Burning Tower (53 page)

M
uch of the research for this book was done by Roberta Pournelle, who found most of the primary sources we used to build our version of Aztlan/Aztec culture, as well as the codex exhibit.

The authors did considerable research for this book. We drove the path that would have led our wagon trains to Chaco Canyon, though we didn't veer around the Salton Sea, as wagons would. We climbed around Chaco Canyon and the Petrified Forest. We skipped Meteor Crater because we'd both roamed through it years ago. With Roberta Pournelle's help (because Niven was in a wheelchair), we toured a traveling exhibit of Aztec lore at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a wonderful array of buildings built above the Black Pit. We collected a sizable stack of reference material on Aztecs, and it was there we found Aztec sweatbaths, an overburdened merchant with a parrot, giant stone heads, and many other wonders. The exhibit was put together by the museum, and it brought to one place materials scattered in twenty museums about the world, including a codex from Germany.

Niven was led through petroglyphs inscribed on cliffs in California, by Aleta Jackson and a host of rockhounds. He researched Navajo magic in Salt Lake City. He owes much gratitude to his guides.

As in
The Burning City,
we took what we found and made what assumptions seemed good to us. We have tried to account for many odd and seemingly contradictory twists in ancient legends, as well as the capricious character of gods like Coyote.

Of course, this book is still fantasy, and not much of it should be taken as history.

Or the reader may ignore this warning and assume that later civilizations are the heirs of magic-using civilizations of fourteen thousand years ago, when the manna was dying, most gods had gone myth, and humankind was learning to live in a magic-depleted world.

For instance: Hogans are well described in Navajo lore. If later Navajos believe that a properly built hogan was a living thing, fourteen thousand years ago it may have been so. So also with locusts used as scouts, and the rule that everything comes in fours.

Terror birds were quite real. They didn't become extinct until long after humankind was speading through the Americas. Even the skeletons found in the southwest and Mexico are scary as hell.

In Aztec myth, Aztlan is the island origin of the Aztec people. After they left the island city, they roamed for ten thousand years before certain signs allowed them to build a new home. Their war god was a hummingbird—a nasty-tempered, quarrelsome little bird, however pretty. The god was called Left-handed Hummingbird for reasons unknown; we think our explanation is as good as any.

Chaco Canyon, in the middle of the North American continent, is about where Aztlan ought to be. It's a desert now, but a river once ran through it. It was a mighty trading empire: food had to be imported from scores of miles away, and trees too—they used lumber in building. One problem: Aztlan is certainly not an island.

The Salton Sea was real enough, and it drained into the current Sea of Cortez. The Colorado emptied into it, running not as deep as it does today, but the canyons must already have been impressive.

The Petrified Forest was woefully depleted during the days of the American robber barons, so much so that there's no telling how extensive it might once have been. The servants of Aztlan's Emperor might have stripped a far more extensive stone forest.

And the Aztecs worshipped a feathered serpent.

The assumption of this series has been that ancient legends are garbled accounts of true events that happened in a time when magic was still a major force. Magic is fueled by manna, and manna is a very nearly nonrenewable resource. Today we use science to accomplish wonders; but, as C. S. Lewis once pointed out, science and magic were born twins.