Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1)

Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1) Page 23

    "The raptors got out," Hammond said.

    "Did they," Malcolm said, breathing shallowly. "How could that possibly happen?"

    "It was a system screwup. Arnold didn't realize that the auxiliary power was on, and the fences cut out."

    "Did they."

    "Go to hell, you supercilious bastard-"

    "If I remember," Malcolm said, "I predicted fence integrity would fail."

    Hammond sighed, and sat down heavily. "Damn it all," he said, shaking his head. "It must surely not have escaped your notice that at heart what we are attempting here is an extremely simple idea. My colleagues and I determined, several years ago, that it was possible to clone the DNA of an extinct animal, and to grow it. That seemed to us a wonderful idea, it was a kind of time travel-the only time travel in the world. Bring them back alive, so to speak. And since it was so exciting, and since it was possible to do it, we decided to go forward. We got this island, and we proceeded. It was all very simple."

    "Simple?" Malcolm said. Somehow he found the energy to sit up in the bed. "Simple? You're a bigger fool than I thought you were. And I thought you were a very substantial fool."

    Ellie said, "Dr. Malcolm," and tried to ease him back down. But Malcolm would have none of it. He pointed toward the radio, the shouts and the cries.

    "What is that, going on out there?" he said. "That's your simple idea. Simple. You create new life forms, about which you know nothing at all. Your Dr. Wu does not even know the names of the things he is creating. He cannot be bothered with such details as what the thing is called, let alone what it is. You create many of them in a very short time, you never learn anything about them, yet you expect them to do your bidding, because you made them and you therefore think you own them; you forget that they are alive, they have an intelligence of their own, and they may not do your bidding, and you forget how little you know about them, how incompetent you are to do the things that you so frivolously call simple.... Dear God . . ."

    He sank back, coughing.

    "You know what's wrong with scientific power?" Malcolm said. "It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are. It never fails."

    Hammond said, "What is he talking about?"

    Harding made a sign, indicating delirium. Malcolm cocked his eye.

    "I will tell you what I am talking about," he said. "Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline.

    "Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it.

    "But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast. There is no discipline lasting many decades. There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature. There is only a get-rich-quick, make-a-name-for-yourself-fast philosophy. Cheat, lie, falsify-it doesn't matter. Not to you, or to your colleagues. No one will criticize you. No one has any standards. They are all trying to do the same thing: to do something big, and do it fast.

    "And because you can stand on the shoulders of giants, you can accomplish something quickly. You don't even know exactly what you have done, but already you have reported it, patented it, and sold it. And the buyer will have even less discipline than you. The buyer simply purchases the power, like any commodity. The buyer doesn't even conceive that any discipline might be necessary."

    Hammond said, "Do you know what he is talking about?"

    Ellie nodded.

    "I haven't a clue," Hammond said.

    "I'll make it simple," Malcolm said. "A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special. And that is the kind of power that science fosters, and permits. And that is why you think that to build a place like this is simple."

    "It was simple," Hammond insisted.

    "Then why did it go wrong?"

    Dizzy with tension, John Arnold threw open the door to the maintenance shed and stepped into the darkness inside. Jesus, it was black. He should have realized the lights would be out. He felt the cool air, the cavernous dimensions of the space, extending two floors below him. He had to find the catwalk. He had to be careful, or he'd break his neck.

    The catwalk.

    He groped like a blind man until he realized it was futile. Somehow he had to get light into the shed, He went back to the door and cracked it open four inches. That gave enough light. But there was no way to keep the door open. Quickly he kicked off his shoe and stuck it in the door.

    He went toward the catwalk, seeing it easily. He walked along the corrugated metal, hearing the difference in his feet, one loud, one soft. But at least he could see. Up ahead was the stairway leading down to the generators. Another ten yards.

    Darkness.

    The light was gone.

    Arnold looked back to the door, and saw the light was blocked by the body of a velociraptor. The animal bent over, and carefully sniffed the shoe.

    Henry Wu paced. He ran his hands over the computer consoles. He touched the screens. He was in constant movement. He was almost frantic witb tension.

