Thunderhead
Page 25
“Naturally. We’re also collecting carbonized seeds for C-fourteen dating and human hair for DNA analysis.”
“Seeds,” Nora repeated. “By the way, did you know that most of those granaries in the rear of the city are still bulging with corn and beans?”
Black straightened up. “No I didn’t.”
“Sloane told me earlier this morning. That suggests the site was abandoned in the fall, at harvest time. And that it was abandoned very quickly.”
“Sloane,” Black repeated casually. “She came by here a little earlier. Where is she now, anyway?”
Nora, who’d been looking away, looked back. “Somewhere in the central roomblocks, I think. She’s beginning the preliminary survey, with the help of Peter and his magnetometer. I’ll be checking in with her later. But now I’m off to see what Aragon is up to.”
Black seemed to be thinking about something. Then he turned and laid a hand on Smithback’s shoulder. “Care to finish up F-one, my muckraking friend?”
“Slavery still exists,” Smithback muttered.
She raised her radio to her lips. “Enrique, this is Nora. Do you read?”
“Loud and clear,” came the answer after a moment of silence.
“Where are you?”
“In the crawlspace behind the granaries.”
“What are you doing back there?”
There was a short silence. “Better see for yourself. Come in from the west side.”
Nora walked around the back of the midden heap and past the first great tower. Typical cautious Aragon, she thought; why couldn’t the man simply come out and say what was up?
Just beyond the tower she picked up the small passageway that ran behind the granaries toward the back of the cave. It was dark and cool here behind the ruin, and the air smelled of sandstone and smoke. The passageway doglegged through a gap in the granaries, and there she came to a sunken passage—Aragon’s Crawlspace—at the very rear of the city. Once again, the Crawlspace was a feature unique to Quivira. As Nora moved forward, the ceiling of the passageway became so low that she had to drop to her hands and knees. There was a long moment of close, oppressive darkness, then ahead she could see the glow from Aragon’s lantern.
She rose to her feet inside a cramped space. Before her sat Aragon. Nora drew in her breath: beyond him lay a sea of human bones, their knobby surfaces thrown into sharp relief by the light. To her surprise, Aragon was holding a bone in one hand, examining it with jeweler’s loup and coordinated calipers. Beside him lay the tools for excavating human remains from surrounding matrix, barely necessary here: bamboo splints, wooden dowels, horsehair brushes. The place was silent save for the hiss of the lantern.
Aragon looked up as she approached, his face an unreadable mask.
“What is all this?” Nora asked. “Some kind of catacomb?”
Aragon did not reply for some time. Then he carefully placed the bone back on the heap beside him. “I don’t know,” he said in a flat tone. “It’s the largest ossuary I’ve ever encountered. I’ve heard of such things in Old World megalithic sites, but never in North America. And never, ever, on this kind of scale.”
Nora glanced from him to the bones. There were many complete skeletons lying on the top of the pile, but beneath them appeared to be a thick scattering of disarticulated bones, most of them broken, including countless crushed skulls. Punched into the stone walls at the back of the cave were dozens of holes, a few rotten timbers still jutting out of them.
“I’ve never seen anything like this either,” Nora said in a low voice.
“It’s like no burial practice, or cultural behavior, I’ve seen before,” Aragon said. “There are so many skeletons, so loosely thrown about, even a horizontal section is unnecessary.” He gestured at the closest skeletons. “It’s clearly a multiple interment of sorts: a series of primary burials, overlaying a vast number of secondary burials. These skeletons on top, the complete ones, weren’t even ‘buried’ in the archaeological sense of the word. The bodies seem to have been dragged in here and hastily thrown on top of a deep layer of preexisting bones.”
“Are there any signs of violence on the bones?”
“Not on the whole skeletons on top.”
“And the bones underneath?”
There was a short pause. “I’m still analyzing them,” Aragon replied.
