Thunderhead

by Douglas Preston

There he goes again, Nora thought. “Like I told you on the barge,” she said a little more loudly than she intended, “the Anasazi had no precious metals.”

  “Just a minute,” Smithback said, folding his notebook and shoving it into his pants. “What about the Coronado reports Holroyd was reading aloud? All that talk of plates and jugs of gold. You mean that was just bullshit?”

  Nora laughed. “Not to put too fine a point on it, yes. The Indians were just telling the Spanish what they wanted to hear. The idea was to tell the Spanish that the gold was somewhere else, far away, to get rid of them as quickly as possible.”

  “Perhaps something was lost in translation,” said Aragon, with a smile.

  “Come on,” Smithback said. “Quivira wasn’t made up by the Indians. So why should the gold be?”

  Holroyd cleared his throat a little tentatively. “According to that book I was reading, Coronado had gold samples with him. When he tested the Indians by showing them samples of gold, copper, silver, and tin, the Indians identified the precious metals from the base. They knew what they were.”

  Smithback folded his arms. “See?”

  Nora rolled her eyes. One of the foundations of southwestern archaeology was that the Anasazi had no metals. It almost wasn’t worth arguing the point.

  Black suddenly spoke up. “All over the Southwest,” he said, “Anasazi graves have been found containing parrot and macaw feathers imported from the Aztec empires and their Toltec predecessors. They’ve also found New Mexico turquoise in Aztec burials. And we know that the Anasazi traded extensively with the Toltecs and Aztecs—slaves, obsidian, agate, salt, and pottery.”

  “What are you getting at?” Nora asked.

  “Simply that with all this trade going on, it’s not entirely unreasonable to think the Anasazi obtained gold.”

  Nora opened her mouth, then shut it again, surprised at hearing this from Black. Holroyd, Swire, and even Sloane were listening intently.

  “If they did have gold,” Nora began, trying to keep patient, “then, in the tens of thousands of Anasazi sites excavated over the last hundred and fifty years, we’d have found some. But not one excavation has ever turned up even the tiniest speck of gold. The bottom line is, if the Anasazi had gold, then where is it all?”

  “Maybe right here,” said Smithback quietly.

  Nora stared at him. Then she began to laugh. “Bill, put a cold compress on that fevered imagination of yours. I just saw a dozen rooms full of incredible stuff today, but not a single glimmer of gold. If we do find gold in Quivira, I’ll eat that ridiculous hat of yours. Okay? Now let’s get down and see what miracle Chef Bonarotti has prepared for dinner.”

  27

  * * *

  NORA GAZED ANXIOUSLY UP AT THE FIGURE rapelling down the rock wall four hundred feet above her head, a brightly colored bug against the sandstone. Beside Nora, Black and Holroyd gaped upward, motionless. Nearby, Smithback stood, notebook at the ready, as if waiting for some disaster to happen. A sharp clang rang out as Sloane drove an angle into the deep red rock with her wall hammer. As Nora watched, Sloane affixed the next portion of the rope ladder to the cliff face, then slid easily another ten feet down the rockface to drive in the next piece of gear.

  In order for the weather receiver and communications gear to operate, it was necessary to place them atop the rim of the canyon, far above Quivira. Two hours earlier, Nora and Sloane had determined the best place to set up the gear, basing their estimates on a combination of the easiest climb and lowest clifftop. The site turned out to be just beyond the far end of the city, overlooking the valley floor by the entrance to the slot canyon through which they had entered.

  Easiest climb, perhaps, but still frightful. Nora’s eyes had traveled up the wall, stopping at the last pitch. It was obviously the most difficult, a beetling brow of rock that hung out into space. But Sloane had just smiled. “Grade 1, 5.10, A-two,” she’d murmured, visually rating the difficulty of the climb. “Look at that secure crack system, goes almost all the way to the top. No problem.” And, in a spectacular feat of bravura climbing, she proved herself correct. An hour later, as they waited nervously below, slings and a haul bag tumbled down from above, indicating that Sloane had reached the top and was ready to hoist up the radio gear.

