“So Mom said,” he interrupted. “What are you planning to do?”
“I figured—” Nora paused. This was going to be the hard part. “I figured the way to find out what happened to him would be to find Quivira. And that will take money. Which is why I want to put Las Cabrillas on the market.”
Skip shook his head and gave a wet laugh. “Jesus, Nora. Here I’ve been living in this shithole, with no money, begging you to sell that place so I could get my feet on the ground. And now you want to blow what nest egg we’ve got looking for Dad. Even though he’s dead.”
“Skip, you could always get your feet on the ground by finding a job —” Nora began, then stopped. This wasn’t why she came here. He sat on the sofa, shoulders hunched, and Nora found her heart melting. “Skip, it would mean a lot to me to know what happened to Dad.”
“Look, go ahead and sell the place. I’ve been saying that for years. But don’t use my share of the money. I’ve got other plans.”
“To mount an archaeological expedition might take a little more than just my share.”
Skip sat back. “I get it. So the Institute won’t fund anything, right? Can’t say I’m surprised. I mean, it says here he never saw the city! He’s all worked up over a trail. There’s a leap of faith in this letter, Nora. You know what Mom would say about this?”
“Yes! She’d say he was just dreaming again. Are you saying it, too?”
Skip winced. “No. I’m not siding with Mom.” The scornful tone had been stung from his voice. “I just don’t want to lose a sister the way I lost a father.”
“Come on, Skip. That’s not going to happen. In the letter, Dad says he was following an ancient road. If I can find that road, it would be the proof I need.”
Skip pushed his feet to the floor, elbows on his knees, a scowl on his face. Suddenly he straightened up. “I’ve got an idea. A way that maybe you can find that road, without even going out there. I had a physics professor at Stanford, Leland Watkins. Now he works for JPL.”
“JPL?”
“The Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech. It’s a branch of NASA.”
“How’s that going to help us?”
“This guy’s been working on the shuttle program. I read about this specialized radar system they have that can see through thirty feet of sand. They were using it to map ancient trails in the Sahara Desert. If they can map trails there, why not in Utah?”
Nora stared at her brother. “This radar can see old roads?”
“Right through the sand.”
“And you took a class from this guy? You think he still remembers you?”
Skip’s face suddenly became guarded. “Oh, yeah. He remembers me.”
“Great! So call him up and—”
Skip’s look stopped her. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“How come?”
“He doesn’t like me.”
“Why not?” Nora was discovering that a lot of people didn’t like Skip.
“He had this really cute girlfriend, a graduate student, and I . . .” Skip’s face colored.
Nora shook her head. “I don’t want to hear about it.”
Skip picked up the yellow mescal worm and rolled it between finger and thumb. “Sorry about that. If you want to talk to Watkins, I guess you’re going to have to call him yourself.”
5
NORA SAT AT A WORKTABLE IN THE Institute’s Artifact Analysis Lab. Lined up in front of her, beneath the harsh fluorescent light, were six bags of heavy-mil plastic bulging with potsherds. Each was labeled RIO PUERCO, LEVEL I in black marker. In one of the nearby lockers, carefully padded to eliminate “bag wear,” were four more bags marked LEVEL II and yet another marked LEVEL III: a total of one hundred and ten pounds of potsherds.
Nora sighed. She knew that, in order to publish the report on the Rio Puerco site, every sherd had to be sorted and classified. And after the sherds would come stone tools and flakes, bone fragments, charcoal, pollen samples, even hair samples; all patiently waiting in their metal cages around the lab. She opened the first bag and, using metal forceps, began placing artifacts on the white table. Glancing up at a buzzing light, she could see a corner of white cloud scud past the tiny barred window far above her head. Like a damn prison, she thought sourly. She glanced at the nearby terminal, blinking the data entry screen into focus.
TW-1041
Screen 25
SANTA FE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE
Context Recording / Artifact Database
Site No
Area/Section
Plan No
Accession No
Coord
Provenance
Recorded by
Site Book Ref
Grid Square
Context Code
Lev/Stratum
Trinomial Desig
Excav Date
Lev Bag Of
Artifact Description (4096 chars max)
CONFIDENTIAL—DO NOT DUPLICATE
She understood precisely why this kind of statistical research was necessary. And yet she couldn’t help but feel that the Institute, under Murray Blakewood’s guidance, had become shackled by an obsession with typology. It was as if, for all its vast collections and reservoir of talent, the Institute was ignoring the new developments—ethnoarchaeology, contextual archaeology, molecular archaeology, cultural resource management—taking place outside its thick adobe walls.
She pulled out her handwritten field logs, tabulating the artifacts against the information she entered into the database. 46 Mesa Verde B/W, 23 Chaco/McElmo, 2 St. John’s Poly, 1 Soccoro B/W . . . Or was that another Mesa Verde B/W? She hunted in the drawer for a loup, rummaging unsuccessfully. Hell with it, she thought, placing it to one side and moving on.
Her hand closed over a small, polished piece of pottery, evidently the lip of a bowl. Now this is more like it, she thought. Despite its small size, the fragment was beautiful, and she still remembered its discovery. She’d been sitting beside a thicket of tamarisk, stabilizing a fragile basket with polyvinyl acetate, when her assistant Bruce Jenkins gave a sudden yelp. “Chaco Black-on-Yellow Micaceous!” he’d screeched. “God damn!” She remembered the excitement, the envy, that the little fragment had generated. And here it was, sitting forlorn in an oversized Baggie. Why couldn’t the Institute devote more energy to, say, learning why this fantastic style of pottery was so rare—why no complete pots had ever been found, why nobody knew where it came from or how it was made—instead of ceaselessly numbering and cross-tabulating, like accountants of prehistory?
She stared at the potsherds spread out in a dun-colored line. With a sudden movement, she pushed away from the desk and turned toward the phone, dialing information.
“Pasadena,” she said into the phone. “The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.” It took one external and two internal operators to learn that Leland Watkins’s extension was 2330.
“Yes?” came the voice at last, high-pitched and impatient.
“Hello. This is Nora Kelly, at the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute.”
“Yes?” the voice repeated.
“Am I speaking to Leland Watkins?”
“This is Dr. Watkins.”
“I’d like a moment of your time,” Nora said, talking quickly. “We’re working on a project in southeastern Utah, looking at ancient Anasazi roads. Would it be possible for you—”
“We don’t have any radar coverage in that area,” interrupted Watkins.
Nora took a deep breath. “Is there any way we might cooperate in getting some radar coverage? You see—”
“No, there is no way,” said Watkins, his voice growing nasal in irritation. “I’ve got a list a mile long of people waiting for radar coverage: geologists, rain forest biologists, agricultural scientists, you name it.”