Boundary: Chapter Nine

    Helen gritted her teeth, willing herself to keep still in her chair. It helped that she had clamped both hands on the armrests to make sure she didn't move. If she let go of the armrests, she'd probably leap straight over the three rows of seats ahead of her and strangle Doctor Alexander Pinchuk with her bare hands.

    Helen had first encountered Dr. Pinchuk in her second semester as a graduate student. He'd been a visiting professor. Within a month, she had come to detest the man. Nothing in the years that came after, as she encountered Dr. Pinchuk time and time again—either personally at conferences or indirectly in professional journals—had changed her opinion except to deepen it.

    Wine improved with age. Dr. Pinchuk did not. The sarcastic nickname he'd been given by graduate students—Alexander the Great—had derived from the man's egotism. A decade and a half later, coming toward the end of a career that had never been very distinguished, Pinchuk was as sour as vinegar.

    Dr. Myrtle Fischer, an old classmate from those graduate student days, had hinted to Helen that she might want to attend Pinchuk's talk at the conference. Not that Helen had really needed the hint, given the title of the talk.

    Frauds, Fakes, and Mistakes: An Overview of Questionable and Falsified Paleontological Evidence and Methods.

    Leaving aside Helen's personal dislike for Pinchuk—she'd spent some considerable time avoiding him over the past many years; said avoidances including one outright rejection of a pass—she'd also taken him to task in several articles and at least one conference for sloppy fieldwork, something that he'd been perennially guilty of.

    Pinchuk, among other things, had a nasty streak. He not only kept grudges. He fed them and bred them.

    At first, the presentation seemed a good review of the history of the field, with a focus on misperceptions and outright fakery. But soon a theme emerged, wherein Pinchuk kept returning to the present and asking the question of whether such a fraud could be perpetrated in modern times. Each time, presenting a little example of how such a thing might be done. And each little example was, in fact, clearly drawn from her own dig. Without saying anything directly, the slimy bastard was implying that she'd faked Bemmie!

    The fact that the accusation bordered on the ludicrous wouldn't necessarily keep anyone from believing it. Dr. Pinchuk had done his research well. Helen was a bit astonished, in fact, when she finally realized how much effort he'd put into it.

    The approaches he described would, in fact, make it possible to create a fake even as complex as Bemmius, given the advances of current technology. People would ignore, or be unaware of, the other facts—for instance, that to make such a fake dig and set it up as described would take far more money and time than she'd received in grants over the past ten years. And that he was implying that the Secords were also in on the scam, as were all of Helen's associates and assistants.

    That made her even madder than the accusations against herself. She'd been prepared for something to be brought out against her, though the brazen effrontery of this approach went far beyond anything she imagined, but not for accusations against her friends.

    And now she was aware of the surreptitious glances being sent in her direction. She wasn't the only one who was catching Pinchuk's references. She wondered if it would do more harm than good to try to confront him.

    But... no, he was surely ready for that. If he'd spent this much time preparing what was obviously both an actually worthwhile paper and a carefully-crafted strike at her, he wouldn't have neglected to cover the likelihood of her presence.

    She could just ignore it, but that might give it more credibility. Helen ground her teeth together as Pinchuk unctuously began a discussion of another possible technique that "the paleontological field must keep vigilant watch for."

    Just as she felt she couldn't possibly keep seated any longer, someone else spoke.

    "Pardon me, Doctor Pinchuk."

    That deep, warm voice, clearly audible around the auditorium without benefit of microphone and speakers, yanked Helen's head around almost as though by a string. It was the voice she'd been dreading all weekend, since the big annual paleontological conference began.

    Dr. Nicholas Glendale rose from a seat in the back as Pinchuk recognized him.

    "Overall, Doctor, an excellent piece of work," Glendale began. Helen's heart sank. Attacks from Pinchuk she could handle. Overall, she out-pointed him professionally—by a big margin, in fact—and everyone knew it. But Glendale was, quite honestly, out of her league. As a paleontologist, Helen today was probably just as good—better, in fact, in the field. But in terms of reputation and professional politics, there was no comparison.

