Thunderhead

if it contained a large ruin, how do you propose to find it?”

Nora hesitated. How much should she tell him? “I have an old letter,” she began, “that describes an Anasazi road in these canyons. I believe the road would lead to the ruin.”

“A letter?” Blakewood’s eyebrows elevated.

“Yes.”

“Written by an archaeologist?”

“Right now, I’d rather not say.”

A shadow of irritation crossed Blakewood’s face. “Dr. Kelly—Nora—let me point out a few practical matters here. There’s not enough evidence, even with this mysterious letter of yours, to justify a survey permit, let alone an excavation. And as you pointed out yourself, the area’s known for extremely severe summer thunderstorms and flash floods. Even more to the point, the Kaiparowits Plateau and the country to its west encompasses the most complicated canyon system on the planet.”

The perfect place to hide a city, Nora thought to herself.

Blakewood stared at her briefly. Then he cleared his throat. “Nora, I’d like to give you some professional advice.”

Nora swallowed. This wasn’t how she had envisioned the conversation developing.

“Archaeology today isn’t like it was a hundred years ago. All the spectacular stuff has been found. Our job is to move more slowly, assemble the little details, analyze.” He leaned toward her. “You always seem to be looking for the fabulous ruin, the oldest this or biggest that. None of that exists anymore, Nora, even around the Kaiparowits Plateau. There have been archaeological survey parties in that area at least half a dozen times since the Wetherills first explored those canyons.”

Listening, Nora struggled to keep her own doubts at bay. She herself knew there was no way to be certain whether her father actually reached the city. But there was no mistaking the tone of certainty in his letter, or the high flood of his triumph. And there was something else: something always present now in the back of her mind. Somehow, those men—those creatures—that attacked her in the farmhouse had known about the letter. That meant they, too, had reason to believe in Quivira.

“There are many lost ruins in the Southwest,” she heard herself say, “buried in sand or hidden under cliffs. Take the lost city of Senecu. That was a huge ruin seen by the Spanish that has since disappeared.”

There was a pause as Blakewood tapped a pencil on the desktop. “Nora, there’s something else I’ve been meaning to discuss with you,” he said, the look of irritation more plain now. “You’ve been here, what, five years?”

“Five and a half, Dr. Blakewood.”

“When you were hired as an assistant professor, you realized what the tenure process involved, correct?”

“Yes.” Nora knew what was coming.

“You will be up for review in six months. And frankly, I’m not sure your tenure will be approved.”

Nora said nothing.

“As I recall, your work in graduate school was brilliant. That is why we brought you on board. But once you were hired, it took you three years to finish your dissertation.”

“But Dr. Blakewood, don’t you remember how I got tied up at the Rio Puerco site—?” She stopped as Blakewood raised his hand again.

“Yes. Like all of the better academic institutions, we have a scholarship requirement. A publishing requirement. Since you brought up the Rio Puerco site, may I ask where the report is?”

“Well, right after that, we found that unusual burned jacal on the Gallegos Divide—”

“Nora!” Blakewood interrupted, a little sharply. “The fact is,” he went on in the ensuing silence, “you jump from project to project. You have two major excavations to write up in the next six months. You don’t have time to go chasing some chimera of a city that existed only in the imagination of the Spanish conquistadors.”

“But it does exist!” Nora cried. “My father found it!”

The look of astonishment that came across Blakewood did not sit well on his normally placid face. “Your father?”

“That’s right. He found an ancient Anasazi road leading into that canyon country. He followed it to the site, to the very hand-and-toe trail leading up to the city. He documented the entire trip.”

Blakewood sighed. “Now I understand your enthusiasm. I don’t mean to criticize your father, but he wasn’t exactly the most . . .” His voice trailed off, but Nora knew the next word was going to be reliable. She felt a prickling sensation move up her spine. Careful, she thought, or you could lose your job right here and now. She swallowed hard.

Blakewood’s voice dropped. “Nora, were you aware that I knew your father?”

Nora shook her head. A lot of people had known her father: Santa Fe had been a small town, at least for archaeologists. Pat Kelly always had an uneasy relationship with them, sometimes providing valuable information, other times digging ruins himself.

“In many ways he was a remarkable man, a brilliant man. But he was a dreamer. He couldn’t have been less interested in the facts.”

“But he wrote that he found the city—”

“You said he found a prehistoric hand-and-toe trail,” Blakewood broke in. “Which exist by the thousands in canyon country. Did he write that he actually found the city itself?”

Nora paused. “Not exactly, but—”

“Then I’ve said all I’m going to say on this expedition—and on your tenure review.” He refolded his old hands, the fine pattern of wrinkles almost translucent against the burnished desktop. “Is there anything else?” he asked more gently.

“No,” Nora said. “Nothing else.” She swept her papers into the portfolio, spun on her heels, and left.

4

NORA SCANNED THE CLUTTERED APARTMENT with dismay. If anything, it was worse than she remembered. The dirty dishes in the sink looked as unwashed as when she’d seen them a month before, tottering so precariously that no additional plates could be added, the lower strata furred in green mold. Sink full, the apartment’s occupant had apparently taken to ordering pizzas and Chinese food in disposable cartons: a tiny pyramid rose from the wastebasket and trailed onto the nearby floor like a bridal veil. A flood of magazines and old newspapers lay on and around the scuffed furniture. Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” played from speakers barely visible behind piles of socks and dirty sweatshirts. On one shelf stood a neglected goldfish bowl, its water a murky brown. Nora glanced away, unwilling to look too closely at the bowl’s occupants.

There was a cough and a sniff from the apartment’s inhabitant. Her brother, Skip, slouched on the decomposing orange couch, propped his dirty bare feet up on a nearby table and looked over at her. He still had little bronze curls across his forehead and a smooth, adolescent face. He’d be very handsome, Nora thought, if it weren’t for the petulant, immature look to his face, his dirty clothes. It was hard—painful, really—to think of him as grown up, his physics degree from Stanford barely a year old, and doing absolutely nothing. Surely it was just last week she’d been babysitting this wild, happy-go-lucky kid with a brilliant knack for driving her crazy. He didn’t drive her crazy anymore—just worried. Sometime after their mother’s death six months ago, he’d switched from beer to tequila; half a dozen empty bottles lay scattered around the floor. Now he drained a fresh bottle into a mason jar, a sullen look on his inflamed face. A small yellow worm dropped from the upended bottle into the glass. Skip picked it out and tossed it into an ashtray, where several other similar worms lay, shriveled now to husks as the alcohol had evaporated.

“That’s disgusting,” Nora said.

“I’m sorry you don’t value my collection of Nadomonas sonoraii,” Skip replied. “If I’d appreciated the benefits of invertebrate biology earlier, I’d never have majored in physics.” He reached over to the table, pulled open its drawer, and removed a long, flat sheet of plywood, handing it to Nora with a sniff. One