Текст книги "Thunderhead"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston,Lincoln Child
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

There was the sound of footsteps crunching on sand and Bonarotti came swinging back down the canyon, a sack thrown over his back. He dropped the sack on the cook tarp spread out by the fire. He slapped a grill on the fire, oiled a large skillet, tossed in some minced garlic from his cabinet, and followed this with rice in a separate pot of water. Out of the sack tumbled some hideous, unidentifiable roots and bulbs, bundles of herbs, and several ears of prickly pear cactus. As he worked, Sloane came back into camp from her reconnaissance, clearly tired but still smiling, and sidled over to watch the final preparations. Working the knives with terrifying swiftness, Bonarotti diced up the roots and threw them into the pot, along with the bulb and a bundle of plants. Then he singed the cactus ears on the grill, skinned and julienned them, and threw them into the sizzling garlic. He gave the concoction a final stir, combined it with the rice, and removed it from the fire.

“Risotto with prickly pear, sego lily, wild potato, bolitas, and romano cheese,” he announced impassively.

There was a silence.

“What are you waiting for?” Sloane cried. “Line up and mangia bene!”

They jumped up, grabbing plates from the kitchen tarp. The cook loaded down each plate, sprinkling chopped herbs on top. They settled back on logs by the fire.

“Is this safe to eat?” Black asked, only half jokingly.

Sloane laughed. “It may be more dangerous for you, Doctor, if you do noteat it.” And she rolled her eyes melodramatically toward Bonarotti’s revolver.

Black gave a nervous laugh and tasted it. Then he took a second bite. “Why, this is quite good,” he said, filling his mouth.

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” intoned Smithback.

“Damn tasty chuck,” mumbled Swire.

Nora took a bite, and found her mouth filled with the creamy taste of arborio rice mingled with the delicate flavors of mushroom, cheese, savory herbs, and some indefinable tangy flavor that could only be the prickly pear.

Bonarotti accepted the praise with his usual lack of emotion. The canyon fell into silence while the serious business of eating began.

* * *

Later, as the expedition made ready for bed, Nora walked off to check on the horses. She found Swire in his usual position, notebook open.

“How is everything?” she asked.

“Mighty fine” came the answer, and then she heard a rustle as Swire removed a gingersnap from his breast pocket and inserted it into his face. There was a crunching sound. “Want one?”

Nora shook her head and sat down beside him. “What kind of a notebook are you keeping?” she asked.

Swire flicked some crumbs off his mustache. “Just some poems, is all. Cowboy doggerel. It’s a sideline of mine.”

“Really? May I see?”

Swire hesitated. “Well,” he said, “they’re supposed to be spoken, not read. But here, help yourself.”

Nora thumbed through the battered journal, peering closely in the mixture of firelight and starlight. There were bits and snatches of poems, usually no more than ten or twelve lines, with titles like “Workin up a Quit,” “Ford F-350,” “Durango Saturday Night.” Then, toward the back of the journal, she found poems of a completely different nature: longer, more serious. There was even a poem that appeared to be in Latin. She turned back to one called “Hurricane Deck.”

“Is this about Smithback’s horse?”

Swire nodded. “We go way back, that horse and me.”

He came tearing down the draw one stormy winter’s night,

A brush-tailed mustang, full of piss and fight.

I saddled up a chaser and laid a rope around his neck,

Corralled him and christened him Hurricane Deck.

Hurricane Deck, Hurricane Deck, hard on the eye and the saddle,

You whomper-jawed, hay-bellied, cold-backed old spraddle,

Only a blind mare could love your snip-nosed face,

Oh, but I tell you, Hurricane Deck could race.

I trained him for heeling, took him on the road,

At Amarillo and Santa Fe we won a load,

He served me well, from Salinas to Solitude,

But Hurricane’s been retired to loading up dudes.

“I need to work on the last stanza,” said Swire. “It don’t sound right. Ends kind of sudden.”

“Did you really catch him wild?” Nora asked.

