Instinctively, she sought out Sloane’s face in the dim light. Sloane looked back, amber eyes wild. The composure that had returned so quickly was gone again.
“This must have been the storage room for the family who occupied these roomblocks,” Sloane finally said, voice trembling. “Just one family. There could be dozens of other rooms like this in this city. Maybe hundreds.”
“I believe it,” Nora replied. “But what I can’t believe is the wealth. Even in Anasazi days, this would represent an inconceivable fortune.”
The dust raised by their entry drifted in layers through the cool, heavy air, scattering the yellow light. Nora took a deep breath, and then another, trying to clear her mind.
“Nora,” Sloane murmured at last. “Do you realize what we’ve found?”
Nora tore her eyes away from the clutter of dim objects. “I’m working on it,” she said.
“We’ve just made one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.”
Nora swallowed, opened her mouth to reply. But no sound would come, and in the end she simply nodded.
26
TWELVE HOURS LATER, THE CITY OF QUIVIRA lay in shadow, the late afternoon sun blazing its last on the valley cliffs opposite the ruin. Nora rested on the ancient retaining wall below what they’d come to call the Planetarium, feeling as drained as she had ever felt in her life. She could hear the excited voices of the rest of the expedition ringing out of the city, distorted and magnified by the vast pregnant hollow of rock in which Quivira stood. She glanced down at the rope ladder and pulley system, rigged by Sloane to provide quick access to the ruin. Far below, in the grove of cottonwood trees where they had made their camp, she could see the smoke of Bonarotti’s campfire and the gray rectangle that was his folding serving table. The cook had promised them medallions of wild javelina with coffee barbecue sauce and—amazingly—two bottles of Château Pétrus in celebration. It had been, she thought, the longest—and greatest—day of her life: “that day of days,” as Howard Carter had described it when he first entered King Tutankhamen’s tomb. And they had yet to enter the Great Kiva. That, she had decreed, would be delayed until they had made a rough survey and recovered some sense of their perspective.
From time to time, during the course of the day, Nora had found herself searching among the sandy ruins for footprints, inscriptions, excavations—anything that would prove her father actually reached the city. But the rational part of her knew that the constant currents of wind and animal tracks would have long ago erased any marks of his passing. And it could well be that he, like Nora herself, had been so overwhelmed by the majesty of the city as to feel any modern inscription to be a sacrilege.
The group emerged from the ruin, Sloane bringing up the rear. Swire and Smithback came toward Nora and the rope ladder. Swire simply slumped down, flushed beneath his leathery tan, but Smithback remained behind, talking animatedly. “Unbelievable,” he was saying, his voice loud and grating in the ruin’s stillness. “Oh, God, what a find. This is going to make the discovery of King Tut’s tomb look like a . . .” He stopped, temporarily speechless. Nora felt inexplicably annoyed that his thoughts would coincide with her own. “You know, I did some work in the New York Museum of Natural History,” he began again, “and their collection couldn’t begin to hold a candle to this place. There’s more stuff here than in all the museums in the world, for chrissakes. When my agent hears about this, she’s going to get such a—”
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?”