Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

said, nodding. ”I’ll go and tell Mr. Kan that
it’s bothering you. Sit and take deep breaths.” He hurried off to look for the
guide, filled with an energy that defied the heat and promised well for his
desert travels, thought Mrs. Pollifax as she turned back to Malcolm.
    ”I always thought it must be quite fascinating to be psychic,” she told
him. ”An added dimension to life, you might say. Now I see that it has its
hazards and its price.”
    He gave her a twisted smile. ”Hell sometimes. Sorry about this, you
won’t mention it to anyone?”
    ”You notice I didn’t,” she said dryly.
    ”Good of you not to assume I’d gone off my rocker. Hearing voices is one
of the first signs, they tell me.”
    ”You seem surprisingly sane to me,” she said firmly, thinking that if he
should be their KGB agent, he was at least a sane one. ”When it happens in a
ruin that’s six thousand years old... Auschwitz ,
too?”
    He nodded unhappily. ”They had to carry me out. Most humiliating
experience in my life. On a stretcher.”
    ”Let’s talk of something else,” she announced. ”I think we should. Iris,
for instance? Or the heat? Or—” She suddenly wondered if he sensed or ”saw”
anything about her, or about Peter, and for just a moment felt endangered and
uneasy.
    The moment passed. Mr. Li, hurrying toward them in the heat, called out,
”I have sent Mr. Kan to find all our people, the young lady
Jenny is very sick.”
    Mrs. Pollifax sighed. ”And a four-hour trip back to Urumchi ahead of us?
As group leader, Mr. Li, I do think we must go.”
    Both Iris and Mr. Kan appeared from among the walls supporting
a very white-faced Jenny between them. ”Cramps,” Iris explained, and accepted
Mrs. Pollifax’s smelling salts. Jenny was installed in the bus on the rear seat
and a paper bag produced for her. Joe Forbes and George Westrum strolled in
from a different corner of the city with Peter herding them like a shepherd
rounding up a flock. The bus started, and Mrs. Pollifax took one last look at
Jiaohe dreaming in the hot golden sun in its sadness. What did happen to
you, she asked silently, and knew that she would always wonder.
     
    Once again as they entered Urumchi they passed the antiaircraft guns
silhouetted on the hills outside the city, and the huge sign Protect Our
Motherland, Heighten Alertness. Threading their way through the sprawling town
they passed several factories belching sinister yellow vapors, and then as they
approached the wooded driveway leading to their hotel Mrs. Pollifax looked from
her window and saw Sheng Ti.
    He was sitting by the road at the entrance, watching the oncoming bus
with great interest. She saw his intelligent eyes focus on Peter, and then on
her, and she quietly lifted one hand to him, and smiled. Somehow he had made
his way to Urumchi. He was here.
    The bus turned into the drive and Mrs. Pollifax, taking stock, found
herself grateful, and almost happy. Sheng Ti had arrived to join Peter. They
were back in Urumchi, and it was gratifying to realize that she no longer need
wear a wet towel wrapped around her head and look like a berserk Arab. She was
bearing leftover food from their meals in Turfan, all of it conscientiously, if
wetly, stuffed into her suitcase, and behind her in the bus Jenny had fallen
asleep at last after being actively ill a number of times.
    But most of all, she thought as she looked back on Turfan, she knew that
she would not easily forget her trip into the desert with Peter. They both
carried back with them the ramifications of that night—the knowledge that
someone had been watching them—but for herself she knew that she would never
forget that sense of leaving time behind them for a few hours, of moving
effortlessly, slowly, into another century. It had diminished barriers and
touched them both so that perhaps the closeness she’d shared with Peter was the
most important part of the memory, and what had moved her most of all.
    And because of this she decided not to tell him of her suspicions, not
to burden him with them yet. They drew up to the hotel, and it was Mr. Kan and Mr. Li who went to the back of the bus to look after Jenny. Mrs. Pollifax,
leaving the bus with Peter, whispered to him, ”You saw Sheng Ti on the street
out there?”
    ”I sure did.” He nodded. ”I’m really pleased. He made it.”
    ”Do you go off with food for X tonight?”
    He nodded.
    She had to say it. ”You’ll be terribly sure you’re not