  And now Sloane was making her way back down to the bench that held Quivira, placing the ladder as she went. Another ten minutes, and she dropped nimbly into the group to a round of applause.

  “That was fantastic,” Nora said.

  Sloane shrugged and smiled, obviously pleased. “Another ten feet and we’d have run out of ladder. Is everybody ready?”

  Holroyd looked up, swallowing. “I guess so.”

  “I have important work to do,” Black said. “Can someone remind me again why I have to risk life and limb on this little climbing expedition?”

  “You won’t risk anything,” Sloane laughed in her deep contralto. “Those placements of mine are bombproof.”

  “And it’s your misfortune,” Nora said, “that you’ve been on a lot of digs and know how to use the radio equipment. We need a backup for Holroyd.”

  “Yeah, but why me?” Black asked. “Why not Aragon? He’s got more field experience than all of us put together.”

  “He’s also got twenty years on the rest of us,” Nora replied. “You’re much better suited to a physical challenge like this.” The buttering-up seemed to have its intended effect: Black pulled in his chest and looked sternly up the cliff.

  “Let’s get started, then.” Sloane turned briefly toward Smithback. “You coming?”

  Smithback looked speculatively upward. “I’d better not,” he said. “Somebody has to stay behind to catch the ones that fall.”

  Sloane raised one eyebrow, with a look that said she’d thought as much. “All right. Aaron, why don’t you lead, and I’ll follow. Peter, you come third, and Nora, please bring up the rear.”

  Nora noticed that Sloane had staggered the inexperienced climbers with the more experienced ones. “Why do I have to go first?” Black asked.

  “Believe me, it’s easier when nobody’s ahead of you. Less chance of eating a boot that way.”

  Black looked unconvinced, but grasped the base of the rope ladder and began hoisting himself up.

  “It’s just like climbing the ladder to Quivira, only longer,” Sloane said. “Keep your body hugged to the rock, and your feet apart. Take a rest at each bench. The longest pitch is the last one, maybe two hundred feet.”

  But Black, scrabbling at the second step, suddenly lost his footing. Sloane moved with the swiftness of a cat as Black came lurching downward. She half caught, half tackled him, and they ended up sprawled in a soft drift of sand at the base of the cliff, Black atop Sloane. They lay still, and Nora came running over. She could see that Sloane was shaking and making a choking sound; but as she bent down in a panic she realized the woman was laughing hysterically. Black seemed frozen in either fear or surprise. His face was buried between Sloane’s breasts.

  “Death, where is thy sting?” Smithback intoned.

  Sloane continued to gasp with laughter. “Aaron, you’re supposed to be climbing up, not down!” She made no move to push Black away, and after a few moments the scientist sat up, hair askew. He backed away, looking from Sloane to the rope ladder and back to Sloane again.

  Sloane sat up, still giggling, and dusted herself off. “You’re letting yourself get psyched out,” she said. “It’s just a ladder. But if it’s falling you’re afraid of, I’ve got a wall harness you can use instead.” She stood up and walked over to her equipment duffel. “It’s for emergencies, really, but you can use it to get familiar with the climb.” She pulled out a small harness constructed of nylon webbing and fastened it around Black. “You are just going to jumar your way up the rope. That way, you can’t fall.”

  Black, strangely quiet, simply looked at Sloane and nodded. This time, with the mental security of the harness and Sloane’s encouragement, he got the hang of using
the jumar and was soon moving confidently up the cliff. Sloane followed, then Holroyd reached hold of the lowest rung.

  Nora had noticed that, in the sudden scramble, Sloane hadn’t bothered to check on the image specialist’s state of mind. “You up to this, Peter?” she asked.

  Holroyd looked at her and smiled bashfully. “Hey, it’s just a ladder, like she said. Anyway, I’m going to have to climb this thing once a day. I’d better get used to it.”

