Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1)

Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1) Page 28

    "He likes me," Lex said. "His name is Clarence."

    "Clarence?"

    "Yes," Lex said.

    Muldoon was holding the leather collar with the small metal box attached to it. Grant heard the high-pitched beeping in the headset. "Is it a problem putting the collar on the animal?"

    Lex was still petting the raptor, reaching through the cage. "I het he'll let me put it on him," she said.

    "I wouldn't try," Muldoon said. "They're unpredictable."

    "I het he'll let me," she said.

    So Muldoon gave Lex the collar, and she held it out so the raptor could smell it. Then she slowly slipped it around the animal's neck. The raptor turned brighter green when Lex buckled it and closed the Velcro cover over the buckle. Then the animal relaxed, and turned paler again.

    "I'll be damned," Muldoon said.

    "It's a chameleon," Lex said.

    "The other raptors couldn't do that," Muldoon said, frowning. "This wild animal must be different. By the way," he said, turning to Grant, "if they're all born females, how do they breed? You never explained that bit about the frog DNA."

    "It's not frog DNA," Grant said. "It's amphibian DNA. But the phenomenon happens to be particularly well documented in frogs. Especially West African frogs, if I remember."

    "What phenomenon is that?"

    "Gender transition," Grant said. "Actually, it's just plain changing sex." Grant explained that a number of plants and animals were known to have the ability to change their sex during life-orchids, some fish and shrimp, and now frogs. Frogs that had been observed to lay eggs were able to change, over a period of months, into complete males. They first adopted the fighting stance of males, they developed the mating whistle of males, they stimulated the hormones and grew the gonads of males, and eventually they successfully mated with females.

    "You're kidding," Gennaro said. "And what makes it happen?"

    "Apparently the change is stimulated by an environment in which all the animals are of the same sex. In that situation, some of the amphibians will spontaneously begin to change sex from female to male."

    "And you think that's what happened to the dinosaurs?"

    "Until we have a better explanation, yes," Grant said. "I think that's what happened. Now, shall we find this nest?"

    They piled into the Jeep, and Lex lifted the raptor from the cage. The animal seemed quite calm, almost tame in her bands. She gave it a final pat on the head, and released it.

    The animal wouldn't leave.

    "Go on, shoo!" Lex said. "Go home!"

    The raptor turned, and ran off into the foliage.

    Grant held the receiver and wore the headphones. Muldoon drove. The car bounced along the main road, going south. Gennaro turned to Grant and said, "What is it like, this nest?"

    "Nobody knows," Grant said.

    "But I thought you'd dug them up."

    "I've dug up fossil dinosaur nests," Grant said. "But all fossils are distorted by the weight of millennia. We've made some hypotheses, some suppositions, but nobody really knows what the nests were like."

    Grant listened to the beeps, and signaled Muldoon to head farther west. It looked more and more as if Ellie had been correct: the nest was in the southern volcanic fields.

    Grant shook his head. "Not much about nesting behavior is clear," he said. He found himself explaining about the modern reptiles, like crocodiles and alligators. Even their nesting behavior wasn't well understood. Actually, the American alligator was better studied than most, and in the case of alligators, only the female guarded the nest, and only until the time of birth. The male alligator had spent days in early spring lying beside the female in a mating pair, blowing bubbles on her checks and providing her with other signs of masculine attention designed to bring her to receptivity, causing her finally to lift her tail and allow him, as he lay beside her, to insert his penis. By the time the female built her nest, two months later, the male was long gone. And although the female guarded her cone-shaped, three-foot-high mud nest ferociously, her attention seemed to wane with time, and she generally abandoned her eggs by the time the hatchlings began to squeak and emerge from their shells. Thus, in the wild, a baby alligator began its life entirely on its own, and for that reason its belly was stuffed with egg yolk for nourishment in its early days.

    "So the adult alligators don't protect the young?"

    "Not as we imagine it," Grant said. "The biological parents both abandon the offspring. But there is a kind of group protection. Young alligators have a very distinctive distress cry, and it brings any adult who hears it-parent or not-to their assistance with a full-fledged, violent attack. Not a threat display. A full-on attack."