    He reviewed the steps he would take. He must be quick. The first screen would come up, and he would press-

    "Wu!" The radio hissed.

    He grabbed for it. "Yes. I'm here."

    "Got any bloody power yet?" It was Muldoon. There was something odd about his voice, something hollow.

    "No," Wu said. He smiled, glad to know Muldoon was alive.

    "I think Arnold made it to the shed," Muldoon said- "After that, I don't know."

    "Where are you?" Wu said.

    "I'm stuffed."

    "What?"

    "Stuffed in a bloody pipe," Muldoon said. "And I'm very popular at the moment."

    Wedged in a pipe was more like it, Muldoon thought. There had been a stack of drainage pipes piled behind the visitor center, and he'd backed himself into the nearest one, scrambling like a poor bastard. Meter pipes, very tight fit for him, but they couldn't come in after him.

    At least, not after he'd shot the leg off one, when the nosy bastard came too close to the pipe. The raptor had gone howling off, and the others were now respectful. His only regret was that he hadn't waited to see the snout at the end of the tube before he'd squeezed the trigger.

    But he might still have his chance, because there were three or four outside, snarling and growling around him.

    "Yes, very popular," he said into the radio.

    Wu said, "Does Arnold have a radio?"

    "Don't think so," Muldoon said. "Just sit tight. Wait it out."

    He hadn't seen what the other end of the pipe was like-he'd backed in too quickly-and he couldn't see now. He was wedged tight. He could only hope that the far end wasn't open. Christ, he didn't like the thought of one of those bastards taking a bite of his hindquarters.

    Arnold backed away down the catwalk. The velociraptor was barely ten feet away, stalking him, coming forward into the gloom. Arnold could hear the click of its deadly claws on the metal.

    But he was going slowly. He knew the animal could see well, but the grille of the catwalk, the unfamiliar mechanical odors had made it cautious. That caution was his only chance, Arnold thought. If he could get to the stairs, and then move down to the floor below . . .

    Because he was pretty sure velociraptors couldn't climb stairs. Certainly not narrow, steep stairs.

    Arnold glanced over his shoulder. The stairs were just a few feet away. Another few steps . . .

    He was there! Reaching back, he felt the railing, started scrambling down the almost vertical steps. His feet touched flat concrete. The raptor snarled in frustration, twenty feet above him on the catwalk.

    "Too bad, buddy," Arnold said. He turned away. He was now very close to the auxiliary generator. Just a few more steps and he would see it, even in this dim light. . . .

    There was a dull thump behind him.

    Arnold turned.

    The raptor was standing there on the concrete floor, snarling.

    It had jumped down.

    He looked quickly for a weapon, but suddenly he found he was slammed onto his back on the concrete. Something heavy was pressing on his chest, it was impossible to breathe, and he realized the animal was standing on top of him, and he felt the big claws digging into the flesh of his chest, and smelled the foul breath from the head moving above him, and he opened his mouth to scream.

    Ellie held the radio in her hands, listening. Two more Tican workmen had arrived at the lodge; they seemed to know it was safe here. But there had been no others in the last few Minutes. And it sounded quieter outside. Over the radio, Muldoon said, "How long has it been?"

    Wu said, "Four, five minutes."

    "Arnold should have done it by now," Muldoon said. "If he's going to. You got any ideas?"  

    "No," Wu said.

    "We heard from Gennaro?"

    Gennaro pressed the button. "I'm here."

    "Where the hell are you?" Muldoon said.

    "I'm going to the maintenance building," Gennaro said. "Wish me luck."

    Gennaro crouched in the foliage, listening.

    Directly ahead he saw the planted pathway, leading toward the visitor center. Gennaro knew the maintenance shed was somewhere to the east. He heard the chirping of birds in the trees. A soft mist was blowing. One of the raptors roared, but it was some distance away. It sounded off to his right. Gennaro set out, leaving the path, plunging into the foliage.

    Like to live dangerously?

    Not really.

    It was true, he didn't. But Gennaro thought he had a plan, or at least a possibility that might work. If he stayed north of the main complex of buildings, he could approach the maintenance shed from the rear. All the raptors were probably around the other buildings, to the south. There was no reason for them to be in the jungle.