  He took a deep breath, then began to climb. Nora followed carefully. She tested one or two of Sloane’s placements and found them to be as tight and secure as the woman had said. She’d learned from experience it was best not to look down on a long climb, and she kept her eyes on the three figures ranged up the face above her. There were long minutes of almost vertical climbing. They caught their breaths at each ledge. The final pitch ended with a brief, frightening moment of hanging backward as she worked around the protruding rimrock. For an instant, Nora was reminded of the Devil’s Backbone: the scrabbling at the slickrock, the frightened screaming of the horses as they hurtled to their deaths below her feet. Then she took another determined step upward, hoisted herself onto the top of the cliff, and collapsed, gasping, to her knees. Nearby sat Holroyd, sides heaving, head resting on crossed arms. Beside him was Black, trembling with exhaustion and stress.

  Sloane, alone, seemed unaffected by the climb. She began moving the small array of equipment a safe distance from the edge of the cliff: Holroyd’s satellite positioning unit, now sporting a long UHF whip antenna; the microwave horn; the solar panel and deep-cycle battery; rack-mounted receivers and transmitters. Beside them, winking in the morning light, the satellite dish was still enmeshed in nylon netting from the trip up the cliff face. Nearby was the weather-receiving unit.

  Holroyd struggled to his feet and moved toward the equipment, followed reluctantly by Black. “Let me get this stuff set up and calibrated,” Holroyd said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  Nora glanced at her watch with satisfaction. It was quarter to eleven, fifteen minutes before the appointed hour for their daily transmission to the Institute. As Holroyd initialized the radio unit and aligned the dish, Nora looked around at the surrounding vista. It was breathtaking: a landscape of red, yellow, and sepia clifftops, unfolding for countless miles under brilliant sunlight, covered with sparse piñon-juniper scrub. Far to the southwest, she could make out the sinuous gorge through which ran the Colorado River. To the east stood the brooding rim of the Devil’s Backbone, running off and behind the Kaiparowits Plateau. The purple prow of the Kaiparowits thrust above the land, like a great stone battleship ploughing through the wilderness, its flanks stripped to the bone by erosion, riven by steep canyons and ravines. The landscape ran on endlessly in all directions, an uninhabited wilderness of stone covering many thousands of square miles.

  To improve reception, Holroyd climbed into one of the stunted juniper trees nearby and screwed the twenty-four-hour weather receiver into the highest part of the trunk. He then wrapped the unit’s wire antenna around a long branch. As he adjusted the receiver’s gain, Nora could hear the monotonous voice of the forecaster reading out the day’s report for Page, Arizona.

  Black, having watched Holroyd set up the equipment, was now standing well away from the rim, looking pleased with himself, the smugness somewhat diluted by the harness that still clung to his haunches. Sloane, meanwhile, stood perilously close to the edge. “It’s amazing, Nora,” she called out. “But looking down from here, you’d never know there was an alcove, let alone a ruin. It’s uncanny.”

  Nora joined her at the edge. The ruin, set far back, was no longer visible, and the brow of rock below their summit shut out any hint that a cave lay underneath. Seven hundred feet below, the valley lay nestled between walls of stone like a green gem in a red setting. The stream ran down the center of the valley, and Nora could see more clearly the tortuous boulder-strewn path of the frequent floodwaters, a hundred yards wide, that ripped through the center of the valley. She could see the camp, blue and yellow tents scattered among the cottonwoods well above the floodplain, and a wisp of smoke curling up from Bonarotti’s fire. It was a good, safe camp.

  As eleven o’clock neared, Holroyd shut off the weather receiver and returned to the radio unit. Nora heard a bark of static, the whistle of frequency overload. “Got it,” Holroyd said, tugging on a pair of headphones. “Let’s see who’s out there.” He began murmuring into the microphone, almost toylike in its diminutive size. Then he straightened up abruptly. “You won’t believe it, but I’ve got Dr. Goddard himself,” he said. “Let me patch this through to the speaker.”

  Abruptly, Sloane moved away from the edge and busied herself coiling rope. Nora watched her a moment, then turned her glance to the microphone, feeling the excitement of the discovery kindling once again inside her. She wondered how the elder Goddard would react to the news of their success.

  “Dr. Kelly?” came the distant voice, crackling and small. “Nora? Is that you?”

  “Dr. Goddard,” said Nora. “We’re here. We made it.”

  “Thank God.” There was another crackle of static. “I’ve been here at eleven every morning. Another day, and we would have sent out a rescue party.”

