Douglas Preston - Thunderhead

Nora’s sudden glare silenced the writer.

“Sorry, Madame Chairman.” Smithback settled back, looking only momentarily put out. He whipped out a small spiral-bound notebook from a back pocket and began jotting notes.

Aragon, Holroyd, and Black joined them along the wall, followed by Sloane. “This is the discovery of the century,” Black boomed. “What a cap to a career.”

Holroyd sat down by the retaining wall, slowly and unsteadily, like an old man. Nora could see his face was dirty and streaked, as if he had wept at the sight.

“How are you doing, Peter?” she asked quietly.

He looked at her with a weak smile. “Ask me tomorrow.”

Nora turned to Aragon, glancing curiously at his face, wondering if the magnitude of the discovery would break his usual dour reserve. What she saw was a face covered with a sheen of sweat, and a pair of eyes that had grown as dark and glittery as the obsidian the city was full of.

He looked back at Nora. And then—for the first time since she’d met him at the fire circle—he smiled, widely and genuinely, white teeth huge in the brown face. “It’s fantastic,” he said as he took her hand and pressed it. “Almost beyond belief. We all have a lot to thank you for. Perhaps myself more than the rest.” There was a curious force in his low, vibrant voice. “Over the years I’d come to believe, as much as I believed anything, that the secrets of the Anasazi would never be ours. But this city holds the key. I know it. And I feel fortunate to be part of it.” He removed his knapsack, placed it on the ground, and sat down next to her.

“There’s something I must tell you,” he said. “Perhaps now isn’t the right time, but it will only become more difficult the longer we are here.”

She looked at him. “Yes?”

“You know my belief in Zero Site Trauma. I’m not as zealous as some, but I still feel it would be a terrible crime to disturb this city, to remove its essence and squirrel it away in museum storage rooms.”

Black snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re a sucker for that bullshit. Zero Site Trauma is a passing fad of political correctness. The real crime would be to leave this place unexplored. Think of all we can learn.”

Aragon looked at him steadily. “We can learn everything we need to know without looting the city.”

“Since when is a disciplined archaeological excavation called looting?” Sloane asked mildly.

“Today’s archaeology is tomorrow’s plundering,” Aragon replied. “Look what Schliemann did to the site of Troy a hundred years ago, in the name of science. He practically bulldozed the place, destroyed it for future generations. And that, for its day, was a disciplined excavation.”

“Well, you can tiptoe around all you want, taking pictures and touching nothing,” said Black, raising his voice. “But I for one can’t wait to tuck into that midden.” He turned toward Smithback. “To the uneducated mind, all these treasures are amazing—but nothing tells you what you want to know like a trash mound. You’d do well to remember that for your book.”

Nora looked from one member of the group to the other. She’d expected this discussion, although not quite so soon. “There’s no way,” she said slowly, “that we can really begin to excavate this city, even if we wanted to. All we can hope to do in the next few weeks is to survey and inventory.”

Black began to protest, and she raised her hand. “If we are to properly date and analyze the city, it’s necessary to be a little invasive. That’s Black’s job, and he’ll confine any site disturbance to test trenching in the trash mound. No part of the city itself will be excavated, and no artifacts will be shifted or removed, unless absolutely necessary, and with my express permission.”

“Site disturbance,” Black echoed sarcastically, but he sat back with a satisfied air.

“We’ll have to bring back a few type specimens for further analysis at the Institute,” she went on. “But we will only bring back inferior artifacts that are duplicated elsewhere in the city. Long-term, the Institute will have to decide what to do with the site. But I promise you, Enrique, that I’ll recommend they leave Quivira untouched and intact.” She glanced pointedly at Sloane, who had been listening intently. “Do you agree?”

After a brief pause, Sloane nodded.

Aragon glanced from one to the other. “Under the circumstances, that will have to be acceptable.” Then he smiled again, suddenly, and stood up. A hush fell on the group.

“Nora,” he said, “you have the congratulations of all of us.”

Nora felt a sudden flush of pleasure as she listened to the chorus of clapping punctuated by a long loud whistle from Black. Then Smithback too was on his feet, hoisting a canteen.

“And I’d like to propose a toast to Padraic Kelly. If it weren’t for him, we’d never be here.”

This sudden reference to her father, coming from a source as unexpected as Smithback, brought a sudden welling of emotion that closed Nora’s throat. Her father had never been far from her thoughts all day. But in the end, she had seen no trace of him, and she felt grateful for Smithback’s remembrance.

“Thank you,” she said. Smithback took a drink and passed the canteen.

The group fell silent. Light was draining fast from the valley, and it was time they made their way down the rope ladder to supper. And yet everyone seemed reluctant to leave the magical place.

“What I can’t figure out is why the hell they left all that stuff behind, ” Smithback said. “It’s like walking away from Fort Knox.”

“A lot of Anasazi sites show a similar abandonment,” Nora replied. “These people were on foot, they had no beasts of burden. It made more sense to leave your goods behind and make fresh ones when you arrived at your new home. When the Anasazi moved, they usually only carried their most sacred items and turquoise.”

“But it looks like even the turquoise was left behind here. I mean, the place is full of it.”

“True,” Nora said after a moment. “This was not a typical abandonment. It’s like they left everything. That’s part of what makes this site unique.”

“The sheer wealth of the city, and the many ceremonial artifacts, makes me think it must have been a religious center that overshadowed even Chaco,” said Aragon. “A city of priests.”

“A city of priests?” Black repeated skeptically. “Why would a city of priests be located way out here, at the very edge of the Anasazi realm? What I found more interesting was the amazingly defensive nature of the place. Even the site itself, hidden so perfectly in this isolated canyon—it’s damn near impregnable. You’d almost think these people were paranoid.”

“I’d be paranoid if I had the kind of wealth they had,” Sloane murmured.

“If they were impregnable, then why did they abandon the city?” Holroyd asked.

“They probably overfarmed the valley below,” Black replied with a shrug. “Simple soil exhaustion. The Anasazi didn’t know the art of fertilization.”

Nora shook her head. “There’s no way, given its size, that the farmland in the valley could support the city to begin with. There must be a hundred granaries back there. They had to have been importing tons of food from someplace else. But all this begs the question: why put such a huge city here in the first place? In the middle of nowhere, at the end of a circuitous road, at the end of a narrow slot canyon? During the rainy season, that canyon would have been impassable half the time.”

“As I said,” Aragon replied. “A city of priests, at the end of a difficult ritual journey. Nothing else makes sense.”

“Of course,” Black said scornfully. “When in doubt, blame it on religion. Besides, the Anasazi were egalitarian. They didn’t believe in a social hierarchy. The idea of them having a priestly city, or a ruling class, is absurd.”