Through the door Shan glimpsed a pair of soldiers advancing around the back of the village, behind the animal pens on the opposite side of the path. They seemed to be searching for something.

"Our village is honored by the presence of the glorious soldiers of the People's Liberation Army," Lhandro said in a flat voice, casting an uneasy glance at Winslow.

"Of course you are," Lin said in an amused tone as he lit a cigarette and shot a stream of smoke toward Lhandro. "And your honor can only increase."

The knot in Shan's gut drew so tight it hurt.

Lin stared at Winslow intensely, as though trying to will the American to back down. "There were others with you before. Tibetans. Two tall men." He paused and stared at Lhandro expectantly, then shifted his gaze toward Lhandro's feet as though reminding Lhandro that Lin had once had the headman in manacles.

"I had a driver…" Winslow offered in a speculative tone.

Lin's hand made a quick jerking motion upward, as if he meant to strike the American. But he stopped it in midair and it collapsed into a fist. He surveyed the soldiers moving through the village, then turned back to the American. "But later that day you insisted your driver leave you at the side of the road. Just drop you there and drive away. He was wrong to do that. His report caused quite a disturbance at Public Security. He was punished for his irresponsibility."

"I wanted to walk. Fresh mountain air and all. We call it trekking."

"But how did you get over here?" the colonel pressed. "The mountains are impassable."

"Almost."

Lin frowned. "The petroleum venture is going to bring great wealth to this valley," he observed to Lhandro in his loud, public address voice. "Comrade Lhandro," he added, as if the colonel wanted to remind the village headman that he still knew his name, still held his papers.

"Perhaps," Lhandro offered in an anguished tone, "there isn't any oil."

The amusement returned to Lin's face as he drew deeply on his cigarette. "There's oil. The geologists just have to prove how much. Already there is not enough room in the camp for all the workers, and others will be coming when the oil starts to flow. A pipeline will need to be built. Workers will be stationed here permanently to operate the pumps."

Lhandro stared at the colonel's boots. "We have an empty stable," he said in a hollow tone. "We could convert it, make straw pallets."

Lin's eyes flared, but it seemed as though with pleasure, not anger.

"Please colonel," Lhandro pleaded. "We are simple farmers. We have farmed this valley for centuries. We pay taxes. We could supply food to the workers…" His voice seemed to lose strength. "We have done nothing wrong," he added despondently, still staring at Lin's boots.

"You never explained what you were doing a hundred miles south of here that day."

"Salt," Lhandro said, extending his hand toward the sheep, which the villagers were herding into pens at the far end of the village. "We always go for salt in the spring." Even from his distance Shan saw the hand was shaking.

Lin answered with another frown. "This is the twenty-first century, comrade. You are required to have certificates from the salt monopoly."

Lhandro shrugged morosely, and stepped toward the gate that led to his house. A salt pouch lay on the low wall. He pushed his hand into the open side and extended a handful of salt toward Lin. "We have some money. We could pay the monopoly," he offered.

The colonel sighed impatiently, motioned to one of the nearby soldiers. The man roughly seized the pouch and tossed it on the ground, kicking it with the toe of his boot so that both of the side pockets lay flat. He produced a short bayonet from his belt and probed the contents of the open pocket, then looked up expectantly at Lin, who nodded. The soldier began stabbing the still-sealed second pocket, ripping apart its tight woolen weave, spilling the precious salt onto the ground.

"It is special salt," a woman's voice interjected. Shan saw Nyma step past the door opening to stand by Lhandro. "It could heal you," she declared to Lin, looking straight into the colonel's eyes.

"I'm not sick."

Nyma stared back, as if she didn't agree, but would not argue.

"You should be careful," Lin said icily. "Someone might mistake you for a nun. Yesterday Public Security arrested someone a few miles from here. Under his coat he wore a maroon band on his sleeve. He had a little piece of yellow cloth in his pocket."

Even from a distance Shan could see Nyma swallow hard. Lin meant an outlawed monk had been caught nearby, one reckless enough to carry a Tibetan flag in his pocket.

The tension became a tangible thing, like a frigid cloud in the air about them. Lin cast a gloating grin toward the American. "Even in America, Mr. Winslow," the colonel said, "those who commit treason are sent to prison." He gestured to the headman. "This man Lhandro knows about prisons. He had an old man with him, a former criminal who wore a lao gai registration." Lin's eyes squeezed into tight slits. "Where is that old man?" he barked abruptly. "And the one named Shan, the one who has no papers. They were not with you when you arrived with the sheep. If you are hiding them it will go worse for you when we catch them. And if any of you have something of mine," he said pointedly, "we will consider the entire village guilty of the crime."

There was another long silence as Lin surveyed the village with smoldering eyes. His gaze finally drifted downward, and he pushed the pouch of salt with the toe of his well-polished boot. "I am a simple man," the colonel said in a strangely frustrated tone. "I keep my world simple. There are those who belong to the new order, and those who are trying to. Everyone else," he said in a tone of mock apology, "has no place, and is owed nothing."

Winslow pulled the cover off his camera lens and Lin's face hardened. "The Qinghai Petroleum Venture," he said in a loud voice, as if he were making a proclamation to the entire village, "is prepared to give liberal compensation to all those who cooperate in building the new economy, in building the new valley. We are even honoring it with a new name. We have decided to call it Lujun Valley now," he said with a taunting expression. "I will be issuing orders for the maps to be changed."

Lhandro's head shot up and he lurched forward as if about to attack the colonel, until Winslow restrained him with a hand on his arm. Lin was renaming the valley to honor the Chinese soldiers who had destroyed its people a century earlier.

Lin paused, as if inviting Lhandro to attack, and seemed about to offer another taunt when he was interrupted by a booming noise, a distant, hollow repetitive thumping sound that echoed through the valley. Lin twisted about as though searching the derrick and the oil camp for the source of the noise. But it was not a mechanical sound. It was almost like a heartbeat, slow but steady. Shan found himself inching out the doorway, his eyes searching the outside wall. The deity drum was missing.

Lin's thin lips folded into something like a snarl. He gestured to the soldier who had stabbed the salt pouch, who instantly whistled toward the village. As the soldiers sweeping through the village turned he raised his left arm and clenched his right hand around the left forearm, then pointed to the west side of the valley and made a spiraling motion with his fingers. They were to deploy west, Shan guessed, and climb toward the sound.