by Xu, Lei
Yuan Xile could tell something was wrong. "What is it? Is there a problem?"
I glanced back at her, lost as to how to explain this one. "It's nothing," I replied, but my hands were already beginning to shake.
I took several deep breaths and made myself calm down. Who could have done the carving? Only two people even knew about the sentence: myself and Wang Sichuan. I obviously hadn't written it, had he? Impossible. I hadn't told Wang Sichuan my plans, nor did he know how significant this sentence was to Yuan Xile and me. Even if he had been able to slip into the safe room before me and carve out these words, why would he have wanted to? That would have been far stranger than my discovery of the sentence. Unfortunately, I could think of no other explanation.
I looked back down at my dagger, feeling awkward and unsure. Should I cross out the sentence and write my own? Or simply add an "x2" at the end? What if I did add an "x2?" Would this somehow change the course of events still to come? I figured not, though it would certainly cause my future self to feel a bit puzzled.
I shined my flashlight around the section of concrete surrounding the words. Something caught my eye. I pulled the bed farther into the room. There, near the foot of the wall, several inches below the sentence, was a line of marks; it seemed someone had scraped something off the concrete. As I ran my fingers over the scratches, I realized these had once been words, eight of them in total. Could it also have been some kind of message? If so, then who had written it and who scratched it out?
At last I began to understand that nothing was as simple as I'd thought. All my experiences were just the tip of an iceberg floating in a circular river of time. "What will be will be." Only one person could have written it: me. But I hadn't written it just now. In finding this sentence, had I encountered traces of the true beginning of this entire affair? Did this mean that after my work here was done, I'd once more return to the cave and travel even farther back in time? This was truly a terrifying prospect.
I put the dagger away and sighed to myself. From the looks of things, I didn't yet have what it took to change my fate, but there was no point in worrying about these matters now. Still, I couldn't help but wonder. If a man was meant to change his fate, was this change not merely a part of his fate to begin with? In any case, I could no longer be certain of what would happen next. I was in the same boat as Yuan Xile, able to do no more than proceed one step at a time.
***
I wondered what the special emissary was doing now. He'd said that Little Einstein and the others had managed to escape his trap before the poison fully set in. I remembered finding the old expert's corpse in the sinkhole, his gums black, most likely from mercury poisoning. I remembered Little Einstein in the warehouse and still more of the team in the telegraph room. At this point these people were probably still alive, but severely poisoned. Still, so long as they lived, the special emissary could not ignore them. And this gave us some room to maneuver.
Could I save those who still lived? I knew they'd escaped from this area, but how had the special emissary tricked them into coming inside in the first place? Could he have smoked them out of the projection room, much as he'd done with us? At the time of our escape, the vent covers had already been loosened. If the projection room was merely a ploy to lure the first and second teams into the poisoned passageways, then perhaps the special emissary had loosened the covers himself.
It was the first team's numbers that made the trap necessary. Had the special emissary not tricked them into entering the poisoned passageways to escape the smoke, they probably could have forced open the door to the projection room door. They were never warned of the "ghosts in the shadows." It would have taken them longer to notice the poison, but the special emissary had turned on the lights too early, before they'd traveled too deeply into the poisoned passageways. As a result, the first team was able to survive long enough to climb back into the ventilation shaft, where they were safe within the darkness. When they could assume the special emissary had taken them for dead, they must have escaped back through the projection room.
By the time that the first team escaped, though, they must have already begun suffering the effects of the poison. As their nervous systems went haywire, the remaining men and women would have parted ways. Little Einstein would never be willing to turn tail and run. He'd most likely believed the special emissary had taken Yuan Xile prisoner. He'd then set out to save her and do away with his former superior. He was killed in the warehouse before he could accomplish either task. The old expert, on the other hand, had dearly wanted to live—he was high ranking and had a lot to lose. He'd attempted to escape, but succumbed to the poison in the sinkhole. Then there was the group Old Tang had found in the telegraph room. They'd placed the mission above all personal concerns and, with the little time remaining to them, had attempted to contact the outside world.
I didn't know how these three had managed to find the telegraph room. Perhaps they'd happened upon it before and remembered its location. I was sure, however, that their original message was not what we heard when we picked up the ringing phone in the cement tower. That latter telegram had to have been written by the special emissary himself. He must have found the three prospectors in the telegraph room, killed them and altered their message. His motives remained unclear, but this at least explained why he chose to allow the telegram even after he'd discovered it.
So this was how it had all went down, I was almost sure of it. As a result I knew I didn't have a chance of saving the others. It was already too late to save the old expert and I didn't know where the telegraph room was located. I might have a chance of saving Little Einstein, but since he'd died and the special emissary survived, I knew I'd fail. Of course, I couldn't deny that this was just justification for using my comrades as distractions to keep the special emissary's attention scattered. And because he'd never expect us to hide here, I had more than enough time to take care of a few matters.