    "Oh." Gennaro fell silent.

    "But that's in all respects a distinctly reptile pattern," Grant continued. "For example, the alligator's biggest problem is to keep the eggs cool. The nests are always located in the shade. A temperature of ninety-eigbt point six degrees will kill an alligator egg, so the mother mostly guards her eggs to keep them cool."

    "And dinos aren't reptiles," Muldoon said laconically.

    "Exactly. The dinosaur nesting pattern could be much more closely related to that of any of a variety of birds-"

    "So you actually mean you don't know," Gennaro said, getting annoyed. "You don't know what the nest is like?"

    "No," Grant said. "I don't."

    "Well," Gennaro said. "So much for the damn experts."

    Grant ignored him. Already he could smell the sulfur. And up ahead he saw the rising steam of the volcanic fields.

    The ground was hot, Gennaro thought, as he walked forward. It was actually hot. And here and there mud bubbled and spat up from the ground. And the reeking, sulfurous steam hissed in great shoulder-high plumes. He felt as if he were walking through hell.

    He looked at Grant, walking along with the headset on, listening to the beeps. Grant in his cowboy boots and his jeans and his Hawaiian shirt, apparently very cool. Gennaro didn't feel cool. He was frightened to be in this stinking, hellish place, with the velociraptors somewhere around. He didn't understand how Grant could be so calm about it.

    Or the woman. Sattler. She was walking along, too, just looking calmly around.

    "Doesn't this bother you?" Gennaro said. "I mean, worry you?"

    "We've got to do it," Grant said. He didn't say anything else.

    They all walked forward, among the bubbling steam vents. Gennaro fingered the gas grenades that he had clipped to his belt. He turned to Ellie. "Why isn't he worried about it?"

    "Maybe he is," she said. "But he's also thought about this for his whole life."

    Gennaro nodded, and wondered what that would be like. Whether there was anything he had waited his whole life for. He decided there wasn't anything.

    Grant squinted in the sunlight. Ahead, through veils of steam, an animal crouched, looking at them. Then it scampered away.

    "Was that the raptor?" Ellie said.

    "I think so. Or another one. juvenile, anyway."

    She said, "Leading us on?"  

    "Maybe." Ellie had told him how the raptors had played at the fence to keep her attention while another climbed onto the roof. If true, such behavior implied a mental capacity that was beyond nearly all forms of life on earth. Classically, the ability to invent and execute plans was believed to be limited to only three species: chimpanzees, gorillas, and human beings. Now there was the possibility that a dinosaur might be able to do such a thing, too.

    The raptor appeared again, darting into the light, then jumping away with a squeak. It really did seem to be leading them on.

    Gennaro frowned. "How smart are they?" he said.

    "If you think of them as birds," Grant said, "then you have to wonder. Some new studies show the gray parrot has as much symbolic intelligence as a chimpanzee. And chimpanzees can definitely use language. Now researchers are finding that parrots have the emotional development of a three-year-old child, but their intelligence is unquestioned. Parrots can definitely reason symbolically."

    "But I've never heard of anybody killed by a parrot," Gennaro grumbled.

    Distantly, they could bear the sound of the surf on the island shore. The volcanic fields were behind them now, and they faced a field of boulders. The little raptor climbed up onto one rock, and then abruptly disappeared.

    "Where'd it go?" Ellie said.

    Grant was listening to the earphones. The beeping stopped. "He's gone."

    They hurried forward, and found in the midst of the rocks a small bole, like a rabbit hole. It was perhaps two feet in diameter. As they watched, the juvenile raptor reappeared, blinking in the light. Then it scampered away.

    "No way," Gennaro said. "No way I'm going down there."

    Grant said nothing. He and Ellie began to plug in equipment. Soon he had a small video camera attached to a hand-held monitor. He tied the camera to a rope, turned it on, and lowered it down the hole.

    "You can't see anything that way," Gennaro said.

