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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