aisle seat to speak to her. "Scully, I'm not sure we've ever encountered a situation as frightening as a senior citizens chartered flight to Cancun." He buckled his seatbelt, ready for a wild ride.
After they were airborne, the flight took them away from Florida's clear and sunny skies, past the Keys, heading southwest across the Caribbean toward a horizon decorated with cloud cover over the Yucatan. Scully sat back and closed her eyes, snatching a moment of quiet relaxation.
Mulder remembered their very first case, flying out to Oregon to look into the mysterious deaths of high school students who, Mulder was convinced, had been abducted by aliens. During their flight, the plane had lurched and lost altitude. He had remained confident and calm, while Scully gripped the arms of her seat.
Sandwiched between them, Vladimir Rubicon slid his half-glasses onto his nose and squinted at a notepad. He scribbled names, places, people he remembered from pre-vious expeditions. "It's been a long time since I've worked down in Central America, but Maya work is one of the cornerstones of my career," he said. "Perhaps some of my old contacts will be able to help us get out to Xitaclan. Uh, it's not on any map, you know."
"Tell me a little bit about your former work, Dr. Rubicon," Scully said.
"Anything I would have heard of? I'm afraid I'm not as familiar with archaeology as I'd like to be."
The old archaeologist smiled at her and tugged at his yellow-gray goatee.
"Those words are music to an old man's ears, my dear Agent Scully!
"My primary research interest lies in the American Southwest, particularly the Four Corners area of northern Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, and Colorado. The pueblo-building Indians there had a spectacular culture, which still remains quite a mystery." His half-glasses slid down his nose, and he nudged them back into place.
"Like the Maya, the Anasazi Indians had a vibrant and thriving civilization along with other cliff dwellers in the Southwest—but they inexplicably dwindled from a thriving, burgeoning culture to become pueblo ghost towns.
Other groups around the area had extensive trade—the Sinagua, the Hohokam, the Mogollon—and left behind significant ruins you can see in many national monuments, especially Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly.
"I made my own fame—if you can call it that— unearthing and reconstructing sites in northern Arizona around Wupatki and Sunset Crater. Most of the tourists in that part of the country just head out to the Grand Canyon and ignore all the historical areas ... which is good news for us archaeologists, since tourists tend to have sticky fingers, wandering off with fragments and souvenirs." He cleared his throat.
"I was personally fascinated by Sunset Crater, a large volcano near Flagstaff.
Sunset Crater erupted in the winter of 1064 and virtually wiped out the bustling Anasazi civilization, knocking it to its knees—sort of like Pompeii.
Their culture never fully recovered, and when extreme droughts ruined all their crops another century later . . . well, that was all she wrote for the Anasazi. If memory serves me correctly, I believe the place was finally turned into a national monument because some Hollywood filmmaker wanted to fill the crater with dynamite and blow it up for a movie."
Scully folded down her tray table as the flight atten-dant came by with a cart of beverages.
"The Native Americans scattered around the Southwest after Sunset Crater erupted nine hundred years ago .. . but on the positive side, the volcanic ash made the surrounding area much more fertile for the farmers. Until the drought came, at least."
As Mulder had dreaded would happen, once the pilot turned off the seatbelt light, the senior citizens tour group got up and began to exchange seats, gossiping, walking up and down the aisles, waiting in long lines at the cof-fin-sized lavatories.
To his horror, some vile ringleader got it into her head to start singing
"family
After they were airborne, the flight took them away from Florida's clear and sunny skies, past the Keys, heading southwest across the Caribbean toward a horizon decorated with cloud cover over the Yucatan. Scully sat back and closed her eyes, snatching a moment of quiet relaxation.
Mulder remembered their very first case, flying out to Oregon to look into the mysterious deaths of high school students who, Mulder was convinced, had been abducted by aliens. During their flight, the plane had lurched and lost altitude. He had remained confident and calm, while Scully gripped the arms of her seat.
Sandwiched between them, Vladimir Rubicon slid his half-glasses onto his nose and squinted at a notepad. He scribbled names, places, people he remembered from pre-vious expeditions. "It's been a long time since I've worked down in Central America, but Maya work is one of the cornerstones of my career," he said. "Perhaps some of my old contacts will be able to help us get out to Xitaclan. Uh, it's not on any map, you know."
"Tell me a little bit about your former work, Dr. Rubicon," Scully said.
"Anything I would have heard of? I'm afraid I'm not as familiar with archaeology as I'd like to be."
The old archaeologist smiled at her and tugged at his yellow-gray goatee.
"Those words are music to an old man's ears, my dear Agent Scully!
"My primary research interest lies in the American Southwest, particularly the Four Corners area of northern Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, and Colorado. The pueblo-building Indians there had a spectacular culture, which still remains quite a mystery." His half-glasses slid down his nose, and he nudged them back into place.
"Like the Maya, the Anasazi Indians had a vibrant and thriving civilization along with other cliff dwellers in the Southwest—but they inexplicably dwindled from a thriving, burgeoning culture to become pueblo ghost towns.
Other groups around the area had extensive trade—the Sinagua, the Hohokam, the Mogollon—and left behind significant ruins you can see in many national monuments, especially Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly.
"I made my own fame—if you can call it that— unearthing and reconstructing sites in northern Arizona around Wupatki and Sunset Crater. Most of the tourists in that part of the country just head out to the Grand Canyon and ignore all the historical areas ... which is good news for us archaeologists, since tourists tend to have sticky fingers, wandering off with fragments and souvenirs." He cleared his throat.
"I was personally fascinated by Sunset Crater, a large volcano near Flagstaff.
Sunset Crater erupted in the winter of 1064 and virtually wiped out the bustling Anasazi civilization, knocking it to its knees—sort of like Pompeii.
Their culture never fully recovered, and when extreme droughts ruined all their crops another century later . . . well, that was all she wrote for the Anasazi. If memory serves me correctly, I believe the place was finally turned into a national monument because some Hollywood filmmaker wanted to fill the crater with dynamite and blow it up for a movie."
Scully folded down her tray table as the flight atten-dant came by with a cart of beverages.
"The Native Americans scattered around the Southwest after Sunset Crater erupted nine hundred years ago .. . but on the positive side, the volcanic ash made the surrounding area much more fertile for the farmers. Until the drought came, at least."
As Mulder had dreaded would happen, once the pilot turned off the seatbelt light, the senior citizens tour group got up and began to exchange seats, gossiping, walking up and down the aisles, waiting in long lines at the cof-fin-sized lavatories.
To his horror, some vile ringleader got it into her head to start singing
"family
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