Bones of the Earth

11. Chalk Talk

Xanadu Station: Mesozoic era. Cretaceous period. Gallic epoch. Twonian age. 95 My B.C.E.

The meeting room was built into a cliff overlooking the Tethys Sea. Ordinarily the view through the glass wall was enough to fill the soul and elevate the spirit, and even at the exorbitant rates charged for its use, the room was booked solid for every clear day until its scheduled demolition. Today, however, the weather was dreary. A dull rain spattered against the windows and turned the ocean water gray.

Griffin sat in a leather conference chair, thinking about chalk.

It was only vertebrate chauvinism that made people think dinosaurs were the most important living things of their time. From the mid-Cretaceous onward, one of the most significant and varied families of organisms on Earth was the calcareous algae. Though microscopically small, these spherical plants had armored themselves with ornately structured overlapping calcium plates. The warm seas contained galaxies of calcareous algae, living uneventful lives and shedding their cu

The exoskeletal debris from the algae and other na

Griffin often meditated upon this. The thought that such transient lives served the diverse purposes of a higher order of life pleased him. He wondered sometimes if the human race would leave behind a legacy half so enduring. Such thoughts calmed him, usually.

Not today.

Today, everything was fucked. Griffin had come at last, as he’d always known he would, to a dead end. The fairy castle he had built out of playing cards and hope was trembling in the breeze. Any second now, it would collapse. Everything he’d worked for, the sacrifices he’d made, the hard and sometimes cruel decisions that had been forced on him—all was come to futility. Everything was fucked and done for.

The door opened and closed behind him. He did not need to look to know that Salley had entered the room. She came up behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. Briefly, she kneaded the muscles. They were stiff and knotted.

“All right,” she said. “What is it?”

There were so many responses he could have made. Almost at random, he said, “I’ve never hit a woman.” He could see her ghostly reflection in the window wall, tall and regal as a queen. Below her he was slumped in his leather armchair like a defeated king waiting for the barbarians to arrive. Their eyes met in the glass. “Today, I almost hit you.”

“Tell me why.”

Griffin had been away from Salley for a week when he finally returned to his room in Xanadu. But for her, it had only been a half hour. He knew because, as he always did in such cases, he’d written himself a memo.

His plan was simply to say a quiet goodbye. Salley was scheduled to leave on the Baseline Project expedition in the morning. Knowing what hardships she would face, and how long it would be before her rescue, he wanted to say something that would linger. Something that would, on reflection, offer her a touch of secret hope when it looked like she was stranded forever.

But when he’d tried saying the carefully composed words, she’d stopped his mouth with kisses. She’d hooked a leg behind him and shoved him on the chest, tumbling him down on the bed. Then she took his shirt in both hands and pulled, scattering buttons in all directions. What happened then should have been every bit as much fun as he’d had the first time with her.

It wasn’t, of course.

It made him feel guilty. There was no use denying that. But what choice did he have? Anything else would only have been that much crueler for her. So he was using her. So what? It hadn’t been his decision. She’d seduced him, for Christ’s sake! It would be different if it had been the other way around. But he wasn’t going to carry the can for a situation that was entirely of her own making.

Griffin had been married before, both times to women who ended up making him feel confused and defensive. Women who introduced chaos and emotion into what should have been an orderly existence. Women toward whom—it could not be denied—his feelings were mixed, even now.

This was why relationships were such a bad idea.

For all his experience, however, he had to admit that Salley was a particularly exhausting woman. She made demands. She took up all of his attention. She melted every bone in his body. By the time she was done with him, he lacked the desire even to sit up.

To her, on the other hand, sex was clearly a tonic. It made her glow. Afterwards, she crouched over him, smiling, and, bending down, covered his face with soft kisses. “Don’t try to get up,” she said. “I’ll show myself out.”

“I really should make sure you get back to the Carnian in time to make your preparations.”

“I’m already packed. I’m cleared to take the fu

“No, really, I can’t let you…”

“Hush,” she said. “Don’t say a word. Let me watch you fall asleep, before I go.”

Gratefully, suspecting nothing, he let sleep overcome him.

In the morning he awoke to find Salley rattling about in the kitchenette, brewing a pot of coffee. She was wearing one of his shirts, and whenever she reached for something, it rode up to reveal her bare bottom.

Griffin sat bolt upright, shocked fully awake. “What time is it? Why are you still here?” He snatched up his watch. It read 8:47 A.M. Disbelieving, he slid it on his wrist.

“Relax.” She came into the room with two cups of coffee and handed him one. “There was a change in the expedition’s roster. Lydia Pell took my place.” She put down her cup and rummaged about in her purse. “Here. I brought you a copy of that day’s traffic log.”

Griffin unfolded the sheet one-handed and stared at it in disbelief. There was no denying its existence. Yet it simply could not be. He had seen that exact same sheet (the light blue flimsies were never duplicated nor their ID numbers reused) on his desk, with “Salley, G. C.” at the top of the roster. Now her name was absent, and replaced by Lydia Pell’s.

“You were supposed to be on that expedition. Goddamnit, you were on that expedition. It’s documented. It’s certain. I signed off on it myself. It’s already happened.” He placed his hand over his wrist and squeezed as hard as he could. “You’ve created a Class One time paradox.”

Salley smiled. “Yes, I know.”

“Tell me why,” Salley repeated.

So he did. It took a very long time, and he had to oversimplify wildly, but he managed. He told her something about the Unchanging, and quite a bit more about Holy Redeemer Ranch, and went into some detail about why, though he knew who was responsible, he couldn’t simply arrest the mole who’d planted the bomb in the expedition’s supplies.

He’d expected Salley to be angry when she learned that he had been prepared to send her off on a doomed expedition. She was not. To his astonishment, she was hanging on his every word, transparently fascinated.