Thunderhead

by Douglas Preston

  “You can go first,” Nora said.

  Sloane looked at her. “Me?”

  Nora smiled.

  Quickly, Sloane climbed down the first five rungs, then held up her hand for the lamp. Climbing down a few more rungs, she stopped to direct the light around the walls. Nora could not see what Sloane was looking at, but she could see the expression on the young woman’s face. The kiva, she knew then, was not empty.

  Sloane rapidly descended to the bottom, and after a last deep breath Nora followed. A moment later she stepped off the ladder, her eyes following the lamp’s broad illumination.

  The circular wall of the kiva was covered with a brilliantly colored mural. The images were highly stylized, and Nora had to examine them for a moment before she realized what they represented. Ranged around the top were four huge thunderbirds, their outstretched wings almost covering the entire upper part of the kiva wall. Jagged lightning shot from the birds’ eyes and beaks. Below, clouds drifted across a field of brilliant turquoise, dropping dotted curtains of white rain. Running through the clouds was a rainbow god, his long body encircling almost the entire circumference of the kiva, his head and hands outstretched and meeting at the north. Toward the bottom of the mural was the landscape of the earth itself. Nora noticed the four sacred mountains, placed at each of the cardinal directions. It was the cosmography that still ran through most present-day southwestern Native American religions: the black mountain in the north, the yellow mountain in the west, the white mountain in the east, and the blue mountain in the south. The mural was executed in the finest detail, and the colors, so long buried in darkness, seemed as fresh as if they had been painted the day before.

  Nora dropped her eyes. Below the mural, ranging around the circumference of the kiva, was a stone banco. On the banco lay a huge number of gleaming objects, appearing and disappearing as the lantern beam moved slowly over them. As she stared, Nora realized, with a kind of remote surprise, that they were all skulls. There were dozens, if not hundreds of them: human, bear, buffalo, wolf, deer, mountain lion, jaguar—each completely covered with an inlay of polished turquoise. But it was the eyes that struck Nora most of all. In each eye socket lay a carved globe of rose quartz crystal, inlaid with carnelian, that refracted, magnified, and threw back the beam of the lamp, causing the eyes to gleam hideously pink in the murk. It was a grinning crowd of the dead, a host of lidless ghouls, ranged around them, their eyes glowing maniacally, as if caught in the headlights of a car.

  Aside from the skulls, Nora saw, the room was completely bare. There was the usual sipapu, the hole to the underworld, in the exact center of the kiva, and two firepits on either side. To the east, she noticed the standard spirit opening, a narrow keyhole channel running up and out of the kiva. But the mural and the skulls were, like almost everything else in Quivira, unique.

  Nora glanced at Sloane, who had already turned away from the sights and was arranging the camera’s three flash units.

  “I’m going to invite the others in,” said Nora. “There’s very little they can disturb in here if they stay away from the walls.”

  Sloane nodded curtly. As she busied herself with the exposure meter, Nora thought she saw a kind of disappointment on the woman’s face. Then the first bank of flashes went off, illuminating the entire grinning company for a ghastly moment.

  The others filed down the ladder in silent astonishment and gathered at the bottom. Nora found herself drawn to a curious design of two large circles at the northern end of the mural. One circle enclosed an incised disk of blue and white, showing miniature clouds and rain, done in the usual Anasazi geometric style: a miniature version of the huge circle painted on the kiva’s exterior. The second circle was painted yellow and white, and it enclosed an incised disk of the sun, surrounded by rays of light. As the beam of the lantern moved across it, the image glittered like a disk of gold. As Nora examined it closely, she could see that the effect had been created using crushed flakes of mica mixed with the pigment.

  Sloane had repositioned the camera, and she now gestured for Nora to move out of the way of her shot. As Sloane bent over the ground glass screen of her camera, Nora heard a sharp intake of breath. Sloane abruptly straightened up, walked over to the small image of the sun, and began examining it intently.

  “What is it?” Nora asked.

  Sloane turned away and her face broke into a broad lazy smile. “Nothing in particular. Curious design. I hadn’t noticed it before.” She went back to the camera, finished photographing the design, and moved on.

