Thunderhead

by Douglas Preston

  Two dark forms moved among the silent broken rafts and blocks of frozen lava that lapped the sides of the mesa. They were covered with thick pelts of fur, and their movements had the combined swiftness and caution of a wolf. Both figures wore heavy silver jewelry: concho belts, squash blossom necklaces, turquoise disks, and old sand-cast bow guards. Beneath the heavy pelts, naked skin was daubed with thick paint.

  They reached the talus slope below the caves and began to ascend, picking their way among boulders and rockfalls. At the bottom of the cliff itself they rapidly ascended a hand-and-toe trail and disappeared into the dark mouth of a cave.

  Inside the cave, they paused. One figure remained at the mouth while the second moved swiftly to the back of the cave. He pushed aside a rock, revealing a narrow passage, and wriggled through into a smaller room. There was a faint scratching sound and the wavering light of a burning splinter revealed that this room was not empty: it was a small Anasazi burial chamber. In niches carved in the far wall lay three mummified corpses, a few pathetic broken pots left beside them as offerings. The figure placed a ball of wax with a bit of straw stuck into it on a high ledge, lighting it with an uncertain glow.

  Then he moved to the central corpse: a gray, delicate form wrapped in a rotting buffalo hide. Its mummified lips had drawn back from its teeth and its mouth was open in a monstrous grimace of hilarity. The legs of the corpse were drawn up to the chest and the knees had been wrapped with woven cords; its eyes were two holes, webbed with shreds of tissue; its hands were balled up into shriveled fists, the fingernails hanging and broken, gnawed by rats.

  The figure reached in and cradled the mummy with infinite gentleness, removed it from the niche, and laid it down in the thick layer of dust on the cave floor. Reaching into the pelt, he removed a small woven basket and a medicine bundle. Tugging open the bundle, he extracted something and held it up to the uncertain light: a pair of delicate bronze hairs.

  The figure turned back to the mummy. Slowly, he placed the hairs in the mouth of the mummy, pushing them deep into the mummy’s throat. There was a dry crackling noise. Then the figure leaned back; the candle snuffed out; and absolute darkness fell once again. There was a low sound, a mutter, then a name, intoned again and again in a slow, even voice: “Kelly . . . Kelly . . . Kelly . . .”

  A long time passed. There was another scratch of a match, and the wax was relit. The figure reached into the basket, then bent over the corpse. A razor-sharp obsidian knife gleamed in the faint light. There was a faint, rhythmic scraping noise: the sound of stone cutting through crisp, dry flesh. The figure soon straightened up, holding a small round disk of scalp, dotted with the whorl of hair from the back of the mummy’s head. The figure placed it reverently in the basket.

  The figure bent once more. There was now a louder, digging noise. After a few minutes, there was a sharp rap. The figure held up a disk of skullbone, examined it, then placed it in the basket beside the scalp. Next, he moved the knife down the mummy until it reached the clenched, withered fists. He gently pulled aside the rotted tatters of buffalo hide from the hands, caressing them in his own. Then he worked the knife between the fingers, methodically prying them loose and breaking them off one at a time. Cupping each finger, he cut off the whorl of fingerprint and placed the desiccated chips of flesh into the basket. Then the figure moved down to the toes, breaking them off the body like breadsticks and quickly carving off the toe prints. Small showers of dust rained onto the cave floor.

  The little basket filled with pieces of the corpse as the makeshift candle guttered. The figure quickly rewrapped the mummy and lifted it back into its niche in the wall as the light winked out. Picking up the basket, he left the chamber and rolled the rock back into place. Gingerly, he pulled a buckskin bag from the pelt, unwound the tight knot of leather that sealed it shut, and teased the bag open. Holding it away from himself, he carefully sprinkled a thin trail of some powdery substance along the base of the rock. Then he carefully sealed up the bag and rejoined his companion at the cave entrance. Swiftly and silently, they descended the cliff face and were once again swallowed up in the darkness of the great lava flow of El Malpaís.