    At least, he hoped not.

    He moved as quietly as he could, unhappily aware he was making a lot of noise. He forced himself to slow his pace, feeling his heart pound. The foliage here was very dense; he couldn't see more than six or seven feet ahead of him. He began to worry that he'd miss the maintenance shed entirely. But then he saw the roof to his right, above the palms.

    He moved toward it, went around the side. He found the door, opened it, and slipped inside. It was very dark. He stumbled over something.

    A man's shoe.

    Gennaro frowned. He propped the door wide open and continued deeper into the building. He saw a catwalk directly ahead of him. Suddenly he realized he didn't know where to go. And he had left his radio behind.

    Damn!

    There might be a radio somewhere in the maintenance building. Or else he'd just look for the generator. He knew what a generator looked like. Probably it was somewhere down on the lower floor. He found a staircase leading down.

    It was darker below, and it was difficult to see anything. He felt his way along among the pipes, holding his bands out to keep from banging his head.

    He heard an animal snarl, and froze. He listened, but the sound did not come again. He moved forward cautiously. Something dripped on his shoulder, and his bare arm. It was warm, like water. He touched it in the darkness.

    Sticky. He smelled it.

    Blood.

    He looked up. The raptor was perched on pipes, just a few feet above his head. Blood was trickling from its claws. With an odd sense of detachment, he wondered if it was injured. And then he began to run, but the raptor jumped onto his back, pushing him to the ground.

    Gennaro was strong; he heaved up, knocking the raptor away, and rolled off across the concrete. When he turned back, he saw that the raptor had fallen on its side, where it lay panting.

    Yes, it was injured. Its leg was hurt, for some reason.

    Kill it

    Gennaro scrambled to his feet, looking for a weapon. The raptor was still panting on the concrete. He looked frantically for sometbing-anything-to use as a weapon. When he turned back, the raptor was gone.

    It snarled, the sound echoing in the darkness.

    Gennaro turned in a full circle, feeling with his outstretched hands. And then he felt a sharp pain in his right hand.

    Teeth.

    It was biting him.

    The raptor jerked his head, and Donald Gennaro was yanked off his feet, and he fell.

    Lying in bed, soaked in sweat, Malcolm listened as the radio crackled. "Anything?" Muldoon said. "You getting anything?"

    "No word," Wu said.

    "Hell," Muldoon said,

    There was a pause.

    Malcolm sighed. "I can't wait," he said, "to hear his new plan."

    "What I would like," Muldoon said, "is to get everybody to the lodge and regroup. But I don't see how."

    "There's a Jeep in front of the visitor center," Wu said. "If I drove over to you, could you get yourself into it?"

    "Maybe. But you'd be abandoning the control room."

    "I can't do anything here anyway."

    "God knows that's true," Malcolm said. "A control room without electricity is not much of a control room."

    "All right," Muldoon said. "Let's try. This isn't looking good."

    Lying in his bed, Malcolm said, "No, it's not looking good. It's looking like a disaster."

    Wu said, "The raptors are going to follow us over there."

    "We're still better off," Malcolm said. "Let's go."

    The radio clicked off. Malcolm closed his eyes, and breathed slowly, marshaling his strength.

    "Just relax," Ellie said. "Just take it easy."

    "You know what we are really talking about here," Malcolm said. "All this attempt to control . . . We are talking about Western attitudes that are five hundred years old. They began at the time when Florence, Italy, was the most important city in the world. The basic idea of science-that there was a new way to look at reality, that it was objective, that it did not depend on your beliefs or your nationality, that it was rational-that idea was fresh and exciting back then. It offered promise and hope for the future, and it swept away the old medieval system, which was hundreds of years old. The medieval world of feudal politics and religious dogma and hateful superstitions fell before science. But, in truth, this was because the medieval world didn't really work any more. It didn't work economically, it didn't work intellectually, and it didn't fit the new world that was emerging.

    Malcolm coughed.

    "But now," he continued, "science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways-air, and water, and land-because of ungovernable science." He sighed. "This much is obvious to everyone."

