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FOUR

Post Mortem

I
t was still raining the next morning, and a blustery wind was blowing from the north-west. Nathan’s designated parking space had been taken up by a delivery van from Emsco Scientific Supplies, so he had to park his black Dodge Avenger under the trees on the opposite side of the parking lot, where it would inevitably get covered in wet leaves and bits of branches and bird droppings.

He had nearly reached the laboratory steps when he heard footsteps hurrying up behind him, and the jostling of a waterproof coat.

‘Professor Underhill!
Professor Underhill
!’

He turned around. A pretty blonde girl in a puffy red squall was jogging across the parking lot toward him. She was wearing bright red rubbers with sparkles on them, and a red knitted hat with bunny’s ears on top of it.

‘Professor Underhill! Sir! May I talk to you, please?’

‘It depends what about.’

The girl bit off one of her gloves with her teeth and dug into her pocket for an identity card. ‘Patti Laquelle, from
The Philadelphia Web
,’ she panted. ‘I’m
so
glad I caught you!’

‘
The Philadelphia Web
? You mean the online newspaper?’ Nathan wasn’t impressed. The
Web
was the digital equivalent of
The National Enquirer
, full of stories about the marital indiscretions of minor TV celebrities and bungling local bank robbers and budgerigars that could whistle ‘Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Mighty is your name.’

Most of the media had been deeply skeptical about Nathan’s cryptozoological project when the zoo had first announced it, but the
Web
had mocked him more than most. ‘Dragon’s Eggs Could Be Miracle Cure For Everything That Ails Us, Claims Philly’s Would-Be Wizard.’ After that, he had responded to all media inquiries about his progress with only the dullest and most technical of answers, and over the years the media had gradually lost interest. Until today, anyhow.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Laquelle. But I’m busy right now, and I’m a half-hour late already.’

‘But I need to ask you about your gryphon!’

‘My what?’

‘Your
gryphon
, Professor. Come on, I know that you managed to fertilize a gryphon’s egg.’

‘OK,’ said Nathan, defensively. ‘I never made a secret of it.’

‘No. But you haven’t exactly shouted it from the rooftops, have you?’

‘It’s difficult, complicated stuff, that’s why. Not exactly
Web
material. If you’re really interested, I published a three-thousand-word article about it in
The American Journal of Genetics
– November seventeenth last year.’

‘You did? Wow – I don’t know how I could have missed that.’

‘You and about three hundred and three million other people. Don’t worry about it.’

‘So how’s the little monster getting along?’

‘It’s growing, and we’re keeping a close watch on its development. That’s all. It’s taking a little longer to hatch out than we thought it would, but – well – there’s absolutely no precedent for what we’re doing here, is there?’

‘You mean it hasn’t hatched already?’

Nathan opened the laboratory door. ‘Listen, Ms Laquelle. As soon as anything happens, you’ll be the first to know about it. I promise you.’

‘You’re
sure
it hasn’t hatched already?’

‘No, it hasn’t. Now I really have to get going.’

‘How come I heard from a very reliable source that it
did
hatch, but it was stillborn?’

He hesitated, still holding the door open. ‘I can’t imagine why you should think that.’

‘Meaning that it
did
hatch, and it
was
stillborn?’

‘Meaning that I can’t tell you anything, because there’s absolutely nothing to tell you.’

Patti Laquelle came up the steps and stood very close to him, frowning up at him as intently as if she could read his mind. She had a spattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her blonde fringe was sparkling with raindrops. She reminded him of a girlfriend he used to go out with, when he was only fifteen.

‘That’s not true, Professor, is it?’ she asked him.

‘Ms Laquelle—’

‘Please, call me Patti. I know what’s happened, Professor. I know it’s all gone wrong. And I have to file
something
about it. You can’t expect me not to.’

Nathan was silent for a very long time. Then he said, ‘Who leaked it?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that. But if you explain to me exactly how the gryphon died, and why, I won’t have to speculate, will I? I won’t have to write “How Did Philly’s Would-Be Wizard Get Egg On His Face?” Don’t forget that all the other media are going to be after you, too, as soon as this story breaks. “Breaks” – sorry! But you know I’m right. It’s going to be a feeding frenzy.’

