Chapter 44 #2
She didn’t answer. Alice stood staring at the trompe l’oeil. It was painted to look like a garden, with a bright sun shining down.
As the baffled officer watched, Alice reached out and pressed the sun. Then she really leaned into it. As she did, it moved.
There was a grinding.
“What is that?” Captain Hu looked around but couldn’t see anything.
“Look up.”
He did. The bright stars in the azure sky began to wink out. First a few, then more and more, then the moon went dark, and finally, there was an eclipse of the sun. A quarter, half. Three-quarters of it was covered with a disk.
The light faded. It was afternoon. Twilight. Late evening.
Just before the tomb was plunged into complete darkness, Alice paused to take one last look at the remarkable world.
The gold spires of the palace, the tiles of the temple’s graceful roofs.
The curled dragons and watchful qilins. The village homes, their walls gleaming with precious stones catching the last of the light.
It was straight out of an imaginary world, created by a mad, brilliant tyrant.
And then it was midnight, and out of that darkness came an ungodly howl. A shriek of panic from the lunatic terrorists now lost in the great necropolis.
Then she was in the passageway. It was low, she had to stoop down, but she could still run. She turned on the flashlight on her phone.
Behind her, she could hear Captain Hu entering the tunnel. Then she heard something strange. It sounded like rain. Heavy rain. Hail. And then an “oomph.”
She looked back in time to see the tunnel collapse on top of him.
“Oh. My. God. No!” She began running toward him, then stopped when more of the tunnel collapsed. The cave-in was moving toward her. Ready to go completely.
She could see his legs struggling as he fought to work his way out. She backed away. Then stopped and ran forward, grabbing one of the boots. Tugging it. Him.
Nothing.
More of the dirt rained down on her. She could taste it in her mouth, feel it in her nose. She was beginning to choke.
The movement of his feet was slowing. His legs spasming. In a panic, she began frantically digging with her hands. Once at his waist, she grabbed his belt and pulled.
Pulled.
Arching her back, she could feel his body moving an inch at a time. Farther, farther. Until he was almost free of the dirt. But he was too big, too heavy, and she was too spent.
Then other hands joined hers. Vivien.
They dragged him a few feet before Corporal Song joined them. His eyes bright with terror. To be buried alive …
They dragged the body to the entrance as quickly as they could. Kai-wen, who had been waiting anxiously, rushed over. He and Ming-na had their flashlights on, guiding them. Encouraging them.
And then they were out.
While the agent worked on his boss, Alice dropped to her knees and caught her breath. Then she looked around.
It was dark, nighttime. But still, she knew she was in a forest. The air was fresh and smelled of pine, and grass, and jasmine. She lowered her hands to the ground and felt soft moss.
She heard coughing, and turned to see Captain Hu propped up, dirt embedded in his face. His body encased in muck. Song was brushing the dirt out of his boss’s face.
The senior MSS officer looked not unlike a less-successful Terracotta Warrior.
“Thank you,” he sputtered.
“Not me, sir.” He nodded toward Alice.
Hu struggled to his feet and turned to Alice. “Thank you.”
“My mother helped.”
“That stays between us,” muttered Vivien, clearly conflicted about saving the life of a Ministry of State Security officer. The very people who rounded up people like her. And disappeared them.
He held out his hand to her, and she stared at it. Then she took his filthy, bleeding hand in her filthy, bleeding hand. Lifting her eyes to his, Vivien saw something there.
“You did it on purpose,” she said. “You brought down the tunnel, knowing it would collapse on top of you.”
“They’re terrorists. Worse, they’re insane terrorists. Who knows what they could do in the outside world.”
They imagined those mercury-addled minds, running roughshod, running wild. Killing and maiming at random. Without purpose or brakes.
“We couldn’t let them escape. Not until we get troops in there.” He looked around and pointed to a massive boulder. “We need to seal this end too.”
The six of them struggled and finally managed to roll the rock in front of the entrance to the tomb.
“Incredible,” said Kai-wen, and he didn’t mean the rock. He meant what it hid.
The others nodded.
It already seemed a dream. The tomb of Qin Shi Huang. It was even more remarkable, more beautiful, than any historian had led them to believe. More dangerous. More gruesome. More spectacular. More grotesque.
“Why did you go back?” asked Kai-wen as they limped back to the helicopters.
“To turn off the sun,” said Alice.
“The son?” Vivien asked, confused. “What son?”
“Sun. Stars. Moon,” said Captain Hu. “The sky. She turned them all off.”
While Vivien stared at her daughter, Kai-wen asked, “How did you know how to do it?”
“That room where we hid, it had writing on the walls. Equations. And drawings. Every other room had paintings of battles, of great moments in Qin Shi Huang’s reign.
But that wall had writing. I realized it showed how Qin Shin Huang’s engineers and mathematicians created what they did.
They wanted a record of their creations.
Something that would live well beyond them.
That might one day be found. And then they’d be even more celebrated than their lunatic master.
There was a schematic of the sun and moon and stars.
Where else would you put a light switch but by the door? ”
The others laughed.
“But still,” said Vivien, “how did they do it?”
“It must be mercury,” said Captain Hu. “The stars, the huge moon, the sun? All mirrors made from mercury. It must catch, hold, and magnify what little light makes it through a small opening in the roof of the tomb.”
“Ingenious,” said Kai-wen.
Alice did not tell them that she’d taken photographs of the drawings. If they ever got back to the States, she would show them to her friends at Columbia. Who knew what else the emperor’s engineers had discovered?
“How did you know the code to stop the attack?” Vivien asked.
Alice brought out the black-and-white photograph of the girl and showed it to them.
“I don’t understand,” said the MSS officer.
Alice took back the photograph. “You’re not meant to.”