First, I marked the walls of the corridors leading both to the great tunnel and to the exit. Because the lights were off, I had to shimmy up the walls and inspect the filament of each bulb to determine whether it would switch on. It was slow going, but eventually I cut a pair of trails that each avoided as many working lights as possible.
Once I was finished, I returned to the safe room and waited. I was delighted that even after all this time, the special emissary had yet to make an appearance. He probably assumed I'd long since departed. I probably would have, too, if it weren't for Yuan Xile and the role she would play in the survival of my second team. Without her interference, we'd likely have died just as swiftly as the ones who came before us. I couldn't just take her and leave. She needed to be coached in what to do.
I waited with Yuan Xile in the darkness for nearly a month. Early on I located a number of bags left in the surrounding corridors. Upon discovering the gas, Little Einstein and company must have dropped their heaviest belongings and run for it. Their cans of food and my bag full of jerky meant we were able to get by rather comfortably.
All traces of our previous intimacy were gone, though. Yuan Xile kept a close watch on me, especially at first, though as the days passed she became accustomed to my presence. When we spoke, which we did often, I told her about Ivan and all he had done, as well as many other things. Most of the time she just listened quietly and I could tell that her attitude toward me was beginning to soften.
From a distance, she seemed no different than my Xile, the woman I'd loved and lain with. Yet as soon as I approached, she instantly became a stranger. Eventually I gave up and we passed our time in the darkness without incident, counting down the days. When at last I decided that the second team would be entering the cave within the week, Yuan Xile and I slipped out of the safe room and started making our way to the surface. We saw no sign of the special emissary. Although I was certain he was somewhere nearby, this place was so big that even if we abandoned all caution, we were unlikely to run into him.
***
; After that, everything pretty much went according to plan. I prepared two handwritten notes. One said "beware of Pei Qing," the other "enter the sinkhole." While I was certain of the second note's purpose, the reason for the first remained vague. Why did I need to beware of Pei Qing? All he did was shoot me once and that was just for show. Had I really been the one to write both of these notes? I couldn't say for sure, but I scrawled them on strips of a labor insurance form anyway. Even though I didn't totally understand the warning about Pei Qing, I knew I nonetheless had to slip it into my pocket.
A strange feeling came over me after I finished writing out the note. It seemed to be meant as a subtle nudge, meant not to cause a specific action, but affect the way I approached events. The note's motive was indiscernible. Had I not received the note myself, I never would have conceived to leave one behind. Which was the chicken and which was the egg?
I thought again of the scratched-out words I'd seen on the wall behind the bed. I may have written the notes, but that didn't mean I was the one to get them to their target. Someone was controlling all this, but it wasn't necessarily me. Had someone else really guided all of these events? Perhaps this person had been unhappy with the way things were turning out down here and decided to interfere. He'd involved himself in ways both critical—"enter the sinkhole"—and abstract—"beware of Pei Qing." Who was he? The caution admonished by this second note alone had changed my whole attitude, setting off a chain reaction whose purpose I couldn't begin to grasp.
Such thinking was only making me crazy. So long as I was the one to hand off the notes, things would be much simpler. If the notes had been left by someone else, then I knew that everything I'd experienced was merely part of a much larger plan, one I would be powerless to resist. I preferred to believe the former. Even though I'd begun to believe that the latter was actually occurring, this prospect too terrifying to fully accept. There was no way for me to determine what was really going on. The possibilities were simply too many. Perhaps it really had been Chen Luohu who'd slipped me the first note. I had no choice but to play it by ear.
After passing through a fork in the cave, we found ourselves back beside the tributary upon which my team had first traveled. We marched along it, heading upriver. Hours passed. Suddenly, the sound of rifle fire split the dark air. It was coming from somewhere in front of us. I had found myself.
Sprinting ahead, I soon reached a towering rock wall. A waterfall tumbled down its face. At its bottom lay Big Beard. Pei Qing was atop the cliff, desperately firing his rifle into the sky. I kept my distance. The fallen soldier was wedged amid a pile of rocks. He wasn't moving. I told Yuan Xile to hide behind the waterfall Then I carefully scaled the cliff. By now my future self had already heard the gunshots and was making his way over here as fast as he could. I crept past Pei Qing. I made sure to stick to the shadows, but it didn't much matter. He was far too agitated to pay me any attention. Once I was some distance away, I scurried behind some rocks and watched as the deputy squad leader and his soldiers came running past, followed by Wang Sichuan and me. When the coast was clear, I hurried back to the camp.
I had left my jacket to dry beside the fire. I grasped the "beware of Pei Qing" note and slipped it into the pocket. Just as I was about to leave, I suddenly heard footsteps behind me.
"What's going on?" a voice asked.
It was Chen Luohu. He was on all fours. He'd crawled back after being unable to keep up with the others. Holding his ankle, he climbed to his feet. Although far from a weakling, the guy was not particularly coordinated. For a moment I just stared at him, unable to respond. He didn't seem to notice.
"What's going on?" he asked again. "Why did Old Pei fire his gun?"
