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The Dinosaur Feather(29)

By:S. J. Gazan


“What are you doing here?” Clive said, at last.

“It’s my first day,” Jack said, smiling shyly. It was frightening how much he resembled his younger self. Clive couldn’t help feeling proud. This was his reward.

“You taught me everything about nature,” Jack said. “Everything I know. I’ll never forget that.”

“Don’t mention it,” Clive said. “You’ll find a way to pay me back one day,” he added, laughing.

Jack completed his biology degree and went on to do a PhD. He focused on the communication of natural science from the Renaissance up to the present day. Clive reviewed Jack’s PhD and felt edgy about it. He had hoped Jack would specialize in ornithology, and he didn’t regard the history of science as a proper subject. However, Jack was determined, and, shortly after his PhD had been accepted, he launched a new Canadian journal, Scientific Today, which quickly became the best-selling natural science journal in North America and soon also in Europe.

Eight years had passed since Clive and Jack had bumped into each other at the university, and they still met for lunch at regular intervals. They talked about science, they discussed recent university initiatives, they assessed scientific conferences, but they skillfully avoided ever mentioning their private lives, as though by tacit agreement. Sometimes they happened to stay in the same hotel during an out-of-town conference and, after the conference, they might dine together alone or with other colleagues. But it was never like the old days. It didn’t even come close. Clive wondered why he didn’t simply invite Jack and his wife, Molly, to his home for dinner. Kay would love it. She often remarked that they never entertained. But something inside him fought it. What would happen if the easy mood of a social setting loosened Jack’s tongue? Might he tell Kay that Clive had played with him every weekend for years, even though he had been fifteen years older than Jack? That Clive hadn’t had a single friend his own age? That Clive had taught Jack to kill and dissect animals but had never killed or dissected a single one himself? And what precisely did Jack remember about the night in the tree house? Clive shuddered. He had suffered beyond measure when Jack left, but it was all in the past now, and there it would stay.

In 2001 Clive published his life’s work, The Birds. The day the book came out, he spent a long time sniffing it. He had worked on it for four years, and every single one of his arguments was solid. Soon his opponents—Darren in New York, Chang and Laam in China, Gordon at the University of Sydney, and Clark and his team in South Africa—would be convinced that birds were a sister group to dinosaurs and not their descendants. Most of all, he was anticipating the reaction of Lars Helland in Denmark. The Danish vertebrate morphologist was the opponent who tormented Clive more than anyone else. Helland never attended any of the ornithology symposia held around the world, so Clive had never met him in person, but Helland’s papers were always meticulous and vicious. Every time Clive had published something on the evolution of birds, Helland could be relied on to provide an instant refutation, stating the exact opposite, as though he had nothing better to do than annoy Clive. However, Clive was convinced The Birds would silence Helland. Clive knew the Dane nearly always relied on the evolution of the manus, the bird’s hand, to illustrate the relationship between birds and dinosaurs, and neither Helland nor Clive’s other opponents had given much thought to the evolution of the feather. Consequently, Clive had decided the feather would be his trump card. He had studied the evolution of the feather for years. From now on, no one would be able to argue that feathers on present-day birds had anything to do with the feather-like structures found on dinosaurs.

When the book was published, it went straight to the bestseller lists in Canada and the United States. Every dinosaur-mad amateur biologist on the planet bought a copy. However, Clive’s fellow scientists ignored it. It received only a few peer reviews in the more serious journals, and, on each occasion, in a rather dismissive tone, as though it was a curiosity to fill column inches rather than an important scientific work. Only Scientific Today allocated it a half-decent amount of space, but even so Clive was dissatisfied. He tried to call Jack to find out why his book had received such minimal coverage and been bounced to page 22, but Jack was unavailable.

Clive volunteered to speak at every upcoming symposium and carefully rewrote every chapter of The Birds as individual papers that he submitted simultaneously to scientific journals all over the world. He thought about his father. Had his father still been alive, he would have been proud. The reactions came just under a month later. Clive was prepared. He had already drafted his counter arguments because he knew exactly where his opponents would attack: the crescent-shaped carpus, the reduction of fingers, the ascending process of the talus bone, and the alleged feathers.