Thunderhead

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 a

“It will be 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.”