The Dinosaur Feather

by S. J. Gazan

  In a fit of despair she started reading Freeman’s book The Birds from start to finish. Dr. Tybjerg had mentioned it several times and dryly remarked that when Anna was capable of pulling it apart, she would be ready to defend her dissertation. Anna had had the book lying on her desk for weeks. Every day when she left, she put it in her bag, intending to read it, and every night she managed seven lines before falling asleep. Time to bite the bullet now. Suddenly spurred on by the promise that everything would fall into place once she had read it, she immersed herself in the book.

  Freeman’s book was a masterpiece. It was filled with wonderful color photographs and illustrations, and throughout the text he argued seriously and soberly. He backed up his views with well-argued scientific conclusions, made references to existing literature, and allowed for doubt to remain where certain points had yet to be decided. Had it not been for Helland, and especially Tybjerg’s ardent assertion that Freeman was wrong, Anna would have bought Freeman’s sister-group theory on the spot. Freeman was without a doubt someone who knew what he was talking about, and this was the man she was supposed to “wipe the floor” with? When she had finished reading The Birds she had eighty-two pages of handwritten notes and hadn’t grown even a bit wiser; rather, she had become truly terrified of the task that lay ahead of her. With The Birds in her arms and her heart pounding, she decided to come clean with Dr. Tybjerg.

  Dr. Tybjerg was waiting for her in the cafeteria at the Natural History Museum, and Anna didn’t even have time to sit down in the chair opposite him before her misgivings poured out of her.

  “Dr. Tybjerg, I fail to see why Professor Freeman’s scientific position is wrong… I think his argument sounds convincing.”

  Dr. Tybjerg pursed his lips.

  “Well, then you haven’t read enough,” he said with zen-like calm.

  “It’s taken me three weeks to read The Birds,” Anna groaned.

  “Why on earth did you read all of it? You can flip through it. That’s more than enough for anyone.” Dr. Tybjerg took the book from her.

  “This book is a flash in the pan, nothing more.” He quickly thumbed the pages. Then he smiled. “But I do understand why it can seem a little overwhelming. Freeman appears convincing because he has convinced himself. Such people are always the worst.” Dr. Tybjerg paused and then looked as if he had come up with a plan.

  “Drop the book,” he ordered her. “Instead, read at least fifteen papers written by people who argue that birds are present-day dinosaurs, and fifteen papers by people who disagree. This will make everything clear to you. And stay away from books for the time being. Many of them are good and you can return to them later, but this one,” Dr. Tybjerg slammed The Birds on the table, “is nothing but whorey propaganda.”

  Anna exhaled through her nostrils.

  “And one final thing,” he added, giving her a short, sharp look. “You need to assume I’m right. You’ll be convinced in time, but until that happens you need to accept my position. Otherwise you’ll quite simply lose your way.”

  Dr. Tybjerg’s face told her the meeting was over. Anna nodded.

  Anna spent the next three days searching the database for published papers at the University Library for Natural Science and Health Studies in Nørre Allé. She kept reminding herself Tybjerg was right.

  The first day was an exercise in futility. There were tons of papers for and against, but she didn’t come across anything that convinced her that Helland and Tybjerg’s argument was more valid than Freeman’s. It wasn’t until day two that things improved. She had compiled over forty papers at that point, she had photocopied them and spread them out on the table in front of her, and she was just about to give into frustration again when a tiny flicker of light appeared in the darkness.

  If Tybjerg was right, if it really were the case that the kinship of birds to dinosaurs was as well supported as Tybjerg and Helland and… she did a quick count… around twenty-five other vertebratists from all over the world agreed it was, then it had to follow that their scientific position was the stronger, at least for now, as Dr. Tybjerg maintained. If that were true, well, then it was indeed remarkable that reputable journals such as Nature, Science, and, in particular, Science Today, which owed their existence to their scientific credibility, continued to assign column inches to it. Anna still was not convinced that this was the case, but that seemed secondary now. The situation would have been different if a sliver of doubt remained. If birds might have been dinosaurs, if fossilized evidence had yet to be discovered, which Anna could see had been the case in the 1970s and 1980s, if the feathered Sinosauropteryx hadn’t been found in 2000 or the feathered Tyrannosaurus in 2005. But there was plenty of fossil evidence. The feathered dinosaur was a reality, and it was clear in every single paper that argued in favor of the close kinship between birds and dinosaurs that the authors were convinced birds were dinosaurs. Utterly convinced.

