The Dinosaur Feather

don’t you all move closer to the coffin?’
    People got up and filled the front pews and when Mrs Kampe began to sob, a woman with heavy black make-up and green hair gently took her hand. Anna sat in the fourth row letting her tears fall freely. The coffin was pure white. It should have been wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

CHAPTER 21
     
    Anna looked out across the almost fifty people gathered in Lecture Hall A at the Institute of Biology. She didn’t know most of them, postgraduates from other departments and institute staff, who must have seen her viva listed on the internal notice board. Hanne Moritzen sat in the back row. In her grief, she glowed faintly, like a distant moon. Asger had been buried last Saturday and Anna had attended the service. At first, they had been the only two mourners, but Dr Tybjerg arrived at the last minute, dressed in a nice but crumpled suit and with a new haircut. The organ started playing and none of them heard the door open and shut again, but when the service was over and they rose to leave, Mrs Helland was sitting at the back of the church. She said nothing and she didn’t look up.
    Anna’s eyes swept across the seat rows. There was Jens and Cecilie, and Karen next to them. They all watched her with excitement and Jens’s eyes were moist. Anna had told him not to take photographs, that it would distract her and make her nervous, but she couldn’t stop herself from grinning when, for the fourth time in less than ten minutes, he sneaked out his camera and snapped a picture of her.
    They had all had dinner together the other day, Anna, Karen, Lily, Jens and Cecilie, and it had gone very amicably. They had talked about Troels, and Karen and Cecilie had cried. That was all right. Anna understood that they were shocked. After the meal, Karen had gone to the corner shop and Jens, Anna and Cecilie had cleared up while Lily put her dolls in a drawer in the living room. Cecilie started to speak, ‘Er, Anna,’ she said, in a certain way. Anna stopped her.
    ‘But we have to talk about it,’ Cecilie protested, her voice thick and Jens standing behind her, nodding.
    ‘We do, Anna, my love,’ he said.
    ‘And I want to,’ Anna replied. ‘I promise you. But not now. I’m exhausted.’
    Cecilie and Jens had accepted that.
    At that moment, Karen returned with marshmallows and they all played a game of Monopoly.
    Her lecture would begin in five minutes. Anna was sweating. They had agreed that Karen would pick Lily up from nursery between Anna’s lecture and examination. Afterwards there would be cake and champagne for everyone in the department, and Lily was, of course, invited.
    Dr Tybjerg sat in the front row, tilting his pencil. He was dressed in the crumpled suit he had worn at Asger’s funeral and he looked gravely at her. He pointed to his watch with his pencil and Anna nodded.
    She lowered the lights and took a deep breath.
    She opened with a short historical review and proceeded to the in-depth presentation of scientific ideals where she succinctly accounted for Popper, then Kuhn and Daston afterwhich she extracted the basic rules for scientific integrity, which had been listed on the paper she had given to Professor Freeman. It took her about fifteen minutes. The next thirty minutes she spent reviewing the morphological evidence linked to the controversy. At fairly high speed, she went through the stratigraphic disjunction, the half-moon-shaped carpus, the furcula, the ascending process of the talus bone, the fingers of the bird hand and the base of the pubic bone, whereupon she considered in detail first the disputes and then the theoretical science problems linked to the evolution of the feather. She held a small remote control in her hand, and while she explained, illustrations and keywords flashed up on the screen behind via a computer.
    Anna briefly looked out into the darkness.
    ‘After this review it should be clear that Clive Freeman, Professor of Palaeoornithology at the Department of Bird Evolution, Palaeobiology and Systematics at the University of British Columbia, didn’t adhere to the most basic rules for sober science, and his archosaur theory is riddled with major internal contradictions and a striking absence of consistent methodology. The central question is . . .’ Anna paused and tried to find Dr Tybjerg’s eyes in the half-light, ‘why? Why is the opposition reluctant to accept that birds are descended from dinosaurs? I propose three possible