Nora looked around, feeling an unpleasant gnawing in the pit of her stomach. She was far from squeamish, but the charnel-house nature of the place made her uncomfortable. “What could it mean?” she asked.
Aragon glanced up at her. “A large number of simultaneous burials usually means a single cause,” he said. “Famine, disease, war . . .” He paused. “Or sacrifice.”
At that moment her radio crackled. “Nora, this is Sloane. Are you there?”
Nora pulled her radio from her side. “I’m with Aragon. What is it?”
“There’s something you need to see. Both of you.” Through the microphone, the quiver of suppressed excitement in Sloane’s voice was clear. “Meet me at the central plaza.”
A few minutes later, Sloane was leading them through a complicated series of second-story roomblocks at the far end of the ruin. “We were doing a routine survey,” she was saying, “and then Peter found a large cavity in one of the floors with the proton magnetometer.” They stepped beneath a doorway and entered a large room, only dimly lit by the portable lantern. Unlike most of the other rooms she had seen at the ruin, this one was strangely empty. Holroyd stood in a far corner, tinkering with the magnetometer: a flat box rolling on sliding wheels, the long handle projecting from its side ending in an LCD screen.
But Nora wasn’t looking at Holroyd. She was gazing into the center of the room, where a section of floor had been removed, exposing a slab-lined cyst. The enormous flat stone that had covered it lay tipped up carefully against one wall.
“Who opened this grave?” she heard Aragon ask sharply.
Nora stepped forward, anger at this breach of authority flooding through her. Then she looked down and stopped short.
Within the cyst was a double burial. But it was no ordinary Anasazi burial, graced perhaps with a few pots and a turquoise pendant. The two completely disarticulated skeletons lay in the center of the grave, the broken bones of each arranged in a circular pattern in its own large painted bowl, surmounted by their broken skulls. Over each bowl had been draped cotton mantles, which had rotted down to the warp. Enough shreds remained, however, to see that they had once been extraordinarily fine, a pattern of grinning skulls and grimacing faces. The scalps of both individuals had been laid in the grave on top of their skulls. One had long white hair, beautifully braided and decorated with incised turquoise ornaments. The other had brown hair, also braided, with two huge dishes of polished abalone fixed to the ends of each braid. In both skulls, the front teeth had been drilled and inlaid with red carnelian.
Nora stared in astonishment. The bodies were surrounded by an unheard-of wealth of grave goods: pots filled with salt, turquoise, quartz crystals, fetishes, and ground pigments. There were also two small bowls, carved of quartz, filled to the brim with some kind of fine reddish powder—more red ochre, perhaps. Nora’s eyes moved over the cyst, picking out bundles of arrows, buffalo robes, soft buckskins, mummified parrots and macaws, elaborate prayer sticks. The entire burial was covered with a thick layer of yellow dust.
“I examined that dust under the stereozoom,” said Sloane. “It’s pollen, from at least fifteen different species of flowers.”
Nora stared at her in disbelief. “Why pollen?”
“The entire cyst was once filled with hundreds of pounds of flowers.”
Nora shook her head in disbelief. “The Anasazi never buried their dead like that. And I’ve never seen inlaid teeth like that before.”
Suddenly, Aragon knelt by the grave. At first, Nora had the odd notion he was going to pray. But then he bent down, shining a flashlight over the bones, scrutinizing them from a very close distanc
e. As he probed the two pots of bones with his light, Nora noticed that many of the bones had been broken, and some showed signs of charring at their ends. Then Nora heard a sharp intake of breath, and Aragon quickly straightened up. His expression had suddenly changed.
“I would like permission to temporarily remove several bones for examination,” he said, his voice coldly formal.
More than anything else, this request, coming from Aragon, capped Nora’s mystification. “After we photograph and document everything, of course,” she heard herself say.
“Naturally. And I’d like to take a sample of that reddish powder.”
He departed wordlessly, but Nora continued to stand at the edge of the cyst, staring down into the dark hole in the floor. Sloane began setting up the 4x5 camera at the edge of the gravesite, while Holroyd powered down the magnetometer. Then he came over to Nora.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” he murmured in her ear.
