Gradually, as if waking from a dream, I began to think more coherent thoughts. Of course the river could be changed. I was an engineer. I dealt with facts. Dams were made of steel and concrete. The holes in Mêng Liang’s ladder were cut into hard stone. The water above a dam would one day cover many of those holes. An engineer dealt with objective facts. There was no place in my life for shadowy thoughts about faceless nobodies. Old Pebble was dead.

Yet I could not help remembering what the head tracker had told me he wanted of life: to pull on the towline, a little wine when he went ashore, a hoard of friendship. That was all. A dam was not among the things he listed. Had there been a dam he would not have died. Would he have wanted a dam if he had known that?

I am not at all sure. He wanted to haul junks, drink wine, and have friends.

I had been in a great hurry to survey this river. What did I think now about my dam—about skimming a millennium in a day?

—

AT SOME time—it must have been while we were still in the mouth of the gorge—I thought of Su-ling. I remembered that after the Old Big had gone out of sight down the river, Su-ling had run sobbing through the arch of the main cabin aft across the conning deck to her small home on the junk, and the owner’s. Its door had slammed shut. I wanted to help her now, as she had so often helped me through uneasy times on this voyage, and I went astern and knocked on the cabin door.

There was no answer, and I knocked again, and again, repeatedly, but the silence within held. I opened the door and walked in.

This was the first time I had been in the after-house. It was dark there. There was a tiny square opening for light and air high on the sloping transom wall opposite me. Dimly I made out two wide wooden bunks on either side, each with a reed mat spread on it. The place seemed bare and clean. I was surprised not to see Su-ling curled on one of the bunks, weeping. Her love was lost; her husband, I assumed, was also dead. Finally, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw her standing directly in front of me, with her back to me. She was gazing with wide dry eyes into a mirror that was fastened to a stanchion, with the meager light from the little window on her face.

Becoming aware of me, she turned and brushed past me and walked out onto the conning deck. Her face was the one she always showed, unfurrowed, sweet, and bright, with only the tuck of everlasting woe at the corner of her mouth to show for the day’s catastrophes. She did not look at me. Her hands worked at one earlobe as she walked, then at the other, and following her I saw her go to the port side, facing the open river, and there she threw the red earrings Old Pebble had given her into the man-eating water.