Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1)

Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1) Page 10

    As he spoke, Hammond steered him toward the door.

    "But, John," Wu said. "Remember back in '87, when we started to build the containment devices? We didn't have any full-grown adults yet, so we had to predict what we'd need- We ordered big taser shockers, cars with cattle prods mounted on them, guns that blow out electric nets. All built specially to our specifications. We've got a whole array of devices now and they're all too slow. We've got to make some adjustments. You know that Muldoon wants military equipment: TOW missiles and laser-guided devices?"

    "Let's leave Muldoon out of this," Hammond said. "I'm not worried. It's just a zoo, Henry."

    The phone rang, and Hammond went to answer it. Wu tried to think of another way to press his case. But the fact was that, after five long years, Jurassic Park was nearing completion, and John Hammond lust wasn't listening to him any more.

    There had been a time when Hammond listened to Wu very attentively. Especially when he had first recruited him, back in the days when Henry Wu was a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student getting his doctorate at Stanford in Norman Atherton's tab.

    Atherton's death had thrown the lab into confusion as well as mourning; no one knew what would happen to the funding or the doctoral programs. There was a lot of uncertainty; people worried about their careers.

    Two weeks after the funeral, John Hammond came to see Wu. Everyone in the lab knew that Atherton had had some association with Hammond, although the details were never clear. But Hammond had approached Wu with a directness Wu never forgot.

    "Norman always said you're the best geneticist in his lab," he said. "What are your plans now?"

    "I don't know. Research."

    "You want a university appointment?"

    "Yes."

    "That's a mistake," Hammond said briskly. "At least, if you respect your talent."

    Wu had blinked. "Why?"

    "Because, let's face facts," Hammond said. "Universities are no longer the intellectual centers of the country. The very idea is preposterous. Universities are the backwater. Don't look so surprised. I'm not saying anything you don't know. Since World War II, all the really important discoveries have come out of private laboratories. The laser, the transistor the polio vaccine, the microchip, the hologram, the personal computer, magnetic resonance imaging, CAT scans-the list goes on and on. Universities simply aren't where it's happening any more. And they haven't been for forty years. If you want to do something important in computers or genetics, you don't go to a university. Dear me, no."

    Wu found he was speechless.

    "Good heavens," Hammond said, "what must you go through to start a new project? How many grant applications, how many forms, how many approvals? The steering committee? The department chairman? The university resources committee? How do you get more work space if you need I . t? More assistants if you need them? How long does all that take? A brilliant man can't squander precious time with forms and committees. Life is too short, and DNA too long. You want to make your mark. If you want to get something done, stay out of universities."

    In those days, Wu desperately wanted to make his mark. John Hammond had his full attention.

    "I'm talking about work, " Hammond continued. "Real accomplishment. What does a scientist need to work? He needs time, and he needs money. I'm talking about giving you a five-year commitment, and ten million dollars a year in funding. Fifty million dollars, and no one tells you how to spend it. You decide. Everyone else just gets out of your way."

    It sounded too good to be true. Wu was silent for a long time. Finally he said, "In return for what?"

    "For taking a crack at the impossible," Hammond said. "For trying something that probably can't be done."

    "What does it involve?"

     "I can't give you details, but the general area involves cloning reptiles."

    "I don't think that's impossible," Wu said. "Reptiles are easier than mammals. Cloning's probably only ten, fifteen years off. Assuming some fundamental advances."

    "I've got five years," Hammond said. "And a lot of money, for somebody who wants to take a crack at it now."

    "Is my work publishable?"

    "Eventually."

    "Not immediately?"

    "But eventually publishable?" Wu asked, sticking on this point.

    Hammond had laughed. "Don't worry. If you succeed, the whole world will know about what you've done, I promise you."