Nathan hesitated. Then he said, ‘Come along inside,’ and opened the door wider.

He led her into his office. Richard hadn’t arrived yet, to open up the refrigerator and take out the gryphon’s remains. All the same, Nathan sniffed, twice, and he was sure that he could still smell it.

Patti took off her squall. Nathan took it from her and hung it up on the coat stand. ‘Kind of big for you, this coat.’

‘It belonged to my last boyfriend.
Lars
, would you believe? He was a skiing nut. Me – I always hated skiing. Trudging up hills, sliding back down again. I could never see the point.’

‘You want some coffee?’

‘Sure. Black. No sugar.’

Nathan spooned coffee into the cafetière on top of his filing cabinet. Without turning around, he said, ‘You’re right about the gryphon. It died yesterday evening, just after eight. It was fully grown, but it never made any attempt to pip – that is, to hatch itself. Too feeble, I guess.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I cracked the egg myself, with a hammer. But when I opened it up, I found that the gryphon was in what you might call an advanced state of decomposition. In other words, it had putrefied.’

‘Oh, my God.’

‘It died a few seconds later. There wasn’t a hope in hell that we could have revived it.’

He poured boiling water on to the coffee grounds. ‘It’s too early to say what went wrong. It could have been a bacterial infection, it could have been some kind of chromosome disorder. It could have been some genetic problem that I can’t even begin to understand.

‘All I know is that the people who want to see this project shut down are going to have a field day.’

Patti said, ‘I’m sorry, Professor. Truly.’

‘Why should you care?’

‘Well – what a
gas
it would have been, wouldn’t it, if you had managed to pull it off? A real live walking talking gryphon! Well, maybe not talking, but
squawking
. You could have made a fortune!
I
could have made a fortune! Think of the syndication rights!’

‘For Christ’s sake. I’m a molecular biologist, not P.T. Barnum.’

‘So what do you want me to post on the
Web
?’

‘Why are you asking me? You’ll write whatever you feel like. “Gryphon’s Egg Is A Big Fat Zero.” “Gryphon Egg Project Goes Pear-Shaped.” Who knows?’

‘No, seriously.’

Nathan poured them each a mug of coffee. ‘Why don’t you just remind people of what I’m working on here?’

‘OK. Why not?’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘I’m not sure I trust you.’

‘Try me, why don’t you? I won’t call you a “would-be wizard”, I promise you. Nor a “zany zoologist” either. Although you
are
a zoologist, aren’t you? And what you’re doing here, it is kind of zany, you have to admit.’

‘Ms Laquelle – Patti – I’m not breeding these so-called mythical creatures for their entertainment value. I want them for their embryonic stem cells. Hopefully I can use them to cure people who have diseases that are currently incurable – like Alzheimer’s, and cystic fibrosis, and motor neurone disease, and Huntington’s.’

‘That’s such an incredible idea,’ said Patti. ‘But if these creatures are mythical, they’re like
imaginary
, aren’t they? They never really existed.’

Nathan said, ‘Some paleontologists absolutely refuse to believe in them, yes. But there’s a whole mountain of documentary evidence that they
did
exist, going right back to Sumerian times. Descriptions, drawings, accounts of their habits and behavior. All from highly reliable sources.

‘They were amazing, some of these creatures. Jackals with enormous wings, that could fly. Birds that lived for hundreds of years. Lizards that could heal themselves, even when their skins were burned to a cinder. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, he was a zoologist, too, although not many people know that. He was supposed to have owned a three-headed dog that could remember
everything
. What one head forgot, another head remembered.’

‘That sounds exactly like my grandma,’ said Patti.

Nathan opened a drawer, took out a file, and handed her a woodcut of a gryphon sitting on its nest. ‘You know who drew that? Albrecht Dürer, in 1513. His drawings of exotic animals were so accurate that they were still being used in schoolbooks three hundred years after his death.

