Empire of Dust (27 page)

"Here it is. I can pick up his track here. He was going this way." He pointed deeper into the canyon, along the base of the cliff. "Okay?"

"Okay," Tony said, "let's go."

"Wait a minute, you want me to keep going?"

"You're a tracker. You want the rest of the money, you track."

Bitsosie looked at Yazzie as if in appeal, but Yazzie nodded. "That would seem the minimum requirement," he said dryly.

Bitsosie replied with a string of profanity in a combination Tony had not heard before, then started walking up the canyon, his eyes on the ground. Tony and Yazzie followed.

"Can you tell us anything about him?" Tony asked, after they had gone a few hundred yards along the canyon base.

"Yeah. He was moving slow. Sort of shuffling. And he was pretty heavy. But it may not be the same guy."

"You mean, as the one who came down the cliff?" Yazzie asked.

"Yep. Those tracks weren't as deep as these. I mean, it
could
be the same guy, because the boot marks look like the same size, but if it is, he's carrying something pretty damn heavy."

Tony stored that one away in the
weird shit
section of his mind as one to lay on Joseph and Laika. He thought about how much water the human body had in it, and how all that moisture would be pretty heavy, were it all to be drawn out. But what would the attacker carry it in? A barrel? The even more confusing question was why? What would anyone do with . . . man juice?

"Well, looka here," said Bitsosie, pointing to a trail up the cliff. There was a natural cut through the sandstone, and flat stones had been placed to facilitate easy access to the canyon from above. "He went up here. Slow, too. Bet he was pantin' when he reached the top." He fixed Tony with a stern glare. "Just like a certain old Navajo would be if some white-eye sonofabitch made him climb up there."

"You want the rest of your money?" said Tony. "We can go as slow as you like, but we've got to stay on this trail. I want to know where this . . . person went."

Yazzie, the holder of the money, nodded in agreement. "You turn against your own people like this?" the old man said.

"Two of my people have died, maybe because of what the person you're tracking did. I want to find him."

"Well, you might have another one of your people die on you, you make me climb up there."

"Come on," said Yazzie. "We'll go at your pace."

Grumbling, the old tracker started climbing the steps nimbly, in spite of the complaints of ill health that he continued to make.

Twenty minutes later, they reached the top of the cliff. There was an overlook fifty yards away, where several tourists were peering into the canyon and taking pictures. A sign at the top of the trail informed all that access to the canyon was forbidden without a guide.

Bitsosie kept his eyes on the loose stones that led to the road, and stopped at the edge of the blacktop. "That's it," he said. "Stops here. Even I can't track on a paved road."

"Can you tell which way he went?" Tony asked.

"Yeah—either that way," Bitsosie pointed down the road, "or that way. Now, where's my money?"

Yazzie took the bills out of his pocket and handed them to the old man. "All right, damn it," Bitsosie said. "I'm an old man, and I'm not going to walk down there again. Here, sonny." He handed Tony a ring of keys. "The silver one's to my car. I'm going to sit on that bench over there and count my money while you two walk back down and bring that car back up to me. Unless you want another dead Indian on your conscience, white-eyes."

D
riving along on the floor of the canyon had been an experience that Joseph never wanted to go through again. The truck bounced enough through the dry sand, but when it hit the washes it was spine rattling. By the time they approached the eastern end of Canyon de Chelly where it met Monument Canyon, Joseph's buttocks felt as though he had been initiated into several dozen fraternities at once.

The drawing was flush with the canyon floor, so they saw the two towers of Spider Rock first. Joseph heard Miriam gasp, and when he followed her haunted gaze, he saw the two stone towers, one shorter than the other, rising to the sky, and remembered what Tony had told them about Miriam's dream.

"Are those the towers you saw in your dream?" Laika asked.

Miriam nodded dully, then seemed to grasp the implications, and blushed deeply. "Vincent told you?"

"Yes," she replied. "Don't be concerned. We're only interested in this from a . . . scientific viewpoint."

"Then you know about the—" They came over a rise then, and saw the drawing of the heart line in the damp sand of the wash. "Oh, my God. . . ." Miriam said.

"Vincent didn't tell you about this?" Joseph said, trying to keep the doubt out of his voice.

"No . . . no, he didn't, just that there was another drawing."

"But this is what you saw, isn't it?" asked Laika.

"Yes, it is . . . the beast . . . and the line to its heart . . . the arrowhead . . .
everything
."

"Including the towers," Joseph said.

"Yes."

Laika glanced at Joseph. If he read her look correctly, she was impressed. So was he, but he wouldn't admit it. He still did not, could not, allow himself to believe in an out-of-body experience. It would give too easy an explanation to his own bizarre dreams about the prisoner.

If he tried hard, he could believe that the extraordinary coincidences between what he'd dreamed and what he'd later seen to be true were exactly that, nothing but coincidences, if in an amazing series. But if he allowed himself to believe that Miriam had some kind of psychic power, then it would be easy to believe that he himself had the same, and that was something he didn't want.

Strange mental powers existed only in the realms of fiction and fantasy, areas in which Joseph had spent many pleasurable hours. Though he knew that in reality such things were rubbish, they could be sheer delight when confined to the imagination. Joseph's collection of books and videos, as well as his writings for fan magazines, attested to his fascination with the genre.

