Thunderhead

by Douglas Preston

  “Have some coffee,” Nora said.

  Sloane took the proffered cup and sat down beside her. They sipped in silence as the sun crept down the canyon walls.

  “There’s nothing here, Nora,” Sloane said at last. “I just spent the last hour going over this place inch by inch. Your pal Holroyd can scan this ground with the magnetometer, but I’ve never seen a ruin under the sand or in a cliff that didn’t leave some trace on the surface. I haven’t found one potsherd or flint chip.”

  Nora set down her coffee. “I don’t believe it.”

  Sloane shrugged. “Take a look for yourself.”

  “I will.”

  Nora walked to the base of the cliffs and began making a clockwise circuit of the valley. She could see the welter of footprints where Sloane had scoured the ground for artifacts. Nora, instead, took out her binoculars and systematically searched the cliffs, setbacks, and rimrock above her. Every twenty steps she stopped and searched again. The morning invasion of light into the valley continued, each minute creating fresh angles and shadows on the rock. At each pause she forced her eyes across the same rock faces, from different angles, straining to recognize something—a toehold, a shaped building block, a faded petroglyph, anything that indicated human occupation. After completing the circuit, she then crossed the valley from north to south and from east to west, heedlessly wading through the stream again and again, peering up at the walls, trying to get every possible view of the towering cliffs above.

  Ninety minutes later she came back into camp, wet and tired. She sat down beside Sloane, saying nothing. Sloane was also silent, her head bowed, staring into the sand, idly tracing a circle with a stick.

  She thought about her father, and all the terrible things her mother had said about him over the years. Was it possible that she could have been right all this time? Was he untrustworthy and unreliable—just a fantasist, after all?

  They remained beside the dying fire, wordlessly, for perhaps ten minutes, perhaps twenty, as the full weight of the colossal defeat settled upon them.

  “What are we going to tell the others?” Nora said at last.

  Sloane tossed her short hair back with a shake of her head. “We’ll do it by the book,” she said. “We can’t turn around now without going through the formalities. Like you said last night, we’ll bring in the equipment, do an archaeological survey of the valley. And then we’ll go home. You to your office. And me . . .” She paused. “To my father.”

  Nora glanced over at Sloane. A haunted look came into her amber eyes as she spoke. The woman looked back at Nora. As she did so, her expression softened.

  “But here I am, moping like a selfish schoolgirl,” she said, the old smile returning. “When you’re the one who really needs consoling. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Nora. You know how much we all believed in your dream.”

  Nora looked up at the dark encircling cliffs, the smooth sandstone faces that showed no trace of a trail. There had been no other ruins in the entire canyon system, and this was no exception. “I just can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe I dragged you all out here, wasted your father’s money, risked lives, killed horses, for nothing.”

  Sloane took one of Nora’s hands and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Then she stood up.

  “Come on,” she said. “The others are waiting for us.”

  Nora stowed the cooking gear and sleeping bag into her pack, then shouldered it wearily. Her mouth felt painfully dry. The thought of the days to come—going through the motions, working without hope—was almost too much to bear. She looked up yet again at the rock, picking out the same landmarks she had seen yesterday. The morning light was coming in at a different angle, raking along the lower cliffs. Her eyes instinctively scoured the rock face, but it remained clear and barren. She raised her eyes higher.

  And then she saw something: a single, shallow notch in the rock, forty feet above the ground. The light now lay at a perfect raking angle. It could be natural; in fact, it probably was natural. But she found herself digging into her pack anyway for her binoculars. She focused and looked again. There it was: a tiny depression, seemingly floating in space a foot or so below a narrow ledge. Magnified, it looked a little less natural. But where was the rest of the trail?

  Angling her binoculars down, she saw the answer: below the lone notch, a section of the cliff face had recently peeled off: the desert varnish—that layer of oxidation built up on sandstone over centuries—was a lighter, fresher color. At the base of the cliffs was the proof—a small heap of broken rubble. Her heart began to pound. She turned and found Sloane staring at her curiously.