  “This is obviously a moiety,” said Black, approaching. He pointed at the two circles, his large, craggy face backlit by the lamp.

  “A moiety?”

  “Yes. Many Anasazi societies—as well as other societies—were organized into moieties. They were divided into halves. Summer and winter societies, male and female, earth and sky.” He pointed to the two circles. “This blue disk matches the one outside this kiva. That would imply that this city was divided into rain and sun societies. The first circle represents the Rain Kiva, and the second the Sun Kiva.”

  “Interesting,” said Nora, surprised.

  “Of course. We must be standing in the Rain Kiva itself.”

  There was another blinding leap of light as Sloane took a third exposure.

  “So?” said Smithback, who had been listening. “Go ahead and drop the other shoe.”

  “What do you mean?” Black replied.

  “If this is the Rain Kiva, then where’s the Sun Kiva?”

  There was a silence, interrupted only by the soft sound of another flash. Finally Black cleared his throat. “That’s actually a very good question.”

  “It must be at some other site, if it exists at all,” Nora said. “There’s only one Great Kiva here at Quivira.”

  “No doubt you’re right,” Aragon murmured. “Still, the longer I am here, I, too, have this feeling of something . . . something that, for whatever reason, we’re not seeing.”

  Nora turned to him. “I don’t understand.”

  The older man returned the glance, his eyes looking hollow and dark in the lantern light. “Don’t you get the sense that there’s a piece of the puzzle still missing? All the riches, all the bones, all this massive construction . . . there has to be some reason for it all.” He shook his head. “I thought the answer would be in this kiva. But now, I am not so sure. I dislike making value judgments, but I feel there was an overarching purpose to all this. A sinister purpose.”

  But Black was still considering Smithback’s question. “You know, Bill,” he said, “your question raises another one.”

  “And what’s that?” Smithback asked.

  Black smiled, and Nora saw something in his face, a kind of glittering intensity that she had not seen before. “Turquoise was the stone the Anasazi used in the rain ceremony. This was true at Chaco Canyon, and it is obviously true here. There must be hundreds of pounds of turquoise in this room. That’s quite a lot for a culture in which even a single bead had great value.”

  Smithback nodded. Nora looked from one to the other, wondering where Black was headed.

  “So I ask you: if turquoise was the material used in the rain ceremony, what material was used in the sun ceremony?” He pointed to the image of the Sun Kiva, its mica disk glittering in the reflected light. Both Bonarotti and Swire had come over, and were listening intently. “What does this look like to you?”

  Smithback gave a low whistle. “Gold?” he ventured.

  Black merely smiled.

  “Come on,” Nora said impatiently, “let’s not start on that business again. This is the only Great Kiva in the city. And the thought of a Sun Kiva, or any kiva, being filled with gold is ridiculous. I’m surprised to hear this kind of wild speculation from you, of all people.”

  “Is it wild speculation?” Black asked. “First,” he said, ticking the points off on his fingers, “we have legends of gold among the Indians. Then we have Coronado’s and Fray Marcos’s report
s of gold, among others. And now we have this pictograph, which is a pretty remarkable imitation of gold. As Enrique will confirm, the dental modifications to these skulls are pure Aztec, and we know they had tons of gold. So I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t some reality behind the legends.”

  “Find me this Sun Kiva full of Aztec gold,” said Nora wearily. “Then I’ll revise my opinion. But until then, stifle the treasure talk, okay?”

  Black grinned. “Is that a challenge?”

  “It’s more like a plea for sanity.”

  There was a laugh behind her, husky and sotto voce. Nora glanced over to see Sloane, looking from her to Black and back again, her amber eyes twinkling with some private amusement of her own.

  31

  * * *

  NORA SLEPT POORLY AND AWOKE EARLY, the memory of ugly dreams receding quickly into forgetfulness. The gibbous moon was setting and the valley was heavy with moonshadows, the night just yielding to color. She sat up, immediately wide awake, and heard the distant plash of water in the creek. She glanced around. Swire was already up and gone on his wearisome daily slog through the slot canyon to check on the horses. The rest of the camp slumbered in the predawn darkness. For the second night in a row, the light had remained on in Aragon’s tent; now, in the early dawn, it was dark and silent.