“Sure did. One summer when I was running a pack string at the T-Cross up in Dubois, Wyoming, I heard talk about this buckskin mustang that nobody could catch. He was an outlaw, never branded, always broke for the mountains when he saw riders. Then that night I saw him. Lightning spooked him, sent him right past the bunkhouse. I chased that son of a bitch for three days.”

“Three days?”

“I kept cutting him off from the mountains, circling him back around past the ranch. Each time I picked up a fresh mount. I wore out six horses afore I got a rope on him. He’s some horse. The son of a bitch can jump a barbwire fence and I’ve seen him walk, just as nice as you please, across a cattle guard.”

Nora handed back the journal. “I think these are excellent.”

“Aw, horsehocky,” Swire said, but he looked pleased.

“Where’d you learn the Latin?”

“From my father,” came the answer. “He was a minister, always after me to read this and study that. Got it into his head that if I knew Latin, I wouldn’t raise so much hell. It was the Third Satire of Horace that finally made me light out of there.”

He fell silent, stroking his mustache, looking down toward the cook. “He’s a damn fine beanmaster, but he’s an odd son of a bitch, ain’t he?”

Nora followed his gaze to the tall, heavyset figure of Bonarotti. Postprandial ablutions completed, the cook was now preparing himself for bed. Nora watched as, with finicky care, Bonarotti inflated an air mattress, applied nocturnal facial creams, and readied what appeared to be a hairnet and a facial mask.

“What’s he doing now?” Swire muttered, as Bonarotti began working his fingers into his ears.

“The croaking of the frogs disturbs his rest,” Sloane Goddard said, emerging from the darkness and taking a seat beside them. She laughed her low, husky laugh, eyes reflecting the distant firelight. “So he brought along earplugs. And he’s got a little silk pillow that would turn my great aunt green with envy.”

“Odd son of a bitch,” Swire repeated.

“Maybe,” Sloane said, turning toward the wrangler and eyeing him up and down, one eyebrow raised. “But he’s no wimp. I’ve seen him on Denali in a blizzard with the temperature at sixty below. Nothing fazes him. It’s as if he has no feelings at all.”

Nora watched the cook slip gingerly into his tent and snug down the zipper. Then she turned back to Sloane. “So tell me about your recon. How is it upcanyon?”

“Not so good. A lot of dense willow and salt cedar brush, with plenty of loose rock.”

“How far did you go?”

“A mile and a half, maybe.”

“Can the horses make it?” Swire asked.

“Yes. But we’re going to need brush hooks and axes. And there isn’t much water.” Sloane glanced down at the remnants of the group, lounging around the fire drinking coffee. “Some of them are going to be unpleasantly surprised.”

“How much water?”

“A pothole here and there. Less as you go up. And that’s not all.” Sloane reached into a pocket and pulled out a map and a penlight. “I’ve been studying the topo. Your father found Quivira somewhere upcanyon, right?”

Nora frowned, unaware that Sloane had brought along maps of her own. “That’s about right.”

“And we’re here.” Sloane moved the penlight. “Look what’s between us and Quivira.”

She moved the penlight to a spot on the map where the elevation lines came together in an angry black mass: a ridge, high, difficult, and dangerous.

“I know all about that ridge,” Nora said, aware of how defensive she must sound. “My father called it the Devil’s Backbone. But I don’t see any reason to get everyone worried prematurely.”

Sloane snapped off the light and refolded the map. “What makes you think our horses can make it?”

“My father found a way to get his horses over that ridge. If he could do it, we can.”

Sloane looked back at her in the starlight; a long, penetrating look, the amused expression never leaving her face. Then she simply nodded.

18

THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER A BREAKFAST ONLY a little less miraculous than its predecessor, Nora assembled the group beside the packed horses.

“It’s going to be a tough day,” she said. “We’re probably going to be doing a lot of walking.”

“Walking sounds good to me,” Holroyd said. “I’m sore in places I didn’t know I had.” There was an assenting murmur.

