The Dinosaur Feather(32)

“Did you have a good trip?” Jack asked, smiling.

“Yes,” Clive said.

“Coffee?”

Clive declined. Jack went to get some for himself, and when he returned he closed the door behind him and called his secretary to say he didn’t want to be disturbed for the next fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, Clive thought. Jack let himself fall into the chair behind his desk and looked at Clive.

“I can’t print your paper,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve got doubts,” Jack replied.

“About what?”

“About the origin of birds.” He held up his hand to forestall Clive’s reaction, but Clive was speechless.

“For years your position was reasonable. We were missing many decisive fossils, phylogenetic methods were still unreliable, and there were problems explaining the reduction of bird fingers. . . . During all that time I understood perfectly well why you didn’t buy the dinosaur theory. But now? New evidence is discovered every week, Clive. And everything points to birds being present-day dinosaurs, don’t you see? More than 250 apomorphies link birds and dinosaurs. Two hundred and fifty apomorphies! Including feathers. Feathers! Not to mention that more than 95 percent of the world’s scientists today agree that cladistics is the accepted phylogenetic method. Everyone’s using cladistics, except you. You have an impressive résumé, Clive. No one would think less of you if you changed your position—on the contrary. That’s the very core of science. That a hypothesis stands until it’s replaced by a better-supported one. Remember Walker? He dismissed his own theory when it no longer held up. He won a lot of admiration for that.”

Clive stared at Jack and, in that moment, he hated him. He remembered once when Jack was little and had cut his finger on a knife and Clive had stuck his finger in his mouth. Suddenly, he could taste the blood again.

“I want my story on the front page,” he whispered.

“We already have a lead story.”

“I’ve been an ornithologist for thirty years,” Clive said. “And now you’re telling me that some fashionable paleontology theory is going to end my career?” Clive shot up from his chair, reached over the desk and grabbed Jack’s jaw.

“Look at me,” he hissed. “I was like a father to you. I got you out of that shit hole you came from. Everything you’ve got,” he gestured toward the enormous desk and the stacks of journals, “you owe to me.”

Clive let go of Jack’s face and pointed at his paper lying on the desk. Then he left.

The next issue of Scientific Today was published in mid-August. On the cover was a photo of Caudipteryx, its left wing partly unfolded and beneath it the headline: THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES: THE CRETACEOUS TURKEY.

Clive was satisfied.


In the autumn of 2005, Clive was invited to take the hot seat at a major ornithology conference in Toronto, where he would participate in a live TV debate with a young Danish paleontologist, Dr. Erik Tybjerg, who appeared to have been promoted from being Lars Helland’s PhD student to his errand boy. Clive had met the young scientist several times because Helland made a point of staying away from conferences, and he found Tybjerg intensely annoying. He was an upstart who thought he knew it all, and Clive would regard it as a considerable pleasure to bring him down on national television.

Clive made a last-minute decision to fly to Toronto via his hometown. Since the death of his father, he tended to visit his mother every other year. She was an old lady now, practically blind and living in a nursing home. Clive looked forward to seeing her lined face and feeling her hand in his. He left three days before the conference and stayed at a hotel near the nursing home. When he wasn’t spending time with his mother, pushing her around in her wheelchair, he slept like a log in his room, ate well in the restaurant, and even managed four walks around the local area before traveling onward on the fourth day.

He landed in Toronto, rested and exhilarated. He was met at the airport and driven straight to the conference center where he left his luggage with a cloakroom attendant, collected his entry pass, and strolled around the many interesting booths.

Half an hour later he took a seat in a comfortable red armchair on the stage. Opposite was an identical but vacant armchair. The stage was bathed in light and Clive found it hard to see properly, but he was aware of a large audience taking their seats in the auditorium. A well-dressed young woman came out to greet him, introduced herself as the assistant to the producer, and asked if Clive was ready to be hooked up to his microphone. Of course, Clive answered and complimented her on her appearance. He noticed the young woman’s perfume, and she stood very close to him while she attached the clip of the micro port to his lapel.