  She dressed quickly in the shivery cold. Shoving her flashlight into her back pocket, she walked over to the kitchen area, unbanked the coals, and tossed some twigs on to start the fire. Reaching for the blue-flecked enamel coffeepot that always stood at the ready, she filled it with water and placed it on the grill.

  As she did so, she saw a form emerge from the darkness of a distant grove of cottonwoods: Sloane. Nora momentarily wondered why she had not slept in her tent. Probably likes to sleep under the stars, like me, she thought.

  “Sleep well?” Sloane asked, tossing her bedroll into her tent and taking a seat beside Nora.

  “Not especially,” Nora said, gazing into the fire. “You?”

  “I did all right.” Sloane followed her gaze to the fire. “I can see why the ancients worshiped fire,” she went on smoothly. “It’s mesmerizing, never the same. And it sure beats watching TV. No ads.” She grinned at Nora. She seemed in high spirits, a stark contrast to Nora’s own subdued mood.

  Nora smiled a little wanly, and unzipped her jacket to let in the heat of the fire. The coffeepot began to stir and shake on the grill as the water boiled. Heaving herself to her feet, Nora removed it from the fire, threw in a fistful of grounds, and stirred the pot with her knife.

  “Bonarotti would die if he saw you making that cowboy coffee,” Sloane said. “He’d brain you with his espresso pot.”

  “Waiting for him to get up and make coffee in the morning is like waiting for Godot,” Nora said. While they were on the trail, the cook had always been the first one up. But now that they were encamped at Quivira and working a more routine schedule, Bonarotti had steadfastly refused to leave his tent in the morning until the sun could be seen striking the clifftops.

  She put the pot back on the fire for a moment and stirred the grounds down. Then she poured them each a cup. Steam came off the surface of the coffee, filling her nose with the strong bitter scent. She inhaled it gratefully.

  “Bet I can guess what you’re thinking about,” Sloane said.

  “Probably,” Nora replied. They sipped their coffee a while in silence.

  “It’s just so unexpected,” Nora found herself saying, as if they’d been conversing all the while. “We find this place, this enchanted and marvelous place. Filled with more artifacts, more information, than we could ever hope for. Suddenly it seems as if we’ll get all the answers, after all.” She shook her head. “But all we get is riddles, strange unsettling riddles. That kiva filled with skulls is a perfect example. Why skulls? What does it mean? What could the ceremony have possibly been?”

  Sloane put down her coffee and looked searchingly at Nora. “But don’t you see,” she said in a low voice, “we are getting the answers. It’s just that they aren’t the ones we expected. Scientific discovery is always like that.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Nora replied. “I’ve discovered things before. And they never felt like this. Something in my gut just doesn’t feel right. And it hasn’t felt right since I first laid eyes on Aragon’s Crawlspace, littered with those countless bones, thrown about like so much trash.”

  She fell silent as dark shapes bundled out of the dark. Smithback and Holroyd came over and joined them at the fire. Black soon appeared out of the twilight and hunkered down beside them. The dark branches of the cottonwoods were just beginning to separate themselves from the night.

  “It’s as cold as Lenin’s balls around here in the mornings,” Smithback said. “And on top of that, my valet neglected to polish my boots, although I specifically left them outside my door.”

  “It’s so hard to find good help these days,” said Black, in a whiny imitation of Smithback’s voice, and poured himself a cup. He held it to his nose. “What a barbarous way to make coffee,” he said, setting the cup down. “And when are we going to eat? Why can’t that Italian fellow get himself out of bed a little earlier? What kind of camp cook is this who won’t get up until the crack of noon?”

  “He’s the only cook I know who can make pommes Anna as well as the best chefs of Paris, but with a twentieth of the equipment,” said Smithback. “Anyway, forget breakfast. Only savages and children eat breakfast.”