    And now it seemed the whole world would indeed know, Wu thought. After five years of extraordinary effort, they were just a year away from opening the park to the public. Of course, those years hadn't gone exactly as Hammond had promised. Wu had had some people telling him what to do, and many times fearsome pressures were placed on him. And the work itself had shifted-it wasn't even reptilian cloning, once they began to understand that dinosaurs were so similar to birds. It was avian cloning, a very different proposition. Much more difficult. And for the last two years, Wu had been primarily an administrator, supervising teams of researchers and banks of computer-operated gene sequencers. Administration wasn't the kind of work he relished. It wasn't what he had bargained for.

    Still, he had succeeded. He had done what nobody really believed could be done, at least in so short a time. And Henry Wu thought that he should have some rights, some say in what happened, by virtue of his expertise and his efforts. Instead, he found his influence waning with each passing day. The dinosaurs existed. The procedures for obtaining them were worked out to the point of being routine. The technologies were mature. And John Hammond didn't need Henry Wu any more.

    "That should be fine," Hammond said, speaking into the phone. He listened for a while, and smiled at Wu. "Fine. Yes. Fine." He hung up. "Where were we, Henry?"

    "We were talking about phase two," Wu said.

    "Oh yes. We've gone over some of this before, Henry-"

    "I know, but you don't realize-"

    "Excuse me, Henry," Hammond said, with an edge of impatience in his voice. "I do realize. And I must tell you frankly, Henry. I see no reason to improve upon reality. Every change we've made in the genome has been forced on us by law or necessity. We may make other changes in the future, to resist disease, or for other reasons. But I don't think we should improve upon reality just because we think it's better that way. We have real dinosaurs out there now. That's what people want to see. And that's what they should see. That's our obligation, Henry. That's honest, Henry."

    And, smiling, Hammond opened the door for him to leave.

    Control

    Grant looked at all the computer monitors in the darkened control room, feeling irritable. Grant didn't like computers. He knew that this made him old-fashioned, dated as a researcher, but he didn't care. Some of the kids who worked for him had a real feeling for computers, an intuition. Grant never felt that. He found computers to be alien, mystifying machines. Even the fundamental distinction between an operating system and an application left him confused and disheartened, literally lost in a foreign geography he didn't begin to comprehend. But he noticed that Gennaro was perfectly comfortable, and Malcolm seemed to be in his element, making little sniffing sounds, like a bloodhound on a trail.

     "You want to know about control mechanisms?" John Arnold said, turning in his chair in the control room. The head engineer was a thin, tense, chain-smoking man of forty-five. He squinted at the others in the room. "We have unbelievable control mechanisms," Arnold said, and lit another cigarette.

    "For example," Gennaro said.

    "For example, animal tracking." Arnold pressed a button on his console, and the vertical glass map lit up with a pattern of jagged blue lines. "That's our juvenile T-rex. The little rex. All his movements within the park over the last twenty-four hours." Arnold pressed the button again. "Previous twenty-four." And again. "Previous twenty-four."

    The lines on the map became densely overlaid, a child's scribble. But the scribble was localized in a single area, near the southeast side of the lagoon.

    "You get a sense of his home range over time," Arnold said. "He's young, so he stays close to the water. And he stays away from the big adult rex. You put up the big rex and the little rex, and you'll see their paths never cross.

    "Where is the big rex right now?" Gennaro asked.

    Arnold pushed another button. The map cleared, and a single glowing spot with a code number appeared in the fields northwest of the lagoon. "He's right there."

    "And the little rex?"

    "Hell, I'll show you every animal in the park," Arnold said. The map began to light up like a Christmas tree, dozens of spots of light, each tagged with a code number. "That's two hundred thirty-eight animals as of this minute."

    "How accurate?"

    "Within five feet." Arnold puffed on the cigarette. "Let's put it this way: you drive out in a vehicle and you will find the animals right there, exactly as they're shown on the map."

    "How often is this updated?"

    "Every thirty seconds."

    "Pretty impressive," Gennaro said. "How's it done?"