    "Let it adjust," Grant said. There was enough light along the upper tunnel for them to see smooth dirt walls, and then the tunnel opened out-suddenly, abruptly. Over the microphone, they heard a squeaking sound. Then a lower, trumpeting sound. More noises, coming from many animals.

    "Sounds like the nest, all right," Ellie said.

    "But you can't see anything," Gennaro said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.

    "No," Grant said. "But I can hear. " He listened for a while longer, and then hauled the camera out, and set it on the ground. "Let's get started." He climbed up toward the bole. Ellie went to get a flashlight and a shock stick. Grant pulled the gas mask on over his face, and crouched down awkwardly, extending his legs backward.

    "You can't be serious about going down there," Gennaro said.

    Grant nodded. "It doesn't thrill me. I'll go first, then Ellie, then you come after."

    "Now, wait a minute," Gennaro said, in sudden alarm. "Why don't we drop these nerve-gas grenades down the hole, then go down afterward? Doesn't that make more sense?"

    "Ellie, you got the flashlight?"

    She handed the flashlight to Grant.

    "What about it?" Gennaro said. "What do you say?"

    "I'd like nothing better," Grant said. He backed down toward the hole. "You ever seen anything die from poison gas?"

    "No . . ."

    "It generally causes convulsions. Bad convulsions."

    "Well, I'm sorry if it's unpleasant, but-"

    "Look," Grant said. "We're going into this nest to find out how many animals have hatched. If you kill the animals first, and some of them fall on the nests in their spasms, that will ruin our ability to see what was there. So we can't do that,"

    "But-"

    "You made these animals, Mr. Gennaro."

    "I didn't."

    "Your money did. Your efforts did. You helped create them. They're your creation. And you can't just kill them because you feel a little nervous now."

    "I'm not a little nervous," Gennaro said. "I'm scared shi-"

    "Follow me," Grant said. Ellie handed him a shock stick. He pushed backward through the hole, and grunted. "Tight fit."

    Grant exhaled, and extended his arms forward in front of him, and there was a kind of whoosh, and he was gone.

    The bole gaped, empty and black.

    "What happened to him?" Gennaro said, alarmed.

    Ellie stepped forward and leaned close to the hole, listening at the opening. She clicked the radio, said softly, "Alan?"

    There was a long silence. Then they heard faintly: "I'm here."

    "Is everything all right, Alan?"

    Another long silence. When Grant finally spoke, his voice sounded distinctly odd, almost awestruck.

    "Everything's fine," he said.

    Almost Paradigm

    In the lodge, John Hammond paced back and forth in Malcolm's room. Hammond was impatient and uncomfortable. Since marshaling the effort for his last outburst, Malcolm had slipped into a coma, and now it appeared to Hammond that he might actually die. Of course a helicopter had been sent for, but God knows when it would arrive. The thought that Malcolm might die in the meantime filled Hammond with anxiety and dread.

    And, paradoxically, Hammond found it all much worse because he disliked the mathematician so much. It was worse than if the man were his friend. Hammond felt that Malcolm's death, should it occur, would be the final rebuke, and that was more than Hammond could bear.

    In any case, the smell in the room was quite ghastly. Quite ghastly. The rotten decay of human flesh.

    "Everything . . . parad . . ." Malcolm said, tossing on the pillow.

    "Is he waking up?" Hammond said.

    Harding shook his head.

    "What did he say? Something about paradise?"

    "I didn't catch it," Harding said.

    Hammond paced some more. He pushed the window wider, trying to get some fresh air. Finally, when he couldn't stand it, he said, "Is there any problem about going outside?"

    "I don't think so, no," Harding said. "I think this area is all right."

    "Well, look, I'm going outside for a bit."

    "All right," Harding said. He adjusted the flow on the intravenous antibiotics.

    "I'll be back soon."

    "All right."

    Hammond left, stepping out into the daylight, wondering why he had bothered to justify himself to Harding. After all, the man was his employee. Hammond had no need to explain himself.

