BOUNDARY(2)

"What's with the 'Dr. Sutter' business, Jackie? It's been 'Helen' for years, remember?"

Jackie grinned. "I figure I gotta practice up on my formalities. I'm not all that far behind Joe when it comes to getting my doctorate—and God help me if I start breezily referring to the head of my committee as 'Frank.' So what's up for this year?"

"Same as ever," Joe said, coming in after Helen. "Spend a couple months working ourselves to death to dig out a few fossils just like the ones everyone else has. Write some papers about them that no one but us and the reviewers will read. Then Helen and company write another grant proposal."


"And Joey's still the optimist, I see."

Joe winced. He detested being called "Joey," Helen knew. But some years before, when they'd both been undergraduates, Jackie and Joe had been casually "sorta-dating" for one summer. Her pet nickname for him had probably seemed cute then. Now, of course, it was inescapable, though he wouldn't put up with anyone else using it.

Laughing, Helen nodded. "As always. Seriously, I thought we might try that area a bit north of the last dig. The indications we had seem to show that some of the random fossils come from that area in the runoff."

"You stop by Jeff's?" Helen wasn't sure, but Jackie's gaze seemed somewhat more intense than usual.
Jeff Little owned a souvenir shop in the nearest town, and specialized in buying and selling fossils from the local rock hounds and collectors. If a new group of fossils started showing up, he was generally the first to know.



"Yes, we did. He didn't seem to have much new, except one bone that might—might—have come from a dromeasaur or related species."
There was no mistaking the gleam in Jackie's eyes now. "Well, Jeff doesn't get all the good stuff. After the time I've spent working with you, I can spot the real winners out in the field if I run across them. Most of that stuff he gets is junk."



"Sure, you showed me your better pieces last year, too. Saves us having to bargain with Little for them."



"I've got something really nifty this year, I think. Came down in the year's runoff, and I think I've got a good idea where it came from. Be right back." Jackie trotted upstairs to fetch her prize.



Jackie's mother had come in from the kitchen by then. "Would you like some lemonade?" she asked, then gestured at the couches and armchairs scattered about the sprawling ranch-style living room. "And why don't you two sit down a spell before you go out there to start your digging?"



"Don't mind if I do," Joe said, sighing histrionically. "A chair that isn't bouncing up and down will be a comfort."



"Cut it out, Joe!"



Jackie came clattering down the stairs, holding something behind her. "Ready?"



"Let's see it."





A few minutes later, Helen looked up. "Joe, take a look at this."



Joe put down the lemonade Mrs. Secord had handed him, rose from the couch and joined Helen in staring at the object.



It resembled nothing so much as a large blackish shoehorn— Helen estimated it at around fifteen centimeters long and ranging from three to six centimeters wide, with a concave side and a little hook on the narrow end.



"Some kind of brachiopod relative?"



"Not one I'm familiar with. Look at these marks here."



Joe frowned, then took the object and studied it more closely. "Well, it's definitely a fossil, and . . . those sure look like muscle attachment scars. But what're they doing on both sides of this thing, if it's a shell? Should run down only one side, shouldn't they?"



"That'd be my expectation, too. But if this is a bone, why is it so thin and concave? I've never even heard of anything like that."



Joe was good at visualizing anatomy—much better than Helen, in fact, who always had to sit down and sketch it out a piece at a time. His face now screwed up in concentration. "If you had a. . . no, no, that wouldn't make sense. Oh, but maybe . . . no, not that either. I suppose if . . ."



He turned the fossil over, examining the backside carefully. "Darn. No sign of it being a piece of something else, either, which might have explained it." He turned it over and over a couple more times, shifting his point of view as though it might suddenly become an obvious and familiar fossil from some different angle, then handed it back to Helen.



"Okay, you win, Jackie. I'm beat. Do you know what it is?"



Jackie shook her head, looking excited and trying not to—after all, she wasn't a high school girl any longer, and hadn't been for a number of years. "No, not really. I knew it didn't look like anything I'd seen before, but I was sure you people would know right away. Are you guys putting me on? You really, truly don't know what it is?"