    "We have motion sensors all around the park," Arnold said. "Most of 'em hard-wired, some radio-telemetered. Of course, motion sensors won't usually tell you the species, but we get image recognition direct off the video. Even when we're not watching the video monitors, the computer is. And checking where everybody is."

    "Does the computer ever make a mistake?"

    "Only with the babies. It mixes those up sometimes, because they're such small images. But we don't sweat that. The babies almost always stay close to herds of adults. Also you have the category tally."

    "What's that?"

    "Once every fifteen minutes, the computer tallies the animals in all categories," Arnold said. "Like this."

    Total Animals            238____________________________________                                        

    Species         Expected        Found        Ver

     Tyrannosaurs               2         2         4.1

     Maiasaurs              21        21        3.3

     Stegosaurs             4         4         3.9

     Triceratops               8         8         3.1

     Procompsognathids            49        49        3.9

     Othnielia              16        16        3.1

     Velociraptors             8         8         3.0

     Apatosaurs             17        17        3.1

     Hadrosaurs             11        11        3.1

     Dilophosaurs              7         7         4.3

     Pterosaurs             6         6         4.3

     Hypsilophodontids            33        33        2.9

     Euoplocepbalids            16        16        4.0

     Styracosaurs              18        18        3.9

     Callovosaurs              22        22        4.1

     Total             238        238

    "What you see here," Arnold said, "is an entirely separate counting procedure. It isn't based on the tracking data. It's a fresh look. The whole idea is that the computer can't make a mistake, because it compares two different ways of gathering the data. If an animal were missing, we'd know it within five minutes."

    "I see," Malcolm said. "And has that ever actually been tested?"

    "Well, in a way," Arnold said. "We've had a few animals die. An othniellan got caught in the branches of a tree and strangled. One of the stegos died of that intestinal illness that keeps bothering them. One of the hypsilophodonts fell and broke his neck. And in each case, once the animal stopped moving, the numbers stopped tallying and the computer signaled an alert."

    "Within five minutes."

    "Yes."

    Grant said, "What is the right-hand column?"

    "Release version of the animals. The most recent are version 4.1 or 4.3. We're considering going to version 4.4."

    "Version numbers? You mean like software? New releases?"

    "Well, yes," Arnold said. "It is like software, in a way. As we discover the glitches in the DNA, Dr. Wu's labs have to make a new version."

    The idea of living creatures being numbered like software, being subject to updates and revisions, troubled Grant. He could not exactly say why-it was too new a thought-out he was instinctively uneasy about it. They were, after all, living creatures. . . .

    Arnold must have noticed his expression, because he said, "Look, Dr. Grant, there's no point getting starry-eyed about these animals. It's important for everyone to remember that these animals are created. Created by man. Sometimes there are bugs. So, as we discover the bugs, Dr. Wu's labs have to make a new version. And we need to keep track of what version we have out there."

    "Yes, yes, of course you do," Malcolm said impatiently. "But, going back to the matter of counting-I take it all the counts are based on motion sensors?"

    "Yes."

    "And these sensors are everywhere in the park?"

    "They cover ninety-two percent of the land area," Arnold said. "There are only a few places we can't use them. For example, we can't use them on the jungle river, because the movement of the water and the convection rising from the surface screws up the sensors. But we have them nearly everywhere else. And if the computer tracks an animal into an unsensed zone, it'll remember, and look for the animal to come out again. And if it doesn't, it gives us an alarm."

    "Now, then," Malcolm said. "You show forty-nine procompsognatbids. Suppose I suspect that some of them aren't really the correct species. How would you show me that I'm wrong?"

    "Two ways," Arnold said. "First of all, I can track individual movements against the other presumed compys. Compys are social animals, they move in a group. We have two compy groups in the park. So the individuals should be within either group A or group B."

    "Yes, but-"

    "The other way is direct visual," he said. He punched buttons and one of the monitors began to flick rapidly through images of compys, numbered from 1 to 49.

