Chapter 13

We had only been in the corridors for a minute or so when Jorani had something to say. She had been quiet for most of our tour of the Barkhor district.

“You know that Tsepak is a member of the Black-market, don’t you?” she asked. “Perhaps even a highly placed member of the Black-market.”

“Yes, that was pretty obvious when he saw that hundred-dollar bill and didn’t want me to change it for smaller, easier to pass bills worth the same amount,” I told her.

“Were you serious about using part of the tribute to support free food in some of the tea houses?” I asked her.

“If it is needed ... yes. It is not right that the very young and the old must suffer because of the Chinese. Also, there is always a Black-market. In Cambodia and Thailand, they are opposed to the high tax on things from outside,” she said, as we moved toward the portal to the Nest.

“True, and in China there are the Tongs and in Japan the Yakuza. They are all criminal organizations,” I reminded her.

“Here, however, those in the Black-market, at least some of them, seem to care about the old and the poor, at least somewhat,” she added as we entered the cave below the Nest.

“We will need to be careful how much we tell them, and what we allow them to see. They will, of course, always have their own best interest in mind,” she continued. It was obvious that she had dealt with those in the Black-market previously.

“What shall we have for dinner tonight?” she asked changing the subject.

“Whatever you wish to prepare. We did find some alcohol for the stove today. Still, because of the lower oxygen level at this altitude, it has trouble getting a hot enough fire to cook things quickly,” I reminded her.

“Yes, and the Chinese don’t seem to have any good solutions to the problem either. Still, let’s start on dinner. Perhaps we will find a solution on a full stomach,” she suggested.

We still needed to cook a part of our food. We weren’t ready to go out and catch and roast our dinner every night. We had looked at various types of stoves at the market today. There were several solutions to the problem available. There were electric stoves, except we had no electricity here in the Nest.

There were a number of models of alcohol, butane, and propane stoves available also. There were also iron or steel stoves that burned coal or Yak dung, but these had chimneys for the gasses to escape, but we had no exits for the gases. All of these stoves were of Chinese manufacture. The problem that all of them had, was the need for fuel. Fuel that had to be constantly purchased from the various merchants. We would not be able to continually do that, as they and the government would be asking questions about why we were here so long not being Tibetans. Also, they had the same problem as our present stove. They produced limited amounts of heat at this altitude even the coal burning ones.

The answer to our problem was right in front of us, but we didn’t see it until a day later when we were going over the human living and work areas here at the Nest and actually looked at some of the paintings on the walls.

We had seen the piles of rocks in ceramic containers in the living areas and had wondered what they were for. After actually looking at the pictures, the answer was evident. They were stoves ... Dragon powered stoves. They also heated the area around them. And yes, the simplest answer is always the best. We would see about creating our own the next day when we visited the markets again.

We got a much earlier start the next day and arrived at the agreed upon meeting place at 9:00 in the morning. Tsepak was already there, and he took us to see the Tsingsaikang Market and several smaller markets. Along the way, we stopped at several supermarkets also. The story at the Tsingsaikang and the other small markets was basically the same as it had been at the Barkhor the previous day.

The story at the supermarkets was somewhat different. They basically sold a lot of imported items and expensive Chinese delicacies along with fruit, vegetables, and meat, but at higher prices than the street markets. There were mostly Chinese and wealthy Tibetans shopping there. We stopped early that day, as we wanted to consider how we would be able to obtain food during the entire time we were here and how to cook it. We agreed to meet Tsepak the following morning at the same place we had today. We would be going to a number of tea houses tomorrow.

On arriving back in the Nest that afternoon, Jorani had a suggestion.

“Those who helped the Dragons had to cook their food just as we do. We should look at their living areas more closely. Perhaps we could learn how they did that,” she told me.

“They possibly did that by burning Yak dung as the Nomads and others still do,” I told her.

“Maybe, but not in here I would think,” she answered. We went to the artists’ level and began checking their living areas. The partitions between each cubical had long since disintegrated, but their remains marked the separate areas. Paying closer attention now, we noticed that there was something else that defined each area. It was centered in it and near the back wall. It was a ceramic container that was filled with rocks. Just plain old everyday rocks from the mountains. There were certainly enough of them everywhere. Some of the containers were fancier than others. Some were solid while others were pierced, but every living space had one or more.

“What are they?” Jorani asked. “And why does it appear everyone have at least one?”

That was when I started looking at the pictures on the walls. There were many of them on the artisans’ level. I soon located one showing a young Dragon breathing fire on one of the containers full of rocks.

“They’re stoves and heaters!” I told her in a surprised voice and pointed to the picture.

“I never thought...!” she started but didn’t finish.

“Of course, they didn’t have the things that are available now, but they still needed to cook their food. There were also plenty of young Dragons around then to do the heating,” I told her.

