“But you have not said specifically why the army is here,” Che Lu chided him. Lo Fa straightened and stared at her with his good eye. “They are here specifically, old woman, to fight rebels.”
“Rebels?” Che Lu wondered if she had spent too much time in the library at the university. “There is open rebellion?”
“There is fighting. Especially among the Muslim people who live in this province. They owe no loyalty to Beijing.”
“I have heard nothing.”
“That is the government’s desire.” Lo Fa had a small metal cap in his hand that he was attaching to the end of the blue cord. “It is not hard for them to suppress news from such faraway places as this province. When thousands die here in floods the world never knows because the government doesn’t want them to know. You can be sure they do not want word of fighting to spread.”
“How serious is it?” Che Lu asked.
Lo Fa was done rigging the blasting cap. “I would be very quick about your business here and be gone as fast as you can. In fact, old lady, if I was you, I would go home now.”
“I can’t do that,” Che Lu said.
“I should have never sent you those oracle bones.” The old man’s voice lowered. “There is something else.”
“What?”
Lo Fa looked about the mountainside above them nervously. “I’ve heard there are foreigners about the area.”
“Foreigners?”
“Rumors. The army was on the mountain four days ago. There were explosions and weapons firing on the other side. I don’t know what they were doing. That is all I have heard. That is all I know.”
The cord was laid and Lo Fa put the cord from the blasting cap into a small detonator. He waved them all back. He looked at Che Lu. “I hope you know what you are doing, old woman. This tomb has not been opened since the emperor’s retainers sealed it. Perhaps it is best to leave it be.”
“Superstitious?” Che Lu asked.
“No,” Lo Fa replied in a strangely serious tone of voice. “It is just that I do not like meddling with things beyond me.”
“This is not beyond me,” Che Lu said confidently, but inside she wondered. She had been teaching too long and it had been many years since she’d been on a dig, and never in her many long years had she been on one as potentially important as this one.
Lo Fa hesitated for the briefest of seconds, then pulled the ring on the top of the detonator. There was a flash and crack, the sound confined in the courtyard.
Che Lu winced when she saw the damage done to the doors, but there was no other way. A black line was singed into the bronze along the seam, with a small opening about chest high.
“The jack from the Jeep,” Lo Fa ordered. He took the jack and, jamming it into the hole, began cranking the handle. With a groan the doors slowly swung open. A dry rush of cool air swept over the small party standing in the courtyard, causing all to shiver.
“Your tomb,” Lo Fa said with a wave of his hand. “I am done here.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Che Lu, I would leave now.”
Before she could respond, he had already disappeared out of the courtyard.
Several students turned on flashlights, and with Che Lu leading the way, they entered the tomb. Right inside the doors was a large anteroom. The light of the lanterns flickered off the walls. They were painted with many pictures of women and men in royal garb. Che Lu had seen similar pictures many times before. There was something different about these, however, something that caused her to pause, before moving on, but she couldn’t put her finger on what troubled her.
A wide tunnel beckoned, leading into the heart of the mountain. With firm steps Che Lu led the students down the tunnel. It ran ten meters wide and was perfectly straight as far as the glow from the lights would penetrate the inky blackness. One of the students put his light next to the wall and they all stared at the smoothly cut stone. Che Lu tried to imagine the state of craftsmanship that could make such smooth walls with hand tools, and she felt a chill run down her bent spine. The Old Ones had certainly been masters of the stone.
There was no dust and the air was dry, the slightest odor of decay carried on it. Che Lu paused after about two hundred meters. There was writing on the walls where two smaller tunnels split off to each side at ninety-degree angles. She took a flashlight from one of her students and held it so she could see.
High runes. There was no mistaking the hieroglyphics. She pointed and the female student with the camera flicked on the power, lighting the wall, and quickly filmed it, then shut down to preserve the batteries.
As Che Lu turned to continue down the main tunnel, a dim red glow appeared about twenty meters in that direction. “Hold!” Che Lu ordered her startled students. Her mouth was dry and she ran her tongue over her chapped lips, watching. She did not believe in ghosts but she was old enough to know there was much she didn’t know.
The red glow began to change shape from a circle, stretching and narrowing, touching the floor. The form of a person began to coalesce, but an oddly shaped person, legs and arms too long, body short, a large head covered with red hair like fire. The skin was pure white, looking like unblemished ivory. The ears had long lobes that almost touched the shoulders. It was the eyes, though, that held Che Lu’s attention. They were bright red under fierce red eyebrows and the pupils were elongated like a cat’s.
The figure wavered in the dusty air, the corridor behind dimly visible through it. The right arm rose up, a six-fingered hand on the end, palm open toward them. A deep, guttural sound echoed up the tunnel, coming from the figure, although how the image could produce it, Che Lu had no idea. The language was singsong, almost familiar, but there wasn’t a word she recognized.
The figure spoke for almost a minute, then faded out of sight, leaving the scared group of students huddled around their mother-professor, who truth be said, was more than a little frightened herself for the first time.
CHAPTER 10
Viking II had traveled an elliptical path of over 422 million miles to Mars after being launched in 1976. In the twenty-plus years that had passed since it went into orbit, it had relayed data from its lander and used its outdated orbital sensors to gain information on the Red Planet. It should have gone off-line a decade ago, but the numerous failures in other Mars probes had forced NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to try to eke every extra day of service out of the aging probe. Days past its projected life had turned into months, months into years, and over a decade past its launch it was still functioning. It had finally been shut down the previous year when Pathfinder had arrived with great fanfare.
Now it was receiving the radio messages telling it to wake up; there was one more task to accomplish, a task more important than any it had done before.
As the electronic instructions were routed through a computer more antiquated than that in any high-school library, the machinery began to come alive. The maneuvering thrusters on the Viking II Orbiter fired and the satellite circling Mars slowly changed paths, its orbit disturbed for the first time in over two years.
At JPL, the place where the commands firing those engines were being generated, there was great concern about the status of the Viking II Orbiter. Mars was cursed, at least that was the firm opinion of Larry Kincaid, the director of all JPL Mars missions once they left the orbit of Earth. He still felt that way even after the success of Pathfinder. Driving around looking at a couple of rocks wasn’t something he considered a great success. True, getting Pathfinder down in one piece had been something to feel good about for a while, but this achievement was overshadowed by the long and troubled history of Mars missions.
Kincaid had been at JPL since 1962, starting as a junior flight engineer. He’d been present in the control room for the first Mars-probe launching, Mariner 3, on November 5, 1964. He’d watched the reactions of the other scientists as the spacecraft’s protective shroud failed to jettison after leaving Earth’s atmosphere, causing complete mission failure.