  They sat around the fire, all but Sloane grumpy in the predawn air, nursing their coffee and speaking little. Nora wondered if the discoveries in the city and the Great Kiva were casting a pall over them, as well. Gradually the rising sun poured more color into the landscape, transforming it from gray to rich reds, yellows, purples, and greens.

  Smithback saw Nora’s eyes traveling around the cliffs, and he said, “Paint by the numbers, right?”

  “What a poetic thought,” said Nora.

  “Hey, poetic thinking is my business.” Smithback chuckled and fished some grounds out of his coffee with a spoon, flicking them into the bushes behind him.

  Nora heard the whisper of footfalls on sand and looked up to see Aragon, bundled against the chill. He sat down and wordlessly poured himself a cup of coffee. He drank it off with extreme rapidity and refilled the cup, hands unsteady.

  “Burning the midnight oil again, Enrique?” Nora asked.

  It was as if Aragon hadn’t heard. He continued drinking his coffee and staring into the fire. At last, he turned his dark eyes to Nora. “Yes, I was up quite late. I hope I did not disturb anyone.”

  “No, not at all,” Nora replied quickly.

  “Still working on those bones of yours, I suppose?” asked Black.

  Aragon took a final swig of his coffee and refilled the cup a third time. “Yes.”

  “So much for ZST. Find anything?”

  There was a long pause. “Yes,” Aragon repeated.

  There was something in his tone that silenced the company.

  “Share with us, brother,” intoned the oblivious Smithback.

  Aragon set his cup down and began slowly, deliberately, almost as if he had prepared his words ahead of time. “As I told Nora when I first discovered it, the placement of the bones in the Crawlspace is exceedingly odd.” There was a pause while he carefully removed from his coat a small plastic container. He placed it on the ground and gently unbuckled the lid. Inside were three fragmentary bones and a portion of a cranium.

  “Lying sprawled on top are perhaps fifty or sixty articulated skeletons,” he continued. “Some still have the remains of clothing, rich jewelry, and personal adornment. They were well-fed, healthy individuals, most in the prime of their lives. They all seemed to have died at the same time, yet there is no sign of violence on the bones.”

  “So what’s the explanation?” Nora asked.

  “It seems to me that whatever happened, it happened so suddenly that there wasn’t time to give the bodies a pro
per burial,” Aragon replied. “My analysis turned up no clear disease process, but many diseases leave no osteological traces. Apparently, the bodies were simply dragged, intact, into the back and thrown on top of a huge existing pile of bones.” His expression changed. “Those bones underneath tell a very different story. They are the broken, disarticulated remains of hundreds, even thousands, of individuals, accumulated over years. Unlike the skeletons on top, these bones come from individuals who clearly died of violence. Extreme violence.”

  He passed his dark eyes around the group. Nora felt her unease grow.

  “The bones from the bottom layer display several unusual characteristics,” Aragon said, wiping his face with a soiled bandanna. He pointed with a pair of rubber-tipped forceps at a broken bone in the tray. “The first is that many of the long bones have been broken, perimortem, in a special way, like this bone here.”

  “Perimortem?” asked Smithback.

  “Yes. Broken not before death, and not long afterward, but about the time of death.”

  “What do you mean, broken in a special way?” Black asked.

  “It’s the same way the Anasazi broke deer and elk bones. In order to extract the marrow.” He pointed. “And here, in the cancellous tissue of the humerus, they actually reamed out the center of the bone to get at the marrow inside.”

  “Wait,” said Smithback. “Hold on. You mean to extract the marrow for—?”

  “Let me finish. Second, there are small marks on the bone. I have examined these marks under the microscope and they are consistent with the marks made by stone tools when a carcass is dismembered. Butchered and defleshed, if you will. Third, I found dozens of fractured skulls among the litter of bones, mostly of children. There were cut marks on the calvaria that are made only by scalping: just like the skull we found at Pete’s Ruin. Furthermore, the children’s skulls in particular showed ‘anvil abrasions.’ When I reexamined the Pete’s Ruin skull, I found anvil abrasions on it, as well. I also found that many of the skulls had been drilled, and a circular piece of bone removed.”