Simon Judah first saw the white quetzal Wednesday afternoon at his uncle's funeral.

After leaving work early in San Jose, he had driven up the peninsula to Millbrae, arriving ten minutes late for the graveside ceremony. A groundsman directed him to the tiny cluster of people around the white-draped casket, listening to a minister.

Self-consciously, Simon joined the group of strangers--the men in dark suits and sunglasses; the women in dark dresses, dark hats, and sunglasses--smoothed the wrinkles from his blue polo shirt, then jammed his hands into his Levis cords. He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the eulogy, but the words blurred into a meaningless drone. Too hot, he thought, wiping his forehead and glancing yearningly at a nearby circle of shade, cast by a magnificent black oak about twenty yards from the group of mourners. His gaze shifted to the coffin, draped with a shawl of white linen and a huge spray of red carnations--Uncle Will had always worn a red carnation in his lapel.

Simon smiled. His uncle had been quite a character, often mentioned in Herb Caen's column in the Chronicle, usually connected with his gallery in San Francisco. Probably most of these people were from the art crowd, Simon thought, looking around at the group. He spotted one familiar face: Mr. Rutherford, Uncle Will's attorney ... and beside the lawyer, a young man with a handkerchief to his face. Always a young man around Uncle Will, he thought, even now.

Simon let his gaze wander back to the great oak. Uncle Will had been good to him in his senior year of high school; after the death of Simon's mother, the old man helped him into Stanford, but Simon had flunked out in the second semester, and they had argued violently. He hadn't heard from his uncle in twelve years. So Simon had been surprised when Mr. Rutherford called to advise that he would be included in his uncle's will.

The minister droned on in the heat, like an old water cooler with loose bearings.

Simon felt sleepy--

Something landed on a branch of the black oak. Simon narrowed his eyes against the reflected glare, realizing it was a bird. A great white bird, dazzling in the sunlight, much larger than a seagull, long tail feathers drooping below the tree branch--He almost choked with the recognition. It was a quetzal, the rare Central American bird. But this one was unusual--the color of clouded ice. Simon clutched himself, shivering and rubbing goose bumps along his bare arms--the temperature had plunged twenty or thirty degrees. He glanced at the others, but incredibly, no one seemed affected by the temperature drop or the appearance of the strange bird.

The minister closed his book but rattled on.