The Dinosaur Feather (50 page)

Professor Freeman was white as a sheet.

“Last, but not least, you write in 2000 and in 2002, in
Science
and
Scientific Today
respectively, it’s impossible to imagine that a structure as complex as a feather might have evolved independently in different situations, which is likely to be correct. However, the inconsistency arises the moment you, on several occasions in 1996, 1999, and 2000, argue brazenly that other, equally complex structures found in both birds and dinosaurs, such as the half-moon-shaped carpal, might well be the result of convergent evolution. Isn’t it absurd that the feather, according to you, could
not
have evolved independently, while the half-moon-shaped carpal
could
?” Anna raised her eyebrows and looked at Professor Freeman.

“Have you finished?” he groaned.

“Yes,” Anna said. “I’ve proven the same kind of sweeping inconsistency and absence of methodology with respect to your arguments about stratigraphic disjunction, the carpus, the furcula, the ascending process of the talus bone, the fingers of the bird hand, and the orientation of the pubic bone. However, I think my time’s up.”

Nothing happened for several seconds. The air stood still and Anna’s heart raced. Then Professor Freeman pushed back his chair and walked out.

Anna let herself fall into Freeman’s empty chair. She heard his footsteps fade away; she heard the doors close, and she sensed how his defeat was absorbed by the stillness of the room. Her heartbeat slowly returned to normal.

“You can come out now, Dr. Tybjerg,” she said.

She didn’t say it very loud; she knew he was close by.

Anna and Dr. Tybjerg put Karen and Lily on the number 18 bus. Tybjerg was less than thrilled, but Anna had insisted and helped him into his jacket as though he was a child.

“I’ll be there in an hour,” Anna promised. Karen looked dubious.

“Karen, I’ll be there in an hour,” she repeated, gravely. “If you make the batter, I’ll make pancakes when I get home.”

Lily shouted with glee and Karen relented.

When the bus had departed, Tybjerg said, “I’ve never met your daughter before.”

And Anna replied, “No.”

Then they caught a bus to Bellahøj police station. Tybjerg seemed drained and kept squinting in the light.

They introduced themselves at the reception but didn’t even have time to sit down before Søren Marhauge came racing out and looked from Anna to Dr. Tybjerg, dumbfounded.

“Er, hi,” he said. “Glad you’re here.”

They were put in separate interview rooms. Dr. Tybjerg gave her an anxious look before his interview began, but Anna shook her head gently. You’ll be fine, she signaled.

The interview lasted thirty minutes. Søren’s questions were precise and thorough, and she tried to reply likewise. When Søren told her that Asger Moritzen was dead, the tears started falling down her cheeks. Søren got up. He’s about to hand me a tissue, she thought, to wipe away my tears, tell me to pull myself together, be strong. But he didn’t. He squeezed her shoulders gently and told her she was free to go once she signed her statement.

Back at Anna’s they ate pancakes and, later, lasagna, salad, and ice cream.

“We’re having a party,” Lily said, again and again, and Karen and Anna laughed every time.

When Lily had been put to bed, they sat in separate chairs in front of the fire and shared a bottle of wine, while Anna told Karen the story from beginning to end, even though some of it was probably confidential. She didn’t care. When she had finished, Karen looked at her for a long time.

“You need to open the door to Thomas’s office.”

Anna closed her eyes and didn’t respond.

“Anna—”

“I’ll open it,” she cut in. “I’m not scared of opening it. There’s nothing behind it. The room’s empty.” She straightened up.

“But first I have to do something I really am scared of.” She glanced at Karen.

“Stay where you are,” she went on. “Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, please. Just be here, all right?”

Karen nodded.

Anna stood by the dark window, her hand on the telephone, looking down into the street, now slushy with melted snow. She could see Karen’s reflection in the glass; she was sitting in the chair to the left of the stove with her legs curled up, her chin resting on her knee. Anna breathed right down into her diaphragm, then she picked up the telephone and pressed Thomas’s number. It was past eleven, and it rang six times before he answered, drowsy with sleep.

“It’s Anna,” she said.

Thomas sighed.

“What do you want?” he said, as though she rang him constantly. “I was asleep. I’m working shifts.”

“I’m calling to tell you I forgive you.”

“What?”

“I’m saying,” Anna cut the letters out of a large, heavy sheet of metal, “that I f-o-r-g-i-v-e you. I forgive you for messing up my and Lily’s life.” Her voice gained strength. “I forgive you for being a fraud. I forgive you for never really loving me, and I forgive you for being cold. I forgive you for being a coward, I forgive you for all the stuff you haven’t got the guts to face, I forgive you for all your lies and your habit of blaming everyone but yourself. I forgive you for only seeing what you want to see, I forgive you for—”

“Do you know something, I don’t need to listen to your crap,” he said and slammed the telephone down.

Anna looked out across the street.

“No, I don’t suppose you have to. But I forgive you anyway, damn you,” she said and added into the telephone: “Except one thing. I’ll never forgive you for depriving Lily of her father.” Then she hung up.

She turned around and faced Karen, who was still sitting in front of the stove and said, “Why don’t we take a look at your new room?”

