The Anomaly(16)

“But people in the past got stuff wrong, too,” she said. “Like thinking the Earth was flat until the Middle Ages.”

“Nope. Herodotus was kicking holes in that idea back in 500 BC. The flat-Earth idea was a fake put about by science fanboys like Washington Irving and Andrew Dickson White—to ‘prove’ religion’s dogmas needed defeating.”

“Ah, the dreaded conspiracy at work once more.”

“Make fun if you like. But to me it’s the height of arrogance to dismiss thousands of years of folk knowledge through an evangelical adherence to scientific paradigms that remain theories rather than facts. Our species didn’t suddenly start being smart a hundred years ago.”

There was a sound from behind, and we turned to see Feather standing on a rock close by, feet neatly together, clapping.

“Bravo,” she said.

I shrugged modestly—wishing only that Ken or Molly had been there to see me Conspicuously Pleasing Our Sponsor.

And that I could remember what I’d just said.





From the files of Nolan Moore:





MARBLE CANYON, EARLY PHOTOGRAPH (date unknown)





Chapter

10



Holy crap it was cold in the night.

The sleeping bags just about made it bearable, so long as you curled up like a grub and stayed absolutely still long enough for trapped body heat to build. I drifted off quickly—the day had featured a level of exercise wholly alien to what I like to think of as my “lifestyle”—but woke within an hour to anxious bleating from my nose and cheeks.

When I woke for the third time I sat up and smoked, giving my eyes enough time to adjust to the darkness, and realized that Pierre and Dylan had taken the obvious step of pulling their heads down inside the sleeping bags. Ken hadn’t, but he was carrying a ton of vodka inside him and likely feeling no pain.

So I tried the head-inside technique, and managed to get a couple of fitful hours. I was awake again at four thirty, waiting for the sun to rise and turn the walls of the canyon three-dimensional. In the meantime I looked up at the stars, so sharp that their light seemed almost blue.

Just before the dawn I realized I wasn’t the only person awake. It’s strange how you can tell. I turned my head, expecting to see Molly up on her feet, getting an early start on the day in the organized and can-do way she has.

But she wasn’t.

Nobody was, in fact. I could see all the other members of the team, either still zipped up inside mini tents or curled up in sleeping bags.

And yet it felt strongly as if I wasn’t alone.

I looked around again, slowly panning my gaze across the small beach and over the rocky areas on either side. Nobody there. Of course. We were a long way from anywhere. It wasn’t possible for another person to be here.

Here, and watching me. Watching us.

I remembered a final Hopi legend, one that I hadn’t included in my spiel to camera before we started down the trail. A story that somewhere within the Grand Canyon lies a deep, hidden cave that is home to their god Maasaw, the “keeper of death”—and that’s why portions of the canyon have long been associated with accidents and anxiety attacks.

I hadn’t included this tale because I was sure—as Powell himself had been—that it was their way of keeping people out of a sacred site, and there was no truth in it beyond that.

Nonetheless, I was glad when it was properly light.



Eventually other people started to stir. Dylan first, who nodded in my direction and got on with filling the cold air with the smell of cooking bacon. A little banter around the grill the night before had improved relations between the males in the group, and I was considering giving him a few nontaxing moments on camera at some point today.

Hollow eyes among my fellow crew members told me I wasn’t the only person who’d suffered a patchy night. The tents the women had slept in hadn’t helped much with the dead-of-night temperatures. Ken looked the same as usual, but he usually looks like shit—albeit a robust type of shit that stands up and holds out his hand for a cup of coffee and starts dealing with the world as if waking with sand in your hair at the bottom of the Grand Canyon is business as usual.

We ate and drank coffee and struck camp and got in the boat and paddled gamely off down the river, ready for adventure.



But by three o’clock something was clear.

There was nothing here.

Nothing over and above the outstanding natural beauty, that is, but that wasn’t what we’d schlepped all this way for. We’d come for the cavern.

And it wasn’t there.

We’d cruised for four hours—as it got hotter and hotter—including navigating another short stretch of mildly turbulent water, then a further hour of calm. Eventually we reached the stretch I’d outlined, determining its position via GPS.

We then rowed slowly along it with great anticipation, each member of the team instructed to focus their gaze on a specific level of the towering wall.

When nothing was spotted, we gamely paddled back upriver, still watching.

Then floated down again, everyone staring at different heights of the wall this time, to keep eyes fresh. Nothing.

Then, at Molly’s suggestion, we laboriously maneuvered the raft over to the far side of the river—it was about eighty feet wide at this point, and very deep—in case the change in viewing angle made a difference.