‘There are plenty of remains, too. Only last October they found a gryphon skeleton at the foot of the Altai Mountains, in the Gobi Desert. The official interpretation was that it was the bones of a young protoceratops. Hardly anybody had the nerve to say what it really was. In fact only one paleontologist came out and said that it was almost certainly a gryphon. The head of an eagle and the body of a lion.’

Patti stared at the woodcut for a long time, and then handed it back. ‘I still find it hard to believe. You actually bred one of these.’

‘Well, I did, yes, even if it
did
die. And if the zoological society doesn’t decide to cut my funding, I’m sure that I can do it again. And – in time – I think I can breed any other kind of hybrid you care to mention. Gargoyles, wyverns, hippogryphs. Maybe a cuegle, even, which can grow extra limbs for itself. Imagine that, you lose a leg, you can grow yourself another one.’

‘Can I
see
it?’ asked Patti.

‘The gryphon? Not unless you want to lose your breakfast.’

‘I didn’t eat breakfast. Only grapefruit juice. Come on, let me take a look at it.’

‘OK . . . but no photographs, mind. Not until after the necropsy – and, even then, only maybe.’

Nathan led her across the laboratory to the stainless-steel refrigerators. Patti stood a little way away while he slid open the drawer with the gryphon’s embryo in it. Even though it had been chilled, it still smelled just as foul.

He used a glass stirring rod to point out its head and its beak and its claws. He lifted its feathers so that she could see how wide its wingspan would have been.

‘It’s fantastic,’ said Patti, with her hand cupped over her face. ‘If I didn’t know it was for real, I would have thought you just sewed them together, a bird and a lion cub.’

At that moment, the door banged open, and Richard came into the laboratory, closely followed by Keira and Tim.

‘Professor?’ he asked, hanging up his limp khaki raincoat. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Impromptu press conference,’ said Nathan. ‘This is Ms Patti Laquelle, from
The Philadelphia Web
. She’s going to make us famous.’

‘
The Philadelphia Web
?’ asked Tim. ‘As in, “My Grandmother Ate My Schnauzer”?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Patti. ‘Only it wasn’t “schnauzer”, it was “chihuahua”.’

FIVE

Sack-Dragger

D
enver was still sullen at suppertime, toying with his chicken-and-pepper stew and hardly saying a word.

‘I won’t ask how your necropsy went,’ said Grace. ‘Not while we’re eating, anyhow.’

Nathan poured himself another glass of white wine. ‘Let’s just say that I still don’t have the first idea what went wrong. It was very a virulent infection, that’s for sure, but what kind of bacillus it was and where it came from—’

Denver threw down his fork. It bounced across his plate and landed on the tablecloth. ‘Didn’t you hear what Mom said? Do you really think we want to hear about bacterial infections while we’re trying to eat our supper?’

Nathan said, ‘OK. OK. I’m sorry. But you don’t have to toss your cutlery around.’

Denver pushed back his chair so that it tilted and fell over. ‘Forget it. I’m not hungry now. I’m going out.’

‘Sit down and finish your supper.’

‘What? And listen to you talking about pus and infections and decomposing gryphons? Don’t you
ever
give it a rest? Don’t you ever think that we don’t want to hear about it?’

Nathan looked down at his plate. He was trying hard not to lose his temper, and he took a very deep breath to steady himself.

Grace said, ‘Denver . . . you need to apologize. Your dad’s had some really difficult problems to deal with. His whole future at the zoo could depend on this. The last thing he needs is you stamping your feet like a two-year-old.’

‘Oh, he’s had some really difficult problems to deal with, has he? So we have to sit here and listen to all this disgusting stuff about dead creatures that should never have been alive in the first place, is that it? While we’re
eating
, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Denver,’ said Nathan, in a very quiet voice. ‘Shut up.’

Denver jabbed his finger at him. ‘You think you’re the only person in this house who’s allowed to have an opinion, don’t you? I don’t count for anything! Do you know what I’ve been doing at school lately? Do you have any idea? Of course you don’t! Did you know that I was thrown off the basketball team?’

‘No,’ said Nathan. ‘I didn’t know because you didn’t tell me.’

‘You want to know why? Look at you – you don’t even want to know why!’

‘Of course I want to know why.’