    He went through the gates of the fence, looking around the park. It was late afternoon, the time when the blowing mist was thinned, and the sun sometimes came out. The sun was out now, and Hammond took it as an omen. Say what they would, he knew that his park had promise. And even if that impetuous fool Gennaro decided to burn it to the ground, it would not make much difference.

    Hammond knew that in two separate vaults at InGen headquarters in Palo Alto were dozens of frozen embryos. It would not be a problem to grow them again, on another island, elsewhere in the world. And if there had been problems here, then the next time they would solve those problems. That was how progress occurred. By solving problems.

    As he thought about it, he concluded that Wu had not really been the man for the job. Wu had obviously been sloppy, too casual with his great undertaking. And Wu had been too preoccupied with the idea of making improvements. Instead of making dinosaurs, he had wanted to improve on them. Hammond suspected darkly that was the reason for the downfall of the park.

    Wu was the reason.

    Also, he had to admit that John Arnold was ill suited for the job of chief engineer. Arnold had impressive credentials, but at this point in his career he was tired, and he was a fretful worrier. He hadn't been organized, and he had missed things. Important things.

    In truth, neither Wu nor Arnold had had the most important characteristic, Hammond decided. The characteristic of vision. That great sweeping act of imagination which evoked a marvelous park, where children pressed against the fences, wondering at the extraordinary creatures, come alive from their storybooks. Real vision. The ability to see the future. The ability to marshal resources to make that future vision a reality.

    No, neither Wu nor Arnold was suited to that task.

    And, for that matter, Ed Regis had been a poor choice, too. Harding was at best an indifferent choice. Muldoon was a drunk.. . .

    Hammond shook his head. He would do better next time.

    Lost in his thoughts, he headed toward his bungalow, following the little path that ran north from the visitor center. He passed one of the workmen, who nodded curtly. Hammond did not return the nod. He found the Tican workmen to be uniformly insolent. To tell the truth, the choice of this island off Costa Rica had also been unwise. He would not make such obvious mistakes again-

    When it came, the roar of the dinosaur seemed frighteningly close. Hammond spun so quickly he fell on the path, and when he looked back he thought he saw the shadow of the juvenile T-rex, moving in the foliage beside the flagstone path, moving toward him.  

    What was the T-rex doing here? Why was it outside the fences?

    Hammond felt a flash of rage: and then he saw the Tican workman, running for his life, and Hammond took the moment to get to his feet and dash blindly into the forest on the opposite side of the path. He was plunged in darkness- he stumbled and fell, his face mashed into wet leaves and damp earth, and he staggered back up to his feet, ran onward, fell again, and then ran once more. Now he was moving down a steep hillside, and he couldn't keep his balance. He tumbled helplessly, rolling and spinning over the soft ground, before finally coming to a stop at the foot of the hill. His face splashed into shallow tepid water, which gurgled around him and ran up his nose.

    He was lying face down in a little stream.

    He had panicked! What a fool! He should have gone to his bungalow! Hammond cursed himself. As he got to his feet, he felt a sharp pain in his right ankle that brought tears to his eyes. He tested it gingerly: it might be broken. He forced himself to put his full weight on it, gritting his teeth. Yes.

    Almost certainly broken.

    In the control room, Lex said to Tim, "I wish they had taken us with them to the nest."

    "It's too dangerous for us, Lex," Tim said. "We have to stay here. Hey, listen to this one." He pressed another button, and a recorded tyrannosaur roar echoed over the loudspeakers in the park.

    "That's neat," Lex said. "That's better than the other one,"

    "You can do it, too," Tim said. "And if you push this, you get reverb."

    "Let me try," Lex said. She pushed the button. The tyrannosaur roared again. "Can we make it last longer?" she said.

    "Sure," Tim said. "We just twist this thing here."

    Lying at the bottom of the hill, Hammond heard the tyrannosaur roar, bellowing through the jungle.

    Jesus.

    He shivered, hearing that sound. It was terrifying, a scream from some other world. He waited to see what would happen. What would the tyrannosaur do? Had it already gotten that workman? Hammond waited, hearing only the buzz of the jungle cicadas, until he realized he was holding his breath, and let out a long sigh.