  She handed over the binoculars. “Look at that.”

  Sloane examined the indicated spot. Suddenly, her body tensed.

  “It’s a moqui step,” she said breathlessly. “The top of a trail. The rest must have fallen away. Jesus, look at that pile of rubble at the bottom. How could I be so stupid? There I was, so busy looking for sherds that I never thought . . .”

  “That little landslide must have happened since my father saw the trail,” Nora said. But Sloane was already digging into her pack, pulling out a rope shot through with black fibers.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “No problem,” came the response. “It’s a friction climb.”

  “You’re going up there?”

  “Damn right I’m going up there.” She worked frantically, pulling out her equipment, kicking off her hiking boots and tugging on climbing shoes.

  “What about me?” Nora asked.

  Sloane glanced up at her. “You?”

  “There’s no way in hell you’re going up there without me.”

  Sloane stood up, began coiling the rope. “Done any climbing?”

  “Some. Mostly one-pitch scrambles and boulder problems.”

  “What about your hands?”

  “They’re fine,” Nora insisted. “I’ll wear my gloves.”

  Sloane hesitated for a moment. “I didn’t bring a lot of gear along, so you’re going to have to belay me without a harness.”

  “No problem.”

  “Then let’s do it,” said Sloane, with a sudden radiant grin.

  In a moment they were at the base of the cliff. Sloane tied on with a figure eight, then helped Nora set up the ground stance and showed her how to use the belay device. Nora braced the rope around her body as Sloane dusted her hands, then turned to address the sheer face. “Climbing,” she called out in a clear voice.

  As Nora watched, Sloane moved up the rock with care and precision, instinctively finding tiny holds in the cliff face. As she climbed, her small loop of friends, cams, and carabiners dangled in the still air. Nora played out the rope sparingly. Fifteen feet up, Sloane paused to select a nut, insert it into a crack, and pull down sharply, testing for tightness. Satisfied, she attached a quickdraw to the wire and clipped the climbing rope into it. She continued up the face, placing a nut here, a friend there. At one point she called out “Rock!” and Nora dodged a shower of chips. Another minute and Sloane had reached the single toe hold, then gained the ledge above it. She set up the anchor and tied in, yelling “Off belay!” Then, leaning out onto her anchors, she called down to Nora, “On belay!”

  There was a brief silence. Then she cried out again. “I can see a route!” The sound echoed crazily around the valley. “It goes up another two hundred feet and disappears over the edge of the first bench. Nora, the city must be recessed in an alcove just above!”

  “I’m coming up!” Nora shouted.

  “Take it slow,” came the voice from above. “Follow my chalk marks for the best holds. Don’t jam straight in, use the insides of your feet. The handholds are small.”

  “Got it,” Nora said, freeing the rope from the belay device. “Off belay!”

  She began working her way up the cliff face, painfully aware that her climb had none of the grace or assurance of Sloane’s. Within minutes, the muscles of her arms and calves were twitching spasmodica
lly from the strain of clinging to the thin holds. Despite the gloves, the ends of her fingers were exquisitely painful. She was aware that Sloane was keeping the rope tighter than normal, but she was grateful for the added lift.

  As she approached the single ancient step, she felt her right foot lose its purchase on the rock. Her bandaged hands could not compensate, and she began to slip. “Watch me!” she cried. Immediately, the rope tightened. “Lean away from the rock!” she heard Sloane call. “I’ll haul you up!”

  Taking short, choppy breaths, Nora half climbed and was half pulled the last few feet onto the ledge. She climbed shakily to her feet, massaging her fingers. From this vantage point she could see that the canyon wall sloped back at a terrifying angle. But at least it wasn’t vertical, and as it continued the angle lessened. Sloane was right: though invisible from the ground, from up here the trail was unmistakable.

  “You okay?” Sloane asked. Nora nodded, and her companion began a second pitch up the rock, rope trailing from her harness. With the hand-and-toe trail still in place it was a simple pitch. After another fifty feet, she anchored herself and in a few minutes Nora was beside her, breathless from the exertion. The recessed benchland above them loomed closer, its hidden secrets now a single pitch away.