    There was a silence. Malcolm lay with his eyes closed, his breathing labored. No one spoke, and it seemed to Ellie that Malcolm had finally fallen asleep. Then he sat up again, abruptly.

    "At the same time, the great intellectual justification of science has vanished. Ever since Newton and Descartes, science has explicitly offered us the vision of total control. Science has claimed the power to eventually control everything, through its understanding of natural laws. But in the twentieth century, that claim has been shattered beyond repair. First, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle set limits on what we could know about the subatomic world. Oh well, we say. None of us lives in a subatomic world. It doesn't make any practical difference as we go through our lives. Then G?del's theorem set similar limits to mathematics, the formal language of science. Mathematicians used to think that their language had some special inherent trueness that derived from the laws of logic. Now we know that what we call 'reason' is just an arbitrary game. It's not special, in the way we thought it was.

    "And now chaos theory proves that unpredictability is built into our daily lives. It is as mundane as the rainstorm we cannot predict. And so the grand vision of science, hundreds of years old-the dream of total control-has died, in our century. And with it much of the justification, the rationale for science to do what it does. And for us to listen to it. Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn't true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and as misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly."

    "This is very extreme," Hammond said, shaking his head.

    "We are witnessing the end of the scientific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains in power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power. Because things are going very fast now. Fifty years ago, everyone was gaga over the atomic bomb. That was power. No one could imagine anything more. Yet, a bare decade after the bomb, we began to have genetic power. And genetic power is far more potent than atomic power. And it will be in everyone's hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators, And that will force everyone to ask the same question-What should I do with my power?-which is the very question science says it cannot answer."

    "So what will happen?" Ellie said.

    Malcolm shrugged. "A change."

    "What kind of change?"

    "All major changes are like death," he said. "You can't see to the other side until you are there." And he closed his eyes.

    "The poor man," Hammond said, shaking his head.

    Malcolm sighed. "Do you have any idea," he said, "how unlikely it is that you, or any of us, will get off this island alive?"

    SIXTH ITERATION

    [picture]

    "System recovery may prove impossible."

    IAN MALCOLM

    Return

    Its electric motor whirring, the cart raced forward down the dark underground tunnel. Grant drove, his foot to the floor. The tunnel was featureless except for the occasional air vent above, shaded to protect against rainfall, and thus permitting little light to enter. But he noticed that there were crusty white animal droppings in many places. Obviously lots of animals had been in here.

    Sitting beside him in the cart, Lex shone the flashlight to the back, where the velociraptor lay. "Why is it having trouble breathing?"

    "Because I shot it with tranquilizer," he said.

    "Is it going to die?" she said.

    "I hope not."

    "Why are we taking it?" Lex said.

    "To prove to the people back at the center that the dinosaurs are really breeding," Grant said.

    "How do you know they're breeding?"

    "Because this one is young," Grant said. "And because it's a boy dinosaur."

    "Is it?" Lex said, peering along the flashlight beam.

    "Yes. Now shine that light forward, will you?" He held out his wrist turning the watch to her. "What does it say?"

    "It says . . . ten-fifteen."

    "Okay."

    Tim said, "That means we have only forty-five minutes to contact the boat."

    "We should be close," Grant said. "I figure we should be almost to the visitor center right now." He wasn't sure, but be sensed the tunnel was gently tilting upward, leading them back to the surface, and-

    "Wow!" Tim said.

    They burst out into daylight with shocking speed. There was a light mist blowing, partially obscuring the building that loomed directly above them. Grant saw at once that it was the visitor center. They had arrived right in front of the garage!

    "Yay!" Lex shouted. "We did it! Yay!" She bounced up and down in the seat as Grant parked the cart in the garage. Along one wall were stac animal cages. They put the velociraptor in one, with a dish of water. Then they started climbing the stairs to the ground-floor entrance of the visitor center.

    "I'm going to get a hamburger! And french fries! Chocolate milk shake! No more dinosaurs! Yay!" They came to the lobby, and they opened the door.

    And they fell silent.

    In the lobby of the visitor center, the glass doors had been shattered, and a cold gray mist blew through the cavernous main hall. A sign that read WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH dangled from one hinge, creaking in the wind. The big tyrannosaur robot was upended and lay with its legs in the air, its tubing and metal innards exposed. Outside, through the glass, they saw rows of palm trees, shadowy shapes in the fog.

