Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (60 page)

Ten seconds more and Jess had them on their feet as the ripple of destruction spread and the underground site approached extinction.

As they rounded the corner by the first mural they’d discovered, David shone his flashlight ahead. Through a haze of dust he saw the rubble they’d landed on when they’d dropped down from the surface. The mound was larger now, and growing. More debris was falling from above.

Fifteen feet between the top of the mound and the crevasse opening overhead, thin rays of daylight spiked through. In that light, he saw—

“The rope’s still there!”

They rushed for the pile of rocks and stones, scrambling up its sloping sides, sliding down two feet for every three gained. Just as they made the top and Jess grabbed the rope to pull on it, a blinding flash of light blazed down, accompanied by a deafening crash and a hail of rocks that struck them like a shotgun blast.

It was a minute, and another wave of bombs, farther off this time, before David’s hearing recovered sufficiently that he heard Ironwood’s labored coughing, his breath almost whistling. But David’s first thought was for the rope. If it had been lost in that blast . . .

Jess had it. She’d wrapped it around her forearm and was testing it to see if it would hold her weight. It did.

David steadied the rope as Jess began to climb, hand over hand, upward, to the patch of sky.

“I surely can’t make that climb, Dave.” Ironwood stared up as they both watched Jess reach the surface, crawl out, and turn to shout for David to follow her.

“You don’t have to.” David released his grip on the rope and shucked off his gloves. “The agents lowered you down, we’ll pull you up.”

“Good man.” Ironwood gripped his shoulder. “You remember what I told you we were going to do, the two of us, way back in that hotel?”

David did. “We’re going to turn this world upside down.”

“So what are you waiting for? Climb!”

David reached the top and swung his body out of the opening. His lungs had only an instant to register the burning change from cold to freezing air before he and Jess flattened to the ground as jets flashed by and the air shuddered with more explosions over a nearby ridge.

Jess’s eyes were bright with unshed tears and despair. “They’re bombing everything. There won’t be a thing left down there. After all this time—”

David reached for her hand to comfort her. “We’ve got pictures, and Ironwood has books. This time there’s evidence.”

Jess was inconsolable. “It’s not enough. It was the First Gods’ temple.” She twisted around to call down to Ironwood, jerked the rope to signal him. “Ready?”

His voice echoed back, unintelligible.

David peered down to see Ironwood kneeling on the mound of rocks, his parka off. “What’re you doing?”

“The books go first.” Ironwood stuffed the books into his parka and tied the makeshift bundle to the end of the rope. He gave Jess a thumbs-up. She hauled the parka to the surface and untied it quickly.

“Okay,” David shouted down. “You’re next.”

He threw back the rope as the roar of approaching jets shook the surrounding rock. “Grab it!” David shouted.

But Ironwood cupped his hands to his mouth and called up as if he already knew what was about to happen.

“Tell them, David! Change the world!”

Then the next bomb hit and sound ceased to be sound and became something physical.

The impact slammed David and Jess back against the slope of hard rock and ice, and in a final, endless moment, David watched the ground around the opening shift, and then with terrifying speed it was sucked down, erasing all traces of the opening.

And all traces of Ironwood.

One after another, three jets streaked past, so low to the ground David could feel their wake, taste their fumes. Stung by flying rocks, he staggered across the unyielding terrain, disoriented by the blinding light and deafening noise, yet somehow beyond the hurt of cold or injury and the dreadful, senseless loss of Ironwood. All that mattered now was the camera’s precious records. Ironwood’s five gold books. And Jess.

She dragged him down one slope as bomb after bomb exploded close behind them. At the bottom of that slide, a large white rock stood up and ran for them.

It was Agent Lyle. He had a radio in one hand, and he dove at them both to force them down as a line of small explosions stitched the ground beside them.

“They’ve seen us!” he shouted. “Get to cover!” He pointed to a tall pile of rocks that offered protection on two sides, and they ran to it.

“Where’s Ironwood?” Lyle asked. Jess shook her head. The agent’s attention immediately turned back to the sky.

“Not good,” he said.

Distant jets were banking, turning, coming back.

“This way.” Lyle got to his feet and led them running past the rocks and—

Another jet. On approach from the opposite direction.

Lyle yelled, “Scatter!”

Then the
sky
exploded—not the ground.

What had once been a jet became a madly spinning fireball cartwheeling past them, spewing thick black smoke and flaming wreckage.

There was a second explosion. This time behind them. The death spiral of the second jet.

The air above them thundered as three more jets shot by.

This time, Lyle was on his feet and waving, shouting.

“Raptors! They’re on our side!”

Later, in the protected hollow where Roz Marano dozed in thermal blankets, Lyle set up an emergency shelter from the commandos’ supplies,
cracked the chemical packs to heat their rations, and listened to the reassuring words of the captain of the
Roosevelt,
now less than a day away. Later, Jessica MacClary and David Weir showed him what had cost Ironwood his life.

Weir had carefully removed five small objects from his parka and set them on a blanket. They were books of gold. An embossed cross marked the top sheet of all but one book. That book bore the image of a face.

