There was little more to the psychic conversation; then the emperor discontinued it. He next took a brief report from Tenzin Geshe on what the raven had seen. As he returned to his apartment, Songtsan Gampo felt a thrill run through him. This barbarian was indeed interesting. More than interesting: exciting! Tenzin had sensed the man as a threat, but Tenzin was always cautious. And opportunities often entailed danger. The barbarian held some special significance, it seemed to Songtsan, some special promise. Perhaps from him he’d learn something new and powerful, a key that would open the world to his grasp.
For just a moment, as if standing on an exhilarating height, he felt possibilities he couldn’t quite perceive. Marvelous possibilities that went well beyond conquest!
Then the height sagged, and he lost his certainty.
But Songtsan Gampo was a man of spiritual strength as well as vast material power. And of great patience, when it suited him. He would wait, see, react, and take the initiative when the time came.
TWENTY-TWO
From—Modern China, by Giulio Matsuda. University Press, A.C. 832.
…. No written records have been found of the post-plague Tibetan migration into those parts of China previously peopled by “Chinese,” that is, by people ethnically Chinese. Certain assumptions and conclusions can safely be made, however. Considering the physical appearance of the ethnic Tibetans in modern China, they presumably came from the eastern Tibet-Qinghai Plateau and adjacent mountain districts.
One might ask how there came to be so many. According to the Terran census of a.d. 2100, the last available, the total population of ethnic Tibetans within Tibet itself, and in the adjacent Chinese states of Xinjiang, Sichuan, Qinghai, and upper Yunnan was fewer than seven million. According to planet-wide estimates of plague and short-term post-plague mortality, the expected number of Ti-
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betan survivors should have been somewhere between five hundred and five thousand. In the instance of a people many of whom lived a relatively self-sufficient life, not vitally dependent on the technological infrastructure, five thousand seems not unreasonable.
An additional peculiarity lies in the genetic strain of Tibetans to which modern Sino-Tibetans seem to belong: the Goloks. Judging by the degree of their population recovery, Asian nomads in general seem to have been less severely decimated by the plague, or more probably by post-plague privation and disease, than were other genetic stocks. But seemingly the Goloks were the least affected of all; one might hazard a guess that something like five percent survived, possibly ten or fifteen percent, instead of a small fraction of one percent.
Apparently becoming aware of the depopulation of China, with its much kinder climate, significant numbers of Goloks began moving down the river valleys into Guizhou, Qinling, lower Yunnan, and lower Sichuan within a generation or two. Numbers capable of dominating the scattered Chinese survivors they found in those areas. …
The next morning Baver opened his eyes to Hans’s voice, not loud, but intense and worried. “Nils!” the boy was saying. “I cannot find Svartvinge! He is not on the roof, and I cannot see him flying!”
The doorflap was open and bright morning entered, to lose itself in the ger’s interior. Their sleeping robes were on beds of new hay near the wall. Nils rolled to his feet with no apparent disorientation. He must already have been awake. Baver thought sleepily. For a moment the Northman simply stood there as if listening, not to Hans, or to anything, but for something. Or so it seemed to Baver.
“The shaman has killed him!” Hans was saying. “Or had him killed! I know it!”
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“Maybe he flew off to investigate something,” Baver suggested, and got a dirty look from Hans.
Nils shook his head. “I don’t think so, either one.”
/ don’t think so. It occurred to Baver that such a statement was unusual from Nils. Usually he was sure of things.
“What, then?” Hans demanded.
“If he was near, within a few tusen, I would sense him and know where—in what direction. And if he’d been killed, I’d sense some residue of the act …”
He stiffened then, scanned the dim ger for a moment, and moved quickly to where his gear lay—battle harness, axe, bow and quiver, saddle . . . and dropped to his haunches. When he stood again, it was with the body of Svartvinge in his hands, like a large bundle of black feathers. The Northman said nothing, simply peered at the bird.