  Anna stared into space.

  Dr. Tybjerg had told her that the editorial committee of a scientific journal typically consisted of five people with a science background, which, broadly speaking, meant that fifteen people from the three leading journals, Nature, Science, and Science Today, were in supreme command of which scientific topics would reach the public. Fifteen people. That’s not many, Anna thought, and in order to avoid giving preferential treatment to certain subjects or areas of research, those fifteen people had to consider very carefully if what they published did, in fact, reflect the actual work being carried out across the world. And this was where things didn’t add up. Even though experts agreed that birds were present-day dinosaurs, Anna found in every other journal, at least, new contributions to the debate. She could feel the excitement pump through her body. Quick as lightning she sorted the papers into two piles, then she highlighted the names of the authors in yellow, and when that was done, she leaned back and smiled. There were twenty-four full-length papers and minor contributions in the pile that supported the kinship of birds to dinosaurs; there were twenty-three contributions in the pile that didn’t believe that birds were present-day dinosaurs. Together, Dr. Tybjerg and Professor Helland accounted for five of the articles in the one pile; the remaining nineteen had been written by sixteen other vertebratists from universities all over the world. It was a rather convincing spread.

  Then she went through the pile with twenty-three papers. These were written by three different authors. Clive Freeman, Michael Kramer, and Xian Chien Lu. Clive Freeman and Michael Kramer were responsible for nineteen out of the twenty-three articles. Anna got up and found a computer with Internet access. First she looked up Xian Chien Lu and discovered that the Chinese paleontologist had died the previous year. That left only Clive Freeman and Michael Kramer. It took Anna eight clicks to learn that Michael Kramer had completed his graduate degree at the department of Bird Evolution, Paleobiology, and Systematics at the University of British Columbia in March 1993, been awarded a PhD grant in 1993 by the same department, and had written his thesis there from 1997–2000, after which he had been employed as a junior professor in June 2000. Anna’s eyes scanned his résumé and soon found what she was looking for: his MSc and his PhD supervisor was Professor Clive Freeman, his internal PhD examiner was Professor Clive Freeman, and the Senior Professor at the department of Bird Evolution, Paleobiology, and Systematics was Clive Freeman. For the first time since Anna had started her graduate work, she felt she had made a breakthrough.

  Anna had just taken off her jacket, shaken thoughts of Lily’s upsetting meltdown at the nursery school from her mind, and switched on her computer when she pricked up her ears. She knew every sound in the department. The groaning extraction system, the shrill smoke alarms, the Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday noises of students conducting experiments, the sound of Helland’s busy footsteps, of Johannes’s snail’s pace shuffle, of Svend Jørgensen and Elisabeth Ewald, the other two professors in the department, who wore soft rubber soles and clicking heels, respectively. However, the sound Anna was now hea
ring didn’t fit in. Someone was running, then they stopped, and she heard Johannes call out for Professor Ewald in a half-strangled voice followed by the sound of running feet again, and then Professor Ewald’s voice and then Professor Jørgensen’s. Frowning, Anna rolled back her chair and stuck her head out into the corridor. Johannes was standing in front of Professor Jørgensen’s lab, his arms flailing.

  “He’s just lying there… I think he’s dead. He looks dreadful. They’re coming, emergency service said, they’re coming right away; they said I wasn’t to leave him, but I can’t look at him. His tongue… it’s his tongue.” Anna stepped into the corridor and joined the trio, who started moving away from her before she reached them. They were running now. Anna started running too, and ten seconds later they stopped in front of Helland’s open door.