    "But while it's certainly instructive to think on past events," Glendale continued, "I think you are missing an opportunity with your review of potential techniques for modern fakery."

    She could make out the barely-restrained grin on Dr. Pinchuk's face very easily. "Indeed, Doctor? How so? I would be glad to elaborate on any of the points I have made so far."

    Glendale returned Pinchuk's smile with his charming white-toothed grin. "I'm not speaking so much of the points themselves. While, as you say, they could be elaborated upon, your descriptions were more than sufficient to get across the important elements. What I mean is that you weaken your argument by presenting it piecemeal. The audience can be left with the impression that one piece or another of some dig could be faked, but without the understanding that an entire dig could be successfully falsified."

    He raised an elegant eyebrow, questioningly. "Unless I am misinterpreting you?"

    "Not at all, Doctor, not at all! You're quite correct. Even a dig of quite considerable size could be effectively faked with the right techniques, even today, and proving it after the fact... Well, perhaps in twenty years. But we know what can happen in twenty years—and how hard it would be to eradicate false impressions that remain for that long."

    "I think," Glendale said, nodding in agreement, "that it would be instructive if we could go over, step by step, the faking of such a dig from start to finish. Unless I am imposing too much, Doctor Pinchuk?"

    By now, Helen thought, Pinchuk's professional smile was clearly straining to break through to some version of Evil Overlord Laughter.

    "I wouldn't mind at all, Dr. Glendale, as long as the audience doesn't. After all, I still have a few parts of my retrospective left."

    To judge by the anticipatory murmur that followed, Helen was probably the only one in the room who would rather just see the subject dropped. Pinchuk's eyes carefully avoided hers, giving the impression that he was utterly unaware that she was actually in the room—except that his smile widened momentarily when his gaze passed nearby.

    "Well, then, Doctor, let's see what we can do." Glendale joined Pinchuk on the lecture stage, without asking for an invitation. "We need a large, sensational fossil we want to fake. To make it really challenging, it should be something that's completely impossible in the fossil record. Something truly—"

    "Alien?" Dr. Pinchuk finished, innocently.

    "Alien?" Glendale mused on that theatrically for a moment. "Certainly an excellent candidate, but I think we should stick with something for which there's anecdotal evidence, so to speak. How about another creature of myth? A unicorn? No, something like that actually could have existed. Ah, I know. A dragon! Your classic dragon, four limbs plus two wings, tail, and so on. Fire-breathing metabolism, the works. And to be proper about it, let's put him in the Age of Dinosaurs—always a favorite for sensationalism."

    "Perhaps right on the K-T boundary?" That suggestion came from a member of the audience. Helen couldn't quite see who it was.

    Glendale looked rather torn, but Dr. Pinchuk nodded. "Oh, come on, Dr. Glendale. It allows the demonstration of all the techniques in one example."

    He sighed. "Oh, very well, but the combination is ludicrous."

    The talk, now an exploration in theoretical paleontology gone bad, continued. Glendale and Pinchuk alternated conversation as elements of the phony dig were explicated. For authenticity, Pinchuk demonstrated the use of actual fossils and how they could be effectively "salted" to the dig. Glendale raised objections of mineral consistency and solidity, pointing out that in order to fool observers and the cameras one would have to effectively fake rock. Dr. Pinchuk countered with numerous exhibits of replicated stone from recent laboratory studies—including one sample which looked suspiciously like the stone from which Bemmie had been dug. If that part was possible, Glendale conceded, it would take care of many of the objections.

    "Now, the skeleton itself would be a problem," he pointed out. "Perhaps you could use similar techniques to replicate the fossilized bone. But how would you make a convincing design for the creature? "

    Pinchuk was tall, very skinny, and had outsized elbows. The way he seemed to stoop over that question, even while sitting, reminded Helen of nothing so much as a vulture. A vulture with disheveled graying red hair, just to make things worse.