I looked off into the darkness, listening to the distant gunshots. "I think someone fell," I said, "but I couldn't keep up with them. When I noticed you were gone, I came back here to look for you."
He pointed at his leg. "I just twisted it little. Don't worry about me. I'm fine."
"Good to hear it." I faked a concerned expression. "I'm going to head back and see what's going on. You wait here." I turned and rushed into the darkness.
After running some distance, I looked back. Chen Luohu was sitting on the ground by the fire, not paying me any attention at all. He hadn't noticed a thing. I stroked my chin in thought. The darkness had certainly been a factor, but it seemed I still looked more or less the same. This would allow me to do far more than I had imagined.
I returned to the edge of the cliff. I hid behind a rock and watched as they retrieved the corpse and carried it back through the darkness. Once they were gone, I climbed down the rock wall, found Yuan Xile, and the two of us climbed back up. We crept towards their camp, making sure not to get too close. We observed from our perch in the darkness. The fire was high and bright. Wang Sichuan and I were relaxing beside it. Yuan Xile grabbed my arm, her fingernails digging into my flesh. I was also staring at the other me. The feeling was indescribable. If only he knew who was gazing at him from out of the darkness. If only he knew all that would soon happen to him.
I glanced back at Yuan Xile. Her moment had arrived. Putting my hand on her shoulder, I signaled for her to remember all I'd told her. Yuan Xile nodded, looking serious. For the first time she finally seemed to trust me. For a moment our eyes met. Then she took a deep breath and turned to go. I couldn't stand it anymore. At the very last moment, I grabbed her arm and pulled her back. Before she could react, I kissed her. Unexpectedly, she made almost no resistance. As our lips parted, I could see a strange glimmer in her eyes, lit by the distant campfire. She gave me a long look, then turned and walked towards camp. She did not glance back once.
I crouched behind a rock and listened to the commotion that followed, knowing exactly what was happening. I felt both nervous and calm at the same time.
After that things were simple. I tailed the second team to the water dungeon and pulled Pei Qing down into the river. Then, when I jumped in to save him, I floated a corpse towards myself headfirst. As my future self began to panic, I slipped the second note into his pocket. I followed myself until I reached the dam. When at last all parties had entered the caisson, I started it up and dropped them into the icehouse.
After that, the rest was up to me.
CHAPTER
65
The Wandering Years
With my tasks completed, I returned to the surface. The old Japanese outpost was now bustling with activity. Trucks ran along the newly-built plank road that encircled the log cabins and wound through the forest. Construction projects were underway and everywhere people were hurrying about. I snuck past camp and began traveling south down the plank road.
I walked for days. About halfway along I ran into Wang Sichuan. He was waiting for me by the side of the road. I was surprised to see him, but had our roles been reversed I would have done the same thing; for not only were we friends, we were now unlike everyone else in the whole world.
"Were you successful?" he asked. I nodded, but said nothing.
After we'd walked for two weeks, a heavy snow began to fall. Luckily, we soon found a tree farm where a small train was loaded up with lumber. We snuck aboard and, when the train reached a wood station, we got off, already so cold we could barely speak. We pretended to be construction soldiers from another tree farm who'd lost their way. The station staff gave us overcoats and some rations and we boarded a larger train to Jiamusi.
There was no such thing as a national surveillance network in those days. Our ID cards and military credentials enabled us to travel wherever we wanted and eat at dining halls in every town and city. Wang Sichuan asked me what I was planning on doing. I said I wanted to return to my hometown in the South, but I knew this was unrealistic. Our best bet was to hide out in a remote village for a while. I suggested we head for the mountain communities near the Daqing oilfields. Geological surveys were still taking place there, so we should have no problem lying low, pretending to be part of the troops.
We checked
a map and found a village that could only be reached on foot. Then we exchanged all our belongings for grain coupons and set out. We discovered a wonderfully peaceful little hamlet awaiting us. The people there barely even knew about the war against Japan. Their village was surrounded on all sides by mountains and so remote that none of its men had been conscripted into the army. At the local administrative office we traded some of our grain coupons for various necessities and a room in town. There we waited out the winter. By the time our grain coupons ran out, summer had nearly arrived. A man from the distribution collective arrived in town to take census. We convinced him to sell us a radio and broadcasted dramatic programs for the locals in exchange for food. We headed out of town when the weather grew hot.
Unable to report back to my regular unit, I finally returned home. I told my parents I'd deserted the army after nearly perishing at the hands of the Soviets. My superiors all thought I was dead. Most villagers wouldn't know any better if I made up a war with the USSR. My father was surprised I'd deserted, but I was still his son, so he allowed me to stay for a while and hide out. Back then this sort of thing was actually fairly common. When a war was over, if a soldier was unable to find the rest of the troops, he had no choice but to return to his home village while the army took him for dead. Eventually he had to reapply for ID under someone else's name. My father asked a friend in the military to find an unused identity for me, but there was nothing.