  For a moment they all froze. Professor Helland was lying in his recliner. He was still wearing the gray trousers that Anna had seen only minutes earlier through the gap in the door when she arrived. He slumped slightly, his arms hung rigid to either side, and his eyes were wide open. In his lap, as though he had been reading it, lay Anna’s dissertation. There was blood on it. Then she noticed his tongue.

  It was lying on his chest. One end of it looked like an ordinary rough, flesh-colored tongue, the other was a severed, bloody limb, elongated and shredded like prepared tenderloin. Johannes was standing behind them, whimpering, and Anna, Professor Ewald, and Professor Jørgensen reacted simultaneously by retreating to the corridor.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  They had arranged to meet to discuss their paper, Johannes stammered, his hands and eyes fluttering. “I was on time,” he said. Helland had failed to answer the door, so he had pushed it open, and there was Helland, rattling, his tongue had fallen out of his mouth, that was how it had looked, as though it had let go of Helland’s mouth at that very moment and dropped down onto his chest. Johannes had grabbed him, only the whites of Helland’s eyes were showing; Johannes had panicked, run to the back office and called 911.

  Professor Jørgensen went to the men’s room across from Helland’s office and threw up.

  “We have to go back inside,” Anna said. “What if he’s still alive? What’s if he’s not dead yet? We have to help him.”

  “I’ll go,” Professor Ewald declared.

  “We mustn’t touch anything,” Johannes called out. “They told me not to.”

  “Calm down, Johannes,” Anna said. She felt dizzy. Professor Jørgensen emerged from the men’s room white as a sheet. Then they heard the sound of the approaching emergency vehicles.

  “Bloody hell,” Professor Jørgensen said, rubbing one eye with the palm of his hand.

  The emergency vehicles were close now, and soon they heard people thunder up the stairs. Two uniformed police officers and an ambulance doctor arrived; the doctor disappeared immediately into Helland’s office and thirty seconds later another pair police officers arrived. One of the officers entered Helland’s office and the other three started asking questions. Professor Jørgensen and Professor Ewald talked over each other and Anna fixed her eyes on a button on the floor. The two professors disappeared down the corridor with one of the officers, and Anna stared at the button until a warm spot on her head told her Johannes was looking at her.

  “Right, we had better have a chat,” a police officer said to Anna and Johannes. They spoke for five minutes. Johannes repeated what he had already said, and Anna explained who she was and said she had seen Helland’s trousers through the gap in the door as she passed on her way to her office, that she had heard agitated voices coming from inside, and yes, it might just have been one agitated voice, and no, she hadn’t heard exactly what had been said. Johannes kept staring at her. Anna tentatively held out her hand to see if it was trembling. It was.

  The doctor emerged in the doorway and quietly briefed the two police officers, who nodded. One officer took Anna and Johannes a little farther down the corridor, where he told them to sit down.

  “Please wait here. We’ll be a few minutes,” he said and returned to Professor Helland’s door. Anna watched as the two officers cordoned off the entrance to Helland’s office and a section of the corridor with red-and-white police tape.

  More police officers arrived, uniform and plain clothes. Two of the plain-clothes officers put on thin, white boiler suits and face masks and disappeared into Helland’s office. A tall man came over to Anna and Johannes and introduced himself as Superintendent Søren Marhauge. He had brown eyes, freckles, and short hair, and he looked kindly into Anna’s eyes.

  At Anna’s suggestion they went to the small library, which lay between Professor Jørgensen’s and Helland’s laboratories. Søren Marhauge had a soft voice with a strange, slow drawl, as though he struggled to articulate his thoughts. Anna grew impatient. She thought he asked her the same question over and over, and by the time there was a knock on the door twenty minutes later, she had nicknamed him the World’s Most Irritating Detective. An officer poked his head around the door, whispered a message, and the meeting was over. The World’s Most Irritating Detective disappeared down the corridor and Anna returned to her study. The corridor was teeming with police. She groaned to herself. In two weeks exactly she would defend her dissertation which, at this very moment, lay in Professor Helland’s office, soaked in blood.