But Nora paid no attention to this, or to the excited undercurrent of Sloane’s voice in the background. She was thinking of Aragon, and the sudden look that had come over his face. She felt it too: there was something odd, even wrong, about the burial. In some ways, she thought, it wasn’t like a burial at all. True, some Pueblo IV cultures cremated their dead, and others dug up and reburied their dead in pots. But this: the bones broken and burned; the thick flower dust; the grave goods ranged so carefully.
“I wonder what Black will make of this burial,” came Sloane’s voice, intruding on her reverie.
I don’t think this is a burial at all, Nora thought to herself. I think it’s an offering.
* * *
As they stepped out onto the first-floor roof, its farthest edges tipped in noontime sun, Nora gently laid a hand on Sloane’s arm.
“I thought we had an agreement,” she said.
Sloane turned to look at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You shouldn’t have opened that grave without consulting me first. That was a major violation of the ground rules for this dig.”
The amber color of Sloane’s eyes seemed to deepen as she listened to Nora. “And you don’t think opening the burial was a good idea?” she replied, her voice suddenly low, an almost feline susurrus.
“No, I don’t. We have a whole city to survey and catalog, and burials are particularly sensitive. But like I told you at Pete’s Ruin, that’s not the point. This isn’t how a professional archaeologist should work, simply digging up what interests her.”
“You’re saying I’m not a professional?” Sloane asked.
Nora took a deep breath. “You’re not as experienced as I thought you were.”
“I had to open that cyst,” said Sloane abruptly.
“Why?” asked Nora, failing to keep the sarcasm from her voice. “Were you looking for something?”
Sloane started to answer, then stopped short. She moved closer, so close that Nora could feel the heat and anger radiating from her. “You, Nora Kelly, are a control freak. You’re just like my father. You’ve been breathing down my neck, hoping for mistakes, ever since I first flew in. I did nothing wrong in opening that burial. The magnetometer showed a cavity and all I did was lift the stone. I touched nothing. It was no more invasive than walking through a doorway.”
Nora struggled to maintain her composure. “If you can’t abide by the rules,” she said as evenly as she could, “I’ll place you under Aragon, where you can learn respect for the integrity of an archaeological site. And obedience to the expedition director.”
“Director?” Sloane sneered. “By all rights, I should be the expedition director. Don’t forget who’s paying for all this.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Nora said, voice steady despite the heat of her anger. “Just one more example of your father not trusting you, isn’t it?”
For a moment, Sloane stood before her speechlessly, limbs taut, face dark under the deep tan. Then, wordlessly, she pivoted on her heel. Nora watched her descend the ladder and walk deliberately away, erect and proud, her dark hair burned violet by the sun.
30
* * *
THE GROUP ASSEMBLED IN THE EARLY MORNING silence at the base of the rope ladder leading to the city. Even Swire and Bonarotti were on hand. The swallows, now acclimated to the human intrusion, no longer raised their usual clamor of indignation. An unusually subdued Bill Smithback was fumbling with a cassette recorder. Beside him stood Aragon, face gray and thoughtful. Despite his preoccupation with the bone-filled crawlspace, he had left his work to join them. This, more than anything, underscored the importance of what they were about to undertake.
A rough preliminary survey of the city had been completed, and Holroyd had downloaded the location coordinates and field elevations established by his GPS equipment into a geographic information systems database. It was time to enter the Great Kiva, the central religious structure of the city. For much of the previous night, Nora had lain awake, wondering about what they might find. In the end, her imagination had failed her. The Great Kiva was equivalent to the cathedral of a medieval city: the center of its religious activity, the repository of the most sacred items, the locus of social life.
Black was resting on a rock, drumming his fingers with ill-disguised anticipation. And chatting with him, oversized plant in his hand, was Peter Holroyd, loyal and uncomplicated. The only person missing was Sloane, whom Nora had scarcely seen since the previous day’s confrontation.