    "These pictures are . . ."

    "Current ID images. From within the last five minutes."

    "So you can see all the animals, if you want to?"

    "Yes. I can visually review all the animals whenever I want."

    "How about physical containment?" Gennaro said. "Can they get out of their enclosures?"

    "Absolutely not," Arnold said. "These are expensive animals, Mr. Gennaro. We take very good care of them. We maintain multiple barriers. First, the moats." He pressed a button, and the board lit up with a network of orange bars. "These moats are never less than twelve feet deep, and water-filled. For bigger animals the moats may be thirty feet deep. Next, the electrified fences." Lines of bright red glowed on the board. "We have fifty miles of twelve-foot-high fencing, including twenty-two miles around the perimeter of the island. All the park fences carry ten thousand volts. The animals quickly learn not to go near them."

    "But if one did get out?" Gennaro said.

    Arnold snorted, and stubbed out his cigarette.

    "Just hypothetically," Gennaro said. "Supposing it happened?"

    Muldoon cleared his throat. "We'd go out and get the animal back," he said "We have lots of ways to do that-taser shock guns, electrified nets, tranquilizers. All nonlethal, because, as Mr. Arnold says, these are expensive animals."

    Gennaro nodded. "And if one got off the island?"

    "It'd die in less than twenty-four hours," Arnold said. "These are genetically engineered animals. They're unable to survive in the real world."

    "How about this control system itself?" Gennaro said. "Could anybody tamper with it?"

    Arnold was shaking his head. "The system is hardened. The computer is independent in every way. Independent power and independent backup power. The system does not communicate with the outside, so it cannot be influenced remotely by modem. The computer system is secure."

    There was a pause. Arnold puffed his cigarette. "Hell of a system," he said. "Hell of a goddamned system."

    "Then I guess," Malcolm said, "your system works so well, you don't have any problems."

    "We've got endless problems here," Arnold said, raising an eyebrow. "But none of the things you worry about. I gather you're worried that the animals will escape, and will get to the mainland and raise hell. We haven't got any concern about that at all. We see these animals as fragile and delicate. They've been brought back after sixty-five million years to a world that's very different from the one they left, the one they were adapted to. We have a hell of a time caring for them.

    "You have to realize," Arnold continued, "that men have been keeping mammals and reptiles in zoos for hundreds of years. So we know a lot about how to take care of an elephant or a croc. But nobody has ever tried to take care of a dinosaur before. They are new animals. And we just don't know. Diseases in our animals are the biggest concern."

    "Diseases?" Gennaro said, suddenly alarmed. "Is there any way that a visitor could get sick?"

    Arnold snorted again. "You ever catch a cold from a zoo alligator, Mr. Gennaro? Zoos don't worry about that. Neither do we. What we do worry about is the animals dying from their own illnesses, or infecting other animals. But we have programs to monitor that, too. You want to see the big rex's health file? His vaccination record? His dental record? That's something-you ought to see the vets scrubbing those big fangs so he doesn't get tooth decay.

    "Not just now," Gennaro said. "What about your mechanical systems?"

    "You mean the rides?" Arnold said.

    Grant looked up sharply: rides?

    "None of the rides are running yet," Arnold was saying. "We have the jungle River Ride, where the boats follow tracks underwater, and we have the Aviary Lodge Ride, but none of it's operational yet. The park'll open with the basic dinosaur tour-the one that you're about to take in a few minutes. The other rides will come on line six, twelve months after that."

    "Wait a minute," Grant said. "You're going to have rides? Like an amusement park?"

    Arnold said, "This is a zoological park. We have tours of different areas, and we call them rides. That's all."

    Grant frowned. Again he felt troubled. He didn't like the idea of dinosaurs being used for an amusement park.

    Malcolm continued his questions. "You can run the whole park from this control room?"

