Vigil Read Free

the smaller carnivores.”
    “Okay, good. But what makes you say that?”
    “Nothing does. I thought of it all by myself.”
    There was a wave of laughter, and now he knew it was Katie.
    “Let me rephrase, Ms. Coyne,” Carter said, trying to regain control. “What makes you think, for instance, that it’s a meat eater?”
    “From here, it looks like whatever it was had sharp teeth, maybe even serrated—”
    “That’s good—because it did.”
    “—and although it’s tough to make out, maybe its feet had claws, like one of the raptors. But I can’t really tell that for sure.”
    “So you’re looking down at this area,” Carter said, touching his pointer to the bottom of the slide; there, the creature’s feet were splayed apart and did indeed look clawed. But even in its entirety, the fossil image didn’t offer much in the way of clues. It was really no more than an impression of faint gray and black lines—twisted and broken and in some spots doubling back on themselves—set against a blue-gray backdrop of volcanic ash. Katie had done a good job of picking out some of its most salient characteristics. Still, she’d missed the most important.
    “But what do you make this out to be?” Carter asked, raising his pointer to the top of the slide, where a bony protuberance twisted upward and ended with a blunt flourish. Even Katie was silent.
    “Maybe a tail, with something on the end of it,” another student hazarded.
    “An armored spike,” Katie said, “for warding off other predators?”
    “Not exactly. On closer examination, which this slide is probably inadequate to provide, that little clump at the end of the tail—and it is a tail—turned out to be,” and he took a second for dramatic effect, “a plume of feathers.”
    The hum of the projector was all that could be heard. Then Katie said, “So I was wrong? It’s not a dinosaur—it’s a bird?”
    “No, you’re right, in a way, on both counts: it’s a dinosaur, with feathers, called—and be prepared, I’ll expect all of you to spell this on the final— Protoarchaeopteryx robusta. It was found in western China, it dates from the Jurassic era, and it’s the best proof to date that present-day birds are in fact descendants of the dinosaurs.”
    “I thought that theory had been discredited,” Katie said.
    “Not in this class,” Carter said. “In here, that theory is alive and kicking.”
    The bell—more of an annoying buzzer, really—sounded, and the students started gathering their books and papers together. The projectionist turned up the lights in the lecture hall, and the slide instantly paled into obscurity on the screen.
    “So that thing you just showed us,” Katie said, “whatever it was called, did it fly?”
    “Nope, doesn’t look like it,” Carter replied, as the other students shuffled toward the door. Katie was always the last to go, always had one more question for him before she buttoned up her army surplus jacket and headed out herself. She reminded Carter a little of himself at that age, always trying to tie up one more loose end or get one more piece of the puzzle. Usually he hung around after the class to answer any remaining questions, but not today; today—and he’d put a yellow Post-it on his lecture notes so he wouldn’t forget—he had an appointment to get to.
    He pulled on his leather jacket, stuffed his notes in his battered briefcase, and left through the side door, just behind Katie.
    “So, do you believe that T. rex had feathers, too?” she asked over her shoulder.
    “It’s not inconceivable,” he said.
    “Guess they’re going to have to reshoot Jurassic Park then.”
    “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll do that,” he said, “and while they’re at it, maybe they ought to call it Cretaceous Park. ”
    “How come?”
    “Because T. rex didn’t actually show up till then. See you next Thursday.”
     
Outside, it was crisp and autumnal, the kind of day when New York actually seemed to