As if sensing her glance, Holroyd looked her way. Then he stood and approached her, shaking the plant he was holding. “Have a look at this, Nora,” he said.
She took the plant: an oversized, bushy explosion of green stalks, with a tapered root at one end and a creamy flower at the other.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Oh, about five to ten in a Federal prison.” Holroyd laughed.
She threw him an uncomprehending gaze.
“It’s datura,” he explained. “That root’s loaded with a highly potent hallucinogen.”
“Hallucinogen?”
“The alkaloid is concentrated in the upper sections of the root,” Aragon interjected. “Among Yaqui shamans, fortitude is measured by just how far up the root you can ingest.” He glanced at Holroyd. “But certainly you’ve noticed that’s not the only illegal plant in this valley.”
Holroyd nodded. “Not only datura, but psilocybin, mescal cactus . . . the place is a veritable smorgasbord of psychedelics.”
“The curious thing,” Aragon said, “is that those three plants you mention—which seem to run riot here—are sometimes taken by shamans and medicine men. In combination, they can induce a wild frenzy. It’s like an overdose of PCP: you could get shot at close range and never feel it.”
“Those priests knew what they were doing, settling here,” Smithback cackled.
“The flower’s pretty, at least,” Nora said.
“Looks like a morning glory, doesn’t it?” Holroyd asked. “That’s another funny thing. There’s an enzyme in the datura root that the body can’t metabolize. Instead, it gets exuded in the sweat. And I’ve heard that’s exactly what people who take it smell like. Morning glories.”
Unconsciously, Nora leaned forward, bringing the flower to her nose. It was large and white, almost sexual in its ripeness. She inhaled the delicate scent deeply.
Then she froze, fingers turning cold. In a moment, her mind was back in the upstairs hallway of her parents’ abandoned ranch house, hearing the crunch of glass underfoot, smelling the scent of crushed flowers on the still night air...
She heard a clatter, and turned to see Sloane approaching, burdened by a portable acetylene lantern, a chalk information board, and the 4x5 camera. Sloane caught her eye. Immediately, the woman put down the equipment and came over. She slid a graceful arm around Nora’s waist.
“Sorry,” she whispered in Nora’s ear. “You were right. As usual.”
Nora nodded, pulling herself back to the present. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“Thank you,” Nora said, dropping the plant. “And I shouldn’t have made that crack about your father. It was unkind.”
Then she turned to the group, doing her best to push thoughts of Holroyd’s plant out of her mind. “Okay, here’s the protocol. Sloane and I will enter the kiva first, to make an initial analysis and do the photography. The rest of you will follow. Agreed?”
Black frowned, but there was nodding and murmuring from the rest of the group.
“Good. Then let’s get started.”
One at a time, they ascended the rope ladder. Moving through the central plaza, they climbed a nearby sandpile and walked across the first setback of roofs. Mounting an Anasazi ladder placed against the second story—still in perfect condition, lashed with sinew—they topped out on the second story setback. The entrance to the Great Kiva lay at the back, its vast circular bulk in purple shadow. Another ladder had been placed against its wall, and in a moment Nora and Sloane stood on the roof. It was covered with a thick layer of adobe and felt immensely solid beneath Nora’s feet. As with all kivas, it was entered from a hole in the roof. Protruding from the opening were the two ends of a ladder, leading down into the interior. As she stared at the ladder, Nora felt her mouth go dry.
She moved slowly toward it, stopping just before the opening. “Let’s light the lantern,” she said.
There was the hiss of gas, and with a pop of ignition the lantern sprang to life. As they knelt by the opening, Sloane directed the brilliant white light down into the gloom.
The ladder descended about fifteen feet, ending in an anchor groove cut into the sandstone floor. Sloane angled the beam around, but from their vantage point nothing but bare floor was visible: the kiva was sixty feet in diameter, and the walls were beyond reach.