In the meantime they had been looking at the news channels and Yifan was getting more and more alarmed. It appeared that their names had been leaked by someone at the British Museum, but no-one at the Museum was available for comment. “Cowards”, muttered John, smoothing Ji Ye’s hair.
The Chinese Embassy was not commenting either, and a spokesperson for the UK Government would only say that it was a matter for the individuals concerned. A Chinese pro-Democracy group was loudly proclaiming Mister Ji as the new Emperor of China – in John’s opinion not very democratic – and the United States Ambassador was warning China against an overreaction against dissidents.
“I don’t know what it’s got to do with him,” said John, accepting a biscuit from Rachel.
Later in the evening Rachel’s mother took them to a cheap hotel, and in the morning John brought breakfast to the room. “We can’t risk you going down to breakfast – your faces are all over the telly. The press even interviewed Mrs Ji – they got an interpreter, but found that all she would say was that they were blocking the street and no-one could park their cars, and if they didn’t get going she would throw water over them.”
“What happened then?” asked Yifan.
“She threw a bowl of water over them from an upstairs window.”
John went off to work, although he spent most of the day trying to talk to Professor Steller or Doctor Parfew at the Museum, to ask them to give some sort of a statement which might satisfy the Press and get them off the family’s back, and to someone at the Chinese Embassy, in the hope that a dialogue could be arranged about the political implications of the Qin connection. Eventually a meeting was arranged at the Museum, and Yifan found herself being dragged up to London in haste and without lunch.
The meeting was quite short. The man from the Embassy was important enough that he was able to make decisions there and then, without being subject to later agreement from Beijing. Mister Ji was on the telephone from Cardiff, and Doctor Parfew represented the Museum’s interests and took the minutes. In the end the meeting resulted in a statement to the Press along the lines that the Ji family were as surprised as anyone about the turn of events, that their status was subject to verification by China, and that the Chinese Government was in harmony with their position, however it turned out.
In the meantime the Press had assembled outside the Museum, in the cold. And the rain. And it was windy.
This only served to amuse Ji Ye, Yifan and John as they stood behind the Chinese representative and Doctor Parfew as the latter addressed the dampened reporters from the Museum steps. In just one brief statement the situation was defused, and the family was free to go home.
Vicky was very impressed when Yifan met her, a couple of days later.
-- When it happened to us, she said, all sorts of people got the information before the Press did. So the first we heard of it was when a crowd of Chinese turned up around grandpa’s house in Cardiff, and then the Chinese Government applied for a warrant for our extradition to China.
-- Wow, said Yifan, that’s much more exciting. Ours was really boring.
-- Don’t knock it. Now you just have to enjoy being a Princess, in the limelight for a while. And mum can exploit the situation – I’ll let you know how…
And she did, and Yifan relayed her handy hints and tips, which Ji Ye began to turn into money. Interviews, of course, and articles for newspapers, and endorsements of products they had never tried and never intended to (until boxes of the stuff turned up); and free travel, free clothes, free everything. Yifan continued at school during all of this, and for a while was in demand as best friend for everyone. Some girls even changed the dates of their birthdays so that they would not have to wait too long before getting her as their guest of honour.
Yifan had been closely drilled by John and Ji Ye as to what she could say and what she couldn’t, and since most of what she couldn’t say was to do with another Universe it did seem reasonable to withhold it. Yifan did not want to appear to be mad, and Ji Ye did not want everyone to ask her who was going to win the National.
Eventually all the fuss died down. Ji Ye was making an income from her Princess-ship, Yifan was getting on very well at school, and John and Bart went on being John-y and Bart-y. Mister Ji was offered a huge sum of money for Princess Aster’s pot, but refused to sell it. It was, he said, an heirloom of great value to his family. If it left their possession it would be worth nothing.
Vicky was making progress in her documentary work. Whenever Yifan visited there was some new discovery in or around the Tomb site; and there were developments too in Vicky’s relationship with Abel, despite the fact that he seemed never to be able to grasp the importance of archaeology, focusing instead on the worth of the artefacts.
-- He’s got the soul of a pawnbroker, moaned Vicky. But he’s got lovely eyes…
-- He’s very old, though, maintained Yifan, as they watched him over the dinner table one evening.
-- So am I, retorted Vicky. Anyway, he’s handsome and cute… Have you got a boyfriend?
That remark was calculated to make Yifan cringe and go quiet for a while, so that Vicky could smile at Abel and ask him whether he like the giant sea-snail. Abel did, or so he said, and by the time Vicky got back to Yifan, Yifan had gone.
“She’s just snogging all the time,” Yifan moaned to Ji Ye. “It’s disgusting. And he smells of garlic.”
“Not always of garlic, I expect,” said Ji Ye. “They were having dinner, so it’s to be expected. But you should take that as an example for the future. Always make sure that your mouth is fresh when you are with someone you want to kiss.” She looked pointedly at John as she said this, and he went a bit red.
“I’m not going to go around kissing people,” Yifan declared. “It’s disgusting.”