    Tim and Lex huddled against the metal desk of the security guard. Grant took the guard's radio and tried all the channels. "Hello, this is Grant. Is anybody there? Hello, this is Grant."

    Lex stared at the body of the guard, lying on the floor to the right. She couldn't see anything but his legs and feet.

    "Hello, this is Grant. Hello."

    Lex was leaning forward, peering around the edge of the desk. Grant grabbed her sleeve. "Hey. Stop that."

    "Is he dead? What's that stuff on the floor? Blood?"

    "Yes."

    "How come it isn't real red?"

    "You're morbid," Tim said.

    "What's 'morbid'? I am not."

    The radio crackled. "My God," came a voice. "Grant? Is that you?"

    And then: "Alan? Alan?" It was Ellie.

    "I'm here," Grant said.

    "Thank God," Ellie said. "Are you all right?"

    "I'm all right, yes."

    "What about the kids? Have you seen them?"

    "I have the kids with me," Grant said. "They're okay."

    "Thank God."

    Lex was crawling around the side of the desk. Grant slapped her ankle. "Get back here."

    The radio crackled. "-n where are you?"

    "In the lobby. In the lobby of the main building."

    Over the radio, he heard Wu say, "My God. They're here."

    "Alan, listen," Ellie said. "The raptors have gotten loose. They can open doors. They may be in the same building as you."

    "Great. Where are you?" Grant said. "We're in the lodge."

    Grant said, "And the others? Muldoon, everybody else?"

    "We've lost a few people. But we got everybody else over to the lodge."

    "And are the telephones working?"

    "No. The whole system is shut off. Nothing works."

     'How do we get the system back on?"

    "We've been trying."

    "We have to get it back on," Grant said, "right away. If we don't, within half an hour the raptors will reach the mainland."

    He started to explain about the boat when Muldoon cut him off. "I don't think you understand, Dr. Grant. We haven't got half an hour left, over here."

    "How's that?"

    "Some of the raptors followed us. We've got two on the roof now."

    "So what? The building's impregnable."

    Muldoon coughed, "Apparently not. It was never expected that animals would get up on the roof." The radio crackled. "-must have planted a tree too close to the fence. The raptors got over the fence, and onto the roof. Anyway, the steel bars on the skylight are supposed to be electrified, but of course the power's off. They're biting through the bars of the skylight."

    Grant said, "Biting through the bars?" He frowned, trying to imagine it, "How fast?"

    "Yes," Muldoon said, "they have a bite pressure of fifteen thousand pounds a square inch. They're like hyenas, they can bite through steel and-" The transmission was lost for a moment.

    "How fast?" Grant said again.

    Muldoon said, "I'd guess we've got another ten, fifteen minutes before they break through completely and come through the skylight into the building. And once they're in . . . Ah, just a minute, Dr. Grant."

    The radio clicked off.

    In the skylight above Malcolm's bed, the raptors had chewed through the first of the steel bars. One raptor gripped the end of the bar and tugged, pulling it back. It put its powerful hind limb on the skylight and the glass shattered, glittering down on Malcolm's bed below. Ellie reached over and removed the largest fragments from the sheets.

    "God, they're ugly," Malcolm said, looking up.

    Now that the glass was broken, they could hear the snorts and snarls of the raptors, the squeal of their teeth on the metal as they chewed the bars. There were silver thinned sections where they had chewed. Foamy saliva spattered onto the sheets, and the bedside table.

    "At least they can't get in yet," Ellie said. "Not until they chew through another bar."

    Wu said, "If Grant could somehow get to the maintenance shed . . ."

    "Bloody hell," Muldoon said. He limped around the room on his sprained ankle. "He can't get there fast enough. He can't get the power on fast enough. Not to stop this."

    Malcolm coughed. "Yes." His voice was soft, almost a wheeze.

    "What'd he say?" Muldoon said.

    "Yes," Malcolm repeated. "Can . . ."

    "Can what?"

    "Distraction . . ." He winced.