The plane finished its steep ascent and settled into a comfortable cruise. Little by little, Nina relaxed her grip on Sam's fingers. She wondered whether she was being unreasonable. Leaving the faculty was a welcome blessing to freedom disguised as a suicidal move at the juncture her career had reached, at the time a bold decision while in the throes of severe emotional trauma and unsound resolve.
Besides, she had already been uncertain about her academic career. The harder she tried to be angry about her missed opportunity after Wolfenstein, the more certain she became that she had not lost anything that she really wanted. There would have been other opportunities, if she had really wanted them. And there were. The hunt for the Spear of Destiny was as equally glamorous as revealing the existence of a secret Nazi ice station. Besides, plenty of people managed to forge successful careers based on less momentous material. She could have continued along the tedious path she had been on, churning out publications just for the sake of it, going to the right conferences, and kissing the right asses.
It's just a bit of a funk, she told herself. Everyone goes through it at some point. I'm sure that once I've had some time away from academia, I'll remember why I once thought it was my vocation. All I need is a different route to the same goal. God, I hope this is the right one this time.
The captain's voice came over the speaker, announcing the plane's descent. Nina realized that she still had not let go of Sam's hand. It had been a short flight, barely forty-five minutes, but still, she should not have left her hand in his the whole time. She wondered whether it would be more awkward now to remove it or to leave it where it was. She decided in favor of leaving it where it was. Taking it away would only draw attention to the awkwardness, and she did not want to risk him offering it again to comfort her during the landing.
"Nina?" Sam touched her arm as she stood up to disembark.
"Yeah?"
"About the material we gathered on Deep Sea One… "
Nina shook her head as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "Not yet, Sam; soon, but not yet." Sam was uncertain what that meant, but her tone was polite and serene and he trusted her to return later to that statement. A brisk nod was all he got from her, but he smiled, nonetheless, as she walked down the passage. Purdue had emerged from the cockpit. He smiled and greeted Sam as he passed, then Nina took his hand and they left the plane together.
Chapter Nine
"Welcome to Parashant!" Jefferson beamed, striding toward Sam with his heavy-looking, artfully rugged backpack held on one shoulder. "Looks like we'll have a nice cool day for building our camp! That's good. It's a lot more work getting it all set up when it's hot."
Sam, wilting in the Arizona heat, made no reply. All his energy was currently being divided between lugging his holdall and staying on his feet without dissolving into a puddle of whisky-flavored sweat. It might have been a cool day by Jefferson's standards, but at 22°C, it was far too hot for him.
After disembarking from the plane at Grand Gulch, the group had been met by a fleet of Jeeps and ferried along winding dirt roads. They had passed the signs for Parashant National Monument some time ago and were now far off the beaten track, leaving the edge of the Grand Canyon far behind. They found themselves in an expanse of parched wilderness, sparsely populated by scrub vegetation. Some way off, Sam thought he could make out the shimmer of water — he assumed that they must be close to a river, because they would need some source of water. However, he was not sure. In the blinding sunlight, with nothing to shield his eyes, the thing he took for water could just as easily have been rising heat.
The group of delegates contained a variety of people, such as Sam (clearly not use to the heat and exertion and already starting to feel dehydrated) to glossy, fit, and well-prepared individuals (looking as if they just stepped out of an air-conditioned gym). Among the latter group, Paige Daniels was clearly the leader. Her crisp cotton shirt was not white, since Labor Day had passed, but it was such a pale shade of pink that it made little difference. Navy blue shorts revealed toned, tanned legs that could just as easily have belonged to her daughter. Henley, however, had refused to shed her black attire. She was dressed in what appeared to be a partially destroyed ballet tutu and boots from Doc Martens. Her eyeliner was smudged across her left cheek.
"Dad, how far do we have to go?" she moaned. "Where's the base?"
"It'll be around here soon!" Jefferson lifted his daughter's wheeled suitcase. "Just as soon as we've built it. This wasn't the greatest choice, was it, honey? Why didn't you bring the backpack your mom gave you?"
"I'm not carrying that thing. It's butt ugly." She took the case from her father. It was a little too heavy for her, but she was determined not to concede that the backpack might have made her life easier. "So, are there going to be tents or something? Where are they?"
"Right over here, Miss Daniels," Cody called from a little way off. He was posing on a rock, well aware of the figure he cut in his stone colored shorts and white T-shirt with the clear blue sky as his backdrop. He looked like some kind of advertisement. Sam's dislike for him deepened just a little further, but he joined the delegates in moving obediently toward the pile of tent materials to which Cody was pointing. As much as Sam hated being given orders and was not keen on physical labor, he was happy to pitch in and help with anything that would afford the group some shade from the intense sun.
His attitude was shared by many of the delegates. Within minutes everyone's belongings were heaped in a pile and hands that had not touched anything less refined than a keyboard in years were gripping long wooden tent poles and wielding spikes and mallets. Sam had decided that he would prefer to stick with the devil he knew, so he had sought out Purdue and chosen to work alongside him. There were no instructions telling them how to erect these tents, but he was willing to bet that Purdue would either know, or he would be swift to work it out.
Sure enough, Purdue had assembled a small team and was busy issuing instructions. He had found Nina and Julia Rose, but he had also recruited a stocky man with close-cropped, dark hair and a man, with a long, mopey face and a slight, premature paunch, whom Sam took to be one of the programmers. There was no time for introductions, not with the sun getting increasingly hot overhead. Purdue flitted among the members of the team, working out angles and making suggestions. He seemed to have had the foresight to fill a small notebook with instructions. Sam caught glimpses of it concealed in his palm as he moved around the group.
They were not the first group to finish. That honor went to a team led by Dylan Thoreau, the CEO of a massive social media network. From what Sam had heard about him and succeeded in eavesdropping, it seemed that he had previously participated in several sweat lodges and presumably had experience in putting up these teepee-style tents. Nevertheless, it was too hot to care about finishing first. As soon as they were certain that the tent was stable, Sam dived gratefully into the shade.
Soon Cody appeared at the flap of the tent with an armful of empty waterskins. He carried out a swift head count of the little group and left a skin for each person. The stocky man, speaking in a heavy eastern European accent that Sam found difficult to place, gathered them and offered to fill them at the river.