Lyle looked at Weir, then back to the book. “Huh,” he said. “That almost looks like you.” Then he looked at Jessica MacClary with even more interest, because his observation had caused her to put a hand on Weir’s arm. A protective gesture.

“You’re not going to believe what we found down there,” David said.

Lyle looked again from David to the book.

“Probably not,” he agreed, “but Roz will.”

Deep in the cavern near the Colorado River, twelve women gathered, because that was the number the Talking God and the House God required to pray at the
tsenadjihih.
It was an ancient shrine, a table made of stone, three feet high, eight feet wide, and holding the Spider Woman’s gifts. It had been moved many times for safety through the years, and now a wide, round kiva had been built around it, for protection. Coleman lamps lit the inside.

Each woman placed her hands on the object before her, each object cradled by a hollow indentation in the table, each object different, old and revered and many times repaired, and they chanted their prayer for good fortune on their journey.

Three of the objects were covered jars of fired clay. Their contents had been lost long ago, but the designs incised around them hinted at their purpose. One showed seeds planted in even furrows, and beside them tall grasslike plants growing in lines. Another showed a tree, a curl of bark, a figure on a litter holding the bark, and then a figure standing, robust. The third showed the jar itself, but as if it were transparent, so that inside the women could see it once held a central core and winglike filaments and was filled with liquid. Though none of them knew what that liquid was supposed to be.

Other objects were more easily recognizable. A model of a boat, with precise lines etched in it, as if to show its construction. A thin, hollow cylinder with inner ridges that once held disks of some type, and if the disks had been glass, then the cylinder was obviously a telescope. And a heavy stone of metal with one polished side on which a diagram of the sun and planets had been inscribed.

Then there were those simple objects whose purpose was unclear. A bundle of woven cord, a weight like a plumb bob, and a rod of metal marked with the same precise lines as were found on the boat. Another bundle of several small planks of wood joined by knotted cords, with the edges of the planks dotted with what could be, but might not be, random indentations, though each was identified by a carved figure, undecodable
by the women. There was also a badly tarnished metal box, no larger than a hand, that held a collection of tiny gears.

Two objects were fired-clay cylinders in which stones and metal had been embedded, and which some women thought might be recipes. One cylinder had flint and a chunk of metal, so it seemed reasonable to conclude it was to show how fire could be made. The other cylinder was more puzzling. It held three stones with threads of metal ore, and a final small ingot of a different metal. The women assumed it took the first three ores to make the metal, but it was not their place to understand, only to preserve.

The final object was the most obvious in purpose, and the most precious: a collection of thin gold sheets, bound together like a book, on which the Spider Woman had written her words, though in symbols none today could read.

Someday, all the women knew, Spider Woman would come back to read those words to them again, and all would be understood. That she had promised.

Among the women who prayed today, Yazhi was the youngest, a new generation, and when the prayer was completed, she asked to speak.

Shimasani was eldest and gave her permission.

“Have you seen the news?” Yazhi was excited and nervous, all at the same time. “In Antarctica, they’ve found a
tsenadjihih.
Like this one!
”

“I find that difficult to believe,” Abequa said. “There are no people there.”

“But there were, they say. They found bodies. Hundreds of them. Very old.”

“You say the bodies were left there?” Chochmingwu asked.

Yazhi nodded urgently. This was so important. “All over the place.”

“What people leave their dead like that?”

“Old-time people. They say they traveled across the whole world a long time ago and built
tsenadjihih
everywhere they went to teach the people that they met.”

“What things did they teach?” Shimasani asked.

Yazhi gathered her courage. “The things we say the Spider Woman taught us.”

“Yazhi, you are young. You know the White Man does a lot of confusing things to try to mix us up. I think this story is one of those things.”

“But they had pictures. I saw them.”

The older women spoke among themselves, and as far as they could tell, there was a simple explanation for what their youngest member had seen.

“Yazhi, there are people everywhere,” Shimasani said. “Maybe different gods made them in different places. I don’t know. But we were made here, and this is the land the Spider Woman gave us. And here on the
tsenadjihih
she made for us, these are the gifts she gave us, to protect and care for until she returns to us.

“We know this is true because this is what our mothers told us. And it’s what their mothers told them. And their mothers and their mothers all the way back to when Spider Woman told the first mother. So that’s what it is. And you shouldn’t listen to what the White Man says.”

Yazhi bowed her head, embarrassed for having questioned the truth. “I’m sorry. If . . . if you want me to leave the
Naakits’ladah
, then I will go.”

Shimasani smiled for the young girl. “We all make mistakes. We’re all the same. That’s why the
tsenadjihih
is round.”

Yazhi felt better. There was comfort in the place, knowing the secret things she knew, knowing the sacred trust she had accepted.

So for the rest of the day and into the night, the twelve women chanted all the verses of how the land was formed and the people made and all the other lessons taught by the Spider Woman.

In time, Yazhi would memorize the entire saga, and then add the stories of the twelve women gathered here today, so she could teach the verses to her daughter, who would teach them to her daughter, and on through the journey that would last until the Spider Woman returned to the people, as she had promised.