“Can I have a different pack horse?” Smithback asked, leaning against a rock.

Swire ejected a stream of tobacco juice. “Got a problem?”

“Yeah. A horse-sized problem. Beetlebum over there keeps trying to bite me.”

The horse tossed its head in a mighty nod, then nickered evilly.

“Likes the taste of ham, I guess,” said Swire.

“That’s Mr. Prosciutto to you, pal.”

“He’s just kidding around. If he really wanted to bite, you’d know it. Like I said, he’s got a sense of humor, just like you.” Swire glanced at Nora.

Despite herself, Nora found the writer’s discomfiture covertly satisfying. “Roscoe’s right, I’d rather not make any changes unless we have to. Let’s give it another day.” She climbed into the saddle, then gave the signal to mount up. “Sloane and I will go first and pick out a trail. Roscoe will bring up the rear.”

They moved forward into the dry streambed, the horses pushing through the dense brush. Hard Twist Canyon was hot and close, with none of the charm of the previous day’s ride. One side of the canyon lay in deep purple shadow, while the other was etched in sunlight, a contrast almost painful to the eyes. Salt cedars and willows arched over their heads, creating a hot tunnel in which ugly, oversized horseflies droned.

The brush grew thicker, and Nora and Sloane dismounted to hack a path. It was hot, miserable work. Making things worse, they found only a few stagnant potholes of water that did not keep up with the horses’ thirst. The riders seemed to bear up well enough, except for Black’s sarcastic protest when told they would have to ration water for a while. Nora wondered how Black would react when they reached the Devil’s Backbone, somewhere in the wasteland ahead of them. His personality was beginning to seem a high price to pay for his expertise.

At last they came across a large muddy pool, hidden on the far side of a rockslide. The horses crowded forward. In the excitement, Holroyd dropped the lead rope of Charlie Taylor, his pack horse, who eagerly bounded forward into the muddy pool.

Swire turned at the sound. “Wait!” he called, but it was too late.

There was a sudden, terrifying pause as the horse realized it was bogging down in quicksand. Then, in an explosion of flexing muscle, the animal tried to back out, legs churning, spraying thick mud, whinnying in shrill fear. After a few moments it flopped back into the muck, sides shuddering in panic.

Without hesitating, Swire jumped down into the muck beside the horse, drew his knife, and with two deft strokes cut through the diamond hitch. As Nora watched, two hundred pounds worth of provisions slid off the horse’s back into the mud. Swire grabbed the lead rope and pulled the horse’s head to the side, simultaneously quirting him on the rump. With a great sucking noise the horse struggled free. Swire labored out of the mud himself, dragging the pack behind him. Resheathing his knife, he collected the shaking animal’s lead rope and wordlessly handed it to Holroyd.

“Sorry,” said the young man sheepishly, throwing a deeply embarrassed glance at Nora.

Swire stuffed a plug of tobacco into his already full cheek. “No problem. Coulda happened to anyone.”

Both Swire and the pack were liberally covered in vile-smelling muck. “Maybe this is a good time to stop for lunch,” Nora said.

After a quick meal, with the horses watered and the canteens full of purified water, they set out again. The growing heat had baked the canyon into a kind of oppressive somnolence, and all was quiet save for the clatter of horses’ hooves and the occasional muttered imprecations from Smithback to his pack horse.

“Goddammit, Elmer,” he finally cried, “get your hairy lips off me!”

“He likes you,” Swire said. “And his name’s Beetlebum.”

“Soon as we get back to civilization, it’s going to be Elmer,” Smithback said. “I’m going to personally escort this nag to the nearest glue factory.”

“Now don’t go hurtin’ his feelings,” Swire drawled, punctuating the sentence with a spit of tobacco juice.

