Major Bao called out and Jakli's head was shoved from the back of the other truck, her hair roughly held by a knob, forcing her to see the dead horse as its body slid into the rocks below. Then Bao strutted back to his truck and the knobs drove away. Shan found himself on his knees, clenching his belly, as the wise, joyful Jakli disappeared into the gulag.

Marco did not come back to the encampment. He and Sophie had disappeared up the valley. An hour later someone had called and pointed to a small dot moving at the top of the high ridge to the west. Marco was going home.

Gendun and Lokesh had not spoken with Shan but followed Jowa to the Red Stone camp as Shan stood watching the dust cloud of the knob trucks. Ten minutes later the three Tibetans appeared, leading horses. Shan saw but did not hear Malik giving directions to Jowa, pointing toward the high ridge Marco had crossed. At the last minute, as the four of them approached the lake, another rider raced to join them. Fat Mao.

By the time they reached the last valley Shan had taken the lead. There was no sign of Marco above as they began climbing the final steep switchback, no sign even when they reached the plateau. But Sophie was there and greeted them with a shallow bray. Jowa pointed as Shan was removing his saddle. Marco was sitting by the waterfall on the far side of the pasture.

Lokesh took Gendun's arm. "We can make food," he announced, and the two men disappeared into the cabin.

Marco finally saw Shan and Jowa, and he lumbered across the meadow like an old, weary ape. "There were to be races today," the Eluosi said to Shan. His voice sounded empty. "You would have liked the races."

"We had to come," Shan said. "We have to be sure the plans go ahead." Marco looked wearily from Shan to Fat Mao, as though for an explanation.

"The Americans have to leave," the Uighur said. "Nikki can still go. Give her something to hope for, to live for. We can watch out for Jakli, find out what prison she was sent to. We can get news to her then. That's what will keep her alive."

Marco was silent a long time. "Right," he said at last. "Day after the full moon it starts. There's time."

Shan followed Marco into the house and watched him go down the back hallway, not to his room but to Nikki's. He took an envelope out of his pocket and laid it by the samovar. It was what Jakli had dropped when the knobs came. A letter from Nikki he was certain, that she read whenever she was lonely, a letter she would never allow the knobs to see. He heard Gendun ask Jowa to come with him, and the two Tibetans went outside. He watched from the doorway as they wandered over the meadow, pausing, bending to pick up things. And then, because he realized what Gendun was doing, he went to the pool at the waterfall and brought back a clay pot full of water.

Shan sat with the three Tibetans in front of the cabin in the last rays of the sun with the pile of stones collected by Jowa and the lama. Gendun picked a rock from the pile, gazed upon it, and passed it around their small circle. It was a small, ugly thing, crusted with dirt and what may have been camel dung. Jowa watched uncertainly, but accepted the rock from Shan and looked it over before returning it to Gendun. With the rock in one hand, the lama took a dipper of water and poured it over the rock. The dirt fell away, and the rock became brilliant, with a swirl of oranges and browns, and a tiny seam of something green. The lama handed the rock around the circle, and Shan and Lokesh studied its complex beauty. When Jowa took it he passed it quickly on to Gendun. But the lama handed it back to the purba. Jowa looked at it a few seconds, turning it over, and passed it to Gendun. The lama handed it back to him and Jowa accepted it back, more uncertainly, then began to study the rock in earnest.

It was an exercise Shan had seen often in the gulag. The crust of life, one of the imprisoned monks had called it. They would just sit sometimes on their brief eating breaks, and wash rocks, sometimes using their only water ration for the day, wash away the crust that accumulated from living in the world, to reach the true nature of the rock.

They ate a vegetable stew in silence, and Jowa and Fat Mao left to speak in hushed tones outside the front door. The cold, clear night fell quickly. Lokesh and Gendun stayed in the kitchen, on the floor, saying their beads.

Shan leaned against a tree outside and watched the stars for a long time, letting the chill wind wash away his crust. He had the paper with the abbreviations in his hand and stared at it even though he could not read it in the darkness.

The house was quiet when he went inside and found his way to the tower. Marco was there, in a dark, brooding silence.

Shan offered small talk, about the sky and the sound of an animal far away. Marco joined with quiet, terse words.

"They are hollow, empty things," the Eluosi said suddenly, "the bastards that would put Jakli in prison. Their world is a desert far crueler and more heartless than the Taklamakan. And you," he said to Shan in an accusing tone, "you think you are like the old monks who lived at Sand Mountain, trying to take water to the desert. But whatever is planted in the soil where such men live just shrivels and dies."

"So we keep alive the seeds," Shan said after a moment. "Sometimes, when a drought goes on for years, all you can do is preserve the seeds. That's what Jakli does. Preserve the seeds. She will survive. The drought won't last forever."

"You mean the government can't last forever."

Shan did not reply.

"My boy, he reads many things. Once he read that a group of Western writers in the spirit of revolution, claimed that the best form of government was no form of government, where people could be free. He laughed when he told me this, he said we had found the highest form of government, here on our mountain."

After a long silence Marco spoke again. "Try it, Johnny. We can wait here while Nikki goes to university in America. He will have to go. She will want him to go, go and make a place for her when it is time. He will send us a telescope. We will stand here and look at the stars."

"No," Shan said, his voice cracking with pain.

"The choice is yours."

"No. I mean, he will not send a telescope." In the moonlight Shan could see the fear in the big man's eyes.

Marco buried it with a snort. "You will see. I will name a star after him. He speaks English like the president."

Shan did see. He saw with excruciating clarity, excruciating empathy, the worry that had been building in Marco. It wasn't the danger of the caravan, of the chase. These were realities he had lived with for years. It was something alien to his huge, ebullient spirit. Like a worm with an insatiable appetite, it had been gnawing away within him, trying to reach his soul. As Shan searched for words, Marco fled down the stairs.

He found him in Nikki's room. "It's a mess," Marco said distractedly, and began arranging the books on the shelf. "He likes things neat. Didn't get it from me. Must be his mother." His voice was hollow and small.

In that moment Shan would have preferred to be at the bottom of a cell in the gulag under a life sentence, than to be standing there searching for the words he knew he must say.

"I know where your Nikki is."

Marco paused in his work only for a moment. He did not look at Shan. "He is on caravan. Back soon," he said in his thin voice. "You saw the silver bridle."

"He was taken by the knobs."