaf.

Shan studied his friend. It was as if he were trying to avoid speaking of something.

"What are they doing, Lokesh? Larkin and the purbas. I fear for them."

Lokesh looked out over the chamber. "I saw old images painted on the wall in the back. I think that hermits once lived here."

"What are they doing?" Shan repeated.

Lokesh shrugged. "Trying to align the earth deities and the water deities."

Shan sighed in frustration.

"I think they are trying to learn about how miracles are performed," Lokesh added in an excited whisper.

"They have explosives," Shan said, and pointed to the wooden boxes, stacked where the purbas slept.

Lokesh stared at the crates a long time. "I don't know. Nyma and Somo, they wouldn't use avoiders."

Avoiders. It was part of their particular gulag language, stemming from a teaching given in their barracks by an old monk, in his twenty-fifth year of imprisonment, just before he died. Guns were avoiders, he said, and bombs and tanks and cannons. They allowed the users to avoid talking with their enemy, and allowed them to think they were right just because they had more powerful technology for killing. But those who could not speak with their enemies would always lose in the end, because eventually they lost not only the ability to talk with their enemy but also with their inner deity. And losing the inner deity was the greatest sin of all, for without an inner deity a man was an empty shell, nothing but a lower life-form.

Shan looked at Somo and Nyma, both asleep on the floor of the cave. He could never consider them lower life-forms.

"We must speak with those purbas in the morning," Lokesh said in a sorrowful tone. "If a bomb is set off, Jokar is lost forever." Despair flashed across his face, then he settled back into his blanket as Shan blew out the lamp closest to the pallet.

But in the morning the purbas, the American geologist, and the explosives were gone.

"They left three hours ago," Lhandro said in a confused voice. He was standing at the cave opening, as if he had been out searching for them. "They wouldn't speak with me. Except some of the purbas gave me letters for their families. Before they left they sat in a circle and prayed, even the American woman, then they picked up their boxes and left. They made a fire outside." He gestured toward the opening.

Shan and Somo darted out onto the ledge. Against the wall was a small pile of ashes, fragments of charred papers. The maps. They had burned their maps, the notes of their research. As if they had abandoned the idea of publicly announcing the discovery of the river. There was an alarming sense of finality. They had taken the explosives. They had burned their records. The convoy of officials was arriving that morning.

"She left a note," a melancholy voice said over his shoulder. Winslow stood with a small piece of paper, a page ripped out of Larkin's notebook. "Her address in the States, where I should write to tell her parents about her if things don't go well. A special telephone number in Lhasa where people might have information about her. She says no one but me will have that number. She says come back in the summer and we can make a camp at the sacred lake." The American looked up the mist-shrouded trail, toward the grey patch above them where daylight was beginning to show. "If she's still alive. She says a venture supply truck will be leaving for Golmud before noon, to be sure I am on it, because she's an American taxpayer and wants me back at work."

Before noon. Before the officials were scheduled to arrive, she meant.

"Everyone has to go down," Shan said urgently, "get down to the road. Flee." Lokesh looked at him pointedly. Shan realized he sounded like someone else they had heard desperately exhorting everyone to flee. Perhaps Drakte, too, had given up hope. He gestured toward Chemi's uncle, who seemed to be stirring to consciousness at last, and would need help if he were to make it down the mountain. "The soldiers will be swarming over the slopes by tomorrow."

The refugees looked at Shan oddly, as if he had misunderstood something about them, but they began leaving the cavern in small groups, wearing anxious expressions. Shan heard one young farmer call out excitedly. "Siddhi's chair," he declared in a proud, defiant voice. Shan's heart sank. They were going to the high meadow where the other farmers and herders were gathering, waiting, because they had faith, because they believed the old lama would somehow escape and find them to lead them into a new age.

Finally only a handful of the villagers remained, waiting to carry out Lokesh and Dzopa. But when they went to lift the big man onto a blanket to carry him, he called out in protest and pushed away his niece.

"Rinpoche!" the man cried in a tormented voice.