Their route branched again into an unnamed canyon. Here, the walls were narrower and well scoured by flash floods, but there was less brush and the riding grew a little easier. At one broad bend, where the canyon temporarily widened, Nora reined in her horse and waited for Sloane to catch up. Looking around idly, she suddenly tensed, pointing toward a cutbank on the inside of the bend where flash floods had sliced through the old streambed.

“See that?” she asked, indicating a long thin swale of stained soil beside what looked like a linear arrangement of stones.

“Charcoal,” Sloane nodded as she rode up.

They dismounted and examined the layer. Her breath coming fast with excitement, Nora picked up some tiny fragments of charcoal with a pair of tweezers and placed them in a test tube. “Just like the Great North Road to Chaco,” she murmured.

Then she straightened up and looked at Sloane. “I think we’ve finally found it. The road my father was following.”

Sloane smiled. “Never doubted it.”

They moved on. Now, wherever the canyon took a sharp bend and the old floor was exposed as a bench high above the stream, they could see charcoal-stained ground and, infrequently, lines of stones. Time and again, Nora found herself picturing her father: riding along this same trail, seeing these same sights. It gave her a feeling of connection she hadn’t felt since he died.

Around three o’clock they stopped to rest the horses, taking refuge under an overhang.

“Hey, look,” Holroyd said, pointing to a large green plant growing out of the sand, covered with huge, funnel-shaped white flowers. “ Datura meteloides.Its roots are saturated with atropine—the same poison in belladonna.”

“Don’t let Bonarotti see it,” Smithback said.

“Some Indian tribes eat the roots to induce visions,” said Nora.

“Along with permanent brain damage,” replied Holroyd.

As they sat with their backs to the rock, eating handfuls of dried fruits and nuts, Sloane retrieved her binoculars and began scanning a series of alcoves in a blind canyon opposite them.

After a minute she turned to Nora. “I thought so. There’s a small cliff dwelling up there. First one I’ve seen since we started out.”

Taking the binoculars, Nora peered at the small ruin, perched high on the cliff face. It was set into a shallow alcove, oriented to the south in the Anasazi way, ensuring shade in the summer and warmth in the winter. She could see a low retaining wall along the bottom of the alcove, with what looked like several rooms built in the rear and a circular granary to one side.

“Let me see,” Holroyd said. He gazed at the ruin, motionless. “Incredible,” he breathed at last.

“There’s thousands of little ruins like that in the Utah canyon country,” Nora said.

“How did they live?” Holroyd asked, still peering up with the binoculars.

“They probably farmed the canyon bottom—corn, squash, and beans. They hunted and gathered plants. I’d guess it housed a single extended family.”

“I can’t believe they raised kids up there,” Holroyd said. “You have to be pretty brave to live in a cliff face like that.”

“Or nervous,” said Nora. “There’s a lot of controversy over why the Anasazi suddenly abandoned their pueblos on the flats and retreated into those inaccessible cliff dwellings. Some say it was for defense.”

“Looks like a no-brainer to me,” Smithback said, grabbing the binoculars from Holroyd. “Who’d live up there if they didn’t have to? No elevators, and Pizza Hut sure as hell doesn’t deliver.”

Nora looked at him. “What makes it strange is that there’s no overt evidence of warfare or invasion. All we really know is that the Anasazi suddenly retreated to these cliff sites, stayed there for a while, and then abandoned the Four Corners area entirely. Some archaeologists think it was caused by a total social breakdown.”

Sloane had been scanning the cliffs with a shaded hand. Now she took the binoculars from Smithback and examined the rock more carefully. “I think I can see a way up,” she said. “If you climb that talus slope, there’s a hand-and-toe trail pecked up the slickrock which goes all the way to the ledge. From there you can edge over.” She lowered the binoculars and looked at Nora, amber eyes lit up with mild excitement. “Do we have time to try it?”

Nora glanced at her watch. They were already hopelessly behind schedule—one more hour wouldn’t matter, and they did have an obligation to survey as many ruins as they could. Besides, it might revive some flagging spirits. She gazed up at the little ruin, feeling her own curiosity aroused. There was always the chance her father had explored this ruin, maybe even left his scrawled initials on a rockface to record his presence. “All right,” she said, reaching for her camera. “It doesn’t look technical.”