  “The canyon walls were too high, we couldn’t transmit en route. And it took us a few more days than we anticipated.”

  “That’s just what I told Blakewood.” There was a brief silence. “What’s the news?” Goddard’s excitement and apprehension was palpable even through the wash of static.

  Nora paused. She hadn’t quite prepared herself for what to say. “We found the city, Dr. Goddard.”

  There was a sound that might have been a gasp or an electronic artifact. “You found Quivira? Is that what I just heard?”

  Nora paused, wondering just where to begin. “Yes. It’s a large city, six hundred rooms at least.”

  “Damn this static. I didn’t catch that. How many rooms?”

  “Six hundred.”

  There was a faint sound of wheezing or coughing, Nora couldn’t tell which. “Good lord. What kind of condition is the ruin?”

  “It’s in beautiful condition.”

  “Is it intact? Unlooted?”

  “Yes. Nothing’s been touched.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful.”

  Nora’s excitement grew stronger. “Dr. Goddard, that’s not the most important thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “The city is unlike any other. It’s absolutely filled with priceless, priceless artifacts. The Quivirans took nothing with them. There are hundreds of rooms filled with extraordinary artifacts, most of them perfectly preserved.”

  The voice took on a new tone. “What do you mean, extraordinary artifacts? Pots?”

  “That and much more. The city was amazingly wealthy, unlike any other Anasazi site. Textiles, carvings, turquoise jewelry, painted buffalo hides, stone idols, fetishes, prayer sticks, palettes. There are even some very early Kachina Cult masks. All in a remarkable state of preservation.”

  Nora fell silent. She could hear another brief cough. “Nora, what can I say? To hear all this . . . Is my daughter there?”

  “Yes.” Nora handed the microphone to Sloane.

  “Sloane?” came the voice from Santa Fe.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Is all this really true?”

  “Yes, Father, it is, and it’s no exaggeration. It’s the greatest archaeological discovery since Simpson found Chaco Canyon.”

  “That’s a pretty tall statement, Sloane.”

  Sloane did not answer.

  “What are the plans for the survey?”

  “We’ve decided that everything should be left in situ, undisturbed, except for test trenching in the trash mound. There’s enough here for a year’s worth of surveying and cataloguing, without moving anything. Day after tomorrow we plan to enter the Great Kiva.”

  “Sloane, listen to me: be very, very careful. The entire academic world is going to
be judging your every move after the fact, second-guessing you, picking apart everything you did. What you do in the next days will later be analyzed to death by the self-appointed experts. And because of the magnitude of the discovery, there will be jealousy and ill will. Many of your colleagues will not wish you well. They will all think they could have done it better. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” said Sloane, returning the mike. Nora thought she detected a momentary edge of irritation, even anger, in the woman’s voice.

  “So what you do has to be perfect. That goes for everyone else. Nora, too.”

  “We understand,” said Nora.

  “The greatest discovery since Chaco,” Goddard echoed. Again, there was a long period of static, punctuated by electronic pops and hisses.

  “Are you there?” Nora finally asked.

  “Very much so,” came Goddard’s voice, with a little laugh, “although I have to admit an urge to pinch myself to make sure. Nora, I can’t emphasize how much you are to be commended. And that goes for your father.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Goddard. And thanks for your faith in me.”

  “Good lady. We’ll expect your transmission tomorrow morning, at the same time. Perhaps then you can provide some more concrete details about the city.”

  “Yes. Goodbye, Dr. Goddard.”

  She handed the mike back to Holroyd, who powered-down the transmitter and began securing a lightweight tarp over the electronics. Nora turned to find Sloane gathering her climbing gear, a dark look on her face.

  “Everything all right?” Nora asked.

  Sloane slung a coiled rope over her shoulder. “I’m fine. It’s just that he never trusts me to do anything right. Even from eight hundred miles away, he thinks he can do it better.”

  She began to walk away, but Nora put a restraining hand on her arm. “Don’t be too hard on him. That caution was as much to me as it was to you. He trusts you, Sloane. And so do I.”

  Sloane looked at her for a moment. Then the darkness passed and she broke into her lazy smile.