  Another ten minutes of climbing, and the trail leveled off considerably. “Let’s solo the rest,” Sloane said, the excitement clear in her voice.

  Nora knew that, technically, they should keep to the safety of the ropes. But she was as eager to reach the bench as Sloane was. On an unspoken signal, they untied from the ropes and began moving quickly up the trail. It was the work of a minute to climb the last remaining stretch of rock.

  The bench was about fifteen feet wide, sloping gently, covered with grass and prickly pear cactus. They stood motionless, staring ahead.

  There was nothing: no city, no alcove, just the naked shelf of rock that ended in another cliff face twenty feet away, which rose vertically for at least five hundred feet.

  “Oh, shit,” Sloane groaned. Her shoulders slumped.

  In disbelief, Nora scanned the entire bench again. There was nothing. Her eyes began to sting, and she turned away.

  And then she glanced across the canyon for the first time.

  There, on the opposite cliff face, a huge alcove arched across the length of the canyon, poised halfway between ground and sky. The morning sun shone in at a perfect angle, shooting a wedge of pale light into the recesses below the huge arch. Tucked inside was a ruined city. Four great towers rose from the corners of the city, and between them lay a complicated arrangement of roomblocks and circular kivas, dotted with black windows and doorways. The morning sun gilded the walls and towers into a dream-city: insubstantial, airy, ready to evaporate into the desert air.

  It was the most perfect Anasazi city Nora had ever seen; more beautiful than Cliff Palace, as large as Pueblo Bonito.

  Sloane looked at Nora. And then she, too, slowly turned to look across the canyon. Her face went deathly pale.

  Nora closed her eyes, squeezed them shut, then opened them again. The city was still there. She gazed slowly across the vista, drinking it in. Wedged into the middle of the city, she could make out the circular outline of a Great Kiva: the largest she had ever seen, still roofed. An intact Great Kiva . . . nothing like it had ever been found.

  She could see how the alcove itself was set back from the bench, making it invisible from below. The great sandstone cliff above billowed out in a huge convex curve that leaned at least fifty feet beyond the bottom of the alcove. It was this fortuitous artifact of geology and erosion that allowed the city to be hidden, not only from above and below, but also from the opposite canyon rim. She had a fleeting, desperate thought: I hope my father saw this.

  Suddenly her knees grew weak and she dropped slowly to the ground. Seated, she continued to stare across the valley. There was a rustling sound, and Sloane knelt down beside her.

  “Nora,” came the voice, the slightest trace of irony leavening the reverence, “I think we’ve found Quivira.”

  25

  * * *

  SHOULD WE?” SLOANE MURMURED TO NORA.

  There was a long pause. Nora’s eyes followed the benchland as it curved around the canyon. In places where the bench became a narrow ledge of slickrock, she could see that a shallow groove had actually been worn into the sandstone by countless prehistoric feet. One part of her registered all this quite dispassionately; another part was far away, still in shock, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the discovery.

  The dispassionate part told her that they should go back for the others, bring in the equipment, begin a formal survey.

  “What the hell,” she replied. “Let’s go.”

  She rose shakily to her feet, Sloane following. A quick, dreamlike walk brought them around the far end of the canyon to the edge of the great alcove. Here Nora paused. They were now looking on the ruin from the far side, at an acute angle. The morning sun only penetrated the facade of the city; the rest faded back into darkness under the heavy brow of rock, a ghostly ruin melting into purple shadow. Quivira had a gracefulness, a sense of balance, that belied its massive stone construction. It was as if the city had been planned and built as a unit, rather than growing by accretion, as most other large Anasazi cliff dwellings had. There were still traces of gypsum whitewash on the outer walls, and the Great Kiva showed traces of what had once been a blue disk painted on its side.

  The four towers were paired, two on each side of the alcove, with the main city lying between and the circular Great Kiva at the very center. Each tower rose about fifty feet. The front two were freestanding; the rear two were actually mortared to the natural stone roof of the alcove.