“I’d like to go, too,” said Holroyd excitedly. “I did some rock climbing in college.”

Nora looked at the flushed, eager face. Why not?

“I’m sure Mr. Swire would be happy to give the horses an extra rest.” Nora looked at the group. “Anybody else want to come?”

Black gave a short laugh. “No thanks,” he said. “I value my life.”

Aragon glanced up from his notebook and shook his head. Bonarotti had gone off to gather mushrooms. Smithback pushed away from the rock wall and stretched luxuriously. “Guess I’d better tag along with you, Madame Chairman,” he said. “It wouldn’t do to have you find an Anasazi Rosetta stone while I was loafing around down here.”

They crossed the stream, scrambled over boulders and up the talus slope, loose rocks clattering behind them. The sandstone ahead sloped upward at a forty-five-degree angle, notched with a series of eroded dimples set into the rock.

“That’s the hand-and-toe trail.” Nora pointed. “The Anasazi pounded them out with quartzite hammerstones.”

“I’ll go first,” said Sloane. To Nora’s surprise she shot nimbly upward, limbs tawny in the sunlight, hands and feet finding the holds with the instinctive assurance of a veteran rock climber. “Come on up!” she said a minute later, kneeling on the ledge above their heads. Holroyd followed. Then Nora watched Smithback creep cautiously up the slickrock face, gangly limbs clutching at the narrow holds, his face covered with sweat. Something about him made her smile. She waited until he had safely completed the climb, then brought up the rear herself.

In a few moments they were all sitting on the ledge, catching their breath. Nora looked at the camp spread out below their feet, the horses grazing along an apron of sand, the humans looking like splotches of color resting against the red cliffs.

Sloane rose. “Ready?”

“Go for it,” said Nora.

They crept along the narrow ledge. It was about two feet wide, but the bottom was canted slightly and scattered with fragments of sandstone, which rattled off into space as they inched along. After a short distance the ledge broadened out, curved around a corner, and the ruin came into view.

Nora made a quick visual inspection. The alcove was perhaps fifty feet long, ten feet high at its highest point, and about fifteen feet deep. A low masonry retaining wall had been built at the lip of the alcove and filled with rubble, leveling the surface. Behind were four small roomblocks of flat stones mortared with mud; one with a keyhole door, the rest with tiny windows. The builders had used the natural sandstone roof of the alcove as their ceiling.

Nora turned to Holroyd and Smithback. “I think Sloane and I should make an initial survey. You wouldn’t mind waiting here for a few minutes?”

“Only if you promise not to find anything,” Smithback replied.

Nora unbuckled the hood of her camera and walked gingerly along the facade, photographing the exterior of the dwelling. Although Sloane’s expertise with the large 4x5 Graflex made her the expedition’s official photographer, Nora liked to keep her own record of all the sites she studied.

She stopped to peer more closely at the plastered wall. Here, she could see the actual handprints of the person who had smeared the adobe. Raising her camera again, she took a careful closeup, then another when she noticed a clear set of fingerprints. It was not unusual to find prints preserved in Anasazi plaster and corrugated pottery, but she always liked to document them when she could. They helped serve as a reminder that archaeology was the study, ultimately, of people, not artifacts—something she felt many of her colleagues seemed to forget.

There was the usual littering of potsherds on the ground—mostly Pueblo III Mesa Verde whiteware and some late Tusayan-style corrugated grayware. A.D. 1240,Nora thought without surprise.

Sloane, who had been sketching a quick plan of the ruin, now removed a pair of tweezers and some Ziploc bags from her rucksack. Labeling the bags with a marker, she moved carefully forward, picking up a sampling of potsherds and some scattered corncobs with the tweezers. She placed them in the bags, then marked their positions in her sketchbook. She worked quickly and deftly, and Nora watched with growing surprise. Sloane seemed to know exactly what to do. In fact, she worked as if she had been on many professional surveys before.