Karen smiled.

Johannes was cremated on Thursday October 18. The day before Anna called Mrs. Kampe to ask when and where, and she replied it was a small and private service but Anna was welcome. When Anna arrived at the chapel of Charlottenlund Church at 12:50 p.m. she encountered ninety-five goths in full costume. It was a glorious sight. Mrs. Kampe stood away from the crowd, looking lost.

Inside the church, she sat alone in the front pew, but just before the service was about to begin, she rose and asked in a meek voice, “Why 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 makeup 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 disseration defense 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 fresh 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 asked 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 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 they were shocked. After the meal, Karen had gone to the corner store 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 school between Anna’s lecture and examination. Afterward 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 after which she extracted the basic rules for scientific integrity, the same that 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 paleoornithology at the Department of Bird Evolution, Paleobiology, 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 reasons.”

Anna took a step toward her audience.

“Firstly, it’s human to see what you want to see.” Anna dearly wished she could look into her mother’s eyes, but Cecilie was lost in the darkness. “And in people’s minds, dinosaurs don’t have feathers as per previous definitions. The same conservatism applies to birds. Birds are unique and advanced, and every child can tell you they look nothing like dinosaurs. After all, they’re not big scary creatures with teeth!”

A short burst of laughter from the hall.

“The truth often lies elsewhere,” she went on, “in the ground, from where it must be excavated, dusted down, and interpreted as objectively as possible.” She let the conclusion linger for a moment, and then she went on:

“Secondly, there’s human obstinacy, here camouflaged as scientific prestige. The opposition and Professor Freeman, in particular, have obviously invested considerable resources in supporting a position, which at some stage has turned out to be scientifically untenable. Acknowledging you were mistaken is no defeat. Acknowledging you were wrong is to accept that you participate in a discipline called science, where the overall dynamic depends on scientists constantly proposing possible hypotheses and trying to support them with evidence and, more important, reject them when they can’t. Not to acknowledge this is, however, unscientific. Clive Freeman can maintain his position as much as he wants to, also for reasons we cannot fathom, but he doesn’t have the right to call it science.

“Thirdly, it’s about the communication of science, and this is closely related to status in science, as mentioned earlier. It’s one thing to understand Clive Freeman’s agenda, but if you really want to appreciate why a controversy like this one endures, you need to turn your eyes to the world in which research and science exist. It’s a world characterized by tough competition for scarce research grants, a world wherein the media play a shockingly big role for scientists and consequently the quality of science.

“Since the latter half of the twentieth century it has become customary to publicize scientific controversies, in order to make science accessible to the wider public. However, it’s my opinion we are currently experiencing a shift in communication, where the interest in the content of a controversy has given way to a rise in interest in the feud itself. Everyone knows that Bjørn Lomborg argued with leading experts about the state of the earth, but how many lay people can explain the scientific arguments at the heart of that controversy, and how many understand its scientific implications, even though the media covered it extensively?”

Anna looked at Dr. Tybjerg and saw the pencil in his hand, which now rested in his lap.

“And
why
has controversy suddenly become so attractive?” she asked and turned up the light. It went very quiet, and Anna could now see Dr. Tybjerg’s face clearly. He was smiling.

“It sells tickets,” Anna said. “It sells newspapers, it sells journals, and the pressure for profit also affects highly respected journals such as
Science
and
Scientific Today
, which increasingly regard the degree of controversy as their basis for selecting which papers to print, while ignoring the quality of those papers. Dinosaurs are ‘sexy,’ and the question of what became of them is glamorous. In the controversy surrounding the origin of birds, it seems to have created a co-dependent relationship between the opposition and the media, where each party needs the conflict because it sells, even though it means that an expert, such as Professor Freeman, is forced to defend a scientific position that is ultimately indefensible.” Anna found Karen’s admiring gaze in the hall.

“Research grants are awarded by people who also read newspapers and journals and watch television. Big headlines and extensive media coverage can easily give the impression the feud is important. Bitter arguments between highly qualified scientists sell and, in my view, the opposition has exploited that. Publicity leads to media coverage, and media coverage leads to grants. You can think what you like, but you can’t call it science.”

The hall was very quiet.

“Thank you,” Anna said and closed her laptop.

Everyone clapped.

Dr. Tybjerg rose and started examining her. A young professor from the University of Århus assisted him, and an external examiner, also from Århus, took careful notes. Anna wore Helland’s necklace. The questions rained down over her and, at some point, Dr. Tybjerg handed her a box of bones and asked her to account for the evolution of the bird hand compared to the evolution of other pentadactyle hands. Anna answered and looked Dr. Tybjerg straight in the eye. Karen had left the hall to pick up Lily. For God’s sake, it had to be over soon! Suddenly, the door opened and the World’s Most Irritating Detective entered. He looked frazzled and tried not to draw attention to himself. He failed. When he missed a step and stumbled, everyone turned to glare at him. Christ, he was irritating. Anna flushed hot all over and smiled at him.

Dr. Tybjerg said, “Congratulations.”

And, at last, Anna was a biologist.