  Chapter 3

  It was early Monday morning, October 8. Søren Marhauge was driving to Copenhagen, his car right behind a red Honda. He was Denmark’s youngest police superintendent, based at Copenhagen’s Police Department A, Station 3 in Bellahøj. It was well known that Søren had risen quickly through the ranks because he could “knit backward” as he called it. He possessed an extraordinary eye for the true nature of things, and many of the most spectacular conclusions reached in Department A had been achieved by Søren. At the age of thirty he had been promoted to superintendent. That was seven years ago.

  Søren was in a hurry, so he overtook the Honda. He was late because he had stopped in Vangede to have breakfast with Vibe. Vibe and Søren had dated for seventeen years, but three years ago they’d split up. They had lived together in Nørrebro in Copenhagen, but Søren now lived in a house in Humlebæk, north of the city. Vibe had since married and lived with her husband in a house by Nymosen in the suburb of Vangede.

  When they were still a couple, Vibe and Søren had done everything together. Picked strawberries, taken the train together all through Europe, traveled to India, shared student housing, and opened a totally unnecessary joint bank account. They had even worn matching rings. In those seventeen years it had never once crossed Søren’s mind that Vibe might not be the right girl for him. Vibe was his girl. The end. They had met at a high school dance, their teenage romance continued into adulthood, and no one ever questioned it, least of all Søren.

  Then one morning Vibe woke up wanting to have a baby. Having children wasn’t something they had ever really discussed, and when Vibe first brought it up Søren didn’t take much notice. But the genie was out of the bottle. Vibe’s biological clock had started ticking and soon the putative child became a sore point. Søren didn’t want children. He explained why: he had no parental urges at all. He thought that in itself was a good enough reason. Vibe began screaming at him. Vibe, who had been good-natured and sweet all through their time together, refused to accept his ridiculous position: there are two of us in this relationship, she argued. Søren tried to explain again. Needless to say, he only made matters worse. He went for a walk to think it through. He felt no desire to be a father, but why? For the first time since meeting Vibe, he wondered whether it was because he didn’t love her enough. That evening—without screaming—she made the very same point: if she wanted a child so badly and he wouldn’t give it to her, then it was because he didn’t love her. I do love you, Søren protested, desperately. But you don’t love me enough, Vibe had replied. She had her back to him and was taking off her earrings while Søren thought about what she had said. Slowly, she turned around. Yo
ur hesitation says it all, she declared, I think we should split up. Her eyes were challenging him.

  Obviously they weren’t going to split up. Vibe was his best friend, his closest and most trusted ally. She knew Elvira and Knud, she knew why he had grown up with his grandparents; she was family and he loved her. Søren hugged her tightly that night and they agreed to give it some time or, more accurately, they agreed that if Søren didn’t change his mind very soon, he would have to go.

  Søren was born in Viborg in Jutland. For the first five years of his life he lived with his parents. His maternal grandparents, Knud and Elvira, lived nearby in his mother’s childhood home which lay outside a small village, on a hill, with a garden that sloped steeply down behind the house. The lawn was impossible to mow, and the long tangled grass offered numerous places to hide. Søren had hardly any memories of his earliest childhood, but he remembered Knud and Elvira’s red house vividly, probably because it was there that Knud had told him his parents had been killed in a car crash. Knud and Elvira had been looking after him that weekend; Søren’s parents had borrowed their car and driven off on an adventure. He remembered being told at the far end of the garden one summer’s evening with Spif, the dog, standing next to him, barking. The next childhood memory he could clearly recall was their move to Copenhagen, to the house in Snerlevej. Knud and Elvira were teachers and both got jobs at the nearby public school, which Søren also attended. Søren lived in Snerlevej for the rest of his childhood. Far, far away from the red house.