Reaching into her bag again, Sloane pulled out a small, battery-powered chrome instrument and moved to a viga that projected from one of the roomblocks. There was a small whining sound, and Nora realized she was taking a core from the roofbeam for tree-ring dating. By studying the growth pattern of the rings, a specialist in dendrochronology such as Black could tell the exact year the tree was cut. As the whining ended abruptly and silence returned, Nora felt a sudden annoyance at this mechanized disturbance of the site—or, perhaps, with the fact that Sloane had done it so blithely, without her permission. She instinctively moved forward.

Looking over, Sloane read her face in an instant. “This all right?” she asked, raising her dark eyebrows inquiringly.

“Next time, let’s discuss something like this first.”

“Sorry,” Sloane said, in a tone even more annoying for its apparent lack of sincerity. “I just thought it might be useful—”

“It willbe useful,” Nora said, trying to moderate her voice. “That’s not the point.”

Sloane glanced at her more closely, a cool, appraising glance that bordered on insolence. Then the lazy grin returned. “I promise,” she said.

Nora turned and moved to the doorway. She realized her irritation was partly based on a vague, irrational threat she felt to her leadership. She hadn’t realized Sloane was so experienced in fieldwork, spoiling Nora’s earlier assumption that she would be leading Goddard’s daughter through the basics. She immediately felt sorry for showing her feelings; she had to admit that the pencil-thin core probably contained the most useful piece of information they would take from the ancient ruin.

She shined a penlight inside the first roomblock and found the interior relatively well preserved. The walls were plastered, still showing traces of painted decoration. She angled the beam toward the floor, covered with sand and dust that had blown in over the centuries. In one corner she could see the edge of a metate—a grinding stone—protruding from the dirt, beside a broken mano.

Opening her flash, she took another sequence of pictures in the room and the one beyond, which was exceptionally dusty and—very unusually—seemed at one time to have been painted with thick, heavy black paint. Or perhaps it was from cooking. Moving through a low doorway, she advanced into the third room. It, too, was empty, save for a hearth with several firedogs still propping up a comal,or polished cooking stone. The sandstone ceiling was blackened with crusted smoke, and she could still smell the faint odor of charcoal. A series of holes in the plaster wall might have been the anchor for a loom.

Moving back through the rooms, Nora leaned out into the sudden warmth of the sun and beckoned the waiting Holroyd and Smithback. They followed her into the roomblock, stooping through the low doorways.

“This is incredible,” Holroyd said in a reverential whisper. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I still can’t believe people lived up here.”

“Neither can I,” said Smithback. “No cable.”

“There’s nothing like the feeling of one of these ancient ruins,” Nora replied. “Even an unremarkable one like this.”

“Unremarkable to you, maybe,” Holroyd said.

Nora looked at him. “You’ve never been in an Anasazi ruin before?”

Holroyd shook his head as they stepped into the second room. “Only Mesa Verde, as a kid. But I’ve read all the books. Wetherill, Bandelier, you name it. As an adult, I never had the time or money to travel.”

“We’ll call it Pete’s Ruin, then.”

Holroyd flushed deeply. “Really?”

“Sure,” said Nora, with a grin. “We’re the Institute: we can name it anything we want.”

Holroyd looked at her a long moment, eyes gleaming. Then he took her hand and pressed it briefly between his. Nora smiled and gently withdrew her hand. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea,she thought.

Sloane came from the back of the ruin, shouldering her rucksack.

“Find anything?” Nora asked, taking a swig from her canteen and offering it around. She knew that most rock art was found behind cliff dwellings.

Sloane nodded. “A dozen or so pictographs. Including three reversed spirals.”

Nora looked up in surprise to meet the woman’s glance.

Holroyd caught the look. “What?” he asked.