Yifan’s no-kissing manifesto, though stoutly presented, was quite obviously unenforceable; only five minutes later she found herself kissing Abel with impressive enthusiasm and with no noticeable traces of garlic. It took her a few seconds to work out quite what was happening, after which she bit Abel on the tongue and then left Vicky to clear up the mess.
*
Work on the Tomb mound went on through the spring and summer. Every shovelful of earth had to be riddled and inspected. Every artefact, however small, had to be catalogued and its position recorded before it could be moved. When the excavation along the western passage reached a thick carved wooden door a party was held in a local restaurant – this being China, the restaurant could comfortably hold the six hundred or so archaeologists, engineers, forensic scientists, media people and so on who made up the Xi’an Dig. There were speeches of varying degrees of dullness, 3Ds of the stages of the excavation so far and animations of the structures inside the tomb based on the robotic and sensor surveys, and at the end a spoof 3D was shown that had a young man from the engineering pool playing Vicky and presenting the opening of the tomb to the cameras. He knocked on the great wooden door and cried, “Open up, grandpa – it’s Vicky!” The tomb door opened and a little old man in a brown robe peeked around it.
“Who are you?” he asked in a querulous voice.
“I’m Princess Vicky,” the actor playing Vicky replied. “And it’s twenty forty-five.”
“Oh,” was the reply. “It’s nearly time for bed…” The old man turned his head and shouted in a surprisingly healthy bellow, “Hoy! It’s your great great great great great great great great great great granddaughter…”
“Tell her I’m out” came the reply in a deep voice from far down in the cavernous depths.
Everybody laughed, and Vicky felt her face flushing. The sketch went on for a while but she did not take much notice of it. She was worried about the coming weeks, when the door and its frame and the surrounding earth or rock would be inspected, and holes drilled through which the atmosphere inside could be tested and robot cameras inserted. And if the inspection of the area immediately behind the door was favourable, an airlock would be constructed and
the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi would be opened for the first time since it was built more than two thousand years before.
And Vicky would be the first human to enter the tomb in all that time.
*
“Vicky’s going to be the first one in the tomb,” crowed Yifan.
“I thought Qin Shi Huangdi got there before her,” said John.
“Don’t be annoying,” said Ji Ye, and the other two wondered which one of them she was talking to. It turned out to be Bart.
Christmas had come and gone and Yifan had received a number of things she was not particularly interested to receive, and had been fooled into believing that no-one was interested in buying her anything to do with her particular boy-band crush, Singular Orientation (or something similar). But then, after all the dull gifts, she had got presents with their signatures on, and likenesses, and possibly smells too.
Vicky, for some years now a Doctor of Philosophy, would probably end up with a Professorship once the Xi’an dig had ended. Media was the big thing now all around the world, and most Universities had an interest in obtaining an appropriately qualified and photogenic Faculty to carry their message to the masses. Vicky, it seemed, was a natural; and this reflected well on Yifan, who was wont to float around gazing benignly into unseen cameras. Although Yifan was, at her age, quite shy, she knew that Vicky was confident and charismatic. This, Yifan asserted, was to be her future, even if it did not contain Archaeology.
The last news that Yifan had relayed regarding Vicky had been to the effect that she was probably the most famous human in the world right now. The net and the 3D channels were all over her – she was the Princess who would keep an appointment her great great ever so great grandmother had failed to keep over two thousand years before, and enter the tomb of the First Emperor of China. She would enter alone, the first human in all that time, accompanied only by a few small camera platforms. Yifan said that Vicky had spent days thinking about what her first words should be, when the floodlights went on inside the tomb mound and all the shadowed and half-glimpsed treasures were at last revealed.
“’Ding-dong – Yifan calling’?” suggested John.
Yifan was not with Vicky when at last the day arrived, and all the media and all the politicians, and the Professors and policemen, and paparazzi and passers-by and peanut sellers and PR people had their eyes glued to the screens as she, her support team, cameraman and the robots all climbed up the ramp that led to the tunnel that ended at the great and now open wooden door. The humans all wore white NBC suits, the robots were shrouded in plastic and foil with only their camera snouts protruding. The floodlight platforms were already inside the tomb, dispersing under infra-red direction to their prearranged positions. No human had yet gone through the door, and the few images of the interior so far obtained were black and white and fuzzy. The team were doing everything they could to heighten the tension in the spectators.
In front of the tunnel entrance the President of China welcomed them and made a speech. It was short, full of pride for the people of China, and instantly forgettable. Vicky said a few words that she herself almost instantly forgot, because she was nervous and eager to get moving. Then she and the camera operator went down the tunnel, the airlock outer door opened and she and the camera platforms went inside.
The door closed. Through the clear plastic of the airlock the cameraman focused his remotes on the inner door opening onto blackness. Vicky remembered just in time to turn on her air tank before someone in the control centre noticed and embarrassed her in front of half the population of the world, and then she stepped over the sill and into the tomb.
*
“She was too busy… You know.” Yifan looked embarrassed. “Kissing and things.”
“Who was?” asked John.
