The Dinosaur Feather

down.
    That night, Clive drank too much white wine before he staggered back to his hotel room. The next morning, he woke up with a dreadful taste in his mouth and grabbed a fizzy drink from the minibar. While he was drinking it, he switched on the television and found CNN. For a fraction of a second, he thought he must be the victim of a cruel hoax. To the right of the presenter was a huge photograph which, to Clive, looked like a dinosaur with clearly visible feathers.
    At that moment, the presenter cut to a CNN reporter who announced, with cracked lips as though he had trekked all the way to Asia, that he was in the Liaoning Province in north-eastern China.
    ‘This is a sensation,’ the reporter panted. ‘Early this morning farm-workers discovered what might be the world’s first feathered dinosaur. Tonight, the first experts have already reached the area and a few minutes ago, they confirmed that the newly discovered fossil is not a prehistoric bird, but a predatory dinosaur belonging to the Theropod family. The animal is believed to have lived between 121 and 135 million years ago, and the exciting feature is that it has fossilised but extremely well-preserved down running in a ridge from itshead and along its back. The tantalising questions here in north-eastern China are these: were dinosaurs able to fly and were they warm-blooded, or are these feathers astonishing proof that feathers weren’t only used for flying, but also for insulation? We’ll know more once the experts have had a chance to examine this thrilling discovery in detail. Back to the studio.’
    Clive stared at the screen for nearly twenty minutes. Then he crushed his cola can.
    Kay greeted him with a nervous smile when he came back to Vancouver. The telephone had rung constantly all morning and please would he call . . . and she reeled off the names of everyone from his colleagues at the department to national television stations. Jack hadn’t called.
    Clive made himself a sandwich, gave Kay’s cheek a reassuring pat and went to his study. Calmly, he ate his sandwich. The discovery in China was obviously a prehistoric bird, not a dinosaur. Dinosaurs didn’t have feathers. He downloaded forty-eight e-mails and skimmed through them. Irritably, he opened one from Lars Helland. Typical. The Danish scientist just had to put his oar in, in his usual affable manner, of course, so that it might be mistaken for good-natured banter. Clive deleted the e-mail.
    When he had finished on the computer, he leaned back and tried not to think about Jack. Why hadn’t he called? Clive had still to meet Molly, Jack’s wife. They had just had their second daughter and Clive hadn’t even seen the first one yet. Once upon a time, Clive had been the sole recipient of Jack’s rare, blinding smiles, the one who triggered his exclamations of surprise, the one who prompted him to pressthe tip of his tongue against the corner of his mouth in concentration when learning new facts. Now it was likely to be Molly and the two little girls. Clive was well aware that the distance was partly his own making. Jack had briefly met Clive’s sons, Tom and Franz, one day when the boys had picked him up from the university car park, and had, on one occasion, met Kay at a conference dinner which Jack had attended alone. However, distance was one thing, deliberate avoidance was something else. Jack was conspicuously polite and friendly, and always had time for a professional discussion, but Clive found his private reticence unbearable. They didn’t have to get together with their wives and children, the very thought caused Clive to break into a sweat, but Clive and Jack had a connection and it was as if Jack refused to acknowledge it, even when they were alone. It was absurd. Clive knew Jack better than anyone. He had Jack in his blood, in the tips of his fingers, which still remembered the feeling of ruffling Jack’s dark hair.
    Jack would know perfectly well that the discovery of an allegedly feathered dinosaur meant late nights for Clive, who would need weeks to defend his position and refute the implications which the media and every other idiot would draw from the discovery. Jack not letting Clive into his life might be a coincidence, it might even be Clive’s own fault. But Jack not ringing him, that was deliberate.
    Clive called a meeting with his department that Monday and later the same day they issued a press release announcing that UBC’s Department of Bird