“I don’t know much about it, she’s registered with another department. But as far as I know she’s only waiting to defend her dissertation, then she can graduate. I don’t know who will examine her in Helland’s place. We don’t have that many paleoornithologists in Denmark . . . Perhaps you might extend your stay and examine her?”
Clive was well aware that Professor Fjeldberg was teasing him.
“I would have to fail her,” he said, archly. “If she has written her dissertation in line with Helland and Tybjerg’s scientific arguments, I don’t think she has grasped even elementary evolution, and that surely is a fundamental requirement for a biologist.”
Fjeldberg looked briefly at Clive and said, “Why don’t we say I let you work here for a couple of hours until . . .” He glanced at his watch. “12:30 p.m.? Then I’ll pick you up, and we can have a bite to eat. I’ve ordered in, sandwiches and so on.”
Clive nodded.
The door closed behind Professor Fjeldberg and Clive was alone. He pulled out a chair, sat down, took out his magnifying glass, and started examining the skeleton. Dinornis Maximus. Fabulous. In relatively recent studies, scientists had successfully isolated DNA from bones of the long-extinct bird and proved the female had been 300 percent heavier and 150 percent taller than the male. Clive wasn’t sure he believed it. He carefully held the talus bone in both hands. He found a pad and made some notes. Then he started looking for the rudimentary front limbs, which had to be in the box somewhere. An hour later, he was in an excellent mood. The synapomorphies between this secondarily flightless bird and, say, Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx, which Tybjerg and Helland alleged were dinosaurs, were striking. More than ever, Clive was convinced that many of the animals, which Helland and Tybjerg claimed were dinosaurs, were in fact secondarily flightless birds from the Cretaceous and not dinosaurs at all. As far as he could determine, their skeletons were practically identical.
A noise made him turn around. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It sounded like a suppressed cough, and there was some barely audible scraping; he thought he could hear breathing. He rose and sniffed the air like a deer. The building sighed. Someone walked down the corridor outside. Clive relaxed his shoulders. He was in a public place, he reassured himself, yet he suddenly became very conscious of the far end of the Vertebrate Collection, which was lost in darkness.
He thought about how Helland had died. It was a revolting death. It was one thing to perish in an instant, another to die slowly as parasites in your tissue grew bigger. Worms, larvae, maggots. Clive shook his head to make the images go away. He hated the little monsters. They should be eliminated from the animal kingdom. He had once had a tick in his groin, which he hadn’t discovered until it was the size of a pea and purple and bloated like a plum. Kay had removed it with tweezers.
The memory distracted him. The darkness seemed to grow more intense; suddenly he thought the bones stank of old membranes and sweet decomposition. He got up and put the bones he had managed to study back in their box. He opened a couple of cabinets and pulled out some drawers. They were neat and tidy. One drawer contained teeth, another feathers, sorted according to size and color. Some cabinets contained pelts, others held specimens floating in spirit in glass jars. For a long time he gazed at a dissected dromedary eye, which stared back at him. He breathed out. He couldn’t shake off his unease. The darkness was mighty and menacing. He gave up and headed for the exit.
He found a seat in the corridor and stared out the window. It made no sense to start looking for Fjeldberg, he would only get himself lost. He decided to snooze. When Professor Fjeldberg arrived shortly afterward, he laughed and said the collection tended to have a soporific effect on everyone. Quiet as a womb and a few degrees too warm. They walked down the corridor, and Fjeldberg talked about the weather. After lunch, they discussed a possible joint project, and Clive almost forgot the spooky atmosphere in the collection, almost forgot Helland might have been murdered and Tybjerg was missing. Fjeldberg proposed an interesting project and when the two men parted, the seed to a future collaboration between the University of Copenhagen and UBC had been sown. Clive even dropped his planned rant about the feather exhibition.
“I’ll see you on Saturday,” Professor Fjeldberg said, and pressed Clive’s hand warmly.
Later that evening, Clive and Michael had dinner at a fancy restaurant. Clive studied the menu with dismay and was about to object when Michael said, “The department is paying!”
“What do you mean?” Clive said, surprised.