“I’m sorry?” Shan replied, with an eye on Cao, who had returned to the square. To Shan’s great surprise he was walking in the same patterns as the old Tibetans, as if the Chinese scholar also saw the phantom shrines. He knelt at one of the invisible stopping places, unfolded a pocketknife, and used its blade to dig. After a few moments he nodded, as if confirming a discovery.

Cao gave a self-conscious grin as Shan and Pike approached him at the third such stop. “An earth-taming temple,” the Chinese student declared, and gestured at a stone foundation he had uncovered six inches below the surface. “The gompa here must have been an earth-taming temple,” he said, referring to the ancient sites that had been constructed to subdue the demons under the earth.

“I don’t know,” Shan admitted.

“No, no, I am telling you. This was an earth-taming temple site, a very important one.” He pointed to smudges on the wall of the tower, then took out a small notepad and drew a series of symbols stacked one on top of the other. “A sun, a moon, an empty lotus throne to welcome the god, hovering over mountains. And a garuda bird, I think, though it is mostly a smudge. Earth-taming signs,” he explained.

Shan stared in disbelief. He had taken the patches of discoloration on the crumbling stucco of the wall to be nothing more than water stains, but now as Cao held up his drawing so he could compare it to the stains, he could see that indeed the faded patterns corresponded with the symbols in shape and placement.

Cao bent and scooped away more of the dirt, revealing cobblestones around the foundation. “There was a great paved courtyard, and the small foundations mark the pattern used for the old dances, the ritual cham dances done to honor the good earth spirits and discourage the evil ones. This was the courtyard of a great temple,” he said, pointing to the exposed cobbles. “The professor and I have seen this before. Religious Affairs and the army were in a great hurry to obliterate everything fifty years ago, so they just dumped a few inches of soil on top and called it a park.”

Shan recalled complaints from those who tried to plant in the square about the many stones they encountered. He extracted the paper he had taken from the mess hall bulletin board at the Five Claws project, the satellite photo embellished with new lines. It had some of the same signs drawn across the top.

“Exactly,” Cao said.

Shan stared at him, not comprehending. “It’s an aerial photo of the dam site with some lines drawn to suggest some kind of body.”