The Dinosaur Feather

under his curly fringe, and his downy upper lip pointed at Clive.
    It’s better this way, Clive told himself again long after the removal van had left. The way he felt about the new Jack was forbidden.
    The next time Clive saw Jack, he could hardly believe his own eyes. It was 1993. Clive had married Kay, they had two children and he had been appointed the youngest ever professor of the Department of Bird Evolution, Palaeobiology and Systematics. Clive recognised Jack immediately. He was standing to the left of the entrance, glancing at his watch. A worn briefcase by his feet. He was tall with very dark hair, and he had the face of a grown man, but Clive recognised the sharp line of his upper lip. His eyes were still guarded and the movement with which he swept aside his hair was the same it had always been. Clive felt flushed all over as he held out his hand to Jack. At first, Jack failed to recognise him, but then his eyes penetrated the soft beard Clive had grown and his face lit up.
    ‘Clive, isn’t it?’ he exclaimed, smiling. Jack was taller than Clive and, for a few seconds, they simply looked at each other.
    ‘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 sciencefrom the Renaissance up to the present day. Clive reviewed Jack’s PhD and felt edgy. He had hoped that Jack would specialise 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 up for lunch at regular intervals. They talked about science, they discussed recent university initiatives, they assessed scientific conferences, but they skilfully 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 round 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 that
The