    "Yes," Arnold said. "I can run it single-handed, if I have to. We've got that much automation built in. The computer by itself can track the animals, feed them, and fill their water troughs for forty-eight hours without supervision."

    "This is the system Mr. Nedry designed?" Malcolm asked. Dennis Nedry was sitting at a terminal in the far corner of the room, eating a candy bar and typing.

    "Yes, that's right," Nedry said, not looking up from the keyboard.

    "It's a hell of a system," Arnold said proudly.

    "That's right," Nedry said absently. "Just one or two minor bugs to fix."

    "Now," Arnold said, "I see the tour is starting, so unless you have other questions . . ."

    "Actually, just one," Malcolm said. "Just a research question. You showed us that you can track the procompsognathids and you can visually display them individually. Can you do any studies of them as a group? Measure them, or whatever? If I wanted to know height or weight, or . . ."

    Arnold was punching buttons. Another screen came up.

    [picture]

    "We can do all of that, and very quickly," Arnold said. "The computer takes measurement data in the course of reading the video screens, so it is translatable at once. You see here we have a normal Poisson distribution for the animal population. It shows that most of the animals cluster around an average central value, and a few are either larger or smaller than the average, at the tails of the curve."

    "You'd expect that kind of graph," Malcolm said.

    "Yes. Any healthy biological population shows this kind of distribution. Now, then," Arnold said, lighting another cigarette, "are there any other questions?"

    "No," Malcolm said. "I've learned what I need to know."

    As they were walking out, Gennaro said, "It looks like a pretty good system to me. I don't see how any animals could get off this island,"

    "Don't you?" Malcolm said. "I thought it was completely obvious."

    "Wait a minute," Gennaro said. "You think animals have gotten out?"

    "I know they have."

    Gennaro said, "But how? You saw for yourself. They can count all the animals. They can look at all the animals. They know where all the animals are at all times. How can one possibly escape?

    Malcolm smiled. "It's quite obvious," he said. "It's just a matter of your assumptions."

    "Your assumptions," Gennaro repeated, frowning.

    "Yes," Malcolm said. "Look here. The basic event that has occurred in Jurassic Park is that the scientists and technicians have tried to make a new, complete biological world. And the scientists in the control room expect to see a natural world. As in the graph they just showed us. Even though a moment's thought reveals that nice, normal distribution is terribly worrisome on this island."

    "It is?"

    "Yes. Based on what Dr. Wu told us earlier, one should never see a population graph like that."

    "Why not?" Gennaro said.

    "Because that is a graph for a normal biological population. Which is precisely what Jurassic Park is not. Jurassic Park is not the real world. It is intended to be a controlled world that only imitates the natural world. In that sense, it's a true park, rather like a Japanese formal garden. Nature manipulated to be more natural than the real thing, if you will."

    "I'm afraid you've lost me," Gennaro said, looking annoyed.

    "I'm sure the tour will make everything clear," Malcolm said.

    The Tour

    "This way, everybody, this way," Ed Regis said. By his side, a woman was passing out pith helmets with "Jurassic Park" labeled on the headband, and a little blue dinosaur logo.

    A line of Toyota Land Cruisers came out of an underground garage beneath the visitor center. Each car pulled up, driverless and silent. Two black men in safari uniforms were opening the doors for passengers.

    "Two to four passengers to a car, please, two to four passengers to a car," a recorded voice was saying. "Children under ten must be accompanied by an adult. Two to four passengers to a car, please . . ."

    Tim watched as Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm got into the first Land Cruiser with the lawyer, Gennaro. Tim looked over at Lex, who was standing pounding her fist into her glove.

    Tim pointed to the first car and said, "Can I go with them?"

    "I'm afraid they have things to discuss," Ed Regis said. "Technical things."

    "I'm interested in technical things," Tim said. "I'd rather go with them."

    "Well, you'll be able to hear what they're saying," Regis said. "We'll have a radio open between the cars."

