They began to walk. The night was getting colder. The wind abated and, overhead, Fong saw the brilliant desert night sky again. Fong was tiring. Late nights were no longer simple for him. He was about to request a stop when Dr. Roung crested a hill and pointed his flashlight at one of the oddest sights in China – a very large, empty plot of arable land.
Fong didn’t need to be told what this was. He sensed the presence of the dead all around him. Huge numbers of them. Buried here. One atop another. Squashed side to side like eels on a cutting table. “The workers?” he asked, already knowing the answer to his question.
“Very good, Fong. There may be in excess of seven hundred thousand bodies buried here.”
“Not nearly so lavish as the tomb of Qin Shi Huang!” Fong spat out.
“True, Fong, but are all lives really worthy of royal tombs – of immortality?”
That sense of falling came from the man at his side again. The sense of loss. Fong thought of Captain Chen’s confusion about justice. Fong had been unmistakably moved by the achievement of the Qin emperor’s tomb. But was the emperor’s life really worth that much more than the lives of all those who worked on the enterprise?
Again the archeologist put a hand on Fong’s shoulder – so personal. So un-Chinese. “Two million visitors a year come to the terra-cotta warriors. The foreigners love it. We bake little replicas for them and they pay a fortune for the worthless things. That’s a lot of money coming into the country. Some claim that the warriors are the number one tourist attraction in the world.” Dr. Roung removed his hand and began to laugh, to cackle. “Personally, I’m interested in seeing Disneyland.”
Fong turned toward the braying sound. The archeologist’s face was dark; confusion and loss vied for prominence on his features.
“But our emperor did not meet an end any better than those seven hundred thousand souls buried out there, Fong. He died at forty-nine, after only eleven years of power.” The man chuckled again, a hoarse, angry laugh. “Do you know how he died?”
“No, how?”
“Naked on a mountain top. Howling at the moon. He’d got it into his head that there was an elixir of life. A fountain of eternal youth.” A truly ghastly laugh exploded from the man’s face. A line of spittle crept from the corner of his mouth. “China’s first emperor, perhaps the most powerful man the world had ever seen, sent his scholars out to find it. The whole of China was turned upside down in Qin Shi Huang’s desperate effort to stop growing old, to defeat time itself. Thousands were executed when the substances they produced for the emperor had no effect. Finally, he was told of a mountain peak, a holy mountain. He climbed it with a single trusted serving man. Once they got to the top, the faithful retainer was sent down. They found the emperor the next morning, naked, clutching a stone to his groin – frozen to death.”
Dr. Roung moved away, but Fong stayed where he was and drank it all in. A cold night. Seven hundred thousand buried souls to one side and the image of a mad emperor seeking the elixir of life on the other. Parallel patterns. His teeth clacked. They hadn’t done that for a while. A surge of anger went through him and in his heart he knew what this was all about. What bound it all together – the elixir of life. Staying young. Fighting against the inevitable. That’s what was in the islanders’ DNA. That’s why the foreigners want the patent. That’s why Hesheng had been given a name that means “in this year of peace” despite the fact that he only looked to be in his twenties. Why there were so few graves in the island’s cemetery, why Iman couldn’t remember the words for the prayer to the dead, why the foreigners were so anxious to get accurate family histories from the islanders: from the farmers who were thought never to intermarry, but not from the fishermen who did. The islanders’ DNA – the elixir of life.
From the missing piece he had deduced the whole.
He turned to the archeologist, “What’s your given name, sir?”
“Chen. My science degree permits me to use the title doctor. So I am Dr. Roung Chen.”
Fong laughed.
“What?”
“Chen is a common name, a very common name for one so unique.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
That night Fong wandered the deserted Xian streets alone. Visions of visions cascaded in his head. Seven hundred thousand bodies crammed in burial. Soldiers ready to attack, frozen in eternal stillness by the rising light. Seven unidentified corpses. Two generals kept apart from each other. Time itself standing still.
Then there was a shuffling of feet. Fong turned and somehow he was in pit #1 of the terra-cotta warriors. Before he could understand what was happening to him he sensed movement through the rank upon rank of clay soldiers in the pit. And colour. Then a shout. Someone shouting his name. Ordering him.
Fong moved past a kneeling archer and ran down a row of mounted cavalrymen.
And there he was.
Qin Shi Huang, dressed just as he was in the famous woodcut. On his head sat a rectangular, lacquered piece of hide from which hung silk strands – a dozen behind, a dozen in front. Each strand was strung with exquisite jade beads. His dark upper garment was of an almost blue-black silk. His voluminous sleeves were embroidered – light on the outside but dark as blood on the interior. The elaborate frontpiece was held in place by a white jade belt over an obi-like silk sash from which the jade handle of his sword protruded. Below the belt were silk skirts in several layers of light red that just exposed the tips of his wooden platform sandals. Fong vaguely remembered that the entirety of what the emperor wore was called Mian Fu. Both the name and the clothing style went back to the Xi Zhou people in the eleventh century BC.
“We’ve made it.”
The man’s gruff voice shocked Fong. The accent was unidentifiable.
“Help me off with this,” he said indicating the broad obi-like sash around his waist.
Fong was frightened to touch the illusion lest it return to nothingness.
“Hurry, the light fades and I must be prepared.”
Fong undid the white jade belt and put it on the ground. It was surprisingly heavy. Then he reached behind the emperor and untied the thin belt that kept the sash in place. The garment slid through his fingers with a silken whisper. The emperor bowed his head and Fong undid the straps and removed the headpiece, the Tong Tian, being careful not to snag the long ribbon attached to it that is supposed to connect the emperor to heaven.
A brisk wind picked up. Fong shivered. He looked around him. He was on the crest of a high rugged peak, timeless China down below.
The emperor stared into the distance. Fong knew that Qin Shi Huang was actually his own age although he looked ancient as the rock.
With a huge sigh, the emperor sat heavily on the cold ground and lifted a foot. Fong found the delicate straps and snaps and freed the emperor’s feet from the raised platform sandals. Then he slipped off the silk socks. The emperor’s feet were severely arthritic; the joints were swollen or broken and his toes splayed in odd crushed patterns. His toenails were extremely thick and deeply yellowed from fungal growth.
The emperor lifted his upper garment over his shoulders revealing a sunken chest and sparse growth of greying hair, narrowing to a single line that ran from his navel downward.
Qin Shi Huang stood and turned to Fong. Clearly Fong was to undo the ribbons that held the emperor’s lower skirts in place. He hesitated. His eyes were at the emperor’s waist. He glanced up, aware of what this looked like. But the emperor was once again staring deep into the far-off.
Fong unlaced the ribbons. The emperor’s skirts fell away. Before him, nestled in a bed of grey pubic hair, the man’s penis looked at him like a one-eyed eel, frightened of the world.
“Cover him.”
Fong whipped around. Dr. Roung was there holding a round flat stone, almost the size of a dinner plate.