    With his injured ankle, he couldn't climb the hill. He would have to wait at the bottom of the ravine. After the tyrannosaur had gone, he would call for help. Meanwhile, he was in no danger here.

    Then he heard an amplified voice say, "Come on, Timmy, I get to try it too. Come on. Let me make the noise."

    The kids!

    The tyrannosaur roared again, but this time it had distinct musical overtones, and a kind of echo, persisting afterward.

    "Neat one," said the little girl. "Do it again."

    Those damned kids!

    He should never have brought those kids. They had been nothing but trouble from the beginning. Nobody wanted them around-Hammond had only brought them because he thought it would stop Gennaro from destroying the resort, but Gennaro was going to do it anyway. And the kids had obviously gotten into the control room and started fooling around-now, who had allowed that?

    He felt his heart begin to race, and felt an uneasy shortness of breath. He forced himself to relax. There was nothing wrong. Although he could not climb the hill, he could not be more than a hundred yards from his own bungalow, and the visitor center. Hammond sat down in the damp earth, listening to the sounds in the jungle around him. And then, after a while, he began to shout for help.

    Malcolm's voice was no louder than a whisper. "Everything looks different . . . on the other side," he said.

    Harding leaned close to him. "On the other side?" He thought that Malcolm was talking about dying.

    "When . . . shifts," Malcolm said.

    "Shifts?"

    Malcolm didn't answer. His dry lips moved. "Paradigm," he said finally.

    "Paradigm shifts?" Harding said. He knew about paradigm shifts. For the last two decades, they had been the fashionable way to talk about scientific change. "Paradigm" was just another word for a model, but as scientists used it the term meant something more, a world view. A larger way of seeing the world. Paradigm shifts were said to occur whenever science made a major change in its view of the world. Such changes were relatively rare, occurring about once a century, Darwinian evolution had forced a paradigm shift. Quantum mechanics had forced a smaller shift.

    "No," Malcolm said. "Not . . . paradigm . . . beyond "Beyond paradigm?" Harding said.

    "Don't care about . . . what . . . anymore .

    Harding sighed. Despite all efforts, Malcolm was rapidly slipping into a terminal delirium. His fever was higher, and they were almost out of his antibiotics.

    "What don't you care about?"

    "Anything," Malcolm said. "Because . . . everything looks different . . . on the other side."

    And he smiled.

    Descent

    "You're crazy," Gennaro said to Ellie Sattler, watching as she squeezed backward into the rabbit hole, stretching her arms forward. "You're crazy to do that!"

    She smiled. "Probably," she said. She reached forward with her outstretched hands, and pushed backward against the sides of the hole. And suddenly she was gone.

    The hole gaped black.

    Gennaro began to sweat. He turned to Muldoon, who was standing by the Jeep. "I'm not doing this," he said.

    "Yes, you are."

    "I can't do this. I can't."

    "They're waiting for you," Muldoon said. "You have to."

    "Christ only knows what's down there," Gennaro said. "I'm telling you, I can't do it."

    "You have to."

    Gennaro turned away, looked at the hole, looked back. "I can't. You can't make me."

    "I suppose not," Muldoon said. He held up the stainless-steel prod. "Ever felt a shock stick?"

    "Doesn't do much," Muldoon said. "Almost never fatal. Generally knocks you flat. Perhaps loosens your bowels. But it doesn't usually have any permanent effect. At least, not on dinos. But, then, people are much smaller."

    Gennaro looked at the stick. "You wouldn't."

    "I think you'd better go down and count those animals," Muldoon said. "And you better hurry."

    Gennaro looked back at the hole, at the black opening, a mouth in the earth. Then he looked at Muldoon, standing there, large and impassive.

    Gennaro was sweating and lighthearted. He started walking toward the hole. From a distance it appeared small, but as be came closer it seemed to grow larger.

    "That's it," Muldoon said.