  The ruin was in beautiful condition, but on closer view it was far from perfect. Nora could see several ugly fractures snaking up the sides of the four towers. In one place, the masonry had peeled off part of an upper story, revealing a dark interior. In the terraced city between the towers, several of the third-story rooms had collapsed. Others appeared to have burned. But overall the city was remarkably well preserved, its huge walls built of stone courses mortared with adobe. Wooden ladders stood against some of the walls. Hundreds of rooms were still intact and roofed—a complicated arrangement of roomblocks and smaller circular kivas, dotted with black windows and doorways. The Great Kiva that dominated the center seemed almost untouched. It was a city made to last forever.

  Nora’s eyes wandered into the dark recesses of the alcove. Behind the towers, terraced roomblocks, and plazas lay a narrow passageway that ran between the back of the city and a long row of squat granaries. The passageway was low and dim. Behind the granaries appeared to lie a second, even more constricted alleyway—no more than a sunken crawlspace, really—cloaked in darkness. This was unusual: in fact, Nora had never seen anything like it. In most Anasazi cities, the granaries were built directly into the back wall of the cave.

  Although the archaeologist in her registered these observations, Nora was aware that her hands were shaking and her heart was thudding at a breakneck pace.

  “Is this real?” she heard Sloane mutter hoarsely.

  As they slowly approached the city, a remarkable series of pictographs became visible on the cliff face beside them. They had been laid down in several layers, figures painted over figures, a palimpsest of Anasazi imagery in red, yellow, black, and white. There were handprints, spirals, shamanistic figures with huge shoulders and power lines radiating from their heads; antelope, deer, snakes, and a bear, along with geometric designs of unknown meaning.

  “Look up,” Sloane said.

  Nora followed her glance. There, twenty feet above their heads, were rows upon rows of negative handprints: paint sprayed over a hand held against the rock, a great crowd waving goodbye. Above that, on the domed roof itself, the Anasazi had painted a complicated pattern of crosses and dots of various sizes. Something about it was vaguely familiar.

  Then it hit her. “My God, it’s an An
asazi planetarium.”

  “Yes. That’s the constellation Orion. And there’s Cassiopeia, I think. It’s just like the Planetarium at Canyon de Chelly, only more elaborate by far.”

  Instinctively, Nora raised her camera. Then she dropped it again. There would be time, plenty of time, later. Now she just wanted to simply experience it. She took a step forward, then hesitated and glanced at her companion.

  “I know what you mean,” Sloane said. “I feel the same way. It’s as if we don’t belong here.”

  “We don’t,” Nora heard herself say.

  Sloane looked at her a moment. Then she turned and began to move toward the ruin. Nora followed slowly.

  As they walked into the cool darkness, their shadows merged with the shadows of the stone. A group of swallows burst out of a cluster of mud nests above their heads, wheeling out into the sunlight, dipping and crying with displeasure at the intrusion.

  They walked toward a broad plaza area in front of the towers, their feet sinking into soft sand. Glancing down, Nora saw there was almost no cultural debris on the surface: many inches of fine, windblown dust had covered everything.

  At the front of the first tower, Nora stopped and laid her hand on the cool masonry. The tower had been built straight and sure, with a slight inward slope. There were no doors in its face; entry must have been gained from the back. A few notches far up its flank looked like arrow ports. Peering into one of the cracks in the bottom of the tower, she saw the masonry was at least ten feet thick. The towers were obviously for defense.

  Sloane walked around the tower’s front, Nora following in her wake. It was odd, she thought, how they were instinctively staying together. There was something unsettling about the place, something she couldn’t immediately put into words. Perhaps it was the defensive nature of the site: the massive walls, the lack of ground-floor doors. There were even piles of round rocks stacked on some of the frontline roofs, clearly intended as weapons to be dropped on the heads of any invaders. Or maybe it was the absolute silence of the city, the powdery smell of the dust, the faint odor of corruption that unnerved her.