    The second car came. Tim and Lex got in, and Ed Regis followed. "These are electric cars," Regis said. "Guided by a cable in the roadway."

    Tim was glad he was sitting in the front seat, because mounted in the dashboard were two computer Screens and a box that looked to him like a CD-ROM; that was a laser disk player controlled by a computer. There was also a portable walkie-talkie and some kind of a radio transmitter. There were two antennas on the roof, and some odd goggles in the map pocket.

    The black men shut the doors of the Land Cruiser. The car started off with an electric hum. Up ahead, the three scientists and Gennaro were talking and pointing, clearly excited. Ed Regis said, "Let's hear what they are saying." An intercom clicked.

    "I don't know what the hell you think you're doing here," Gennaro said, over the intercom. He sounded very angry.

    "I know quite well why I'm here," Malcolm said.

    "You're here to advise me, not play goddamned mind games. I've got five percent of this company and a responsibility to make sure that Hammond has done his job responsibly. Now you goddamn come here-"

    Ed Regis pressed the intercom button and said, "In keeping with the nonpolluting policies of Jurassic Park, these lightweight electric Land Cruisers have been specially built for us by Toyota in Osaka. Eventually we hope to drive among the animals-just as they do in African game parks-but, for now, sit back and enjoy the self-guided tour." He paused. "And, by the way, we can hear you back here."

    "Oh Christ," Gennaro said. "I have to be able to speak freely. I didn't ask for these damned kids to come-"

    Ed Regis smiled blandly and pushed a button. "We'll just begin the show, shall we?" They heard a fanfare of trumpets, and the interior screens flashed WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK. A sonorous voice said, "Welcome to Jurassic Park. You are now entering the lost world of the prehistoric past, a world of mighty creatures long gone from the face of the earth, which you are privileged to see for the first time."

    "That's Richard Kiley," Ed Regis said. "We spared no expense."

    The Land Cruiser passed through a grove of low, stumpy palm trees. Richard Kiley was saying, "Notice, first of all, the remarkable plant life that surrounds you. Those trees to your left and right are called cycads, the prehistoric predecessors of palm trees. Cycads were a favorite food of the dinosaurs. You can also see bennettitaleans, and ginkgoes. The world of the dinosaur included more modern plants, such as pine and fir trees, and swamp cypresses. You will see these as well."

    The Land Cruiser moved slowly among the foliage. Tim noticed the fences and retaining walls were screened by greenery to heighten the illusion of moving through real jungle.

    "We imagine the world of the dinosaurs," said Richard Kiley's voice, "as a world of huge vegetarians, eating their way through the giant swampy forests of the Jurassic and Cretaceous world, a hundred million years ago. But most dinosaurs were not as large as people think. The smallest dinosaurs were no bigger than a house cat, and the average dinosaur was about as big as a pony. We are first going to visit one of these average-size animals, called hypsilophodonts. If you look to your left, you may catch a glimpse of them now."

    They all looked to the left.

    The Land Cruiser stopped on a low rise, where a break in the foliage provided a view to the east. They could see a sloping forested area which opened into a field of yellow grass that was about three feet high. There were no dinosaurs.

    "Where are they?" Lex said.

    Tim looked at the dashboard. The transmitter lights blinked and the CD-ROM whirred. Obviously the disk was being accessed by some automatic system. He guessed that the same motion sensors that tracked the animals also controlled the screens in the Land Cruiser. The screens now showed pictures of hypsilophodonts, and printed out data about them.

    The voice said, "Hypsilophodontids are the gazelles of the dinosaur world: small, quick animals that once roamed everywhere in the world, from England to Central Asia to North America. We think these dinosaurs were so successful because they had better jaws and teeth for chewing plants than their contemporaries did. In fact, the name 'hypsilophodontid' means 'high-ridge tooth,' which refers to the characteristic self-sharpening teeth of these animals. You can see them in the plains directly ahead, and also perhaps in the branches of the trees."