Nora sighed. “It’s just that, in Anasazi iconography, the counterclockwise direction is usually associated with negative supernatural forces. Clockwise or ‘sunwise’ was considered to be the direction of travel of the sun across the sky. Counterclockwise was therefore considered a perversion of nature, a reversal of the normal balance.”

“A perversion of nature?” Smithback asked with sudden interest.

“Yes. In some Indian cultures today, the reversed spiral is still associated with witchcraft and sorcery.”

“And I found this,” Sloane said, lifting one hand. In it she held a small, broken, human skull.

Nora turned, uncomprehending at first, and Sloane’s grin widened lazily.

“Where did you find that?” Nora asked sharply.

Sloane’s smile did not falter. “Back there, next to the granary.”

“And you just picked it up?”

“Why not?” Sloane asked, her eyes narrowing. The slight movement reminded Nora of a cat when threatened.

“For one thing,” Nora snapped, “we don’t disturb human remains unless it’s absolutely critical for our research. And you’ve touched it, which means we can’t do bone collagen DNA on it. Worst of all, you didn’t even photograph it in situ.”

“All I did was pick it up,” Sloane said, her voice suddenly low.

“I thought I made it clear we were to discuss these things first.”

There was a tense silence. Then Nora heard a scratching sound behind her and she glanced at Smithback. “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded. The journalist had his notebook out and was scribbling away.

“Taking notes,” he said defensively, pulling the notebook toward his chest.

“You’re writing down our discussion?” Nora cried.

“Hey, why not?” Smithback said. “I mean, the human drama’s as much a part of this expedition as—”

Holroyd advanced and snatched the notebook away. “This was a private conversation,” he said, ripping out the page and handing the notebook back.

“That’s censorship,” Smithback protested.

Suddenly Nora heard a low, throaty purr that swelled into a mellifluous laugh. She turned to see Sloane still holding up the skull, looking at the three of them, amusement glittering in her amber eyes.

Nora took a breath and ignored the laugh. Don’t lose your cool.“Now that it’s been disturbed,” she said in a quiet voice, “we’ll bring it back for Aragon to analyze. Being a ZST type, he may object, but the deed’s been done. Sloane, I don’t want you ever doing any invasive procedures without my express permission. Is that understood?”

“Understood,” said Sloane, looking suddenly contrite as she handed the skull to Nora. “I wasn’t thinking. The excitement of the moment, I guess.”

Nora slipped the skull into a sample bag and tucked it in her pack. It seemed to her there had been something challenging in the way Sloane had come forward holding the skull, and Nora momentarily wondered if it hadn’t been a deliberate provocation. After all, it was clear that Sloane was well versed in the protocol of fieldwork. But then she told herself she was being paranoid. Nora remembered infelicitously seizing a gorgeous Folsom point she once uncovered at a dig, pulling it out of the stratum, and then seeing the horrified looks of everyone around her.

“What’s a ZST?” the unrepentant Smithback asked. “Some kind of birth control?”

Nora shook her head. “It stands for Zero Site Trauma. The idea that an archaeological site should never be physically disturbed. People like Aragon believe any intrusion, no matter how careful or subtle, destroys it for future archaeologists who might come along with more sophisticated tools. They tend to work with artifacts that have already been excavated by others.”

“ZST groupies consider traditional archaeologists to be artifact whores, digging for relics instead of reconstructing cultures,” Sloane added.

“If Aragon feels that way, why did he come along?” Holroyd asked.

“He’s not a total purist. I suppose that on a project as potentially important as this, he’s willing to put his personal feelings aside to some extent. I think he feels that if anyone is going to touch Quivira, it should be him.” Nora looked around. “What do you make of these walls?” she asked Sloane. “It’s not soot, it’s some kind of thick dried substance, like paint. But I’ve never seen an Anasazi room painted black before.”

“Beats me,” Sloane replied. She removed a small glass tube and a dentist’s pick from her pack. Then she glanced with a quick smile at Nora. “May I take a sample?” she paused. “Madame Chairman?”