"What questions? What did Drakte ask?" Shan inquired, squatting beside the woman.

"The number of sheep and goats we have," the woman said woodenly. "Who has yak and who has goats. Where the nearest fields of barley might be. How much fodder we cut for the winter."

Barley. Shan stared at the woman, then at Lhandro and Nyma. The abbot and the Director of Religious Affairs had been counting fields of barley. Counting them on the changtang pastureland, where no barley grew. He darted to his blanket and unrolled it to find the pouch the dropka woman had brought through the storm. They leafed through Drakte's book together until they found a page near the end captioned Lamtso Gar- Lamtso Camp- dated the week before. There was a column for barley, marked none, and others for sheep, yak, and goats.

"This camp is our home for much of the year," the woman explained. "Everyone else just visits for the salt." She pointed to the columns with obvious pride. One yak, eighteen sheep, five goats read the entry for Lamtso Gar. And two dogs.

If it made no sense that the abbot and a senior howler were collecting such data, it made even less sense Drakte would be. But Drakte had not only collected the data, he had certified it. At the bottom of the page were signatures, and beneath the signatures a note Shan suspected was added later. Last year, Drakte had written, a two-year-old girl died of starvation here.

Shan leafed through the following pages and pointed to entries that had no signatures, only circles or X's.

"Even those who could not write had to sign," the woman explained. "He insisted there be an entry for every family, every home. He said bad things until they made their marks," she added in a low, perplexed voice.

"Bad things?"

The woman hung her head, as if embarrassed. "He was tired, and worried. He was a good boy."

"What things?" Shan asked again.

The woman stared at the ground and whispered so low Shan had to lean toward her to hear. "He said sign or else all your children will grow up to hate you." She shivered and folded her arms over her breast.

Shan stared at the woman, then at the ledger.

Suddenly a loud curse echoed through the camp. Dremu was yelling at a middle-aged woman who was throwing pebbles at him and encouraging the children to do likewise. The Golok raised his fist threateningly, but turned and broke into a fast stride toward the fire. When he reached the ring of stones he paused, looked at Lhandro, then stepped behind Shan. Lhandro, the soft-spoken rongpa, had thrown stones, too.

"This Golok is not welcome," Lhandro said stiffly.

"You would welcome me…," Shan said in confusion, not needing to ask the obvious question: Why would Lhandro welcome a Chinese but not another Tibetan?

"I don't mean all Goloks," Lhandro explained in a heavy voice. "But this man's clan were bandits. Once that band raided many camps and villages between here and the ranges in Amdo the Goloks call home. They attacked many innocent clans, stole many herds and bags of barley."

"Those bandits died a long time ago," Dremu muttered. "Caught by Public Security and executed."

"Is this man still a bandit?" Lhandro demanded of Shan.

Dremu gave a grunt-like laugh, as though to say, if only he could have it so good.

"You don't need this man," Lhandro said when Shan did not reply. "You are going to Yapchi with us."

"But the purbas arranged it," Nyma interjected. "I think they wanted someone who knows the mountains, knows the hiding places, knows where patrols look. We aren't used to knobs. Drakte arranged it," she whispered soberly, as if it settled the matter.

"I don't understand," Shan said. "Who else is going to Yapchi Valley?" Their trip was supposed to be a secret.

"We have been waiting for you," Lhandro said, sweeping his hand toward the white tent where the men had begun sewing a mound of the filled salt pouches shut. "Those from my village who came to the salt camp. Five of us from Yapchi, and forty sheep. We leave at dawn." As though to ease Shan's doubt, the rongpa produced a tattered map from his pocket and unfolded it, showing Shan the lake, a large oval blue shape at the edge of the changtang. Then he traced a route east along the shore and north through the mountains into Amdo, the part of Tibet that Beijing called Qinghai Province. Shan studied the map. It was surprisingly rich in detail, including a fifty-mile-wide sector of red hash marks along the far shore of Lamtso. Along the top of the map was a large legend. Nei Lou. It meant classified, a state secret. He glanced up at Lhandro, who returned his gaze with challenge in his eyes, then pointed to the red marks. The legend over the marks said Toxic Hazard Zone.

"An army base?"

"No," Lhandro sighed. "Worse. There are places in this region where special weapons were tested. Things that caused disease, or killed everything with chemicals. Some say they were used on herds of wild animals. Some say on bands of nomads who refused to be registered. But no one goes in the places with red marks, not even the army. Sometimes people find things, canisters on the ground, or a herd of sheep that has died for no clear reason, and the army comes and declares a new zone. The army puts signs up, and fences sometimes."

Shan looked at Nyma, then the sturdy farmer. "You planned this with the purbas? The salt caravan?"

Lhandro smiled. "My village has always done a caravan to Lamtso, every spring. The purbas learned about it," he said with a glance toward Nyma. "They said it would be a way of making you and the stone inconspicuous." He stepped away to help sew the salt bags shut.

Nyma began to move among the other tents, speaking in gentle, reverent tones, straightening prayer flags that had been strung from tent lines. She sat by the old dropka woman with cataracts and began reciting her beads. Dremu stared warily at the people walking about the camp, who either refused to acknowledge him or glared at him with obvious resentment. He cursed, then stepped toward his horse. Shan assumed the Golok was going to groom the animal, but suddenly he was mounted. He ran his horse out of camp and disappeared into the hills. The man had been paid already. Shan doubted they would see Dremu again.

Shan and Lokesh wandered about the camp, Shan watching for any sign of a man with a fish, or anything to explain the monk's cryptic warning. They lingered by a fire where a woman was frying sweet dough for the dropka children until Lokesh decided he should join the search for tonde. His old friend was always seeking the little treasures and, like many older dropka they had met, he tried to keep nine in his possession at any one time, a number that was said to bring powerful luck.

Shan watched as Lokesh walked toward the slope where the man in the fox hat dug, then he circled behind the tents, intending to approach the back of the tent where the old man stood guard with his staff.

But Tenzin stood at the water's edge, looking forlornly across Lamtso, his new beads dangling from his fingers. Shan paused, stepped to his side, and sat on a boulder. The grief the mute Tibetan had shown in Drakte's death hut seemed to have returned to his face.

"When I was in prison," Shan said after a long silence, "there was a man in my barracks for hitting a Public Security officer. His spirit was so troubled he could barely speak and everyone feared he would take his own life. Finally the lamas were able to get him to speak about the burden he carried inside. He confessed that he had killed a Chinese whom he had caught stealing sheep. The Chinese had beaten his wife unconscious and drawn a pistol on the man. No one, not even his wife, knew that they had struggled and that the Chinese had been killed. He had hidden the body and it was later that he hit the knob, when the man refused to give a ride to his injured wife."