    "Ah! Excellent question! Let me refer you to my earlier images, Figures 19 through 23. As you can see, combining a modern 3-D modeling package with data on fossil formation, then putting the model through the desired process, leaves a model of a fossil in all the detail you desire. In fact, you'd probably want to damage the model some to make it look believable—here, let's rip off part of our dragon's wing and leave it over here. Then we can arrange to find the dig through this piece."

    A little titter ran through the audience, at this latest of Pinchuk's none-too-subtle jabs at Helen's work.

    "Excellent thinking, Doctor," Glendale said approvingly.

    Glendale continued to analyze the phony dig, and Dr. Pinchuk eagerly supplied explanations for every objection. Finally, the entire structure was complete.

    "If I may say so, Dr. Glendale," Pinchuk triumphantly concluded, "I believe between us we have built an ironclad case. Such things are possible today."

    "Ironclad indeed, Doctor." Nicholas Glendale was smiling broadly. His gaze swept the audience. When it reached Helen, staring in paralyzed fury, she thought she saw one eyelid dip—ever so slightly—in a wink.

    What...?

    "I have, in fact, been verifying your facts as we went along." Glendale patted the glittering ornament which was his personal data center. "They check out very well, although you are considerably more optimistic with a few elements than I feel comfortable with. Still, you've made an excellent case. A large dig such as this could indeed be faked, even well enough to fool modern technological investigation. Of course, doing so would cost—at rock-bottom minimum—about..."

    He looked down to check his figures. "Forty-six million dollars. Or, to put it another way, approximately six hundred times the annual salary of a fully-established paleontologist."

    Dr. Pinchuk's grin seemed to freeze on his face, and a hush fell over the audience.

    "Forty-six million... Well, it's true that—"

    "No matter," Glendale said breezily. "While it's clearly ludicrous to contend that any large and important dig could be faked in the real world"—his emphasis was sharply defined and unmistakable to everyone in the room—"your points still stand well on their own. Smaller fossils and digs are well within the capabilities of well-off notoriety seekers—millionaires, really, they'd have to be, to throw that much money around—and certainly should be watched for."

    The good humor seemed to fade a bit from his expression. "I just wished to caution the observers to draw no conclusions about large excavations from our admittedly overly ambitious example. Such a falsification, though within the realm of the theoretically possible, would be so expensive as to make it, in the real world, something out of science fiction. Fantasy, I should say."

    He gestured to the image of the falsified dragon fossil. "As fantastic as our draconic friend here. It would not only require money, but multiple co-conspirators in laboratories and at the dig itself. The latter is what truly dooms any such attempt at fakery, of course. Money itself doesn't talk, but in conspiracies we must all remember what Benjamin Franklin said."

    He paused, smiling at the audience, and finished. "'Three can keep a secret—if two of them are dead.' So be suspicious when someone hands you a fossil of Tinkerbell, but don't worry about something much larger. It may be weird, and the discoverer may be misinterpreting the data. But it's real. Don't think for a moment it isn't."

    He shook Dr. Pinchuk's hand with great enthusiasm. Since Pinchuk's whole arm seemed to have gone completely limp, it looked as if Glendale was shaking hands with a very large rag doll.

    "Thank you very much for an entertaining diversion, Doctor Pinchuk! Well, I'd best leave you to finish up." He bowed to the audience. "And thank you all for your patience."

    There was thunderous applause as Dr. Nicholas Glendale left the stage. Helen would have added to the applause, but on forcing her hands to release their grip she'd found they hurt too much. A huge weight was lifting from her shoulders. She couldn't help but laugh as she saw Pinchuk, still shell-shocked, try to resume his speech.

    But his audience was already up and leaving. They knew what had been happening, under the surface. And now that Glendale had utterly demolished him, there was nothing left to see. She waved cheerily to Pinchuk, then headed for the exit herself.