  12

  * * *

  THE HEADLIGHTS OF NORA’S TRUCK SWUNG across the predawn dark, scissoring through clouds of dust rising from the corrals, highlighting the wooden gates of the dude ranch. She came to a stop in a rutted parking area and killed the motor. Nearby, she could see two dark-colored vehicles, a pickup and a van, each bearing the Institute’s seal. Two slant-load horse trailers had been backed up to nearby horse pens, and ranch hands were loading horses into them under electric lights.

  Nora stepped out into the coolness of the early morning air and looked around. The sky would not begin to lighten for another half hour or so, but already Venus was rising, a sharp fleck of light against the velvet sky. The Institute vehicles were empty, and Nora knew everyone must already be at the fire circle, where Goddard planned to introduce the expedition to one another and say a brief farewell. In an hour, they would begin the long drive to Page, Arizona, at the end of Lake Powell. It was time she met the others.

  But she lingered a moment. The air was filled with the sounds of her childhood: the slap of latigo, the whistles and shouts of the cowboys, the boom of prancing hooves in the trailers, the clang of stock gates. As the aroma of piñon smoke, horses, and dust drifted near, a tight knot that had been growing within her began to relax. Over the last three days she had been supremely cautious, supremely vigilant, and yet she had seen nothing more to alarm her. The expedition had come together with remarkable speed and smoothness. Not a word had leaked out. And here, away from Santa Fe, Nora found some of the tension that had kept her so painfully on edge begin to ebb. The mystery of who had mailed her father’s letter was never far from her thoughts. But at least, once they were on the trail, she would leave her strange pursuers far behind.

  A cowboy in a battered hat strode out of the corral, leading a horse in each hand. Nora turned to look at him. The man was barely five feet tall, skinny, barrel-chested and bandy-legged. He turned and shouted to some hands deeper in the dusty darkness, bracketing the orders with four letter words. That must be Roscoe Swire, she thought: the wrangler Goddard had hired. He seemed a sure enough hand, but as her father had always said, he ain’t a cowboy til you see him ride. She again felt a momentary annoyance at how the Institute’s chairman had taken over the hiring of all personnel, even the wrangler. But Goddard was paying the bills.

  She pulled her saddle out of the back of her truck and stepped around. “Roscoe Swire?” she asked.

  He turned and removed his hat in a gesture that managed to be both courtly and ironic. “At your service,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice. He had a great overhanging mustache, droopy lips, and large, cow-sad eyes. But there was a certain scrappiness, even truculence, about his manner.

  “I’m Nora Kelly,” she said, shaking the small hand. It was so rough and scabby, it was like grasping a burr.

  “So you’re the boss,” said Swire with a grin. “Pleased.” He glanced at the saddle. “What you got there?”

  “It’s my own. I figured you’d want to load it with the rest in the front of the trailer.”

  He slowly placed his hat back on his head. “Looks like it’s been drug around a bit.”

  “I’ve had it since I was sixteen.”

  Swire broke into another smile. “An archaeologist who can ride.”

  “I can pack a set of panniers and throw a pretty good diamond hitch, too,” said Nora.

  At this, Swire took a small box of gingersnaps out of his pocket, placed one underneath his mustache, and began to chew. “Well, now,” he said, when his mouth was full, “you ain’t shy about your accomplishments.” He took a closer look at her gear. “Valle Grande Saddlery, three-quarter-rigged with the Cheyenne roll. You ever want to sell this, you let me know.”

  Nora laughed.

  “Look, the others just went up to the circle. What
can you tell me about them? Buncha New Yorkers on vacation, or what?”

  Nora found herself liking Swire and his sardonic tone. “Most of them I haven’t met. It’s a mixed group. People seem to think all archaeologists are like Indiana Jones, but I’ve met plenty who couldn’t ride to save their lives, or who’d never ventured beyond the classroom and lab. It all depends on what kind of work they’ve done. I bet there’ll be a couple of sore butts by the end of the first day.” She thought about Sloane Goddard, the sorority girl, and wondered how she, Holroyd, and the rest were going to fare on horseback.

  “Good,” said Swire. “If they ain’t sore, they ain’t having fun.” He pushed another gingersnap into his mouth, then pointed. “It’s up that way.”