Still, he wrote for skeptical publications as well, and kept the two areas of interest totally separate, as a breeder who fancies both Siamese cats and flightless birds. Now, when it seemed that the two were merging into one disquieting reality, he struggled all the harder to keep them apart.

Miriam's dreams and visions could be nothing more than coincidences, as were his own. As the truck pulled to a stop just yards away from the drawing, he jumped down, anxious to investigate, to get to practical work.

This drawing was different. It was slightly larger than the others, but what differentiated it most from its predecessors was that it was made in damp earth instead of dry sand. "This should resolve the tread mark question," Laika said, as they walked toward the deep ruts in the earth. He knew what she meant. Tread marks might not show on dry sand, where gravity would pull the loose sand down to cover them. But with wet earth, any tread marks would be easily seen.

There were none. The ruts were nearly a foot wide and seven inches deep, and as smooth as though a giant hand had drawn in the earth with a massive pencil. "Still could have been tires without treads," said Joseph, refusing to give up his motorcycle theory.

Laika made no comment, but led the way around the massive drawing. High on the canyon rim, dozens of people were standing against the railing, looking down at them and the drawing. "I think the silicalogists are out in force," Laika said.

"Yeah, well, let's hope we can prove to them this is just another hoax," said Joseph. "They don't want to hear it, but they'll be better off knowing the truth."

Miriam walked next to Joseph, just behind Laika. The tribal policeman tagged along behind. "Do you think there's any connection between the drawings and the deaths?" Miriam asked.

"I would think it's an incredible coincidence if there's not," replied Joseph. Then he snorted a laugh. "Of course, we've seen a lot of coincidences lately."

They continued to walk slowly around the huge drawing, stopping from time to time for Miriam to take pictures. When they reached the head, they stepped inside the drawing to examine the line from the beast's mouth to its chest. The arrowhead was as gigantic as the rest of the work. Two of the three straight lines that formed it were twenty feet long, while the base of the arrowhead was nearly twice that.

"These angles where the lines meet are nearly perfect," Laika observed. "Just a little overlap here."

"Where the motorcycle went a little too far," said Joseph.

"Dr. Tompkins," Laika said, "if you think it was a motorcycle that made these trenches, how did it get here? Unlike sand, tracks in wet earth can't be easily brushed away, you know."

"Dr. Kelly, there
were
no tracks in or out," Joseph said. Then he pointed skyward. "Death from above."

"Your helicopter theory?" Laika asked.

"Absolutely. When you eliminate the impossible . . . well, you know. A helicopter with some sort of mechanism attached to a chopper is damned improbable, but not impossible. Or maybe it just dragged something heavy in the sand."

"There wouldn't be any prop wash visible here," Laika admitted, "but there would have been at the other two sites. And wouldn't someone have noticed a helicopter in a place as heavily infested with tourists as this?"

In reply, Joseph called back to the policeman. "Hey, Officer, what happens to this end of the canyon at night? Anybody come to the overlook?"

The officer shook his head. "The access road's closed after dark."

"And does anybody live around here?"

"Used to, but no more. Some folks live back that way a bit," he said, gesturing to Canyon de Chelly, "but hardly anybody in Monument Canyon."

"So is it possible that if a helicopter flew over this area in the middle of the night, no one might have seen it?"

"Possible," the Navajo said.

Joseph looked at Laika. "You got a better explanation?"

"I haven't."

Joseph turned to Miriam. "Ms. Dominick?"

Miriam seemed to think a moment, even closing her eyes for a few seconds. "No," she said. "I really have no idea."

After they had completely circled the figure, and seen no way by which a vehicle could have gotten to the drawing over the wet earth, Laika turned to the Navajo policeman. "Could you take us back now? We'd like to see the drawing from the overlook."

A
thousand feet above where the two operatives, the policeman, and Miriam Dominick were getting back into the truck, a man named Taylor Griswold stood with a pair of powerful binoculars, looking down at them. A number of other onlookers were doing the same.

Many were taking pictures and videos of the drawing below, and the first video crew had arrived and were interviewing tourists, asking what they thought was the origin of the giant beast. When they asked Taylor Griswold if he thought the drawing was proof of alien intrusion, he told them not to bother him, in language that ensured his face would not be televised.

Only when the truck started moving westward did he start back on the path to the small loop road where his rental car was parked. He got in and dialed a number on his cell phone. He was calling the New York headquarters of the tabloid newspaper for which he worked, the
Inner Eye
.

When the automated operator answered, he punched in the extension of his assistant, with whom he was immediately connected. Then, from a notepad, he dictated to her his feature story, improvising the part about this most recent "incontrovertible evidence of artisans from beyond our solar system, and possibly our galaxy itself."

Griswold's story covered all three sand drawings, and also talked about "a series of recent deaths in which bodies have been drained of their blood. Authorities have been strangely silent on the matter, but the government has sent a secret team of psychic investigators to the area.

"Your reporter has spoken with these people, and learned that the deaths and the drawings are related, and may be some kind of alien blood sacrifice by which these otherworldly creatures derive the inspiration to create their monumental works of art.

"Does this mean that our popular conception of the peaceful alien offering us technology and wisdom may be replaced by a startling reality of bloodthirsty aesthetes, a race of 'Vampicassos' who are willing to slaughter our comparatively primitive race in order to feed their appetite for art? We pray that it is not so, but the evidence coming from the ancient southwest is anything but comforting."