    "In the trees?" Lex said. "Dinosaurs in the trees?"

    Tim was scanning with binoculars, too. "To the right," he said. "Halfway up that big green trunk . . ."

    In the dappled shadows of the tree a motionless, dark green animal about the size of a baboon stood on a branch. It looked like a lizard standing on its hind legs. It balanced itself with a long drooping tail.

    "That's an othnielia," Tim said.

    "The small animals you see are called othnielia," the voice said, "in honor of the nineteenth-century dinosaur hunter Othniel Marsh of Yale."

    Tim spotted two more animals, on higher branches of the same tree. They were all about the same size. None of them were moving.

    "Pretty boring," Lex said. "They're not doing anything."

    "The main herd of animals can be found in the grassy plain below you," said the voice. "We can rouse them with a simple mating call." A loudspeaker by the fence gave a long nasal call, like the honking of geese.

    From the field of grass directly to their left, six lizard heads poked up, one after another. The effect was comical, and Tim laughed.

    The heads disappeared. The loudspeaker gave the call again, and once again the heads poked up-in exactly the same way, one after another. The fixed repetition of the behavior was striking.

    "Hypsilophodonts are not especially bright animals," the voice explained. "They have roughly the intelligence of a domestic cow."

    The heads were dull green, with a mottling of dark browns and blacks that extended down the slender necks. Judging from the size of the heads, Tim guessed their bodies were four feet long, about as large as deer.

    Some of the hypsilophodonts were chewing, the jaws working. One reached up and scratched its head, with a five-fingered band. The gesture gave the creature a pensive, thoughtful quality.

    "If you see them scratching, that is because they have skin problems. The veterinary scientists here at Jurassic Park think it may be a fungus, or an allergy. But they're not sure yet. After all, these are the first dinosaurs in history ever to be studied alive."

    The electric motor of the car started, and there was a grinding of gears. At the unexpected sound, the herd of hypsilophodonts suddenly leapt into the air and bounded above the grass like kangaroos, showing their full bodies with massive hind limbs and long tails in the afternoon sunlight. In a few leaps, they were gone.

    "Now that we've had a look at these fascinating herbivores, we will go on to some dinosaurs that are a little larger. Quite a bit larger, in fact."

    The Land Cruisers continued onward, moving south through Jurassic Park.

    Control

    "Gears are grinding," John Arnold said, in the darkened control room. "Have maintenance check the electric clutches on vehicles BB4 and BB5 when they come back."

    "Yes, Mr. Arnold," replied the voice on the intercom.

    "A minor detail," Hammond said, walking in the room. Looking out, he could see the two Land Cruisers moving south through the park. Muldoon stood in the corner, silently watching.

    Arnold pushed his chair back from the central console at the control panel. "There are no minor details, Mr. Hammond," he said, and he lit another cigarette. Nervous at most times, Arnold was especially edgy now. He was only too aware that this was the first time visitors had actually toured the park. In fact, Arnold's team didn't often go into the park. Harding, the vet, sometimes did. The animal handlers went to the individual feeding houses. But otherwise they watched the park from the control room. And now, with visitors out there, he worried about a hundred details.

    John Arnold was a systems engineer who had worked on the Polaris submarine missile in the late 1960s, until he had his first child and the prospect of making weapons became too distasteful. Meanwhile, Disney had started to create amusement park rides of great technological sophistication, and they employed a lot of aerospace people. Arnold helped build Disney World in Orlando, and had gone on to implement major Parks at Magic Mountain in California, Old Country in Virginia, and Astroworld in Houston.

    His continuous employment at parks had eventually given him a somewhat skewed view of reality. Arnold contended, only half jokingly, that the entire world was increasingly described by the metaphor of the theme park. "Paris is a theme park," he once announced, after a vacation, "although it's too expensive, and the park employees are unpleasant and sullen."