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They were entering a broad open canyon formed by a long mesa along the north and two smaller ones on the south that opened like gates to the desert beyond. Connolly could see clumps of stone ruins backed against the walls of the canyon, small villages placed up and down the valley. A dusty official pickup truck was parked next to the building at the southeast end of the canyon road. The park ranger, an incongruous uniform in the emptiness, stared casually at her legs as he warned them to take water on the trail. But Emma seemed not to notice his interest, as if she had left all that behind in the miles of desert that separated them from the world. In fifteen minutes they were back on their own, the ranger another shadow, as they ate sandwiches on the kiva wall of the Bonito ruin, their faces lifted to the sun. With his eyes closed, he could hear the faint movement of insects. When he opened them, the sound retreated back into the stillness of the canyon. He looked over at her, at the line of her raised throat running into the now blazing white of her blouse, and marveled at their being here, away from everything.

She guided him through the site, pointing out the masonry patterns, the low chamber entrances, the arrangement of the rooms, so that what had been an inexplicable maze of stones now became real, filled with imagined life. People had lived here, moving from ceremonial kiva to irrigated field to storage room. The valley floor had hummed with noise. As they walked from room to room, the place began to make sense, there was an order to things, and he wondered suddenly if years from now people would walk like this on the Hill, picking their way through its buildings and rituals and puzzles until they arranged themselves in the simple pattern of a town. Maybe it would keep its mysteries too, and maybe they would seem just as inconsequential.

“But why here?” he asked again. “It can’t have been easy to farm here.”

“No,” Emma said. “Frijoles makes sense-there’s a river there. And Mesa Verde-I haven’t been, but presumably it’s green. Of course, they liked difficult places, they were always building on cliff faces and overhangs. But I agree it’s a problem. The archaeologists think there were as many as five thousand people here at the peak, so it may have been an administrative center of some sort. Perhaps religious. I think it’s more likely it was geographic-you’ll see what I mean at the top. It’s pretty much in the middle of their territory, so they may have picked it for just that reason. You know, an artificial capital. Like Canberra or Ottawa.”

“Or Washington.”

“Or Washington. What are you looking at?”

He took her hand. “I’m just looking.”

She was flustered but pleased. “You haven’t listened to a thing I’ve said.”

“Yes I have. They built in the middle of nowhere because it was the middle. Keep the bureaucrats away from the fleshpots.”

He leaned over and kissed her, a soft, long kiss because now there was so much more time.

“That’s never a bad idea, is it?” she said, her face still close to his.

“I don’t know. Maybe they need it more than anybody.” He kissed her again, but then she drew away.

“He’ll see,” she said, nodding her head toward the park station.

Connolly laughed. “All this way and it’s still the neighbors. Is there anywhere we can go?” he asked playfully, taking in the vast stretch of land.

“Later,” she said, pushing him away. “Are you always so anxious?”

“No, I’m shy. I just hate to pass up an opportunity. We could always go behind that wall.”

“No we couldn’t. If you think I’m going to lie down on a kiva for you, you’re very much mistaken.” But she had come closer to him.

“Afraid of disturbing the spirits?”

“Maybe. Maybe I just don’t fancy a stone floor.”

“You can be on top.”

“Later,” she said again, laughing at him. “Come on. You could do with the exercise.”