The Unearthing Read Free Page A

very generous scale.” This brought smiles and some applause. There were worse ways of kicking people off a dig site.
     
    As the work crew shouldered their shovels and pickaxes, climbing from the work pit, Echohawk returned his attention to the pyramid. He reached out to its golden surface, laying his hand on metal warmed by the desert sun. Except that the metal covering the surface of the pyramid was cool; it certainly was no hotter than air temperature, which on that fine summer morning hovered around thirty-two degrees Celsius. Baking in the sun, the skin of the pyramid should have been much warmer. Echohawk slid his hand along the pyramid, feeling the smoothness of it. He couldn’t find any fresh scratches or gouges despite the equipment that had been used; the damage inflicted on its surface was old. The surface of the pyramid was mottled but that appeared to be a function of design. Echohawk stood and made his way from the pit. This was an unbelievable find and so far the information didn’t make sense to him at all.
    ♦♦♦
    LINX TO: Laura Echohawk
    FROM: Mark Echohawk
    SUBJECT: Laguna Dig
     
    Dear Laura,
     
    I got your last linx yesterday. I’m glad you like the book; finding a tome on abstract art of the 1980s was difficult. I think you’re one of the few people who actually likes work from that era. I hope the book helps you with your current project. It was also good to hear that you and your room mate managed to work things out; Allison’s a great girl and it would have been a shame if your friendship ended over something as trivial as housework division.
     
    I have news of my own: I have returned to the field! If you can believe it, I finally got a field project interesting enough to pull me out of the classroom: Early last week shortly after I linxed you my last letter the World Aboriginal Anthropological Society contacted me regarding a discovery made in New Mexico on land belonging to the Laguna Band. The Laguna discovered the tip of a golden pyramid buried beneath the desert.
     
    Three things about this discovery have piqued my interest: First, it was previously assumed that the pyramid-building Aboriginal societies hadn’t established themselves any further north than the Mexican Peninsula. Second, the Laguna Pyramid has more in common in design with Egyptian pyramids than it does to its South American cousins: it is flat, not stepped, and covered in gold or some sort of gold alloy and has a pointed peak and smooth sides, as opposed to the plateaued summit and staggered sides of most South American pyramids. Lastly, that the Laguna Pyramid is buried is significant, because the land around Laguna has been unchanged by geological event for thousands upon thousands of years. This means that either the Laguna Pyramid is quite ancient or it was meticulously and deliberately buried. I haven’t been this excited about a project since Doctor Aiziz and I discovered the Quipu repository, in Columbia.
     
    I hope this linx finds you well; I look forward to hearing from you soon. Let me know how things go authenticating those works you discovered in the university’s warehouse. We’ll go out for coffee as soon as I get back to LA.
     
    All my love,
     
    Dad
    ♦♦♦
    Peter Paulson had arrived and gotten his people parked and unpacking. They parked just inside an area marked off earlier by James using orange “CAUTION” tape and aluminum poles. A small army of assistants, graduate students and general help, began unloading crates of equipment and setting up tent-like portable shelters to be used as living quarters and a mobile lab building made from corrugated aluminum sheets and a titanium frame. By the middle of the afternoon Mark Echohawk’s archaeological team had set up their entire base of operations and James and Peter had drilled out their first core samples.
     
    “James!” Peter called, stepping inside the lab. “What have we got going?” James turned his chair away from the