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