  The fire circle lay north of the corrals, hidden in a stand of scrub juniper and piñon. Nora followed the trail, quickly spotting the flickering fire through the trees. Huge ponderosa logs were arranged in broad rings, three deep. The circle lay at the base of a tall bluff, which was pockmarked here and there by caves, a pendulous overhang across its top. Light from the fire leaped and flickered, painting the sandstone bluff lurid colors against the dark. A fire circle before a long journey was an old Pueblo custom, Nora knew, and after witnessing the incident with the Mimbres pots, she wasn’t particularly surprised Goddard had suggested it. It was another indication of his respect for Indian culture.

  She stepped into the firelight. Several figures were seated on the ponderosa logs, murmuring quietly. They turned at her approach. She immediately recognized Aaron Black, the imposing geochronologist from the University of Pennsylvania: six-foot-five-inches tall or more, with a massive head and hands. He held his head erect, chin jutting forward, which both added to his stature and gave him a slightly pompous air.

  But the look belied Black’s towering reputation. She had seen him at numerous archaeological meetings, where he always seemed to be giving a paper debunking some other archaeologist’s shaky but hopeful dating of a site; a man of intellectual rigor who clearly enjoyed his role as spoiler of his colleagues’ theories. But he was the acknowledged master of archaeological dating, at once feared and sought after. It was said that he had never been proved wrong, and his arrogant face looked it.

  “Dr. Black,” Nora said, stepping forward. “I’m Nora Kelly.”

  “Oh,” Black said, standing up and shaking hands. “Pleased to meet you.” He looked a little nonplussed. Probably doesn’t like the idea of having a young woman for a boss, she thought. Gone were the trademark bow tie and seersucker jacket of his archaeological conferences, replaced by a brand-new desert outfit that looked as if it had been lifted straight out of the pages of Abercrombie & Fitch. He’s going to be one of the sore ones, Nora thought. If he doesn’t get his ass killed first.

  Holroyd came over and shook her hand, gave her a quick awkward hug, and then, embarrassed, stepped back in confusion. He had the luminous face of a Boy Scout setting out on his first camping trip, his green eyes shining hopefully.

  “Dr. Kelly?” came a voice from the darkness. Another figure stepped into the light toward her, a small, dark man in his middle fifties who radiated an unsettling, even caustic intensity. He had a striking face: dark olive skin, black hair combed back, veiled eyes, a long, hooked nose. “I’m Enrique Aragon.” He briefly took her hand; his fingers were long, sensitive, almost feminine. He spoke with a precise, dignified voice, in the faintest of Mexican accents. She had also seen him many times at conferences, a remote and private figure. He was widely considered to be the country’s finest physical anthropologist, winner of the Hrdlicka Medal; but he was also a medical doctor—a highly convenient combination, which had undoubtedly figured in Goddard’s choice. It amazed her again that Goddard could have gotten professionals of the stature of Black and Aragon at such short notice. And it struck her even more forcefully that she would be directing these two men, very much her superior in both age and reputation. Nora shook off the sudden surge of doubt: if she was going to lead this expedition, she knew, she had better start thinking and acting like a leader, not an assistant professor always deferring to her senior colleagues.

  “We’ve been making introductions,” Aragon said with a brief smile. “This is Luigi Bonarotti, camp manager and cook.” He stepped aside and indicated another figure who had come up behind him to meet Nora.

  A man with dark Sicilian eyes leaned over and took her hand. He was impeccably dressed in pressed khakis, beautifully groomed, and Nora caught the faint whiff of an expensive aftershave. He took her hand and half-bowed with a kind of European restraint.

  “Are we really going to have to ride horses all the way to the site?” Black asked.

  “No,” Nora said. “You’ll get to walk some, too.”

  Black’s face tightened with displeasure. “I should have thought helicopters would make more sense. I’ve always found them sufficient for my work.”

  “Not in this country,” Nora said.

  “And where’s the journalist who’s going to be documenting all this for posterity? Shouldn’t he be here? I’ve been looking forward to meeting him.”

  “He’s joining us at Wahweap Marina, along with Dr. Goddard’s daughter.”