“You know. Vicky. When I got there it was all over and she was in the hotel, and she was… You know.”
“Kissing and things.”
“Yes. She didn’t want to stop and talk to me, and show me the pictures.”
“She was too busy kissing. She didn’t want to stop.”
“I don’t know why – what’s so good about kissing and that? It’s disgusting.”
“Well, you would like to kiss Insert Boyband Member Name Here, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s not his name. His name’s Harry. Anyway, I’d rather go for a walk with him than kiss him, if he kisses like that Abel does.”
“I don’t think you should be going off to Vicky when she’s doing that sort of thing,” said Ji Ye.
“I can’t help it.”
“And it’s unhygienic. You might catch something.” John contributed, helpfully.
Yifan felt put-upon. They were having fun at her expense. All of them were adults – Ji Ye, John, Abel, Vicky. Vicky was older than Ji Ye now! It wasn’t fair. The biggest thing in the world was happening in that other place, and Yifan had missed it. All she got was some smelly American licking her mouth like some big but unattractive breed of dog.
Yifan clattered upstairs and threw herself on her bed, intending to cry. But she was too gloomy to do that, so she just lay there on her tummy, brooding on her life. So far it was all back luck and boredom.
She and Ji Ye and John had moved house because of the money they’d got from being Royal. So many people wanted to pay them for interviews, photographs and endorsements that the move was inevitable and, to Ji Ye’s mind, long overdue. So now Yifan had a big room, and there were spare rooms to use as studios and wardrobes and spare beds for guests, and enough storage all around so that an appearance of tidiness could be maintained.
There was also an attic room, reached by stairs rather than by a rickety aluminium ladder; a light bright space with sloping windows and a deep soft carpet, and which Ji Ye had furnished with couches and a desk. It was Yifan’s play room, and it contained most of her toys and games and books. She went up to it now and lay down on a couch, and looked up through a skylight at the clouds in the limitless blue sky. And it was there that she was not any more, for a while.
VIII.
-- Oh!
It was stuffy and dark, and the smell of plastic was in her nostrils, and her limbs were stiff and hard to move. It was ferociously hot, and the ground underfoot was uneven and tripful. Vicky was walking carefully, her left arm outstretched, her right holding a torch. The wavering beam played on rock gouged with tool-marks. She was treading quietly, and when Yifan appeared she stopped and spoke to her.
-- We’re in the tomb, she said. It’s night-time outside. Someone is in here.
-- Who? asked Yifan, and felt a chill strike her even through the heat.
-- I have a suspicion, replied Vicky. Keep quiet.
As they crept along, Vicky told Yifan how she had discovered that there was something wrong. She had spent the early part of the evening with Abel (of course, thought Yifan. Always Abel), and after dinner she had driven her jeep back from a posh restaurant at the new Weinan airport to the Hot Springs Resort at Lintang, where the Western team were now staying. And on the way she had passed by the site.
-- What about Abel?
-- He’s flying to Shanghai this evening. I’ll miss him, but it can’t be helped. Anyway, when I passed the site entrance something made me suspicious. I tried to turn into the site, but the barrier was down. And there was no-one in the guard post.
-- Is that unusual?
-- Yes. The local Red Army unit provides the guards. They must be reliable, or they’d be punished. So I –
-- What are we wearing?
-- What? It’s an NBC suit. Tough gasproof nylon. Air tank. The air around us is full of mercury vapour. We’d die without protection.
Yifan felt suffocated in the plastic suit, and almost deafened by the whiffling sound it made as Vicky crept carefully along the passageway.
-- Where are we?
-- I said. Oh. I see. We’re in a passage that leads around from the Western entrance tunnel towards the Northern. We’re moving clockwise around the
tomb chamber. This is part of the construction that got the tomb workers up to the ceiling of the chamber, so they could work on the higher friezes and galleries. There are rooms, even dormitories, in this sort of backstairs part of the tomb. It makes it easy for me to get around without being seen.
-- Who is there to see us?
Vicky did not answer for a minute, being occupied with getting across a stretch where there had been a minor roof collapse. Then she continued her tale.
-- I told the jeep to wait a kilometre up the road, and walked onto the site. The vehicle barriers were set, but anyone on foot can slip past them. I checked the security booth and there was a soldier on the floor. He’d been shot with a dart gun. I took one of the electric buggies we use to get around the site. They’re silent. I drove to the security control room next to the Visitor Centre and snuck around for a peek. The men in the office aren’t people I recognise, and they’re not dressed right. There are three rugged terrain trucks parked by the ramp up to the tomb entrance, and there’s a communications damper all over everything. Phones won’t work, basically.
Vicky was really brave, thought Yifan. And then another thought immediately hit her – she’s brave, and I’m with her!
-- Oh, great, said Yifan with a groan.
-- I crept up to the entrance and got as far as the airlock without meeting anyone. So I got kitted out and came inside, and up the staircase to this section. Now I’m going to one of the upper galleries to see what’s happening in the chamber.
-- I bet you didn’t expect me, said Yifan.