“These are much too old for us to use,” she said looking at the stoves critically. “What can we use to put rocks in and heat them up?” she asked.

That was when I remembered all of the stainless-steel buckets that we had seen at the various markets we had visited. There had been a lot of them. They had all been marked ‘PLA’ very plainly. Some had been in better condition than others. It appeared that the Chinese Army used them to ship large quantities of something here, and then they disposed of them, or they sold many of them when they were empty or no longer needed. They were a little larger than the size of five-gallon (19 ltr) plastic containers that were sold in the States for many purposes.

“Do you remember the steel containers that we saw at the markets?” I asked.

“Yes, there were a lot of them, even some with lids,” she replied.

“They are about this size and won’t melt when we breathe Dragon fire on the rocks in them,” I told her to a surprised look from her.

“Yes, and no carbon emissions either,” she said with a smile after a few seconds, having heard the many commercials about carbon emissions.

“Now, all we need to worry about is how to get enough food to need stoves,” I told her to a frown from her.

“Tsepak should be able to solve that problem for a consideration,” she said after a time. We returned to the nesting area following that to prepare our dinner. There was sex that night, but we started early and didn’t over do it. We were up early the next morning and anxious to meet Tsepak and acquire some of the stainless-steel containers.

Tsepak was very nervous when we met him on the third morning.

“Something is going on,” he told us first thing.

“What kind of things?” I asked.

“The police are even more active than usual. They are out checking people’s papers and stopping people at random and searching them. You don’t have any papers, and you have been using those disguises for several days now. What will happen if you are stopped?” he asked in a nervous voice.

“You mean what will happen to you,” Jorani told him.

“Yes, me also. What can you do?”

“Allow us to handle the situation. We can use Magic to make them think that they have seen our papers. We can also change the glamours that we are using,” I told him before changing the subject.

“We need to obtain some of the stainless-steel containers that we have seen in several of the markets,” I told him.

“Why would you want one of them?” he asked, puzzled.

“Actually, we need three,” I told him.

“Four,” Jorani said. “We need one for a trash can.”

“Okay, four of the containers. One with a lid,” I told him.

“And one with a handle,” Jorani added.

“But what for?” he asked again.

“To use as a stove and heaters,” I told him to a blank look from him.

“There are no provisions for cooking at the Nest. Dragons caught their meals on the hoof and roasted them outside before eating them,” Jorani told him to a surprised look from him.

“Caught what?” he asked confused.

“Caught various animals ... deer, goats, sheep, horses, Yaks. Whatever looked good to eat,” she told him.

“The whole animal?” he asked shocked.

“Certainly, a forty-foot-tall Dragon has a large appetite,” she assured him to another surprised look.

“All right, we’ll go to the closest market, and you can purchase those containers. Then we must visit a couple of tea houses and remain off the street for most of the day,” he told us.

For something that was surplus and had been thrown out or possibly sold as trash, the containers were a bit expensive, especially considering how many of them there were. I had given Tsepak another hundred dollars for our purchases that day which included not just the four containers but also enough food to fill all of them most of the way to the top. All of that went to the Timeless Zone when no one was watching us. We had managed to skirt a couple of police checkpoints while shopping and went to the first tea house to relax for a time and to have lunch.

During lunch, Tsepak presented us with two different maps of Lhasa. It seems that all of the Chinese facilities weren’t available on just one map. We were amazed by the number of organizations located in the city. There were the offices of the Autonomous Region Government, the Municipal Government’s offices and the Changguan District Government’s facilities. All of them were located within a couple of blocks of each other.

Then there were things like police stations, the post office, telecom offices, the TV stations and their studios plus the transmission tower. There was also the Department of Public Security. This didn’t even include the military, most of which were located outside of the city. The maps also had the street names and other locations like hotels, restaurants, and Temples printed on them in English.

“My ... my, so many places for us to cause the Chinese trouble,” Jorani said on looking at the maps.

“All of these government people, where do they shop?” I asked Tsepak.

“The lower-level people shop at the markets like everyone else. The higher-ranking people, those in charge of the government, have their food shipped in by the central government. They seldom if ever shop at the markets and have bodyguards with them all of the time.

“Their food is stored in a well-guarded warehouse. There are police and military guards both outside and inside. They receive the most expensive imported foods as part of their pay. Our people have tried to gain access to that warehouse but have never succeeded. The food there is worth a fortune. Even the supermarkets have trouble obtaining that kind of food. When they can get it, it is very expensive, but sells to the Chinese and some wealthy Tibetans,” Tsepak told us. I could see the twinkle in Jorani’s eyes on hearing this.

Later that afternoon, we were just coming out of the second tea house when we were stopped by the police. There were four of them plus two soldiers. The police said something in Chinese and then Tibetan before Tsepak turned to us.