    Gennaro climbed backward into the hole, but he began to feel too frightened to continue that way-the idea of backing into the unknown filled him with dread-so at the last minute he turned around and climbed head first into the hole, extending his arms forward and kicking his feet, because at least he would see where he was going. He pulled the gas mask over his face.

    And suddenly he was rushing forward, sliding into blackness, seeing the dirt walls disappear into darkness before him, and then the walls became narrower-much narrower-terrifyingly narrow-and he was lost in the pain of a squeezing compression that became steadily worse and worse, that crushed the air out of his lungs, and he was only dimly aware that the tunnel tilted slightly upward, along the path, shifting his body, leaving him gasping and seeing spots before his eyes, and the pain was extreme.

    And then suddenly the tunnel tilted downward again, and it became wider, and Gennaro felt rough surfaces, concrete, and cold air. His body was suddenly free, and bouncing, turning on concrete.

    And then he fell.

    Voices in the darkness. Fingers touching him, reaching forward from the whispered voices. The air was cold, like a cave.

    "-okay?"

    "He looks okay, yes."

    "He's breathing. . . ."

    "Fine."

    A female hand caressing his face. It was Ellie. "Can you hear?" she whispered.

    "Why is everybody whispering?" he said.

    "Because." She pointed.

    Gennaro turned, rolled, got slowly to his feet. He stared as his vision grew accustomed to the darkness. But the first thing that he saw, gleaming in the darkness, was eyes. Glowing green eyes.

    Dozens of eyes. All around him.

    He was on a concrete ledge, a kind of embankment, about seven feet above the floor. Large steel junction boxes provided a makeshift hiding place, protecting them from the view of the two full-size velociraptors that stood directly before them, not five feet away. The animals were dark green with brownish tiger stripes. They stood upright, balancing on their stiff extended tails. They were totally silent, looking around watchfully with large dark eyes. At the feet of the adults, baby velociraptors skittered and chirped. Farther back, in the darkness, juveniles tumbled and played, giving short snarls and growls.

    Gennaro did not dare to breathe.

    Two raptors!

    Crouched on the ledge, he was only a foot or two above the animals head height. The raptors were edgy, their heads jerking nervously up and down. From time to time they snorted impatiently. Then they moved off, turning back toward the main group.

    As his eyes adjusted, Gennaro could now see that they were in some kind of an enormous underground structure, but it was man-made-there were seams of poured concrete, and the nubs of protruding steel rods. And within this vast echoing space were many animals: Gennaro guessed at least thirty raptors. Perhaps more.

    "It's a colony, Grant said, whispering. "Four or six adults. The rest juveniles and infants. At least two hatchings. One last year and one this year. These babies look about four months old. Probably hatched in April."

    One of the babies, curious, scampered up on the ledge, and came toward them, squeaking. It was now only ten feet away.

    "Oh Jesus," Gennaro said. But immediately one of the adults came forward, raised its head, and gently nudged the baby to turn back. The baby chittered a protest, then hopped up to stand on the snout of the adult. The adult moved slowly, allowing the baby to climb over its head, down its neck, onto its back. From that protected spot, the infant turned, and chirped noisily at the three intruders.

    The adults still did not seem to notice them at all.

    "I don't get it," Gennaro whispered. "Why aren't they attacking?"

    Grant shook his head. "They must not see us. And there aren't any eggs at the moment. . . . Makes them more relaxed."

    "Relaxed?" Gennaro said. "How long do we have to stay here?"

    "Long enough to do the count," Grant said.

    As Grant saw it, there were three nests, attended by three sets of parents. The division of territory was centered roughly around the nests, although the offspring seemed to overlap, and run into different territories. The adults were benign with the young ones, and tougher with the juveniles, occasionally snapping at the older animals when their play got too rough.

    At that moment, a juvenile raptor came up to Ellie and rubbed his head against her leg. She looked down and saw the leather collar with the black box. It was damp in one place. And it had chafed the skin of the young animal's neck.

    The juvenile whimpered.

    In the big room below, one of the adults turned curiously toward the sound.