  The others began to range themselves around the fire and Nora settled down on a log, enjoying the warmth, inhaling the scent of cedar smoke, listening to the hiss and crackle taunt the surrounding darkness. As if from far away, she heard Black still muttering about having to ride a horse. The flames capered against the sandstone bluff, highlighting the black, ragged mouths of caves. She thought she saw a brief glow of light inside one of the caves, but it vanished as quickly as it had come. Some trick of the eye, perhaps. For some reason, she found herself thinking of Plato’s parable of the cave. And what would we look like, she thought, to those dwellers deep inside, gazing at shadows on the wall?

  She realized that the murmur of conversation around her had died away. Everyone was staring at the fire, absorbed in their own thoughts. Nora glanced at the excited Holroyd, pleased that the remote-sensing specialist wasn’t having second thoughts. But Holroyd was no longer staring at the fire: he was staring beyond it, into the darkness of the cliff face.

  Nora noticed Aragon look up, then Black. Following their gaze, she again saw a flash of light inside one of the caves beyond the fire, fitful but unmistakable. There was a faint clicking noise, and more yellow flashes. Then a lone figure resolved itself, gray on black, against the darkness of the cave. As it stepped forward out of the shadow of the sandstone bluff, Nora recognized the gaunt features of Ernest Goddard. He came silently toward the group, his white hair painted crimson by the fire, staring at them through the flames and smoke. He moved something within his hand, and the flashes returned yet again, flickering through his narrow fingers.

  He stood for a long moment, holding each person in turn in his gaze. Then he slipped whatever was in his hand into a leather bag and tossed it over the flames to Aragon, closest on the circle. “Rub them together,” he said, his whispery voice barely audible above the crackle of the campfire. “Then pass them around.”

  When Aragon handed her the bag, Nora reached inside and felt two smooth, hard stones. She drew them out and held them to the firelight: beautiful specimens of quartz, river-tumbled by the look of them, carved with the ritual spiral design that signified the sipapu, the Anasazi entrance to the underworld.

  In that instant, she recognized them for what they were. Pulling them out of the glare of the fire, she rubbed them together, watching the miraculous internal sparks light up the hearts of the stones, flickering fiercely in the dark. Watching her, Goddard nodded.

  “Anasazi lightning stones,” he said in his quiet voice.

  “Are they real?” asked Holroyd, taking them from Nora and holding them to the firelight.

  “Of course,” said Goddard. “They come from a medicine cache found in the great kiva at Keet Seel. We used to believe the Anasazi used them in rain ceremonies to symbolize the generation of lightning. Bu
t we aren’t sure anymore. The carved spiral represents the sipapu. But then again, it might represent a water spring. Again, nobody knows for sure.”

  He coughed lightly. “And that’s what I’m here to say to you. Back in the sixties, we thought we knew everything about the Anasazi. I remember when the great southwestern archaeologist Henry Ash urged his students to seek other venues. ‘It’s a sucked orange,’ he said.

  “But now, after three decades of mysterious and inexplicable discoveries, we realize that we know next to nothing about the Anasazi. We don’t understand their culture, we don’t understand their religion. We cannot read their petroglyphs and pictographs. We do not know what languages they might have spoken. We do not know why they covered the Southwest with lighthouses, shrines, roads, and signaling stations. We do not know why, in 1150, they suddenly abandoned Chaco Canyon, burned the roads, and retreated to the most remote, inaccessible canyons in the Southwest, building mighty fortresses in the cliff faces. What had happened? Who were they afraid of? A century later, they abandoned even those, leaving the entire Colorado Plateau and San Juan Basin, some fifty thousand square miles, uninhabited. Why? The fact is, the more we discover, the more intractable these questions become. Some archaeologists now believe we will never know the answers.”

  His voice had dropped even further. Despite the warmth of the fire, Nora couldn’t help shivering.

  “But I have a feeling,” he whispered, his voice weaker, hoarser. “I have a conviction that Quivira will contain answers to these mysteries.”

  He glanced at each of them again, in turn. “All of you are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. You’re headed for a site that may prove to be the biggest archaeological discovery of the decade, perhaps even the century. But let’s not fool ourselves. Quivira will be a place of mystery as well as revelation. It may well pose as many questions as it answers. And it will challenge you, physically and mentally, in ways you cannot yet imagine. There will be moments of triumph, moments of despair. But you must never forget that you are representing the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute. And what the Institute represents is the very highest standard of archaeological research and ethical conduct.”