“We are running out of time,” Lexina said.
“I will be ready to move on schedule.”
“That may not be good enough. You must find the power.”
“The power will be no good without—”
“I know,” Lexina snapped. “Do you have any further information that could help my quest?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Coridan and Gergor?”
“They have done what they were ordered to.”
“Did they find it?”
“No.”
“I will check with you later.”
She took the headset off.
Lexina continued. As the path went up over a rise, she stopped. Far in the distance was a shimmering white cloud. She stared at it for several minutes, but it didn’t move. She pulled the hood back. Her face was pale and smooth, the white hair cut tight against her skull. She wore black wraparound sunglasses.
She pulled the sunglasses off for a moment. Red, elongated pupils narrowed as the bright sun hit them, but she wanted a clear look. She knew the white wasn’t a cloud but snow, the very top of Mount Kilimanjaro, rising 19,340 feet above the plain that surrounded it. Her destination, according to the markers, was to the west of that landmark. She put the glasses back on.
“My men have gone completely around the tomb and checked all the approaches. The army is too strong. They have tanks, we have rifles. They have helicopters, we have grenades.” For Lo Fa that was a speech. He had spoken in a low voice, so that only Che Lu could hear him.
The small grove that sheltered the group’s base camp had filled up. The men’s women had arrived, bringing their children. Che Lu had not realized how extensive the rebellion was. Wandering the camp, she heard tales of villages being burned, people slaughtered.
The population in this part of China differed somewhat ethnically from the east, but more important, Islam was the religion of the majority of people. The central government had long waged battle against that religion as its practitioners looked westward rather than east.
Che Lu had seen many refugees in her life and the sight never failed to depress her. They were people who had lost everything but their spirit and what they carried on their back. Having lived through all of China’s modern history, she found it particularly ironic that the government in Beijing, which had been founded by those she had been with on the Long March — refugees to the extreme — were now inflicting the same situation on their own people.
Che Lu returned her attention to Lo Fa, who had accepted a tin of stew from a young girl. Che Lu had been reading Nabinger’s notebook while the guerrillas did their reconnaissance.
“Has the army entered?” she asked.
“No. Remember, they sealed the entrance you went in. The only opening right now is the way you got out, on the top. They have rigged explosives around it and have guns trained on it, as if they fear someone coming out more than they consider going in themselves. They fear the tomb.”
Che Lu knew a westerner would find such a reaction by an army to be strange, but the Chinese people had different beliefs and values from those in the West. What checked the army from going in were several factors. One was an ingrained respect for ancestors — thus any entry into a tomb was viewed as a terrible crime. Another, though, was fear of the unknown. The army had to know by now that there was more to the tomb than just the graves of Gao-zong and his empress.
“So they wait and do nothing,” she said.
“They keep us from getting in,” Lo Fa replied. “That is something.” She held up Nabinger’s notebook. “I have discovered some interesting information.”
“What is that?”
“Shi Huangdi.”
“The First Emperor. The Son of Heaven.” Even Lo Fa knew who that was, as did every Chinese.
“Yes. The emperor who unified China. Who pulled together the Great Wall.” “What about him?” Lo Fa asked.
“I think he is in the tomb.”
Lo Fa considered the old woman. “How can that be? The tomb holds Gao-zong and his empress. Gao-zong was of the Tuang Dynasty, well after Shi Huangdi.”
Che Lu shrugged. “That is what some of the notes that Professor Nabinger transcribed indicate. I do not know how it can be, but also remember that Nabinger told me that part of the Great Wall had been built in the form of an Airlia high rune. Since Shi Huangdi was responsible for most of the Great Wall, it must be that he was somehow connected with these aliens.”
“Ahh…” Lo Fa shook his head. “This is crazy talk. Aliens. The Wall built to signal to space. Flying saucers.” He looked away.
Che Lu felt sorry for her old friend. His world, the world he had grown up in and lived in for over seven decades, was being thrown on its ear. The rulers in Beijing were all old men like Lo Fa, and she knew they were having an even harder time accepting the new reality, especially since they had so much more to lose than her friend.
“Just think,” Che Lu pressed. “If we discover the link between Shi Huangdi and the aliens, it may mean we were indeed the central kingdom. The source of civilization. Not the way we had always thought, but still in a way. Perhaps we were the chosen of the Airlia, the humans picked to be their special people.
“Nabinger told me some things,” Che Lu continued. “When they found the ruby sphere in the great cavern in Africa, they found a stone marker. It talked of Cing Ho.”
“Who is that?”
“I thought he was nothing more than a legend. A made-up tale. According to the story, Cing Ho was a sailor, the admiral of a fleet that sailed from China, through the Straits of Malacca, past India, to Africa and the Middle East. He did this long before the Silk Road was open to Rome, before the birth of Christ.”
Lo Fa pulled some tobacco and paper out of a pouch and began making a cigarette. “So?”
“So? First, if Cing Ho was real, it means there was a Chinese sailor traveling farther than any explorer of his time. According to history, we did not use the compass for navigation until A.D. 1120, although there are records of magnetic pointers being used thousands of years earlier in the emperor’s courts for divining purposes. But maybe Cing Ho did use a divining compass to navigate to the Middle East. And, if he was the one who placed the ruby sphere in that cavern, as the stone indicates, then he had some connection with the Airlia.”
“So?”
Che Lu could not tell if her old friend was trying to antagonize her or not. “Then we — China, the Middle Kingdom — are central to all of this.”
“We do not know what this is,” Lo Fa noted.
“If we get in the tomb we can find out,” Che Lu said. “What is interesting to me is the thing that destroyed China as a world power was our unwillingness to go outside of our borders in the last five centuries. The last time we made any attempt to was in 1405.”
“Are you giving me a history lesson?” Lo Fa asked.
Che Lu ignored the sarcasm. “In 1405, over twenty thousand men and three hundred seventeen ships led by Zheng He left China and traveled west, following the route Cing Ho took over two millennia previously.” She thumped Lo Fa on his skinny chest. “They went to the Middle East. To northeast Africa. And then they came home and China never again mounted any sort of expedition. And the question I have, old man, is what were they looking for? And did they find it? Is that why they came home? Or did they fail? If they did find whatever it was that Cing Ho removed so many years ago, is it now inside the tomb in front of us? Or did they take something with them like Cing Ho did? I believe the answer lies inside the tomb.”
“This thinking is all fine and well,” Lo Fa said, “but it will not get us in the tomb.”
Che Lu ignored the comment. “Shi Huangdi,” she whispered.
“What of Shi Huangdi, old woman?”